In the morning, I learn to forgive you again

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/49314895.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: F/F
Fandom: BLACKPINK (Band)
Relationship: Jennie Kim/Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Character: Jennie Kim, Lalisa Manoban | Lisa
Additional Tags: Slice of Life, Domestic, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, vlogger jennie, Youtube
AU, Romance
Language: English
Series: Part 29 of Watch Me, Watch Us
Stats: Published: 2023-08-13 Words: 5,372 Chapters: 1/1

In the morning, I learn to forgive you again

by rudesunyoung

Summary

Lisa listens to Jennie's voicemail and feels her heart break apart.

Notes

See the end of the work for notes

"Please come back home to me. I don't want you...I didn't want you to leave and I fucked up and I
said something really shitty to you and I'm sorry, okay? Please, please, I can't go back up there
without you."

Lisa listens to the message and then before it can stop, she starts it over again.

"Please come back home to me. I don't want you...I didn't want you to leave and I fucked up and I
said something really shitty to you and I'm sorry, okay? Please, please, I can't go back up there
without you."

Even though she is mad, and she wants to delete the voicemail, and she wants to call Jennie back
just so she can tell her to fucking leave her alone like she wanted her to do, Lisa does none of those
things.

And a part of her doesn’t know why exactly. Between the fighting and the arguing and storming
out of the house, her head honestly just hurts, but even more than that, she's exhausted too. She can
feel it in the way it takes her eyelids too long to blink. She can feel it in the way her hands are slow
to grip the steering wheel. And even as she ponders picking her phone back up to respond to
Jennie, to text her a one-worded response, she just doesn't.
Instead, she finds herself pulling into a McDonald’s parking lot at the end of the street. There are a
few cars idly waiting in the drive-thru lane and even from where she’s parked, Lisa can see that the
inside is fairly empty. There’s a handful of workers inside and what looks like an older man
nursing a cup near a table at one of the windows.

Lisa turns the engine off and unbuckles her seatbelt, hearing the material smack against the side of
the door as she exhales. She’s not even hungry but she doesn’t want to drive anymore, especially
with the way that she’s feeling and she can’t just go back to the house, so right now this is her best
option.

For a long time, she doesn't even go inside. All she does is sit in the driver's seat and watch as her
cell phone continues to vibrate insistently on the passenger’s seat. After the call doesn’t go
through, her phone will ping with a new voicemail. And maybe she should pick up the phone,
maybe she should just listen to what Jennie wants to say to her since she knows the older woman
wants to apologize, but she’s allowed to be upset and she’s allowed to be angry right now.

Every time she closes her eyes, she thinks back to the way Jennie had recoiled when she touched
her, how hard she snapped at even just the gentlest brush of Lisa’s fingertips against her shirt.

And maybe that’s Lisa’s fault too. Even from standing in the doorway of their bedroom, she could
see how tense Jennie’s shoulders were. She could hear her muttering to herself as she scrolled
endlessly, her finger never leaving the mouse. It was in the way her back was hunched over her
computer and how her leg shook from how hard it had been bouncing underneath the table.

Her body language alone should have been enough for Lisa to give her space, to leave her alone
with her thoughts and her tasks because Jennie was scared. She knew Jennie was scared, that much
was so easy to tell.

She had spent over a decade learning how Jennie smiled when she was excited, how Jennie stepped
back and wrung her fingers together when she was nervous, and the way that she would cover her
mouth with a hand to hide her gummy smile when she was too happy to talk.

Lisa could know from the inflection in her voice whether or not Jennie was about to cry. She could
know from the way her eyebrows furrowed if she was confused because her face was so
expressive, so easily mapped open for the world to see because it was her face that always spoke
before her mouth.

So, Lisa should have seen the way that Jennie took too long to respond as a sign. She should have
seen the way that Jennie had trouble making eye contact with her as a sign. She should have known
from the way that she would disappear on her phone at night and then wake up earlier than normal
to be on the phone with different hospitals as a sign.

Jennie hadn’t said it before until tonight, until Lisa had pushed her too far, had made her snap.

But her body language had already told her days ago – leave me alone.

Leave me alone, I’m scared.

