{ picture perfect } onew/jessica

[tuesdayhero]

picture perfect
11,800~ (!!!)
pg-13, au, romance
Jessica needs a good reason to change.
a/n: OH MY GOD YOU GUYS, WHAT EVEN IS THIS.

okay, some explanation: obviously jessica and onew are so so adorable, i love their dynamic. not going to lie, this popped into my head after i watch the victoria's secret fashion show 2010 (which was GLORIOUS) and...yeah. i wrote this in four days. am i crazy? yes. yes, i am.

(sekrits: i've always shipped onsica more than jongsica)
enjoy!



It's pretty hard to discern faces when you're storming down the runway in six-inch heels, with flash photography going off every two seconds in your face and the blood pounding in your ears, but Jessica glances just briefly to the side as she tilts her head and gives her trademark half smile at the camera, and she sees him. The split second of acknowledgment only sends a couple bits of information to her brain-he has caramel-colored hair, a cute face, and looks simultaneously bored and anxious and and fidgety all at once, and she briefly wonders if she should be offended.

But she's heading down the runway again, and thank god because the gray trucker cap perched rakishly on top of her golden curls is starting to slide off, and she just manages to duck backstage before it falls off completely. Someone grabs it from her and nudges her away, and she dashes through the people yelling into their headsets and anxious models waiting to be called up the front, to change into her next outfit, her finale outfit. Two women buzz around her, stepping around eachother to thicken her eyeliner, tease up her hair, as she pulls on leather shorts and an exquisitely made floral blouse, before she's being shoved onto the runway again.

The music changes to a slower track, to some lispy voiced girl singing about coffee and lipgloss stains and summertime with an air of nostalgia, and Jessica's grateful that she gets to slow her pace. With her hands high up on her waist, she can feel the bumps of her lowest ribs and she grips around them, feeling the flesh ooze out around her fingers, reminding of her what she needs to get rid of before her next show. Thinking about this makes it easy to make her face blank and simply staring, and she thinks its funny that it's this face that earned her the "ice princess" title of the modeling world, made her famous, when really what causes this face only brings her down.

At the end of the catwalk, she cocks her hip and twists around easily to start down it again, but this time she's prepared, and she deliberately points her eyes in the direction of the guy from before, and in that split second she realizes that he's looking at her. This shouldn't be surprising or out of the norm at all (there are probably a thousand, give or take, other people staring at her right now) but when their eyes catch his mouth falls open just a tiny bit and he gets this dumbfounded look on his face that makes a wave of laughter rise up in her chest, so much that she almost stumbles before staggering off the catwalk and into the darkness of the wings, before she bursts into a mess of desperate, breathless giggles.

Jessica's gets wrapped up tight in this pale pink confection of a dress by one of the designers of the show, before getting booted out of the place and steered downtown into a ritzy hotel that's housing the after-party. Her hair has been tossed up into this big, deliberately messy bun on the top of her head. She thinks she looks like a cupcake, a jumbo-sized vanilla one with swirls of pink frosting and a sugar-crusted gumdrop on top.

"Hey, Ice Princess," a teasing voice calls out from behind her, and Jessica turns gratefully to see Yuri, who's clad in a similar dress, except for it's done in gauzy layers of mint green and pale blue. Jessica thinks Yuri looks like a cupcake, too. Definitely chocolate. "It's about time you got here."

"Had to fix my make-up," Jessica says demurely. "I sort of broke down in hysterics and had tears running everywhere and they were about to send me to the hospital for a psychological evaluation, but I felt alright after they gave me a granola bar."

Yuri looks like she doesn't know whether to look concerned or to start laughing to to be slightly scared, so her pretty face sort of just scrunches up unbecomingly, shock frozen on her face.

"I'm was joking," Jessica tells her. "Sort of."

"You worry me sometimes," Yuri says dryly, crossing her arms.

"I should," Jessica replies evenly. "By the way, do you know that we look like cupcakes? Is that the point?"

"You should see Tiffany," Yuri laughs. "Come on, let's go find them."

Their heels clacking on the wooden floors, they slip into a darkened room, and Jessica blinks as her eyes adjust to the dimness. There's a dance floor smack in the middle, with a bar glowing blue against one wall, a cluster of mostly empty round tables set near the door, and a gigantic tower of cupcakes to the left. Maybe that was the concept. The music is loud and pulsing, and there's a flurry of colors, iridescent and ethereal in the low light, standing out among the crowd of mostly black, out on the dance floor-clearly the rest of the models, dancing and fluttering and generally being captivating.

