genre: royalty au, soulmate au, fantasy elements, smut
word count: 8.4k
warnings: smut, swearing
note: Echoes girlies and prince jungwon enthusiasts, this one is for YOUUUUUU!! This is a follow-up to my story echoes, published on my main blog stllmnstr. Read that first! This takes place a few months after the events of the main story but before the events of the epilogue. It’s also the most intimate smut I think I’ve ever written in my life, so buckle in, friends! And as always, enjoy 🤍
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The weight of the crown is heavy, even for someone as dedicated as Jungwon. But in the sanctity of quiet moments between closed doors, even things as demanding as duty can be forgotten.
or, we could be in the shadows where nobody else could follow.
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Sprawled across the left side of your bed, the light from the candle burns low.
Gaze trained on the misshapen wax, your eyes start to glaze as the flame dips lower and lower.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Wax falls onto the table below, hardening as soon as it hits the surface.
You sigh. On the sheets next to you, a thick novel lies open, its pages bared to the chill of the room. On the table beside your bed, a half-finished letter to your sister sits equally discarded.
It’s not as if palace life has left you bored — quite the opposite, in fact. Your days are full of reports and meetings and appearances that leave you drained long before the sun sets.
In the castle, perhaps the only person with a schedule more crammed than yours is the king.
Jungwon.
Your eyes fall shut for a moment, as if imagination alone can conjure him. You almost wish it could. These days, the king is a difficult person to come across. Even for you, and you’re afforded far more privileges than most.
Still, the last time you laid eyes on him was yesterday morning, and that was only for the brief moment your paths crossed in the dining hall at breakfast.
The last time you actually spoke with him properly was… thoughts trailing, you sigh out loud to no one in particular. It must have been nearly two weeks ago now.
You have never been naive enough to think running a kingdom, especially one entrenched in the turmoil of transition, would be an easy task. But stolen moments underneath the branches of a weeping willow and the shadows of forgotten hallways have only made you crave his presence more. And, much to your disappointment, notice his absence that much more acutely.
Lying on your back, your fingers thread though your hair that splays over your pillow. The action is absentminded, a feeble attempt to distract your wandering thoughts.
The end of autumn is approaching. The air has a chill to it these days, one you recognize well. One you know the kingdom will need to prepare for.
There is work to be done. Plenty of it. Food rations that need to be sorted. Preservation and storing that needs to be taken care of before the chill becomes deeper, before the ground starts to frost.
The large inventory of winter coats, a new initiative you helped oversee, needs to be allocated for mass distribution among the people in the most vulnerable districts.
You have things to do. Plenty of important tasks and work to keep you busy.
But at the end of yet another long day, it’s always this. You, a candle you’ve burned down to its bones, and a bed that’s entirely too large.
Your new chambers were a gift from your king himself. A gesture of goodwill, a thoughtful attempt to make the castle feel more like your home instead of a begrudged fulfillment of a prophecy. But it’s so much larger than the tiny bedroom you had before. With all the space, your thoughts have nothing to do but wander.
You should sleep. The sunrise always comes earlier than you think it will, and tomorrow is a busy day. Foreign dignitaries from the western kingdom will arrive sometime after breakfast, and you imagine discussions with them will take up most of your day.
Besides that, Jaeyun’s been begging you to visit. It’s been weeks, nearly a month, since you last took Nabi out to your once familiar hilltop.
You should pay him a visit in the evening, perhaps. Find out if there are any updates on the fire that broke out at the schoolhouse last month. If it was just an accident of chance or the work of the small band of dissenters that have been wreaking havoc since the transition in rulership.
Your mind feels heavy with the weight of it all. Again, sleep calls to you. Lulling with that sense of promised comfort. A reprieve from the thoughts swirling around your brain like wind on a stormy day.
Your candle is nearly nothing now. It will be extinguished soon whether you blow out the flame or not.
Still, like every night, a part of you hesitates.
Your graveyard of candles is growing at a rather alarming rate, but every night it’s the same thoughts that torment you.
Perhaps tonight, hope and temptation and that feeble prayer of maybe whisper against your ear, perhaps tonight will be the night he comes.
You can see it in your mind, all too clearly. The way it will sound, loud in the silence, as he raps his knuckles gently against the wood of your door.
The way he’ll enter. Softly, slowly. But never unsurely. He’ll know what he’s here for, even if propriety makes it difficult to put a name to.
Your candle, low but steady, will provide just enough light. His crown will be the first to go, and the rest will follow soon enough.
In the secrecy of your imagination, Jungwon’s eyes never leave yours.
The young king, consumed by duty and honor and the troubles of the kingdom he’s inherited, for at least a few moments longer, will only be thinking of you.
It’s a thought so vivid, so terribly tempting, that you almost consider calling to him through your connection.
You could. It would be so easy. Even in your half conscious state, reaching for him through the recesses of your mind would feel like second nature.
But every time you think to tug at that tether between the two of you, something in you hesitates. Reconsiders. And ultimately, resigns.
It’s not that you don’t want to. You do. Even apart from your more illicit thoughts, the truth is that you miss him.
The man you once spent long nights with, trading secrets and unraveling misconceptions under the cover of moonlight.
Your prince and now your king. Something in you aches whenever you remember that night in the stables, the one where he insisted you drop all pretenses and propriety and just call him Jungwon.
What you wouldn’t give to do it again now. To look in his eyes and let the castle and your duties fall away to dust as you whisper his name in the sanctity of your bedroom.
Rolling suddenly, you press your face into your pillow, as if the pressure alone can stifle your errant thoughts. Then, after a long moment, you turn back around, sitting up to reach for your candle. Warring with your thoughts will only make your feet drag slower in the morning, after all. You need to sleep.
Moving your half finished novel from your bedsheets to your bedside table, you let your lips hover just above the dying fire for a minute longer.
Another night. Another smothered flame. It’s nothing new, but you hesitate yet again.
Lips parting, your breath has just begun to pass through them when the sound of your name stops you dead in your tracks.
You’re so startled you nearly lose your balance, hair coming dangerously close to the last remnants of your still burning candle.
There’s no one else in your bedroom. Your name wasn’t spoken, at least not out loud.
Immediately, a molten urgency begins to burn deep within you. It’s him. It has to be.
Half afraid you’ve imagined it, you’re hesitant to try reaching back out. You reach for the connection in your mind tentatively, as if the last months have meant nothing. As if this is little more than an illusion crafted from glass. As if one misstep will shatter it.
Jungwon. You’re holding your breath, terrified that the ripple effect from any of your actions will become a beast to contain.
But your connection is not an illusion. And your name was not a figment of your imagination.
He’s quick to respond.
You’re awake. It’s not a question. Even though the bond, you can sense it, his conflicted mix of relief and disapproval.
I am. You return immediately. A moment of silence passes then. Another. Finally, you venture back out, Do you… do you need something?
You can almost see it, the way he shakes his head. It has a small surge of panic rising in your throat. As if he’s suddenly become sand, and all you can do is watch helplessly as it slips through your fingers.
No, I… I’m sorry. It’s late.
But you won’t lose him now, and especially not to feeble excuses. He sought you out. He won’t break away so easily. The hour, you exhale, hardly daring to move, is the least of my concerns.
To your immediate relief, Jungwon’s response comes quickly.
Where are you?
Less than a beat later, you tell him, My chambers.
Again, he’s silent for a long moment. Afraid his responses will stop entirely, you fill the silence in his mind again by returning his question. Where are you?
It must be past midnight by now. He should be free of his meetings, although some particularly pedantic ones have been known to extend this late into the evening.
If you had to guess, though, he’s dropped his official duties for the night. You don’t think he’d run the risk of distracting himself if his attention were still required elsewhere.
This time, nearly a minute of silence passes. Another handful of wax drops harden against your table. Your breath is shallow in your chest.
Maybe he’s fallen asleep, you finally concede. You do your best to be relieved at the thought. Rest is a fleeting thing these days for the king. If he’s sleeping, you shouldn’t disturb him further.
Still, this is the most you’ve had in weeks. You aren’t quite ready to let it go.
Quietly, as if your mind itself were whispering, you try one last time.
Jungwon.
For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of your breath and the silence of your bedroom.
And then you hear it. This time, the sound doesn’t resonate inside your mind. No, it rings out into the space of your bedroom, coming from your right.
It’s the unmistakable rap of three muted knocks against your bedroom door.
Head turning so fast you’re afraid your neck will be sore in the morning, you scramble, standing up from your bed.
It has to be him. He’s here.
Come in, you send through your bond, still not thinking entirely straight.
Your hair is a mess around your shoulders, you’re sure. The nightgown crafted from fabric meant to provide comfort more than structure is hardly proper attire in the presence of a king, but these realizations come too little, too late.
Before you can so much as smooth down the front of your crumpled night clothes, the door to your bedroom is opening.
And in walks the king, pushing the latch closed quietly behind him. Then, he turns to you.
The ample size of your bedroom is something you curse again now. Even with him near, the distance between the two of you still feels like an abyss, an uncrossable thing.
Jungwon stands at your door, candlelight flickering over his features.
It never fails to strike you, especially in quiet moments like these, just how beautiful he is. Dark hair falls over his forehead, kissing the tips of long eyelashes. His cheekbones, sharp and defined, glow warm in the low light.
And his eyes. By the gods, his eyes. Even from a distance, you can see the shadows beneath them. Born from long nights in the throne room and the duty that weighs heavy on his broad shoulders.
Still, they're full of light, a keen sense of alertness where they meet yours across your bedroom.
Jungwon wears no crown, no regalia. He’s come to you as himself, the barest version of it he can muster with so many responsibilities to his name.
You watch, breath rising shallow in your chest, as his eyes trace the planes of your face. As if he’s seeing how well memory has served him these past weeks. As if he’s been dreaming of this too.
And then his eyes fall lower, ghosting over your neck. Your exposed collarbone, revealed by the neckline that sits just above your chest. They trace you, slowly, steadily, all the way to where the hem of your nightgown brushes against your ankles.
His gaze returns to your face. You watch as his throat works through a swallow, jaw tightening.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says to you out loud. “It’s late.”
You shake your head, repeating the same sentiment you told him earlier. “The hour matters little.”
“I just,” he continues, as if he’s under the incorrect assumption that his presence in your bedroom needs justifying. “I wanted to see you.”
You look at him again, then. Take in the shadows beneath his eyes. Just how deep they’ve become, even since you last saw him. The set of his shoulders. Still broad, still proud, but unmistakably weighed down by exhaustion.
Your candlelit fantasies, then, whatever indistinct, sensation-driven form they’ve taken, start to shift. Into something softer, more delicate.
You nod, infused suddenly with a new sense of purpose. A stroke of bravery.
“Come here,” you urge, motionting him closer.
Jungwon hesitates for only a moment. But the magnetism that tethers you pulls at him too. And eventually, even the king is bending to your requests.
He approaches slowly, with the careful, even footsteps of a hunter trying not to startle its prey. But when he comes to stop, still an arm’s length away, you’re not sure which of you is truly in pursuit.
Reaching, you let your fingers encircle his wrist. Then, you sit back down on your bed, pulling him along with you.
You’re not sure if it’s the sleepiness or something else that makes him so pliant in your hold, but Jungwon offers no resistance.
Moving backwards until your spine is pressed against the expanse of your headboard, you meet Jungwon’s gaze. He still sits with respectable distance between the two of you, hovering at the edge of your bed.
Reaching out, you intertwine your fingers with his.
Pulling gently, you search his eyes for any sign of hesitation. There’s none to be found. Just a wide-eyed, glassy reflection of desires that match your own. Your candle, bare flame that it may be, reflects in his gaze like starlight.
“Come,” you urge, guiding him gently until his body is a mirror image of your earlier position, splayed across your bedsheets. His head, however, never reaches your pillow. Instead, you guide it into your lap.
He’s tense, you can tell. He won’t relax fully into you, even as he lets himself be pulled to a lying position, his head resting against your thighs.
Tentatively, as if pressing at an invisible boundary, you thread your fingers through his hair.
You can’t see his expression. His eyes face away from you now, but his sigh of relief is immediate. Audible.
Your fingers press deeper into his hair and he sighs again, this time against your nightgown, as some of the tension begins to ease from his shoulders. As he relaxes further into your touch.
Absentmindedly, you begin to trace patterns against his scalp, letting your fingertips ghost through his dark hair in soothing repetitions. His head is warm in your lap, a comfortable weight that settles over the tops of your thighs. You’re hyper aware of every shift in position, every miniscule movement he makes under your ministrations.
You spend long moments like that, basking in the quiet, in the stillness. Your fingers continue to work through his hair, chasing the small sounds he makes whenever you come across a particularly sensitive spot.
After long minutes, his breath becomes more even. You wonder if he’s fallen asleep.
A sudden movement answers your question. Slowly, but absent of inhibition, his hand comes to rest on your thigh, just beneath his chin.
It doesn’t remain motionless for long. Like you, Jungwon begins to trace patterns. He draws his with his thumb, pressing gently against you as he rubs small, even circles.
Even through the thin layer of fabric, his touch sends a coil of heat pooling just under your skin. You’re suddenly grateful for your position. Thankful that he’s facing away from you so he can’t see the way color begins to bloom on your cheeks.
Suddenly overcome with the need to fill the silence, you ask, “What’s on your mind?”
Jungwon’s touch continues as he thinks for a moment. Finally, he answers quietly, “At the moment? Very little.”
“I’m serious,” you urge, a frown pulling your lips down. “You seemed… tense earlier. Did something happen?”
“I was,” he admits. “A meeting with the royal advisors ran late and no one could be reasoned into agreeing with anything.” He pauses for a moment, swallowing once. “But I’m not thinking about them now.”
“You’re not?” you ask, fingers still in his hair, tracing his skin like you can soothe away any errant thoughts through touch alone.
“No,” he confirms. You feel his head shake gently against your lap. “I’m not.”
“Good,” you nod, voice so quiet it’s almost lost to the stillness of your bedroom.
You’re both silent for a moment, breaths mingling as your candle dips impossibly lower, light flickering more erratically as it reaches its final moments. As if the wick itself isn't quite ready to let go. Can’t give into the finality of being extinguished.
You’re whispering now, but he still hears you. He always does, whether your voice reaches his ears or his mind directly.
“Jungwon,” you breathe.
“Mm,” he hums, vibrations sinking through your skin and settling near your bones.
“I miss you.” It’s a strange thing to admit, perhaps, when you share a home. When he’s here now, lying in your lap, connected in more ways than one.
When you agreed to live in the castle, now a handful of months ago, you thought it would be disarming, distracting, just how often you saw Jungwon. You never imagined you’d be spending sleepless nights aching for moments like this. That your time together would almost always have to be stolen.
Back then, whatever was beginning to bloom between the two of you felt like hope, like possibility. But as summer gave way to autumn, reality began to root itself more firmly into the ground. As the leaves turned from green to golden and began to fall from the trees, so did the illusion that you and the newly crowned king would have nothing but time to explore the budding connection between you.
You don’t blame him. You can’t resent him. You admire Jungwon’s dedication to bettering the world around him, to keeping his promises and seeing things through. And you know he feels the same towards you. Every solidified plan, every treaty and agreement you’ve helped draft into law has only made him more fond of you.
But you’re long past pretending that admiration is the only feeling you harbor for your king. Here in your bedroom, the weight of it all sits heavy on your chest.
You mean it. You want him in ways that extend beyond duty. You miss him, even when he’s right in front of you.
For a moment, his fingers still. Their weight still presses against your skin, but his movement has stopped. You wish you could see his expression. You’re thanking every one of the ancient gods that you can’t.
A million and one contradictions. But it always comes back to this. To him.
“You miss me?” he echoes. There’s no accusation in his voice, nothing but a small sense of wonder.
Still, it has a tendril of guilt blooming in your gut. He already has so much on his plate. Stretched so thin from the immense sense of duty that’s always pulling him in every direction. You can hardly be selfish enough to ask that he add something as frivolous as your feelings to his list of concerns.
“I’m sorry,” you try to retract. “I know—”
Don’t apologize.
He whispers it into your mind this time. Mostly because his lips are occupied elsewhere. Turning slightly, he presses a long, gentle kiss against the top of your thigh, just above where his fingers have resumed their ministrations.
It’s embarrassing, perhaps, how immediately it has heat pooling in your gut. His mouth isn’t even moving. It’s just pressed to your skin, warmth overwhelming even through the small barrier of fabric.
You feel his lips part against you, jaw brushing your thigh as he moves higher, pressing another kiss against you. As if your nightgown is nothing to him, as if he’s imagining the taste of your skin beneath it.
“Jungwon,” you whisper, still using what’s left of your voice. In the quiet of your bedroom, with his mouth warm against your skin, it sounds scraped raw. Whether you’re urging him or begging for reprieve, you’re not entirely sure.
He doesn’t respond out loud. His lips remain occupied with the taste of silk as his mouth begins to draw higher, carving out a trail of soft kisses.
You’ve kissed him before, yes, but his mouth has always been on yours. Or perhaps the length of your throat, in particularly desperate moments. But those moments have become increasingly rare. And this is different. This is new.
This has muscles tightening beneath his touch, your legs clenching, all the way down to your toes. Your fingers tangle tighter in his hair, and he exhales harshly against you, silk fluttering at the movement.
Don’t tell me you’re sorry. He reaffirms in your mind, lips still working against you. You think I haven’t missed you too? Do you think that this hasn’t plagued every last one of my waking thoughts?
Jungwon. This time, you speak in your mind. You’re afraid of what your voice will sound like if you try to find it now.
He’s not done wreaking havoc on your last threads of coherence.
I dream of you, you know. His mouth is on your hip now, leaving a trail of slow, deep kisses. The number of nights I’ve waited just outside your door like this… apologies are the last thing I want from you.
“Jungwon,” you urge. Somewhere in the haze, in the heat, you manage to find your voice. It’s raw, yes, but it’s there. You disentangle your hands from his hair, and he groans at the loss of contact.
The sound is nearly your undoing. Vibrations, low and deep, spread from where he still has his mouth on you, reaching untouched places, parts of you that are beginning to ache.
“Jungwon,” you try again, hands sliding to his jaw. Gently, you press a finger beneath his chin, urging him to look up at you.
Pliant under your touch, his mouth leaves your skin. You mourn the loss of contact for only a moment before his eyes finally, finally meet yours.
Wide and glassy in the low light, you can practically see your reflection in them. Forgetting your earlier embarrassment at just how easily he affected you, the sight beneath you proves that Jungwon is far worse for wear.
Pupils blown, he looks up at you like a man starved. Lips swollen and glossy from his ministrations, it’s as if he’s indulged in too much of the palace’s wine. A deep, violent flush dusts the top of his angular cheekbones, exhaustion in his eyes replaced by something entirely new.
If the ache in your bones is beginning to sing, you imagine his must be screaming with the way he looks at you, gaze leaden with want.
There’s a shiver of thrill that chases your spine, the same flicker you felt that afternoon in the moments just before you ducked beneath the willow tree. Only now, it’s intensified a thousand times over.
You have his attention now, and you’ll use it well.
Come here, you plead.
A ridiculous request given how entangled you already are, but he understands. And he doesn’t need to be told twice.
Sitting up, Jungwon rises until it’s him who hovers above you, crowding you further into the solid expanse of your headboard. The sudden pressure against your spine makes you wince, an unintentional expression that doesn’t escape his notice.
“Here,” he urges. His voice is low, gentle in its command even as it roughens around the edges. “Like this.”
He moves again, this time leaning back until he’s the one sat resting against your headboard. With a gentle grip that spares no urgency, he reaches for your wrists, pulling until you’re settled across his lap, legs splayed on either side of him.
It’s a change in position, an adjustment from earlier, but it still puts your eyes above his. He looks up at you with that same glassy gaze, heavy with the weight of his desire.
Hands against his chest, you feel the depth of his breath as it rises and falls slowly. Captivated by the way he seems almost inebriated from this, from you, you watch as the flush spreads further across his cheekbones. His gaze, locked on you, fills with a sudden intensity. Under the weight of his undivided attention, you feel a sudden flash of shyness.
Alone in your bedroom, deep in the forgotten hours of night, there’s no one to admonish you for your actions, no one to scold you for your lack of propriety.
It’s only you, Jungwon, and that ever-pulsing thread of desire that’s taken root deep within you, wrapping around your body, your mind, until you feel consumed by it.
Between the deep, tightening waves of sensation and the heat simmering just under your skin, eye contact becomes a difficult thing to maintain. It’s too much. He’s only looking at you now, fingers still against the outsides of your thighs, but the combination of it all is overwhelming in ways you can’t entirely explain.
A renewed flash of heat blooming across your features, you dip your chin, looking down at where your body rests on his.
Immediately, one of his hands leaves the expanse of your thigh. Raising it, he gently soothes back hair that’s fallen over your eyes, tucking it behind your ear. His fingers go back to your temple, then. Retracing the same pattern even though your hair’s already been adjusted. He’s not trying to fix anything now. He’s just soothing you.
You don’t have to say anything. Even though this breaches new barriers between the two of you, he can read every expression, every breath, like an open book. He recognizes how unmistakably overwhelmed you’re quickly becoming.
Slowly, quietly, he lets his hand fall to the side of your neck. You can’t suppress the shudder that runs the length of your spine when it settles there. He feels it too, the way you shake, and his next exhale is a bit rougher, a bit more labored.
With the reverence of a worshipper, his thumb begins to trace gentle lines, a repeated motion up and down the overly warm skin of your neck.
He’s patient, even though the effort strains. Even though his own desires have started to near a boiling point.
Still, he waits until you’ve adjusted to his touch. Until you’ve begun to relax into it.
Only then does his hand start to splay. Thumb still rubbing comforting strokes against one side of your neck, his fingers extend to the other. Until his hand covers the base of your throat.
His fingers wander, searching until they find what they’re looking for. Eventually, they come to rest in the dip above your collarbone, feeling the way your pulse hammers there. It quickens, then. Becomes impossibly more erratic.
He’s doing it on purpose, you realize. Measuring your physical response to him. Surveying just how deeply his effect on you extends.
Your heart skips a beat, then. A telltale sign of just how much his touch had already begun to unravel you.
He sighs, brow creasing, breath catching like he’s in pain.
But it’s not himself that he’s concerned with. Are you okay? he asks. Even in your mind, he’s whispering. As if you’re a skittish kitten he’s trying not to startle. As if that alone will be enough to calm your frayed nerves.
Searching for your voice, you come up hopelessly blank. His hand still sits around your throat like a promise. A reminder of his presence.
All you can do is nod. You’re not sure you could even form your thoughts into something coherent now.
Do you want me to stop? Stop what, you’re not entirely sure. He’s not really doing anything. Even his thumb has stilled now. His hand is wrapped loosely around the base of your throat, your thighs spilling on either side of his.
It’s not as if you’re entirely clueless, but you’ve never been here before either. None of your inexperienced fumbling or horribly awkward explanations from the castle midwives of what womanly flowering entails prepared you for the sensations you’re feeling now. They made it sound so… clinical. Detached. A simple repetition of motion. A clear start, middle, and end.
Never once did they mention the intensity of it all. The way your nerves are all flowing into one another and you can’t quite tell where things begin and end anymore. The way having Jungwon in front of you, beneath you, makes you feel like a torch light filled with too much oil, on the verge of exploding at any given moment.
You don’t know exactly what comes next. But you know the answer to his question.
Silently, resolutely, you shake your head.
But Jungwon isn’t willing to take his chances on your silence. He wants, needs to be sure.
Tell me, he pleads.
So you do.
No, you assure him, finding your last train of sensible thought. No, I don’t want you to stop.
His fingers flex against your throat. Not tightening, just… there.
Will you look at me? Even in your mind, something in his words sings with desperation. Like he needs it. Like he’ll fall apart without it.
So slowly, gathering every last ounce of bravery, you let your eyes trace the band of his belt, the planes of his chest, the set of his jaw, before you acquiesce to his request. Taking one final, steadying breath, you bring your gaze to his.
You don’t think any amount of time or preparation or damn breathing would make you feel ready for what you find.
His eyes are wide, full of longing so poignant you imagine it must be painful. His fingers twitch against your neck again, and you realize then just how much restraint he holds you with. You can see it now, the rippling threads of tension evident in his shoulder, his brow, the swallow he forces down.
Eyes on yours, he asks, somewhat hesitantly, Do you… Your mind is silent for a moment. Have you ever…
You understand what he means now. Deciding pride is a better sacrifice than honesty, you shake your head.
He closes his eyes for a moment, eyelids tightening like the idea affects him more than he thinks it should. More than he wants you to know.
Subtly, almost as if involuntary, he shifts beneath you, hips moving slightly. Even the miniscule adjustment sends a fresh wave of heat plummeting through your veins. His gaze finds yours again. You do your best to maintain it, even as your eyelids start to flutter.
Looking at you as if everything he has hinges on your response, he parts his lips. And then he asks slowly, almost as if he’s afraid of your answer, Does it feel good?
It takes you a moment to respond.
Good is an insufficient word for the way warmth is spreading through your body so quickly you can’t contain it. For the way you can feel your heartbeat everywhere. In your chest, against his fingers at your throat. Pulsing, low and deep, in the place beneath you where your bodies connect.
It’s almost terrifying, the way you can’t predict what sensations you’ll be assuaged with next, the way you don’t know how your body will react to his ministrations.
But this is Jungwon. Your Jungwon. You trust him in a way that makes your fears feel small. You want him in a way that has you desperate to chase the unknown instead of hiding from it.
Your spinning, spiraling thoughts are surely too much to tell him. You’re not even sure how to put most of them into words that he’ll understand.
So instead, you say, Yes. Eyes locked on his, you nod. It feels good. A bit more shyly, you add, You feel good.
His eyelids shutter at that. His exhale is shaky, barely holding on by a thread.
Opening his eyes again, he nods. Good. You don’t… you don’t have to think so hard. Just let it feel good. Do what feels good.
He’ll follow your lead, is what he means. Part of you wants to protest. You feel unsteady, unsure. You don’t know what to do. Wouldn’t it be better if he just showed you?
But his words play in your mind again. It’s exactly what he told you, isn’t it? Don’t think so hard. Just… do.
Closing your eyes for a moment, you let your mind run a full scan of your body, all the way from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, searching for the most prominent sensations to follow.
With all of your attention on them, they’re easy to pinpoint. Most of all, your focus snaps to that deep, pulsing ache in your gut that seems to start and end between your splayed thighs.
Brow creasing, you adjust your weight slightly. The effect is almost instantaneous. Friction, pressure. You identify them immediately, effortlessly, as the things to chase. The shaky breath that spills from your parted lips breaks into a tiny, audible whimper.
Jungwon’s fingers nearly spasm against your throat at the sound.
“Yeah,” he whispers aloud, more breath than sound. “Like that.”
Your hips move slowly at first, trying to commit every angle, every new sensation to memory.
Beneath you, Jungwon is true to his word. For long minutes, he only watches, thumb resuming its soothing patterns against the side of your neck as you chase sensations. As he lets you use his body as you please, following the pathways of your own pleasure.
You feel him lean forward, your eyes still closed tight, as he puts his mouth on your throat, lips pressing softly just under your jaw. The added sensation has a high, helpless sound rising in your throat. It spills through your lips, without your permission, and Jungwon’s loosening grip on restraint slips further. You feel his tongue hot against your skin in response.
So beautiful. You can’t tell if he means to send the thought to you or not. So fucking pretty.
Either way, his praise has another whimper falling through your lips. This time, Jungwon moves his mouth to yours the second it begins, as if he wants to swallow it whole.
It’s the first time tonight he’s had his mouth on yours, but it can hardly be called a kiss, with the way your lips are practically slack against his, still a slave to the sensations unfurling beneath you.
Jungwon doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, he works at you like a man starved, as if he wants to count just how many more of those sounds he can swallow straight from your lips.
Your hips chase relief on his thigh for minutes longer, but eventually, the sensation starts to lose its edge. The friction you feel from your movements alone is no match for the ache still building deep within you.
“Jungwon,” you whisper, lips moving against his as he presses his forehead to yours. You’re both so warm. The heat of proximity is almost as unbearable as the thought of breaking it.
You don’t know how to tell him, the way it still feels good, but you can’t quite seem to get it just right. The way you're practically falling over yourself in search of the right angle, the right pressure, the perfect movement, but you can’t seem to find it no matter how hard you try.
It’s so frustrating — like you’re nothing but an endless jumble of nerves. With too much energy, sensations that still ebb but you can’t maneuver into flowing.
“Jungwon, I can’t—” your voice breaks. “It’s not—”
Even in your incoherence, even without you finishing the thought, he understands.
“Sh,” he soothes, “I have you.”
And he does. Immediately, his hand leaves the dip in your neck, breaking contact with your pulse point. Jungwon lets it wrap around your body, settling at the base of your spine instead. He uses his new leverage to pull you further onto his lap. Closer into his burning heat. Up, up, up, all the way until you feel him, feel a man, for the first time.
Immediately, every stalled sensation begins to flow again.
And Jungwon isn’t so still anymore either. His own body, once a tool for your pleasure, begins to take some of its own, too. He moves with you now, hands at your waist as he guides you over his lap. Angles his hips in well-timed motions that have you seeing stars. Whimpering his name until your voice sounds like sobs.
Your hands fall to his shoulders now, trying to erase any last fragment of space that still exists between the two of you as he works you over his body.
His lips return to your throat, this time trailing further downwards. You feel his tongue press against your collarbone, following the dip of your neckline, teasing just beneath it. The air sings cooly over the path of damp kisses he leaves on your skin, a welcome reprieve from the fire burning everywhere else in your body.
Jungwon’s breath becomes more labored, more erratic as you continue. The groan he releases on a particularly sharp uptake sends your mind spinning, a sound of your own breaking through your lips to join it.
Jungwon, you send to his mind this time. You don’t know what to ask for, don’t know how to explain it, but you just need— more, Jungwon. Please. I can’t—
Again, he reads your thoughts like they’re his own.
“Okay,” he nods. Your hips still move with his, but the frantic pace he’s helped you build begins to subside. The two of you are moving slower than before, with more intent. “Okay, baby, just—” He presses a small, delicate kiss to the center of your chest, like he needs one more touch before leaning back.
Eyes meeting yours, his fingers come to rest on the ties that line the front of your nightgown. Looking up at you, hair mussed, cheeks flushed, lips swollen, he asks for permission, “Can I?”
“Yes,” you nod immediately, mind already spinning at the idea of his skin against yours, no barrier or fabric between you. “Please.”
His long fingers are slow, deliberate, as they begin to unravel the ties holding your bodice together. You watch him as he works, sighing as he leans in, covering every inch of newly exposed skin with his mouth, as if there’s no part of you he’s willing to leave untouched.
Finally, when the last of his work is done, your nightgown pools at your waist. Bare before him, you feel exposed in the low light. Shy as his gaze travels from your eyes to your navel and then back again.
You try not to let the discomfort take root, but it makes you fidget. “Jungwon, I—”
“You’re beautiful,” he repeats his earlier words. This time, he says them out loud, his eyes never leaving yours. In the dying light of your bedroom, he decides that your bodies aren’t the only thing worth baring.
There’s a distinct touch of vulnerability, of pure, raw truth, when he tells you, “You cannot begin to understand the number of times I’ve imagined this. How soft you’d be.” His fingertip traces the curve of your cheek as you lean into his touch, chasing his warmth. “The way you’d look at me while I touch you.” His eyes meet yours, a new kind of heat burning in them. “The sounds you’d make while I’m inside you.”
Your eyes widen on his last admission, and he misreads it for panic, for trepidation, for uncertainty.
“We don’t have to,” he assures you. “As I said, we’ll do whatever feels good.”
But you don’t feel any panic or trepidation. There’s no trace of uncertainty left anywhere in your bones. You’re too far down this path to not see it through until the end. Besides, you’re starting to find that the tendrils of your own pleasure are wonderful to chase, but his…
Something about knowing that it’s your body, your voice, your mind that Jungwon takes his pleasure from is satisfying in an entirely different way. If it’s something he’s imagined, you’re sure it must be worth living.
Eyes low, you take his hand in yours. Playing with his fingers, the momentary distraction fuels your bravery. Makes what you’re about tell him a bit easier to work through your mouth.
“I want to,” you whisper. “I want you…” your voice trails off, heat blooming anew against your cheeks as you slowly admit, “I want you inside of me.”
And you do. After all, it feels only right. He’s already carved a space for himself inside your mind and within your heart. Your body only feels like a natural progression. A final affirmation of the feelings you already have, of the declarations you’ve already made.
Gently, he slides his fingers beneath your jaw, turning your face until you have nowhere to look but him.
His breath falters as he takes you in again. Assesses the mess he’s already made of you. His eyes are wide as he searches your expression for any hint of hesitation.
“Are you sure?” he whispers. “There are other ways I could—”
You shake your head. “I’m sure. Please. I want—” you admit to him what you couldn’t before. “I want you to make me feel good.”
Then Jungwon’s the one closing his eyes, forcing an exhale through his lips like your admission physically pains him.
“Okay,” he finally says, opening his eyes to look at you again.
“Okay?”
“Gods, yes,” he affirms, already moving. “I’ll give you anything. Anything you ask for, it’s yours.”
Despite the urgency, despite the still aching heat between the two of you, Jungwon vows to take his time. To commit every expression, every miniscule movement to memory. To savor sensations instead of just chasing them to completion.
His movements are gentle, as measured as they can be as he helps you rid your nightgown entirely. There’s reverence in his gaze as it traces the expanse of your body. Silent prayers he says as he takes in every uncovered inch of skin.
Jungwon follows suit, his hands covering yours as you help rid him of his clothes. Dark and simple, they provide just enough warmth for the light chill of the turning seasons. Now, they lie scattered across the floor near your bed. Forgotten, unnecessary.
This time, Jungwon guides you onto your back, hair fanning over your pillow. It’s a mirror image of your earlier position. Only this time, you aren’t alone in your room anymore, wallowing in your loneliness.
Now, he cages you in, pressing impossibly closer until your breaths are mingled, heartbeats intertwined.
Your bed doesn’t feel so terribly big now, not as he covers your body with his own, skin against skin everywhere you can reach.
You’re so warm. Overwhelmed in a new way even as the pace begins to quiet.
He’s gentle. Intentional. Slow as he presses his fingers against you. Inside you.
Jungwon takes his time with you. Alternates between covering every inch of you with his lips and watching the expressions that play out across your features every time he discovers a new way to touch you.
It’s quiet. Full of breathy whispers, long sighs. And then, it’s anything but.
Hushed whimpers, heady groans. The broken gasp that falls from his mouth to yours when he finally, finally presses his way inside of you.
The way he soothes your hair back from your face as you wince at the unfamiliar intrusion.
Shhh, he whispers into your mind as he holds his body still, letting you adjust. Giving you time to relax around him. You’re okay. Doing so well, aren’t you? So full and still taking it all.
Then your hands are back in his hair, and his are back on your thighs, this time pulling them upwards as he gently encourages you to wrap them around his waist.
He starts to move, and it’s so much, so fucking overwhelming, that you think you might die.
It’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt, beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. You can feel him everywhere.
From your fingers to the tips of your toes to the inside of your mind, and it all converges back to that place deep inside of you that he presses against every time he moves.
Your mind is filled with him. With the two of you tangled in one another, your connection sings. He doesn’t have to send his thoughts to you. You can feel them, as if they were a part of you already.
Look at you, he insists, reveling in the way you tug against his hair, something surging in his chest at the way your eyes screw shut in another wave of pleasure so deep you’re nearly drowning.
Perfect, he insists when another breathy whimper spills from your lips.
Mine, he decides when he hopes you’re too wrapped up in sensation to remember.
Before long, something starts to build inside of you, slow at first and then impossibly fast. A new feeling, one that starts deep in your gut, imbued with a renowned sense of urgency. You chase it, running blindly even if you don’t yet know what waits on the other side.
It’s as if you’re climbing. Higher, higher, higher. And then you’re falling. Suspended in midair. Falling. Floating. Flying.
Jungwon is there, working you through it, talking you through it. Whispering sweet nothings in your ear and in your mind. Words blend into one another, and you can only half understand him through the way your body still trembles slightly. You can feel yourself pulsing around where he still sits inside you, stronger than anything you felt before.
It must have the same effect on him. Only seconds later, Jungwon buries his face in your shoulder, releasing one final groan before warmth fills your body.
For long moments after, the two of you lie motionless, still connected as his weight settles over you, either unwilling or unable to move. You suppose it doesn’t really matter which of the two it is.
And even later still, long after the urgency has transformed into something sweeter, the two of you are awake.
Now, your head rests against Jungwon’s still bare chest, his fingers threading through your hair. Your body feels heavy with satiation, a kind of deep, physical contentment foreign to you until now. The ghost of his touch lingers. You can still feel everywhere he was inside of you.
Eventually, Jungwon is the one to finally break the silence. His voice is small, but it rings clearly in the quiet of your bedroom. “I don’t want you to miss me.”
You sigh, sleepy as you curl further into his warmth. “It’s inevitable.” You’re not angry. Even if the loneliness stings on occasion, you’ll continue finding ways to make your peace with it. Although it might prove more difficult now that you know what it is to have him like this. “A king will always be bound by duty. And duty will always find a way to call at the most inopportune of times.”
You can feel the way he shakes his head. “Duty calls to everyone. We all just have different names for it.”
“Perhaps,” you agree, fighting a yawn, “but your responsibilities will always look a bit different than everyone else’s. It’s okay,” you add, sensing his lingering unease. “I understand. I don’t know what it feels like to wear a crown, but I can’t imagine it would be easy.”
For a moment, he’s silent. His fingers go still in your hair. And then— “Would you ever?”
You frown. “Would I ever what?”
There’s a tremor of hesitation in his voice now, a betrayal of his nerves. “Wear a crown.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I’m asking you.”
“I know what you’re implying,” you agree. “But don’t ask me now.” Pushing yourself up, you turn until your hand is splayed across his chest, your chin resting on top. From this angle, you can look him in the eye. “Don’t ask me when you’re afraid I’ll say no.”
Jungwon holds your gaze. Exhaling slowly, he admits, “I think I’ll always be at least a little afraid you’ll say no.”
“No,” you shake your head, a glimmer in your eye. “I promise that you won’t be.” Leaning up, you press a chaste kiss to the skin just below his chin. “Sleep,” you urge, settling back into your original position. Bare skin still pressed to his, you pull your blanket up over both of your bodies. “We’ll both need our strength for tomorrow.”
So Jungwon doesn’t ask you, not tonight. Not the next night. Not until nights have begun to bleed into one another, the frequency with which he greets you with a voice in your head and a knock against your door only growing.
He waits, until he knows every inch of your mind. Until he understands your dreams, your hopes, your fears just as intimately as if they were his own. Until the time he’s spent learning you in the privacy of your bedroom means he knows your body just as well.
For tonight, he does his best to follow your instructions, to put his wandering thoughts to rest and just sleep.
Only once more does he work his way into your mind with the gentle presence of someone who’s been invited, of someone who’s grown to be welcome.
Good night, he sends to you, and you shudder as if he’s whispered it against the shell of your ear.
Good night, Jungwon, you return before drifting off into a dreamless sleep.
You come home from three years abroad not by choice but for your grandmother’s funeral and walk straight back into YANG JUNGWON — lead businessman at Yang Industries and standing beside a life that doesn’t include you. Your grandmother’s will fractures your family, though it was already fractured, the letters she left begin exposing secrets, and the manor starts unravelling everything it’s been hiding — affairs, business ties, and truths no one wanted uncovered. Every moment alone with him drags you back toward those buried feelings since you were teens and makes you confront the one thing you never said; your grandmother planned this. But did she really bring you back just to watch your family spiral — or to force the two of you to face what she always knew was ‘meant to be’?
parings. . . yang jungwon x female reader ┃ wc. 27.7k
⟡themes. . . childhood best friends to lovers, second chance romance, right person wrong time, mutual pining, slow burn, angst with payoff, unspoken feelings, complicated relationships, love vs duty, rich family drama, inheritance drama, toxic family dynamics, sibling rivalry, jealousy, family secrets, corruption, old money, forced proximity, shared history, emotional repression, house as a character, flashbacks, happy ending
⟡content warnings. . . mature content (18+), fingering, oral sex (f), slight repression of breathing (fingers in mouth), penetrative sex, multiple orgasms, cowgirl, missionary, eye contact, light restraint (wrists pinned), praise kink, slight dom/sub undertones, loss of a loved one, grief, infidelity, family dysfunction and manipulation, emotional repression, mild angst, morally grey side characters
⟡now playing. . . Wicked Games by Chris Isaac // To Love by Suki Waterhouse // she heart by Cameron Cabelo
⟡laceys note // I really loved writing this and how the grandmother is so present in the story while not being present, she controls the whole narrative. The family secrets always just a matter of time before they came out. I put a lot of heart into this and I hope it shows, i didn’t indent for it to be this long but oh well! I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing! Enjoy💞 (ps I’ve rebloged with all those who asked to be tagged bc tumblr has a limit 😫)
THE FLIGHT FROM BARCELONA LANDED FORTY MINUTES LATE.
You didn’t mind. Forty minutes was forty minutes less of being home, and you needed every one of them. You sat in your seat while the other passengers stood and jostled for overhead luggage and you looked out the small oval window at the grey Korean sky and you thought about your grandmother’s hands.
The way they looked when she shuffled a deck of cards. The way she’d lay one down on the table and look at you sideways and say what does that tell you before you’d even had time to see the face of it.
She’d been teaching you something your whole life. You were still figuring out what.
Your phone had forty-three unread messages by the time you turned it off airplane mode. Thirty-one of them were from your sister Haeun. You read the first one — the lawyer says the reading is Thursday, I need to know what grandmother told you — and put your phone face-down on your thigh and breathed through your nose until the seat belt sign dinged off.
She hadn’t told you anything. That was the thing about Han Sooja. She never told you anything. She offered, suggested, implied. She left doors slightly open and trusted you to be curious enough to walk through them. Every Sunday for three years you’d called her from your apartment in Barcelona — the one with the yellow kitchen tiles you hated and then grew to love — and she’d talk about the garden, about the house, about whatever book she was reading, and at the end she’d say something that didn’t make sense until weeks later.
The last call had been eight days before she died. She’d asked if you still had the book she gave you before you left. Italo Calvino, the one about invisible cities. You’d said yes, it’s on my shelf, and she’d made a small sound of satisfaction and said good girl the way she used to when you found a hidden room in the manor, small and proud and like she’d been waiting. You hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. The book was in your carry-on bag right now. You didn’t know why you’d packed it. It had felt necessary in the way that irrational things sometimes do.
The Han family estate sat forty minutes outside of Seoul, through the kind of countryside that looked different in every season and the same in all of them. Your father had arranged a car. You sat in the back and watched the city dissolve into hills and treelines and you felt the specific vertigo of returning somewhere that exists more fully in your memory than in real life.
You hadn’t been back in almost three years. Barcelona had been good to you. Your degree, your small studio, your Sunday markets and your terrible attempts at Catalan and the way the light hit the Eixample buildings at five in the afternoon like the whole city was on fire. You had built a life there from scratch, which was something, which was actually a lot. You had been proud of the distance.
Now the distance was just kilometres you’d swallowed in nine hours and your grandmother was dead and the estate gates were opening in front of you and you were twenty-three years old and somehow eight years old at the same time. The manor was lit from inside. Warm amber in every window, the way it always looked in winter, the way it looked in every memory you had of arriving home from anywhere. Your chest did something complicated.
You were barely out of the car when the front door opened. Your mother came down the steps first. She looked beautiful and exhausted and somewhere behind her eyes was a grief that was doing battle with something sharper. She held you and you held her back and she smelled like the same perfume she’d worn your entire life and for a moment you just let yourself be held. “You look thin,” she said, pulling back to look at your face. Her hands cupped your jaw the way she’d done when you were small.
“I’m not thin.”
“You’re thin.” She said it like a conclusion and took your bag from you before you could argue. Your father appeared behind her. Tall, silver-templed, the kind of handsome that photographs well. He kissed your cheek and said welcome home, sweetheart and squeezed your shoulder and you smiled and said thank you and the whole thing lasted four seconds and felt utterly normal and you pushed down the small unnameable thing it stirred in you and went inside.
Haeun was in the sitting room with her husband Minjae, who was tall and quiet and had the energy of a man who had learned to occupy as little space as possible to survive his marriage. She stood up when you came in and crossed the room and hugged you and over her shoulder her eyes were already doing the thing — already calculating, already moving pieces around a board.
“You look wonderful,” she said, and she meant it as something other than a compliment.
“So do you,” you said, and you sat down, and you accepted the tea someone put in your hands, and you listened to your family talk around the actual subject the way families do, and you thought about your grandmother’s hands again. The way she’d lay a card down. What does that tell you?
You were so inside your own head that you didn’t hear the second car arrive. You didn’t hear the front door. You didn’t hear the voices in the hall. The first thing you registered was your mother’s posture changing — a small straightening, a social smile replacing the real one — and then the sitting room door opened and Jungwon walked in.
He was wearing black. Of course he was, it was a house in mourning, but it suited him in a way that felt almost unfair. He’d grown into himself in the years since you’d last seen him — not taller, he’d always been tall, but somehow more present, like he’d learned to take up the exact right amount of space. His father walked in behind him and then a woman you didn’t recognise, and then you did recognise her, you’d seen her tagged in photos online the way you absolutely had not been keeping track of, and her name was Seo Yerin and she was very beautiful and her hand was in the crook of Jungwon’s arm like she’d grown there.
Jungwon’s father greeted yours with the practiced warmth of two men who had been doing business together for decades. Your mother offered Yerin tea. Haeun said something charming. Minjae stood slightly behind Haeun and looked at the ceiling. And then Jungwon looked across the room and found you.
There was a moment — just a moment, small enough that you could convince yourself later it hadn’t happened — where his face did something unguarded. Something that looked like there you are and oh no at the same time. And then it resolved into a smile. Warm, professional, genuine enough to be dangerous. “You made it,” he said.
“I made it,” you said. He crossed the room and hugged you and he smelled different — something expensive, cedar and something clean — but underneath it was the same, was him, was the boy who had eaten your grandmother’s good biscuits and blamed it on you and laughed so hard he’d fallen off the kitchen counter. You pulled back before you held on too long.
“How was Barcelona?” he asked. His voice was careful. Friendly.
“Cold right now,” you said. “How’s the company?”
“Growing,” he said. And then, quieter, under the room noise: “She talked about you. Every time I visited. Said you were doing well.”
Something lodged in your throat. “She talked about you too,” you said. Yerin appeared at his shoulder like a weather system. Her smile was lovely and precise. “You must be the friend,” she said. “Jungwon’s told me so much.”
You held her gaze for exactly the right amount of time. “Good things, I hope,” you said pleasantly.
“Of course,” she said. And her hand found Jungwon’s arm again. And the moment sealed shut.
Dinner was the thing it always was in this house — too much food, too much wine, too much history in the walls. You sat across from Jungwon and next to your father and you told yourself to eat and listen and feel nothing in particular.
Your grandmother’s chair at the head of the table was empty and remained empty the entire meal. Nobody had moved it. Nobody had suggested moving it. It sat there with its carved wooden back and the slightly worn armrest where she’d rested her right hand for sixty years and it was the loudest thing in the room.
After dinner, when the adults had migrated to the sitting room and Haeun was performing warmth at Yerin with the energy of a woman collecting intelligence, you slipped out. The hallway was quiet. The manor at night had its own sound — old wood settling, the particular silence of high ceilings, the grandfather clock at the end of the east corridor that had been six minutes fast for as long as you could remember and which your grandmother had refused to correct because she said she liked having six extra minutes that nobody else knew about.
You stood in the hall outside the library and pressed your hand flat against the wall. Old wallpaper. Pale blue, faded at the seams. You knew what was behind it. Third panel from the left, your grandmother had said when you were nine, crouching down to your eye level with absolute seriousness, you push at the bottom corner, not the middle, because the middle is what they expect. And then she’d winked at you and Jungwon and said the house has more rooms than anyone thinks. That’s true of most things.
You pressed the bottom corner of the third panel. Nothing happened for a second. Then the soft mechanical exhale of something old and well-made, and the panel gave, and the smell of cool air and stone and something faintly like old paper came out of the dark.
You stood there looking into it. Behind you, very quietly, someone said: “You remembered.” You turned around. Jungwon was leaning against the opposite wall with his hands in his pockets, watching you with an expression you couldn’t quite read in the low hall light.
“You followed me,” you said.
“I saw you leave.” He pushed off the wall and came to stand beside you, looking into the dark passage the way you both used to as kids — like it was a dare, like it was an invitation. “I used to come here,” he said. “After you left. With her” You looked at him. “She’d make tea and we’d sit in the passage room with a candle and she’d make me do the crossword and not let me leave until I finished it.” He had a smile on his face.
Your throat did the thing again. “She never told me that,” you said.
“She never told me she called you every week either,” he said. “I found out from the phone records when we were going through her things.” A pause. “She listed you as the Barcelona girl in her contacts.”
A sound came out of you that was almost a laugh. It hurt a little on the way out. The passage waited. Dark, familiar, smelling of everything unchanged. “We should go in,” Jungwon said quietly.
“Now?” He looked at you sideways and for a second he was twelve years old and the whole world was just this house and summer and whatever stupid adventure came next.
“She would have wanted us to,” he said. And the thing was — he was right. You both knew it. This was exactly the kind of thing she would have engineered if she could have. And the thought that maybe she had — maybe this was the beginning of something she’d set in motion from a long way back — made the back of your neck prickle. You reached into the dark for the torch she’d always kept on the inside ledge. It was there. Fresh batteries. Recently placed. Of course it was. What does that tell you, she would have said.
You clicked it on. “Come on then,” you said. And Jungwon followed you into the wall.
The passage room was exactly as you remembered. Small, stone-floored, with a ceiling low enough that Jungwon had to duck slightly now in a way he hadn’t needed to at fifteen. There was a wooden table, two chairs that didn’t match, a candle in a brass holder with a box of matches beside it, and a shelf of books along the far wall that had nothing to do with the library on the other side of it. Your grandmother had curated this room the way she curated everything — deliberately, privately, with a logic that only revealed itself if you were paying attention. Jungwon lit the candle without being asked. Old habit.
You swept the torchlight along the bookshelf. Calvino. Borges. A Korean translation of an Agatha Christie you’d never seen before. Three books on architecture that made your chest ache with something fond.
And at the end of the shelf, propped against the stone wall like it had been recently placed and not forgotten, a tin box. Small, olive green, the kind that used to hold biscuits. You both looked at it. “That wasn’t here before,” Jungwon said.
“No,” you agreed. Neither of you moved toward it immediately. That was something she’d taught you both without ever making it a lesson — patience. The instinct to look before you touched. To let a thing be what it was for a moment before you decided what to do with it. You sat down in one of the mismatched chairs. Jungwon took the other. The candle made the room flicker and warm and very small.
“When did you last come here?” you asked.
He thought about it. “Two weeks before she died. She wanted to do the crossword and said the library was too bright.” A corner of his mouth moved. “She said fluorescent lighting was an act of violence against the human spirit.”
“She said that about my university’s studio lighting on a phone call once,” you said. “I’d sent her a photo of my desk.”
“She printed it,” Jungwon said. “It was on her dresser.” You looked at the candle flame. Three years of Sunday calls and she’d printed a photo of your desk and put it on her dresser and filed Jungwon under the boy who visits in whatever internal registry she kept and said nothing to either of you about the other and you had both thought you were each grieving her separately and privately and it turned out she had been holding you both the whole time, one in each hand, like she always had. “I should have come back sooner,” you said. You hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
Jungwon was quiet for a moment. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to. She was proud of you being there.” He paused. “She showed me your graduation photos.”
“She wasn’t at my graduation.”
“I know. But you sent them to her.” He looked at the table. “She showed me on her phone. Stood there in the garden and made me look at every single one and told me what each building in the background was.” A beat. “She knew all of them.” Of course she did. Han Sooja had read every book in this room and a thousand more and had never once made a performance of knowing things.
You stood up and crossed to the shelf and picked up the olive tin. It wasn’t locked. The lid lifted with the soft resistance of something sealed against air and inside was not another letter, not yet, but a folded piece of paper and beneath it a photograph and beneath that a single playing card.
The seven of spades. You picked it up. Turned it over. On the back, in her handwriting — small, precise, the handwriting of someone who had learned to write when paper was expensive: Not everything buried is lost. Some things are just waiting for the ground to be ready. — start with the east corridor, third door.
Jungwon leaned over and read it. His shoulder was warm against yours. “The east corridor,” he said.
“Third door is the old study,” you said.
“Your father and mine use it when they’re doing paperwork. She always hated that.”
Something shifted in Jungwon’s expression. Not much. Just enough. “Why did she hate it?” you asked.
He picked up the tin lid and turned it over in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said. Which meant he knew something and wasn’t sure yet whether to say it. You let it sit. Patience. Look before you touch.
You folded the note back up, put it in your pocket, and placed the seven of spades carefully back in the tin. “Tomorrow?” you said.
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
—
The will reading was at ten in the morning in the manor’s formal sitting room, which your grandmother had always called the room where people go to say things they’ve rehearsed.
The family lawyer, an older man named Mr. Oh who had been handling Han Sooja’s affairs for thirty years, sat at the writing desk with a folder open in front of him and his reading glasses pushed to the end of his nose. Your mother sat straight-backed in the good armchair. Your father beside her. Haeun on the small sofa with Minjae, who had the expression of a man attending something he had been asked to attend and was determined to survive neutrally. The Yang family were not present for this — this was immediate family, just yours, just the people your grandmother had chosen to name. And it surprised you that she hadn’t named Jungwon.
You sat in the chair nearest the window. Old habit. Whenever your grandmother held court in this room she’d saved that chair for you because it got the best light and she knew you liked to draw in the margins of things.
Mr. Oh read the preamble in the formal language of legal documents and your mother’s posture got incrementally straighter with each clause and Haeun’s hands in her lap were very still in the way that meant they wanted to be doing something else. The estate. The grounds. The property in full — to you and Haeun jointly, held in trust until such time as you both agreed on its future. Haeun’s shoulders dropped a fraction. Okay. Shared. That was manageable.
The financial holdings, the investments, the accounts — split equally between the two of you. Still manageable. Still even. Your mother’s face was carefully neutral.
And then: The personal correspondence, the private library, the contents of the third floor study, and sole guardianship of the estate’s architectural records and original documents — Mr. Oh paused in the way lawyers pause when they know what they’re about to say will change the temperature of a room — to my granddaughter, Y/N, who has always understood that a house is not a building but a living record, and who I trust to know what to do with what she finds.
The room was very quiet. You felt your mother look at you. You didn’t turn. Haeun said, lightly, carefully, as if the words hadn’t been sitting in her mouth for thirty years: “The architectural records.”
“All original documents pertaining to the construction and modification of the estate,” Mr. Oh confirmed. “Floor plans, correspondence, modification records. All to your sister, as specified.”
“I see,” Haeun said. Her voice was a closed door. Mr. Oh continued. There were smaller bequests — to staff, to a charity your grandmother had supported quietly for decades, to a cousin you barely knew. A piece of jewellery to your mother, significant and old and chosen with the precision of someone who knew exactly what a gift could mean and what it could also withhold. Your mother held the jewellery box in her lap and looked at it and you saw, briefly, the grief crack through the composed surface of her face.
She had loved her mother. Whatever else was happening in the register beneath that love, the love was real and it was enormous and she was going to feel both things at the same time for a very long time.
The reading ended. Mr. Oh gathered his papers. Minjae quietly offered to fetch tea as a reason to leave the room. Your father stood and shook Mr. Oh’s hand. Haeun stood up and came to you. “Congratulations,” she said. The word had nothing to do with congratulations.
“I didn’t ask for it,” you said.
“No,” she agreed. “You never have to.” She left the room. You watched her go and thought about the seven of spades in the tin box in the passage room and your grandmother’s handwriting and the specific, deliberate way she had chosen to distribute what she knew and what she owned. Not everything buried is lost.
Your father’s hand on your shoulder again. That same four-second warmth. “Your grandmother loved you very much,” he said.
“She loved all of us,” you said.
He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course,” he said. “Of course she did.”
Six weeks before she died — Sunday, Barcelona, 4pm
The light through your kitchen tiles was doing the thing it did in late autumn, coming in flat and amber and making everything look like the inside of a memory. You had your phone wedged between your ear and your shoulder and you were attempting to re-pot a plant that had been dying slowly since August.
“The Calvino,” your grandmother said. “You still have it?”
“On my shelf,” you said. “It’s been there for three years, Halmoni.”
“Good.” That sound of satisfaction. “I want you to read it again before you come home.”
“I’m not planning to come home.”
“I know,” she said. Not sadly. Just factually, the way she said most things. “Read it anyway. There’s a passage in the chapter about Octavia — the spider-web city — that I want you to think about.”
You looked at your dying plant. “About what?”
“About the nature of what holds things together,” she said. “And what happens when you finally look down.”
You’d laughed a little, because she was always doing this, always dropping things into conversation like seeds into soil. “You could just tell me what you mean.”
“Where would be the fun in that,” she said. Not a question. The plant lost a leaf. You caught it. “Jungwon came by yesterday,” she said, at the end, in the place where she always put the things that mattered most.
You were quiet for a second too long. “How is he?” you asked, carefully.
“The way young men are when they’re doing the right thing for the wrong reasons,” she said. “He brought me tangerines. He stayed for four hours.” A pause. “He asked how you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were building something beautiful and that you missed home more than you admitted.”
“Halmoni—”
“I told him the truth,” she said serenely. “Goodnight, my girl.” The call ended. You stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen in Barcelona with a dead leaf in your hand and the flat amber light going dark around you and you thought about Jungwon asking how you were. You didn’t call him and you could almost see your grandmother's disarming look.
—
Your grandmother’s bedroom was at the end of the east wing. Nobody had gone in since she died. You could tell by the way the door resisted slightly when you turned the handle — not locked, just untouched, the air on the other side of it thick and still in the way that rooms get when they’ve been holding their breath. The staff had respected it. Your mother had respected it, or avoided it, and those two things looked identical from the outside. You went in alone.
The curtains were half-open the way she always kept them — enough light to see by, not enough to bleach the colours, she’d said once, about curtains and about most other things. Her bed was made with the precise, almost architectural tidiness of a woman who had made her own bed every morning for eighty-one years. On her nightstand: reading glasses, a glass of water someone had forgotten to remove, a library book three weeks overdue, and a small framed photograph.
You crossed the room and picked it up. It was the two of you. You and her, you couldn’t have been more than ten, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the passage room with a candle between you and a crossword spread out on the stone floor and your face screwed up in concentration. You had no memory of the photo being taken. You had no idea who had taken it. You stood there holding it for a long time. Then you put it down, carefully, exactly where it had been, and you looked at the room.
She had left it for you to find. Whatever it was. You knew that the way you knew the batteries in the torch had been fresh — she had arranged this, she had thought about you standing in this room, she had trusted you to look properly. So you looked.
Her desk first. Neat, deliberate. Correspondence in one pile, addressed and stamped and ready to post — you’d find out later she’d written them in the last week of her life, small notes to old friends, a letter to a charity, one to Mr. Oh with an addendum to her will that simply read make sure she gets the Calvino back if she doesn’t bring it herself. Her pen in its holder. A magnifying glass. A small jade figurine of a rabbit that had sat on every desk she’d ever owned since before your mother was born.
You moved to the wardrobe. Her clothes, her good coat, a shelf of shoeboxes at the top. You pulled each one down and opened it with the care of someone who understood that your grandmother did not waste containers. Shoes in most of them.
In one — the second from the right, which was the kind of specific detail only she would have noted — a bundle of letters tied with kitchen string, and beneath it a leather notebook, and beneath that a folded envelope. Your name on the front. Both names. For my granddaughter and for Jungwon-ah — to be opened together, in the house, when the time is right. You’ll know.
Your hands were very steady. That surprised you. You sat on the edge of her bed — something you’d done a thousand times as a child, sitting there while she brushed her hair or told you something she wanted you to remember — and you held the envelope and you didn’t open it. Not yet.
She’d said together. She’d written both your names. She’d trusted you to know when the time was right and you knew, the way she’d taught you to know things, that the time was not right alone in her bedroom at nine in the morning while the house was waking up around you. You put the envelope inside your jacket, against your chest, and you took the leather notebook too because it had no name on it and therefore belonged to you the way all unnamed things in this house now did, you put the shoeboxes back exactly as you’d found them, and you straightened the bed where you’d sat, and you took one more look at the photograph on the nightstand.
There’s a passage in the chapter about Octavia, she’d said. About the nature of what holds things together. You’d read it on the plane. You’d sat in seat 24A at thirty thousand feet over France and read the passage about the spider-web city suspended over an abyss and the people who lived in it who did not think about the abyss because to think about the abyss was not the point. The point was the net. The point was the thing that held. The life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than that of other cities, Calvino had written. They know the net will only last so long.
You left the bedroom. You pulled the door back to exactly where it had been.
The leather notebook turned out to be a record. You found this out that afternoon, sitting on the floor of the passage room with the candle lit and your back against the cold stone wall, and it was not what you expected and it was completely what you should have expected because this was Han Sooja and she had never done anything without documentation.
It was dated across seven years. Small entries, some only a few lines, written in the spare economical way she wrote everything. It read less like a diary and more like case notes — observations, dates, names, figures. The early entries were oblique enough that you had to read them twice. The later ones were less patient with their own obliqueness.
Your father’s name appeared on the fourth page. And then a name you didn’t recognise. A woman’s name, recurring, with dates beside it and in one entry a location — a restaurant in Gangnam, a hotel in Busan, a work trip that had not been a work trip. Your grandmother had written these things in the same tone she used to note the weather or the overdue library book. No exclamation. No fury. Just the facts, recorded with the quiet, devastating precision of a woman who had known for years and decided that the right time to use what she knew was not while she was alive to be argued with.
Your father, the last entry about him read, dated eight months ago, has made choices that your mother has chosen not to see. I have chosen not to intervene in my daughter’s choices. But I have chosen not to reward his with my silence after I’m gone. He will know, when the estate goes to you, that I knew. That is enough.
You read that three times. Then you turned the page. The next section was about the company. Your father’s company and the Yang family company and the specific way they were connected, which your grandmother laid out in the same case-note fashion — dates of agreements, figures, the shape of something that had been built quietly over decades. You didn’t understand all of it. You understood enough. You understood that it was the kind of thing that would matter enormously to Jungwon, who was now running his family’s side of it, who had taken over from his father without knowing everything his father had built. Or maybe knowing some of it. You didn’t know yet what Jungwon knew.
The last entry in the notebook was not about your father or the companies. It was short, just four lines, and it was the only entry in the whole notebook that had nothing to do with documentation. I have watched those two children for fifteen years and I have been patient because patience was what was needed. They are both very clever and very stupid in the way that people are when they are in the middle of something they can’t see the edges of yet. I am leaving them the house and each other and every door I can think to unlock. The rest is up to them. I trust them. I always have.
The candle burned. You sat on the cold floor of the secret room your grandmother had shown you at nine years old and you held a notebook full of everything she’d known and you pressed the back of your hand to your mouth and you did not cry, quite, but it was a near thing.
—
You found Jungwon at the edge of the garden. He was standing at the low stone wall that separated the formal garden from the fields beyond it, the ones where you used to chase the chickens, the ones that looked in winter like a grey-green painting of themselves. He had his coat on and his hands in his pockets and he was looking at the fields the way you’d been looking at the manor from the car yesterday — like something that was more inside him than outside. “Jungwon,” you said.
He turned. Registered your face. “What happened?” You hadn’t known it showed. You’d been careful on the way out of the house.
“I found something,” you said. “In her room.” You took the envelope out of your jacket. Held it out so he could see both your names on it. He looked at it for a long time without moving. The winter fields were quiet behind him. The house was warm and lit behind you. You were standing exactly between the two of them, which felt like something your grandmother would have arranged if she could have. Maybe she had.
Jungwon reached out and took the envelope from your hand. He turned it over. Ran his thumb across the handwriting. “She wrote both our names,” he said.
“She said to open it together. When the time was right.”
He looked up at you. “Is it?”
You thought about the notebook in your jacket. About the woman’s name recurring through seven years of entries. About the company and the figures and the connection between your families that neither of you had been told about. About the seven of spades and the east corridor and the third door. About the passage room, two chairs, a candle. About him asking how you were from three years and three thousand kilometres away through the relay of your grandmother’s voice. “Not yet,” you said. “But soon.”
He nodded slowly. He held the envelope for a moment longer and then he held it back out to you. “You keep it,” he said. “She gave you the house. She’d want it kept here.”
You took it. Put it back inside your jacket. “There’s something else,” you said. “The notebook. I need to tell you about it. Not now, not here—” you glanced back at the house, at the lit windows, at the shapes of people moving behind glass— “but soon. There are things in it about the company. Your family and mine.”
Something moved behind his eyes. Just a fraction. “How much do you know?” he asked. His voice was careful. Professional. The voice he used in the sitting room, not the voice from the passage with the candle.
“Enough to know you might know some of it already,” you said. He held your gaze. The wind moved between you.
“Tonight,” he said. “Passage room.”
“Tonight,” you agreed. He nodded and turned back to the fields. You stood beside him for a moment, not saying anything, looking at the same grey-green view, and it was almost like being ten years old again except that you were both carrying things ten-year-olds don’t carry and the weight of it was very quietly changing the shape of everything.
“She kept a photo of us,” you said. “In the passage room. Do you know who took it?”
“She did,” he said. “She had one of those cameras with the timer. She set it up on the shelf.” A pause. “She has about fifteen of them. Of us, from different years. She kept them in the tin.”
You thought about the olive green tin. The photograph beneath the note beneath the playing card. “I only found the one,” you said.
“There’s a second tin,” he said. “She showed me once. It’s in the east corridor study.” He paused. “Third door.” You looked at him. He looked back at you. Not everything buried is lost.
“Tonight,” you said again. And you both stood at the wall in the winter garden and looked at the fields where you used to chase chickens and neither of you said anything about the thing that had been living in the space between you for longer than either of you had names for it yet.
—
The Yang family came at seven. Your mother had spent the afternoon directing the staff with the focused energy of a woman who needed something to control. The good dishes. The good wine. Flowers on the table that were tasteful and seasonal and had been ordered from the florist your grandmother had used for forty years because some things you don’t change even when you are quietly furious at the dead person who used to order them. You’d spent the afternoon in your room with the notebook open on your bed and your laptop beside it, cross-referencing what your grandmother had recorded in her careful case-note hand against what you could find publicly about your father’s company and the Yang Group. You’d built a partial picture. Partial was enough to make your chest feel tight in a way that had nothing to do with the altitude change from Barcelona.
You closed everything at six-thirty and got dressed and looked at yourself in the mirror of your childhood bedroom. The room still had your things in it. Sketchbooks on the shelf. A poster from a Barcelona exhibition you’d sent home because you’d had no wall space. A corkboard above the desk with old photos and ticket stubs and a hand-drawn map of the manor’s ground floor that you’d made when you were twelve and that contained, you now noticed, three rooms that weren’t on it that you’d known about since you were nine. She’d taught you to keep secrets the way other grandmothers taught you to knit. Quietly. Practically. With the implication that the skill would matter someday.
You put your earrings in and went downstairs. Jungwon’s father, Yang Junho, had the big laugh and the easy warmth of a man who had learned early that charm was infrastructure. He embraced your mother, clapped your father on the shoulder, kissed your cheek and said look at you, all grown up and making us all feel old in the way that powerful men say things to young women — benevolent, slightly proprietary, not quite seeing you. Yerin arrived in something that was architecturally perfect for the occasion. You noticed it the way you noticed good design — involuntarily, with a kind of professional appreciation that sat alongside everything else. She was very good at this. At the surface of things.
She found your eyes across the hall and smiled. You smiled back. Jungwon was behind her, talking to your father, and you watched the two of them shake hands and exchange the warm professional pleasantries of men from families that had known each other a long time and you thought about the notebook in your room and the figures on page four and the way your father’s hand had been on your shoulder after the will reading, and you kept your face very still. Haeun arrived late, which was a statement, with Minjae in tow, which was a footnote.
Dinner was served at eight.The dining room in winter was all candlelight and dark wood and the accumulated weight of every meal that had ever been eaten in it. Your grandmother’s empty chair was still at the head of the table. Still nobody suggested moving it or filling it. It sat there and presided. You were seated between your father and Jungwon’s father, which was either an accident of place settings or your mother’s idea of diplomacy or the universe testing your ability to eat soup while sitting on top of a secret. Jungwon was diagonally across from you. Yerin beside him, her hand on the table near his, not quite touching. She had positioned herself with the precision of someone who understood rooms and sightlines and what it meant to be seen next to the right person. You understood rooms and sightlines too.
The first course arrived. Conversation did what conversation does at these dinners — it found the safe channels and moved through them. Business. The economy. A mutual acquaintance’s new venture. Your Barcelona degree, which Yang Junho asked about with genuine interest and which you answered clearly and concisely and felt Jungwon listening to without looking at you. “Architecture,” Junho said, nodding. “Your grandmother always said you’d do something with buildings.”
“She said I’d do something with spaces,” you said. “She made a distinction.” Junho looked pleased by this in the way people look pleased when they’re reminded of someone they miss. “That sounds like her.”
“She was very specific about words,” Jungwon said. He was looking at his wine glass. “She used to correct my crossword answers even when they technically fit.”
“Because fitting and being right are different things,” you said, before you could decide not to. He looked up. Found your eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what she said.” Yerin reached for her wine.
Haeun chose the main course to begin her campaign. She did it beautifully. That was the thing about your sister — she was genuinely skilled at this, at the long game of dinner table conversation, at the way you could introduce a subject so casually that by the time people realized they were discussing it they’d already committed to a position. “It’s such a comfort,” she said, during a lull, with the warm sincerity of a woman who had rehearsed warmth until it became real, “that grandmother’s things will stay in the family. The records, especially. The architectural history of this place.” A smile at you. “I know how much it means to you.”
“It does,” you said.
“It’s just interesting,” Haeun said, tilting her head slightly, “that grandmother felt those should be — separated out. From the general estate. Don’t you think, Mum?” Your mother’s expression didn’t change. “Your grandmother had her reasons.”
“Of course.” Haeun smiled. “She always did. I’m just thinking about practicality. If we’re going to manage the estate jointly, having certain documents siloed with one person seems—”
“Haeun,” your father said. Quiet. Warning. “I’m just raising it,” Haeun said pleasantly. “This is family. We can talk about family things.” The table had gone the particular kind of quiet where everyone is pretending not to listen while listening completely. You set your fork down. “Grandmother specified it in the will,” you said. “Mr. Oh read it out. I’m not sure what there is to discuss.”
“I’m not disputing the will,” Haeun said. “I’m asking whether it makes sense.”
“She thought it made sense,” you said. “I trust her judgment.”
“She was eighty-one and she hadn’t left this house in two years.” The silence that followed that sentence was a different quality entirely. Your mother put her glass down very carefully. Yang Junho cleared his throat and said something about the food being excellent, which was what men like him did when a table needed rescuing and he was the one with the social capital to do it. Your father laughed too quickly at something that wasn’t funny. Minjae became deeply interested in his plate. Jungwon wasn’t looking at your sister — instead at you — with an expression that was too controlled to read and too attentive to be neutral. Yerin said, lightly, pleasantly, into the recovering silence: “It must be wonderful to have a place like this to come home to. Even under sad circumstances.” She was looking at you when she said it. Even under sad circumstances. “It is,” you said. You held her gaze. “I’ve missed it.”
“Barcelona must be quite the change,” she said. “All that sun. All that distance.”
“I like distance,” you said pleasantly. “It gives you perspective.” Her smile stayed exactly where it was. “I imagine it does,” she said.
like it owed him something. “Your sister,” he said.
“I know.”
“She’s going to contest it.”
“She’s going to try,” you said. “She won’t succeed. Grandmother was meticulous.”
“She was,” he agreed. A pause. “She was meticulous about everything.” You thought about the notebook upstairs. The passage room tonight. The envelope against your chest earlier, both your names in her handwriting. “How much do you know?” you asked. Quietly. The same question as the garden, but in here it landed differently. In here it was just you two and the too-loud clock and the chipped tile and fifteen years of history in the walls. He looked at his hands on the table. “About the company — some. Not all. My father has been—” he paused, choosing the word— “selective about what he’s handed over.”
“Jungwon.”
“I know.” He looked up. “I know there’s something. I’ve been finding the edges of it for six months.” He held your gaze. “What did she leave you?”
“A notebook,” you said. “Seven years of notes. Dates, names, figures.”
He was very still. “My father’s name is in it,” you said. “Yours is too.” He looked at the table again. The muscle in his jaw moved once. “Tonight,” he said. “Show me tonight.”
“I will.” The clock ticked. The kitchen held you both the way it always had — indiscriminately, warmly, without judgment or agenda. Through the door you could hear the distant murmur of the sitting room. Your families on the other side of a wall. All their history and all their secrets and all the careful surfaces they maintained. “She sent me a tangerine once,” you said. Not because it was relevant. Because you needed a second.
Jungwon looked up.
“From the tree in the garden,” you said. “She packaged it up and posted it to Barcelona. Just one tangerine, wrapped in tissue paper, with a note that said the tree had a good year. Thought you should taste it. Nothing else.”
He was quiet for a moment. “She sent me a crossword clue once,” he said. “Just one clue. In the post. No puzzle, no page, just the clue on a card.” He almost smiled. “Seven letters. What two people share when they stop pretending.”
You looked at him. “Did you figure it out?” you asked.
“Eventually,” he said. He looked away first. “Honesty.” The clock ticked. The sitting room murmured. Neither of you said anything for a while, and the kitchen held you both, and outside the window the winter garden was dark and the fields beyond it were darker and somewhere in the walls of this house there were secret rooms and hidden documents and a dead woman’s careful architecture and the net was holding, still holding, over an abyss neither of you had looked directly at yet.
The door opened. Yerin stood in the doorway. Her eyes moved from you to Jungwon and back to you in a fraction of a second and her face showed nothing and showed everything. “There you are,” she said. Just to him.
“Just getting water,” Jungwon said. He stood up. Straightened. The professional composure settling back over him like a coat. Yerin’s eyes found yours one more time. The smile was small and precise and had teeth somewhere inside it. “Of course,” she said. Jungwon followed her out. You stood in the kitchen alone and listened to the clock tick and looked at the stool he’d been sitting on and thought about seven letters and everything that word contained and didn’t contain and how your grandmother had sent it to him in the post like a key and trusted him to find the lock eventually. You finished your water. You went upstairs. You sat on your bed with the notebook and the envelope and the Calvino and you waited for midnight.
—
Midnight in the manor sounded like this: The grandfather clock in the east corridor striking twelve with the particular resonance of something that had been marking time in the same place for longer than anyone alive could remember. The house settling into itself, old wood finding its resting position. Wind against the north-facing windows. And underneath all of it, the specific silence of a building full of sleeping people who didn’t know what was happening in its walls. You’d waited until one in the morning to be safe. You’d sat on your bed with the Calvino open to the Octavia chapter and read it three times and then put it face-down on the duvet and stared at the ceiling and thought about the crossword clue. Seven letters. What two people share when they stop pretending. Then you’d picked up the notebook and the envelope and the torch and gone to the third panel from the left.
Jungwon was already there. He’d brought a second candle and a blanket from somewhere, which was so specifically him — practical, quietly considerate, the kind of thoughtfulness that didn’t announce itself — that it did something small and inconvenient to your chest. He’d pushed the two chairs closer to the table and there was a thermos between them that smelled like barley tea and you stood in the entrance of the passage and looked at all of this and thought about your grandmother writing I have been patient because patience was what was needed and understood, not for the first time tonight, exactly what she had meant.
“You found the second tin,” you said. On the table beside the thermos: the olive green tin, open. And beside it, spread out in a loose arrangement, photographs. You crossed the room and looked at them. Fifteen photographs. Maybe more. All of you and Jungwon, all taken in this house, spanning — you picked them up one by one — what looked like a decade. You at nine in the passage room, cross-legged over the crossword, face screwed up in concentration. At eleven, standing in the kitchen covered in flour from some disaster you vaguely remembered involving a recipe and overconfidence. At thirteen, outside in the summer fields, both of you caught mid-run, the chickens a chaotic blur in the background, your face turned back toward the camera mid-laugh. At fifteen, sitting on the stone wall at the edge of the garden, shoulders touching, looking at something outside the frame, both of you with the particular quality of stillness that means you don’t know you’re being watched.
At seventeen. The last summer before Barcelona. The two of you in the library, you on the floor with a sketchbook, him in the armchair above you reading something, and neither of you looking at each other but the angle of your bodies saying everything that the lack of eye contact was trying not to say. Your grandmother had taken all of them. Arranged them. Put them in a tin in a secret room in the house she left specifically to you. I am leaving them the house and each other and every door I can think to unlock. “She documented us,” Jungwon said. He was standing beside you, looking at the photographs spread on the table. His voice was careful in the way it got when he was feeling something he hadn’t categorised yet.
“She documented everything,” you said. You sat down. He sat down. You poured the barley tea because your hands needed something to do. Then you put the notebook on the table. You walked him through it methodically the way your grandmother had recorded it — chronologically, without editorialising, the way she’d taught you to present information. Let the facts be the facts. Let them land before you decide what they mean. He listened without interrupting. That was one of the things about Jungwon that had always been true — he knew how to be still while someone was talking, genuinely still, not the performance of patience but the real thing. His father had it too but in him it felt like strategy. In Jungwon it had always felt like respect. You got to the woman’s name. The dates. The hotel in Busan. Jungwon looked at the notebook. “Your father.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Seven years that she documented. Possibly longer.”
He was quiet. “Does your mother know?”
“She knows something,” you said. “I don’t think she knows the shape of it.”
“Haeun?”
“I don’t know. Haeun would have used it by now if she did.” He nodded slowly. You turned to the next section. The company. The figures. The structure of the agreement between your families that had been built quietly over decades in the particular way that men build things they don’t want scrutinised — in pieces, in separate rooms, in the gaps between what was documented and what wasn’t. You watched Jungwon’s face while you walked him through it. He was very still. “You knew some of this,” you said. Not an accusation. A calibration.
“I knew the shape of it,” he said. “Not the detail.” He turned a page, read something, turned it back. “My father told me when I took over that there were legacy arrangements with certain partners that were — grandfathered in. His word. He said they were historical and that I didn’t need to concern myself with the mechanics, only the outcomes.”
“Did you accept that?” A pause. The candle moved. “For about four months,” he said. “Then I started finding things that didn’t add up and I started asking questions and my father told me I was looking too hard at things that didn’t need looking at.” He looked at the notebook. “I stopped asking questions to his face. I kept looking on my own.”
“What did you find?”
“Enough to know there’s a liability,” he said. “Enough to know that whatever this arrangement is, it would not survive scrutiny. Not legal scrutiny.” He looked at you. “Enough to know that if it came out, both companies would be implicated. Both families.” The candle. The stone walls. The photographs on the table.
“She knew,” you said. “She knew all of it and she left the documentation to me and she left you the crossword clue and she trusted us to—” you stopped. “To what?” he said.
“I don’t know yet,” you said honestly. “But she didn’t do this so we’d bury it again.”
He looked at the notebook for a long time. Then he reached out and turned to the last entry. Read it. His expression did something very quiet and very complicated. I trust them. I always have. He sat back. Pressed his hand over his mouth for a moment. Dropped it. “She should have told us,” he said. Not angry. Just — something underneath anger that hadn’t found its shape yet. “She told us everything,” you said. “We just didn’t have the key yet.” He looked at the photographs again. The one from the library, you on the floor, him in the chair, both of you tilted toward each other without knowing it. “She saw everything,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” you said. The word sat between you. Everything had a weight in this room, in this house, with these photographs spread on the table between you and the barley tea going cold and your grandmother’s handwriting on the pages of a notebook she’d spent seven years filling for this exact moment. You reached into your jacket and put the envelope on the table. Both your names. Her handwriting. Jungwon looked at it. “Now?” he said. You thought about the Octavia chapter. About nets and abysses and the things that hold. About patience, and what it was for, and when it ended. “Not yet,” you said. “There’s still the east corridor. The third door.”
He looked at you. “You want to go now.”
“I want to go now.” He almost smiled. It was the almost that got you — the way it stopped just short, the way the boy who had chased chickens with you was right there behind the composed professional surface, three millimetres from the outside, held back by three years and a girlfriend and a company and everything that had accumulated in the space your absence had left. He stood up. Picked up the torch. “Third door,” he said.
The east corridor at one in the morning was a different place entirely from the east corridor in daylight. The wallpaper, pale blue, faded at the seams, turned grey in the torchlight. The portraits of your grandmother’s family watched you pass with the unsettling patience of people who had been watching things happen in this house for a very long time. You moved quietly, both of you, the old instinct from childhood — sock feet on the floorboards, weight on the outside of the step, don’t breathe past the third portrait because the floor creaks. You didn’t breathe past the third portrait. Jungwon didn’t either. The third door. It was heavier than the others — solid wood, original to the house, with an iron handle that your grandmother had refused to replace with something modern. You turned it slowly and pushed and the room opened up in the torchlight.
Your grandmother had called it the old study. Your father and Yang Junho used it when they met here — papers spread on the desk, the door closed, the polite fiction of privacy in someone else’s house. It smelled of old paper and woodsmoke and faintly, underneath that, the cedar and something clean that you’d noticed when Jungwon had hugged you in the sitting room two days ago and had been careful not to think about since. He’d been in here recently. “You came here,” you said. Not an accusation. “After she died,” he said. He moved into the room, swept the torchlight along the walls. “I wanted to understand what my father and yours were doing in here. What they kept here.”
“Did you find anything?”
“The desk was clean,” he said. “Whatever they kept here they took when she died. Or before.” He stopped the torch beam at the far wall. “But she was smarter than that.” The far wall was bookshelves. Floor to ceiling, the same as the library on the other side of the passage, filled with the kind of books that accumulate in old houses — mismatched, well-read, organised by a logic that was entirely your grandmother’s. You crossed to them and ran the torchlight along the spines and then you remembered something. Third door, her note had said. And then: start with the east corridor. Not the room. The door itself. You turned back. The door was solid wood, original to the house. Iron handle. And on the back of it — you moved the torch slowly — carved into the wood at hip height, almost invisible, a small symbol. A circle with a line through it. The same symbol your grandmother used to mark the starting square of any puzzle she set you. Start here.
You crouched down. Ran your fingers along the bottom of the door frame. A loose board. Not rotten, not accidental. Deliberately loosened, the nails removed and replaced with something that held the board in place but gave when you pressed the right spot. You pressed the right spot.nThe board lifted. Inside: a metal document box, dark with age, sealed with a combination lock. Three digits. Jungwon crouched beside you. His shoulder against yours again. “She changed the combination every year,” he said. “She told me that once. She said the only constant was the starting number.”
“Seven,” you said immediately. He looked at you. “She always started with seven,” you said. “Every combination, every puzzle. Seven was the beginning. She said it was the only number that looked like someone thinking.” He took the box. Turned the dial. Seven. Then you looked at each other. “Her birthday,” you said. “The month.”
“Four,” he said. Seven. Four. One digit left. “The crossword clue,” you said slowly. “Seven letters. She sent it to you. The answer—”
“Honesty,” he said. “Eight letters.”
“No,” you said. “Think about what she actually wrote. What two people share when they stop pretending.” You looked at the lock. “She wouldn’t use the answer. She’d use the question.” Jungwon was quiet for a second. “The number of the clue,” he said. “She sent me one clue.”
“Which number was it?” He thought. The candle from the passage room was far away now, just a distant suggestion of warmth. In the torchlight his face was all shadow and focus and the particular expression he’d had at nine years old whenever a puzzle was almost solved. “One,” he said. “It was clue one across.”
Seven. Four. One. The lock opened. Inside the metal box: A folder of documents. Financial records, correspondence, agreements bearing both your fathers’ signatures, dated across fifteen years. The architecture of the thing your grandmother had recorded in her notebook, now in primary source form — not her observations but the actual evidence, the originals, the paper trail that would make a lawyer sit up very straight. She had not just documented it. She had collected it. For fifteen years she had quietly, methodically, with the patience of someone who understood that the right time was not now but was coming, gathered every piece of paper that passed through this house and made copies and built a case and put it in a box under the floor of the room where the men who didn’t know she was watching met to do their careful, private business.
Jungwon sat on the floor of the study with the documents spread around him and read. You sat beside him and read. The candle burned down in the passage room. At some point you’d both ended up with your backs against the wall beneath the window, shoulders touching, documents in your laps, and the torch propped against the skirting board pointing at the ceiling and making the room dim and amber. Outside, the manor was completely silent. Inside, the only sound was the occasional turning of a page.
Around three in the morning Jungwon said, quietly: “He knew I’d find this eventually.”
“My father?”
“Mine.” He turned a page. “He structured it this way on purpose. Grandfathered it in so that when I took over I’d inherit the liability without inheriting the knowledge.” He paused. “He was protecting himself. He thought if I didn’t know the detail I couldn’t be held responsible for knowing and saying nothing.”
“He was wrong,” you said.
“Yes,” Jungwon said. “He was.” You looked at the document in your lap. Your father’s signature at the bottom of an agreement dated eleven years ago. Neat, confident, the signature of a man who did not expect to be looked at too closely. “What do we do with this?” you said.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But we don’t bury it.” She didn’t do this so we’d bury it again. Your own words from earlier, back to you. “No,” you agreed. “We don’t.” You sat on the floor of the old study in the dark with the evidence of your families’ careful deceptions around you and the envelope with both your names in your jacket and the photographs in the passage room and the clock somewhere in the east corridor counting its six extra minutes that nobody else knew about.
Jungwon’s head tipped back against the wall. He looked at the ceiling. “I used to think about what it would be like,” he said, “when you came back.” You were very still. “I’d built this whole — picture of it,” he said. “You walking in. Me being normal about it.” A short almost-laugh. “I was not normal about it.”
“You were professional,” you said. “You were very professionally warm.”
“I know,” he said. He sounded tired in a way that had nothing to do with three in the morning. “I’ve been professionally warm about a lot of things for a long time.” The torch light flickered. Steadied. “Jungwon—”
“Not yet,” he said quietly. He turned his head and looked at you and his face in the low amber light was very close and very tired and very much the face of someone carrying something he didn’t have a name for yet. “I know. I know there are — I know.” You looked at him. He looked at you. The house was completely silent. “Okay,” you said. Quietly. “Not yet.” He nodded. Looked back at the ceiling. You both sat there for another hour, reading your families’ secrets in the dark, shoulders touching, not saying the thing, the envelope in your jacket ticking like a clock. Outside, eventually, the dark began to grey at the edges. “We should go back,” you said.
“Yes,” he said. Neither of you moved for another minute. Then he gathered the documents with the careful deliberate hands of a man who had decided something, put them back in the box, locked it. Looked at the combination — seven, four, one — and then at you. “She really did plan everything,” he said.
“Down to the last detail,” you agreed. He almost smiled again. Three millimetres from the outside. “Infuriating woman,” he said. With so much love it wasn’t an insult at all. You put the box back under the board. You both stood up. In the corridor you walked in single file, sock feet, outside edge of the step, not breathing past the third portrait. At the point where the corridor split — your wing, his — you stopped. He stopped. “The envelope,” he said.
“Soon,” you said. He looked at you for a moment. The grey pre-dawn light from the window at the end of the corridor fell across half his face and left the other half in shadow and he looked like something your grandmother would have photographed — like something that belonged to this house, to this particular quality of light, to the specific hour before the world woke up and everyone put their surfaces back on. “Okay,” he said. He went left. You went right. You lay on your bed as the manor began to fill with the sounds of morning and you stared at the ceiling and you held the envelope on your chest over your heartbeat and you thought about seven letters and what they contained and you thought:
Soon.
—
You slept for three hours. It wasn’t restful sleep — it was the kind that happens to you rather than for you, pulling you under between one thought and the next and depositing you back on the surface before you’d actually recovered from anything. You dreamed about the passage room. About the photographs spread on the table. About your grandmother’s handwriting, the letters getting smaller and smaller until they were too small to read and you were pressing your face to the page trying to find the last thing she’d written and waking up with your cheek against the envelope. You lay there for a moment with the morning light coming through the curtains at the angle your grandmother had approved of and you listened to the manor breathing around you.
Somewhere below, the kitchen was already alive — the smell of rice and something warm coming up through the house the way it always had, the particular smell of this house in the morning that had lived in your memory for three years like a frequency you couldn’t quite tune out. In Barcelona your mornings smelled like coffee and exhaust and the bread from the bakery two streets over. You had loved that smell. You had also, on certain mornings, stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen and closed your eyes and tried to remember this one.
You got up. Showered. Dressed. Put the envelope in the drawer of your childhood desk beneath a sketchbook, which felt both insufficient and like exactly what your grandmother would do — hiding things in plain sight, in the most obvious containers, trusting the right people to know where to look. Then you went downstairs. The kitchen at eight in the morning held your mother, a cup of tea, and the particular quality of silence that meant she’d been sitting there long enough for the silence to have settled into something deliberate. She looked up when you came in. Her eyes moved over your face the way mothers’ eyes do — reading something, calibrating, deciding how much to say. “You were up late,” she said.
“Couldn’t sleep,” you said. Which was true. She nodded. Looked at her tea. “Your grandmother used to do that. Walk the house at night.” A pause. “She said the house was different in the dark. That you could hear it thinking.” You poured yourself tea and sat down across from her.
In the morning light your mother looked her age in a way she rarely allowed. The grief was closer to the surface now, unguarded, the performance of composed widowhood resting somewhere else for the hour before the house fully woke up. She had loved Han Sooja with the complicated ferocity of a daughter who had never quite understood her mother and had spent sixty years trying to. That love was real. You had never doubted it. “Are you alright?” you asked.
She looked at you for a moment. Something moved across her face — an assessment, a decision. “I’m managing,” she said. Which was not the same as yes and they both knew it. You wrapped your hands around your mug and thought about the notebook. About the woman’s name and the dates and Busan. About your grandmother sitting in this house for seven years watching your father’s careful second life and recording it and saying nothing to your mother because your mother had chosen not to see and Han Sooja had respected that choice while quietly preparing for the consequences of it. You thought about how to carry what you knew and not let it show. You were apparently not as good at this as your grandmother. “What is it?” your mother said.
“Nothing,” you said. “I’m just tired.” She looked at you for another moment. Let it go. “Haeun called a lawyer this morning,” she said. Conversational. Almost. “Her own lawyer. She says it’s just to understand her options.”
“Of course she did,” you said.
“She’s not—” your mother stopped. Started again. “She’s not wrong that your grandmother could have been clearer about her reasoning. For the records. The architectural documents.”
“She was very clear,” you said, carefully. “She put it in the will.”
“I know she did.” Your mother’s hands moved around her cup. “I know.” A pause that had more inside it than its length suggested. “Your grandmother kept a great deal to herself. I accepted that. I spent my whole life accepting that.” Something small and old in her voice. “I sometimes wonder what she knew that she didn’t tell me.” The kitchen clock ticked. You looked at your mother’s face. At the grief in it, and underneath the grief the older, more weathered thing that had been there longer. The thing that had learned to sit next to an absence and call it marriage. She knows something, you’d told Jungwon. I don’t think she knows the shape of it. “She loved you,” you said. “She just loved you in her own way.” Your mother smiled. Small, tired, true. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
You found Haeun in the formal sitting room at nine with her laptop open and a woman you didn’t recognise sitting across from her — late forties, professional, the kind of person who carries a briefcase as a personality trait. The lawyer. Already here, already seated, already opening something on her tablet. Haeun looked up when you came in. Her smile was immediate and warm and about as genuine as a show home. “Good morning,” she said. “You look tired.”
“Good morning,” you said. “I see you’ve been busy.”
“Just preliminary conversations,” Haeun said lightly. “You know me, I like to understand things properly. This is Ms. Bae, she specialises in estate law.”
Ms. Bae nodded at you with the professional neutrality of someone being paid to have no opinions. “Haeun,” you said. “Grandmother has been dead for three weeks.”
“I know that.”
“Her body is barely—”
“I know that,” Haeun said. Her voice didn’t change. Didn’t sharpen. Stayed exactly where it was, which was somehow worse. “I’m not doing this to hurt anyone. I’m doing this because grandmother made decisions that affect this whole family and I think it’s reasonable to—”
“She made her decisions very deliberately,” you said. “Specifically. With full possession of everything she knew and everything she was.”
“She was eighty-one and isolated and possibly—”
“Don’t,” you said. Quiet. “Don’t say it, Haeun. Not in this house.” A silence. Ms. Bae became deeply interested in her tablet. Haeun looked at you for a long moment. And then, beneath the performance of reasonableness, you saw something real — something that wasn’t greed, not exactly, but the older wound underneath it. The child who had grown up knowing their mother had a favourite. Not unloved but not — first. Never quite first. You understood it. You even felt for it. But you had a notebook upstairs and an envelope in a drawer and a dead woman’s trust and you were not going to let that be dismantled because your sister was still trying to win an argument with someone who was no longer here to have it.
“I’m not going to fight you,” you said. “But I’m also not going to make it easy. Whatever grandmother left me she left me for a reason and I intend to honour that.” Haeun held your gaze. “Fine,” she said. The warmth had gone down to its lowest setting. “Then we’ll let the lawyers talk.” You left the room.
Yerin found you at eleven. You were in the garden — the formal part, the clipped hedges and the stone paths, where you’d gone to be outside and think and be somewhere that wasn’t a room full of someone else’s agenda. You had your sketchbook with you out of habit, but you hadn’t opened it. You were just sitting on the bench near the old sundial, which had been telling the wrong time since the seventies and which your grandmother had also refused to correct. She came down the path alone. No Jungwon. That was intentional — you registered it immediately, the way you registered everything about Yerin, with the involuntary alertness of someone in the presence of a thing that requires careful watching. She was dressed impeccably even at eleven in the morning in someone else’s country house garden. She sat down on the other end of the bench without asking and crossed her ankles and looked at the hedge in front of her and said nothing for long enough that it became its own kind of statement. You waited. “You grew up here,” she said finally.
“Yes,” you said. “The families are neighbours.”
“But you treated this house like yours.”
“My grandmother lived here,” you said. “She made it feel like ours. Mine and Jungwon’s.” The name landed. You’d done it deliberately, put it out there plainly, because you were tired and had slept for three hours and were not in the mood for the slow-motion version of this conversation. Yerin turned and looked at you directly for the first time. She had remarkable eyes — dark, steady, the eyes of someone who had decided a long time ago that she would not be the one to look away first. “He talks about this place like it raised him,” she said.
“It did, partly,” you said. “His family’s estate is half a kilometre that way.” You gestured. “We were back and forth constantly. His mother and mine were close.” A pause. “He and I were close.”
“Were,” she said. “We haven’t seen each other in almost three years,” you said. “People change.”
“Do they,” she said. Not a question. You looked at the sundial. “I’m not here to cause problems,” you said. “I came home because my grandmother died.”
“I know why you came home,” Yerin said. And then, very precisely: “It’s not why you’re staying that I’m thinking about.” You looked at her. She looked back. That steady, unblinking gaze. “I know what you two were,” she said. “Not because he told me — he’s very careful about what he tells me. Because of the way he is in this house.” She paused. “He’s different here. He laughs differently. He moves differently.” Something moved across her face that was not quite hurt and not quite anger and was instead something more complicated and more honest than either. “I’ve been with him for a year and a half and I have never seen him laugh the way he laughed in that kitchen two nights ago.” The garden was quiet. You didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say that wouldn’t be a lie or a cruelty. “I’m not stupid,” Yerin said. “I know what his father wants. I know what my family wants. I know what this relationship is built on and I know what it isn’t built on.” She turned and looked at the hedge again. “But I’m also not going to simply—” she stopped. Started again. “I have worked very hard to be what he needs. What everyone needs him to have.”
“That sounds exhausting,” you said. Quietly. Without any edge. She was quiet for a moment. “It is,” she said. Which surprised you. The honesty of it, the sudden flatness of it, stripped of the careful surface. “It really is.” You sat with that. The sundial gave its wrong time to the grey winter sky. “I don’t have a plan,” you said. Truthfully. “I don’t know what I’m doing here beyond what I’ve told you. I came home for the funeral. I’m dealing with the estate. I’ll go back to Barcelona.”
Yerin looked at you. “Will you.”
“I have a life there,” you said.
“Yes,” she said. “You do.” She stood up, smoothed her coat, looked down at you with those steady dark eyes. “And he has one here. One that was built very carefully. One that a lot of people are depending on.” A pause. “I want you to remember that.” She walked back up the path toward the house. You sat on the bench and watched her go and thought about what she’d said and what she hadn’t said and the specific way she’d said I have worked very hard to be what he needs with the exhaustion of someone describing a job they are very good at and do not love. You thought about Jungwon laughing in the kitchen. The three millimetres. You thought about a net over an abyss and what it meant to finally look down. You opened your sketchbook. You didn’t draw anything. You just sat with the blank page.
He found you there at noon. He came down the same path Yerin had come down an hour earlier and you watched him come and thought about what she’d said — he moves differently here — and looked for it and found it immediately, the thing she’d named. He walked like the house was familiar to him at the cellular level. Like his body remembered it even when the rest of him was trying to be someone who’d moved on. “Yerin talked to you,” he said. Not a question. “How did you know?”
“She told me,” he said. He sat down on the bench — the middle of it, not the far end. Closer than Yerin had sat. “She said she needed to talk to you and I asked her not to and she did it anyway.”
“She loves you,” you said. He looked at the sundial. “I know.”
“And you—”
“Don’t,” he said. Quietly. You stopped. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, looking at the ground between his feet. His jaw was tight. The professional composure was not all the way up this morning — three hours of sleep and a garden and nobody watching except you and it had slipped. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“You were going to ask if I love her.” He paused. “The answer is that I care about her and I respect her and I have not been—” he stopped— “I haven’t been fair to her. I know that. I’ve known it for—” another stop. Longer.
“Jungwon,” you said. He looked up. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” you said. “We’re not—” you gestured vaguely— “I’m not owed that.”
He looked at you for a long moment. “That’s the problem,” he said. His voice was very quiet. “That’s exactly the problem.” The wind moved through the formal garden. Somewhere across the grounds a door opened and closed. The manor held its breath. You looked at him. He looked at you. Three millimetres. “The envelope,” he said.
“Tonight,” you said. “Passage room.” He nodded. Looked away. Looked back. “She told me,” he said, “that you’d go back to Barcelona.”
“I have a life there,” you said. The same words.
“I know,” he said. He stood up. Straightened. The composure coming back up like a tide. “Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” you said. He went back up the path. You sat on the bench with your blank sketchbook page and the wrong-time sundial and the specific feeling of being someone standing at the edge of something enormous trying to decide whether enormous things were better walked toward or run from. Your grandmother had never run from anything. You closed the sketchbook.
—
The house went quiet at eleven. You heard it happen the way you always had — the gradual diminuendo of a building settling into night, the last doors closing, the last lights going off under the gap at the bottom of the corridor, the grandfather clock doing its twelve-stroke accounting of the hours. Your father had gone to bed early. Your mother had sat up reading, or pretending to read, until ten. Haeun and Minjae had retired without saying goodnight to you, which was its own kind of statement. Yang Junho had gone back to the Yang estate after dinner, taking his easy laugh and his careful warmth with him. Yerin was in the room at the end of the east guest corridor.
Jungwon was — you didn’t know exactly. His footsteps had gone past your door at ten-thirty and not come back. You sat on your bed with the envelope in your hands and the Calvino face-down beside you and you waited until the house was completely still.
Then you went to the third panel from the left.
He was already there. Both candles this time, placed at opposite ends of the small stone table, and the photographs still spread from two nights ago, and the barley tea thermos again because apparently this was something he did now — thought about whether you’d be cold, acted on it, said nothing about it. The second mismatched chair was pulled out at the angle that meant this is for you. You sat down. He sat down. You put the envelope on the table between the two candles.
Both your names. Her handwriting. The paper slightly worn at the fold from the number of times you’d handled it without opening it. You both looked at it. “I keep thinking,” Jungwon said, “that once we open it that’s it. Whatever she says becomes the thing she said. You can’t—” he paused— “you can’t unknow it.”
“We already know most of it,” you said.
“Not what she meant to do with it,” he said. “Not what she wanted from us.”
You looked at the envelope. “She wanted us to be ready,” you said. “That’s why she didn’t just leave it with the will. That’s why she put the notebook in the bedroom and the box under the floor and the photographs in the tin.” You turned the envelope over in your hands. “She was building up to this. She wanted us to find everything else first so that when we read this we’d—”
“Have the context,” he said.
“Be ready,” you said again.
He looked at you. “Are you?”
You thought about three years in Barcelona. About Sunday calls and tangerines in the post and the Calvino on your shelf and the way you’d stood in your yellow-tiled kitchen with a dead leaf in your hand and almost called him and didn’t. About the photograph on your grandmother’s dresser — your desk, your lamp, your small evidence of a life being built somewhere else. About the library. Seventeen years old. Him in the chair above you, you on the floor, neither of you looking at each other. “No,” you said honestly. “Open it anyway.”
He broke the seal. His hands were steady. Steadier than yours would have been — you knew that about yourself, that you went very shaken when things were enormous, that shakiness was your version of bracing.
He unfolded the paper with the care of someone handling something irreplaceable and laid it flat on the table between the candles. Her handwriting. Small, precise. Three pages, front and back, in the blue ink she’d used your entire life. You both leaned in and read.
To my granddaughter, and to Jungwon-ah.
I am writing this in October, which is the best month in this garden, and I am sitting at my desk with the window open and I can hear the tree. I want you to know that I am well as I write this. Clear-headed, if slower than I used to be. I have thought carefully about what I want to say and I have decided to say it directly because I am eighty-one years old and I have spent enough of my life being indirect and while I believe indirectness is an art form and frequently undervalued I think you two have earned something plainer.
First: the house. I am leaving it to you, my girl, because you understand what a building is. Not the walls or the deeds or the history that other people will try to tell you it represents. You understand that a house is a record of what happened inside it. That the walls remember. You will know what to do with what you find here and you will know what to do with the house itself when the time comes. I trust this completely.
Jungwon-ah: I am not leaving you the house because you already know where everything is. You have spent fifteen years learning its rooms and its passages and its particular way of holding secrets. You don’t need the deed. You need the person who has it.
Now. The harder things. I have kept records for seven years. You will have found them by now — the notebook, the box, all of it. I want to be clear about why I kept them. Not for revenge, though I will not pretend there is no satisfaction in the idea of your father finding out that I saw everything he thought he was doing privately. Not for leverage. I kept them because the truth was happening in my house and I refused to let it happen without a witness. Someone had to see it. I decided that person would be me. What you do with the records is your decision, not mine.
I have opinions, which I will share: the arrangement between the companies is not survivable in its current form and the longer it is maintained the larger the liability becomes. Jungwon-ah, your father built something with good intentions and poor judgment and the combination is always more dangerous than either alone. You are more careful than he is. You are also more honest, which he would consider a weakness and which I consider the only thing that will save you.
As for your father Y/N, I have watched him for twenty-two years. I have watched your mother choose not to watch him. I will not make that choice for her. When the time comes — and it will come, these things always do — she will need you both. Not to fix it. You cannot fix it. Just to stay.
And now the thing I have been working up to. I have watched you both for fifteen years. I have taken photographs and kept crosswords and sent tangerines in the post and asked questions I already knew the answers to and I have been, I think, excessively patient. I want to explain why. I was not waiting for the right moment. I was waiting for you both to become the people who could survive the right moment.
You were children and then you were young people and there is a specific kind of damage that happens when the right thing arrives before a person is ready to hold it and I was not willing to risk that with either of you. I believe you are ready now. I am saying this plainly because I am eighty-one and I have earned the right to be plain: I have never in my life seen two people more thoroughly and more stubbornly fail to see what was directly in front of them. I say this with tremendous love and only moderate exasperation.
You grew up beside each other. You ransacked my kitchen and chased my chickens and ran through my house with muddy shoes and I watched you do all of it and I watched what happened in the spaces between the noise, which is where the real things were. I watched you learn each other. I watched you become the people each other needed. I watched you not say it and not say it and not say it and I thought: they are seventeen, they have time.
And then you left, my girl. And I understood why, and I respected it, and I watched Jungwon-ah come and sit in my garden and not say anything about it for three years, and I watched you call me every Sunday from Barcelona and not ask about him directly, always sideways, always carefully, and I thought: they are going to need some help. This is the help.
I am giving you the house and I am giving you the records and I am giving you the passages and the photographs and the puzzles and the box under the floor. I am giving you October light through an open window and barley tea and two chairs in a room nobody else knows about. I am giving you every door I can think to unlock.
The rest is yours. I love you both. I have loved watching you. I am not afraid of where I’m going but I am sorry to miss what comes next. Take care of the tree.
— Halmoni.
P.S. Jungwon-ah; the seven of spades. You will remember what that means. It was always yours.
The candles burned. You read it once and then you sat back and looked at the stone ceiling and blinked several times in rapid succession. Your grandmother had said she was going to be plain and she had been plain and it had landed exactly as she’d intended it to, which was with the force of something that had been true for a very long time and had simply been waiting for someone to say it out loud.
Jungwon had not moved. He was still leaning forward, elbows on the table, reading the last page. Or re-reading it. Or sitting very still the way he did when something was enormous.
You looked at the side of his face. At the candlelight on it. At the line of his jaw and the way his eyes moved across the page and the three millimetres that had been there since you’d walked into the sitting room and found him across the room and felt your stomach drop straight through the floor. He sat back.He looked at the letter for another moment. Then he looked at you.
“The seven of spades,” he said. His voice was different. Quieter. Stripped of something.
“What does it mean?” you said. He reached into the pocket of his shirt. And he put something on the table. A playing card. The seven of spades. The one from the first tin, that you’d left there — or a second one, identical, worn at the edges with age.
“She gave it to me,” he said, “when I was sixteen. We were playing cards in this room and she dealt us both a hand and when I turned mine over there was a seven of spades on top and she said—” he paused— “she said that one’s yours. Keep it. And I didn’t know what she meant, I thought she was just being—” a brief sound that was almost a laugh— “herself. Being her. So I kept it.” He turned the card over in his fingers. “I’ve had it in my wallet for seven years. I take it out sometimes. I never knew what it meant.”
You looked at the card. “Seven of spades,” you said. “In cartomancy—”
“I looked it up eventually,” he said. “Three years ago. Right after you left.”
“What does it mean?”
He put the card down on the table. Looked at it. “Unfinished business,” he said. “Something that was set in motion and hasn’t resolved. Something that’s still—” he stopped.
“Still in motion,” you said.
“Yes.” The candles. The stone room. Fifteen photographs on the table. Your grandmother’s handwriting on three pages of blue ink telling you both the plainest truth she’d saved for last. I have never in my life seen two people more thoroughly and more stubbornly fail to see what was directly in front of them. “She was right,” you said quietly. “About the thoroughly and stubbornly part.”
“Infuriating woman,” he said again. But his voice broke slightly on the last word and it wasn’t exasperation at all, it was grief, it was the specific grief of missing someone who knew you completely and there was nothing to do with that kind of grief except let it be exactly as large as it was.
You reached across the table. Your hand over his. He looked down at it. He didn’t move for a moment. Then he turned his hand over beneath yours and held it. Just that — palm to palm, his fingers closing around yours, the simple warm weight of it. You sat like that for a while. “Jungwon,” you said eventually.
“I know,” he said.
“There’s—” you started. “There’s a lot happening. The records, the companies, Haeun, your father—”
“I know.”
“And Yerin.” His hand tightened slightly around yours. Not pulling away.
“I know,” he said. A third time. A different weight each time.
You looked at the letter. At the last line before the postscript. I am not afraid of where I’m going but I am sorry to miss what comes next. “She would have loved this,” you said. “Being right.”
“She would have been unbearable about it,” he said.
“She would have been so restrained,” you said. “She would have just looked at us and not said anything and somehow that would have been worse.” He made that almost-laugh sound again. It was closer this time. It was getting closer. “She sent me one tangerine,” you said.
“She made me finish the crossword,” he said.
“She kept fifteen photographs in a tin.”
“She put fresh batteries in the torch.” You both looked at the candles. “She planned everything,” you said.
“Everything,” he agreed. His thumb moved. Once, across your knuckles. The smallest possible thing.
The candle on the left burned down to its base and went out. The room got smaller. The remaining candle made everything amber and close and the stone walls pressed in gently and the photographs were spread on the table and his hand was in yours and outside the manor the winter was doing whatever winter does at two in the morning.
“Tell me something about Barcelona,” he said. Quietly. Like he was asking for something he’d wanted for a long time and had finally decided to ask for. You thought about it.
“There’s a building,” you said. “In the Eixample. Not famous, not on any list, nobody goes specifically to see it. But at five in the afternoon in autumn the light hits the facade in this particular way and it looks like—” you paused, finding the words— “it looks like it’s remembering something. Like the building is having a memory.” You paused. “I used to walk past it on the way home and think about this house. About how old buildings hold things.” He was quiet. “I used to think about you,” you said. Because your grandmother had spent three pages telling you to stop not saying things. “When I walked past it. About showing you.”
He looked at your joined hands. “I used to drive past the airport,” he said. Not looking up. “When flights from Barcelona came in. Not to meet anyone. Just—” he stopped.
“Just,” you said.
“Just,” he said. The last candle flickered. In the amber half-dark you looked at each other and everything your grandmother had written was true and had been true for longer than either of you had been willing to name it and the net was still holding, still holding, and below it was the abyss which you were both finally, for the first time, looking directly at.
He leaned forward. You leaned forward. The candle went out.
In the dark: his forehead against yours. His breath. Both your hands on the table between the photographs. Just that. Just the weight of it. The held thing, finally held between two people instead of inside one. “Not yet,” he said. Against your forehead. His voice was barely sound.
“I know,” you said.
“I have to—” he stopped. “There are things I have to do first. Things I have to say. To her. To my father. I can’t—” he exhaled. “I won’t do this like it’s something to hide. I won’t do that to you.”
Your eyes had adjusted to the dark. You could just see the shape of him. The outline. “Okay,” you said.
“Soon,” he said. And it was your word back to you, the one you’d been handing back and forth for days, and in his mouth it meant something different now. It meant a door about to open rather than one being held closed.
“Soon,” you said.
You stayed like that for another minute. Foreheads together in the dark. Hands on the table. The letter between the extinguished candles.
Then you both sat back. He found the torch. Clicked it on. The room came back. He looked at you in the white torchlight and you looked at him and there was something different in the air of the room now, something that had been there all along but had finally been acknowledged, and it was terrifying and it was also — underneath the terrifying — the most settled you had felt since you’d stepped off the plane.
He folded the letter carefully and put it back in the envelope. “Keep it with the notebook,” he said.
“I will.” He stood. You stood. He looked at the seven of spades on the table. He picked it up. Held it for a moment. Then he put it in your hand.
“She said it was mine,” he said. “I think she meant it was ours.” You closed your fingers around it. He picked up the torch. You followed the light out of the secret room and back into the walls of the manor, and the house held you both the way it always had, and somewhere in the east corridor the grandfather clock ticked through its six extra minutes that nobody else knew about, and the walls remembered everything.
—
Morning came in like it hadn’t been briefed on what happened the night before. Pale winter light through the curtains. The kitchen smell rising through the house. The grandfather clock doing its eight-stroke announcement of an hour you’d technically only slept through three of.
You lay on your back with the seven of spades on the nightstand beside the Calvino and the envelope in the drawer and you stared at the ceiling and felt the specific quality of a day that was going to be significant before it had done anything yet. Forehead against yours. His breath. Soon.
You got up.
You didn’t see Jungwon at breakfast. His seat was empty. Yerin’s too. You registered this with the carefully neutral expression of someone who had been trained by their grandmother to reveal nothing at inopportune moments and you ate your rice and drank your tea and listened to your father talk to Yang Junho about something that had nothing to do with anything your grandmother had documented and you watched your father’s face and thought about the woman’s name recurring through seven years of entries.
Yang Junho was in good form this morning. Easy, expansive, filling the room the way he always did. He’d stayed over — the guest room on the second floor, the one with the good view of the garden. He spoke warmly about your grandmother, about the estate, about the families’ long history together and what a comfort it was to be here, to be among people who understood the weight of a loss like this.
Your mother smiled at him. Your father nodded. You watched the space between the three of them and thought about what your grandmother had written. Your father built something with good intentions and poor judgment and the combination is always more dangerous than either alone. She had meant Yang Junho. But sitting here watching your own father nod along, the sentence fit like a coat made for two people.
Haeun arrived at half past eight with the bright eyes of someone who’d slept well because they’d externalised all their feelings into legal strategy. She kissed your mother’s cheek and sat down and accepted coffee and was charming to Yang Junho and you watched her work the table and thought: she has no idea. She is fighting about the wrong things entirely. None of them know what’s in this house. None of them know what’s in the walls.
You found out where Jungwon was at nine-fifteen when you were coming back from the garden and heard voices in the east corridor. Not arguing. Not quite. But the specific register of a conversation that was trying very hard not to become an argument and was losing. Yerin’s voice, low and controlled: “I just want to know if something changed.”
Jungwon’s voice, careful, deliberate, the voice he used when he was being honest and it was costing him: “Nothing happened.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
A pause. “Yerin—”
“Don’t.” A silence. “Don’t say my name like that. Like you’re managing me.” You had stopped walking. You were standing three metres from the bend in the corridor with your hand flat against the pale blue wallpaper and you were not moving.
“I’m not managing you,” he said. “I’m trying to—”
“You’ve been trying to say something since we got here,” she said. “I’ve been watching you try to say it for three days. And last night you didn’t come to bed until four in the morning and you thought I was asleep but I wasn’t.” A long silence.
When he spoke again his voice was different. Quieter. The professionalism gone all the way down. “I know,” he said.
“Is it her,” Yerin said. Not a question. The wallpaper under your hand was cool and slightly rough, the texture of something very old.
“It’s not—” he started.
“Jungwon.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said. “It was never—” a pause— “I didn’t come here intending for anything to—”
“I know you didn’t,” she said. And the thing in her voice was not what you expected. It wasn’t fury. It was the exhausted, clear-eyed honesty of someone who had known something for a long time and had chosen not to name it and had now run out of reasons not to. “I’ve known since we arrived. I think I knew before we arrived. I think I’ve known for—” she stopped herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he meant it. You could hear that he meant it completely.
“Don’t apologise for having feelings,” she said. “Apologise for letting me come here. For letting me stand in that sitting room and meet her and pretend I didn’t see it immediately.” Her voice wavered once, precisely once, and then steadied. “Apologise for making me the person who had to see it clearly while you were still pretending.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Different weight.
“Is it real?” she said. “Or is it just — this house, the history, grief making everything feel—”
“It’s real,” he said quietly. “It’s been real for a long time. Before Barcelona. Before the company. Before any of this.” A pause. “I should have known that before I—” he stopped. “I should have been more honest with you from the beginning. About what I was carrying.” You closed your eyes.
“Your father is going to be furious,” Yerin said. Not bitterly. Just factually.
“I know.”
“Mine too.”
“I know.” Another silence. Longer. You could hear the quality of two people recalibrating.
“I don’t hate her,” Yerin said finally. “I wanted to. It would be easier.” A short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She’s exactly what I expected her to be. Which is somehow the worst part. I’m going to need some time,” she said. “And I’m going to need you to not be — kind about this. I can’t do kind right now.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Go sort out whatever you need to sort out,” she said. “I’ll handle the rest.” Footsteps. You moved. Fast, silent, back around the bend in the corridor and into the doorway of the linen room, pressing yourself into the shadow of it, heart going considerably faster than was dignified.
Yerin came around the corner and walked past you without seeing you. Her face was composed and dry-eyed and very, very tired and she walked like someone who had made a decision and was now simply executing it, one step at a time, down the corridor and around the next bend and gone. You stood in the linen room doorway and breathed.
You didn’t go to him. That was the right thing and you knew it was the right thing — he needed time, she needed time, the corridor needed to stop being the corridor where that conversation had happened before it was the corridor where you appeared. So you went to the library instead and sat in the armchair — his armchair, seventeen years old, the photograph, you on the floor — and opened the Calvino and read three pages without taking in a single sentence.
The library was the warmest room in the house in winter. South-facing windows, old rugs, the smell of paper and wood and decades of accumulated reading. Your grandmother had called it the room that minds its own business, which was the highest compliment she gave to spaces. You put the Calvino face-down on your knee and looked at the ceiling.
He’d said it. It’s been real for a long time. Before Barcelona. You thought about being seventeen in this room. Him in the chair above you. Neither of you looking at each other and both of you angled toward each other like plants toward light, so obvious in retrospect, so invisible from the inside. You thought about the morning you left for Barcelona. Five-thirty, still dark, your father loading the car. Your mother with tea in a thermos for the journey. And Jungwon — he’d come over, you hadn’t expected him, you’d seen the lights of his car in the driveway and felt something lurch in your chest and he’d gotten out and stood there with his hands in his pockets and said text me when you land and you’d said I will and the distance between you had been three metres and had felt like something that would grow and that you were choosing to let grow and that you were not going to say anything about.
That was all. Three years of Sundays with your grandmother and not once had you called him directly. Thoroughly and stubbornly, she’d written. I say this with tremendous love and only moderate exasperation. You pressed the book against your face and made a sound into it that was not your most dignified moment.
The knock on the library door came at eleven. Not Jungwon. You knew by the knock — two short, businesslike, the knock of someone who had decided they were coming in regardless of the answer. “Come in,” you said.
Your father. He came in and closed the door behind him with the careful quietness of someone who wanted this conversation to stay in the room. He was dressed well, as always, silver-templed, handsome in the way that photographs well, and this morning there was something different in the way he was holding himself. A tension in the shoulders. Something behind his eyes that was working too hard to look like nothing. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said.
“It’s a good room,” you said. He looked around it. Nodded. Came and sat in the chair across from you — not Jungwon’s chair, the other one, lower, the one your grandmother had used when she wanted to read facing the garden.
“How are you doing?” he said. “Really. With all of it.”
“I’m managing,” you said.
“The business with Haeun and the will—”
“I can handle Haeun.”
“I know you can.” He smiled. The practiced warmth of it. “You’re the most capable person in this family, you know that. You always have been. Your grandmother always said so.” You looked at him. He was too eager to know what the letter said, too careful about the manor.
“She mentioned you in the letter,” you said. You hadn’t planned to say it. But you were your grandmother’s granddaughter and you had learned from the best and sometimes the direct approach was the one that told you the most. His face did not change. That was the tell — a different face would have changed, would have shown surprise or curiosity, would have asked what did she say?