But Lisa had been scared too. Lisa was terrified of the same things, the same problems, the same
nasty thoughts that she knew were growing inside of Jennie’s head.

When she would brush her teeth half-asleep at the sink, she thought about whether or not Holland
could hear the sound of the water running in the mornings. If he knew all the lyrics to their ‘brush,
brush, brush your teeth song,’ that always made Hanzel smile and Holland laugh. She wondered if
the sound of Jennie blending her oats, and protein powder and milk in the blender still bothered
him like it used to.

She thought of all those little things and throughout the day when Hanzel would fall asleep on the
floor in front of the TV, Lisa would watch as Holland edged closer and closer towards the TV until
he was practically standing in front of the screen and maybe it hadn’t clicked until that very
moment but Lisa had understood it now, had understood how the closer that he got that maybe he
was also trying to figure out why he couldn’t hear it as well anymore.

And well…the more she lingered on that, the more she could feel her head splitting itself open.

A horn honking startles her out of her thoughts. She looks up in time to see one of the cars pull
away from the drive-thru window just as another one, a blue four-door Sedan, takes its place.

She’s not even hungry, I mean how could she be?

All she can hear in the back of her head is the way that Jennie had shouted, at the way she had
trembled after every breath, like she was holding herself together for the sake of not breaking apart
in front of Lisa.

But she doesn’t want to stay in the car either, doesn’t want to accidentally fall asleep and then wake
up to a confused employee tapping on the window of the car to make sure she’s okay either.

So with one more glance out the window, Lisa grabs her phone and her keys and throws the door
open.

It’s even quiet outside too.

It doesn’t take long to walk the few steps needed to reach the front door and pull it open for herself.
The inside hums with quiet conversation and the sound of appliances. The floors look like they've
just been waxed judging from the caution sign on the other side and there's a girl - probably no
more than 16 - with a rag in her hand who's wiping down the surface of one of the booths against
the wall. The familiar pop of the red and yellow accents inside do little to lighten her mood, not
when she can feel her phone vibrating in her pocket still. The inside feels much more open and yet
just as suffocating as it felt sitting in her car. But she tries to shoulder that feeling aside as the
employee at the register looks up with a blank stare at her.

He doesn't say anything either, but his face is practically telling her, 'are you going to order
something or not?'

Lisa glances up at the menu, does the normal thing of looking through the items and mentally
cataloging what’s still available at this hour. Hyun would have been tugging on the sleeve of her
shirt and begged Lisa in that whiny little voice that he does, “mommy, can I have the apple snacks
with chicken, please mommy?” And Hanna would have ran up to the cashier, telling him her order
like it was a secret, like no one else could know as she leaned over the counter and cupped her
hands around her mouth.

Jennie was the one who always picked the seat, who would undoubtedly choose a table close to the
playground entrance because Hyun liked to eat pieces of his food in between going down the slide
or stand by the table sipping his milk before running over to jump in the ball pit.

Unconsciously, Lisa finds herself looking back, almost as if she could see them huddled at one of
the booths with Hanzel trying to look under the table to see if he could peel any gum off.

The thought makes her smile sadly and she turns back around, shoving her hands in her pockets as
she does so.

“Can I just get a large french fry and a vanilla milkshake?”

The guy nods wordlessly, punching her order into the computer, but then Lisa swears quietly to
herself, apologizes and orders four happy meals just because. They’ll be cold in the morning and
Hanna might not want to eat hard french fries, but it feels weird to order something here without
getting anything for the kids.

After paying for the order and with her receipt in hand, Lisa stands off to the side and pulls her
phone out of her pocket. She taps on the screen and can see her notifications at the bottom of it.
They’re all from Jennie.

Missed Call 1:15 AM

Missed Call 1:16 AM

Missed Call now

When she slides her notifications up, there are a slew of more missed calls and voicemails to
accompany them. Her thumb twitches, like it wants to listen to her voice again, like it wants to
listen to the way that Jennie cries over the phone or the way that Lisa can hear her voice shake as
she tries to catch her breath.

But Lisa doesn’t want to hear that. She doesn’t want to hear the pain inside of Jennie’s voice. She
doesn’t want to hear how scared she sounds in between some of her words. And she doesn’t want
to hear her drop the phone again because she knows her hands are shaking.

