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the24thkey) wrote2021-04-05 06:57 pm
Lezgeddit verse: the commentary (part 1)
Lezgeddit verse is a series of four loosely connected fics in four different kpop fandoms (Day6, Got7, BTS and Stray Kids), and all of them are about stories about disaster lesbians and their friends. While I’m just a humble disaster bisexual who never got involved in any fanfiction-worthy hijinks, these stories are still deeply personal on some levels, and I'm very proud of all of them.
Without further ado, let's get into the commentary of the first fic in the series: lezgeddit.
This fic started out as a single off-hand joke on twitter back in June 2018, at which point I had only ever written one (1) fic to completion, so, y’know. I really didn’t expect everything it would turn out to be. I didn’t even expect to finish this fic at all! But I did, one month later.
Before I got into kpop I had a pretty intense hockeyrpf phase, as you do, and something I missed (and sometime still miss) about that fandom were these ridiculous established fandom tropes like animal transformation etc., but also always-a-girl-fic or rule 63 or whatever you want to call it. I know the trope isn’t for everyone, and I also know there’s meta out there that goes into what does make it compelling for people, but tbh I’ve never thought all that much about it. I just love it.
I just didn’t expect I’d end up writing 43k words for 4 fandoms with this trope.
Park Sungjin is everything Brianna aspires to be. He’s mature, put together, and the dictionary definition of a distinguished gay (”Bisexual,” Sungjin interjects calmly without taking his eyes off his book). Not to mention the fact that he’s successfully maintained a healthy, loving relationship with not only one but two partners for five years.
(Dowoon mumbles “Three and a half years,” around a mouthful of pepero, Wonpil shouts “Six!” from the doorway to the kitchen, and Sungjin says, “We never ended up settling on an anniversary, did we.”)
Can you believe I didn’t have any particular feelings about Sungjin/Wonpil/Dowoon as a pairing before I wrote this? I actually end up incepting myself into loving background pairings and characters a lot while writing, it’s terrible/great. Also a lovely commenter said that SungDoPil each have one third of a brain cell, and you know what? That seems accurate.
Brianna herself is just kind of stuck in panicked gay mode. She can fake it well enough, mind you. She knows she’s handsome and has no problem picking up girls at clubs all over Hongdae. Actual relationships, though? A whole different story.
Tiny note but I very deliberately chose the word ‘handsome’ here instead of ‘pretty’, which might go back to that one video of the OG girl crush, Mamamoo’s Moonbyul, where she says she likes being called ‘handsome’. Moonbyul vibes were exactly what I wanted for Brianna.
Also re: Hongdae: I always try to make it clear that my kpop fics are set in Korea wherever I can, which mostly comes down to me googling Seoul neighborhoods or Korean foods to sprinkle in as scene-setting.
She looks up from where she’s wallowing in self-pity to find that no one is even paying attention to her anymore. Wonpil, still only halfway into the room, is arguing with Sungjin that even if they didn’t call themselves boyfriends, that first year totally counts. Dowoon is throwing in useless objections just for the fun of it.
Brianna makes a noise of frustration and flops over on the loveseat she’s occupying by herself, hugging a throw pillow. It’s a really nice pillow. The entire flat is very nicely decorated. But let’s be real, compared to the tiny apartment she shares with Jae, pretty much any place would be an improvement.
She startles when Wonpil suddenly appears next to her, pushing at her legs. “Shove over, noona.”
Brianna grumbles but sits up anyway, making space for Wonpil to sit down. He bumps their shoulders together and lets her play with his hair, so she forgives him.
“You don’t need to force yourself into a relationship to be happy,” Sungjin says, seamlessly picking the topic back up as if there had been no interruptions — and as if he’d been listening in the first place, as opposed to tuning her out in favour of his book on music theory. “The right person for you will come along eventually.”
Wonpil snorts. “The right person is already there, she just needs to get her head out of her ass.”
“Haha,” Brianna says. “What.”
Dowoon perks up, pushing at Sungjin’s shoulder in excitement. (Sungjin looks resigned.)
“Oh, oh, are we finally gonna talk about it?”
“Ha. Ha,” Brianna says again. “Talk about what.” She’s sweating, but it’s definitely because she refused to take off her stylish new jacket in the heated apartment, no other reason.
Like I said in the end notes on AO3, Brianna owns 10 leather jackets and has named all of them - which is mostly a reference to jaebri naming their guitars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB9gbPMwNJ0
“Let’s not make anyone uncomfortable,” Sungjin says reasonably, but he’s drowned out by Wonpil and Dowoon simultaneously and gleefully proclaiming, “Jaeparkianna!”
Brianna blinks. Hugs the throw pillow to her chest. Blushes.
“I can’t believe you guys still remember that,” she mumbles. “That’s so cringey.”
Jae is kind of an obnoxious drunk. She usually ends up loudly going on about something or other, like that one time she got them kicked out of their favourite gay bar because she wouldn’t stop yelling about how she put the lez in lezgeddit.
And here we go, that lezgeddit joke is the reason this whole fic exists :’)
“Me and BriBri,” Jae had yelled another night when they were all drunk but she was even more drunk than the rest of them, “We’re for-fucking-ever. Ain’t nothing gonna get between this!” She’d gestured between herself and Brianna, pressed together from hip to shoulder on the bench seat.
Brianna had already been laughing, the kind of laughter that makes your stomach hurt and takes your breath away. She’d managed to throw in an affirmative “Forever!” anyway.
“We’re friggin’- Jae and BriBri. But with no spaces in between. JaeBri. Fuck, that’s too short. Jaebrianna? Wait! Jaeparkianna!”
I spent a not-insignificant amount of time thinking about how to modify ‘Jaehyungparkian’, jaebri’s official, Jae-sanctioned ship name, to fit their new names. This was made a bit more difficult by the fact that I’m not actually sure what their full names would be - as in, which female Korean name could be abbreviated to Jae etc.
You can kinda see me avoiding full names throughout large parts of lezgeddit ‘verse because I was worried about choosing names that sound old-fashioned or worse, names that are just plain wrong. Shout-out to wikipedia for being a decent resource for researching Korean names!
Everyone around the table had burst into another round of laughter, Wonpil managing to gasp out, “What’s your last name so important for?” and almost knocking his drink over right after.
“Can’t have my part be shorter, duh,” Jae had said, like it made perfect sense, and then she’d looked at Brianna with a smile so bright it made the entire room fade into the background.
“We wouldn’t be able to forget it even if we wanted to,” Sungjin says, sounding weary. “You do realize she still uses it constantly, right?”
Brianna hadn’t, actually. This is new information to her, and she’s not quite sure what to do with it.
“We’re friends,” she says stubbornly. “Best friends.”
Dowoon opens his mouth, but Sungjin slaps his hand over it at the speed of light. The indignant noise Dowoon makes at that would be hilarious if Brianna wasn’t busy freaking out.
“Is that all you want to be, though?” Sungjin asks, and that’s just unfair.
“I—” Brianna starts, but she doesn’t know what to say to that. Hearing them talk so nonchalantly about what she thought was her most closely-guarded secret is disconcerting, to say the least. If they know, who else does? Does Jae know? God, she doesn’t even want to consider that. She tried so hard to not let anything show through, she thought she had herself under control—
“I totally thought you two were dating when I first met you,” Dowoon says once he manages to pry off Sungjin's hand, blissfully unaware of the panicked thoughts running through Brianna’s head.
“Well, we’re not,” she says, licking her lips nervously before she continues. “What would even make you think so?”
Dowoon gives her a flat look, less than impressed. “Noona. You’re like, all over each other.”
“You literally call her ‘babe’,” Wonpil adds. Which, sure, she does, but only platonically.
