A Million Faces
A/N Because there will never be enough of rocker!taeng ever. Also, I have to thank a friend of mine
dugeunsaranghae who helped me with a bit of editing. Title credit goes to Paolo Nutini's song of the same name.
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Thousands of faces passed by Taeyeon every day, the fans, the women, the townspeople. Their names went through her like most things.
However, she loved the company of women, oh how she enjoyed them. How their soft curves moulded against hers, and the slight girlish sighs against her lips. They readily eased her boredom of traveling from town to town at the convenience of their disposal.
In amongst a sea of nameless faces, there was one that she’d distinctly recall.
--
The warm sun rays had bled through the split between the curtains, and Taeyeon squinted through the slit of her eyes. Her bed dipped when Tiffany sat on the other side, and Taeyeon’s body lolled to the sunken side.
“Here,” Tiffany said as she wrapped Taeyeon’s fingers around the glass of water. Taeyeon nodded and took a sip.
“Thanks,” she replied, resting her back against the headboard. “You stayed the night,” Taeyeon noted and watched Tiffany walk across the room, barefooted.
“Yeah,” Tiffany turned her head over shoulder and smiled and pulled the blinds apart. The wave of blistering heat engulfed the room when Tiffany opened the door to the porch and stepped outside. Tiffany stood on the ends of her toes to collect the pegs from the clothesline without a care in the world. “Does it bother you?” she asked, genuinely curious, without looking back.
Taeyeon’s eyes flickered for the briefest moment at the hem of Tiffany’s blouse riding up the back of her bare thighs. “No,” she uttered, resting the glass cup on the wooden stand next to alarm clock, “Not really.”
Tiffany walked back, placing the dried clothing by the dresser and sat on the spare chair, stretching and pressing her toes against the edge of the bed. “What are we going to do today?” She looked at Taeyeon with round expecting eyes.
“I’m going to stay inside,” Taeyeon responded, peeling the covers away from her and gently pushing Tiffany’s feet away just as she swung her own legs over the bed’s edge.
“Where?”
“The hotel.”
Tiffany grimaced, “I’ll stay here with you then.”
“Oh.” Taeyeon blinked. “Don’t you have your own room?”
They sat in silence for a moment longer before Tiffany said more softly, “No,” placing her hands into her lap, “I can go if I bother you. Maybe Sunny’s still here.”
Taeyeon watched Tiffany fidget with her fingers. For some reason, that was enough for Taeyeon to feel a little bit sorry for the girl, deciding that didn’t have the heart to turn her away. She sighed, “It’s too hot to be outside,” flicking the fan switch on, “Stay.”
A grin eased onto Tiffany’s lips. She was easy to please, Taeyeon noticed as she stood up and reached for the packet of smokes in the front pocket of her jeans.
The girl flung herself onto the unmade bed, her limbs sprawled messily and her dark locks fanning out in every different direction.
Taeyeon drew a long puff, and breathed out a plume of smoke into the humid air, before lying down on the mattress as well. Tiffany stretched out an arm and took it from her lips, rolling the cigarette cylinder between her fingers before experimentally taking a short puff of her own, staining the filter with her red crimson lipstick.
The smoke rose lazily from her mouth into a messy wisp.
Tiffany turned to face Taeyeon, with her head propped on her bent elbow. The cigarette hung loosely from her mouth as she spoke, and she wiped away the stands of hair that clung to the sweat that sheened on Taeyeon’s face. “Is this what you do in your free time?”
Taeyeon stared up at the fan whirring unsteadily from the ceiling. “Not exactly,” she replied, her hands rested on her abdomen, acutely aware that their hips were pressing.
Tiffany watched Taeyeon for a moment, huffed and slid back down, resting her head against the pillow. “You’re very hard to talk to you know,” she said and crossed her arms.
“What?”
“Do you treat all the other girls like this?”
Taeyeon shrugged her shoulders. Strangely, as of late, she hadn’t been with many other women for as long as her memory could recollect.
“Well,” Tiffany continued, “It’s not very nice.”