His face stayed precisely where it was, which meant he’d been expecting this, which meant he’d been thinking about what she might have known and deciding how to handle it. “That’s kind,” he said. “She was a remarkable woman.”
“She was,” you said. “She was also very thorough.”
“What do you mean?” he said. Light. Careful.
“She kept records,” you said. “Of the house. Of the people in it. Of — everything, really. You know how she was.”
“Of course,” he said. The smile staying exactly where it was.
“Dad,” you said. Quietly. Not an accusation. Just his name. And something shifted. Something small but real — a crack in the surface, so quick you’d have missed it if you weren’t watching carefully, if you hadn’t been trained your whole life by the woman who’d taught you that the truth lived in the space between what people said and what their face did when they said it.
“Whatever you think you know,” he said. Still quiet. Still composed. “I want you to understand that things between your mother and I are—”
“Complicated?” you said.
“Adult,” he said. “They’re adult. They’re not—” he stopped. Reorganised. “Your grandmother had opinions about my marriage that she never fully expressed to me but which I was always aware of. Whatever she wrote—”
“I haven’t decided what to do with it yet,” you said. That landed. He looked at you. Really looked at you, for the first time in the conversation, with the eyes of a man recalibrating what he was dealing with.
“You’re very like her,” he said. Slowly. And it wasn’t a compliment exactly and it wasn’t a threat exactly and it sat in the space between those two things doing something complicated.
“Thank you,” you said. As if it had been a compliment.
He stood up. Straightened his jacket. Moved toward the door. At the door he stopped. “The architectural records,” he said. Without turning around. “The original documents. The floor plans.” A pause. “Is there anything in them that would be — relevant to current matters.”
You thought about the metal box under the floor of the third room. The fifteen years of documents. His signature at the bottom of an agreement dated eleven years ago. “I haven’t gone through everything yet,” you said. He nodded. Once. And left.
—
The thing about a house full of people keeping secrets is that the secrets create pressure. And pressure, sustained long enough, finds the weakest point. The weakest point turned out to be the sitting room at two in the afternoon when the families had reconvened in the way they kept reconvening, pulled together by the gravity of the occasion and the shared fiction that everything was normal, that this was simply a gathering of old friends in mourning, that the ground was solid.
Yang Junho was telling a story about your grandmother — a good one, genuinely funny, about a business meeting she had attended thirty years ago and dominated completely without ever raising her voice. Your mother was laughing. Your father was laughing. Even Haeun was laughing.
Jungwon was sitting across the room. He’d come in ten minutes ago and taken the chair by the window and met your eyes briefly when he sat down and then looked away. He hadn’t spoken much. Yang Junho had put his hand on his son’s shoulder when he came in and Jungwon had not visibly reacted and you had watched the specific quality of that not-reacting and understood that something had already happened between them this morning.
Yerin was not in the room. Nobody had asked where she was.
You were watching the fire when Haeun’s phone rang. She glanced at it, made a small apologetic gesture, and stepped out. Two minutes later she came back in and her face had done something you hadn’t seen it do in a very long time — it had gone genuinely, unperformatively still. The stillness of shock. She looked at your father. “I need to speak with you,” she said. “Now.”
The room shifted. Your father’s laugh ended. “Haeun—” your mother said.
“Not you,” Haeun said. Still looking at your father. Her voice had no warmth in it at all, no performance, nothing. “Just him.”
“Whatever you need to say—” your father started.
“I was just on the phone with Ms. Bae,” Haeun said. And something in her voice made everyone in the room go very still. “She’s been going through the estate filings. The things that were submitted publicly as part of the probate record.” She paused. The pause was a grenade with the pin already pulled. “She found a company filing. Seven years ago. A subsidiary registered under a holding name.” She looked at your father. “Your name is on it. And so is the name of a woman who is listed as a joint director.”
The fire crackled. Your mother turned to look at your father. And on your father’s face — just for a moment, one unguarded moment before the composed surface came back up — was the expression of a man who had known this day was coming for seven years and had convinced himself it wouldn’t. “Haeun,” he said. Warning.
“Her name is Park Jooyeon,” Haeun said. She said it clearly, without hesitation, the way you rip off a plaster because fast is kinder than slow. “She’s been listed as a director of your subsidiary for seven years. The filing also shows a residential address which is—” she glanced at her phone— “not this house.” Your mother said nothing. The room held its breath.
“I think,” Yang Junho said, standing up with the practiced authority of a man who had been managing rooms for forty years, “that this is perhaps a family conversation—”
“Sit down, Junho,” your mother said. He sat down. Everyone looked at your mother. She was looking at your father. Her face was doing something you had never seen it do and hoped never to see again — not anger, not shock, but the specific expression of a person watching something they already knew become something they could no longer choose not to know. The shape of it finally arriving. The avoidance finally over. “How long,” she said. Your father opened his mouth. “Don’t lie to me,” she said. Very quietly. “I have lived in the shape of this lie for long enough. Don’t make me hear another one.”
“Mum—” you said.
“Not now,” she said. Without looking at you. Still looking at him.
“At least twenty years,” Haeun said. She’d gone very pale. Her voice had lost its edge — she’d wanted ammunition and she’d gotten a detonation and they were different things and she was just now feeling the difference. “Ms. Bae found earlier filings. Different company name. Same address.”
Twenty years. The number went around the room. Your mother stood up. “I would like everyone to leave this room,” she said. With the composure of someone who had spent sixty years learning from Han Sooja how to be still when everything was breaking. “Except for my husband.”
People stood. Moved. Yang Junho put his hand briefly on your mother’s shoulder as he passed and she didn’t acknowledge it and he didn’t require her to. You stood in the doorway. Your mother looked at you. Her eyes were dry. They would probably stay dry — that was her way, the Han way, grief and fury going inward first and only surfacing when she was ready to let them. You recognised it because you did it too. She gave you the smallest nod.
The corridor outside the sitting room. Jungwon was there. He’d come out just ahead of you and he was standing at the window at the end of the corridor with his back to the room, looking out at the winter garden, his hands loose at his sides. You came and stood beside him.
Below: the formal garden, the stone paths, the sundial giving its wrong time. The bench where Yerin had sat beside you. The path where you’d watched him walk back to the house with his composure settling over him like a coat. “She planned this too,” you said quietly. “Not the sitting room. But — she knew this would happen. Eventually. She wrote it in the notebook. It will come, these things always do.”
“Yes,” he said.
“She wanted us here when it did.”
“Yes,” he said again. You looked at the garden.
“Your father,” you said. “This morning.” He exhaled. Not a sigh — something more deliberate than that. Something he’d been holding since before breakfast.
“He came to me at eight,” he said. “He’d already spoken to yours. Some kind of warning system they’d apparently arranged.” His jaw tightened. “He told me there might be some questions raised about the companies in the coming days and that I should be prepared to manage the narrative.”
“Manage the narrative,” you said.
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him,” Jungwon said carefully, “that I’d been looking at the companies for six months and that I thought what he’d built with your father was a liability and that I wasn’t prepared to manage any narrative that involved me pretending I didn’t know what I knew.”
“How did he take that?”
“About as well as you’d expect.” You looked at his profile. The set of his jaw. The tiredness in him that was different from yesterday’s tiredness — this was the tiredness of someone who had said the honest thing to their father and was living in the aftermath.
“Yerin left,” he said. “An hour ago. Her driver came.”
“I know,” you said. “I heard — I was in the corridor. This morning. I didn’t mean to hear.”
He looked at you. “How much?”
“Enough,” you said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He looked back at the garden. “She was right about all of it. I wasn’t fair to her.” A pause. “She deserved better than what I gave her.”
“She’s going to be alright,” you said. Because it was true — you’d seen it in Yerin’s face, that hard clear-eyed competence. She would grieve this in private and then she would be formidable again. Women like Yerin always were.
“I know,” he said. “That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” you said. “It doesn’t.” Below, the sundial. The wrong time. Your grandmother’s unrepentant refusal to correct anything that she’d decided was fine as it was. Inside the sitting room your mother was having the conversation that had been twenty years in the making.
In the walls of the house the passages waited, the photographs on the table in the candlelit room, the seven of spades somewhere in your jacket. “What happens now?” you said.
He turned from the window and looked at you directly and his face had none of the professional composure on it and none of the careful distance and was just — him. Tired and honest and present in the way he’d been at one in the morning on the floor of the old study and in the way he’d been at seventeen in the library and in the way he’d always been when it was just you and the house and none of the surfaces required. “Now,” he said, “everything falls apart for a while.”
“And then?”
He looked at you for a long moment. “And then we see what’s left,” he said. From behind the sitting room door, muffled and distant, your mother’s voice. Not loud. Never loud. But with an edge in it like a clean cut, precise and final, the voice of a woman who had decided that the shape of this particular truth was one she was done living inside.
The house held it all. The grief and the reckoning and the long-delayed arrivals of things that had been on their way for years. The walls remembered. They always had. Your grandmother had known that. She’d counted on it.
—
The house didn’t sleep that night. Not really. It had the shape of sleeping — quiet corridors, dark rooms, the grandfather clock marking hours into silence — but underneath it was awake the way houses get when something significant has happened inside them. Like the walls were still processing. Like the rooms needed time to absorb what they’d held that afternoon.
Your mother had come out of the sitting room at four o’clock. She’d walked past you in the corridor with her back straight and her face composed and her eyes doing the thing they did — grief going inward, fury going inward, everything going inward to be dealt with in private on her own terms in her own time. She’d touched your face with one hand as she passed. Just that. Her palm against your cheek for three seconds, warm and dry, and then she’d gone upstairs.
Your father had left the sitting room twenty minutes later. He’d taken his coat from the rack by the front door and gone outside and you’d watched from the corridor window as he walked down the front drive and stood at the gate and made a phone call and you had not needed to wonder who he was calling.
Haeun had found you at five and said I didn’t mean for it to come out like that and you’d said I know because you did know — she’d wanted leverage and had accidentally dismantled the family instead and the gap between those two things had clearly shaken her more than she’d expected. You’d made her tea. You’d sat with her in the kitchen while she held the mug and stared at the table. That was the most honest you’d been with each other in years, sitting in silence while your family reconfigured itself in the rooms above you.
Yang Junho had left at six. Businesslike, minimal. He’d shaken your father’s hand when your father came back in and something had passed between them in that handshake — something that looked like a renegotiation — and then he was gone.
Jungwon had stayed. You’d seen him at dinner, which was quiet and reduced and nothing like the dinners this house was built for. Your mother had come down and eaten and said almost nothing and your father had sat at the opposite end of the table from her and the distance between them had the specific quality of a distance that had always existed but had only just been measured.
Haeun and Minjae had left after dinner. Minjae had squeezed your shoulder on the way out, which was the most he’d ever communicated to you directly and which you’d appreciated. And then the house had gone quiet. And you had lain on your bed and stared at the ceiling and waited for sleep and sleep had declined the invitation.
The clock in the east corridor struck two when you were already in the kitchen. You hadn’t turned the overhead light on. Just the small light above the stove, the one that had always been there, the one that turned the kitchen amber and warm and made it look the way it looked in every memory you had of it.
You were standing at the counter with both hands wrapped around a mug of tea you hadn’t drunk yet and you were looking at the window above the sink and the darkness outside it and you were thinking about your mother’s palm against your cheek. Just to stay, your grandmother had written. Not to fix it. You cannot fix it. Just to stay.
You heard him before you saw him. The particular sound of his footsteps — the outside edge of the step, old habit, the way you moved in this house at night without deciding to. The door opened. You didn’t turn around. He came in. Stopped. Registered the amber light and you at the counter and said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed the room and stood beside you at the counter and looked at the dark window and also said nothing. You handed him your tea. He took it. Drank. Handed it back. “How is she?” he said. Quietly.
“She went to bed at nine,” you said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping either.”
“No,” he said.
“He’s in the guest room,” you said. “The east one. He didn’t try to go to their room.”
“Small mercies,” Jungwon said. The clock in the east corridor was very faint from here. Just a suggestion of ticking. The kitchen had its own sound — the refrigerator’s low hum, the settling of the old pipes, the back door with the broken latch occasionally sighing in the wind.
“Your father,” you said.
“We talked again after dinner,” he said. “When you were with your mother.” He paused. “I told him I’ve been building a case for six months. That I know what the arrangement is. That I’m going to have to restructure the company’s position and that it’s going to require disclosure and that he needs to be prepared for that.”
“How did he take it?”
“He told me I didn’t understand business.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I understood it well enough to know that what he’d built was going to collapse eventually and that the only question was whether we were the ones who dismantled it carefully or whether it fell on us.” A pause. “He said I sounded like your grandmother.”
“Good,” you said. Something moved in Jungwon’s face. Almost a smile. You put the mug down. Turned around and leaned against the counter with your arms crossed not as a defence but as something to do with your hands. He turned too, mirroring you, and you stood there facing each other in the amber kitchen light and the house was completely quiet and you were both in old clothes — him in a dark t-shirt and soft trousers, you in whatever you’d put on when sleep became definitively not happening — and there were no surfaces up at two in the morning in this kitchen. There never had been. That was the thing about this room. It didn’t allow for them.
“She’s going to be alright,” you said. About your mother. About the specific quality of her composure.
“I know,” he said. “She’s a Han woman.”
“Don’t let her hear you say it like that or she’ll take it as an insult.”
“She’d be right,” he said. “It was completely a compliment.”
You looked at him. He looked at you. The refrigerator hummed. “Jungwon,” you said.
“Yes,” he said. Not a question.
“What you said this morning. To your father. About the company.” You held his gaze. “That was the hard version. The harder version than anything I’ve asked you to do.”
“It needed to be done,” he said.
“I know. I’m saying — I know what it cost.” He looked at you for a moment. Something in him settling, like a weight redistributed. “She would have approved,” he said.
“She would have handed you the crossword and not said anything and that would have been the approval,” you said. He made that sound again, the almost-laugh, and this time it came all the way out — quiet, real, and the boy who had chased chickens was fully present in it and the three millimetres collapsed entirely and you felt it in your sternum like a struck bell.
He reached out and tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. His hand stayed. Cupped the side of your face. You went very still. His thumb moved along your cheekbone. The same gesture your mother had used in the corridor except that this one was slow and deliberate and asking something.
“I talked to Yerin,” he said. Quietly. “She called tonight. We — it’s done. It’s properly done. I wanted you to know that.”
“Okay,” you said. Your voice was not entirely steady.
“I told you I wouldn’t do this like something to hide,” he said. “I meant it.”
“I know you did.” His eyes moved over your face. Unhurried. The way he moved in this house — like he knew every room and had time.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about what to say. Since the passage room. I had things arranged. Sentences.” The corner of his mouth. “They’re all gone.”
“Say it without sentences,” you said.
He looked at you. “I drove past the airport,” he said. “Every time a flight came in from Barcelona. I did that for three years. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself I was just—” he stopped. “I didn’t tell myself anything, actually. I just drove there.”
Your hand came up and covered his where it held your face. His breath shifted slightly. “I have my grandmother’s crossword clue for you in my head,” you said. “Seven letters. I keep thinking about it.”
“Honesty,” he said.
“Honesty,” you said. And then neither of you said anything else.
He closed the distance — not rushed, not after all this time, not after three years and this house and fifteen photographs and both your names on an envelope — he closed it like he’d been planning the exact geometry of it for longer than either of you were going to admit, one hand still cradling your face and the other coming to rest at your waist and his mouth meeting yours with the specific quality of something that had been waiting long enough that when it arrived it felt less like a beginning than like a return.
You kissed him back with every Sunday call you hadn’t made and every time you’d almost said something and every seven of spades and every tangerine in the post and the whole accumulated weight of it came through in the way your hands went to the front of his shirt like they already knew where they were going.
He made a quiet sound against your mouth. His hand moved from your waist to the small of your back and pulled you closer and you went, easily, completely, like a thing that had been resisting gravity for three years finally letting go. He tasted like tea and the faint ghost of something warmer and he kissed the way he did everything in this house — like he knew the rooms, like he had time, thorough and unhurried and devastatingly present.
His hand slid from your face into your hair and tipped your head back and you made a sound you didn’t intend to make and felt him inhale sharply at it. “Hi,” he said against your mouth. His voice low and a little wrecked already.
“Hi,” you said.
He pulled back just enough to look at you. His hand still in your hair, yours still twisted in his shirt, both of you breathing like you’d been doing something more athletic than standing in a kitchen.
In the amber light his eyes were dark and his mouth was slightly swollen and he was looking at you with an expression that had nothing professional or composed or carefully maintained about it whatsoever. He was looking at you the way he looked at the passages when they opened — like something that had been there all along and was finally, finally being seen. “Three years,” he said quietly.
“More than three years,” you said. He kissed you again and this one was less careful — his hands moving down your back, yours sliding up to his shoulders, the counter behind you taking your weight as he pressed closer.
He kissed down the line of your jaw and you tilted your head back and looked at the amber ceiling and thought distantly that your grandmother had planned everything except possibly this specific configuration in her kitchen at two in the morning and that she would have been insufferably pleased about it.
“Upstairs,” you said. He lifted his head. Looked at you. Checking.
“Yes,” you said, to the question he hadn’t asked.
Your childhood bedroom with the sketchbooks on the shelf and the Barcelona exhibition poster and the corkboard above the desk looked different at two in the morning with Jungwon closing the door behind him and turning to look at you across the room. He looked at the room first. The way he always looked at rooms — registering, cataloguing, the thing your grandmother had done too, the thing you did.
Then he looked at you. “I used to stand outside this door,” he said. “When we were kids. Waiting for you to come out.”
“I know,” you said. “I could always hear you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I liked knowing you were there,” you said. Something in his face. Something very warm and very undone. He crossed the room. There was a quality to being undressed by someone who had known you for fifteen years that had nothing to do with unfamiliarity and everything to do with its opposite — the specific intimacy of someone who already knew the shape of you in other ways and was learning this one slowly, like a new room in a house they’d lived in for years.
His hands were unhurried. His attention was total. He treated each thing like it mattered and it made your chest ache in a way that had nothing to do with sadness. You pulled his shirt over his head and put your hands flat against his chest and felt his breathing. “Still thinking in sentences?” you asked.
“Not even close,” he said. He took your chin between his fingers and tilted your face up and kissed you properly — deep and unhurried and completely in charge of it — and you felt the dynamic settle into place like something clicking. Jungwon had always had this quality. This absolute certainty. In every other context you’d spent years watching it from the outside.
You pushed him back onto the bed. He pulled you with him, one hand at your waist, and you landed against his chest and he rolled you gently and hovered over you and looked at your face again with that same thoroughness, like he was memorizing you. Then he moved down your body and the careful part began.
He took his shirt off first — unhurried, watching your face while he did it — and then he came over you and looked down and something in his expression was focused and warm and entirely certain. “I’m going to take my time,” he said. Like a statement of intent. Like he was informing you.
“Okay,” you managed.
“You’re going to let me.” Not a question.
“Yes,” you said.
He kissed your cheek again — that specific tenderness, completely at odds with the authority in his voice — and then his mouth moved to your throat and the careful, methodical dismantling began. He learned you like a map he intended to memorize. His mouth at your collarbone, the inside of your wrist — pausing there when your breath hitched, pressing his lips back to the same spot twice — your stomach, the soft curve of your hip. His hands moved with his mouth, cataloguing, noting, and every time you made a sound his eyes came to your face briefly. Checking. Watching. “Good?” he murmured against your ribs.
“Yes,” you breathed. “Yes.”
“Good girl,” he said quietly, and continued. His fingers found the edge of your underwear and he looked up at you from where he was and raised an eyebrow. Asking without asking. You lifted your hips. He drew them down slowly, dropped them, and settled between your thighs and looked at your pussy with an expression of complete, focused attention that made you want to press your thighs together out of sheer overwhelm.
He didn’t let you. His hands pressed your thighs apart, firm and certain. Held them there. “Don’t,” he said simply. Then his mouth found your clit and your back left the mattress.
He ate you out like he had nowhere else to be and no interest in being anywhere else — long slow strokes of his tongue through your folds, his lips sealing over your clit and applying exactly the right pressure, his eyes coming up to your face every few moments to read your expression and adjust accordingly. He was thorough in the way that only someone genuinely paying attention could be, cataloguing every hitch of your breath, every clench of your thighs against his hands.
The sound that left you was embarrassingly loud. His eyes came up. “Shh,” he said against your folds — not unkind, just certain. Then he pressed two fingers against your lips. Firm. “Here.”
You opened your mouth and took them in. “Good.” His voice low and approving. He pressed them deeper against your tongue and returned his mouth to your cunt with noticeably more intent — like your compliance had unlocked something — his tongue working faster, two fingers from his other hand pushing slowly into your hole and curling upward. You moaned around his fingers and clenched around the ones inside you and he made a low sound against your pussy that you felt everywhere.
He worked you with complete focus — his tongue on your clit, his fingers curling inside your hole, your wetness absolutely everywhere and him making quiet reverent sounds about it that were muffled against your folds. Your hand went to his hair and gripped and he let you, kept going, his fingers in your mouth pressing down on your tongue every time you got too loud.
“Look at me,” he said against you. You looked down at him. Dark eyes looking up at you from between your thighs. That eye contact while his mouth was on your cunt was almost more than you could process. “Stay with me,” he said. “Right here.”
When you came it crashed through you in deep rolling waves, your cunt clenching hard around his fingers, your moan muffled completely by his hand, your thighs pressing around his face and his hands not letting them close. He worked you through every single pulse — not stopping, not slowing — until you were pulling at his hair and trembling. He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to your inner thigh. Then another.
Then he was kissing up your stomach, your ribs, your collarbone, the corner of your mouth. “There she is,” he murmured against your cheek. “How are you doing?”
“I’m—” You laughed weakly. “I’m good. Really good.” He kissed your cheek.
“Yeah you are.” He reached for the bedside drawer himself, sorted himself out, and came back to you and looked at your face and brushed your hair back from your forehead with both hands like you were something worth being careful with.
Then he took both your wrists and pressed them above your head, his hand wrapping around them, pinning them to the pillow. “Keep them here,” he said quietly.
“And if I don’t?” you said. The look he gave you was patient and very slightly dangerous.
“Keep them here,” he said again. He pushed inside you slowly — that long, aching stretch — and the sound you both made was simultaneous and involuntary, his a low broken groan, yours a gasp that turned into his name.
He held there for a moment, fully seated, his forehead dropping to yours, his hand still pinning your wrists above your head. “Okay,” he breathed. Like a reset. Like he needed a second.
“Jungwon—”
“I know.” He kissed the corner of your mouth. “I know. You feel—” He stopped. Pressed his lips to your cheek. “Perfect. You feel perfect.”
He started to move. Long and deep and measured, his hips rolling in that deliberate rhythm, his cock filling you completely with every stroke and withdrawing slowly — the kind of pace that was specifically designed to make you lose your mind.
Your hands stayed above your head because he’d told them to and because his hand around your wrists was warm and present and you weren’t going anywhere. “Good girl,” he murmured. Watching your face. “Look at you.”
“Jungwon — harder—”
“Not yet.” Steady. Infuriatingly steady. “When I say.”
He kept the pace exactly where he wanted it — deep and thorough, hitting somewhere inside you that made your toes curl — and his free hand found your clit and worked it in slow circles and you arched up into him. “There,” he said. Dark and satisfied. “Feel that?”
“Yes—”
“Yeah.” The circles on your clit tightened. His hips snapped forward once, harder, and you gasped. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
He built you up carefully and completely, his cock and his fingers working in tandem, his eyes on your face the entire time — that absolute quality of attention that dismantled you, that had always dismantled you, fifteen years of it turned toward this single purpose.
“Close,” you managed. “Jungwon, I’m—”
“I know.” He didn’t slow down. “Give it to me.” The second one rolled through you deep and long and he watched your face through every second of it — your mouth falling open, your back arching, your hands straining against his grip above your head — and he kept going through all of it, his fingers not stopping until you were clenching and crying his name and he said “there she is, good girl, there she is” against your cheek like a quiet litany.
Then he released your wrists and pulled you up.
“Your turn,” he said. He lay back and you understood immediately. You swung your leg over him and his hands went to your waist — not guiding, not yet, just there — and you sank down onto him and the sound that left him was the most gratifying thing you’d ever heard. Low and wrecked and completely involuntary.
You rolled your hips. “Fuck,” he breathed. His hands tightened. “Do that again.” You did. Set your own pace, slow and grinding, finding the angle that made your vision blur and staying there.
His head pressed back into the pillow, his jaw tight, his eyes on your face with that dark focused expression cracking at the edges into something rawer. “Look at you,” he said, rough and quiet. “You’re perfect. Do you know that?” His jaw went tight as you clenched around him. “God.”
“Don’t stop talking,” you said breathlessly. “Please—”
“You feel incredible.” His hands moved you faster without asking permission. “Your pussy is—you have no idea. No idea what you—”
He sat up suddenly, arms wrapping around you, and kissed you deep and you rolled your hips and he held you through it and you came for the third time with your face in his neck and your nails raking down his back and he groaned at the sting of it — not pulling away, pressing closer, like he wanted that, like he’d been waiting for your nails.
He rolled you back down. Both of you past careful now — his cock driving into you deep and purposeful, your legs over his shoulders, his hand pinning your wrists above your head again. His other hand pressed flat to your lower stomach and he felt himself moving inside you and his expression went somewhere completely undone.
“Eyes on me,” he said. You looked at him. He looked at you. Dark and certain and something underneath it — something fifteen years old — looking out. “You’re mine,” he said quietly. Not possessive. Just true. Like he was finally saying something he’d always known.
“Yes,” you said. “Yes, Jungwon—”
“Good girl.” Driving deeper. “My good girl.” Your nails went to his back again — raking down — and he hissed through his teeth and his rhythm stuttered and then he was coming, buried as deep as possible, your name in his mouth, his whole body shuddering through it in slow waves while you held him and felt every pulse of it.
Afterward you lay in the narrow single bed of your childhood bedroom with his arm around you and your head on his chest and his heartbeat slowing gradually back to something normal under your ear. The house was very quiet.
Outside the window the winter garden. The sundial. The stone wall at the edge of the fields where you’d stood together three days ago and looked at the grey-green view and said nothing about the thing that had been living in the space between you.
“The tree,” you said. Against his chest. Almost asleep.
“What?”
“Her letter. At the end. Take care of the tree.” He was quiet for a moment.
“The tangerine tree?” he said.
“I don’t know how to look after a tangerine tree.”
“I do,” he said. “She taught me.” Of course she had. You made a sound into his chest that was grief and fondness and exhaustion and something newly made and warm all at once. His arm tightened around you. “Sleep,” he said. Quietly. Into your hair.
“There’s still so much to sort out,” you said. “The companies. Your father. Mine. The records. Haeun—”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “All of it tomorrow.”
You were quiet. “She would have liked this,” he said. “She would have smiled like she’d won something.”
“She did win something,” you said. He made the sound — the real laugh, quiet and warm, in the dark.
“She won everything,” he said. The house breathed around you. The walls remembered. The tree stood in the winter garden under the wrong-time sundial and the six extra minutes ticked by in the east corridor and outside the window the fields were dark and still and the net held, the net held, it had always been holding.
—
Morning came differently. Not the grey reluctant morning of the days before — this one had actual light in it, thin and winter-pale but present, coming through the curtains at the angle your grandmother approved of and landing across the bed in a way that felt almost deliberate. Like the house had decided something had shifted and was adjusting its lighting accordingly.
You were awake before him. This was not surprising. You had always been the one who woke first — in Barcelona, in studio all-nighters, in every version of your life you’d constructed away from this place. Your brain came online quickly and completely and then immediately started cataloguing everything that needed to be dealt with, which was both a useful quality and an exhausting one.
You lay still and let it catalogue. Your mother down the hall. Your father in the east guest room. The notebook in your desk drawer and the metal box under the floor of the third room and fifteen years of documentation that was going to require very careful decisions made by people who were currently in various states of devastation. Haeun, who had driven home last night after dismantling the family dinner table and was presumably now sitting in her very expensive apartment feeling something she didn’t have a script for. Yang Junho, who had been told by his son that the careful architecture of his business legacy was going to be pulled apart and rebuilt into something honest. The tangerine tree in the garden.
You turned your head. Jungwon was asleep. This was — notable. He slept with the specific quality of someone whose body had been running on insufficient rest for days and had finally been given permission to stop. On his back, one arm still loosely around you, his face completely unguarded in a way it almost never was when he was awake. The professional composure was entirely absent. He looked like the boy in the photographs on the passage room table.
You looked at him for longer than was strictly necessary. Then you carefully moved his arm, and got up, and got dressed, and went to find your mother.
She was in the garden. Not the formal garden — the kitchen garden at the back, the working one, where your grandmother had grown things with the same methodical attention she gave everything. It was winter-bare now, the beds turned over, the herbs cut back, but your mother was standing at the edge of it with a cup of tea in both hands and her coat over her pyjamas and her hair not yet done and looking at the dormant beds like they owed her a conversation. You came and stood beside her. She looked at you. Her eyes moved over your face the way they had yesterday in the corridor — reading, calibrating. This morning they stilled on something and she looked at you for a beat longer than usual and you thought: she knows. Of course she knows. She is a Han woman and she has been reading rooms since before you were born.
She said nothing about it. “The mint comes back every year,” she said instead. Nodding at one of the beds. “No matter what. Your grandmother never planted it twice.”
“Persistent,” you said.
“Invasive, she called it,” your mother said. “But she never pulled it out.”
You stood beside her. The kitchen garden in the early morning, both of you in coats, tea and no tea. “How are you?” you said.
“I’ve been better,” she said. Dry. Almost wry. A Han woman’s version of honesty.
“Mum—”
“I’m not broken,” she said. “I want you to know that before you start.” She looked at the mint bed. “I’ve known the shape of this for a long time. Not the detail. Not the name, not the company, not the—” she stopped briefly— “not all of it. But the shape.” She turned her mug in her hands. “Your grandmother knew I knew the shape. We never discussed it because discussing it would have made it real in a way I wasn’t ready for.”
“I know,” you said.
“She left you the records,” your mother said. “Because she knew you’d know what to do with them.”
“I’m still figuring that out,” you said honestly. Your mother nodded slowly.
“Whatever you decide — about the companies, about the documentation — I want you to know that I don’t expect you to protect him on my account.” She looked at you directly. “I’ve done enough of that for both of us. You don’t inherit that.”
You looked at her. “She wrote about you,” you said carefully. “In the letter. She said you’d need us to stay. Not to fix it. Just to stay.”
Your mother’s face did something very small and very real. “That sounds like her,” she said.
“She loved you,” you said. “The jewellery she left you — she chose it specifically. I know she did.”
“She chose everything specifically,” your mother said. And then, quietly: “She was infuriating.” Her mouth curved, just slightly, just for a second, the specific curve of someone who misses a person and is furious at them and loves them all at once. “She was the most infuriating woman I have ever known and I have been her daughter for sixty years and I would give almost anything for one more conversation with her.”
Your throat. You put your arm around your mother’s shoulders. She leaned into it. Just slightly. Just enough. “The mint will come back,” you said. “It always does,” she said.
—
Your father found you at nine. You were in the library — the room that minded its own business — with the notebook open on the table and your laptop beside it and three years of your grandmother’s documentation laid out in the order you’d decided to present it. You’d made decisions in the kitchen garden with your mother’s shoulder under your arm and the winter light coming up over the dormant beds, and the decisions were clear and final and felt like the most your grandmother’s-granddaughter thing you had ever done. Your father came in and looked at the table and went still. “Sit down,” you said.
He sat. He looked at the notebook. He looked at the laptop. He looked at your face. “I’ve been through all of it,” you said. “The notebook, the financial records from the box, the subsidiary filings that Haeun’s lawyer found. I have a complete picture.” You held his gaze. “I want to tell you what I’m going to do with it before I do it, because she would have done that. She would have told you directly.” He was very still.
“Jungwon and I are going to work with our respective company counsel to restructure both companies’ positions and make the necessary disclosures. The arrangement your father and his built — the liability your grandmother documented — will be unwound properly. Not buried, not managed. Dealt with.” You turned a page in the notebook. “There will be consequences. Probably financial, possibly regulatory. We’re going to take them straight rather than sideways.”
He opened his mouth. “I’m not finished,” you said quietly. He closed it.
“The personal documentation — your relationship with Park Jooyeon — is not something I intend to make public or use. That’s not mine to use. That’s between you and Mum and whatever comes next for the two of you.” You looked at him steadily.
“But I want you to know that I have it. That grandmother had it. That she saw everything and chose the moment and the recipient very carefully.” You paused. “She trusted me with it because she knew I’d tell you directly rather than use it as leverage. So I’m telling you directly.”
Your father was quiet for a long time. He looked older than yesterday. Something had come down overnight — a structure he’d maintained for twenty years, load-bearing, invisible until it wasn’t. “She always knew,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes,” you said.
“Your mother—”
“Is dealing with it on her own terms,” you said. “In her own time. That’s between you and her and I’m not going to be in the middle of it.” You closed the notebook. “But I am going to be here. For her. For as long as she needs.”
He looked at the closed notebook. “You’re very like her,” he said again. The same words as the library yesterday, same tone — not compliment, not threat, something that had moved past both into something more complicated and more honest.
“Good,” you said again.
He stood up. He looked at you for a moment with the eyes of a man who was reassessing something fundamental and finding the reassessment uncomfortable and necessary in equal measure. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For — all of it. The parts that touched you.”
“I know,” you said. He left. You sat in the library for a minute after he’d gone, in the room that minded its own business, and you breathed and looked at the ceiling and thought about your grandmother writing case notes in her precise blue hand for seven years and choosing you and trusting you and leaving you every door she could think to unlock.
I trust them. I always have.
“I know,” you said to the empty room. “I know you did.”
—
Jungwon was in the kitchen when you came down at ten. He’d made breakfast — actual breakfast, not just tea, the kind of breakfast that required navigating someone else’s kitchen and finding things and making decisions about eggs. You stood in the doorway and looked at this and something in your chest did a quiet complicated thing.
He looked up. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” you said.
“I found the eggs,” he said. “I hope that’s alright.”
“It’s very alright,” you said. You came in and sat at the kitchen table — the big scrubbed one, the one you’d sat at a thousand times — and watched him move around the kitchen with the ease of someone who had been in it almost as often as you had, who knew which drawer had the spatulas and which cupboard had the good salt, who knew to use the second burner because the first ran hot.
“I talked to my father’s lawyer this morning,” he said. Back to you, watching the pan. “Started the process. It’s going to take months. There’ll be restructuring costs, probably some regulatory disclosure, definitely some uncomfortable conversations with the board.” He turned around. “But it’s started.”
“I talked to my dad,” you said. “The personal side — I left that between him and my mother. But the business — he knows what’s coming.” Jungwon nodded.
He brought two plates to the table and sat across from you and for a moment you both just looked at the food. “She would have had opinions about the eggs,” you said.
“She would have said I used too much butter.”
“You absolutely used too much butter.”
“The correct amount of butter,” he said, “for a kitchen that has been through what this kitchen has been through in the last four days.” You looked at him. He looked at you. The kitchen held you both in its amber morning warmth and the back door sighed in the wind and the clock ticked its slightly-too-loud tick.
“Barcelona,” he said. Your fork stopped. “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “About what you said. The building at five in the afternoon. The light.” He looked at his plate. “I want to see it.” You looked at him. “I want to see where you’ve been. What you’ve built. The studio, the yellow tiles, all of it.” He looked up. “I’m not asking you to come home. I’m not — I know you have a life there and I’m not going to be the person who asks you to fold that up.”
“Jungwon—”
“I’m saying I want to come to you. If that’s—” he stopped. “If you want that.”
You thought about your Barcelona apartment. The yellow tiles you’d hated and grown to love. The building in the Eixample at five in the afternoon. The Sunday light coming flat and amber through the kitchen window and you standing there with a dead leaf and almost calling him. “When?” you said.
Something shifted in his face. The last of the composure, the very last of it, releasing. “As soon as I can arrange it,” he said.
“The companies—”
“Will take months to sort out. I can do that from anywhere with a phone and a laptop.” He looked at you steadily. “I’ve been doing everything from this house and this office and this city for three years and I think—” he paused— “I think I’ve been using that as a reason to not go anywhere I actually wanted to go.”
You held his gaze. “There’s a market on Sundays,” you said. “Near the apartment. They have good tomatoes even in winter, I don’t know how.”
“I’ll need to know where to get good coffee,” he said.
“I know three places,” you said. “Ranked.”
“Of course you do,” he said.
“The first one is wrong,” you said. “Everyone thinks it’s the best and they’re wrong. The second one is correct.” He smiled. The real one, the full one, no millimetres of distance at all. You smiled back.
Outside the kitchen window the winter garden was pale and still. The tangerine tree stood at the edge of the formal garden where it always had, bare-branched, patient, waiting for the season that would bring it back. The sundial offered its wrong time to the thin morning light. The fields beyond the stone wall were grey-green and quiet.
Inside: two plates of eggs with the correct amount of butter, and the kitchen clock ticking, and the back door with the broken latch, and the house breathing around you in the way old houses breathe when something they’ve been waiting for has finally arrived.
“Take care of the tree,” you said.
“I will,” he said.
“She’ll want a report,” you said. “I’ll take notes,” he said.
“In a small book,” you said.
“Obviously,” he said.
You ate breakfast in the warm kitchen of your grandmother’s house while the morning came properly through the windows, and the walls remembered everything, and somewhere in the passage behind the library fireplace the candles had burned down to nothing and the photographs were still on the table and the letter was in your desk drawer with both your names on it in blue ink, and Han Sooja had been right about all of it, every last word, and the tree would come back in spring and so would you.
SPRING
The tangerine tree bloomed in April. Jungwon sent you the photograph at seven in the morning Barcelona time, which meant he’d been in the garden at eight Korean time, which meant he’d gone specifically to check and then specifically to tell you. No caption. Just the photograph — pale blossoms on the bare-becoming-green branches, the stone wall behind it, the edge of the formal garden catching the early spring light.
You were in bed with your phone and the yellow morning light coming through the kitchen tiles and you looked at the photograph for a long time.
Then you typed: she knew it would.
He replied immediately: she knew everything.
Then: flight lands Friday. Is the second coffee place still correct?
Still correct, you typed. I checked yesterday.
Of course.
You put the phone down and looked at the ceiling of your Barcelona apartment and listened to the street coming alive below and thought about the building in the Eixample at five in the afternoon and the light that made it look like it was remembering something, and you thought about what it meant to show someone the life you’d built from scratch in a city that had been yours alone, and you thought about your grandmother in her garden in October with the window open writing three pages of blue ink to two people she trusted to be ready.
You were ready.
You went to the kitchen and put the coffee on and stood at the window with the yellow tiles warm in the morning light and outside the bakery two streets over was already sending its bread smell into the world and somewhere behind you on the shelf the Calvino stood between its neighbours and in the back of it, tucked where it had always been, the recipe card with the hand-drawn map of a house full of secret rooms.
Not everything buried is lost. Some things are just waiting for the ground to be ready.
The coffee finished. You poured two cups out of habit and then looked at the second one and smiled and didn’t move it.
Pairings: Autistic Jake x fem!reader
Wordcount: 22k+
Summary: Two years into your meticulously structured marriage, an unexpected pregnancy introduces the ultimate unpredictable variable into the quiet sanctuary you share with Jake. As you both navigate the overwhelming sensory challenges of impending parenthood, Jake must step outside his comfort zone to prove he can be the unshakable wall your growing family needs.
Warnings: Autism Spectrum Representation (Level 1/high support needs), Sensory Overload & Meltdowns, Pregnancy & Morning Sickness (Emesis), Childbirth/Medical Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Mild Angst. Very Mild Smut, unprotected sex (due to sensory aversions), sensory-focused intimacy, overstimulation, pregnancy themes.
A/N: after so many requests it’s finally here!!! Thanks to all the readers that gave me ideas to incorporate in here , love yaaa. And truly thank you for all the love for finding where we fit!!🥹Anyways Like always Please Like, Reblog and Comment! They are very appreciated.
[Masterlist]
The morning sun filtered softly through the edges of the drawn blackout curtains, casting a hazy, warm glow across the bedroom. You lay perfectly still beneath the familiar, heavy comfort of the fifteen-pound grey weighted blanket, anchored to the mattress by your husband.
Jake slept exactly as he had since the very first time you spent the night: like a clinging octopus. His broad chest was pressed flush against your back, his heavy arm slung securely over your waist, and his long legs were tangled inextricably with yours. His breathing was a slow, steady rhythm against your spine.
You carefully brought your left hand up to the edge of the blanket, watching the morning light catch the simple band of polished titanium and lapis lazuli on your ring finger. It had been two years since the quiet, intimately controlled wedding in your backyard. Two years of being Jake Sim's permanent variable.
And exactly one hour since you had locked yourself in the master bathroom, stared at a plastic stick, and watched two pink lines bloom into existence.
"Your heart is beating really fast," a deep, sleep-rough voice rumbled against the nape of your neck.
You jumped slightly, your breath catching. You turned your head to see Jake's face pressed into your pillow, a mess of dark, fluffy curls sticking up in every direction. He blinked his large, dark brown eyes slowly. The sleep-heavy softness of his face completely stripped away the hyper-vigilant tension he carried outside these walls.
"Did you have a bad dream?" he murmured, his voice laced with genuine concern. He pulled you a fraction closer, his large hand flattening against your stomach to offer the deep pressure he knew grounded you both. "The room is quiet, Y/N. Everything's safe."
"No bad dreams, Jakey," you promised, shifting your weight to turn and face him, managing a shaky but genuine smile. "I'm just... thinking about how happy I am."
Jake smiled, a soft, sleepy curve of his lips that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He reached up, his long fingers gently tracing the line of your jaw. "I like that," he whispered, his thumb brushing over your cheek. "I'm happy too. The temperature is right at 68, the blanket feels good, and you're here. It's a perfect morning."
It was a perfect morning, but beneath your ribs, your heart was doing a frantic, terrified flutter.
You were exactly one month pregnant.
You knew without a doubt when it had happened. A month ago, after a quiet, beautiful dinner at home to celebrate your second anniversary, the math of your cycle tracking had apparently failed.
Physical intimacy with Jake had always required an immense level of trust and sensory management. Early in your marriage, you had tried utilizing standard protections. But the introduction of a condom had triggered an immediate, devastating sensory failure for him. You still remembered how his body had gone rigid beneath you. The latex had felt like a suffocating barrier, a synthetic, rubbery texture that created a "secondary friction" completely overwhelming his delicate receptors. He had lost the physical sensation almost immediately, the "noise" of the unnatural texture drowning out the intimacy. He had pulled away midway through, his hands trembling as he stripped it off, his breathing hitched in a sudden wave of panic and overstimulation.
He had been so devastated, so terrified that his neurology was "broken" and ruining the experience for you. You had immediately stopped, wrapped him in his weighted blanket, and held him until the static faded. You promised him right then and there that you would never force a variable that hurt him.
So, you became the gatekeeper. You rigorously researched cycle tracking, charting your basal body temperature and monitoring your fertility windows. It was a highly logical, data-driven system that Jake appreciated immensely. On the safe days, you allowed him the barrier-free, skin-to-skin contact that his sensory processor so desperately craved—the only time his mind was truly, beautifully silent.
But biology, it seemed, didn't care about your data.
"Are you ready to get up?" Jake asked, pulling you out of your spiraling thoughts. He bumped his nose affectionately against yours. "It's Tuesday. Grilled cheese day."
"I'm ready," you whispered, leaning in to press a firm, grounding kiss to his lips.
Thirty minutes later, you were fully dressed in your work clothes—comfortable slacks and, as always, your quiet, rubber-soled Converse sneakers.
The life you had built together over the last two years was a masterpiece of careful adjustments. The transition into marriage had been blissful, but it hadn't been without its growing pains.
The biggest hurdle had come exactly three months after the wedding. That was when Sarah, holding back tears of both pride and sorrow, had officially packed up the rest of her belongings and moved to the bright, sunny condo she had purchased 4.2 miles away. She knew that for you and Jake to truly build a life as husband and wife, you needed the beige house to yourselves.
Jake had understood the logic. He had agreed to the timeline. But the reality of the shift had absolutely devastated him.
For the first two weeks after Sarah left, Jake had experienced a profound system crash. The ambient noise of the house was wrong without her footsteps. The smell of her specific brand of herbal tea was missing from the kitchen. The sudden absence of the woman who had spent twenty-four years shielding him from the world was a massive, gaping void.
He hadn't touched his LEGOs for fourteen days. He had retreated to the bedroom, living under the weighted blanket, the blackout curtains drawn, trapped in a spiral of dysregulation and grief. He didn't speak much. He just rocked, overwhelmed by the missing variable.
You hadn't pushed him. You hadn't tried to force him to be "okay." You had simply climbed under the blanket with him. You provided the deep pressure, the quiet reassurance, and the absolute certainty that while the variables had changed, the sanctuary remained intact. You took over the routines, proving to him day by day that you could keep the world at bay just as well as his mother had. And slowly, the static had cleared. Sarah started coming over for Tuesday dinners, and a new, stable routine had blossomed.
Now, the house operated like a well-oiled machine, supporting both of your new lives.
You had officially left the agency shortly before the wedding. Now, you worked full-time as the program coordinator at a local community center, specializing in designing sensory-friendly recreational programs for neurodivergent teens. It was fulfilling work that utilized your social work degree without the draining bureaucracy of your old job.
And Jake wasn't just sitting idle, either. With your encouragement, he had turned his hyper-fixation into a thriving, quiet career.
He now ran a highly successful online business restoring and selling vintage, discontinued LEGO sets. People from all over the country would mail him boxes of mixed, dirty, incomplete bricks. Jake would meticulously clean them, sort them, source the missing pieces down to the exact molding variants, and reassemble them to ensure structural integrity before selling them to collectors at a premium. He also took on custom architectural commissions, designing incredibly complex scale models for independent firms.
He worked from the safety of his living room, surrounded by his organized bins. He made his own hours, controlled his own environment, and contributed to the household income in a way that made him deeply, visibly proud.
Walking into the kitchen, you found him standing at the round wooden table, bathed in the carefully filtered morning light. He was wearing a dark navy blue hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over his knuckles. In front of him on a blue plate was his breakfast: two uniform yellow scrambled eggs, separated perfectly from three strips of bacon cut into precise one-inch squares.
You stood at the kitchen island, packing your canvas tote bag for the day. You slipped your wallet, your planner, and the positive pregnancy test—wrapped tightly in a tissue and shoved deep into an interior zippered pocket—inside.
Then, you reached into the small, decorative ceramic bowl you kept on the counter. Inside were two distinct pieces of plastic.
One was a solid, red 2x4 LEGO brick.
The other was a translucent blue, polycarbonite "power blast" web piece.
You picked up the blue web piece, rubbing your thumb over the sharp, molded plastic edges. You slipped it into the front pocket of your cardigan, a daily ritual. The red brick, however, you left in the ceramic bowl. It belonged here, in the center of the home.
Jake chewed his bacon rhythmically, swallowed, and took a sip of his water from a clear glass.
"You're taking the web piece today," Jake observed, his keen eyes tracking your movement as he wiped his mouth carefully with a napkin.
"I am," you smiled, walking over to wrap your arms around his shoulders from behind, pressing a kiss to his temple. "I have a big meeting with the city funding board today. I might need a little extra structural support."
Jake leaned his head back against your chest, seeking the deep pressure, his hands coming up to rest over your arms. "Polycarbonite is highly resilient," he reminded you softly. "It won't break. You're going to do great at the meeting. You have all the data prepared."
"Thanks, baby," you replied, though your voice wavered just a fraction at the affectionate nickname.
He didn't catch the slight tremor, too focused on the comfort of your touch. He speared a forkful of eggs. "I have a big project today, too," he told you, chewing carefully. "A collector in Seattle sent me a massive bin of unsorted bricks. They think there's an original 2007 Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon in there. I get to sort it all. It's going to be incredibly satisfying."
"That sounds like a perfect Tuesday for you, Jakey," you murmured, smoothing down the soft fabric of his hoodie. "I'll be home at exactly 4:15 PM."
"4:15 PM," he confirmed, his shoulders relaxing completely at the predictable timeline. "I'll make sure the living room is quiet for you when you get back."
You grabbed your tote bag and headed for the front door, the weight of the hidden plastic test feeling heavier than an anvil against your side.
Jake's entire world, his career, his mental health, his beautiful, brilliant mind—it was all built on managed expectations and calculated variables. He thrived on his routines because it was the only way he could survive the overwhelming sensory input of existence.
And in less than nine months, the ultimate unpredictable, loud, messy, chaotic variable was going to be introduced into his carefully controlled sanctuary. You loved him more than anything in the world, but as you started your car, a tear slipped down your cheek. You had absolutely no idea how you were going to tell him without shattering his peace.
The next five days were an agonizing exercise in compartmentalization.
You had always prided yourself on being Jake’s safe harbor, the one variable in his life that never fluctuated, never lied, and never introduced unnecessary chaos. But now, you were carrying a secret that felt like a ticking time bomb, and hiding it from a man who noticed every micro-shift in your breathing was proving to be nearly impossible. Yet, those same five days also highlighted just how incredibly, breathtakingly intimate your marriage had become.
The intimacy wasn't just in the dark of the bedroom, though the skin-to-skin contact remained his ultimate grounding mechanism. The true intimacy was in the daylight. It was in the way Jake had stopped asking for permission to enter your space. If you were sitting on the couch reading a case file for work, he wouldn’t sit on the opposite end anymore; he would slide onto the cushions, drape his long legs over your lap, and pull your free hand down to rest flat against his chest. He needed you the way he needed oxygen.
On Thursday evening, you were standing at the stove, trying to focus on boiling pasta. The smell of the boiling starch, which had never bothered you before, was suddenly turning your stomach into a churning, uneasy knot. Jake walked into the kitchen, his silent footsteps barely registering until you felt his broad chest press firmly against your back. His heavy arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you completely flush against him. He rested his chin on your shoulder, his nose brushing against the sensitive skin of your neck.
"Your baseline temperature is elevated," he murmured, his breath warm against your pulse point. His large hands flattened against your stomach, spreading his fingers wide. "You are radiating more heat than your standard output. And your skin is slightly clammy."
You froze, the wooden spoon stalling in the pot of water. He was a human thermometer. "I'm just a little warm from the stove, Spidey," you lied smoothly, leaning back into his solid weight to distract him. "The boiling water is creating a lot of steam."
Jake hummed, a deep vibration of thought, but his hands didn't leave your stomach. He pressed slightly harder, offering that deep, soothing pressure. "If the thermal environment is uncomfortable, I can adjust the thermostat. Or I can finish the pasta sequence. You should sit down."
"I'm okay, Jake, really," you promised, turning your head to kiss his cheek.
He didn't argue, but he didn't leave your side, either. He stayed pressed against you for the entire cooking process, his thumb gently, rhythmically stroking the fabric of your shirt right over the exact spot where a new life was currently dividing into cells. The profound, heartbreaking sweetness of his touch made you want to burst into tears right there into the pasta water.
By Sunday, the secret became entirely physical.
It started the moment you opened your eyes. The blackout curtains were drawn, the room was a cool 68 degrees, and Jake’s heavy leg was thrown over yours beneath the weighted blanket. It was the perfect Sunday morning.
But the moment you shifted, a sudden, violent wave of nausea hit you so hard the room spun.
You slapped a hand over your mouth, practically shoving Jake’s arm off your waist as you bolted upright. You scrambled out of the bed, your bare feet hitting the hardwood, and sprinted for the master bathroom.
You barely made it to the toilet before your stomach violently emptied itself.
You dropped to your knees on the cold tile, gripping the porcelain as you heaved, coughing and gasping for air. The sound was loud, sudden, and harsh—exactly the kind of chaotic, unpredictable noise that usually sent Jake’s sensory system into an immediate tailspin.
But Jake didn't cover his ears. He didn't hide under the blanket.
Less than five seconds later, the bathroom door was pushed open. Jake dropped to his knees right behind you on the bathmat. He didn't hesitate. He wrapped one arm securely across your collarbone to hold you upright, and placed his other large, warm palm flat against the center of your spine, pressing down with firm, unyielding pressure.
"Deep pressure," he chanted softly, his voice remarkably steady despite the chaotic situation. "I am the wall. Breathe into the wall, Y/N."
You heaved again, a miserable, wet sob tearing from your throat, and leaned your entire weight backward into his chest. He held you flawlessly. He didn't flinch at the smell or the sound. Two years ago, a sick person would have been a massive biological hazard to his rigid need for cleanliness. Today, his only concern was the fact that his permanent variable was in distress. When the nausea finally subsided to a dull, aching throb, you slumped against him, resting your sweaty forehead on your arm.Jake reached up with his free hand, grabbing a towel from the rack. He gently wiped your mouth, his brow furrowed in intense, analytical concern.
"Your system is violently expelling data," he observed, his dark eyes scanning your pale, sweat-dampened face. "Your heart rate is erratic. Are you experiencing acute gastrointestinal distress?"
"I think so," you gasped, letting him pull you backward so you were sitting against his chest on the floor. You closed your eyes, the guilt of what you were about to do sitting heavier in your stomach than the sickness. "I'm so sorry, Jake. I know the sound is loud."
"The sound is irrelevant," he stated firmly, pulling you tighter against him. "You are malfunctioning. We need to identify the variable. Did you ingest a pathogen?"
"It must have been lunch on Friday," you lied, the words tasting like ash in your mouth. "I went to that new deli with my coworkers. I had a turkey sandwich. It... the mayonnaise must have been bad."
Jake's eyes narrowed slightly as his internal processor immediately crunched the numbers. "Foodborne illness," he muttered, his fingers drumming a quick, anxious rhythm against your arm. "The incubation period for Salmonella can range from six hours to six days. Staphylococcal food poisoning usually occurs within thirty minutes to eight hours. Given the timeline, a Campylobacter or Salmonella infection is statistically probable."
He was applying logic to your lie, accepting it instantly because it fit a mathematical parameter. And more importantly, he accepted it because you were the one saying it. You never lied to him.
"I just need to lie down," you whispered, feeling a fresh wave of tears prick your eyes.
"Yes. Rest is the optimal recovery protocol," Jake agreed immediately. He stood up, incredibly careful not to jostle you, and then reached down to help you to your feet.
He guided you back to the bed, pulling the sheets and the weighted blanket back so you could slide in. He tucked the heavy grey fabric tightly around your shoulders, cocooning you in safety.
"I will procure hydration," he announced, his face set in a mask of determined focus. "Electrolyte imbalance is a secondary threat to vomiting. I will also eliminate environmental stressors. The house will remain at a volume level of zero."
"You don't have to do all that, Jake," you mumbled into the pillow, utterly exhausted by the physical toll of the morning sickness and the emotional toll of the deception.
"I am the husband," he said simply, as if that explained the fundamental physics of the universe. "It is my protocol to maintain your structural integrity."
He leaned down, pressing a lingering kiss to your warm forehead, before turning and leaving the room on silent feet.
For the next two hours, you drifted in and out of a restless sleep. True to his word, the house was entirely silent. You didn't hear the clink of dishes or the usual low hum of his LEGO sorting.
In the laundry room down the hall, Jake was executing a new system.
If there was a biological pathogen in the house, his logic dictated that all potential vectors of contamination needed to be sanitized. He had gathered the clothes you had worn over the last days, including the work slacks and the light jacket you had discarded over the back of the armchair in the bedroom.
Jake stood in front of the washing machine. He liked the washing machine. The cyclical rotation of the drum was mathematically soothing, and the detergent smelled clean and predictable.He meticulously checked the pockets of your clothing. It was a strict rule: foreign objects in the washing machine could disrupt the balance of the drum or create catastrophic clanking noises during the spin cycle.He emptied a crumpled receipt and a stray pen from your slacks. Then, he picked up your light jacket.
He reached his long fingers into the deep, zippered interior pocket. He felt something hard, wrapped in a layer of soft tissue paper. Jake pulled it out. He unwrapped the tissue paper carefully, placing it in the wastebasket, and held the plastic object up to the light. It was a white plastic stick, roughly five inches long, with a small digital screen and a square window. Inside the window, there were two distinct, highly saturated pink lines.Jake frowned, tilting his head. His brain immediately began searching its vast databases for a match. It looked like a medical diagnostic tool. He knew what a thermometer looked like; this was not a thermometer. Two pink lines.
He stared at it for a long, quiet minute. He turned it over, looking for a manufacturer label or a model number, but there was only a small logo he didn't immediately recognize.
His chest felt tight. A new, unidentified variable in his house was always a cause for a slight spike in anxiety. But this variable belonged to you. You had hidden it in your interior zipper pocket.Logic dictated that if you were utilizing a medical diagnostic tool, it was related to the systemic failure you had experienced in the bathroom. The food poisoning.Jake didn't panic. He just needed the data. He needed to understand the mechanics of the tool so he could properly assist in your recovery.
He left the laundry room, the plastic stick grasped loosely in his hand, and walked silently down the hallway. You were half-asleep when the bedroom door clicked open. The hinges were perfectly oiled—Jake maintained them monthly to prevent squeaking—so the door made no sound. You opened your eyes heavily, blinking against the dim light. Jake was standing at the foot of the bed. His posture wasn't rigid, but he looked deeply confused, his head tilted to the side like a dog trying to understand a new command.
"Hey, Spidey," you rasped, shifting under the weighted blanket. "Did you finish the laundry?"
"I paused the sequence," Jake said softly, keeping his voice pitched low to accommodate your headache. He took a few steps forward, coming to stand beside the mattress. "Is the machine unbalanced?" you asked, rubbing your eyes.
"No. The machine is optimal." Jake looked down at his hand, then looked at you. His large, dark brown eyes were filled with pure, unadulterated innocence and a deep desire to comprehend.
He held his hand out, opening his long fingers to reveal the plastic stick resting in his palm. "Y/N," he began, his voice perfectly calm and inquisitive. "I was executing the pocket-clearing protocol to prevent lint contamination and auditory disruption in the washing machine. I found this in your jacket."
The blood in your veins instantly turned to ice water.
Your entire body went rigid beneath the blanket. The air vanished from your lungs. You stared at the plastic stick in his hand, the two glaring pink lines practically screaming at you in the quiet room.
No. No, no, no. "I do not recognize this diagnostic tool," Jake continued, entirely oblivious to the catastrophic internal explosion happening in your brain. He brought the stick a few inches closer to his face, analyzing the window again. "It has two highly saturated pink lines. I hypothesize that it is a chemical reagent test."
He lowered the stick and looked at you, his brow furrowing in genuine concern.
"Is this for the Salmonella?" he asked innocently. "Does it measure the pathogen load in your system? I did not know they manufactured rapid tests for foodborne illnesses."
You were caught so completely, so devastatingly off guard that your voice simply ceased to exist.You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. Your heart was hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against your ribs—a rhythm so loud you were certain Jake’s sensitive ears could pick it up. He saw your panic. His own eyes widened slightly, his internal processor snagging on your sudden, profound distress.
"Y/N?" he murmured, taking a step closer, the plastic stick still held in his hand. "Your breathing just became incredibly shallow. Your pupils are dilated. Did I do something wrong? Was this a private medical variable?"
"Jake..." you choked out, the word barely a whisper. You pushed yourself up on your elbows, your hands shaking violently. He instantly dropped the test onto the nightstand. The sharp clack of the plastic hitting the wood echoed in the quiet room, but he didn't care. He dropped to his knees beside the bed, reaching out to grab both of your trembling hands in his. "Deep pressure," he said immediately, his voice rising in pitch as your panic triggered his own. He squeezed your hands tightly, his brown eyes searching yours frantically. "I'm sorry. I breached your privacy. I just wanted to process the data so I could help you fix the malfunction. Please don't look like that. The static is getting loud, Y/N."
"You didn't do anything wrong," you gasped, pulling one of your hands free to cup his face. His skin was warm, his jaw tense with sudden anxiety. "You didn't breach my privacy, Jakey. I'm not mad at you. I'm not."
"Then why are your hands shaking?" he pleaded, leaning his face heavily into your palm. "Why is your heart beating like you are in danger? The house is safe."
You looked from his beautiful, terrified face to the plastic stick sitting innocently on the nightstand. There was no more compartmentalizing. There was no more waiting for the 'perfect time' to introduce the variable. The data was on the table.
"Jake," you whispered, your voice cracking as the first tear spilled over your eyelashes. "I lied to you."
Jake froze entirely.
The word lied was a massive, system-crashing error code in his brain. People outside the house lied. People in stores, people at the agency, people who didn't understand him—they lied. But you were the baseline. You were the permanent variable. You did not lie."You... gave me false data?" he asked, his voice dropping to a hollow, devastating whisper. He didn't pull away from your hand, but his entire body went as rigid as a board. "Yes," you sobbed, using your thumb to stroke his cheekbone desperately, trying to keep him grounded. "I didn't have a turkey sandwich on Friday. I don't have Salmonella, Jake." He blinked rapidly, his processor struggling to re-route the information. "Then why did your system violently expel its contents? Why is your temperature elevated? If there is no pathogen..."
He stopped. He slowly turned his head to look at the plastic stick on the nightstand.
He was brilliant. He didn't have the social scripts, but he understood biology, chemistry, and systemic reactions better than anyone. He stared at the two pink lines.
Diagnostic tool. Elevated temperature. Morning nausea.You watched the exact second the realization hit him. Jake's breath hitched—a sharp, jagged sound that seemed to tear its way out of his throat. His dark eyes went impossibly wide, his pupils expanding until they almost swallowed the brown irises. He slowly, mechanically turned his head back to look at you.
"The barrier," he whispered, his voice trembling so violently it barely sounded like him. "On our anniversary. The sensory failure. We did not... we did not use the barrier."
"We didn't," you confirmed, the tears flowing freely down your face now.
He stared at your stomach. The same stomach he had been pressing his hands against for the last five days to provide deep pressure. "That is not a test for a pathogen," Jake said, his voice entirely devoid of its usual factual cadence. It was raw, breathless, and stripped bare. "That is an hCG test. It measures the human chorionic gonadotropin hormone."
"Yes," you cried softly. Jake slowly pulled his hands out of your grasp. He didn't do it aggressively, but the loss of his deep pressure left you feeling terrifyingly unmoored. He sat back on his heels, his hands hovering uselessly in the air for a moment before he wrapped them tightly around his own torso, applying his own pressure.
He began to rock. It wasn't a violent, meltdown rock. It was a slow, rhythmic sway, forward and backward on his knees. Forward, back. Forward, back. He squeezed his eyes shut, his breathing coming in short, erratic bursts.
"Jake," you pleaded, leaning over the edge of the bed to try and reach for him.
"Too much data," he whimpered, slapping his hands over his ears. He curled his head down toward his chest, hiding his face. "It's too much data. The variable is too big. The volume is at maximum."
Your heart shattered into a million pieces. This was exactly what you had been terrified of. A baby wasn't just a life change for Jake; it was a sensory explosion. It was crying that couldn't be reasoned with, unpredictability that couldn't be scheduled, and a total dismantling of the quiet, controlled environment he needed to survive.
"I'm sorry," you sobbed, sliding off the mattress and dropping to your knees right in front of him. You didn't try to pull his hands away from his ears. You knew better. Instead, you wrapped your arms around his entire curled-up form, burying your face in the soft fabric of his hoodie. You squeezed him with everything you had, becoming the heavy blanket he desperately needed. "I'm so sorry, Jakey. I didn't know how to tell you. I was so scared of breaking your peace."
He rocked against you, the physical momentum jarring your bones, but you held on tighter. "It's going to be okay," you whispered fiercely against his shoulder, hoping he could feel the vibration of your voice even if he couldn't hear the words over his covered ears. "We write our own code, remember? We'll figure it out. I won't let it be too loud. I promise."
For ten agonizing minutes, you sat on the floor of the bedroom, holding your husband as his world tilted violently off its axis.Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the rocking began to decelerate. The frantic, jagged gasps for air smoothed out into deep, shuddering breaths.Jake's hands slowly lowered from his ears.
He uncurled his body, remaining on his knees but straightening his spine. You loosened your grip, leaning back just enough to look at his face. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes wet with tears, and his jaw was clenched tightly as he fought to process the massive system update. He didn't look at you at first. He looked down at your stomach again. He slowly, hesitantly reached out with his right hand. His fingers were trembling. He didn't apply deep pressure this time. For the first time in your entire relationship, his touch was feather-light. His palm barely brushed the fabric of your pajama shirt, resting softly over your womb. "There is a secondary heartbeat in the house," Jake whispered, the awe in his voice cutting through the panic like a laser. "Yes," you breathed, placing your hand gently over his.
He finally looked up at your face. The sheer terror of the unpredictable variables was still there, swimming in the depths of his dark eyes, but it was being rapidly overwritten by something else. A profound, consuming gravity.
"I did not calculate this," he said, his voice thick with tears. "I do not have the manual for how to be a father. The crying... the biological fluids... the disrupted sleep cycles. It is a mathematical nightmare."
"I know," you smiled wetly.
Jake's thumb twitched against your stomach. A single tear slipped down his cheek.
"But," he continued, a watery, blindingly beautiful smile breaking through the fear, "it is our variable. It is a combination of my data and your data. It is fifty percent you."
"And fifty percent you," you whispered back.
He let out a long, shuddering exhale, collapsing forward into your arms. He buried his face in your neck, wrapping you in a crushing, desperate hug that finally restored the deep pressure you both needed.
"We will require a massive restructuring of the schedule," he mumbled into your skin, his logical brain already starting to construct a new system to handle the chaos. "We will need noise-canceling headphones for the infant to protect its own auditory receptors. And we will need to purchase the LEGO Duplo sets. They are structurally appropriate for early motor skill development."
You laughed, a loud, joyous sound that echoed in the quiet room, tangling your fingers in his dark hair.
"We have nine months to build the schedule, Spidey," you promised, holding him as tightly as you could.
"Nine months," he echoed, pulling back just enough to press a firm, deeply intentional kiss to your lips. "That is approximately 274 days. We will optimize the environment. The house will be safe." He rested his forehead against yours, his eyes closing in complete surrender. "I love you, Y/N. And I love our anomaly."
The transition into the second trimester hit you like a freight train.
Five months had passed since the morning the two pink lines had rewritten the algorithm of your lives. It was now late October, and the world outside the beige house was a flurry of biting winds and dead, brown leaves. Inside, however, the house was a carefully maintained 69 degrees.You sat heavily on the edge of the living room sofa, staring down at your feet. They didn't even look like your feet anymore. They were swollen, puffy, and aching with a dull, relentless throb that radiated all the way up to your calves. Your belly was undeniably, magnificently large, resting heavily in your lap beneath the oversized fabric of one of Jake’s vintage Spider-Man hoodies.You had taken an early leave from your job at the community center around month two. The sensory-friendly programs you ran for the teens were fulfilling, but they were also unpredictable. The sudden loud noises, the emotional heavy lifting, and the physical demands had caused a few terrifying stress-spikes early in the pregnancy. Jake’s processor had essentially red-lined. He had compiled a fifty-page binder of statistical data on maternal stress and fetal development, presented it to you over Tuesday grilled cheese, and firmly requested that you prioritize your structural integrity. You hadn't argued; the exhaustion had already been sinking its claws into you.
So, you were home. You were the permanent, stationary variable.
And right now, you were crying over a vegetable.
"I don't understand," Jake murmured, his voice tight. He was standing by the kitchen island, surrounded by the brown paper bags of your weekly grocery delivery.
He held up a clear plastic clamshell container. Inside were six perfectly uniform, miniature Persian cucumbers.
"You requested the small, green, cylindrical gourds," Jake said, his brow furrowed in deep, anxious confusion. He looked from the container to your face, his dark eyes wide and panicked. "I selected the organic Cucumis sativus. The reviews indicated a high level of structural crunch. They are exactly as requested."
"Jake," you sobbed, burying your face in your hands. The tears were hot, fast, and entirely irrational, fueled by a cocktail of second-trimester hormones and sheer physical exhaustion. "I wanted pickles. I wrote 'baby dills' on the shared list. Pickles."
Jake stared at the cucumbers, his brain rapidly cycling through the data.
"Pickles are cucumbers," he stated, his voice pitching up slightly. "They are cucumbers submerged in an acetic acid solution. The vendor interface did not specify the brining process in the primary search results. I... I procured the base ingredient. I can initiate a brine. It requires vinegar, sodium chloride, and dill weed. The fermentation process will take approximately three to four days—"
"I don't want them in three days!" you wailed, the sound escaping you before you could clamp a hand over your mouth. "I want them right now! And my feet hurt, and I can't even see my own toes to put my socks on, and I just wanted a stupid, salty pickle!"
You instantly regretted the volume of your voice. The loud, unpredictable sound of crying was one of Jake's most sensitive triggers. It was chaotic audio data that his brain struggled to categorize. Through the gaps in your fingers, you saw the immediate physical toll your breakdown was taking on him. Jake froze. His broad shoulders hitched up rigidly toward his ears. The clamshell of cucumbers dropped onto the granite counter with a sharp plastic clack. His hands flew up, hovering just an inch over his ears, his fingers twitching violently as he fought the overwhelming, instinctual urge to clamp them down and block out the noise. His breathing hitched, catching in a ragged, shallow gasp. The static was deafening him. You could see it in the terrified, wide-blown look in his eyes. He was on the absolute edge of a system crash. "I'm sorry," you choked out, trying desperately to swallow the sobs, your chest heaving. "I'm so sorry, Jakey. I'm being too loud. Please, go get your headphones. I'm fine. I'm just hormonal."
You hated this. You hated putting this heavy, unpredictable emotional weight on him. He worked so incredibly hard every single day to manage his environment, to be the steady, logical anchor you needed, and here you were, flooding his sanctuary with chaotic noise over a grocery mix-up. The guilt compounded the tears, making them fall even faster. Jake looked at his noise-canceling headphones, which were resting on the edge of the coffee table. They were his shield. They were the emergency exit.
He looked at the headphones, and then he looked at you—weeping, swollen, and miserable on the sofa. He didn't grab the headphones. Jake let out a low, agonizing groan, his hands dropping forcibly from his ears. He curled them into tight fists at his sides, his knuckles turning stark white as he forced himself to physically override his own sensory defense mechanisms. He crossed the living room in three long, stiff strides. He didn't sit beside you. He dropped straight to his knees on the plush rug, right in front of your swollen feet. "You are not fine," Jake said, his voice trembling under the immense strain of remaining present. "You are leaking. Your pain receptors are firing. The volume is... the volume is high, but the variable is you. I am not leaving the variable."
"Jake, your ears," you wept, reaching out to touch his tense shoulder. "It's too loud for you."
"I am the husband," he gritted out, squeezing his eyes shut for a microsecond to re-center himself. "It is my protocol to fix the malfunction." He didn't hesitate. He reached out and wrapped his large, warm hands around your right foot. He applied immediate, intense deep pressure, his thumbs digging firmly into the aching arch of your foot, his fingers wrapping around your heel.
The relief was so sudden and profound that a fresh sob tore from your throat, but this one was a sound of release.Jake flinched slightly at the sound, but his grip didn't falter. He began to systematically massage the swollen tissue, moving with robotic, mathematical precision. Press, hold, release. Press, hold, release. He used his body weight to push the pooling fluid back up your calf, his dark head bowed in absolute concentration. "The edema is severe," he murmured, his voice still tight, but the repetitive physical motion of the massage was beginning to ground him. "The fluid retention is a standard biological response to the second trimester, but the hydrostatic pressure must be incredibly uncomfortable. The deep pressure should stimulate the lymphatic system."
"It feels so good," you breathed, leaning your head back against the sofa cushions, the tears finally beginning to slow. "Jake, it feels amazing. Thank you."
He moved to your left foot, applying the exact same pounds per square inch of pressure. He worked in silence for ten minutes. The only sound in the living room was your gradually steadying breath and the ticking of the wall clock.
Slowly, you felt the rigid tension in Jake's shoulders begin to melt. His breathing synced with yours.
"I'm sorry I cried," you whispered into the quiet room, wiping your damp cheeks with the oversized sleeves of his hoodie. "I know how much you hate it when I'm sad. And I know the noise hurts you. I didn't mean to overload your system."
Jake stopped rubbing your foot. He shifted his weight, moving up so he was kneeling between your knees. He rested his hands flat on your thighs, right just below the heavy curve of your belly. He looked up at you. His eyes were red-rimmed from the strain, but the frantic, panicked static was gone. "I do not hate the noise because it is loud," Jake corrected softly, his thumb brushing a slow, rhythmic pattern against your sweatpants. "I hate the noise because it means my permanent variable is in distress, and my internal processor struggles to locate the correct solution. I procured cucumbers when you required acetic-acid soaked cucumbers. I failed the grocery parameter. That was the source of the overload. I felt... inadequate."
Your heart cracked. You reached down, cupping his beautiful, earnest face in both of your hands.
"You could never be inadequate, Jake Sim," you promised him fiercely. "Never. You are taking care of me perfectly. My hormones are just scrambling my emotional data. It's not your fault."
He leaned into your palms, letting out a long, heavy exhale.
"I will go to the convenience store at the corner," he announced, a sudden, determined spark lighting up his brown eyes. "The crowd density will be negligible at this hour. I will procure a jar of Baby Dills. The sodium content will not help your edema, but it will stabilize your emotional parameters." You let out a watery laugh, running your thumbs over his cheekbones. "You don't have to go out, Spidey. The massage was enough."
"The massage fixed the hydrostatic pressure," he replied logically, turning his head to press a kiss to your palm. "It did not fix the pickle deficit. I will return in precisely fourteen minutes."
True to his word, fourteen minutes later, you were sitting on the couch, crunching happily on a perfectly salty, cold baby dill pickle. Jake was sitting right beside you, his hip pressed flush against yours, watching you eat with a profound sense of satisfaction. "Optimal crunch," he noted, listening to the snap of the pickle.
"Optimal," you agreed, resting your head on his shoulder. "Thank you, baby."
He hummed, wrapping his arm around your shoulders and resting his large hand directly over your belly. The baby was active tonight. The sudden influx of sodium and the cold temperature of the pickle had woken them up. A sharp, distinct kick hit right against Jake's palm. Jake's eyes widened. He stared down at your stomach, a look of absolute, unvarnished awe washing over his face. Even after five months of feeling the baby move, it still short-circuited his brain in the best possible way.
"The kinetic energy is increasing," he whispered, his fingers splaying wider to capture the sensation. "The anomaly is practicing its motor functions. The muscle density is growing."
"They're getting strong," you smiled, covering his hand with yours.
"They require a highly structured environment," Jake said, his tone shifting back into that hyper-focused, factual cadence that meant his brain was locked onto a project. "Which is why the nursery parameters must be finalized before tomorrow."
Ah, yes. The nursery. When you first found out you were pregnant, the idea of a baby had been an abstract, terrifying variable for Jake. But as the months progressed, his logical brain had found a way to cope with the impending chaos: systematic, meticulous preparation. The nursery had become his ultimate hyper-fixation.
"Do you want to show me the progress?" you asked softly.
Jake nodded immediately, a proud, eager energy vibrating in his shoulders. He stood up, offering you both of his hands to help haul your heavy center of gravity off the sofa. You waddled down the hallway together, your hand locked tightly in his.
The door to the spare bedroom was closed. Jake opened it with a soft click, pushing it wide to reveal his masterpiece. It didn't look like a traditional, Pinterest-perfect baby room. There were no bright, overwhelming primary colors. There were no loud, flashing musical mobiles. The room was a sanctuary of controlled sensory input. The walls were painted a muted, soft sage green—a color Jake had researched extensively, proving it to have the lowest psychological stimulation threshold. The lighting was entirely indirect, utilizing warm-amber smart bulbs that could be dimmed to exact percentage points from his phone to prevent harsh glare on a newborn's sensitive retinas.
Along the baseboards, he had installed subtle acoustic dampening panels to absorb the high-frequency sound waves of crying, ensuring the noise wouldn't echo and multiply within the confined space.
But the centerpiece of the room was the crib.
Jake walked over to it, running his long fingers over the smooth, unfinished birch wood. "I verified the structural integrity of every joint," he told you, his voice filled with quiet pride. "The manufacturer instructions suggested a torque of 15 Newton-meters for the primary bolts. I increased it to 18 to account for micro-vibrations over time. The mattress is organic, hypoallergenic cotton. There are no synthetic off-gassing chemicals to disrupt the infant's olfactory development."
"It's beautiful, Jake," you whispered, walking up beside him and resting your hand on the railing. It didn't wobble even a fraction of a millimeter. It was built like a fortress.
"It is mathematically sound," he agreed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, digital thermometer and hygrometer monitor, placing it perfectly parallel to the edge of the changing table. "And tomorrow, mom is arriving at 10:00 AM."
"She is," you nodded, bracing yourself slightly.
"We are executing the apparel procurement mission," Jake recited, his foot beginning to tap a light, anxious rhythm against the plush carpeting. "We will navigate the baby section of the department store. Mom will provide the neurotypical social buffer. You will provide the emotional baseline. I will verify the textile safety."
You smiled, reaching out to wrap your arm around his waist. "Are you feeling okay about the mission, Spidey? We don't have to go to the store. We can order the clothes online if the crowd density is going to be too much." Jake stopped tapping his foot. He looked down at the perfectly assembled crib, then looked down at your swollen belly. "Online procurement does not allow for tactile verification," he explained seriously, his brow furrowing. "Baby apparel is frequently manufactured with scratchy tags, raised seams, and rigid synthetic blends. I cannot allow the anomaly to experience the 'cobweb' sensation. Their skin will be highly sensitive. I must touch the fabrics. I must ensure the seams are flat."
Your heart melted into a puddle on the floor. He was terrified of the loud, unpredictable department store. He was already anxious about the changing routine. But his protective instinct over this unborn baby was so incredibly fierce that he was willing to willingly walk into a sensory minefield just to make sure his child never had to feel a scratchy tag. "You're going to be the most amazing dad in the world," you told him, tears pricking your eyes again—happy ones, this time.
Jake blinked, processing the title. Dad. It still sounded foreign, a variable he hadn't fully assimilated yet. But he wrapped his arms tightly around your shoulders, burying his nose in your hair, inhaling the familiar, grounding scent of vanilla and oats.
"I do not have the complete manual," he murmured into your skin, his grip firm and steady. "But I have you. And the crib is secure. We will manage the variables together."
By the time the sixth month of your pregnancy rolled around, the world outside had surrendered entirely to the bitter, biting chill of late November. Frost clung to the windowpanes of the beige house.The end of the second trimester had brought with it a host of new variables. The morning sickness had thankfully evaporated, replaced by an insatiable hunger that had Jake calculating your caloric intake with the dedication of a sports nutritionist. Your belly was no longer just a soft curve; it was a pronounced, hard sphere, the undeniable physical proof of the anomaly growing inside you.
But the most surprising variable of month six was one that neither you nor Jake’s extensive, fifty-page binder of pregnancy statistics had fully prepared him for.
Your hormones had shifted again. And this time, they had manifested as an intense, almost overwhelming spike in your libido.
It wasn't something you could easily graph on a chart. It was a visceral, heavy heat that seemed to pool in your lower stomach, entirely separate from the fluttering kicks of the baby. It made you acutely, constantly aware of your husband. You found yourself staring at the broad line of his shoulders when he was sorting his LEGOs, or fixating on the elegant, strong span of his hands as he meticulously washed the dishes.Jake, for his part, was always eager to provide the deep, skin-to-skin pressure you both craved. But the sudden frequency and intensity of your desire was pushing the boundaries of his sensory threshold.
It came to a head late on a Friday night. The house was completely dark, save for the faint, amber glow of the bedside lamp. The blackout curtains were drawn tight, sealing out the harsh winter wind. You and Jake were tangled together beneath the heavy grey weighted blanket.You had just finished a deeply intimate, breathless session. Without the barrier of synthetic fabrics or latex, the sensory input for Jake was a massive, consuming wave of data. He had buried himself inside you with that familiar, mathematical rhythm, his hands gripping your hips with bruising, desperate need until the friction had pushed him over the edge. He had shattered with a high, fractured gasp, collapsing against your chest, his heart hammering wildly against your bare skin. Now, ten minutes later, you were lying on your side, facing him. His eyes were closed, his dark, fluffy curls damp with sweat and plastered to his forehead. His breathing was still slightly ragged as his internal processor worked overtime to categorize and store the massive influx of physical pleasure.
But your body hadn't received the memo that the sequence was over.
The heavy, throbbing heat was still there, buzzing under your skin. The single climax hadn't been enough to quiet the hormonal static in your own brain. You shifted closer, your bare leg sliding over his, pressing the soft, swollen curve of your belly against his abdomen.
You reached out, your fingers trailing lightly down the center of his chest, tracing the line of dark hair that trailed past his navel.
"Jakey?" you whispered, your voice thick and slightly raspy in the quiet room.
Jake’s eyes flew open. At the exact moment your fingers brushed lightly over his skin, his entire body flinched violently.
It wasn't a subtle movement. His chest jerked away from your hand, a sharp, ragged hiss escaping his teeth. He pulled his arms up, crossing them tightly over his own chest in a sudden, defensive posture. His dark eyes were wide, blown-out, and swimming with a frantic, chaotic energy.
"Y/N," he gasped, his voice trembling as he pressed his back firmly against the mattress, trying to put distance between your hands and his skin.
You froze instantly, yanking your hand back as if you had been burned. Your heart dropped into your stomach. "Jake? Baby, what’s wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No," he panted, squeezing his eyes shut as he fought to regulate his breathing. "No, you did not cause tissue damage. But the... the texture of your touch. It was too light. It felt like... like an electric shock. Like sparks." You realized your mistake immediately. After the massive, overwhelming neurological load of a climax, Jake's sensory receptors didn't just turn off; they became hyper-sensitized. Every nerve ending in his body was currently dialed to maximum capacity. A light, teasing touch—the kind of touch that was supposed to be seductive—felt like a swarm of angry bees on his raw skin.
"I'm sorry," you whispered, guilt instantly replacing the heavy heat of desire. You pulled your leg back, giving him space. "I'm so sorry, Jake. I didn't mean to overstimulate you." He opened his eyes, his brow furrowing in deep distress as he looked at your face. He saw the way you were pulling away. He saw the lingering flush of arousal on your chest, and his brilliant, analytical brain immediately pieced the data together. "You are still experiencing physical arousal," Jake stated, his voice tight with a sudden, crushing wave of inadequacy. He uncrossed his arms, forcing his hands down to his sides, though his fingers twitched with the effort of remaining still. "Your heart rate is still elevated. The hormonal surge... it requires a secondary sequence."
"It's fine, Jake," you promised quickly, pulling the edge of the weighted blanket up to cover yourself. "It's just the pregnancy hormones. I'm okay. We don't have to do anything."
"I am the husband," Jake insisted, his voice cracking slightly. He forced himself to roll toward you, though you could see the rigid tension in his shoulders. He reached out with a trembling hand, aiming for your waist. "It is my protocol to ensure your needs are met. I can... I can restart the sequence. I can provide the friction."
"Jake, stop," you said firmly, reaching out to catch his wrist before his hand could make contact with your skin. You didn't use a light touch. You wrapped your fingers entirely around his wrist, applying immediate, unyielding deep pressure. You squeezed his joint tightly, anchoring him to the mattress. He let out a shaky, relieved breath at the heavy pressure, but his eyes were still frantic. "I am failing the parameter," he whispered, a tear pricking the corner of his eye. "You requested a secondary round of intimacy. Normal husbands can provide multiple rounds. But my capacity is full. The static is too loud. If I experience that level of input again right now, my system will crash. I am defective."
"Look at me," you commanded softly, moving your face closer until you occupied his entire field of vision. He blinked, a tear slipping down his cheek to soak into the pillowcase. "You are not defective," you told him, pouring every ounce of love and absolute certainty into your voice. "You are Jake. Your nervous system processes the world differently, and that includes how you process pleasure. You gave me everything you had ten minutes ago, and it was beautiful. I am not going to let you push yourself into a sensory meltdown just because my hormones are acting crazy."
"But you are still in distress," he argued weakly, his eyes dropping to your lips.
"I am not in distress," you corrected, offering him a warm, reassuring smile. "I'm just a little horny. There's a massive difference. And I would rather be a little frustrated for one night than watch you suffer through an overload."
He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in the dim light. "You are certain? You are not angry with the limitations of my processor?"
"I love your processor," you whispered, lifting his heavy hand and bringing it to your lips. You pressed a firm, deliberate kiss to his knuckles. "I love exactly how you are built. Now, what does your system need right now to quiet the static? Tell me."
Jake closed his eyes, running a quick internal diagnostic. "The light touch is painful," he mumbled, his voice dropping back to its soothing baritone. "The air currents on my skin are distracting. I require compression. Heavy, stationary compression."
"Okay. Come here."
You shifted onto your back, opening your arms. Jake didn't hesitate. He practically dove across the few inches separating you. He laid his head squarely on your chest, right over your heart, and threw his heavy arm and leg across your body. He didn't move. He didn't stroke your skin. He just locked himself against you, his absolute dead weight pressing you firmly into the mattress. You wrapped your arms around his broad, sweat-dampened back, applying as much squeezing pressure as you could muster, holding him together while his overloaded nerves slowly began to cool down.
"Is this better?" you murmured into his hair.
"Yes," he let out a long, shuddering sigh, the rigid tension finally melting out of his muscles. "The static is decreasing. The heavy pressure is optimal. You are my favorite variable, Y/N."
"And you're mine, Spidey," you smiled, the lingering heat of your libido fading away, replaced by a profound, overwhelming wave of tender affection. You didn't need a second round. Holding your husband while he found his peace was the best feeling in the world.
A week later, the highly anticipated twenty-four-week anatomy scan arrived.
The clinic was a sensory minefield, but Jake had perfected his navigation protocols. He walked through the brightly lit, sterile-smelling waiting room wearing his polarized sunglasses to cut the fluorescent glare, his noise-canceling headphones resting securely over his ears. He held your hand in a vice grip, his thumb pressing rhythmically into your knuckles—his physical tether to reality.
When the ultrasound technician called your name, he followed you into the small, dimly lit examination room. He only took off the sunglasses when the lights were turned off, and he slid the headphones down around his neck so he could hear the technician's instructions. You lay back on the crinkly paper of the examination table, pulling your shirt up to expose your swollen belly. Jake pulled a chair up immediately beside the bed. He didn't sit back; he perched on the edge of the seat, his knees pressed against the side of the table, his eyes locked onto the black-and-white monitor.
"Alright, let's take a look at this little one," the technician smiled, squirting a generous amount of warm gel onto your stomach.
You hissed slightly at the texture, but Jake didn't look at you. His dark eyes were wide, reflecting the glowing light of the ultrasound screen.
The wand pressed into your skin, and suddenly, the static snow on the monitor resolved into a clear, distinct image. A perfect, miniature spine. A tiny, beating heart that fluttered rapidly like a hummingbird's wings.
"The heart rate is 142 beats per minute," Jake announced before the technician even had a chance to measure it, his voice hushed and reverent. "It is mathematically strong."
"Spot on, Dad," the technician laughed, clicking her mouse to take a few measurements. "Everything looks completely healthy. All the organs are developing beautifully. The femur length is in the 85th percentile. You're going to have a tall one."
Jake's chest puffed out just a fraction. He reached out blindly, finding your hand on the table and gripping it tightly. "Now," the technician said, angling the wand slightly. "I know it's in your file that you wanted to know the sex today. Are you both still ready for that?"
You looked at Jake. He hadn't expressed a preference either way. His logical brain maintained that biological sex was simply a chromosomal reality, not a measure of the child's value. But as he stared at the screen, you could see a rapid, fluttering anticipation in his jaw. "We're ready," you confirmed softly.
The technician clicked a button, zooming in on the lower half of the tiny, curled-up body on the screen. "Well," she smiled, pointing to a distinct set of shapes on the monitor. "There's absolutely no mistaking that. You've got yourselves a healthy baby boy." The room went entirely silent. Jake stopped breathing. He stared at the screen, his dark eyes locked onto the image. His mouth opened slightly, a tiny gasp caught in the back of his throat.A boy.
"Jake?" you whispered, squeezing his hand. "Spidey, did you hear that?"
Jake slowly turned his head to look at you. The clinical, protective mask he wore in public spaces had completely vanished. His eyes were shining with a bright, glassy layer of unshed tears. The corners of his mouth were trembling as a massive, uncontrollable smile broke across his face. "XY chromosomes," he whispered, his voice cracking with pure, unfiltered joy. "The genetic data has been confirmed. It is a male."
"It's a boy, baby," you laughed, tears of your own spilling over your cheeks.
Jake looked back at the screen, his free hand coming up to cover his mouth as if he couldn't contain the sheer volume of his happiness. His leg started to bounce rapidly against the side of the examination table—a massive, joyful stim.
"He is a boy," Jake repeated, the reality of it settling into his bones. He leaned forward, his face inches from the monitor. "He will require the Spider-Man pajamas. The tagless ones. I must procure the correct sizes for his developmental stages. He will have my genetic markers. Y/N... we are manufacturing a miniature version."
"We are," you sobbed happily, bringing his hand up to kiss his knuckles. The technician handed you a long strip of glossy ultrasound photos, grinning from ear to ear. Jake practically vibrated out of his chair as he helped you wipe the gel off your stomach. He was so overwhelmed with positive data that he didn't even need to put his headphones back on when you walked out through the waiting room.
He just held your hand, his chest puffed out, walking with the undeniable pride of a man who had just solved the greatest equation in the universe.
The news of a grandson sent Sarah into an absolute tailspin of joy.
The very next day, a Saturday, she arrived at your front door at exactly 10:00 AM. She didn't just bring her usual Tupperware of leftover roast; she brought two massive canvas bags overflowing with baby name books, printouts of statistical popularity charts, and a box of non-toxic, hypoallergenic markers."I couldn't sleep," Sarah announced, dropping the bags onto the kitchen island with a heavy thud. She pulled off her coat, her dark eyes—so much like Jake's—sparkling with manic excitement. "I spent all night on the Social Security Administration's database. We have to be strategic."
Jake was sitting at the round wooden table, a brand-new, unopened LEGO Architecture set resting in front of him. But he wasn't looking at the box. He had his laptop open, an incredibly complex Excel spreadsheet illuminating his face.
"I have already initiated a database," Jake informed his mother, his tone incredibly serious. "I have categorized potential names by origin, syllable count, and phonetic clarity. A name is a primary identifier. It cannot be ambiguous." You sat at the island, nursing a cup of decaf tea, watching the two of them with a heart so full it physically ached. "Okay, let's hear the parameters," Sarah said, pulling out a stool and flipping open a heavy book titled 100,000 Baby Names for the Modern Parent.
Jake adjusted his glasses, peering at the screen. "The name must have a strong phonetic structure," he dictated, his fingers resting lightly on the keyboard. "It cannot contain soft, trailing vowels that are easily misheard in loud environments. It must be easily spelled to prevent bureaucratic errors. And it cannot be within the top ten most popular names of the current decade. Anomaly designation requires a unique identifier, but not one that is socially isolating."
"So, 'Liam' is out," Sarah noted, crossing a line through a piece of paper. "It's number one."
"Liam is highly inefficient," Jake agreed, shaking his head. "There are statistically three Liams in every kindergarten class. The auditory confusion would be overwhelming for the child."
"What about Arthur?" you suggested, resting your chin on your hand. "It's classic. Easy to spell."
Jake's eyes darted across his spreadsheet. He typed the name into a search bar. "Arthur. Meaning: Bear. Origin: Celtic. Two syllables. The 'th' fricative consonant provides a solid phonetic center." He paused, his brow furrowing as he processed the data. He looked at you, a soft smile playing on his lips. "It is structurally sound. I approve of Arthur."
"Arthur Sim," Sarah tested the name, her eyes watering instantly. She slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, it sounds so distinguished. Like a little professor."
"He will be highly intelligent," Jake stated matter-of-factly, closing his laptop slightly. "He has Y/N's neural pathways. She fixes the leaky pipes."
You laughed, reaching across the space to playfully swat at his arm. "He's going to have your brain, Jake. He's going to be building scale models of the Brooklyn Bridge by the time he's four."
Jake looked down at his hands, his thumb rubbing absentmindedly against the side of his laptop. The analytical mask slipped for a moment, revealing the profound, raw vulnerability beneath. "I hope he has your brain," Jake whispered, his voice dropping so low it was almost lost in the quiet kitchen. He didn't look at his mother; he looked directly at you. "I hope his volume dial works correctly. I do not want him to feel the static." The kitchen went still. Sarah lowered her book, her expression softening into a look of fierce, protective love for her son.
You stood up from your stool. You walked around the island, your heavy belly preceding you, and stood beside his chair. You ran your fingers through his dark, fluffy hair, applying the gentle, rhythmic pressure he loved. "Jake," you said softly, making sure he met your eyes. "If he has your brain, he is going to be the luckiest boy in the world. He'll see the colors in the soap bubbles. He'll notice the Fibonacci sequence in the flowers. And if the world ever gets too loud for him..." You leaned down, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "...he will have the best dad in the entire universe to teach him how to build a safe room."
Jake let out a shaky breath, leaning his face against your stomach, right where his son was currently sleeping. "I will build him the strongest walls," Jake promised into the fabric of your sweater, his arms coming up to wrap securely around your waist. "The structural integrity will be flawless." Sarah sniffled loudly from the island, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Well," she managed a watery laugh, picking up her pen again. "Arthur is definitely going on the shortlist. But we still need a middle name. Something with a good consonant-to-vowel ratio."
Jake lifted his head, his dark eyes shining with absolute clarity and a deep, overwhelming love. "The middle name is a secondary variable," Jake told his mother, his hand resting flat against your belly. "The primary variable is already perfect."
By the time the calendar flipped to February, marking the eighth month of your pregnancy, the beige house felt less like a building and more like a heavily fortified bunker. Winter was raging outside, dumping feet of snow onto the driveway and howling against the windowpanes. Month eight was entirely different from month six. The romantic, hormone-fueled haze had been thoroughly replaced by sheer, undeniable physical exhaustion. Your belly was a massive, taut drum that dictated every movement you made. Rolling over in bed was a multi-step sequence that required strategic planning and leveraged momentum. Your center of gravity was so far skewed that Jake hovered behind you whenever you walked down the hallway, his hands raised two inches from your hips, ready to initiate a physical catch protocol if your balance failed.The anomaly—now regularly referred to as Arthur—was running out of room. His movements were no longer gentle flutters; they were sharp, visible protrusions of a heel or an elbow against your skin. Jake found this biological reality both fascinating and deeply alarming.It was a Thursday evening. You were seated on your designated side of the living room sofa, propped up by a meticulously engineered mountain of pillows. Jake was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table.But he wasn't sorting LEGOs. He hadn't touched a plastic brick in three weeks. Instead, the coffee table was covered in sterile, organized piles of items. Jake was conducting his daily audit of the "Hospital Protocol" bag.
He had a clipboard. He was wearing his glasses, his dark brown eyes narrowed in intense, frantic concentration as he checked off items with a black pen.
"The receiving blankets," Jake muttered, his voice tight and clipped. He picked up a stack of soft, washed cotton cloths. He rubbed his thumb over the edge of the fabric, verifying the texture. "100% organic cotton. Washed twice in the unscented detergent. The seams are flat. The structural integrity is intact. Check."
He placed the blankets into the grey duffel bag with robotic precision, then looked back at his clipboard."The infant's external garments," he continued, picking up a tiny, dark blue onesie. He turned it inside out, meticulously inspecting the tagless collar. "No synthetic fibers. No localized friction points. Check." You watched him from the sofa, your heart aching with a mixture of overwhelming love and a creeping, heavy guilt.Jake had been like this for weeks. As the due date loomed closer, the abstract concept of a baby had solidified into an impending, unavoidable collision with the outside world. To give birth, you had to go to the hospital. The hospital was Jake's ultimate nightmare. It was a chaotic environment filled with unpredictable variables. Fluorescent lights operating on a 60-hertz flicker cycle. The sharp, random beeping of heart monitors. The smell of harsh antiseptic chemicals that burned his olfactory receptors. And, worst of all, a building full of strangers who would be touching his permanent variable while she was in severe physical distress.
He couldn't control the hospital. So, he was over-controlling what he could: the bag, the route, and the exact inventory of the nursery."Jake," you said softly, shifting your heavy weight against the pillows. "You checked the bag yesterday. And the day before. The inventory hasn't changed, baby. It's perfectly packed."
Jake froze. His hand hovered over a pair of tiny socks. His shoulders were rigid, hitched up toward his ears in a permanent state of defensive tension."The variables must be continuously verified," Jake replied, not looking up at you. His voice was entirely devoid of its usual warmth; it was hollow, flat, and vibrating with an undercurrent of barely suppressed panic. "Human error is a statistical probability. If I do not audit the inventory, a scratchy fabric could be introduced. The anomaly—Arthur—cannot experience the cobweb sensation upon entry into the environment. I must be precise."
"Spidey, look at me," you tried again, reaching a hand out toward him.
He flinched slightly, but he didn't turn his head. He dropped the socks into the bag, his fingers trembling as he gripped the edges of his clipboard."I cannot look right now," he whispered, his breathing growing shallow and fast. "If I lose my visual focus on the inventory, the sequence breaks. If the sequence breaks, the protocol fails. The hospital is exactly 12.4 miles away. The snow accumulation is currently at four inches. The friction coefficient of the tires—"
"Jake," you interrupted, the volume of your voice rising just a fraction out of desperation.
Suddenly, your body hijacked the conversation.It started low in your back, a dull ache that rapidly, violently wrapped around your abdomen. Your stomach tightened with a fierce, crushing pressure that literally drove the breath from your lungs. It was a Braxton Hicks contraction, but it was the strongest one you had felt yet.You gasped, your hands flying down to clutch the underside of your belly. A sharp, pained hiss escaped your lips before you could stop it. "Ah—" The sound was a bomb detonating in the quiet living room. Jake’s clipboard clattered to the floor. The sharp crack of the plastic hitting the hardwood echoed sharply.He whipped around to face you, his eyes wide, terrified, and blown completely black. He saw you gripping your stomach, your face pale and contorted in a grimace.The fragile, meticulously maintained dam in his brain shattered instantly. "The timeline is incorrect!" Jake shouted, the sheer volume of his own voice startling him. He scrambled backward, his hands flying up to grip the sides of his head. "It is month eight. The gestational parameter is 40 weeks. We are at 34 weeks and 2 days. It is too early! The protocol is not finished!"
"Jake, wait," you gasped, trying to breathe through the tightening of your uterus. "It's just a—"
"I have not calculated the winter storm variable into an emergency transit!" he continued, his breathing spiraling into full-blown hyperventilation. He wasn't looking at you; he was looking through you, trapped in the terrifying, deafening static of his own mind. He scrambled to his feet, pacing frantically behind the coffee table. "The bag is incomplete. The car is cold. You are in distress. Your pain receptors are firing. I have to fix the malfunction. I am the husband, I have to fix it, but I cannot stop the biological sequence!" He grabbed a handful of his own hair, pulling hard, a physical manifestation of his internal overload.
"Make it stop," he whimpered, his voice cracking into a jagged sob. "I can't compute the noise. The hospital is too loud. They are going to hurt you. The machines are going to beep, and you are going to scream, and I will not be able to apply deep pressure to stop the pain! I am failing! I am a defective variable!"
The sheer, agonizing devastation in his voice cut through your physical discomfort like a hot knife.The contraction was already beginning to fade, the muscles in your abdomen slowly releasing their iron grip, but the emotional damage in the room was catastrophic. Jake was in the red zone. He was drowning in his own inadequacy, convinced that his sensory limitations made him incapable of protecting you during the most vulnerable moment of your life.You didn't care about the heaviness of your body. You didn't care about the lingering ache in your back. You pushed yourself off the sofa, ignoring the clumsy, unbalanced sway of your center of gravity. "Jake!" you called out, your voice firm and authoritative. He didn't hear you. He was rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands clamped over his ears now, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as the tears streamed down his flushed cheeks. He was completely disconnected from the room, swallowed whole by the system crash.
You crossed the living room. You didn't hesitate. You stepped right over the spilled hospital bag, ignoring the meticulously folded organic blankets on the floor.
You reached him. You grabbed his wrists, your fingers locking around his forearms with a desperate, unyielding strength.
He jerked violently, a choked gasp tearing from his throat at the unexpected contact, but you didn't let go. "Deep pressure," you commanded, stepping into his space until your swollen belly brushed against his tense abdomen. "Jake, listen to my voice. Feel my hands. I am applying deep pressure. You are in the living room. I am Y/N. You are Jake. The static is a lie."He fought you for a second, his muscles rigid and trembling like a strained cable, his head shaking back and forth. "Failing," he choked out, keeping his eyes squeezed shut. "I am failing the protocol. It hurts you."
"Open your eyes," you ordered, squeezing his wrists harder, anchoring him to the physical reality of the moment. "Look at my face. Now."
Slowly, agonizingly, his dark eyes fluttered open. They were wild, bloodshot, and completely shattered."Look at me," you softened your voice, shifting from command to comfort. "I am not in pain. The contraction is gone. It was a false alarm. A Braxton Hicks. The anomaly is just flexing his muscles. He is staying exactly where he is. We have six weeks left. The timeline is perfectly intact."
Jake stared at you, his chest heaving as his processor struggled to parse the new data. "False... alarm?"
"Yes," you promised, releasing one of his wrists to reach up and cup his cheek. His skin was incredibly hot, radiating the heat of his adrenaline spike. You stroked your thumb firmly under his eye, wiping away a tear. "The sequence did not break."
He let out a ragged, tearing breath, his knees buckling slightly. You held onto him, wrapping your arms around his broad shoulders as he slumped forward, burying his face in the crook of your neck.
He didn't wrap his arms around you. They hung uselessly at his sides as he wept against your collarbone, the emotional exhaustion of his panic attack hitting him like a physical blow."I am terrified, Y/N," Jake confessed into your skin, his voice so fragile it broke your heart entirely. "I have built the crib. I have audited the fabrics. I have mapped the route. But I cannot control the birth. It is a massive, violent biological variable. I read the medical journals. The paing you will experience is statistically severe. And I cannot take it from you." You squeezed your eyes shut, resting your cheek against his dark, messy curls. "And the hospital," he continued, a shudder running through his heavy frame. "The fluorescent lights burn my retinas. The noise of the machinery disrupts my cognitive function. What if the static gets so loud that I shut down? What if you need me, and I cannot move because I am trapped in the noise? I cannot fail you. I cannot let you be alone in a room full of strangers."
He was terrified of his own neurology. He was terrified that his autism, the very thing that made him so beautifully, meticulously attentive to you, would be the thing that ultimately abandoned you when you needed him most.t"Jake, baby, listen to me," you whispered fiercely, your hands rubbing firm, rhythmic circles into his tense back. "You have never, ever failed me. Do you hear me? Never."
He sniffled, his breath hot against your neck. "But the data—"
"Screw the data," you interrupted, pulling back just enough to force him to look at you again. You held his face in both of your hands, making sure he saw the absolute, unwavering conviction in your eyes. "I don't care about the statistics. I don't care about the medical journals. I care about you."
He blinked, another tear slipping down his cheek."The hospital is going to be loud," you validated his fear, keeping your voice steady and calm. "It is going to be chaotic. But we are going to manage the variables together. Sarah is going to be there to buffer the doctors. You are going to wear your noise-canceling headphones. You are going to bring the weighted blanket. And you are not going to leave my side."
"But your pain," he whimpered, his eyes dropping to your stomach.
"You are going to help me through the pain," you promised him. "Because you are my anchor, Jake. When I am hurting, you are going to hold my hand, and you are going to apply deep pressure. You are going to count my breaths for me, because you have the best internal clock in the world. You are the only person who can keep me grounded." Jake stared at you, his internal processor rapidly analyzing the new role you had just assigned him.He wasn't powerless. He had a protocol. Apply deep pressure. Count the breaths. Ground the variable."I can count," Jake whispered, his voice gaining a fraction of its usual factual cadence. "I can track the duration and frequency of the contractions. I can provide stationary compression."
"Exactly," you smiled, a few tears of your own finally spilling over. "You are not a defective variable, Spidey. You are the only math that makes sense to me. I need you in that room. Not a 'normal' husband. I need you."
Jake took a deep, shuddering breath. The frantic, chaotic energy that had been vibrating under his skin finally, completely dissipated. He brought his hands up, wrapping them securely around your waist, pulling your heavy belly flush against his abdomen.He didn't just hold you; he anchored you."I will not shut down," Jake vowed, his dark eyes locking onto yours with a fierce, profound intensity that took your breath away. "I will wear the headphones, but my eyes will be on you. I will track the data. I will not let the static win. I am your permanent variable."
"I know you are," you breathed.
You didn't wait for him to close the distance. You leaned up, pressing your lips firmly against his.It wasn't a gentle, reassuring peck. It was a deep, desperate, grounding kiss. It was the physical manifestation of all the love, trust, and absolute certainty you held for him.Jake responded instantly. The fear melted out of his posture, replaced by the overwhelming, consuming gravity of his love for you. He kissed you back with a fierce, meticulous passion, his hands sliding up your back to tangle in your hair. He tasted like salt and adrenaline, but his lips were incredibly soft, moving against yours with a deliberate, rhythmic pressure that chased the last lingering shadows of his panic out of the room.He poured everything he had into the kiss, anchoring himself to the taste of your mouth, the heat of your skin, and the solid, heavy reality of your body against his.When you finally broke apart, gasping softly for air, Jake kept his forehead pressed against yours. His eyes were closed, his breathing perfectly synced with yours."The thermal transfer is optimal," he murmured, a tiny, genuine smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
You laughed, a wet, joyous sound, resting your hands flat against his broad chest. "It always is."Jake opened his eyes. He looked down at the floor, at the scattered piles of baby clothes and the dropped clipboard. The chaos that had caused his meltdown ten minutes ago was still there, but it didn't look like a systemic failure anymore. It just looked like a task."I need to repack the inventory," Jake stated, his voice calm, returning to its comfortable, logical baseline. "The organic receiving blankets are currently touching the hardwood floor. They must be re-washed to ensure sterility."
"We can wash them tomorrow, baby," you suggested gently, running a hand down his arm. "Let's just go to bed. The anomaly is asleep, and I'm exhausted."
Jake considered this. He looked at the bag, then looked at your tired face.
"Optimal recovery requires sleep," he agreed, wrapping his arm around your waist to support your center of gravity. "The protocol can wait until 0800 hours. Come, Y/N. Let's go to the quiet room." You walked down the hallway together, incredibly slow, his hand providing the constant, deep pressure that held your entire world together. The unpredictable variables of the future were still looming, but as Jake pulled the heavy grey weighted blanket over both of you in the dark, you knew without a shadow of a doubt that your structural integrity was flawless.
The final weeks of your pregnancy felt like existing in a state of suspended animation.
It was late February. The world outside was still locked in the icy grip of winter, but inside the beige two-story house, time seemed to have slowed to a thick, agonizing crawl. You were thirty-eight weeks pregnant. The hospital bag, after being audited by Jake no less than forty-two times, was sitting fully packed by the front door.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. The house was quiet, save for the faint, rhythmic sound of Jake moving around in the nursery down the hall.You were standing at the kitchen island, a task you could only manage for about ten minutes before your swollen, aching feet demanded you sit down. Your parents, who lived three cities away, had sent a massive, gorgeous bouquet of flowers to celebrate the impending arrival of their grandson.You had filled a glass vase with lukewarm water and were methodically trimming the stems and stripping the excess leaves. Snip. Snip. The scent of eucalyptus and blooming lilies was strong, but pleasant. It was a grounding, repetitive sensory task.Down the hall, you could hear the soft hum of Jake’s voice. He wasn't talking to you; he was talking to the room. "The ambient light from the streetlamp will filter through the primary window at an angle of 45 degrees," Jake was murmuring to himself, likely adjusting the blackout curtains for the hundredth time. "The secondary acoustic panels are secure. The friction coefficient of the rug is optimal for crawling, though that biological milestone is currently months away. The inventory is stable."You smiled, tossing a handful of trimmed leaves into the compost bin. He was trying so hard to control the environment, trying to build a fortress strong enough to withstand the chaotic, unpredictable variable of childbirth.
You reached for a heavy, dark pink peony. You clamped the floral shears around the thick stem.
Snip.Simultaneously, a distinct, bizarre pop echoed low in your pelvis.
You froze. The floral shears slipped from your fingers, clattering loudly onto the granite countertop.
For a microsecond, there was no pain. There was only a sudden, overwhelming rush of warm fluid flooding down your thighs, soaking instantly through your maternity leggings and splashing onto the kitchen linoleum. "Oh," you gasped, your hands flying down to brace yourself against the edge of the island. Before your brain could even process the reality of your water breaking, the first contraction hit.
It didn't build slowly like the books had promised. It didn't start as a dull, menstrual-like ache. It hit you with the force of a high-speed collision—a massive, crushing band of iron clamping down around your abdomen and your lower spine with violent, breathless intensity. Your knees instantly buckled.You went down hard, catching yourself on your hands and knees right in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by fallen leaves and the expanding puddle of amniotic fluid. A raw, guttural cry tore from your throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated shock and agony.
"Ah—! Jake! Jake!"
The sound of your scream shattered the quiet peace of the house.
The heavy, rapid thud of Jake’s footsteps echoed down the hallway instantly. He didn't just walk into the kitchen; he skidded into it, his socks slipping slightly on the hardwood before he caught himself on the doorframe. "Y/N?" Jake gasped, his chest heaving.He saw you on the floor. He saw the sheer, contorted agony on your face. And then, his eyes dropped to the puddle of fluid on the linoleum.
The biological variable. The system failure.Jake’s entire body went rigid. The color completely drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale. His hands flew up, hovering frantically around his chest as if he didn't know what to do with his own limbs.
"The... the timeline," Jake stammered, his voice jumping an entire octave, thin and panicked. "It is week thirty-eight. The statistical average is forty weeks. The fluid... your amniotic sac has ruptured. The sequence has initiated prematurely!"
"Jake," you sobbed, squeezing your eyes shut as the contraction refused to let go. It was blinding, a white-hot agony that made your entire body shake. "Jake, it hurts. It hurts so bad." That sentence broke him.Jake had spent the last two years dedicating every ounce of his massive, beautiful brain to keeping you safe. He audited your environment. He maintained the climate control. He massaged the fluid out of your swollen feet. You were his permanent variable, the only thing in the universe that made the static quiet. And now, you were writhing on the floor in a level of physical agony he had never, ever witnessed. A sharp, ragged whimper tore from Jake’s throat. He dropped to his knees right into the puddle of fluid, completely ignoring the sensory nightmare of the wet linoleum soaking through his jeans.He reached out, his large hands hovering over your back, trembling violently. He was terrified to touch you, terrified that his pressure would somehow exacerbate the pain.
T"You are in distress," Jake cried, the tears spilling instantly over his eyelashes, tracking fast and hot down his pale cheeks. "Your pain receptors are overloading. The volume is too high. I can see it. You are shaking. Y/N, I don't know how to fix it! I don't have the protocol to stop the biology!"
He pulled his hands back, grabbing fistfuls of his own dark hair, his breathing spiraling into rapid, shallow gasps. The sensory overload of your screaming, the visual trauma of your pain, and his own overwhelming, suffocating helplessness were crashing his system all at once. "Jake, no, don't pull away," you gasped, managing to lift one shaking hand to reach blindly for him. "Deep pressure. Please. My hips. Squeeze my hips."He heard the command. Apply deep pressure.
He let go of his hair. He crawled forward, positioning himself behind you. He placed his large, warm hands firmly on either side of your hips and squeezed with everything he had. "I am compressing the joints," Jake wept, his tears falling freely onto the back of your shirt. His chest heaved against your spine, his entire heavy frame shaking with the force of his sobs. "I am applying pressure. But you are still crying. It is not fixing the malfunction. Y/N, please, I cannot watch you hurt. It is too loud in my chest. It is tearing my data apart."
"You're helping," you panted, the contraction finally, agonizingly beginning to peak and slowly recede. "You are... anchoring me. Just hold me."
He slumped forward, wrapping his arms securely around your heavy belly, burying his wet face in the crook of your neck. He was sobbing openly now, the sound broken and terrified. He hated this. He hated the lack of control. He hated that his safe harbor was in pain."I have to initiate the transit sequence," Jake choked out, trying to force his logical brain back online through the haze of his tears. "The hospital bag is at the door. The car... I have to warm up the car. But I cannot leave you on the floor. If another contraction hits, you will lack compression."
You were both trapped. You couldn't walk, and he couldn't leave you to get the car ready without risking a massive panic attack for both of you.
And then, the front door unlocked.
"Y/N? Jakey? I let myself in!"
It was Sarah. It was Tuesday. She was arriving for your weekly Tuesday dinner, carrying two bags of groceries because you couldn't stand at the stove anymore.
Sarah walked into the kitchen, a smile on her face, and immediately dropped both bags of groceries onto the floor. Tomatoes and boxes of pasta spilled out, rolling across the hardwood, but she didn't even look at them. She took in the scene in a fraction of a second. The water on the floor. You on your hands and knees. Her son, weeping hysterically, wrapped around you like a human shield.
"Oh, my god," Sarah breathed. The mother-bear instinct, honed over twenty-six years of managing crises, snapped into place instantly.She crossed the kitchen in three strides. She didn't yell, knowing the volume would shatter Jake further. She dropped to her knees right beside the two of you, placing a firm, grounding hand on Jake’s shaking shoulder.
"Jake," Sarah said, her voice dropping into that calm, authoritative, unshakable register she used when he was a child having a meltdown. "Look at me, honey."
Jake lifted his head from your neck. His face was a mess of tears and raw, unfiltered terror. "Mom," he gasped, his voice cracking. "The sequence initiated early. The pain variable is extreme. I cannot stop her pain."
"You aren't supposed to stop it, Jakey," Sarah promised him fiercely, brushing a sweaty curl off his forehead. "You are just supposed to hold her. And you are doing a perfect job. But we need to move the environment to the hospital. Right now."
"I cannot leave her to start the car," he wept, his grip tightening around your waist. "She requires deep pressure."
"You don't have to leave her," Sarah commanded, already pulling her car keys back out of her pocket. "My car is running. It's warm. It's parked right at the bottom of the driveway. I am driving. You are going to stay right beside her the entire time."
Another wave of tightness began to coil low in your back. The interval was impossibly short."Sarah," you whimpered, bracing your hands against the floor again. "Another one. It's coming fast."
"Okay, Jake, on three, we are going to lift her," Sarah instructed, moving to your other side. "We are going to get her to the backseat of my car. You will provide the physical support. Can you execute the lift?"
Jake’s jaw clenched. The tears were still streaming down his face, his chest still heaving with panicked sobs, but the presence of his mother and a clear, defined set of instructions offered a tiny foothold in the chaos.
"I can execute the lift," Jake confirmed, his voice vibrating with absolute determination.
"One. Two. Three."
Jake hauled you up, taking almost your entire weight against his own body. He practically carried you down the hallway. He didn't even stop to grab his coat. He just grabbed the grey hospital bag by the door with his free hand and pushed out into the biting, freezing February air.Sarah had the backseat door of her SUV open. Jake maneuvered you inside, laying you across the seats, and instantly climbed in right beside you. He didn't sit in the seatbelt; he wedged himself onto the floorboard, kneeling so his face was level with yours and his hands could maintain their vice-grip on your hips.Sarah slammed the door, threw the hospital bag into the front, and jumped into the driver's seat. "I'm putting the hazards on," Sarah announced, throwing the car into drive and accelerating hard out of the suburban neighborhood. "We will be there in twelve minutes."The small, confined space of the backseat felt like a pressure cooker.The second contraction hit its peak just as Sarah took a sharp turn. You screamed, a loud, ragged sound that bounced off the windows. You couldn't help it. The pain was an all-consuming fire.Jake flinched violently at the sound, a fresh sob tearing from his own throat. He was crying just as hard as you were, his face buried in the heavy wool of your maternity sweater."I'm sorry," he wept, his thumbs pressing brutally hard into your hipbones, trying to force the deep pressure through the agony. "I'm so sorry, Y/N. Please, I want to take it. I want to swap the data. Give it to me."
"You're... doing it," you panted, your fingers tangling desperately in his dark hair, pulling his head up so you could see his face. "Jake, look at me. Count. Remember the protocol? Count my breaths."He stared at you, his brown eyes wide and shattered, swimming in tears. He took a massive, shuddering breath, forcing his analytical brain to latch onto the numbers."Inhale," Jake choked out, his voice shaking. "One... two... three... four. Exhale."You blew the air out through your teeth, your eyes locked onto his."Inhale," he wept, keeping the rhythm steady even as his own body shook with terror. "One... two... three... four. The interval is approximately ninety seconds. The duration of the peak is forty-five seconds. You have fifteen seconds of peak physical trauma remaining."
"I love you," you groaned, squeezing your eyes shut as the pain finally began to recede. "I love you, Spidey."
"I love you," he cried, leaning forward to press his wet, salty forehead against yours. "I am right here. I am the wall."
"Jake," Sarah called from the front seat, her voice tight but remarkably steady as she navigated the icy roads. "Your headphones. Put them on. The hospital emergency entrance is going to be loud, and I need you grounded."Jake reached blindly into the front pocket of his hoodie. He pulled out the heavy Sony noise-canceling headphones. His hands were shaking so badly he almost dropped them, but he managed to slide them over his ears.
He didn't turn the noise-canceling feature all the way up. He left it at 50%. He needed to hear the ambient noise dampened, but he absolutely refused to block out the sound of your voice. If you needed him, he had to hear the data.Sarah pulled the SUV sharply into the red-lit emergency bay of the hospital. She laid on the horn, a long, aggressive blast that signaled an incoming emergency.
Nurses were outside with a wheelchair in seconds.The transition from the safe, insulated bubble of the car to the blinding, chaotic reality of the hospital was an assault on the senses. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed with that aggressive 60-hertz cycle. The air smelled of sharp alcohol and sterile bleach. Radios were crackling, and people were shouting orders.
It was Jake's personal hell.As they helped you into the wheelchair, another contraction ripped through your body. You folded forward, crying out.
Jake stood frozen by the car door for exactly two seconds. His hands flew up to the sides of his headphones, his shoulders hiking up to his ears, his body desperately trying to fold inward to escape the sensory attack of the emergency room bay. The static in his head was a roaring, deafening tidal wave.
System crash imminent.
But then he looked at you. He saw you gripping the armrests of the wheelchair, your knuckles white, your face pale and twisted in pain.