"Anyone would think you’re a couple when they see how you two act around each other. Not to mention that you live together," he goes on, and Brianna bristles at that.
"Because it saves us a ton of money. I only just started out in the industry, do you really think I could afford a place by myself? In Seoul?"
And they were ROOMMATES.
“You went to LA together to meet her family. And you have your weird anniversary,” Dowoon continues, now apparently counting reasons why they might as well be dating on his fingers.
Brianna almost gasps, she's so offended. Their friendship anniversary is sacred and wonderful and something she looks forward to every year.
"You’re basically married," Wonpil concludes, looking very pleased with himself.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Brianna says. Denial clearly isn’t an option anymore, but she doesn’t like the way this conversation is going. “We’re not dating. And yes, fine, maybe I’d like it if we were, but that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter what I want. I’ll get over it eventually.”
Wonpil scoffs at that, and Brianna has to resist the temptation to push him off the loveseat. “You’ve been mooning over her forever, don’t deny it. Just tell her already.”
“Ask her out!” Dowoon agrees, looking way too excited about it.
Sungjin, who is a traitor, chimes in as well. "They're not wrong, you know. I know the feeling and I get that it's scary, but don't you think it would be worth the risk?"
He looks at her imploringly, and he sounds so goddamn reasonable that it almost makes Brianna want to agree. But no.
Brianna grits her teeth. “I’m not you,” she bites out, sharper than she meant to. “Jae isn’t Wonpil or Dowoon. Just because your stupid crushes worked out perfectly doesn’t mean that mine ever would.”
She immediately feels bad for snapping at him, but she’s not about to take it back. He’s used to her, anyway. He can deal with it.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate being considered relationship goals,” Sungjin says gently, even as he’s pinching the bridge of his nose, “but that wasn’t what I meant and you know it.
Before Brianna can think of an answer to that, Wonpil cuts in, idly picking at the sleeves of his pink sweater as he says, “Jae-noona is at least as much work as two people.” He reconsiders. “Possibly more like five. But if there’s anyone that could even dream of handling her, it’s you.”
Of course I had to put in a reference to Wonpil’s legendary pink sweater.
“You keep presuming that Jae would want to date me,” Brianna says, and it hurts to think about it, but she can’t let this go on. “But she doesn’t. So there’s no point in me telling her anything.”
There’s an unmistakable finality to her words that makes everyone pause for a moment. Dowoon is exchanging an uneasy glance with Sungjin, who’s definitely looking concerned now. Wonpil is persistent however, even if he sounds a lot more hesitant with his next words, reaching out to lay his hand gently on her shoulder.
"Why are you so sure about that? I really think you should give it a chance. We all know how whipped noona is for you. All you have to do is bat your lashes and call her ‘unnie’ and she does whatever you want."
Brianna rarely uses honorifics with Jae anymore, but when she does? Jae caves. It's a secret weapon she uses sparingly, and mostly for stupid stuff like getting Jae to pay for their popcorn.
Honorifics! I am fascinated by them, even if I worry constantly that I’m using them wrong. My understanding is that you might eventually drop honorifics with friends you’re very close to (which is why Brianna never calls Sungjin ‘oppa’ in this fic). There’s this video I saw once where f(x) Amber explains how you can use honorifics (oppa, in that case) to sound cute when you want something from someone, which I included here as Brianna’s ‘secret weapon’.
Somewhat unrelated, I saw a post about fic research about Korean wlw stories once that showed how ‘unnie’ is used much more often in explicit fic, and I think about that a lot.
Wonpil makes it sound weird, though. Brianna sinks further into herself, frowning.
"Can you guys just stop," she mumbles. "I didn't even ask for your opinion."
"You're the one who came here to complain about how she can't keep a relationship."
"False," Brianna says. "I came here to steal your food."
Wonpil throws up his arms in defeat, Sungjin huffs out a laugh, and mercifully, that’s the end of the discussion.
Right from this first section you can tell what I love writing most: banter between friends. Looking at everything I’ve written so far, it’s all ensemble fic, isn’t it? I don’t quite know how to write something with just two people. Even if they and their relationship are at the center of the story, I need other characters as vehicles for emotional realizations and also jokes. Lots of jokes.
I supposed this is also in part because everything I write is for kpop groups where I’m very fond of all the members, so I want to include as many as possible. Not to mention I’m a sucker for idol friendships, so if there’s space for me to cram in a reference to any of those, I will take it (see also the expats in this fic).
Brianna has never admitted this to anyone (not even Sungjin, whom she trusts with her life) but the thing is, they did talk about it once. The day they moved in together Jae had leaned against the kitchen counter, surrounded by boxes upon boxes and her eyes trained on the floor.
“You know,” she’d said, fingers twisting and tangling, “I thought about asking you out once. Back when we met.”
I liked this image of Jae’s hand-wringing, an obvious sign of nervousness that flies right over Brianna’s head.
Brianna had stopped rummaging around for their cutlery, head whipping around to look at Jae.
“Like—” she’d paused at a lack of words, licking her lips nervously. “On a date?”
Her voice had come out high and incredulous, static buzzing in her ears.
“Yeah. Is that weird?”
“Oh! Oh wow,” Brianna had stuttered, a nervous laugh bubbling out of her throat, “Uh, yeah. Can you imagine? The two of us, dating? Wow.”
In the silence that followed she could have hit herself for the obvious over-correction, but before she could open her mouth again to say anything else, anything at all, Jae had turned to her with a casual grin and said, “So, pizza?”
And that was that.
Here we go with the food - I didn’t do that much research for this fic, so I just settled on pizza as something universal that wouldn’t seem out of place in Korea.
“Dude, are you okay?”
Brianna blinks, startled, and looks up from her mostly untouched dinner. (Of all the restaurants they could have gone to tonight, it just had to be a pizza place.)
Jae is squinting at her in concern, the slice in her hand drooping and threatening to fall apart as she stops halfway from bringing it to her mouth.
They’re sitting across from each other at a cramped table, legs entangled because they kept bumping together anyway. Next to Jae, Jimin is arguing with Eric about something or other, loud enough that the entire room has the pleasure of hearing her dulcet tones. One seat further down, Kevin and Bernard are so used to this particular kind of chaos that they have no problem ignoring it completely.
The expats! I love them. Jimin, Eric and Kevin are all connected to Jae through ASC, of course, and Jimin and Bernard were both with JYP. Last year I accidentally incepted myself into shipping Jimin/Eric/Kevin within lezgeddit ‘verse, which I mostly blame on that one video where the three of them talk about the Jimin/Kevin dating rumors and Eric is like, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME I SHOULD’VE BEEN THE FIRST TO KNOW.
So yeah. In universe these three all used to date each other in various combinations in the past and at some point after jaebri get together they work things out as OT3. Or something like that.
“Ah, sorry,” Brianna says, pushing her hair back behind her ears and giving Jae a sheepish smile, “I was just thinking about something.”
I use the word ‘sheepish’ so much. What are all my characters so sheepish for!
“Uh-huh,” Jae says skeptically, but goes on eating before all of the cheese can slide off her slice. She keeps looking at Brianna with narrowed eyes while she chews, which just makes her look ridiculous. Brianna can’t help but laugh at her.
“Really, it’s just—” she searches for a reason Jae will believe without questioning, and settles on the most obvious one. “It’s just work stuff.”
Jae pulls a sympathetic face. "Boss guy giving you shit? I'm serious, you know? I'll kick his ass if you want me to."
Brianna snorts, mostly because the idea of Jae throwing down with her boss, a stout man in his fifties that would barely reach up to her shoulders, is pretty hilarious. But no, Brianna gets along with him well. The only interpersonal problems she has to deal with at work are JB's occasional Talks, where she pulls Brianna aside and asks, in that awkward way of hers, if she's doing alright.