"I'm gonna go dance, I do see my date," Yuri grins and winks at Jessica, as a tall, handsome guy breaks off from his group to head over to them. Jessica nods absentmindedly, before she wanders over to the tables shoved to the corner of the room, sinking down into one seat.

There should be something strange, or even pitiful, about a stunning model so clearly detached from the party, a social wallflower, but in Jessica's case the industry is so used to it that they don't even bat an eyelash when she slips out into the deserted garden, or plants herself at the bar for hours, or when she doesn't even show up at all. There used to be a time when people, mostly men, would come up and bug her, asking her to dance, asking her if she wants a drink, mistakenly believing that she wanted someone to accompany her. True, she did also get the nickname of "frigid bitch" (the much less sugar coated version of "ice princess") after one too many had gotten rejected, but she doesn't really mind; most of the time, she doesn't really like people, anyway.

So she lets herself zone out here, leaning her head on one hand over the table, half clouded in darkness. She would have left, but the last time she did, the designer had been less than friendly about how she had walked out in one of the designs that she was supposed to be promoting, which was the sole reason as to why she was even here. She idly runs her gaze through the room, wondering if today's designer would be more forgiving. She sees Seohyun walking around with her musician boyfriend, looking not unlike a dollop of whipped cream in her white dress, and notes that Yuri's already making out with her date against a far wall. There's Sooyoung in the middle of the dance floor, which Jessica can only make out because of the girl's height, and Taeyeon over there is already hunched over the bar.

Jessica wonders when things will change.

Just as that thought flitters across her mind, a voice jerks her out of her stupor, stuttering nervously, "Uh, hi, can I-can I sit down here?"

A ready "no" is on her lips even before she gets a good look at him, but when she does the words die immediately-He has caramel-colored hair, a cute face, and now he looks more anxious and fidgety than bored, but she definitely recognizes him.

"Yeah," Jessica blurts out, against every protesting cell in her body. "Yeah, go ahead."

"So," he starts awkwardly, tapping his fingers on the table, "You're one of the models, right?"

Jessica looks down at her pastel dress. "Yes."

"Right..." he trails off. "Um, what's your name?"

"You don't know my name?" Jessica asks bluntly. "Isn't that why you sat down here, you know, everybody wants to bag a model..."

"N-no, of course not!" he stammers immediately, his face flushing red. "I'm sorry, am I supposed to know your name? I mean, I recognize you from the fashion show but otherwise-I'm sorry, I don't really-I only sat down because there are no other chairs and I was getting tired!" he says in a rush.

Jessica tilts her head at him, amused at his reaction. "You don't go to these often, do you?" He shakes his head apologetically, still blushing. "I should have figured, by how you looked completely bored during the walk."

"You saw me?"

"You were in the front row," Jessica says. "How'd you get that seat?"

"My friend," he murmurs, embarrassed. "Kim Kibum? He runs a style blog, and he got free tickets-he forced me to come. Not that it wasn't enjoyable!" he says hastily, waving his arms around to emphasize his point. "It's just..."

"-Not really your thing," Jessica finishes for him.

His name is Lee Jinki ("Well, people mostly call me Onew, that's my alias-" "I like Jinki better." "O-oh, okay-") and he runs a blog too, which was how he met Kibum (who, surprisingly, Jessica vaguely recognizes when Jinki points him out), and his blog posts are full of pictures he's taken around the city and audio snippets of the songs he writes and long, rambling accounts of the things that pass through his mind. He apparently has a modest following, but not enough to make blogging his full-time job, so he takes other photography gigs on the side ("I just wander around dressed head to toe in black, take some photos of them being happy and popping champagne and spilling cake all over the wedding dress - and I get paid! Isn't that amazing?") but what probably amazes Jessica the most is how perfectly content he is with himself, and his life.

"Well, you know, it wouldn't hurt to be a little less clumsy, or maybe to have abs," Jinki pokes woefully at his flat stomach. "But yeah, I would consider myself pretty happy, why?"

"Just wondering," Jessica murmurs. "I guess," she says a little louder. "I guess my question is, how? Why are you happy? What did you do?"

"I just did what I wanted to do," Jinki shrugs, temporarily blinding Jessica with his sunny smile. "It's pretty simple, really."

"Is it?" Jessica wonders out loud, dragging her eyes over to catch at his eyes, and his Adam's apple bobs as he swallows nervously, his own eyes roaming over her face. "Is it really?"