His permanent variable.Jake let out a low, guttural growl—a sound of sheer, absolute defiance against his own neurology. He dropped his hands from his headphones. He closed the distance, grabbed the handles of your wheelchair from the nurse, and shoved it forward himself.
"Do not touch her," Jake snapped at an orderly who tried to assist, his voice taking on a cold, flat, entirely robotic tone—his ultimate defense mechanism. "She requires deep pressure. I am the husband. I am the primary support. Direct me to the labor and delivery ward. Now." The nurses, taking one look at the massive, fiercely protective man with tears streaming down his face and headphones over his ears, didn't argue. They led the way.Sarah ran right beside you, carrying the grey duffel bag, her hand resting on Jake’s back to guide him through the harsh, echoing corridors.When they finally got you into a delivery room, the chaos only intensified. Machines were hooked up. Wires were taped to your belly. The monitors began to beep—a sharp, high-pitched ping that measured the baby's heart rate and the intensity of your contractions.Jake stood rigidly beside the bed. He had pulled his dark blue hoodie up over his head, the hood layered over his headphones to create an additional sensory barrier. He looked terrified. He was still crying, silent tears tracking steadily down his pale face, but his hands were locked onto yours.
"The biological anomaly is arriving," Jake whispered to you, his thumb stroking your knuckles frantically as the nurse adjusted the IV in your arm. "The data is overwhelming. But the heart rate monitor indicates 140 beats per minute. Arthur is stable. You are stable."
"I need you to stay with me," you panted, the exhaustion beginning to blur the edges of your vision.
"I am stationary," Jake promised fiercely, leaning down so his face was inches from yours. "I am not leaving the coordinates. I will count every breath. I will audit every variable."And he did.
For the next six hours, Jake Sim endured the most profoundly overstimulating environment of his entire life, and he did it without shutting down.When the pain grew too intense for you to speak, he became your voice. He utilized his incredibly clinical vocabulary to communicate exactly what you were experiencing to the nurses, leaving no room for medical ambiguity. When the fluorescent lights became too much for him, he didn't leave the room; he simply closed his eyes and buried his face in the blankets beside your hip, maintaining the heavy, deep pressure you required.
Sarah sat in the corner, managing the logistics, answering the doctors' questions, and watching her son perform miracles.When it was finally time to push, the room filled with doctors. The noise level spiked. The clinical smell of iodine and blood filled the air.Jake stood right by your shoulder. He pushed one side of his headphones back, exposing his ear so he could hear you perfectly. He slid his arm behind your back, supporting your entire weight as you curled forward."The friction is massive," Jake wept with you, his face pressed against your sweaty cheek. "You are structurally incredible, Y/N. The output is almost complete. Keep pushing. One... two... three... four." You gave one final, agonizing, earth-shattering push, screaming his name into the chaotic room. And then, a new sound pierced the air.
It wasn't a beep. It wasn't the buzz of a fluorescent light. It was a loud, wet, furious wail.
You collapsed back against the pillows, gasping for air, your chest heaving.
"Time of birth, 11:42 PM," the doctor announced, placing a tiny, squalling, incredibly messy bundle directly onto your bare chest.
Jake completely froze.
He stared at the tiny, red, screaming infant resting on your chest. The baby's fists were clenched, his eyes squeezed shut against the harsh hospital lights. He was loud. He was unpredictable. He was covered in biological fluids. He was a sensory nightmare.Jake slowly reached up and pulled his headphones completely off his head, letting them drop around his neck.He didn't flinch at the crying. He didn't pull away from the mess.He leaned down, his broad shoulders shaking with fresh, overwhelming sobs, and rested his large, trembling hand gently over the baby's tiny, frantic back. The contrast between his massive hand and the tiny infant was staggering.
"Arthur," Jake whispered, his voice cracking with a love so profound it seemed to pull the gravity out of the room. "The variable is complete."
The baby, feeling the sudden, firm warmth of his father's hand, let out one last shuddering cry and slowly began to quiet down, settling into the familiar rhythm of your heartbeat."He's here, Jakey," you wept, turning your head to press a kiss to Jake's tear-soaked cheek. "He's perfect." Jake looked from the baby to you. He leaned his forehead against yours, his dark eyes shining with absolute, unvarnished awe. He had survived the noise. He had survived the chaos.
"The data was correct," Jake murmured into your skin, a wet, beautiful smile breaking across his face. "Fifty percent you. Fifty percent me. He is mathematically perfect."
Three days in the maternity ward felt less like a medical recovery and more like a prolonged sensory endurance test. For seventy-two hours, the world had been reduced to a small, starkly white room. It was a chaotic environment dictated by the hum of fluorescent bulbs, the sharp scent of antiseptic wipes, and the unpredictable, revolving door of nurses who came in at all hours to check vitals, administer pain medication, and press on your bruised, aching abdomen.For you, the exhaustion was absolute. Your body felt as though it had been put through a commercial-grade compactor. Every muscle ached, walking was a slow, shuffling physical trial, and your center of gravity had completely shifted, leaving you feeling hollowed out and incredibly fragile. Yet, beneath the crushing fatigue and the physical soreness, there was a profound, intoxicating euphoria.
You were a mother. Arthur was perfect. He was tiny, warm, and entirely reliant on you. He had a mop of dark, fluffy hair that mirrored his father’s, and a pair of dark, observant eyes that he opened just long enough to study the blurred shapes of the world before falling back into a deep, milk-drunk sleep.
For Jake, the three days in the hospital had been an exercise in sheer, unadulterated willpower. He had not left the room once. Not to get coffee, not to go to the cafeteria, not to step outside for fresh air. He had established a perimeter around your bed and Arthur's clear plastic bassinet, and he guarded it with the hyper-vigilant dedication of a sentry.
He wore his noise-canceling headphones almost the entire time, keeping the volume dial just low enough to hear your voice or Arthur’s cries, but high enough to drown out the beeping monitors and the hallway chatter. He tracked the nurses’ shifts in a small notebook. He memorized your medication schedule, reminding the staff exactly three minutes before your ibuprofen was due.But most importantly, he was your anchor. When Arthur cried in the middle of the night and the hormones and exhaustion made you weep, Jake was there. He would carefully lift the baby, applying the perfect, broad-handed deep pressure that Arthur seemed to inherently crave, and then sit on the edge of your hospital bed, wrapping his free arm around your shoulders to ground you both.Now, it was Friday morning. Discharge day.You were sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, dressed in soft, loose sweatpants and a maternity sweater. You watched as Jake executed the final packing protocol.He was standing by the small bassinet, his brow furrowed in absolute, laser-focused concentration. Arthur was dressed in his going-home outfit: a soft, dark blue, organic cotton onesie with the seams sewn on the outside to prevent localized friction.
Jake was currently securing the infant into the portable car seat.
"The chest clip must be aligned precisely with the armpit axis," Jake murmured to himself, his long fingers gently but firmly adjusting the plastic buckle over Arthur’s tiny sternum. "If it is too low, it compromises the skeletal restraint system in the event of sudden deceleration. If it is too high, it introduces an asphyxiation variable."
"It looks perfect, Spidey," you said softly, your voice raspy from fatigue.
Jake didn't look up until he had pulled the tightening strap at the bottom of the seat. He inserted two fingers beneath the shoulder harness, verifying the tension with mathematical precision. "The slack is eliminated. He is secured."
Jake finally turned to look at you. His dark eyes were shadowed with heavy bags, the physical toll of his hyper-vigilance evident in the pale, tight lines of his face. The hospital had drained his battery down to a critical one percent. He desperately needed his sanctuary."Are you ready to initiate the transit sequence?" he asked, walking over to you."I'm so ready to go home, Jake," you breathed, reaching your hands out.He leaned down, wrapping his arms around your waist, and carefully hauled you to your feet. He didn't let go of you immediately. He pressed you flush against his chest, burying his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply.
"You still smell like the hospital," he mumbled into your skin, his nose wrinkling slightly. "The iodine and the synthetic linens. I need to recalibrate your olfactory baseline. I need you to smell like vanilla and oats again."
"I'll take a shower as soon as we get home," you promised, rubbing his back. "Just get us to the quiet room."
A sharp knock on the door made Jake flinch, his shoulders instantly hiking up defensively.A cheerful nurse walked in, pushing a wheelchair. "Alright, Mom and Dad! It’s policy that we wheel you down to the exit. Is your ride here?"
"My mother is parked in the designated loading zone at the East Entrance," Jake stated, his voice flattening into its protective cadence. He stepped back from you, picking up the heavy car seat with one hand and grabbing the grey duffel bag with the other. "We are prepared for extraction." The nurse blinked, slightly taken aback by his terminology, but she smiled politely. "Great. Have a seat, Y/N." The journey through the hospital corridors felt like running a gauntlet. The fluorescent lights buzzed violently overhead. The wheels of the chair squeaked against the linoleum. Jake walked exactly half a step behind your left shoulder, his jaw clenched so tightly you could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin. He was staring straight ahead, refusing to look at the other patients, his headphones securely clamped over his ears.When the automatic sliding doors finally parted, the rush of cold, crisp February air was like a physical blow of relief.Sarah’s SUV was idling by the curb. She leaped out the moment she saw you, a massive, tearful smile on her face.
"Oh, my babies," Sarah cooed, rushing over. She hugged you first, carefully avoiding your tender abdomen, before turning to her son.
Jake didn't hug her back. He couldn't. His hands were full, and his sensory capacity was entirely maxed out. "The external environment is 34 degrees," he stated abruptly, dodging her embrace to move toward the backseat of the car. "The infant will experience a rapid thermal drop. I must initiate the docking procedure."
Sarah didn't take it personally. She knew the signs of an impending system crash better than anyone. She stepped back, her smile softening into profound understanding. "The car is warm, Jakey. Go ahead."Jake clicked the car seat perfectly into the pre-installed base. Click. Clack. He tested the structural integrity by pulling aggressively on the handle. It didn't budge a millimeter.
He then helped you into the backseat, sliding in right beside you. He pulled his door shut, sealing out the noise of the hospital traffic.The silence inside the SUV was sudden and heavy. Sarah had turned the radio completely off. The only sound was the low, steady hum of the heater and the rhythmic sound of Arthur’s tiny, snuffling breaths.Jake let out a long, shuddering exhale. His head fell back against the headrest, his eyes sliding shut. His hands, which had been clenched into tight fists, slowly uncurled on his thighs."Deep breaths, Spidey," you whispered, shifting your weight painfully to lean your head against his broad shoulder.
Jake shifted instantly, bringing his arm up to wrap securely around your shoulders, tucking you against his side. He opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto the car seat in front of him.
"The hospital is a chaotic variable," Jake murmured, his voice thick with exhaustion. "But the data collection was successful. We entered as two. We are exiting as three."
"We did it," you smiled, closing your eyes.The drive back to the house took exactly twenty minutes. Sarah drove with excruciating care, avoiding every pothole and taking the turns at a glacial pace. Jake spent the entire transit staring at Arthur’s chest, visually tracking the rise and fall of the baby’s breathing.When the SUV finally turned into your familiar driveway, the snow piled high on the lawns, your heart did a massive, relieved flutter."We're home," Sarah announced softly, putting the car in park.She got out, grabbing the duffel bags from the front, and hurried to the front door to unlock it and turn on the lights.Jake didn't rush. He opened his door, stepping out into the cold air. He unclicked the car seat with practiced ease, lifting Arthur out. Then, he offered you his free arm, providing the deep, stable pressure you needed to hoist yourself out of the low seat.Together, you walked up the front steps.
The moment Jake crossed the threshold into the house, you physically felt the shift in his energy.The front door clicked shut behind you, and the chaotic noise of the outside world vanished entirely. The house was bathed in the soft, warm glow of the amber lamps. The air smelled faintly of cedar and the clean, unscented laundry detergent he used."The temperature is exactly 69 degrees," Jake whispered, his chest expanding as he took his first real, deep breath in three days. He looked around the living room, his eyes scanning the perfectly aligned sofa cushions, the blackout curtains, and the neat rows of his LEGO bins.
The baseline had been restored.
"Welcome home, boys," you smiled, tears pricking your eyes at the sheer, overwhelming peace of the space.Sarah came walking out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. "I stocked the fridge," she told you, keeping her voice pitched to a soft, soothing volume. "There's a massive batch of the organic chicken soup Y/N likes, and all the ingredients for Tuesday grilled cheese are prepped and sorted in the crisper drawer."
"Thank you, Mom," Jake said. He was still holding the car seat, standing in the entryway, processing the sensory relief.Sarah walked over. She didn't try to hug him again. She just reached out and gently smoothed down the collar of his hoodie. "You did so good, Jake. I am so incredibly proud of you. You protected them."
Jake’s jaw tightened. He looked down at the sleeping infant, then looked at you."They are my permanent variables. It is my primary function."
"I know it is," Sarah smiled, a tear slipping down her cheek. She picked up her purse from the entryway table. "Now, I am going to leave. You three need to establish your new routines. The static is gone, honey. You’ve got the manual now."
"I have the manual," Jake agreed softly.
Sarah blew you a kiss and slipped out the front door, locking it securely behind her.
And then, there were three."Let's get him out of the restraint system," Jake said, his focus immediately shifting back to the baby. "Prolonged containment in the car seat can restrict diaphragmatic expansion."
"To the nursery," you agreed, shuffling slowly down the hallway.
The nursery was exactly as Jake had built it—a masterpiece of sensory control. The walls were that soft, calming sage green. The lighting was dimmed to a mere twenty percent capacity. The acoustic panels absorbed the sound of your footsteps, making the room feel like a quiet, insulated cocoon.Jake set the car seat gently on the rug. He unbuckled the harness, his large hands incredibly gentle as he scooped the tiny infant into his arms.Arthur let out a small, disgruntled squeak at being moved, his tiny arms flailing out in a sudden startle reflex. His face scrunched up, the precursor to a loud, chaotic cry.Before the hospital, a sudden, unpredictable noise from a baby would have sent Jake’s nervous system into an immediate tailspin.
But not now.Jake didn't flinch. He didn't look for his headphones. He immediately pulled Arthur against his chest, tucking the baby's head beneath his chin. He spread his large hand over Arthur's entire back, applying a firm, steady, continuous deep pressure."Sensory overload," Jake murmured to the baby, his voice dropping into a low, resonant baritone that vibrated through his chest cavity. "The transition from the restraint system to the open air caused a proprioceptive disruption. I understand, Arthur. The world is too big right now. I am providing the boundary."
Jake began to rock. It wasn't the frantic, erratic rocking of a meltdown. It was a slow, deeply mathematical sway. Forward, two, three. Back, two, three. He calculated the momentum, keeping the rhythm flawless.Arthur’s scrunching face instantly smoothed out. The impending cry died in his throat. He felt the deep pressure. He felt the heavy, rhythmic vibration of his father’s voice. He let out a tiny, contented sigh, his little fists relaxing against Jake’s hoodie.You stood in the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame, watching your husband work his magic."You're a natural, Spidey," you whispered, your heart swelling until you thought it might burst through your ribs.
Jake looked up at you as he rocked. "His nervous system is essentially a blank hard drive," he explained, though his eyes were incredibly soft. "He does not know how to self-regulate yet. He requires external compression to find his physical coordinates. It is highly logical."
"It's beautiful," you corrected him.
Jake walked over to the crib—the structurally flawless, birch wood fortress he had built. He lowered Arthur into the bassinet, keeping his hand flat against the baby's chest until the very last second, ensuring a smooth transition to the mattress.
Arthur didn't even twitch. He was out cold.Jake stood over the crib for a long moment, verifying the rise and fall of the tiny chest. He checked the digital thermometer on the changing table."The environment is stable," Jake announced quietly.He turned away from the crib and walked over to you. He didn't stop a foot away. He stepped directly into your space, wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling your tired, aching body flush against his."Your turn," Jake whispered into your hair."My turn for what?" you asked, melting against his solid warmth, letting him support your weight.
"Maintenance," he stated factually. "You have undergone massive biological trauma. The fluid loss, the muscle exertion, the sleep deprivation. Your structural integrity is compromised. I must initiate the recovery protocol." He didn't wait for you to argue. He swept one arm under your knees and the other around your back, lifting you entirely off your feet. You let out a startled laugh, wrapping your arms around his neck. "Jake! I'm heavy!"
"Your mass is irrelevant. I have calculated the load-bearing capacity of my skeletal structure," he replied, carrying you out of the nursery and down the hall toward the master bedroom. "You are not to walk anymore today. It introduces unnecessary friction to your healing tissues."He carried you into the master bedroom. The blackout curtains were drawn tight. The bed was freshly made, the sheets crisp and smelling of his unscented detergent.He set you down gently on the edge of the mattress. He knelt in front of you, carefully untying your sneakers and sliding them off your swollen feet. He pulled your socks off, his thumbs instinctively pressing into your arches to offer that deep, soothing pressure."The swelling is already decreasing," he noted, analyzing your ankles. "But you require hydration and horizontal rest."
He stood up, pulling the heavy, fifteen-pound grey weighted blanket back. "Get in."
You didn't need to be told twice. You slid under the sheets, groaning in absolute bliss as the familiar, heavy weight of the blanket settled over your exhausted body. It was like sinking into a cloud of pure safetyJake didn't immediately join you. He went into the master bathroom, returning a minute later with a large glass of ice water—no, room temperature water, because ice clinked and the cold shocked the system.
He set it on the nightstand, then walked around to his side of the bed.
He stripped off his hoodie, leaving him in his soft, tagless t-shirt, and climbed under the weighted blanket beside you.The moment his body settled against the mattress, the final piece of the algorithm locked into place. He pulled you flush against his side, his heavy arm slinging over your waist, his long legs tangling with yours.
He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his breath ghosting over your collarbone.
"The static is entirely gone," Jake whispered, his voice incredibly thick.
"Me too," you murmured, your eyes already drifting shut, anchored by his heavy, beautiful weight. "I love you, Jake."
"I love you, Y/N," he replied, his hand resting flat against your stomach, which was now soft and empty. "And I love Arthur. The variables are perfect."
The house was completely silent. The temperature was exactly 69 degrees. Down the hall, the anomaly slept peacefully in his mathematically sound crib. And in the quiet dark of the bedroom, Jake Sim finally allowed his hyper-vigilant processor to power down. He had built the perimeter. He had survived the noise. And as he held you in the safety of the beige house, he knew with absolute certainty that no matter how loud the world outside got, he would always be the wall that kept you safe.
The first few weeks of parenthood were exactly what Jake had calculated they would be: a massive, systemic disruption of their previous baseline. Sleep was fragmented into two-hour intervals. The laundry machine ran almost constantly, cycling through organic cotton burp cloths and tagless onesies. The pristine quiet of the beige two-story house was frequently punctuated by the sharp, demanding cries of a newborn who had not yet learned how to exist in a world with gravity and cold air.
But miraculously, the system didn't crash.Jake had adapted with the fierce, hyper-focused dedication he usually reserved for three-thousand-piece architectural models. He had built a schedule so airtight it left no room for the paralyzing anxiety of the unknown. He tracked Arthur’s ounces of milk intake on his iPad spreadsheet. He mapped out the exact times to dim the smart bulbs to promote melatonin production. He became an absolute master of the swaddle, folding the organic receiving blankets around Arthur with the precise tension required to simulate the deep pressure of the womb.It was exactly 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, roughly three weeks after you had brought Arthur home. You woke up with a slow, heavy blink, the phantom echo of a baby’s cry pulling you out of a deep sleep. You reached your hand out instinctively across the mattress.Your fingers met cool, empty sheets.You pushed yourself up, the heavy grey weighted blanket sliding off your shoulders. The house was utterly silent. The ambient temperature was locked at 69 degrees.
You slid your feet into your quiet, rubber-soled slippers and walked softly out of the master bedroom, the acoustic dampening of the hallway absorbing the sound of your steps.A soft, warm amber glow was spilling out from the open doorway of the nursery.
You didn't walk in right away. You stopped just behind the doorframe, peeking into the room.The scene inside made your breath catch in your throat.Jake was sitting in the wide, upholstered rocking chair in the corner of the room. He wasn't wearing his noise-canceling headphones. He was dressed in his soft, worn-in navy hoodie, the hood pushed down, his fluffy dark curls sleep-mussed and sticking up in every direction.Arthur was fully awake, resting against Jake’s chest, swaddled perfectly into a tight, dark blue burrito. The baby’s large, dark eyes—an exact mirror of his father’s—were wide open, staring up at Jake’s face in the dim light.
Jake was rocking the chair. Forward, two, three. Back, two, three. The momentum was perfectly calculated.He was talking to his son. His voice was pitched to that low, resonant baritone, a steady, vibrating hum that you knew provided Arthur with immense tactile comfort."The light you are currently observing is a wavelength of approximately 590 nanometers," Jake was whispering, his long, elegant fingers gently stroking the soft peach fuzz on the top of Arthur's head. "It is the color amber. It is statistically proven to be the least disruptive to your circadian rhythm. That means it is safe for your eyes."
Arthur let out a tiny, soft coo, a bubble of spit forming on his lips.
Jake’s expression softened into a look of such absolute, unvarnished adoration that it made your heart physically ache. He didn't pull a tissue. He just used the soft sleeve Pof his hoodie to gently wipe the baby's chin. "You are experiencing rapid neurological growth," Jake continued, his tone factual but completely laced with wonder. "Every time you blink, your synapses are forming new pathways. It must be very overwhelming. The data input is massive. But you do not need to process it all at once, Arthur. I have optimized the perimeter."Jake leaned his head back against the chair, keeping the baby securely anchored to his chest."When I was your age," Jake murmured, his voice growing incredibly quiet, "the world was very loud. The lights were too sharp. The tags on my clothes felt like sandpaper. My processor did not know how to filter the noise. I was very afraid, very often."You leaned your shoulder against the doorframe, tears pricking your eyes. You had never heard him talk about his infancy this way."But you will not have to be afraid," Jake promised his son, his hand flattening against Arthur’s tiny back, providing that essential deep pressure. "I have audited the textiles. I have sealed the windows. And when the variables become too unpredictable, I will be the wall. Just as your mother is the wall for me. You are fifty percent her, which means you are structurally flawless."
Arthur blinked slowly, his heavy eyelids finally beginning to droop under the soothing cadence of his father’s voice and the rhythmic math of the rocking chair.
"You are my favorite anomaly," Jake whispered, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to the baby's forehead. "Now, initiate sleep mode. The environment is stable."
You stepped into the room, unable to stay hidden any longer.
"You're amazing with him," you whispered, walking over to the rocking chair.
Jake looked up, his dark eyes instantly finding yours. The hyper-vigilant tension he carried in the outside world was entirely absent. Here, in the amber light, holding his son, he just looked like a man perfectly at peace."His distress vocalizations woke me at exactly 3:02 AM," Jake reported softly, not stopping the rocking motion. "He required a diaper change and an additional two ounces of formula. He is now entering the final stages of the sleep cycle. You did not need to break your REM sleep, Y/N. The sequence was under control."
"I know it was," you smiled, reaching out to run your fingers through Jake's messy curls. You leaned down and pressed a kiss to his warm cheek. "I just woke up and missed my permanent variable. Both of them."Jake hummed, a deep sound of profound satisfaction, and leaned his face against your stomach as you stood beside him. "The volume of my love for you is mathematically incalculable," he murmured into your shirt.
"I love you too, Jakey," you whispered, watching Arthur's eyes flutter entirely shut. "Let's put him down and go back to sleep. We have a lot of variables to conquer tomorrow."
Two Years Later
"Dada! Bwock!"
The joyful, demanding shout echoed through the sunlit living room of the house.
It was a Saturday morning. The world outside had thawed into a beautiful, vibrant spring, but inside, the climate control was, as always, locked at a comfortable 69 degrees.You were standing at the kitchen island, a mug of hot coffee in your hands, watching the scene unfolding on the plush living room rug with a heart so full it felt like it might burst.Arthur was now two years old.
He was a whirlwind of kinetic energy, a miniature clone of his father with the same fluffy, dark curls and enormous brown eyes. But unlike Jake’s historically cautious approach to the world, Arthur attacked his environment with fearless enthusiasm, entirely confident that his parents had made the world perfectly safe for him to explore.Jake was sitting cross-legged on the floor.He was wearing his favorite vintage Spider-Man pajama set—the soft, tagless ones with the flat seams. Sitting exactly opposite him, mirroring his posture with striking accuracy, was Arthur, wearing an exact, miniature replica of the same tagless Spider-Man pajamas. Between them sat a massive plastic bin of vibrant, primary-colored LEGO Duplo blocks.
Jake had originally planned to introduce standard LEGO sets when Arthur's fine motor skills developed, but he quickly realized that the larger, safer Duplo blocks were mathematically perfect for a toddler's grip. "Bwock, Dada!" Arthur demanded again, slapping his small, chubby hand against the carpet.Jake picked up a bright red 2x4 Duplo brick. He didn't just hand it to his son; he held it up, examining it with the same intense, analytical focus he used for his architectural commissions.
"This is a fundamental structural component," Jake explained to the two-year-old, his tone perfectly serious and respectful. He never used 'baby talk'. He spoke to Arthur as if he were a colleague. "The clutch power of the interlocking tubes underneath will allow us to build a stable foundation. You must align the studs precisely."
He handed the red block to Arthur.Arthur grabbed it with both hands. He picked up a blue block from the carpet and, with a look of intense concentration that mirrored Jake’s exactly, mashed the two blocks together.
Click.
"I did it!" Arthur cheered, throwing his hands in the air."Your spatial awareness is developing flawlessly," Jake praised, a massive, brilliant smile breaking across his face. He leaned forward and ruffled Arthur's dark curls. "You have achieved a successful connection. Now, we must reinforce the lateral stability." You took a sip of your coffee, leaning against the counter. Watching Jake as a father was the greatest privilege of your life. All the fears he had harbored during your pregnancy—that his sensory limitations would make him inadequate, that he wouldn't be able to handle the noise of a child—had been completely dismantled. He hadn't stopped being autistic. The world outside the house was still too loud, the grocery store still required noise-canceling headphones, and unexpected changes to his schedule still caused his anxiety to spike. But with Arthur, Jake had rewritten his own algorithm.
If Arthur cried loudly because he scraped his knee, Jake didn't cover his ears. He immediately recognized the sound as 'distress data' rather than 'chaotic noise', and his protective instinct completely overrode his sensory defenses. He would scoop Arthur up, apply the deep pressure his son loved, and calmly assess the "malfunction."
He was the most patient, attentive, and deeply affectionate father you had ever seen. He was, in every sense of the word, a puppy husband—utterly devoted, deeply loving, and profoundly safe. "Mama! Look!" Arthur shrieked, spotting you in the kitchen. He scrambled to his feet, abandoning his Duplo tower, and ran across the living room on his sturdy little legs. "I see it, my brave little spider!" you laughed, putting your coffee down just in time to catch him as he crashed into your knees. You scooped him up, settling his warm, solid weight onto your hip. You pressed a loud, exaggerated kiss to his cheek, making him giggle uncontrollably. Jake stood up from the carpet. He uncrossed his long legs with fluid grace and walked over to the kitchen island, his eyes locked onto the two of you. He stepped directly into your space, wrapping his long arms around both you and Arthur, pulling his entire family into a massive, encompassing hug. He pressed his face against the side of your head, inhaling your scent, then leaned down to bump his nose affectionately against Arthur’s. "The tower is incomplete," Jake informed his son, his eyes crinkling with warmth. "But Mama required morning compression. We will resume the construction sequence in approximately five minutes."
"Okay, Dada," Arthur chirped, resting his head on your shoulder and immediately beginning to play with the zipper of your cardigan. You looked up at Jake, running your free hand up his chest to rest flat against his heart. It was beating in a slow, steady, perfect rhythm. "Are you happy, Spidey?" you asked softly, the morning sun catching the lapis lazuli in his wedding band as he held you.
Jake didn't need to run an internal diagnostic to answer the question. The data was glaringly obvious.He looked around the house. He looked at the Duplo blocks scattered on the rug. He looked at the acoustic panels on the walls that kept the world at bay. And then, he looked at you—the woman who had walked into his life three years ago with a crooked diploma and a willingness to understand the math of his mind."Before you arrived, my brain was filled with static," Jake said, his voice dropping into that deep, resonant octave reserved only for you. "I spent all my energy building walls to keep the unpredictable variables out."
He lifted his hand, gently brushing a stray lock of hair behind your ear, his touch feather-light and incredibly tender."But you did not break my walls," he continued, his dark brown eyes shining with absolute, unfiltered devotion. "You walked inside them. You helped me reinforce the foundation. And then, we built Arthur."
He looked at the toddler currently trying to put your zipper in his mouth, pulling it gently away.
"I am not just happy, Y/N," Jake stated, leaning down until his forehead rested flush against yours. "The static isn't entirely gone but it feels like it is. The variables are perfect. My life is... it is no longer an equation to be solved. It is a masterpiece."
You smiled, leaning up to press a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. He kissed you back immediately, a deep, grounding pressure that anchored you to the earth. "Ew! Kisses!" Arthur protested loudly, squirming against your hip. Jake pulled back, a genuine, hearty laugh escaping his chest—a sound that still felt like a victory every time you heard it. He reached out and scooped Arthur out of your arms, tossing the squealing toddler slightly in the air before settling him securely against his chest.
"Kisses are highly optimal for maintaining the parental bond, Arthur," Jake informed his giggling son, turning back toward the living room rug. "Now, we must finish the tower. The structural integrity depends on us."
You stood in the kitchen, picking your coffee mug back up, and watched your two Spider-Men sit back down on the carpet. Jake picked up a blue piece of plastic. It wasn't a Duplo block. It was the translucent blue, polycarbonite "power blast" web piece that he had given you on that rainy afternoon three years ago. The one you still kept in the ceramic bowl on the counter.
He held it up for Arthur to see. "This," Jake told his son, his voice thick with meaning, "is a web. It connects things. It holds things together when they are falling." He looked over his shoulder, catching your eye across the room, and flashed you a smile so bright it outshined the morning sun. "And it never breaks."
You took a sip of your coffee, the warmth spreading through your chest, settling deep in your bones. The diploma was still hanging in your office at the community center. You had plenty of real-world experience now. But your greatest achievement wasn't a file folder or a caseload.
It was right here. In this perfectly controlled, 69-degree sanctuary, watching the man who had once been terrified of the world teach his son how to build a beautiful, indestructible life, one plastic brick at a time.
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Pairings: Autistic! Jake x Caretaker! fem! reader
Wordcount:32k
Summary:Hired to help a brilliant, autistic young man navigate a world that is far too loud, you, a newly graduated social worker learns to speak his unique language of logic, LEGOs, and quiet routines. As you become the one permanent variable that makes the static in his mind finally stop, the strict boundaries of your job description slowly blur into a profound, life-changing connection.
Warnings:Caretaker/Client Relationship (Blurring of Professional Boundaries), Autism Spectrum Representation, Sensory Overload & Severe Meltdowns, Ableism & Public Bullying, Mild Self-Harm (Frustration Stimming/Hitting Head - quickly stopped by Yn), Panic Attacks/Hyperventilating, Emotional Angst (Self-Doubt/Feeling "Broken"), Hurt/Comfort, Protective Reader, Extreme Fluff, Touch-Starved Jake, Slow Burn, First Time/Virginity Loss (Jake), Smut (M/F)(FULL CONSENT I’m not a weirdo 😒), Sensory-Focused Intimacy, Emotional Overstimulation (Happy Tears).get those tissues ready for the absolute softest boy.
A/N: can you tell I love writing for jake because I can. I did a lot of watching videos with people that have autism and this fic came to mind, how we all should treat people even if they’re different from us the same because they’re trying too! But I’m such a sappy girl.Anyways Like always Please Like, Reblog and Comment! They are very appreciated.
[Masterlist]
The diploma on your wall was still crooked. It had been hanging there for three weeks, a piece of expensive cardstock in a cheap black frame that declared you were now a Bachelor of Social Work. It was supposed to feel like a victory lap. Instead, it felt like the starting gun of a race you weren't sure you were qualified to run.
You were twenty-two years old. You had a head full of theory—systems theory, behavioral psychology, crisis intervention models—and absolutely zero real-world experience. The imposter syndrome wasn't just a whisper in the back of your mind; it was a scream.You sat at your small kitchen table, staring at the file folder the agency, New Horizons Support Services, had couriered over that morning.
Client Name: Jake Sim.
Age: 23.
Diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Disorder (Level 1/High Support Needs during sensory events). Notes: History of high caregiver turnover. Client experiences acute sensory overload. Rigid adherence to routine is required. Previous workers reported difficulty establishing rapport."High caregiver turnover." That was the phrase that stuck. In the social work world, that usually meant the client was "difficult"—aggressive, non-verbal, or physically demanding.But looking at the photo clipped to the inside of the file, you didn't see "difficult." You saw a boy—no, a young man—looking away from the camera. He wasn't smiling. His hair was a fluffy, dark brown mop that seemed to be trying to swallow his head. He was wearing a hoodie that looked three sizes too big. He didn't look aggressive. He looked… retreating. Like he was trying to fold himself into a shape that the world wouldn't notice.You closed the file. You drank your lukewarm coffee. You adjusted your blazer, which felt too stiff and too "adult," and grabbed your keys. "Okay," you whispered to the empty apartment. "Don't mess this up." The house was in a quiet suburb, the kind with manicured lawns and basketball hoops in every other driveway. It was a beige two-story with a wrap-around porch.
You parked your beat-up sedan on the street, checking your watch. 8:55 AM. Five minutes early. "On time is late, early is on time," your practicum supervisor used to say. You walked up the path, your heels clicking loudly on the pavement. You made a mental note to wear sneakers next time if you got the job. Click-clack sounds could be a sensory trigger. Think, Y/N. Think.
You rang the doorbell.It opened almost immediately, revealing a woman who looked like she hadn't slept a full eight hours in a decade. She was beautiful, with the same dark eyes as the boy in the photo, but there were deep lines etched around her mouth."You must be Y/N," she said. Her smile was warm, but her eyes were scanning you, assessing you. It was the look of a mother bear who was tired of fighting off wolves but was ready to do it again if she had to. "Hi. Yes, I am," you said, extending a hand. "It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Sim."
"Sarah, please," she shook your hand firmly. "Come in. Take your shoes off at the door, if you don't mind. We try to keep the outside noise… outside."
You stepped into the foyer. It was cool and smelled faintly of lemon pledge and lavender. It was aggressively tidy. Not a speck of dust, not a stray shoe.
"So," Sarah said, leading you toward the kitchen. "You've read the file?"
"I have."
"Forget half of it," she said bluntly. She leaned against the granite island, crossing her arms. "The agency writes those reports to cover their liability. They make him sound like a list of symptoms. 'Sensory processing disorder.' 'Social deficits.' It makes him sound broken." She looked at you, her expression fierce. "Jake isn't broken. He’s just… on a different frequency. He’s brilliant. He’s funny, in his own way. But he feels everything. Imagine if you couldn't turn down the volume on the world. That’s Jake’s life. Every light is a spotlight. Every sound is a siren." You nodded, listening intently. "I understand. My goal isn't to 'fix' him, Sarah. It’s to help him navigate the volume."
Sarah softened. She let out a long breath, her shoulders dropping. "The last girl… she treated him like a toddler. She used that high-pitched 'baby voice.' Jake hated it. He’s twenty-three. He’s a grown man. He just needs help with the logistics of being a grown man."
"I promise," you said seriously. "No baby voice."
Sarah smiled, a real one this time. "Okay. He’s in the living room. It’s his… sanctuary. He’s having a good morning, so he’s building. Just… go in slow. Let him come to you. If you push, he’ll shut down."
"Got it."
"Good luck," she whispered. You walked down the hallway. The floorboards were carpeted here, muffling your footsteps. The house was unnaturally quiet. No TV, no radio, no hum of appliances. You reached the archway of the living room and stopped.The room was large, with heavy blackout curtains drawn halfway, filtering the morning sun into a soft, hazy glow. The furniture was pushed to the perimeter of the room.The center of the floor was occupied by a city.There were thousands—literally thousands—of LEGO bricks. But they weren't scattered. They were organized into plastic trays by color, size, and function. Grey plates. Blue pins. Technic beams.
And sitting in the middle of it all was Jake.
He looked exactly like the photo, but realer. Vivid. He was sitting cross-legged, hunched over a massive, half-built grey structure. He was wearing a faded brown hoodie with fraying cuffs, the hood down, revealing that fluffy hair that curled slightly at the nape of his neck.He was muttering. A low, rapid-fire stream of words.
"...clutch power on the 2x4 is insufficient for the torque... need to reinforce the sub-frame... bag twelve, bag twelve, where is the axle connector..."
You took a breath. You stepped into the room.
"Hi, Jake," you said softly. He didn't flinch. He didn't look up. He didn't acknowledge you existed. His long, elegant fingers continued to snap pieces together with a rhythmic click-click-click. You remembered your training. Parallel play. Don't force interaction. Join the space. You walked over to the sofa, which was a safe ten feet away from his construction zone. You sat down slowly. You placed your bag on the floor. You didn't pull out your phone. You just sat there, hands in your lap, watching him. Minutes ticked by. Five. Ten. Most people would have been awkward. They would have cleared their throat or tried to start small talk about the weather. But you found yourself strangely captivated. There was something hypnotic about the way he worked. He wasn't playing. He was engineering. He would pick up a piece, rotate it, inspect it for flaws, and then place it with the precision of a surgeon.
He was beautiful. That was the unprofessional thought that popped into your head. He had a strong jawline, soft lips that were currently pursed in concentration, and eyelashes that were unfairly long. Fifteen minutes in, he paused. He held a long, grey Technic beam in his hand. He frowned. He looked at the instruction booklet—which was thick enough to be a phone book—then back at the beam. "The inventory is incorrect," he said. He didn't look at you. He spoke to the air. But it was an opening.
"Is a piece missing?" you asked, keeping your voice low and level.Jake stiffened slightly. He turned his head slowly, like a wary deer. For the first time, you saw his eyes. They were big. That was the only word for them. Big, dark, liquid brown eyes that held a depth of innocence that hit you right in the chest. They were "puppy eyes" in the truest sense—guileless, open, and slightly fearful.He looked at you. He blinked. He looked at your feet. He looked at your hands. Then, finally, he looked at your face.
"It’s not missing," he corrected you. His voice was smooth, deep, and sounded very matter-of-fact. "It’s the wrong molding variant. This is a 32523, but the instructions call for a 32524. The friction ridges are different. If I use this, the stabilizer fin will wobble." He held the piece out, not to you, but in your general direction.
"That sounds frustrating," you said. "A wobble would ruin the structural integrity."
Jake’s eyes widened a fraction. He pulled his hand back. "Yes. Structural integrity is the primary variable. Most people don't care about the wobble."
"Well, if you're building the UCS Millennium Falcon," you said, gesturing to the box you recognized in the corner, "you want it to be perfect. It’s a collector's item."
He froze. He turned his body fully toward you now, abandoning the LEGOs for a second. "You know the model number?" he asked. It was a test. "75192," you said. "Released in 2017. It’s the biggest set they ever made, right?"
You thanked your lucky stars for your younger brother, who had begged for this set for three Christmases in a row.Jake stared at you. He was processing this data. New girl. Not loud. Not baby voice. Knows the Falcon.
"It was the biggest," he corrected gently. "Until the Art World Map. But the World Map is just tiles. It’s 2D. The Falcon is 3D engineering. It’s superior."
"I agree," you smiled. "Maps are boring compared to spaceships."
The corner of his mouth twitched. A micro-smile. It was there and gone in a second, but you saw it. "I'm Jake," he said. He looked at your name tag, which you had clipped to your blazer. "You are Y/N."
"I am."
"Are you going to tell me to clean this up?" He gestured vaguely to the chaos on the floor. "The last one... Jenny. She said it was a tripping hazard. She made me put it in bins before I was done." The distress in his voice was subtle, but clear. He remembered the disruption of his routine. "No," you said firmly. "I am not going to make you clean it up. It’s not a mess, Jake. It’s a system. I can see you have the plates sorted by size." Jake let out a breath he seemed to have been holding since you walked in. His shoulders slumped, the tension draining out of him.
"It is a system," he whispered, relieved. "Sorted by function, then color."
He picked up the grey beam again. He looked at it, then at you.
"Do you want to... inspect the sub-frame?" he asked. "It’s very dense."
It was an invitation into his world.You stood up and walked over. You didn't rush. You sat down on the floor, crossing your legs, keeping a respectful distance.
"Show me," you said.For the next two hours, Jake Sim taught you about the physics of plastic bricks. He showed you how the internal technic frame supported the weight of the outer shell. He explained the concept of "SNOT" (Studs Not On Top) building techniques.
He didn't make eye contact often. mostly he looked at his hands or the model. But every now and then, when he was explaining a particularly clever bit of engineering, he would look up at you to see if you were following. And when he saw that you were listening—really listening, not just nodding politely—his face would light up.It wasn't a loud happiness. It was a quiet, glowing satisfaction."You're a good listener," he said abruptly, around 11:30 AM. "Thank you, Jake."
"Most people stop listening after the first sentence about gear ratios."
"I like gear ratios," you lied. Well, a half-lie. You liked him talking about gear ratios.
"Okay," he said. He turned back to the pile. "I'm hungry now. It is Tuesday. Tuesday is grilled cheese."
"Do you want me to make it?"
He paused. He looked anxious. "Do you know the cut?"
"Diagonal?" you guessed. He nodded vigorously. "Diagonal. It tastes better. The surface area of the crust is distributed more evenly."
"I can do diagonal." You went to the kitchen. Sarah was sitting at the table, pretending to read a magazine, but she was clearly listening to the silence in the living room. She looked up as you entered. "He’s... talking," she said, sounding stunned. "I heard him talking."
"He was telling me about the Falcon," you smiled, grabbing the bread. "He’s brilliant, Sarah. He knows more about engineering than I know about anything."
Sarah’s eyes welled up. She blinked them back quickly. "He likes you. He usually ignores them for the first week. Or hides in his room."
"I think we're going to get along just fine."You made the grilled cheese. You cut it diagonally. You placed it on a plate (blue, his favorite color, according to the file).
You brought it to him. He ate it sitting on the floor, wiping his hands meticulously on a napkin between bites so he wouldn't get grease on the LEGOs.
When the shift ended at 3 PM, you felt exhausted but exhilarated. You gathered your bag."I have to go now, Jake," you said.He didn't look up from bag thirteen. "Okay."
"I'll be back tomorrow."He paused. He placed a brick. Then, without looking up, he spoke."Bring sneakers," he said.
"Sneakers?"
"Your shoes," he pointed to your heels you put back on without looking. "They go click-clack. It echoes. Sneakers are quieter. Stealth mode."
You smiled. "Stealth mode. Got it. Sneakers tomorrow."
The morning sun was hitting the pavement differently today. Yesterday, it had felt like a spotlight of judgment; today, it felt like a gentle invitation.You parked your sedan in the same spot, checking the time. 8:50 AM. You were establishing your own routine: ten minutes early, park, breathe, enter. Consistency was the currency of trust, and you intended to be rich in it. You looked down at your feet. Gone were the stiff, "professional" black heels that pinched your toes and echoed like gunshots in a quiet hallway. In their place were a pair of white Converse—clean, soft-soled, and silent. You had spent twenty minutes the night before scrubbing a scuff mark off the toe, irrationally worried that a smudge might disrupt the visual harmony of Jake’s morning. "Stealth mode," you whispered to yourself, grabbing your bag. You walked up the path. You made a conscious effort to step lightly, rolling from heel to toe. The silence was noticeable. You felt less like an intruder and more like a ghost, slipping into the ecosystem without disturbing the wildlife. Sarah opened the door before you could ring the bell. She was holding a mug of coffee with two hands, looking slightly more awake than yesterday, though the tired lines were still etched deep around her eyes. She wore a soft grey cardigan wrapped tight around her frame. She looked down immediately. She saw the sneakers. A small, genuine smile touched her lips—not the polite, strained smile of yesterday, but something softer. A crack in the armor.
"You listened," she said, opening the door wider. "He asked for sneakers," you said simply, stepping into the cool, lemon-scented foyer. "I figure he knows his ears better than I do."
"You’d be surprised how many people argue with him on that," Sarah murmured, closing the door with a soft click. "They say, 'Oh, you'll get used to the noise.' As if he can just will his neurology to change."
"I'm not here to argue with him, Sarah. I'm here to work with him."
"I'm starting to believe you." She gestured toward the kitchen. "He’s eating. It’s a... process. Keep your voice low. Morning transitions are hard. His brain is still booting up." You followed her down the hallway, your rubber soles making no sound against the hardwood. The house was still unnaturally quiet, a sanctuary of stillness against the chaotic world outside. When you entered the kitchen, the scene was almost tableau-like in its precision. The kitchen was bathed in natural light, but the blinds were tilted just so to prevent any glare. At the round wooden table sat Jake.
He was wearing a different hoodie today—a navy blue one, equally oversized, the sleeves pulled down over his knuckles. He was hunched slightly over his plate, his focus absolute. On the plate were two scrambled eggs and three strips of bacon. But "scrambled eggs and bacon" didn't quite do justice to what you were seeing. The eggs were a uniform yellow—no brown spots, no runny bits. They were separated perfectly from the bacon. The bacon itself had been cut into precise, one-inch squares.Jake held his fork in his right hand. He didn't shovel the food. He speared one square of bacon, lifted it, inspected it for a brief second, and then ate it. He chewed rhythmically. He swallowed. He took a sip of water from a clear glass (no ice, you noted—ice clinks). Then, and only then, did he spear a forkful of eggs.
It was a ritual. A sequence.
"Hi, Jake," you said, pitching your voice to a soft murmur, staying near the doorway.
He paused mid-chew. He didn't look up immediately. He finished chewing, swallowed, and took his sip of water. Then, slowly, he turned his head. His hair was messy from sleep, sticking up in tufts in the back, giving him a disarmingly boyish look. His eyes were heavy, blinking slowly as they found you. He looked at your face. Then, immediately, his gaze dropped to the floor. He stared at your white Converse for a long, intense five seconds. You stood perfectly still, letting him inspect the data.
"White," he said. His voice was raspy with sleep, deeper than it had been yesterday.
"White," you agreed. "And rubber soles. No clicking."
He nodded once—a sharp, decisive chin dip. "Stealth mode active."
"Active," you smiled. He turned back to his eggs. "Acceptable." Sarah let out a silent breath beside you. She touched your elbow gently and tilted her head toward the sunroom adjacent to the kitchen. It was close enough to see him, but far enough to talk without hovering over his plate. You followed her, sitting on a wicker chair while she perched on the edge of a loveseat. She watched her son eat with a mixture of fierce love and terrified vigilance. "Okay," Sarah whispered, turning to you. "Lesson number one: The morning sets the algorithm."
You pulled a small notebook out of your bag. "I'm listening."
"Jake’s energy is a battery," Sarah explained, keeping one eye on the navy-hooded figure at the table. "Most of us start the day at 100%. We spend energy, we get tired, we sleep. Jake starts the day at maybe... 60%. Just existing costs him energy. The lights, the texture of his sheets, the smell of the coffee I’m drinking—it all costs him."
You wrote down: Baseline energy lower. High sensory tax.
"If breakfast goes wrong," Sarah continued, her voice tight, "if the eggs are slimy, or the bacon is burnt, or the spoon is the wrong weight... he loses 20% right there. Then he starts the day in a deficit. And a deficit means a meltdown is almost guaranteed by noon."
"So the routine isn't just about being picky," you said, realizing. "It’s about conservation."
"Exactly," Sarah nodded, looking grateful that you got it. "He’s controlling the variables he can control, because the rest of the world is completely out of control for him. That plate?" She pointed to his breakfast. "That’s safety. He knows exactly what the bacon will taste like. He knows the texture of the eggs. It’s predictable. Predictability is safety." You watched Jake spear another square of bacon. The deliberate nature of it made sense now. He wasn't just eating; he was grounding himself for the day ahead. "Tell me about the food," you asked. "I noticed he cut the bacon before he started." "Texture and size," Sarah said. "He has trouble with proprioception—knowing where his body is in space, and sometimes, manipulating utensils while chewing is too much multitasking. If the food is big, he worries about choking. Or getting grease on his face. He hates having a dirty face. It feels like burning to him."
"So we keep it bite-sized," you noted. "Clean face, no unexpected textures."
"And no mixing," Sarah added quickly. "The eggs cannot touch the bacon. If the syrup from a waffle touches the sausage? The whole meal is ruined. It’s contaminated."
"Separation is key."
"Yes." Sarah took a sip of her coffee, her eyes darkening slightly. "The last aide... she thought it was 'silly.' She tried to mix his corn and mashed potatoes to 'save space' on the plate. He flipped the table." You looked at the calm, quiet boy eating his squares of bacon. It was hard to imagine him flipping a table. "He felt bad about it for weeks," Sarah whispered, seeing your expression. "He cried for two days. He kept saying, 'I broke the plate, Mom. I’m bad.' He’s not violent, Y/N. He’s never hurt a fly on purpose. But when the sensory overload hits... it’s like a power surge. His body just explodes to get the feeling out."
"I read about the meltdowns in the file," you said gently. "But the file called them 'behavioral outbursts.'"
Sarah scoffed. "Behavioral implies he’s doing it to get something. To manipulate. He’s not. It’s a system crash. It’s pain. Imagine someone blasts an airhorn in your ear while flashing a strobe light in your eyes and scratching a chalkboard. That’s what a disrupted routine feels like to him. The screaming, the rocking? That’s him trying to survive the input." You looked at Jake again. He had finished his food. He was now wiping his mouth with a napkin. Once. Twice. Fold. Wipe again. "What do I do if he crashes?" you asked. "You don't talk much," Sarah said firmly. "That’s the biggest mistake people make. They try to talk him down. 'Calm down, Jake. Use your words, Jake.' He can't use his words. His language center shuts off. Talking just adds more noise."
"So... silence?"
"Presence," Sarah corrected. "Quiet, heavy presence. He responds to deep pressure. You saw the weighted blanket yesterday? He lives under that thing when he’s stressed. If he’s spiraling, don't touch him lightly—light touch feels like bugs crawling on him. But a firm squeeze? A hand on his shoulder, pressing down? That tells his brain where his body is. It anchors him." You wrote down: No light touch. Deep pressure. Silence > Words. "He’s an empath, you know," Sarah said suddenly, her voice softening. You looked up. "The file said he has 'social deficits.'"
"The file is garbage," Sarah waved a hand dismissively. "He struggles with social cues. He doesn't understand sarcasm or hidden agendas. But emotions? He absorbs them like a sponge. If you are stressed, he will be stressed. If you are sad, he will be devastated. He can't filter out other people's feelings. That’s why he withdraws. It’s too loud emotionally." She looked at you pointedly. "So, you have to be calm. Even if you’re panicking inside, you have to be a rock on the outside. If you bring chaos into this house, he will shatter." It was a heavy responsibility. You were twenty-two. You were barely an adult yourself. But looking at Sarah’s exhausted face, and Jake’s solitary figure at the table, you felt a steel rod of determination form in your spine.
"I can be calm," you promised. "I can be a rock." Just then, the chair scraped against the floor in the kitchen. Jake stood up. He picked up his plate and glass. He walked to the sink, rinsed them both, and placed them in the dishwasher. Then, he turned and walked toward the sunroom. He stopped in the doorway, his hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie. He looked at his mom, then at you. "Breakfast is complete," he announced. "Good job, honey," Sarah said.
Jake looked at you. His eyes were clearer now, the sleepiness gone, replaced by that keen, observant intelligence you had seen yesterday. "Are we going to the living room?" he asked you.
"We can," you said, standing up. "Or we can do something else. What’s the plan for Wednesday?"
Jake frowned slightly. "Wednesday is... mid-week. The energy is medium." He tapped his fingers against his thigh. "I want to disassemble the sub-frame of the Falcon. I dreamed about a better anchor point for the hyperdrive."
"Disassembly," you nodded. "Sounds like a plan."
He turned to leave, then paused. He looked at your feet again.
"They really are quiet," he murmured, almost to himself. "Like a ninja." Then he disappeared down the hallway. Sarah let out a laugh, a short, breathy sound. "A ninja. That’s high praise. He likes ninjas. They have discipline."
"I'll take it," you smiled.
"Go on," Sarah shooed you gently. "I'm going to actually take a shower without worrying the house is burning down. You have the conn."
"I have the conn," you repeated. You walked down the hallway, your sneakers silent on the carpet. You found Jake in the living room, exactly where you left him yesterday. He was kneeling beside the massive LEGO structure. He didn't look up when you entered, but his shoulders didn't tense up either. He knew you were there. He accepted you were there.You walked over to your spot on the sofa and sat down.
"So," you said softly. "The hyperdrive anchor. What was wrong with the old one?"
Jake picked up a section of the ship. He rotated it, his eyes narrowing in concentration. "It was too rigid," he said. "If the ship moves, the stress fractures the connector. It needs flex. The universe has flex. Ships should too."
"That’s a good philosophy," you noted. "Flexibility prevents breaking."
He looked up at you then. A long, steady look. "Yes," he said. "
People break because they don't flex. They are rigid about the wrong things."
You felt a chill go down your spine. For someone who supposedly struggled with social concepts, he had just nailed the human condition in two sentences.
"I'll try to be flexible, Jake," you said. "Good," he said. He handed you a small bucket of grey pins. "You can sort these. By length. The short ones go on the left."
It was an order, but it was also an inclusion. He wasn't just letting you watch; he was letting you help. You took the bucket. You slid off the sofa and sat on the floor—keeping a respectful three feet of distance.
"Short ones on the left," you repeated. You worked in silence for twenty minutes. It was a comfortable silence. The only sounds were the click-click of his building and the soft rattle of your sorting.
"Y/N?"
"Yeah, Jake?"
He didn't look up. He was fitting a gear into place.
"Thank you for the shoes," he said. His voice was quiet, almost swallowed by the room. "The clicking... it hurts my teeth. It makes my spine feel itchy."
"I didn't know," you said. "I'm sorry about yesterday."
"You didn't know the variable," he said simply. "Now you have the data. You updated your software."
"I did."
"That is efficient." He paused, then added, "Jenny never updated her software. She just wore the loud shoes every day." Your heart broke a little for him. You could imagine him sitting here, day after day, his spine "itching" from the sound, unable to articulate why he was so agitated, while a well-meaning but oblivious support worker clattered around him. "I will always try to update my software, Jake," you vowed. "If something hurts, you tell me. I’ll fix it."
He looked at you. He studied your face, your eyes, your posture. He was looking for the lie. He was looking for the condescension. He didn't find it. "Okay," he said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, red 2x4 brick. He held it out to you. "This doesn't belong in the Falcon," he said. "The Falcon is grey and beige. This is red. It’s an anomaly." You reached out and took the brick. It was warm from his pocket. "What should I do with it?"
"Keep it," he said, turning back to his work. "It’s a good color. High saturation. But it needs to be somewhere else. You can hold it."
You closed your hand around the red brick. It felt like a token. A peace offering. A key. "I'll keep it safe," you said.You spent the rest of the morning sorting pins and listening to him explain the difference between torque and horsepower. You watched the way his hands moved, so sure and graceful. You watched the way the sun caught the gold flecks in his brown eyes.You thought about Sarah’s warning: He feels everything.You looked at the boy who was building a spaceship to escape to a galaxy far, far away, and you thought, I will make sure this room is safe enough that you don't have to leave.By lunchtime (grilled cheese, diagonal cut, blue plate), you had learned more about thermal exhaust ports than you ever thought possible.
But more importantly, when you put the plate down in front of him, he didn't just stare at the food.He looked up. He gave you a micro-smile—a tiny quirk of the lip.
"Diagonal," he noted approvingly.
"Flexibility," you countered with a smile.
"Touché," he whispered.
And as he took his first bite, you realized that the crooked diploma on your wall didn't matter. The textbooks didn't matter. This mattered. The quiet boy, the blue plate, the silent shoes, and the fragile, beautiful bridge you were starting to build, brick by brick.
The warm, soapy water in the kitchen sink was turning a pale, creamy orange—the remnants of the roasted tomato bisque you had served for lunch. You moved the sponge in slow, rhythmic circles against the bottom of the ceramic bowl, the motion meditative. Three months. It had been ninety days since you first walked into this house with your squeaky dress shoes and your imposter syndrome. Ninety days of learning that "on time" meant ten minutes early, that "quiet" meant silent, and that the world was a cacophony that Jake Sim fought to tune out every single minute of his life. Sarah had left an hour ago. It was a milestone, really. For the first two months, she had hovered. She was a ghost in the periphery—folding laundry in the next room, "checking emails" at the dining table while you and Jake were in the living room, watering plants that were already drowned. You didn't blame her. The stories she had told you about previous support workers were horror shows of incompetence and impatience. But last week, she had looked at you, then looked at Jake, who was calmly explaining the aerodynamics of a LEGO helicopter to you, and she had exhaled. A long, heavy breath that released years of tension.
"I'm going to the grocery store," she had said today, pulling on her coat. "Alone. And then... I might go to the library. I might be gone for three hours."
"Go," you had smiled, handing her keys. "We have the conn."
"You have the conn," she’d repeated, a small, terrified smile on her face.
And she had left. Now, it was just you, the soup bowls, and the faint sounds of explosions coming from the living room. You rinsed the bowl, placing it in the drying rack. You wiped your hands on the towel, taking a moment to scan the kitchen. It was spotless. Jake liked spotless. Clutter was "visual noise." If a spoon was left on the counter, he wouldn't say anything, but he would stare at it, his brow furrowed, his internal processor snagging on the anomaly until you moved it.You thought about the lunch you had just shared. Tomato soup. Pureed. No chunks. You had learned the hard way about Jake’s dietary landscape. It was a map filled with landmines.
No surprises. That was the golden rule. A piece of onion in a smooth sauce was a betrayal. A crunch in a soft food was a systemic failure. And the colors... that was a fascinating chapter in your education. Jake hated white foods. You remembered the "Cauliflower Incident" of Month Two. Sarah had been sick, so you tried to make dinner. You mashed cauliflower, thinking it was a healthy alternative to potatoes. You put a scoop on his blue plate. Jake had looked at it like it was radioactive waste. He had pushed his chair back, his breathing hitching.
"It’s a ghost," he had whispered, his eyes wide with genuine distress. "It has no data. It’s blank."
"It's cauliflower, Jake," you’d said gently.
"It’s deceptive," he’d countered, his voice trembling. "It looks like nothing, but it tastes like wet earth. It’s lying to my eyes." He hadn't eaten it. He hadn't eaten anything that night until you brought him a glass of milk. Milk was the exception. You had asked him why, fascinated by the logic. "Milk is structural," he had explained, drinking it down in three large gulps. "It builds bone density. Calcium is a metal. It’s not food; it’s construction material. Therefore, the color is irrelevant."
Logic. It was always about logic. You smiled to yourself, folding the dish towel. You checked the clock. 1:15 PM. Transition time. You walked out of the kitchen, your worn-in Converse making zero sound on the hardwood. You moved like a shadow, a skill you had perfected to avoid startling him.You stopped in the archway of the living room.The blackout curtains were drawn, creating a twilight effect that Jake preferred. The only light came from the massive 65-inch TV screen, which was currently exploding with red and blue light. Spider-Man: No Way Home. Again. Jake was sitting on the floor. He never sat on the couch when he was watching Spider-Man. He needed to be grounded, literally. He sat on the plush rug, his legs crossed, his posture rigid with focus. And he was wearing the pajamas. It was 1:15 PM on a Tuesday, but Jake was wearing a matching set of flannel pajamas covered in little Miles Morales masks. He had three sets. One with the classic logo, one with the Venom symbiote (which he only wore when he was moody), and this one.
He loved them because they were "high-tensile cotton," soft but durable, with no tags. He loved them because Peter Parker was his hero. You leaned against the doorframe, crossing your arms, just watching him.It was... cute. There was no other word for it. He wasn't just watching the movie; he was participating in it. He held a small LEGO minifigure of Spider-Man in his left hand. Every time Tom Holland shot a web on screen, Jake’s left hand would twitch, mimicking the thwip motion. It was a subtle stim, a way of processing the action. You knew why he loved Spider-Man. He had told you, in bits and pieces, over the last three months. "He has to wear the suit," Jake had said once, tracing the logo on his pajama shirt. "Because the world is too loud. The suit dampens the input. It holds him together."
"And the Spidey Sense?" you had asked. "Overload," Jake had replied, his voice serious. "When the air changes pressure. When he hears everything at once. He has to learn to dial it down. That is... relatable." Peter Parker was a boy who was overwhelmed by his own senses, who had to hide his true self to survive, who was awkward and nerdy but deeply good. Of course Jake loved him. Jake was him, just without the radioactive spider bite. On the screen, Spider-Man was swinging through New York, the camera panning dizzyingly. Jake rocked slightly back and forth, syncing his vestibular system with the movement on screen.You waited for a quiet moment in the dialogue before speaking. You never interrupted an action sequence. That was a rule. The scene changed to Peter and MJ talking on a roof. "Does the mask fit today?" you asked softly. Jake didn't jump. He knew you were there. He had probably heard your breathing change when you entered the room.
He turned his head slowly. His hair was a chaotic, fluffy halo around his head—he had shampooed it this morning, and it always got extra floofy on wash days. His big brown eyes blinked at you behind his glasses. "The mask is theoretical," he said. His voice was that familiar, soothing baritone. "But the pajamas are optimal. The flannel is at peak softness."
"They look very comfortable," you said, walking over and sitting on the sofa behind him. You didn't sit on the floor with him unless invited. "Is that the bridge scene?"
"It is the preamble to the bridge scene," Jake corrected gently. He turned back to the TV, but he leaned back slightly, resting his shoulders against the front of the sofa, right between your knees. It was a small gesture, but it meant the world. It meant you are safe. You are part of the furniture. I can rest on you. You resisted the urge to reach out and run your fingers through his hair. You knew he liked head scratches, but only when he initiated. Unexpected touch was "bugs." Initiated touch was "grounding."
"I made a discovery today," Jake said, his eyes still glued to the screen.
"Oh?"
"The soup," he said. "The viscosity was different."
Your heart skipped a beat. "Different bad or different good?"
He paused. He tapped the LEGO minifigure against his knee three times. Tap. Tap. Tap.
"Different... efficient," he decided. "You roasted the tomatoes longer. The caramelization added depth. It reduced the acidity. It was... surprisingly pleasant."
You let out a breath. "I'm glad. I tried a new recipe."
"It is approved," Jake said. "You may add it to the rotation."
"Noted. Roasted tomato bisque: Approved." He went quiet for a moment, watching Peter Parker awkwardly try to explain his feelings to MJ. "Peter is bad at talking," Jake observed. "He is," you agreed. "He gets nervous."
"He has too many variables in his head," Jake said, twisting the LEGO figure. "He wants to say 'I like you,' but his brain is saying 'villains, aunt may, geometry, web fluid.' The output gets jammed."
"Does your output get jammed, Jake?" you asked softly.
He went still. The rocking stopped. He turned his head around to look up at you, craning his neck. His face was upside down from your perspective. His eyes were wide, searching yours. "Sometimes," he whispered. "With you."
Your breath caught. "With me?"
"Yes." He blinked. "Usually, with people, the output is jammed because I don't have the script. I don't know what they want me to say. It’s... static."
He paused, thinking hard, his brow furrowing.
"But with you," he continued, "the output jams because... there is too much data. I want to tell you about the soup. And the LEGOs. And the way your shoes don't make noise. And the way you smell like vanilla and oats. It all tries to come out at once. And I get... stuck."
He looked so earnest, so frustrated by his own inability to verbalize the torrent of thoughts in his head.
"That’s okay," you said, your voice thick with emotion. "You don't have to say it all at once. You can just give me one piece of data at a time."
He seemed to consider this. He righted his head and turned back to the TV.
He reached into the pocket of his Spider-Man pajama pants. He pulled something out.
He held his hand up over his shoulder, blindly offering it to you.
"Data point one," he said.
You reached out and opened your hand. He dropped a small, plastic object into your palm. It was a LEGO piece. A translucent blue "power blast" piece that came with the Spider-Man sets. It was meant to look like energy or webbing.
"It’s a web," he explained, staring at the screen. "It connects things. It holds things together when they are falling." You closed your fingers around the small, sharp plastic. It was better than a diamond ring."Thank you, Jake," you whispered. "I love it."
"It’s polycarbonite," he added practically. "It won't break."
"Neither will we." He hummed—that happy, vibrating sound that meant he was content. He leaned harder against your legs. "Do you want a snack?" you asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. "It’s 1:30." Jake stiffened. The snack question. It was always a gamble. "No sweets," he said immediately. "Sugar makes my teeth feel fuzzy sometimes. It makes my brain go bzzzzzt." He made a chaotic hand gesture. "No sweets," you promised. "I was thinking... pretzels? Or cheese cubes?"
"Cheese cubes," he said decisively. "Cheddar. Sharp. Cut into 1x1 centimeter blocks."
"I can do that."
"And... maybe milk?"
"Milk is structural," you recited his rule back to him.
"Correct," he said. "Milk is structural."
You stood up to go to the kitchen. Jake turned to watch you go.
"Y/N?"
"Yeah, Jakey?"
He looked at you, really looked at you, with that puppy-dog innocence that masked a profound, deep-feeling soul.
"Sarah is gone," he stated.
"She is."
"And the house is not on fire."
"Nope. No fire."
"And I am not screaming."
"You are definitely not screaming."
He nodded, a slow, satisfied movement. "This is a successful variable test."
"I think so too."
"Okay. Cheese cubes now."
He turned back to the movie, lifting his LEGO Spider-Man in the air to help Peter Parker swing across the screen. You walked to the kitchen, clutching the translucent blue LEGO piece in your pocket like a talisman. You opened the fridge and pulled out the block of sharp cheddar. You got the knife. You cut the cheese into precise, measured cubes. You thought about the last three months. You thought about the crooked diploma on your wall that you used to feel unworthy of. You didn't feel unworthy anymore. You didn't feel like a social worker "managing a case."
You felt like a web. You were holding him, and he was holding you, and together, you were swinging through the chaos of the world, one quiet, comfortable afternoon at a time. You put the cheese on the blue plate—making sure none of the cubes were touching—and poured the milk. "Coming through," you whispered to the empty kitchen. "Stealth mode active." You walked back into the living room, where the boy in the Spider-Man pajamas was waiting for you, safe in the sanctuary you had built together.
The six-month mark didn't arrive with fireworks. It arrived with a quiet, steady hum of competence. You were no longer the nervous grad with the squeaky shoes. You were Y/N, the keeper of the routine, the translator of the static, the one who knew that if the humidity was above 80%, Jake’s hair would frizz and the sensation would make him irritable unless he wore his hood up. You knew him. You knew the specific cadence of his breathing when he was happy (slow, deep) versus when he was anxious (shallow, catching in his throat). You knew that he categorized people by color auras he imagined for them—Sarah was a soft yellow, you were a "protective blue." Sarah trusted you completely now. She had started taking yoga classes on Tuesday mornings. She had gone to lunch with a friend. She was reclaiming pieces of her life because she knew that when she left the house, you had the conn. "We need apples," Jake announced one Tuesday morning. He was standing in the kitchen, staring at the fruit bowl. It contained three bananas (too ripe, brown spots—he wouldn't touch them) and one orange. Zero apples. "We do," you agreed, closing the dishwasher. "Honeycrisp. No bruises."
"The Gala ones are mealy," Jake said, a shudder running through his shoulders. "Mealy is... bad texture. It feels like wet sand."
"Honeycrisp it is." He looked at you then. He was wearing his "going out" clothes: dark jeans that were soft and worn-in, and a grey hoodie that didn't have logos. He looked calm. His hands were steady at his sides. "I can assist," he said. You paused. "You want to come to the store?"
"Yes." He nodded once, firmly. "I have calculated the variables. It is Tuesday. The store is statistically less crowded at 10:00 AM. I can select the apples myself. To ensure quality control."
It was a big step. You hadn't taken him to the grocery store in two months. The last time had been... okay, but tense. He had gripped the cart handle so hard his knuckles turned white."Are you sure?" you asked gently.
"I am operating at 90% battery," he stated confidently. "I have my hoodie. I am prepared."
"Okay," you smiled, grabbing your keys. "Let’s go on a mission."
The drive was easy. You played his favorite playlist—lo-fi hip hop beats with no lyrics. He tapped his fingers against his thigh in time with the rhythm, looking out the window at the passing trees. "The leaves are changing," he noted. "Entropy."
"It’s pretty though."
"It is acceptable decay," he conceded. You pulled into the parking lot of the massive supermarket. It wasn't too full, just as he predicted. Tuesday mornings were for retirees and stay-at-home parents. You turned off the engine.
"Okay," you said, unbuckling. "Game plan. In, apples, maybe some of that specific cheddar you like, and out. Fifteen minutes max."
"Stealth mission," Jake whispered. You got out of the car. Jake got out.
He reached into his hoodie pocket. And froze. He patted his left pocket. Then his right. Then his jeans. He turned to look at the backseat of your car. "Y/N," he said. His voice wasn't calm anymore. It had a sudden, sharp edge to it.
"What is it?" You walked around the car to him.
"My headphones," he said, staring at the empty backseat. "I... I put them on the table. By the door. I didn't pick them up."
Your stomach dropped. The headphones. The Sony noise-canceling over-ear ones. His shield. His buffer against the world. He never left the house without them.
"Oh, Jake," you said, scanning the car quickly, hoping they had just fallen. But you knew. You had seen them on the console table when you grabbed your keys. You had been so focused on making sure you had your wallet that you hadn't done the equipment check. "I forgot them," he whispered. He looked at the looming sliding glass doors of the supermarket. Suddenly, the building didn't look like a store. It looked like a monster's mouth.
"We can go back," you said immediately. "It’s a ten-minute drive. We’ll go get them."
Jake shook his head. He was clenching his fists at his sides. "No," he said. He looked at you, his brown eyes wide and pleading. He wanted to be brave. He wanted to show you he could do it. "No. It’s Tuesday. 10:00 AM. Low crowd density. I can do it. I have to flex."
"Jake, you don't have to flex on this. The store is loud."
"I can do it," he insisted, his voice rising slightly. "If we go back, we lose the window. The crowd density increases after 11:00. We are here. I am capable."
He looked so determined. He pulled his hood up over his head, tightening the strings until only his nose and eyes were visible.
"Hood up," he muttered. "Muffled." You hesitated. Every instinct in your social worker brain said abort mission. But every instinct in your heart wanted to support his autonomy. He was an adult. He was telling you he could handle it. "Okay," you said, your voice low. "But the second—the second—you feel the static getting too loud, you squeeze my hand three times. And we leave. We leave the apples, we leave the cart, we just go. Deal?" "Deal," he said. "Three squeezes. Emergency exit." He took a deep breath, puffing out his cheeks. "Let’s execute." The mistake became apparent the moment the automatic doors whooshed open. You had forgotten how aggressive a grocery store is. You filtered it out—your brain ignored the hum of the freezers, the beep of the scanners, the squeak of cart wheels, the generic pop music playing over the PA system. But for Jake, without his headphones, there was no filter.
He flinched as we stepped onto the linoleum. The air conditioning blasted him, a physical wall of cold air.
"Okay?" you checked, moving close to his side.
"Buzzy," he muttered, keeping his head down. "Lights are... flickering. 60 hertz cycle."
"We'll be fast," you promised. "Produce is right here."
You steered him toward the apples. He kept his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched up to his ears. He was making himself small.
"Honeycrisp," you said, grabbing a plastic bag. "Help me pick three good ones."
He focused on the task. The task was a lifeline. He inspected the apples with intense scrutiny, turning them over in his hands.
"Bruise," he whispered, rejecting one. "Soft spot."
He found three perfect apples. He placed them in the bag gently.
"Good," he said. "Done."
"Okay. Cheese next? Aisle four."
"Aisle four," he repeated. "Dairy. Cold."
You started walking. The store was indeed mostly empty, but 'mostly' isn't 'completely'.
A cart rattled past us. One of the wheels was stuck, making a rhythmic thud-squeak-thud-squeak sound.
Jake winced. He pressed his shoulder against yours. You leaned back into him, offering your solidity.
"Almost there," you murmured.
We turned into Aisle Four. And that’s when the variables shifted. An employee was restocking the yogurt. He was tossing the plastic containers onto the shelf. Clack. Clack. Clack. At the other end of the aisle, a price scanner beeped loudly. BEEP. And then, the intercom crackled to life. "Price check on register three. Clean up in aisle nine." The voice was distorted, loud, and metallic. It echoed off the high industrial ceilings. Jake stopped walking. "Jake?" you whispered.He didn't answer. He was staring at the yogurt cups. His breathing had gone shallow. In-in-out. In-in-out. "Too many," he whispered. "Too many layers."
"Okay," you said instantly. "We're done. Let’s go."
You reached for his hand.But then, the final variable dropped. A woman turned the corner into the aisle. She was pushing a stroller. Inside the stroller was a baby.
The baby wasn't just crying. It was shrieking. It was that high-pitched, piercing wail that evolution designed to be impossible to ignore. It cut through the air like a jagged knife.Jake gasped. It sounded like he had been punched in the stomach.
His hands flew out of his pockets and slapped over his ears, pressing the fabric of his hood tight against his head. "No," he whimpered. "No no no."
"Jake," you said, stepping in front of him. "Look at me. Eyes on me." But the baby screamed again. A sharp, fluctuating cry. Jake’s knees buckled.
He didn't fall; he crumbled. He dropped straight down to the cold linoleum floor, curling into a tight ball. He tucked his head between his knees, his hands clamped over his ears so hard his knuckles were white. "Make it stop," he keened. It was a high, thin sound of pure distress. "It’s needles. It’s needles in my ears."
The woman with the stroller stopped. She looked at the grown man curled on the floor. She looked at you.
"Is he okay?" she asked, her voice loud, concerned but intrusive.
"He's fine," you said, your voice sharp, protective. "Please, just keep moving. The noise." She looked offended, but she pushed the stroller away. The crying faded, but the damage was done. Jake was rocking now. Fast. Forward and back. Forward and back. Thump. His head hit his knees. Thump. "Jake," you said, dropping to your knees beside him. You abandoned the cart. You didn't care about the apples. "Jake, I'm here. I'm right here." He couldn't hear you. The static had swallowed him. He was in the red zone. System failure. You saw the panic in his posture. He was hyperventilating, gasping for air that felt too thick to breathe. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, a relentless strobe to his overloaded brain.You knew what you had to do.You moved in. You sat on the floor behind him, wrapping your legs around his waist, pulling his back against your chest.
You wrapped your arms around his chest, over his arms, locking your hands together.
And you squeezed. "Deep pressure," you whispered into his hood. "I've got you. I am the shield." You squeezed him with everything you had. You compressed his ribcage, grounding him. He fought it for a second, his body rigid and trembling, radiating heat. He let out a sob—a broken, terrified sound. "Hurts," he choked out. "Everything hurts."
"I know," you murmured, resting your chin on top of his hooded head. "I know, baby. Transfer it to me. Give me the noise." You started to rock with him. You synchronized your movement with his. Forward. Back. Forward. Back.People were staring. A manager was walking over, looking concerned.You held up one hand, palm out. Stop.
The manager paused. He saw the way you were holding him. He nodded once and backed off, diverting traffic away from the aisle. Thank god for small mercies.
"Breathe with me," you commanded softly, pressing your sternum against his spine. You took a deep, exaggerated breath. In. You held it. Out. Jake struggled. His breath was catching in jagged hiccups. "Focus on my arms," you said. "Feel how heavy they are. Feel the floor. The floor is hard. You are here. You are Jake. I am Y/N."
"Y/N," he gasped. It was a lifeline.
"That’s right. I'm right here. I forgot the headphones, Jake. I’m so sorry. I messed up. But I’ve got you now." He was shaking violently, the adrenaline crash hitting him.
We sat there on the floor of Aisle Four for what felt like an eternity. It was probably ten minutes. Slowly, the rocking slowed. His hands, still clamped over his ears, loosened their grip slightly.
"Static," he whispered. "It’s... lowering."
"Good. Keep breathing."
"The baby?"
"Gone. The baby is gone."
He slumped back against you, his weight fully supported by your chest. He was exhausted. A meltdown burned energy like a marathon. "I fell down," he whispered, shame creeping into his voice. "You sat down," you corrected firmly. "You did what you needed to do to survive the input. That is valid."
"People are looking."
"Let them look. They’re just jealous of how good I am at hugging."
He let out a weak, watery huff of laughter. It was a tiny sound, but it broke the tension. "Okay," you said, loosening your grip just a fraction. "Can we move? Or do we need more time?"
"Car," he said immediately. "I want the car. The bubble."
"Okay. We're going to the car. Do you want to walk, or do you want me to help you?"
"Help," he whispered. "My legs are... jelly. The signal is weak."
"I've got you."
Standing up was an ordeal. You had to hoist him up, his arm draped heavy over your shoulders. He kept his head down, eyes squeezed shut, hiding inside his hood.
You left the cart with the apples and the cheese. You didn't look back.
The walk to the exit was a gauntlet, but you moved fast. You glared at anyone who lingered too long with their gaze. Move along, your eyes said. This is my person.
When the automatic doors whooshed open, the humid, real air hit you. It was better than the recycled freeze of the store.
You got him to the passenger side. You opened the door. He practically collapsed into the seat. You ran around to the driver's side and got in. You locked the doors. You didn't start the car. You just sat in the sudden, blessed silence of the sedan.
Jake pulled his knees up to his chest, curling into a ball on the seat. He pulled his hood down further. "I failed," he said. His voice was muffled and thick with tears.
"No," you said, turning to him. "No, you didn't."
"I did," he insisted, a sob breaking through. "I said I could do it. I said I could flex. But I broke. The baby cried and I broke." He turned his head to look at you, and your heart shattered. His face was wet with tears, his eyes red and swollen, looking at you with such profound disappointment in himself. "I wanted to be good for you," he whispered. "I wanted to show you I could be normal." You unbuckled your seatbelt. You reached across the console. You couldn't hug him fully, so you put your hand on his knee and squeezed hard. "Jake," you said fiercely. "You are good. You are so good. You don't have to be 'normal.' Normal is boring. Normal is overrated."
"But I ruined the mission. No apples."
"Screw the apples," you said. "Jake, look at me."
He blinked at you. "This was my fault," you said. "I forgot the headphones. I am the support worker. It is my job to check the equipment. I sent you into a construction zone without a hard hat. Of course it hurt. That’s not you failing. That’s physics."
"Physics?"
"Yes. If you pour too much water into a cup, it spills. The store poured too much noise into your ears. You spilled. That’s just cause and effect."
He sniffled, processing this logic. "So... I didn't malfunction?"
"No. Your sensors were just overwhelmed. And you know what? You signaled. You didn't scream at the lady. You didn't throw the yogurt. You sat down. That was control."
He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "It felt like dying."
"I know," you softened. "I know it did. And I am so, so sorry I let that happen to you."
He looked at your hand on his knee. He reached out and covered it with his own. His hand was cold and clammy. "You squeezed me," he said softly.
"Always."
"You blocked the noise. You felt like... a wall."
"I will always be your wall, Jake." He looked up at you then, and the look in his eyes was so open, so raw, it took your breath away. It wasn't the look of a client looking at a worker. It was the look of a man looking at his safe harbor. "I don't like it when you're sad," he whispered, reaching up to touch your cheek. You hadn't realized you were crying until he brushed a tear away with his thumb. "I'm not sad," you lied, your voice wavering. "I just... I hate seeing you hurt."
"I'm okay now," he said. "The static is gone. You're here."
He leaned his head across the center console, resting it awkwardly on your shoulder. It wasn't comfortable, the gear shift was digging into his side, but he needed the contact.
"Can we go home?" he asked. "To the blanket?"
"Yes," you sniffed, resting your cheek on his head. "Home. Blanket. And I’m ordering pizza. No cooking tonight."
"Pizza," he agreed. "Pepperoni. Symmetrical distribution."
"Symmetrical distribution," you promised.
You started the car. The engine purred to life. As you drove out of the parking lot, He reached over and took your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours. He squeezed three times.
Thank you
It was the signal you had established for "emergency exit," but in the quiet of the car, with the sun filtering through the trees, it felt like it meant something else entirely.
You squeezed back three times.
You're Welcome
You drove home in silence, hand in hand, the apples forgotten, but the trust between you stronger than any reinforced concrete. You had weathered the storm. You had survived the spill. And you knew, with absolute certainty, that as long as you had the conn, he would always be safe.
The plan for New Year’s Eve was simple, safe, and delightfully boring. You were going to wear your ugliest, most comfortable sweatpants, order an obscene amount of pad thai, and binge-watch the new drama that had dropped on Netflix. You had bought a bottle of cheap sparkling cider (because champagne gave you a headache) and planned to be asleep by 12:05 AM. You were looking forward to the silence. After 9 months of working as a support specialist—a job that required hyper-vigilance, constant emotional regulation, and a lot of noise management—silence was a luxury.
Then, at 9:45 PM, your phone buzzed.
Caller ID: Sarah Sim.
Your stomach did a little flip. Sarah never called after hours unless something was wrong. You answered immediately, pausing the drama where the lead actors were staring longingly at each other in the rain. "Sarah? Is everything okay?"
"Y/N, I am so sorry," Sarah’s voice was breathless, pitched high with stress. In the background, you could hear the distinct panic motion. "I hate to do this to you on a holiday. I really, really hate it."
"Sarah, breathe. What’s going on?"
"It’s my sister. Linda. She slipped on some ice in her driveway and... well, it looks like she broke her hip. She’s at the ER, and her husband is out of town on business, and the kids are..." She trailed off, a jagged sound of frustration escaping her. "I have to go. I’m preparing to go there now. But I can't take Jake. The ER waiting room on New Year's Eve? It would be a nightmare. The sirens, the people, the smell of antiseptic... he’d spiral before we even checked in."
"Say no more," you said, already standing up and reaching for your keys. "I’m coming over."
"Are you sure? It’s New Year’s. You must have plans. You’re twenty-three, you should be out at a party."
You laughed, grabbing your coat. "My plans involved noodles and pajamas, Sarah. I’m not missing anything. I’ll be there in twenty minutes."
"Thank you," she sobbed, a sound of pure relief. "Thank you. He’s... he’s anxious. The fireworks have started early in the neighborhood. He’s got his headphones on, but he’s pacing."
"I’ve got him," you promised. The drive to the Sims' house was a gauntlet of festive chaos. Even though it wasn't even 8:00 PM yet, the suburbs were alive. You saw teenagers running on lawns with sparklers, and every few minutes, a distant pop-pop-pop of firecrackers echoed off the houses.
You gripped the steering wheel tighter. You knew exactly what those sounds were doing to Jake. To him, a firecracker wasn't a celebration. It was a sonic assault. It was unpredictable, sharp, and threatening. It was a breach of the peace he worked so hard to maintain. When you pulled into the driveway, Sarah was already standing on the porch. The front door was open behind her, spilling warm yellow light onto the snow-dusted concrete. She had her purse over one shoulder and her car keys clutched in her hand like a weapon. She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back in a messy bun, wearing a coat over what looked like lounge clothes.
"You made good time," she said as you walked up the path, your sneakers silent on the pavement.
"Traffic was light," you said. "Go. Go take care of your sister. Don't worry about anything here."
"He’s in the living room," Sarah said, glancing back at the house. "He ate dinner—chicken nuggets, oven-baked, no sauce. He’s... rigid tonight. The noise is getting to him. He keeps checking the windows."
"I'll handle it," you assured her. "We'll build a fort if we need to. We'll turn up the white noise."
She squeezed your arm, her eyes wet. "You're a lifesaver, Y/N. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year, Sarah."
She hurried to her car, and you watched her back out before you turned to the house. You took a deep breath, shaking off the cold and the residual stress of the drive, and stepped inside.The transition was instant. The outside world was a cacophony of wind and distant explosions. Inside, it was a sanctuary. The air smelled of lemon and old books. It was warm.You locked the door behind you, turning the deadbolt with a soft click. "Stealth mode active," you whispered to yourself, toeing off your shoes and leaving them on the mat.You walked down the hallway. The house felt different at night. The shadows were longer, the silence heavier. You could feel the tension in the air, a static charge that radiated from the living room. You reached the archway.
The blackout curtains were drawn tight, sealing the room against the flashing lights outside. The only illumination came from the TV screen. Jake was sitting on the couch.Usually, he sat on the floor with his LEGOs, or in his recliner. But tonight, he was curled up in the corner of the sofa, knees pulled to his chest.
He was wearing a blue hoodie you hadn't seen before. It looked incredibly soft, a velvet-touch fabric that caught the light of the TV. His pajama pants were a dark plaid flannel. He had his big Sony headphones on, but they were slightly askew, as if he had been adjusting them frequently.He was watching Big Hero 6. The scene where Baymax and Hiro are flying over San Fransokyo at sunset. It was a quiet, visually stunning scene.
He didn't hear you come in.
You stood there for a moment, just watching him. He looked small. He was a grown man, broad-shouldered and tall, but curled up like that, protecting his vital organs from the invisible threat of the noise, he looked like the boy in the file photo from six months ago.You stepped into his line of sight, moving slowly so you wouldn't startle him.Jake’s head snapped up. For a second, there was fear in his eyes—a deer-in-headlights look. Then, recognition flooded in. His face transformed. The tension in his jaw released. His shoulders dropped three inches.
His eyes—those big, expressive, puppy-dog eyes that had hooked you from day one—lit up. It wasn't a dramatic smile; it was a softening. A light turning on in a dark room. He pulled his headphones down around his neck.
"Y/N," he said. His voice was rough, like he hadn't spoken in hours.
"Hi, Jake," you said softly, walking over to the couch. "Your mom had to go help her sister. So you're stuck with me tonight."
"I am not stuck," he corrected immediately, uncurling his legs. "This is an upgrade. Mom is stressed. Her aura is jagged yellow. You are blue. Blue is calm."
You smiled, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch, giving him space but close enough to be an anchor. "I'm glad I'm blue. How are you holding up? It’s loud out there." Jake frowned, looking toward the curtained window.
"The explosions are irregular," he murmured. "There is no pattern. Pop. Then silence. Then boom. My brain tries to predict the next one, but it can't. It’s a broken algorithm."
He picked at the fuzz on his blue hoodie. "I hate the sound. It vibrates in my teeth."
"I know," you said sympathetically. "It’s the worst kind of noise."
"But..." He hesitated. He looked at the TV screen, where colorful lights were dancing. "I like the data. I like the chemistry."
"The chemistry?"
"Strontium carbonate," he said, listing it like a fact from a textbook. "That makes red fireworks. Barium chloride makes green. Copper chloride makes blue. It’s just burning metal. It should be beautiful. Physics is beautiful."
He looked at you, his expression wistful and sad. "I want to see the chemistry. But I can't handle the physics of the sound wave."
Your heart gave a little tug.You thought about the parking lot downtown. The one on the hill that overlooked the river. It was a popular spot, but if you stayed in the car...
An idea formed."Jake," you said slowly. "What if I told you there was a way to see the chemistry without feeling the sound wave?" He tilted his head. "That is impossible. Light and sound travel together. Well, light is faster, but the sound always arrives."
"Not if we're in a bubble," you said. "My car. It’s insulated. If we drive to the lookout, park, roll the windows up tight, turn on the heater, and put your headphones on... you’d see them through the windshield. But you wouldn't hear the boom. Or at least, it would be a tiny thud. Not a bang."
He stared at you. You could see the gears turning behind his eyes. He was calculating the risk. "The car is a Faraday cage," he whispered. "For sound."
"Exactly. A shield." He looked at the window, then back at you. He trusted you. You had established that over six months of grilled cheese sandwiches and LEGO builds. You were the one who saved him in the grocery store. You were the one who brought the frozen peas for his headache.
"Can I bring my blanket?" he asked.
"Yes."
"And the headphones?"
"Non-negotiable."
He took a deep breath. He stood up. He smoothed down the front of his soft blue hoodie.
"Okay," he said. "Let’s go to the bubble."
The preparation for the expedition was precise.
Jake put on his shoes (velcro, no laces to trip on). He grabbed his grey weighted blanket. He put his headphones on, checking the battery life (84%—acceptable). He grabbed a small bag of pretzels, just in case he needed to chew to regulate his jaw tension.
You walked him to your car. The cold air bit at your cheeks. Somewhere down the street, a firecracker went off—a sharp CRACK. Jake flinched violently, stopping in the middle of the driveway. His hands flew to his ears over the headphones.
"Hey," you said, stepping in front of him, blocking his view of the street. "Eyes on me. Look at my coat. Look at the buttons." He focused on your coat. He breathed in. He breathed out.
"Car," he gasped.
"Car," you agreed.
You got him inside and slammed the door. You ran to the driver's side and got in. You immediately cranked the heater and turned on the radio to a classical station—low, steady cello music. "Status?" you asked, looking at him. He was adjusting his headphones. He pushed the noise-canceling button. The world outside muted.
"Status green," he said, though his voice sounded far away to himself. "The seal is tight."
"Okay. We're moving."
The drive to the lookout took twenty minutes. The traffic was light; most people were already at their parties. You drove carefully, avoiding potholes, keeping the ride as smooth as possible. Jake sat in the passenger seat, clutching his weighted blanket to his chest. He watched the streetlights pass by, counting them under his breath.
"You look nice," he said suddenly. You glanced at him, surprised. You were wearing sweatpants and a puffy coat. You had zero makeup on. "I look like a marshmallow, Jake."
"No," he said seriously. "Your face is... nice. And you look calm. You always look calm. It makes the inside of the car feel slow."
"Slow is good?"
"Fast is scary. Slow is safe. You feel safe."
You felt a flush rise to your cheeks that had nothing to do with the heater. "Thank you, Jake. You look nice too. That hoodie looks very soft."
He looked down at his chest. He rubbed the fabric. "It is velvet-fleece blend. Sarah bought it. I usually only wear hoodies with zippers, but this one... the texture is superior. It feels like a cat."
"A cat hoodie. I like it." You reached the lookout. It was a large paved lot on a bluff overlooking the River. Across the water, the city skyline was lit up. There were other cars parked there, facing the river, their engines idling, mist rising from their tailpipes.
You found a spot near the edge, away from a truck that was blasting bass-heavy music. You put the car in park. "We have arrived," you announced.
Jake leaned forward, peering through the windshield. The view was panoramic. The dark water reflected the city lights, creating a shimmering mirror.
"The vantage point is optimal," he noted.
"We have about fifteen minutes until midnight," you said, checking the dashboard clock. 11:45 PM.
"Fifteen minutes," Jake repeated. "900 seconds."
He leaned back, relaxing slightly. He pulled the weighted blanket up so it covered his chin, leaving only his eyes and nose visible. He looked like a cozy, anxious turtle. "Y/N?"
"Yeah, Jake?"
"Why are you here?"
The question caught you off guard. "What do you mean?"
"It’s New Year's Eve," he said. "The social convention is to be at a gathering. Drinking ethanol. Counting down with many people. You are twenty-three. The data suggests you should be partying." He turned his head to look at you. His eyes were searching yours in the dim light of the dashboard.
"I didn't want to be at a party," you said honestly. "Parties are loud. And the floor is usually sticky. And you have to talk to people you don't know."
"You don't like loud?" Jake looked surprised.
"Not really. I do it for work, but... I like quiet. I like slow."
"Like the car."
"Like the car." You turned in your seat to face him fully. "And besides... I’d rather be here. With you." Jake went still. He stared at you. You could see him processing the statement, turning it over in his mind, looking for the hidden meaning.
"With me?" he whispered. "But I am... work."
"No," you shook your head gently. "You stopped being just work a long time ago, Jake. We're friends. Right?"
He blinked. "Friends."
"Yes. And I like hanging out with my friend. Especially when he teaches me about strontium carbonate." A slow, shy smile spread across his face. It started at the corners of his mouth and reached his eyes, crinkling them. He snuggled deeper into his blanket. "Friends," he tested the word. "That is... acceptable. Highly acceptable."
He looked back out the windshield. "Sarah says friends don't get paid to hang out."
"Well, tonight I'm not getting paid," you lied (technically the agency would bill for this, but the sentiment was real). "Tonight I’m just Y/N."
"Just Y/N," he echoed. "And just Jake."
"Just Jake."
The dashboard clock clicked to 11:59 PM.
"One minute," you said. "Sixty seconds."
Jake tensed up. He pressed his hands over his headphones, ensuring the seal was perfect. "The bubble holds," he whispered to himself.
"The bubble holds," you confirmed.
Across the river, in the city center, a single flare shot up into the sky. A white streak against the black. Then—bloom. A massive golden sphere exploded in the air. It was huge, glittering, and silent. Inside the car, you heard nothing. Just the cello music and the heater. Jake flinched visually when the light exploded, his shoulders jerking up. He waited. He braced himself for the boom.
One second. Two seconds. No boom. Just a soft, dull thud that vibrated vaguely in the floorboards, barely noticeable. Jake let out a breath. His shoulders dropped.
Another one went up. Red this time. Strontium carbonate. It burst into a heart shape.
Jake leaned forward. He pressed his hands against the dashboard. His eyes went wide. "Red," he breathed. Then came the finale. The sky erupted. Greens, blues, purples, golds. It was a chaotic, beautiful mess of chemistry and light. The river below caught the reflections, doubling the show.
You weren't watching the sky.
You were watching Jake.
The colored light from the fireworks washed over his face in waves—blue, then red, then gold. His glasses reflected the explosions, making his eyes look like they held galaxies.
His mouth was slightly open in awe. The fear was completely gone, replaced by a childlike wonder that was so pure it made your chest ache. He wasn't the anxious young man in the grocery store aisle. He wasn't the client with the file. He was just a boy loving the lights.
He looked beautiful.
The soft slope of his nose, the messy hair falling over his forehead, the way his eyelashes caught the light. You felt a swell of emotion so strong it almost knocked the wind out of you. It wasn't just affection. It wasn't just protectiveness.
It was love. You had known it for a while, but here, in the quiet bubble of the car, with the new year raining down in sparks of fire, it felt undeniable.
Suddenly, Jake turned his head.
He caught you staring. Usually, when you were caught staring, you would look away. You would check your phone. You would pretend you were looking past him.
But tonight, you didn't. You held his gaze. The fireworks were still exploding behind him, framing his silhouette in halos of light.Jake looked at you. He saw the way you were looking at him. He didn't flinch. He didn't look down at his shoes.
He smiled.It wasn't his polite smile. It wasn't his nervous smile. It was an innocent, soft, intimate smile that said I see you seeing me, and I am okay with it.
He reached up and pulled one side of his headphones back, just an inch, breaking the seal.
"Happy New Year, Y/N," he said softly.
The cello music swelled. The heater hummed.
"Happy New Year, Jake," you whispered.
He didn't put the headphone back. He kept looking at you. His gaze dropped to your lips, then back up to your eyes. It was a fleeting glance, one he probably didn't even realize he made, but you saw it.
"The chemistry is beautiful," he said.
"Yeah," you breathed, looking right into his brown eyes. "It really is."
He held your gaze for another long second, the air between you thick and warm and incredibly soft. It felt like the start of something. Not a frantic race, but a slow, steady walk.Then, he turned back to the windshield as a massive blue weeping willow firework drifted down toward the water. "Copper chloride," he noted, sliding his headphone back into place. But he reached out his hand, the one not holding the blanket, and placed it palm-up on the center console.
It was an invitation. You reached out and placed your hand in his.
His fingers closed around yours. His hand was warm. He squeezed three times.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
You squeezed back three times.
The fireworks ended. The smoke drifted over the river. The year turned over.
But in the quiet car, holding Jake’s hand while he hummed a happy little tune under his breath, you knew the best part of the year had already begun. The new year didn't come in with a bang. It came in with a soft, steady warmth, wearing a blue hoodie and holding your hand.
March arrived with a slow, hesitant thaw, washing away the stubborn winter snow and leaving behind a world that felt raw, muddy, and ready to wake up.
It had been months since you first walked up the driveway of that quiet suburban home, a fresh-faced social work graduate clutching a file folder that tried to summarize a human being into a list of clinical symptoms. Back then, you had been terrified of making a mistake, of wearing the wrong shoes or breathing too loudly. Now, as the first hints of spring began to show through the living room windows, you navigated the complex, beautiful landscape of Jake Sim’s life with a quiet, practiced confidence.
You were officially his support worker. But unofficially, you had become his translator, his anchor, and his closest confidante. The boundaries of your job description had blurred into a deep, unwavering affection. You weren't his girlfriend—you strictly maintained your professional role, aware of the ethics and the fragile nature of his trust—but the feelings you harbored for the twenty-four-year-old were a warm, heavy reality in your chest that you could no longer deny.
Over the winter, the walls Jake had built to protect himself from a world that was too loud, too bright, and too unpredictable had slowly begun to lower. He was more trusting now. The rigid, closed-off young man from the file was gone, replaced by someone who sought out your presence.
You knew him completely. You knew his dietary map so well you didn't even need to consult the notes Sarah had left you on your first day. You knew he despised the texture of anything "mealy," like certain types of apples or boiled potatoes. You knew he had a strict rule against white-colored foods because they felt "deceptive" to his brain, with the sole exception of milk, which he categorized as "structural calcium" rather than a beverage. You had even managed to successfully introduce new variables into his routine. It had happened on a quiet Tuesday in early March. You had taken a massive gamble and driven him to a small, dimly lit Mexican restaurant on the edge of town for a late lunch. Jake had been rigid in the passenger seat, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his gray hoodie.
"Spicy is a pain signal," he had informed you, his brow furrowed anxiously behind his glasses. "Capsaicin tricks the brain into thinking the tissue is burning. I do not wish to be tricked. My baseline for sensory input is already at capacity."
"I promise we won't get anything spicy," you had assured him, parking the car in the empty lot. "But they have chips. Corn chips. And I think you’ll like the texture. They're uniform and crunchy." He had agreed to the mission, trusting you enough to step inside. The restaurant was practically deserted, which kept his anxiety at bay. When the basket of warm tortilla chips arrived, Jake had inspected one like a scientist examining a new element. He noted the uniform triangle shape. He took a tiny bite.
The loud, satisfying crunch made his eyes widen. He hummed, a low vibration of approval in his chest.
Then, you introduced the mild salsa. You explained that it was blended completely smooth—no hidden chunks of onion or tomato to surprise his palate. He had dipped the microscopic corner of a chip into the red sauce. He ate it. He blinked, processed the flavor profile, and dipped again, a little deeper this time.
"The acidity of the tomato cuts through the oil of the corn chip," he had observed, looking at you with a profound sense of realization. "It is mathematically balanced. It is... highly acceptable."Chips and smooth salsa had instantly become a staple. You started keeping jars of it in the pantry, and he would happily eat it as a snack while watching his shows.That same evening, the shift in his trust had become distinctly physical. You were sitting on the couch in the living room, the blackout curtains drawn, watching an animated movie.Usually, when you watched movies, Jake would either sit on the floor, grounded on the rug, or he would sit on the far end of the sofa, leaving a careful, deliberate two-foot gap between you. He wasn't big on physical proximity unless he was in the middle of a meltdown and needed deep pressure to ground himself.But that night, he had sat down on the sofa and looked at the gap. He looked at you. And then, he scooted over.He didn't press flush against you, but the gap shrank to a mere inch. You could feel the warmth radiating from his arm. When he leaned forward to watch a visually intense scene, his shoulder brushed against yours, and he didn't pull away.You had frozen, your heart doing a strange, fluttering tap-dance against your ribs. You didn't pull away, but you didn't push closer, either. You just sat there, hyper-aware of his presence, feeling incredibly honored that he felt safe enough to let his guard down and share your personal space.
A few days later, a new sensory challenge presented itself.
It was a rainy Thursday afternoon. The house was quiet, but Jake was not. He was pacing the length of the living room, his steps heavy and agitated. He kept reaching up to swat at the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders, and grimacing as if something invisible was attacking him. "Jake?" you asked softly from the kitchen counter, where you were organizing his schedule for the week. "Is your shirt tag bothering you? I can cut it out."
He stopped pacing. He looked at you, his brown eyes clouded with severe distress. He reached up and grabbed a handful of his dark, fluffy hair at the nape of his neck. It had gotten long over the winter—curling over the tops of his ears and brushing against the collar of his hoodie. "It’s not the shirt," he said, his voice tight and breathless. "It’s my hair. It’s touching me. Every time I turn my head, it feels like cobwebs. Constant, heavy cobwebs. It is distracting my processor. The input is overwhelming."
"Do you want me to ask your mom to make an appointment at the barber?" you suggested gently. The look of sheer, visceral terror that crossed his face made you instantly regret the question. The barber was a sensory nightmare for him. It meant the loud buzzing of electric clippers vibrating against his skull, the strong smell of chemical barbicide, the bright fluorescent lights, and the unpredictable, light touch of a stranger’s hands on his sensitive scalp."No," he breathed, taking a step back, his hands flapping slightly at his sides as he tried to regulate his rising panic. "No barber. The buzzing hurts my teeth. The cape is too tight on my throat. I can't. I can't go."
"Okay," you said instantly, keeping your voice low and soothing. "No barber. I promise, Jake. We won't go." You thought for a second, watching him scratch frantically at the back of his neck.
"What if... what if I did it?" you offered.
He blinked, his hands freezing. "You?"
"Me. Right here in the kitchen. No buzzing clippers, just regular scissors. We can take breaks whenever you need to. I won't tie a cape around your neck; we'll just use your favorite soft towel."
He considered this. His logical brain weighed the risk of a bad haircut against the immediate relief of getting the "cobwebs" off his neck. He looked at your hands. He trusted your hands."Do you have the data?" he asked skeptically. "Are you trained in cosmetology?"
"I don't have the data yet," you admitted with a reassuring smile. "But I have YouTube. Give me ten minutes to study the algorithm."
He let out a long breath, his shoulders dropping a fraction. "Okay. Ten minutes."
You set up a wooden dining chair in the middle of the kitchen linoleum. You found a pair of sharp styling shears Sarah kept in the bathroom vanity. You propped your phone up against the sugar bowl and watched a video titled How to Trim Men's Medium Length Hair - Scissors Only.When you were ready, Jake walked into the kitchen. He had changed into an old, faded t-shirt. He sat down in the chair, his posture rigid as a board. You draped his favorite plush bath towel over his shoulders, securing it loosely with a binder clip so nothing constricted his throat."Okay," you murmured, standing behind him. "I'm going to touch your hair now. Deep pressure, just like we always do."
"Deep pressure," he echoed, closing his eyes tightly.
You placed your hands firmly on his scalp, letting him feel the solid weight of your touch before you ran a comb through his dark waves. He shivered slightly, but he didn't pull away."I'm going to start at the back," you narrated, knowing that unexpected sensory input was his biggest trigger. "You're going to hear the scissors. They make a sharp snip sound."
Snip. Snip.
"It sounds like a metronome," Jake observed softly, his hands gripping the edges of the wooden chair seat. "A fast metronome."
"Just focus on the rhythm," you soothed, working meticulously.
You weren't a professional, but you were infinitely careful. You trimmed the heavy curls away from his collar. You cleared the bulk from the sides. Every time you had to fold his ear down to cut around it, you warned him first.
It took forty-five minutes. A barber would have been done in ten. But this wasn't about efficiency; it was about safety. He sat perfectly still for you, enduring the falling hair and the metallic snip of the blades because he knew you were on the other end of them."Alright," you said finally, stepping back and carefully brushing the loose trimmings off the towel. "I think we're done, Jake. The cobwebs are gone."
He opened his eyes. He reached a hesitant hand up to the back of his neck. He felt the smooth skin, the clean line of hair that no longer brushed his collar. He felt around his ears, marveling at the empty air.
A slow, brilliant smile broke across his face. He stood up, shaking off the towel, and turned to look at you."It is optimal," he breathed, running his long fingers through the top of his hair, which you had left perfectly fluffy. "The static is reduced. My head feels... lighter. The processing speed is back to normal."
"You look very handsome," you smiled, reaching out to brush a stray clipping from his shoulder."Thank you, Y/N," he said softly, holding your gaze for a long moment. "I trust your scissors."
The trust they shared spilled over into the following week.
It was a chilly afternoon, the kind that made the house feel like a cozy, insulated bubble. It was the perfect afternoon for baking. "Cookies," Jake had announced around 2:00 PM, pulling his favorite glass mixing bowl from the cabinet. "The barometric pressure is low. We need to introduce a superior olfactory variable. Vanilla and butter."
"Sugar cookies?" you asked, rolling up your sleeves and washing your hands.
"Cutouts," he specified, retrieving his plastic container of cookie cutters.
Baking with Jake was a science experiment. He didn't believe in "eyeballing" ingredients. Everything was leveled with the flat edge of a butter knife. The dough had to be chilled for exactly thirty minutes. You did the main work—measuring, mixing, and rolling the heavy dough out flat on the counter—while he stood close beside you, supervising the chemistry of it all.
When it was time to cut the shapes, Jake took over. He treated the rolled-out dough like a puzzle of spatial geometry. He had chosen the star cutter and a specific dinosaur cutter.
"The goal is optimization," he explained seriously, pressing the star into the very edge of the dough. "We must minimize the negative space between the shapes to reduce the need for re-rolling. Re-rolling introduces excess flour and toughens the gluten matrix."
"You are a cookie architect," you laughed, watching his precise, careful movements.
"I am maximizing yield," he corrected gently, pressing the dinosaur cutter down directly next to the star.
You took the filled trays and slid them into the oven. "Okay, timer set for twelve minutes." But variables happen. Your phone buzzed on the counter—it was a call from the agency about a sudden change in scheduling protocols. You answered it, stepping into the hallway so you wouldn't disturb Jake, who was focused on washing the mixing bowl. The coordinator on the phone was chatty, and you got pulled into a frustrating, complicated discussion about paperwork.
You didn't hear the oven timer go off over the sound of the phone call.
You smelled it first. The sweet, buttery scent of baking cookies suddenly turned sharp, followed by the undeniable, acrid smell of burning sugar.
"Oh, shoot!" you gasped, hanging up on the coordinator mid-sentence.
You ran into the kitchen, grabbed the oven mitts, and yanked the trays out. Smoke billowed into the air.You slammed the trays onto the stovetop. The cookies were ruined. The stars were a dark, unhappy brown, and the dinosaurs looked like they had been caught in a prehistoric meteorite strike. They were hard as rocks and blackened around the edges."Dammit," you sighed, your shoulders slumping in defeat. You felt a hot prickle of tears in your eyes. You were his support worker; you were supposed to be on top of things. You had ruined his perfectly optimized geometric dough because you were distracted.Jake turned around from the sink, drying his hands on a towel. He looked at the smoking trays. He looked at your face.
He saw the disappointment. He saw the way you were picking at your thumbnail—a nervous habit he had memorized over the last six months.
He walked up to the stove. He looked at the burnt, sad little dinosaurs.
He reached out and picked one up. It was still hot, but he barely flinched.
"Jake, don't, it’s going to taste like ash," you warned, reaching out to stop him.
He lifted the burnt cookie to his mouth and took a bite.
A loud, aggressive CRUNCH echoed in the kitchen. You winced, waiting for him to spit it out. You knew how sensitive his palate was. Bitter flavors were usually an instant, gag-inducing rejection.He chewed thoughtfully. He swallowed. He looked at the cookie, then looked at you.
"The structural integrity is phenomenal," he stated, his face completely serious.
"Jake, they're burnt."
"They are heavily caramelized," he corrected smoothly. "The Maillard reaction was simply allowed to progress further than usual. It adds a... bold, smoky complexity."
He took another bite. Another loud crunch.
"And the crunch is superior," he continued, holding eye contact with you. "Soft cookies crumble. These cookies are resilient. They require effort. I appreciate the effort."
He was overriding his own intense sensory aversions. He was eating a burnt, bitter cookie just to protect your feelings, to make sure you didn't feel like you had failed him. He was a total sweetheart, wrapping his rigid sensory needs around his care for you.Your heart melted right into the linoleum. You couldn't help yourself—you walked over and wrapped your arms tightly around his waist, pressing your face into his chest in a brief, fierce hug.
"You are the absolute sweetest guy in the world, Jake Sim," you mumbled against his shirt.He patted your back awkwardly but affectionately with his free hand. "I am just analyzing the data," he said, taking a third, agonizingly crunchy bite. "But thank you. They really are good."The emotional safety established on those quiet afternoons paved the way for something far more delicate.
It happened late one evening, a few days later. Sarah had gone to a late movie with a friend, leaving the two of you in the living room. The lights were dimmed, and the TV was playing softly in the background.
Jake was sitting on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chest, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his hoodie. He had been quiet for an hour, a heavy, contemplative silence that usually preceded a deep thought.
"Y/N?" he murmured finally. His voice was low, lacking its usual confident, factual cadence."Yeah, Jakey? I'm here."
He kept his eyes glued to the loose thread. "I had a birthday a few months ago. Before you started working here."
"I know," you smiled gently. "Your mom told me. You turned twenty-four."
"I am twenty-four," he repeated, rolling the number around in his mouth like it tasted strange and unpleasant. "You are twenty-three."
"That’s right. You’re older than me."
He didn't smile. His brow furrowed deeply, and he stared down at his hands.
"Twenty-four is a prime integer for adulthood," he said softly. "I read articles online. At twenty-four, normal men are... doing things. They are driving on the interstate. They are navigating tax brackets. They are going to loud places and drinking ethanol. They wear suits that scratch their necks. They live alone."
He swallowed hard, the vulnerability in his voice jagged and painful to hear.
"I do not do those things," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I cannot drive on the highway because the cars move too fast and the input overwhelms my processor. I cannot do taxes. I wear pajama pants with cartoon characters on them. I spend hours sorting plastic bricks. I need Mom to help me make doctor appointments. I need you to help me go to the grocery store."He turned his head to look at you, his brown eyes swimming with a profound, deep-seated insecurity. It was the awareness of a man who knew he was out of sync with the timeline of the world, a man who felt like he was failing a test everyone else inherently knew how to pass.
"I feel... broken," he choked out, the word hitting the quiet room like a dropped glass. "Like I missed the manual on how to be an adult. And you... you have a degree. You fit in the world. I don't understand how you can stand being here with someone who is stuck on the wrong setting."Your heart cracked right down the middle. You shifted on the couch, turning fully toward him, and reached out to take both of his hands in yours. You held them tightly, anchoring him to the present moment."Jake, look at me," you said fiercely.He blinked, a single tear slipping down his cheek, but he met your eyes."There is no manual," you said, your voice steady and full of absolute conviction. "There is no 'normal' in adulthood. Everyone is just guessing and hoping they don't mess up."He sniffled, processing this. "But they do the normal things."
"Normal is a myth," you promised him. "You think because I have a degree I know everything? Jake, I had to Google how to fix a leaky pipe yesterday, and I still couldn't do it. I am terrified of making phone calls to strangers. I eat cereal for dinner three nights a week. Everyone has things they can't handle. Adulthood is completely new for everyone, and we're all just trying to survive the input."
You let go of one of his hands to reach up and cup his cheek, gently wiping the tear away with your thumb.
"You aren't broken, Jake. You are just you. You built a working replica of the Titanic from memory. You notice when the air pressure drops before the weather app does. You ate a burnt, charcoal cookie just so I wouldn't feel bad about my baking skills. Do you know how rare that kind of empathy is? How brilliant your brain is?"
He leaned into your palm, closing his eyes, a shaky breath escaping his lips.
"You don't have to like loud bars or scratchy suits to be a man," you whispered, maintaining your professional boundary but pouring every ounce of your care into your words. "You just have to be kind, and honest, and try your best. And you do that every single day. You don't have to fit into the rest of the world, Jake. Everything is new, and you just find where you fit most."
He opened his eyes. The fear was slowly draining away, replaced by a quiet, thoughtful relief.
"Find where I fit most," he repeated, testing the weight of the concept.
"Exactly. And you fit beautifully right here, just the way you are."
He let out a shaky breath, a small smile finally breaking through the sadness. He wrapped his arms around your waist, burying his face in your neck, pulling you into a tight, grounding hug.
"You are my favorite variable, Y/N," he mumbled against your skin. "Thank you for the data." To prove your point that his interests were valid and wonderful, you stopped by a department store the very next morning before your shift. When you walked into the house, you handed him a plastic shopping bag. "What is this?" he asked, eyeing the bag suspiciously. "A reminder that what you like is perfectly fine," you smiled.
He reached in and pulled out a brand new, neatly folded package of pajama pants. They were dark navy blue, covered in small, minimalist red Spider-Man logos.
"I checked the tags," you said proudly. "They are tagless. And it’s a modal-cotton blend. Super soft." Jake’s eyes lit up instantly. He rubbed the fabric between his thumb and forefinger, checking the friction coefficient.
"It is superior," he breathed, a wide grin stretching across his face, the insecurities of the previous night completely forgotten. "The texture is incredibly smooth. Thank you, Y/N."
"You're welcome, Spidey. Go test them out."
He hurried down the hall. When he returned, he was wearing the new pants, looking incredibly cozy and relaxed. He did a small crouch in the living room, testing the stretch of the fabric."Range of motion is uninhibited," he declared happily. "They are perfect."The final days of March brought the first true, undeniable breath of spring. The sun came out, warm and insistent, waking up the dormant life in the backyard.
It was a Saturday morning. You were standing at the kitchen sink, washing out your coffee mug, while Sarah sat at the island, looking over some mail. Jake had been outside in the backyard for twenty minutes, "patrolling the perimeter" in his new Spider-Man pajamas and a light jacket.
You watched him through the window. He was pacing the fence line, his hands in his pockets, enjoying the gentle breeze.Suddenly, he stopped. He knelt down in the grass, inspecting something on the ground. Carefully, with precise, deliberate movements, he pinched something between his fingers and plucked it from the earth.
He stood up and turned around, walking back toward the house with a determined stride.
When the back door opened, he walked straight into the kitchen, bypassing his usual routine of wiping his shoes exactly three times. He walked right up to you, holding his hand out, his fist closed around something delicate.
"I found anomalies in the grass," he announced.
He opened his hand.
Sitting in his palm were a half-dozen dandelions. They were bright, aggressive yellow, their stems slightly crushed from his firm grip.
"They are weeds," Jake explained, looking at you earnestly. "Most people apply herbicide to them to make their lawns uniform. But I researched them. They are the first food for bees in the spring. They are incredibly resilient. They grow through cracks in the driveway. They do not care if they belong; they just grow where they fit."
He held the messy, yellow bouquet out to you."I picked them for you," he said, his brown eyes locking onto yours. "Because you are resilient. And because you help me find where I fit."You stared at the bright yellow flowers.You were horribly, violently allergic to dandelions. The pollen made your throat itch, your eyes swell, and your nose run like a broken faucet. If you held them too close, you’d be sneezing for the rest of the day in absolute misery.You didn't hesitate for a microsecond.
You reached out and gently took the crushed, beautiful weeds from his hand. You would never, ever tell him."They are the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen, Jake," you said, forcing your breathing to remain shallow so you didn't inhale the pollen directly. "Thank you so much. I love them."
His chest puffed out slightly with pride. "They require water. A small vessel. Their stems are short."
"I’ll put them in a shot glass right now," you promised.
You turned around, grabbed a small glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and arranged the dandelions carefully on the windowsill above the sink. As soon as his back was turned to grab a glass of water, you quickly turned your head and stifled a massive, aggressive sneeze into the crook of your elbow.
"Bless you," Jake said, drinking his water.
"Just dust," you lied smoothly, your voice thick as you quickly washed your hands with soap to remove the pollen. "Spring dust."
Sarah had watched the entire exchange from the kitchen island, her mail forgotten. As Jake wandered into the living room to adjust the volume on the TV, feeling successful and completely at ease, Sarah stepped closer to you.
She looked at the dandelions in the shot glass, and then she looked at you, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. "You're allergic to those, aren't you?" she whispered, having seen you pop an antihistamine just yesterday when a neighbor mowed their lawn.
"Deathly," you whispered back, rubbing your itchy nose with the back of a clean hand.
Sarah let out a soft, watery laugh. She reached out and squeezed your arm, her grip tight and full of a mother's profound gratitude.
"He hasn't picked flowers for anyone since he was six years old," she said, her voice cracking with emotion. "Before the world got too loud and he folded in on himself. I used to wonder if I’d ever see that sweet, expressive little boy again."
She looked out toward the living room, where Jake was happily sitting on the couch, completely in his element. He wasn't hiding behind his hands or his headphones. He was just a young man, comfortable in his own skin, wearing the Spider-Man pajamas you bought him."He’s not just surviving anymore, Y/N," Sarah said, looking back at you with fierce, unwavering respect and praise. "He is living. He is confident, and he is himself again. But he’s not doing it alone. He has you. You brought him back."
You looked at the dandelions, their bright yellow petals soaking up the sun in the window, stubborn and resilient against all odds. You weren't his girlfriend, and you were technically just doing your job, but looking at the life and light that had returned to Jake Sim’s eyes, you knew you were exactly where you were supposed to be.
"I think we're just finding where we fit, Sarah," you smiled, your eyes watering from the pollen, but your heart completely full. "I really do."
April crept in with a deceptive warmth, bringing days that started crisp and ended bathed in golden, gentle sunlight. Over the past month, the trust between you and Jake had solidified into something unbreakable. The boundaries of your job title as his support worker had softened so completely that you often forgot you were on the clock. You were just Y/N and Jake, navigating the world together, one carefully calculated variable at a time.
Because he had been doing so well—expanding his safe foods, managing his sensory input, and initiating communication—you had planned a special outing.
There was a specialty hobby shop about twenty minutes away. It wasn't a big-box toy store with screaming children and blinding fluorescent lights; it was a quiet, dimly lit collector’s shop. It smelled of old cardboard, modeling clay, and dust. More importantly, they carried retired, vintage LEGO sets. Jake had been talking about a specific, out-of-production Architecture set for three weeks. He had saved his own money for it, meticulously budgeting his allowance in a small notebook.
"The crowd density on a Thursday at 11:00 AM will be approximately 12% of peak capacity," Jake had announced that morning, standing by the front door.
He was prepared. He was wearing his noise-canceling headphones securely around his neck, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice. Underneath his unzipped, soft grey hoodie, he wore a subtle, vintage-wash Spider-Man t-shirt you had found for him online. It didn't have any scratchy tags, and the seams were flat.
"The math is solid," you agreed, jingling your car keys. "We have a clear window. Are you feeling good? Battery at 100%?" He closed his eyes for a brief second, running an internal diagnostic. "Battery is at 94%. I slept well. The eggs were uniform. I am ready to initiate the mission."
"Let's go get that set, Spidey."The drive was peaceful. You kept the radio volume low, playing a soft instrumental track that Jake liked because the time signature was mathematically consistent. He spent the drive looking out the window, his fingers tapping a complex, rhythmic pattern against his thigh. He was excited. It was a subtle excitement to anyone else, but to you, it was loud and vibrant.