The thought and the image of that in her head unsettles her and it rips and tears and pulls at
different parts of herself inside of her that can’t handle that right now.

“Order 27,” the guy at the register calls.

He holds the paper bag up for Lisa and she moves towards the counter to take it and offers a quick
‘thank you’ that probably gets lost in the feedback of the headset over his ears. When she turns
around to look for somewhere to sit, she notes that the teenager has moved to a different side of the
restaurant where she’s wiping down the large windows at the side doors.

Lisa grabs a table that looks clean, one next to the playground, and deposits the bag on the table as
she takes a seat. The fluorescent lights inside are harsh against the table but it finds a way to blend
in with the street lamps outside that spill onto the pavement and the headlights of other cars that
slowly pass by as their orders are handed to them through the window.

Lisa rips the bag open along the side and packets of ketchup spill out onto the table. She smooths
the brown paper down flat and dumps the fries out, being careful to move the milkshake so it
doesn’t tip over. The heat from the french fries wafts up towards her face and after ripping a packet
open with her teeth, she squeezes it out on the fries, drizzling them in the sauce until it’s hard to see
the pile of fries underneath it all.

“No one likes ketchup that much,” Jennie had told her once, her face twisted in disgust.

“I like ketchup this much.”

And it’s weird to sit here alone in this McDonald’s without Jennie across from her. It’s weird to
bring a fry up to her mouth and smear ketchup across her lips and not hear her say, “you’re eating
like Hyun” or “I should have brought an extra bib” for you.

Instead, she looks up and sees the other workers mill about in the kitchen. She sees the guy at the
register pick at his nails before glancing up at the clock on the wall, probably counting the hours
until his next break. She sees the teenager wring the rag out into a bucket and haul it over her
shoulder as she finishes up.

As she brings another fry to her mouth, she takes her phone out of her pocket and slides the screen
open.

From: Jennie 1:20 AM

I’m really sorry that I hurt you.

From: Jennie 1:21 AM

I know that you were just trying to help. I know that and I fucked up. I took it out on you.

From: Jennie 1:21 AM

You didn’t deserve that. I’m really sorry.

Lisa sets the phone down and reaches for the milkshake, stirring the contents inside with the straw
before she takes a sip. The vanilla is thick and sweet and clings to the roof of her mouth. Jennie
would have asked for some even though she hates the flavor. And even if Lisa would have said to
give it back, she would have taken three more large sips, her cheeks practically bulging from
holding all that ice cream in her mouth.

From: Jennie 1:22 AM

Can you let me know where you’re at?

From: Jennie 1:22 AM

Please?

Lisa thinks she could do that. She doesn’t have to but she knows that Jennie is worried. She knows
that she had said to leave, to find somewhere else to go. And even if she hadn’t meant to say it,
those words still came out of her mouth.

But Lisa also knows that anger is a fickle thing, that it plays with our wants and our desires and our
needs and our thoughts, and it mangles them. She knows that anger is sharp and jagged, that it is
used at the most vulnerable moments and it punctures you in the places that are guaranteed to
produce a visceral response.

Jennie’s anger is slow to build but so quick to encroach upon you and her worry follows the exact
same frequency. Maybe it’s gotten worse over time with their children and their habits and their
ways of being kids that utterly terrify them. Maybe it’s all a lot of different things jumbled together
that precipitate that.

Nonetheless, Lisa finds herself tapping on the message and opening it up anyway.

From: Lisa 1:23 AM

I’m at McDonald’s. I’m fine.

And even if she knows that the kids are asleep and that Jennie would never leave them alone
despite how many times Hanna claims she’s a big girl, she still types out the next response.

From: Lisa 1:23 AM

don’t come to me

The texting bubbles that had appeared after her first response disappear. It takes another second but
then Jennie is typing again.

From: Jennie 1:23 AM

Okay, I won’t. Thank you for letting me know.

Her reply sounds formal, too polished for how they usually banter over the phone, and Lisa
assumes that it must be because she’s scared. She’s scared to say something that might already
undo the apologies she’s said over the phone. She’s scared to say the wrong thing to Lisa. But then
there’s another thought and it’s probably worse than all the thoughts that have been fighting for
space inside of her head, but it’s the thought that Jennie thinks that she won’t come back.