“Unnie, I know lyrics about broken hearts are just kind of your thing,” JB will say carefully, “But if there's anything going on in your life that you want to talk about, I'm here for you, yeah?”
I think this was written right around the time when the track list and previews for the Shoot Me album came out, so everyone on twitter was joking around like, damn Brian, who hurt you. He really does write about heartbreak a lot.
Brianna always laughs it off as taking her inspiration from too many late night dramas so JB will give her a pat on the shoulder and slink back to her side of the studio, and then Brianna gets to write her sad songs in peace for another month.
“Please stop threatening my boss,” Brianna says fondly, resting her chin in one hand. Jae gets really protective sometimes. It’s cute. “It’s just some writer’s block, nothing I can’t handle.”
Jae doesn’t look convinced by that, leaning closer over the table so she can lower her voice.
“Listen, we can just skip the movie and go home if you want to, I don’t mind. We can chill and jam.”
The thought is tempting. Really tempting, because they haven’t done that in a while — just sit around and play together, snippets of their favourite songs or improvising new ones, the both of them on their guitars until Brianna brings out her old bass.
Jae is incredibly talented, and even if she insists Brianna has the better voice between them, Brianna could listen to her sing for hours.
(It’s an argument they’ve called a ceasefire on ages ago, because neither of them will budge an inch, and also Sungjin snapped at them once that they should just compliment each other like normal people instead of making a competition out of it.)
As nice an idea as it is, Brianna shakes her head anyway. “I’m good. But thank you.”
“If you’re sure,” Jae relents, still reluctant.
For a long moment, they just look at each other, and even though they’re in a crowded, noisy restaurant, it feels strangely intimate.
Then, abruptly, Jae shakes herself as if to clear her head, leaning back in her seat.
“So, are you gonna eat that or can I have it,” she says, eyeing Brianna’s plate.
“What? No!” Brianna’s arm shoots out to protect her pizza from Jae’s thieving fingers. She hurriedly picks up a slice and shoves it in her mouth, only to choke while Jae points and laughs at her.
Chugging down her drink and already planning her revenge, Brianna catches Jimin looking back and forth between her and Jae with a strange expression before she schools her features.
Brianna isn’t quite sure why, but it leaves her feeling nervous.
Jimin is kind of a scary person. Speaking as someone who really can’t back up the image she projects, Brianna fears and admires her in equal measures. The fear used to outweigh the admiration back in their university days, when Jimin was the kind of person who knew everything about everyone. A quick thinker and a quick talker, incredibly blunt and somehow still charming. She and Jae clicked the moment they met, setting off a beautiful, if volatile, friendship.
It’s embarrassing to admit in hindsight, but Brianna used to be afraid that Jimin was going to replace her. It was also embarassing in the actual moment, because Jimin is stupidly perceptive and noticed immediately.
Jimin! I love Jimin, and I learned to love her more through writing this fic. I could definitely see her very brash and forthright nature coming across as intimidating. Also I like the structure in these two sentences, with the “embarrassing in hindsight/embarrassing in the moment” repetition.
Brianna tries not to remember that particular conversation. She has no desire to die of mortification all over again.
In any case, they get along really well now. They don’t hang out by themselves all that often, but Brianna likes to tag along when Jae meets up with her expat friends. They get dinner, go to the movies or out for drinks, and their time spent together is always filled with a chaotic mess of Korean and English being thrown back and forth. It’s nice.
I love code-switching, so Brianna also loves code-switching. She and Jae probably default to English when they talk, but with lots of Korean mixed in.
Tonight is a movie night. Brianna steps out of the restaurant and into the cold air, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket as she waits for everyone else to hurry up and join her. She really should have gone for her parka after all.
Count two for Brianna’s fancy jackets.
“Hey there,” Jimin says, sidling up to her. “How’s it going? I feel like I’ve barely gotten to talk to you at all tonight.”
Brianna grins and bumps their shoulders together. “Hey. I was kind of distracted earlier, sorry.”
Jimin smirks. “Jae needs to stop monopolizing you all the time. But it’s cool, we can catch up now.”
“The movie isn’t for another hour anyway,” Brianna agrees. She can see the rest of their group finally making their way towards the door, so she starts walking, loosely linking her arm with Jimin’s. “How’s work been treating you?”
Jimin pulls a face. “Ugh, work is boring, let’s not talk about it.”
“Really?” Brianna is genuinely surprised. Jimin is a presenter, her job is literally always interesting. Usually she loves to tell them all about the cool guests they’ve had on the show lately.
A very obvious reference to ASC as Jimin’s job here.
“Yes. Nobody cares,” Jimin says, waving a hand dismissively. “What about you, what’s going on in your life? Seeing anyone lately?”
The abrupt change in topic startles Brianna into silence, and before she can regain her senses, a sudden weight slamming into her back throws her off balance — specifically, Jae, who’s thrown an arm each around Brianna and Jimin both, wedging in between them.
“Heyyyy, ladies,” she says. It’s way too loud right next to Brianna’s ear, making her wince.
Jimin seems annoyed. “Jae, what the hell. Get your stupid twig limbs out of my face.”
Jae doesn’t even react to the jab, which is kind of weird. Instead she just lets go of Jimin and grabs Brianna’s hand, pulling her along at a pace fast enough to almost make her stumble.
“Come on people, they’re not gonna wait for us! Let’s get it!”
All that gets her is grumbling from the guys and a pointed, “You can’t keep this up forever, chicken face,” from Jimin.
Brianna has no idea what that’s about, but Jae is laughing and her grip on Brianna’s hand is tight and warm. Whatever. It’s probably just some sort of inside joke.
Jimin has known about Jae’s crush forever, and they’ve probably had many, many conversations about it that mostly amount to Jimin being like, fucking tell her already, and Jae being like, nooooooooo. Brianna might be a bit harder to read for her, but at the very least Jimin suspects the feelings might be mutual, so she’s fishing for intel here.
Brianna loves her friends, she really does. Even when they put ideas in her head that threaten to tear down the boundaries she took so much care to build and maintain for herself.
She’s known Sungjin forever now, before she even moved to Canada. Through some sort of miracle they kept in touch the entire time, which also meant that Brianna was constantly updated on the progress of Sungjin and Wonpil turning into Sungjin-and-Wonpil, which finally happened (officially) just after she returned to Korea.
Her front row seat to that entire mess should probably stop her from constantly holding their relationship up as a good example for what she wants from her own love life, but they're good now. Even better with Dowoon in the mix.
Here’s a head canon I once wrote in the comments: “To be perfectly honest I have no idea how Sungjin and Wonpil got together, but I am very amused by the idea of poor Brianna waking up in Canada only to find that Sungjin blew up her phone AGAIN with 10 million texts about Wonpil while she was asleep. Don't let his wise friend act fool you, he was a panicked bisexual and Brianna suffered through a lot of emergency skype calls.”
The whole thing about how people are awkward and messy but other people still look up to them and think of them as more competent and grown-up than they actually are turned into an accidental theme for this entire verse. You can see it much more clearly in the things I’ve almost told you, where JB and Jinyoung both have slightly skewed perceptions of each other, and again in wow (the wlw remix) where Jisung holds up Brianna and JB as some sort of ideal - people who are successful and have their lives together.
It basically comes down to how you see yourself vs. how other people see you, and I’ve had some very interesting conversations about this in the comments, especially bc of how I labelled these pairings and characters as disaster/functioning/distinguished lesbians. For the most part I did so jokingly, but still, it’s interesting to think about where everyone would place themselves vs. how other people perceive them.
She stops by their place again a week later - unannounced, because she has a key, anyway - and manages to catch Sungjin on his way out.