Growing restless from the lack of response, Tiffany rolled over to her stomach and reached for the ashtray, putting the butt out.
She jutted out her lower lip, “You’re not very interesting either, are you?” Tiffany concluded, “Nothing like what they say on the radio.”
“You hardly know me,” Taeyeon said sleepily.
“That’s ok,” a hint of disappointment in her voice, “I know that you were just an idea,”
“What am I now?” Taeyeon replied, opening an eye.
Tiffany danced her fingers idly on Taeyeon’s arm for a moment before sliding her hand into Taeyeon’s palm. She stared at their joined hands and looked Taeyeon in the eye before answering with a soft chuckle, “A little more human.”
--
It bothered Taeyeon. As time went on, her heart clenched painfully at the thought of Tiffany realizing the world for what it really was.
When Tiffany smiled, the band would humour the girl telling her that they should write a song about her distinctly crescent like eyes.
Taeyeon saw the blush creep onto her cheeks before turning away. The city’s neon lights slowly faded into quiet grassy plains. Flashes of lightning streaked the night sky, and Taeyeon watched rain droplets slide lazily down the speckled window pane.
She frowned as a silly passing thought flitted across her mind.
Tiffany stood on the porch as she watched their children run through the sprinklers.
“They’ll grow up one day,” he said, “We’re going to have to worry about them.”
“Yeah, like we don’t already,” she laughed softly.
“You know what I mean.”
She played with the silver band on her finger as she contemplated to herself. “There was this time,” she paused, “Actually no, it’s so silly.”
“What?”
“It was more like an experimental phase I had as a kid,” she smiled to herself, “There were these musicians, they were stars…I was young, it was really dumb.”
Taeyeon blinked, snapping out of her daze. The single silly thought was unsettlingly plausible.
She reached for a pen and unravelled a piece of crumpled paper. Despite it all, Taeyeon still wanted to think of Tiffany as just a girl with stars in her eyes.
--
Silly girls with flippant dreams did trivial things.
The radio played softly in the background while she scribbled onto her notepad. Her voice was almost too familiar; the scratchy sombre warble followed by yet another solemn obituary.
They’d replay it over and over again.
Her eyes flickered to where Tiffany kneeled over the white powdered line on the table. Tiffany lifted her head, and glanced at Taeyeon with a lucid smile, offering her a share. So, Taeyeon walked over, dropped to her knees and leaned in. After the sting in her nose had subsided and her heart palpitated that much harder, she pushed Tiffany down on the mattress, her pupils dilated and wide.
And as they lay in post coital bliss, Taeyeon hated herself for revering the curve of Tiffany’s hip next to hers and the soft hand that lay over her abdomen under flimsy sheets.
Because, it meant that everything was hardly meaningless for Taeyeon, and she wondered the same for Tiffany.
The thing about Tiffany was that she was never just Taeyeon’s.
There had been times where Taeyeon fell out of slumber at the sound of a small knock that rattled the wooden door.
When she opened it, Tiffany would wordlessly slip her way through and casually pulled her dress over her head.
Routinely, Taeyeon would have returned to her bed and switched off the night lamp with Tiffany tailing behind, mattress sinking along with her weight.
The strong stench of liqueur, sweat and men’s cologne permeated against the clean chemical smell of bleached sheets.
Tiffany would have scooted closer to Taeyeon, her cold toes pressing into the back of Taeyeon’s leg and fall asleep.
Sleep, however, would have always eluded Taeyeon.
So, more recently, like every other night, Taeyeon found Tiffany lying next to her, humming contently against her ear. The reality was, Tiffany was also a woman realizing her choices.
--
There were rare evenings where the crowd cheered with deafening silence. If performing could make her feel like the world had fallen at her feet, then the quiet was the revolt that riled her up, agitated her caustic temper for hurting her pride.
On those days, she left the microphone stand empty hours too early.
“What the fuck, Taeyeon?” her manager threw his arms up as she pushed past him. “Get back out there.”
She grunted and found her leather jacket hanging off the chair.
“Where do you think you’re going?!” he shouted down the corridor when Taeyeon made her way to the exit without an answer.