Lisa lets it sit in her head and then glances back down at her phone. She knows that Jennie is
waiting for her to say something, for her to speak, so she does.

From: Lisa 1:25 AM

I’ll be back before the kids wake up

From: Jennie 1:25 AM

Okay.

From: Jennie 1:25 AM

Can we talk? Please?

The texting bubbles appear again and then disappear again like she’s thinking of taking it back or
apologizing, probably both, but then they disappear altogether.

Does Lisa even want to talk to her? A part of her doesn’t, no. That part inside of her that’s still
mad, that’s still reeling from their argument earlier takes care to revel in her anguish just a bit. That
small part of her that finds some kind of comfort in knowing that Jennie is scared, and is crying,
and is desperate to make amends wants to see Jennie suffer.

Why? It’s probably because anger is also vengeful too. Anger takes pride in knowing that the one
that hurt you is also hurting too. Anger simmers in the torment of others and it thrives in the spaces
between two people whose anguish threatens to suffocate them. Anger is necessary and human, but
it is also cruel and it takes its time, drawing out for hours, days, and months and sometimes years.

Lisa doesn’t know if she has that much anger inside of herself. But she does know that Jennie—
even when she is scared and when she is lashing out—doesn’t deserve that type of anger. She
doesn’t deserve to have an anger directed at her that lasts for years.

After shoving another fry in her mouth and taking a sip of her milkshake that’s fully melted, she
wipes the condensation off on her pants and picks up her phone.
The line only rings once before Jennie answers.

And even if her voice was laced with sadness, was laced with anger, and was laced with the fear of
not knowing what now, Lisa feels her chest deflate with all of the oxygen inside of it when she
hears how timid she sounds.

“Hey.”

Her throat sounds like it’s fucked up and her nose is probably stuffy, but it’s her voice and it’s her
breath that Lisa can hear over the line.

“Hey.”

Neither of them know what to say to each other and Lisa finds herself picking at one of the fries
from the pile, turning it over until most of the ketchup has rubbed off.

“I—“ Jennie starts, catches her breath, and talks again. “I’m so sorry. I just—I didn’t have any right
to talk to you like that and I’m just…I’m sorry for all that stupid shit that I said—”

She stops because Lisa can hear the way that she tries to cover up the sound of her crying. But
Jennie is incapable of hiding herself, of pulling a screen across her emotions like it never happened.
She’s never been one that’s good at holding herself back.

“You have to know that I didn’t mean that shit. You have to.”

“I do,” Lisa says after a beat. She picks up her milkshake and watches as the contents slosh around
before she takes another sip.

“I know that.”

“Do you—“ Jennie’s breath is so harsh over the line that Lisa has to stop herself from telling
Jennie that it’s okay. She has to remind herself that Jennie needs to feel what she feels because
she’s hurt.

“Do you want to come back?”

And that’s a heartbreaking thing for Jennie to ask her. It twists that ache inside of herself that aches
at being alone, that aches at knowing that Jennie is hurting, that aches at knowing how many
messages and how many calls that Jennie has left because she’s scared.

“I love you,” Lisa tells her and before she can finish that thought completely, she can hear Jennie
start to cry over the line.

She pulls the phone away from her ear and sets it down. Her hand twitches on top of the table and
out of impulse she shoves a handful of fries into her mouth, focusing on how loud the chewing
sounds in her head instead of the way Jennie’s crying sounds.

When she swallows and drags her hand over the back of her mouth, her fingers are still twitching
when she picks her phone back up.

“Lis—“

“I love you,” Lisa says and takes a deep breath. “I know you’re sorry and I know…I know you
didn’t mean it.”

“I didn’t!” Jennie says quickly.

It’s hard to hear her with how quiet her voice is, but Lisa makes it out enough.

“I didn’t..fuck,” Jennie coughs. It sounds like she’s moving because there’s shuffling over the line
and then she seems to settle down because she starts again.

“I didn’t mean to say all that shit and I don’t….I don’t know why the fuck I did. I just—“

“You’re scared,” Lisa finishes for her.

“That’s still not an excuse,” she scoffs. “You didn’t deserve that and you didn’t deserve that anger.
I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that.”