"About the other day," he says, as he's putting on his shoes in the entryway, "I'm sorry if we went too far.”
I didn’t want it to seem like Brianna’s friends constantly push her past her limits, so I really felt it necessary to include an apology here. Sungjin and Brianna have been friends for a long time now, and they have a lot of care and respect for each other.
Brianna waves it off because he already said as much over text, but she does appreciate that he makes the effort to check in again in person. “It’s okay, I know you meant well. And I guess…you know. Maybe it was good that I talked about it for once.”
She’s looking anywhere but at Sungjin, but she can hear his sigh loud and clear.
“Well, if you ever want to talk about it some more, we’re here for you.” He shrugs on his coat and grabs his keys. “In the end you’re the only one who can decide what to do about it, but we can at least help you figure out your options.”
“Yeah,” Brianna mumbles. “Thank you.”
Sungjin pulls her into a hug, and she goes gladly. Sungjin is a great hugger. Even if he does end it by ruffling her hair before she can duck out of the way, and then has the audacity to laugh at her annoyed expression.
“Wonpil’s still out, but Dowoon’s around,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder while Brianna is still busy rearranging her fringe. “Are you staying until dinner?”
She perks up instantly at the promise of free, home made food. “Not gonna say no to that. See you tonight.”
This Sungjin section was added pretty late in the process. Usually I start by writing the beginning of a fic and then jump around between scenes, though I tend to finish the ending pretty early on. Then it’s just a matter of filling in the gaps. This scene is also another example of me using ensemble characters and conversations with them to push the narration forward.
Sungjin gives her one last fond look before he waves goodbye, and then he’s out the door. Brianna is left to stand in the entryway by herself, stuck with thoughts she’s been trying to avoid. It’s been getting harder, though, to keep up the denial that used to work so well for her. It certainly isn’t helping that Jae is constantly around. And of course she is — they live together, it’d be weirder if they didn’t see each other constantly.
Even when they’re busy with work they make sure to eat together and talk about their day, and Jae always texts her to complain about her coworkers throughout the day, or to send her selcas with silly filters that she knows will make Brianna laugh. Jae is just a clingy person in general, and usually Brianna really likes that.
It’s just a bit much right now, the constant reminder of what she can’t have.
But it's not like she came here to hide from Jae or anything. She didn’t. She just dropped by to raid her friends’ fridge for leftovers.
After she does exactly that, she goes to hang out in the living room with Dowoon, talking shit and watching him play video games.
It’s relaxing, and Dowoon’s always fun to be around. It took them a while to get comfortable around each other back when they first met, because Dowoon is always shy around new people and Brianna can be a bit reserved herself. But he’s adorable, and unexpectedly hilarious, and he makes Sungjin and Wonpil disgustingly happy. She’s grown to like him a lot.
Jae and Dowoon are close, too. They haven’t always been, were perfectly content as acquaintances, especially back in the beginning when the boys were still mostly Brianna’s friends. But then Jae punched some douchebag who deadnamed Dowoon, and the rest is history.
The punch wasn’t very effective, because Jae is a scrawny featherweight with no aim, so they had to call in Brianna for back-up. Brianna, who could never hurt a fly, but who wears leather jackets and has piercings and can somehow scare off guys twice her size with just one stormy look when they threaten her friends.
Honestly the image of Jae, real life or fictional, punching anyone is just very funny.
In any case, Dowoon has looked up to Jae ever since and adores her in that special way of his that means he mostly makes fun of her and laughs maniacally whenever he beats her at League of Legends (which is every time they play).
As for Jae? Well.
“Dowoonie!” Jae coos (yells) the minute she’s through the door later that afternoon, interrupting Dowoon and Brianna’s bro time. “Where’s my lil’ drummer boy!”
This Dowoon section was written very early on. It remains one of my favourites to this day. The fight anecdote was a way to mention that Dowoon is trans, but it also let me give the readers some friendship history, which I always want to do. Even if this ensemble cast is primarily there to support the relationship of the central pairing, they’re still (hopefully) well-rounded characters on their own. And even if the romantic relationship is the focus, I want the main characters to have other relationships that are important to them.
I ended up writing these queer friendship groups into every single installment of lezgeddit verse, and in a way I guess this is very wishful thinking on my part. I don’t have a group like that in real life, but I sure as hell wish I did.
“Noona, stop,” Dowoon whines, but it’s distorted by the way Jae is squishing his cheeks. “Ugh, you’re the worst.”
Jae flails when he shakes her off, falling against Brianna with exaggerated dramatics.
“BriBri,” she gasps, “Did you hear that? Kids these days, no respect for their elders.”
Brianna laughs as she pulls Jae gently into her arms so she can fake sob into the collar of Brianna’s flannel shirt.
“Babe,” Brianna says, because they’re friends and friends calling each other ‘babe’ is totally normal, fuck you Wonpil, “You’d be a brat too if you had two boyfriends who spoil you rotten.”
She winks at Dowoon around the mop of blue-silver hair being pushed into her face. Dowoon rolls his eyes and unpauses his video game.
Jae’s hair colour here once again places this very much in the Shoot Me era. I kinda like these little things that show when a story was written.
Jae steps back, and Brianna tries not to miss the warmth of their bodies pressed against each other. Lucky for her Jae is one of the most tactile people she’s ever met, so they’re barely apart for five seconds before there’s an arm being thrown around her shoulder.
As you can probably tell, I’m big on casual intimacy. I’ve noticed I tend to write in a lot of touching between all characters, not just the main pairing.
“If I were into dudes, which, eww,” Jae says, “Dowoonie would be the only one for me.”
She points her finger at Dowoon, making a shooting motion and mouthing “Bam!” It’s really stupid and really cute. Brianna can’t seem to stop grinning like a fool.
And again! I have no memory of putting in this really rather blatant Shoot Me reference lol.
“Why are you here, noona?” Dowoon asks. He’s back to wildly mashing buttons on his controller, just as used to Jae’s antics but way less likely to enable her. “Is Youngie-noona out past her curfew? Did you come to fetch her?”
Here we go again with the names. I’m not sure which female Korean name ‘Youngie-noona’ could derive from other than Jinyoung (which is unisex), but that would really be one Jinyoung too many for this verse.
Brianna flushes and kicks Dowoon’s shin, but it’s half-hearted at best. He complains loudly about her ruining his game, anyway.
“Wellllllll,” Jae drawls out, holding up one hand and eyeing her nails critically, “I’m here to take some of Wonpil’s polish off his hands.”
She pauses for a second, thinking, and then snorts at her own unintentional joke. “Hah! Take it off his hands. Get it? Because it’s nail polish?”
Yes, I am very fond of my dumb jokes.
Brianna sighs. “We have nail polish at home, you know? You don’t need to steal Pillie’s.”
“Uh, yeah I do,” Jae protests. “Your five million shades of black are useless to me.”
Brianna is affronted - she has six bottles of black polish tops, which is a very reasonable amount - but before she can say as much Jae stops her in her tracks.
The nail polish thing was really just an excuse because I needed Jae to show up at SungDoPil’s place, but I rather like how it turned out and what it says about their characters. Also it may or may not be a call out @ me and my nail polish collection.
“I’m here for the fancy shit. The glitter, the sparkles, the whole shebang. Because your girl,” she pauses meaningfully, letting go of Brianna’s shoulder to spread both her arms wide, “has a date.”
Brianna can feel the grin slide right off her face. She does her best to correct her expression as quickly as possible, but judging by the look Dowoon shoots her he definitely noticed.
“That’s great!” she says, and it barely even sounds strangled. Saved it.
Oh, BriBri. You’re not fooling anyone. Except Jae. But even that’s mostly because Jae has convinced herself Brianna would never be into her.