When you pulled into the strip mall where the hobby shop was located, the parking lot was blissfully empty."Twelve percent capacity might have been an overestimation," you smiled, turning off the engine. "Looks like we have the place to ourselves."
Jake unbuckled his seatbelt, a small, proud smile on his face. "My calculations included a margin of error. Empty is an optimal variable."
You walked into the store together. The bell above the door chimed—a soft, pleasant ding that made Jake blink, but he didn't flinch. The shop owner, an older man reading a magazine behind the counter, offered a quiet nod and went back to his reading. It was perfect.
Jake immediately navigated toward the back corner of the store, where shelves were stacked high with pristine, sealed boxes.
You hung back a few feet, giving him space to explore his element. This was his territory. He moved down the aisle with absolute reverence, his eyes scanning the boxes, reading the piece counts and set numbers like they were lines of poetry.
"They have it," he whispered suddenly.You stepped closer. "The Architecture set?"
"Yes." He pointed to a high shelf. "Set number 21010. The Robie House. 2,276 pieces. It was discontinued years ago. The dark red brick count is unprecedented."
His hands started to move. It was a happy stim—his fingers fluttering rapidly in front of his chest, a physical manifestation of the joy bubbling over in his brain. He bounced slightly on his heels, a soft, high-pitched hum of pure excitement vibrating in his throat."I have the exact funds required," he said, turning to look at you, his brown eyes shining with absolute delight. "This is... this is a highly significant acquisition."
"I'm so happy for you, Jake," you beamed, your heart swelling at the sight of his unbridled joy. "Let me help you get it down."
You reached up and carefully pulled the box from the top shelf, handing it to him. He took it as if it were made of glass, tracing the edges of the cardboard, his happy humming growing a little louder.
And then, the bell above the door chimed again.
You didn't think much of it at first. But then the voices carried down the aisle. Loud, booming, aggressively casual.
"Bro, I swear they sell Warhammer stuff here, just look."
Three guys turned the corner into the aisle. They were roughly Jake's age, maybe a year or two younger. College kids. They were wearing baseball caps backward, reeking of sharp, chemical body spray that immediately made your nose wrinkle. They were talking over each other, their voices echoing harshly in the quiet shop.
You saw Jake stiffen instantly. The happy humming cut off. His fingers stopped fluttering and clenched into tight fists around the edges of the LEGO box. He instinctively took a step back, pressing his shoulders against the shelving unit, trying to make himself smaller. He lowered his head, his hair falling forward to shield his eyes.
You casually moved, placing yourself slightly in front of him, creating a physical buffer between him and the newcomers.
The guys walked down the aisle, completely oblivious to the sudden tension. One of them, a guy in a bright red polo shirt, stopped to look at the shelf right next to where Jake was standing.
"Man, who drops three hundred bucks on plastic bricks?" the guy scoffed, laughing loudly. Jake flinched at the volume. His hands were shaking. He pulled the box tighter to his chest. He was trying to be invisible, but the movement caught the guy's attention.The guy in the red polo looked at Jake. He looked at the way Jake was hunched over, avoiding eye contact. He looked at the vintage Spider-Man t-shirt peeking out from the hoodie.Then, the guy smirked. He nudged his friend.
"Hey, check it out," he said, not bothering to lower his voice. "We got a real-life man-child over here. Hey buddy, aren't you a little old for the kids' aisle?"
The words hung in the air, heavy and sharp.
Jake froze entirely. His breathing hitched, catching in his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut."Excuse me," you said immediately, your voice cold and sharp as a razor. You stepped fully in front of Jake, locking eyes with the guy in the red polo. "Back off."The guy raised his hands in mock surrender, letting out an obnoxious laugh. "Whoa, chill out. I was just making a joke. Didn't realize his mommy was here to defend him."
"I said, back off," you repeated, taking a step toward him, the protective fury blazing in your chest. You didn't care about professionalism. You didn't care about causing a scene. You only cared about the man trembling behind you. "Keep your mouth shut and walk away."The second friend sneered, looking Jake up and down. "Jeez, what's wrong with him? He's shaking like a weirdo. Does he need a diaper change or something?"
Snap.
You moved forward, jabbing your index finger hard into the second guy's chest. "If you say one more word to him, I am going to have the owner throw you out by your hair. You are pathetic, miserable little bullies. Walk. Away. Now."
Your voice wasn't yelling, but it was deadly. The guys looked at your face, realizing you were genuinely a second away from a physical altercation. The bravado faltered.
"Whatever, crazy bitch," the red polo guy muttered, rolling his eyes. "Place is a freak show anyway. Let's go."They turned and swaggered out of the aisle, laughing loudly to save face ,mimicking disabilities, their heavy footsteps echoing as the front door chimed and they left the store.The silence that followed was suffocating.You turned around instantly, your heart hammering. "Jake," you breathed, reaching out. "Jake, I'm so sorry, are you okay?"
He wasn't okay.He was staring blankly at the floor. His face was entirely devoid of color. The box he had been holding so carefully slipped from his numb fingers, hitting the linoleum with a loud, hollow thud.
"Jake?" you asked softly, not touching him, knowing better than to initiate contact when he was in shock.He didn't look at the box. He didn't look at you. He reached up with shaking, jerky movements and pulled his noise-canceling headphones over his ears. He turned around, completely ignoring the set he had saved up for, and began speed-walking toward the exit."Jake, wait!" you called, abandoning the box on the floor and jogging after him.You caught up to him just as he pushed through the front door. The bright April sun hit him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, his hands coming up to grip the edges of his headphones so hard his knuckles turned stark white.
"Car," he choked out, his voice thick, rough, and entirely monotone. "Take me to the bubble."
"Okay," you said instantly, unlocking the car with your fob. "We're going. We're going right now."
He practically dove into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut. He didn't put his seatbelt on. He pulled his knees up to his chest, curled into a tight, defensive ball, and pulled his hood over his head and his headphones. He was burying himself alive.
You got in, started the car, and drove.The twenty-minute drive back to his house was the longest of your life. The silence in the car wasn't the comfortable, companionable quiet you were used to. It was a heavy, toxic, suffocating silence. It was the sound of a mind tearing itself apart.You wanted to reach over. You wanted to pull over to the side of the road, wrap your arms around him, and squeeze the pain out of him. But his body language was a massive, neon DO NOT TOUCH sign. He was completely closed off. The static in his head had turned into a roar.
When you pulled into his driveway, you noticed Sarah's car was gone. She was at her yoga class. It was just the two of you.
Jake opened his door before you even put the car in park. He scrambled out, almost tripping over his own feet, and half-ran to the front door. You hurried after him, unlocking it quickly.He didn't take his shoes off. He walked straight down the hallway, into his bedroom, and slammed the door.
You stood in the empty, quiet living room, your heart breaking into a thousand jagged pieces.You gave him ten minutes. You knew he needed time to process the massive spike of negative data. You went to the kitchen, poured a glass of ice water, and tried to steady your own breathing. Your hands were shaking with residual anger at those boys. You wanted to drive back and key their car.
But anger wouldn't help Jake.
After fifteen minutes, you walked down the hall and stood outside his bedroom door. You listened.You didn't hear crying. You heard a rhythmic, dull thump. Thump. Thump.Your stomach dropped.It was a sound you had only heard once, during his worst meltdown months ago. He was hitting his head. Not hard enough to cause a concussion, but hard enough to try and physically jar the overwhelming thoughts out of his brain. It was a frustration stim.
You didn't knock. You opened the door.
The blackout curtains were drawn, plunging the room into darkness. Jake was sitting on the floor in the corner, wedged between his bed frame and the wall. He had his knees pulled up, his arms wrapped tightly around his legs. He was rocking violently forward and backward.
Every time he rocked back, the back of his head hit the drywall. Thump.
"Jake, stop," you said, your voice firm but laced with panic. You crossed the room in three strides.
You dropped to your knees in front of him and slid your hand between the back of his head and the wall. When he rocked back again, his head hit your soft palm instead of the drywall.He gasped, the unexpected texture breaking his rhythm. He opened his eyes, glaring at you through the darkness. His cheeks were wet, but he wasn't sobbing. He was hyperventilating, trapped in a spiral of pure, toxic shame.
"Get out," he rasped, his voice raw.
It was the first time he had ever told you to leave. It felt like a physical blow to the chest, but you held your ground. You kept your hand behind his head.
"I'm not leaving you, Jake."
"Get out!" he yelled, a sudden, desperate burst of volume. He grabbed your wrist, trying to pry your hand away from the wall. His grip was frantic. "You are off the clock! Go away! Go back to your adult life!"
"I don't care about the clock," you said fiercely, refusing to let him push you away. You slid closer, ignoring his attempts to push you back, and grabbed both of his wrists, holding them firmly against his chest. Deep pressure. "Look at me. Look at my face."
"No!" He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head away, trying to hide his face in his knees. "Don't look at me. I am... I am a freak show. I am a man-child."
He was echoing their words. The toxic data had infiltrated his system, overwriting all the confidence you had built together over the last six months.
"They were wrong, Jake," you pleaded, leaning in until your forehead was almost touching his. "They were stupid, miserable bullies who don't know anything about you."
"They were right!" he cried out, a ragged sob finally breaking through his throat. He stopped fighting your grip, his whole body slumping in defeat. "I am twenty-four years old! I wear a superhero shirt! I play with children's toys! I can't even go to a store without my mom or my... my paid caretaker to defend me!"
He pulled his hands out of your grip and buried his face in his palms, weeping openly. The sound of his heartbreak was agonizing.
"I thought I was doing good," he sobbed, his chest heaving. "I thought... I thought I was finding where I fit. But I don't fit anywhere. I am broken. The world looks at me and they see a joke. And you... you just pity me."
"Jake, no," you gasped, the tears finally spilling over your own eyelashes.
"You do," he insisted, his voice muffled by his hands. "You are beautiful. You are smart. You fix leaky pipes and drive cars and yell at scary men. You are a real adult. I am just your charity case. I am a job. You just pretend I am a man so I don't feel bad."
The absolute devastation in his voice, the deep-seated insecurity that had been completely laid bare by three cruel strangers, ripped through you. He didn't just feel humiliated; he felt unlovable. He felt like an imposter in his own life.
You didn't try to reason with him. You couldn't fight this level of emotional static with words alone.You moved. You uncrossed your legs and slid directly into his space. You didn't ask for permission. You wrapped your arms tightly around his trembling shoulders and pulled him forward, practically dragging him out of the corner until his chest hit yours.You wrapped your legs around his hips, trapping him in a tight, full-body embrace. You buried one hand in his dark, fluffy hair, pressing his head firmly against your shoulder, and wrapped your other arm tightly around his back. You applied as much deep pressure as your body could physically muster, crushing the space between you.
He stiffened violently, a gasp tearing from his throat at the sudden, overwhelming input. But he didn't fight it. He never fought your pressure.
"Listen to me," you whispered fiercely into his ear, your voice trembling with unshed tears and absolute conviction. "Listen to my voice. You are going to delete that data right now. Do you hear me?"
He let out a broken, hiccuping sob against your neck, his arms hovering uselessly at his sides.
"You are not a charity case," you continued, holding him tighter. "You have never been just a job to me. Those boys in the store? They are cowards. They tear people down because they have nothing interesting or beautiful inside their own heads. But you? Your brain is a masterpiece, Jake."
He shook his head weakly against your shoulder. "I'm a child."
"You are a man," you stated firmly, pulling back just enough to force him to look at you. You grabbed his face in both of your hands, your thumbs wiping away the hot tears streaming down his cheeks.
His brown eyes were wide, bloodshot, and utterly shattered, staring at you in the dark room. "A real man isn't someone who wears a scratchy suit and drinks at a bar," you told him, staring directly into his eyes, refusing to let him look away. "A real man is someone who is kind. Someone who is honest. A real man notices when I'm sad and gives up his favorite weighted blanket to comfort me. A real man eats a burnt, awful cookie just so I don't feel like a failure. A real man picks resilient yellow weeds for me because he knows I love them."He let out a shaky breath, his chest rising and falling rapidly against yours.
"You are the strongest, bravest, most incredible man I have ever met, Jake Sim," you whispered, your voice cracking. "And I don't pity you. I am in awe of you."
You didn't plan the next part. You didn't calculate the professional boundaries or the risk of sensory overload. You just acted on the overwhelming, desperate need to prove to him that he was loved exactly as he was.You leaned forward and pressed your lips to his.It wasn't a hesitant, chaste peck. It was firm, grounding, and full of every ounce of love and fierce protectiveness you harbored for him. You kept your hands cradling his face, anchoring him to the sensation.For one agonizing second, Jake froze. He went completely rigid beneath you. The new sensory input—the softness of your lips, the heat, the overwhelming intimacy—was massive.
But then, he melted.
A soft, desperate whimper vibrated in his throat. His hands, which had been hovering uselessly, came up and gripped your waist with a frantic strength. He didn't know what he was doing, but his instincts took over. He pressed back into the kiss, his lips moving clumsily but eagerly against yours. He clung to you like you were the only solid thing left in a world that had suddenly turned to quicksand.
You kissed him until the shaking in his body finally, slowly began to subside. You kissed him until the frantic rhythm of his heart slowed to a manageable beat against your chest. When you finally pulled back, you kept your foreheads pressed together, both of you gasping softly for air in the quiet, dark room. Jake's eyes were closed. His eyelashes were wet with tears, but his face had lost that pale, terrified pallor. His hands were gripping your hips so tightly it almost hurt, grounding himself in your physical presence. "Did you mean it?" he whispered, his voice incredibly small, incredibly fragile. "I meant every single word," you promised, stroking your thumbs over his cheekbones. "You are my favorite person in the entire world, Jake. I don't want a 'normal' guy. I want you. With your Spider-Man shirts and your LEGOs and your beautiful, brilliant brain." He opened his eyes. The shattered glass look was gone. The insecurity hadn't vanished completely—it never did, not instantly—but the toxic shame had been washed away by the absolute certainty in your voice and the lingering heat on his lips.
He swallowed hard. "I dropped the Robie House set."
You let out a wet, tearful laugh, pressing a kiss to the tip of his nose. "We can go back tomorrow. Or we can order it online. Whatever you want."
"Online," he decided immediately, his voice gaining a fraction of its usual factual cadence. "The crowd density in that store is heavily polluted with negative variables."
"Online it is." He took a deep breath, processing the massive emotional shift that had just occurred. He loosened his death-grip on your waist, moving his hands up to carefully, hesitantly wrap his arms around your back, returning the full-body hug. He rested his chin on your shoulder, burying his nose in your hair.
"You smell like vanilla and anger," he murmured into your neck.
You laughed again, burying your face in his soft hoodie. "I was very angry. I wanted to hit them."
"I am glad you didn't," he said seriously. "Assault is a felony. That would disrupt our routine."
"You're right. No felonies."
You sat there on the floor for a long time, tangled together in the dark. The sting of the outside world, the cruelty of strangers, was still there, but it was locked outside. Inside this room, inside the circle of your arms, he wasn't a man-child. He wasn't a broken algorithm.
"Y/N?" he whispered after a long silence.
"Yeah, Jakey?"
"When you kissed me... the static stopped completely."
"Yeah?"
"Yes. It was... highly effective. Superior to the noise-canceling headphones."
You smiled against his shoulder, your heart finally settling into a steady, peaceful rhythm. "Well, then I guess I'll just have to keep doing it. For medicinal purposes, of course."
"Agreed," he hummed, the vibration rumbling happily against your chest. "Frequent application is recommended." And as you held him in the dark, feeling the steady beat of his heart against yours, you knew that no matter how loud or cruel the world got, you would always be his quiet place. And he, in all his honest, beautiful complexity, would always be yours.
The aftermath of that afternoon on his bedroom floor shifted the entire axis of your relationship. The kiss had been an impulsive, desperate act of protection on your part, meant to shock him out of a spiral of toxic shame. But for Jake, it had fundamentally rewritten his internal algorithm.
You had become his baseline. In the weeks that followed as April blossomed into a warm, gentle May, Jake became undeniably, profoundly clingy. It wasn't a demanding, suffocating kind of clinginess. It was a quiet, constant gravitational pull. He simply needed to be in your orbit.
Before, he had valued his solitary space. He would spend hours in the living room building LEGOs while you read in the armchair, comfortable but separate. Now, if you sat on the sofa, he sat on the sofa, his hip pressed firmly against yours. If you stood at the kitchen island cutting his grilled cheese or pouring his milk, he would stand right behind you, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his chest.
He initiated touch constantly. It was never light or brushing—he still hated the "spiderweb" feeling of gentle contact. Instead, it was firm and deliberate. He would reach out and wrap his long fingers securely around your wrist while you were talking to Sarah. He would drop his heavy head onto your shoulder while waiting for the microwave to beep. He would randomly press his palm flat against the center of your back as you walked down the hallway.He was seeking deep pressure, but more than that, he was seeking you. You were the variable that made the static stop, and he wanted that quiet safety as much as possible.
You didn't mind it. In fact, your heart swelled every single time he reached for you. You returned his affection in equal measure, leaning into his weight, squeezing his hand back, and resting your cheek against his fluffy, dark hair whenever he ducked his head into your neck.
Nothing was labeled. You hadn't sat down and had a formal discussion about being "boyfriend and girlfriend." You were just existing in this warm, safe bubble of mutual adoration, letting Jake process the new physical and emotional data at his own pace.
Sarah, of course, noticed the shift immediately.
It was impossible to miss. One Tuesday morning, you were standing at the stove, carefully stirring a pot of oatmeal (no lumps, perfectly smooth). Jake had padded into the kitchen wearing his tagless Spider-Man pajama pants and a soft grey t-shirt. Instead of sitting at his usual spot at the round table, he walked straight up behind you. He wrapped his arms around your waist, burying his face in the space between your neck and shoulder, and let out a long, contented sigh that vibrated against your back.You had simply smiled, leaning back against his solid chest, and kept stirring. "Morning, Jakey. Did you sleep well?"
"Eight hours and twelve minutes," he mumbled into your skin, his arms tightening in a firm squeeze. "The humidity dropped. The sheets felt correct."
Sarah had walked in right at that moment, pausing in the doorway. She froze, a mug of coffee half-raised to her lips. She stared at the way her son, who had spent his entire life flinching away from unexpected contact, was willingly, eagerly anchoring himself to another human being.She caught your eye over Jake’s shoulder. You offered her a soft, reassuring smile.Sarah’s eyes immediately filled with tears. She didn't say anything to disrupt his peace; she just pressed her lips together, gave you a shaky, incredibly grateful nod, and quietly backed out of the kitchen to give you both privacy.Later that afternoon, while Jake was in the backyard inspecting the growth of his beloved dandelions, Sarah sat next to you on the porch."I have never seen him like this," she whispered, watching him carefully step over a line of worker ants on the patio. "He’s always been so guarded. Even with me, sometimes. His sensory threshold is just so delicate. But with you... it’s like he doesn't have a threshold at all. You’re just part of him.""He makes it easy, Sarah," you said honestly, pulling your cardigan tighter against the spring breeze. "He’s so honest. There’s no guessing games with him. I know exactly where I stand."
"You know he likes you, right?" she asked gently, turning to look at you. "More than just as a support worker. I know the agency has rules, but Y/N... I am his mother. And I have never, ever seen him look at someone the way he looks at you."
"I like him too," you admitted, the truth feeling warm and bright in the cool air. "I really, really do. We’re just... taking it slow. I want him to figure out the feelings on his own timetable."
"Take all the time you need," Sarah smiled, her shoulders dropping in profound relief. "Just... thank you. For seeing him. For really seeing him."
The culmination of all those quiet, clingy weeks happened on a rainy Friday evening.
It was Movie Night. The blackout curtains were drawn, creating a cozy, insulated cave in the living room. The TV was glowing brightly with the saturated colors of Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Jake was sitting on the sofa. You were tucked seamlessly into his side. His arm was wrapped heavy and secure around your shoulders, and your legs were tangled together beneath his favorite fifteen-pound grey weighted blanket. The pressure of the blanket combined with the solid weight of his body pressing against yours was incredibly grounding.
On the screen, Peter Parker was awkwardly fumbling through a conversation with MJ in Venice, clearly overwhelmed by his circumstances and his desperate, clumsy desire to just tell her how he felt.
Jake was usually hyper-focused during Marvel movies, cataloging the physics of the web-shooters or the structural damage to the buildings. But tonight, he was distracted.
His fingers were tracing a repetitive, rhythmic circle on your upper arm. One, two, three. One, two, three. It was a self-soothing stim. He had been doing it for twenty minutes."Is the volume okay?" you whispered, tilting your head up to look at his profile. The blue and red light from the television painted sharp angles across his jawline."The volume is at level 14. It is optimal," he replied softly.
He didn't look down at you. He kept his eyes fixed on the screen, but his brow was furrowed in deep concentration. He stopped tracing circles on your arm.
"Y/N?" he murmured, his voice rumbling in his chest against your side.
"Yeah, Jake?"
"Peter's heart rate is elevated," he observed, watching the animated panic on Tom Holland's face. "He is experiencing a stress response. But there is no immediate physical threat. The elemental monsters are not present in this scene."
"No," you agreed softly. "There are no monsters. He's just stressed because he's trying to talk to MJ."
"Because he wants to give her the black dahlia necklace," Jake stated factually. "Because he likes her."
"Exactly. He likes her, and he's terrified of messing it up. Feelings can cause a stress response too, Jake. Adrenaline. Sweaty palms. A fast heart rate."
Jake went completely still. The slight, rhythmic bouncing of his foot beneath the weighted blanket stopped. He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"I have been experiencing a stress response," he said. The admission was quiet, almost a whisper, as if he were confessing a systemic error.
Your heart did a tiny, nervous flip. You shifted slightly under the heavy blanket, turning your body more toward him. "Are you experiencing one right now? Is the environment too loud?"
"No," he said quickly, his grip on your shoulder tightening in a firm, reassuring squeeze. "The environment is safe. The blackout curtains are closed. The blanket is heavy. You are here. The variables are all controlled."
"Then what's causing the stress response, Jakey?"
He finally pulled his eyes away from the television screen. He looked down at you. His dark brown eyes were wide, intensely focused, and swimming with an emotion so raw and heavy it practically took your breath away.
"You," he said simply.
You froze. "Me?"
"Yes," he nodded, his expression deadpan but his eyes betraying a frantic, searching vulnerability. "I have been analyzing the data for weeks. Ever since... ever since the incident at the hobby store. When you kissed me. My baseline changed."
He pulled his hand away from your shoulder, bringing it up to rest flat against the center of his own chest, right over his heart.
"It feels heavy in here," he explained, his voice trembling slightly as he tried to articulate the abstract chaos inside his mind. "But it's not the bad heavy. It’s not a meltdown. It’s like... like when I put the weighted blanket on, but it’s on the inside of my ribs."He reached out and carefully took your hand, lacing his long, elegant fingers through yours. He squeezed firmly.
"When you are not here, the static comes back. When you leave to go to your apartment, I count the hours until 8:50 AM when your car pulls into the driveway. I check the window. And when I see you wearing your quiet white shoes... my heart beats very fast. Like Peter Parker." Tears immediately pricked the back of your eyes. The absolute, unvarnished honesty of his words was staggering. There were no games. There was no posturing. He was laying his entire internal processor bare for you to see. "Jake," you breathed, your voice thick.
"I didn't know how to categorize the data," he continued, his thumb rubbing firmly over your knuckles. "I read the diagnostic criteria for anxiety, but the symptoms didn't match perfectly. Because anxiety makes me want to hide. This feeling... makes me want to be exactly where I am. Sitting right next to you. With no gap between the cushions."
He looked back at the TV for a split second, pointing at Peter and MJ, who were now sharing a quiet, charged moment on the screen.
"Peter feels it," Jake said, looking back down at you. "He feels the heavy, fast thing in his chest. And he calls it love." A single tear spilled over your eyelashes, tracking hotly down your cheek. Jake saw it. He immediately let go of your hand, his face falling into a mask of panic. "You are leaking. I said the wrong thing. I processed the variable incorrectly—"
"No, no, Jake, look at me," you interrupted quickly, reaching up with both hands to cup his face. You held his cheeks firmly, applying the deep pressure he needed to stay grounded in the moment. "I'm not crying because I'm sad. I'm crying because I'm happy. Because it's a good heavy feeling."
He stopped pulling away. He leaned into your palms, his wide eyes searching yours for confirmation. "It is a good variable?"
"It’s the best variable," you sobbed out a watery laugh, swiping your thumbs under his eyes. "You're saying you love me, Jake?"
"Yes," he said. He didn't hesitate. He didn't stutter. He looked at you with an innocence and a certainty that shattered every doubt you had ever harbored. "I love you. I love your quiet shoes. I love that you know I need the cheese cut into squares. I love that you fought those loud men for me. You are my safe place, Y/N. I love you."
Your heart took a massive, soaring leap against your ribs. You pulled his face down and pressed your lips firmly against his.
It was better than the first kiss. The first kiss had been born of panic and desperation. This kiss was born of absolute, undeniable clarity. Jake responded instantly, his hands coming down to grip your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. He kissed you with that same meticulous, focused attention he applied to everything he cared about, learning the exact pressure and rhythm that made you sigh into his mouth.
When you finally pulled back, you were both breathless. Jake’s glasses were slightly askew, and his cheeks were flushed a beautiful, vibrant pink.
"I love you too, Jake," you whispered, resting your forehead against his. "So much. My chest gets heavy when I look at you, too."
He let out a long, shuddering exhale, a massive weight lifting off his broad shoulders. He bumped his nose affectionately against yours. "Optimal," he whispered, a huge, gummy smile breaking across his face. You laughed, tangling your fingers in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "Since we both have the same data... does this mean you want to be my boyfriend?"
Jake paused. He blinked, processing the terminology. He tilted his head slightly.
"Boyfriend," he repeated slowly. "And you would be my girlfriend."
"If you want to be."
He thought about it. "Labels are useful. They categorize relationships so the boundaries are clear. A girlfriend is a primary, permanent variable."
"I would very much like to be a permanent variable, Jake."
His smile widened, crinkling the corners of his dark eyes. "Yes. I will be your boyfriend. That is... a very pleasing symmetry."
"It's perfect symmetry." He pulled you back against his side, wrapping his arm securely around your shoulders, tighter than before. He dragged the weighted blanket higher up over your chests, cocooning the two of you in the dim, flashing light of the television.
"Y/N?" he asked softly, resting his cheek on the top of your head.
"Yeah, boyfriend?" you teased gently. He hummed, a deep, happy vibration that rattled pleasantly against your ribs. "I do not need to buy you a black dahlia necklace like Peter Parker, do I? Because you do not like jewelry that clicks against the table. And glass is fragile."
You couldn't help the joyous laugh that bubbled out of you. "No, Jake. No glass necklaces required."
"Good," he said practically. "I will buy you more smooth salsa instead. It is a superior investment."
"I'd love nothing more." As Spider-Man swung across the screen, saving the city from chaos, you sat safely in the dark, anchored by the weight of the blanket and the boy who held you. There was no more static. There was no more confusion about where you fit into his life. You were dating Jake Sim, and as he pressed a firm, deliberate kiss to your hairline, you knew absolutely that you had found exactly where you belonged.
The transition from support worker to girlfriend wasn't just an emotional shift; it required a logistical one, too.
Two days after that rainy movie night on the couch, you walked into the drab, fluorescent-lit office of New Horizons Support Services and placed your ID badge on your supervisor's desk. You explained that you could no longer remain objective. You didn't give them the deeply personal details, but you told them enough: the professional boundary had dissolved, and it was no longer ethical for you to clock in and bill the state for the time you spent at the Sim household.
Your supervisor had sighed, citing "high turnover" again, but you didn't care. You walked out of that office feeling lighter than air.
You drove straight to Jake’s house. When you walked through the front door, you weren't wearing your agency polo. You were just wearing a comfortable sweater and your quiet white Converse. Jake was sitting at the kitchen island, meticulously peeling an apple in one continuous ribbon. Sarah was at the stove, boiling water for pasta. "I quit my job today," you announced softly, standing in the archway.
Sarah froze, the wooden spoon pausing in the pot. She turned to look at you, panic momentarily flashing in her dark eyes. "You... you quit? Y/N, what happened? Did the agency—"
"No, Mom," Jake interrupted. He didn't look up from his apple, but his voice was remarkably steady, imbued with a quiet, undeniable pride. The apple peel fell to the cutting board in a perfect spiral. "She did not quit me. She quit the agency. It is a conflict of interest for her to be on the payroll." Sarah blinked, looking back and forth between the two of you. "Conflict of interest?"
Jake finally looked up. He set the paring knife down carefully. He walked over to where you were standing in the archway. He didn't hesitate, didn't check the room for variables. He simply reached out, took your hand in his, and intertwined his long fingers with yours. He gave your hand a firm, grounding squeeze.
"Y/N is my girlfriend now," Jake stated, looking at his mother with absolute clarity. "She is my permanent variable. We are dating."
For a full ten seconds, the kitchen was dead silent. The only sound was the rolling boil of the pasta water.
Then, Sarah dropped the wooden spoon. It clattered against the stove. She covered her mouth with both hands, a loud, wet sob escaping her throat.
"Oh, my God," she wept, the tears spilling over her cheeks in a flood of sheer, unadulterated joy. "Oh, Jakey." She crossed the kitchen in three quick strides and wrapped her arms around both of you, pulling you into a crushing, messy hug. Jake stiffened slightly at the suddenness of the contact, but he didn't pull away. He just patted his mother’s back awkwardly with his free hand, while keeping his other hand locked tightly in yours.
"I am so happy," Sarah cried into your shoulder, squeezing you tight. "I am so, so happy for both of you. Y/N, you... you are family. You were already family, but this... thank you. Thank you for loving him."
"I couldn't stop if I tried, Sarah," you whispered, wiping your own eyes.
From that day on, it wasn't a job anymore. You were just taking care of your love, and he, in his own brilliant, meticulous way, was taking care of you.
As the damp chill of spring gave way to the heavy, golden warmth of summer, Jake bloomed.The boy who used to flinch away from unexpected contact became entirely, wonderfully unabashed about seeking it from you. He didn't care who was watching. If he needed grounding, he took it.
You started going to the local metro parks together. It was a massive sensory step for him—parks were unpredictable. There were off-leash dogs, shouting children, and the sudden, sharp crack of baseball bats from the nearby diamonds. But he wanted to go, because he knew you liked the walking trails.
To manage the input, he wore his noise-canceling headphones, a pair of dark polarized sunglasses to cut the glare of the sun, and, most importantly, he held your hand.
Jake’s hand-holding wasn't a casual, loose grip. It was a firm, deliberate anchor. He would press the palm of his hand flush against yours, locking your fingers together so tightly you could feel his pulse beating against your skin.
"Deep pressure," he would murmur, adjusting his grip as you walked down the shaded, tree-lined paths. "It keeps the static away. You are my tether."
"I've got you, Spidey," you would smile, swinging your joined arms gently.
One particularly warm afternoon in late June, a golden retriever slipped its leash and came bounding toward you on the trail, barking excitedly. Before you could even react, Jake stepped directly in front of you, placing his body between you and the dog. He was terrified of loud, unpredictable animals, his shoulders hitching up to his ears, but his first instinct was to shield you.
When the owner ran up apologizing and leashed the dog, Jake let out a long, shaky breath."You stepped in front of me," you said softly, rubbing his tense back as he watched the dog walk away.
"I am the boyfriend," he stated, his voice trembling slightly from the adrenaline, but laced with a fierce, protective logic. "The boyfriend protects the girlfriend from biological anomalies. It is in the protocol."
You had pulled him down by the strings of his hoodie and kissed him right there on the trail, surrounded by the buzzing cicadas and the summer heat. He had melted into the kiss instantly, his hands finding your waist, the fear of the dog entirely overridden by the overwhelming, consuming input of your lips against his.
Summer evenings in Jake's backyard became your sanctuary.
When the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in bruises of purple, pink, and deep, saturated orange, the temperature would drop to a comfortable coolness. The neighborhood would quiet down, and the sensory input of the world would finally dial back to a manageable hum.
One evening in July, you had brought a cheap, plastic bottle of bubbles from the grocery store.Jake had been sitting on the patio chair, watching the fireflies begin to blink in the grass. You sat on the grass in front of him, unscrewed the cap, and blew a stream of bubbles into the warm evening air.Jake’s eyes went wide. He watched the translucent spheres float upward, catching the dying light of the sunset.
"They are perfectly spherical," he breathed, leaning forward, utterly captivated. "Surface tension forces the liquid into the shape with the least surface area. It is... mathematically flawless."
"They're pretty, aren't they?" you smiled, blowing another stream toward him.
He reached out and caught one on the tip of his finger. It didn't pop immediately. He brought it closer to his face, his dark eyes reflecting the shimmering, rainbow-colored surface of the soap film."Thin-film interference," he whispered, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "The light waves are bouncing off the inner and outer boundaries of the soap film. They are interfering with each other to create the colors. Magenta. Cyan. Yellow. It is chemistry and physics working together."
Pop. The bubble vanished, leaving a tiny drop of soapy water on his skin. He laughed. It was a rare, full-bellied sound that bubbled up from his chest, pure and bright.
"Do it again," he requested, his eyes shining.
You spent an hour blowing bubbles for him. He didn't just watch them; he analyzed them. He tried to catch them without popping them. He tracked their flight paths, calculating the wind currents. And every time he laughed, your heart swelled until you thought it might burst.He looked so beautiful in the fading light. He was stripped of all his anxieties, all his fears about fitting into the "normal" world. He was just a brilliant, joyful man marveling at the physics of a soap bubble.
When the bottle was empty, he slid off the patio chair and sat on the grass beside you. He pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his head on your shoulder.
"That was a superior activity," he murmured, his breath warm against your neck. "The visual input was highly stimulating, but not overwhelming. It was... soft."
"We can get more tomorrow," you promised, resting your cheek against the top of his fluffy hair.
"Yes. But only the brand with the pink wand. The fluid viscosity was excellent."
You laughed, wrapping your arms around his chest and pulling him backward until you were both lying flat on the cool grass, looking up at the first stars pricking through the twilight. He rolled onto his side, throwing a heavy leg over yours and burying his face in your chest.
"I love you, Y/N," he whispered into the fabric of your shirt, his voice drowsy and content.
"I love you too, Jakey."
As the summer wore on, your integration into his daily life became seamless. You didn't just watch him build LEGOs anymore; you built them with him.
It was a profound level of trust. Jake was highly territorial over his LEGO sets. They were his system of order in a chaotic world. But one rainy August afternoon, he pushed the massive instruction booklet for the LEGO Rivendell set toward the middle of the coffee table.
"You may assemble the roof tiles," he announced, handing you a plastic sorting tray filled with hundreds of tiny, earth-toned pieces.
You took the tray, deeply honored. "Are you sure? I don't want to mess up the symmetry."
"I have observed your fine motor skills," he stated pragmatically, clicking a wall piece into place. "You are careful. You do not force the bricks if they resist. And... I like seeing your hands next to mine."
You spent four hours sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor. You learned the specific, satisfying snap of a perfectly placed tile. You learned not to talk when he was counting studs. It was an intimate, quiet language you developed together.
When you finished the Elven council ring, Jake stopped. He looked at the structure, then looked at you."We built this," he said, the realization settling heavily on him. "Together as a unit."
"We make a good team."He reached out and traced the edge of the plastic roof you had assembled. "My life used to be a solo build. I did not want anyone to touch my pieces because they always knocked them over. But you... you reinforce the structure. You make the build stronger."By the time the leaves began to turn the vibrant reds and oranges of October, months had passed since the kiss.And with the passage of time came the deepest intimacy of all: spending the night.
The first time it happened, it hadn't been planned. You had been watching a marathon of animated movies, and the heavy rain outside had lulled you to sleep on the sofa, your head pillowed on his chest.
When you woke up, it was 2:00 AM. Jake was still awake. He was sitting perfectly still, not moving a muscle, his arm wrapped tightly around you.
"Jake?" you mumbled, rubbing your eyes. "Why didn't you wake me up? Your arm has to be numb."
"My arm is numb," he confirmed softly. "But you were in the REM cycle of sleep. Your breathing was deep. Interrupting the REM cycle causes cognitive fatigue. And... I liked the weight of you. It is better than the blanket."
You had smiled sleepily, stretching your stiff back. "I should probably drive home."
Jake’s grip on your waist tightened instantly. His heart rate spiked against your cheek.
"The roads are slick," he said, his voice rising in that familiar, anxious pitch. "The visibility is reduced by 60%. The statistical probability of an accident is elevated."
He looked down at you, his brown eyes wide and pleading in the dim light of the living room. "Please do not drive. The variables are unsafe. My bed is... it is a king size. There is room. You can sleep there."
You hadn't hesitated. "Okay. I'll stay."
Sleeping in Jake’s bed was a sensory experience in itself. His mattress was firm. His sheets were 100% Egyptian cotton, washed in unscented detergent because artificial lavender made his nose itch.
When you climbed into the bed, wearing a spare oversized Spider-Man t-shirt he had given you, he immediately pulled his heavy, fifteen-pound grey weighted blanket over both of you."Is the weight acceptable?" he asked anxiously, hovering over you. "It can be crushing to neurotypical nervous systems."
"It feels like a hug," you assured him, settling into the pillows.
Jake climbed in beside you. He didn't leave a gap. He closed the distance immediately, turning on his side and wrapping himself around you like an octopus. He pulled your back flush against his chest, throwing his heavy arm over your waist and tangling his long legs entirely with yours.
He buried his face in the back of your neck. He took a deep, shuddering breath, inhaling the scent of your shampoo.
"Optimal," he whispered into your skin.
You reached down and laced your fingers through his where they rested on your stomach. "Goodnight, Jake."
"Goodnight, Y/N."
You learned that Jake didn't move in his sleep. Once he found his anchoring position against you, he was dead weight. He slept deeply and heavily, his breathing a steady, soothing rhythm against your spine.
Waking up to him was even better.The first time you opened your eyes in his bed, the morning sun was filtering through the edges of the blackout curtains. Jake was already awake.He was propped up on one elbow, his chin resting on his hand, just staring at you. His hair was an absolute bird's nest of fluffy, chaotic curls sticking up in every direction. His face was soft, relaxed, completely devoid of the tension he carried during the day.
"You have a freckle on your left eyelid," he whispered, his voice deep and raspy from sleep. "I never noticed it before. It is very small. Exactly 1.5 millimeters."
You smiled lazily, reaching up to push a stray curl out of his eyes. "Good morning to you too, Spidey."
"You look different when you sleep," he observed, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to the corner of your mouth. "Your facial muscles lose their tension. You look very peaceful. It made my chest feel heavy again. The good heavy."
"I was peaceful because I was sleeping next to you," you murmured, pulling him down by the collar of his shirt until his chest rested against yours.
He hummed happily, nuzzling his nose against your jaw. Waking up together became a staple of your weekends. You learned that he needed exactly ten minutes of quiet transition time before speaking about complex topics. You learned that he liked it when you traced light patterns on his bare back to help him wake up his sensory receptors.You learned that you had never, ever felt a love like this before.
It was a love completely stripped of games, manipulation, and societal expectations. It was a love built on raw honesty, calculated variables, and an intense, unwavering loyalty.
Now, exactly six months since that rainy New Year's Eve, you were sitting in the living room on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
The Thanksgiving break was approaching, and the air outside was biting and crisp. Inside, the fireplace was crackling.
Jake was sitting on the floor, leaning back between your legs as you sat on the couch. This was his favorite position. He called it "the grounding chair." You were running your fingers slowly and rhythmically through his dark hair, scratching gently at his scalp.He had his eyes closed, practically purring.
"The tactile input is superior," he murmured, his head tilting back against your knee to give you better access. You smiled, looking down at him. He was beautiful. He was so incredibly bright. You thought about the file you had read a year ago. Difficulty establishing rapport. Rigid. High support needs. They had missed everything that mattered. They missed the way his mind was a kaleidoscope of logic and empathy. They missed the way he noticed the iridescent colors in a soap bubble. They missed the fierce, protective way he would step in front of a strange dog for the person he loved.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked, opening his eyes and looking up at you upside down."I'm thinking about you," you said softly, cupping his face in your hands.
"Is the data positive?" he asked, a small, teasing lilt in his voice. He was learning how to joke with you, understanding the cadence of playful banter.
"The data is overwhelmingly positive," you assured him, leaning down to kiss him upside down, like Spider-Man.
He smiled against your lips. He reached up, his long fingers wrapping gently around your wrists."I am operating at 100% battery," Jake whispered, looking at you with those deep, liquid brown eyes that held his entire, beautiful soul. "And you are the power source. I love you, Y/N."
"I love you too, Jake. Forever."
"Forever is a mathematical concept denoting infinite time," he stated, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "I accept those parameters."
He closed his eyes and leaned back against you, completely at peace, and you knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that your parameters were perfectly, infinitely aligned.
The seven-month mark of your relationship with Jake, the world outside the house had grown cold, brittle, and gray. But inside the house, the atmosphere was a saturated, brilliant gold.
You knew the exact rhythm of his breathing when he was relaxed; you knew the precise weight of the fifteen-pound blanket; you knew that when the world got too loud, you were the quiet room he retreated into.
It was a Friday night. The wind was howling outside, rattling the windowpanes with a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm that would have usually sent Jake into a spiral of sensory defense. But tonight, the blackout curtains were drawn tight, sealing the unpredictable elements away. The living room was bathed in the warm, colorful glow of the television screen.
You were having a movie night. It was a comedic, wildly colorful animation film about a chaotic family trying to save the world from a robot apocalypse. Jake had initially been skeptical of the plot's disregard for basic physics, but he had quickly become captivated by the vibrant, symmetrical animation style and the logical, deadpan humor of the family’s pug.For the last hour, you had been spooning on the sofa.
It was a position that had required careful calibration over the last few months. Jake’s sensory processing meant that light, feathery touches felt like crawling insects on his skin. But deep, firm pressure was his anchor. So, he lay behind you, his broad chest pressed flush and firm against your back. His heavy arm was wrapped securely around your waist, his hand splayed flat against your stomach, grounding you both. His long legs were tangled with yours beneath the plush velvet blanket.
He was incredibly warm, a human furnace radiating a steady, comforting heat through his vintage, tagless t-shirt.On the screen, the animated pug did something ridiculous, and a bright, bubbly laugh escaped your lips. Behind you, Jake laughed —a bright, resonant vibration in his chest that you could feel all the way down your spine. It was his version of a laugh, a happy, contented sound that meant his battery was operating at optimal capacity."The canine’s center of gravity is entirely disproportionate to its mass," Jake murmured into the shell of your ear, his breath sending a pleasant shiver down your neck. "It is impossible for it to run that fast."
"It's a cartoon, Jakey," you smiled, tilting your head back slightly to rest against his shoulder. "Physics take a holiday in cartoons."
"Physics never take a holiday," he corrected softly, his nose brushing against your hair. "But I will suspend my disbelief because the color palette is soothing."
You relaxed further into his hold, feeling utterly, completely safe. But after another ten minutes of lying in the exact same position, biology demanded a shift. Your left arm, which was tucked beneath your body and wedged against the cushions, was beginning to tingle uncomfortably.
"Jake," you whispered, squirming just a fraction. "My arm is falling asleep. The nerve is pinched."
"Paresthesia," he noted immediately, his grip on your waist loosening just enough to allow you to move. "You need to restore the blood flow."
"Yeah. Just give me a second."
You pushed backward against him to free your trapped arm, using your hips to gain leverage against the cushions. You shifted your weight, pressing your backside firmly against his lap to brace yourself as you pulled your arm free and rolled your shoulders. As you pushed your hips back into him, Jake made a sound you had never heard before. It wasn't his happy, vibrating hum. It wasn't the sharp, panicked gasp of a sensory overload. It was a low, breathy whimper that hitched in the back of his throat—a sound that was raw, involuntary, and entirely instinctual.
You froze. Before you could ask if you had accidentally hurt him, you felt it. Pressed flush against the soft curve of your backside, right through the fabric of your sweatpants and his soft flannel pajamas, was a distinct, solid ridge of heat.
He was hard.For a microsecond, the living room was dead silent, save for the cartoon explosions on the TV screen. You stopped breathing, your mind racing to process the new variable. Jake’s body, however, didn't wait for his logical brain to catch up.
Driven by a sudden, overwhelming biological imperative, Jake’s hips twitched. He pushed forward, pressing that hard, aching heat deliberately into your backside, seeking the friction.Another soft, ragged moan escaped his parted lips, hot against your neck. His heavy arm, which was still wrapped around your waist, suddenly tightened, his large hand gripping your hip with a frantic, desperate pressure.
"Jake?" you breathed, your heart doing a wild, erratic flutter against your ribs.
He jerked slightly, as if your voice had snapped him out of a trance. The physical pressure against your back remained, but his breathing had turned shallow and erratic.
"I... I apologize," he stammered, his voice thick and wavering. He tried to pull his hips back, a sudden wave of panic radiating from his tense muscles. "I did not calculate that reaction. The friction... when you moved... the sensory input was massive. It bypassed my primary processor." You didn't let him pull away. You reached down and placed your hand firmly over his where it gripped your hip, anchoring him to you.
"Jake, it's okay," you said softly, keeping your voice low and steady. "You don't have to apologize. It's just biology. It's a natural variable."
"My heart rate is elevated to 110 beats per minute," he whispered, his chest heaving against your back. "The blood flow has heavily redirected. The physical sensation is... it is loud, Y/N. It is very loud."
"Is it a bad loud?" you asked carefully. "Is it overwhelming like a meltdown, or... is it something else?" He went still, analyzing the internal data. He pressed his forehead against the back of your shoulder, taking a shaky breath.
"It is not a meltdown," he confessed, his voice dropping to a gravelly, intimate register. "It does not feel like the static. It feels like... gravity. Like I am being pulled toward the center of the earth. It is a very heavy, concentrated need. I want..." He swallowed hard. "I want to press against you again. The pressure felt... optimal."
Your pulse skyrocketed. You had navigated countless sensory challenges together, but this was uncharted territory. Over the last seven months, your physical intimacy had been limited to deep kisses, fierce hugs, and the quiet comfort of sleeping tangled together. You had let him set the pace, knowing that the intense vulnerability of sex could easily turn into a sensory nightmare if not handled with absolute care and trust.
But right now, his body was telling him what he needed, and he was trusting you enough to vocalize it.
You slowly turned over in his arms, shifting until you were facing him on the sofa.
His dark eyes were wide, blown out, and swimming with a chaotic mix of desire, confusion, and vulnerable trust. His chest was rising and falling rapidly under his t-shirt. His hair was messy, falling into his eyes, making him look devastatingly beautiful in the flickering light of the television.
"You can press against me, Jake," you whispered, reaching up to cup his face in both hands, applying the firm, grounding pressure he loved. "If you want to. We can explore this data together. But only if you feel safe."
He leaned into your palms, his eyes fluttering shut for a second. "I always feel safe with you. You are my permanent variable."
"Do you want to turn the TV off?" you asked. "To reduce the audio-visual input?"
He opened his eyes and nodded once, a jerky, decisive motion. "Yes. The flashing lights are distracting. I only want to focus on one input. I want to focus on you."
You reached for the remote on the coffee table and clicked the power button. The room was instantly plunged into a soft, velvety darkness, illuminated only by the faint amber glow of the streetlamp filtering through the edges of the blackout curtains. The silence in the room was profound, amplifying the sound of your mingled breathing.
"Is the dark okay?" you murmured, your thumbs stroking his cheekbones.
"The dark is good," he rasped, his hands sliding from your waist to grip your thighs. "It limits the variables. I can only feel."
"Okay," you breathed. "We're going to go very slow, Jake. If anything feels like too much—if the texture is wrong, or the pressure changes, or the static gets too loud—you just squeeze my hand three times. The emergency exit. And we stop immediately. Deal?"
"Deal," he agreed, his voice trembling slightly with anticipation. "Three squeezes."
You moved closer, swinging one leg over his hips so you were straddling him on the wide cushions of the sofa. You settled your weight down carefully.
The moment your center pressed directly against the hard ridge behind the zipper of his flannel pants, Jake let out a sharp, fractured gasp. His head fell back against the armrest, his eyes squeezing shut as his hands clamped down hard on your hips.
"Deep pressure," he groaned, his hips bucking upward instinctively to meet your weight. "Y/N... the pressure is... oh."
"I know, baby," you whispered, leaning down to press your lips to the erratic pulse beating wildly at the base of his throat. "I'm right here. Just feel it."
You began to move, establishing a slow, rhythmic rock against him. You knew better than to be unpredictable. He needed a pattern. Forward, back. Press, release. You created a physical metronome with your body, allowing his sensory processor to latch onto the predictability of the friction. Jake’s response was breathtaking. Stripped of his anxieties and grounded by the heavy weight of your body, he surrendered completely to the sensation. His hands roamed over your back, mapping the curve of your spine with firm, deliberate strokes. He was learning the topography of your body in a whole new way. "I need..." he panted, opening his eyes to look up at you. "The barrier. The fabric is creating a secondary friction that is confusing my receptors. I want... skin."
"Okay," you said, your own voice thick with desire. "Let's remove the barriers."
You sat up, reaching for the hem of your sweater. You pulled it over your head and tossed it onto the floor, leaving you in just your bra. Jake’s dark eyes widened, tracing the exposed skin of your chest and stomach. He didn't reach out with a light, tentative touch; he placed his large, warm palms flat against your ribcage, anchoring himself to your warmth.
"Symmetrical," he whispered, a breathless awe in his voice. "You are structurally perfect."
You smiled, a rush of pure affection warming your blood. You reached down and grabbed the hem of his vintage t-shirt, pulling it up and over his fluffy hair. His chest was broad and pale, his muscles tense and defined under the amber light.
You leaned down, pressing your bare chest flush against his.
The skin-to-skin contact was electric. Jake let out a long, shuddering sigh, wrapping his arms around you in a crushing, desperate hug.
"The thermal transfer is optimal," he murmured into your hair, his heart hammering against your breasts. "You feel like... you feel like the sun, Y/N."
"You feel amazing, Jake."
You reached down, your fingers fumbling with the waistband of your sweatpants. You shimmied them down your legs, kicking them off the edge of the sofa. Jake followed suit, his hands shaking slightly as he shoved his flannel pajama pants and boxers down, kicking them away with a clumsy urgency.
When you settled back over him, entirely bare against him, the reality of the moment hit him. It was his first time. Twenty-four years of guarding his body against a world that was too loud, too bright, and too sharp, and he was opening all the doors for you.
"Y/N," he whispered, his hands gripping your waist tightly. Panic flickered in the depths of his brown eyes, a sudden spike in his data processing. "I do not have the manual for this. I have read the biological mechanics online, but... the practical application... what if I malfunction? What if my rhythm is inefficient?"
You stopped moving. You cupped his face again, bringing your forehead down to rest against his."There is no manual, Jake," you promised him, repeating the words you had told him months ago when he felt broken. "There is no malfunction. This isn't a test with a pass or fail grade. This is just you and me, talking to each other in a different way. You just have to tell me what feels good, and I’ll tell you what feels good. We write our own code."
He blinked, processing the logic. "We write our own code," he echoed.
"Exactly. And I promise you, everything you do is perfect to me."
He let out a shaky breath, the panic subsiding. "Okay. Initiate the sequence."
You reached down, guiding his thick, incredibly hot length to your entrance. He was trembling beneath you, a fine, high-frequency vibration of pure anticipation.
"I'm going to go very slow," you whispered, locking your eyes with his. "Deep pressure. Ready?"
"Ready."
You sank down.The entry was a slow, deliberate stretch. You took him inch by inch, allowing his body to process the immense, overwhelming sensation of being enveloped.When you were seated fully at the base, you stopped.
Jake’s reaction was instantaneous and profound. His eyes rolled back slightly, his jaw dropping open in a silent shout. His hands flew up, not to your hips, but to your back, pulling you down into a crushing, desperate embrace. He buried his face in the crook of your neck, his entire body going rigid as he absorbed the data.
"Jake?" you whispered, your hands stroking his hair. "Are you okay? Is it too much?"
He shook his head frantically against your collarbone.
"No," he gasped, a wet, fractured sound tearing from his throat. "It is not too much. It is... everything. It is all the data in the universe at once, but it is organized. It is quiet. Y/N, you are so quiet."
He meant it as the highest compliment his brain could formulate. You were the only thing in his life that silenced the chaotic noise of the world.
He didn't wait for you to establish the rhythm. His instincts, buried under layers of logic and sensory defense, roared to life. He surged upward, his hips snapping off the cushions, driving himself deep inside you. You cried out, a loud, breathless sound of pleasure that echoed in the dark room. The sound was a positive variable for him. It fueled him.He began to thrust. It wasn't clumsy, and it wasn't hesitant. It was a firm, relentless, driving rhythm. He found the mathematical perfection of the friction and locked onto it. Up, down. Press, release. He held your hips in a vice grip, ensuring the angle never deviated, maximizing the sensory input for both of you.
"Jake... oh my god, Jake," you moaned, your hands bracing on his broad shoulders as you rode the incredible wave of his momentum.
"Is the depth acceptable?" he panted, his brow furrowed in intense concentration, sweat glistening on his forehead. "Is the velocity optimal?"
"It's perfect," you gasped, leaning down to capture his lips in a fierce, messy kiss. "Don't stop. You feel so good."
He growled into your mouth—a primal, masculine sound that sent a jolt of pure electricity straight to your core. The logical, quiet young man who meticulously sorted LEGO bricks was completely subsumed by the overwhelming, consuming fire of his love for you. The pleasure began to build, a tightening coil of heat that radiated outward. The sensory input in the room narrowed down to just him—the smell of his clean sweat, the sound of his ragged breathing, the solid, heavy impact of his hips against yours. "I'm going to fall," he whimpered suddenly, breaking the kiss. His rhythm became erratic, frantic. His eyes squeezed shut, his head tossing back against the armrest. "Y/N, my system is overloading. The pressure is too high. It's too high!" He wasn't panicking; he was climaxing.
"Let it overload, Jakey," you cried out, feeling your own climax rushing forward to meet his. "I've got you! Just let go!"
With a final, desperate, upward surge, Jake broke.
A high, fractured whimper tore from his throat—a sound of absolute, overwhelming release. He froze, his body bowing upward off the couch, every muscle pulled taut as a bowstring. He buried himself as deeply inside you as physically possible, his hands digging into your lower back to anchor you to him as he flooded you with his warmth.
The intensity of his release pushed you right over the edge. You shattered around him, your internal muscles spasming and milking him dry, crying out his name into the quiet, dark room.For a long, endless minute, neither of you moved. You lay collapsed against his chest, your breathing ragged and out of sync.
Slowly, the tension drained out of Jake's body. He slumped back against the cushions, his arms wrapping limply but securely around your waist.
You lifted your head, your hair falling in a messy curtain around your face, and looked down at him.His eyes were closed. His chest was heaving. And tracing down the sides of his flushed, sweat-dampened cheeks were two steady streams of tears.
Your heart constricted in a sudden panic. You reached down, wiping your thumb across his cheek. "Jake? Baby, what's wrong? Why are you crying? Did it hurt? Was the static too loud?"He opened his eyes. They were bloodshot, wet, and incredibly bright.He looked up at you, reaching a trembling hand up to cover yours where it rested on his cheek. He turned his face into your palm, pressing a kiss to your skin.
"It didn't hurt," he whispered, a watery, brilliant smile breaking across his face. "The static is completely gone. There is no noise left in my head at all."
"Then why are you leaking?" you asked softly, using his terminology.
"Because my capacity is full," he explained, his voice thick with a profound, overwhelming happiness. "I processed the data of the physical connection, and I combined it with the data of my emotional attachment to you. The resulting sum was larger than my internal storage. It had to spill over."
He let out a shaky, joyful laugh, pulling you back down until your ear was resting right over his racing heart."I am crying because I am exactly where I belong," he murmured into your hair, wrapping his arms around you like a shield. "You are my favorite variable, Y/N. You are the only math that makes sense."You closed your eyes, a few happy tears of your own slipping onto his chest, and held your permanent variable as tightly as you could.
Epilogue
The two years following that rainy autumn night unfolded with a rhythm that was entirely your own. Your relationship with Jake wasn't built on grand, unpredictable gestures or spontaneous cross-country road trips. It was built on the quiet, steady accretion of reliable data. It was built on Tuesday grilled cheese, the specific hum of the dryer on Thursdays, and the absolute certainty that when the world outside grew too sharp, you were each other's soft landing.
The seasons cycled —the oppressive, humid summers fading into the stark, brilliant colors of autumn, giving way to the biting cold of winter, and melting back into the muddy hope of spring. Through it all, Jake continued to bloom.
He still wore his Spider-Man pajama pants. He still organized his LEGOs by size, function, and color. He still required a predictable morning routine to conserve his daily battery. He was still undeniably, beautifully Jake. But the fear that had once defined his interactions with the world had largely dissipated. He was anchored. He had found where he fit.
It was a Saturday morning in late May. The air was warm, and the morning sun was filtering through the kitchen windows, catching the dust motes dancing in the air.
You were sitting at the kitchen island, wearing one of Jake's oversized grey hoodies, nursing a mug of coffee. You were twenty-five now, working full-time at a local community center. Your imposter syndrome hadn't vanished completely, but you no longer felt like a fraud playing at being an adult. You had a handle on your life, mostly.
Jake was standing at the counter, completely absorbed in the meticulous preparation of his breakfast. Two scrambled eggs (uniform yellow), three strips of bacon (cut into one-inch squares). "The humidity is rising," Jake noted, spearing a piece of bacon with his fork. He didn't look away from his plate. "It is currently at 68%. By mid-afternoon, it will likely exceed my comfortable threshold. My hair will experience frizz."
"We can stay inside," you offered, taking a sip of your coffee. "We have the new Star Wars puzzle. The 3,000-piece one."
Jake paused mid-chew. He swallowed and took a deliberate sip of his water.
"No," he said, finally looking up at you. His dark brown eyes were serious, but there was a subtle, nervous energy thrumming beneath the surface. He was tapping his left foot against the linoleum—a sign of processing complex variables. "I have calculated a different trajectory for today. I require a change in routine."
You lowered your mug, intrigued. A voluntary change in routine was rare. "Oh? What's the new variable?"
"I would like to visit the city Park," he announced, his posture straightening slightly. "The one with the botanical gardens. The rhododendrons are currently in peak bloom. They are highly saturated in color."
"The Park on a Saturday?" you asked, verifying the data. "It might be crowded, Jakey. High density."
"I am aware," he said, reaching up to adjust the collar of his t-shirt. "I have packed my noise-canceling headphones. I have assessed my battery level. I am operating at 98% capacity. I believe I can manage the input. It is... important."
There was a weight to the word important that made your heart skip a tiny beat. You had learned to trust his self-assessments. If he said he could handle it, he meant it.
"Okay," you smiled warmly. "Let's go see the rhododendrons."
The drive to the Park was filled with the familiar, comforting silence of Jake's lo-fi hip hop playlist. He sat in the passenger seat, his fingers tapping a complex rhythm against his thigh. He was wearing his favorite soft, navy blue hoodie and a pair of clean, comfortable jeans.When you arrived at the park, it was, as predicted, relatively busy. Families were walking dogs, joggers were navigating the paved trails, and children were shouting near the playground.Jake immediately deployed his headphones, pulling them over his ears to muffle the auditory chaos. He reached out with his right hand, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead, and waited.You slipped your hand into his, intertwining your fingers tightly. Deep pressure. The anchor.
He squeezed your hand three times. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I love you.
You squeezed back three times.
I love you too.
His shoulders relaxed a fraction, and together, you began to walk down the main path toward the botanical gardens. The gardens were a stark contrast to the rest of the park. They were quieter, designed for contemplation rather than recreation. The air smelled of damp earth and blooming flowers.Jake led the way, navigating the winding stone paths with purpose. He stopped occasionally to examine a specific leaf structure or to identify a flower species under his breath."The Fibonacci sequence is evident in the petal arrangement of the Echinacea purpurpea," he murmured, pointing to a purple coneflower. "Nature relies heavily on mathematical efficiency."
"It's beautiful," you agreed, leaning against his side.He guided you deeper into the gardens, away from the main thoroughfare, until you reached a small, secluded clearing. In the center of the clearing was a large, ornate wooden gazebo, surrounded on all sides by massive, blooming rhododendron bushes. The flowers were a blinding, saturated magenta.The clearing was entirely empty.
Jake stopped walking. He pulled his headphones down so they rested around his neck.
The sudden exposure to the ambient noise of the park made him blink rapidly for a second, but he didn't put them back on.
He turned to face you.
His breathing had grown shallow. You could feel the slight tremor in his hand, which was still gripping yours tightly.
"Jake?" you asked softly, recognizing the physical signs of a stress response. "Is it too loud? Do you need your headphones?"
"No," he said, his voice hitching slightly. "The noise is acceptable. The variables are within manageable parameters."
He let go of your hand. You frowned, a sudden spike of anxiety hitting your chest. Jake never let go of your hand in a public place. It was his primary grounding mechanism.
He took a step back, putting a careful two feet of space between you. He reached his hands into the front pocket of his navy hoodie. He was searching for something.
"Y/N," he began, his voice taking on the formal, factual cadence he used when he was nervous. "I have spent the last two years analyzing the data of our cohabitation. I have observed the statistical probability of a successful, long-term human partnership."Your breath caught in your throat. Your heart began to hammer against your ribs like a trapped bird."The data indicates," Jake continued, his dark eyes locked intensely on yours, refusing to look away, "that relationships are prone to entropy. They break down due to poor communication, mismatched variables, and a lack of systemic maintenance."
He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pocket. He was holding a small, square object made of dark, polished wood. It wasn't a standard velvet jewelry box. It looked distinctly handmade.
"However," he said, his voice softening, the clinical distance dropping away to reveal the raw, beating heart beneath. "My internal processor has run the simulation a thousand times. And in every single simulation, the variable that prevents the entropy... is you."
He took a step forward, closing the gap between you. He didn't drop to one knee—he knew that societal conventions didn't dictate the validity of an action, and the ground was damp—but he held the wooden box out between you."You do not try to rewrite my code," Jake whispered, his eyes shining with an overwhelming, profound sincerity. "You learned my language. You understand that the static is loud, and you are the only thing that makes it quiet. You eat burnt cookies, and you do not make fun of my Spider-Man pajamas, and you provide optimal thermal transfer when I am cold."A tear slipped free from your eyelashes, tracking hotly down your cheek. You couldn't speak. You could barely breathe."I do not possess the vocabulary to adequately express the magnitude of my attachment to you," he admitted, his hands trembling slightly as he gripped the small wooden box. "But I have learned that human tradition utilizes symbolic gestures to denote permanent, primary variables."
He opened the wooden box. Inside, resting on a bed of dark blue velvet, was a ring. It wasn't a massive, flashy diamond. It was a simple, elegant band of polished titanium, inlaid with a thin, continuous stripe of dark, starry lapis lazuli.
"I selected titanium," Jake explained, his voice gaining confidence as he presented the data. "It has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metallic element. It is incredibly resilient. It will not warp or degrade. And the lapis lazuli is blue. You are my protective blue aura." He looked up from the ring, his gaze finding yours. The puppy-dog innocence was still there, but it was anchored by the unwavering conviction of a man who knew exactly what he wanted."Y/N," he said, his voice clear and resonant. "Will you agree to be my permanent, legally recognized variable? Will you marry me?" A sob tore from your throat—a loud, messy, uncalculated sound of pure joy. You didn't answer with words initially. You couldn't. You closed the remaining distance between you, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling his face down to yours. You kissed him with every ounce of love, gratitude, and fierce devotion you possessed.
Jake gasped against your lips, his hands instantly finding your waist, the wooden box clutched safely in one fist. He kissed you back eagerly, grounding himself in the familiar, perfect pressure of your touch.When you finally pulled away, you were both breathless. You rested your forehead against his, your tears mixing with the warmth of his skin."Yes," you whispered, your voice thick and wobbly. "Yes, Jake. A million times, yes. I will be your permanent variable."His face broke into a blinding, full-teeth smile—the kind of smile that reached his eyes and crinkled the corners. He let out a long, shuddering sigh of absolute relief."Optimal," he breathed. "The simulation was accurate." He carefully extracted the ring from the wooden box. He took your left hand, his fingers steady now, and slid the titanium band onto your ring finger. It fit perfectly. He had likely measured your finger while you were sleeping, calculating the exact circumference."It's perfect, Jakey," you sobbed, looking at the band. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"It is mathematically precise," he agreed, admiring his handiwork.
He pulled you back against his chest, wrapping his arms securely around your shoulders. You buried your face in his navy hoodie, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of unscented detergent and the crisp spring air.
You stood there in the quiet clearing, surrounded by the blinding magenta rhododendrons, holding your fiancé. The static of the world was entirely absent.
The wedding, like your relationship, was exactly what you both needed it to be: small, controlled, and deeply personal.There was no massive reception hall filled with hundreds of strangers. There was no loud DJ blasting bass-heavy music. There were no flashing strobe lights.Instead, six months later, you stood in the backyard of the beige two-story house. The late October air was crisp and smelled of fallen leaves. The trees surrounding the yard were ablaze in oranges and reds.
Sarah had spent weeks transforming the backyard into a quiet, intimate sanctuary. Fairy lights—warm white, non-flickering—were strung through the branches of the old oak tree. The grass was meticulously trimmed.
There were only twelve guests. Your parents, your brother, Sarah, and a few close friends who understood the rules of the environment.
You wore a simple, elegant white dress with no scratchy lace or heavy, restrictive corsetry. You wore your new white Converse sneakers beneath the hem.
Jake stood at the end of the short aisle. He wasn't wearing a suit. He had tried one on during the planning phase, but the stiff collar and the tight constraints of the jacket had sent him into a near-meltdown.Instead, he wore a dark navy blue cashmere sweater over a collared shirt, and dark, comfortable trousers. He looked incredibly handsome, comfortable in his own skin, and entirely at peace.He was wearing his noise-canceling headphones around his neck, a comforting weight, but he didn't need to turn them on. The environment was safe.When you walked down the aisle, your eyes locked onto his. He wasn't looking at the ground. He wasn't looking at your shoes. He was looking directly at your face, his brown eyes shining with unshed tears.
He held his hand out to you as you approached.
You took it, feeling the immediate, deep pressure of his grip.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I love you.
The ceremony was short. The officiant, a close family friend, spoke softly and clearly.
When it came time for the vows, you hadn't written traditional promises. You had written your own code."Jake," you said, your voice steady, holding both of his hands in yours. "I promise to always be your quiet place. I promise to never mix the eggs with the bacon. I promise to always check the weather for humidity spikes, and to always have your noise-canceling headphones charged."
Jake smiled, a single tear slipping down his cheek."I promise to fiercely protect your routines," you continued, your own vision blurring. "Because your routines are what allow your brilliant, beautiful mind to thrive. I promise to love you, exactly as you are, in every variable, in every simulation, for the rest of our lives."
Jake took a deep, shaky breath. He didn't have notes. He had memorized his data.
"Y/N," he began, his voice carrying the deep, resonant timbre that always grounded you. "Before I met you, the world was a chaotic, unmanageable input. I survived by building walls and closing doors. You did not try to break the walls down. You simply sat outside them, in your quiet shoes, until I realized I wanted to open the door."
He squeezed your hands, his thumb brushing over the titanium ring on your finger.
"You are the most statistically improbable, incredibly fortunate anomaly of my life," he said, his eyes conveying a depth of emotion that defied any clinical diagnosis. "I promise to provide optimal thermal transfer when you are cold. I promise to eat the burnt cookies so you do not feel inadequate. I promise to step in front of the unpredictable variables to shield you. I promise to be your permanent, primary partner, until the entropy of the universe consumes us both."
There wasn't a dry eye in the small gathering. Sarah was openly weeping into a tissue, clutching your mother’s hand.
When the officiant pronounced you husband and wife, Jake didn't hesitate. He pulled you flush against his chest, wrapping his arms around your waist, and kissed you with the firm, deliberate passion of a man who had finally found his permanent place in the world.The small crowd cheered softly, clapping their hands—a muted, respectful applause that didn't startle him.The reception was a dinner held in the living room and kitchen. The food was carefully curated. There was a macaroni and cheese bar (no mixing required), a tray of perfectly uniform, sharp cheddar cheese cubes, and a massive bowl of smooth, roasted tomato bisque, a roast Sarah made, a salad.For dessert, there wasn't a traditional, multi-tiered wedding cake.Instead, there was a large platter of sugar cookies and other desserts. The cookies were cut into precise geometric shapes—stars and Stegosauruses. They were baked to a perfect, light golden brown.Jake stood by the dessert table, holding a star cookie. He looked across the room at you. You were talking to your brother, laughing at something he had said.Jake walked over to you. He didn't care that you were mid-conversation. He stepped up behind you, wrapping his arm securely around your waist, pulling your back flush against his chest.
"Deep pressure," he murmured into your ear, resting his chin on your shoulder.
"Always," you smiled, leaning back into his solid warmth.
Your brother smiled warmly at the two of you and excused himself to get more macaroni and cheese.Jake held the star cookie out in front of you.
"The bake on these is optimal," he noted, his voice a low, happy rumble against your back. "The structural integrity is sound. The Maillard reaction was controlled."
"I set three timers," you laughed, turning your head to kiss his cheek. "I wasn't taking any chances today."He took a bite of the cookie. It crunched satisfyingly.
"They are very good," he decided, chewing thoughtfully. "But..."
"But?" you asked, raising an eyebrow.
"But I think I prefer the fossilized dinosaurs," he said, his eyes crinkling with a subtle, teasing humor. "They possessed a superior... smoky complexity. And they proved that you are fallible. Which makes you mathematically perfect for me."
You let out a loud, joyous laugh, turning fully in his arms to wrap your hands around his neck."You are ridiculous, Jake Sim," you beamed, looking up at your husband.
"I am entirely logical," he corrected softly, his gaze dropping to your lips. "The data supports my conclusion." He leaned down and kissed you again, right there in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the soft murmur of your families and the warm, golden light of the fairy lights.Outside, the world continued its chaotic, unpredictable spin. The traffic roared, the sirens wailed, and the variables shifted without warning.
But inside, wrapped in the arms of the man who organized his life with plastic bricks and unyielding honesty, everything was perfectly, mathematically still. The static was gone. You were home. And you knew, with the absolute certainty of a scientifically proven fact, that you would never need to run from the noise again.
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Summary: When a disastrous heist forces you to fake your death alongside Jay, a notoriously grumpy weaponsmith, the two of you have no choice but to lay low in his subterranean garage with his fiercely loyal scrap-yard dog, Dex. Between dodging deadly syndicates, surviving high-speed chases, and navigating the suffocating tension of shared quarters, your constant bickering slowly blurs the line between reluctant roommates and partners in crime, turning what should have been a complete misfire into something a bit more chaotic with a sweet tang.
Warnings: Sci-Fi / Cyberpunk / Steampunk/ Dystopian (uhhh a melting pot),Action Comedy, Romance Comedy,CoGun Violence & Explosions, Accidental Kidnapping/Hostage Situation, Forced Proximity, Near-Death Experiences, Blood & Physical Injury , Criminal Underworld Dynamics, Mild Medical Content. Smut M/F (Jay x Y/N), workbench sex, oral sex (giving and receiving), rough sex, dirty talk, praise kink, deep penetration.
A/N:So as I mentioned that GQ photo shoot had me feeling, thinking, writing and I came up with this! I swear I write Jay so much you guys might’ve thought he was my bias😭✌🏽. But I hope you guys enjoy this fic as much as I enjoyed creating the world building and fic in general as y’all know I love a good dystopian fic. I also decided to write Jay a bit differently for this fic though not drastically, but I wanted to not make him like how I did in my other Jay fics so I hope you guys like that as well 🙇🏽♀️.
[Masterlist]
The city of Meridian did not sleep, nor did it ever stand completely still. It was a sprawling, gravity-defying tangle of brass architecture, neon-lit skyways, and impossible colors that felt less like a city and more like a fever dream engineered by a mad watchmaker. Giant clockwork gears turned agonizingly slow between towering skyscrapers, venting thick plumes of violet and tangerine steam into a sky that perpetually looked like a bruised, painted sunset. Bullet trains ran on humming magnetic rails that looped like rollercoasters through floating market districts, where merchants hawked everything from glowing, bioluminescent fruit to illegal, heavily modified cybernetics. It was loud, it was vibrant, and it was entirely unapologetic in its absolute chaos. Amidst a population draped in extravagant velvets, holographic silks, and heavy, polished mechanical augmentations, you kept things frustratingly simple.
You were just a girl with a unique but practical taste in fashion—a faded, oversized canvas jacket, fitted cargo pants patched at the knees, and heavy boots built for running. You didn't have a giant copper arm or a flashy gimmick. You were just an "Independent Retrieval Specialist," which was a very polite, diplomatic way of saying you were a thief who made a living swiping high-value items from the city's less-than-savory underbelly. You had a terrible habit of biting off more than you could chew, entirely reliant on your fast talking and fast feet to get you out of whatever mess you dove into.Usually, it worked. Today, however, the universe was aggressively deciding it was not going to work.Your target was a local syndicate operating out of a damp, brass-plated alleyway tucked behind a subterranean gear-head fighting ring. The air down here smelled heavily of ozone, spilled cheap ale, and machine oil. Word on the sky-wire was that this crew, led by a massive brute with a literal bear-trap for a jaw, was receiving a shipment of highly illegal, custom-built kinetic weapons.
Your plan was straightforward: observe the handoff from high above, wait for the manufacturer to leave, and then relieve the syndicate of their new toys while they were distracted.From your perch on a rusted, overhead ventilation pipe, you watched the exchange unfold beneath the flickering glow of an amber streetlamp. The manufacturer was just a silhouette standing in the violet steam venting from the grates below. He handed over a sleek, heavily reinforced metal crate that looked like it could survive atmospheric reentry. The syndicate boss grunted, his trap-jaw clicking ominously, and tossed over a thick, velvet pouch heavy with physical platinum credit chips. The manufacturer caught it without looking, gave a lazy, two-finger salute, and turned, dissolving into the crowded, chaotic thoroughfare at the end of the alley. Perfect.
You waited precisely three minutes. The syndicate goons were already tearing into a bottle of glowing blue liquor, celebrating their new arsenal, entirely focused on slapping each other on the back. You dropped down from the pipe, your boots hitting the slick cobblestones with practiced silence. You kept low, using the shadows of stacked cargo containers and hissing steam vents to mask your approach. The heavy, rhythmic thumping of the fighting ring next door vibrated through the soles of your boots, providing the perfect acoustic cover for your footsteps.You crept toward the loading dock. The crate sat right in the center of a rusted iron table, practically glowing under a spotlight. You slipped past a stack of empty fuel barrels, your heart doing a familiar, thrilling drumroll against your ribs. You reached out, wrapping your fingers around the cold, textured metal handle of the target case, and hoisted it up.
Your arm instantly screamed in protest. It was heavy. Absurdly heavy. It felt like it was filled with solid lead rather than weapon parts. You grunted, biting your lip to keep quiet as you shifted your center of gravity to accommodate the massive weight. You took a slow, careful step back.CRUNCH.The sound echoed off the brass walls like a gunshot. You froze, looking down. Hidden beneath a thin layer of alley grime, you had stepped dead center onto a discarded, glass hydro-bulb. It had shattered into a thousand musical pieces.The laughter from the goons died instantly. All four syndicate members stopped moving. Slowly, agonizingly, they turned their heads toward the loading dock. You stood there, perfectly illuminated by the spotlight, awkwardly holding their multimillion-credit weapon crate, offering a tight, highly apologetic smile."I don't suppose you guys offer a delivery service?" you asked, your voice echoing slightly in the damp alley.
"Kill her!" the boss roared, his bear-trap jaw snapping shut with a terrifying, metallic clack.You didn't wait to see them draw their weapons. You spun on your heel and bolted.A bolt of searing orange plasma sizzled past your ear, so close you heard the air pop, striking the brick wall ahead of you and showering your shoulder in molten slag. You ducked hard, sprinting down the narrow corridor of the alley, the heavy crate banging brutally against your thigh with every step. You couldn't run in a straight line; you had to zigzag wildly as laser fire chewed up the cobblestones at your heels.
You burst out of the alleyway and into the blinding, chaotic light of the vertical market district. The area was a multi-tiered labyrinth of suspended walkways, vendor stalls, and swinging neon signs. You vaulted over a table covered in glowing, bioluminescent eels, ignoring the furious shouting of the merchant. A plasma bolt shattered a water pipe directly above you, drenching you in a sudden, icy downpour.
"Cut her off at the sky-bridge!" one of the goons bellowed behind you.You scrambled up a flight of rusted iron stairs, your lungs burning, the weight of the crate threatening to pull your arm from its socket. You hit the second tier of the market and threw yourself into a forward roll just as a blast of kinetic energy tore through the space where your chest had been a second before. You came up running, shoving your way through a crowd of people dressed in holographic silks. You grabbed a heavy canvas awning and yanked it down behind you, hoping to stall them, but the brute with the metal jaw simply tore through it like paper.You were losing ground. The crate was throwing off your balance, making it impossible to scale the higher platforms. You needed a distraction. You needed a miracle. You saw a narrow, dimly lit chute leading back down to the main thoroughfare. Without thinking, you threw yourself down it, sliding wildly on the slick brass, picking up a terrifying amount of speed.You shot out of the bottom of the chute, bursting back out onto the bustling main street, the sudden influx of neon light blinding you for a fraction of a second. You tried to hit the brakes, tried to dig your heels into the pavement, but your momentum was too great.You slammed face-first into what felt like a solid wall of leather, muscle, and heavy metal hardware.
The impact completely knocked the wind out of your lungs. You stumbled backward, dropping the heavy crate. It hit the ground with a deafening CLANG that rattled your teeth. You fell to your knees, gasping for air, and looked up to see the collateral damage of your high-speed escape.It was a guy. And you had just ruined his day.He was looking down at the pavement where a perfectly good, fully loaded chili dog lay tragically upside down in the dirt, the neon-yellow mustard slowly bleeding into the street grime. Beside his heavy boots, a scruffy, highly intelligent-looking mutt let out a low, mournful whine at the fallen food, nudging the ruined bun with its nose.The guy sighed. It was a slow, exaggerated sound of profound, world-weary annoyance. He slowly tilted his head down to look at you.
He was a complete aesthetic collision. He wore a tight black turtleneck under a track jacket that looked purposely smudged with real engine dirt, contrasting sharply with heavy, stacked leather belts and heavy metal-hardware boots. His hair was a chaotic masterpiece—spiky, piecey, and sporting a "wet-look" that somehow defied the humid, tropical air of the city.Wraparound sporty sunglasses rested on the bridge of his nose, but they were pulled down just enough for you to see his eyes. They were an arresting, icy pale color that pierced right through you, striking against the warm tones of his face.He didn't wear a drop of the vibrant makeup common in Meridian. He just had naturally tan skin dusted with a heavy scattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones, and a smudge of real, actual black grease swiped sharply across his jawline. He radiated a vibe of boyish recklessness, giving off the distinct impression that he had just rolled out from under a turbine engine, threw on whatever was on the floor, and somehow managed to look incredible.
"Do you have any idea," he drawled, his voice deep, gravelly, and dripping with irritation, "how hard it is to find a vendor that doesn't use synthetic meat in this sector?"
"I—" You gasped, trying to pull air back into your lungs.You looked back over your shoulder. The shouts of the syndicate goons were echoing down the chute. The crowd on the street was beginning to part, sensing the impending violence. You looked back at the guy in the leather jacket, your survival instincts kicking into absolute overdrive.Time to play the card.You scrambled to your feet, grabbed a fistful of his thick leather sleeve, and ducked heavily behind his back, shrinking yourself to look as small, frail, and terrified as humanly possible."Please!" you cried out, pitching your voice up an octave to sound absolutely frantic and on the verge of tears. "You have to help me! They're trying to kill me! I don't know what they want, I was just walking home from the bakery!"The guy stiffened. His annoyance was instantly replaced by a sudden, rigid, protective posture. He instinctively shifted his weight, moving his arm to shield you from the street, his pale eyes narrowing as he looked toward the alley exit. The dog, picking up on the immediate shift in his master's energy, let out a sharp, aggressive warning bark, the hair on its scruff standing up.
"Hey, calm down. It's alright," the guy said, his tone dropping its lazy drawl and becoming surprisingly steady and commanding. "Just stay behind me. I've got this."
Hook, line, and sinker, you thought, feeling a massive wave of relief wash over you, immediately followed by a sharp twinge of guilt. Sorry, hot dog guy.The syndicate boss exploded out of the alleyway, his heavy boots cracking the pavement, followed closely by his three heavily armed goons. They stopped dead in their tracks, raising their bulky plasma blasters, the ambient hum of their weapons charging up.
"There she is!" one of the goons yelled, pointing a glowing barrel in your direction. "Light 'em up!"
"Wait!" the boss barked, holding up his massive, heavily scarred hand. He squinted through the violet steam venting from the street grates, his eyes landing squarely on the spiky-haired guy standing defensively in front of you.The boss's expression shifted wildly from murderous rage to absolute bewilderment. He lowered his weapon slightly, his metal jaw hanging slightly open."Wait a second," the boss grunted, the gears in his head visibly turning. "Is that...?"
"Yeah," one of the goons said, sounding equally confused, lowering his own rifle."That's the mechanic. The guy who just sold us the guns."
Behind his back, your blood ran entirely cold. You squeezed your eyes shut. Oh, absolutely not. You have got to be kidding me.The guy in the leather jacket froze. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he turned his head to look over his shoulder at you. His icy pale eyes searched your face for a long, silent second. Then, his gaze dropped to the ground, landing directly on the sleek, heavily reinforced metal crate resting right by your boots. The exact same crate he had handed over in the damp alleyway exactly twelve minutes ago.He looked back up at your face. Your perfectly crafted "innocent, terrified damsel" expression instantly melted into a sheepish, incredibly guilty grimace. You offered him a tiny, awkward wave.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he deadpanned, his voice flat."I can explain?" you offered weakly, taking a half-step back."You set us up!" the syndicate boss roared, his bewilderment vanishing, instantly replaced by explosive fury. He pointed his massive blaster directly at the guy's chest. "You take our credits, then send this little rat to steal the tech back so you can sell it twice?! I'll mount both your heads on the hood of my hover-bike!"
"Whoa, whoa, hold on!" the guy yelled, throwing his hands up in a placating gesture, completely dropping his protective stance. "I don't even know this girl! She fell out of the sky and assassinated my lunch!"
"Fire!" the boss commanded.A volley of bright, searing pink plasma fire erupted from the goons' rifles.In a blur of motion that completely contradicted his previous laid-back, lazy demeanor, the guy grabbed you by the collar of your canvas jacket and yanked you violently to the ground, pulling you behind a solid brass fire hydrant just as the air where you’d been standing turned to superheated, smoking slag."You absolute menace!" he shouted over the deafening, rhythmic crackle of blaster fire chewing up the pavement around you. "Are you out of your mind?!""I didn't know you were the manufacturer!" you yelled back, curling into a ball and covering your head as chunks of molten concrete rained down on your jacket. "You don't look like a weapons dealer! I thought you were just a guy with a dog!"
"I am a guy with a dog!" he yelled back indignantly.
He reached into the inner pocket of his smudged track jacket. You expected him to pull out a standard issue blaster, or maybe a sonic grenade, but instead, he pulled out something entirely custom. It looked like a heavy, chrome cylinder wrapped in glowing, spinning copper coils that hummed with a terrifying amount of stored energy.His entire demeanor shifted in a fraction of a second. The witty, lazy annoyance vanished completely, replaced by a cold, hyper-focused, calculating intensity. He didn't look like a guy who threw his clothes on randomly anymore; he looked like a brilliant, lethal predator who built his own teeth."Cover your ears," he ordered, his voice leaving no room for argument.You slammed your hands over your ears, squeezing your eyes shut. He leaned out from the cover of the hydrant, twisted the bottom of the cylinder with a sharp click, and fired.It wasn't a laser, and it wasn't plasma. It was a massive, concentrated shockwave of pure kinetic energy that sounded like a localized thunderclap. The blast literally distorted the air itself, visibly rippling the space between him and the syndicate. It hit the goons with the force of a runaway train. They were thrown backward, lifted completely off their feet, and sent crashing through a fruit vendor's stall in a massive shower of sparks, shattered wood, and pulverized, glowing watermelons.He didn't wait around to admire his handiwork or check the damage. He reached down, grabbed the handle of the heavy metal crate with one hand with surprising ease, grabbed your wrist with his other hand in an iron grip, and bolted down a narrow side street branching off the main avenue."Dex! Heel!" he barked sharply.The scruffy dog didn't need to be told twice; it was already running a step ahead of him, entirely unfazed by the explosion.
"Where are we going?!" you gasped, your legs burning as you struggled to keep up with his long, heavy strides."My car!" he yelled back without looking at you. "Unless you want to stick around and explain your brilliant heist strategy to the guy with the bear trap on his face when he wakes up!"
You rounded another sharp corner, diving into a dimly lit, open-air parking bay tucked beneath a giant, slowly turning bronze cogwheel. Sitting dead center in the bay was a machine that made your heart skip a beat. It was a retro-futuristic masterpiece—a low-slung, heavily armored muscle car painted in a sleek, matte black finish with bold, aggressive yellow racing stripes down the center. It had thick, treaded tires, glowing blue exhaust vents, and a visible engine block that hummed with a quiet, terrifying, vibrating power."Get in!" he yelled. He popped the trunk with a remote on his wrist, casually tossed the incredibly heavy metal crate inside, and slammed it shut with a heavy thud.You sprinted for the passenger side door, your hand wrapping around the cool metal handle, ready to throw yourself inside to safety."Hey! What are you doing?!" he barked, halting right in front of the driver's side door, staring at you across the roof of the car."Getting in!" you yelled back, panicked, hearing the distant sound of shouts returning from the main street.A low, vibrating growl sounded right next to your knee. You looked down. Dex the dog was standing squarely between you and the passenger door, his hackles raised, baring his teeth at you."The front seat is for the dog," the guy said, completely deadpan, perfectly serious despite the active life-or-death situation unfolding literally right behind them. "You ride in the back."
"Are you serious?!" you shrieked, your voice cracking. "We are literally being shot at! People are trying to kill us!"
"Dex gets shotgun. It's the rules of the road. Back seat. Now." He pointed a finger at the rear door.You let out an exasperated, furious scream, yanked the back door open, and threw yourself ungracefully onto the plush leather seats just as the remaining syndicate goons came limping violently around the corner into the parking bay, their weapons raised.
The guy slid effortlessly into the driver's seat. Dex happily bounded into the passenger seat beside him, instantly dropping his aggressive stance and panting happily. The engine didn't just start; it roared, a sound so loud and guttural it shook the dust from the massive brass gears turning above them. He slammed the heavy metal gearshift into reverse, and the car launched backward with terrifying speed, the tires screaming and smoking against the concrete."Hold on!" he yelled over his shoulder.He spun the heavily gripped steering wheel, executing a flawless, violently chaotic J-turn. The car whipped around just as a stray energy blast from one of the goons sparked wildly off the back right bumper, leaving a scorched streak of black as the car tore out of the garage and launched itself onto the suspended, illuminated overpass of the skyway.You pulled yourself up from the floorboards, groaning, your muscles aching, breathless, your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. You slumped into the back seat and looked at the back of his spiky head.
"We made it," you breathed out, wiping a streak of grime from your forehead. "Holy crap, that was a nice save. You're actually pretty good at this."He didn't look back at you. He was staring intensely at the dashboard monitors, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were completely white. He took a slow, deep, terrifyingly measured breath."You scratched it," he whispered, his voice dangerously low and quiet."What?"He looked up, meeting your gaze in the rearview mirror. His pale eyes were wide, practically vibrating with barely contained fury. "They shot my car. They shot my baby. Because of you."
"It's just a bumper!" you argued, gesturing wildly around the pristine interior. "We're alive! You have your crate back!"
"It's a custom matte-finish poly-alloy, you absolute feral gremlin!" he yelled, swerving violently to avoid a steam-powered tram carrying late-night commuters. "Do you know how hard it is to match that paint?! I have to source the pigment from three different sectors! I am genuinely going to drop you off the edge of the nearest skyway!"
"You can't do that, you're officially an accessory to grand larceny now!" you shot back, a smug, highly inappropriate grin fighting its way onto your face despite the immense danger you were both still in. "We're partners in crime!"He groaned loudly, a sound of pure agony, taking one hand off the wheel to press the heel of his palm aggressively against his forehead. In the passenger seat, Dex barked happily out the open window, his ears flapping wildly in the tropical wind."I'm Jay," he muttered bitterly, staring straight at the road ahead as the vibrant, neon city lights streaked beautifully over the windshield. "And I think I hate you."You leaned back against the plush leather, making yourself comfortable, crossing your arms over your chest. "Nice to meet you, Jay. I think we're going to be best friends."
The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, replaced by a deep, aching throb in your shoulder and the distinct, unsettling realization that you had just kidnapped a weapons dealer. Or, perhaps, he had kidnapped you. The exact logistics of the situation were getting a little blurry. You sat in the back of the matte black muscle car, watching the vibrant, chaotic heart of Meridian blur past the heavily tinted windows.Jay drove like an absolute maniac, but a controlled one. He didn't just steer the car; he commanded it, his large, grease-smudged hands moving over the steering wheel and the heavy metal gearshift with a terrifying, practiced fluidity. He wove through the airborne traffic of hover-skiffs and steam-trams, taking sharp, impossibly narrow turns that made the tires shriek and your stomach drop into your boots.
In the passenger seat, Dex the dog was living his absolute best life, his front paws resting on the dashboard, barking excitedly at passing neon signs. You sank lower into the plush leather, which smelled faintly of ozone, expensive machinery, and dog hair. "So," you started, your voice breaking the tense silence of the cabin. "Where exactly is this safehouse of yours? Because if we stay on this skyway, we’re going to hit the edge of the Copper Reefs, and the syndicates practically own the docks down there." Jay didn't look back at you. His icy pale eyes were fixed intensely on the road ahead, illuminated by the soft, amber glow of the dashboard dials. "I know where I'm going, gremlin. I don't need navigational advice from someone who uses discarded glass as a stealth tactic."
"Hey! That alley was practically a landfill! How was I supposed to know a hydro-bulb was under that specific pile of sludge?" "You're a thief," he shot back, seamlessly downshifting as the car plummeted down a steep, spiraling off-ramp. "Aren't you supposed to be observant? Light on your feet? You stomp around like a malfunctioning steam-golem."
"I was carrying a crate that weighs more than I do!" you argued, gesturing indignantly at the trunk behind you. "What do you even put in those things? It felt like pure, condensed gravity!"
"Quality craftsmanship," he muttered. "Something you clearly know nothing about." He ripped the steering wheel hard to the right. The car veered off the pristine, magnetic rails of the inner city skyway and slammed onto a crumbling, unpaved service road that wrapped around the massive, rust-red perimeter wall of the city. The ride instantly became violently bumpy. You grabbed the back of his seat to keep from bouncing off the roof. The vibrant neon lights and the towering, hissing brass skyscrapers faded into the rearview mirror. Out here, on the very fringes of Meridian, the city was reclaiming itself.
Massive, overgrown bioluminescent vines wrapped around forgotten, decaying clockwork towers. The air was thicker here, smelling of damp earth and rust rather than ozone and street food. Jay navigated the treacherous road entirely from memory, his spiky, wet-look hair barely moving despite the erratic bouncing of the car. He finally pulled off the road entirely, driving straight toward what looked like a solid wall of dense, glowing blue ivy clinging to the side of a massive, ancient aqueduct. "Uhh, Jay?" you asked, your voice pitching up slightly. "Unless this car can phase through solid brick, you might want to hit the brakes."He ignored you. He reached up, tapped a sequence onto a panel on the sun visor, and hit the accelerator.You squeezed your eyes shut and braced for a spectacular, fiery death. Instead, there was a loud, metallic groaning sound. You opened one eye. The wall of ivy had parted perfectly down the middle, revealing heavy, camouflage-painted steel doors sliding open to swallow the car into absolute darkness.The car rolled to a halt. The massive steel doors slid shut behind you with a deafening, final thud.
Fluorescent overhead lights flickered on one by one, buzzing angrily as they illuminated Jay’s hidden sanctuary. It was an enormous, cavernous garage suspended inside the hollowed-out belly of the aqueduct. It was a masterpiece of absolute, unfiltered chaos. Half-finished kinetic rifles, dismantled hover-bike engines, and scattered, glowing blue plasma coils littered every available surface. Heavy brass tools hung on pegboards next to incredibly complex, hand-drawn blueprints scrawled on physical parchment. In the corner, a massive, rusted turbine engine served as a makeshift coffee table, surrounded by a battered, mismatched velvet couch.It was grimy, it was unorganized, and it was entirely brilliant. It suited him perfectly.Jay killed the engine. The sudden silence in the cabin was deafening. He let out a long, heavy exhale, slumping back against his seat. He reached up, rubbing his grease-smudged jaw with his thumb. For a moment, in the harsh fluorescent light, he just looked exhausted. You noticed the heavy dusting of freckles across his tan nose and cheekbones—a stark contrast to the sharp, intimidating pale blue eyes. He looked younger when he wasn't glaring at you or blowing things up.
Dex whined, nudging Jay’s arm with his wet nose. Jay’s hardened expression melted instantly. He ruffled the dog's scruffy ears. "I know, buddy. I know. Dinner time." He popped his door open and climbed out. You awkwardly pushed the back door open and tumbled out onto the oil-stained concrete floor, your legs feeling like absolute jelly.Jay walked straight to the trunk, popped it, and effortlessly hoisted the massive metal crate onto his shoulder. He carried it over to a heavy, reinforced steel workbench and dropped it with a loud clang. He didn't even look at you. He just walked over to a mini-fridge tucked beneath a rack of spare tires, pulled out a thick, foil-wrapped package of premium, raw meat, and tossed it to Dex, who caught it mid-air and trotted happily to a dog bed made of old velvet cushions in the corner.You stood awkwardly near the car, wrapping your oversized canvas jacket tighter around yourself. The damp chill of the aqueduct was seeping through your clothes. "So," you started, rocking back on your heels. "Nice place. A little heavy on the fire hazard aesthetic, but it's cozy." Jay slowly turned to face you. He leaned his hip against the workbench, crossing his arms over his chest. The heavy leather belts wrapped around his waist clinked softly. He looked you up and down, his pale eyes entirely unamused. "Don't get comfortable," he warned, his voice low and raspy. "You're only here because if I let you wander back into the city, Trap-Jaw is going to skin you alive, and then he's going to come looking for me to finish the job."
"Trap-Jaw?" you echoed, raising an eyebrow. "Is that what we're calling him? Because honestly, it lacks creativity. I was thinking something more like 'Bitey' or 'Sir Crunch-a-Lot.'" Jay stared at you, his jaw tight. "Do you ever stop talking? Is it a medical condition? Because I can probably build a muzzle out of spare parts in about ten minutes."
"I talk when I'm nervous," you admitted, crossing your own arms defensively. "And I tend to get nervous when a guy who looks like a runway model for a mechanic's convention shoots up a city block and drags me to an underground lair." A flicker of something crossed Jay's face—surprise, maybe, or begrudging amusement at the compliment—but he quickly masked it with a scowl. He pushed off the workbench and walked toward the back of his car.He knelt down, his fingers tracing the scorched, blackened mark on the matte black poly-alloy of his rear bumper. The plasma blast had melted a deep groove straight through the yellow racing stripe. He let out a soft, devastated sound that genuinely sounded like he was mourning a lost relative."Look at this," he whispered. "It's ruined. The structural integrity of the aero-panel is completely compromised."You walked over, peering over his shoulder. "It's a scratch, Jay. Slap some black paint on it and call it a day."He snapped his head up, glaring at you with such intense offense you actually took a step back. "Paint?You think I just went to a hardware store and bought paint? This is a micro-layered, kinetic-absorbent polymer! It has to be baked at four hundred degrees in a pressurized vacuum chamber!" He stood up, towering over you, pointing a grease-stained finger at your face. "You owe me a new bumper. And a chili dog."
"I don't have any credits!" you shot back, swatting his hand away. "I was stealing that crate so I could pay my rent this month!"Jay let out a harsh, bitter laugh, dragging a hand through his chaotic, spiky hair, making it stand up even more wildly. "Oh, brilliant. So I'm stuck with a broke, amateur cat-burglar who managed to piss off the Copper Reef Syndicate."He walked over to a massive, multi-screen terminal set up on a stack of rusted shipping pallets. He tapped the glowing glass surface, and the screens flickered to life, projecting a holographic interface of the city's sky-wire network. Code cascaded down the screens, reflecting in his pale eyes. His fingers flew across a physical keyboard with terrifying speed."Let's see just how much trouble you actually caused, gremlin," he muttered.You walked over, standing beside him, watching the screens. "My name is Y/N, by the way. Since we're going to be roommates and all."
"We are not roommates," he corrected sharply, not looking away from the monitors. "You are an unwelcome hostage to the consequences of your own actions."He hit a final key. The cascading code cleared, replaced by a massive, glowing red holographic wanted poster.Your stomach plummeted.There, floating in high-definition, was a perfectly captured security still of you dropping the crate in the alleyway. Right next to it was a still of Jay, shielding you on the street corner. Below your faces was a number so large it had two commas in it. "Two hundred thousand credits," Jay read, his voice terrifyingly calm, the red holographic light reflecting in his pale eyes. "Alive. They want us alive."
"That's... that's a lot of money," you whispered, suddenly feeling very cold. The adrenaline that had been keeping you on your feet evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, heavy exhaustion."That's enough money to make every bounty hunter, street-rat, and corrupt city guard in Meridian look for us," Jay corrected, turning to look at you. The annoyance was gone from his face, replaced by a grim, hard reality. "We can't go back into the city. We can't use the sky-wire to book a transport out. We are completely, totally trapped here until I can figure out how to wipe this bounty from the central registry."You stared at the glowing red numbers, the reality of the situation finally crushing the last of your bravado.
You weren't just in trouble; you were hunted. You slowly sank down onto an overturned, reinforced milk crate, pulling your knees to your chest."I'm sorry," you said, and for the first time all night, you genuinely meant it. Your voice was quiet, stripped of its usual sarcastic bite. "I really am. I didn't know they would connect us. I was just trying to survive the week." Jay looked down at you. He watched you shrink into your oversized canvas jacket, the cocky street-thief completely gone. He let out a long, slow breath, the tension in his broad shoulders dropping just a fraction. He reached up, rubbing the back of his neck, looking away toward the shadows of the cavernous garage."Yeah, well. Surviving in Meridian usually means stepping on someone else's neck," he muttered, walking away from the terminal. The red hologram flickered off, plunging the corner of the room back into dim, fluorescent lighting. "Don't sit on the floor. It's covered in industrial solvent. Take the couch."You looked up. He was already walking back to his primary workbench, pulling a heavy canvas tarp off a dismantled piece of machinery.
"I'm not going to kick you out," he added, his back to you, picking up a heavy brass hydro-spanner. "Dex seems to like you. And his character judgment is historically better than mine." You managed a weak, exhausted smile. "Thanks, Jay."
"Don't thank me yet," he grunted, twisting a bolt on the machine with a loud squeak of metal. "You're pulling your weight. Tomorrow, you're learning how to strip down a kinetic coil. If you blow off your own eyebrows, that's your problem." The rest of the night passed in a strange, heavy quiet. You curled up on the battered velvet couch in the corner of the garage. The heavy fabric smelled like dust, old engine oil, and faint, musky cologne. It wasn't comfortable, and the damp chill of the ancient aqueduct seemed to seep right through the soles of your boots, but it was safe.
You couldn't sleep. Every time you closed your eyes, you saw flashes of searing orange plasma and the metal trap-jaw of the syndicate boss. So, instead, you watched Jay.He didn't sleep. He stayed at his workbench for hours, the harsh, concentrated glare of his desk lamp carving sharp shadows across his face. Without the constant threat of a firefight, you had time to really look at him. He worked with a fierce, quiet intensity. The careless, boyish recklessness he wore like armor vanished the second he had tools in his hands. He was methodical, precise, and completely engrossed in his craft. He had shed the heavy, dirt-smudged track jacket, tossing it over a spare tire, leaving him in just the tight black turtleneck. You could see the lean, corded muscle of his shoulders shifting as he worked a heavy file against a piece of brass. He would hold tiny, delicate copper wires between his teeth while soldering joints, completely oblivious to the fresh smear of black grease he just wiped across his cheekbone. In this light, the heavy dusting of freckles across his naturally tan nose was incredibly prominent.
He looked younger, less intimidating, just a guy completely obsessed with how things fit together. To break the silence, he reached over and tapped a rusted, cube-shaped radio on his desk. Low, aggressive, underground synth-punk started to hum through the garage. He kept the volume down, presumably for your sake, but you could see his heavy, metal-hardware boot tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the concrete floor while he soldered. You watched the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders, the steady tapping of his boot, until the sheer exhaustion finally dragged you under. When you woke up, the harsh fluorescent lights of the garage were still blazing. You groaned, sitting up on the couch, your spine popping in three different places in protest. The heavy velvet cushions had done nothing to fend off the damp chill of the aqueduct. A heavy, warm weight suddenly dropped onto your lap. You gasped, looking down to see Dex. The scruffy dog was wagging his tail furiously, dropping a slightly chewed, grease-stained rubber gear right onto your knees.
"Good morning to you too, buddy," you rasped, your voice thick with sleep. You scratched him behind his ears, and Dex leaned heavily into your hand, letting out a happy huff."Don't let him fool you, he just wants you to throw that," Jay's voice echoed from across the room.You squinted through the harsh light. Jay was standing by a mini-fridge tucked beneath a rack of glowing blue plasma coils, pouring a thick, steaming black liquid from a brass carafe into two mismatched ceramic mugs. He looked exactly the same as last night, though the wet-look of his spiky hair was slightly more chaotic from him running his hands through it. He walked over, his heavy boots echoing on the concrete, and shoved one of the mugs toward you. "Drink this. It tastes like battery acid, but it’ll kickstart your heart." You took the mug, wrapping your cold, stiff fingers around the warm ceramic. You took a tentative sip. He wasn't lying; it was incredibly bitter, tasting vaguely of burnt chicory and metal, but it immediately sent a jolt of heat straight to your brain. "Thanks," you mumbled, throwing the rubber gear across the room for Dex, who scrambled after it, his claws clicking on the floor. Jay sat down on the heavy metal crate he had stolen back the night before, resting his elbows on his knees, holding his own mug with both hands. His icy pale eyes locked onto you, studying your face in the harsh morning light.
"I ran secondary diagnostics on the sky-wire while you were dead to the world," he said smoothly, taking a long sip of his awful coffee.
"I wasn't dead, I was heavily resting," you defended automatically, shifting on the uncomfortable cushions. "You sleep like a brick," he corrected effortlessly. "Anyway. The bounty is still actively pinging on every major mercenary board in the city. Trap-Jaw has his entire syndicate turning the lower vertical markets upside down. They’re questioning vendors, shaking down informants."
"Did they find anything?" you asked, your grip tightening on the mug.
"No. This garage is entirely off the grid. The aqueduct walls block standard thermal scanning, and I scramble my own energy signatures. So, as long as we stay put behind these steel doors, we're ghosts."
"Okay," you nodded, feeling a tight knot of anxiety loosen slightly in your chest. "So we just lay low. A day? Two?"Jay let out a harsh breath, looking down into his mug. "Could be a week. Could be more. I have to write a custom bypass code to infiltrate the central registry and scramble our biometric tags from the wanted posters. That takes time. A lot of time. Time we have to spend staring at each other in a poorly ventilated room."You leaned forward, resting your chin on your free hand, offering him a sharp, challenging grin despite your exhaustion. "Oh, don't pretend you're not thrilled, Jay. I'm a delight to be around."
He rolled his eyes so hard you thought they might get stuck in the back of his head. "You are a walking natural disaster. You've been here less than twenty-four hours, you've ruined my car's paint job, almost gotten me vaporized, and you're already trying to steal my dog's affection."
"Dex loves me," you stated confidently, as the dog trotted back over and dropped the slobbery gear right onto your boot. "He recognizes a kindred spirit. We both appreciate a good street hustle."Jay snorted, a genuine, unguarded sound that entirely changed his face, wiping away the grimy, unapproachable edge. For a split second, he just looked like a normal guy finding something genuinely funny.
"Right," he said, shaking his head and standing up, the heavy belts at his waist clinking. "Well, kindred spirit, put the coffee down. I told you last night, you're pulling your weight." He walked over to a secondary, smaller workbench near the center of the garage. He pulled a tarp off what looked like a massive, terrifyingly complex piece of artillery. It was a twin-barrel kinetic rotary cannon, entirely disassembled. Hundreds of tiny cogs, scorched copper wires, and soot-covered brass plates were scattered chaotically across the table."I need to clean the carbon scoring off every single one of these exhaust valves," Jay instructed, grabbing a heavy, oil-stained rag and a glass bottle of what smelled like pure, concentrated turpentine. He tossed them onto the table. "Start scrubbing. And if you drop one down a floor grate, I'm throwing you into the aqueduct."You stood up, setting your empty mug down, and walked over to the bench. You looked down at the overwhelming pile of intricate, filthy parts.
You picked up a small, blackened brass valve between your thumb and forefinger. "You know," you said, looking up at him, "for a guy who sells highly illegal, face-melting weapons to crime lords, you're weirdly domestic. Giving me chores on day one?" Jay leaned across the table, bracing his large hands on the metal edge, bringing his face dangerously close to yours. The ambient light caught his pale eyes, making them look like cracked ice. "I sell weapons to anyone who pays," he corrected, his voice dropping an octave, instantly losing the playful banter. "I don't care about syndicate politics, and I don't care about the street wars. I care about my tech. And right now, my tech is the only thing standing between you and a very short, very painful future. So scrub."
He pulled back, grabbing a hydro-spanner, and turned his back to you, walking over to his primary workbench. You watched him for a second, the harsh reality of his words settling heavily over you. He wasn't playing a game. He wasn't just a gear-head; he was a survivor in a city that actively tried to eat people alive. And right now, his meticulous nature was keeping you both breathing. You didn't argue. You uncorked the glass bottle, poured a generous amount of foul-smelling solvent onto the rag, and started scrubbing the valve. The first few hours of Day One were agonizing. The solvent burned your nose, the brass valves tore at your cuticles, and your shoulder still throbbed from the chase the night before. Jay worked in total silence, occasionally blasting that same aggressive synth-punk music, totally lost in his own world. By mid-afternoon, you had managed to clean exactly twenty valves. Your hands were black with soot, and your back ached from hunching over the table.
"You're holding the rag wrong," Jay's voice suddenly cut through the music.
You jumped, dropping a valve with a clatter. You looked up. He was leaning against the pillar next to your workbench, casually eating from a foil packet of compressed synthetic rations. He pointed the packet at your hands.
"You're just smearing the carbon around," he critiqued, walking over. He set his food down and reached out, his large, calloused hands closing gently over yours.
You froze. His hands were incredibly warm compared to the chill of the room. He guided your fingers, readjusting your grip on the heavy canvas rag.
"Pinch the edge of the valve, and twist the rag against the grain of the brass," he murmured, standing just behind your shoulder. "Like this. Let the solvent do the work, not your wrist." He guided your hand through the motion. The thick, black carbon immediately flaked off, revealing the bright, shining gold of the brass underneath.
"Oh," you breathed out, staring at the clean piece of metal.
Jay stepped back, picking his food back up. "You're a thief. I thought you'd be better with your hands."
"I pick locks and slip pockets," you shot back, rubbing your thumb over the clean brass, trying to ignore the lingering warmth on the back of your hand. "I don't usually scrub heavy artillery."
"Well, consider this your vocational training," he deadpanned, walking back to his own bench. "If we survive this, you can put 'Kinetic Weaponry Maintenance' on your resume."
"I'll be sure to list you as a reference," you replied dryly.
"Don't. I'd give you a terrible review. You complain too much."
You couldn't help it; a small laugh escaped you. You picked up the next valve, adjusting your grip exactly the way he showed you. It was tedious, filthy work, but as the hours ticked by, the silence between you two felt a little less hostile, and a little more like a truce. You were stuck here, hidden away from the neon chaos of Meridian, with nothing but a dog, a pile of weapons, and the most irritatingly handsome mechanic in the city.
It was going to be a very long week.
The second day of your indefinite hostage situation began with a violent cramp in your left calf and the distinct feeling that you had swallowed a mouthful of industrial sawdust. You groaned, peeling your face off the battered velvet cushions of the couch. The damp, heavy chill of the hidden aqueduct had thoroughly settled into your bones overnight. You sat up, your spine popping in a staccato rhythm that sounded uncomfortably loud in the cavernous garage. You rubbed your eyes, trying to blink away the harsh, buzzing glare of the fluorescent overhead lights.
From somewhere deep within the chaotic labyrinth of workbenches and stacked spare parts, you heard the rhythmic, grating sound of metal grinding against metal, accompanied by the muffled baseline of that same aggressive, underground synth-punk music. You swung your legs over the edge of the couch, your boots hitting the oil-stained concrete. "I know you're awake," a deep, raspy voice called out over the music. "You stopped sounding like a dying asthmatic about ten minutes ago."
You scowled, wrapping your oversized canvas jacket tighter around your shoulders. You shuffled around a towering stack of rusted shipping pallets to find Jay.
He was lying flat on his back on a wooden mechanic’s creeper, slid halfway underneath the front chassis of his matte black muscle car. His heavy, metal-hardware boots rested on the floor, the stacked leather belts around his waist clinking softly as he shifted his weight. He was wearing the same tight black turtleneck, completely unapologetic about the fact that he looked like he had just walked off a gritty, underground fashion runway rather than spending the night sleeping in a subterranean chop-shop. Dex was sitting obediently by Jay’s boots, his tail thumping a happy rhythm against the concrete. The dog had a heavy, grease-stained socket wrench held gently in his mouth. "Wrench," Jay mumbled from under the car. Dex immediately dropped the tool. Jay’s large, calloused hand reached out from the shadows of the undercarriage, snatched the wrench, and disappeared back into the machinery. "You're a menace, you know that?" you rasped, walking over to the mini-fridge and pulling out the brass carafe of yesterday’s terrible coffee. It was lukewarm, but you poured it into a mug anyway. "Some people say 'good morning.' Some people ask if you slept well."
"I don't care if you slept well," Jay replied, his voice strained as he yanked hard on a stubborn bolt. "I care if my plasma injectors are aligned. Hand me the multi-meter, gremlin. It's on the red toolbox." You took a sip of the bitter sludge, grimaced, and walked over to the toolbox. You picked up a handheld device covered in dials and wires and knelt down next to the car, tapping it against his heavy boot. Jay rolled out from under the chassis with a smooth push of his heels. He let out a long exhale, wiping a streak of sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. It didn't help; he just managed to smear a fresh streak of black grease directly across the bridge of his nose. It sat starkly against his naturally tan skin, right over the heavy dusting of freckles that bridged his cheekbones. His hair, styled in that chaotic, spiky wet-look, somehow completely defied gravity, standing perfectly on end even after he had been rolling around on the floor. He reached up, pulling his wraparound sporty sunglasses down from where they had been resting on top of his head, settling them over his eyes. Even through the tinted lenses, you could feel the weight of his icy, pale gaze assessing you.
"You look terrible," he observed deadpan. "I slept on a couch that smells like a wet dog and broken dreams," you shot back, handing him the multi-meter. "What's his excuse, anyway?" You pointed at Dex, who was currently sniffing your boot with intense interest. "I've never seen a dog like him in the upper districts. He looks like he was assembled from spare parts." Jay took the meter, a genuine, albeit faint, smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He reached out and ruffled Dex’s scruffy, wiry fur. "He's a Meridian Wire-Hound," Jay said, his voice softening just a fraction, the irritation bleeding out when he talked about the dog. "They're a scrap-yard breed. Most syndicates use them to sniff out valuable metals in the junkyards because their noses are highly sensitive to electrical currents and chemical oxidization. But Dex was a runt. His old owner was going to toss him into the incinerator because he was gun-shy. Didn't like the sound of plasma fire."
You looked down at the dog, your heart doing a pathetic little ache. You crouched down, scratching Dex behind the ears. "You saved him?" "I bought him for half a credit and a half-eaten sandwich," Jay corrected smoothly, rolling back under the car. "Don't try to make me sound noble. I just needed someone to guard the passenger seat."
"Right. Completely heartless mercenary. Got it." You stood back up, taking another sip of your awful coffee. "So, heartless mercenary, what are we eating for breakfast? Because if my stomach growls any louder, the bounty hunters are going to hear us through the walls."
A silver foil packet flew out from under the car, hitting you square in the chest. You fumbled, catching it before it hit the floor. It was a compressed, synthetic protein block. It looked like a brick of grey clay. "Eat up," Jay's muffled voice called out. "And then get over to the secondary workbench. I have a job for you."
"I thought my job was to sit quietly and regret my life choices."
"That was yesterday," Jay grunted. "Today, you're earning your keep." You choked down the protein block—which tasted exactly like chalk mixed with beef bouillon—and trudged over to the smaller workbench. Sitting in the center of the scarred metal table was a massive, rusted iron bucket. It was filled to the brim with thousands of tiny, glass-encased micro-fuses. They were no bigger than a thumbnail, each one containing a microscopic, hair-thin filament that glowed faintly in different colors. Jay rolled out from under the car again, wiping his hands on a filthy canvas rag. He walked over, towering over you, looking down at the bucket.
"This is the firing matrix for the rotary cannon," he explained, pointing a grease-stained finger at the chaotic pile. "I need them sorted. By color, and by resistance. Red filaments are volatile—they handle the explosive charge. Blue is kinetic force. Green is grounding." He reached over, dropping three empty metal trays onto the table in front of you. "Red in the left tray, blue in the middle, green on the right. Do not, under any circumstances, mix the red and the blue in the same tray once they are out of the bucket. If they scrape against each other and create a static spark, they will blow a hole through this table and take your hands with them. Do you understand?" You stared at the bucket, the sheer volume of tiny fuses making your eyes cross. "You're giving me explosives to sort? Are you insane?"
"I'm giving you a tedious task to keep you busy and out of my way," he corrected, turning his back on you and walking toward his primary workbench. "Just sort them, gremlin. Slowly. I have to calibrate the targeting optics, and I can't concentrate with you hovering."You let out a heavy sigh, pulling up a wobbly stool and sitting down. "Fine. But if I blow off my hands, you're tying my shoelaces for the rest of my life."
"I'd just buy you slip-ons," he fired back without missing a beat. You started sorting. It was mind-numbingly tedious work. The fuses were tiny, slippery, and covered in a thin layer of protective oil. You carefully picked them out one by one, squinting at the microscopic filaments under the harsh desk lamp, placing red in the left, blue in the middle, and green on the right. For a long time, the only sounds in the garage were the clinking of the glass fuses, the low hum of the synth-punk music, and the crackle of Jay's welding torch. Eventually, your eyes started to blur, and your attention drifted. You found yourself watching Jay. He had put on a pair of heavy, brass welding goggles over his pale eyes, the dark lenses obscuring his eyes completely.
The bright, blinding blue sparks of the blowtorch illuminated the sharp line of his jaw and the corded muscles of his forearms as he worked. There was an incredible, mesmerizing contrast to him. He dressed like a chaotic, underground street punk who didn't care about anything, but he handled the volatile, complex machinery with the delicate, reverent precision of a surgeon. He leaned back, turning off the torch, and pushed the heavy goggles up onto his forehead, settling them into his spiky hair. He grabbed a small, intricate copper gear, and without thinking, popped it into his mouth, holding it between his teeth while he used both hands to adjust a heavy brass plate. You stared. You couldn't help it. The combination of the grease smudges, the heavy belts, the dangerous tech, and the fact that he was currently holding a piece of a deadly weapon in his teeth was incredibly, infuriatingly distracting. "If you stare any harder, you're going to burn a hole through my turtleneck," Jay mumbled around the gear, not looking up from his work. You jumped, nearly dropping a blue fuse. "I wasn't staring! I was... observing. I'm trying to learn the trade."
He took the gear out of his mouth, snapping it perfectly into place with a sharp click. He turned his head to look at you, resting his hands on his hips. The pale, icy eyes locked onto you from across the room. "You've sorted maybe two hundred fuses in an hour," he drawled, his voice thick with sarcastic judgment. "My grandmother could sort faster than that, and she's been dead for ten years."
"Your grandmother probably didn't have the threat of spontaneous combustion hanging over her head!" you argued, gesturing wildly to the trays. "These things are tiny! And my hands are cramping!"
"Then stretch your fingers and keep going," he said, turning back to his cannon. "I don't run a charity." You scowled at his back, muttering a string of highly uncharitable insults under your breath. You reached back into the bucket, your fingers digging deep to grab a handful of fuses.As you pulled your hand out, a particularly slippery red fuse shot out from between your fingers. It hit the edge of the metal bucket, bounced off the table, and hit the concrete floor, rolling rapidly under the heavy iron legs of your workbench, right toward a rusted floor grate."Oh, no," you gasped, dropping to your knees.You scrambled under the table, reaching for it. Your fingers brushed the glass casing, but you just managed to push it further away, directly to the edge of the dark, gaping grate.
If it fell in, it was gone forever.Panic seized you. Jay was going to kill you. He was going to feed you to the syndicates. You needed a tool. You looked frantically around the legs of the workbench. Sitting on the bottom shelf was a long, heavy metal rod with a thick, flat disc on the end. It looked like a magnetic sweeper, the kind mechanics used to pick up dropped screws and loose metal shavings. Perfect. You grabbed the heavy handle, leaned deep under the table, and extended the rod. The flat disc hovered right over the edge of the grate. You clicked the activation switch on the handle.The rod hummed with a sudden, violent surge of power.You didn't realize until it was exactly one second too late that it wasn't a standard, low-grade magnet. It was an industrial, hyper-polarized electromagnetic coil.The red fuse shot up from the grate, smacking onto the magnetic disc with a sharp clack."Got it," you whispered victoriously.And then, the magnetic field expanded.The hum grew instantly louder, vibrating the iron legs of the workbench. On the table above you, the massive, rusted iron bucket violently shuddered.