The outside air was cool, the floor wet after the clearing of rain. She marched small circles around the muddy puddles near the back entrance, rummaging in her pocket for smokes without the luck of finding any.
In a fit of rage, she rammed her fist into the cold brick wall and recoiled her hand to shake the unprecedented pain away as she walked away cussing under her breath.
Tiffany somehow always found her by the town’s local bar, sipping at her rum and coke.
Only more recently, Tiffany had wondered whether Taeyeon had lost her thirst for liqueur. For every time she appeared, she’d push her drink away.
“Had enough?” Tiffany tilted her head as she pulled out a stool from under the table.
Taeyeon nodded with a frown and sighed through her nose. She passed the glass to Tiffany, “You can have the rest.”
Tiffany glanced warily at the burly bartender and took the smallest of sips. She scrunched her nose, as she rested the glass onto the table, the cool ice hitting the bottom with a clink, “Yuck,” she commented, “I don’t even like this drink.”
A curve formed on Tiffany’s lips as she traced the slight ragged gash on the back of Taeyeon’s hand with her finger. “Did you…?”
“No.” Taeyeon flinched, not retracting her hand completely. “The wall,” she muttered emphatically.
Tiffany suppressed a giggle, brushing her thumb (almost lovingly, Taeyeon foolishly hoped) over the gash, “Well that was silly of you.”
Taeyeon blushed all too soberly and ordered Tiffany another drink.
--
It had barely even started, had barely been anything and Taeyeon watched her slowly slip away. The girl was adored by many and had hardly been generous to give any adoration in return.
“You can trust me on one thing,” Tiffany whispered into Taeyeon’s ear, giggling uncontrollably from her high.
Taeyeon leaned back onto the couch, “Why?”
“I promise you,” Tiffany slurred languidly, “This won’t be forever.”
“Nothing is forever.”
“Perhaps I’m growing up.”
“People don’t grow up. They just grow older.”
“Maybe that’s just you Taeyeon”.
--
Tiffany shifted away and Taeyeon read disappointment in her eyes.
“So while you think it’s perfectly acceptable for you to sleep around with women and toss them away at their own expense when you feel like it, I’m the immoral one here?” Tiffany exclaimed incredulously. “Is that what you’re trying to say?” Tiffany pressed on, as she slid up against the headboard.
“No, that’s not what I mea-.”
“I’m young, not dumb Taeyeon. I’m not who you think I am, just like-- just like how you’re not the perfect ideal human being that everybody thinks you are.”
Taeyeon frowned, throwing her hands up in the air and scowled, “Well, I’m sorry that I’m not perfect.”
“No,” Tiffany sat on the edge of the bed, her back now turned against Taeyeon. She answered in no more than a hurt whisper, “I never said you had to be.”
And just like that, Taeyeon felt another twist beneath her ribs.
--
She watched Tiffany laugh with the other girls, as they played with the leftover food from the diner.
They hadn’t really spoken after that morning. Taeyeon was a proud person.
“Tiffany,” she said in the midst of everything with a nagging feeling impossible to shake away.
There was a stunned silence that came from the table.
Tiffany rested her fork on the serviette, “What is it?”
Taeyeon flushed at the sudden attention and motioned Tiffany to walk outside with her.
The parking lot was quiet and Tiffany shivered, folding her arms into her body. “Is there something you wanted to ask?”
Taeyeon fidgeted with her thumbs, “I wanted to apologise, for the other morning. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” Tiffany replied, “I know.”
Taeyeon frowned; it hadn’t eased the uncomfortable tension that lingered from the other day.
Tiffany kicked the stones on the tarmac and turned her gaze back to where they had been sitting inside the diner. “Do you want to go back inside?”
Taeyeon followed her gaze and resigned, “Alright.”
--
Tiffany sat on the amplifier, picking at the lint on her floral dress.
“Have you ever thought about what you’d be doing if you hadn’t been performing?”
Taeyeon kicked the electrical cords away, “No, not really.” She looked at Tiffany, “I’m useless at everything else.”