Dowoon frowns and looks Jae up and down, his game forgotten in an instant.
“So you’re, like, dressing up?”
He sounds skeptical, which is understandable when you consider that Jae usually lives in oversized hoodies, ratty jeans, and hipster glasses, her colourful hair pulled up in messy buns.
She’s already beautiful, Brianna thinks, because it’s true. But the thought of her actually putting an effort into her outfit for once, bothering to put on nail polish that she’ll ruin again the second she picks up her guitar - the thought of Jae doing all that for some girl hits an ugly note in Brianna’s chest that not even the weight of Jae throwing her arms back around her can overpower.
“BriBri,” Jae says, chin coming to rest on her shoulder, “My BFF for life,” (Brianna wants to point out that’s redundant, but there’s a lump in her throat that won’t let any words out.) “You’ll lend me something to wear, right? Kevin said this is one fancy lady, so I’d better wear something nice or else.”
Brianna kinda wishes someone else had set Jae up for this one. Jimin maybe, or Eric. She could be angry at them. She can’t be angry at Kevin, he’s like a really cute baby.
I really didn’t know anything about Kevin at this point other than that he is very soft spoken and cute compared to his fellow MCs Jimin and Jae, who are loud as fuck.
“Sure,” Brianna mumbles eventually, “We’ll pick out something nice for you.”
Jae makes excited noises and hugs her, almost knocking both of them over. Dowoon’s eyes are too knowing and too full of pity. Brianna looks away.
In the end, they don’t go for anything too over the top. Brianna unearths Jae’s best pair of skinny jeans from the very back of the closet and lends her a sheer black blouse to layer over a lace cami. It’s more delicate than Jae’s usual style, and even just standing there in the middle of her room, bored out of her mind while Brianna tries to decide between two pairs of almost identical wire-frame glasses, she’s breathtaking. She took the time to properly blow-dry her hair for once, and then let Brianna braid it to fall gently over one shoulder.
This is very stereotypical movie makeover, but I didn’t want this to be a ‘oh wow she took her glasses off now she’s beautiful’ kinda thing, y’know. Brianna loves Jae no matter how she looks, whether it’s dressed up or wearing ratty sweats. It’s all just different aspects of her favourite person. Also I kinda struggled to come up with a fancy outfit for Jae because I just couldn’t picture her in anything other than casual clothes.
Brianna loves Jae’s hair. Sometimes, when they cuddle up on the couch to watch a movie or whatever new drama Wonpil got them invested in, Jae will take out the everpresent hair tie and let Brianna smooth out the tangles with her fingers. Compared to that, braiding Jae’s hair tonight mostly made her feel guilty for enjoying it so much.
This is a call out @ me and my thing about hair. I will not elaborate any further.
Brianna needs to get it through her head that Jae isn’t hers. Jae is going on a date, and whoever the mystery girl is will probably fall in love with her because she’s gorgeous and funny, and then Brianna won’t be needed for couch cuddles or hair braiding anymore.
Alright. Now she’s just being overdramatic.
“Are we done yet?” Jae whines, inspecting her nail polish where it already chipped barely one day after Wonpil applied it for her. (It’s glitter, and that shit clings on for dear life, so Brianna is genuinely impressed.)
Again, the nail polish showing something about Jae’s character. I’m pretty pleased with how that tied into everything.
“I need to leave in, what, five minutes? Or else I won’t make it, and then Kevin will be all disappointed at me.”
Brianna sighs, finally settling on the silver glasses and shoving them at Jae before she reaches up to her own neck and unclasps her necklace.
“Wait, what—” Jae starts, but Brianna shushes her, stepping in close to put the necklace on her.
It’s a thin silver chain with a small pendant that looks kind of like a bass clef if you tilt your head just right. It was a gift from Jae on the occasion of the two of them moving into this apartment together, and Brianna, who has no delusions about her sentimental tendencies, almost never takes it off.
“I’ll be expecting this back tonight,” she says, looking at where it rests against Jae’s collar bone. “Think of it as a good luck charm, yeah?”
A moment of stillness passes by before Jae clears her throat and starts fidgeting, bringing her fingers to the necklace, to her hair, to her glasses.
“Yeah,” she says, “Yeah, alright. I’ll see you later, BriBri.”
With that, she moves to hug Brianna, arms tight around her shoulders. Startled, with her blood pounding in her ears, Brianna barely hears the quiet “Thanks,” being ghosted against her neck.
Then Jae is out of the door, and Brianna is left standing in the middle of her best friend’s room, running a hand through her hair with a shaky breath.
The necklace scene! Oh my god am I proud of the necklace scene. I can’t remember where I wrote the necklace in first, here or in the final scene, but it worked out so beautifully. In a way it’s a really rather blatant move on Brianna’s part, making sure that Jae has something on her that is Brianna’s and saying that she wants it back that night. What are you doing, marking your territory? XD It’s the tiniest bit of possessiveness Brianna allows herself to have, probably in response to how threatened she feels by this situation.
You might be wondering, if Jae goes on dates a lot, why this date in particular hits Brianna so hard. It probably comes down to all the thinking she’s done on their relationship recently. She might have been quite good at suppressing her feelings in the past, but those conversations with SungDoPil really did a number on her.
In any case, Jae is definitely freaking out a bit about the necklace. I imagine she’s very aware of it throughout her date and distracted thinking about Brianna putting it on her and the hug. It’s a good thing Jinyoung isn’t interested in her, honestly. That would’ve been a terrible date.
It's not like Jae never goes on dates. Sure, maybe she hasn't had a serious, long-term relationship in a couple of years, but her friends are weirdly committed to setting her up with someone. Those nights always end the same way - with the two of them sitting on their cramped couch and laughing themselves silly while Jae regales her with tales about how everything that could go wrong went wrong, and all the ways she embarrassed herself this time.
And it's not like Brianna doesn't go on dates, either. Sometimes a girl takes her home after a night out and asks her, in the light of the morning after, if she'd like to go get coffee. And sometimes Brianna will say yes, because maybe this one will be what it takes to help her get over her hopeless crush on her best friend.
It never works out that way. They're all too quiet, or not quiet enough when it matters, or they don't like the same music or they want to spend every waking moment together, and eventually Brianna just buries herself in the studio until they break up with her.
I just like the idea of jaebri matching well, from how much space they need to Brianna being used to how loud Jae is and not minding a bit. It’s not that they’re exactly the same, it’s more like they pay attention to each other and have long since figured out what the other needs. They don’t have to talk about it. New relationships, however, would mean figuring out all that stuff all over again, and Brianna just isn’t invested enough to want to make it work. It would require talking about her feelings, and that stresses her out (hellooooo communication issues).
Actually let’s take that out of the parentheses because communication issues are what this entire fic is based on. It’s also something that I projected very heavily onto Brianna, because in the end, a lot of the issues in this verse are just my own, processed through fictional characters.
So maybe it's kind of ruining Brianna's life, but most of the time it's not that bad. It's been so long now that she barely even notices it anymore, honestly.
I’m very fond of these kind of ‘everything is terrible but it’s fine! It’s totally fine’ lines.
They’d met back at university. Jae had been fresh from LA and very much questioning the life choices that had led to her moving to Korea by herself. Homesick and constantly frustrated at her lacking language skills, she’d latched onto the first person she could hold a proper conversation with. Namely, Brianna.
(When they talk about it years later, Jae admits she mostly saw her as that one girl in all her classes that no one called by her Korean name and who was too polite to stop Jae’s incessant rambling.
“Also you just exuded a really powerful queer energy.”
“Thank you! I worked very hard on that.”)
Honestly a dream compliment.
While Brianna had never considered herself a shy person, Jae and her larger than life personality had been overwhelming at first. But she’d recognized the desperation of being in a foreign country with no one to talk to, and it wasn’t like she minded the opportunity to make use of her hard earned English.