When Jessica calls him a week later (his number was on his Facebook profile - really, who gives out that kind of information?), he picks up after three rings, letting out a cautious, "Hello?"

"Hello," Jessica says. And then she lets the phone fall to silence.

"Um," Jinki says. "I don't mean to be rude, but who is this?"

"Your biggest fan," Jessica deadpans. "No seriously, look outside your window. Do you see me, oppa?"

A much longer silence follows this, and in the background Jessica can hear a slight rustling, like the sound of blinds being pulled outside, and she wonders if he's actually checking. "I was joking. It's me, Jessica."

"Oh - oh! Jessica!" Jinki says, half relieved and half - thrilled, maybe? Pleasantly surprised? "Hey, how are you? How'd you get my number? Wait, am I really your oppa?"

"It's on your Facebook," Jessica tells him. "And uh, no, of course not."

"You searched me?" Jinki says, clearly tickled by this confession and pointedly ignoring her other one, before a realization dawns on him. "Wait, it's on my Facebook? God, no wonder random thirteen-year olds call me all the time..."

"Yeah," Jessica hums absently, as he continues to chatter stressfully. "So, I'm walking to Noori's Bagels, and you should meet up with me," she interrupts him.

"Oh, that's down the street from here!"

"I'll keep that in mind," Jessica makes sure her laugh is sinister, before snapping her phone shut and settling down to wait.

Jinki shows up in seven minutes, looking flushed and breathless like he had ran the entire way there. Jessica has to smile at him though, because he is still incredibly cute in the daytime, in an endearing puppy dog sort of way that makes him seem warm and soft and cuddly, which might be why Jessica suddenly feels a rush of affection for this not-quite-but-almost-stranger.

"Hey!" he grins as he jogs up to her bench, beaming widely. "Wow, I almost didn't recognize you," Jinki flares his hands out around his waist spasmodically, and then curves his hands around an imaginary ball on his head. "You know, all that fancy stuff."

Jessica is amused to hear Jinki refer to high-end designer clothing and a complex hairstyle as "fancy stuff", but she just smiles and says, "Well, I can't look like that all the time."

"I didn't mean that you're any less pretty!" Jinki blurts out immediately, flailing his arms around. "You are! Seriously, the casual look is good on you," he gives her a jaunty thumbs up.

She looks down at her plain skinny jeans and black t-shirt, her blonde hair falling straight down her back. "Sure," she says, humoring him. "You think I'm pretty?"

"Well, yeah," Jinki says automatically, and then he flushes red. "I mean, you're a model! Of course I think you're pretty because models are pretty and you're a model..."

"Right, Jessica rolls her eyes, hitting him lightly in the shoulder. "Come on, I'm hungry."

Jinki talks the entire time while they're waiting in line, telling her about how he had done a review of the fashion show but his readers had angsted about how he was woefully ignorant about high fashion, and Kibum in particular had just left a comment about how he was never going to bring Jinki to another show ever again since he clearly does not appreciate the greatness of haute couture. Jinki doesn't particularly mind, though, because "-I mentioned you, and how I had a good time talking to you. I hope you don't mind, I just said that you were really cool, and everything."

"Really?" Jessica says, surprised. "What did the readers say?"

"Oh, they told me to beware the 'Jessica effect', whatever that means," Jinki laughs. "I suppose that means to not fall in love with you?"

"Hardly," Jessica says dryly, as she nods her head at the cashier who hands her a freshly toasted bagel. "The 'effect' something that Kim Heechul, the editor of Kitty, coined - when I walk into a room, the temperature drops, because of how cold I am."

"You're not cold at all!" Jinki looks so shocked at this that he fumbles with his change, and drops a dime on the floor. He swoops down to retrieve it, flustered. "How could people think you're cold? You're like the complete opposite, you're, like-"

"-Hot?" Jessica says archly.

"Well, I was thinking warm --" Jinki says, absentmindedly taking his bagel. "Not that you're not hot! I mean, you totally are, it's just that 'hot' doesn't really describe personality and you're warm and if you had a hot personality, that'd just be weird because well your personality is attractive it's just -"

"You think I'm hot?" Jessica smiles.

"...We're not having this conversation again."

They wander outside again, and they cross the street to the nearby park. The sun is shining, making embellishing a copper sheen onto Jinki's hair. He pointedly asks why she only has a plain bagel with non-fat cream cheese and a thin layer of lox (Jinki himself is eating a garlic bagel with ham, cheese, and an egg) but when she rises her eyebrow at him he falls silent, although he doesn't seem very pleased about this new revelation.