“But what will happen, if this whole fame thing doesn’t work out for you?”
Taeyeon shrugged her shoulders, “I guess,” she replied, “It’s something to think about.”
“Yeah,” she nodded in response. There was a prolonged silence before Tiffany slid off the box and bit her lip, “I think,” she began, “I think I want to go home.”
“What?”
Tiffany nodded more adamantly, “Yeah,” she repeated, “Yeah, I want to. My family, my friends at school, I miss them. I miss them so, so much actually.”
“You can fly over there, visit your town. I can pay for your flight,” Taeyeon replied with the slightest hint of desperation.
“No, no. I don’t want that. I want- I need to go back and finish school. Go to college. It’s that gut feeling, you know?”
Taeyeon blinked, “Oh.” She drew her hands out of her pockets, placing them by her side.
“I might study philosophy. I don’t know. I wonder if they will let me back into school,” she laughed, “I’ve missed an entire semester already.”
“Why?” Taeyeon said, “Why philosophy, I mean.” Why school, why anything she really wanted to say.
Tiffany parted her mouth, “I’ve said it before, I thought you’d have known--,” she corrected herself, and smiled wistfully instead, “I guess, there are things you haven’t paid attention to. Not that they’re important, I think. I’ve noticed that about you.”
Taeyeon nodded. There wasn’t much else she did after that. She liked to think it was because she loved her enough to see her go, but Taeyeon was hardly a generous person. Maybe if she hadn’t been so set to protecting her pride, she’d have tried to convince Tiffany to stay for just awhile longer or at least a parting kiss to bid her farewell.
And sometimes Taeyeon would wonder if she’d dreamt the whole thing, concocted a phantom of a stranger late at night with a glass of whisky sitting in one hand, and a joint hanging loosely between her lips. But the point was that it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. The lasting, unsettling feeling of complete and utter loss would have still existed, only unexplained.
--
Taeyeon swept the tiled floor, scowling at the punks who littered crushed cigarettes by the entrance of the record store.
She returned to the cash register drummed her fingers lightly over the glass cabinet, eyeing the kids who loitered by the front of the store. Life was slow, slower than what it had been a few years ago. At least the itching feeling of wishing she had achieved more had long subsided, except for the nights at the bar where they’d get her to sing. Those nights became less frequent, in her mind anyway, as she washed away the memory away with strong liqueur.
She had hoped, however, that maybe there’d be a chance where Tiffany would walk through those glass doors.
She’d be wearing the crimson lipstick she’d have bought at the local drugstore and the turtle shell sunglasses that she’d kept since she was fifteen, carrying a hemp bag on one shoulder as she flipped through the records that would tell of the yesteryears.
And then Taeyeon would approach her, ask her whether if she recalled her youth, whether she remembered her at all. Maybe she’d offer to buy Tiffany a coffee at the café across the road, they’d laugh and reminisce about their glory days and Tiffany would bite her lip at the mention of Taeyeon’s graceless descent to complete irrelevance. Tiffany would then try and console her, tell her how school never worked out for her and despite seeing so much of the world and meeting the people in it, that she ended up working as a florist instead because she too, like Taeyeon, was a failure.
“It’s still funny that after all these years,” she’d say, “That you still don’t know my real name.”
Taeyeon would frown, and it’d sink in that Tiffany had been no more than a nameless face that had passed her life by. “So what is it?”
Taeyeon didn’t know how it ended. She kicked herself for letting the important things fly past her head, never quite knowing what name to put to her face.
So, as Taeyeon held onto the vaguest of ideas and the most absurd of wishes, because after all, the possibilities for the scene to play out would be endless, the bell jingled when the stranger entered the store.
“Hello,” she said moving past the music stalls to where the counter was.
Taeyeon turned her head. “Hi,” she answered back breathlessly. “How may I help you?”
And just as the woman turned to leave after not having found what she was looking for, this time Taeyeon didn’t forget.
“What is your name?”
“Stephanie. My name is Stephanie,” she replied.
Taeyeon ruminated through a moment of clarity. “Well, Stephanie, I’m pleased to have met you.”