Brianna hadn't exactly been drowning in friends, either. Her years abroad had not been beneficial to her local social life. Sungjin and Wonpil weren't attending the same university, and Brianna knew she could come across as a bit intimidating and unapproachable, despite her best efforts.
Here we go again with another instance of how Brianna sees herself vs. how others see her! This is something I’m very fascinated by (see also: my love for Stray Kids' Seo Changbin) as well as some more projection on my part.
So maybe Jae's aggressive openness had been exactly what she needed.
Slowly, day by day, she’d warmed up to Jae and opened up in turn. Their mutual love for music made for passionate conversation and jam sessions late into the night. They studied together because they shared almost every class, and even after Jae met Jimin and all her other expat friends, she stuck to Brianna’s side like glue. Until one day Brianna looked up at where Jae was sprawled out on her tiny dorm bed, lazily strumming her guitar, and thought, with startling clarity, “This is the most important person in my life.”
Jae was kind of a mess under her quick wit and fake bravado, and Brianna was also very much a mess under her expensive haircut and calm demeanor, but together they somehow made it through the most stressful and uncertain time of their lives.
Let’s not talk about how much money I spend on my haircuts.
She’d never had a best friend like that before. And once she’d gotten used to it, the attraction simmering underneath seemed too dangerous to touch — so she tried her best to ignore it while it built, and built, and built.
Brianna falls asleep in front of the TV that night, but it's fitful at best. She wakes the instant the key turns in the lock, sitting up groggily.
When Jae walks into the room and sees her she seems surprised, her mouth forming a silent 'oh'.
"Hey," Brianna croaks out, rubbing her eyes and trying to force herself into being more awake.
"Hey yourself," Jae says softly, as she drops her bag on the floor and walks over. "You didn't have to wait up for me."
"Of course I did," Brianna protests and rearranges herself on the couch so Jae can squeeze in next to her. "What if you needed someone to help you stage an emergency escape because you accidentally insulted someone's family to their face and also got lobster all over their Chanel?"
Ah yes. Lobster.
"That was one time!" Jae squawks. "And such a waste of lobster, god."
"To think that you're still more upset about the food than the fact that you missed out on the opportunity to become the trophy wife of one of Korea's richest—"
"It was really good lobster!"
Brianna laughs, the argument familiar and comfortable. The room is quiet, and barely illuminated by the flicker of the TV screen and the cheap lamp in the corner that Jae always complains about because she swears it’s making her eyes even worse. It makes for a muted, almost unreal atmosphere, as if Brianna were still asleep.
Jae is still in the outfit they picked out earlier, of course, but the nice braid Brianna put in her hair is messed up — probably because she kept touching it all night. She has a habit of doing that when she’s nervous, or excited, or bored. Her eyeliner is smudged on one side only, making her look a bit lopsided.
Brianna loves her.
She loves her so much.
Jae turns her attention to the muted TV and gasps in mock-outrage when she sees what’s on screen. “Were you watching Descendants of the Sun without me?”
I’ve never seen Descendants of the Sun, I just picked randomly from the handful of famous dramas I’d heard of. I thought it was a long-running show and a good fit for something these two might watch religiously every week, but apparently it’s only 16 episodes!
“I would never,” Brianna says, even though that was exactly what she was doing. She realizes now that it was mostly out of pettiness over Jae’s date, which is kind of embarrassing. She quickly grabs the remote and hits the off button. She fell asleep fairly quickly, anyway. When they continue watching it together she’ll just pretend she’s seeing the episodes for the first time and Jae will be none the wiser.
“How was your date? Did you have a good time?”
Jae’s eyes light up immediately, TV drama forgotten.
"I love her," she gushes, and Brianna can feel something inside her die.
"Oh," she says in a small voice, but Jae keeps talking over her.
"She's so mean, but like, in a hot way," Jae laughs, "Turns out she used to intern for our PR department, so we just talked shit about everyone there for the entire time, it was great!"
Very pleased with ‘mean but in a hot way’ as a Jinyoung description, not gonna lie.
She pauses with her hands up in front of her, like she's telling the world to hold up for a second because what she's going to say next is gonna be just that great.
"And listen. We all know I'm a genius."
There she pauses again, as if she calculated in the time for Brianna's usual objections to her self-aggrandizing. When they don't come as expected, she seems to falter momentarily, but soldiers on.
"And now I'm also claiming the title of greatest matchmaker from Kevin because this girl? Is exactly JB's type."
Brianna blinks.
"Oh," she says again. She feels light-headed, not up to processing what's going on. "That's—" she fumbles for words, "That's good?"
"It's not just good, dude, it's great! Because there I was thinking, like, oh shit, this girl would have JB eating out of her hand within seconds, so I told her, heyyy, I should totally hook you up with this friend of mine, because at that point we'd already agreed that there obviously wouldn't be anything happening between the two of us—"
"Obviously," Brianna repeats faintly.
Jae nods enthusiastically. "I can't believe Kevin thought we would work out, it's like he doesn't know me at all. But anyway, she was like, do you have a picture of this friend, and I was like, yeah I do, and showed her on my phone—"
"Wait," Brianna interrupts, snapping out of her daze because she has an ominous feeling about this, "Jae, when you say picture, you don't mean—"
"The horrible selfie JB-baby sent us after she got that disaster of a haircut last week? Hell yeah I do," Jae says gleefully, seconds away from just outright cackling like the terror she is.
Ah yes, here we go. The only reason the things I’ve almost told you exists in the first place. Jae’s date wasn’t even going to be named at first, she was just supposed to be some random girl, but this was right around when JB got that terrible mullet and I couldn’t resist an opportunity to make fun of it. And if Jae set JB up with anyone it obviously had to be Jinyoung, and then I somehow ended up writing 16k about those losers.
Brianna groans in second-hand embarrassment, but Jae flaps her hands dismissively.
"No, no, listen! I show her the picture and she gives it this long look, and then she just says 'Acceptable'."
Jae adopts a snobby voice to deliver that baffling verdict, before she breaks and starts laughing outright.
"It was incredible, holy shit, I wish you'd been there," she gets out, hitting Brianna’s thigh in her glee. "She asked me for JB's number and I'm, like, 80% convinced she's just gonna text her a time and address out of the blue and order her to show up for a date."
As we know, this is exactly what ends up happening. Incredible foresight on Jae’s part. ;) Also would you look at that ‘I wish you had been there (with me on this date)’.
Brianna snorts at that, and Jae's eyes light up when she sees she's finally getting a proper reaction.
"Amazing, right?" she says, grasping for Brianna's hands and holding them tight in her own. "I'm so good at this, I should just start a dating service. I've found my true calling in life."
"Yeah," Brianna says, grinning now that it feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off her shoulders, "You're amazing alright."
They settle down then, and Brianna is almost ready to call it a night when suddenly, something catches her attention.
This is where things could’ve gone back to the same status quo they’ve been stuck in for years and years, but then…
“Oh,” she says, letting go of Jae’s hands to reach for her neck instead.
Jae freezes.
“The necklace,” Brianna says, eyes trained on the hollow of Jae’s throat, where the pendant is all turned around and the clasp is caught up in it, “Let me fix that.”
...the necklace comes back in! Ah, I’m so pleased with that.
She untangles it and moves the chain back so the clasp sits where it’s supposed to be. In the quiet, she can hear Jae swallow loud and clear.
Brianna freezes, dropping her hands into her lap - the light mood is gone, replaced by suffocating tension. She tries her best to push back the familiar panic settling in at the back of her mind and searches for something to say, something to cut through the awkwardness.
"I, uh...I'm sorry your date didn't work out."