“But you did.”

“I know,” she pauses and the couch makes a sound as she shifts. “It was so fucking stupid of me to
do that and it was wrong. You were just trying to help and I retaliated like a fucking child.”

“You did,” Lisa chuckles but there’s no humor behind it.

There’s never anything funny about anger.

“I’m just…I feel—I feel so lost, Li.”

Jennie’s voice is very soft. It’s hard to hear her when she’s talking on a regular day because of how
careful and quiet her words are given to you. But as she talks now over the phone, all Lisa can hear
is helplessness. All she can hear is her wife reaching out to her in the only way that she knows how:
first, through anger, then through sorrow, and finally, through fear of the unknown.

“I’m scar—“

“Wait,” Jennie says and she sniffles, shifts again on the couch, and then speaks. “Just wait, okay?”

Lisa doesn’t respond and Jennie must take that as a sign because she pauses and then says, “I’m
lost without you here.”

“When you left—I—when you left, it fucking scared me. It made me think about all the fucked up
shit I said to you and the way that you looked at me when I told you that I needed space—“ she
chokes up and it bothers Lisa because she can’t wipe those tears away. She can’t smudge away the
snot on her upper lip or take back any of the things that Jennie said, but she can listen, she can do
that much.

“I don’t need space—not from you. Not ever. I told you that I didn’t need your help, but I do. I
need you and I need your help and I need to talk to you and I need you to know that I’m sorry. I’m
so fucking sorry.”

“I know,” Lisa murmurs. “I know you are.”

“And you are–” Jennie sighs and shifts again. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

Her milkshake is practically water now, the contents inside of it are separated and settled down at
the bottom.

“I’m not—at least I’m not anymore.”

“I was hurt and I was upset and I —“ Lisa stops and for the first time this night, she feels tears
sting the back of her eyes.
She squeezes her eyes shut and distantly, she remembers that she’s sitting in a god damn
McDonald’s at 1 in the morning almost crying over a bag of soggy fries and watered down ice
cream.

She shakes her head and Jennie never says anything. She’s too busy waiting, waiting for Lisa to
finish, waiting for Lisa to feel what she’s allowed to feel.

“I thought that…I thought that maybe I was supposed to hate you,” she whispers.

Hate is such a strong word. Hate is vulgar and it’s vast. It’s all encompassing and it’s selective.
Hate strangles you and it holds you down. It has an eerie way of comforting you while also
keeping you hostage. But even more than that, hate is heavy and it weighs you down and it follows
you every single minute of every single day until it has taken everything that it could take from
you.

Jennie’s never taken anything from her. She’s never followed her anywhere Lisa didn’t want her
to. She’s never weighed her down. She’s never been a person that Lisa had to shoulder in her life,
she’s never held her down or made it difficult for her to breathe.

Jennie’s never done anything to make her hate her and this night doesn’t change that fact.

“But I couldn’t feel that way towards you. I didn’t know how to make myself hate you because
I’ve never known how to feel anything besides love for you.”

Jennie makes a wounded sound like she’s hurt and then she starts to cry—hard.

“Jennie, Jennie, don’t—“

But she’s crying too hard to listen, to calm herself down at this point. And as much as she tries to
avoid it, Lisa finds herself crying too. She wipes at her eyes hurriedly, pushing the heel of her
palms against her eyes, but it’s hard to stop.

When she looks up, the guy at the register is staring right at her, his mouth gaping open in shock.
The sight makes Lisa flush red in embarrassment and she quickly looks back down, blinking the
tears away, as she stares down at the mess of ketchup soaking through the paper bag.

She picks her phone back up and Jennie is saying something but she can’t hear her that well.
Between the ringing in her ears and the sniffling over the line, she has to tell her to repeat herself
again.

“I can’t understand you, Jen.”

She pauses, says something softly underneath her breath, and then a little more sure of herself says,
“I love you too and I’m sorry, again, for everything. For pushing you away and shutting you out
and telling you to leave. I never want you to leave.”

Her throat feels raw from crying and her eyes are starting to sting, but Lisa nods as if Jennie can
somehow see her.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs again. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you. It’s okay. I do.”