ZAP. CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
A terrifying, metallic waterfall sound erupted above you. You froze, slowly pulling yourself out from under the table, the active magnetic rod still in your hand. You stood up, looking at your workstation. The three neatly sorted trays were entirely empty. The iron bucket was empty. Instead, every single glass-encased micro-fuse—all the thousands of red, blue, and green filaments—had been violently magnetically pulled from their containers. They were now clumped together in a massive, chaotic, basketball-sized sphere of glass and metal, magnetically fused to the heavy iron body of the desk lamp directly above the table.It looked like a horrifying, multicolored beehive. And because the red and blue fuses were now aggressively smashed against each other, the entire sphere was emitting a low, angry, crackling sound, tiny sparks jumping between the glass casings.The synth-punk music across the garage suddenly cut off.You didn't dare breathe. You didn't move. You just stared in absolute horror at the crackling sphere of imminent death. Slowly, you turned your head. Jay was standing at his workbench. He had completely stopped moving. The blowtorch in his hand was off. His shoulders were incredibly stiff. He slowly reached up, pulled the welding goggles off his head, and tossed them onto the table. They landed with a heavy, final thud. He turned around, his face completely devoid of expression, and walked slowly, deliberately toward you.He stopped exactly three feet away. He looked at the empty bucket. He looked at the empty trays. He looked at the industrial electromagnet still humming in your hand. And finally, he looked up at the massive, sparking sphere of highly volatile explosives stuck to the lamp.
He didn't yell. He didn't curse. Instead, Jay closed his eyes, tilted his head back toward the ceiling, and let out a sigh.It was a staggering, monumental display of human exhaustion. It wasn't just an exhalation of breath; it was the sound of a man’s soul physically leaving his body, packing its bags, and moving to a different, less stressful dimension. The sigh lasted for an impossible amount of time, his broad chest deflating, his spiky hair seeming to droop in sympathy.
When he finally finished, he slowly lowered his head, pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger—dragging yet another streak of black grease across his freckles—and opened his icy pale eyes. "I explicitly said," Jay whispered, his voice dangerously, unnervingly calm, "do not let the red and blue touch."
"I... I dropped one," you stammered, your voice pitching up an octave in sheer panic. "It was going to fall in the grate! I just used the sweeper to grab it!"
"That is an industrial magnetic lifter," Jay said, his voice remaining terrifyingly level. "It is used to pull engine blocks out of hover-tanks. You used it to pick up a fuse that weighs less than a paperclip."
"I didn't read the label!" you defended weakly. "There is a giant, yellow radioactive warning symbol on the handle!" he finally snapped, his composure cracking, gesturing wildly at the rod in your hand. "Drop it! Turn it off and drop it before you magnetize the actual room!" You fumbled with the switch, immediately killing the power, and dropped the heavy rod onto the floor with a clatter.
The magnetic field died. The massive, sparking sphere of fuses instantly detached from the desk lamp and crashed onto the table, shattering the glass casings of dozens of fuses and sending thousands of tiny, mixed red, blue, and green components scattering wildly across the floor, under the table, and into every possible crack in the concrete. The silence that followed was deafening.
Dex trotted over, sniffed a green fuse that had rolled near his paw, and sneezed.
Jay stared at the mess. He rested his hands on his hips, his heavy belts clinking, and let his head hang forward. "I am going to kill you," he stated matter-of-factly. "I'm going to chop you up, put you in the trunk of my car, and I'm going to drive you into the ocean."
"It was an accident!" you cried out, throwing your hands up. "How was I supposed to know the magnet was that strong?!"
"Because you're in a weapons lab, you absolute catastrophe!" he yelled, finally breaking, throwing his hands in the air. "Nothing in here is safe! The coffee maker could probably blow up a city block if you pushed the wrong button! You have set my production schedule back by three days!"
"I'll clean it up!" you offered frantically, dropping to your knees and immediately starting to scoop up handfuls of the mixed, scattered fuses. "I'll sort them again! I'll do it twice as fast!" Jay let out another groan, rubbing his face with both hands. He grabbed the wobbly stool, dragged it over, and collapsed onto it, sitting amidst the sea of scattered parts. "Don't scoop them," he ordered tiredly, dropping his hands. "The glass is shattered on half of them. You'll cut your hands open."
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of heavy, insulated rubber tweezers, and tossed them onto the floor next to you. He pulled out a second pair for himself.
"Pick them up one by one. Check the filament. If the glass is cracked, put it in the discard pile. If it's whole, sort it." You sat cross-legged on the cold concrete floor, picking up the heavy tweezers. You looked up at him. He was sitting on the stool, hunched over, already meticulously picking up tiny shards of glass and sorting the unbroken fuses back into the trays he had placed on the floor. His jaw was tight, the muscles ticking in his cheek. "I really am sorry, Jay," you said quietly, the bravado completely gone. He didn't look up. He just picked up a blue fuse, placed it in the middle tray, and sighed again, though this one was much softer.
"Just sort, gremlin," he mumbled. For the next two hours, you sat on the floor together, meticulously picking up thousands of tiny pieces of glass and metal. The anger slowly bled out of the room, replaced by a quiet, focused monotony.
It was strangely intimate, sitting on the floor of the grimy garage, your knees almost brushing against his heavy boots. "Why do you do this?" you asked quietly, breaking the silence. Jay paused, a red fuse held delicately in his tweezers. He looked down at you, his eyes reflecting the harsh overhead light. "Do what? Subject myself to the torture of your presence?"
"No," you rolled your eyes. "Why are you a freelance weaponsmith? You're clearly brilliant. You could work for any of the major guilds in the upper districts. You wouldn't have to live in a damp aqueduct and dodge syndicate bounties." Jay scoffed, a bitter, cynical sound, and dropped the red fuse into the tray. "The guilds are worse than the syndicates. They just wear nicer suits. I worked for the Ironwork Guild for three years. Built stabilization cores for their automated security drones." He leaned his forearms on his knees, the tweezers dangling loosely from his long fingers. He looked past you, staring at a stain on the concrete. "They tell you you're building tech to keep the city safe," he continued, his voice dropping, losing its usual snarky edge. "But then you realize they're just selling those drones to the highest bidder to suppress the riots in the lower districts. They put a patent on your brain, tell you what to build, who to build it for, and if you ask questions, they wipe your credentials." He looked back down at you. The boyish recklessness was entirely gone, revealing a hardened, cynical core that you hadn't seen before. "I don't like rules," Jay stated simply. "And I don't like people telling me what to do with my own hands. Out here, I build what I want. I sell to who I want. Trap-Jaw is a monster, sure, but he's an honest monster. He pays up front, and he doesn't pretend to be saving the world. I prefer the honest monsters." You stared at him, absorbing the weight of his words. He wasn't just a chaotic gear-head making a quick credit; he was a guy who had actively chosen the dangerous, dirty fringes of the world over the suffocating, corrupt safety of the center.
"I get it," you said softly. "I grew up in the lower districts. The guilds don't care about us down there. Stealing from the syndicates... it was just a way to level the playing field." Jay watched you for a long moment, his icy eyes searching your face. The irritation from the massive mess you had just made seemed to fade entirely, replaced by a quiet, begrudging understanding. "Well," Jay finally said, his voice a low, rough rumble. "You level the playing field like a wrecking ball.” He reached out, and for a split second, you thought he was going to touch your face. Instead, he reached past your ear, his tweezers plucking a tiny, green fuse out of your messy hair. He held it up, offering a slow, genuine smirk. "Green goes in the right tray, gremlin."
You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding, a small smile breaking across your face. "Right. Sorry."
"Don't apologize," he said, turning back to the mess on the floor. "Just pick up the pace. If we don't finish this by dinner, I'm feeding your synthetic protein block to Dex."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me."
Day three of your subterranean exile began with a quiet, mutual agreement that the synthetic protein blocks were a crime against humanity, and day four introduced the very real threat of cabin fever. The cavernous garage inside the abandoned aqueduct was massive, but when you were trapped inside it with a highly lethal, chronically irritated weaponsmith and a dog that liked to chew on heavy machinery, the walls started to feel like they were shrinking. The damp, heavy chill of the stone walls was a constant companion, only fended off by the ambient heat radiating from Jay's various welding torches and the humming engine block of his pristine, matte black muscle car. You had quickly learned the exact rhythm of Jay’s life. He didn't adhere to a normal sleep schedule; he operated in frantic bursts of hyper-focused genius followed by sudden, heavy crashes on his creeper board under the car. You also learned that his terrifying, icy pale gaze was significantly less intimidating when he was wearing a pair of fuzzy, mismatched socks he had found in a storage crate, a stark and hilarious contrast to his heavy leather belts and tight black turtleneck. By the afternoon of the fourth day, the boredom had settled deep into your bones.
You had already reorganized his entire wrench drawer—which had earned you a ten-minute lecture on his highly specific, chaotic categorization system—and Dex was currently napping, exhausted from chasing the beam of a laser sight you had found in a scrap bin. You needed a project. And as you stared at the brass carafe sitting on the mini-fridge, inspiration struck.Jay was across the garage at his massive, multi-screen terminal. He had been stationed there for the last fourteen hours, his spiky, wet-look hair an absolute disaster of piecey strands sticking up in every direction from him constantly running his hands through it in frustration. The glowing red light of the holographic displays cast sharp shadows across his naturally tan face, illuminating the dusting of freckles over his nose and the permanent smudge of black grease on his jawline. He was typing with a ferocious, blinding speed, trying to slice into the Meridian Central Registry to erase the two-hundred-thousand-credit bounty hovering over your heads.
He was entirely engrossed in the cascading green and gold code. He wouldn't notice a little bit of structural modification happening ten feet away.
You grabbed a small hydro-spanner, a coil of copper wire, and a discarded thermal regulator from the "safe" junk pile Jay had designated for you. If his coffee tasted like battery acid and burnt chicory, it was clearly because the brass percolator wasn't filtering the water through the synthetic beans fast enough. It just needed more pressure.You sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, humming quietly to yourself as you unscrewed the bottom plate of the carafe.
"Whatever you are doing over there," Jay’s deep, gravelly voice echoed across the room, completely cutting through the aggressive synth-punk blasting from his radio, "stop it."
You froze, the spanner halfway to a pressure valve. "I'm not doing anything. I'm sitting quietly."
"You are sitting quietly with tools," he corrected without turning around, his fingers never pausing on the physical keyboard. "Which means you are currently engineering a disaster. Put the spanner down, gremlin."
"I am trying to improve our quality of life!" you argued indignantly, standing up and holding the partially disassembled coffee maker. "Your coffee tastes like a liquidated boot! I'm just adjusting the thermal regulator to flash-boil the water. It’s simple thermodynamics." Jay finally stopped typing. His broad shoulders visibly stiffened beneath his black turtleneck. He slowly turned his chair around. His pale eyes narrowed into a deadly, exhausted glare. "You attached a thermal regulator to a pressurized brass vessel?" he asked, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper.
"Just a small one," you defended, suddenly feeling a spike of genuine panic. "To speed up the brew time."
"Put it down."
"Jay, I think I know how to make coffee—"
"Y/N, gently place the localized pipe bomb on the floor and step away from it." You looked down at the carafe. The copper wire you had wrapped around the base was beginning to glow a faint, angry orange. The brass was vibrating. A high-pitched, tea-kettle whistling sound started to emanate from the spout. "Oh," you squeaked.
You carefully bent your knees, placed the vibrating carafe onto the concrete floor, and scrambled backward behind the safety of the battered velvet couch.
Jay didn't even flinch. He just reached up, pulled his wraparound sporty sunglasses down from his forehead to cover his eyes, and crossed his arms.
POP-HISSSSS-BANG. The bottom of the carafe blew out with the force of a small firecracker. A geyser of boiling hot, sludgy black coffee and synthetic grounds erupted into the air, raining down like dark, caffeinated snow over the mini-fridge, the spare tire rack, and unfortunately, a solid portion of Jay’s terminal desk.
Dex bolted awake with a yelp, scrambling under the matte black muscle car for safety. Silence descended on the garage, save for the pathetic dripping of coffee sliding off the fluorescent light fixtures. You slowly peeked your head over the top of the couch. Jay was sitting completely still in his chair. A thick, wet blob of coffee grounds was plastered directly in the center of his forehead, slowly sliding down the bridge of his nose, right between his pale, tinted lenses. His black turtleneck was speckled with brown sludge. He didn't yell. He didn't dramatically sigh like he had with the fuse incident. He simply raised one hand, elegantly wiped the wet grounds off his freckles with his thumb, and flicked the sludge onto the floor.
"Well," Jay said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "The good news is, the brew time was incredibly fast." "I... I can wipe that up," you offered weakly, slowly standing up from behind the couch.
"Don't touch anything," he ordered, holding up a hand. He pulled his sunglasses off, revealing eyes that looked like they were about to freeze you solid. "If you try to clean the monitors, you will inevitably short-circuit the mainframe and alert the Ironwork Guild to our exact coordinates. Sit on the couch. Put your hands in your lap. Do not perceive the tools. Do not breathe on the machinery." You quickly sat down on the velvet cushions, folding your hands neatly in your lap like a scolded child. "Understood. Sitting. Not perceiving." Jay grabbed a canvas rag and began meticulously wiping the coffee spray off his keyboards. "You are a saboteur. Trap-Jaw didn't hire you to steal my weapons; he hired you to slowly dismantle my sanity from the inside out."
"It was a calculated risk!" you shot back, the guilt fading back into your usual banter. "How was I supposed to know the brass couldn't handle the thermal output?"
"Because it’s a coffee pot, not a kinetic warhead!" he yelled, finally breaking his calm facade, throwing the wet rag onto the desk. "You don't flash-boil water in a sealed container! That’s literally chapter one of 'How Not to Explode'!" He dragged both hands through his wet-look hair, completely ruining the chaotic style and making it stand up in wild, spiky clumps. He groaned, turning back to his monitors, pulling up a fresh line of code to check for damage. "I'm sorry," you muttered, leaning your head back against the couch. "I’m just going crazy in here. You’ve been staring at that screen for two days. I don't understand why you can't just delete a picture and a number from a database. You build plasma cannons in your sleep. Hacking should be easy for you." Jay scoffed, his fingers resuming their lightning-fast dance across the keys. "It's not a simple database, gremlin. The Central Registry is heavily encrypted by the Ironwork Guild's ICE—Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. It's a massive, shifting clockwork algorithm. Every time I find a backdoor, the gears turn, the code shifts, and I'm locked out again. It's like trying to pick a lock while someone is constantly changing the shape of the keyhole." You perked up at that, shifting forward on the couch. "Wait. You're treating it like a mechanic."
"I am a mechanic," he deadpanned, glaring at the screen.
"Right, but you're trying to out-engineer the lock," you explained, standing up and walking over to his terminal, completely ignoring his previous order to stay put. You leaned over his shoulder, looking at the cascading golden symbols. "You're trying to figure out how the gears work so you can stop them."
"That is generally how dismantling things works, yes. Thank you for the profound insight."
"But I'm a thief," you pointed out, pointing a finger at the screen. "When I hit a lock I can't pick, I don't sit there trying to rebuild the tumbler. I find a different way in. I steal the key from the guard, or I go through the ventilation shaft." Jay paused, his hands hovering over the keyboard. He tilted his head back, looking up at you from his chair. His face was inches from yours, the faint smell of engine grease and burnt coffee clinging to him. The annoyance in his pale eyes shifted into a sharp, focused curiosity. "Go on," he murmured, his deep voice sending a slight shiver down your spine. "You're trying to sneak into the main vault to delete the files," you said, gesturing to the heavy, fortified blocks of red code on his screen representing the firewall. "But where do the files come from? Trap-Jaw had to submit the bounty, right? He’s a syndicate boss, not a hacker. He used a public terminal or a corrupt precinct node to upload it." Jay’s eyes widened slightly. The gears in his own head were visibly turning. "The submission nodes," Jay breathed out, his gaze snapping back to the screen. "The guild’s ICE is focused entirely on protecting the core registry from the outside. But the external submission nodes... they have automated clearance. They have to, so the city guards and bounty brokers can update the boards in real-time."
"So," you grinned, leaning heavily against his chair, "don't hack the vault. Hack the guy who walked the bounty into the building. Forge a submission from Trap-Jaw’s own local network that formally retracts the bounty. Tell the system the targets were eliminated." Jay stared at the screen for a long, silent moment. A slow, brilliant, dangerous smirk spread across his face. It entirely transformed him, wiping away the exhaustion and replacing it with the cocky, boyish recklessness that had gotten you both into this mess in the first place. "You," Jay said, his voice thrumming with sudden energy, "are a devious, magnificent criminal."
"I prefer 'Independent Retrieval Specialist,'" you corrected smugly. Jay didn't reply. His hands hit the keyboard with a renewed, violent intensity. Windows snapped open and closed on the holographic displays as he immediately pivoted his entire strategy. He wasn't fighting the massive clockwork firewall anymore; he was slipping around it, tracing the digital footprint back to the damp, brass-plated alleyway where this all started. "I need twenty minutes," Jay commanded, his eyes darting across the code. "If this works, I can spoof a biometric confirmation of our deaths from a corrupt medical droid's transponder. The registry will automatically void the bounty and clear our faces from the boards." You backed away from the terminal, feeling a massive surge of triumph. You had actually helped. You weren't just a hostage or a liability; you were the one who handed him the crowbar.
To celebrate your impending freedom, and because the absolute silence in the garage was making your ears ring, you walked over to his heavily modified, rusted cube radio. The aggressive, heavy synth-punk was still pounding out a dark, grating baseline that felt like it was rattling your teeth. You reached out, twisted the heavy brass dial, and switched the frequency. The dark, moody synth vanished, instantly replaced by the cheerful, obnoxiously upbeat brass horns and synthesized vocals of Meridian Bubble-Pop. It was a disgustingly happy song about riding hover-scooters through the neon reefs, complete with a bouncy, infectious baseline. Across the room, Jay’s fingers violently slipped on the keyboard. He hit a wrong key, causing the terminal to emit a loud, angry buzz. He slowly spun his chair around. His expression was a mixture of profound betrayal and utter disbelief. "What," Jay asked, his voice deathly quiet over the bouncy pop music, "is that sound?"
"It's ambiance," you smiled innocently, leaning against the workbench next to the radio. "We’re celebrating. It's good for morale."
"It sounds like a clown car crashing into a synth-organ," he deadpanned, standing up. The heavy metal hardware on his boots clacked against the floor as he took a step toward you. "Turn it back. I need to focus to finalize the spoof."
"You focus too hard," you argued, grabbing the heavy radio and pulling it against your chest. "You're entirely too tense. A little pop music won't kill you."
"It is actively killing my brain cells," Jay growled, taking another step. The lazy, slow walk was a predator's stalk. "Y/N. Give me the radio."
"Make me," you challenged, a wicked grin spreading across your face.
The boyish mechanic vanished. In a flash of terrifying speed, Jay lunged across the space between you. You shrieked, a breathless sound of pure laughter, and bolted. You ducked under his outstretched arm, clutching the heavy radio like a stolen prize, and sprinted around the front of his matte black muscle car.
"You absolute child!" Jay yelled, his boots slipping slightly on the oil-stained concrete as he chased you around the heavy bumper. "I am trying to save our lives!"
"You're trying to subject me to goth-mechanic depression music!" you yelled back, dodging around a stack of plasma coils.Dex, suddenly realizing a game of chase was happening, burst out from under the car with a joyful bark, scrambling wildly after the both of you, his tail wagging furiously. You rounded the velvet couch, laughing so hard your sides ached. It was the first time in four days that the crushing weight of the city wasn't pressing down on your chest. You looked back to see if he was close. He wasn't behind you. You spun forward, right into a solid wall of black turtleneck and leather belts. Jay had vaulted cleanly over the trunk of his car to cut you off. The impact knocked you off balance. You stumbled backward, the heavy velvet couch catching the back of your knees, and you tumbled downward into the dusty cushions.
Jay went down with you, his momentum carrying him forward. He caught his weight on his hands, his arms caging you in against the back of the couch, keeping his heavy frame from completely crushing you. The heavy, upbeat pop music continued to blare happily from the radio currently squished between your chest and his stomach.
You were both gasping for air, chest heaving. The laughter died in your throat, instantly replaced by a sudden, electric shock of awareness. He was entirely too close. Without his wraparound sunglasses, the proximity was devastating. His face was mere inches from yours, his icy pale eyes blown wide, his chest rising and falling heavily against yours. You could feel the heat radiating off his skin, smell the sharp, masculine scent of metal, ozone, and that dark cologne beneath the engine grease. His wet-look, spiky hair was completely messy, hanging slightly into his eyes.
He looked down at you, his gaze dropping to your lips, and for a terrifying, exhilarating second, you thought the bickering was finally going to snap into something else entirely. The tension in the air was so thick it felt like one of his kinetic shockwaves. Dex suddenly bounded up onto the couch, wedging his scruffy head directly between Jay’s shoulder and your cheek, letting out a loud, sloppy bark directly into your ear. The spell shattered. Jay blinked, the haze clearing from his eyes. He let out a low, raspy groan, entirely devoid of the previous annoyance. He shifted his weight, using one hand to gently push Dex's nose away, while his other hand reached down, effortlessly plucking the heavy radio from your grip.
He pushed himself up off the couch, his face flushed slightly beneath his tan. He didn't look at you as he twisted the brass dial, completely killing the power to the radio. The garage plunged back into a ringing silence, save for the hum of the terminal. You lay on the couch for a second, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs, feeling completely unmoored. You slowly sat up, smoothing down your oversized canvas jacket, suddenly feeling incredibly warm in the damp air.
Jay walked back to his terminal, his back stiff. He set the radio down on the desk with a heavy thunk and sank back into his chair.
"Don't touch my music," he muttered, his voice slightly hoarse.
"Noted," you breathed out, pulling your knees to your chest, trying to calm your racing pulse. He didn't say anything else. He just turned back to the glowing screens, his hands hovering over the keyboard for a second before he resumed his furious typing.
For twenty agonizing minutes, the only sound was the clacking of keys. You watched him from the couch, your mind entirely distracted from the bounty, entirely focused on the feeling of his hands caging you in, the intense, heavy look in his pale eyes before the dog interrupted. Suddenly, Jay stopped typing. He hit one final, heavy key.
The massive holographic screens, which had been glowing a violent, warning red for four straight, agonizing days, suddenly flickered. The cascading gold and green code vanished entirely, evaporating into the digital ether.
The screens flashed a brilliant, calming azure blue.
A large, official crest of the Meridian Central Registry—a stylized gear interwoven with a brass key—appeared in the center of the display. Beneath it, in bold, stark, indisputable letters, read:
BOUNTY #88492 - TARGETS: UNKNOWN THIEF & JAY THE WEAPONSMITH.
STATUS: TARGETS DECEASED. BOUNTY RETRACTED. CASE CLOSED.
You stared at the blue light illuminating the dark, damp corners of the garage, the words taking a long, heavy second to actually process in your exhausted brain. You let out a massive, undignified breath, slumping forward so your forehead rested against the edge of the terminal desk.
"Oh, thank the gears," you groaned, your voice muffled against the metal. "I am officially out of the danger zone. I am a ghost. A glorious, untraceable ghost."
"You're a dramatic ghost," Jay corrected.
He leaned back heavily in his reinforced desk chair, letting out a long, shuddering sigh of his own. He rubbed his eyes beneath the tinted lenses of his sporty wraparound glasses, the harsh lines of tension finally melting out of his broad shoulders. Trap-Jaw's local network had swallowed the bait perfectly. The fake medical droid transponder ping had confirmed your violent, unfortunate demise in an alleyway, and the Ironwork Guild’s server had wiped your biometric tags from the active hunter boards.
"We did it," you laughed, standing back up and stretching your arms over your head. Your spine popped in a rapid-fire sequence. "Jay, you're a genius. An incredibly grumpy genius, but a genius nonetheless."
"Don't let it go to your head. You're the one who pointed out the backdoor in the submission node," Jay replied, standing up and stretching his long legs. He grabbed a filthy canvas rag from the desk and absentmindedly wiped a smear of engine grease off his hands. "Though I’ll deny it if you ever tell anyone I took hacking advice from a street thief who doesn't know how to use a thermal regulator."
"Your secret is safe with my officially deceased alter ego," you promised, crossing your heart.
Jay walked past you, his heavy, metal-hardware boots thudding against the concrete, heading straight toward the massive, camouflage-painted steel doors of the garage. He aggressively tapped a sequence into the rusted wall panel.
With a deafening, metallic groan that shook the dust from the rafters, the heavy doors began to slide open.
The damp, earthy smell of the overgrown aqueduct flooded the garage, instantly mixing with the distant, chaotic, intoxicating scent of Meridian—ozone, roasted synthetic meats, venting steam, and rain on hot pavement. The bruised purple and electric tangerine light of the city's perpetual sunset spilled across the oil-stained floor.
You tapped the heavy brass comm-link strapped to your wrist, punching in the frequency for the local transit guild.
"Automated air-taxi to the aqueduct perimeter," you ordered into the receiver. The comm-link chirped twice in confirmation.
You walked over to the open doorway, the humid, tropical air of the city immediately wrapping around you. You zipped your faded, oversized canvas jacket up a few inches, feeling the familiar, chaotic pulse of the city calling you back to your normal routine.
"Well," you said, turning back to look at Jay. He was leaning casually against the control panel, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dirt-smudged track jacket, his tight black turtleneck perfectly neat despite the chaos of the last four days. Dex was sitting happily by his boots, his tail thumping against the wall. "I'd say it's been a pleasure, Jay, but honestly, your coffee took at least three years off my life, and I never want to see another micro-fuse as long as I live."
Jay snorted, a genuine, dry sound of amusement. He rolled his icy pale eyes behind his glasses, shaking his head.
"The feeling is entirely mutual, gremlin," he drawled, his voice a low, raspy rumble. "Do me a favor. Try not to immediately steal from another heavily armed syndicate on your way home. I am officially retiring from my brief career as your personal bodyguard."
"No promises," you grinned, walking over to crouch in front of Dex. You aggressively scratched the wiry hound behind his ears, and he let out a happy, sloppy huff, licking your knuckle. "Stay out of the engine blocks, buddy. And don't let him feed you those grey chalk blocks. Demand the premium meat."
A low, vibrating hum began to echo from the sky outside. A bulky, teardrop-shaped air-taxi made of riveted brass and glowing teal thrusters descended from the purple smog, hovering unsteadily a few feet off the rusted service road. The gull-wing door popped open with a hiss of pressurized steam.
You stood up, dusting off your cargo pants. You offered Jay a mock-formal bow. "Thanks for not throwing me into the aqueduct."
"There's always next time," Jay deadpanned. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and offered a lazy, effortless two-finger salute. "See you around, Y/N."
"Catch you later, mechanic," you smiled, turning around and hopping into the cramped, leather-scented interior of the air-taxi.
You dropped heavily into the passenger seat as the automated brass droid mounted in the dashboard clicked its gears. "Destination recognized. Lower Vertical Markets, Sector Four. Engaging thrusters."
The gull-wing door hissed shut. Through the scratched plexiglass window, you saw Jay turn around and hit the panel to close the garage doors. As the taxi's thrusters roared to life and lifted you into the sky-lanes, the massive steel doors slammed shut, sealing the brilliant, chaotic weaponsmith back into his subterranean fortress.
The ride back to the lower markets was a blur of neon lights and rushing wind. It felt incredibly good to be out of the damp, enclosed space, watching the familiar sights of Meridian speed by. Holographic advertisements blared jingles for glowing fruit, hover-skiffs zipped past on the magnetic rails, and towering clockwork gears turned slowly in the distance. It was just another normal, chaotic Tuesday. You had survived. That was the job.
The taxi abruptly dropped altitude, the repulsor lifts whining as it navigated the dense, claustrophobic architecture of Sector Four. The neon lights here were flickering and broken, the brass was tarnished green with oxidation, and the air smelled heavily of cheap fuel.
The taxi hovered next to a rusted iron catwalk clinging to the side of a massive, residential spire. You paid the droid fare with a tap of your wrist-comm, stepped out onto the grating, and the taxi immediately zoomed away into the smog.
You walked down the catwalk, your heavy boots echoing hollowly. You reached your door—a heavy, dented slab of corrugated steel—and pressed your thumb against the biometric scanner. It clicked green.
You pushed the door open, stepped inside, and kicked it shut behind you with the heel of your boot, locking the heavy deadbolt.
Your apartment was exactly the cluttered disaster you had left it as. Faded clothes were draped over a rickety chair, half-empty mugs of stale synthetic tea littered the cramped kitchenette, and your bed was a chaotic nest of blankets shoved into the corner. The singular window overlooked a hissing steam pipe.
It wasn't a palace, but it was yours.
You shrugged off your oversized canvas jacket, tossing it onto the floor, and collapsed face-first onto the unmade bed with a loud, exhausted groan. The mattress was lumpy, but compared to Jay's velvet couch, it felt like a cloud.
You rolled onto your back, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.
Your mind casually wandered back to the aqueduct. It was a weird four days. You pictured Jay, holding a glowing copper gear between his teeth while he adjusted his welding goggles, looking entirely unbothered by the fact that he was essentially a walking fire hazard. He was a complete weirdo. A highly skilled, incredibly annoying weirdo with a severe attitude problem, an obsession with his matte black car, and a surprisingly soft spot for a scrap-yard dog.
You let out a soft snort of amusement, shaking your head. Yeah. A total weirdo.
Suddenly, a loud, violent rumble echoed through the quiet apartment.
You blinked, sitting up slightly. The rumble sounded again, deeper and more insistent this time. It wasn't the steam pipes outside. It was your stomach.
You pressed a hand to your abdomen, wincing. Your body, completely freed from the adrenaline of being hunted by the Copper Reef Syndicate, had finally realized that it had been subsisting entirely on Jay’s terrible, chalk-flavored synthetic protein blocks and battery-acid coffee for nearly a week.
"Right," you muttered to the empty room, swinging your legs off the bed. "Food. Real, actual food."
You padded over to the cramped kitchenette, completely abandoning any lingering thoughts of spiky-haired mechanics. You pulled open a squeaky tin cabinet and grabbed a brightly colored styrofoam cup of synthetic spicy ramen.
You cracked the seal, shoved it under the brass hot-water dispenser, and leaned against the counter, waiting for the noodles to soften. The bounty was gone, you were alive, and you had a hot meal coming in exactly three minutes.
Just a normal day in Meridian.
Two weeks was a surprisingly long time to stay dead.
In the sprawling, chaotic metropolis of Meridian, dying usually meant you became a permanent fixture in the local incinerator or fish food down in the Copper Reefs. But for you, "deceased" was just a bureaucratic status update on the Ironwork Guild’s central server.
Still, you weren't stupid. You knew how the syndicates operated. Trap-Jaw might have received a forged ping confirming your violent demise, but street rumors had a nasty habit of drifting upward like steam from the grating. So, you played it safe. You abandoned your tiny apartment in Sector Four, leaving behind the lumpy mattress and the squeaky tin cabinets, and relocated even deeper into the underbelly of the city.
Your new "low-down" place was in Sector Six, a subterranean district where the neon lights flickered out more often than they stayed on, and the air perpetually smelled of oxidized copper and synthetic sulfur. It was a windowless, converted storage container suspended over a rushing drainage canal. It was cramped, it was damp, and it was entirely off the grid. Perfect for a ghost.
For fourteen days, you had played the part perfectly. You kept your oversized canvas jacket pulled tight, kept your head down, and stuck to the shadows. You survived on pre-packaged synthetic noodles and whatever loose credits you had stashed in your boots.
But a thief’s itch is a difficult thing to ignore.
You were an Independent Retrieval Specialist. The adrenaline of the hustle, the puzzle of a heavily guarded lock, the absolute thrill of slipping away with something that didn't belong to you—it was in your blood. Laying low felt like suffocating.
It happened on a rainy Tuesday evening. The sky above the vertical markets was a bruised, heavy purple, weeping a steady, warm drizzle that made the brass walkways slick and treacherous. You were walking back to your storage container, your hands shoved deep into your pockets, the collar of your jacket turned up against the damp chill.
That’s when you heard it.
It was a sound so familiar it made the hair on the back of your neck stand up: the heavy, metallic clink of physical platinum credit chips hitting a velvet pouch, followed by the low, vibrating hum of illegal plasma-tech powering up.
It was coming from a narrow, unlit alleyway wedged between a crumbling clock-repair shop and a defunct steam-laundromat.
You stopped walking. Your brain immediately supplied a dozen entirely logical reasons why you should keep your head down and keep walking. You were supposed to be dead. You were supposed to be laying low.
But curiosity was a terminal disease, and a distraction always meant an opportunity for theft. If two rival gangs were doing a high-level exchange in a back alley, there was bound to be collateral left unguarded. Just a quick peek. Just to see if there was a stray cred-stick or a misplaced piece of tech you could fence for better food than chalky protein blocks.
You slipped into the shadows, your heavy boots making no sound on the wet cobblestones. You pressed your back against the cold, damp brick of the laundromat, inching your way down the alley. The voices grew louder.
"The stabilizing cores are degraded," a rough, modulated voice argued. "I'm not paying full price for tech that's gonna blow up in my enforcers' hands."
"Then don't buy 'em," a second, sleazier voice shot back. "But good luck finding someone else selling Ironwork Guild surplus this far down."
You reached a stack of rusted, iron oil drums. You silently pulled yourself up, using the heavy rivets for footholds, until you could peek over the top.
There were four men in the dead end of the alley. Two thugs in heavy, waterproof trench coats were standing guard over an open, glowing briefcase full of glowing blue cores. The boss—a tall, skeletal cyborg with glowing red optic implants—was arguing with the seller.
Your eyes darted around the scene. The seller had a secondary, smaller duffel bag resting on the ground near a pile of garbage bags. Unguarded. Out of the immediate line of sight.
Easy money, you thought, a familiar smirk pulling at the corner of your mouth.
You shifted your weight on the oil drum, preparing to drop down and circle around the back.
"You know," a voice whispered directly into your right ear, the breath hot against your cold skin. "For a ghost, you make a hell of a lot of noise."
Your blood turned to absolute ice.
Before you could react, a massive, heavy hand clamped over your mouth, and a thick arm wrapped around your waist. You were violently yanked backward off the oil drum.
You hit the wet cobblestones hard, the breath exploding from your lungs in a muffled gasp. You scrambled wildly, kicking out with your heavy boots, but the man who had grabbed you simply pinned your legs down with his knee.
He was a massive, hulking brute, wearing a patch over one eye and a heavy, spiked leather collar. He was the lookout. You had been so focused on the exchange that you hadn't even bothered to check your blind spots. Amateur mistake. A fatal mistake.
The brute kept his hand clamped over your mouth, his one good eye squinting down at your face in the dim, amber light of the alleyway.
He leaned closer, his brow furrowing as he analyzed your features. The oversized canvas jacket. The patched cargo pants. The wide, panicked eyes.
Suddenly, the brute’s single eye widened in absolute shock.
"Well, I'll be damned," the lookout breathed out, an ugly, predatory grin stretching across his scarred face. "Trap-Jaw’s boys said they scraped you off the pavement two weeks ago. But I never forget a face with a two-hundred-thousand credit tag attached to it."
He knew. The bounty might be officially closed on the registry, but the street never forgot a payday that big. If he dragged you back to the Copper Reef Syndicate alive, Trap-Jaw would gladly reopen his wallet.
Pure, unadulterated panic flooded your veins. You couldn't let him call out to the others.
You stopped struggling against his grip, letting your body go entirely limp. The brute, expecting a fight, instinctively loosened his hold just a fraction, thinking you had given up.
It was all the room you needed.
You violently jerked your head forward and bit down as hard as humanly possible on the meaty part of the hand covering your mouth.
The brute let out a muffled roar of pain, yanking his hand back. "You little—!"
You didn't hesitate. You drove the heel of your heavy boot straight up into his kneecap with a sickening crack.
He stumbled backward, cursing loudly, his weight shifting off you. You scrambled to your feet, the wet cobblestones slick under your boots. You turned to run, but the brute lunged, his massive hand catching the thick canvas fabric of your jacket.
He yanked you backward with terrifying force. You flew through the air, slamming spine-first into the solid brick wall of the laundromat. The impact rattled your teeth and sent a blinding flare of agony shooting through your ribs. You gasped, tasting copper in your mouth.
"Hey! Boss!" the brute yelled over his shoulder, still clutching your jacket. "We got a rat! A very expensive rat!"
Footsteps splashed in the puddles behind you. The exchange was forgotten. The cyborg and his thugs were running toward the commotion.
You had seconds.
You twisted wildly, slipping your arms entirely out of the sleeves of your beloved, oversized canvas jacket. The brute stumbled backward, left holding an empty coat.
You spun around, grabbing a discarded, heavy brass pipe from the garbage pile. As the brute lunged forward again, furious, you swung the pipe with everything you had. It connected heavily with the side of his jaw. The metal clanged, and the brute went down like a felled tree, unconscious before he hit the puddles.
But the victory was short-lived.
One of the thugs from the exchange rounded the oil drums. He didn't bother asking questions. He raised a heavy kinetic pistol and fired.
The shockwave blasted the brick wall directly next to your head, showering you in razor-sharp shrapnel. A piece of jagged brick sliced across your cheek, hot blood immediately welling up and mixing with the cold rain.
You threw the brass pipe at him, forcing him to duck, and sprinted blindly toward the exit of the alley.
You burst out onto the main thoroughfare of Sector Six, your lungs burning, your ribs screaming in protest with every frantic step. The rain was coming down harder now, blurring the neon lights into smeared streaks of pink and green.
"Don't let her get to the sky-wire!" the cyborg boss bellowed from the alleyway.
You pushed through the dense crowds, shoving past vendors and late-night commuters. You couldn't go back to your storage container. If they saw you head that way, your only safehouse was compromised. You needed to lose them in the vertical labyrinth.
You vaulted over a rusted guardrail, dropping ten feet down onto a suspended metal catwalk on the tier below. You landed badly. Your right ankle twisted violently upon impact with the metal grating, a sharp, agonizing pop echoing in your ears.
You let out a cry of pain, collapsing onto your hands and knees.
Above you, heavy boots thudded against the guardrail you had just jumped over. "There she is! Down on the catwalk!"
You forced yourself up. Your right leg instantly buckled, a white-hot spike of pain shooting up to your knee. You couldn't run. You were limping heavily, dragging your right foot as you scrambled desperately down the narrow catwalk, leaning heavily against the brass railing for support.
Your breath was coming in ragged, painful gasps. Your ribs felt like they were cracked, your ankle was useless, and warm blood was running down your neck from the cut on your cheek. You were losing. If you stayed on foot, they were going to corner you, and this time, there wouldn't be a spiky-haired weaponsmith to pull a rotary cannon out of his jacket to save you.
Jay.
The thought hit you like a physical blow.
You hadn't let yourself think about him for two weeks. You had buried the memory of the damp aqueduct, the smell of burnt coffee, and the terrifying, electric weight of his hands on your waist. You had convinced yourself that walking away was the smart, professional thing to do.
But right now, limping through the pouring rain, bleeding and hunted, there was only one place in the entire sprawling, chaotic metropolis of Meridian that actually felt safe. There was only one place entirely off the grid.
You dragged yourself to the end of the catwalk, reaching a bustling, illuminated intersection where automated air-taxis hovered, waiting for fares.
You waved your arm frantically, nearly collapsing against a streetlamp.
A battered, yellow-painted air-taxi with a dented brass hull pulled up to the grating, its gull-wing door popping open.
You threw yourself into the backseat, entirely bypassing the passenger seat. You slammed your hand against the close button. The door hissed shut, locking out the sound of the shouting thugs who had just reached the intersection.
"Destination required," the automated brass droid chirped cheerfully from the dashboard.
You reached into your boot, your hands shaking violently, and pulled out your last stash of physical platinum chips. You shoved them blindly into the payment slot.
"Sector Four," you gasped, clutching your ribs, your head falling back against the worn leather seat. "The old aqueduct perimeter. The service road by the glowing ivy. And fly fast, please."
"Payment accepted. Engaging thrusters."
The taxi shot up into the sky-lanes, banking hard away from Sector Six.
The adrenaline that had been keeping you conscious finally began to recede, leaving behind a devastating wave of absolute agony. You curled into a tight ball on the backseat, shivering violently. You were soaking wet, your t-shirt sticking to your skin since you had lost your jacket in the alley. Every time the taxi hit a pocket of turbulence, your ribs screamed.
You closed your eyes, pressing your cold hands against your bleeding cheek.
What were you doing? Jay had explicitly told you he was retiring from being your bodyguard. He had rolled his eyes when you left. He probably hadn't thought about you once in the last two weeks. He was probably sitting in his warm, dry garage, listening to terrible synth-punk, entirely unbothered.
If you showed up at his door, bleeding and bringing trouble to his doorstep, he might just leave you outside in the rain.
But as the air-taxi wove through the massive clockwork gears of the upper districts, heading toward the forgotten fringes of the city, you knew you didn't have a choice. You were out of options, out of credits, and entirely out of luck.
"Approaching destination," the droid chimed.
The taxi dropped altitude, the bright neon lights of the city fading away, replaced by the dark, heavy shadows of the overgrown aqueduct. The rain was torrential out here, hammering against the plexiglass windows.
The taxi hovered over the unpaved, crumbling service road and settled onto the mud with a heavy thud. The door popped open.
"Thank you," you whispered, though the machine didn't care.
You dragged yourself out of the cabin. Your right leg gave out entirely the moment your boot hit the mud. You collapsed onto your hands and knees in the freezing rain, the mud splashing up against your face. The taxi’s thrusters roared, and it immediately lifted off, abandoning you in the absolute darkness.
You were entirely alone.
You forced yourself to look up. Through the driving rain, illuminated only by the faint, ambient light of the distant city, you saw it. The massive, solid wall of dense, glowing blue ivy clinging to the side of the stone aqueduct.
You gritted your teeth, pushing yourself up on your good leg. You leaned your entire weight against the rough, ancient stone of the aqueduct wall, using it to keep yourself upright as you dragged your ruined ankle through the mud.
It felt like it took hours to cross the fifty feet of service road. The cold was seeping into your bones, making your muscles lock up. Your vision was beginning to blur, black spots dancing at the edge of your sight.
Finally, your hands hit the cold, solid steel of the hidden garage doors concealed beneath the ivy.
You leaned your forehead against the metal, gasping for air. You were here.
But the doors were locked. Massive, impenetrable, and designed to withstand a siege.
You fumbled blindly along the stone wall next to the doors until your frozen fingers brushed against the rusted metal casing of the keypad panel. You tried to focus your blurry eyes. You remembered watching Jay punch in the code. You remembered the rhythm of his fingers.
You pressed the heavy mechanical buttons. Click. Click. Click-click.
A harsh, red light flashed on the panel, followed by a loud, angry buzz.
Incorrect sequence.
"No," you sobbed, a sound of pure, exhausted despair. "No, please."
You tried again, your fingers slipping on the wet metal. Click. Click. Click.
Buzz.
Your strength gave out. You slid down the cold steel door, collapsing into a miserable, shivering heap on the muddy ground. You pulled your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around your ribs. You had made it all the way here, and you were going to freeze to death or bleed out on his doorstep because you couldn't remember a stupid string of numbers.
You weakly lifted a fist and banged it against the heavy steel door. It made a pathetic, hollow sound that was entirely swallowed by the roar of the rain.
"Jay," you rasped, though you knew he couldn't hear you through the reinforced metal. "Jay, please."
You rested your head against your knees, the darkness finally threatening to pull you completely under.
Suddenly, a heavy, metallic groan vibrated through the steel against your back.
You flinched, weakly lifting your head.
The massive, camouflage-painted doors shuddered, the locking mechanisms disengaging with a loud clack. Slowly, agonizingly, the heavy steel began to slide open, parting the glowing blue ivy.
A flood of warm, bright fluorescent light spilled out into the rainy night, blinding you for a fraction of a second. The smell of ozone, engine grease, and burnt coffee washed over you, a scent so familiar and overwhelmingly comforting it made fresh tears prick your eyes.
A silhouette stood in the center of the opening, backlit by the harsh lights of the garage.
He was wearing a fresh black turtleneck, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and his heavy leather belts. He had a wrench in one hand, his head tilted downward, entirely expecting to see a syndicate courier or a lost scavenger who had accidentally triggered his perimeter sensors.
"The shop is closed," Jay’s deep, gravelly voice echoed out into the rain, dripping with his signature, lazy irritation. "If you're looking for scrap, keep walking before I test my new pulse-rifle on your kneecaps."
He took a step forward, his heavy metal-hardware boots stopping right at the edge of the rain. He looked down.
The wrench slipped from his grip. It hit the concrete floor with a deafening, sharp CLANG that echoed wildly through the garage.
For a split second, the universe completely froze.
Jay stared down at you. He took in the missing canvas jacket. He saw the way you were curled awkwardly around your ribs, soaked to the bone, your clothes plastered to your shivering frame. And then, his icy pale eyes locked onto the jagged, bleeding cut across your cheek and the dark bruises already blooming across your jaw.
The lazy, annoyed mechanic shattered into a million pieces.
"Y/N," he breathed out, the sound entirely stripped of any sarcasm or wit. It was a raw, visceral sound of absolute shock.
He didn't hesitate. He dropped to his knees in the mud right in front of you, entirely ignoring the torrential rain soaking his clothes. His large, warm hands hovered over you for a frantic second, as if he was afraid that touching you would break you further, before he gently, carefully cupped your face.
His thumbs lightly brushed against your jaw, avoiding the cut on your cheek. The heat radiating from his palms was the most incredible thing you had ever felt.
"Jay," you whispered, your teeth chattering violently. You leaned into his touch, your eyes fluttering shut. "I... I scratched the paint."
"What?" he asked, his voice shaking, his pale eyes wide and frantic as he quickly assessed the damage to your body.
"Your rule," you mumbled, a weak, delirious smile touching your split lip. "You said... don't let anyone scratch me. I messed up."
Jay let out a ragged, uneven breath. "You absolute idiot," he whispered fiercely.
He didn't ask what happened. He didn't ask who did it. He slid one strong arm beneath your knees and the other around your back, being incredibly careful of your ribs. With effortless strength, he stood up, lifting you out of the mud and entirely against his chest.
He carried you out of the freezing rain and across the threshold, stepping back into the warm, brilliantly lit sanctuary of the garage. Behind him, the massive steel doors slammed shut with a heavy, final thud, locking the chaos of the city outside once again.
The transition from the freezing, muddy darkness into the warm, clinical light of the bedroom was a blurred, disjointed memory. You woke up slowly, the world coming into focus like an old steam-camera lens finding its mark.
The first thing you realized was that you weren't on the battered velvet couch in the garage.
You were lying in a real bed. A soft, incredibly supportive mattress that seemed to swallow your aching limbs whole. The sheets were a dark, crisp charcoal grey, and they smelled overwhelmingly of Jay—not the sharp, metallic tang of the workshop, but a deeper, more personal scent of clean cotton, expensive wood-smoke cologne, and a hint of ozone.
You tried to shift, but a sharp, white-hot flare of pain in your side forced a hiss through your teeth. You looked down. You were wearing an oversized black t-shirt that definitely wasn't yours; it was massive, the collar slipping off one shoulder, the fabric soft against your skin. Beneath it, your ribs were tightly, professionally bound in medical tape. Your right ankle was elevated on a stack of pillows, encased in a high-tech compression brace that hummed with a low, soothing heat.
The room was unfamiliar, but it was unmistakably his. Unlike the glorious, chaotic mess of the garage, this space was unnervingly tidy. A heavy dark-wood dresser, a singular drafting table with neatly pinned blueprints, and a distinct lack of discarded engine parts. It was the private sanctuary of a man who spent his life surrounded by noise and grime.
The heavy door pushed open with a soft, mechanical click.
Jay walked in, carrying a silver tray. He looked like he’d been dragged through a turbine. He was still in his black turtleneck, but the sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, revealing forearms smudged with dried mud and fresh grease. His spiky, wet-look hair was a disaster, standing up in wild, unkempt clumps as if he’d been gripping it in frustration for hours. Without his wraparound sunglasses, his icy pale eyes looked raw and bloodshot, the heavy dusting of freckles across his tan nose standing out starkly against his pale, exhausted expression.
Dex trotted in right behind him, his tail thumping a hopeful rhythm against Jay’s calf, his eyes locked on the steaming bowl on the tray as if he were convinced this was a team effort.
Jay stopped dead when he realized you were awake. He stood in the center of the room, the tray trembling slightly in his large hands before he tightened his grip. The silence between you was heavy, filled with the ringing echo of the rain outside.
You swallowed hard, your throat feeling like it was full of rusted needles. You needed to break the tension before it crushed you. You managed a weak, lopsided smirk.
"You know," you rasped, your voice sounding like it had been dragged over gravel. "If you had a bed this soft the whole time... making me sleep on that lumpy, dust-mite infested couch when I first got here was borderline cruel. I’m pretty sure I have grounds for a lawsuit in at least three sectors."
You waited for the witty retort. You waited for him to call you a gremlin and tell you to be grateful he didn't leave you in the trunk.
Jay didn't laugh. He didn't even roll his eyes.
He just looked at you with an intensity that made the breath hitch in your chest. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle feathered in his cheek, and his icy eyes were burning with a dark, terrifying mixture of relief and absolute fury.
He walked over and set the tray down on the bedside table with a deliberate, agonizing slowness. He dragged a wooden chair over, the legs scraping harshly against the floor, and sat down. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his face inches from yours.
"I spent three hours picking glass out of your shoulder," Jay said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that vibrated in the small room.
"Jay—"
"I had to realign your ankle before the swelling locked the joint," he continued, cutting you off with a sharp, icy stare. "You have three fractured ribs, a mild concussion, and you lost enough blood that the medical droid was flagging a terminal alert. If you had stayed in that rain for another ten minutes, you wouldn't have woken up."
The smirk died on your face. The joke felt heavy and tasteless in your mouth.
"I was laying low," you whispered, pulling the heavy duvet tighter around your chest. "I moved to Sector Six. I was just... I heard an exchange. I thought I could swipe a bag. I didn't see the lookout."
Jay let out a harsh, bitter sound that was half-scoff, half-growl. He dragged a hand through his messy hair, making it stick out even more wildly. "You tried to rob an active syndicate deal. Alone. While faking your own death. Do you have a literal vacuum where your survival instinct is supposed to be?"
"I'm a thief, Jay! It's what I do!" you shot back, wincing as the sudden volume pulled at your ribs. "I needed credits! I couldn't stay in my old place!"
"So you decided to commit suicide-by-syndicate instead?" he snapped, leaning in closer. The smell of his cologne and engine grease was overwhelming. "You think I enjoyed watching you bleed out on my floor? You think I liked seeing you like that?"
He stopped, his breath hitching. He looked away, his chest heaving under the black turtleneck. The anger was still there, but beneath it was a raw, jagged vulnerability that made your heart ache.
He reached for the tray, picking up the glass of water and the bowl of broth. "Drink this. All of it."
He didn't hand it to you. He knew your hands were shaking. He dipped the spoon into the broth, blew on it with meticulous care, and held it to your lips.
It was an incredibly domestic, quiet gesture that felt surreal coming from him. You took the broth, the warmth spreading through your chest, easing some of the chill that felt permanent. Dex rested his scruffy chin on your good leg, letting out a sympathetic whine.
"Who did it?" Jay asked after you’d taken a few sips.
He asked the question with a terrifying, flat calm. He wasn't looking at the broth anymore. He was staring at the bandages on your cheek, his pale eyes calculating, lethal.
"It was a cyborg," you murmured, staring at your hands. "A guy named Kaelen. Rust-Blood Syndicate. He had a lookout with a spiked collar. They recognized the bounty description."
Jay went perfectly still. He didn't curse. He didn't blow up. He just sat there, the spoon held halfway to the bowl, as a cold, ruthless shadow passed over his face. You could almost see the gears in his head shifting, moving away from 'mechanic' and toward 'weaponsmith.'
"Kaelen," Jay repeated, the name sounding like a death sentence in his deep voice. He set the bowl back on the tray and stood up, the heavy hardware on his boots clinking as he paced a small circle in the tidy room. "The Rust-Bloods have been getting cocky lately. They’ve been trying to muscled into the Copper Reef routes. They use cheap, modified Guild tech that's more likely to explode than fire."
He stopped at the foot of the bed, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the amber light. He looked back at you, and for a second, the icy Pale of his eyes looked like freezing water.
"I think I owe Kaelen a visit," Jay said, his voice dropping into a smooth, deadly purr.
"Jay, no," you said, reaching out a hand toward him, but the movement sent a spike of pain through your ribs that made you gasp. "You can't go to Sector Six. It's a nest. You're one guy with a dog and a fast car."
Jay walked back to the side of the bed. He leaned down, bracing his hands on the mattress on either side of your hips, his face mere inches from yours. He looked at the bruises on your jaw, then met your eyes with a look that made your skin tingle.
"I'm not going there to negotiate, Y/N," he whispered, the boyish recklessness replaced by something much darker, much more focused. "I'm going there to collect a debt. They decided to play with things they don't understand. Now they get to see what happens when the manufacturer comes to inspect the damage."
He reached out, his thumb gently brushing the messy hair away from your forehead. His hand was rough, calloused, and incredibly warm.
"Sleep," he ordered softly. "The painkillers in that broth are high-grade. You won't be able to stay awake for another five minutes."
"Jay, stay," you murmured, your eyes already starting to feel heavy as the medicine kicked in.
He didn't answer. He just watched you, his thumb lingering against your skin for a second longer than necessary. He stood up, grabbing the silver tray.
"I have work to do in the shop," Jay said, his voice drifting as the darkness started to pull at the edges of your vision. "I need to calibrate the explosive yields on a few personal projects. I won't be far."
He walked to the door, Dex trotting faithfully behind him. He paused in the doorway, his silhouette tall and imposing against the light of the garage.
"And Y/N?"
"Hmm?" you hummed, halfway to sleep.
"Next time you want to commit a heist," he drawled, the lazy, arrogant smirk returning to his voice for just a heartbeat. "Wait until I've had my coffee. It makes the rescue much smoother."
The door clicked shut, leaving you in the warm, quiet dark of his room, the distant, muffled sound of a welding torch sparking to life in the garage being the last thing you heard.
The drug-induced fog of the painkillers didn’t lift with a dramatic gasp or a sudden jolt of memory. Instead, it was slowly peeled away by a series of very wet, very persistent, and very rhythmic slaps against your cheek.
You groaned, the sound vibrating painfully in your chest as you tried to turn your head away from the assault. But the intruder was relentless. A cold, damp nose pressed into the crook of your neck, followed by another long, sloppy lick that started at your chin and ended somewhere near your eyebrow.
"Dex… stop," you rasped, your voice sounding like it had been dragged through a gravel pit.
You forced your eyes open, blinking against the soft amber glow of the bedside lamp. Dex, the Meridian Wire-Hound, was practically vibrating with excitement. His scruffy, wiry fur was a mess, and his tail was thumping a frantic, heavy rhythm against the side of the mattress. When he saw your eyes open, he let out a sharp, high-pitched yip and dropped a slobbery, grease-stained rubber gear directly onto your chest.
"Ugh, gross, Dex," you muttered, weakly pushing the dog's head away.
You moved to sit up, and the world did a slow, nauseating tilt. You hissed as the bandages around your ribs pulled tight, a sharp reminder of the alleyway in Sector Six. You looked down at yourself—still in Jay’s oversized black t-shirt, still wrapped like a fragile mummy.
Wait. The room was oddly quiet. Two weeks ago, the garage had been a constant symphony of grinding metal, sparking welders, and aggressive synth-punk. But now, as you strained your ears, the only sound was the low, distant hum of the aqueduct’s ventilation system and the frantic panting of a very hyper dog.
"Where’s your dad, Dex?" you whispered, scratching the dog behind his ears.
Dex didn't answer with a whine or a mournful look toward the door. Instead, he did a literal backflip off the bed, his claws clicking loudly on the composite floor as he began to do "zoomies" in the small, tidy room. He sprinted in a circle, tossed his rubber gear into the air, caught it, and then began to play tug-of-war with an invisible ghost.
It was weird. If Jay had gone to Sector Six to "collect a debt" from a violent cyborg syndicate, he usually would have taken his four-legged radar with him. Dex was a Wire-Hound; he could sniff out an ambush before it even happened. Leaving him behind meant Jay was either being incredibly reckless, or he didn't want the dog in the middle of whatever carnage he was about to unleash.
And based on the way Dex was acting, Jay had been gone for a while. The dog was bored, hyper, and clearly looking for a new target to pester.
"Fine, fine. I’m up," you groaned, swinging your good leg over the side of the bed.
You stood up tentatively, leaning heavily on the dresser for support. Your right ankle, still encased in the humming compression brace, felt remarkably stable, though a dull ache throbbed in rhythm with your heartbeat. You limped toward the door, Dex darting between your legs and nearly tripping you in his excitement.
"Dex, chill! I’m a wounded ghost, remember?"
You pushed the heavy black door open and stepped out into the main workshop.
The garage was empty. The matte black muscle car was gone, leaving a wide, lonely space in the center of the concrete floor. The floodlights were dimmed, casting the rows of workbenches and half-finished cannons into long, jagged shadows. It felt eerie—like a cathedral of chrome and brass that had lost its priest.
You limped through the aisles, your bare feet cold on the oil-stained floor. You passed Jay’s primary workbench. A half-empty mug of that battery-acid coffee sat next to a pile of blueprints, and a few discarded metal shavings glinted like diamonds under the low lights.
As you passed the mini-fridge tucked beneath the plasma-coil rack, your stomach let out a roar that was loud enough to echo off the stone walls.
The protein blocks were out of the question. Your body was screaming for something—anything—that didn't taste like chalk and regret. Specifically, you craved something sweet. Maybe it was the blood loss, or maybe it was the lingering taste of the medicinal broth, but you felt like you could eat a gallon of pure cane sugar and still want more.
"Let's see what the mechanic hides in here," you muttered, pulling the small, dented door of the fridge open.
Dex shoved his head in next to yours, his tail wagging so hard it was slapping against your thigh.
"No, Dex. This is a solo mission."
The fridge was a masterclass in utilitarian minimalism. There was a carton of synthetic milk, a few foil packets of raw meat for the dog, and a stack of those dreaded grey protein bricks. You sighed, about to give up, when you noticed a small, unmarked brass tin tucked all the way in the back, hidden behind a jar of industrial-grade cooling gel.
You pulled it out. It was cold, heavy, and lacked any sort of warning label.
You pried the lid off. Your eyes widened.
It was a stash of "Sun-Crystals"—hand-crafted, crystallized fruit preserves from the upper neon-reefs. They were rare, incredibly expensive, and tasted like concentrated sunshine and honey. Jay, the supposedly grimy, heartless weaponsmith, had a secret stash of luxury sweets hidden behind his machine coolant.
"Caught you, Jay," you whispered with a triumphant grin.
You popped one of the glowing, amber-colored crystals into your mouth. The sweetness was overwhelming, an explosion of flavor that made your toes curl. You leaned back against the cool metal of the fridge, closing your eyes in pure bliss, the oversized shirt falling off one shoulder as you reached for a second one.
You were standing there, barefoot, messy-haired, and red-handed, clutching a tin of stolen candy like a common street-urchin, when the silence of the aqueduct was violently shattered.
The massive, camouflage-painted steel doors at the far end of the garage began to groan. The sound of heavy mechanical gears turning echoed through the cavern, followed by the blinding, flickering violet light of the Meridian sky spilling inside.
Then came the roar.
The engine of the black-and-yellow muscle car didn't just hum; it screamed as it tore into the garage, the tires screeching against the concrete as it drifted into its usual spot. The exhaust vents hissed, releasing a cloud of glowing blue steam that filled the room.
The engine cut off, the vibration dying out, leaving only the ticking of cooling metal.
You froze, the second Sun-Crystal halfway to your mouth.
The driver's side door swung open with a heavy thud.
Jay stepped out.
He looked like he had just survived a localized explosion, which, knowing him, was a distinct possibility. His black turtleneck was smudged with fresh soot and a dark, purplish fluid that definitely wasn't engine grease. His heavy, stacked leather belts were slightly askew, and the padded motocross gloves were gripped in his left hand.
His hair was the real tragedy. The "wet-look" spikes were completely disheveled, some flattened against his forehead while others stood up in chaotic, piecey clumps. He looked exhausted, his shoulders slumped, but as he leaned back against the car door to catch his breath, he looked... good.
There was a raw, boyish energy to him when he was disheveled like this—the tan of his skin contrasting with the dark grime, the heavy dusting of freckles clear even through the soot. He looked like the collision of a disaster and a masterpiece.
He took a slow, deep breath, his head falling back against the frame of the car. He reached up, pulling his wraparound sporty sunglasses down to the bridge of his nose, and then he saw you.
He didn't move. He didn't even stand up straight. He just stayed leaning against the car, his icy pale eyes tracking from your bare feet, up the massive black shirt that clearly belonged to him, to the brass tin of Sun-Crystals clutched in your hand.
Jay let out a long, slow, exaggerated sigh. It was the sound of a man who had just dismantled a syndicate and come home to find his domestic sanctuary invaded by a sugar-starved gremlin.
"I see," Jay drawled, his voice deep, gravelly, and dripping with a tired sort of wit. "We’ve moved on from grand larceny to petty confectionery theft. I’m not sure if that’s a promotion or a demotion for your career, Y/N."
"I was hungry!" you defended, finally popping the second crystal into your mouth and speaking around it. "And you hide your good stuff behind machine grease. That’s entrapment."
Jay pushed off the car, his heavy, metal-hardware boots clanking on the floor as he walked toward you. He moved with a slight stiffness, a sign that the "visit" to Sector Six hadn't been entirely one-sided.
He stopped a few feet away, towering over you in the dim light. He smelled like ozone, rain, and the faint metallic tang of spent pulse-cells. He reached out, his large, rough hand plucking the brass tin from your fingers.
"Those cost more than your last three heists combined," he muttered, though there was no real heat in his voice. He popped one of the crystals into his own mouth, leaning his hip against the workbench next to the fridge.
"So," you said, your voice dropping its playful edge as you looked at the soot on his jacket. "How was the visit? Did Kaelen enjoy his inspection?"
Jay tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling for a second. A cold, ruthless smirk—the one that made him look like a predator—flickered across his lips before vanishing into a look of pure fatigue.
"Let’s just say the Rust-Blood Syndicate is currently experiencing some... significant technical difficulties," Jay replied smoothly. "Kaelen won't be bothering anyone for a long time. He had a lot of 'unstable' tech in his warehouse. It was a shame. Very combustible."
He looked back down at you, his gaze softening just a fraction as it landed on the dermal-patch on your cheek. "You should be in bed. I didn't give you those painkillers so you could go on a midnight snack-raid."
"Dex woke me up," you pointed out, gesturing to the Wire-Hound who was currently doing laps around Jay’s legs, barking happily. "Why didn't you take him with you? He’s been acting like a caffeinated ferret for the last few hours."
Jay looked down at the dog, a faint, genuine smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He reached down, ruffling Dex’s scruffy ears.
"I didn't want him smelling like Sector Six," Jay said quietly. "It takes forever to get the smell of burnt copper out of his fur."
He looked back at you, his pale eyes searching yours. The silence of the garage returned, but this time it wasn't eerie. It was grounded. The "debt" had been collected, the city was at bay, and for the first time in two weeks, the air felt like it had finally cleared.
"You look like hell, Jay," you whispered, reaching out a tentative hand. You stopped just before touching the soot on his shoulder.
"I look like I did my job," he countered, though he didn't pull away. He reached up, his hand closing over yours, his skin warm and grimy against your own. He pulled your hand down, but didn't let go.
"Get back to the room," he ordered, his voice dropping into that deep, command-tone that usually made you want to argue, but right now just made you feel safe. "I’m going to clean the soot off my baby, and then I’m going to make sure you actually stay asleep this time."
"Only if I get to keep the tin," you challenged, nodding toward the Sun-Crystals.
Jay rolled his eyes, a dramatic, exhausted gesture that felt like home. "Fine. Take the crystals. Just don't get sugar on my sheets, gremlin. I just changed them."
"No promises, mechanic."
You limped back toward the bedroom, the heavy tin of sweets tucked under your arm. You stopped in the doorway, looking back. Jay was already heading toward the car, a rag in one hand and a bottle of specialized cleaner in the other, but he was watching you go.
"Jay?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're back."
He paused, the violet light of the city silhouetting his spiky hair. He didn't say anything for a long moment, but he gave that lazy, two-finger salute before turning back to his car. It wasn't a "you belong to me" moment. It was better. It was the silent, gritty reality of two people who had nowhere else to go, finally figuring out that they didn't want to be anywhere else.
One week of being confined to the sterile, organized four walls of Jay’s bedroom was officially six days longer than your sanity could handle.
The fractures in your ribs had settled into a dull, manageable ache, and the high-tech compression brace on your ankle had done wonders, reducing the injury to a stiff, rhythmic throb. You were no longer a "ghost" haunting the hallways; you were a restless, caged animal.
You had spent the last seven days watching Jay through the cracked door of the workshop. You watched him dismantle pulse-rifles, solder microscopic connections with the focus of a surgeon, and drink enough battery-acid coffee to kill a lesser man. He was methodical. He was precise. He was everything you weren’t.
"I’m coming with you," you stated, leaning against the doorframe of the workshop. You were wearing a fresh pair of cargo pants and a simple, fitted black tank top—your oversized canvas jacket was still missing, lost to the gutter of Sector Six, but you had managed to scavenge a lighter windbreaker from Jay’s "discard" pile.
Jay didn't even look up from the kinetic coil he was calibrating. The blue glow of the desk lamp caught the sharp angle of his jaw and the dusting of freckles across his tan nose. His spiky hair was styled in that piecey "wet-look" again, and his pale eyes made him look like he was made of ice and chrome.
"No," he deadpanned. "Jay, I’m fine. I’m healed. I’m practically bionic at this point."
"You’re a walking liability with a target on her back," he countered, finally setting his tools down. He turned his chair, his heavy, metal-hardware boots clanking against the floor. He pulled his wraparound sunglasses down from his forehead, masking his eyes. "The registry says you're dead, but the streets have ears, Y/N. Rumors don't care about biometric wipes. There are people in Meridian who would kill you just to see if you bleed neon."
"Which is exactly why I need to see how a pro does it," you argued, stepping into the garage. "Teach me. Show me how you do a low-down deal without ending up in a dumpster. I’ll be your backup."
Jay let out a short, dry laugh. He tilted his head toward the passenger seat of the black-and-yellow muscle car. Dex was already sitting there, his scruffy chin resting on the leather, looking remarkably professional for a dog.
"That’s my backup," Jay said, pointing at the Wire-Hound. "He doesn't talk back, he doesn't try to reinvent the coffee maker, and he actually knows when to stay in the shadows."
You huffed, rolling your eyes so hard it actually made your head spin. "Fine. Dex is the muscle. But I can be the eyes. Come on, Jay. I’m going crazy in here. If I stay in this aqueduct for another hour, I’m going to start talking to the tools."
Jay stared at you for a long, silent minute. You could see the internal battle behind his tinted lenses—the protective mechanic versus the guy who was probably also getting a little tired of the silence.
"One rule," Jay finally growled, standing up and grabbing his dirt-smudged track jacket. "You stay in the back seat. You don't speak. You don't move. You are a piece of luggage. If things go sideways, you keep your head down and let me handle the physics. Got it?"
"Got it," you grinned, already limping toward the car. "Luggage. Totally silent, inanimate luggage."
The deal was supposed to be simple. A drop-off in "The Skin"—a bizarre, surreal district on the far edge of the mid-tiers.
The Skin didn't have traditional brass or iron walls. Instead, the buildings were wrapped in iridescent, semi-translucent membranes that stretched and breathed with the wind. The sky here was a permanent shade of deep, electric violet, casting a strange, bioluminescent glow over everything. It felt like being inside the lung of a giant, neon beast.
Jay parked the car in a dark pocket beneath a vibrating, pink-veined overpass.
"Stay," he ordered, looking at you in the rearview mirror.
"I'm luggage, remember?" you whispered.
He let out a tired sigh, adjusted his motocross gloves, and stepped out into the humid, membrane-scented air. You watched through the tinted back window as a group of men in heavy, hooded cloaks emerged from the violet fog. The exchange was quiet. Brief. Jay handed over a small, reinforced metal case, and in return, he received a heavy pouch that clinked with the familiar sound of platinum.
Everything was perfect. The "pro" was doing his thing. No sirens. No yelling.
That was until Dex’s ears suddenly shot up.
The dog let out a low, vibrating growl that started in the base of his throat. You froze, your hand hovering over the seat. Outside, Jay’s posture shifted instantly. His hand moved to the hilt of the blade on his thigh, his icy eyes scanning the translucent rooftops above.
"We have company," Jay’s voice crackled through the car’s internal comms.
Suddenly, the violet sky was pierced by the blinding red beams of sniper sights.
"Get down!" Jay roared.
The world exploded into chaos. The cloaked men scrambled into the shadows as a volley of high-velocity kinetic rounds shredded the membrane of the building next to you, sending sprays of sticky, iridescent fluid everywhere.
Jay didn't hesitate. He dived back into the driver's seat, slamming the door just as a round sparked off the reinforced glass.
"I thought we were dead!" you shrieked, ducking into the footwell of the back seat. "I thought the bounty was cleared!"
"Bounty hunters don't care about paperwork!" Jay yelled, slamming the gearshift into reverse. "They caught a whiff of the car! They've been tracking the engine signature!"
The engine roared—a guttural, prehistoric sound that vibrated through your entire skeleton. Jay spun the wheel, executing a violent J-turn that sent you sliding across the leather.
The "Skin" district was a nightmare on a good day, but during the mid-evening commute, it was a death trap. The entire sector was wrapped in those iridescent, semi-translucent membranes that acted like organic greenhouses, trapping the heat and the smell of ozone until the air felt like a humid lung. The sky-lanes here weren't just lanes; they were a chaotic, three-dimensional tangle of hover-trams, slow-moving cargo skiffs, and private gliders all fighting for a pocket of thermal air.
And right now, Jay was treating the "Safety and Discretion" lane like a private racetrack.
"Jay! You’re going to clip that transport! Watch the—watch the mechanical jellyfish!" you shrieked, your fingers digging into the premium leather of the back seat until your knuckles turned a ghostly white.
Jay didn't even flinch. His hands, encased in those padded motocross gloves, moved over the steering wheel with a twitchy, frantic precision. His spiky, wet-look hair was perfectly intact despite the G-force, and his icy pale eyes were fixed on the HUD projected onto the windshield. The dusting of freckles across his tan nose was scrunched in a look of pure, focused irritation.
"I see the transport, Y/N! I built the sensors in this car; I think I know if I’m going to hit a cargo-whale!" Jay barked back, his voice strained as he slammed the gearshift. The car’s teal thrusters roared, sending a jolt through the chassis that rattled your teeth. "And for the record, this is Lesson Three: Spatial Awareness. You clearly have none!"
"Spatial awareness?! We have three bounty hunters on hover-bikes trying to turn us into a colander!" you yelled, looking out the back window. The pursuit bikes were weaving through the airborne traffic with terrifying ease, their serrated blades sparking against the brass hulls of civilian commuters. "You said the plan was to blend in! To stay low-down! Look at us! We’re a black-and-yellow neon sign screaming 'Please Shoot Here'!"
"I told you the plan was discretion!" Jay countered, executed a violent, vertical bank that sent you sliding across the leather. "The plan changed to 'Aggressive Evasion' the second you decided to wave at the lookout!"
"I wasn't waving! I was swatting a bug!"
"Well, you swatted us right onto the most-wanted list for the afternoon!" Jay swung the wheel hard to the left, diving the car through a narrow gap between two massive, slowly-turning clockwork gears that powered the district's ventilation.
Dex, who was sitting in the passenger seat looking remarkably bored for a dog in a dogfight, let out a soft huff and adjusted his position, his scruffy chin resting comfortably on the dashboard. He looked at you through the gap in the seats with a gaze that clearly said, First time?
"See?" Jay pointed at the dog with one gloved finger. "Even Dex is disappointed in your performance today. You’re supposed to be my backup. Backup doesn't scream at the pilot while he’s navigating a Class-4 membrane-clogged skyway."
"I am not screaming! I am projecting my concern for our structural integrity!"
A volley of kinetic fire sizzled past the rear window, melting a jagged hole through the iridescent membrane of a nearby skyscraper. The building let out a low, groaning sound as it leaked pressurized steam.
"My paint!" Jay let out a strangled, pained sound of genuine agony. "They just scorched the clear-coat! That’s it. Lesson’s over. Now it’s personal."
"Jay, no! Don't do the thing! Whatever 'the thing' is, don't do it!"
Jay didn't listen. He hit a series of brass toggles on the center console. The car’s engine didn't just roar; it began to hum with a high-frequency vibration that you felt in the very marrow of your bones.
"Y/N, grab the safety handle," Jay said, his voice dropping into that smooth, terrifyingly calm purr that usually meant something was about to explode.
"Which one?! There are like six!"
"All of them!"
Jay slammed the car into a vertical climb, the thrusters erupting in a blinding flare of teal flame. You were pinned to the back seat by the sudden surge of G-force, your breath hitching as the car shot straight up through a layer of violet smog.
The bounty hunters on their hover-bikes struggled to keep up, their smaller engines whining as they tried to match the car’s raw power. Jay looked at the rear-view monitors, a cold, ruthless smirk touching his lips. He wasn't just a mechanic; he was the man who built the monsters.
He flipped a switch labeled REAR KINETIC DISCHARGE.
"Wait, Jay—is that legal?!"
"In this district? Nothing is legal," he drawled.
The back of the car emitted a massive, invisible shockwave of kinetic energy. It wasn't a weapon in the traditional sense; it was a localized "get-off-me" pulse. The airborne traffic around you shuddered, but the bounty hunters, who were tucked right into your slipstream, got the full brunt of it.
The hover-bikes were tossed backward like toys in a hurricane. One of them spun out of control, slamming into a floating advertisement for synthetic honey, while the other two were forced to dive deep to avoid the backlash.
"Did we lose them?" you gasped, pulling yourself up from the floorboards.
"For about ten seconds," Jay muttered, his eyes darting to the radar. "They’ve got friends. The Skin has bounty-broker nodes on every street corner. We need to get to the transition gate before they lock down the sector."
He leveled the car out, merging back into the chaotic stream of airborne traffic. He was weaving through civilian skiffs with a speed that would have gotten him arrested in any other city, but in Meridian, it was just survival.
"You know," you said, trying to smooth back your messy hair as the car stabilized. "As a teacher, you’re kind of a failure. I haven't learned a single thing about 'not getting caught' today."
Jay let out a sharp, dry laugh, checking the sensors. "Really? You didn't learn that my car is faster than a standard-issue Guild interceptor? You didn't learn that I look incredible even when I’m being shot at?"
"I learned that you’re a freckle-faced maniac who takes his car's paint job more seriously than his passenger's heart rate!"
"Priority management, gremlin," Jay countered, though a small, genuine smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "The car can’t fix itself. You, apparently, can survive an entire syndicate beatdown and still have enough energy to annoy me."
Suddenly, the sky-lane ahead of you began to glow a violent, warning red. Massive, brass-plated gates started to swing shut across the main thoroughfare, cutting off the exit to the mid-tiers.
"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me," Jay hissed. "They’re closing the gate."
"Jay! Hit the brakes! We’re going to be a pancake!"
"I don't do brakes, Y/N! I do innovation!"
Jay didn't slow down. He hit a final, heavy brass lever. The car’s stabilizing fins retracted, and the thrusters pivoted 180 degrees.
"Jay, what are you doing?!"
"We’re not going through the gate," Jay said, his pale eyes glinting with pure, boyish recklessness. "We’re going through the maintenance vent. Brace yourself, luggage. This is going to be a tight fit."
"I hate this lesson!" you screamed as the car tilted onto its side, screaming through a gap in the machinery that looked entirely too small for a muscle car.
The car scraped against the brass walls, sparks flying past the windows in a beautiful, terrifying shower of gold. Jay was grinning now, a wild, ecstatic look on his face that made him look younger and more dangerous all at once.
You burst through the vent and into the open, sun-drenched sky of the mid-tiers, the "Skin" district left behind in a cloud of violet smoke.
Jay leveled the car out, the engine settling into a satisfied hum. He reached up, pulling his wraparound sunglasses down to cover his eyes, his posture returning to that lazy, effortless cool.
"And that," Jay drawled, "is how you do a low-down deal."
"We are currently smoking, Jay," you pointed out, pointing at the wisps of blue vapor coming from the hood.
"It’s a 'dramatic exit' smoke," he corrected. "Now, go check the back seat for any lost credits. I think I heard something clinking when we did that vertical climb."
"I'm not your credit-finder!"
"You're the backup! Find the credits, gremlin!"
You huffed, rolling your eyes, but as you looked out at the vibrant, colorful skyline of Meridian, you realized that despite the terror and the near-death experience, your heart was racing in a way it never did back in Sector Six.
Maybe the lesson wasn't about not getting caught. Maybe it was about who you were with when the world decided to catch you.
"Jay?"
"Yeah?"
"Next time, can we just take the bus?"
Jay let out a loud, genuine laugh that echoed through the cockpit. "The bus doesn't have teal thrusters, Y/N. And it definitely doesn't have Dex."
"Fair point."
Life in the aqueduct didn't just become a habit; it became a rhythm.
In the beginning, your presence in Jay’s sanctuary felt like a glitch in the system—a temporary error that would eventually be patched out. But as the days bled into weeks, the "temporary" status of your stay quietly dissolved. You didn't have a home to go back to; your old apartment was a memory, and your status in the city was still technically "deceased." So, Jay had grunted, gestured toward a small, windowless room that used to hold surplus pulse-cells, and told you to keep your boots off the workbench.
You were officially, unofficially, Jay’s sidekick.
You worked under him, which mostly meant you were the one who held the heavy-duty magnetic flashlight while he was elbow-deep in a turbine, or you were the one tasked with sorting the thousands of brass rivets that he seemingly went through like candy. But you were getting better. You weren't just a "feral gremlin" anymore; you were a girl who knew the difference between a kinetic stabilizer and a thermal regulator—and more importantly, you knew which one not to drop.
Morning in the garage didn't start with sunlight. It started with the rhythmic, metallic hiss of the espresso machine—a brass monstrosity Jay had "innovated" to the point where it looked like it could launch a satellite.
You sat at the small, rusted iron table in the corner, nursing a mug of the black sludge that was finally starting to taste like actual coffee instead of battery acid. Jay was already at his primary workbench, his back to you. He was wearing his signature black turtleneck, the sleeves pushed up to reveal his lean, tan forearms. His spiky, wet-look hair was perfectly piecey, reflecting the overhead fluorescent lights.
Dex was sitting right at your feet, his scruffy chin resting heavily on your boot.
"You know," you said, leaning down to scratch Dex behind his wiry ears, "I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room, Jay."
Jay didn't turn around. He was focused on soldering a delicate copper wire. "If the elephant is the fact that you still haven't reorganized the hydro-wrenches, I’m aware."
"No," you grinned, watching Dex’s tail thump a happy rhythm against the floor. "The fact that Dex clearly likes me more than you now. Look at him. He’s practically a puddle. I think he’s considering a change in ownership."
Jay finally paused, his soldering iron hovering in the air. He slowly turned his chair around. He pulled his wraparound sporty sunglasses down just enough to fix you with an icy, pale stare. The dusting of freckles across his nose scrunched in a look of pure, feigned offense.
"Dex is a professional," Jay drawled, his voice deep and raspy from a lack of sleep. "He’s just playing the long game. He knows you’re the one most likely to drop a piece of real bacon on the floor."
"He follows me into the spare room every night," you countered, sticking your tongue out. "He doesn't even look at your door anymore."
"That’s because your room smells like those Sun-Crystals you keep stealing from my stash," Jay shot back, a faint, boyish smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "He’s not loyal; he’s an opportunist. He’s a Meridian Wire-Hound, Y/N. Their entire evolution is based on sniffing out high-value assets. Right now, you’re just a walking sugar-dispenser."
"Admit it, Jay. He loves me."
Jay rolled his eyes, a dramatic, world-weary gesture, and turned back to his work. "Whatever helps you sleep at night, gremlin. Finish your coffee. We have a delivery in the Neon Reefs, and I need someone to handle the landing gear while I negotiate with the broker. And try not to wave at anyone this time."
"I told you! It was a swatting motion!"
The missions with Jay were never simple. They always started with a "low-down" objective and inevitably spiraled into a high-speed, airborne disaster.
The Neon Reefs were a cluster of floating, bioluminescent coral-islands suspended over the energy-wells of the central city. The sky here was a constant, shimmering teal, and the air was thick with the scent of saltwater and ozone. It was a high-traffic zone, filled with wealthy tourists in glass-bottomed gliders and scavengers looking for rare reef-gems.
Jay navigated the black-and-yellow muscle car through the airborne traffic with a terrifying, effortless cool. He wove between the floating coral-pillars, the teal thrusters of the car leaving a glowing trail in the humid air.
"Okay, sidekick," Jay said, checking his HUD. "The broker is a piece of work named Silas. He’s a Reef-Runner, which means he’s paranoid, fast, and likely has a couple of cloaked guards nearby. I’m dropping the crate, he’s giving me the credits, and we are leaving before the airborne patrol catches the engine signature."
"What’s in the crate?" you asked, peering over his shoulder.
"Modified pulse-cells for reef-mining. Totally legal for him to own, technically illegal for me to sell without a Guild permit. So, discretion is key."
"Got it. Luggage mode: Engaged."
Jay landed the car on a small, shimmering landing pad jutting out from a coral-reef. The ground beneath the car was translucent, revealing the swirling clouds of the energy-wells thousands of feet below.
Jay stepped out of the car, his heavy boots clanking on the reef. He looked incredible—the Y2K grunge aesthetic fitting perfectly against the neon backdrop. He grabbed the reinforced metal crate from the trunk, hoisting it onto his shoulder with a grunt.
"Stay in the car, Dex," Jay ordered.
You stepped out after him, checking your light windbreaker. "You said I was helping."
"You are helping by being the lookout," Jay muttered, scanning the violet fog. "If you see a flash of gold—that’s the Guild patrol. If you see a flash of red—that’s Silas’s guards. If you see both, we’re probably going to have a very bad afternoon."
Silas emerged from the fog. He was a thin, wiry man in a suit made of iridescent fish-scales, accompanied by two massive, silent guards with mechanical eyes. The exchange was tense. Jay didn't speak much; he just let his tech do the talking. Silas opened the crate, the blue glow of the pulse-cells illuminating his greedy face.
"Quality work as always, Jay," Silas hissed, handing over a heavy, vibrating pouch of digital credit-chips.
"I don't do anything else," Jay replied coolly.
Everything was going perfectly. No shooting. No flying harpoons. You were actually beginning to think that you were finally getting the hang of this "professionalism" thing.
Then, the coral-reef beneath Silas’s feet suddenly shivered.
"What was that?" you asked, your hand flying to the hilt of the small multi-tool Jay had given you.
"The energy-wells," Jay muttered, his eyes narrowing. "They’re fluctuating. Silas, we need to move."
"Wait!" Silas barked, his mechanical guards stepping forward, their weapons hummed to life. "I haven't verified the thermal stability of the third cell!"
"The stability is perfect, you idiot! The reef is about to vent!"
As if on cue, the center of the landing pad erupted in a geyser of superheated, violet energy. The force of the blast sent Silas and his guards flying backward, the crate of pulse-cells skidding toward the edge of the floating island.
"The cells!" Silas screamed. "If they hit the energy-well, they’ll detonate the whole reef!"
"You've got to be kidding me," Jay groaned, dragging a hand through his piecey hair.
He didn't hesitate. He bolted toward the skidding crate, his motocross gloves sparking as he slid across the slick coral. But the crate was moving too fast, heading straight for the 5,000-foot drop.
"Jay! The guard's weapon!" you yelled.
One of the guards had dropped a heavy, magnetic grappling-hook during the blast. You dived for it, the metal hot in your hands. You didn't have time to calculate the physics. You just aimed for the crate and fired.
The harpoon shot out with a violent thwack, the magnetic tip slamming into the metal casing of the crate just inches before it rolled off the edge.
The recoil nearly pulled your shoulder out of its socket. You were dragged across the coral, your boots digging in for purchase.
"I got it! I got it!" you shrieked.
Jay was there a second later. He grabbed the cable with his gloved hands, his muscles bulging under his turtleneck as he helped you pull the heavy crate back from the brink. Together, you hauled the volatile tech back onto solid ground just as the reef let out another, smaller hiss of energy.
Jay slammed the lid shut, locking the stabilizers. He was breathing heavily, his face smudged with violet ash and sweat. He looked at the crate, then he looked at you.
He didn't say anything for a long moment. He just reached out, his rough hand catching your shoulder, steadying you as you gasped for air.
"Nice shot, gremlin," he murmured, his voice a low, genuine rumble.
"I told you I was getting better," you panted, offering a weak, triumphant grin.
"Don't let it go to your head. You still almost took my arm off with that recoil."
Silas and his guards scrambled to their feet, looking terrified. Jay didn't give them a chance to argue. He snatched the crate, tossed it back to Silas, and pointed toward the car.
"The deal’s done, Silas! Get off the reef before it vents again!"
We scrambled back into the muscle car, Dex barking a frantic welcome as Jay slammed the doors shut. The car’s thrusters roared, launching us into the teal sky just as the entire coral-island was swallowed by a massive, violet energy-plume.
The ride back to the aqueduct was unusually quiet. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a comfortable, heavy warmth. Jay was driving with one hand, his other resting on the gearshift. He looked relaxed—the tension of the deal and the near-explosion finally bleeding out of his frame.
"You did good today, Y/N," Jay said suddenly, his voice breaking the silence.
You looked over at him, surprised. "Really? No lecture about spatial awareness or the clear-coat on the car?"
Jay let out a soft, dry laugh. He glanced at you in the rearview mirror, his icy pale eyes softening just a fraction. "The clear-coat is fine. And you didn't wave at a single bounty hunter. I call that a successful day."
He pulled the car into the hidden garage, the massive steel doors sliding shut behind us. The familiar smell of ozone and engine grease greeted us like a warm blanket.
Jay killed the engine, the silence of the garage settling over us. Dex jumped out of the car, immediately trotting over to the kitchen area, looking back at us with an expectant whine.
"He wants his reward," Jay muttered, climbing out of the car.
You followed him, your legs feeling a little heavy but your heart feeling light. You walked over to the mini-fridge and pulled out a small, foil-wrapped piece of high-grade beef you’d been saving.
"Here you go, Dex," you whispered, dropping it into his bowl.
Dex didn't even sniff it. He immediately swallowed the meat, then trotted over to you, leaning his scruffy head against your knee and letting out a long, contented sigh.
"See, Jay?" you grinned, looking over your shoulder. "He loves me more."
Jay was leaning against the car, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his track jacket. He watched you and the dog for a long moment, the harsh fluorescent lights carving sharp shadows across his tan face. He looked at the way Dex was leaning into you, and the way you were smiling, and for the first time in weeks, the "hostage" and "bodyguard" dynamic felt entirely, beautifully gone.
"Maybe he does," Jay murmured, his voice so quiet you almost didn't hear it.
He pushed off the car and walked over to his workbench, picking up a wrench. "But don't think this means you’re getting the passenger seat. That’s still a non-negotiable."
"We'll see about that, mechanic," you laughed, walking toward your small spare room. "I’m a very persuasive sidekick."
"Goodnight, gremlin."
"Goodnight, Jay."
You closed the door to your small, tidy room, the blue light of the garage fading away. You lay down on the soft bed, Dex jumping up to curl at your feet, and for the first time in a very long time, you didn't feel like a ghost in Meridian. You felt like you belonged exactly where you were.
Even if you were just a girl with a unique taste in fashion and a very grumpy, very handsome boss.
Over the next few weeks, the missions blurred together. You survived snipers in The Skin, but the Neon Reefs nearly got you and Jay blown to pieces. Every time y’all went out, the stakes seemed to get higher, but so did the trust between you and Jay.
The aqueduct was no longer just a workshop; it was a contested territory, and you were its reigning champion of chaos.
Six weeks had passed since you’d officially moved into the "surplus pulse-cell" room, and in that time, you had successfully transitioned from a terrified hostage to Jay’s primary living headache. You were the grain of sand in his perfectly oiled gears, the unexpected variable in his meticulously calculated equations. And despite his constant sighing, his dramatic eye-rolling, and the way he muttered about "the peace and quiet of the good old days," you knew for a fact he loved it.
"You’re doing it again," Jay’s voice rumbled from the depths of the workshop.
You were currently balanced on a rolling stool, trying to use a magnetic reaching-tool to snag a stray bag of neon-blue gummy candies you’d accidentally dropped into the middle of a pile of dismantled hover-bike rotors.
"Doing what? Being efficient? Utilizing the tools provided to me for retrieval?" you asked, not looking back.
"Being a menace," Jay corrected.
He appeared from behind the matte black car, looking like he’d just stepped out of an underground biker-grunge magazine. He had shed his track jacket, leaving him in a pitch-black, short-sleeved compression shirt that hugged his frame with a precision that was frankly uncalled for. It showed off the lean, corded muscle of his arms and the breadth of his shoulders—the result of a lifetime spent hauling heavy artillery and wrestling with stubborn engines. His hair was perfectly styled in that "wet-look" spike, and his pale eyes glinted under the fluorescent lights, making him look like something out of a beautiful, dangerous dream.
"I’m retrieving my assets, Jay. It’s part of the job description," you said, finally snagging the bag and hopping off the stool.
Jay crossed his arms, his motocross gloves tucked into his stacked leather belts. He looked at you, then at the bag of candies, then back at you. His expression softened from "irritated boss" to "overbearing guardian" in a heartbeat.
"Are your ribs hurting?" he asked, his voice losing its edge. "You were reaching pretty high. The dermal-knitter said you shouldn't be overextending for at least another three days."
You let out a loud, exaggerated groan, throwing your head back. "Jay! The 'Shatter-Point Incident' was a week ago! I am fine. I am more than fine. I am practically glowing with health."
"You almost got a kinetic bolt through your sternum," Jay reminded you, stepping closer. His shadow completely engulfed yours. "And for the record, it was your fault."
"It was not my fault! How was I supposed to know the floor was made of collapsible brass plates? It was a design flaw! If anything, the architect should be the one in trouble!"
Jay reached out, his large, calloused hand gently catching your chin, tilting your face up so he could inspect the faint, fading line on your cheek where the dermal-patch had been. He did this after every "mission" now—a thorough, almost clinical inspection that always ended with him lingering a second too long, his thumb brushing against your skin.
It was endearing. It was also incredibly distracting. Especially when he was wearing that compression shirt. Not that you were looking. You were a professional. Professionals didn't get flustered by their grumpy weaponsmith bosses.
"You’re easy, Y/N," Jay murmured, his icy pale eyes searching yours. "You have zero sense of self-preservation. You see something shiny, and you forget that the entire world is trying to kill you."
"I see the shiny things because I’m a thief, Jay! It’s literally how I pay my imaginary rent!" You swatted his hand away, though your heart was doing a frantic, traitorous drumroll. "And you trust me more now. Admit it. You let me hold the pulse-driver yesterday. That’s like... high-tier trust."
Jay let out a short, dry laugh, turning back toward his workbench. "I let you hold it because I needed three hands and Dex doesn't have opposable thumbs. Don't get ahead of yourself, sidekick."
"Confirmed but unconfirmed sidekick," you corrected, hopping onto the edge of his workbench and swinging your legs. "And Dex definitely likes me more. He told me this morning while you were brooding over the espresso machine."
Dex, hearing his name, trotted over from his velvet bed, letting out a happy huff and resting his chin on your knee. You smirked at Jay, who was busy loading a fresh set of shells into a custom shotgun.
"See? Loyalty," you said, scratching the dog’s scruff.
Jay ignored the comment, but you saw the faint, genuine tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. "Gear up, gremlin. We have a deal in the Rust-Light Docks in twenty minutes. It’s a low-tier exchange, but after last week, I’m not taking chances. You stay in the car unless I give the signal."
"I want to help with the negotiations," you said, sliding off the bench. "I’ve been practicing my 'intimidating stare.'”
Jay stopped what he was doing, turned, and looked at you. You narrowed your eyes, pulled your lips into a thin line, and tried to look like a hardened Meridian mercenary.
Jay stared at you for three seconds before he let out a loud, barking laugh that echoed through the aqueduct.
"You look like a disgruntled kitten," he choked out, wiping a fake tear from his eye. "Stick to the 'luggage' role, Y/N. It’s much more convincing."
"You're a jerk, Jay!"
"And you're a headache. Now, get in the car."
The Rust-Light Docks
The Rust-Light Docks were where Meridian’s machinery came to die—or to be reborn as something much uglier.
The district was a vertical maze of rusted iron piers, hissing steam-cranes, and giant, slow-moving magnets that plucked scrap metal from the oily canals below. The sky here was a permanent, muddy copper, lit by the flickering orange glow of the smelting fires. It was a place for people who didn't want to be found, and for deals that didn't happen on the books.
Jay navigated the black-and-yellow muscle car onto a suspended iron platform overlooking a primary scrap-heap. He didn't turn off the engine; the car hummed with a low, predatory vibration, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.
"Stay," Jay ordered, checking the tactical display on his wrist. "I mean it, Y/N. If I see even a hair of your head outside that window, I’m locking you in the spare room for a month."
"I'm an inanimate object. I don't even exist," you promised, though you were already reaching for the binocular-optics tucked in the seat pocket.
Jay stepped out of the car. He looked lethal. He had thrown on a heavy, hardware-laden utility vest over his compression shirt, and the metal-hardware boots clanked with a heavy, final sound against the iron pier. He grabbed a reinforced metal case from the trunk and walked toward the center of the platform.
The buyer was a man known as 'Chrome-Lung'—a veteran scavenger with a mechanical respirator built into his chest that wheezed with every breath. He was flanked by four enforcers carrying modified Guild rifles.
You watched through the optics, your heart thumping. This was the part where you wanted to impress him. You wanted to prove that you weren't just a "headache," but an asset.
As the exchange began, you scanned the surrounding cranes. Jay was focused on Chrome-Lung, but your thief’s instincts were screaming. You noticed a subtle, rhythmic flicker of light from the top of a rusted crane fifty yards away.
Sniper.
You didn't have time to wait for a signal. You knew Jay’s car inside and out by now—you’d spent enough nights helping him clean the intakes. You reached over the seat, grabbing the remote-override for the car's external searchlight.
"Jay, hit the deck!" you screamed into the comms, even as you slammed the toggle.
A blinding, high-intensity beam of white light erupted from the car's roof, aimed directly at the top of the crane. The sniper, blinded by the sudden flare, fired a wild shot that hissed harmlessly into the oily canal.
"What—?!" Chrome-Lung wheezed, his enforcers raising their rifles.
Jay didn't hesitate. He dropped the case, pulled a kinetic-flare from his belt, and slammed it onto the ground. A massive, blinding white explosion of light and sound swallowed the pier.
In the chaos, Jay didn't run away—he ran toward the car. He snatched the pouch of credits from Chrome-Lung’s hand as he passed, dove into the driver's seat, and slammed the door.
"GO! GO! GO!" you yelled, ducking as a volley of rifle fire sparked off the reinforced glass.
Jay floored it. The car launched backward, tires screaming, before spinning into a violent J-turn. He didn't head for the main sky-way; he dove the car off the edge of the pier, engaging the thrusters mid-air.
The car glided through the copper-colored smog of the docks, weaving between the swinging arms of the scrap-cranes. Behind you, two pursuit skiffs launched from the lower tiers, their orange lights flashing.
"I TOLD YOU TO STAY IN THE CAR!" Jay roared, though he was grinning like a madman as he navigated a 90-degree turn around a cooling tower.
"I DID STAY IN THE CAR! I OPERATED THE SEARCHLIGHT FROM THE INSIDE!" you yelled back, gripping the safety handle. "I SAVED YOUR FRECKLED FACE, JAY! ADMIT IT!"
"YOU INTERRUPTED A SENSITIVE NEGOTIATION!"
"HE WAS GOING TO BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!"
Jay let out a loud, joyous laugh, slamming the car into overdrive. The teal thrusters erupted, leaving the pursuit skiffs in a cloud of violet exhaust.
"Lesson Four, gremlin!" Jay yelled over the roar of the wind. "Always trust your sidekick’s instincts, even if she’s a massive pain in the—"
"I heard that!"
The ride back was filled with the usual bickering, but the energy had shifted. The "Shatter-Point" tension was gone, replaced by the electric thrill of a successful escape. You had helped. You had seen the threat before he did.
When the car finally rolled into the hidden garage, the massive steel doors sliding shut behind you, the silence was almost deafening.
Jay killed the engine. He sat there for a second, his hands still gripping the wheel, his chest rising and falling. He slowly pulled off his motocross gloves, tossing them onto the dashboard, and then he turned to look at you.
He didn't say anything. He just looked at you with those icy pale eyes, and for the first time, there was no sarcasm. No wit. Just a deep, profound respect.
"You're okay?" he asked softly.
"I'm fine, Jay. Not a scratch. I told you, I’m getting better at this."
He reached over the seat, his hand catching the back of your neck. He pulled you forward until your forehead rested against his. The smell of ozone, rain, and his dark cologne was overwhelming.
"You're a nightmare, Y/N," he whispered, his voice a low, rough rumble. "But you're my nightmare."
"Does that mean I get to keep the gummy candies?" you whispered back, a grin tugging at your lips.
Jay let out a soft laugh, his thumb brushing against the nape of your neck. "Yeah. You can keep the candies. And maybe... maybe we can start working on that 'intimidating stare' tomorrow."
"Really?"
"Don't make me regret it, gremlin. Now, go check on Dex. I think he’s offended you didn't let him help with the searchlight."
You hopped out of the car, your heart feeling lighter than the airborne traffic of Meridian. You walked toward your spare room, Dex trotting happily at your heels, but you stopped in the doorway and looked back.
Jay was leaning against the car, watching you go. He had that small, genuine smile on his face—the one he only showed you. And as he pulled his black compression shirt down, smoothing out the fabric over his chest, you realized that maybe, just maybe, being his "living headache" was the best job in the world.
"Goodnight, Jay!"
"Goodnight, headache."
The doors of the aqueduct were closed, and the city of Meridian was still a dangerous, chaotic mess outside, but as you fell onto your soft bed, you knew you weren't a ghost anymore. You were exactly where you were supposed to be.
Even if your boss was a grumpy, freckle-faced maniac in a very tight shirt.
The state of being "dead" had surprisingly few perks, but the one you appreciated most was the domestic chaos of the aqueduct.
By now, you and Jay had fallen into a rhythm that was equal parts efficient and exhausting. You were his shadow, his sounding board, and—as he frequently reminded you—the primary reason his blood pressure was a constant concern for the medical droids. You lived in the spare room, worked in the garage, and shared your life with a dog who had officially decided you were the superior human.
One evening, the workshop was unusually hushed. The aggressive synth-punk was replaced by the low, melodic hum of a localized gravity field Jay was testing. He was hunched over a workbench, his back a broad expanse of black compression fabric that left very little to the imagination. He was currently trying to calibrate a set of micro-thrusters, his fingers moving with a delicacy that always fascinated you.
You were sitting on the floor nearby, cross-legged, using a specialized magnet to pull iron shavings out of the rug—a task you’d volunteered for because it was satisfyingly mindless.
"Jay?" you murmured, not looking up.
"If you're about to ask if we can get another dog, the answer is still no," he drawled, though there was a soft edge to his voice.
"I wasn't going to ask that. I was going to ask... do you ever miss the city? Like, the real parts of it? Not just the back-alley deals and the grease?"
Jay paused, his soldering iron hovering. He slowly turned his head. Without his wraparound sunglasses, his pale eyes were startlingly bright in the dim light. He looked at you, then back at the piece of tech in his hands.
"I miss the food," he admitted, his voice a low, raspy rumble. "Real, non-synthetic skewers from the Floating Lantern district. And the way the wind smells when you're gliding over the Neon Reefs at midnight. But the people? No. I don't miss the people."
He went back to work, but you noticed the way his shoulders dropped just a fraction. He was a lonely man who had built a fortress out of chrome and sarcasm, and you had somehow found the back door.
"We should go back," you said. "Not for a mission. Just to eat. You remember that place in the Prism Bazaar? The one with the spicy octopus skewers and the purple tea?"
Jay let out a short, dry laugh. "You mean the place where you almost started a riot because you accidentally insulted the chef’s mechanical hat?"
"It looked like a steamer basket, Jay! I was hungry!"
He finally turned his chair all the way around, leaning his elbows on his knees. The compression shirt pulled tight across his chest, and for a second, your brain completely stalled. You quickly looked down at the iron shavings.
"Fine," Jay sighed, though a small, genuine smirk was playing on his lips. "But we go in, we eat, and we leave. No wandering. No jellyfish-watching. And you wear a hood. I don't need the entire city realizing their favorite ghost is back for a snack."
The Prism Bazaar was located in the Luminescent Archipelago, a cluster of floating islands held together by massive, ancient golden chains. The world here was a dreamscape; the ground was made of a crystalline rock that refracted the sunset into a million different colors, and the trees grew leaves that glowed like soft, pastel lanterns.
It was the randomness at its peak—one island was a tropical forest, the next was a Victorian-style clockwork village, and the one you were currently in was a bustling, multi-tiered marketplace built into the side of a giant, dormant volcano.
Jay parked the car in a secluded hanger on the "quiet" side of the island. He was extra overbearing as you stepped out, his hand lingering on your arm as he checked your hood for the tenth time.
"I'm fine, Jay," you huffed, adjusting the fabric. "I'm a ghost, remember? No one’s looking for a dead girl in a marketplace."
"Tell that to the guys who almost harpooned us in The Skin," Jay muttered. He looked incredible, as usual—black turtleneck, heavy stacked belts, and those metal-hardware boots that made a satisfying clack on the crystal ground.
Dex was on a retractable lead, trotting happily between the two of you, his tactical collar blinking a soft green.
The Bazaar was a sensory explosion. The air smelled of spices, sea salt, and roasting meat. Vendors shouted in a dozen different languages, selling everything from clockwork toys to bottled starlight. You led Jay through the winding streets, your heart light. It felt like a date, even if neither of you would ever admit it.
"There!" you pointed to a small, open-air stall perched on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the clouds.
The skewers were just as good as you remembered. You and Jay sat at a small, wobbly table, eating in a comfortable, bickering silence. Dex sat at your feet, receiving "accidental" scraps of octopus.
"See?" you said, wiping a bit of spicy sauce from your lip. "Totally worth the risk."
Jay watched you, his icy pale eyes softened by the amber glow of the lanterns hanging above. He reached out, his thumb catching a stray smudge of sauce on your chin. His touch was warm, lingering for a second too long to be accidental.
"Yeah," he murmured, his voice dropping into that deep, intimate register. "Worth the risk."
The peace didn't last. In Meridian, it never did.
As you were walking back toward the hanger, the ground beneath the Bazaar suddenly shuddered. It wasn't an earthquake; it was a localized explosion.
"Get down!" Jay roared, throwing his arm across your chest and shoving you toward the wall of a crystal shop.
A group of bounty hunters—remnants of the Rust-Blood Syndicate who had clearly spent the last week tracking Jay's engine signature—burst from the shadows. They weren't looking for a deal; they were looking for revenge.
"The girl!" one of them yelled, pointing a heavy-duty kinetic rifle. "The ghost is real! Take them both!"
"Run for the car!" Jay commanded. He reached into his jacket, pulling out a pair of flash-grenades.
The next few minutes were a blur of violet smoke, screaming, and the rhythmic thud of kinetic rounds hitting the crystal walls. Jay was a whirlwind of precision, his motocross gloves sparking as he used his forearm shields to deflect fire while pushing you toward the hanger.
But the Archipelago was precarious. The explosion had damaged one of the massive golden chains holding the island in place. The ground began to tilt at a terrifying angle.
"Jay! The ground!" you screamed.
The crystalline pavement beneath your feet cracked. A massive fissure opened up, and before you could jump, the section you were standing on broke away entirely.
You felt the sickening drop in your stomach as you fell into the chasm.
"Y/N!" Jay’s scream was raw, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror that echoed over the gunfire.
You managed to grab onto a protruding brass pipe—part of the island’s ancient plumbing—but you were dangling over the five-thousand-foot drop. Below you were nothing but the swirling, violent clouds of the lower energy wells.
The pipe groaned under your weight. Your fingers were slipping, the cold metal slick with condensation.
"JAY!"
The bounty hunters were still firing, pinning Jay down behind a stack of crates. He didn't care about the cover. He didn't care about the rifles.
He lunged. In a display of boyish recklessness that defied every law of physics he loved so much, Jay vaulted over the crates, ignoring a graze of a kinetic bolt that tore through his shoulder. He skidded across the tilting ground, his heavy boots throwing up sparks, and dove toward the edge of the fissure.
He caught your wrist just as the brass pipe snapped.
The jerk nearly pulled your arm from its socket. You screamed, looking up into Jay’s face. He was flat on his stomach, his fingers clamped around your wrist with a grip like iron. His pale eyes were wide, the pupils blown, his face pale beneath the tan. He looked like he was staring into his own personal hell.
"I've got you," he wheezed, his muscles bulging under the compression shirt as he strained to pull you up. "I've got you, gremlin. Don't you dare let go."
Another round hissed past his head, but he didn't even flinch. He hauled you upward with a strength born of pure desperation, dragging you over the jagged edge of the crystal and into his arms.
He didn't stand up. He just rolled onto his back, pulling you flush against his chest, shielding you with his entire body as more debris rained down. He was shaking—actually shaking.
"I almost lost you," he whispered into your hair, his voice breaking. "I almost lost you."
Dex appeared at the edge of the fissure, barking frantically, snapping at a bounty hunter who got too close. The distraction was enough for Jay to reach for a small, silver canister on his belt—a localized smoke screen.
He slammed it onto the ground.
"We’re leaving," he growled.
The flight back to the aqueduct was silent. Not the comfortable silence of before, but a heavy, vibrating tension. Jay drove like a man possessed, the teal thrusters of the car glowing at maximum output. He didn't look at you. He just gripped the wheel, his knuckles white. When the garage doors finally slammed shut, he didn't even wait for the engine to cool. He stepped out of the car, his movements jerky and sharp.
m"Jay, wait—"
He turned around, and the look on his face stopped you in your tracks. He looked furious, but it wasn't directed at you. It was the look of a man who had finally hit his breaking point.
"You're not going out again," he stated, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. "I don't care about the missions. I don't care about the credits. You stay here."
"Jay, you can't just lock me in here! It was a freak accident!"
"It wasn't an accident!" he yelled, stepping into your space. He smelled of smoke, ozone, and the dark cologne that always made your heart skip. "They’re coming for you because of me. Because you're with me. And I can't... I can't watch you fall again." He stopped, his chest heaving under the torn turtleneck. He looked down at his hands—the hands that had barely caught you—and let out a ragged, exhausted sigh. "I'm a geek, Y/N," he whispered, his voice cracking. "I like things that make sense. I like equations. I like tech that I can fix with a wrench. But you? You're the one thing in this world I can't calculate. You’re the one thing I can't fix if it breaks."
He looked up, his pale eyes searching yours, stripped of all his witty armor.
"I love the headache," he admitted, the words barely a breath. "I think I've loved the headache since the day you ruined my lunch." You stared at him, your breath hitching. The "no crush" lie you’d been telling yourself for weeks disintegrated into ash.
"Jay..."
You didn't have to say anything else. You reached out, grabbing the front of his tactical vest, and pulled him down. The kiss wasn't like the ones in the dreamscape movies. It was messy, desperate, and tasted like salt and adrenaline. It was the collision of two weeks of suppressed tension and one terrifying moment of near-death. Jay groaned into the kiss, his hands finding your waist and pulling you flush against him, lifting you off your feet as if he needed to prove you were still solid, still there, still his. His leather-clad fingers tangled in your hair, ruining the style, but neither of you cared.
He pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against yours. His pale eyes were bright, focused entirely on you. "You're still a liability," he murmured, a faint, shaky smirk finally returning to his face.
"And you're still a grumpy, overbearing maniac," you whispered back, a grin spreading across your face. Jay laughed—a real, genuine sound that filled the grimy corners of the aqueduct. He leaned down, catching your lips in a softer, slower kiss that felt like a promise. Dex let out a happy bark, trotting over and nudging his wet nose against both of your knees. Jay pulled back, looking down at the dog, then back at you. He rolled his eyes, the dramatic, world-weary gesture that officially meant everything was going to be okay. "Fine," Jay drawled, his voice returning to that lazy, arrogant swagger as he picked you up and headed toward the bedroom. "The sidekick stays. But you're still not getting the passenger seat."
"We'll see about that, mechanic."
The doors of the aqueduct were sealed, and the colorful, dangerous world of Meridian was still waiting outside, but for the first time since you’d crashed into him, the silence in the garage was perfect.
The adrenaline of the Prism Bazaar had finally settled into a heavy, humming warmth that filled the cavernous garage. Outside, the tropical rain of Meridian drummed a relentless, rhythmic beat against the ancient stone of the aqueduct, but inside, the world was reduced to the soft glow of amber work lights and the scent of ozone and dark wood-smoke.Jay was sitting on a low stool by his primary workbench, his back toward you. He’d shed the heavy tactical vest and the track jacket, leaving him in just that pitch-black, short-sleeved compression shirt. It clung to the sharp lines of his shoulders and the corded muscles of his back with a frustratingly perfect fit. He was trying to reach the graze on his shoulder with a medical swab—the one he’d taken while leaping across the fissure to catch you. Every time he moved his arm, the compression fabric pulled tight across his chest, and he’d let out a low, irritated hiss between his teeth.
"You’re going to tear the stitches if you keep squirming like that," you murmured, stepping out from the shadows of the spare room.Jay froze, his hand halfway to his back. He didn't turn around, but you saw the way his shoulders stiffened. "I don’t have stitches, Y/N. It’s a scratch. I’ve had worse from a faulty solder-joint."
"It’s a 'scratch' that’s currently bleeding onto your favorite shirt," you countered, walking over. You reached out, gently taking the antiseptic swab from his gloved fingers. "Sit still. I’m the sidekick, remember? This is in my contract."
Jay let out a long, slow sigh—that dramatic, world-weary sound you’d grown to love. He dropped his hand, resting his elbows on his knees. "The contract also mentioned you not being a massive headache, but we both know how that turned out."You stepped into the space between his knees, forcing him to look up at you. Without his wraparound sunglasses, his pale eyes were startlingly bright, fixed on you with an intensity that made the air in the garage feel impossibly thick. The dusting of freckles across his tan nose was visible in the low light, a soft contrast to the hard, lethal lines of his jaw.
"Shirt off, Jay," you said, your voice steadier than you felt.
Jay’s brow arched. A slow, dangerous smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth—the boyish, reckless grin that usually preceded a high-speed chase. "Direct. I like it. But I thought you said you didn't have a crush on the grumpy mechanic?"
"I don't," you lied, your heart doing a violent, traitorous thud against your ribs. "I just don't want blood on the upholstery when you eventually pass out from stubbornness." Jay chuckled, a low, gravelly sound that vibrated in his chest. He reached down, his large, calloused hands grabbing the hem of the compression shirt. In one smooth, fluid motion, he pulled it over his head and tossed it onto the workbench.
The air in the garage suddenly felt ten degrees hotter.He was a masterpiece of grit and precision. His skin was naturally tan, marked by a few faded white lines of old scars and the fresh, angry red graze on his shoulder. His muscles were lean and defined, the kind of strength built from years of wrestling heavy brass and iron.You moved behind him, your fingers trembling slightly as you pressed the cold antiseptic swab to the wound. Jay flinched, his back muscles rippling under your touch, but he didn't pull away."You're shaking, gremlin," he murmured, his voice dropping into that deep, raspy register that always made your skin tingle."It’s cold in here, Jay," you whispered, focused entirely on the graze."The heater is at sixty percent," he countered. He slowly turned his head, looking at you over his shoulder. "Try again."
You finished cleaning the wound, but you didn't move away. You let your fingers linger against the warm skin of his shoulder, your thumb tracing the edge of an old scar. The silence of the aqueduct wasn't empty anymore; it was filled with the weight of everything that had happened since you’d crashed into his life.
"I really thought you were going to let go," you whispered, your voice breaking just a fraction. "At the Bazaar. I thought I was done." Jay turned on his stool, his knees brushing against your thighs as he faced you fully. He reached out, his large hands catching your waist, his thumbs hooking into the belt loops of your cargo pants. He pulled you a single, agonizing inch closer, until the heat radiating off his bare chest was overwhelming."I told you," Jay said, his voice a low, rough rumble. He looked up at you, his icy pale eyes dark with a hunger that had nothing to do with spicy skewers. "I don't let go of things that belong to me. And Meridian is a very, very small city when I’m looking for something."
He reached up, his rough, grease-smudged hand cupping the back of your neck. He leaned his forehead against yours, his breath warm against your lips.
"You're the biggest headache I've ever had, Y/N," Jay whispered, his thumb tracing the nape of your neck, sending electric shocks down your spine. "And I don't think I want the quiet back."
He didn't wait for a sarcastic comeback. He didn't wait for a joke. He tilted his head, his lips brushing against yours in a ghost of a kiss that promised everything.
"Jay..." you breathed out, your hands finding his bare shoulders, your fingers digging into the firm muscle."Say it," he murmured against your mouth, his grip on your waist tightening. "Tell me you're not just here for the dog."You let out a soft, breathless laugh, pulling him down until the distance between you finally vanished. "I'm definitely not here for the dog —though I still love him." Jay groaned, a low, guttural sound of pure surrender, and captured your lips with a hunger that finally snapped the last of the tension in the room. He stood up, lifting you effortlessly and sitting you back against the edge of the workbench, his body crowding into yours as his hands wandered with a frantic, desperate precision.
The kiss ignited like a kinetic coil overloading—messy, desperate, all teeth and tongue and months of pent-up tension finally snapping. Jay groaned low into your mouth, the sound vibrating through his bare chest where it pressed hot and solid against yours. His large, calloused hands wandered with frantic, desperate precision: one sliding up your spine to fist the back of your tank top, the other gripping your ass and hauling you tighter against the hard line of his cock straining in his pants. He broke the kiss just long enough to yank your tank top over your head, tossing it blindly into the shadows. His eyes raked over you, dark with hunger, the dusting of freckles across his tan nose and cheeks standing out in the amber glow. “Fuck, look at you,” he rashed, voice gravelly and wrecked. Then his mouth was on you again—hot, open kisses down your throat, teeth grazing your collarbone, tongue soothing the sting as he worked your cargo pants open with one hand. He shoved them and your underwear down your thighs in one rough tug. You kicked them off, and Jay lifted you onto the edge of the workbench like you weighed nothing, spreading your legs wide around his hips. But he didn’t fuck you right away. No—he dropped to his knees between your thighs, broad shoulders forcing them wider, and looked up at you with those icy pale eyes blown black. “Been dying to taste you,” he murmured, breath hot against your slick skin. His hands gripped your thighs, thumbs stroking the sensitive inner flesh as he leaned in.
His tongue dragged a slow, filthy stripe up your folds, flat and broad, savoring the taste of you with a deep groan that made your hips jerk. “So fucking sweet,” he growled against you, then sealed his lips around your clit and sucked—hard. Your back arched off the workbench with a sharp cry, fingers threading tight into his spiky, sweat-damp hair. Jay didn’t let up. He ate you out like a man starved: tongue flicking fast and relentless over your clit, then dipping lower to push inside you, fucking you with it in deep, wet strokes. Two thick fingers joined in, sliding in to the knuckle and curling hard against that perfect spot inside you while his mouth focused back on your clit, sucking and licking in messy, obscene rhythm.The sounds were filthy—wet slurps and the slick glide of his fingers, your broken moans echoing off the brass walls, the rain hammering outside like it was trying to match the pace. Jay’s free hand pinned your hip down when you started grinding too hard against his face, holding you exactly where he wanted you. He looked up at you the whole time, pale eyes locked on yours, watching every twitch and gasp like he was memorizing how to ruin you. “That’s it, gremlin,” he rasped between licks, voice muffled and vibrating against your clit. “Let me hear you. Come on my tongue.”Your thighs started shaking. The pressure built fast and brutal—his fingers pumping faster, curling harder, tongue flicking in tight circles until your vision whited out. You came with a sharp, keening cry, walls clenching around his fingers, hips jerking against his mouth as pleasure ripped through you in heavy, pulsing waves. Jay groaned like he was the one coming, licking you through every aftershock, drawing it out until you were whimpering and oversensitive.
Only then did he stand, lips shiny and swollen, a feral smirk tugging at his mouth as he wiped his chin with the back of his hand. You were still panting when you slid off the workbench on shaky legs and sank to your knees in front of him. Jay’s breath hitched hard as you tugged his pants the rest of the way down, freeing his cock—thick, heavy, flushed dark at the tip and already leaking.You wrapped your hand around the base, looking up at him as you leaned in and took him into your mouth. Jay’s head fell back with a guttural groan, one hand gently threading through your hair. “Shit—yes, just like that.” You sucked him slow at first, tongue swirling around the head, tasting the salty pre-come before taking him deeper, hollowing your cheeks. The weight of him on your tongue was addictive; you bobbed your head, taking more with every pass, hand stroking what your mouth couldn’t reach. Jay’s hips twitched, but he let you set the pace, eyes locked down on yours, pale gaze burning. “Fuck, your mouth… so good for me,” he rasped, thumb brushing your cheek tenderly even as his voice went rough. “Look at you—on your knees for me after all that attitude.” You moaned around him, the vibration pulling another deep curse from his throat. You worked him faster, wetter, saliva dripping down your chin as you took him to the back of your throat and swallowed. His fingers tightened in your hair, not forcing, just holding on like he was barely keeping control. But before he could tip over the edge, he gently tugged you off, breathing ragged. “Not yet,” he growled, voice wrecked. “Want to be buried inside you when I come.” He lifted you back onto the workbench in one smooth motion, stepping between your spread thighs. His cock nudged your slick entrance, sliding through your folds teasingly before he pushed in—slow, deliberate, inch by thick inch. His forehead pressed to yours, eyes locked on yours the entire time, pale and intense. “Eyes on me,” he whispered, voice strained as he bottomed out, hips flush against yours. The stretch was perfect, overwhelming, filling you so completely you forgot how to breathe for a second.