Jae looks a bit shell-shocked, blinking a couple of times as if coming out of a haze. "What? Oh. No, don't be, it's not like I wanted it to go anywhere." She laughs awkwardly. "I just went with it so Kevin and Jimin would stop pestering me for a bit. They're so annoying, honestly."
Brianna frowns in confusion. "You didn't want to go?"
"I mean, it's like. Don't get me wrong, she was cool but. I'm not, like, looking to date anyone? So."
"But they're constantly trying to set you up with people, I thought you were— Have you told them?"
Jae snorts. "That I don't want to go on a million blind dates with random girls they know? Yeah I have." She shrugs and shakes her head, her tone one of exaggerated long-suffering as she goes on, "I tell them constantly, but do they ever listen to anything I say? No, because they're—"
"What the hell," Brianna interrupts her, so forcefully that Jae is startled into silence. She's getting angry, maybe more than the situation actually merits, but she can't believe Jimin and Kevin would just ignore Jae's objections like that. They're her friends — Brianna's friends, too — and she thought they were better than this.
In hindsight it’s a bit unclear what Jimin & Co.’s intentions here are - do they want to push Jae into a feelings realization? Do they want to make Brianna jealous? Have they come to the conclusion that this is hopeless and genuinely want Jae to find happiness with someone else?
In any case, they definitely take credit for jaebri finally getting together, just like Jinyoung does.
As for why Jae goes along with the dates: she is 100% convinced Brianna will never be into her because of that one time she ‘turned her down’, so she figures she should get over it. But, as she says later, she realized that she really doesn’t want to get over it.
"They shouldn’t keep forcing you on dates when you’ve told them you're not interested. Do you want me to talk to them? I'll tell them to back off."
“Whoa, no,” Jae says quickly, raising her hands and flailing them around in a manner that’s probably supposed to be placating. “No, you really don’t have to, I didn’t mean to make it sound like they were forcing me or anything, it’s okay! You know me, I was just talking shit, we’re good! We’re chill!”
“You know what, I’m going to call Jimin right now,” Brianna cuts her off, looking for her phone and locating it under a couch cushion, raising it in the air with a triumphant noise.
There’s a blur of movement, a high-pitched yell of “No!” and then Brianna watches in horror as her phone goes flying.
There’s a muffled thump as it hits the carpet, and then, silence.
Brianna looks at her phone. Looks at Jae.
“Oh my god,” Jae says faintly, stock still before she bursts into movement again. “Oh my god, shit, I’m so sorry!”
She tries to stand up, almost falling off the couch in the process, but Brianna catches her and holds her still with a strong grip on her shoulders, caging her in against the arm rest.
I like the image of this, kind of a flurry of movement until Brianna forces Jae into stillness and closes the distance between them.
“Jae,” she says intently, “I don’t care about my phone right now.”
Jae’s mouth falls open in shock and, yeah, in a moment Brianna is going to worry about it, but right now she’s focused on something more important.
“Tell me why you don’t want me to talk to Jimin.”
Jae doesn’t say anything, but Brianna stares her down. She remembers their last movie night, when Jimin was talking to her, was asking her something, but Jae interrupted them. What was it Jimin had said? You can’t keep this up forever.
“You don’t want me to talk to Jimin. Because she knows something I don’t?” Brianna guesses. “And you don’t want me to know.”
Would Jimin have spilled the beans if Brianna had called her all angry and accusatory? Probably, yeah. She’s pretty fed up with Jae at this point.
Jae laughs weakly, looking anywhere but at Brianna. “Oh wow. Uhm…”
It can’t be anything too bad if Jimin hasn’t gone behind Jae’s back to tell her directly, but that just makes Brianna even more determined to get to the bottom of this.
“Jae,” Brianna says. And then, “Unnie.”
Her secret weapon <3
That gets Jae to look at her at least, even if it is kind of a low blow. Wonpil’s words ring in her ears, we all know she’s whipped for you, but Brianna isn’t above exploiting Jae’s weaknesses if it gets them somewhere. Anywhere.
“Listen,” Jae starts. “Jimin is just. You know how she can get. You give her a problem that requires a lockpick and she takes a sledgehammer to it.”
The sledgehammer line is definitely one of my favourites in this entire fic, I was very pleased when I came up with that. It feels very true to Jimin’s character.
Brianna raises an eyebrow at that, and Jae fidgets. “I mean. She’s just trying to help, and the rest of the guys, too. With the stupid blind dates and everything, they’re just trying to help me get over—”
She cuts herself off abruptly, gritting her teeth together.
Brianna’s throat is dry. She licks her lips before she asks, very carefully, “Help you get over what?”
Jae sinks in on herself, somehow managing to look small, and Brianna instantly regrets pushing her. But before she can even think to move back and give her space and apologize, Jae takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and looks Brianna in the eyes with something like determination.
“Jimin and the guys,” Jae says slowly, each word carrying weight, “They were trying to help me get over you.”
Oh.
Brianna stares at her. For a long, long moment, her mind is just blank.
Jae starts to fidget when the silence drags on, but the determined look on her face doesn’t slip.
“I didn’t mean to turn into such a cliché, you know? It’s silly. At first it was just a small crush, and you were like, my only friend at a pretty lonely time in my life? So I figured it would go away by itself. But it didn’t. So, yeah. I’m kind of ridiculously in love with you. And I…” Jae laughs shakily. “I don’t want to get over it. Sorry. Is that weird?”
Very pleased with how this scene mirrors the one where they’re moving in together, down to the ‘Is that weird?’ It’s an interaction that Brianna has been agonizing over for years, which is why she echoes her own words so clearly below. But this time, she makes it right.
Brianna thinks she should be freaking out, but instead, she just feels strangely calm. Maybe because the revelation is too much, too overwhelming, for her to wrap her head around it.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Brianna says, and her heart is pounding, and she can see the way Jae flinches, and this is all so very familiar. But this time, she knows exactly what she needs to do.
“It’s weird,” she repeats, and brings up a hand to stop Jae from talking, “But I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. Whatever the opposite of minding something is, that’s what I’m doing.”
Jae’s eyes widen almost comically, a hitched breath escaping her. It kind of looks like she’s buffering, Brianna thinks half hysterically, half relieved. The realization that this is actually happening is starting to set in, making her giddy with excitement.
Jae licks her lips. Opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. And then she says, “Are you sure you write for a living?”
Without breaking eye contact, Brianna reaches behind herself, grabs a pillow, and uses it to smack Jae in the head.
It was time to break up the tension here, because these two are too dorky for romantic confessions, and neither of them can pass up an opportunity to make fun of each other. I also can’t go 3 paragraphs without a joke, obviously.
The laugh Jae lets out is loud and obnoxious and music to Brianna’s ears. “Dude!” she yells, bringing her arms over her head to defend herself. “My glasses!”
Brianna gets in one last hit for good measure. “You’re impossible,” she says, but she’s grinning. “Oh my god, Jae. I can’t believe you.”
She hugs the pillow to her chest, glad for something to hold onto. She’s almost shaking now, so full of feelings and questions and no idea where to start. She’s probably going to start crying any second now, but that’s okay, because Jae is wiping at her cheeks, too. It dislodges her glasses more than Brianna’s pillow attack ever did in the first place, and she huffs another laugh at that.
“BriBri,” she says, “Am I reading this right? I can’t— I need you to—”
“I love you,” Brianna blurts out, because if Jae needs reassurance, she will tell her a thousand times. “You’re my best friend and you’re so important to me and I love you so much. And not just in a best friend kind of way.”
Congratulations to Brianna for voicing her feelings! Communication skills +1
“Yeah?” Jae asks, and her smile is blinding. “Maybe even in a ‘Can I kiss you’ kind of way?”
