Ruby.

Y/N’s phone screen lit up in the middle of the night.

1:11 in the fucking morning to be exact.

Y/N had been half-asleep, one arm folded under his pillow, the other resting across his stomach, rising and falling with the slow, thoughtless rhythm of almost-gone. The buzz on the nightstand pulled him back before the sound did — and then, the sound did.

Her voice.

Soft, a little breathy, the melody she'd hummed into a voice memo on his phone one afternoon while sitting cross-legged on his kitchen counter, wearing his shirt and nothing else, pretending it was hers.

I made you something, she'd said, handing the phone back with this small, pleased expression — like she'd wrapped a gift she was quietly proud of.

Don't make it weird.

He, infact, did make it weird.

He listened to it four times before she even left.

He reached for the phone instinctively, as he usually always does when that song came up.

The contact photo was the one she'd taken herself — screen angled down, chin tilted up, caught mid-laugh while sitting on his lap on a random Tuesday when she invited him and decided that his lap was gonna be a chair today. Her hair was a little messy. There was a smudge of something at the corner of her mouth he'd tried to wipe away right after and she'd leaned into it like a cat and then immediately pretended she hadn't. She'd set the photo herself while he was in the bathroom. When he came out and saw it, he never asked about it or changed it, just looked at her with a tilt on his head and his mouth slightly agape.

What? it's a good photo, she'd said flatly, handing him his phone back, as he smiled instinctively, his thumb tracing Jennie’s cheek through the phone. You look happy.

Jennniee ❤️

He answered before the second line of her song came up.

"Shoot." Her voice came through clear and wide awake. No hello, no introductions, just one word, as if anything will change anyways.

Jennie could call and not say anything and he’ll come.

He exhaled slow through his nose, grunting as he stretched. "Shoot what?"

A pause. Then sultrier, "You know."

He didn't, actually — that was the consistent, slightly infuriating yet lovable still thing about Jennie. She communicated in the space between what she said and what she wanna say, and she always expected you to cross it yourself. Half the time he did. The other half he showed up anyway and figured it out in person, which he suspected was the point.

"Cameras or—"

"Bring the cameras."

He was already sitting up, pushing the blanket back with one hand, reaching for the jeans he'd left on the chair.

The drive was quiet in the way the city got quiet after midnight — slower. Red lights that stretched. Streetlights scrolling across the windshield in long, unhurried stripes. He had the windows slightly ajar and the playlist running low, half his attention on the road, the rest scattered towards something, or a specific someone.

And then, as if on cue, her song came on.

He smiled lightly, reached over and turned it up.

It was barely a minute long, the sound of Jennie chewing heard as she sung. Its still somehow his favorite song.

Her voice was light and a little unpolished in a way she never was in recordings that were meant for everyone. But she'd added to it at some point he didn’t know. He noticed it one afternoon when it played through his car speakers and there was a second melody underneath the first, softer. He'd sat with it for the full sixty seconds and then kept driving and hadn't brought it up because he wasn't sure what he would say.

He pulled up to her building still smiling for some reason.

She buzzed him in without asking who it was.

The elevator was the same as always — mirrored walls, that specific overhead light that made everything look a little late-night golden, the faint trace of whatever the building used in the hallways that his nose got used to a few years before. His feet knew the trip even before his brain can really fully catch up — third floor, left out of the elevator, door at the end of the hall.

He raised his knuckles to knock.

It opened before he can even do so.

Jennie stood in the doorway in her pajamas — the oversized pale blue set with the little clouds on it, bottoms pooling slightly around her bare feet, a chip held between two fingers mid-bite. Her hair was down and a little flat on one side since she'd been lying on it. She was chewing when she opened the door and she didn't stop, just looked at him with that particular look — unhurried, a little self-satisfied, tiny smirk on her lips as if she won a lottery.

Of course you came.

"You're here," she said, still chewing.

"You called."

She stepped aside.

The coffee table had become half of a 7/11.

Three kinds of chips. Two chocolates, one already opened and missing a row. Leftover takeout in at least two different containers that were definitely not from the same restaurant. A bowl of fruit that felt like it was only there to seem like she was eating something healthy. Ramyeon still sitting in the pot on a folded kitchen towel on the floor, because she'd decided that was easier than serving it. Two strawberry milk cartons with the straws already in, one half empty the other still full.

Y/N looked at the spread of food, slightly impressed. Then at her.

"Is this a new concept?" He nodded at the table. "For the next album?"

She dropped back onto the couch and pulled her knees up. "Shut up," she said, with a stupid little giggle and a snort, a crumb falling at the corner of her mouth, she tried to catch it with the back of her hand and the giggling only got worse, and she pressed the heel of her palm to her lips until it passed.

"Okay, I’m not that funny" He said, already smiling when he took off his shoes.

He gently put the camera bag somewhere behind the couch, and then dropped into the cushion beside her — she moved before he'd even fully settled. Her weight pressing into his side, her shoulder tucking under his arm, her knees folding up onto the couch as she curled into the space he made for her instinctively, his hands finding her waist.

On the TV, a man was standing in the rain looking very devastated about it.

"What are we watching?"

"The Notebook."

He let a beat pass, before sighing heavily. "Again?"

"It's a classic." She reached over him to grab one of the chocolates off the table, her arm crossing his lap, unhurried about it, he leaned back slightly to give her room. She broke a piece off and handed the rest to him without looking.

"It's cheating propaganda," he said, taking the chocolate and putting it on his mouth.