Then he started to move. Deep, rolling thrusts at first, letting you feel every inch as he dragged out and slammed back in. The workbench creaked under the force. Jay’s hands gripped your hips hard enough to bruise, anchoring you as his pace turned rough—pounding, relentless, the wet slap of skin on skin loud and obscene in the garage. Every thrust hit that perfect spot inside you, making your mouth fall open on a constant stream of whines and broken moans. “Jay—ah—fuck—!” The sounds spilled out of you helplessly, high and needy, as he ruined you on the bench. He kept his eyes locked on yours, never looking away, watching every flicker of pleasure cross your face like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. “Yeah? Feel that?” he rasped, voice gravelly and wrecked, hips snapping harder. “Taking me so fucking deep. So good for me.” He leaned in, kissing you sloppily—messy, open-mouthed, tongues sliding together as he pounded into you. Your legs wrapped tight around his waist, heels digging into his lower back, pulling him even deeper. Sweat slicked both your bodies, his spiky hair damp and wild, freckles glistening on his tan skin.
The pressure built impossibly high. Jay’s thrusts turned punishing, hips slamming forward with raw power, the head of his cock dragging perfectly against that spot on every stroke. One hand slid between you, thumb circling your clit in tight, firm strokes. Your mouth stayed open, whines pouring out louder, eyes wide and locked on his as the coil snapped. You came hard—walls clenching violently around his cock, vision sparking white as pleasure tore through you in crashing waves. Jay groaned deep in his chest, hips stuttering as he followed right after, burying himself to the hilt and grinding against you while he spilled hot and thick inside you. His mouth crashed into yours again—sloppy, desperate, tongues tangling messily through both your orgasms, sharing every shudder and moan as you came together. You stayed like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, breathing ragged and shared, his cock still twitching inside you. Jay kissed you softly now—slow, lingering presses to your lips, your cheeks, your closed eyelids—whispering rough, affectionate nonsense against your skin. “Perfect… so fucking perfect.” He pulled out carefully, both of you sighing at the loss. Then he scooped you up into his arms like you weighed nothing, carrying you bridal-style through the garage toward his bedroom. Dex barely stirred from his velvet bed, offering one sleepy tail thump before settling back down. In the dim warmth of Jay’s room, he laid you down gently on the big bed with its dark sheets that smelled like him—ozone, cologne, engine grease, and home. He disappeared for only a moment, returning with a warm, damp cloth. With careful, tender strokes, he cleaned you both—gentle between your thighs, over your stomach, across the faint marks his grip had left on your hips. He pressed soft kisses to every spot he wiped: your thighs, your hips, your stomach, the curve of your shoulder, your lips.
When you were both clean, he climbed into bed behind you and pulled you close, spooning you tight. His strong arm wrapped around your waist, pulling your back flush against his chest. One leg draped over yours, his breath warm against the back of your neck as he nuzzled closer, lips brushing your skin. “You okay?” he murmured, voice sleepy and rough and fond, fingers tracing lazy patterns over your stomach. “More than okay,” you whispered, relaxing completely into his heat. Jay hummed contentedly, tightening his hold just a fraction. “Good. Sleep, gremlin. I’ve got you.” The rain drummed steadily against the aqueduct outside, a lullaby that matched the steady beat of his heart against your back. Safe in his arms, surrounded by his warmth and scent, you drifted off first. Jay followed soon after, his breathing slowing into the deep rhythm of sleep, never once letting go.
Two weeks is a funny measure of time in a city that operates on perpetual neon twilight. In the upper tiers of Meridian, fourteen days was just another cycle of clockwork gears, shifting syndicates, and corporate espionage. But down in the damp, quiet belly of the abandoned aqueduct, two weeks had completely rewritten the laws of physics and the boundaries of your entire universe. You woke up entirely tangled in dark charcoal sheets, your face pressed against a warm, solid expanse of bare skin. The scent of ozone, clean cotton, and dark wood-smoke cologne was immediately grounding. You didn't open your eyes right away. You just breathed in, letting the deep, rhythmic rise and fall of Jay’s chest lull you in the dim amber light of the bedroom. His arm was wrapped securely around your waist, holding you flush against him with a possessive, heavy weight that made it very clear you weren't sleeping in the surplus spare room anymore, nor would you ever again. His other hand was resting in your hair, his calloused, mechanic’s fingers idly tracing lazy, soothing circles against your scalp. "I know you're awake, gremlin," Jay’s voice rumbled. It was thick with sleep, a deep, raspy vibration that you felt straight through your ribs. "Your breathing changed. You stopped sounding like a defective exhaust valve."
You groaned, tilting your head back to glare up at him. Jay was looking down at you, his head propped up on the plush pillows. Without his signature spiky, wet-look styling, his dark hair was a soft, chaotic mess, falling over his forehead and grazing his eyebrows. His eyes were half-open, and even in the dim morning light, that striking, icy pale color was arresting. They were his natural eyes—piercing, cold, and entirely unique, yet right now they were warm and completely unguarded, making the heavy dusting of freckles across his naturally tan nose look incredibly boyish and sweet. "I do not sound like an exhaust valve," you mumbled, burying your face back into his chest, right over his heart. "I am a very delicate, quiet sleeper. A vision of grace." Jay let out a low, vibrating chuckle, his hand sliding down to rest flat against your bare back. "You stole all the blankets at 3:00 AM, kicked me in the shin at 4:00 AM, and at some point, you tried to put me in a headlock. I had to use tactical evasion maneuvers just to stay on the mattress."
"It’s called establishing dominance in the territory," you smiled against his skin, pressing a soft kiss to his collarbone. "You should be proud. My street instincts are staying sharp."
"Your street instincts are going to get you rolled onto the cold floor," he warned, though the lazy, entirely smitten smirk on his face completely ruined the threat. He leaned down, pressing a warm, lingering kiss to your forehead, then to the bridge of your nose, before finally catching your lips in a slow, morning-lazy kiss that tasted like sleep and complete safety. You tangled your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer, perfectly willing to spend the rest of the day exactly like this, hidden away from the chaotic metropolis of Meridian. A sudden, high-pitched whine shattered the peace. A cold, wet nose aggressively shoved its way between your shoulder and Jay’s bicep. Dex let out a sharp bark, his scruffy tail thumping a frantic rhythm against the side of the bed. Jay sighed, dropping his forehead against yours with a heavy, dramatic thud. "I take it back. The dog is the exhaust valve. And he has zero respect for my personal time."
"He’s starving, Jay. Look at him. He’s practically wasting away," you laughed, rolling over to scratch the Wire-Hound behind his ears. Dex immediately climbed halfway onto the mattress, leaning his entire body weight against you and letting out a happy huff. "He ate a premium synthetic steak less than eight hours ago," Jay grumbled, throwing the heavy duvet off and sitting up on the edge of the bed. He ran both hands through his messy hair, pushing it back. He stood up, stretching his long arms over his head. Without his compression shirt or heavy belts, the sharp, lean muscles of his back and shoulders were on full display. The red graze from the Prism Bazaar was entirely healed now, leaving behind a faint, silvery line that just added to his collection of occupational hazards. "Don't stare, sidekick," Jay drawled, throwing a glance over his bare shoulder, a wicked, knowing grin on his face. His icy pale eyes crinkled at the corners. "It’s unprofessional."
"I’m analyzing your structural integrity for future missions," you shot back smoothly, though your cheeks flushed warmly. "Strictly professional."
"Right. Get dressed, structural analyst," Jay said, pulling open the dark-wood dresser and tossing you one of his clean, oversized black t-shirts. It hit you square in the face. "We have to go into the city today. I finally got a ping from a specialized vendor in the Brass Quarter." You pulled the shirt over your head, the hem falling halfway down your thighs, entirely swallowing your frame. "A vendor? Are we buying volatile explosives or illegal pulse-cells?"
"Neither," Jay said, walking into the attached washroom. You heard the sound of running water as he began fixing his hair into its signature, piecey wet-look spikes. He walked back out a few minutes later, pulling on his tight black turtleneck and strapping his stacked leather belts around his waist. He reached for his padded motocross gloves, the familiar grunge aesthetic snapping perfectly into place. "We are picking up three ounces of custom-mixed, matte-finish poly-alloy pigment." You paused, one foot hovering over your cargo pants. "Wait. You mean..."
"Yes," Jay deadpanned, turning to face you with a look of profound, agonizing seriousness. "I am finally going to fix the scratch you put on my bumper on the day we met. It has been haunting my waking hours for two solid months. I see it every time I walk past the rear axle. It mocks me, Y/N. It looks at me and laughs." You burst out laughing, hopping on one foot as you pulled your pants up. "Jay! It’s a tiny scratch! It adds character! It makes the car look tough!"
"It makes the car look like it was driven by an amateur who doesn't respect aerodynamics," he corrected sharply, though his pale eyes were dancing with amusement. "Hurry up. If the vendor sells that pigment to someone else, I’m deducting the cost from your non-existent salary." Thirty minutes later, you were fully dressed, fueled by a mug of Jay’s heavily improved, nearly-drinkable espresso, and ready to face the neon chaos of Meridian. You walked out into the massive, cavernous garage. The amber floodlights illuminated the pristine, matte black-and-yellow muscle car sitting dead center on the oil-stained concrete. It looked like a resting predator, sleek and dangerous, the teal thrusters resting quietly beneath the chassis. Dex was already trotting circles around the front bumper, his tactical collar blinking green as he waited for the garage doors to open.nYou let out a soft sigh, resigning yourself to your fate. You walked toward the back of the car, reaching out to pull the handle of the rear door. It had been weeks, and despite the fact that you now slept in the mechanic’s bed, wore his oversized clothes, and occasionally saved his life from cyborg snipers, the hierarchy of the car remained entirely, stubbornly unbroken. "Dex gets shotgun," you muttered to yourself, an old, familiar grumble that lacked any real heat. "The rules of the road. Feral street-thief in the back, spoiled scrap-yard dog in the front."
You pulled the handle. The back door opened. You stopped. You blinked, staring into the back seat, completely sure that your eyes were playing a trick on you in the dim, atmospheric light of the aqueduct. The plush leather of the back seat was entirely covered by a massive, custom-built structure. It was a dog bed, but calling it a dog bed felt like an insult to engineering. It was a masterpiece of canine luxury. It featured multi-axis shock-absorbent memory foam upholstered in the exact same premium black leather as the car seats. It had raised, heavily padded bolsters for neck support during high-speed J-turns, and integrated, climate-controlled thermal coils glowing faintly beneath the fabric. There was even a built-in, spill-proof brass water bowl holder bolted securely into the center console, operating on a miniaturized gyroscopic gimbal to prevent splashing. It took up the entire back seat. There was absolutely zero room for a human being, unless that human was incredibly flexible and didn't mind curling up around a water bowl. "What is this?" you whispered, completely bewildered, staring at the mechanical marvel. "That," Jay’s deep, gravelly voice echoed right behind you, sending a familiar shiver down your spine, "is a gyro-stabilized, thermal-regulated canine transit module. I built it on Tuesday while you were busy trying to reprogram my workshop radio." You slowly turned around. Jay was leaning casually against the driver's side door, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His wraparound sporty sunglasses were resting on top of his spiky hair, leaving his icy pale eyes completely visible. The look in them was entirely soft, entirely fond, and incredibly amused. "Jay..." you started, pointing a trembling finger at the back seat. "You built a luxury apartment for Dex in the back of your car."
"He’s a growing boy," Jay said smoothly, completely deadpan, though the corner of his mouth twitched. "He needs proper lumbar support during evasive maneuvers. The front seat just wasn't cutting it anymore. The ergonomics were entirely wrong for his spine. It was a medical necessity."
"His spine," you repeated slowly, matching his deadpan tone. "Exactly." Jay whistled, a sharp, two-note sound that echoed off the damp stone walls. Dex didn't hesitate. The Wire-Hound bounded past you, leaping effortlessly into the back seat and sinking blissfully into the memory foam. He let out a loud, happy huff, circling twice before laying down and resting his scruffy chin on the padded bolster, looking like a tiny, grease-stained king on a leather throne. Jay walked around the hood of the car, his heavy metal-hardware boots clacking against the concrete. He stopped right in front of you, towering over you in the amber light. He didn't say a word. He just reached out, his motocross-gloved hand wrapping around the handle of the front passenger door. With a soft, metallic click, he pulled it open. He took a step back, gesturing toward the empty, pristine leather seat with a grand, mocking bow. "The front seat is for the co-pilot," Jay drawled, his voice dropping into a low, intimate rumble that made your heart skip a beat. "It’s the rules of the road. Shotgun is yours, gremlin. Try not to scratch the door on your way in." You stared at the empty passenger seat, then up at his face. He was trying so hard to maintain his cool, lazy, untouchable mechanic aesthetic, but the boyish, completely reckless grin breaking across his face gave him away entirely. The dusting of freckles on his nose crinkled as his smile reached his striking, pale eyes. He hadn't just built a bed for the dog. He had spent hours fabricating a highly complex, custom piece of tech solely to give you the seat next to him, all without admitting he was being a massive, hopeless romantic. You burst out laughing, a bright, joyous sound that filled the garage, and threw your arms around his neck. The sudden weight made him stumble back half a step, but his large hands instantly caught your waist, pulling you flush against his chest, lifting your boots slightly off the ground.
"You are such a massive, ridiculous geek," you breathed against his neck, burying your face in the collar of his black turtleneck, inhaling the scent of him. "I'm a visionary engineer," Jay corrected, his chest vibrating with his own laughter. He kissed the side of your head, his arms tightening around you, holding you like you were the most valuable piece of tech he owned. "And you’re holding up the schedule. Get in the car before I change my mind and bolt a rusted milk crate to the roof for you to ride in." You pulled back, offering him a bright, wicked grin. "You wouldn't dare. It would ruin the aerodynamics."
"You're learning," he smirked, tapping the tip of your nose with a gloved finger. You slid into the passenger seat. The leather was cool, the dashboard dials glowing with a soft, familiar amber light. The view from up here was entirely different. You weren't a terrified hostage ducking in the footwell to avoid plasma fire, and you weren't an unwanted piece of luggage. You were exactly where you belonged. Jay shut your door with a solid thud and rounded the hood, sliding effortlessly into the driver’s seat. He pulled his wraparound sunglasses down to cover his eyes, returning to full stealth mode. He hit the ignition, and the car roared to life, the guttural, prehistoric sound of the engine vibrating through your bones. As he shifted the heavy gearstick into drive, you reached out, your hand hovering over the brass dials of the rusted cube radio integrated into the dash. You paused, looking at him out of the corner of your eye. "So. Since I'm officially the co-pilot... does that mean I get DJ privileges?" Jay froze. His head snapped toward your hand, a look of profound, existential horror crossing his face. "Y/N. Do not touch that dial."
"I’m just saying," you reasoned, a teasing lilt in your voice, leaning closer to the console. "Meridian Bubble-Pop is excellent driving music. It keeps the morale high. It’s scientifically proven to improve focus during high-speed chases. It has a great baseline."
"It is scientifically proven to make my ears bleed," Jay growled, reaching over to swat your hand away. "We listen to synth-punk. Aggressive, depressing, underground synth-punk. It matches the matte black aesthetic of the car."
"Aesthetic is nothing without joy, Jay!" You dodged his hand, twisting the brass dial violently to the right. The heavy, grinding baseline of his beloved underground music was instantly cut off, replaced by the aggressively cheerful, synthesized brass horns and upbeat vocals of a bubbly pop anthem about neon coral reefs. "I am going to eject your seat into the upper stratosphere," Jay deadpanned, staring straight ahead as the heavy steel garage doors groaned open, revealing the vibrant, chaotic, impossible colors of the city outside. "You don't have ejector seats," you grinned, kicking your heavy boots up onto the dashboard, making yourself completely at home. "I will install them this afternoon!" Jay slammed the gas. The car tore out of the damp, dark aqueduct and launched onto the suspended, illuminated overpass of the skyway. The wind rushed through the open windows, smelling of rain and hot pavement, as the black-and-yellow muscle car wove flawlessly through the floating traffic. You looked over at him. His jaw was tight, he was muttering curses under his breath about the pop music ruining his reputation, and his spiky hair was blowing wildly in the wind. He looked completely irritated, entirely dangerous, and absolutely perfect. He caught you staring. He didn't look away. Instead, he reached across the center console, his large, motocross-gloved hand finding yours. He laced his fingers through yours, his grip firm and warm, bringing your hand over to rest on his thigh, entirely contradicting the scowl on his face. "I hate this song," Jay muttered, keeping his eyes on the road as he drifted past a lumbering cargo-skiff. "I know," you smiled, squeezing his hand, leaning back into the plush leather of the passenger seat. "I love you too, mechanic."
Jay let out a soft, defeated sigh, a small, genuine smirk finally breaking through his grumpy facade as he drove you both deep into the beautiful, chaotic heart of Meridian. You never could have predicted that ruining a grumpy mechanic's hot dog would lead to this, but as you shifted comfortably in your brand-new seat and heard a suspicious squish, followed by Jay's horrified, "Y/N, did you forget you had candy in your pockets and mess up my leather?!"... yeah. You could definitely live with this.
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only two years post-debut, NAPE are the band to beat, and you might be the only woman in london whose heart races in a bad way at the sight of their guitarist—your ex-boyfriend, jay.
pairing ✩ jay park x fem!reader
genres: band au, exes to lovers, smut, fluff, angst | warnings: minors dni, reformed evil guy jay, set in london (#SCOTLANDFOREVER), so many english people (#SCOTLANDFOREVER), yn is #GoingThroughIt #Confused, hoseok is the bus driver, BLATANT PLAGIARISM OF SONGS BY EXISTING ARTISTS SORRYYYYYYYY | word count: 37,699
playlist: lover, you should've come over by jeff buckley ✩ puddles by not for radio ✩ eventually by tame impala ✩ where do broken hearts go by one direction ✩ 505 by arctic monkeys ✩ no control by one direction ✩ stateside by pinkpantheress ✩ you da one by rihanna ✩ change your ticket by one direction
from zo: HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASAHICORE !!! wow u are 23.25 now! amazing. youngest person ever. happy reading to everyone else and go wish asahicore a happy birthday rn. AS ALWAYS SHARE FEEDBACK OK LMK WHAT U THINK !!!
BACKSTAGE WITH NAPE ON THE ‘NO WAY BACK’ TOUR.
By: Daydream Mag. Photographs by: Heeseung Lee, Jay Park, Jake Sim & Sunghoon Park.
4:02 P.M. SUNDAY, MARCH 9, 2025. PARIS: If you’re one of NAPE’s four members, how do you spend the hours before the final show of your sold out tour? By sleeping, calling your mum, watching YouTube mukbangs, or taking film photos of your bandmates doing any of the above.
In broken Frenglish, guitarist, Jay, plays tour guide for the green room they’ve made home over the course of their three day concert at the iconic Le Trianon. “Did you know that Rihanna played here?” he asks, eyes wide as he swats away Sunghoon’s camera. “And Kesha, and Fifth Harmony? So many legends and now we’re here—crazy downgrade.”
This same eager, mildly insecure, energy permeates the green room as the band discuss highlights from the last two months on the road — riding a beer bike in Manchester, seeing the Eiffel Tower at midnight — and express how much they wish the tour could last forever. “Performing is the absolute best part,” Jake says between slurps of cup ramen he brought with him from London. “We’re always trying to find local pubs to play in because we can’t get enough.”
“That’s where it all started anyway,” explains their half-asleep frontman, Heeseung. “Playing in pubs, busking in Zone 5 shopping—
“Well, well, well,” Aeri says, appearing over your shoulder and catching you in the act. “If it isn’t Little Miss NAPE-hater drooling over a two-page spread.”
A chill runs down your spine and you couldn’t have dropped the magazine quicker if you tried. At your feet, it clatters with a flinch-inducing thud that rings throughout the deserted entrance of your local twenty-four hour Tesco. Neither you nor Aeri make any move to lift Daydream Mag’s summer 2025 issue from the speckled tile, so from its glossy cover, the face you’ve come to loathe gazes up at you through lidded eyes.
You scoff, affronted by the very suggestion. “I’m not you, Aeri. I wasn’t drooling.” And even if you were drooling, it certainly would not have been over Jay Park and his band of idiots. “It’s a four-page spread, by the way.”
“Same difference.”
Over Aeri’s shoulders, the sun’s first rays are threatening to shine through the glass on what is already an obscenely hot day for September. Dye slips from her damp hair down her face like blood, staining her white collar red, and you watch as she takes a picture of the magazine on the floor between your feet and hers before picking it up. She posts the picture to her story with one of NAPE’s songs playing and tags them so they can eventually see it and repost. They’re always doing that—reposting things fans tag them in. Satisfied, Aeri puts the magazine back in its place on the shelf, between Interview and the last copy of Dazed that has a photo of NAPE’s bassist and drummer laying together on the cover like something from a CEO yaoi. You have no idea how or when they got so popular.
Finally, leaving the band behind, you and Aeri loop your sweat slick arms and move through the aisles. You sniff and review scented candles; browse the books on the shelves, sharing thoughts on the ones you’ve read; and pick up snacks with Clubcard discounts, all on the way to find the one thing you came for at this time of night: salted caramel cheesecake cookies. Along with the rest of the internet, Aeri’s boyfriend has been raving about them since he tried them two weeks ago, and the three of you have been on high alert ever since. You even reached out to Somi’s little cousin, Riki, whose ex-girlfriend has a friend that works here to see when they’d be back in stock.
She told him to kill himself.
This is why, when you finally see them — fully stocked and still warm in their bags — you gasp. Understandably, when Aeri tries calling her boyfriend, he doesn’t answer, but you take as many as you can carry and run for the self-checkout.
Under the purple sky, you and Aeri walk all the way home, carrier bags in hand. It takes a lot not to eat all thirty cookies as soon as you cross the threshold, but, in an exercise of immense self-control, you leave them in the bread bin, and bid your flatmate goodnight.
Love her as much as you’ve come to, you often find yourself wishing it was some incredible story that brought the two of you together. A great tale of intertwined fates and instant connection. Instead, you found Aeri on spareroom.co.uk and when you deemed each other harmless enough, you signed the lease and moved in. It took a few months for you to shake off your anxiety and say more to her than, how did you sleep? but you got there in the end, and almost one whole year down the line, this flat and Aeri feel more like home every day.
As the working world’s alarms go off, you get into bed, showered and fresh-breathed, where sleep is reluctant to find you. One hundred counted sheep later, you give up and open Twitter. Now, you are mature enough to know better than to engage with content you know you’re not going to like—you’re not a critic. But… you are a hater. While NAPE haven’t yet brought forth the next strain of fandom-induced illness — à la Bieber Fever or One Direction Infection — they’re inescapable if you use the internet in any capacity. Profiles in magazines, Spotify playlist covers, constant viral concert clips: sweat-sheened skin and lidded eyes, long, thick ring-clad fingers strumming guitars or stroking mic stands. The tattooed back of their frontman populates hit tweets and Instagram Reels alike.
It’s not like you’re immune to attraction or allure. You have eyes. Eyes that widen at the sight of Sunghoon flexing his arms or Jake biting his lip. At Jay and his perfectly mussed hair that sits right at the junction of neat and messy. His two silver hoops in each ear. His dimpled cheek. How he sings with his eyes closed. The scar on his nose that you can only really see up close or when the light hits it just right. Keeping up with things like this is important because if you’re going to be a hater, you’d like to at least be an informed one. This is why, when you search for them on Twitter and the first tweet that comes up is the link to NAPE Catch Each Others Lies | Teen Vogue, you click with no hesitation.
It’s weird seeing them in motion like this, comfortable and joking around. Not singing. They’re decked head to toe in smart casual. Loose blazers and tailored trousers, fake glasses and neatly parted hair, smart shoes and polo shirts. Even though it’s different to their concert outfits and doesn’t really match what seems to be their vibe — evil-demon-fuckboy-rockstar — it suits them, highlighting their oddly perfect proportions.
From this video, you learn that Jay doesn't know any of their birthdays, Jake uses Sunghoon’s deodorant, and Sunghoon has never fallen asleep during rehearsal. Heeseung is also there. When the video ends, you fall asleep without a hitch, fresh linen and sweet dreams pulling you under.
Until you force open your heavy eyes to the sound of your phone ringing at eight o’clock—you slept for exactly two hours. It’s Aeri’s boyfriend. You can’t even speak when you answer, letting out a grumble instead. “Welcome to the land of the living, sweetheart!” he chirps, sounding much too awake for your liking. “Care to open the door?”
“Come back later.”
“But your breakfast will be cold later.” There’s a poutiness to his voice that would irk you if your hungry ears didn’t perk up at the sound of breakfast.
Turning over under the covers, you lean up on your elbows. “What’s for breakfast?” you ask slowly.
“Toad’s.”
To you — and the rest of London’s Gen Z population — Toad’s is the breakfast spot. At seven a.m. every day, there’s a queue that wraps around the corner. They recently issued a statement to request that customers stop selling their spots in line. Tired as you are, the thought of eating Toad’s without having lined up thrills you so much that you run straight to the door and fling it open. There stands Heeseung, a cup-holder in one hand and several paper bags in the other. A pair of sunglasses keep his bleach-fried hair from his forehead.
“You look nice,” he says, smiling as you step aside to let him in.
Smoothing out your hair with self-conscious palms, you inspect your face in the mirror beside him, seeing the crust lining the corners of your puffy eyes. “We are not close enough for you to speak to me like that,” you tell him, leaning into your reflection to clean yourself up a little.
Though you’re joking, mostly, Heeseung and Aeri have only been together for two months, and as her close friend, he should be on his best behaviour around you for at least the rest of his life. He frowns, apologising sincerely as he holds out one of the red and white paper bags. “Can I interest you in a forgive me choux vanille?”
The words make your heart race in your chest as you give a reverent nod, taking the bag from him.
“There’s, like, four of them in there—all yours.”
You have seen fanpages for these choux vanilles, you have been close to starting one yourself, and here, now, on a random Tuesday morning, standing in your hallway with NAPE’s frontman, you hold in your trembling hands a bag of, like, four of them. Later in life, when the time comes, you will name your firstborn after this man, probably.
“Heeseung,” you say softly. “Speak to me however you like.”
He laughs at that, as if he hasn’t just made your whole week. The soft sound breaks you out of your stupor and you help him carry all one million things he brought. “How’d you even get all this?” you ask over your shoulder, everything is still warm, perfect. “What time did you get there? What time did you even wake up?”
Heeseung follows you into the kitchen, his footsteps light against the hardwood. “Will you think I’m a prick if I say I’ve been up all night?” His question surprises you as you take in the sight of him once more—he is the picture of wakefulness with his bright eyes and glowy skin.
“Ah.” You set the goods on the counter, nodding as you take a picture of his haul. “Rockstar life, huh?”
A smile spreads over his lips as he rolls up his sleeves, tattoos appearing from under the white cotton, oddly sheepish. For an artist of his — their — size, with his — their — visibility, there’s a certain meekness to Heeseung that you thought was an act at first, but now you’re not so sure.
“Not even,” he mumbles, looking down at the dark worktop and describing the epitome of rockstar life. “We had this party thing in Soho, but it was dead so we went round this guy’s flat instead, and he stays proper close, as in the line goes by his front door—one of Jongseong’s friends…”
Whether Heeseung knows you’ve stopped listening at the mention of that name is anyone’s guess, but suddenly, your long-awaited Toad’s matcha tastes like nothing and your blood pumps thickly through your body. Loud in your ears. It’s one thing to anticipate seeing or hearing about him — watching that video before bed or bracing yourself for posters plastered in stations and around the city — but like this, so casually, from the mouth of your one person in common, it still shakes you up.
“Whoa.” He waves his large palm in front of your face. “You alright?” Concern creases his eyebrows.
An attempt at a light-hearted laugh stumbles from you. “Just sleepy.” A long, ungraceful moment dawdles by as he studies you, performing some form of assessment that you’re sure you’ve failed.
“Same, honestly,” he finally agrees, though he doesn’t seem convinced. “I’ll catch you in a bit, yeah?”
You nod, watching as he makes his way to Aeri’s room and snapping your neck in the other direction when he looks over at you. “You sure you’re alright?”
“Perfect!” you call out over your shoulder, all but sprinting to your bedroom.
In the privacy of your four walls, you sink into the chair at your desk and eat your steak, brie, and mushroom toastie. Half of it anyway, the thought of Jay is too distracting to enjoy it fully. You open Instagram before you even realise, hitting the search button and typing pzzong without a second thought. Eighteen hours ago, he made a post. A photo dump: his guitar in his lap, a blurry sunrise, a gym selfie with Sunghoon’s naked back in the mirror, a video of a lively crowd, and a piercing through his left eyebrow. Life is good, he wrote. The comments display varying degrees of thirst for Sunghoon. Blue ticks light up the screen as you scroll through them. Heart eyes from Bae Sumin. Best show ever babyyyyyyy from Yeh Shuhua.
Good for him.
Seriously.
You have committed a cardinal sin, for which you will never forgive yourself—you forgot your headphones at home. And so, like the rest of Central London, you’ve been subject to hearing the rustle of plastic on plastic in your bag as you walk down the street. As it turns out, no matter how delicious, eating thirty ginormous, sickly sweet cookies is quite difficult, so you’re taking them out to the pub where you’re meeting up with some friends.
The bell above the door at Ruby’s rings loud and clear over the radio when you step inside. For a Wednesday afternoon, it’s busier than you expect, patrons crowding the bar and tables alike, though you suppose, as one of them, that this is the way of the unemployed. Speaking of, Riki towers over everyone at the bar, oblivious or uncaring towards the pretty bartender’s fluttering eyelashes. At the sight of you though, he raises his bleached eyebrows, waving you over.
“Three p.m. tequila shots, don’t mind if I do,” you say, beaming into the rough collar of his denim jacket.
His hug is tight and brief. “Aw, yeah. I’ve got class in the morning,” he offers unhelpfully, holding up a clear shaker. “Salt?” Riki pours salt all over the back of your hand, more granules falling to your feet than sticking to the spot you licked, and hands you his wedge of lime. Holding up his shot with surprising steadiness, he says, “C’est la vie!”
Doing a shot of straight fire would burn less, but Riki isn’t fazed, grabbing you by the wrist and tugging you towards the back of the pub where the rest of your friends are. Yizhuo sees you first, peering over the booth and her face splits into a grin. You feel yours doing the same. She and Somi leap to their feet, pulling you into a hug and wrapping you up in a cloud of florals and spice and beer. “You’re alive!” Yizhuo cries out, pulling back to get a good look at you, her hand on your jaw to turn your face this way and that. “And still so beautiful!”
“Against all the odds,” you mumble, accepting the wet kiss Somi plants on your cheek with a smile. Right when you settle into the booth beside Yizhuo, texts from Aeri light up your phone screen, notification bubbles covering up the chestnut horse on your lockscreen.
aeri: heeseung said the guys can make it after all ! he promises they’ll behave
aeri: they’re not as bad as you think !!!
You groan around a long sweet sip of the cloudy IPA Somi ordered for you. “I’m meeting Aeri’s boyfriend’s friends tonight,” you mumble, sending a thumbs-up emoji in response.
“Wait.” Yizhuo pauses, looking over her shoulders before leaning over the table. “NAPE are going to be at your flat tonight?” she whispers, eyes wide and buggy.
What comes from your mouth is a disgusting sigh-groan hybrid that makes Riki flinch as you say, “The one and only.”
Somi’s entire face crumples and she hunches over, hitting her forehead repeatedly on the tabletop, making it wobble. “Why do good things keep happening to you instead of me?”
“This is public knowledge, I texted the chat like a week ago.” You lift your golden pint and Yizhuo’s dark Guinness from the table so they don’t slip off the edge. “Plenty of time, no?”
“A week ago…” Riki repeats, voice trailing off into nothing as he rubs his stomach and leans back in his seat. “That’s like an hour’s notice in employed people's time.” He sighs. “No offense, YN.”
“Okay, Big Rik.” You scoff. “You’ve had a job for ten minutes.”
He glances at his watch before squinting at you, venom written all over his cute little face. “And that’s ten minutes longer than you, is it not?”
“Did I do something to you?”
“You know what? I’m glad you br—” Somi cuts off her little cousin by shutting his mouth with her hand. “Can we please focus on the real issue, you’re partying with NAPE tonight and I can’t go.”
“Why not?”
“My mum’s up and we’re having dinner,” she says bitterly.
“Just come after.”
“Or don’t come at all!” Yizhuo butts in. “I have plans for Jake Sim tonight and I don’t need him getting distracted.”
Riki kisses his teeth, shaking his head. “I’m willing to bet a good amount of money that your plans involve staring at him from across the room, then blowing up the chat to talk about how you two caught a vibe.”
This is, to Yizhuo, the greatest offence — despite its truth — and you have to actually hold her back from leaping over the table to strangle Riki, but there’s nothing you can do about the string of insults that leave her mouth.
Somi’s ring-clad knuckles rap against your side of the table, right beside your glass. “Really sorry about Daydream, by the way. Seriously,” she says, frowning. “If it makes you feel any better, I heard a bunch of their permanent staff got laid off as well.”
Only now, with Somi’s sincerity, do you realise how long it’s been since you last saw your friends. Nearly three weeks have passed since you lost your job, and this is the first time the four of you have managed to get together. As much as you hate to admit it, Riki was right about needing loads of notice to schedule something as simple as day drinking at the pub. Your world used to revolve around your planner, with separate sections in your worn Filofax for work, personal, and social—which was, largely in part, due to your obsession with stationary. Sitting down on a Sunday night to plan out the week ahead was one of your main hobbies, pencilling in coffee dates and errand-run-hangout hybrids wherever you found an hour or two in common with one of your friends. If you didn’t live with Aeri, you’d probably never see her.
“You know what, Somi? Not really, but thank you.”
Undeterred, she beams at you. “One door closed is a million doors opened, I swear.”
“Cheers to that!” Riki grins, raising his shot glass to his cousin’s nonsensical proverb.
Pushing your doubts away, you raise your pint and toast to the possibility of a million doors opening up before you. Beautiful doors with even more beautiful things behind them, of course. You need all the luck you can get.
Somi has time to nurse another half pint before she has to leave, begging you to text her everything about tonight as it happens. You make no promises. It’s another four pints and a sunset before the rest of you get up to leave, zigging and zagging through the crowded bar out into the crisp fresh air. And because the speakers in the beer garden are playing music, different music to what was on inside, Riki makes you and Yizhuo sit shivering with him at a picnic bench so he can listen to Folded by Kehlani.
“Fuck, Riki,” Yizhuo mutters, rubbing her face with her hands when the second verse starts. “Don’t you have music at home?”
He rolls his eyes, pausing his singing to say, “I’m sure even you could appreciate that hearing a song you like in the wild is way better than listening to it at home.”
“I would love to agree with you, but I have central heating at home.” Your teeth chatter when you finish talking, and all you can think about is your bed and the multiple other ways you could be experiencing warmth at home right now. Hot water bottle. Electric blanket. Taking a bath. Cuddling with Aeri.
“You also have NAPE at home.” Yizhuo points out.
“We’re all going there, what’s your point?”
She pulls a face that you know means she’s not coming.
“We?” Riki repeats, eyes bulging out of his head. “I’m going home. There’s music at home, as Yizhuo so kindly reminded me.”
“Neither of you are coming? Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack, brother.” He nods solemnly, standing up from his seat as the song comes to an end. “None of my mutuals are going.” He pats his pockets, in search of the big three — phone, wallet, keys — before zipping up his jacket.
“Your mutuals…” Yizhuo trails off, eying him. “Riki, this is real life.”
“Also it’s literally my flat, where I live… I thought we were mutuals.”
“Ladies, please.” He holds up his hands defensively. “I can ragebait Jay Park any time, okay, I don’t need to go to your house to do that. I also think I reserve the right to sleep in my own bed tonight. Alone.”
“Who else would be in your bed?” Yizhuo scrunches her nose, pulling the fallen strap of her bag back up her shoulder.
Gesturing towards all six feet of himself, Riki licks his lips, stumbling just a little. “Have you seen me?” he asks, a smug smile curling over his mouth.
“Unfortunately, we have, princess,” you say, patting his back. “Let’s get you home.”
Ruby’s isn’t your favourite pub, but it’s the best option if you’re drinking with Riki, because he stays so close and the only way any of you will have peace of mind after a night out is if you actually see him getting into his flat and hear the lock clicking behind him. The three of you walk arm in arm with Princess Riki towering over you in the middle. It takes all of fifteen minutes to get to his place and then the station across the road. Side by side on the platform, Yizhuo bumps your hip with hers. “How are you feeling?”
Given the pile of her texts you haven’t yet returned, you have a good idea of what she’s referring to. Even so, you ask, “About?”
Yizhuo gives you a look, pursing her lips before mumbling your name. She got lucky, jumping off the slowly sinking Daydream ship in time to snag a senior editorial position at Interview. She’d encouraged you to do the same, move up in your career, but no, you just had to prove your unwavering loyalty to a company for which you were no more than a name on a list. A recipient for an email with the subject line: Notice of Organisational Changes. Hindsight, as always, is 20/20 and the signs were there before you even got to London. The Edinburgh office, where you’d worked since graduating, closed last summer for financial reasons. Transferring seemed like a no-brainer, a blessing, but if you knew you had a year left, you would’ve stayed put.
“The downtime’s nice.” Over the last three weeks you’ve fixed your sleeping schedule, started and finished eight books, gone home to see Minjeong, applied and been rejected from nine editorial positions, and played through all of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Twice. “I do, however, enjoy receiving a salary, so it would be nice to work again. Quite soon.”
Yizhuo nods, squeezing your shoulder. “I’ll keep an eye out for openings, but it might help to get your work out there, keep you sharp and all that. Are you on Substack?”
You laugh in her face. It’s 2025, everyone is on Substack—including the two-hundred subscribers you panicked and abandoned when your page started gaining traction. “Yes, Yizhuo. I’m on Substack.”
“Perfect!” she exclaims and because this is the Central Line and Londoners do not care about anyone else, no one spares her a glance. Your cheeks burn anyway. A happy sigh falls from her lips, and she tilts her head. “Write and post, write and post. Anyone will read anything these days, just get your name and your gorgeous words online, and I promise, you’ll be rolling in opportunities.”
“Yizhuo…”
“I’m serious. Write about your crazy NAPE party tonight, God knows how many people would kill to be in your position.” She lets go of the handrail and makes a show of pointing at herself with both hands. “Just do something, okay? You’re too young to sit in your room watching TV all day. You need to leave your house and live your life and see your friends.”
“I know, Yizhuo. I know that,” you mumble, fiddling with the hem of your jacket. “It’s not on purpose or anything, I just… sometimes I need a day to do nothing, and then it’s two days and then it’s a week.” Your stomach curls in on itself at the thought. The longer you spend at home, the harder it is to leave. You had to psych yourself up this afternoon, staring at your reflection and repeating: my friends do not secretly hate me. My friends enjoy my company. I am good company.
She frowns. “I get that, really. But you don’t have to deal with everything on your own, you have friends. A lot of friends who love you and want to spend time with you.” It all sounds a bit like an affirmation tape, a YouTube subliminal, and maybe if those weren’t the exact words you needed to hear right now, you might have laughed. “Next time you’re home doing nothing, text me and we can rot together, okay?”
You nod.
“And please, please, please get some NAPE dick tonight and review it ASAP,” Yizhuo says, whispering the name of the band as if that was the worst part of her sentence.
“I’ll pass.”
“Not a request.”
“Okay, daddy. I’ll do it,” you say, which, of course, makes London’s so-called nonchalant population turn their heads in your direction.
Yizhuo’s head falls back with laughter and you look up at the map above the door. Seven more stops for you, though hers is next. She pulls you into a hug, and you hide your face in her puffer jacket, willing your cheeks to stop burning. It doesn’t work. When the doors slip open, she kisses your cheeks and says, “See you later, Kitten.”
Flustered doesn’t even begin to describe how you feel as you call out, “Text me when you’re home, okay?”
She nods and blows you a kiss before climbing the stairs, disappearing into the sea of commuters leaving the station while the doors close. The Tube chugs on, homeward bound. With Yizhuo’s words on a loop, you finish the rest of the journey home, relieved to feel the autumn wind on your cheeks when you get back outside.
Dread stirs a pit in your stomach as you hear the party before you even see your front door. And dread almost kills you as you take careful steps around the people sitting in the corridor to get inside. The music is loud but there aren’t as many people as you thought. It’s mainly just a bunch of influencers you recognise by IG handle instead of name—jenaissante and _chaechae_1 are stretched over your couch, yawnzzn laughs with you.th in the kitchen doorway.
Heeseung spots you before you have a chance to retreat to your room. He is elated and red all over, pulling you into a hug, and wrapping his warm tobacco scent around you. “Hello!” he yells into your ear, before gesturing behind himself. “Jake and Sunghoon.” NAPE’s bassist and drummer, the ones from the yaoi magazine cover you went back for a copy of, are somehow much better looking in person.
The camera doesn’t quite do justice to Jake’s large… everything. His eyes, nose, lips, and rose-tinted knuckles are so big and so beautiful. He tucks some of his hair behind his ear and smiles with all of his teeth. “Nice finally meeting you,” he says, seeming to mean it. Having a favourite member in a band where you know half of the members personally feels wrong, but Jake is that for you, and so, the tipsy fangirl-adjacent part of you gives him a hug that he graciously returns.
At his side, Sunghoon stands in a white button-up that clings to his huge biceps. Great. His hair is perfectly parted over his forehead, his tie tight and straight. His lips are plump and pink, pulling into a sheepish smile as he raises his huge hand to wave at you. The sight of it, the dimple in his cheek, sets off a flutter in your stomach and you can’t help giggling like he’s done something special. “We’ve heard so much,” he says. “I mean, J—” He groans, keeling over and clutching his ribs where Jake elbowed him.
“It’s true, Gigi’s always talking about you,” Jake finishes off like nothing happened. “Something to drink?”
Dazed, you blink at the band boy, but take him up on his kind offer of a drink in your home. Jake leads you through the sparse crowd, weaving artfully towards your kitchen and making small talk along the way. “I actually used to play in church,” he tells you, opening your cupboards and taking out what he needs. Absolut Vanilla, simple syrup. A sticky bottle of Schweppes swiped from the kitchen island behind you. “I wanted girls to like me.”
“Did it work?”
Jake looks up from the counter at you, a smile playing at the corner of his lips as he halts his mixology. “Of course it worked,” he says, disbelief written all over his face. “But I was too shy to do anything about it.”
“I see,” you say, struggling to conceal your laughter as he hands you a cup.
“Wasn’t for nothing though.” He shrugs, leaning against the counter. “I guess you could say I’m pretty confident these days.”
You’ve seen enough about NAPE online, fanwars and uproar about the personal lives of the members, to know firsthand he’s not exactly lying. This is the face of some of Pinterest’s favourite couple inspo, one half of the now-mourned JakeZuha. You’d met her once, Kazuha, at a work thing. One of Daydream’s holiday parties. She was nice, more than, even if she didn’t have much to say about anything that wasn’t her boyfriend. Their breakup in the winter had fanpages proclaiming that love was dead and that they were children of divorce.
The thought makes you laugh in his face and you’re just glad he laughs too as you clink the rims of your plastic cups together.
Armed with the sweetest vodka lemonade you’ve ever had, you head to your room, desperate to change out of your jeans. After triple checking the lock on your door, you leave your jeans in a heap at your feet, stepping out of them and towards your dresser, where you settle on your favourite grey sweatpants and resolve to only be photographed from the waist up. One large gulp of drink, a deep breath, and you pull open the door, returning to the party—if fifteen people in your flat can really be described as such.
Before you can go over and join Aeri, a knock at the front door catches your attention, though you seem to be the only one to hear it. The knock comes again and you roll your eyes, unwilling to apologise for noise at nine p.m. on a Friday night. You know your rights. At the sound of a third knock, you stomp over to the door and fling it open.
“Mrs. Kim, we—Jay?”
The last year of your life living in London has been long. A massive adjustment. Hiked up prices and supermarkets closing early on Sundays, learning Tube routes and constantly being an hour away from any given plan you’ve made. So much has changed. You have changed. You are not the same petrified grown up who left everything she knew to move here, nor are you the same lovestruck girl Jay abandoned all those years ago. Yet the sight of him, live and in person and standing at your door dislodges something in your chest. In your memories, those odd dreams you have from time to time, he always looks so grown up. Jay at twenty. Twenty-one. It had never occurred to you back then how young you both were, especially given that he was a year older. Reconciling that version of him with the 25-year-old man before you now is impossible. The last of his baby fat, those stubborn chubby cheeks you loved with everything you had are gone now.
Is there any part of him, of this stranger, that you still know?
His hair is slicked back, a few strands left down, streaking over his forehead in that handsome way. You’d always liked it back like this, though he rarely did it. Reserved it for special occasions. Grad Ball Jay. Anniversary Jay. 25-year-old Jay. Even though the sun is down, a huge pair of sunglasses rests on the straight bridge of his nose. The silver ball above his eyebrow shines in the light. Making sense of the odds in your mind is impossible. How, at once, you are pleased to see him and thoroughly disgusted by it. How after everything, he can look at you, smile, and say your name.
“Jay…” you say again, trailing off, uncertain and half-expecting him to vanish into thin air, like some hyperrealistic figment of your imagination, complete with the cologne he used to wear. Scent — his scent — that most powerful of senses that hurtles you into the past as soon as you catch it. Hurtles you long back into his soft hoodies. Into your bed where that same honey musk lingered on the sheets long after he left.
“It’s so good to see you,” he says, sincere as ever.
“I know,” you agree, stomach turning. Nervous. Nauseous. “I, uh, I do think I’m going to be sick, though.”
Before you have the chance to rush away from him, to do anything, you wretch and spew alcohol onto the doormat between his feet and yours.
Pinching yourself does nothing—this is not a nightmare to be woken from.
“Fuck,” Jay says, crouching into view. Concern drenches his features, the last thing you see before screwing your eyes shut. “Are you okay?”
Mortification creeps through every last inch of your body, settling between your bones. This is not happening. This can not be happening. Seeing Jay again was supposed to be an event of Princess Diana revenge dress proportions. You own a revenge dress! You had grand plans to make Jay Park regret the day he was born, never mind the day he dumped you. Yet here you are, in a crop top and joggers covered in your own vomit.
“Great, Jay,” you mutter. “I’m great.”
Against your better judgment, you let him take you to the bathroom where you lean over the toilet bowl. Nothing comes out, but he rubs your back and holds your hair away from your skin anyway. His gentle touch burns through your clothes. “Are you alright?”
Kneeling on the checkerboard linoleum with Jay at your side has been a real test of strength, though, even with your screaming joints, you’re certain it’s better than the alternative—actually having to look at him. Weepy-eyed and vomit-breathed. “I’m fine,” you say for the hundredth time, sighing. “You can stop asking now.”
He scoffs, an amused sound that heats your skin to hear. Behind your closed eyelids, you can picture the look on his face. Clearly see the lopsided curve of his lips, the hint of a dimple. “Alright, my bad for worrying after you threw up all over me.”
Your hair slips from his hold when you whip your head to face him, strands sticking to your neck as soon as they’re free. Frantically, your eyes search his dark jeans. “It got on you?”
Jay smiles and he is so painfully gorgeous in the warm light of your shared bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub. Seeing him here, seeing him at all makes your heart stutter. “No, YN.” He shakes his head, quickly, voice a low rumble. “You’re all good.”
You hum, raking a hand through your hair. “I’m all good,” you agree.
Now that your level of goodness has been sufficiently clarified, Jay clears his throat. “Alright, champ,” he says, as if you are an eight-year-old little boy while helping you to your feet in much the same manner. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”
On your waist the weight of his palm, the heat of it, is dizzying, and your alcohol consumption and post-vomit fogginess do nothing to stop the room from tilting. “Don’t touch me,” you croak, wriggling out of his grip. The words are rough on your throat.
Ever respectful, he lets go at once, stepping back and apologising as he flushes the toilet. A thrum of irritation flares in your head, hammering at your skull, at how easily that word came out of him, sorry, slipping from his little pink mouth and over the smallest thing. At once, the desire to wring his neck and to press your lips against his spar in your head. Neither wins. “So that you can apologise for,” you say under your breath instead.
Somehow, the look he gives you — tilted head, wide eyes, lips ajar — is the worst thing that’s happened since he arrived. Jay pities you, his scorned lover. The tightness in your chest is immediate, a thick knot that won’t give. Before he can speak, you turn away to clutch the sink and it is a grand effort. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“It’s fine, Jay. I’m fine,” you say, though it is the furthest thing from fine you can think of. “It was a big deal to me and not to you. We’re over it, we’re fine.”
In the mirror, he looks at you like you’ve grown a second head, like you are Patrick Zweig asking for Tashi Duncan’s coaching. “Not a big deal to me?” he repeats, incredulous. “Are you kidding? Who said it wasn’t a big deal to me?”
You cover your face with your hands, sighing into your palms. “We’re not having this conversation.”
“I think we need to.”
“Yeah, Jay. We did,” you agree, catching his eye in the glass. It’s a mistake. “About three years ago before you up and left out of nowhere.”
“Out of nowhere?” he says, as if he absolutely must repeat everything that comes out of your mouth. “I was always moving back here, YN. That was always my plan, you knew that.”
Your eyes sting at the corners. Tears eager to spill. He’s right. You did know that. Jay made it explicitly clear. But there had been a time back then, when you were a part of those plans too. When his tongue slipped around I and we like they were the same thing. They were. To you. When we go to London… He brought you here that last winter. You drank Bailey’s hot chocolate at Winter Wonderland and met his parents. Met Heeseung. Jay had a life here, a vibrant one, and with each day you spent together, it became harder to imagine him anywhere else. By the fireplace in his family home, he asked you if you liked it, liked London. Of course you did. The flame raged warm in his brown eyes when he asked if you could see yourself here, with him. Your heart was beating in your throat. You loved London, and you loved Jay even more. You would have moved to Aberdeen if that’s where he wanted to go.
“Jay?”
His gaze softens, gone is the harsh crease of his brow, his squinting eyes. It’s like staring the past dead in the face. Everything you wanted so badly and never got to have. “Yeah?” he says gently.
“Get to fuck.”
Jay clenches his jaw, nodding slowly. “If that’s what you want.” He closes the door softly behind him when he leaves.
It’s only now, alone, that you register the hammering of your heart, the thudding of your pulse in your ears. You cry into the sink until your head hurts. You brush your teeth. Wash your face.
Opposite the bathroom door, Jay leans on the wall. Sunglasses on. Bottle of water in his white knuckle grip. He holds it out for you to take and you sigh, far beyond the mood to hear whatever he has to say. Minted by Colgate and Listerine, the water is ice in your mouth. Refreshing. “Thanks.”
Jay flicks off the bathroom light by your shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says.
Together, you turn down the hall and into the living room. All of the guys — NAPE, at least — lapse into silence to watch you, though Heeseung is polite enough to pretend he’s not staring. Your stomach turns. Leaning up to Jay’s ear is grossly reflexive when you ask, “Do they—” You pause, pursing your lips and knowing the answer already. “Obviously Heeseung knows, but…”
“I told them.”
No matter how evil he was / is, he has every right to talk about what happened. About what he did. It’s Jay’s story as much as it’s yours, and he can do with it what he wants, regardless of how mortifying it is to think of other people knowing. What you did with it, and intend to continue doing with it, was keep the whole ordeal to yourself, like any other mentally sound adult woman would, which is obviously very healthy and working out really well for you. Jay had to move back home and we agreed it’d be best to end things. This is the version of events everyone else in your life has heard, and it’s what Minjeong and Jaehyun would have heard if it wasn’t for your living with them.
“Sorry,” he adds in a low voice.
That word again, easier than breathing it seems. “It’s fine.”
At the sight of you, Aeri’s face lights up and she stumbles out of Heeseung’s lap and over to you, taking you into her tattooed arms like it’s been an age since you last saw each other. In a way, you can’t believe it hasn’t been. “Here you are!” With her hands cradling your elbows, she takes a good look at you, eyes latching onto every part of your face. “You feeling okay?”
“Perfect!” Your voice is unusually high, strained.
“Heeseung cleaned up.” Aeri’s gaze flickers over your shoulder and she grins. “And I see you two have met.”
“Actually—” Jay starts, but you talk over him. “Yeah!” You face him, grinning too widely and extending a hand for him to shake. “Sorry about that. I’m YN.”
Only after a moment does his confusion clear and he takes your hand in his, shaking it. His fingertips are rougher than you remember, thick callouses boiling hot on your skin. “Nice meeting you,” he says, holding onto you for just too long. Too long for a conventional first meeting, anyway. No amount of time holding Jay Park’s hand could ever be long enough.
True peace and relaxation only find you when everyone has left, trickling out into London’s night time, cluster by cluster. Heeseung and his band boys stayed behind to tidy up and get their hands on one last pint before leaving your place even neater than they’d found it.
While you wash the breakfast dishes you abandoned in your room this morning, Aeri tiptoes into the kitchen behind you, humming happily to herself and pulling you into her arms. “They’re not so bad, are they?” Unfortunately, she and the rest of the world are correct. NAPE aren’t so bad after all. In fact, they are perfectly charming, and funny, and kind. Even their evil guitarist. You hum in response and focus on keeping a firm grip on your bowl as you move it to the drying rack.
“And…” She trails off, apparently waiting for you to finish her sentence. Much to her dismay, you do not. Aeri lets go of you and leans on the counter at your side, tipping her head to see your face. “What do we think of Jay?” she asks in a sing-song voice, and if she were referring to literally any other guy on the planet, you’d have smiled along with her.
But she isn’t and the sound of his name dries your mouth. “He’s… okay,” you say after too long. “Seems nice.”
Aeri’s jaw drops. “He’s okay?” Her disbelief is palpable, expressed through every part of her. “He held your hair while you threw up in the toilet and you think he’s just okay?”
“I actually didn’t throw up at all in the toilet,” you correct her, like that makes it any better, defensive in an off-putting way that makes you cringe. “But I guess the rockstar thing doesn’t really do it for me.”
“The rockstar thing,” she repeats under her breath, shaking her head. “What about the freakishly understanding thing? Or, I don’t know, the extremely fuckable guy thing?”
A pit takes over your stomach. “You’ve fucked him?” You don’t mean to ask, or to sound so dejected when you do, but the words come out before you can help it.
“Jesus, no.” Aeri sighs. “I’m not that lucky.”
You hate how relieved you are to hear it.
“He’s, like, impressively celibate. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had on, like, a chastity belt or some shit.” She shakes her head solemnly. “A damn shame if you ask me,” she starts, though quickly changes her tune. “But, you know, I’m obviously very lucky with Heeseung… yadda yadda yadda.”
A scoff comes out of you, but you can’t help the smile on your face. “Right.”
Aeri yawns and stretches her arms out over her head. “Believe me when I say I cannot wait to see the kind of person who does it for you.” It’s the last thing she says before she kisses your temple and heads for bed.
you: I threw up on Park Jongseong tn.
minjeong: YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
In bed, you open your phone and search for the thread you haven’t looked at in years. His contact still has a kissy face in it.
jongseong 😽: i got my shift swapped soooooo sleepover?
you: 😭😭😭 YES YES YES YES YES YES
jongseong 😽: hahaha leaving in 10 ❤️🔥
jongseong 😽: baby baby baby baby baby baby
Because this knife to the gut isn’t quite sharp enough, you search for the word dakgaejang, and those first messages come up.
jongseong 😽: hey yn! it’s jongseong from earlier, i hope you don’t mind me asking around for your number, i’m only now realising how creepy this is… i just wanted to make sure you were able to get home okay, and i’m really sorry i couldn’t walk you all the way back, i swear i meant to! and don’t worry about the hoodie, just hold onto it and stay cozy!!! if you have someone at home who can cook, my mom has this insane recipe for dakgaejang, that shit could cure anything, and if you don’t have someone at home who can cook, i’d be happy to whip some up for you when i get home and drop it off!!!
jongseong 😽: whatever works for you, okay? just lmk!
When you finally fall asleep, you dream of Jay. Of Jay and your university bedroom back in that freezing Edinburgh flat. At the foot of your bed, he hurriedly picked his clothes from the floor while your space heater roared into the cold. You leaned up on your elbows, but said nothing. You couldn’t speak. Finally, he saw you and froze in place. This was not the Jay of years past. Not Jongseong. It was Jay as he’d been last night. With his hair slicked back and his worn leather jacket over his broad shoulders. Still, he gave you that same look. Those same soft and sleepy eyes.
“Sorry, beautiful,” he mumbled, his voice low and thick. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
You shook your head. “It’s okay.”
All it took was one blink, and he was right there, kneeling at the side of the bed. “I’m glad we got to see each other again, YN. I’ve really missed you.” His palm rested on your cheek, calluses on the tips of his fingers. “Get some sleep, okay? I’ll be back soon,” he said. A dimple dented his cheek when you nodded, and his soft lips grazed yours—you wake up with a start, sweat-drenched and heavy breathing. Heart pounding in your chest. Tears welling in your eyes.
When you finally manage to get out of bed, you go straight to the shower. You don’t bother drying your hair after, which you will regret. On the kitchen counter, the kettle boils noisily, but you can’t bring yourself to worry about waking your flatmate. Can’t bring yourself to worry about anything other than the fact you haven’t been able to steady your breathing in the thirty minutes since you tore yourself from your damp cheeks.
A door clicks shut down the hallway, making you flinch. Heeseung appears in the doorway wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants. “How’d you sleep?” he asks through a yawn.
Your dream, Jay, comes to mind quickly and with no warning. The ghost of his palm on your cheek, his lips on yours, all so vivid like he’s here with you now. Like he really spent the night. “Same as always,” you say, clearing your throat. “You?”
“Slept alright.” He shrugs and takes a glass from the cabinet by your head, filling it up with water from the filter. “Are you going to tell Gigi or should I?”
The drop of your stomach is immediate. “Tell Gigi what?”
After a sip of water, he presses his lips into a flat line and takes a moment, like he’s carefully choosing his next words. “I know it’s none of my business but—”
“Stay out of it then,” you interrupt, pulling the kettle from the element and filling your mug. Instant espresso splashes onto the counter.
“But he’s really sorry, you know?” Heeseung says as if it makes a difference.
He’s sorry? Great! The urge to punch Heeseung in the face for his crime of simply having a functional relationship with your life’s great evil is overbearing. Your clenched fist trembles at your side and a maniacal laugh rips out of you. He takes a step back. Your coffee burns your tongue. “Wow, Heeseung! Why didn’t he just say so? Holy shit, this changes everything!”
“YN—”
Desperate for this conversation to be over, to bury yourself under your duvet and start again tomorrow, you cut him off yet again. “It’s not your mistake to fix.”
“You’re right.” Heeseung sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“Look, obviously you’re going to stick up for your friend, I get that and it’s fine. It’s just that I’m not exactly—” You pause, running a hand over your face. “I have a lot I need to figure out.” The awareness of how long you’ve had to do just that, and how long you’ve spent avoiding it, weighs heavy on your shoulders.
He nods, twisting the back of the stud in his ear. “Of course, YN. It’s just… you know…” He trails off, gesturing vaguely into the space between you with both hands. “I’m your friend too, I hope. And, it’s not like I think he can justify what he did, but it might be helpful to hear why he did it. From him?” he suggests, voice tipping upwards as your eyes get progressively more squinted.
The absolute last thing you need right now, is to hear Jay wax poetic about being a true artist and unlocking one’s inner self. How he absolutely had to leave and that was it, you weren’t allowed to be upset about it, because trapping an artist in a box would be like clipping a bird’s wings. Or something.
“Just think about it, yeah?”
For lack of anything better to do, you blow on your coffee, rippling the surface before taking a cautious sip. Over the rim of your cup, Heeseung is watching you, gnawing at his bottom lip with his teeth. If not for the twinkle of hope in his ginormous eyes, you wouldn’t give in and say, “Fine, I’ll think about it.”
His face lights up like you gave him a firm yes and he claps his hands together. “Are you free on Friday night?”
You splutter, coughing into your elbow as you put down your cup. “You’re giving me thirty-six hours to make up my mind?”
“No, not at all. No rush, I swear,” he says, waving his hands frantically. “We’re playing a show at The Helmet, and I thought it would be cool if you came along.”
Disbelief tugs at your brow. “You thought that?”
Heeseung opens and closes his mouth repeatedly, saying nothing. And if you weren’t so curious, you’d drop the subject and decline, but… “I think—” He starts, cutting himself off to look at the ceiling. Then, with his hand on his heart, “All of us would be honoured to have you there. Collectively.”
You’ve seen enough clips online to know that seeing NAPE perform, seeing Jay, would do horrible things for not only your healing journey, but for feminism at large.
As if sensing your reluctance, he adds, “You can come backstage and everything!”
“That would be lovely, Heeseung. No thank you.” Right as the words leave your mouth, Yizhuo crosses your mind and you ask, “Is Jake single?”
With saucers for eyes, he tilts his head. “Pardon?”
“Is he?”
“Are you asking for yourself?”
“Would that change your answer?”
A quiet second passes, Heeseung’s actually thinking about it. “That depends.”
“I’m not going, but I have some friends, two, who would genuinely die to go backstage,” you explain unhelpfully. “I’ll speak to Aeri about it and they can all go together.”
“No can do, YN.” Heeseung purses his lips. “If you’re not backstage, then your friends aren’t either.”
“Then I guess they won’t be backstage.” You frown, lifting your coffee from the counter. The steam has cleared. “Break a leg, rockstar.” On your way out, you pat Heeseung on the back.
Poor Somi and Yizhuo.
The Helmet is a pub of relative dinginess. Each step you take is a mild effort for how sticky the floor is with God knows how many hours of uncleaned booze. And quite small compared to the venues NAPE have been selling out recently, but according to Aeri, “This place has sentimental value! They played their first ever gig here, it’s special.”
She loops her arm through yours and drags you into the throng, not caring who she elbows. And the elbowed don’t seem to mind either when they realise it’s Heeseung’s girlfriend. And you. And Somi. And Yizhuo and Riki and Jaehyun. There is no barricade between the stage and the crowd. Just a foot high elevation and a whole lot of trust from the lack of security the pub seems to boast. Despite how packed it is, it’s not difficult to get to the bar, as evidenced by Jaehyun and Riki’s trips back and forth to supply you guys with drinks.
The DJ plays a jarring mix of alt-rock and 60’s pop music and everything in between. Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole becomes Like I Love You by Justin Timberlake becomes Surfin’ U.S.A. Who the target audience is, you’re not sure, but the more you drink — and the more Riki moves his broad shoulders to the beat — it becomes easier and easier to bear.
“I went to international school with that guy!” Riki yells in your ear. “Name’s Asahi and he’s fucking crazy.”
“The DJ?”
“No, you idiot. That’s Jungwon.” Riki flicks your forehead. “I mean the bartender.”
Around you, the crowd cheers raucously when the stage lights dim. Nothing happens. The DJ continues to terrorise all of you with more insane transitions — Sugar Water Cyanide into No One Noticed — and you continue to drink.
The lights go dim and the crowd around you roars. At your side, Aeri shakes like she’s the one about to perform, grabbing your hand and giving it a tight squeeze. She doesn’t let go. Another swell of screams fills the air as a song starts playing, one of NAPE’s. No Way Back was the first and last NAPE song you ever listened to. It was everywhere—the lead single of their debut album, the title of the tour they just finished, the common song choice for TikTok OOTDs and DIMLs. They were everywhere—BBC Live Lounge, The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live.
And, much to your dismay, they were damn good.
In the blink of an eye, the lights come up slowly and you hold your breath as NAPE appear on stage. With Aeri, you look straight up at Heeseung who smiles, leaning towards the mic and singing, “When the last sun sets…”
They are a golden spotlighted blur to your tipsy eyes, but Jay has maybe never looked so good. There’s nothing special about wearing a flannel over a plain white T-shirt, you know that, but on him, now, it’s mesmerising. He is mesmerising. Glowing under the lights and so, so close. His guitar sits right by his waistband, veins criss-crossing over the backs of his hands as he plays. Goosebumps rise along your skin, and a funny feeling ravages your stomach. Butterflies on crack, just like the first time you saw him.
It seemed unjust that someone like him could exist not only on your campus, but within walking distance of your flat without you knowing. That someone so handsome had been existing and so close to you for three years. That was all you could think back then. If only we’d met earlier. If only we had more time. It was a real cosmic injustice. You had no real plans to stay in Edinburgh, but not for lack of wanting to—there you had a roof over your head, you had friends, and you had Jay. You had nights spent curled around him, you had mindblowing sex, and you had something special and real that you will never get back.
Knowing what he has now, it would have been ludicrous for Jay to stay behind. He has a crowd screaming his name, and a flat right in the centre of London and most of all, he has accepted that things are over and his life is better for it.
When you lift your stinging eyes from his guitar, he’s already looking at you. His eyes are wide, his lips set apart. He looks like he’s seen a ghost, like he too is using this most inconvenient of moments to mourn the past. To mourn you. He freezes, fingers stilling over the strings for long enough that Heeseung casts a look in his direction.
You chew on your bottom lip until it hurts and snatch Jaehyun’s cup out of his hand to finish it. When the song ends, the crowd erupts into cheers, again.
Jay Park is a god among men.
“What you saying, London?” Heeseung says, grinning, and the crowd goes crazy over it. Over him. You can’t blame them. There’s a charm to him, like this, standing in front of you on the stage. Heeseung the idol, you the… well, reluctant fan of sorts. “We’re NAPE and we’ve got a special show prepared for you tonight.”
The crowd cheers. To his credit, Heeseung is electric on stage, and you are standing so close you can see the sweat beading along his hairline and can already predict the tweets you’re going to see later about all of this. For fear of doing something rash, like jumping on the stage and tackling Jay for a kiss, you keep your eyes trained on the reflective red of Heeseung’s microphone as he continues to speak to the crowd.
“If tonight’s your first time with us, then allow me to introduce the band,” he says, his voice low in a way you’ve never heard before as he gestures behind him. Sunghoon on the drums, Jake on the bass, and his good friend, Jay on the guitar.
“Thank you for that, good friend Heeseung.” The words leave Jay’s mouth in a slow mumble, his cheeks a little flushed as he touches his palm to his heart. The screams for him seem the loudest by far, but that might be because you’re screaming with everyone else. “It’s good to see you guys, I’m Jay. Let’s have fun tonight, London.”
They launch into the next song immediately, a funky track about how they’re always going to be there for their ex who they left in unfavourable circumstances and still love. Sunshine, another unfortunately good song that is a perfect fit for Jay’s voice. Minjeong was the one who sent this single to you when it first came out, along with a message telling you to check the credits. Jay was listed as the sole writer.
Artists take creative liberties, you know that, and it’s easy to see why an attractive guy writing about still loving his ex, no matter what, would do better than an attractive man singing about being Satan’s son. But still, it’s weird to think of the millions of listeners who think they know what happened because Jay wrote about it. Who think he is the perfect, sweet, dream man who’d do anything to be wherever you are. Unless, of course, that place is Scotland—though you can see how that might have been difficult to rhyme.
And even still, despite your growing irritation, you can’t help but look at him in awe.
They play one song after another — not saying much — and you don’t know any of them, but they only get better. The crowd gets more excited, louder somehow, and Jay only gets harder to look away from. Seeing him like this, on stage, is overwhelming. His skin honeyed under the strong lights, slick with sweat making him glow. His thick fingers move quickly over the frets, his straight teeth bite his bottom lip. When he leans towards the mic, his lips brush the top of it, eyes meeting yours. You can see how people idolise him, idolise them, because holding his gaze, staring into the eyes of the man you once knew is impossible, and it’s an effort to stay upright on your weak knees.
A song called Helium closes to raucous screams and applause and all of the members look to Jay. You do the same. As the crowd calms down, he chuckles, tilting his head. Around his hairline, damp strands stick to his face, his temples, and he leans down, mouth a breath away from the mic. “This last song is actually, uh… It’s pretty personal, you know? It’s the first song I wrote when I moved back here,” he says, scrunching his nose. Jay is clearly nervous, his cheeks and neck turning rosy.
The girl behind you says, “He’s so cute when he’s shy!” And you hate that she has learned him enough to see what you do. Hate that she has learned him enough to have formed opinions on Jay and his tendencies, while being lucky enough not to know him personally.
Lucky enough to look at him and see hardly anything more than a blank slate upon which to project her every whim and fancy. This version of Jay, her Jay, that she has gotten to know through YouTube videos and overanalysing social media captions. Who she must imagine is very clear and upfront about his feelings, if that’s what she’s into. What does anyone in this crowd know about Jay? How lucky they all are to have only a part of the picture that makes up the whole, to have straightforward positive feelings for and towards this side of him that anyone with internet access can see. Lucky not to know what it’s like to fall asleep by his side, or to be scared half to death in the middle of the night to find him sleeping with his eyes half open. Lucky not know what it’s like to miss those things. To miss him.
“We don’t really do this one live, but Heeseung wasn’t lying when he said tonight was special.” His eyes flick over to you for the longest second and Jaehyun nudges your ribs.
While the crowd erupts once again, he shows you something on his phone. It’s his Notes app, with the words, get a fucking load of this male manipulator, written in all caps and bold. And because, yeah, I’m trying to, isn’t the right response, you can only offer your friend a forced chuckle before you gulp.
“So for what I think is the first time ever, here’s Carolina,” Jay says, launching into the opening chords. There is a clear difference between this song and the rest. It’s upbeat, and catchy, sounding almost like what you imagine would happen if The Beatles had made a song you enjoyed.
It is also, quite clearly, about you—though it was your father who told you to swim before you drown.
If you had your wits about you, you would probably turn on your heels and storm out. How unfair of Jay to do this. To sing about you and your life and the heartbreak he inflicted on you without so much as a simple text to let you know. Give you a heads up. Hey, I wrote a really fucking good song about our relationship for my first EP and reduced two years to a one night stand lmao. Unfortunately, you do not have your wits about you, and so, as you stand there bobbing your head to the beat and swaying, you cannot help but bite on your lip and stare indulgently up at Jay as he sings about what a good girl you are.
“How would I tell her that she’s all I think about?” Jay sings, looking at you. “Well, I guess she just found out.”
When Jay first told you about his dream, a pang of horror punched you in the gut. Fearing that your fate would be like that of girls everywhere, that he would be your tropey boyfriend, your canon event: the privileged, untalented SoundCloud rapper, or indie artist. All you could do was nod your head and smile stiffly as he told you how much he loved his guitar and writing music. It was to your great relief that Jay wasn’t just good, he was great. You’re certain that’s why, now, as you watch him sing about your relationship for hundreds of adoring fans, there is a flicker of admiration, of awe, right alongside your annoyance.
“She feels so good,” he sings over and over, with his eyes shut. A vein presses against his forehead. His neck.
With that, and a rapturous combination of applause and screaming, NAPE give a bow and leave the stage. They do not do an encore, though a good number of stragglers wait behind for one, while Aeri drags you and all of your friends through a door marked with restricted access. The corridor lights come on one by one as you walk further and further towards another door that she doesn’t hesitate to push open. All of the members are startled by your sudden entrance, but relax quickly at the sight of her.
“Baby!” Heeseung calls out, embracing Aeri, while you and everyone else stands around by the door.
Besides her, you’re the only other person who has met all of these people, and so, you’re tasked with introductions. Jaehyun greets everyone but Jay who stands there looking at him with a straight face. Thankfully, everyone is too caught up with Somi’s huge reactions and extra enthusiasm towards Sunghoon to pay anyone else any mind. He eats it right up, nodding at all the right moments and tucking blonde curls behind her ear while she speaks. Yizhuo, whose big plans for Jake Sim involved taking him to pound town, stands in the corner and stares at him from a distance while he drinks his water.
After filing out of the back exit, you quickly learn that trying to coordinate ten drunk people to use the Tube on a Friday night is more than a bit hellish. But somehow, you manage, with your arm looped through Jaehyun’s the whole way. Jay doesn’t take his eyes off of you, even as he and Sunghoon are tasked with keeping all six feet of Riki vertical.
What Aeri refers to as The NAPE House whenever she’s visiting Heeseung, is a four bedroom penthouse apartment that could surely hold more people than the pub they just performed at. There are people everywhere, influencers and other niche celebrities, drinking and laughing and grinding on each other. Not a phone in sight—only vlogging cameras. And on the black leather living room couch, you have a front row seat. A comfortable one you share with Heeseung and a sleeping Aeri.
“Can you do me a favour?” He lolls his head in your direction, yelling. “Will you get my hoodie from my bed?”
You make a show of rolling your eyes. “You owe me. Where’s your room?”
“Always.” Heeseung smiles. “It’s the last door in the hall, straight down.”
You weave through the crowd, throwing apologies over your shoulders and trying to remember exactly which hallway he was referring to. When you get there, his door is slightly ajar, a dim glow coming from the room right at the end of the hall like he said. The sight of the bed alone, dark sheets pulled tight and waiting, is enough to make you sleepy, a nagging exhaustion you only feel now. Noticeably missing though, is his hoodie, but it’s hardly an urgent matter. Surely not. Blinking heavily, the duvet calls for you, the corn on the cob plushie begging you to hold it—a weird choice for Heeseung, but maybe Jay got it for him.
Since you’re doing him a favour — and he uses your couch more than you — you figure there’s nothing wrong with resting your eyes on the end of his bed. It would be foolish not to seize this moment now that you have it. Carpe… moment. Closing the door behind you, you find a key in the lock, and if that isn’t a sign, you don’t know what is. With the door locked, you pass the guitar rack on the way to the bed, and make yourself comfortable, facing the ceiling. Sooner than you expect, your eyes flutter shut, honey musk tickling your nose.
A soft voice wakes you up. “Hey.”
You don’t need to see Jay Park to know it’s him. If not for the American shape of the word leaving his mouth, the fresh scent of his shower gel gives him away. How annoying, knowing someone. When you open your eyes, he’s leaning over you with a smile on his face, very close. Close enough to see that his hair is damp. To see the light from outside reflecting on the droplets that cover the solid muscle over his shoulders. The scar on the bridge of his nose.
A drop of water falls from his hair, hitting your chest—you swear you hear it sizzle. “What are you doing in here?” The words come out before you have a chance to think of something less accusatory to say. Hey, might have been a good place to start. You shoo him away with your hand, sitting up and facing him, ignoring the heat in your stomach. The butterflies. It’s a mistake to look at him properly, to see all of him. His white vest is vacuum sealed over his defined torso, cinching where his waist does. With his hair flat over his forehead, he looks so young again. Looks like himself. Looks like he’s yours. Like any second, he’s going to pull you into him and press his mouth into the crook of your neck, to say, I’ve missed you, gorgeous. You can feel it already, the shape of his phantom words against your skin, the hum of them from his chest. Jesus Christ. Why couldn’t you be one of those very strong women who’d fallen for an ugly man? How was it fair that Jay could break your heart and only get better looking?
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“I’m allowed to lie on Heeseung’s bed. He’s my friend.” With that, it’s all you do to hope Jay doesn’t pass this on, you calling Heeseung your friend.
Jay eyes you, wetting his lips. His attention, having all of it, warms your skin. “I’m sure you are, YN. But this is my bed, so if I let you lay on it… what does that make me?” His eyes narrow, just a little. Just enough. There’s something behind them, a challenge to match his low voice.
Everything in your life feels so different now. You have new friends, a new address, different interests and opinions, but still, a very agitating part of you is moved by Jongseong. Charmed. “I think that would still make you my evil ex-boyfriend,” you say, more as a reminder to yourself than anything else. A mental marking of the words, do not open, on the overflowing can of worms with Jay’s name on it—a solution about as effective as sellotape around a broken bone.
He pulls air through his teeth, nodding. “Fair assessment.”
It’s been long enough that the vague dim shapes of his bedroom have sharpened into some form of clarity. The names and faces on the posters visible now: Oasis, Bon Jovi, Destiny’s Child. His desk is completely free of clutter, only housing a huge monitor, a notebook, a mouse and a keyboard. It seems in your absence, he’s gotten a grip on keeping tidy. Mounted on the wall above the guitar rack is the plastic guitar that came with the old copy of Guitar Hero you bought for him. Your heart twists in your chest.
“So this is your room,” you announce. And just like that, the pieces of Heeseung’s drunken puzzle slot into place before your very eyes—he was already wearing his hoodie.
Jay hums, a smile tugging his mouth up at the corners. “You like it?”
“Yeah, I do. I mean, I’ve spent so long wondering what your life is like here. Where you hang out with your friends, if you still smoke. I’ve been really keen to find out your life is terrible.” You have no idea why you’re saying these things, but it’s difficult to stop now that you’ve started. “Seeing it though, seeing you on stage, seeing you at all. I’m really glad it isn’t, Jay.”
The crowd screaming his name. Singing along to lyrics he wrote. Of course he had to come here. There is no universe where Jay staying in Edinburgh, staying with you, was the right decision. All of those versions of reality play out in your head, split like a kaleidoscope—you are happy, Jay is not, there is more for him than you or Edinburgh can offer, and he resents you for that. Even if his method wasn’t ideal, he did the right thing by leaving, and the realisation forces a lump in your throat.
He mumbles your name, running his hand through his hair. The water makes it stay put like gel, pushed off his forehead, and his eyebrow piercing shimmers. “I didn’t even know you stayed here.”
“It was none of your business.”
“No, I… Yeah, you’re right, it wasn’t.” Jay looks like he has a billion things on his mind, you can practically hear the gears grinding against one another. “I’ve been wanting to see you is all. Catch up.”
A laugh bursts out of you, dry and bitter, as you stand up from the bed. “To catch up,” you repeat. “What, so you could tell me all about your perfect life in perfect London? So you could thank me for inspiring your discography?”
Jay’s jaw ticks when he clicks his tongue. “Do you think so low of me?”
“Hard not to.”
This seems to genuinely hurt him and some part of you takes delight in that fact. His face drops right away, a sad glimmer in his big eyes as he steps towards you. “I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay—more than.”
“I’m great, Jay.” You don’t bother wiping the first tear from your eye, but as soon as it falls, the floodgates open and there’s nothing you can do to close them. You can hardly see anything anymore, a fuzzy blob replaces Jay where he stands in front of you. “I just let go from a job I really loved and now I’m crying in my ex-boyfriend’s bedroom. Clearly, I’m…” Getting the words out is an effort so you stop, letting the sentence die around the block in your throat.
When you take your hands away from your leaking eyes, the heels of your palms are black with mascara and eyeliner, and Jay says nothing. He’s sitting on the end of the bed, hiding his face with his hands. In your head, a tiny drunk voice wills fervently for him to take you in his massive arms and pat your back. To rest his chin on the top of your head and tell you that it’s all going to be okay. That it’s all going to be good. You hate yourself for wanting that. For wanting him.
Instead, Jay looks up at you with wet eyes. “I really am sorry. It wasn’t meant to happen like that, I swear. I had everything planned out and I just… I don’t know.”
“After all this time, you’re telling me you don’t know why you did that to me?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Elaborate then.”
“Before I met you, all I did was keep to myself, study, and think about coming back to London. That was it, okay. Being in a relationship was the absolute last thing I wanted back then an—”
You scoff, cutting him off. “Good to know.”
“That’s not what I… I was sure about you, YN. From the start, I was sure about you.” The rest of what comes out of his mouth is secondary, background noise to this.
You feel those words, in your bones, with every single fibre of your being. Recognise them. Because it’s exactly how you felt. There wasn’t a single part of you that would have believed or accepted anything other than the fact that he was the one. Your one—right from the day you met, you knew you wanted him.
Jay sighs, the sag of his broad shoulders catching your attention. “But I couldn’t ask you to do long distance, it wouldn’t have been fair.”
“Fair?” you repeat, hardly believing your ears. “You think disappearing was fair?”
“I thought I was doing the right thing, that it would be easier for both of us that way.”
The thought of hearing him say anything else to defend himself turns your stomach. Worse is the fact that you actually want to hear him out, pick his brain on it. Ask all the questions you never had the chance to. Try to make sense of the mess and sort it all out. Sort yourself out, finally. You just need a minute. Need a minute to get your head on straight, and that’ll be impossible with Jay watching you the way he is, his glossy eyes boring into yours. You fling open the door to his ensuite and shut it behind you before he has the chance to keep speaking.
Heat from the shower hits you immediately, condensation lingering in the corners of the mirror. It’s a beautiful bathroom, glossy white and matte black fixings, a deep sink basin with lots of counter space and a roomy shower. His hand wash and lotion are perfectly lined up by the tap, his watch and some rings placed neatly in front of them as if he wanted to take up as little space as possible. Despite how much makeup stains your palms, your eyes don’t look as horrific as you thought they would, it’s the swelling and redness that makes you look awful. His Le Labo soap smells warm and green, lathering nicely over your fingers when you finally spot something amiss. A blister pack sits between the tap and the wall, all of the tiny white pills gone bar one. Sertraline, reads the foil over the front when you pick it up, and for the second time since you and Jay have come across each other again, you throw up in his vicinity, vomiting into the sink.
The lone tablet clatters to the floor at your feet.
“Are you okay?” Jay asks. The door does nothing to muffle his concern.
How could you possibly answer that? I’m grand! Only gone and found your antidepressants HAHAHA. His antidepressants. Just thinking the word in relation to Jay is enough to make you wretch again. Nothing comes out.
“May I come in?” To your silence, he continues, escalating from polite question to concerned statement. “I’m coming in, okay?”
While you fight for breath over the sink, Jay counts loudly from one to five before the door clicks open behind you. In the mirror, you see his eyes drift to the floor and widen. He picks up the blister pack and puts it in his pocket, aiming for subtle but being more overt than you’ve ever seen. “I saw it, Jay,” you say. “I know.”
He nods slowly like he’s coming to terms with what’s happened. As if he’s the one finding out about his diagnosis. “It’s uh… I’m okay,” he offers weakly, though his reassurance only makes you feel worse.
Your palms itch against the counter, desperate to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. To yell in his face that he doesn’t have to act like he’s alright with everything all the time. Finally, you’ve found something about Jay that hasn’t changed. What a shame it had to be this. “You’re okay,” you repeat, speaking the words more like an affirmation than anything else.
“I’m seeing someone about it and I have good people around me. I’m okay.”
A chill runs over your spine, pulls the hairs on your arms straight up, at the way he says it. This, for Jay, is simply a part of life now, as ordinary and boring as brushing his teeth before bed or tying his shoelaces before he leaves the house. You brace against the sink, screwing your eyes shut again. Nothing changes when you open them, you’re still in Jay’s bathroom and he is still depressed.
“How long?” you ask, as if his answer will make a difference.
He looks away when your gaze meets his in the mirror and shrugs, his shoulders rising and falling in a stiff motion. You don’t press him on it. Whether it’s been one year or one day, the point is that he’s unwell. And the gaping chasm between his life and yours is big enough that you had no idea. God, you’ve been so selfish.
Neither of you says anything else, but it’s not until there’s a thump at his bedroom door and a muffled apology called out through it that you realise. Both of you let out the exact same laugh, a huffed breath from your noses, which only makes the pair of you laugh properly when your eyes meet. The crinkle of his eyes is still a delight, still heats you up from the inside out.
More than anything, you are desperate for this silence to end, desperate to be saying something, making conversation. “So,” you start, clearing your throat. “About this family of mine in Carolina.”
Jay’s cheeks pinken, a sweet, rosy tinge blooming against his skin. “That was just something I thought sounded good.” He was right, unfortunately, it did sound good.
This fact, however, does nothing to stop the harsh pull of embarrassment in your stomach. “I was being presumptuous, sorry.”
“No, it was… that song is definitely about you,” Jay admits, for better or for worse. “They all are, when I write anyway.”
Jesus. You still had an entire discography to listen to, all based around the worst event of your life so far. Such is the plight of dating an artist, you suppose. In the midst of your irritation with him over that, and sick pleasure at knowing your relationship — you — had impacted him as much as it — he — had you, was a flare of curiosity. All of his unknowable thoughts, the things you wished he said, existed only a mere couple of clicks away. You could listen to them all right now, read the lyrics. Given the dedication of NAPE’s fanbase, you were certain multiple Twitter threads had been posted with line-by-line analysis.
“Great!” you say, cheeks aching with the stretch of your lips as you give him a thumbs-up. “Thanks, champ.”
His laugh is warm, filling the space between you. “I wrote it thinking about your…” Jay scratches at the back of his neck, cheeks growing pinker by the second. The colour spreads down his neck and over his chest. “You used to talk about riding camp, when you were younger. That pretty chestnut horse you rode as a kid.”
“Carolina,” you supply uselessly, the name hardly audible over the thud of your pulse in your ears.
“The one and only.”
You gulp. “And here I thought I was well behaved.”
“There was that too, of course there was.” He’s smiling, but you can’t bring yourself to do the same.
You’re not even sure if Aeri knows you went to riding camp. “I can’t believe you remembered that.” Some twisted part of you wonders what else he remembers, what other Easter eggs he’d left behind for you. For everyone.
He seems bewildered by this, his brows furrowing, head tilting. “Who could forget anything about you?” Each word is as sincere as the last, breeding a fascinating and surely singular type of hurt deep in the pit of your stomach.
“You know, I don’t usually throw up so often,” you blurt out, turning to the mess you left in the basin and flicking the tap on.
His reflection smiles in the mirror, leaning against the door frame. “Am I that bad?”
“You’re so much worse.”
“Four words every depressed person wants to hear.” He’s still smiling, his posture relaxed, slanted, but it’s the look in his eyes that gives him away, breaks your heart. How glossy they’ve become in the light.
“You’re really okay?”
Jay nods. “I’m okay.”
Every part of you aches to believe him, willing with every fibre of your being that he’s telling the truth. Okay isn’t good, but it’s a start, and soon he’ll be more than that. He has to be. Without a second thought you wrap your arms around him, feeling his warmth as he hugs you back. “I know I can’t take back or change what I did, but I really am sorry,” he mumbles into your shoulder.
And all of a sudden, it’s too much. His soft lips on your skin, the vibration into the crook of your neck. The familiar squeeze of his strong arms around you, his faint honeyed scent. The fact that despite everything, despite the frenzied red flags waving in your brain, you want to believe him. You do believe him.
You pull away, quickly, and take a huge step back, hitting your hip against the sink. “Do you have a spare toothbrush?”
Jay watches you for a moment, his eyes catching on each of your features like he’s seeing you for the first time. He clears his throat, scrunching his nose with a sniffle before speaking. “I might have a spare head for my electric somewhere.”
“Great,” you say, while he opens the cabinet with pursed lips. “Thanks.”
Those lips. You feel them while you brush your teeth alone in his bathroom, and while Jaehyun walks you home. While you shower, and while you collapse into bed. I really am sorry. God. How much easier this all would be if his belated apology fixed all of this.
jongseong 😽: Thank you for coming to the show, it really meant a lot to me having you there
you: No prob 👍
Under your face, your pillow muffles a would-be bloodcurling scream. “No prob, thumbs-up emoji…?” you repeat into the fabric, affronted by your word choice.
you: Just texted “no prob” unironically
minjeong: To who 😭
you: Rhymes with Jark Pongseong
minjeong: You should have said YES prob or ALL prob in fact you shouldn’t even have responded to whatever that freak loser (VERY DEROGATORY) said to my sweet angel girl
you: It was kind of sweet tbf, he thanked me for going to the gig and then said it meant a lot to him
Minjeong calls you immediately. You answer but can’t say anything for the genuine wave of fear that crashes over you. Through the phone you hear the click of her heels against the pavement, rumble of traffic, roaring engines and beeping horns, the soundtrack to the functioning woman’s afternoon. “You are the lostest cause of them all,” she says. “I thought you were over this insane person.”
“I am over him. I am also allowed to think he is very good looking and incredible onstage.”
“Shut up!” Minjeong sighs. “Also, did you take my coat when you stayed? The wool one?”
“I wish.”
“I’m hanging up now.” Three beeps follow her words, and her black wool coat stares at you from the open wardrobe.
The room spins around you when you sit up from bed. You can feel your brain swooshing around in your skull. Waking up hungover in last night’s makeup and outfit is never a treat, especially not when last night’s makeup is coming off of your face in crumbs every time you blink, and the outfit is a tank top and Aeri’s sequin microshorts. Somehow you make it to the kitchen where you sway by the counter and make a cup of black coffee, flinching at the sound of Aeri’s key twisting in the lock.
“Ugh, the show was perfect, YJ! It really sucks you couldn’t make it, but I know they’ve got some other gigs coming around the city so I’ll text you deets, alright?” she says. “I dropped my film off after yoga this morning, but I was so drunk last night… not hopeful.” Her voice gets louder in the hallway, an ear-splitting squeal sounding through the flat as she approaches and blows a kiss down the phone before appearing in the doorway. “Hey, you!” The grin on her face is wide and shows all of her teeth.
“Hey,” you say, it’s the only thing you can muster as you watch her lean in the doorframe, decked out in a matching brown workout set that ALO sent her in PR.
Her eyebrows give a suggestive wag as she says in a singsong voice, “Guess who I had breakfast with?”
The full scope of Aeri’s circle is still unclear to you, so the answer could be anyone. Playing it safe, you simply ask, “Who?”
“Your boyfriend! Almost boyfriend.”
“And that would be…”
“Don’t be coy, YN. Jay told me all about last night.”
“Jay?” It’s a wonder that your eyes don’t fall from their sockets—it would’ve shocked you less if she’d suggested that Byeon Wooseok was your boyfriend.
“I wanted to put in a good word for you, but he already wants you bad. Never seen anything like that, he asked a million questions about you. If I didn’t have to get home to shoot I’d still be there telling him about your commute.”
“He doesn’t. At all.” You clench your fists behind your back, denting half-moons into your palms with your fingernails. “We dated for a few years at uni, but he…” The sting isn’t enough to distract you from the swoop in your stomach, so you settle instead for clawing at the back of your hand. “He had to move back home and we agreed it would be better to end things.” No matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t get any easier.
Aeri’s face flickers through the full spectrum of human emotion, never quite settling on one.
“I know I should have said something earlier, it’s just…” Embarrassing. It’s embarrassing that not only can Jay live without you, he can thrive. Meanwhile, you can’t even secure a job interview. “I don’t know.”
Finally, she pulls you into a hug, all citrus and sweat, and you sink into her arms. “I have two pieces of good news and one piece of bad news. What do you want first?” she asks, pulling away just enough to look at you.
Clearing your throat, you ask, “Can you do good news, bad news, good news? Like a sandwich?”
Aeri leans against the island opposite you, smiling. “Okay, good news: you don’t owe me, or anyone else, every last detail about your life, and given the whole me dating your ex-boyfriend’s best friend thing, I get why you kept that from me, alright? You don’t need to apologise for that. The bad news is that said ex-boyfriend is definitely still in love with you, but — and this is the next good part — you guys broke up because he didn’t think he could have London and you, right?”
Put simply, “Yes.”
“You’re in London now, you’re both single…” Aeri lets her eyes and hands spell out the rest of her sentence.
“Jay doesn’t… It’s not like that.”
“Okay,” she says, though you can tell she doesn’t buy it. “What about you? Do you still want him?”
What you really want, more than anything, is to feel secure. To feel like the people in your life won’t just up and leave at any given moment. You want to be with someone you can rely on, someone dependable. A person you can call and know they’ll answer—or at least call you back. You’re not sure if that person is Jay.
“I don’t know,” you admit.
“You don’t need to know that right now. What you need is to sit down,” Aeri says, guiding you by the shoulders to one of the stools under the island. “Watching you sway like that is giving me a hangover by association. I’ll make you something to eat.”
She makes you a cup of herbal tea and some fruit topped French toast with bacon. You inhale it before she shoos you out of the kitchen. “You need to sleep this shit off, okay? We need to leave at eight tomorrow morning.”
Fuck. She’d agreed to let you tag along on her work day tomorrow so you’d finally have something interesting to post on Substack. You didn’t realise that would involve facing the public so early in the day. “Of course!”
yizhuo: dear sweetcheeks bubblegum fairy woman consider this our final correspondence as i’m literally about to die idk who the fuck was sick near me but they got me brother stay safe also tell that fuckface riki he can stop praying on my downfall ok it worked.
you: i’ll pass that message along for you… get well soon angel pie dream lady :( do u need me to bring anything by for you?
yizhuo: jimin’s playing sexy nurse this weekend dw i’m right wehre i wanna be 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 in other more relevant news, interview is opening another office…….good day for the unemployed, look how many openings there are !!!
Her next message has fifteen links, and those are just the jobs you’re qualified for. These must be the millions of doors Somi was talking about. In a full-bellied haze, you write a new cover letter and apply to every last one of them. After that, with renewed pep in your hungover step, you climb back into bed and watch as many episodes of Pretty Little Liars as you can handle without breaking the screen in half at the sight of Mr. Fitz and his minor-student-girlfriend Aria. It’s two. You manage two episodes and sleep for the rest of the day.
At eight in the morning, when Aeri is ready to leave, you have, unfortunately, reached the end of your life. And as it turns out, Jennifer’s Body had it all wrong, hell is not a teenage girl. If only. Hell, you’re learning, is whatever strain of the common cold is currently nerfing your immune system.
Shivering under your duvet, you scroll through the pictures you took after the gig, smiling, laughing, completely oblivious to the fact that those would be some of your last moments on this mortal plane. Probably you’ll never, ever drink again. Never do anything again. Your throat is swollen. Raw and painful when you swallow. A dull ache reaches all of your joints, weighing them down. Swallowing ibuprofen is a tear-inducing, Herculean task, but you manage, and finally, sleep comes over you.
For the next few hours, you fade in and out of slumber until you quit trying. Your throat still hurts, but the swelling is down. When you blow your nose into your last tissue, your ears pop and the thumping in your head is actually at the front door. The Grim Reaper here to… well, reap, you suppose. He even knows your name and yells it incessantly like some sort of evil, murderous baby who’s just learned a new word. Gun! Knife! YN! It’s only after your fourth, weak, attempt at calling out for Aeri that you remember she’s not home, and quickly resign to your fate, dragging yourself out of bed and then all the way to the door. Against the wall you catch your breath before pulling it open.
“I’m not here to bother—” Jay stops short.
“Jay?” He is hazy and beautiful in front of you. His sunglasses hold his hair away from his face, and none of the three buttons on his black polo shirt are done up, exposing just enough of his collarbone and chest to make your cheeks heat up. He is the cruel mirage of an oasis in the desert. “Jay,” you say again, reaching out your aching arm to touch him.
Against your fingertip, he is completely solid and real, which is more than a little mortifying. He looks down to where your hand touches his chest, where your hand is still, for some reason, touching his chest. He grabs your wrist, his touch soft but scorching through your long sleeve, and puts your arm back down at your side carefully. “You’re sick.”
“A little.”
“Okay,” he says slowly, wearing his thinking face. Head tilted, tongue poking out between his soft pink lips, the same way he would when he was trying to calculate how long it might take your food delivery to reach your place, and if there was enough time for the two of you to share the shower first. “I just need to get Heeseung’s computer and then I’ll be out of your hair. You need to put on something warm.”
You step aside to let Jay into the flat and he goes straight to Aeri’s room, coming back with a laptop tucked under his arm. He inspects you from head to toe and frowns. “Drink some tea, okay? Lemon and ginger with lots of honey.” It’s the last thing he says before he disappears.
Heeding Doctor Jay’s advice, you use the last sliver of your energy to hobble into the kitchen so you can make yourself a cup of lemon and ginger tea with lots of honey. Equipped with a steaming mug, you go back to your room where you pull a jumper on and stuff yourself into your dressing gown, before crawling back into bed. As soon as your head hits the pillow, you fall asleep, lemon and ginger tea with lots of honey cooling down on your nightstand, untouched.
It’s Jay’s gentle voice that rouses you out of your thick sleep, saying your name over and over until your eyes open. “Hey,” he says, his palm massive on your arm. His glasses slip down the straight bridge of his nose but he doesn’t push them up. “Aeri gave me her keys and I—”
“Aeri’s at work,” you say, correcting him.
He smiles. “Yeah, I just saw her.”
“She’s on the other end of the city.”
“So here’s the cool thing about London — and you might not know this — but we have this thing called the Tube and it got me there and back.”
“But it’s so… it’s like an hour one way.”
Jay waves a dismissive hand, his smile unwavering. “Forty-five minutes.”
The words he’s saying are all words you’ve come across. Words for which you know the dictionary definition and spelling, but it’s taking a lot for your brain to make sense of them and their implications in these particular sequences, coming from him. Fuzzy-headed, you lie back down, sinking into the pillow and screwing your eyes shut.
“You okay?” When you open your eyes, he’s watching you with an arched brow, inspecting you like you are fungi on a petri dish and not his dying ex-girlfriend.
“The common cold doesn’t normally kill people, right?”
Instead of laughing or being charmed by these, your final words, he tilts his head. “Well, it can lead to more severe forms of sickness like pneumonia or sepsis, which could, quite easily, kill you, yes,” he says, delivering the information to you in a tone that suggests he was reading about this on the way over.
This had been one of your favourite things about Jay, his insatiable curiosity and willingness to share what he’d learned with whoever was around. He could talk about any subject for hours and you were always keen to listen. It got to the point that you would direct your queries to him instead of the Google search bar, just for a reason to text him. Hey Jay, is thirty minutes too long to cook a steak? Way too long??? I’m coming over. Hey Jay, what’s the name of that Bon Jovi song you played for me? Hi beautiful, it’s called Always :). Hi baby, would you still love me if I was a worm? I’m always going to love you, YN. No matter what.
“Great, Jay. Thanks.” You lean up on your elbows, coughing with your mouth open like a child. “Still a fount of knowledge, I see.”
Bright red blooms over his cheeks and neck. “As always,” he says, though he doesn’t seem happy about this fact, scrunching his nose. “I… uh… I made you some soup.”
“Your mum’s dakgaejang?” you whisper. To his sheepish smile, you mumble, “That shit could cure anything.”
“It always did,” Jay agrees, lifting the steaming bowl from your desk. He gasps at something, putting the bowl back down and holding up a magazine for you to look at. The magazine, with him and the rest of NAPE on the cover. “Wow, I had no idea you liked us this much,” he says, flipping through the pages to find the article.
It hurts to roll your eyes, but you do it anyway. “Don’t flatter yourself, Park. I bought it because it was my first printed write-up.” And last, you do not add.
The lump in your throat is immediate and all-consuming. Seeing the magazine was a real shock, knowing that — though uncredited — you had left a mark on the world, no matter how small. And that thousands of NAPE fans around the country, and in all nations that print Daydream Mag, had you to thank for transcribing the interview. It wasn’t much, but it was yours. Jay’s eyes turn glassy and his gaze falls to the pages once more, running his finger over the words, your words. The thud of your heart in your ears pads the silence. You wonder if he’s thinking what you were, that you’ve both made it. Both of your dreams unspooling before your very eyes, and somehow, after all these years, your paths found a way to cross again. In print, no less.
At least, that’s how it felt before you lost your job.
“Wow,” Jay whispers. “This is really special, YN. You’re amazing.”
The article wasn’t much to write home about. And sure, when you found out, some of your work friends treated you to drinks that evening, and got a celebratory cake made. And yes, you called your mum in happy tears from the office toilet. But seeing Jay make a fuss over it on your behalf is nothing short of humiliating. Your cheeks burn at the sight—a chart-topping artist praising the ex-girlfriend he ghosted over some paragraphs no one else knew she wrote.
God, what a joke.
“You’re the one who said all the words, and the guys.” You fiddle with the loose thread at the top of your duvet cover. “All I did was read some notes, watch a recording and type it all up.”
He shakes his head and in a blink, he’s crouching by the side of your bed, looking up at you with huge eyes. “That was our first big feature, my mum cut out the parts about me and stuck them to the fridge. Heeseung’s parents got it blown up and framed for the living room.”
“Anybody could’ve written it.”
“I know, but ‘anybody’ didn’t write it.” Jay’s eyes search yours, like he’s begging you to see where he’s coming from, that he means it. “You did.”
It’s only when you cough, a harsh rattle in your throat, that he seems to remember himself, remember the situation and the dakgaejang on your desk. Without a word, he helps you sit up in bed, propping your pillow up before bringing the soup over on a tray. Steam curls up from the bowl, heating your face, and the first spoonful is rich and spicy and perfect. Tender shredded chicken and soft vegetables. A long, contended hum rumbles out of you. “Holy shit,” you murmur, already feeling your blocked nostrils starting to open up. It tastes more like a memory than anything else. Like Jay’s broad shoulders in the kitchen, standing over your stove. His hoodie over your shoulders and the soft hum of the washing machine as you watched him cook. Like cuddling on the couch with a stranger and asking him to stay. Whether it was period-induced sensitivity or that food really was the quickest way to someone’s heart, you fell for him that night.
Jay gives a firm nod. “Alright, I know I’m not exactly who you’d want to spend your time with, so is there someone I could call to look after you? At least until Aeri gets off work?”
Hearing it from him, the reminder that he has a life and things to worry about that no longer include you stings the backs of your eyes. Another cold symptom, probably. You take another glorious spoonful of rice and soup, chewing slowly.
“I’ll call Riki when my phone’s back on.”
As if on cue, your phone starts to life, a black and white film strip of you and Aeri staring up at you from the lockscreen. Jay chews his lip, watching you with his hands on his hips, clearly eager to leave, and, to his luck, Riki answers on the first ring. “Yo, YN. What you saying?” he asks, delighted as the music in the background comes to a stop.
“Are you busy?”
“Not really — ow — okay, yeah, I’m kind of busy. What’s good, though? You alright?”
Your cuticles sting where your thumb bothers them, picking at the raw skin unthinkingly. Terrified of admitting to Riki that you need him, you say, “Yeah, no, I’m fine. Talk later, yeah?”
“Safe,” he says and cuts the phone.
Jay raises a brow. “It’s okay to ask for help when you need it. You know that, right?”
“I know,” you say, trying to convince yourself. “I’ll call Somi then Jaehyun.”
“No!” he blurts out, covering his mouth with his palm as if he can push the words back in. “I mean, you don’t need to bother him when I’m here, I could stay. If you want me to stay, I can stay.”
There’s no time to overthink his reaction, nor is there time to overthink the flutter in your chest at the sight of it, because as soon as he’s done speaking, you’re already saying, “You can stay.”
He only nods and stays there, standing over you. He is very still. It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. Or blinking. Unless he’s blinking at the exact same time you are.
“You can also sit on the bed if you want,” you offer.
He gestures vaguely towards his body. “These are my outside clothes.”
You could have laughed at that, the idea that maybe his smart trousers and the Ralph Lauren polo shirt tucked into them were his casual inside clothes. Unfortunately, because he is Jay, and you are you, you’re too busy being struck by his remembering such a mundane detail to joke around. A silly thing you’ve since grown out of worrying about. You point him towards the drying rack in the living room where Heeseung had left some laundry. You’re not sick enough to tell Jay he can change in front of you, but you are sick enough to picture it as he closes your door behind him.
Sick enough to picture the smooth expanse of his back, muscles flexing while he pulls his T-shirt over his head. The cinch of his waist, the unfairly round curve of his ass, his Calvin Klein boxer briefs clinging to him like a second skin. His toned arms and thighs. It only takes a second for him to come back, fully dressed, in Heeseung’s grey sweatpants and white Henley that hugs his biceps. You open your mouth to say something casual like, I wasn’t picturing you naked, or you look nice in clothes, but he uses the bottom of his shirt to clean off his glasses and the sight winds you. Dark ink sticks out of his waistband, round edges touching his waist.
“You…” The sentence dies on its way out, your finger shaking as you point at him. “When did you get that?”
“Get wha—Oh.” He looks down at his side, the tips of his ears burning pink. “Two years ago? Last year? I don’t really remember.” Putting his glasses back on, he lifts the left side of his shirt properly, tugging at his waistband too. Only a little, only enough to make your heart race and show the word, nape, written in huge swirling cursive. “Hurt so bad, but it’s pretty, right?”
Pretty sexy, more like. “Yeah. Pretty,” you agree, willing for him to stop showing off his skin before you do something unwise.
“I actually have a couple now.”
The rest of Jay’s tattoos, all one of them, are very tiny and very him—a treble clef behind his right ear. He blushes when you tell him you like it, giving a sheepish smile as he gets under the covers beside you, careful not to knock your bowl over.
“You’re not scared of getting sick?”
“Nah.” Jay shakes his head. “I’m sure you’ll take good care of me if I do.”
“Whatever,” you mumble, focusing on your dakgaejang instead of your blushing cheeks.
When you finish eating you take a nap, eventually waking to the long set sun and Jay bringing over a cup of tea and some paracetamol. He crouches by your side and feels your forehead with the back of his hand. “How’re you feeling, sleepyhead?”
“Is Aeri home?”
“She texted saying she was going to crash at ours. With Heeseung.”
“Do you think you could stay over?” you ask slowly.
Jay tilts his head, eyebrows meeting in the middle. He’s as taken aback by your request as you are. For a long while, he simply stares up at you, like he’s waiting for you to take it back. You don’t. And so, finally, he nods and says, “I can stay over. Absolutely, I can stay over.”
After a surprisingly restful night of sleep, your second day with the cold begins with your head on Jay’s chest and your leg around him. Neither of you says anything about that.
For breakfast, he makes toast soldiers and beans, and you can’t contain your excitement, even though it hurts your throat to speak. “This was, like, the only breakfast I ate when I was little,” you gush, taking a picture to show your mum. “Especially when I was sick. This is perfect, Jay. Thank you.”
From the other side of the table, he watches you dunk a strip of buttered toast into your dippy egg with a smile on his face. “I know, YN. I’m just glad you still like it.”
You sniff, ignoring the heat rushing to your cheeks and neck—Yizhuo was right, this cold is no joke. Rubbing your hands together, you let crumbs fall to your plate and pull your dressing gown tighter around yourself, redoing the belt.
Back in bed, you warm your hands against a cup of tea while Jay opens your laptop. He insists there is a YouTube video you must see, but when he opens the site, the very first video is NAPE Swap Favourite Snacks | Snacked, uploaded fifteen minutes ago. Great. As it turns out, you had it all wrong, hell is not the common cold. Hell, you’re learning, is whatever the fuck is happening to you right now. This cannot be real life. All you did was watch that stupid video of them spotting each other’s lies. And then the one where they played most likely to with Variety. And showed Glamour what was on their phones.
Every inch of your body burns. “I didn’t put that there,” you blurt out. “Should we watch it ironically?”
A shudder racks through Jay and he scowls. “I kind of do not like to… look at myself. At all. So, no. Thanks though.”
Nothing about his tone or demeanour suggest that he’s joking. The thought that someone so beautiful, that Jay, could feel that way seems senseless. “If I had that face…”
“You’d what?” His straight teeth dent his bottom lip, curious eyes roving your face. Whatever insecurities plagued him a second ago are long forgotten now apparently. To your silence, he says, “I’m glad you don’t have my face, I really like yours.”
When this is all said and done, you’ll have to see a doctor about whatever part of the cold is making your heart race like this. “Just show me the video,” you mumble.
“Yes, ma’am.”
What if forks were made of salt? is eight minutes and twenty-four seconds of some white guy asking and answering what you now feel is an essential question. What if forks were made of salt? Would every bite of steak be perfect? Glossing over the mild existentialism at the end, the video is uplifting, awe-inspiring.
So much so that you and Jay discuss it for an hour before he says, “I bought one.”
Your jaw drops. “No way.”
“Yeah way! I’ll let you try it ou—” Jay’s ringing phone cuts him off and steals the smile from his lips. “Fuck,” he mutters, wiping his face with his palm. “Sorry. I’ve been ducking our manager’s calls, kind of, so I have to take this.”
Nosiness gets the better of you. “Put it on speaker.”
Jay obliges, screwing his eyes shut like he’s bracing himself. Through the phone, his manager’s voice is soft, kind, when he launches straight into his spiel. “I’m trying to bear with you here. I get it, I swear, but if you don’t have lyrics, can you just tell me that? We’ll figure it out, but you need to let me help you.”
Immediately, you regret asking Jay to put the phone on speaker, feeling your stomach drop.
He lets a quiet second pass before sighing. “I don’t have lyrics, Sunoo.” At this, the groan that comes through the phone is never-ending. “Yet,” he adds, rubbing his temples.
“I really did not want you to say that.” Sunoo sighs. “But it’s okay. See, you told me the truth and nothing bad happened. We’ll work something out, okay. Just take it easy, talk to your bandmates, and answer your fucking phone when I call you.”
“Got it.”
Sunoo cuts the phone abruptly and Jay hides his face in his hands, ears burning red.
“Ar—” He utters your name, interrupting you. “Yeah?”
“I don’t really want to talk about this right now.”
You reach out for him, palm resting on his knee and giving it a squeeze. He rests his calloused palm over your hand, locking his fingers with yours. There goes your heart, racing again. And what’s left of the day passes in half-awake snippets. The opening scene of The Matrix here, some spoonfuls of hot soup there, until you finally settle down for the night next to Jay. He falls asleep first, his strong arm around your shoulders holding you close. The thump of his heart is soothing as a lullaby. His chest rises and falls steadily with his slow breathing, in stark contrast to the shallow breaths you’re fighting for, until finally, you fall asleep too.
Hours later, a coughing fit wakes you up, skin damp with a cold sweat as you lean over your side of the bed. It’s relentless, each wheezy hack aching a spot in the back of your skull—your throat has never hurt so much in your life. Jay rushes out of the bed and comes back with a cup of water, rubbing circles on the wet fabric of your t-shirt with his palm while you try to catch your breath. When you manage to, you drink the water in gulps, finishing it quickly while he squints at the boxes on your nightstand before opening one of them—antiseptic throat spray. He pushes your hair away from your face, tucking it behind your ears and watching you with worry in his massive eyes. “Can you open up for me, baby?” he asks softly. When you do, he positions the nozzle between your lips and clears his throat. “It’s going to be a little uncomfortable, yeah?”
You nod, blinking with heavy eyelids. He sprays it three times and it takes a lot of work not to gag. A little uncomfortable might be the understatement of the century, but already the menthol is soothing your throat.
“There you go,” he murmurs, taking the spray out of your mouth. “Atta girl.” His large palm rests on your cheek, his thumb wiping your tears.
At this, at all of it — him being here, doing this for you with no complaints — your stomach is in knots. You wrap your fingers around his wrist, keeping his hand in place. “Why are you being so nice to me?” you croak.
In the lamplight, his eyes flicker over every part of your face before he sniffs. “Let’s try and get some sleep.”
“Jongseong…” His full name slips out of you, like you’re back in uni. Like you’re back together—still together.
He says nothing, only closing the lid on the spray and helping you lie back down before joining you in bed. He doesn’t say anything when you curl into his side or when he wraps his arms around you.
Then, right when you blink for the last time, you feel the rumble of his chest against your ear. He says, “You make it so easy.”
It’s another three days before you feel better and Jay spends all of them at your side. At the end of it all, though there’s no reason for Jay to stay any longer, hugging him goodbye is bittersweet. But in all of your time apart, your phone doesn’t get much rest from seeing his name on it. And you don’t get sick of texting him back. Texting him first.
you: We’re having a movie night on Friday!!! Heeseung is coming so I was wondering if you wanted to come along too? Also it would be nice to see you again if you’re not sick of seeing me
you: Or just sick in general… how are you feeling actually?
jongseong 😽: That sounds really nice!!! I’d love to join you guys thank you for thinking of me ❤️
jongseong 😽: Who could ever be sick of seeing you? If anything I’m surprised you’re not sick of me
jongseong 😽: This is a serious emergency ik it’s 8am but please text back
jongseong 😽: HIIIII can u reply rn
jongseong 😽: Heeseung said you liked the choux vanilles from Toad’s so I picked some up for you even though you did NOT reply in my time of need. Are you home? I’ll leave these at your doorstep and get out your hair
you: THANK YOU THANKY OUU THANK YOU THANK YOU
you: You can come in! I’m getting ready to meet Yizhuo for breakfast but maybe we can head out together?
jongseong 😽: Sounds goood!!!
jongseong 😽: It was really nice seeing you yesterday morning, even if it was only for a little bit. I didn’t mean to make it weird and ik that doesn’t make it any better but I’m really sorry
you: Noooo!!! I swear you didn’t make anything weird, I had a lot of fun with you and I wish we could have spent more time together!
When Heeseung arrives for movie night an hour early, he arrives alone—not counting the two bottles of wine and three pints of ice cream he brought with him. “Hey!” he says, smiling from ear to ear. “You look well, I’ve heard awful things.”
You roll your eyes, taking his offerings and letting him in. “Trust me, it was much worse than whatever you heard.”
“Five days with Jay though, how was that?” he asks in a sing-song voice, following you into the kitchen. At this, your smile is immediate and very wide, so much so that he raises his brows, beaming too. “Wow, that good, huh?”
You turn away, putting the wine in the fridge and the ice cream in the freezer, trying your best to look any less elated. “Did you ask him?” you ask, genuinely curious.
Heeseung shakes his head, sinking into one of your dining chairs at the table. He is quiet for long enough to make you wonder if you’d imagined that second night, what he’d said. You make it so easy. Five simple words that your mind has allowed to colour the rest of the week, and all of your conversations since, rosy. To think harder about how Jay cooked an endless supply of dakgaejang for you and Aeri, restocking your groceries afterwards. How you sat with your back to the bathtub while he washed your hair over the edge of it.
Five simple words that may have been nothing more than that.
Finally, Heeseung says, “I didn’t have to ask, he was texting me nightly updates and gave me a full debrief when he got back.”
“Wow,” you repeat. “That good, huh?”
Shrugging off his jacket, he nods. “Better—” He stops short at the sight of Aeri in the doorway. She’s in her pyjamas, scrunching her wet hair in an old T-shirt and holding her phone to her ear. A great big grin tugs his lips up at the corners, scrunches his eyes. “Hey, baby,” he says, pulling her into his arms, splashes of pink hitting his white T-shirt when he leans down to peck her lips.
She seems just as delighted, holding the speaker against her chest as she looks at you to ask, “Is it you that hasn’t tried that mussels from Lilly’s?” When you nod she puts the phone back to her ear. “Could you add another portion of mussels and black bean sauce to the order, please? Okay, perfect, see you at eight!”
Just the mention of food makes your stomach grumble, hunger taking over as if you didn’t have a bowl of rice and stew an hour ago. From the mini charcuterie board you’d been preparing before Heeseung arrived, you eat a slice of smoky chorizo. And another. Aeri joins you, lifting the wedge of cheddar you bought earlier and taking a bite straight out of it. She hums, pleased, while you watch in horror.
“So that’s actually for sharing,” you point out belatedly.
“It’s only you two.” Shrugging, she puts the cheese down, cutting off her teeth mark. “And Jay,” she adds, looking around as if he might pop out from behind something. “Where is he anyway?”
“On his way. Probably?” Heeseung suggests.
“Probably? You live together, what do you mean probably?” Aeri asks.
“I’ve been out all day. Shall I ring him and see?”
You shake your head. “We’re not watching anything until eight o’clock, he’s got half an hour.”
Armed with snacks, you all set up the living room together. Charcuterie plate in the middle of the table for easy access while you wait for dinner, chilled wine and carton of apple juice, the coveted final packet of salt & vinegar crisps which you plan to steal so Jay can have them. Aeri’s in control of the remote, so the three of you watch YouTube videos of eighteen-year-olds playing Dress to Impress on Roblox while you wait for food and Jay to arrive. Eight p.m. comes quickly and with no sign of either, though it seems like you’re the only one to take notice as Aeri and Heeseung are fully locked in on rating the looks coming down the runway.
“One star.” He groans, gesturing at the TV with both of his palms, furious. “The theme was sea monster, why are you wearing a beret and holding an ice cream cone?”
It’s half-eight when your takeaway arrives, and your phone lights up in your lap.
jongseong 😽: Can’t make it tonight
jongseong 😽: Sorry
Not many things can wipe the Lilly’s-induced smile from your face, but this does the job. In a split second. Worsened by the fact that he doesn’t say anything else. Beside you, Heeseung and Aeri open every container, humming with increased volume and enthusiasm at the sight and smell of each new part of your meal.
jongseong 😽: Tied up with recording but I would’ve loved to see you!
You split a pair of wooden chopsticks, stealing a salt & chilli covered chip from the box in Aeri’s lap. She doesn’t stop you. Nor does she complain when you take more. Heeseung hands you an oil-spotted brown paper bag, chicken balls, but still, the stir in your stomach persists, disappointment rather than hunger.
jongseong 😽: Are you free in the morning? Coffee date?
jongseong 😽: *coffee run
you: No worries!!!!! A coffee date sounds really nice :)
you: *coffee run
jongseong 😽: :)
Locking your phone, you tuck it under your thigh and reach over to open a bottle of the wine Heeseung brought. “Jay can’t make it,” you say, hating how small and upset you sound. Heeseung frowns and Aeri squeezes your knee. You’re the one who presses play on the remote, and Superbad’s opening credits start up, while the empty spot to your left gets colder and colder.
jongseong 😽: Hiiiii sorry again about last night, are we still on for this morning?
jongseong 😽: Ik it’s so early hahaha
You almost drop your toothbrush in the sink at the sight of his name in your phone, rushing to text back.
you: Wowwwww Park, are you trying to bail on me already…? Again? Sick.
jongseong 😽: No way! I’ve already left the flat!!!
Right away, a picture of Jay on the Tube appears in the thread, his smiling cheeks and eyes poking out over the top of a thick black scarf. You heart-react to the picture then remove it, replacing it with a friendly thumbs-up instead—there is, however, no fix for the butterflies in your stomach. The heat in your cheeks. You gargle mouthwash and pack your bag before running off to go meet him at once. So excited, so jittery, you can’t even read the thriller you packed for the commute.
Through the café window, you see Jay before he sees you. He’s drumming his fingers against the table, lips pressed together, his eyes on the door. His hair is short and styled so it sits up off his forehead, spiky sort of. You’ve never seen it as short as this. It’s good, you think, that you’ve seen him first, because now you can turn on your heel and go home to address the thump in your chest. As if feeling your eyes on him, he turns around, gaze meeting yours right away, and a grin breaks out over his face. Crinkles his eyes. Dimples his cheek. Takes your breath away. You can’t help but smile too as you hurry inside. He’s standing when you reach the table.
“Hey,” Jay says, pulling you into a hug that smells like honey and smoke and doesn’t last nearly long enough. “I really am sorry about last night.”
“Don’t worry about it, you’re here now.”
He nods, grinning. “I like your jacket, it’s cute.”
“Right? It’s Minjeong’s.” You look up at him, overwhelmed by the closeness of his face to yours, by the handsomeness of said close face. “You cut your hair,” you say, because it’s the only thought you’re having that has nothing to do with how good he looks and smells.
Jay’s lips curl into a sheepish smile. “Thanks for noticing.”
“Of course.” You nod. “You look like a baby.”
And there it is again, that grin. A laugh. “Great, because that’s exactly what I was going for. Thank you, YN.” He gestures to the table, at the steaming mug across from his seat. “I got you a latte.”