Brianna surges forward so fast that she almost knocks their heads together. And maybe it’s not as smooth as she thought it might go, when she indulged herself in guilty daydreams about kissing Jae, but this is real, so she honestly couldn’t care less.
She loses herself in the feeling of Jae’s lips against hers for a moment, bringing up a hand to rest gently against Jae’s neck and leaving it there when they pull apart. They stay close, though, and Jae reaches out to take Brianna’s free hand between her own, entangling their fingers.
“That night,” Brianna says, because she can’t stop thinking about it, “when we moved in together. You were trying to tell me?”
Jae nods. “I thought you were turning me down. Pretty clearly so.”
Brianna groans. Of course that’s how it came across. “I’m so sorry, Jae. I was panicking and I ruined it. I can’t believe we wasted so much time, I’m such an idiot."
“No, it’s not your fault,” Jae hurries to tell her before she pauses. “Well, I guess partially it is.”
Brianna’s dry “Thanks,” gets ignored as she goes on.
“You know what Jimin always calls me?”
“Chicken Little?”
“Well, yes, but the other one.”
“Four-eyes?”
“I…you know what, Jimin is both really mean to me and really uncreative, I’m not sure what’s worse there—”
“Oh!”, Brianna interrupts her, suddenly remembering, “A useless disaster lesbian!”
“Yes,” Jae sighs, “That.”
Even though the title of this fic was pretty much set from the beginning, I did mostly refer to it as ‘disaster lesbians’ as I was writing it, so I was happy I found a way to include that. Also I just think this back-and-forth is funny.
She looks so disgruntled that Brianna has to try really hard not to laugh at her.
“I should’ve told you earlier. Or even that night, I should’ve made it more obvious. But I chickened out.” Jae winces. “Wow. Now I’m even calling myself a chicken.”
“I won’t tell Jimin,” Brianna promises immediately. “And it’s not like I’m any better. If I had gotten over myself and told you I liked you, we could have avoided this entire mess. Could’ve saved ourselves and everyone else a lot of headaches.”
Jae smiles at that, looking a bit embarrassed, so Brianna lets her thumb rub gentle circles against the skin of Jae’s neck. She understands the feeling. Sungjin and the two terrors are going to be so smug about this.
“So,” Brianna says gently, “We can be useless disaster lesbians together.”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Jae says, and she actually sounds like she means it. Her eyes keep darting over Brianna’s shoulder though, and her next words come out in a rush. “But also can you please check that your phone is okay because I hit it pretty hard and I really don’t have the money to buy you a new one.”
Brianna blinks, following Jae’s gaze to where her phone is still lying on the floor.
“Oh shit, I completely forgot about that,” she laughs, bending down awkwardly to reach for it without letting go of Jae completely.
“See? All good.”
She holds it out to show Jae that it’s still in one piece. The screen comes to life, showing a selca the two of them took that time last month when they all went to a theme park together. Jae’s hair is a disaster from the ride they went on, and if you know where to look you can see a traumatized Dowoon in the background. It’s a cute picture. Brianna likes it a lot.
This is, of course, a reference to that one jaesix vlog where they go on a roller coaster and Jae’s hair ends up a disaster while Brian’s remains perfect.
In this moment, it almost seems like a reminder that not much is going to change, even though everything is different now.
This sentiment is admittedly a bit heavy-handed, but I’m glad I included it anyway. Starting a relationship might be scary, but they’re still the same Jae and Brianna they’ve always been, and there’s already so much trust and love between them. They’re gonna be just fine.
Jae sighs in relief as Brianna sets her phone down on the coffee table. “Oh thank god,” she says. “If I had to replace that I wouldn’t be able to take you on a date for months.”
“It’s not that expensive,” Brianna mutters, and then she blushes, feeling ridiculous. “You want to take me on a date?”
“Duh,” Jae says, like it’s a silly question — which, to be fair, it is. “I want to take you on all the dates, obviously. You need me to make it more official? I can give you official.”
For a second, Brianna is actually afraid Jae might go down on one knee — that’s just how dramatic she is. But all she does is draw herself up to her full height and clear her throat before she asks, “Brianna. Would you do me the honour of being my girlfriend?”
Brianna lets out some sort of mortifying giggling sound before she can get herself under control. “Yes. Yeah. I’d love to be your official girlfriend. Officially.”
Jae breaks out into a beautiful smile that gets ruined immediately by the way she pumps her fist and says, "Jaeparkianna," more to herself than anything.
“Never call us that ever again,” Brianna says sweetly, and then she’s leaning back in to kiss her, the clumsiness of their first attempt all but forgotten. It’s a matter of pride, really. She can’t have her girlfriend thinking she’s a bad kisser.
It’s difficult to tell how much time passes, because she finds herself too caught up in Jae’s lips and the beating of her heart and the soft skin under her fingertips. But eventually Jae pulls back, her forehead knocking lightly against Brianna’s.
“Dude,” she breathes out reverently.
“Babe. Can you not call me dude when we’re making out?”
“Dude,” Jae repeats, “This is the best moment of my life.”
This whole dude/babe thing was inspired by a tumblr post, but it really is so incredibly jaebri. Jae is going to keep calling her ‘dude’ and Brianna is going to keep complaining about it, but she doesn’t actually mind.
Brianna can’t help but agree — there’s an overwhelming feeling of happiness spreading through her that she wants to keep forever. It’s late, and she has work tomorrow, and all their friends are going to tease them endlessly about this, but right now none of that matters. Right now, right this moment, is perfect.
She schools her features though, just long enough to say, “I thought the best moment of your life was when Corinne Bailey Rae replied to you on twitter,” and then she cracks up again.
I honestly have no idea if this joke works for anyone but me, seeing as it is a rather niche reference to that one time jaebri covered ‘put your record on’ on a radio show (and also I think Jae covered it a couple times on his own). I have a lot of fondness for that cover, so this is just one of those many lines I put into my fics entirely for myself.
Jae looks slightly exasperated but mostly just really, really fond. There's a grin pulling at the corners of her mouth as she reaches out to smooth Brianna's hair out of her face, tugging it behind her ears.
“Nah,” she says, leaning in close so they can kiss once, twice, soft and sweet.
“No competition.”
That ‘once, twice’ is such a me way of writing things. I think it shows a lot in my works! I do struggle a bit with ending my fics, never quite sure how to draw it to a conclusion. So most of the time I just default to
“Short bit of dialogue,” dialogue tag.
“Another short line.”
and so far that has been working out alright. ^^’’ I do like the ending here though. It feels very soft and sweet, just like their kiss.
Aaaaaaand that's it! I've reread this fic a couple times over the years, but it was nice to go through it again with more intent and think about the process of writing it. I've also learned more about myself and my writing since then, so it's interesting to look back at it through a slightly different lense.
It's also really fun to look at this in comparison to the later fics in the series. I do think you can see me developing a bit of a personal style in my writing and my humor here. Writing for me is mostly about coming up with jokes and then building a story around that, and I think that does come through in my narration.
Lezgeddit verse as a whole really means a lot to me, and I'm so proud of every single one of these stories. I like to think that the things I've almost told you is the best of them and wow (the wlw remix) is the funniest, but lezgeddit is my baby. The beginning of a really wonderful journey that allowed me to express myself in a way that I didn't think I was capable of before I tried. And all it took was me missing a single fandom trope enough to make me try writing it.
I hope you've enjoyed this commentary! I was a bit surprised by much I had to say, but in the end I really do love talking about my own writing and this verse in particular. I think I'd like to do more of these in the near future. I'm not sure if I have that much to say about no resemblance intended, since it's a much more silly, light-hearted spin-off, but I definitely have a lot of thoughts about the JJP and minsung installments.
See you then <3