Sinking down onto a bench, Jinki says through a mouthful, "Can I ask you something?"

She nods, nibbling delicately at the edges of her bagel.

"Are you actually a cold person? You really don't seem like it to me."

Shrugging, she looks out across the park, watching these little kids run around on the playground. "Sometimes. That is, most of the time."

"Why?"

"People annoy me," Jessica says honestly. "Well, not all of them. People are heartless and uncompassionate and selfish, especially in the field of work I'm in. I don't like dealing with it - so I don't. It's one of the things that I actually do for myself, or else my brain might explode," she snorts derisively, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Why are you a model, then?" Jinki asks gently, nudging at her calf with his own foot. "God, you seem to hate it."

"I've been doing it for a long time," Jessica says slowly. "It's a comfort, you know? That I know what will happen and people know how I am and I get a steady income. It's hard to change."

"You could do anything you wanted to," Jinki tells her earnestly. "You know, carve your own path."

"Is it really that easy?" Jessica quotes herself, smiling just slightly, before tearing off a piece of her bagel and popping it into her mouth. "You're just one of the lucky ones, you know."

"Who says you can't be, too?" Jinki says. "You know, maybe that's the problem - that you think happiness happens to other people. You're in control of your own life - it's not luck or karma or anything like that."

"Maybe," Jessica replies distantly, and she smiles wistfully at him. He smiles back, just a little tilt on his lips and looking up at her through his eyelashes, and once again she feels that surge of attraction for this guy that she barely knows but she will soon, she can feel it. Maybe she will listen to Jinki, maybe she will get what she wants, but maybe she can't do it with her entire life (her practical self can't exactly give up all the restrictions her mind's placed on things) but maybe she'll start here, with him.

"You're really nice, you know," Jessica tells him. "Really, really nice," she adds, and he just grins wider.

The weeks blur past in a rush of glittery eyeliner and lethal stilettos and hair teased high as Jessica goes to work, racing around the city to go-sees and meetings with her agency, bright lights trained on her as she poses to the photographer's fancy. She and Tiffany go out for drinks on Fridays, but they usually end up leaving early and pulling on their pajamas, watching reruns of Gossip Girl and eating too much popcorn, even if it's non-fat and butter-free. Jinki texts her often, and they meet up for lunch many times a week. He makes her laugh by how he bends low over the table to get a good shot of their (his - a salad doesn't make a very interesting shot) food, and he's always up for a good adventure in the city, or in the park, or where ever they happen to end up in, really, his camera always at the ready to take the photos that will fill his blog posts. Jinki always turns his camera toward her eventually, but she just ducks out of the shot, covering her face (she doesn't like to mix business and pleasure), resulting in him chasing her around, breathlessly complaining about how she was growing colder toward him every day. That wasn't true, of course, Jessica couldn't ever dislike Jinki - he makes her smile too much.

Today, Jessica breathes out a sigh of relief as the visual director calls a wrap early, praising her to the heavens. She nods and half-smiles politely - she didn't really do anything except for obeying the photographer's barking orders, after all, but of course she isn't going to argue, and gets out of the scalloped chiffon dress they stuck her in and into her own shorts and loose top. She attempts to brush down her purposefully wild and frizzy hair, but then she just gives up and ties it up into a braid, a thick rope of pale hair falling down her back. Bidding everybody goodbye and rushing outside quickly, Jessica quickly hails a taxi, and heads over to Jinki's townhouse.

Jinki's place is comfortable; all wooden floors with mismatched rugs thrown over them, a worn pin-striped couch with the pattern fading in places, the chunky, jet black DSLR cameras a sharp contrast against the pale wood of his desk. There are a lot of windows, so it's airy and sunny and just so relaxing to be in, so Jessica likes unwinding there, watching TV or sometimes just watching Jinki, as his fingers clatter nonstop over the keyboard or when he's sliding across the floors in his socks, inevitably crashing into a wall at the end, listening to him as he hums and sings and laughs. So she quickly gets up the front stairs, and knocks on the door.

When it swings open, though, it's not Jinki, as she expected - it's some guy with killer cheekbones and feline eyes, his hair brown and sweeping perfectly over one eye. He brightens immediately when he sees her. "Oh my god, you're Jung Jessica! Shit, Jinki wasn't lying after all!"

"When does Jinki ever lie?" Jessica asks rhetorically, inclining her head politely at him. "Where is he?"