He really did! And the art on top of it is really normal!! It’s a love heart!!! And your actual heart is beating at a rate others might hear and think: wow, she’s being really normal right now! Hey, everybody!! Come take a look at how normal she’s being!!!
“Are you ageist?” you ask, taking your seat. To his furrowed brows, you continue. “There’s nothing wrong with looking like a baby. I was a baby once, you know.”
Jay sits down slowly, studying you over the rim of his cup and taking a long sip before he says, “I was too.”
Something about it all, seeing him like this, in a café and not studying, is strange. Jay was big on brewing his own coffee, steeping his own tea—exam season was the only justifiable time to splurge on delicious multi-hyphenate beverages. You take a sip of your own drink and try to come up with something normal to say, settling on, “I can’t believe we’re getting a coffee and it was your idea.”
“I don’t really drink anymore, my medication doesn’t… like that very much.”
“Jay, it’s nine o’clock,” you point out. “Oh… my God.” You cover your hand with your mouth, horrified, and leap to make things better. “I’m not judging you.”
“I didn’t mean I’d drink at this time. Jesus, YN. I’m not Scottish.”
“Okay, so you’re judging me.”
“I can’t help it, that’s just my God given right as a… sort of English person. Asking me not to judge you would be like asking me to kill myself.”
“Really desirable?” You sigh as soon as the words come out. “I’m sorry,” you whisper, guilt washing over you.
Jay’s eyes widen and his jaw drops, a surprised, contagious, laugh rushing out of him. He covers his face with his hands while you watch in horror. “Anyway, I was going to ask, how long do you have to stay somewhere before you can claim it?”
He’s still smiling. Your heart is still racing.
“I think it’s more of a feeling,” you say finally.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Jay lifts his notebook from the table, stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “You look a lot better since I last saw you, I was starting to think there was something about being near me that was making you sick, you know? Three times is a pattern and all that.”
“We saw each other two days ago.”
“For ten minutes,” he points out.
Ten minutes that you spent the rest of the day poring over, recounting every single detail, every little thing that led to him kissing your cheek when he said goodbye.
“Well, I only just got here, so I’m not sure we can rule it out yet.” Racing heart, turning stomach, breathlessness—symptoms of post-acute infection, apparently. You offer a weak chuckle. “Thanks again for looking after me, you really didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to. And besides, it was nice spending time with you.” Jay smiles. “How’ve you been?”
“Just the usual.”
“I don’t really know what your usual is these days,” he admits too casually for the weight of it all.
“Right… uh, I’ve been—” You try to think about it, wondering what usual means to you. It used to be so simple. Your usual used to be studying with Jay before and after classes. Sharing every meal you could when time permitted. Ending the night together at his place or yours, even if you’d spent the day apart. He used to be your usual.
“I had an interview yesterday morning. At ‘Interview,’ and I think it went well,” you say, voice high pitched and trailing off towards the end. Worried about jinxing yourself, you hadn’t told anyone about it, not even Yizhuo who sent you the job posting. But now that you’ve said the words out loud, to Jay, you can’t bring yourself to stop. “But my friend told me they’re interviewing until the end of the month, so it might be a bit before I hear anything. I’m feeling good about it though, my portfolio is strong, and it’s versatile — at least that’s what the recruiter said — so I should have a shot for a few of the jobs there if I don’t get this particular one.”
Jay’s face lights up with every word you say, as if you’ve let him in on something secret, something precious.
“I didn’t mean to talk your ear off,” you say, hiding behind a warm sip of coffee.
His smile takes over his face, ear to ear and so delighted. Pink kisses the tips of his ears, the apples of his cheeks. “Luckily I have two ears, and they really love your voice so…” He trails off, ducking his head like he’s embarrassed by his own sincerity. “I’m really happy to hear that, YN. I want all of your good news. And the bad stuff too—everything.”
Suddenly sheepish, you direct the question back towards him, asking what’s been keeping him busy lately. His smile is immediate and wide. “I’ve been writing like crazy since I last saw you.” Jay tilts his head, chewing on his bottom lip, but his smile doesn’t budge. “It’s stupid but it sort of feels like I can… see or something now, again. If that makes sense.”
“Not at all.” You can’t help but smile too. “Tell me everything.”
Pressing his lips together, Jay lets his gaze flick towards the window, looking out at the quiet street. Across the road is a deserted play park with swings that sway in the wind. A fish-shaped spring rocker does the same, bobbing gently. A man pushes a pram. Jay opens his mouth and says, “It’s like I’ve been walking around blindfolded for the last few years and someone finally took it off of me, and now I can see and there’s—” He stops short, biting his lip as his eyes fall on the swirls in his coffee. And then flick up to meet yours. “Well now there’s so much light again.”
You clear your throat, your mind a storm, thoughts unclear over the rush of your blood, the pounding of your heart in your ears. The latte he got you, while delicious, does nothing to calm the raging waters. It feels so pointed, too pointed to ignore. You were startlingly aware of how your five-day fever dream had blurred a line or two in your head. Spending all that time together, letting him look after you — Neo opening the door, following the white rabbit — flipped the switch in your head and turned your ifs into whens. If / when we’re alone, if / when we kiss. Turned you back into an eighteen-year-old, waiting by the phone for Jay to text you back.
It’s only when his smile falters, just a touch, that you realise you haven’t said anything. “That’s kind of extremely beautiful,” you say finally, massively understating it.
“Yeah.” He nods. “I thought so too.”
After finishing your drinks, you sit for a while longer, rehashing uni gossip you bled dry years ago, until the staff start giving you increasingly dirty looks, all but begging you to leave.
Jay holds the door open for you. “So what are you up to today?”
“This is—” Cold wind scrapes your neck, cutting you off as you button your coat to the top. “This is what I’m up to today.”
An amused breath slips out of him, a white cloud by his nostrils, and he takes his scarf off, wrapping it around your neck instead. “I mean after,” he says, unmoved by his gesture. Meanwhile, you’ve got an inhale full of his scent and the exposed column of his neck, his heart-shaped birthmark, on your mind like a thirsty vampire. To your silence he waves his large hand in your face. “Earth to YN.”
“Right here, Park.” You swat his hand away, clearing your throat. “What are you up to after this?”
“I have a session in about an hour, come with?” he offers. “I should warn you though, it’ll be really boring.”
“Boring? I could tell you hated your job and all of your fans.”
“No, I mean for you.” Jay nudges your shoulder. Despite the layers, your heart stumbles at the contact. “Because you kind of just have to sit there and be quiet, which I know will be difficult for you.”
Heat floods your cheeks, pools at the base of your spine. “Shut up,” you mumble, turning away from him.
“What?” Genuine confusion pulls his voice up a few octaves. “Oh,” he says after a beat, figuring it out for himself. “I didn’t mean it like that, but when did I ever complain? I like it.”
“Please stop talking.”
Jay stands to attention, saluting you. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Fuck, if you’re going to beg me then, fine, Jay. I’ll come to the studio with you.” You sigh, struggling to fight a smile. “I can’t catch a break with you.”
His head tips back with sweet laughter and he loops his arm through yours, tugging you and the butterflies in your stomach down the road towards the station. “No, YN. You really can’t.”
On the empty platform, you stand side by side, looking at the massive NAPE poster plastered on the wall. Jay, who usually has no shortage of things to say at any given moment, stares at it in silence. The poster is taller than you are, with No Way Back Tour written at the top in blocky red sans serif. In the centre is a four cut photo strip with a picture of each member, that’s thresholded to oblivion, and the bottom lists a bunch of different venues around London.
“What do you think?” you ask. “I think it’s cool, the portraits look good with the red on them like that.”
Jay snaps back into motion, turning to face you, his teary eyes finding yours. He smiles. “I think I had something else in mind when Riki told me there was a huge poster of my face in the station.”
“What? Just your face?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, just my face.”
“Park Jongseong,” you utter, shaking your head. “Where is your team spirit?”
Jay rolls his eyes but can’t hide his smile. “Dead and gone. Take a picture? Please.” He holds his phone out for you to take and stands by the poster, poking the cheek of his large, printed face.
“Celebrities…” You sigh, though you can’t ignore the swell of pride in your chest. You’ve taken a thousand pictures of Jay standing by posters for movies and artists he enjoys, so this feels almost full-circle in a way you’re struggling to wrap your head around. “Can I take some on my phone?”
He nods, and you slip his phone into your bag, reaching for yours—“This is not happening right now!” A uniformed teenage girl is standing right behind you when you turn around. The strap of her backpack has a can badge with NAPE written on it. Her face and neck and ears bright red as she points a trembling finger at him. “You’re—you’re… Jay fucking Park!”
“Hello,” Jay says, he’s smiling too. He is also turning red. “Good morning.”
“Hello?” she repeats, incredulous. “Hello, yourself, Jay Park. Holy shit!” Everything she says sits at the junction of whispering and screaming as your eyes flick back and forth between the two of them.
“I really slept in this morning and I was like ugh, I don’t want to go to school, so I almost didn’t leave the house, but then I finally did and I was like, I don’t want to walk, so then I came down here, which I literally never do and then I saw you and I was like, she’s so pretty, and then you were taking pictures of literal Jay Park. This is like literally a sign,” she continues, all in one breath. When she shows you her lock screen, she’s listening to Carolina. “My top song for the last two years.”
You’ve never met a celebrity before, as a fan anyway, so you can’t say for sure how you’d react, but her coherence is impressive—you’re not sure you could stand in front of Michael B. Jordan without crying or screaming or proposing, never mind recounting the events that led you there in the first place.
Jay’s entire face is smiling, looking down at this sweet girl like she hung the moon and the stars—he looks like the fan here, hanging onto her every word. “It must be a sign. A great one. I’m really happy to meet you.” A beautiful mix of intrigue, delight, and timidness colours his tone and his wide eyes, straightens his spine.
You feel equally mesmerised by each of them.
“Same,” she says simply, extending a hand for both you and Jay to shake, the picture of composure all of a sudden. She’s amazing. “I’m Wonhee. No one at school’s going to believe this at all, holy shit.”
“Wonhee,” he repeats, to her utmost elation. “Do you want a picture, Wonhee? So everyone at school believes you?”
Wonhee’s jaw drops. “Are you kidding?”
When she says it’s okay, Jay puts his arm around her shoulders, a boyish grin scrunching his sweet face. He looks even more like the fan in all one million live photos you take on Wonhee’s phone. “Wow,” she utters, swiping through the pictures. “Wow!” A glorious, giddy laugh comes out of her and she bolts away up the stairs, leaving the station—so much for school.
“She was so cute,” you coo, unable to keep the smile off your face.
“Yeah.” Jay’s gaze stays on the stairs like she might come back. “Yeah, she was.”
“Look at you, my little celebrity!”
This makes him look away, his eyes falling to his feet, ears and neck just as red as Wonhee’s were. “No, not really,” he mumbles. “Or, not universally, which is a relief. I don’t really get noticed like that, and I think it was only because I was standing next to a giant picture of my face.”
And what a lovely face it is. “You’re her lockscreen, Jay. I’m sure she’d recognise you if she only saw the back of your head.”
“I’m her lockscreen?”
You nod, liking the giddy smile he wears. Liking the flutter in your stomach at the sight of it. The warmth in your chest. “Isn’t it so crazy that you’ve made her day, maybe even her week, and all you did was take a picture?”
“Not really, she’s made my day too.” Jay shrugs, blush still lingering on his skin. “I was already having an amazing day with you, of course. So meeting Wonhee’s just the cherry on top of a great day that already had a cherry on it.” His words come out rushed, one big run on word with no breaks to breathe or think. Like everything he says is coming out of him as soon as it crosses his mind.
“Great,” you say through a breathy laugh. “I’m having a good time too.”
“Washington State is actually the top producer of sweet cherries in the States, did you know that? I was starting to miss them, being away so long—and now I have two cherries on my wonderful day.” Jay is grinning from ear to ear like some sort of adorably Cheshire Cat / Joker hybrid, rocking back and forth on his feet. He might be the most excited person in the whole world at this very moment. Second to Wonhee at least.
You can’t think of the last time you saw him so excited about something. It’s interesting to see a celebrity so thrilled by parts of the job that seem so normal from the outside looking in. Something you’d think he’d be used to by now, two years and millions of streams in. Regardless, you’re just happy he’s happy.
And because you can’t resist teasing him, you say, “I get it, Jay. You’re having the best day of your life because you got attention from a pretty girl. Congratulations.” You give him a slow round of applause.
Undeterred, he tucks some of your hair behind your ear, his warm touch lingering on your skin. “I’m not trying to brag or anything, but I’ve gotten attention from two pretty girls today.”
Your cheeks burn. “Even better.”
Behind you, the Tube whooshes to a stop and the doors slide open right in front of where Jay’s standing. A distraction, finally. “And look at that,” he says, pointing to the doors. “Three cherries.”
NAPE’s room at Laughing Kitty Studios is a large wood-panelled rectangle and you two are the first to arrive. Jay takes his shoes off by the door, so you do the same, stepping in after him. Plaques and posters line the walls, streaming milestones and Nirvana. A worn leather couch sits in the middle of the room with a long table and two chairs at its back. Jay gestures around him and says, “This is where the magic happens.” He gives you a tour when you ask, showing you the huge monitor and lots of expensive mixing equipment that all looks the same to you. In the vocal booth, he shows you the controls and the locked cabinet where they keep snacks.
Helping you out of your coat, Jay hangs it up on the rack beside his and watches as you sink into the couch. “Do you prefer working here or at home?” you ask.
He takes a beat, thinking it over with his hands on his waist. “I guess it depends where we’re at. If we have a deadline or just want to get shit done, we work better here. And it’s nice having, like, a base, I guess, where other writers or producers can come to work with us.”
“That makes sense, it’s like a safe space, kind of.”
“Mmm, safe space,” he repeats. “I like that.” Jay sits too, leaving a small gap between you. “Most days though, especially when the weather’s shit, I prefer working at home.”
“Ah, see, I hated working at home; too many distractions.”
“Sunoo takes all our phones if he’s with us, so no distractions for NAPE at the studio.” Jay licks his lips, eyes meeting yours. “Not normally.”
Your awareness of Jay peaks. Of the spread of his thighs, of his hand grazing your leg when he lifts it from the couch cushion. Every cell in your body zings with this awareness, humming, and even though you’re smiling, even though your heart is a second away from beating out of your chest, you roll your eyes at him, cheeks on fire.
“Will you show me what you’ve been working on?” you ask. “Since I’ve come all this way?”
A boyish grin takes over his face as he nods. “But only because you’ve travelled all of fifteen minutes to get here, my strong, strong girl,” he says, taking out his phone and plugging it into the speaker behind the couch.
His strong, strong girl. Your sanity slips, just a little. Though you suppose it’s this alleged strength that keeps you sitting where you are, rather than jumping into his lap and kissing his stupid, handsome face.
Jay’s thumb hovers over the play button and he hesitates, seeming to second-guess himself before giving a hurried preface. “It’s just a demo, you know? Me and my guitar. I threw it together last night so the final thing probably won’t sound anything like this, alright?”
“You don’t have to play it for me if you don’t want to,” you say, squeezing his knee. “I’m sure it’s amazing though, because you wrote it.”
His ears go bright pink and he scratches the back of his neck. “It’s important to me that you hear it,” he tells you, sounding very certain for someone so clearly nervous. There’s something about it, his certainty, that makes your heart pick up, just a touch as you nod. He presses play and immediately the sound of his guitar fills the room, humming against the couch. Just like he did at the show, how he used to on the end of your bed, he picks a pretty melody. The image comes quick and clear—Jay at twenty. Twenty-one. Sitting in his underwear with his acoustic in his lap, picking the same notes over and over until they either sounded right, or you managed to convince him to get into bed instead. A knife to the gut would hurt less. And then he starts to sing. At first, in some of the most beautiful gibberish and lalalas you’ve ever heard. You open your mouth to compliment him anyway, but the lyrics come in, actual real words with actual real meanings, and everything you wanted to say falls to the wayside.
“You make my heart beat for you. I always cry too often, but I put too much in your hands. So much regret in the end,” Jay sings.
Through the speaker his voice is full and sincere and gorgeous as ever, all while he sits next to you with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. In your chest, your heart does an ungraceful tumble. If he can hear it, your thumping heart, he is polite enough not to comment, instead watching you closely, trying to gauge your reaction, maybe. Trying to read your mind.
“It’s a shame for you, it’s a shame for me. Is the blame on you? No, YN, it’s all on me.”
Oh.
A demo and a confession.
His thoughts laid bare at last, the vulnerability you used to beg for handed over on an acoustic platter. Curling around the room and filling the shortening gap between your bodies until your knee presses against his thigh, or the other way around—you can’t tell who moved. You don’t remember. You don’t care. Not when his lips are parted like that, not when he’s close enough for you to feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough to kiss. The voice in your head says his name over and over. Jongseong. Jongseong. Jongseong. Your favourite nine letters stuck on the tip of your tongue. There are too many things to say, and too many ways to say them, so you don’t say anything at all.
Luckily, Jay says it all for you—sings it. “Wish I knew how to make it right. Just wanna look into your eyes, tell you the truth that I can’t hide, I love you so much.”
Answering seems so simple, but when you try, your mind blanks. Fills, rather, buzzing with all the wrong things. Thoughts and memories. Everything that’s happened over the last three weeks, the time you’ve been together again. Back in each other’s orbit. How he dropped everything to look after you, chose you.
How he finally chose you.
There’s a lightness in your chest, like some persistent weight has been lifted at long last. And now, looking at him, Jay. Your Jay—Jongseong. The freckles on his cheek, how the skin is tinted rosy. Pinched pink. His eyes, dark and wide and staring straight into yours. The only thing on your mind is: I love you, I love you, I love you. You tip your chin, and the space between your lips and his becomes little more than a technicality. His breath is warm against your skin, close enough to feel when it hitches. Close enough to see each of his eyelashes, to count them. To see how they flutter when he blinks, gaze falling to your mouth. Yours does the same, latching on the smooth pink skin, desperate now. Resisting seems futile, so you give in, pressing your lips to his and hoping it’ll be enough to tell him everything.
Jay’s relief is immediate. Clear in the shuddered breath that slips out of him, caught between kisses as he melts against you. His hand finds your jaw, fingers slipping into your hair behind your ear just like they used to. Tongue brushing up to tickle the roof of your mouth and make you smile like always. It feels like it’s been two minutes since your last kiss, not three years. Feels impossible that you went that long without this.
Without Jay.
His grip on your waist is gentle, but his fingertips sear your skin. He pulls you closer, and closer, each point of connection setting off a blaze in its wake. Mouth to mouth. Chest to chest. Knees to the sides of his thighs as you sink into his lap. Like this, under you, the sight of Jay is too much—flushed cheeks, plump lips, ragged breath. The feel of him, all solid muscle and huge palms slipping under your skirt. Nails digging into the curve of your ass. You lean in, lips catching his jaw, finding the side of his neck. His skittering pulse. His birthmark. Sucking on the warm skin there makes him groan, makes his hips buck. His dick strains against his jeans, hitting the exact spot that makes you putty in his hands, moans slipping from both of you as you work up a rhythm.
Your name trails off into a sigh when he tries to say it. “What does this mean?” he asks, breathless.
“I don’t know,” you admit, and for a long while afterwards, the only sound in the studio is the two of you trying to catch your breath. “Do you want to stop?” you ask, terrified for the answer.
Jay says nothing.
Your fingers slip easily through his hair, playing with the tickly short strands on the sides of his head. His question feels heavier the longer he goes without speaking, the longer you stew on it. What does this mean, if anything? There’s an uncomfortable swoop in your stomach, how could this possibly mean nothing? Nothing more than a spur of the moment makeout, never to be spoken of. A unanimous mistake.
On an inhale, Jay’s chest puffs out, touching yours for a heartbeat and he shakes his head. “Not for anything,” he whispers, leaning up to kiss you again.
And this time, when he rocks his hips, his grip on you tightens and he pulls you down to meet them. It’s too much all at once, heat lashing at you from every angle. Increasing with each brush of your tongues, with each press of his covered dick between your legs. Need burns a flame at the base of your stomach, tugs a whine out of you.
Against yours, Jay’s lips quirk into a smile, a smirk. “Needed this just as bad as me, huh, baby?” he asks, voice a low rasp.
“More,” you breathe.
To this, he pulls away, looking up at you with furrowed brows. He shakes his head and says, “No way.” Jay’s heavy palm cups your cheek, his eyes round and wide. A burst of tenderness in the midst of all the heat as his hips freeze under you. A flutter in your stomach. Warmth in your chest, on your cheeks.
“Absolutely, no way,” he says and once again, his lips come up to meet yours. Slow this time, gentle and sweet.
Until laughter erupts from the door, and forces the two of you apart. As if being caught in this position isn’t bad enough, a string of spit attaches you to him when you pull away. There are two guys standing in the doorway, one of them still laughing, the other one pressing his lips in a flat line, as though seeing the two of you like this is disappointing but not surprising.
Frustration and embarrassment wash over you in equal measure, a wave with the force of an eighteen-wheeler casting its great shadow above you. Only death could fix this, of that, you are certain—you can’t laugh at a dead person. At least not right away, surely there’s a buffer period of some description.
The amused one speaks first. “I thought you said you moved the couch off the wall so they wouldn’t fuck on it.”
“Yes, Jungwon. That was the general idea.” Stepping into the studio, shoes off, the disappointed one points at the sign above the light switch—a short list of forbidden things that has, no sex in the studio, written in bold, red letters at the top of it.
Great.
Maybe under different circumstances, if Jay had shown it to you, you might have laughed at the sign, thinking of what had to go wrong to lead to such a notice existing in the first place. For sex to rank over smoking and playing ball games on the list of things not to do in there. Now, like this, sitting in Jay’s lap with only a few layers of clothing between his erection and your dripping cunt, it makes you want to die.
Already, you had a whole host of things to stew over in bed tonight — spending all morning with Jay, the song, the kiss — and now you get to add being walked in on to the roster.
The rush of blood in your ears is disorienting, warbling Jay’s voice when he says, “It’s a great sign, Sunoo.” Completely unconcerned, he wears a great big smile and keeps his hands under your skirt. “But it says nothing about kissing.”
Your breath catches. Sunoo. His manager. Even better.
Without another thought, you stand, straightening your skirt. Jay doesn’t move, he just sits there with his hands on his thighs, eyes trailing over every inch of your body as if you’re still alone. As if now that he knows he can, he wants to use the opportunity to the fullest.
“Yes,” Sunoo agrees, sinking into one of the spinny chairs by the monitor and rubbing his temples. “And I’m coming to regret that.”
Silence hangs over the room as Jungwon steps inside, closing the door after himself. He runs his finger over the sign, following the words one at a time like he’s sounding it out or studying it. How nice it must be, not to have a stake in this moment. You clear your throat, deciding that if the universe isn’t going to answer your pleas for sudden death, you might as well perform good and normal social niceties. “I’m YN,” you announce, so loud that Jungwon flinches by the door. “It’s… nice to meet you both.”
“Likewise.” A genuine smile covers Sunoo’s face, scrunches his eyes—it’s like looking at an angel. “I can see why Jay talks about you so much.”
“Sorry for…” You trail off, unsure how best to put across whatever the hell you and Jay were doing—sorry for having a reconciliatory dry hump on your couch, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. “That,” you say finally.
He laughs and the sound is delightful, a dismissive wave of his hand accompanying it like he wasn’t just losing his mind. “Please, that wasn’t even the worst thing I’ve walked in on this week.” Sunoo shudders, seeming truly disturbed. “First time offence for Jay though,” he adds thoughtfully, which is oddly reassuring.
Jungwon claps his hands, one loud smack as he sits on the other end of the couch, a bright smile on his face like he’s solved some pressing matter. “So what if the sign says, no partners in the studio, instead?” he asks, nudging Jay.
His emphasis on the word partner sets off your stomach, steadily fluttering butterflies flying around a swirl of heat. Is that where this might have led? Where you and Jay could end up? Partners. Again? Casual-workplace-dry-humpationship isn’t a relationship status you’ve had before, or heard of, but now, the thought of it being as far as things go here, with Jay, is a horrible weight on your shoulders, a pressure in your chest.
Sunoo sighs. “I love this band, I really do, but the horny fuckers would just kiss each other.”
At this, you all laugh. All but Sunoo, anyway.
It’s straight to work when the rest of the guys arrive, and Sunoo settles on the other end of the couch, typing away at his laptop and pausing to give his opinion when they ask. Sunghoon sits with his knees to his chest, picking at his lip as he stares at the screen, clicking this and that, playing it back over and over, no matter what imperceptible change they’ve suggested.
Standing over his shoulder, Heeseung tilts his head. “Actually, yeah. Your way’s better, cut that.”
“I think quiet for half a bar instead of fading out—everything off just vocals, and then back on full force for the last chorus. Louder,” Jake suggests, so Sunghoon does just that and plays the whole thing over again. You can’t hear the difference, but all of the guys hum in approval.
Heeseung riffs. Jay does the same on his guitar, and he was sort of right. Maybe if you were less fascinated by him, you would be bored. But he’s kind of extremely good at this. All of them. They manage to lock in for hours at a time, bouncing ideas around and executing them perfectly in a matter of two or three takes. Late in the afternoon, Jungwon orders pizza and they stop working to eat before getting right back to it. It’s the only break they take all day.
“Look, I know you want to, but you don’t need to take a new song out with you—not yet anyway.” Sunoo stands up from the couch, putting his laptop into his bag. “You still have time to decide on the encore show, but maybe after all the travelling you’ll have a few finished songs. New setting, new inspiration.”
Jake furrows his brows. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, I think we’re cutting it a bit thin. I mean this is your last full week off — bar rehearsal — before tour starts, and I don’t want you so stressed about something with an easy fix.”
At the mention of the word tour, Jay stiffens. You do the same.
Jungwon takes his headphones off and turns to face the room, laptop in hand to show the screen. “Do we like these T-shirts for the U.S. shows?”
“Yeah, but…” Sunghoon squints, getting closer. “They look just like the Australia and New Zealand shirts.”
“Which look just like the Europe ones,” Heeseung points out.
Every sentence makes things worse and worse. They’re going on tour in a week. Jay is leaving in a week. Going to the U.S., to fucking Oceania, and this is how you’re finding out. The tightness in your chest, the ache in your stomach, is immediate. Instead of looking at you, Jay bites at his nails. Scrunches his nose.
“If we could kindly get back on track,” Sunoo interrupts, pulling his jacket on. “You have Live Lounge when you’re back in March, VEVO Studios in April—much better opportunities to showcase new music. I know you want something special for fans, but maybe we can shoot a performance video of… Royalty? And release it on Valentine’s Day?”
Jay hides his face in his hands. “Okay.”
“Just think about it, okay. It’s up to you, and I promise I’ll support whatever you decide. For now, though, I have carbonara and an episode of Lovely Runner waiting for me at home, so I’m away, yeah?”
With that, Sunoo leaves and Jungwon is quick to follow. The guys sit in silence for a bit before getting back to work. By your side, Jay hunches over his guitar, resting his chin on the body, picking at the strings aimlessly. Across the room, Heeseung, Jake, and Sunghoon crowd around the monitor, nitpicking.
While their demo plays through the speakers again, louder than before, Jay finally speaks. “You and your friends can come if you’re up to it, to the London show. Whoever you want. On me,” he mumbles, looking at the fretboard instead of you.
“Okay.” You nod, though the thought of having to tell Minjeong that Jay has upset you again, that you’ve let him close enough to be upset by him again, is too grim to bear, so you text the chat, inviting them along instead.
you: Nape concert next Friday night on me (on the band) who’s there?
somi: me me me me me
yizhuo: Will Jake be there?
riki: will jake be at his concert.
riki: what happened w you and jimin 🤔
yizhuo: No further questions your honour (she only wants to hookup HAHAHHAHA).
riki: my apologies twin (Go Get Your #Man).
you: Oh okay bc I thought you all had very important jobs right . Right. MY FUCKING BAD.
And just like that, all three of them stop texting.
It’s ten p.m. by the time you and Jay reach your flat, and neither of you have said anything since you said bye to the other guys back at the studio, ten Tube stops ago. You search in your bag for your keys, desperate to end this silence by disappearing inside. Jay has other plans though, apparently, because when you twist your key in the lock and step over the threshold he sighs, saying your name. You don’t look at him.
“I swear to God, I was going to tell you about the tour, okay? I wouldn’t just leave like that. Not again.” Though his credibility where telling you things is concerned is shaky at best, you nod and he continues. “I’ve known for ages, obviously, but I wasn’t sure when to tell you or if you’d care.”
“You weren’t sure I’d care that you’re leaving for two months?” you ask, hoping he can hear how absurd that sounds.
“Three months,” he corrects, mumbling an apology when you squint at him. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about what I thought this was or could be, by talking about my short-term plans like you’re my girlfriend or something.”
Your scoff echoes through the hall, an accurate reflection of the irritation that heats you from the inside out. “Sure, Jay. Give me the right idea then.”
He takes a beat, his eyes catching over all of your features. “You’re cross with me,” he states simply.
Cross, he said. As if that even begins to cover it. Maybe if you were any less cross with him, the Briticism might have made you smile. “Very.”
“I’m sorry, YN. I should’ve told you sooner.”
“Sunoo told me. You didn’t say anything.”
“Look, I didn’t mean to—” Jay pauses, pressing his eyes shut with his fingers until his nails turn pale. With a shaky breath, he tries again. “We didn’t have hard conversations at home. My parents would just make up their minds and do shit, you know. I found out we were moving to Seoul when my dad came into my room with a bunch of boxes, and told me to fill them up.”
The words rush out of him, each of them a blade to the heart, deeper than the last. Twisting. You’ve seen all of his childhood photos, the calendar his parents had made when he was eight. His permed curly hair and bright smile, those big round eyes that never failed to melt your heart no matter how many times you saw the pictures. Hearing that his parents could raise him that way, their only child, to change his life at the drop of a hat, like he was just another thing to put in a box and cart away, stings the backs of your eyes. From what you remember, he’d gone from the U.S. to Korea, then London, all so quickly—and now you know, with no warning.
“London was the same, back to Tacoma, same thing, and back again. I never really…” He trails off, chewing on his lip before he starts again. “I thought Edinburgh would be like that too, it was supposed to be. But then I met you, and for the first time, the thought of leaving was terrifying. I thought it was about the band, what my parents might say, but it was you, YN. I never had a home to leave until I met you, and I didn’t realise that until it was already too late.”
The realisation sets in with deep unease. His room in Edinburgh was completely bare when you met him, just the essentials, the stuff you can only assume was easy to move with. It was only after the two of you had been together for a while that his room started filling up. Posters and knick-knacks. Snowglobes and postcards from whatever holiday Minjeong had planned for you, her and Jaehyun. At the end of it all, by the time it had been two weeks since Jay left your place and never looked back, his flatmate Wonbin handed you a box with these things in it. To your confusion, to your upset, he only raised a brow and said, I thought you agreed it’d be better to end things? With him moving back home and that…
“And even after I left, I had a million and one chances to reach out to you, to explain, apologise, all of it, but I—I really let you down, and I’m sorry. I’m not that person anymore.” He looks down, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
Your body reacts before your words can, hand reaching out to his cheek, cupping the smooth, flushed skin. His eyes flick up to meet yours, and the only thing you can say is, “You’re not. It’s okay, I promise.”
“It’s not, YN.” He presses his lips together, biting the skin until the pressure turns the pink pale. “I just want you to be happy.”
Again, the words are right there, twisting painfully in your throat and stuck to the tip of your tongue. I love you. I still love you. It’s you, Jay. It’s always, only you. But you can’t get them out, can’t bring yourself to say them. “I am happy, Jay,” you say instead.
Jay’s lips quirk up at the corners, not quite a smile but close. “You’re happy,” he repeats, nodding his head as he seems to consider this. The silence is awful, turning your stomach and when he finally opens his mouth to speak, you’re so certain he’s going to wish you a goodnight that you rush to speak first.
“When are you leaving?”
“Saturday.” One day after the London show. Ten days from today. “Manchester’s Tuesday, then Glasgow, Dublin…” He trails off, but you know the rest—Paris, Hamburg, Stockholm… Auckland, Brisbane… You studied the order from the poster Jungwon showed you.
“When can I see you again?” you ask quietly.
“I’m not sure.” Jay tilts his head. “Want me to send you my Google Calendar?”
He’s kidding, you know that much, but still, you say, “Please.”
At this, he pulls up the app on his phone, multi-coloured blocks filling the screen. “Looks like I’m free at 3 a.m. tomorrow,” he says, clicking the share button and pasting the link in your text thread, where your contact is saved as MY ❤️. Still. Jay hits send on the message and again his calendar fills the screen. “And right now.”
“Me too…” You trail off.
To your surprise, it doesn't take much more to get Jay into the flat, into your room. To have your back against the bedroom door and his lips on yours, not even separating to push your coat down your shoulders. His hands span wherever he can touch, slipping under your shirt to press your body closer to his.
Jay tugs at the waistband of your tights. "Want these off."
"Later." You chase his kiss, desperate not to lose momentum, not to give either of you an opportunity to think about this and what it means.
Relenting, his hand slips under them instead, grabbing your ass. Bucking forwards, you feel his thick cock against you, a swirl of heat ravishing the base of your stomach. He sighs into the kiss, parting your legs with his thigh and guiding you over the solid muscle.
It's not enough. "My tights," you say, changing your tune. "Rip them, Jay.”
He moans on a shaky exhale, pulling away to look down at you. "Are you joking? I can't tell if you're joking." His eyes are blown and frantic, searching your face. As soon as you shake your head, he tugs at the thin fabric until it tears, making a hole. Cool air rushes against you, forcing you to draw a breath. "Now what?”
You push your damp underwear to the side, fingers parting your slick folds before you rock your hips once more. Painfully slow. The feeling of his thigh, the rough denim of his jeans grazing your clit, makes you whimper into the space between you. Jay's lips quirk up at the corner, his bruising grip guiding your hips back and forth.
"So needy, aren't you?" He pushes his thigh harder against you. "What am I gonna do with you, beautiful?"
Holding his gaze is an effort, but you'd die if you missed the way he looks right now, half-lidded eyes looking down at you, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth. Even blinking feels like a waste. "Anything, Jay. Do anything."
"Bed?" As soon as you nod he carries you over, setting you down.
You lean up on your elbows to watch him undress—his jacket comes off first, falling to the floor. Then his T-shirt, pulled over his head, triceps huge when he bends his arms. A lick of need burns your core at the sight of his tattoo peeking out over his waistband, the thick dark hair under his belly button. You have to chew on your lip to hold a moan, but he notices.
"Like what you see?" He smiles, freeing his belt from the loops of his jeans.
"Mhm."
Jay's eyes trail over your body, skin ablaze wherever his gaze lands. "Not as much as I like you." He leans over and kisses you. "Your pretty little mouth," he murmurs, lips trailing your throat. "Your neck, your shoulders." At your chest, he takes his time. Sucking and licking your nipples through your tank top, urging whimpers out of you with each bite and tug. It's only when he continues down the rest of you that you remember the point he's making, a kiss pressed by your belly button. "Your stomach, thighs. Everything, baby. Love all of you.”
Love all of you. You can't breathe. Love all of you. His hands slip under your skirt, pulling off your panties and torn tights in one go. Love all of you. You might die here, now, like this.
He gets up to take off his pants, leaving only his tight grey underwear and the dark patch in the centre, where the fabric clings to his leaking tip. "Want you on me, YN." He licks his lips before a breathtaking smile spreads over them, slow and feline. A smirk, more like. "Sound good? You wanna sit on d—my face?" Even the thought of riding his face, of the word he stopped himself from saying, hitches your breath.
Saying, please, is a measured effort, though he wastes no time getting between your legs. Just the feel of him under you, his built shoulders and solid chest, thick arms wrapped around your soft thighs; seeing him like this, eyes half-lidded and stuck on your cunt, is dizzying and he hasn't even touched you yet.
"So pretty everywhere." The words are a low whisper, warm and sudden, before he licks you from back to front.
A burst of pleasure arches your back, coursing through you immediately as you grind down on him, rutting against the tip of his nose. Dipping into you, his tongue moves slowly to match the roll of your stuttering hips—he's kissing you, making out. And loving every second of it if his groans are anything to go off of. It is, at once, too much and not enough. His pouty mouth finds your clit, licking it in circles, driving you crazy.
"Fuck," you whine. "Like that."
When he hums in response, it rumbles through you, forcing a moan from you as you tug at his hair. At the feeling of it, he groans, burying his face deeper and deeper. Tipping his chin towards you. In his enjoyment of it all, in his actions, he makes no effort to be quiet—squelches amplified and filthy, with his exaggerated movements of his mouth against your soaking cunt.
Your orgasm creeps up on you, slow to start but quickly overbearing. "Jay." From your lips, his name is a wobbly cry. "Jay," you repeat. Falling forwards, your hands grip fruitlessly at the sheets, whole body trembling in his hold. Pure bliss washes over you in harsh waves, whiting the dark behind your closed eyelids. How could you ever go without this again? How did you manage in the first place? You can't even voice it, warn him, that you're close, that you're there, unthinkable heat hitting you from every angle as you gush all over him. He doesn't let up, only humming and licking more feverishly, quicker, harder, and pressing the entire bottom half of his face to you, drinking up your release.
Catching your breath is an impossibility, your legs and stomach twitching as he cleans you up with his tongue, murmuring praises against you. Thank you, baby, as his nose hits your clit. Missed this pretty pussy, after he licks your clenching hole. So good for me, when he sucks at your inner thigh. Jay looks a mess when you finally sit up, glancing down at him. Ruffled hair. Slow blinking eyes. Everything from his straight nose down is slick and shiny, cum slipping over his jaw, and a smile curving his swollen lips. A handsome mess.
You clench around nothing.
Later, you share the shower and lots of kisses, teeth bumping under the spray as Jay whimpers, coming in your hand before getting into bed. He strokes your hair, twirling the ends around his fingers, and opening his mouth to speak but says nothing. Minutes pass like this until you finally ask, “What is it?”
He shakes his head, smiling too. “It’s nothing.”
“Tell me, baby.”
“I just… I kind of feel like I’m dreaming or something,” he admits softly, though you feel the words in every part of you.
Stuck for what to say, scared to say anything, you lean up and kiss him instead. Kiss him until your stomach starts to flutter. Until you’re gasping for breath, legs tangling together under the duvet, because if this really is a dream, you don’t want to have any regrets when you wake up.
@.gigiseung: DUDEEEEEE JAY GOT A GIRLFRIEND 😭😭😭 I USED TO PRAY FOR TIMES LIKE THIS THE MUSIC IS GONNA BE HAPPY !!!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!
@.nojayback: WHY DID HE PUT HIS SCARF ON HER LIKE THAT WHO TAUGHT HIM THAT ??? WHO EVEN IS SHEEEEE 😭😭😭
@.sunghoon67: IDK WHO SHE IS I JUST KNOW SHE’S HOT AND HAS AN ACCENT
@.nojayback: AND LOOK AT HIS OUTFIT HE MET WONHEE IN THIS OUTFIT DID THIS GIRL TAKETHAT FUCKING PICTURE??? @.jaykeyaoi wake tF UP RNNNN DID YOU MEET HER TOO???
@.NAPEisFOUR: So friendship between a man and a woman isn’t a thing anymore? This fandom never fails to disgust me.
@.gigiseung: @.NAPEisFOUR GOODBYEEEE a sex tape would be less incriminating.
minjeong: Oh girl I can’t defend you anymore send my fucking jacket back TODAY
you: What jacket ???
Her next message has ten pictures. And then another set of ten pictures. And then another.
minjeong: Lie again. Asking “what jacket” DUDE I SEE YOU WEARING IT AND WITH YOUR FUCKING SATANIC EX TOO… Killing you would not be enough.
All of the pictures are Twitter screenshots, threads of NAPE fans trying to solve a mystery by the looks of things. Several photos of you and Jay, a video, even. All from yesterday morning.
@.hojumilkpuppy: ALL THESE FUCKING PICTURES AND NOT ONE SHOT OF HER FACE ??? ARE WE KIDDING RN WHO IS THIS AND WHERE DID SHE GET THAT JACKET
@.gigiseung: OP said she has an accent and jay said he studied in edinburgh right?
@.hojumilkpuppy: Are You Trying To Tell Me This Is Miss Carolina.
@.jaysnape: am i the only one who thinks filming them like this is weird af idk it’s nice seeing him all smiley and in love but idkkkkk it feels weird seeing this when they clearly have no idea they’re on camera
@.ClubNAPE: If you’re feeling distressed by the video, it’s ok. But please take care of yourself. Step away from social media for a couple of days. Don’t attack or criticise Jay, too much money and time went into publicly harassing him and it finally paid off for those people.
@.jm4pjs: Thanks for trying to encourage us, but I’m so sad and furious at the same time…For now I’m empty… I hope he uses condoms…
@.ClubNAPE: Trust me when I say he doesn’t go that far with her. Just, please trust me.
@.hojumilkpuppy: You are an adult.
Each thread follows a similar pattern, hundreds, maybe thousands, of NAPE fans freaking out over the video. Posting detailed body language analysis to prove and disprove the true nature of your and Jay’s relationship. The split seems even enough—half of them happy for Jay, for you; half of them affronted by the mere suggestion that Jay might have feelings for any woman in a way beyond friendship. The worst part of it all, by your standards at least, is that you’re just as confused as them and it’s your relationship.
The original video, sunghoon67’s pinned tweet, has over a million views. In all of her replies, she goes to bat for you, insisting that the whole time she saw you and Jay, the two of you seemed comfortable and happy, and that she was not stalking him, but happened to be at the café studying for over an hour when you arrived.
somi: YOU AND JAY???
yizhuo: Do Not even get me started.
riki: you told them about uni? i thought that was a secret yn u made me feel special…you okay though? this is kind of extremely crazy 🤔
yizhuo: What the fuck do you mean UNI
somi: ???
riki: ning yizhuo you have a degree i know ykwtf uni is.
You mute the groupchat, putting your phone on Do Not Disturb.
What Twitter user #hoonjay real’s deep analysis of it all says about them, you’re unsure. An odd mix of delight at the thought of other people perceiving you and Jay as happy together, and discomfort at the thought of someone studying you so closely, filming you without your knowing, clash in your head. The more tweets you read, thanking OP for sharing, and bashing OP for the same thing, the more confused you feel. You spend an hour like this, laying in the bed Jay left this morning, scrolling through Twitter and Reddit, refreshing the timeline to read new responses as they come in. More and more people claim to have seen you together, inventing stories about you yelling at Jay in Notting Hill, or kissing him in Piccadilly. All the while, Minjeong continues to text.
minjeong: And you did it in the street WEARIGN MY FUCKING JACKET THIS IS HOW I FIND OUT YOU STOLE MY JACKET??? This is SO embarrassing for me imagine all the people that think I’m Park Jongseong’s fucking girlfriend because they saw you in my jacket
you: Imagine all the people that think I’M his girlfriend ???
minjeong: You’re not?
you: Define girlfriend.
minjeong: A frequent or regular female companion in a romantic or sexual relationship
you: Define frequent.
minjeong: I really don’t have time for this YN.
minjeong: Are you okay though? Fr
you: I’m good! People think I have nice hair and good taste in jackets, over the moon rn 🥰
Three dots appear on her side of the chat and your phone vibrates in your palm. Jay’s name and an old photo of him with his hair bleached take over your screen. Jay at twenty-one—fast asleep in your childhood bed, cuddling your worn Snoopy plushie. “Hey, are you home?”
“Mhm.”
A sigh comes through the phone, he sounds relieved. “Please open the door.” He’s standing on the mat when you do, chewing furiously at his lip. He hugs you and apologises into the crook of your neck. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, Jay,” you mumble into his chest. “Are you okay? Are you coming in?”
Jay sighs again, letting his shoulders fall. He assesses your face, still holding you close. “Wish I could, baby. I’m on a potty break,” he says, completely earnest.
“Potty break?”
“Like, restroom? It’s a long story, but the suits made a slidesh—” His phone goes off loudly in his pocket, buzzing between your bodies and making him sigh. “I’ll tell you later, alright? I have to get back.”
“Later today?”
Jay shakes his head, pecking your lips. It’s not enough—there’s no such thing with him, so you pull his bottom lip between yours. “Don’t want you… staying up just for me,” he mumbles, the words warm against your mouth as his hand comes up to hold your cheek.
“You’re worth it, Jay,” you admit.
He draws a breath, pulling away just enough to look at you. His face softens, a smile on his lips, his eyes on yours. “You’re cute,” he says softly, thumb brushing over your skin. “I’ll think about it.” When his phone goes off this time, it rings. A call. He mutters a curse, pressing his forehead to yours like he might ignore it, like he might stay, then he kisses you once more. “I really have to go.”
“How about you text me when you’re done and we’ll see if I’m still up?” you suggest.
“Alright, princess. We’ll see.”
And by fire, by force, you are still up at two in the morning when he texts you to say he’s all done at the studio. You open the door to usher a tired Jay to the kitchen, sitting him down at the table where you’ve heated up leftovers for him. A slow smile lights up his face and he eats quietly, only breaking to chug water.
Aeri comes into the kitchen, greeting you both with a tired hum before filling her bottle with water from the filter. On the way out, she smacks Jay over the head with a flat palm. “My loyalty is to YN before it’s to you or Heeseung, okay?”
He winces, clutching the back of his head and nodding. “Got it.”
After food, you wash his dishes while he showers, and he climbs into bed with damp hair, pressing a kiss to your temple. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he mumbles against your skin. “Thank you so much, baby.”
“Thank you for coming over…” You trail off. For making time for me, you think but don’t say.
“I really am sorry about this whole thing. The photos, people talking… Jesus.” Jay sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t want you worrying about any of this, it’ll die down, alright? I promise, shit like this, it always dies down.”
“I’m not worried about any of it, Jay. Promise. It’s kind of cool how much your fans care, a lot of people really love you,” you say. “I’m just happy you’re okay and that you’re here.”
His lips spread into a smile against your temple. “I’m happy I’m here too,” he murmurs, pulling you into his chest. Though naturally, because you are you, and he is Jay, your lips find each other anyway. Kissing for an hour like a bunch of teenagers before you fall asleep.
It’s perfect.
Mostly.
The days leading up to the concert go by similarly, with you and Jay meeting up after his studio sessions or rehearsals. Some nights you hook up, most nights you cuddle and watch the newer seasons of Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which he pauses every two seconds to add his own — very necessary — commentary. Neither of you mention the concert or what’s going to change when he leaves the day after. Its first mention is on the day of, when he sends you a text.
jongseong 😽: We have about an hour or two downtime before the show if you want to head over during that? So around like 5, yeah? Sunoo can come and meet you and bring you up
you: Sounds good see you sooooonn!
jongseong 😽: See you babyyyyy got soundcheck so talk in a few :D
At a pub you’ve never been to, you meet up with Yizhuo to nurse a pint and eat truffle mac‘n’cheese. So much has changed since you last saw her and it’s only been a week and a half. Life has a way of doing that—flipping things on their head when you least expect it.
“Have you heard back from anywhere?” she asks, clearing her plate. “From Interview?”
You deflate, sipping sweet golden nectar from your glass. “Not yet.”
“Try not to look so worried, it’ll be good news. I can tell.”
“What if it isn’t?” The words are impossible to say, a pathetic mumble over the speakers. It feels a bit like admitting defeat. You’d been relatively optimistic at first, but hardly anyone gets the first job they apply for. Or the first thirty. Creative jobs are hard enough to come by as it is, and after all the difficulty of securing one, the only thing anyone leaves for is the grave. “I can’t wait forever, Yizhuo. I’ve got maybe two more months before I need to go and stay with my parents again.” And that’s if you stop using your redundancy pay for frivolous things like groceries and rent.
“It won’t get to that. You’re capable, you’re smart, you’re qualified.” Yizhuo says firmly, squeezing your hand over the sticky tabletop. “Just because things are bad now doesn’t mean they’ll be bad forever. Soon, we’ll look back at this moment and laugh about it at work drinks. I promise.”
You hope she’s right. You need her to be right.
When you meet up with Sunoo, he leads you through the venue’s back entrance and to the green room, where Jay and Riki are the only people inside, bickering on the couch. At the sound of the opening door, they quit it, and Jay greets you with a bright grin. His tight-fitting black long sleeve is tucked into his dress pants, and a pair of wire-frame glasses sit on the bridge of his nose. It’s like seeing God. He hugs Yizhuo first, though in light of #JaysGF-gate and your sharing of the full story, she’s not his biggest fan at the moment. You however, as evidenced by the last week you’ve spent joined at the hip, are more than eager to have Jay’s arms around you.
“Hey, beautiful. How’s your day been?” he asks, pecking your lips.
“Good, Jay. How are you feeling?”
He was a nervous wreck this morning, pacing the length of your bedroom until the absolute last second he had to leave. Now though, he seems relaxed, like he’s left with only excitement for tonight. “Better now that you’re here,” he admits. It doesn’t sound like a line when he says it, but Sunoo mutters, Jesus fucking Christ, before he leaves.
You tease him too, rolling your eyes despite the smile on your face. Despite the fact you feel the same way.
Unfazed, he only smiles wider, holding your jaw and kissing you. He tastes like spearmint, like Jay. “Want me to show you around, baby?”
“Yes!” Riki says before you have the chance. “I’ve never been backstage before.”
Yizhuo has to grab him by the sleeve, stopping him in his tracks. “Not you, weirdo.”
“You don’t know that.” He yanks his arm from her hold, straightening his denim jacket over his shoulders and running a hand through his hair.
Jay takes you by the hand to give you a tour. Just you. Dressing room, catering, the wings. One small lounge for each of the members. There isn’t much inside: a vanity, a couch, a coffee table. His guitar and his bag. All the while, a nervous flicker turns your stomach, anxious like you’re the one about to perform in front of thousands of people.
In the privacy of his locked room, he holds you in his arms, looking down at you. His eyes trail your body, a sweet smile curving his lips. “Look amazing, baby. Always so pretty,” he says, tucking your hair behind your ears.
A different kind of nervousness sets in, classic giddy fluttering, mind racing and trying hard to think of the perfect thing to say at the perfect time. It’s reassuring, feeling like this again, warm and happy—bitten by the lovebug you’d long stopped believing in. No matter what happens tomorrow, when he leaves, at least you know that feeling can still exist for you. The thought is scary now, but most of those big truths always are in the abstract. Until they happen.
You smile up at him, desperate to live in this moment forever, pushing his hair back from his forehead. “Thank you, Jay. So do you,” you say. “My handsome baby.”
Pink tints his cheeks, eyes wide for a split second. “You mean it?”
“Mhm. Love these glasses too, they make you look all serious, like a sexy professor or something," you joke, startled to find you mean it. “Tell me more about changing the subject of a formula, Mr. Park.”
“No way,” Jay mutters, his hips bucking towards yours. “Can’t do this with you right now, baby.”
“Can’t do what, Mr. Park?”
He sighs and shakes his head. “Be good, YN. Please.”
“Yes, sir.”
And like you’ve scalded him, Jay steps away, biting his lip. With his eyes screwed shut, he grabs at the crotch of his pants, adjusting himself before sitting on the couch and patting the cushion next to him. Stepping out of your boots, you curl into his side, playing with his fingers. “You never told me what happened with the song you guys were working on,” you say, hoping not to pressure him after what you heard at the studio.
Luckily, your question seems to do the opposite, and his face lights up. “We finalised it this afternoon! You’ll hear it tonight, baby. I really hope you like it.” A knock on the door punctuates his answer, and he has to disappear for hair and makeup while you wait in the green room.
The boys aren't gone for long, but you don't get any time alone with Jay before he has to go on stage. No time to properly process how good he looks with his hair all spiked up. His freckles aren't covered at all, and his black long sleeve fits like a second skin, clinging to every curve and contour on his torso and arms. You can't help but touch him, feeling his sculpted chest and racing heart against your palms.
"You look..." There's no single word you could use to describe him right now, as he looks at you through matte black sunglasses. "I think you're going to have to surgically remove my mouth from you later," you say pressing a kiss to his soft lips, already picturing your evening plans. As if overhearing, excited as well, the crowd roars before starting to sing along to whatever Jungwon is playing through the speakers.
“Good, baby. That’s good to hear, I’m looking forward to it.” Jay’s grip on your waist is firm, holding you as close as possible, tickling the roof of your mouth with his tongue. A breath comes out of him, flustered, eager, happy, and he rests his forehead on yours. “Wish me luck?”
Giddy butterflies turn in your stomach, your smile impossible to contain. “Good luck, Mr. Park.”
“Mm,” he hums, kissing you again. “I have no plans to go easy on you later, darling.”
It’s Sunghoon who finally has to pry Jay’s grip away from your waist, a firm tug that does little to quell the burning heat on your cheeks and neck. His transformation takes a split second, going from Park Jongseong, the guy you’ve known and wanted all this time, to Jay Park from NAPE, golden under the amber spotlight and singing his heart out. If he wasn’t so good, you’d have more time to process how strange it all is, how clear it is that he comes alive on the stage. All of them do. Like they’re finally doing the exact thing they were put on earth to do.
Song after song, it becomes clear what they mean when they talk about themselves and the fans and the energy. How they meet in the middle, feeding off of each other. Watching it like this, backstage with your friends, it feels like you’ve been let in on something unthinkably special. That feeling sticks around for the length of the entire two hour set, amplifying.
The crowd boos when Jay announces that they’ve reached the end of the show. “But we have one last song for you tonight, something very new and very dear to me—” he says, grinning into his mic when they cheer again. “—I’ve been going through a bit of a funk, I guess,” he admits.
In the front row, you see very pretty women frowning, touched to hear about Jay’s hardships — no matter how vague — like they’re taking them on themselves. Somi squeezes your hand, pointing them out to you and mumbling that they’re so cute. You agree.
“But a couple weeks ago, something really special happened for me, and when I finally figured it all out, what it meant to me, I sat up all night working on this song. And the guys and I have been grinding to get it done, so it’s been a long time coming, and we hope you love it. This is Out Sick.”
All of the lights go dim, save for a stark spotlight that shines straight on Jay. The venue holds its breath, and he looks over his shoulder, craning his neck just a bit to find you. When his eyes meet yours, he gives you a smile, soft and warm, your Jongseong in that moment. Your smile is immediate, a second of calm in your pounding heart as he strums the first chord and turns back to the crowd.
You know this song already, its shape. As familiar as the back of your own hand. As Jay’s lips on yours or his hands under your skirt on the couch at Laughing Kitty. Your stomach plummets to the floor, eyes stinging with tears. Sunghoon comes in slowly on the drums, Heeseung and Jake’s guitars following to make it warm and round and full.
And then, Jay sings, “I don’t have to try to love you, it comes easy to me…”
His demo. Complete. And performed so beautifully. His voice is raw, vulnerable, as he bares his soul for everyone, for you, to hear. Heeseung’s harmonies are simple, sweet, a perfect anchor for the song. They’re amazing. They are actually amazing. All of them.
As the final note rings out, the lights go dim once again, and applause erupts backstage, your friends squealing and hugging each other while you wait. NAPE don’t take long to appear behind the curtain, all four of them a blur of black clothes and adrenaline. Jay doesn’t stop to speak with the crew or with the other guys, he comes straight for you. Short strands of his hair slick with sweat, his glasses fogging up as he pulls you into his arms.
“It was perfect, Jongseong. You were perfect.”
He doesn’t say anything, but you feel him smiling into the crook of your neck as his heart thuds against your chest.
Tearing Jay away from the tour kick-off party is easier than you expected. Largely in part due to the fact that he’s the one dragging you through the crowded flat to his bedroom. Music muffles through his door and as soon as the lock clicks shut, you sink to your knees at his feet and Jay gulps when you look up at him, a gentle look on his face, in his eyes, that makes your heart trip in your chest—that he could look so tenderly at you in this moment seems unreal. Slowly, you unbuckle his belt, unsure who you're teasing more. You undo his zipper. The button.
He cups your cheek with his palm, clearing his throat. "Only if you want to, baby." His voice is soft, delicate as he traces your lips with the pad of his thumb.
You nod. You need to.
Jay's trousers give easily when you pull at them, falling to his ankles. His white underwear stretches over his erection, a dark patch where he leaks onto it. You can't even pretend to resist, tongue finding the spot immediately, and taking his tip between your lips, sucking on it through the wet fabric. Precum seeps into your mouth, the taste of it heady and familiar, leaving you hungry for more.
His hips buck forward, stuffing more of his clothed dick into your mouth, groaning. "My beautiful girl," he mutters, tucking your hair behind your ears. "Still so dirty and all for me, yeah?"
White-hot desperation buzzes along every inch of you. You can't wait any longer. Jay shivers when his leaking tip smacks his stomach, leaving a streak on his toned skin. Oh, my God. When you take him by the base, your hand only just wraps around him, thumb and index finger brushing. "Let me help you, YN." One of his hands covers yours easily, the other holding your head still. "Want my help, don't you, baby?"
All you can do is nod, watching Jay stroke himself—help you to stroke him.
"Say it. Use your words."
"Want you to help me—" Your mind blanks, that five letter word burning on the tip of your tongue. "Jay," you say instead.
His dick twitches in your fist as he brings his slit to your mouth, spreading hot, sticky precum like gloss over your lips. "Good girl," he whispers, thumb tracing your cheekbone. "Always so good for me."
Molten need pools between your thighs. "Only for you," you admit, words muffled against his tip.
Jay's breath hitches, fingers curling in your hair, then, finally, he stuffs your mouth—starts to. At an agonising pace. Inch by torturous inch, he pulls you towards him. Watching with furrowed brows and holding his breath as the stretch starts to ache your jaw. Only when his tip brushes the back of your throat, making you gag, does he let out a breath, a ragged, whiny thing, torn from him. Hearing him like this, being the cause of it, never gets old. Never fails to flip your stomach.
Chest heaving, eyes fluttering shut, he throbs in your mouth when you stroke the part of him that won't fit. "Fuck," he whispers. "Fuck, baby. Too good, need a — fuck — need a minute." He pulls out, looking down at you like he's confused, like he can't make sense of the thick string of spit and precum that attaches your lips to his tip.
Can't make sense of the way you kiss it anyway, lapping up the mess from his slit with your tongue. Every word that follows is a whined curse, his legs shaking as his grip on your hair lets up. Your name comes out of him, a stern mutter that makes you press your thighs together. Even so, you keep going, licking a strip from his tip to his base, thick hair tickling your face when you suck on his balls.
"Shit, YN," he mumbles, watching you with squinting eyes, shivering while you stroke him. "So good, baby."
Kissing your way back up to his tip, you take him in, letting your hollowed cheeks pull him further. He's twitching already, erratic on your tongue, low grunts and shallow breaths coming from him. This time when he says your name, it's gentle, sweet, as he rocks his hips to fuck into your mouth in shuddered strokes. Over and over, he moans for you, the sound of it lighting you up, spurring you on to take him deeper, quicker.
His stomach tenses, thighs shaking until he bucks hard against you, coming straight down your throat, hot and thick, without warning, making you cough. It leaks from the corners of your mouth, rolling down your chin, warm on your chest. Jay moans at the sight, licking his lips while you swallow what you can, still working your fist over him. Bracing against the door behind you, he lets out a cry of your name that drives you mad, loud and unbidden, as he trembles.
When he pulls out, his dick hits his legs with a loud squelch. Spit and cum drip off of him, wetting your thighs and making a mess.
You can hardly catch your breath or wipe your mouth before Jay's kneeling in front of you, pressing his lips to yours. Pressing your body to his. "My sweet, sweet baby," he mumbles, licking into your mouth. Teeth bump teeth. Tongues on tongues. "Way too good to me." He pulls you into his lap, cock wet under you. Something about the feeling of it like this, soft and pressed against your thong, twists your stomach.
Taking him in your fist, you thumb at his slit, and he whimpers. "Need it. You, Jay," you tell him, stroking desperately.
At this point, the wet smack of his mouth on yours can hardly be described as a kiss, but he keeps at it. "I'll give you what you want, I promise," Jay says, pushing your hand away and running his finger over your slit. "But I can't right now." He sounds truly apologetic, distraught and whiny as he presses on your clit.
Relief comes immediately, but it's not enough, when he slips his finger into you and fills you to the knuckle. Still, you chase pleasure, fucking yourself on his thick digit, humming at the stretch of another finger pressing in. "Yes, right now."
Against your mouth, Jay smiles. "Want you ready, yeah? Don't wanna hurt you," he coos, a third finger joining the rest.
"You won't," you whisper. "Please, Jongseong."
On this, he concedes. On not using a condom, however…not so much. Laying you down on the bed, he undresses you before pulling his own shirt off. Now that he's had a beat to collect himself — free from your eager hands — he's hard again, standing up taller than before. His tip not just flushed but angry red and leaking. At the very least, he lets you roll the condom onto him before joining you under the covers and hiking your leg up over his hip.
"You're gonna kill me," he mutters into your neck, pressing himself against you, right between your wet folds. So close yet so far. "Gonna die if you keep this up."
"If you're going to die anyway, you might as well take the condom off," you point out, rocking towards him. "For old time's sake, you know? Last night, two nights ago—the good old days." It was a lack of condoms that led you there, to Jay whispering sweet filth in your ear while he spilled into you.
"Very funny, YN." His breath fans your skin when he chuckles. There's no humour in it, but he throbs between your legs, rolls his hips back to match your rhythm. "Can't keep chancing it." You can hear his resolve fading, his lack of conviction.
"Don't you think I'd look pretty? All nice and full?"
His teeth sink into the crook of your neck, making you cry out. "Don't," he mumbles, soothing the bite mark with his tongue.
"Used to — fuck, Jay — talk about it all the time." You're panting more than you're talking, eyes fluttering shut as your sweat slicked skin slips over his. "Lost your shit when I'd call you da—" He cuts you off with his dick. Finally.
You moan in unison, eyes screwing shut as he thrusts into you, filling you up with one shaky stroke. There's no getting used to the size of Jay. Whether he's fucking you with it or sending a video, it shocks you every time. It's like he's trying to split you in half to make room for himself, thick heat spreading, unbearable, from between your legs out. He doesn't move yet.
"All good, baby? Feels good?" he pants, burying his face into your throat.
You nod into his pillow, gasping for breath, only managing to say, "Uh huh."
A low groan heats your neck when you claw at Jay's back and he pulls almost all the way out before thrusting right back in. "So good for me, YN. Fit so good, baby. Always fit so good." He fucks you with the same strokes each time, even when his breath turns ragged, pulling you closer and closer to the edge. Tip on the burning knot in your stomach, nudging it undone, one deep thrust after the other.
You bury your face in the pillow, biting down on it, as he brings you to your orgasm like this. Finger pressed to your clit, teeth nipping your neck, hips rutting frantically. He fucks you through it, wet and overwhelming, scorching heat tearing through you. The memory foam muffles your mewls and whiny babbles, and he groans when you tug his hair, muttering, oh, my God, over and over, until he finishes with a loud cry of your name, shuddering in and out of you.
Calming down is difficult, but Jay's hand stroking your hair is a comfort. Lips pressing sweet kisses to your jaw and muttering praise into your skin. Again, you find those three words on the tip of your tongue, eight letters eager to make their way out. They don't have a chance, thankfully, because he pulls out slowly, moving just enough to kiss your lips. His tongue brushes yours, wiping your I love you away, taking it for himself, and smiling against you like you actually said it. Like he's saying it back.
Sleepiness overwhelms you, eyelids heavy, lips lazy on Jay's. After you pee, he wipes you clean with a warm towel, kissing your knee while he does. Falling asleep is easy in his arms, with the steady rise and fall of his chest under your head, butterflies swirling in your stomach, and the knowledge that the terrifying and uncertain tomorrow is still hours away.
When you wake up, no music seeps into Jay’s room, no heavy footsteps in the hall. No doors slamming shut, no yelled conversations. The flat is completely still. Even the street outside is quiet through the open window, London’s morning running on silent. Soft cotton kisses your skin, detergent and sweat float around you. Sunlight streaks the wall, slipping through the gaps in the blinds. Jay’s fingers twirl the ends of your hair. His voice, low and gravelly from sleep, asks, “You sleep alright?”
Alright isn’t enough of a word for how well you slept. You’re not even sure if perfect would suffice, but you nod anyway. “Did you?”
“Mm.” He squeezes your shoulder, holding you closer. “Perfect, darling.”
I wish we could just stay here forever, you think. Saying it is another story. “Do you really have to go?” you ask instead, knowing he’ll have to leave soon to make his flight.
You hear the spread of Jay’s lips and see the curve, his perfect teeth, his smile lines and dimple, so perfectly clear behind your closed eyes. His hand is heavy on your arm, his fingertips warm and calloused, dragging senseless patterns into your skin. “I’ll be back before you know it,” he mumbles. “Promise.”
Resting your arms on his chest, you finally get a proper look at him. His hair sticks up in tiny spikes all over his head, pointing this way and that. A smile creeps over his lips, slight and sleepy, but warm all the same. How desperately you want this all to be something, to mean something. Now and when he gets back. The soft look in his eyes, the relaxed lull of his breath, chest rising and falling slowly under you, his hand on your back. How desperately you want this to be something more than simply blowing off steam before he goes on the road.
“What is it, baby? What are you thinking?” Jay asks, using his thumb to smooth out the crease over your brow. His touch is unthinkably gentle, but it ties your stomach in knots.
The words are right there, slipping from your mind and taking their juvenile shape on the tip of your tongue. What are we? It seems absurd to think that he could leave, even if only for a few months, without asking that question—but picturing yourself asking him is worse.
“It’s nothing.”
Jay’s lips curl downwards and the sight tugs at your heart. He kisses the palm of his hand and presses it to your forehead like a stamp, making you giggle, before his fingers find your hair, scratching your scalp. You could fall asleep again, your eyelids weighing more and more with each graze of his nails against your skin. He smiles, finally, he smiles when you lean into his touch.
“You could always come with me,” Jay suggests. “If you want.”
If you were even a little more secure about your place in his life, those three words — if you want — wouldn’t be so jarring. Wouldn’t turn your stomach or make you want to roll your eyes and ask, what the fuck kind of an answer is that?
“What do you want?” you ask instead.
“I want you to do what you want.”
You sigh, a deep breath torn out of you and into the silence.
“What do you want me to say? What am I getting wrong?”
Feeling bad, you shake your head. “Nothing, Jay. It’s nothing, I swear,” you try to assure him, but you can see his thoughts passing through his head. You can’t stand it. Can’t stand to think about whatever comes after this, after he leaves.
You lean up and kiss him to stall the inevitable, warmed by the low sound he makes, by the way he pulls you into his lap. Warmed by the feeling of him under you, hard already. His lips are slow against yours, tongue licking lazily into your mouth and sighing when you roll your hips over his.
“Tell me, baby,” he says, lips barely leaving yours. “Can’t fix it if you don’t tell me.”
When you pull away, his eyes search yours, a million questions written all over his face. His cheek is soft beneath your palm, thumb stroking his skin, and it’s all you can do to hope this won’t be the last time. “Fix what, Jay?” Your voice comes out small, frightened. “What is this?”
Say it, you beg silently. Say you want me. Say that this is everything.
He bites his lips instead. Says nothing.
“Do you still want me?” you ask around the lump in your throat. “Properly?”
Jay’s brows knit together. “I feel like I should be asking you that. I don’t know how else to show you.”
“I can’t go with you, Jay.” Saying it feels final, like you’ve drawn a line under whatever the hell you two have been doing, and he will leave for his tour and come back and this will still be over.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Before you can help it, your face falls, lips curling downwards, and Jay wraps his fingers around your wrist to keep your hand on his cheek. He jumps to take it back, to fix it, but you’re not sure if he can.
“That’s not what…” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I shouldn’t have said it like that. Can we just… Can we take a second?” His cheeks are flushed, skin rosy and warm under your hand, his eyes wide, pink lips pressed together. “I just need a minute,” he adds softly. “I’ll be right back, yeah, baby?”
You nod and Jay kisses you quick, gentle, before slipping into the bathroom and locking the door behind him. It doesn’t take long for you to make up your mind. To put your clothes on and stuff your bra into your bag, turning your phone off on your way out of the flat.
At home, you get straight into bed, pulling the duvet up to cover you completely.
Twenty-year-old you would be mortified if she could see you now: twenty-three, unemployed, and still worrying about the same problems you had three years ago, about the same guy. Surely by now, having known him all this time, known yourself, you should have seen this coming a mile away.
Sleep comes easily like this, moping under your covers like a kid.
By the time you wake up, it’s well into the afternoon and you turn on your phone to one new notification. A text from Aeri asking you to check if her parcel has come yet. Nothing from anyone else, from Jay. He and the rest of the guys are probably in the security queue, fumbling laptops out of bags and shoes off of feet. Chatty and excited and too busy to spare you a second thought, to send a text—which, maybe, given how you walked out, that’s what you deserve. You’re even now though, you and Jay. And it doesn’t feel good at all.
As if you’d willed it, wished it so much it came to be, your phone vibrates next to you on the mattress. Not a text, an email. It’s from Interview, with the subject line: Offer of Employment.
The smile that breaks over your face is instantaneous and aching, tears welling in your eyes as you read and reread the first line of the email. As you read and reread the whole thing, closing the app and opening it again, waiting for something to change, for a second email to come in saying there’s been a mistake. But no. The word congratulations stays right where it is. A job. An actual job that you get to start in a month when the office renovation is complete. It’s a weight off your chest, a blinding ray of light in the face of countless rejection emails.
When you open the phone app, Jongseong 😽, is right at the top, and it takes your thumb hovering over it to even realise what you’re doing. This week-long instinct, relearned and deep as marrow. I need to call Jay, I need to tell Jay, now your default thought. Again, your default thought.
The silence of the flat feels greater, bed bigger without him in it. As quickly as it came, your delight sours, curdling in the pit of your stomach. Everything you’ve been working towards, the fruit of your efforts finally reaped, and the one person you want to tell all about it, is the one person who’d care the least.
Locking your phone, you press the cool top of it to your forehead and take a deep breath. This is okay. You’re okay. You’re great! You have a job, finally, an actual named and recognised role. And it’s all yours.
Feeling lighter, if only a little, you get up to check the mail room, stuffing your feet back into your boots and pulling the front door open. Jay is there. Here. He looks like he’s run a marathon just to stand on your welcome mat, cap on backwards and his suitcase at his side. Sweat shines on his upper lip, his neck. His eyes are wide, brows raised like he’s surprised to find you here, at your flat, where you live. Nothing comes out when you open your mouth to speak, but your name comes from his in a whisper.
“I can’t go.” His voice cracks when he says it, making him smile. “I couldn’t, we got to the gate and I—I can’t leave if we’re like this. I love you, YN. I do. So much. I’m a coward, okay? I’m a coward and I’m awful at all of this, but I love you.” The words leave him in a rush, and he sighs after like he’s relieved, like the words have been weighing on him all this time. “I know how much I’ve hurt you, and I know I can’t make it up to you, but I’d like to try.”
Your heart races in your chest like it’s trying to burst out, thoughts scattered, too fast to latch onto, to process. You need to say something, you know that much. “I wanted to call you,” you utter, pointing at him as though maybe he doesn’t know to whom you’re referring. “I got the job at Interview.”
To this, he lets out a sound you’ve never heard him make. A half-laugh, half-sob as he takes your pointing hand in his, pulling you in. “Of course you did,” he says, the words a warm mumble against the top of your head. “Fuck, YN, that’s—that’s amazing. You’re amazing.” He holds you so tight you can feel the frantic pounding of his heart against your chest. The frantic pounding of your own heart. For a long moment, you bury your face in his chest, taking it all in. His scent, honey and detergent and sweat. The grounding feel of him, his arms around you, his palm stroking your back, mouth kissing your hair.
Reality, everything he’s just said sinks in, slow and heavy. Jay, here, with you, again. At last. And saying all the right things, saying almost everything you’ve been waiting years to hear. Meaning them. Too good be true surely, the job and now this, and all in a matter of minutes. You pull back, only enough to look at him with your palms flat on his shoulders, and wait. For the other shoe to drop. For Jay to glance at his watch and realise he can still make his flight if he leaves right this second. It doesn’t come. He doesn’t even look over his shoulder, his eyes are stuck on you. Only you.
“What are you—what do you want?”
“I want to be with you, and I want you to want that too. Still, again, whatever, just… you’re it for me,” Jay says decisively. “You’re always going to be it for me.”
Whether he knows it or not, he changes your life with those words. He changes everything. Quiets the years of chaos in your mind and finally, finally calms the storm.
“Yes, Jay. Whatever you’re saying or asking, my answer is yes, okay? I love you, Jay. I love you too, I love you still, all of it.” You tip your chin to kiss his smiling lips, and after all this time, your heart falls back into its natural rhythm.
synopsis. You know you should be ecstatic about the invitation to Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s wedding in your mailbox, but you can’t help the nerves gnawing away at your stomach. There are too many things you’ve left unresolved after moving to Seoul—your aunt, your friends, and most of all Sim Jaeyun, the boy you’ve never let yourself love.
genre. childhood/high school friends that grow apart to lovers, angsty fluff, small town au, mutual pining bc they're idiots, this is kind of like hometown but different i promise, SMUT MDNI !!!!
warnings. characters are aged up (late 20s), reader is a little clueless but she's doing her best okay, family issues and family member death, jake is exclusively referred to as jaeyun deal with it
word count. 35.3k
author's note. listen to the playlist here + as always a big thank you to @zreamy for beta reading this and freaking out over jaeyun!!! happy very very late birthday can't wait to name my firstborn child after you... Zreamy Lee what a beautiful name... im sure anton will be stoked when i let him know!
Most of the time
When he looks at me I change my mind
And I don’t think he even cares a bit
How much I have to give
Just as long as I’m awake
To love him every day
[...] Of all the people in the world
[He] says my name the best
Most of the Time, Jackie Evans
From his seat on the couch, Jaeyun stares at the golden inflated balloons spelling out ‘Congratulations, Y/N!’ on the wall of your aunt’s living room. The more he stares, the more the capital letters seem to be mocking him.
He allows himself one last moment of selfishness, during which he thinks the last thing he wants to do, today or ever, is to congratulate you on getting your one-way ticket out of this town. He downs his fruit punch and winces at the overly sweet, artificial taste, then marches towards the crowd around you, trying on different smiles that might seem convincing. None of them fit.
August is nearing its end already. Summer has always felt lazy, molasses-slow, pleasantly neverending to Jaeyun—this year, it blinked by him. He closed his eyes as the schoolbell rang for their last ever period; he opens them again and he is here. Wasn’t prom just yesterday? Graduation? Did he realize that the last bonfire party was just that, the last?
Your birthday isn’t for another week, but you’re leaving tomorrow. Everyone huddles around you, eagerly awaiting your reaction as you open gifts. If it wasn’t for the presents and the chocolate fudge cake waiting in the fridge, this wouldn’t be a birthday party so much as a going-away party. The dreadful words on your wall make that clear: everyone here knows you’re much happier about leaving than about turning eighteen. You said so yourself a few days earlier, and Jaeyun tried his hardest not to burst into tears.
“I can celebrate my birthday every year. I’ll only get accepted into the program of my dreams once.”
You were sitting, just the two of you, atop one of the hills that overlooked your town. Jaeyun knew that when you looked out, you already saw your past, while he could only see his whole life, past, present and future indistinguishable from each other, spreading out for miles and miles and miles.
Up until a few months ago, when Jaeyun looked at you, he could only see his whole life. But ever since you received your acceptance letter, he hasn’t been so sure. He watched as you celebrated leaving him behind, stayed silent as you raved about your plans for the future. Plans he wasn’t a part of. These past months have been the only time seeing you smile made him sad.
He stays at the back of the small crowd, close enough to make out your presents as you unwrap them but not quite joining in. Hands in his back pockets, he wears his best neutral expression一if he can’t fake a smile, he can at least try and not look so depressed. As your friend, he owes you that much. He might hate every moment of this but he’d feel even worse, knowing he was raining on your parade.
You seem to like your gifts. After spending your teenage years together, your friends know what you like. Scented candles, cute notebooks that you’ll probably keep preciously rather than actually use, a personalized calendar for the upcoming school year with a different picture of you and your loved ones every month. Jaeyun shows up a few times in group pictures; it’s just the two of you in April, which is too far away for his liking. Far away enough for you to have forgotten all about him.
As you flip through the calendar, despite your friends’ protest for the pictures to be a surprise each month, it’s on April that you linger the most. There’s a small smile on your face, a sad smile. Your fingers play with the pendant on your necklace, Jaeyun’s gift that he gave you before everyone else even arrived. It was too intimate a gift for him to hand it to you in front of all your friends. He almost died of embarrassment when your eyebrows rose at the sight of the delicate, silver chain, of the letter ‘J’ hanging off it, and it was just the two of you; if anyone else had been in the room, his shyness would’ve gotten the best of him, and the jewelry box would’ve stayed safely tucked in his coat pocket.
You lift your gaze towards him. He didn’t even know you’d noticed him joining everyone, and yet your eyes found him immediately. He has no idea what on Earth is going through your head. Are you finally realizing that the days of seeing each other every single day are over? Are you finally figuring him out, how it isn’t only friendship that has kept him by your side all these years, but the feeling deep in his gut that he gets whenever he thinks of you?
Do you have that feeling, too?
Your eyes shine. For a second, Jaeyun thinks you might start to cry. Then someone, Miji or Yurim, who knows, says that she’s on the next page. Your gaze falls back to the calendar in your hands. Your fingers let go of your necklace, and you flip Jaeyun’s page.
.
.
A tight ball of dread has been sitting in your stomach ever since you got that letter in the mail. You’ve tried to rationalize it many ways: it feels weird to receive a wedding invitation, the first from someone out of your childhood group of friends. Even more so when that someone is the girl you called your best friend for all of your teenage years, but you aren’t sure you deserve that title anymore. Even more so when you’re 28 and couldn’t be further from drafting a wedding invitation yourself.
You know what it really is: it’s the address for the reception, the name of a place in which you haven’t set foot in years blinking innocently up at you. It’s the second piece of paper inside the envelope, a handwritten note asking you to come a few days earlier so that all of you “can gather just like the good old times.”
I’m getting married, Y/N. I’m turning into a proper adult. I just want one last time of feeling like a sixteen year old, and I can’t have that without you here. Say you’ll be there, pretty please? XX
You remember sighing after reading that note, your brain already coming up with excuses to justify your future absence, fully aware that you wouldn’t miss this wedding for the world.
Damn Chaewon, you thought then, and still regularly think now. Damn her and her emotional manipulation, as you’ve decided to view it, forcing you to make that dreaded trip home—not that you really consider that place home anymore.
It was a wonder that you and Chaewon were such good friends back then, good enough to still keep in touch throughout your adult lives. Just like every baby in the family, she was born in the upstairs bedroom of their home, the mayor’s daughter, known and loved by everyone in town, and had always adored her small-town life. You showed up out of nowhere at age fourteen, initially making no effort to befriend anyone, annoyed by the whispers that followed you. You wanted to leave as soon as you arrived, and you eventually did; although along the way, Chaewon’s kind-heartedness melted even your ice walls, and you gradually opened the gates to let the other kids in.
For almost a decade, you’ve been working to close those gates again. You were almost there; they were barely agape, there was just that tiny thread that kept an infinitesimal part of you tethered to that place, and you were sure it was close to snapping. Chaewon and her damn wedding invitation pushed the gates back open, and it took you all your strength to not look back and walk through again.
You left something there, and you aren’t sure you’re ready to retrieve it.
The ball of dread, as though tethered to a chain around your ankle, won’t stop following you. Up until now, you hadn’t noticed how much everything around you seemed to revolve around romance. The TV you watched. The content on your phone. Couples in the street. Even your work was full of it. You’re the editor for the Culture and Media segment of Limelight Monthly, the magazine you work at, not Relationships or even Lifestyle, and yet, in the weeks after receiving the invitation, it felt like all your staff could write about were the latest romance novels everyone raved about online, the best reality TV shows about exes getting back together or forever-singles searching for their first love, and which destinations were the most romantic for couples to travel to this summer.
You do a good job hiding it at first. Although you’re not as focused as you usually are reading your staff’s articles to greenlight them for publication, two years of doing this job means no typos or clunky sentences pass you by. You make sure to greet everyone with your usual cheer, and you don’t miss any Thursday evening afterwork drinks, a tradition of your team’s. Most of the time, you’re able to relegate Chaewon’s wedding and everything it entails to the back of your mind, but it’ll come back up at random moments. You’ll be filling the kettle for tea in the communal kitchen when a certain face will fill the forefront of your thoughts; your heart will start beating uncontrollably, and before you know it, water will be overflowing from the kettle and onto your hands. You’ll stare at the awfully familiar name of a book character in one of your coworkers’ reviews and only snap out of it once someone’s called your name three times in a row, like being summoned out of a trance.
These moments are few and far between, but they add up. When your coworkers ask you whether everything’s okay, at first, it’s lighthearted, like they’re just curious about what got you so lost in your thoughts. Slowly, eyebrows start to furrow, concern starts creeping in their eyes and voice. You’re one zone-out away from an intervention. A few days ago, you overheard Juhee and Haewon, your team’s two most recent recruits, whispering in the break room about their concern for your well-being: “I think she goes home and just, I don’t know, has takeaway and white wine in front of her TV.”
They’re wrong about the takeaway. You’re actually a pretty decent cook. The rest of their sentiment, however… Well.
It takes Minjeong, your favorite coworker-turned-friend, a couple of weeks before she decides to take matters into her own hands. One Tuesday after work, she waits for you outside the building’s main entrance, and as soon as you step outside, grabs your wrist and drags you to the subway station that’ll lead both of you to her apartment. “I’m making you chicken alfredo and you’re telling me what the hell is wrong with you,” she says before you can protest.
You wrench your wrist out of her grasp, shrug on the bag strap that had fallen off your shoulder with a discontented huff, and follow her anyway. “Fine, but I’m only coming for the chicken alfredo.”
“I’ll tie you down to the chair until you speak.”
“Kinky.”
She halts dead in her tracks in the middle of the busy street, ignoring the nasty stares from the other homebound office workers heading for the station. She turns to face you, wearing a severe expression. “I’ve known you for five years, and you’ve never cried in front of me. Not even when we watched Titanic.”
Nonplussed, you reply, “I already knew how it ended.”
“That’s not the point. It’s usually impossible to get a read on you, so when not one or two, but three people come up to me and ask whether you’re alright, that means something’s seriously wrong. I’d be a terrible friend if I didn’t try to find out what that was.”
You hesitate. You’re embarrassed that you’ve been so obvious, and that you’re even this upset in the first place. Who on Earth has such a hard time being happy about her childhood best friend’s upcoming wedding? Your first reaction should’ve been to call Chaewon and rave with her and ask for all the details. You should be sending her pictures of potential dresses and asking her which one fits her color palette the best. You shouldn’t be needing the aforementioned intervention.
It isn’t like you have to follow Minjeong and air your dirty laundry out to her. If it came to it, your couple inches over her might help you win a physical fight. But something about her sincere concern makes you fold—how long has it been since you let someone worry about you like this? Long enough that you forgot how nice it feels, apparently.
She must sense a shift in your demeanor, because she relaxes. “Let’s go,” she says, and this time, she doesn’t need to drag you with her.
From the moment you met Minjeong, you knew she came from money. It wasn’t that she flaunted it or appeared out-of-touch with reality; she just had a way of moving through the world with the air of confidence of someone who knew they belonged, who was used to getting what they wanted. It also helped that she often came to work with a new designer bag and always had flawless hair and nails.
It intimidated you at first, the way she seemed to have worked in this office her whole life, whereas it took you weeks before you stopped being so eager to please and be overly polite with everyone. But it quickly became clear that although you found her infinitely cool, she wasn’t cold. You didn’t work for the same segment, but you spent your lunch breaks together, getting scolded by your respective bosses more than once for coming back half-an-hour late; you would often be so busy talking, you wouldn’t keep track of the time.
But it wasn’t until you stepped inside her apartment for the first time that you realized just how wealthy she, or her family, was. She lived in one of the fanciest neighborhoods of town, in an apartment that you could hardly afford now as an editor, let alone when you were just starting out at the magazine—yet she’d been living there since graduating from university. It’s on the top floor of a brand new apartment complex and composed of three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a ridiculously large open plan kitchen and living room, and a balcony with possibly the best view over the city you’ve ever seen. Her furniture looked and felt expensive, and it made you dizzy trying to figure out how much the artwork that hung on her walls and decorated her shelves must’ve cost. To this day, you haven’t been brave enough to ask.
When you step inside her apartment today, she wastes no time before ordering you to sit at the kitchen island. You watch as she grabs a bottle of wine from the fridge, hesitates, then puts it back. Instead, she grabs a bottle of gin and an unopened one of tonic from a cupboard, two glasses and some ice from the freezer. You smile and sit silently as she expertly pours two drinks. “Here,” she says, sliding a glass towards yours. “I thought you might want something stronger.”
“Should I be worried you just have this on hand?” you tease.
She rolls her eyes. “It’s for emergencies like these, obviously.” You clink your glasses and take a wonderful sip. Then, she looks you straight in the eyes and says, “So, tell me what’s been on your mind.”
So you do.
You tell her about the wedding invitation and what it entails: travelling back to the town you used to live in, having to face everyone you left behind there. You keep things vague. You don’t name names, or dump your entire backstory on her; you simply tell her you didn’t have the best relationship with your aunt when you left, and phone calls between the two of you have been few and far between in the time you’ve moved away. And that this goes for a few other people from home, namely one other person.
Of course, this isn’t enough for Minjeong. She prods, and prods, and prods, until you finally give in. With a sigh and a heavy gulp of your wine, you ask, “Where do you even want me to start?”
She smiles. “From the beginning.”
You stare each other off for a few beats. Even as your instincts tell you to keep your mouth shut, a small voice at the back of your mind says, For once, why not?
“I don’t… talk about this,” you say, voice shaky.
Worry knots Minjeong’s eyebrows together. “Is it that bad?”
“It’s not that it’s bad,” you reply quickly to reassure her. “I just don’t like even thinking about it. So talking about it… Well, that forces me to think about it, doesn’t it?”
“Listen,” Minjeong says, walking over to your side of the island, resting her hand over yours. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, I won’t force you. But from what I can tell, it’d do you some good.” She takes a deep breath, then speaks all in one go. “Also I’m dying to know. I’m not supposed to tell you this but everyone at the office has a theory about where you come from because you never talk about it.”
When you gasp, she shakes her head and squeezes your hand. “I promise everything said here will stay here. I’d derive much more satisfaction from being the only one knowing about your past than blabbing about it to everyone anyway.”
For some reason, this works on you. Maybe Minjeong feels trustworthy enough. Or maybe you know she’s right, you know it’ll do you good to speak about it, to release some of the burden.
“Okay.”
You really do start from the beginning, and work your way up from there. Why you had to move to Gimcheon without your parents. Why it was difficult living with your aunt, and why you could hardly make friends at first. Why it was your sole goal in life to move back to Seoul at eighteen, and why with every passing year, the thought of leaving became harder and harder. Why you did it anyway.
What it cost you.
It feels strange to speak so much at once, and about yourself. Minjeong is plating dinner as you’re wrapping your story up. She has so many questions, it takes you almost an hour to finish your food. But you find yourself readily answering every one of them; you’ve gone this far already, so you might as well give her the fullest picture you can.
Oddly enough, it’s perhaps her easiest question that has you hesitating the most. It’s the end of the night, and you’re surprised your eyes have stayed dry throughout it; but when she asks you this, your nose starts to prickle.
“What’s this guy’s name, anyway? We’ve talked so much about him, and you’ve only referred to him as your friend.”
You can’t help but smile even as the word tugs sharply on your heartstrings.
“Jaeyun.”
.
.
As the date of the wedding approaches, the tight knot of nerves in your stomach grows bigger. The evening before your flight, it takes you hours to fall asleep, your packed suitcase next to your bed startling you every time you lay eyes on it. You sleep fitfully for three hours, then a never-ending loop of worst-case scenarios plays in your head as you go through the motions of getting yourself ready and to the airport. An older woman sits next to you on the plane; anxiety must be emanating from you like a bad odor for her to rest a kind hand on your shoulder and tell you that domestic flights like these are very safe, that she’s flown many times and that nothing bad’s ever happened. You don’t have it in you to tell her, a total albeit nice stranger, that it’s not the journey that’s worrying you so much, but the destination.
Stepping inside the airport at Daegu feels surreal. The few times you’ve traveled between Seoul and Gimcheon, you drove—but Chaewon forced you to fly down, saying you couldn’t just get in your car and leave if you suddenly felt like it. You didn’t tell her you could almost just as easily get a same-day flight, if it really came down to it.
You hope it won’t.
The airport is so relatively unbusy, so it doesn’t take you too long before you arrive at the parking lot, eyes searching for your aunt and her green little car that she’s always driven and that has somehow yet to break down.
But it’s another familiar face that your eyes land on.
The sight feels like a punch to the gut. For a few seconds, you swear you stop breathing, the sound of your heartbeat so loud in your ears that it cuts off all other noise around you, of planes taking off, people reuniting, car doors slamming shut.
You weren’t supposed to see him so soon. You were supposed to meet your aunt, go through a slightly awkward car ride, maybe have your first adult conversation with her now that you weren’t, or at least less of, an angsty teen. You were then supposed to get ready, both mentally and physically, for seeing all of your friends at once again, for seeing him. Who was standing in front of his car, staring at you with a small smile that kept breaking your heart over and over again, clearly here to pick you up.
He lets you stare back. Lets you stand there, mouth agape in shock, fingers wrapped so tight around the handle of your suitcase that your nails dig into the skin of your palm. You weren’t supposed to see him so soon. You didn’t get enough time to prepare, to adjust to being here, and now you’re standing there dumbly like you’ve just seen a ghost.
In a way, you have.
You regain part of your senses. When you try to say his name, your voice is hoarse, and it comes out as a whisper, barely audible even to you. So you clear your throat, try a second time.
“Jaeyun.”
The name feels clumsy on your tongue, like a foreign language you once knew but lost due to lack of practice. And yet, when he smiles and says your name back to you, it sounds so right, like no one else is as deserving of saying it as he is.
“Hi, Y/N.”
Your feet move of their own accord as they step towards him; he mirrors you, and in mere seconds you’re face-to-face with him, and when he reaches out you think he might hug you but all he does is take your suitcase from you and roll it to the trunk of his car. A sigh escapes your lips, but you’re unsure whether it's one of disappointment or of relief.
“There was an emergency at the hospital, so Auntie asked me to pick you up. I hope it’s okay with you,” he explains. You watch, transfixed, as he closes the trunk, then walks over to the passenger side, opening the door and motioning for you to go in.
You nod. “Yeah, it’s okay. Thank you.”
Instead of walking right away to his side of the car, he stays there, one hand on top of the door as you take a seat and fasten your seatbelt. “It’s no worries,” he says finally before gently shutting your door.
There are so many things to think about. Usually, you’d get hung up over the fact that even on the day of your coming back home for the first time in years, your aunt still prioritizes her job over you, or over the fact that Jaeyun still calls her Auntie, despite the resolve you’ve had since you were fourteen of calling her by her first name, and her first name only.
Now, as the boy — the man — beside you starts the car, hands steady compared to your trembling ones, a peaceful expression on his face, all you can think about is the improbability of it all, of being back here, of being next to Jaeyun of all people and not knowing what to say to him. If someone had told you ten years ago, that one day a reunion with Jaeyun would mean silence and cramp-inducing nerves, you would have either laughed them off, or been scared into never leaving at all.
Your mind conjures an infinite list of conversation starters, but none of them seem good enough. They’re all too relaxed, too intense, too inappropriate for a situation like this. Like a fish out of water, you keep opening your mouth to say something, only to close it when you decide not to.
Jaeyun being this quiet only makes things worse. If there’s one thing about him, it’s that he’s always talking like he can’t get the words out fast enough—but maybe it’s been too long for you to speak with any authority about what Sim Jaeyun is like. You know you’ve changed a lot in ten years—how can you expect him to be the same boy you left? You can’t even tell whether he’s just calmer now or if he’s decided to torture you by silence.
As he keeps his eyes on the road ahead of him, you risk furtive glances, trying to assess how much about him might’ve changed. There’s still something of the boy who used to split clementines with you in the winter, who would whisper the answers to you when you got called on in class and blanked. He’s grown into his features, he’s learned how to style his hair, but his kind smile and eyes haven’t changed in the slightest. You still find yourself inexplicably drawn to everything about him, even the small cut on his jawline, probably from shaving—your fingers crave to feel it, this sign of a private life that you haven’t been privy to for years. That you haven’t been a part of.
Minutes pass by like eternity. He’s only pulling out of the parking lot and joining the freeway and you’re already wondering how you’ll survive the twenty-minute car ride to your aunt’s. Thankfully, Jaeyun eventually puts an end to your agony.
“There’s so much I want to tell you that I don’t know where to start.” His voice is low, infused with a kind of timidity you’ve rarely heard from him. It seems to reflect your feelings exactly, and you’re so relieved you could cry.
A small chuckle escapes your throat. “Me too,” you say, glancing at him briefly, avoiding his gaze by the fraction of a second. It’s hard enough being in an enclosed space with him; eye contact isn’t an option right now. Every time his eyes flick over to you, the side of your face heats up so much you think it might melt right off.
“How—how are you?” he asks.
You’re not sure whether he means right now, or in general—but you don’t really feel like examining your feelings about being back here more than you already have, and especially not in front of Jaeyun, so you go for the second meaning.
“Good,” you say. “Everything’s going well at work. And I’ve got a few really great friends. What about you?”
A few beats pass without his answer—in the corner of your eye, you see his head swivel back-and-forth between the road and your face. “What, that’s it?” he finally says with a small, disbelieving chuckle. “The last time I saw you was three years ago. Surely you have more to say than that.” He doesn’t sound angry, just genuinely eager to get more information out of you. But his words make you angry at yourself, because they remind you that it’s your fault you know so little about each other’s lives now. It’s not for his lack of trying, and you both know that—since you left ten years ago, his unwavering kindness and lack of resentment towards you has surprised you every time you’ve seen him again.
“I don’t know, nothing’s really happened. I was promoted pretty recently—”
“Okay, that’s definitely not nothing. Congratulations, Y/N. You deserve it.”
They’re words you’ve heard a hundred times before, but coming from him, they sound so heartfelt, like he truly is proud and happy for you, that you can’t help but soften at them. Smiling, you say, “You’ve never seen me at work. Maybe I slack off all day and hand in everything late.”
“I’ve seen you in high school, and that’s enough to know you’d rather pull out your hair strand by strand than hand in anything a minute late.”
You laugh, and when he turns his head to look at you, this time, you mirror him. He can only keep his eyes off the road for so long, but a second is all you need. Your gazes meet, and he’s wearing one of your favorite smiles of his, the one that makes you feel like he’s really glad to see you again, and a weight is suddenly taken off your shoulders.
Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.
Thankfully, the remainder of the car ride is much less awkward than its first few minutes.You find Jaeyun to be as talkative as ever, not shy in the slightest to tell you about everything going on in his life, from the arguments he gets into with his colleagues — which happen to mostly be members of his family — to the hikes he’s been going on more frequently now that he’s adopted a dog, a Border Collie he says you have to meet.
Your nerves are appeased. The last time you saw Jaeyun three years ago, it was for his grandmother’s funeral. She was the main reason he’d stayed here—back in high school, he’d had vague plans of moving to Seoul after graduating from university in Daegu. But when she got sick, with his brother abroad and his parents working hard to afford the hospital bills, he decided there should be someone to keep her company and take care of her, and that someone would be him. You could count on one hand the number of times you’d been back, and when she passed was one of them. He tried to keep a brave front, smiling as he greeted and thanked everyone for coming, but you could see right through the facade, although it’d been a long time since you could call yourself a close friend of his.
You only stayed three days. The night before you went back to Seoul, you went over to his apartment to make him dinner. In front of you, he let it all out—he’d always cried easily, but never like this. You spent so much time comforting him and offering him your shoulder that in the end, you could only make him a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce that he barely ate half of. You knew only too well what sort of pain he was going through. While your brain has wiped most of your memories of the events soon following your parents’ deaths, you remember the hurt that lasted months, years, that still comes back now from time to time, when you least expect it. It was partly thanks to Jaeyun’s friendship that your grief was easier to overcome—as you got to know him and your new classmates, he took your mind off of things little by little, until one afternoon, you came home from school and realized you hadn’t felt suddenly sad or irrationally angry the entire day.
The moment you left him that night, his cheeks tear-stained and his eyebrows furrowed even in sleep, you made a promise to yourself that you’d be there for him at twenty-five as he was for you at fourteen, despite the distance that separated you. You texted him everyday, called three times in a row if he didn’t answer, made sure your mutual friends checked up on him often.
But Jaeyun was, is strong and he had amazing people surrounding him, people he’s known his entire life and that have his back. He was back on his feet soon, sooner than you expected, for how close he was to his grandmother. Because of, or thanks to that, when you felt like he didn’t need you to look after him anymore, you only felt a little guilty for pulling away. More accurately, the guilt ate relentlessly at you, but you had excuses to make yourself feel better. His dad made all his favorite dishes. Jaemin took him out fishing. A neighbor of his had a dog who gave birth, and he adopted one of the pups. With or without you, he was going to be fine.
You didn’t mind looking after him. But as soon as you felt like you were relying on him, you panicked. And you were starting to look forward to your weekly calls far too much for your liking. So you reached out less often. It was a busy time at work — when wasn’t it, after all? — and you buried yourself in it so that when you told him you were too busy to call or to head back for the weekend, you weren’t lying.
Things went back to the way they were for the seven previous years. You were as relieved as you were heartbroken.
You look at him now, listening to his lively rants with a smile on your face, thinking how glad you are it all turned out okay. The sadness of being apart from him, the longing of missing him, you’d do it all again if it meant he’d be laughing like this in the end.
Parked in front of your aunt’s house, Jaeyun turns off the ignition and turns to you. “Do you want me to come in with you?” he asks.
How easily you fall back into your old ways. Twenty minutes with him and you feel like a teenager again, annoyed with him for being so nice, so unrelentingly nice, annoyed at your stupid heart for beating up a storm in your chest every time he so much as smiles at you. You want desperately to say yes. To have someone to lean on as you walk into the house that contains so many bad memories—fights with your aunt followed by silence, the feeling of loneliness that pervaded your teenage years and that you haven’t quite managed to shake off. It’d be so nice to have Jaeyun there with you—and judging from the concern on his face, he seems to know how you feel.
But you can’t let him, because you can’t let yourself need him. Not again. Not when you already know how it ends.
You smile and shake your head, ignoring the disappointment that flashes across his features. “It’s okay. I don’t wanna take up more of your time.” He looks like he’s going to say something, so you quickly add, already opening the passenger door, “I’ll see you later for the reunion, yeah? Thank you for the ride, Yun.”
With a sigh, he lets go of whatever it was he wanted to say. “Of course. Anytime.”
He gets out of the car even though you tell him not to, and helps you with your suitcase, which really isn’t that heavy. You can tell that your declining his offer has dampened his enthusiasm somewhat, and yet, he waits until you’re at the front door, one hand on the handle, the other waving him goodbye, to drive away. As though he wanted to keep an eye on you for as long as he could—and so do you. You watch his car get smaller until it disappears around a corner. Then, inhaling and exhaling deeply, you turn the key you haven’t used in years inside the keyhole and push the door open.
The first thing you notice is the unchanging smell of the house. Like the cleaning product your aunt uses, and a slight stale odor of food, because she always forgets to crack open a window or turn on the oven fan when she cooks. Plus a scent specific to the house that reminds you of your aunt, of the clothes she wears, of the blanket she covers herself with while she watches reality TV after particularly long shifts.
Gently closing the door behind you, you stand in the entrance for a while, letting yourself take the time you need to get used to this place again. You’re glad your aunt isn’t home to usher you in and pretend she’s happier to see you than she is, or that you didn’t let Jaeyun accompany you. You don’t want anyone, least of all him, to witness you looking around the house like it’s the first time you step foot in it.
Everything is the same as ever. Same furniture, same photos in the frames, same wallpaper, which make the few novelties even more striking. A plant in the corner of the living room, a new, more modern kettle in the kitchen. The black-and-white, low quality scan of your first ever article printed in Limelight is still displayed on the fridge, held up by the Brisbane magnet seventeen-year-old Jaeyun gifted you after he came back from visiting his family there.
You make your way upstairs slowly, holding onto the wooden rail for support, more emotional than physical. Your bedroom is a time capsule of your time in Gimcheon, with the same plain purple bedsheets your aunt bought before you arrived, the same posters of the boybands fifteen-year-old you obsessed over on your walls, the same fantasy series you used to devour during summer break on your shelves. You can’t help but crack a smile at the sight of it all. In all the times you’ve come back to this house, you’ve never had it in you to change anything about this room. You want to keep it preciously, as if changing anything about it would change the memories associated with it, both good and bad.
Losing both of your parents at once had made you anything but an insouciant teenager. You were overly serious and reserved, grief forcing you to grow up far before any kid should have to. And yet, standing in this room, you remember the fleeting moments during which your biggest worries were a pimple on your chin or a test in a subject you didn’t like.
For all your grievances against your aunt, you would’ve turned into a much different person if she hadn’t taken you in back then. Your dad’s family lived in another country, and you knew from conversations with your aunt that she and your mother didn’t have the best relationship with their parents. Their brother had three kids of his own, whereas your aunt had none; it only made sense for her to welcome you into her house. When you were mad at her, you told yourself it was only her moral and legal obligation to take care of you as your closest relative, but when you were feeling more generous — which, for fifteen-year-old you, could be rare — you realized that having a comfortable room to yourself and cupboards always stocked with your favorite snacks was something to be grateful for.
And there were the friends you made here, whose pictures fill five entire photo albums. They made everything more tolerable, and even fun, when you allowed it to be. Of course, you would have never told them that, back then—you liked your cold exterior and the way they saw right through it.
Setting down your suitcase by your bed, you decide to go through the photo albums you assiduously filled back in high school instead of putting your things away. It’s a better way to settle in and get yourself ready—your nerves dissipate as you flip the pages, bright pictures blink up at you, of your friends at each others’ houses, at the park on weekends, at the corner store after school. You’re not in many of the pictures, usually hidden behind the camera, exaggeratedly frowning when Jaeyun managed to pry it from your hands and forced you in the frame.
He never heeded your protests when he wanted to swap places so you could be in the pictures you so often took. You remember the puppy eyes he’d make at you, which had no business being so effective, and the way he’d rest his larger hands on yours on the camera. Too unaccustomed to the feeling of your heartbeat speeding up, you would quickly hand it over to him then, turning away from him so he wouldn’t see the obvious effect his touch had on you. It didn’t help that he’d always show you the photo afterwards, pointing at you on the small screen, grinning as he said, “See? You look pretty,” even though fear of being unphotogenic wasn’t the reason you didn’t like your picture to be taken.
Soon, your anxiety at seeing your friends and ex-classmates, after so long of making yourself unavailable to them, is almost entirely gone, replaced by excitement. There remains a pang of shame, especially at the thought of seeing Chaewon. How long had it been since you’d called her when you received that wedding invitation? Like Jaeyun, you know she won’t even be really mad, and that makes it worse—she might make a light-hearted quip about it, but it’s as though they’re scared that lecturing you about being MIA might only push you away further.
You tell yourself there’s nothing to be scared about. The people you’ll see tonight are but older versions of the people smiling at the camera, at you, in your photo albums.
You flip to a picture of you and Jaeyun taken without your knowledge, by Yunjin, if you remember correctly. Both of you sport wide smiles, the neon lights of the arcade game you were playing reflecting on your faces. It was his phone’s home screen for ages.
You’re so immersed in this trip down memory lane that you lose track of time—when the front door opens and your aunt calls out your name, two hours have passed already. Pushing your awkwardness to the side, you let her hug you and repeat her words back to her when she tells you she missed you. You did miss her, but you only realize it once the familiar scent of her hair. She’s a creature of habit—she still uses the shampoo she used when you first moved here at fourteen.
She was only twenty-six back then, younger than you are now. You don’t know if you could deal with a temperamental, grieving teenager while you’d just lost your sister yourself.
“How was the trip down? I’m sorry I couldn’t come and get you at the airport. I sent Jake instead, I figured you wouldn’t mind if it was him,” she rattles, already filling the kettle for tea. This is so like her, saying a million things at once, always busying herself with something. You know that in an hour, when you leave for Chaewon’s house, she’ll settle herself on the couch and won’t leave it for the remainder of the evening, drained from her shift at the hospital.
“It was fine, I didn’t have any problems with my flight,” you reply, taking the knife from her hands and taking over the apple-cutting. “There was an emergency at work?”
She sighs. “Yeah, you know how we’re so understaffed in the summer. Some teenagers were messing around in a house under construction, and fell through a floor that wasn’t done. No big injuries, but they needed an extra person to deal with parents and paperwork. At least I got to see these little shits get the talking-to of their life,” she says, making you laugh. She reaches for something in the cupboard, pulls out a packet of your favorite chocolate-flavored snacks from back then. “I got you these, if you want.”
“Wow, I haven’t eaten these in ages,” you say, chuckling at the familiar cartoon turtle on the bag.
“Do you not like them anymore?”
“No, no, I do,” you say quickly to make your aunt’s worried expression go away. “I just can’t eat a bag in one sitting like I used to anymore, and they go stale too soon.”
She chuckles. “That’s being an adult for you. I got a stomachache from a can of Coke the other day. Just one.”
You have time to spare before you need to start getting ready for Chaewon’s, so you sit at the dinner table together and catch up. The conversation floats somewhat on the surface of things, more about what you’ve been doing than how you’ve been doing. You’re overly polite, keeping a distance for her sake more than your own, unsure how happy she really is to have you here—and you have the feeling she thinks the same of you. The memory of your last fight hangs heavy in the air between you two, unspoken but tangible.
It’s been easier talking to her since you moved away than it ever was when you lived here. You guess distance really does make the heart grow fonder, more willing to forgive and make amends—that, and growing up. Even after your fight, which you quickly understood had only happened because you let your emotions get the best of you after seeing Jaeyun in such a dishevelled state from losing his grandmother, you can have a normal conversation like this. It’s a far cry from the silence that could stretch on for days when you were in high school.
Like with most dreaded things, you belatedly realize how much time you wasted stressing out about coming home, when there was nothing to worry about. Your mind had made up all sorts of scenarios, like your aunt would start yelling at you the moment you came through the door, rehashing your argument, or would barely give you the time of day during your entire stay. It’s as though you forgot she was always the one who knocked on your door with a slice of takeaway pizza or a piece of buttered toast when you were being moody and wouldn’t come down to eat. Who took you out for ice cream when she felt bad for being so caught up in work you’d hardly seen her all week. Who recorded your Saturday evening dramas on the TV while you were over at a friend’s house.
You’ve still got some talking to do, but it might not be as hard as you thought it would.
Fresh out of the shower, you’re changing into a nicer outfit and putting on light makeup when a text from Jaeyun lights up your phone. He’s asking if you want a ride from him, which you decline—your aunt’s house is out of his way and it’s only a ten-minute bike ride for you, which you find yourself quite excited to go on, for purely nostalgic reasons.
Ok :) I’ll see you later, he texts back, and your stomach twists with both apprehension and giddiness. Having him there will make things so much easier, and yet the thought of spending prolonged time in his vicinity makes you unreasonably nervous.
It’s just Jaeyun, you tell yourself, the guy who drooled on his textbook when he fell asleep in class. Who never got mad unless, in true soccer player fashion, felt another player had committed an unforgivable offense against him. Who insisted on watching horror movies then spent them with his face behind his hands.
You catch yourself smiling in the mirror and shake your head.
It really does feel like you’ve been transported back to ten years ago as you wish your aunt a good evening and hop onto your bike, still in its same spot, resting against the side of the house, then ride down the streets you’ll always know by heart. Gimcheon is at its prettiest during this time of year, the trees plump, their leaves dark green, the flowers bright. The summer evening breeze is warm on your skin, and the sun, low in the sky, casts a beautiful golden light on everything around you.
It’s not long before you reach Chaewon’s house—it’s still amazing to you how you can stand in front of it and say, yes, my friend owns this house. It actually belongs to her—and her fiancé, Jaemin, of course. You don’t know of a single person your age in Seoul who owns their apartment, except for Minjeong, but she’s just exceptionally well-off. It’s a nice, traditional house, with a wooden porch around the front where you know Chaewon, a Korean Nara Smith if you’ve ever met one, will make gochujang and soy sauce from scratch once she’s less busy with work and wedding preparations.
The gate is ajar, so you slide it further and let yourself in, calling out your friend’s name tentatively. Immediately you hear footsteps from inside the house, Chaewon squealing your name before she comes barrelling through the door and running towards you. She practically flings herself at you, and you stumble back a few steps as you catch her, laughing at her enthusiasm.
“Ugh, I’m so happy you’re finally here!” she exclaims, squashing the side of her face onto yours.
“I’m happy to be here, too,” you reply, chuckling. “Thank you for the heartfelt welcome.”
Hands on your shoulders, she leans back, assesses you head-to-toe. You follow her gaze, wondering if the mid-thigh sundress you chose was a good decision. Is it too much cleavage? At your all-female workplace, there is no such thing as too much cleavage. “You look good.”
“Okay, no need to sound so surprised.”
“I’m not!” she says, laughing. “Okay, a little bit, I’m sorry. I thought you’d look all dishevelled like those busy city girls in the movies. Running around, getting coffee, whatever it is city people do. That’s what you look like when you FaceTime me after work.”
You sigh. “That’s great to hear, Chae, thanks.”
“No, don’t take it the wrong way, it’s hot! But it’s nice to see you like this, with your hair down instead of your buns so tight they snatch your eyebrows.”
You frown. “I like my tight buns.”
“So do I,” she says, tapping your butt with a cheeky smile. Before you can protest, she takes your hand and leads you into the house. “Come on, we’ve made some changes inside, let me show you.”
“Am I the first person here?” you ask. The house is empty save for you and her, and probably Jaemin, somewhere.
She smiles at you mischievously. “Of course. We’re going to catch up first. And who the hell starts a party at 6 p.m. anyway?”
Chaewon’s presence is everywhere around her house, from the white gauze curtains that flutter in the wind to the trinkets that line the shelves of a cupboard passed down onto her from her grandparents. There are new pieces of furniture here and there, and a nice patterned rug in the living room, but the biggest change has been done to the kitchen. It’s been fully renovated to be more modern since you were last here, and it’s fully functional now, with everything she needs to make her homemade bread and her thousand side dishes that accompany every one of her meals. It’s a good thing Jaemin’s a nice person—you staunchly believe that not many people are deserving of the kind of care Chaewon is able to provide. You remember making that very clear when you came to visit for the holidays, and got a little too drunk with Chaewon for New Year’s Eve—you can’t recall exactly what you said to him, but he could hardly look you in the eye for the remainder of your stay, so it must’ve left an impression.
There’s barely an inch of free space on the counter, and the fridge isn’t faring much better. All sorts of salads and dips, meat and vegetable skewers, marinating chicken thighs, and of course, cupcakes. Tons of cupcakes. She doesn’t let you linger—Jaemin walks into the kitchen, and you’ve barely hugged him hello and exchanged niceties with him that she’s already dragging you someplace else, telling rather than asking her fiancé to finish getting the food ready.
She sits you down on a chair outside then heads back in, telling you she’ll be right back. It gives you some time to admire her backyard, the way it’s all been set up for tonight, cute cushions on the patio sofas, fairy lights strung in the trees, ribbons on the fence around her vegetable patch. Even back in high school, she grew green onions and avocados on the window sill of her parents’ kitchen. You’re excessively moved knowing that she has a whole garden to tend to now. It’s so easy to picture her, wearing a sunhat as she waters and adds soil to her plants.
When she comes back out, it’s with two glasses of suspiciously pink liquid in her hands. She sees your weary expression and says, “Don’t worry, you can barely taste the alcohol in it.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” you reply, but take a sip anyway. God knows you’re going to need some liquid courage to face tonight. It’s overly sweet, tasting mostly of strawberry syrup, and almost not at all of the vodka and prosecco Chaewon says she put in. Fine with you.
She launches straight away into her usual interrogation. It’s less daunting, because you can expect it—every reunion with Chaewon means she’s going to have a thousand questions for you if you don’t turn the subject around on her at some point. She wants to know all of the office gossip as though she has personal stakes in who your coworkers are dating and what the workplace dynamics are like. She asks about your daily life, your friends, whether you’re seeing anyone.
“I’d have told you if I had a boyfriend, Chae,” you say.
She shrugs, a little sheepish. “I don’t know. There’s lots of things you don’t tell me about, you know…”
There it is, the sharp pang of guilt in your stomach. The summer breeze suddenly feels cold on your bare skin, the stillness of the countryside oppressive. Up until now, it felt like barely a few weeks had passed since you’d last seen Chaewon, but reality catches up to you now, with its distance and silences, the ones you imposed between the two of you. “I’m sorry,” you say quietly.
“No, I’m not mad!” she exclaims, panicked. “I’m just saying, I don’t know so much about your life anymore, so this could be something I don’t know about either… I’m making this worse, aren’t I?” she asks when she sees the pained look on your face.
You shake your head. “You’re right, though. I know I should call more often, I just…”
“Want to put this all behind you, I get it. You always talked about wanting to go back to Seoul in high school, so I’m happy you’re able to thrive there now,” she says, although there’s an edge to her voice that you know means she’s more hurt than she wants to let on.
“But it isn’t fair to you.”
She shrugs again. When she looks at you, there’s a small smile on her face that looks a little too forced. For as long as you’ve known her, Chaewon has been wholly averse to conflict—this is probably the hardest she’ll scold you for being so absent. But because it’s from her, it’s an effective reminder to be a better friend.
You can’t help but put everything and everyone here in the same corner of your mind. You thought that to move on from one person, you’d need to move on from everyone, even Chaewon. You can only hope it’s not too late to start realizing how much of a fool you’ve been.
“Look, I didn’t get you all the way here to talk about this. I just wanna know how you’ve been.”
“I’ve been good, Chae, really. And now it’s your turn to present your life to me in excruciating detail.”
She chuckles and says, “Fine, but we’ll need a refill for this.”
“What? Has it been bad?”
In the doorway, she turns around to look at you. “Oh, not for me. My life’s been so awesome that you’ll need to drink your jealousy away, babe.”
And indeed, when she comes back and tells all about her life recently with a dreamy look in her eyes, it isn’t that you’re jealous per se, but that you realize this is the life a lot of people wish for—married with a nice house before thirty, and children soon, if you know her at all. And you agree these things sound nice, but they’re not what you want for yourself right now. Sure, there have been hurdles: her parents-in-law are pretty conservative, but Jaemin always stands up for her, and her job as an elementary school teacher can be very tiring, but, she says, “having someone like him to come home to makes everything so much easier.” She’s always had a sentimental streak to her, but this close to the wedding, you can tell her love for Jaemin has never been so strong. You’re reassured to see it doesn’t stop her from ordering him around as usual, or scolding him when he puts the chocolate sprinkles on top of the blue frosted cupcakes even though she told him at least a million times that the star-shaped sprinkles went on those.
“But the star-shaped ones taste like nothing, honey,” he says. You shake your head even if he can’t see you. Chaewon gasps like he just told her to go fuck herself—and in her eyes, it’s probably as though he has.
As much as she hates arguments, this is something she’d lay her life down for. She heads into the kitchen to give him a piece of her mind, leaving you to reflect over her words. It makes everything so much easier. You do wonder what that must feel like, to have someone to come home to after a long day instead of a silent glass of wine. At least the wine can’t judge you.
The two glasses of Chaewon’s pink mixture must really be getting to your head, because when she sits back down next to you, face flushed from a heated conversation about sprinkles, you find yourself telling her what’s on your mind. “I’ve almost had that a couple times, you know. Someone to come home to,” you say, feeling her gaze on the side of your face as you keep yours on the garden in front of you. “I did tell you about some of the guys I dated.”
“Yeah, and you always seemed super unfazed about the break-ups.”
“I was. I always expected it to end one day or another, so I wasn’t so surprised when that day came.” Her hand on your forearm is warm, anchoring, silently telling you that it’s okay to go on. “It’s not that I don’t want that life. But whenever they started talking about meeting their parents, or moving in together, let alone get married… It just freaked me out. The idea of someone being so close to me, eventually knowing so much about me. How—” You interrupt yourself, taken aback by the tears you feel pooling in your eyes. You turn to look at Chaewon, and something in her expression, in the familiarity of her features, makes you take a deep breath and keep talking. This is Chaewon. She won’t make fun of you for crying. “How do you do it, Chae? How do you trust someone to still love you when they know about all the worst sides of you?”
“Oh, honey,” she whispers, standing up to wrap her arms around you. A few silent tears stream down your cheeks, hopefully not staining her dress, as you hug her back tightly. “What about me? Minji, Yunjin? What about Jaeyun?”
Her voice seems to soften on his name, or maybe it’s your heart that softens upon hearing it. A part of you thinks he may be at fault for your unsatisfactory love life—knowing he’s out there makes it harder to fall for someone else. But that’s something you couldn’t admit to Chaewon—you can barely admit it to yourself as it is.
“I’m sorry,” you say, sniffling against her shoulder. “I shouldn’t be doing this today, of all days.”
She shushes you. “No, no, it’s okay. I’m glad you’re letting it out. Listen.” She crouches in front of you, brushes away strands of your hair that got stuck in your wet eyelashes. “There’s nothing monstrous about you that would drive anyone away. You’re more cautious than most of us when it comes to relationships, and that’s okay. It just means that when you finally do give your heart to someone, they’ll be all the more deserving of it. And I promise you that someone is out there.” She smiles, adding, “Maybe closer than you think.”
“What—what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on,” she says with a laugh, unfolding from her crouch and holding her hand out to you. “Your makeup’s all messed up. I’ll help you fix it before everyone else gets here.”
In her upstairs bathroom, she pushes off all the clothes laying haphazardly on an armchair and instructs you to sit there. With four cocktails between the two of you, everything becomes funny—you’re both laughing so hard at the shape of her mascara tube that it takes her five minutes to properly apply the makeup to your lashes. She keeps scolding you for scrunching your eyes in laughter and stopping her from doing her job, as if she’s not the one who can’t see through the tears in her eyes. “Now my mascara’s running!” she complains when she sees her reflection in the mirror.
Like little girls playing around with their mother’s beauty products, she applies eyeshadows of all colors on your lids, tries out a different lipstick on each half of your lips to see which one fits you best. You look ridiculous, but you’d probably let her keep going for hours if it wasn’t for the sudden ring of the doorbell. You both freeze mid-laughing fit as if the whole point of this evening wasn’t for people to come over, the blush brush in Chaewon’s hand floating inches from your cheek.