Because she does. She knows that Jennie is sorry, that she means what she says when she
apologizes to someone. That her words that were thrown at Lisa in anger were out of fear and out
of guilt, and not something that was said because those words held meaning.

But most importantly she forgives her because she’s human. She forgives her because people make
mistakes and people say things that they don’t mean when they’re angry. They say things that they
don’t mean when they’re holding the weight of something that they don’t understand and
something that they don’t know how to put into words.

She forgives her because it’s one of the easiest things in the world to do. If you love someone then
you love their mistakes and you love their apologies. When you love someone, forgiving them is
easy, it’s like breathing.

Lisa takes a breath and then another. “Do you want the rest of my fries?”

1:52 AM

When Lisa’s car pulls into the driveway, Jennie is standing outside of the front door. Her arms are
wrapped around herself and she’s got a blanket over her shoulders. The headlights spill across the
front of her which means that Lisa can see how red her eyes are, and she can see the way her lower
lip trembles, and how her knees bump against each other from the cold because she's standing
outside with no pants or shoes or even slippers on. It's just herself and that blanket and her old
USWNT jersey that reaches the middle of her thighs.

"Really?" Lisa laughs.

Her voice must sound weird because Jennie makes a face at her but she is slow to round the car and
meet her at the door. She must be scared and she must be terrified that Lisa is going to change her
mind, that Lisa is going to remember the things that she said to her and she's going to remember
how angry they were at one another. But Lisa isn't one for holding grudges, not for people that
make mistakes, and not for people that she loves making mistakes. So, Jennie has no reason to be
worried, has no reason to be afraid of her reaction or afraid of how she's going to act around her
now.

So Lisa moves for her, jogging the rest of the way up the driveway so she can meet her at the door
step. Jennie steps back and Lisa wouldn't notice it if she hadn't been standing right in front of her,
but Lisa sees it and she has to make sure that Jennie knows that they're okay, that they don't need to
tiptoe around each other like college students that don't know how to communicate with one
another.

"You hungry?" she grins. To make her point, she holds up the greasy bag of soggy french fries and
something trills inside of her when Jennie's mouth quirks up into an almost smile. Her eyes are still
tight and Lisa can tell that she's trying, that she's trying to smile like things are almost okay, like
things are almost alright, and for Lisa, they are. For Lisa, everything is alright.

"You don't have to be scared," Lisa murmurs. She lowers the bag and with her other hand, she
reaches up to run her knuckle underneath Jennie's eye. Jennie doesn't flinch when she touches her
and and Jennie doesn't recoil when Lisa's finger takes route down the curve of her cheek and down
 the cut of her jaw or over her pulse point in her throat that beats in time with Lisa's own breaths.

Lisa presses down on it, only slightly applying the smallest amount of pressure. When she looks
back up at her, Jennie is staring and her eyes are so brown and so warm and so soft. You could get
lost in eyes like those but you could also find yourself falling in love with eyes like those. They're
the kind of eyes that comfort you. They're the kind of eyes that make you sigh in relief after a long
day. They're the kind of eyes that reminds Lisa of why it's so easy to forgive Jennie.

"We're okay," she says and just to be sure that Jennie gets it, that Jennie understands that Lisa
doesn't intend to hold this night over her head like their fight has to be a weight for her, she ducks
down and presses a short kiss to her mouth.

Jennie startles, making a soft noise in shock, and stares at Lisa like she just made up what
happened.

"What?" Lisa smiles. "I can't kiss my own wife now?"

Jennie rolls her eyes, but Lisa can see it. She can see how clear her eyes become underneath the
porch light. She can see how that one kiss has made the side of her mouth tug up even more. She
can see how Jennie blossoms underneath the knowledge of knowing that they're okay, that what
happened in the past needs to stay in the past for the both of them.

"I didn't say that," Jennie murmurs shyly, looking down for a brief second. Her hand reaches out,
taking a hold of the front of Lisa's shirt and it reminds her of their children. It reminds Lisa of the
way Hanna tugs her towards her bookshelf. It reminds Lisa of the way Hyun tugs her towards the
toy aisle. It reminds Lisa of the way the twins tug her towards the rug for nap time.

This is how Jennie tugs her. This is how she reminds her in her own way: I'm here. I'm home.

End Notes

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