"You guys are so adorable!" he squeals to answer her question, flapping his hands as he bounces backward out of the doorway to let her in. "You're so adorable, I love your prints and your runway walk and everything, it's great to meet you. I'm Kibum, I run almightykey.com--"

"We're not dating, you know," Jessica smiles bemusedly at the excited Kibum, stepping inside and sliding her shoes off. "And yeah, I know, I've seen you around at some of my shows, and Jinki mentions you sometimes."

"Oh, well, still -" Kibum says impatiently. "And oh my god, this is so exciting but I've really got to go, there's a party at that new bar downtown, and I got an invitation, and Jinki doesn't want to go and I don't suppose you-"

Jessica shakes her head, just as Jinki skids around the corner, flailing his arms to keep his balance. "Kibum! I thought you left already!"

"I ran into Jessica on the way out, there was no way I wasn't going to talk to her!" Kibum protests, as Jinki is crowding him outside the door, as Jessica watches, her head tilted. "Jessica, let's hang out sometime, alright? Ow -" he hits Jinki on the shoulder in retaliation. "Alright, alright, I'm leaving, you two can have your alone time - get off me, you great baffoon."

Jinki closes the door firmly after he wrestles Kibum out and slumps against it, looking at her with an mixture of embarrassment and exasperation. "Sorry 'bout Kibum, he can be kind of-"

"It's okay," Jessica says. "He's not that bad."

"I know you don't like dealing with people like that," Jinki sighs, rubbing at the back of his head, making his shirt ride up a couple centimeters, and she looks away quickly, realizing how close they're standing in the cramped entry hallway. He seems to realize this too, for he clears his throat and edges past her, heading into the kitchen. "Do you want to eat anything? I can make you something."

She shakes her head as she puts down her bag on the coffee table. "Nah, I'm not hungry."

Jinki grumbles, and she doesn't look in his direction as he huffs and pulls out an apple for himself from the fridge. He wanders back over to his desk, quickly clicking through links as he chews. "Hey, c'mere," he calls over to her. "You wanna see?"

As she gets up to peer over his shoulder, he types in the now familiar url of onewcondition.com into the searchbar, his website quickly loading. It's simple, a white background with a typography-based heading with just the name of the blog. Scrolling down, he shows her the new entry that he must have just posted, the photos from their recent trip to the observatory.

"That's a good one," Jessica points to a picture of the glass dome at nightime, lit up in blacks and greys and blues as the entrance lights reflect off the mirrored windows. "You can see the moon in the sky and reflected on the building, that's cool. Nice composition."

"Thanks," Jinki says, pleased. "Oh look, there's part of your head," he chuckles at a blur of yellow at the corner of a perceptual photo, the curve of her cheek just barely visible. "I don't understand why you don't let me take pictures of you," Jinki complains. "You'd be a great subject."

"I get photos taken of me as a career," Jessica says dryly, crossing her arms. "I think that's enough for me."

"But that's different," Jinki insists. "I mean, modeling for a magazine and just letting me take your picture are two completely different things. Besides, my readers have been clamoring to see your lovely face, since I mention you too much," he wheedles, puppydog-like, as he spins around in his chair to pout up at her, his hands clasped together in a begging motion. Despite herself, she melts a little inside, quite unseemly for the ice princess.

She rolls her eyes but can't stop from smiling, reaching out to flick him on the forehead. "Babo," she mumbles, and he laughs out loud, grabbing her hands gleefully and waving them around.

"I knew you'd come through for me," he grins, as he gets up and starts doing an impromptu jig around her, pulling her along, and stepping on her foot unceremoniously. "I'm excited, let's go downtown-"

"I never said I'd do it," Jessica protests, as she gets spun around in a circle, her braid smacking Jinki in the face. "Don't assume things!"

"Oh, but I know you, Jess," Jinki rubs at his cheek ruefully, where her hair hit him. But then he reaches for her again, smiling as he takes on her hands and puts his other on her waist, guiding her other hand to his shoulder as they sway around the room. "Anything that's not an outright no is a yes."

Jessica mumbles something in return as Jinki moves her across the floor, and Jessica marvels at how easy, how comfortable this is -- yes, there is a trace of awkwardness, and their bodies are far from being pressed together, but Jinki is beaming down at her with a tender look in his eyes, obviously happy - happy - because of such simple words, such simple actions. It really just is that easy for him.

A sudden ringing sound startles them apart, however, and Jinki scrambles over to his computer, where something is flashing on his screen. "What is it?" Jessica asks, coming up behind him.

