CHAELISA One-shots

Interruption

***

"It's funny," Lisa said. "You never really struck me as the 'grew up in the middle of nowhere' type."

"Hmm?" Chaeyoung glanced over at Lisa, then went back to glaring through the windshield. She couldn't help noticing that Lisa had a white-knuckled grip on the handle of the door, nor could she blame her. What had started as a few flurries was threatening to turn into a real storm, and Chaeyoung just hoped they reached her childhood home, where her mother still lived, before the snow obscured the lines on the roads that could be treacherous at the best of times. "Oh. Yeah." She shrugged.

They didn't talk about their pasts much. They were far more interested in their futures – or future, singular, that they hoped to build together. Chaeyoung wouldn't have minded discussing her childhood, but she got the impression that the feeling was far from mutual, so they both avoided bringing it up. The only thing she knew, and then only from vague allusions, was that Lisa had also grown up more-or-less in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as she'd been able, she'd run as far and fast as she could to get out from under the thumb of her oppressive religious upbringing.

"My parents were both do-gooders," Chaeyoung said. "When my mom finished medical school they spent time traveling the world, doing various humanitarian aid projects in areas that had been hit by natural disasters, war, famine, that kind of thing. Then she got pregnant with me and they decided it was time to settle down. But they wanted to settle somewhere where they could still do good, so she found a small town that hadn't had its own doctor in decades, and the rest is history."

"It's... pretty," Lisa said, not sounding sure she believed it.

"It is," Chaeyoung agreed. That was one thing she had to give her hometown. It was pretty. Even in the snow. Maybe especially in the snow... when she didn't have to drive in it. "It's not much farther," she added, maybe to reassure Lisa, or maybe to reassure herself.

Lisa forced a smile and reached over to put her hand on Chaeyoung's leg, giving it a quick, gentle squeeze before letting go. Under other circumstances, she might have taken the opportunity to tease Chaeyoung, just a little, but as they wound their way up into the mountains, with a wall of rock on one side and a steep drop-off on the other, there was no room for error. And there would be plenty of time to let themselves get distracted once they arrived, after the obligatory catching up had been taken care of. After all, it was a long drive and they'd gotten an early start, so it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to want to take a little quote-unquote nap, right? (Which might end with a nap, after...)

Chaeyoung smiled back at her, and then at the sign that had always signaled that they were finally almost home on the rare occasions when she and her parents had gone on vacation growing up. Half an hour (which should have been fifteen minutes, but the snow was coming down thicker and faster by the moment) later, Chaeyoung eased them into her mother's driveway, feeling the back end of her car fishtail slightly even as she removed her foot completely from the gas as she turned. There were more cars there than she'd expected, and she felt a knot form in her stomach. She swallowed her apprehension down and switched off the ignition, leaning back in her seat with a sigh.

"I'll drive home," Lisa offered, taking one of Chaeyoung's hands and bringing it to her lips, pressing them against knuckles that ached from gripping the wheel so tight.

"We'll see," Chaeyoung said, leaning in for a proper kiss, that led to another, and another, until they were jerked out of the moment by a thump. Chaeyoung looked up in time to see another snowball hit her window, and two giggling kids with mittens pressed to their faces.