"Stupid dongsaengs," Jinki grumbles, before pressing the green "talk" button - immediately, a screen pops up, black at first with a loading symbol in the center, just as a green light blinks on from the webcam of the laptop, and then it gives way to show a boy with a mess of strawberry blond hair, grinning widely and waving at them.

"Hey, hyung!" he trills, his voice tinny and digitized through the speakers. "Just thought I'd call, how are you?"

"You don't call for weeks, and you decide that right now is the right time?" Jinki says exasperatedly, frowning into the camera. "You really are troublesome, Taemin."

The image of Taemin pixellizes and blurs as the boy laughs, and just as he's about to retort, another figure comes onto the screen, and for a moment all they can see is a large, dark eye peering through the laptop at them. "Get out of the way, Minho!" Jessica can hear Taemin say, before there's a loud smacking sound and Minho backs away, laughing, to settle behind Taemin, resting his chin on the boy's shoulder.

"Hi, hyung," Minho says, his voice deep and gravelly. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," Jinki says crossly. "I should be asking how you guys are, because you have contacted me in weeks!"

"We just got the internet set up here," Taemin explains. "It took forever! God, I miss being back in Korea, the world's most connected county...everything's, like, ancient over here. Their phones are crap."

"That's what you get for running away to the States," Jinki says, although he's smiling now. "Oh, sorry!" he looks at Jessica apologetically, pulling her beside them. "This is Jessica, guys. Wave, Jessica!"

Jessica flashes an awkward smile and waves at them, and they both react enthusiastically, Taemin practically bouncing in his seat as he exclaims his greeting. "I guess I was interrupting something, hyung!" Taemin says cheekily, and Jinki promptly hits his hand to his forehead, mumbling something about how they were all conspiring against him.

"We'll call you later hyung, have a good day~" Taemin singsongs, and the last thing they hear is their obnoxious giggling before the screen turns black again, before disappearing. Jinki sighs loudly.

"Interesting," Jessica nudges him. "Taemin and Minho?"

"Yeah," Jinki says, his face still buried in his hands. "I was friends with them in high school, they're a bit younger than us - Taemin finished college last year, and they promptly went off to San Francisco. I have no idea what they're doing out there, besides for what they put on -" he types in theheartlessboys.com into the searchbar, pressing enter. "-what they put on their blog."

"Man, you guys all have blogs, don't you," Jessica murmurs, leaning in closer to look. Much like Jinki's, their blog is simple and clean, and in their header is a goofy selca of the two of them, with a large script version of a broken heart next to it. The first picture posted is one of Taemin in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, his hair long and ruffled by the invisible wind, his mouth open in an expression of sheer delight.

"Yeah, it was sort of a trend at our school," Jinki says, scrolling down. There more pictures of Taemin walking down a steep street flanked by small, colorful houses, looking back at photographer, who Jessica assumed was Minho. There are shots of other things like a big red bus, and a shot of a thick grey fog rolling in over the beach. "One of the really popular classes was photography, and it was just easier to use some blog host to post your pictures online - sort of like a digital portfolio. The few of us who really liked it just gained more followers, I guess, and we moved to our own servers."

There's a big block of text with a lot of exclamation points after the first group of pictures, and then the second series of photos showed what looked like an empty loft. There were a lot of pictures of Minho looking grumpily into the camera as he struggles with a pair of boxes up the stairs (there were a lot of ㅋㅋㅋ's under those) and Taemin crouching down next to a cat on the sidewalk. The very last photo is a bit too up-close, but they're both in it, their heads pushed together and their smiles wide, with just the ears of the cat from before visible from the bottom of the picture.

"Wow," Jessica says slowly. "They look really happy. Minho's not in many of these, though."

"Yeah, he's the one that's into photography," Jinki says fondly, clicking on the 'comment' button. "Taemin prefers to be in front of the lens."

"See," he continues. "They're another example, you know - of doing what you want. I mean, who just gets up and leaves, to a place where they barely know the language? It's just about knowing what you want, and all they really need is eachother, it's been like that since they were young - and this is their opportunity to really prove that, to have the grand adventure of their lives, to be in complete control of their lives." he finishes, turning to smile up at her.

"All it takes is to know what you want," Jinki adds simply, "And then you do it." He types something quickly on the keyboard. "There," he murmurs, clicking some buttons on the screen, and Jessica has to squint to see the type: jessica and i think you guys are adorable, have the time of your lives in sanfran! hwaiting!!

"I'm getting there," Jessica says quietly, and she lets her hand ghost through the ends of Jinki's brown hair, her fingers brushing against the soft skin at the back of his neck.

part two