“Who is it?” you whisper, unable to tell who it is from the voices mixing with Jaemin’s downstairs.
“Sounds like Jeno and his new girlfriend,” she whispers back. “You haven’t met her. She’s way too cool for him.”
“As are all of Jeno’s girlfriends.”
Chaewon nods. Before she can say anything else, Jaemin’s voice rings out in the house, calling out for her. “Be down in a minute!” she shouts back, then turns to you. Her energy seems to have shifted from when you were laughing around together when she says, “Let’s get this off you. I made you look a little crazy.”
As she douses a cotton pad with makeup remover, you ask her quietly, “Are you okay?”
With the cotton over your eyes, you can’t see her expression, but you’ve known her long enough to picture it. The tight lips, the slightly furrowed eyebrows. “I’m okay, just a little nervous,” she says. “It’s been a while since we’ve had this many people over at once.”
Your surprise only lasts a second—although Chaewon had appeared nothing but excited every time you talked about this weekend, you remember how she’d grow anxious in the last moments before any party she threw. You take the cotton pad from her hands, holding onto her wrist as you look earnestly into her eyes. “It’s going to be an amazing evening, Chae. You’re the best hostess in this town. The food looks great, as it always does, and everyone’s going to be ecstatic to see each other again. And to congratulate you! You’re getting married in two days!”
A small smile was forming on her lips as you spoke, but it’s the mention of her wedding that really seems to do the trick. “I am,” she says quietly, smiling down at her feet like a giddy schoolgirl.
“And your fiancé’s waiting downstairs for you. Along with Jeno and his cool girlfriend.”
She sighs deeply. “You’re right. I’ve been busy all day getting everything ready, and now that there’s nothing left to do, I’m panicking.”
“There’s no reason to,” you tell her, squeezing her wrist warmly. “Go. I’ll take care of my makeup.”
With a quick hug, Chaewon thanks you and heads downstairs. In the mirror, it really does look like a small child had far too much fun on your face. Wiping it all off with her cleansing oil and digging through her pouch for liner and a lip tint, you remember all the evenings spent at your aunt’s house, her combing through your closet before a party because your aunt let you buy little tops that her parents would have a seizure seeing her wear. For once, the roles are reversed.
Calming her down has had the same effect on your nerves, although the heavy doses of vodka and prosecco in the cocktails might’ve helped. Your heart is only slightly beating faster than usual as the doorbell rings again, the voices of more people filling Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s living room. For some reason, you’re worried that coming downstairs as they’re all greeting each other will be more awkward than meeting them out in the backyard, so you wait until it sounds like they’ve left the room. But your plan isn’t so successful—you’re halfway down the stairs when the door opens again, the person entering seemingly familiar enough to this house to come in without announcing their presence. Your body registers the sight of him first, heart dropping to your stomach, electricity reaching all the way to your fingertips before his name has even made its way to your brain.
“Jaeyun,” you breathe out, the wind knocked out of you as though you didn’t see him mere hours ago and as though you were unaware of his being here tonight. What is wrong with you? Are you sure Chaewon didn’t lace your drinks with something else?
His smile has the power to reassure you and double your nerves all at once. He waits for you, watching as you make your way down the remaining stairs. “Long time no see,” he says when you reach him, an infuriatingly charming grin on his lips. You can’t bite back the one growing on your own. “I hope you didn’t miss me too much.”
“It was a struggle, but I made it through.”
He chuckles, and a few seconds pass in which you don’t quite look at each other; you’re about to offer to join the others in the yard, but he speaks first. “You look beautiful.” Three simple words, but coming from Jaeyun, and spoken with that low, intimate tone, they pack a punch.
You hope you don’t look too obviously flustered as you gaze down at yourself, picking up the hem of your dress and rubbing the fabric between your fingers self-consciously. “Thanks, Yun,” you say, voice barely above a whisper. You give yourself a few seconds to assess him, and the conclusion you come to doesn’t help your state—you’ve seen him wear white button-ups dozens of times before, at school events and fancy gatherings, but you swear his arms didn’t always fill out the sleeves so perfectly, straining ever so slightly against the fabric. And sure, not having it buttoned to the top is fine, but are three undone buttons really necessary? You stop yourself from making a comment about cleavage and return his compliment instead. Then, with a frown, you tell him the others are already outside and turn on your heels.
Behind you, you hear a chuckle, then the sound of his footsteps following you. You thought it’d be nice to have Jaeyun around, a familiar and reassuring presence to look for if you ever felt awkward or out-of-place tonight, but it turns out it might be more distressing than anything.
Outside, all the newcomers, save for Jeno’s girlfriend, greet you with wide, surprised smiles, like they can’t believe you actually made it all the way here. Most of your old classmates have stayed in the area—one has gone abroad, a few have moved to Daegu, the closest big city, but for the most part, they either still live here or in nearby, somewhat larger towns with more job opportunities. That’s why they’ve remained such a tight-knit circle, why everyone knows everyone’s business, and why you were much more nervous than anyone should be at the idea of going to their high school reunion. Your distance is all the more obvious by their lack thereof.
No one is showing you open hostility like in the worst-case scenarios you’d dreamed up, so you must be doing a good job at smiling and catching up with them and being normal with your hands, although you gladly accept the champagne glass Jaeyun hands you, thankful for something to keep them busy. And you find that it’s nice to be here. It’s nice to know Yurim and Jimin are as inseparable as ever and are planning to do the whole baby-at-the-same-time thing (once they manage to both find a boyfriend). It’s nice to see Jeno start to look less like a nerd over time, but that he hasn’t lost his ability to bag the most beautiful women you’ve ever met, like Giselle, who he very proudly introduces you to, and who is indeed way cooler than him. She volunteers at the animal shelter in her free time and DJs for huge techno clubs in the city on the weekend, so to be fair, she’s cooler than most people.
As more people start trickling in, instead of retreating into yourself, you relax. The weather is perfect, the sun making its slow, lazy descent into the night, a warm summer breeze coming through; people are happy to be here, to see each other, to see you; when Chaewon isn’t frantically running around, making sure that everyone is doing okay and that there are enough mini-fours to go around, she actually looks like she’s enjoying herself.
And there’s Jaeyun. It’s not that you mean to notice him, but your gaze keeps drifting to him of its own volition. He moves through the crowd with ease, clearly surrounded by people he’s comfortable with, always being pulled into conversations or making small talk with everyone he bumps into. His eyes seem to find yours often, and every time, he smiles at you like he knows something you don’t. Instead of quickly turning away like he used to as a teenager, unashamed at getting caught, his eyes linger on your face before slowly returning to whoever’s talking to him.
There’s a really annoying moment when he’s standing by the barbecue, keeping Jaemin company while he grills sausages and skewers, holding a bottle of beer in one hand, talking and laughing seemingly without a care in the world, as though he doesn’t know, or care, how infuriatingly hot he is. Hair pushed back from his forehead, a slight blush on his cheeks from the heat of the grill, that stupid third button still popped open. He looks like he was taken straight from the front cover of a men’s magazine, and it shouldn’t be this attractive, but it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it but down the rest of your champagne glass.
Something’s different about him. Despite having seen him over the years, all this time, whenever you’ve thought of Jaeyun, the person who came to mind was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. A little shy, especially around girls, but with a smile that could charm a rock and that he hadn’t yet discovered the power of. The pant legs of his school uniform were a little too long because he was sure he’d have one last growth spurt in your final year of school after seeing Heeseung go through one. He never did, then couldn’t be bothered to exchange them or get them hemmed. They got soaking wet every time it rained. Of course some things have remained unchanged—he’s still as attentive as always, remembering small things about people, asking them about it, and listening with genuine interest when they answer. He doesn’t try to make things about him, and he doesn’t get annoyed when they ramble on for minutes on end without ever returning a question. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that feels so new about him, so unfamiliar in this exciting, intriguing way.
After observing him through careful, discreet glances (which he seems to notice half of), you come to the conclusion that it’s in the way he carries himself. He stands straighter, walks with more confidence, and has figured out what to do with his arms. He’s always been a human magnet: old ladies made conversation with him in grocery lines, strangers stopped him in the street for directions, he was elected class president every year without ever putting himself forward. You remember the pressure he used to feel because of it, like he couldn’t bear to let anyone down although he was sure it’d inevitably happen—but now, he seems completely at ease with all this attention on him. Not like he’s gloating, but like he’s in his element.
Eager to avoid his gaze and the dreadful feelings it causes in you, you move around the backyard as often as he does under the guise of catching up with as many as you can, always managing to be part of a different group than he is. And you drink. Everyone does, so you’re not embarrassing yourself on your own—it’s a known fact that Chaewon can and will feed an army, so her guests bring tons of alcohol to make up for all her efforts. Your glass never goes empty for long simply because no one lets it—you could refuse, but you don’t.
You spend thirty minutes stuffing yourself with Chaewon’s cucumber salad and getting all the staff drama of your old school from Yunjin, who now works there as an English teacher. When she’s done telling you about the affair between the vice-principal and your Year 11 Geography teacher, she takes you aback by asking, “So, what’s up between you and Jaeyun?”
Back in high school, people often mistook you for a couple or joked around about you liking each other, so you do as you did then—you laugh it off, saying there’s nothing there. That doesn’t seem to satisfy Yunjin, however. She tilts her head at you, asking, “Are you sure? He seems so… attentive to you. Just now at the buffet he stopped you from getting the potato salad because there’s mustard in it. And in high school he was always running around doing things for you. All the girls were jealous of you.”
Your smile feels frozen, plastered on as you stare down at your plate. “That’s just Jaeyun. He’s nice to everyone, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Y/N,” a voice says, but it definitely does not belong to Yunjin. Not only does it come from behind you, it’s also much too deep to be hers. When you lift your head, she’s looking right over your shoulder, surprise written all over her features. You turn around to find Jaeyun standing there, handing you a hot dog. “Delivery,” he says, tone light, but his closed-off expression betrays him. You don’t know how much of your conversation he heard, but he must’ve not liked it. You’re not sure why—it’s not like you lied. Jaeyun is nice to everyone.
You bite into the bread. It has all of your perfect toppings for a hot dog—ketchup, fried onions, shredded cheddar and jalapeños. When Yunjin leans towards you, a hand on your arm as she says, “I don’t think it doesn’t mean anything,” you wonder if she’s right.
A few drinks later, you’re stumbling inside the house, headed for the bathroom, when a hand wraps around your wrist. It belongs to none other than Jaeyun, whose expression is a mix of amusement and concern. Now that all the food’s come out, the kitchen is dark, bathing in the fairy lights’ glow from outside and from the few other lights in Chaewon and Jaemin’s garden. And it’s empty, save for the two of you. It’s only the copious amounts of alcohol running in your blood that makes you think how enticing he looks in this semi-darkness, or that makes you imagine the affection you think you see in his eyes.
Of course you’d spend all evening avoiding him only to find yourself face-to-face alone with him suddenly like this. You look down at his fingers on you, and he lets go.
“Here.” With his other hand, he offers you a glass of water.
“I’m good,” you say, trying to sound casual, but you don’t like the close attention he’s paying you. Or maybe you’re embarrassingly drunk and he’s sending you a message. In any case, it’s always been hard for you to accept Jaeyun’s small gestures—you always have to remind yourself he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart and not because he especially cares about you.
“Y/N.” The way he says your name makes lightning zip down your spine. His voice is stern, but there’s a certain warmth to it. Like you’re being unreasonable, but cutely so.
You take the water from his hands and down it in one go. “Happy?”
“Very,” he says, a smirk on his lips that you frown at as he takes the cup back and places it in the sink. He rests his hands behind him on the counter, eyes searching your face, and you, for some reason, stand there and let him instead of going to the bathroom like you’d originally set out to do. Even as silence stretches out between you, your feet are frozen, and you’re finally courageous enough to meet his gaze without backing down. Even as his eyes scan your face, settling on your lips, and your heart threatens to give out. Even as he takes a step towards you and your chest starts visibly heaving up-and-down with every breath you take.
When he’s standing in front of you, he finally speaks, his voice unlike you’ve ever heard it before—low, vulnerable, and with a hint of ruggedness that makes your head spin. “Have you been avoiding me?”
“No—”
“Don’t lie to me, Y/N, please.” He sounds like he’s seconds away from pleading with you. He’s never been one to hide when he’s hurt, so you’ve heard him many times like this, but never when you were the cause of his upset. It was always because of a bad grade, a fight with his parents, a joke he took the wrong way. You wouldn’t know if you ever hurt him before, because he’s never come to you about it. It feels weird knowing you’re capable of such a thing.
“I’m n—Okay, yes, I’m avoiding you a little bit,” you say in a small voice. Whether it’s the look on Jaeyun’s face or the last cocktail you had, but you can’t bring yourself to pretend.
But you belatedly realize that of course, answering this question will only bring about another, much harder to answer: “Why?”
So you make up another lie that’s about as believable as the first one. “I—I don’t know, Yunnie. I’m just trying to speak to as many people as I can.”
“But not me?”
Is he drunk? He always got whinier after drinking. That must be it. Although his voice isn’t whiny at all—he’s not complaining, he rather sounds like he has answers he wants from you and is set on getting them. But it’s the only explanation you can come up with.
You’re unable to keep his gaze anymore. Looking down at the floor, you say, “We spoke earlier. We’re speaking now.”
“Yeah, and I practically had to corner you for it.” The vulnerability has left his voice and he sounds… frustrated?
He crosses his arms over his chest, and despite yourself, your eyes follow the movement. He’s rolled up his sleeves, letting out his forearms on full display for you. That’s an image you immediately need out of your head, so you make the mistake of looking up at his face again, only to be met with his jaw locked tight, his eyebrows slightly furrowed, and the intensity of his eyes staring right into yours.
He’s allowed to be mad, but does he have to look so good doing it?
As if he wasn’t close enough already, he takes another step towards you. It forces you to look up at him, and the sight of his face so near yours is devastating. You can already tell it’ll haunt you for nights to come.
“Do I make you nervous, Y/N? Is that why you don’t want to be around me?”
You inhale sharply, audibly, and the sound seems to amuse Jaeyun. The way he smirks down at you should be condescending, but he manages to make it impossibly attractive. Like he has you exactly where he wants you—which doesn’t make any sense. You don’t understand why he’s doing this, why it’d upset him that you’d rather talk to other people than to him, how he’s figured out the reason you’re avoiding him is the butterflies gnawing at your stomach every time your gazes intertwine. He’s never done any of this before.
“No,” you find yourself saying, but it’s an obvious lie to both of you. You’re breathless uttering that one word, fingers shaking from the tension in your body and Jaeyun’s proximity.
Then he sighs, and the Jaeyun you know is returned to you. A little tired by your antics, maybe, but more worried than anything. “I’ll take you home when you’re ready to go.”
“But—”
“No buts. Just come get me when you want to leave.” And with that, he turns and heads back outside, leaving you to wonder what that was all about as you wobble your way to the bathroom.
When you come back out, you make a point of sitting in the empty lawn chair next to Jaeyun and joining the conversation he’s in. He smiles at you and you glare at him, feeling like a scolded child.
Maybe alcohol makes you a little immature.
You’re having a grand old time listening to Jeno’s and Giselle’s travel stories, but as people slowly start making their way home, aware of the weekend full of festivities they’ve got ahead of them, dread sinks in. When the party’s over, you’ll be left alone with Jaeyun. Thankfully, there’s enough alcohol left to throw another party, and you serve yourself a couple of very generous cranberry-vodkas to prepare yourself for later. Maybe if you’re passed out in Jaeyun’s car you won’t have to talk to him.
When the garden’s really starting to empty out, you find a small moment during which Jaeyun is busy chatting with Jaemin and some other guys, and stealthily approach Chaewon to tell her you’ll be on your way now.
“Aren’t you leaving with Jae—”
You interrupt her with a hand to her mouth. Even though he’s across the yard from you, you don’t want to risk it. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” you whisper, then tip-toe your way around the backyard to the front of the house, where your bike waits for you. Somewhere deep in the back of your head, part of you has remained sober enough to tell you how bad an idea it is to bike home after drinking so much. You wouldn’t run into many cars at this time of night, but it’ll be dark, and the ditches are deep here.
But you couldn’t have predicted for your best friend to betray you. Just as you’re succeeding on your third try to swing your leg over your bike, you hear her voice, clear as day, shouting, “Jaeyun! Y/N’s leaving without you!”
You swear he teleports over to you. You freeze, hoping that moving as little as you can will turn you invisible.
It doesn’t work.
“What are you doing?” Jaeyun asks as he makes his way over to you. You’re relieved when he doesn’t sound annoyed, just concerned. He stands in front of you, two hands on your bike handle right next to yours. “I told you to come get me when you were ready. You can’t go home on your own like this.”
“Sure I can.” You try to hoist yourself up onto your seat, and immediately lose balance, stumbling to the side. Thankfully, Jaeyun’s hand finds your waist before you can fall—it steadies your body but not your heart.
“Come on, Y/N. Let’s get you to bed.”
Does he hear himself? He’s just being a good friend, so why does he have to phrase things in such an intimate way, and make your heart go all pitter-patter like the sixteen-year-old you once were? Why does he have to speak to you in that low, affectionate tone of his, like you’re someone he can’t help but take care of?
You take a deep breath, resigning yourself to your fate. “Okay.”
He helps you off of your bike and into his car. His hold on you is gentle but firm, and you try your very hardest not to think about whether this is how he would hold you in other situations. Before he can even turn on the ignition, you close your eyes and pretend to sleep. You hear him chuckle, then back out of Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s driveway. Once or twice, you hear him inhale as though he’s going to speak, but he seems to decide against it. A ten-minute bike ride makes for a very short car ride, and before you know it, he’s already pulling up in front of your aunt’s house. You keep your pretense up as he walks around the car and opens your door, and you’re sure you make a very convincing show of waking up and being sleepy.
As he takes your hand to help you out of the car, you ignore your instincts yelling at you to jump away from him. You tell yourself it’s only so you don't get caught in your lie that you let him slip an arm over his shoulders and guide you to your front door. It has nothing to do with the fact that your skin tingles everywhere it touches his, or that it feels terribly nice to be handled with so much care and patience. The front door is unlocked, and he holds you steady as you slip out of your shoes. Only when he closes the door behind you do you snap out of it.
“Thank you, Yun. I’ll be alright from here.”
He narrows his eyes at you. “I’m not sure you will. I don’t trust you not to trip up the stairs.”
You panic as he leads you further inside the house. “But—What if my aunt sees us?”
He stops in his tracks, then turns his head to look down at you with something you think is mischief in his eyes. “Why? What about it?”
“She might misunderstand!” you whisper-yell.
“What’s there to misunderstand, Y/N? I’ve taken you home drunk a dozen times before. Besides, I’m just Jaeyun, right? This doesn’t mean anything.” You’re left speechless. So he did hear you earlier, and although he kept his tone light-hearted, something makes you think he isn’t entirely unoffended. You stare at him, sure the guilt on your face is obvious. Eventually, he sighs, starts walking again. “I’m just teasing you.”
Despite yourself, you are glad he’s there to help you up to your bedroom—the stairs are remarkably wobbly tonight. Even though he tries to sit you down gently onto your bed, you let yourself flop on the mattress, already half-asleep the moment your back hits it. You’re uncharacteristically pliant as he guides you into a more comfortable position, lifting your head to rest on your pillows, pulling your duvet over you. You somehow feel more drunk now than you were leaving the party, as though Jaeyun’s touch and proximity are stronger than any alcohol. Maybe that’s why you suddenly find this situation hilarious. Your first chuckle makes Jaeyun’s hand freeze on your blanket; then, when giggles start pouring uncontrollably out of you, he asks you what’s so funny, and has to shush you, saying you’ll wake your aunt up. But you can tell he’s amused, and it only makes you laugh more.
“Seriously, what’s gotten into you?” he asks, sitting next to you. For some reason, the dip of his weight on the mattress feels reassuring.
“This is just nice,” you mutter, eyes still closed. “It feels nice.”
He’s silent for a few seconds. “What is?” he whispers.
“This. You being here.”
He releases a shaky breath. “It could happen more often, if you let me. It could happen every night.”
You giggle, because you know he’s just joking around. But you let him, even if it hurts a little bit, and you play along. “Yeah, that’d be nice. I think I’d sleep a lot better.”
With a delicate finger, he brushes strands of hair away from your eyes. You hum, smiling contentedly at his touch. This is such a nice dream that you hope you won’t have to wake up too soon from. “I think I would, too,” he whispers, voice shaky like he isn’t at all happy like you are, which confuses you. “I don’t know what to do, Y/N. I want so badly to take care of you, but you won’t let me. I don’t know how else to show you how good I could be to you.”
“You’re taking care of me now.”
“Yeah, and you’re so drunk you probably won’t remember this tomorrow.”
He sniffles, and you suddenly get the sensation that this isn’t a dream at all. You keep your eyes closed anyway, frowning as you turn your head to the side, tears starting to form behind your eyelids.
“Be back in a minute,” he whispers.
You open your eyes to find him gone. You try to make sense of what just happened, but your thoughts are muddled and hazy, and more questions than answers appear. You don’t come to any satisfying conclusions, at least none that aren’t clearly fueled by your delusions concerning Jaeyun.
When he comes back, he’s holding a tall glass of water. He seems briefly surprised to see you awake. He puts the glass gently down onto your bedside table, then kneels by your bed, grabbing your hand that you’d slipped above the comforter. He looks into your eyes with an intensity you’re unfamiliar with coming from him, and that makes your stomach twist. “Listen, Y/N. You’re only here for a few days, so I’ll be very clear about this. And if you’ve forgotten by tomorrow, I’ll make sure to remind you.” He pauses here, takes a deep breath. There’s a furrow in his eyebrows as he speaks. He looks desperate, but for what, you couldn’t tell. “I’m not letting you go this time. I feel like I keep losing you, over and over again, just when I think I finally have you. I’m not letting that happen again. I don’t want to be apart from you anymore.”
Your mind is reeling. You feel dizzy. You close your eyes, but it doesn’t help. Jaeyun’s words are loud and nonsensical in your head. “Do you mean… as friends?” you ask, because the other option seems so impossible, even in your inebriated state, you can hardly seriously entertain it.
He sighs, and it sounds like disappointment. “If that’s what you want, then I’ll give up on trying to be more. But if it isn’t what you want, then no.”
Your eyes fly open. Does that mean…
“I’m in love with you, Y/N. I’ve always been, and I can’t take hiding it anymore. I’ll take rejection over another day of pretending all I want to be is your friend. I want to talk to you everyday. I want to see you more often. I can’t keep going like this, calling you once every few months and acting like I’m fine with it.”
You’re stunned into silence. Even your thoughts are frozen, your mind completely blank. How do you react to words you’ve wanted to hear your whole life, and have convinced yourself you never would, not in a million years?
“I—”
“You don’t have to say anything now,” he interrupts, and you’re relieved. “Whatever it is, I’d rather hear it when you’re sober. I’m sorry for springing this up on you, I just… I think I would’ve flaked out if I hadn’t done it right now.”
He gazes down at you with a fondness you’ve only seen in your dreams, and strokes your hair. “I’ll let you sleep now. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” you say, surprised you're able to speak.
“Okay.”
He seems to hesitate for a second, but whatever it is, he decides against it. He gets up, and with one final glance back at you, closes your bedroom door gently. You listen for his footsteps down the stairs, the sound of the front door, and of his car driving away, and find yourself wishing he’d stayed, wishing for proof that you didn’t dream up everything he just said.
.
.
I’m in love with you, Y/N.
You wake with a start. Jaeyun’s voice was so loud in your head, you thought he was standing right over you—but it’s only your imagination playing tricks on you, you realize with some disappointment.
Some moments from last night are blurry or simply inexistent in your mind. Yurim sent selfies a bunch of you took to the group chat, of which you have no recollection being a part of. You have no idea how the marker doodles appeared on your arm, nor who is the artist behind them. But Jaeyun’s words you remember with dizzying, intimidating clarity, the words he spoke to you in the near-complete darkness of this room, and that you don’t think you could ever forget, no matter your state.
Part of you has always longed to hear those words, but another part has always dreaded they would be heard one day. You don’t know which part is stronger right now. Replaying his voice in your mind, your heart flutters at the same time as your stomach sinks. They’re words that have the power to change everything, that perhaps already have, and that’s what terrifies you.
It’s already ten in the morning. You wish you could stay here all day, safe under the covers, rehashing those words until they lose all meaning, but you know that’s impossible. Not only do you have a pounding headache and a mouth drier than the desert to tend to, more importantly, you have a responsibility to be there for Chaewon and the things she’s planned for today. So you force yourself out of bed and begrudgingly make your way downstairs.
Your aunt has already left for work. Breakfast is ready on the dining table, along with a tall glass of water, ibuprofen, and a note that reads: I didn’t hear you come home last night, so I assume you had a good time. Take this and eat your weight in bread. There’s coffee left in the Keurig. Bless her. You know better than to eat too much, though—if there’s one thing Chaewon takes seriously, it’s brunch, so you know you’ll have plenty of food to cure your hangover in just a bit.
As hard as you try to divert your thoughts towards anything else, it’s impossible not to think of what Jaeyun said last night. It’s all your mind circles back to, like a vulture that’s found its prey and won’t let go. Despite that, the shock has yet to wear off, and you stare into your cup of coffee, searching in vain for answers there.
It took you a while to fall for Jaeyun, then it took you even longer to admit those feelings to yourself. At fourteen years old, stepping foot in Gimcheon for the first time, you wanted nothing to do with the people here. Not with your aunt, not with your classmates. You wanted to wallow in your grief, for the bitterness of the injustice that’d taken your parents away from you to fully take over you.
Jaeyun was one of the people who didn’t let that happen. Some of the kids in your class found you odd or standoffish, often whispering behind your back about your sudden arrival in town, but he and Chaewon never failed to try and talk to you despite your extremely low-effort replies, to invite you out for snacks or basketball after class, to send you the lessons you missed on days your body felt too heavy to get out of bed.
Nothing in particular happened for you to suddenly change your mind about them. Maybe it was because you thought they’d stop pestering you if you just said yes, or because you sometimes felt the sharp loss of your friends in Seoul, whose calls you’d all ignored since moving. You surprised your new classmates as much as yourself when they asked you if you wanted to go eat tteokbokki with them, and you casually said, “Sure, why not,” as if your acceptance was a daily occurrence.
The rest was history. Although it took some more time before you really opened up to them, they accepted you the way you were, sharp edges and all. With them, part of the person you were before could resurface, carefree, happy. You still went home to a mostly silent, grief-stricken relative, who was practically a stranger to you, but at least you could look forward to seeing your friends—and something as simple as that made life easier every day.
As soon as you thought they started to appear, you tried to squash your feelings for Jaeyun, to no avail. Just when you told yourself you could never be more than friends, he’d bring you strawberry milk from the convenience store he walks by on his way to school. After spending an evening making a list of all the reasons it’d be a bad idea for you to date (it’d be awkward with your friends, you and your sadness would be a burden to him, it was too scary to get close to someone when they could leave you at any time), you’d wake up the next morning with a text that said, Good morning!!!! Did you know that if the Sun stopped shining, it’d take 8.5 minutes for us to realize it??!
But I know right away when you’re not shining
:)
Mom’s making your favorite shrimp jeon tonight so you HAVE to come over
And even your strongest will wasn’t enough against the force of his kindness. You were forced to submit to it, and to suffer for it for years to come—when other girls offered him chocolate on Valentine’s Day. When Bae Sumin asked him to the dance, and you had to ignore his concerned expression as he repeatedly asked you if it was really okay that he went, and all you could do was smile and convince him that it was. When you left for university and you had to stop yourself from asking why it seemed to be making him so sad, so uncharacteristically upset with you, almost like he wanted to punish you for leaving him. When every time you came back after that, it became harder and harder to say goodbye to him again.
You got mad at him sometimes. If something unexpected reminded you of your parents, like your mom’s favorite dish being served at the cafeteria, or someone using an expression your dad often said, you’d become irritable, and would be unable or unwilling to explain why. He was so patient with you then, even more attentive to your mood than usual, but the feeling of being treated kindly, like he needed to walk on eggshells around you, incomprehensibly made you even more abrasive. You’d blow up at him: I don’t need your help, I don’t need your pity, get off my back, what are you even being so nice for anyways?
And his reply would only drive you further insane: Because I care about you.
You’d always wish he’d say anything else, something less vague like Because it’s the right thing to do, or Because that’s who I am, or even Because you’re my friend, but no, he’d say, “Because I care about you,” and it was worse than anything he could ever say.
Because of course, friends care about each other. Of course they help each other out and do kind things for one another. But you so desperately wished Jaeyun could care for you in another way. And that was the problem: you couldn’t stop yourself reading into his actions, devoid of the meaning you wanted them to have.
And there was always that lingering thought: I’m leaving anyway. You were a city girl at heart. You missed the beauty stores that occupied five floors, the animal cafés you and your friends had spent way too much of your allowance at, the billboards of your favorite celebrities in the subway, the libraries with their wide range of manhwas for you to choose from. As much as you’d come to love your life in Gimcheon, you knew you couldn’t stay. You knew you couldn’t live on a nearby campus during the week and come back on the weekends like most of your friends would be doing.
At eighteen years old, you wanted a clean break. You wanted to attend a prestigious university, to dress up for class, to have study dates at a cozy café, to go out to a club on the weekend and not worry about how you’d get home because the buses stopped running way before midnight. You’d daydream about the cool job you’d have, the cool clothes you’d wear, the cool people you’d meet. Then you’d go downstairs and see your aunt, and she’d ask if you were okay with frozen dumplings for a third night in a row. Or you’d arrive at school and see Chaewon and Yunjin shrieking over Got7’s new song. Or you’d get a text from Jaeyun, saying, Cats use physics to land on their feet. They’re not aware of it though. And suddenly, the idea of a clean break became much, much harder.
Once you left, your reasons for not confessing to Jaeyun didn’t change—if anything, they strengthened. Growing up didn’t make you any less scared of opening up to someone, of letting them see the vulnerable sides of you, and hoping they’d still love you. Even if you had a positive example in Chaewon and Jaeyun, you’d never experienced it with a romantic partner, and not only did your incessant but unconscious comparing of them to Jaeyun stop you from completely falling in love with the few boyfriends you’ve had over the years, your inability to fully bare yourself emotionally to them inevitably caught up to you. They’d point it out, trying to coax your story and emotions out of you with kind words, gentle touches—but you never wanted it enough to make the extra effort. They’d take your independence as a personal affront, like it was a fault on their part that you were allergic to relying on others. They’d get frustrated. Some of them would yell at you while you stared off into the distance, numb, wondering if you’d always be like this. They’d break up with you, and you’d move on like nothing happened.
The fear of loss still froze your heart into place. Even in the throes of puberty, your mother and father were your two favorite people on Earth. At thirteen, you thought they’d live forever. You were reasonable enough to know not everyone you loved would die—although the thought of going through that grief again did keep you up at night. A bad break-up was enough to terrify you. And what would you do when you finally handed your heart to someone, only for them to turn around and decide they don’t want it after all?
A handful of times, you tried to sit yourself down and imagine, as objectively as you could, what might happen if you confessed your feelings to Jaeyun. You tried, but you never could. It was too scary, with him. As your friend, he was the glue that held you together. If you took that one step closer, you’d be too far gone—and once that happened, who was to say, when it inevitably ended, if you’d ever be able to tape yourself back together.
You’ve had many self-indulgent thoughts over the years, many delusions you’ve had to compel yourself away from when he looked at you a little long, grew a little too quiet when you talked about another boy, came up with increasingly ridiculous excuses to walk you home even though it was out of his way. You’ve worked so hard to bury them deep, and here he comes, so late on a Thursday night that it became a Friday morning, telling you it was neither self-indulgence nor delusion.
It’s too much to process with a hangover.
Your shower doesn’t have the relaxing effect you hoped it would have on your nerves. Even when you turn the temperature as low as you can take it, your skin burns hot at the thought of seeing Jaeyun again, of him repeating himself in broad daylight. By the time you’ve dressed and gotten ready, your heart is still racing wild, and you’re no closer to figuring out what the correct attitude around him or right thing to say is.
You’re tying your shoelaces when the doorbell rings. Of course, it’s Jaeyun standing behind the door, asking you if you’re ready to go to Chaewon’s.
You just gape at him. You’d prepared yourself mentally to see him a little later, with other people around—you hadn’t expected this and your brain simply malfunctions as a result.
He chuckles. “I wasn’t going to let you walk all the way there. You left your bike, remember?”
From his softened tone and the way he gulps as he awaits your answer, you can tell he’s not just asking whether you remember the drive home. He looks at you, a little expectant, a little scared, and his demeanor relaxes you. He’s not acting like nothing happened last night, and he doesn’t seem overly confident after—well, after confessing his love for you. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? No matter how hard a time you have believing it. It relaxes you because it feels like you’re not worrying alone about this shift in your friendship, about this rearranging of things and feelings. With just one look, he tells you he’s right there with you.
And that’s all you need.
“Right. Thanks, Yun.”
He stands there for a little, expression morphing into something giddier, more hopeful, and you wonder how long he’d stay there looking at you if you didn’t clear your throat and say, “Should we… go?”
“Yes! Yes, of course, let’s go,” he says, laughing awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head as he turns away and heads towards his car.
Surely, he can’t always have been this obvious. Surely, if he’s been in love with you for as long as he says he has, then he learned just as well as you did to school his feelings and make them as discreet as he could. Because if he was acting this way all along, all boyish grins and non-stop glances your way, then you would’ve had to be the densest person on Earth not to notice.
And it hurts your pride a little to think you might’ve actually been this dense.
After a minute on the road, he asks, “How are you feeling? Not too hungover?”
“A little. But I’ll feel a lot better after having some of Chae’s pancakes.”
“Yeah. And the pressed orange juice as well. With the—”
“—Oranges from her grandparents’ garden?” you say at the same time, and laugh.
“Yeah. It’s the best,” he says.
“What about you?” you ask. “You didn’t drink that much last night, right?”
“Yep. Just a beer at the start of the evening, and that’s it.” Then, he smiles, a little smug, and adds: “Why? Were you watching?”
You scoff, crossing your arms over your chest as though he was making a ridiculous assumption, when you very well knew you were constantly aware of his whereabouts last night. Of course you noticed him sipping on either water or Pepsi the entire evening. “I was not. But you were able to drive, so I assumed.”
“Right.” That smug smile of his is still fixed on his lips, so you know you sounded just as unconvincing as you felt. “Well, I was watching. And I can tell you you drank something like seven different sorts of alcohol last night.”
For your own sanity, you ignore the first part, and focus on the second. You groan, hiding your face in your hands. “That’s why my headache’s so bad.”
Jaeyun reacts immediately. His head turns back-and-forth between you and the road ahead as he says, “Is it? Did you drink enough water? There should be some painkillers in the glove compartment, if you—”
“It’s okay, Yun,” you interrupt, laughing softly. “I took some ibuprofen already. I’ll feel better after eating.”
He seems skeptical. “Okay. But let me know if you need anything, yeah?”
“I will.”
As you feel the tingle of incoming tears in your eyes, you turn your head away from him. Looking out the passenger window, you think how stark the difference is between being on the receiving end of Jaeyun’s attentiveness when you were just friends, and now that you know the way he really sees you. The crushing weight of your repressed emotions is, at last, gone, and you’re only left with a light-heartedness you haven’t felt in years.
Is there really a universe where every day is like this? It feels too good to be true.
But when Jaeyun reaches out, the palm of his hand facing up as it floats above your thigh, his expression bashful, you think — you dare to hope — you might soon be living in that universe. You take his hand, and the rest of the car ride is silent, like this one simple touch is all the words you need.
You’re glad you remember what he told you last night. Hearing it again now, in broad daylight, with no alcohol in your system to be blamed for your reactions, would be too much to bear. The mere thought of it has your heart racing, more than it already is from the warmth of Jaeyun’s hand in yours. You look down at it, the way it sits so prettily in your lap, the way his fingers intertwine with yours like it’s what they were meant to do. You crave to touch his hand more, to turn it around and analyze the lines of his palm, to feel the ridges of his knuckles, the smoothness of his nails under your fingers, but you stop yourself. It’s an art piece in a museum that you content yourself with watching from afar, awed.
Too soon, you arrive at Chaewon’s house. The loss of Jaeyun’s touch is almost alarming—what if he changes his mind and this was the only time you’d get to do this?
But as though he can read your thoughts, he guides you with a hand to your lower back towards Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s front door—and he pauses before it, gazing down at you with a smile you want to interpret as reassuring.
I’m not letting you go this time. I’m not letting that happen.
Maybe you’re overly self-conscious, but you swear a few of your old classmates exchange knowing looks when you and Jaeyun arrive together. Chaewon is the least discreet about it, stopping in her tracks when she sees the two of you, a steaming plate of pancakes in her hands, her smile wide as she gets Jaemin’s attention and nods her head in your direction. You want to escape to the kitchen under the pretense of offering your help, but Jaeyun is already pulling out a chair for you and taking a seat in the one next to it.
Thankfully, almost everyone is in a state similar to yours, too hungover and tired to really pay either of you too much attention. Their minds are on the food in their plates and the coffee in their mugs—the atmosphere is relaxed, everyone making quiet conversation with their neighbors. With Chaewon on your right and Jaeyun on your left, you’re free to scarf down hash browns and scrambled eggs without having to entertain anyone. He seems to be pretty engrossed in his chat about soccer with Jeno, and yet, he knows every time you need something, standing up and reaching for the bacon or the orange juice before you’ve even said anything. He holds the plate while you serve yourself, then places it back to its original spot, shooting you a smile that never fails to make your stomach twist before returning his attention to Jeno.
Chaewon had kept this afternoon’s activities a secret, only telling you all to have your school uniform ready. Some came to brunch already wearing it, but you and a few other girls go up to Chaewon’s room to change. It feels like being back in a locker room again, a bit awkward, a bit fun, teasing Yunjin for her matching black lace set on this seemingly innocuous day, comparing the stretch marks you’ve obtained in the years since you last wore your uniforms.
It’s definitely odd, seeing yourself in the mirror in that familiar short-sleeved white shirt and knee-length marine skirt. Despite how badly you wanted to grow out of Gimcheon, some things have remained the same—that much, you’re forced to admit to yourself when you head back to the living room and see Jaeyun in his old school uniform, a blast from the past. He watches you come down the stairs with a smile, and you wonder if he’s thinking the same things you are—that you’ve never stopped feeling like a teenager around him, and that no matter where you were in life, seeing him was enough to make your dull heart race.
His uniform still fits him okay, although it’s impossible not to notice how his arms and thighs strain against the fabric now, sleeves not quite reaching his wrists. Try hard as you might, your eyes drift to the way his button-up clings to his chest, and it’s clear he isn’t oblivious to it. You swallow as you walk towards him, hands coming up to fix his tie like it’s second nature. “Seriously, Yun,” you mutter. “It was cute when you were seventeen, but at twenty-eight, really?”
He only smirks down at you, making you more flustered than you already were—and it doesn’t help when everyone in the room ooh’s at your gesture. You take a step back, but the damage has been done. It’s like you’re in high school again, rolling your eyes at your friends when they ask if you and Jaeyun are finally dating, pretending like the mere thought doesn’t have butterflies erupting in your stomach.
“I remember how Y/N used to fix his tie in front of the school gates every morning,” Chaewon says loudly, and you glare at her. “She said she didn’t want him to get scolded by teachers.” Everyone erupts in a chorus of so cute and I can’t believe they’re still not together and I’m sure they used to have a crush on each other. She looks happy with herself, blissfully unaware of the chaos she’s created for you—it’s been hard enough acting normally around Jaeyun this morning, you don’t need the added spotlight.
He doesn’t seem to share that sentiment, though. When he speaks, his voice cuts through the chatter. “My dad taught me how to tie a tie before middle school. But I was running late once and she fixed it for me. I always messed it up on purpose after that.” He turns to you. Your jaw is slack, your heart a wild, frantic mess. “Guess that trick still works.”
This really is high school all over again. Your classmates act like they’ve witnessed the revelation of the century, cheering and clapping, the boys clasping Jaeyun’s shoulder like he just scored the winning goal. Chaewon squeals. Yunjin pretends to faint. You’re rooted to your spot, too bewildered to react.
“So you really did like her back then, didn’t you?” Jeno asks, and everyone stops talking, awaiting Jaeyun’s answer with what seems like bated breath—you included, as though he didn’t tell you all about it last night.
He shrugs, but his grin, sheepish and bright at once, says it all. “I’ll let you guys come to your own conclusions.” When he turns to look at you, despite the fact that you want to strangle him for putting you on the spot like this, you can’t deny that his confession is a little bit — just a little bit — adorable. You think of fifteen-year-old Jaeyun looking at himself in the mirror, proud of himself for putting on his tie wrong, and you can’t help but smile. Of course, this only makes your friends crazier, but Jaeyun, as if he’s suddenly decided this was enough attention, says, “Is everyone ready? Let’s head out now.”
Chaewon instructs you all to meet in your high school parking lot. On the drive over, Jaeyun apologizes, asking if what he did was too much.
“It’s okay,” you tell him. “Even if I was a little embarrassed.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing anything like it, but seeing you in your uniform brought back memories, I guess,” he says, bashful. “I did say I would remind you of what I told you last night, didn’t I?”
You shrug, smile down at your hands. “You did. But it’s not like I’d forgotten.”
He doesn’t answer right away—but then, he suddenly looks over at you, and says, “You’re really pretty.”
Your stomach flips. You look down at yourself to avoid his gaze as heat creeps up your face. “What are you saying…” you mutter.
“I never told you properly when we were in high school. So I’m telling you now. I always thought you were the prettiest, Y/N.”
You fight it hard, but you can’t bite back your smile. All you can do is hide your grin behind your fist, resting your elbow on the sill of the open window as you turn away from him. For only a brief second, as if spurred on by the confidence his compliment gave you, you change your mind—you turn to him and abruptly say, “And I always thought you were the most handsome.” Then you whip back to the window and grin at the trees lining the road. But you feel his eyes on you, and when you look back at him, he’s staring at you, mouth agape. “Yun! Look at the road!” you chide, laughing.
“Sorry, sorry!” he exclaims, taking his eyes off you. “But—You—Seriously?”
You can’t believe it, how incredulous he sounds, how he seems as surprised as you felt last night. As you still feel now. “Of course,” you say quietly, feeling shy again.
He’s quiet for a few seconds. Then, “Seriously?!” he repeats, louder, almost yelling.
“Relax,” you say, laughing at his enthusiasm. “It’s not like I was the only one. Half the girls in our class had a crush on you.”
“Did they?” he asks, a shit-eating grin on his lips. You roll your eyes.
“You only received love letters, like, once a month.”
“But never from the person I wanted to receive one from.”
You hold his gaze for a second. Then another, and another—but you can’t handle more than that. The way he looks at you, you feel too seen. Like he can read your every thought, like he can see your heart beating through your chest, your breath making its shaky way up your throat. It makes you too vulnerable, makes your desire to soak in his affection, to let him keep talking to you like this, too strong. It’s a feeling too unfamiliar for you to accept yet.
You return to your spot, turned away from him, elbow on the windowsill. “Whatever,” you mumble.
But it seems like you admitting to having found him handsome when you were teenagers is all the confirmation he needs. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, he sticks close to your side. Since school is out for the summer, Chaewon asked Yunjin to convince her higher-ups to let your group have a ten-year high school reunion there. They agreed and got one of the janitors to act as your supervisor, as if you would damage or steal school property. In any case, he follows you around quietly while you and your classmates roam the old, familiar walls, reminiscing about all the stupid things you did, the gossip that felt like the most important thing in your lives at the time, the teachers you hated, the upperclassmen you crushed on. Mostly, you take loads and loads of pictures, reenacting memories, huddling together in front of the classroom door of your final year. Jaeyun always finds himself right behind you in the group pictures, his taller frame so close to yours you can feel his warmth.
He rests his hand on your shoulder for one of the photos, and your brain short-circuits at a touch that you wouldn’t have thought about twice as a teenager. Sure, back then, Jaeyun’s touch made you feel giddy, but it was also the most natural thing in the world. Linking arms on the way home from school. Your head on his shoulder during a long bus ride. His fingers in your hair when you let him play around with it. He always said it was practice for his future daughter: “I want her to have the prettiest hairstyles in all of her school,” he’d say, as if she was already here. And you’d think to yourself, He’ll make such a great dad. And although he was someone you could tell anything to, for reasons you didn’t like to think too much about at that time, this was something you kept to yourself. Now, you can hardly breathe from a hand on your shoulder. But now, you can also finally admit to yourself why that is.
And with every passing moment, every smile shared, every delicate touch of his hand to your arm, of your fingers brushing against each other, you think that maybe, just maybe, you might finally be able to admit to him why that is.
A while later, when everyone parts ways, heading home to get a few hours of rest before the big day tomorrow, Jaeyun asks you if you can hang back for a bit. He’s so cute about it, so much like a schoolboy asking his crush out, that you can’t turn him down despite the sleep you desperately need.
The soccer field by your school is surprisingly unoccupied—even at this time of year, when the school hallways are empty, there are usually teenagers playing here. You yourself used to spend entire afternoons here, chatting with Chaewon while the boys played soccer under the blazing sun. You remember pretending you weren’t engrossed in the sweat beading on Jake’s forehead or the way his cheeks turned crimson with the effort, and cheering for him whenever he scored a goal and turned towards you, yelling out “Did you see that?!” with that puppyish grin on his lips.
You remember the nights you spent here as well, the last summer before you left, when you and your friends wanted to drink without the adults seeing. You’d lay side-by-side, looking up at the stars as you shared your dreams and fears for the future. If Jaeyun’s hand brushed against yours, you’d wait a few seconds, then move your hand to rest on your chest instead. You always wondered if he noticed it, the small touch, its removal. You know your hand burned with both.
He leads you to the soccer field now, his hand warm and gentle in yours, like he’s scared holding on too tight will scare you off. He’s silent for a while, quietly bringing you down with him until you’re laying on the grass together—this time, you keep his hand preciously in yours, even as your palms turn clammy, even as the memories of being here like this flood in.
The summer breeze has nearly lulled you to sleep when he speaks, his voice soft, careful not to startle you. “I hated the last day of school.”
You turn your head to look at him, but he keeps his eyes trained on the blue sky above. “Of course you did. You were such a nerd, you would’ve stayed in school forever if you could’ve.”
He smiles, but he shakes his head. “No, that’s not it.” His tone is calm, full of significance, which you feel even more when he rests his steady gaze on yours. “It meant time was running out. It meant I’d spent five years liking you and still hadn’t had the balls to tell you.”
You gulp. You’re suddenly not in the mood to tease him at all. “Oh,” is all you can manage to say.
He laughs—clearly, seeing you flustered is amusing to him. “Yeah.” He props himself up on his elbow, gazing down at you in a way that sends your heart into a frenzy. “I got a little carried away last night,” he starts. “When Chaewon told me about her plans to dress in our school clothes and come here — yes, she told me before everyone else, don’t look at me like that — I’d planned to tell you today, I had a whole thing written out, but last night, you… I don’t know, you were drunk so maybe I shouldn’t have put so much weight to your words, but it sounded like you might like me back? And I couldn’t stop myself. I had to tell you immediately. And today… I’m not mistaken, right? You do like me?”
Tears prickle at your eyes. To think that this has been on his mind for so long, that you’re the reason behind the worried look on his face, that he’s the one asking for your confirmation—you can hardly make sense of it all. If only you’d looked closer, if you’d been less scared, you might’ve been wearing this exact same outfit, laying in this exact same place, ten years earlier. This isn’t to say that you aren’t scared anymore—you’re terrified out of your wits. But looking into Jaeyun’s face, you don’t need to search very long to find reassurance.
“I do, Yun. I really, really do.”
He only stares back at you for a few beats, as if waiting for you to change your mind, to tell him you’re joking. When you don’t, his mouth breaks into a wide, radiant smile, and he lets himself fall on his back, hands coming up to hide his face.
Suddenly, you realize how real this is. How genuine Jaeyun is. It isn’t a cruel prank he’s decided to play on you, but the truth of what he feels for you. For what must be the first time since last night, you let yourself react the way any sane person would upon finding out the person they’ve loved for years loves them back: you’re happy. Unbelievably, indescribably happy. And it’s terrifying when you know this happiness might be ripped from your hands at any moment—but you’ll worry about that later. Right now, all you see is the man laying next to you, his smile full of light, his sweet, glimmering eyes. A small tear escapes your eye at the same time as a chuckle leaves your throat.
He returns to his previous position, grinning down at you while he rests his upper body on his elbow. “Okay, this is totally cool. I’m not freaking out at all,” he says, making you laugh. His smile widens. He picks a daisy from the ground, reaches for your hand. Tying the stem around your ring finger, he says, “I wanted to tell you this today, in our school uniforms, as a way to get justice for my teenager self. I know it’s silly, but I feel like I’m only able to do this because he liked you so much.”
But it isn’t silly at all. It’s the nicest, most romantic thing anyone has ever done for you.
He takes a deep breath, looks up from where your hand rests in his, to your eyes. “I love you, Y/N. I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you. And I can’t explain to you how happy I am that I still have a chance after all this time.”
It’s not a singular tear rolling down your face anymore, it’s the whole waterworks threatening to explode the longer Jaeyun looks at you with those eyes, so tender and full of affection. You roll onto your side, resting your forehead against his shoulder so he can’t see your face—it’s enough that he can hear your sniffling, that he can feel your shoulders shake against him, especially as he wraps an arm around your waist to bring you closer. Your feelings overwhelm you—you want to cry, to laugh, to hold him as tight as you can, to run away and stop him from witnessing how vulnerable he makes you. With his free hand, he pets your hair, saying he hopes these are happy tears.
“They’re very, very happy tears,” you reply between sobs. You probably sound ridiculous, but Jaeyun doesn’t seem to mind, holding you through it all.
“Good,” he whispers.
It’s a shame that it took you this long to realize you forgot something you shouldn’t ever have—that people are the most important. Not relying on the ones you love doesn’t make you strong, it makes you a fool.
Jaeyun’s presence is reassuring, familiar, and you picture a life in which you lean on his shoulder and cry when you need to. In which you hold him tight and share every moment with him, not just the happy ones. It sounds so much better than what you’ve been doing for the past ten years. He smiles at you, and you’re flooded with the relief and gratitude that this is the life he wants, too.
For a while, he just holds you, the sun shining down on your bodies. This is what you were so fearful of—Jaeyun’s familiar scent enveloping you, his hand rubbing reassuring circles against your back, his hair soft in your hands. Eventually, he says, voice just loud enough for you to hear, “Later, will you talk to me? Will you tell me why you drifted from me?”
There’s no anger in his tone, no admonition. Guilt still pangs in your stomach, but that’s only because you know how badly he deserves an explanation, and because you’re amazed that even now, he’s so patient and understanding with you. “I will,” you reply.
You don’t know how long you stay there, laughing at Jaeyun’s anecdotes of all the ways he tried to show you he liked you. All the times he ran home in the rain because you didn’t bring an umbrella, all the fish cakes he sacrificed because they were your favorite part of tteokbokki, all the pocket money he spent on your favorite snacks.
“I thought about you so often once you left,” he says. “I worried so much. If you were eating well, if you were making new friends at university. Then if your job was treating you well. I wanted to call you all the time, but I didn’t want to annoy you. I thought you were moving on, and that maybe I should too. But I never was able to.”
You’re a little bashful as you tell him that you never did, either. “I compared all the guys I dated to you. And they were never as nice, as thoughtful, as—”
“As handsome, as smart, as amazing as me, I get it, don’t worry,” he teases, and you swat his shoulder lightly.
“Obviously, but you don’t need to be so smug about it.”
“If you’re going to tell me none of your little boyfriends measured up to me, of course I’m going to be smug about it, are you kidding me? This is the best news I’ve received in my life.”
You only realize how long you’ve been lying there when your phone dings with a text from your aunt, asking whether you’ll be home for dinner. It’s almost seven p.m. already—the two of you spent three hours, just talking and laughing. He pouts a little when you tell him you should head home, but he obliges anyway.
When he drops you off at your aunt’s house, he comes out of the car with you and hugs you tightly before you head inside. “Thank you for this afternoon. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” he says, lips moving against your hair.
You nod and, with a quick peck to his cheek, you bolt for your front door before he can react and try to do something crazy, like properly kiss you.
“Wait, before you go,” he says as you grab the door handle. Turning around to look at him, breath catches, thinking he’s going to tell you something important, yet another thing that will change your life—“Can you tell me about those lame dudes you dated again?”
You roll your eyes, biting back a smile. “Goodbye, Jaeyun.”
“You love me!”
You smile at him, wide and unabashed.
Because you do love him. You really, really do.
.
.
You plop yourself on the couch next to your aunt, the latest Drag Race season playing on the TV. She hands you the bag of caramel popcorn and you grab a handful.
“I heard a car,” she says. “Did Jaeyun drop you off? Is that why you’re smiling so much?”
You only now notice the ache in your cheeks. “I’m not smiling that much,” you say, forcing your features into humorlessness, but the corners of your lips keep rising of their own volition.
“You’re smiling a lot. More than you already usually do with him,” she says, giving you a knowing look.
You gape at her. “Don’t tell me you knew too?”
“Knew what? That you and Jaeyun have liked each other since you were teenagers? I might’ve had an inkling, yeah.”
Her grin is wicked as you bury your face in your hands, groaning. “So it really was everyone but him and me.”
“I think you knew,” she says, her tone gentle. “But you didn’t want to admit it to yourself. Especially in the last few months before you left, you’d always get a look about your face when I mentioned him. You never wanted to say you were sad to be leaving, but it was clear you were, if only because of him.”
You frown. “I was sad to leave you, too. And Chaewon, and Yunjin. And Mrs. Kim, because I knew I wouldn’t find better tteokbokki anywhere else.”
She shrugs. “Sure. But you were sad to leave Jaeyun in particular.”
You fidget with your hands, letting her words sink in. “And I have to leave him again in two days,” you whisper.
She wraps an arm around your shoulder, squeezes it slightly. “But it’ll be different this time around, right?”
DIfferent. You’ll call. You’ll make plans for him to come. You’ll let him into your life, into your heart. You’ll let him break down your walls, brick by brick.
“Yeah. It will,” you say quietly, willing your worries to dissipate.
You meet her gaze, and she smiles. Jaeyun is only one of the many people you’ve kept at bay for too long now.
“Come on,” she says, getting up from the couch. “I’m making meatball pasta, your favorite.”
“It’s your favorite.”
It was one of the few meals she made on rotation whenever she had time to cook—it is your favorite, only because eating it meant you were spending the evening together. You cut vegetables while she seasons the meat, telling each other about your day. Maybe it’s because you’re in such a wonderful mood from your afternoon with Jaeyun, but the atmosphere between the two of you feels particularly light-hearted today, which is why you’re so surprised when she suddenly tells you you should talk about “what happened last time.” Your stomach clenches, but you nod—you knew it was going to happen sooner or later, so you might as well get over it quickly, and she seems to be of the same opinion.
“I know we’re both bad at this, so I’ll keep it short,” she starts, keeping her eyes on the preparation. You really are cut from the same cloth—you continue chopping carrots, glad to have something to do with your hands. “I’m sorry about those things I said. It was an emotional time for both of us, what with Jaeyun’s grandmother and all, but I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the best of me. It’s my fault we never talked about your parents. About your mom. I know you would’ve liked to, but I never could. And you do remind me of her. Gosh, you look so much like her at your age. But you can’t do anything about that, and what I said about looking at you and seeing her, that wasn’t fair. It sounded like I blamed you, which is the last thing I wanted to do.
“She always took care of me, because she was older than me by so many years, you know. She called herself my second mom. And all of a sudden, it felt like I had to take care of her. It’s ironic, since my literal job is to take care of people, but I didn’t know how to, with you.”
“I didn’t make it easy. I barely talked to you,” you say quietly. It’s true that you can’t expect the same maturity from a teenager and a young adult, but thinking back on it, you can’t help but think you could’ve been softer on your aunt. More understanding. You wanted her to replace your parents while resenting her for it. You made no effort at communication yet pushed her away every time she made an attempt to talk to you.
“You were so young, and dealing with all that loss. I should’ve tried harder, but you seemed so independent, spending all that time with your friends, making yourself dinner when I wasn’t home. It felt like you didn’t need me, and I have to admit, I was relieved. I was hanging on by a thread. I didn’t know how I could take care of a whole other human being.”
Your breathing is shallow. You spent so many years struggling, each of you in your little corner, at arm’s length from each other but too scared to reach out a hand.
“It felt like you didn’t want me around,” you whisper, head hanging low.
“Oh, honey.” She drops her spoon and in a second has you wrapped in her arms, the tightest hug she’s ever given you, tighter than when you first arrived at her house, tighter than when you first left. “I’m so, so sorry. I was so glad to have you here. Sure, it was a reminder that I’d lost my sister, but you were a reason to keep going. I had to go to work so you could eat. I had to stay healthy enough to work. You were the only person on this planet that needed me. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of it, and that I didn’t show you how much I needed you. How much I love you. But I promise that I never, ever wished you weren’t with me.”
It’s impossible to keep the tears at bay at this point. Tears start pouring down your face, and at the sight, her own tears quickly follow suit—you sob in each other's arms, apologizing over and over again, and by the time you’re done, the meatballs are overcooked and yet the best you’ve ever had.
Between Jaeyun this afternoon, and your aunt this evening, today has been a whirlwind of emotions—with Chaewon’s wedding tomorrow, you’ll probably be drained on your flight back to the city. You have half a mind to take Monday off, just so you can rest from your holiday.
For now, you’ll rest from today. You’re exhausted, but it takes a while for sleep to claim you—your mind is reeling, replaying Jaeyun’s words, the unspoken promises they contain. Your heart is still swelling with hope when you finally fall asleep.
.
.
It takes a few seconds for yesterday’s events to come back to you after you wake up. It feels like reliving them all over again—Jaeyun’s face next to yours on the soccer field, his hand in yours on the drive home, the conversation with your aunt that feels like one of many steps towards the right direction. And to think you dreaded this weekend for months before coming here.
When Jaeyun pulls up in front of your aunt’s house, she’s quicker than either of you, opening the door before he’s even reached it and inviting him in for coffee. You make a quick mental note of his outfit, a matching dark green suit and vest with a white button-up that fit him a little too well, the veins that run along his forearms down to his hands prominent and a debilitating sight if you’ve ever seen one. Out of concern for your well-being you put that image immediately out of your head—you really don’t need to know how attractive Jaeyun’s hands are.
While you’re trying to gather yourself, with a wide smile, your aunt stares at him sipping his drink, eyes darting around the room awkwardly. He’s always been a little nervous around her, which confused you back then, but endears you now—before every party he picked you up for, he’d be overly polite, assuring her he’d get you home early and safe, standing with his back straight in your hallway as he waited for you like someone trying to impress their girlfriend’s father. She’d wave him off, telling you you could come home shit-faced at three a.m. as long as you were with “this guy.”
It’s so obvious that she’s over-the-moon about him being her nephew-in-law. When he clears his throat, saying, “I’ll take good care of Y/N, I hope you can trust me,” like this is the seventies and he needs to ask her for your hand, she laughs in his face.
“Oh, I’m not worried about you. It’s her I’m worried about.”
“Auntie?”
She ignores you, slides her elbows on the table towards Jaeyun in a conspiratorial manner. “Listen. She can be very grumpy in the morning—”
“Auntie?!”
“And she overthinks everything, even if she’ll never let you know about it. She gets all these crazy ideas about people in her head, so just make sure to talk to her a lot so you know what’s going on up there. Even if you have to force her.”
You’re glaring at her by the time she’s done, but Jaeyun’s delighted. “Thank you for the advice. I’ll make sure to remember it.”
“Good. Now, off you two go. I’ll meet you tonight for the party,” she says with one last wink at you, unfazed by your I-will-murder-you expression as she gets up to put the empty mugs in the sink.
In the car, Jaeyun breaks the silence first. “So, grumpy in the morning, huh?”
“Oh my God,” you mutter, bringing a hand to your temple like your head aches. “I liked it better when you were terrified of her.”
Jaeyun laughs, reaching for your hand and resting it on your lap. “It’s okay. I’ll cheer you up every morning like my life depends on it.” You purse your lips to stop them from curving into a smile. It doesn’t work. “Plus, I can’t imagine you’d be grumpy waking up to this,” he says, pointing to his face.
You roll your eyes. “Don’t be so sure of yourself,” you say as though you don’t agree with him—seeing him first thing in the morning would surely do wonders for your mood, not just when you wake up, but for the entire day.
You know he’s only teasing you, but you have an unexpected problem to deal with now: thoughts of waking up to Sim Jaeyun, thoughts of being in a bed with Sim Jaeyun, thoughts of what usually happens when two people who love each other share a bed. You gulp. When you look over at him, there’s only a serene smile on his lips. One day in, and you’re already getting carried away. He’s probably not even thinking about such things, and you feel guilty about the dull ache in your stomach created by the pictures that your brain is conjuring.
When you arrive at the town hall, you’re greeted by your old friends, standing on the steps in their best clothes. The weather is perfect, the sun shining down warmly but a small breeze stops you from sweating your clothes off. Chaewon and Jaemin decided against staying cooped up in a small room before the ceremony—they thought it’d be much nicer to be there to greet their guests, and that getting to be around each other would prevent any last-minute nerves.
A little before eleven, Chaewon’s sister and Jaemin’s siblings, as the bridesmaids and groomsmen, start ushering everyone in. Once you’re seated inside and waiting for the ceremony to start, Jaeyun leans down towards you, and, quietly enough so only you hear him, whispers, “Should we hijack their wedding? They haven’t been waiting as long as I have.”
You gasp at his words, lightly swatting his chest while he only grins at you, clearly satisfied with your reaction.
“I’m just kidding,” he says. “This isn’t how I’m planning on proposing.”
“Planning on—Sim Jaeyun, be serious for a second.”
“What?” he asks, feigning an innocent tone even as mischief stays written on his features. “I’m very serious about propo—”
Who knows how his sentence ends, because his words are muffled by the hand you put over his mouth.
The ceremony is beautiful, presided over by Chaewon’s dad, who says that in all his years as mayor of Gimcheon, there isn’t a marriage he’s been happier to officiate than today’s. As Chaewon recites her vows, all you can see is your best friend at fifteen, crying because her favorite idol was embroiled in a dating scandal; at seventeen, making vision boards out of her mom’s old wedding magazines; at twenty-two, giggling on the phone because, “Did you know Na Jaemin has had a serious glow-up since high school?”
At twenty-five, telling you she hopes you’ll find the person who makes you as happy as Jaemin makes her.
Jaeyun’s hand stays in yours the entire time. You feel him glancing over you a few times, but you’re too scared that if you meet his eyes, you’ll break down crying, and you’ve done enough of that to last you a few weeks.
There are many pictures to be taken outside of the town hall, plus the bouquet toss — when Giselle catches it, Jeno’s face turns crimson — so it’s a while before you can all start heading to the cottage that Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s family have rented out for the occasion, for extended family and friends who couldn’t be lodged at someone’s house to stay in. For lunch, the caterer has prepared a large cold buffet with everything from thin slices of meat to charcuterie boards and three types of potato salad.
It’s a really idyllic place they’ve chosen, especially in the middle of July—the flowers are in full bloom, climbing cream and pink roses spilling over metal trellises, the scent of lavender bushes wafting delicately through the air. Chairs and tables covered in white drapes are neatly set around the garden and huge ribbons made of alabaster-colored gaze decorate a large oak tree.
You know from a phone call with Chaewon that as hands-on as she was with the wedding preparations, there was one thing that hadn’t been up to her to organize—the afternoon activity, between lunch with family and close friends and dinner with a larger number of guests. Jaemin’s sisters had told her they’d take care of it. “But they’re the kind of people who give people missions to do at parties,” she complained. “I once had to win at rock-paper-scissors with three total strangers.”
“But no one’s forcing you to participate,” you said.
“It was a question of pride,” she replied, firm. “I had to make a good impression.”
You can see the relief flood over Chaewon’s features when they announce that they’ve planned a scavenger hunt for this afternoon, and that those who don’t wish to partake can hang back and have a rest. The groups are assigned randomly, so you’re separated from Jaeyun, but your teammates are friendly—Jaemin’s great-aunt and Chaewon seven-year-old little cousin make for a surprisingly comedic duo, and you and Giselle, who you can confirm once and for all is much cooler than her boyfriend Jeno, spend the whole time cracking up at their antics.
Jaemin’s sisters have created a list of clues to guide you to different places around the venue, where you need to complete little tasks—each team starts out with a different clue, and is guided around by the new clues they find at each spot. In the guest book by the entrance, you each describe a memory you share with the bride or groom; by the lily pond, the four of you take a polaroid picture as a keepsake for the newlyweds; behind the bar, there’s a corkboard on which you can tack heart-shaped pieces of paper and write down your predictions for their marriage. You write down that they’ll have 3 under 3, and Chaewon’s cousin writes that they’ll get to drink milkshakes for breakfast—when you ask him what that’s about, he says that his mom said only adults are allowed milkshakes for breakfast, “and adults are usually married, so maybe that’s what they’ll do.”
You arrive in fifth place, so you only win a piece of candy each—but when you find Jaeyun again, he tells you gloatingly that he’ll share his third-place box of chocolates with you. Slowly after that, more guests start arriving, including your aunt. The main room opens up, and you see just how much effort Chaewon has put into all of this—it’s straight from her Pinterest board, with white roses in the center of every table, tulle curtains draped over the windows, and fairy lights adorning the walls. Candied almonds in small white bags, with a tag that reads C+J, rest on every plate as gifts for the guests. The cottage was the perfect choice for the reception, with its wooden panels that contrast against the cream-colored decorations. They’ve hired Beomgyu, an old high school friend of yours, as their DJ, and for now, as he’s setting up his station, a relaxed R&B playlist drifts quietly through the speakers.
You’re seated between Yunjin and Jaeyun. You mingle at first, champagne glass in hand as you catch up with Chaewon’s mom, at whose house you spent so many of your teenage hours. She has stars in her eyes, telling you how happy she is for your daughter, and when she asks whether there’s a lucky man in your life, you can’t help but glance at Jaeyun, who’s talking with Mrs. Lee, one of his old elementary school teachers, Chaewon’s colleague now. She follows your gaze and exclaims in delight. “Chaewon always said you two would end up together! Well, better late than never,” she says with a wink. Someone calls her name then, and you’re left to process her words.
Considering Yunjin and your aunt had you figured it out, it isn’t so surprising that Chaewon would’ve long been aware of your and Jaeyun’s feelings for each other—what’s taking you aback is the fact she never said anything. She teased you just as much as your classmates did, and she did ask you a couple of times if you really didn’t feel anything for him (which you always adamantly declined, and you understand now that that must’ve only made her only more suspicious of you), but she never pushed any further. Her words from a few days earlier suddenly come back to you—”I promise you someone is out there. Maybe closer than you think.”
You make a mental note to find a minute alone with her tonight, and congratulate her for being much smarter and perceptive than you ever were.
The appetizers start rolling out—Jaeyun is still so engrossed in his conversation with Mrs. Lee that you go ahead and make him a plate with a little bit of everything. When you hand it to him, he looks at you like you’ve just handed him a million bucks. After you go back to your seat, you often feel him or Mrs. Lee glancing your way, and you have an inkling of what they might be talking about.
Before the main course, the parents give their speeches together—Jaemin’s share embarrassing anecdotes of their son and thank Chaewon for taking him off their hands; Chaewon’s mom is so emotional throughout her speech that her husband has to take over her parts.
The atmosphere at your table during dinner is great, and it’s very entertaining to see the champagne start to get to everyone’s heads—you’ve only had a couple glasses, and Jaeyun is driving later, so you’re both sober watching your friends exaggerate everything they say and laugh over nothing much. When you’re done eating, his hand often finds yours underneath the table, and it never fails to make your insides feel pleasantly warm.
After dinner, the music suddenly shuts off for a few seconds, before Can’t Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley, the song for Chaewon’s parents’ first dance at their own wedding, which she wanted to turn into a tradition. Everyone watches the couple gently swaying around the dance floor. They look at each other as though they are the only people in this entire room; on this entire planet. After a minute, other couples start joining them; when Jaeyun stands up and offers you his hand, you don’t even hesitate for a second.
You feel a little shy, standing before him and looking into his eyes, so you rest your head on his chest instead, letting him hold you close to him and guide you around the dance floor, one arm around your waist, holding your hand in his free one.
“Thank you for waiting for me,” you say, lifting your face a little so he can hear you.
He bends down towards you, his lips grazing your forehead as he speaks. “Thank you, too, angel.” The nickname is unexpected, and makes your heart skip a beat. When he presses his lips to the top of your head, you think that if this wasn’t your best friend’s wedding, you might be debating the ethics of leaving before dessert’s been served. “I promise I’ll make you happy,” he whispers.
“You already are.” You wish you could live in the way he gazes down at you, eyes warm and full of adoration. “You make me feel like a teenager. Like I’m still the sixteen-year-old who got giddy at the thought of seeing you at school every morning.”
“Is that right?” he asks, smile turning a little smug. You like nervous, bashful Jaeyun better—this Jaeyun, the intensity of his gaze as it trails down your face until it reaches your lips, the feeling of his thumb roving across your waist, makes you want to curl up and hide your face in the crook of his neck. He makes your knees weak and your breath shaky.
You stop yourself from looking away, eyes set on his as you nod your head.
“That’s funny, because I’m very aware that we’re not teenagers anymore,” he says.
You don’t ask what he means by that, and he doesn’t offer an explanation, so you’re left to ponder his words on your own—although the tone with which he spoke, teasing and enticing, can’t leave you with much room for interpretation.
But just as your eyes drift down to his lips, and you swear he leans a fraction of the way in, the song is over. You step back from him a second after every couple has separated, turning towards the newlyweds and clapping for them.
It’s back to 2010s pop after that, and he doesn’t let you go back to your seat—the rest of your friends quickly join you anyway, and even you can’t say no to jumping around and screaming the lyrics when it’s Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas playing. Jaeyun makes you spin around, his hands firm on your hips during more sensual songs, his worst (or best, if you ask him) moves on display whenever a song calls for it, and you can’t stop laughing.
You need a large drink of water eventually, and take the opportunity to look for Chaewon. You find her at the dessert buffet, stacking mini brownies on her plate. She looks startled when you call her name. “These aren’t all for me,” she says quickly.
“I’m not judging,” you say, smiling.
“Okay, good, ‘cause they’re definitely all for me. I barely ate all night ‘cause I was so nervous and I’m famished now.”
You laugh and get a plate, filling it with more food for her before leading her to your presently unoccupied table. “Thank you,” she says with an exaggerated sigh as she plops down on Yunjin’s chair. “I love my family, but they’ve been taking up all of my attention. I just wanna come dance with you guys.”
“We’ll join them in a bit. Can I just tell you something first?”
She tilts her head at you, her smile like she already knows what you’re about to say. “Of course. And,” she says, taking your hands in hers, “I’ve got something to ask you, too. But you go first.”
You surprise yourself with how easily the words come to you—no hesitation over how to phrase it, no nervousness. They feel so natural, rolling off your tongue. “Me and Jaeyun are together.”
She squeals, immediately throwing her arms around you. “I knew it! Finally! It took you guys so long, I was so close to intervening and playing Cupid myself. Oh, Y/N!” she exclaims, bringing you into another hug, not letting you place a word. “Love is in the air. You know, I think knowing Jae and I were getting married might’ve been the trigger for Jaeyun. When he told me he wanted to confess to you over this weekend, I was ecstatic. You can basically thank me for having a boyfriend.”
You laugh. “Thank you, Chaewon. You’ve known all along, haven’t you?”
She nods proudly. “It was always so obvious. Jaeyun told me a few months after high school ended, but you—” She points an accusing finger at you. “You never did! But you tried too hard to pretend like you were indifferent when I mentioned him on the phone.”
You look down at the floor, feeling a little guilty, a little shy. “I could barely admit it to myself, let alone to anyone else. And I was so, so scared, Chae. Even now…” You look longingly over at the dance floor, where Jaeyun is clearly having the time of his life, throwing his limbs around with Heeseung and Jeno—when he meets your eyes, he waves happily, then returns to what seems to be an attempt at the robot. You sigh. “It’s not like I change my ways overnight, can I? Being so far from him, I don’t know…”
“Don’t think about that right now,” Chaewon says, commanding your attention back to her. “Just enjoy it. It’s what both of you deserve. When you run into a problem, you’ll figure it out together. He’s waited this long, I promise you it’s not a little distance that’ll drive him away now.”
You nod. “Okay. You’re right.”
“Of course I am. Now, I have some news to share too. And it’s our secret, okay?”
Excited, you shift forward on your chair, inching closer to her. “Okay.”
She gazes downward with a smile, lets go of one of your hands to rest on her stomach. Your mouth falls open, and when she looks back up at you, her eyes shiny, you immediately feel yours start to burn. “If you say yes, Y/N, you’ll be a godmother soon.”
“Oh my God, Chae,” you whisper, tears already pooling in your eyes.
She giggles. “Jaeyun’s already agreed to be the godfather, so it only makes more sense now, doesn’t it? And yes, before you ask, I’m absolutely using my unborn child as emotional blackmail to get you to call and visit more often. And I’ll be coming to see you in the city and make you take me around cute baby shops and buy me all the food I want.
“Oh my God, Chae. You’re having a whole baby,” you whisper, incredulous. Your heads lean in towards each other, almost bumping as you laugh.
“I know, right? We wanted to wait until our honeymoon was over to start trying, but… Well, I’ll spare you the details, but we’ve never gone at it so much since getting engaged—”
“Alright.”
“So, what do you say?” she asks, a hopeful expression on her face.
You squeeze her hands. “How could I say anything but yes? Of course I’ll be your kid’s godmother. I’m so honored that you’re asking me, when I haven’t been an ideal friend.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t. We understand you, Y/N, more than I think you give us credit for. And I trust you to make up for it now, okay?”
You nod, tears freely streaming down your cheeks now. “I will. I absolutely will. I love you so much, Chae. I’m so happy for you.”
Her laugh is the prettiest sound to your ears. “I love you too, Y/N.”
She leans back, takes a deep breath as she wipes her tears. “Is my makeup okay?” When you nod, she gets up and says, “Okay. To the dance floor!”
Now that they’ve gone through every step and are reassured that their wedding couldn’t have gone more smoothly, Jaemin and Chaewon let it all out on the dance floor. What starts out as a pretty big crowd, a large portion of the guests up and dancing, fizzles out as the hour grows late. The more elderly relatives have long retired, and it isn’t long before the older adults leave, too, finding their children asleep on random chairs and dragging them out of the venue. Soon, the population on the dance floor is more or less constituted of your high school friends and Chaewon’s and Jaemin’s cousins of your age. When Beomgyu starts to play slower songs around the three a.m. mark, you can’t believe it’s this late already. You were having so much fun you had no idea so much time had passed.
The catering crew has cleared the tables and packed away all their silver- and dinnerware, and your friends, in their drunken state, offer to wipe the floors and take the decorations down, but Chaewon and Jaemin shoo them off, assuring them that they’ll be taking care of it with their families in the morning.
You have to admit, now that the energy’s gone down, you start to feel yourself ready for bed, your feet aching from overuse, even though you took your high heels off hours ago to dance with more ease. It doesn’t help that Jaeyun stays right behind you as everyone starts heading off, his hand low and casual on your hip as you wave them all goodbye and promise to stay in touch. He only hangs back when you have to say goodbye to Chaewon—your flight is around noon tomorrow, so you won’t have time to see her again.
Hugging her tight, you tell her again how beautiful she looked tonight and how happy you are for her. You wish her and Jaemin a happy honeymoon, and she winks back, telling you to have fun, too. “But safe fun!” she yells as you and Jaeyun start making your way to his car. “I love you but you’re not stealing my baby’s spotlight!”
Jaeyun is still laughing as he gets in the driver’s seat, while you’re flooded with embarrassment. “So she told you, then?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“We’re gonna be godparents,” he says, grinning. “Some might say we’re moving a little fast, but I think it’s right.”
You’re smiling impossibly wide. “You’re stupid.”
“And you’re pretty,” he replies, brushing his knuckle along your jaw. It’s an innocent touch, but just like that, the dull ache in your stomach reappears—maybe it’s his proximity all night, all tension and no release, or the fact that it’s the two of you in pure darkness on this late night road, or Chaewon’s comment ringing in your head, but you suddenly find yourself craving for a lot more than an innocent touch. As though he can read your mind, Jaeyun clears his throat. “Do you, um, do you want to go back to mine?” he asks, eyes going back-and-forth between you and the road as though not wanting to miss your reaction.
“Yeah,” you whisper. The air conditioning is on full blast, yet your skin is on fire. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Okay.”
You’re silent for the rest of the car ride, mind racing with possibility. Jaeyun’s hand trembles ever so slightly in yours, like he can barely restrain himself, and you agree that the twenty minutes to his apartment are the longest you’ve ever had to endure. You play with his fingers, hoping the gesture will be calming to both of you, but the feeling of his skin against yours only makes your heart race faster.
His apartment is on the first floor of a small building in the center of Gimcheon. He leads you up the stairs, fingers intertwined with yours, only letting go to open his door. “Layla will be excited to meet you,” he says as he turns the key—indeed, you’re greeted warmly by the cream-colored Border Collie. She seems much happier to meet someone new than to see her boring old owner, who notices this with a frown, huffing something about “betrayal” and “your own kids…” as Layla licks your hands and presents her belly for pets.
“I should probably walk her quickly, she hasn’t been out since this morning,” Jaeyun says, an endeared smile on his face as he watches the two of you get acquainted.
“Should I come with?”
Crouching beside you, he shakes his head. “I know you’re tired, angel. I’ll just be ten minutes, you can wash up in the meantime.”
You follow him into the bathroom, where he hands you a towel and tells you to help yourself to anything you need. “Wait here a minute,” he says, then disappears into his bedroom, coming back with clean clothes for you to wear. He’s sheepish as he rests them on the sink counter, a small smile playing on his lips. “Here. They might be a bit big, but more comfortable than your dress.”
“Thanks, Yun.”
“No worries.” He hesitates for a second, then presses a quick kiss to your temple. “I’ll be quick.”
Even after he leaves, the smile on your lips is wide and unwavering, your heartbeat fast, your fingers twitchy and impatient. You find lotion to wipe your makeup off with, and have far too much fun analyzing all of his shower products as the hot water runs over your body. You can hardly keep your giddiness in check at the thought of washing yourself with Jaeyun’s soap, drying yourself with his towel, then wearing his clothes and finding yourself enveloped with the delicate floral scent of his laundry detergent. He gave you a navy t-shirt with the logo of his family’s business on the front and a pair of basketball shorts that reach your knees, and that you have to tie very tightly at your hips so it stays up. You can’t help but admire yourself in the mirror, for some reason feeling more like a girlfriend than ever before in your life.
When you hear the front door open, you come out to meet him in his living room. As Layla trots over to her bed, he stops for a second when he sees you, mouth slightly agape as his eyes rake your body. You feel shy under his gaze, but surprise yourself by also revelling in the attention, in the way his desire is so evident in his gaze, in the smirk that grows on his lips as he crosses the distance to you.
“Nice walk?” you ask.
“Yeah. You look good,” he says, hands finding your hips, shameless in the way he looks down at you now.
In the shower, you were so preoccupied with simply being here that you didn’t spare a thought for what would happen next—now, under the intensity of Jaeyun’s gaze and the effect of his proximity, you feel unprepared, completely at a loss for what to do with yourself.
It’s lucky for you that Jaeyun, on the other hand, seems to know exactly what he wants to do with you.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, voice low and gravelly unlike you’ve ever heard it before, and it sends shivers down your spines. You don’t trust your voice to work properly, so you nod your assent instead.
Seconds pass like eternity between his question and the moment his lips actually touch your lips. One of his hands leaves your hips to find your chin instead, raising it a little with his thumb so your face is perfectly angled towards his. His touch is gentle, more of a request than a demand, and you crave to melt into it, to let him lead you wherever he wants you.
His lips meet yours, delicate and cautious, like he doesn’t want to scare you off. They move languidly against each other, giving you the time you need to adapt to this without being overwhelmed. You raise your arms and wrap them around his neck while his hand sneaks its way to your lower back, pushing you gently closer towards him, your chest now flush to his. Fire courses through your veins as his tongue meets yours, deepening the kiss and making your thoughts hazy, incoherent, unimportant.
You never dreamed it would be this easy. One kiss, and it’s like a faucet’s opened up inside you, all the desire and want and longing that you’ve kept trapped inside pouring out of you boundlessly. You wouldn’t know how to control it if you had to—and thankfully, Jaeyun doesn’t seem to want you to. He meets you right where you are, holding onto you just as tightly as you are onto him, moaning shamelessly when your fingers tug sharply at his hair, his head thrown back as you pepper his throat with wet, messy kisses.
His mouth doesn’t leave yours as he walks you to his bedroom. Only when he sits down on his bed do you get a glimpse of his expression—the lust-blown pupils, the reddened cheeks, the lips plump and shiny with saliva. His hands are practically on your ass as he brings you down towards him, helping you into a straddling position on his lap. He presses kisses to your cheek, your jawline, then, resting his forehead against yours, asks with a throaty voice, “You’re okay with this?”
You smile, wrap your arms tighter around his neck. “I’m definitely okay with this.”
“Good,” he replies, then wastes no time pressing his lips back to yours.
Years of repressed feelings come out in this kiss—that much is clear in its desperation, in the way you both grab onto whatever parts of the other you can reach, like you want to tether yourselves to each other. When you break apart for air, Jaeyun whispers in your ear how long he’s wanted to do this, lips brushing against your skin as he speaks, making you shake lightly in his hold. The longer you kiss, the weaker the resistance in your thighs grows, and you soon find yourself sitting right on his lap, his bulge hard and demanding attention beneath you. His grip on your hips tightens, but it’s the only sign he gives you of being affected—only when you roll your hips experimentally against his does he let out a loud moan right into your mouth, which you take as a green light to keep going.
You push him down onto the mattress, practically laying on top of him as you grind yourself against him, a small whimper leaving your throat every time his erection rubs perfectly against your clit through your shared layers of clothing. He’s still wearing his wedding outfit, and when his hands leave your body to unbutton his shirt, you waste no time in helping him, untucking his shirt from his trousers, unbuckling his belt. He chuckles at your eagerness, but you can’t bring yourself to feel even a little embarrassed—you don’t think you’ve ever desired anything this badly, and it’s messing with your head. Jaeyun looks at you like he could eat you right up, so you decide there’s no use in hiding your appetite from him.
His hands slip underneath your t-shirt, and your skin blazes with the heat of his touch. They trail up your sides, nails briefly grazing your waist and back before they find your breasts. He gently rubs one of your nipples between his fingers, and Jaeyun curses when you release a moan in the crook of his neck, pressing your crotch against his with more urgency than before. “Does that feel good, baby?” he asks, voice breathy as you squirm under his touch.
“Yes, Yun.”
He hums in satisfaction, one hand on your ass to guide your movements against him, the other alternating between your breasts to pay them equal attention, lips never relenting in their quest to leave no inch of your neck unkissed.
It’s too much and too little at once. A familiar coil tightens in your stomach, and you can’t believe you’re already this close to coming undone from this—every man you’ve slept with before has had to put in a lot more work to get you even near the edge. But with Jaeyun, all it takes is a few minutes of heavy petting and his voice in your ears, telling you how well you’re doing for him, how pretty you look using him to get yourself off.
“That’s it, baby,” he coos as your moans get louder, your movements more erratic. “I’ve got you. Let it go for me.” It’s all you need for your orgasm to wash over you and leave you a trembling mess in his arms, his hold around your waist tight as he kisses your temple and shushes you gently.
When you’ve calmed down somewhat, he helps you onto your back, shifting so that your head rests on his pillows. Now that you’ve regained your senses, the reality of what you’ve done, what you’re doing hits you. Resting on his elbow, Jaeyun gazes down at you fondly, and although you would’ve reveled in it mere moments ago, the intensity of his attention now only brings heat to your face. You can’t quite meet his eyes, a small, bashful smile playing on your lips as you play with the lapels of shirt collar. He must sense this shift in your demeanor, and asks, “Do you wanna keep going?”
Lust pangs low in your stomach. You force yourself to look into his eyes, giving him an almost imperceptible nod. His desire is so obvious on him, and truth be told, you hadn’t even thought you might stop here when he still needs taking care of. The smile on his lips grows, but when you reach out to touch his erection, he tilts his head, grabbing your wrist and laying it back down next to your body. “I didn’t say I was done with you, baby,” he purrs, leaning down to kiss your neck, one hand slipping under your t-shirt again.
“But—”
“I’ve waited so long, angel. Dreamed about having you like this so many times. So be patient and give me this much, hm?”
You release a shaky breath. How can you say no when he makes it sound like letting him make you feel good is doing him a favor, and not you? “Okay.”
“Thank you, angel. Help me with this?” he asks gently, lifting his t-shirt you’re wearing over your head. You’d feel shy at lying half-naked underneath him if it wasn’t for the way he admired you, like an art lover in front of their favorite painting. “So fucking perfect,” he mutters, leaving a trail of kisses down your throat until he reaches your breasts. “Can’t believe you’ve been keeping this from me all this time.”
“I’m sorry, Yun.” You’re already squirming at this touch, body screaming for more than the feather-like kisses he presses to your skin.
“No, no, baby. Don’t apologize. I’d do it all over again, knowing I’d get to see you like this in the end. So perfect,” he repeats, and before you can reply, he wraps his lips around your nipple, tongue darting out to lick at the sensitive bud. Your back arches off his bed, but with a firm hand to your stomach, he stops you from writhing away from his touch.
He seems to be content with doing this for minutes on end, lips alternating between your nipples, fingers tending to the neglected one, teeth sometimes gently nibbling at your skin, leaving behind small marks on the sides of your breasts. “There, now you can’t forget me,” he says with a self-satisfied smirk when he leans back to admire his work.
“As if I could,” you whisper back, hands finding purchase in his hair as you bring him back towards you and kiss him.
But soon enough, another part of your body starts burning from lack of attention, but even as you buck your hips towards him to signal what you need, he doesn’t notice—or doesn’t care. “Yun…” you eventually whine, hoping he’ll understand what it is you want from this one word.
“What’s wrong, baby? You need something?” he asks, faking an innocent tone.
So he does know—he just doesn’t want to give it to you so easily. It’s too bad for you that you’re famously bad at asking for what you need.
You opt instead for grabbing his hand and leading it down to your core—surely, that’s enough of a message. He cups you over your shorts, and your thighs clasp around his wrist, instinctively attempting to create more friction. His hand slips below your waistband, and he groans, forehead falling against your shoulder, when he finds your lack of underwear there. He has direct access to your folds, and he wastes no time sliding two of his fingers there, humming in appreciation. “So wet,” he mumbles, seemingly more to himself than to you.
“Please, Yun,” you plead, voice almost a wince—and it is in a way painful, having him so close to where you need.
“I’m here, angel. I’ll give you what you want.” And indeed, the next second, the pads of his fingers are on your clit, rubbing torturously slow circles onto it. On the pillow, your head falls to the side in your search for more proximity with him—you feel his laboured breathing against your face, and you shift your body closer to him, worming one of your legs between his. As though this is getting to his head as much as yours, he’s silent for a while, his fingers gathering speed on your clit, occasionally sliding down your folds and inside of you. They go so much deeper than yours can, brushing against that spot that has your nails digging into his skin. But as he brings you closer and closer to the edge, you find yourself not wanting to fall right away, at least not like this.
“Yun…” you breathe out, wrapping your fingers around his wrist. He stops immediately, raising his head to look at you with unnecessary concern, making your heart soften for him.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
“No, no, I just…”
You squirm uncomfortably beneath him, and his expression shifts—damn him for understanding so quickly what you’re too shy to say. “You just…” he trails, smug. Resuming his kisses along your throat, he says, “Tell me, baby.”
“You know,” you huff. He laughs against your skin, and even in your annoyance, the melodic sound makes your heart skip a beat.
“Hm, but I’d rather you tell me.”
You hesitate for a few seconds. Your hand finds his bulge again, and this time, he doesn’t stop you. You know he wants this as badly as you do, but if telling him is what he needs, then you’ll have to comply. “I need—I want—I want to come on your dick, Jaeyun, please,” you say, forcing out the words as quickly as you can, face burning in embarrassment.
He freezes. You hear his breathing get louder, more rugged, and it’s a few seconds before he raises himself onto his elbows, fingers at your waistband, dragging your shorts down. The smugness has all but left his features, leaving behind something like sternness—furrowed eyebrows, dark eyes, tight jaw. As he lifts over his head the white sleeveless tee he was wearing beneath his button-up, your hands make clumsy work of his trousers, pulling them down his thighs along with his underwear. His cock springs free, tip an angry-looking red, already leaking precum, and you wonder at the self-restraint he must’ve been exercising this entire time—it’s clearly stronger than yours.
You wrap a hand around the base, transfixed by the sight, and he groans. You pump him a few times, reveling in the small moans that leave his mouth, muffled in the crook of your neck, and in the way his fingers dig into the skin of your hips. He doesn’t let it go on for very long, soon leaning away from you and towards his bedside table. “Let me get a condom, baby,” he says, voice shaky.
“I’m on the pill. You don’t need to wear one.” His head snaps back towards you, eyes wide like a kid on Christmas day.
“Are you sure?” he asks, but he’s already coming back towards you, elbows on each side of your face, peppering the side of your face with kisses.
You wrap your hand around his dick again, letting his tip graze your clit before lining it with your entrance. “Yeah, I am.”
He releases a shaky breath, finding your hand and intertwining his fingers with yours before he finally pushes inside of you, slowly filling you up until he bottoms out. Slick from your previous orgasm and relaxed from his fingers, you accommodate him easily, only needing a few seconds before you’re already bucking up your hips against him, asking for more. For once, Jaeyun doesn’t tease you—he obliges instantly, pushing into you with slow, precise thrusts that have the coil tightening again in your stomach with embarrassing quickness. It doesn’t help that Jaeyun groans right into your ear, whispering curses, muttering about how good you feel around him, “Like you were made for me, baby.”
His free hand slides beneath your thigh and lifts it up to rest it against his hip—this new angle allows him to go deeper, to hit that sensitive spot with every one of his thrusts. As his movements gather speed, you feel yourself inching closer and closer to your orgasm, and when it finally hits, your nails dig into the skin of his bicep, you throw your head back, and you let the pleasure wash over you, your brain going haywire, a loud moan escaping your mouth.
Jaeyun takes the opportunity to latch his lips to your throat, biting and sucking at the skin there, surely leaving yet another mark for you to find in the morning. You’re holding onto him like you might float away if you don’t, thighs shaking as overstimulation starts to set in—and yet, when he asks with a low, gruff voice whether you can handle some more, you find yourself nodding vigorously, ready to take whatever he gives you.
“That’s my girl.”
He slips out of you and you whine at the loss. But he quickly fills you up again, first turning you onto your side as he spoons you from behind, lifting your thigh to grant him better access and pushing into you again with no hesitation. In this position, he’s able to snake an arm around you and play with your clit, making you throw your head back against his shoulder. His pace is gentle at first, as are the kisses he presses to the side of your neck and to your shoulder as he lets you adjust to this new, deeper angle. But it doesn’t take long for his rhythm to quicken as he seems to be nearing release himself—his thrusts get sloppier, harsher, the sounds he makes more desperate.
You didn’t think it’d be possible, but between his fingers on your clit, his dick deep inside you, and his filthy words in your ears, a chasm opens within you once more and you find yourself barrelling towards it at alarming speed. With a few final hard thrusts and the feeling of Jaeyun’s release filling you to the brim, you come undone for the third time tonight, your throat tight and scratchy from moaning so much.
Jaeyun stills inside of you. Without sliding out, he wraps an arm around your middle and brings you closer to him, his hold tight and reassuring. His chest is flush against your back and you feel it rise and fall with each of his breaths; your breathing slowly evens out, eventually matching the rhythm of his. With his fingertips, he draws unintelligible patterns across the skin of your stomach and waist. Tiredness makes your limbs heavy like they could sink right into his mattress. You must be mere seconds away from sleep when you feel him slip out of you. You roll onto your back as he grabs a tissue from his bedside table, cleaning you up gently as he presses a kiss to your temple. “How do you feel?” he asks. “Do you need anything? Some water? A shower?”
You rest an arm around his waist and wiggle closer to him. “Just you,” you say.
“I can give you that. Easy,” he says, the smile audible in his voice.
.
.
You wake up a few times during the night, unaccustomed to sharing a bed with someone else—and not just anyone at that, but Jaeyun, whose warm body you find yourself shifting closer to whenever you regain half-consciousness and realize you’re not in his arms anymore. He barely rouses as you nuzzle your face in his neck, an arm coming up to circle your waist to accommodate your body against his. You wish nothing more than to stay like this forever, but unfortunately, your faithful alarm clock rings at nine a.m. and as you reach for your phone to turn it off, Jaeyun’s loose hold on you tightens.
“Don’t go yet,” he mumbles, voice muffled against your hair, and his gravelly morning voice sends a shiver right down your spine.
You smile. “I’m not. I can stay ten minutes longer.”
He whines, pulls you in closer to him. Goosebumps appear where his fingers slightly dig into your skin. “That’s not long enough…”
“I can’t miss my flight, Yun.”
“Sure you can,” he says casually, and as he starts to press kisses to your neck, you almost think he might be right. “You can catch a later one. You can go home next week.”
You hum, lifting your head to grant him better access to your throat, shivering when his teeth graze your sensitive skin. “My boss might have something to say about that.”
Rolling you onto your back, he drops his forehead on your shoulder with a dramatic sigh. “Ten minutes, you said?” he asks, with a roll of his hips so small it could be seen as accidental. But with the way his erection presses into you, thick and firm, you have an inkling it was anything but.
“Fifteen if you drive fast,” you say, already starting to get out-of-breath.
“That’s plenty.”
Neither of you bothered to put on clothes again last night, so he easily slides two fingers between your folds, gathering your slick and trailing them upwards until they reach your clit. He seems satisfied with the wetness he finds there, quickly shifting to fill you up with his dick rather than his fingers. And indeed, fifteen minutes are plenty—in the time it takes for your alarm to ring again, he’s made you come twice, his thrusts deep and precise as though he has a knowledge of your body that dates back years and not a mere day. He releases inside of you with a groan.
It does suck, having to leave so quickly. You wish you could lay in bed with him for hours, take a shower so long it has negative environmental impacts, and have a late, hearty breakfast with him. Unfortunately, you have to speed through everything—you need to be at the airport at eleven at the latest, and having not foreseen you wouldn’t be spending the night at your aunt, you didn’t finish packing before the wedding. He seems to be as aware of this as you are, and although he keeps a smile on his lips at all times, you can see your sadness reflected in his eyes at the thought of having to say goodbye, so soon after finally opening up to each other.
But in a way, you find goodbye easier this time around. As you hug your aunt and thank her for letting you stay — at which she scoffs, saying this will always be as much your house as it is hers — you’re armed with the knowledge that you’re on good terms now, and that you’re not going back to another three years of near radio silence. It’s not an empty promise that you make her when you tell her you’ll be in touch.
You’ve never seen Jaeyun as talkative as on the drive to the airport. He blabbers away, filling every second of silence like his life depends on it—you don’t help him, quiet as can be out of fear of breaking into sobs in the middle of any given sentence. You remind yourself that this goodbye is only temporary, that you’ll soon make plans for him to visit, but still, your eyes burn at the thought of going home to an empty apartment and falling asleep in a half-empty bed tonight. He must sense this because he eventually tells you, voice soft and vulnerable, “Don’t cry, baby.”
You purse your lips to stop them from trembling, turning away from him so he can’t see your frown. “I feel like I already miss you,” you say, so low you wonder if he can even hear you.
“I’ll come see you soon. And I’ll text and call you so often every day that you won’t have time to miss me,” he replies, but you can hear it in his tone that he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying, only trying to reassure you, and himself, maybe.
“That’s impossible,” you mutter. You’re both silent for the rest of the drive, but his hand in yours is warm, and it does more to comfort you than any words could.
He parks at the airport drop-off area and gets your suitcase out of the trunk for you. He wanted to park where he could leave his car longer, and go into the airport with you, but you convinced him that the quicker your goodbye, the better off you’d be. You have the sinking feeling you might burst into tears at any moment, and you don’t want his last image of you for the foreseeable future to be one with tears streaming down your cheeks, don’t want him to needlessly worry or drive off with a weight on his heart.
He holds you in his arms, hands rubbing reassuring circles on your back. “I’ll come up as soon as I can, okay?” he says. “In less than a month, I promise. Any longer and I might explode.”
You laugh. “I don’t want you to explode.”
“No, that’d be pretty unfortunate.”
With one final kiss to the pretty lips that you’ll be longing for until you see Jaeyun again, you grab the handle of your suitcase and walk towards the entrance of the departures area. “Text me when you land, yeah?” he asks.
You nod. “I will.” You just stand there looking at him for a while—you’re a bit too sad to appreciate the fact that this is your first openly emotional, tearful goodbye, but part of you basks in knowing the separation isn’t hard for you only. “I love you, Yun.”
He smiles, a beautiful mix of sorrow and happiness that you want to commit to memory. “I love you more, angel.”
Every time you turn around, he’s still there leaning against his car, possibly overstaying his time at the drop-off, until you’ve walked too far into the airport and can’t see him anymore.
.
.
It’s already dark outside when a text from Minjeong lights up Jaeyun’s phone. Just dropped her off, it says. I tried to stop her from drinking so much, but she said she was going through Jaeyun withdrawals, whatever that means. Anyways she’s wasted good luck lol
He shakes his head. He’d be annoyed if he wasn’t so excited to see you—he’d told Minjeong to keep you outside for a bit longer after work, not get you drunk. But before he has time to text her back, his phone starts ringing in his hand. Smiling, he picks up, your voice immediately filling his ear.
“Jaeyun,” you whine, extending the second vowel for too many seconds—Minjeong wasn’t just throwing words around when she said you were wasted. You must be in the elevator by now. He has half a mind to come and get you, just in case you’re stumbling around and pressing the wrong floor numbers, but if Minjeong dropped you off at your building and not your apartment, then you must have some awareness left.
He hopes. There’s something important he wants to talk to you about, and he’d rather you were sober for it.
“Hi, baby,” he says.
This is apparently the worst thing he could possibly say, sensing as you make a noise halfway between a grunt and a whine. “Don’t call me baby when I already miss you this much. We’ve talked about this!”
You definitely haven’t. “I’m very sorry,” he says, exaggerating his serious tone, but you don’t catch his sarcasm.
“Yes, you should be.” The telltale beep of your code being pressed into the keypad breaks the silence of your apartment, and Jaeyun’s heart races with excitement. “I’m coming home now, Minjeong took me to this—”
Your next words get caught in your throat the moment you step inside your apartment and see him, a few meters away from you in your kitchen. You stay frozen in place, phone still to your ear as he crosses the distance between you, smiling so hard his cheeks ache.
“Welcome home, angel.”
He’s glad to see you aren’t in too much of a wretched state. Even in your wide-gazed surprise, your eyes are a bit clouded over from the alcohol, and you aren’t standing quite straight on your feet, but the way Minjeong texted him, he half-expected to find you with vomit on the front of your shirt. He steadies you with a hand to your waist, grabs your wrist gently to bring your arm down now that he’s hung up—and right in front of you.
“You’re real?” you ask, and when he nods, as though that was all the confirmation you needed, you throw your arms around his neck. “My Yunie,” you exclaim, voice muffled against his sweatshirt, and he has to bite back his laughter. Even a year and a half into your relationship, that’s a new one. You still get flustered when a pet name escapes your lips instead of his name. Maybe he should let you get drunk more often.
You suddenly lean back, cupping his face between your palms, eyes slightly narrowed as they drift over every inch of his face, like you’re trying to see whether anything’s changed. He lets you, a small, endeared smile on his lips, glad for the opportunity to admire you in return.
You press your lips to his, a little more forcefully than you usually would, then rest your head against his chest once more. “What are you doing here?” you ask. “Did you know I was missing you extra lately?”
“Of course I did. I always know what you’re thinking.”
“Okay. What am I thinking right now?”
He hums, pretends to think for a little. “That you love me and are so happy to see me!”
You gasp. “Yes! You’re so smart,” you exclaim, hugging him even tighter.
Eventually, he manages to get you out of your coat and shoes, and leads you to the kitchen, where your counter is covered in flour and uncooked, homemade dumplings. He only needs to make a few more until he can start frying them. The rice is already cooked, and a miso and vegetable stew simmers on your stove. You make yourself useful by circling your arms around Jaeyun’s waist, your head resting on his shoulders as you watch him fold dough around a beef galbi filling, your favorite.
“Do you wanna go wash up before we eat?” he asks softly, afraid that in your sensitive state, you might take his words the wrong way. But to his surprise, you oblige without a word, giving his cheek a kiss before heading to your bedroom.
When you haven’t come back ten minutes later, he goes to check on you, and finds you laying on top of your sheets, feet not even on your mattress but still on your floor like you fell back sitting and just stayed there. You’ve managed to remove your makeup and let down your hair, but you apparently ran out of energy before you could change out of your work clothes. Drool pools at the corner of your open lips.
Jaeyun’s heart aches with happiness. Every time he looks at you, even like this — especially like this — all he can think is how badly he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. And with every passing day that you stay with him, that you tell him good morning and good night and I love you, he thinks he might have a shot at it.
He sighs, but there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing than slipping your trousers and blouse off of your frame and finding a large t-shirt for you to sleep in, then guiding your body underneath your sheets. You wake up once, giggle at yourself, and immediately fall back asleep.
A while later, after he’s cleaned up the kitchen, had a little bit of dinner — on his own, which he knows you’ll feel awful about tomorrow — and washed up for bed, he gently closes the door of the bedroom behind him, where you’re still in deep sleep.
So he’ll have to wait until the morning to share his news. It’s alright—he has the whole weekend to tell you he’s found the perfect house, not too far from Gimcheon or from Daegu, where your boss has already said you could be transferred. He visited it last week, and in every room, he could picture your future together so perfectly. The kitchen in which he’ll make you a late breakfast on lazy Sunday mornings, the room with a beautiful view over a garden that you could turn into an office for your work-from-home days, the bedroom that he could all too well imagine a crib in. Layla could run around in the garden. You could visit your family and friends whenever you wanted. You could be in Seoul in less than two hours with the train if you ever missed it.
You’ve been talking about moving somewhere together for a while now, but he’s still nervous to bring it up. It’s a huge step, and he can only hope you are as ready as he is to take it—and if you aren’t yet, he’ll gladly wait for you to be. But as he slips into bed with you, your warm body shifting into his embrace even in sleep, he doubts he’ll have to wait long at all. The days of holding back are long gone—ever since it’s fully gotten through to you that he won’t ever leave your side if he can help it, you’ve opened up to him like never before, let him take care of you like he’s always dreamed of.
He looks down at you and your peaceful sleeping face, his initial dangling on a thin silver chain that you’ve worn since you found it again while organizing your jewelry box a few weeks ago. This is enough for now. But one day, if you’ll have him, he’ll make you his with another piece of jewelry, and falling asleep with you in his arms won’t be a once-in-a-while occurrence anymore.
It’s more than enough, he thinks as he presses a kiss to your forehead, and lets the soft sound of your breathing lull him into sleep. It’s everything.
.
.
“My wife.”
Jaeyun’s voice is a low, possessive grunt in your ear. He says those two words like they hold the most precious meaning in the world, and it makes fire rise deep inside you.
You thought the reason Jaeyun had been so antsy during your journey to Hawaii was because he’d never travelled this far. You’d chalked up his need to have his hand in yours or resting on your thigh for the entirety of the flight to it being his first time on a long-distance plane. You easily dismissed his clinginess on the drive from the airport to your hotel as his being tired, which always made him a little needier.
But when he pressed his body to yours the moment the door of your hotel room shut behind you, you finally understood what had actually been on his mind this entire time—the feeling of his erection, hard and insistent on your lower stomach, left no room for interpretation.
To be fair, since getting married three days ago, in the familiarity of your backyard and surrounded by your loved ones, you’d barely gotten any alone time. Relatives of his that lived far away stayed at your house until yesterday night, and at bedtime every night, either one or both of you were too tired to initiate anything. You haven’t had sex since becoming Jaeyun’s wife, and clearly, this has been weighing on your husband.
He kisses you like he has been starving for months, desperate, ravenous, crazed. His arms around you hold you in a tight embrace, your bags haphazardly discarded at your feet. Eventually, he reaches for the back of your thighs and, legs hooked around his waist, carries you to the bed you’ll call yours for the next week. You hadn’t expected to break it in so quickly, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, not when Jaeyun’s tongue laps at your mouth like this, not when his teeth graze your bottom lip so deliciously.
“Need to touch you so bad, my love. Can I?” he asks, voice breathy.
“Yes, Yun, please.”
He slips a hand below your waistband and hums in satisfaction at the wetness he finds there. “Always so wet for me, aren’t you, baby? Always ready for me to fuck you.”
The feeling of his expert fingers on your clit render you unable to reply to him—it’s not like he’s waiting for an answer, anyway. The way you throw your head back and moan his name is all the confirmation he could need.
Although you’d be content to go on like this, it seems as though this isn’t enough for him. He quickly withdraws his fingers, swallowing your whine of protest with a kiss. It’s unusual, the speed with which he makes his way down your body until his face is level with your core. He normally likes to take his sweet time with you, trailing kisses all over your skin before giving in to your pleas for more. You take a little pride in knowing that you don’t have to beg—for once, he’s the desperate one, he’s the one who can’t wait a second longer.
It’s obscene, and obscenely hot, the way he presses his nose against the crotch of your sweatpants and inhales deeply, a guttural groan escaping his throat. He presses kisses to your inner thighs and core over your clothes before he actually slides them down your thighs, letting them pool at your knees like he doesn’t have time to take them off completely. He doesn’t bother with your t-shirt, either, simply snaking his hands underneath it until they reach your breasts.
“Fuck, I’ve missed this pussy so much,” he mutters, admiring it like it belongs in a museum.
You smile. “It’s been, like, four days.”
He shakes his head. “Never going without it for that long again.”
Jaeyun dives into your core, tongue licking a long stripe up your folds before it finds your clit and settles there, alternating between licking and sucking at the sensitive bud, two of his slender fingers quickly sliding inside of you. Your hands find purchase in his hair, tugging at it when a motion of his tongue feels particularly good, hips bucking against his mouth whenever his fingers hit that particularly deep spot inside you. He moans ceaselessly into your core, the vibrations making your thighs shake around his head, as though he needed this as much as you did—if not more. You swear you hear him mutter “my wife” at some point. Embarrassingly quickly, you start to feel that familiar coil of pleasure form low in your stomach, a warm, dizzying buzz spreading throughout your entire body all the way to your fingertips.
Your relief at not having to beg turns out to be short-lived. Jaeyun makes you come on his tongue a first, then a second time, as he is often wont to do. You’re impossibly sensitive, body heavy and boneless by the third time, but he isn’t satisfied. His grip on your hips is firm, and you don’t have the energy to fight it—nor the willingness, really. Tears stream down your face by the time your fourth orgasm hits you, at which point you can’t even tell pleasure from pain anymore. You really do need a break, though, and signal this to your husband — your husband — by lifting his head from your core.
He gives you a few minutes of physical respite, but the words that he whispers against your skin as he presses feverish kisses to your throat and jaw keep you in that hazy, nebulous headspace, and in those few minutes only, you already find yourself reaching for him, cupping his erection over his sweatpants.
You wince when he enters you, overstimulation setting in solely from having him inside you, but you shake your head when he asks if you need a longer break. “Want you, Yun,” you breathe out, holding onto his biceps, nails already digging into his skin.
As he pistons his hips into yours relentlessly, you almost can’t believe this is the same man who was standing before you at the altar mere days ago, the sweetest smile on his lips and tears in his pretty eyes. You guess he’s holding true to one of his vows—he said he’d never make you doubt how much he loves you, and right now, you can’t deny that he’s fucking you like you’re the only woman for him.
You think he must be close when his thrusts speed up and his grunts get louder. And recently, there’s been a new telltale sign that he was inching closer to his orgasm.
“Gonna fill you up, angel. Gonna stuff you full of my cum and make you the prettiest mommy ever. All round and beautiful, and carrying my baby. Show the whole world who you belong to.”
He mutters these words right into your ear just as his breathing gets heavier, more ragged, and seconds later, you feel him spurting ropes of his sperm inside you. When he first started talking to you like this, you assumed it was just long-term relationship dirty talk. But a couple of weeks ago, when you told him you were almost at the end of your last tablet of birth control, he asked how you felt about not renewing your prescription—so not just dirty talk, you realized.
He pulls out of you but stays on top of you, catching his breath as he rests his head on your chest and you play with his hair. Eventually, he grabs your left hand, lifts it to his lips, and presses them to your ring finger, right over the silver band. “Thank you for marrying me, angel,” he whispers. “You’ve made me the happiest man on Earth.”
You kiss the top of his head, basking in the pleasant warmth of his words, of his scent, of his reassuring weight as he lays on top of you. “I’m the lucky one.”
“Will you still feel lucky when I tell you we’re not leaving this room all day?”
When you lift your head to look at him, he’s wearing a devilish grin. “Why not?” you ask.
“Because,” he says, pressing his lips to yours, “I’m fucking the jetlag out of you.” Your body responds to him, heat already starting to swirl in your stomach as though you haven’t already taken more than you could handle—your desire for him is a bottomless well. “And, so that in fifteen years, we get to embarrass our kid by telling them they were conceived in Hawaii.”
Needless to say, over the next week, you spend a lot more time in your hotel room than you’d planned, often only going out around noon or coming back halfway through dinner—whenever Jaeyun sees that ring around your finger, he seems to need some alone time with you.
He doesn't think he'll ever stop needing alone time with you.
You came seeking permanence in a place known for its impermanence. Instead, three men showed you what one unforgettable summer can teach about love, adventure, and letting go.
Genre: destination au, strangers-to-lovers, smut
Pairing: ENHYPEN Jake/Sunghoon/Jay x afab!reader
Warnings: mature themes, explicit sexual content (18+) MDNI,
Notes: 20k words. I KNOW, WHY IS IT SO LONG? Guys, it's three men. 15k words is not gonna cover it all, lmao. Loosely based on the 2018 movie, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again!. I was rewatching the movie (for the 9868th time) and thought it would make a great fic because it's messy and dramatic, you know what I'm saying? LMAO. I hope you like this!
Disclaimer: I do not know them, nor claim they would ever in real life the way they were portrayed in this fic. If you see the same exact fic in a different blog, for NCT, that is me. I did not plagiarize myself, otherwise, lmk.
Enjoy~
Paris, 2007
At a small restaurant tucked into a corner in Paris, you sat across from a guy who hadn’t stopped talking since the wine arrived. His name was Jake. You’d met him earlier that afternoon at the hotel. Or more accurately, you’d bumped into him just as he was coming back from lunch, with his paper cup of cold coffee spilling all over your shirt.
He’d looked horrified. In accented English, he started rapid-firing: “Oh god, I’m so sorry—I didn’t see you—are you okay? Did it burn? No, wait, it’s iced. Still—fuck—hang on—”
You were still blinking the splash out of your eye when he lunged forward with a bunch of napkins, dabbing at your sleeve in a panic. That only led to a series of increasingly awkward brushes and even more frantic apologies. At one point, his hand grazed your left boob and he practically launched himself backward.
“Shit—I wasn’t trying to grope you, I swear! I’m not a strange man!”
You were flustered and maybe a little annoyed. But the whole thing was so ridiculous that you just started laughing. Jake, still a little red in the face, had let out a breathy, nervous chuckle of his own. For a few seconds, he just watched you laugh with a slight crease on his forehead and a confused but curious smile on his lips.
You’d eventually stopped laughing and started waving your hand dismissively. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It was just… oh my god,” you trailed off, looking away so you don’t laugh again.
“I know this is probably the worst possible timing but—would you, um—” He paused, cleared his throat, and in one breath and what you now realized was an Australian accent, blurted, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
And now here you were. He was still rambling.
“It’s just been a mess since I got here. First, the hotel mixed up my reservation, then I couldn’t figure out the train system, and don’t even get me started on the guy at the station who yelled at me in French—I think it was French. I don’t know. I really thought this trip would be like… I don’t know, healing or something?”
He paused only to take a sip of wine, then set the glass down with a sigh.
“I’m not even the spontaneous type, you know? I plan everything. But I thought, hey, maybe I’ll go off the grid for once. Have my little adventure. And so far, it’s just been a lot of me getting lost and getting sworn at in French.”
“They were probably just saying ‘hi,’” you offered, shrugging.
“Yeah, maybe. But I probably should’ve just stayed home,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Played with my dog, or something.”
You rested your chin on your hand, half a smile tugging at your lips as you watched him go on. He talked a lot about himself, but not in a way that he was trying to impress you. He was just… nervous. A little frantic, even. But there was something about the way he talked earnestly and a bit self-deprecatingly that made you want to lean in and listen. It was kind of cute.
He was kind of cute.
Jake glanced up mid-sentence. “Sorry, I’m talking too much, aren’t I? I don’t usually talk too much, but I can’t help it. You’re just so…” he trailed off and sighed. “Is it boring? Am I boring you?” he added, looking a little apologetic.
You shook your head. “Not at all. Please, I like listening.”
He smiled, relieved, and you found yourself smiling back.
Two days ago, you’d been somewhere else entirely. Standing at the airport with your two best friends, both trying not to cry, both saying you were being dramatic, that you were running away. Maybe you were. But you liked to think of it as ‘starting over’ instead.
The moment your graduation cap hit the floor of your shared apartment, you knew your youth was over, and that perfect, cookie-cutter life waiting back home would catch up to you. You didn’t want that. So you packed your bags and chose your own path.
Corsica. An island off the coast of France, where you could be whoever you wanted and do whatever you wanted.
You hadn’t made it to Corsica yet. You hadn’t even figured out how to get there. But you weren’t in a hurry. So for now, you wandered Paris. And somehow, you’d ended up here—with a very cute stranger who couldn’t stop talking.
After dinner, you ended up walking along the Seine and Jake had stopped talking. The silence was a little startling, like someone had hit pause on a very fast, very chaotic radio broadcast. But it wasn’t awkward. He kept close but not too close, his hands tucked into his coat pockets, his shoulders hunched slightly against the wind.
The city lights reflected on the river, making it glimmer as you basked in the quiet and the beauty around you. Paris looked like something out of a movie, and you found yourself slowing your steps just to take it all in.
“Paris is kind of magical,” you said, just to say something.
Jake nodded slowly, then said, “It’d be a lot more magical if the people were a little nicer.”
You laughed. “Still mad about that guy at the train station?”
“He called me a donkey.”
You blinked. “Wait, what?”
“Un âne,” he said, in a terrible accent, pulling out a small dictionary from his coat pocket. “I looked it up later.”
You laughed harder, and he gave a self-pitying sigh that only made it worse. “I don’t even know what I did. I think I just stood too close to him.”
You kept walking, your steps in sync without meaning to. It seemed like Jake had finally gotten comfortable around you. He’d stopped yapping and the nervous crease on his forehead had disappeared at some point. He asked where you were from, how long you were traveling, what made you pick Paris. You answered casually, carefully. Bits and pieces. Enough to keep the conversation going without opening up too much.
But it was a good conversation, and a good walk. You enjoyed talking to him and hearing his thoughts. And from the way he looked at you when you talked, it seemed like he enjoyed it too.
When you finally made it back to the hotel, Jake lingered with you in the lobby, fidgeting with the room key in his hand. He was getting nervous again, you could tell by the way his forehead was creased, and how he couldn’t look you in the eyes.
“What?” you prompted.
Jake scratched the back of his neck. “Hey, um,” he said, voice suddenly a little hoarse, “do you… wanna go out with me tomorrow?”
You tilted your head, pretending to think. “Are you gonna spill another drink on me?”
“No,” he said quickly. Then added, “Not on purpose.”
You bit back a smile.
“I just—” he exhaled, looking a little too earnest, “Meeting you was kind of the only good accident I’ve had this whole trip. So, if you don’t have plans, how about spending the day with me?”
That sold it. You smiled and said, “I would love to, Jake.”
He looked relieved, grinning at the carpet before finally meeting your eyes again.
You didn’t bother setting an alarm. When you wandered downstairs the next morning, Jake was already waiting in the lobby, sipping a cappuccino and tapping his foot like he wasn’t sure whether he was early or late.
His eyes lit up when he saw you. “Hey,” he said, standing up a little too fast. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
You raised a brow. “I said I will.”
“Yeah, I know, but sometimes people say yes and don’t mean it. And I’ve been ghosted before. Not that I thought you would. Just—anyway. Hi.”
You laughed and said hi back.
“You look good today,” he said, smiling toothily. “And yesterday too. I’m sure you look good every day.”
“Dude, stop,” you chuckled, already making a beeline for the exit. “Let’s just go.”
“Of course! Yeah!”
The plan, if there was one, was to wing it. You both agreed on no maps and no real agenda. Jake suggested museum-hopping, and it sounded good enough. He brought a little foldable tourist map “just in case,” which you teased him for.
You wandered through halls of oil paintings and marble statues, whispering observations like you were museum critics. Jake tried to guess what every sculpture was about—usually something tragic or wildly inappropriate. He made you laugh loud enough to earn a few shushes from other people.
“‘Femme Étendue avec un Chien.’ Sounds like a thriller.”
You rolled your eyes. “It’s a woman napping with her dog.”
“Still. Could be a thriller. The dog murdering its master kind of thriller.”
You got shushed by a woman in a long wool coat. Jake mimed zipping his lips but started talking again five seconds later.
After that, you ended up in Montmartre, where artists lined the cobbled square, painting everything from landscapes to caricatures. Jake insisted you both get one drawn together by a grumpy man with yellow-tinted glasses who didn’t say a word the entire time. When he finally flipped the sketch around, Jake let out a strangled noise.
“Is that my nose? I look like a pelican.”
You bit your lip to keep from laughing. “I kind of love it.”
While you were there, a man tried to sell you a tiny Eiffel Tower keychain for twenty euros and Jake got so flustered trying to say ‘non merci’ that you ended up dragging him away before he accidentally bought three.
You shared a crepe from a street vendor and walked into luxury boutiques, the kind where everything smelled expensive and the saleswomen looked allergic to budget travelers. You ran your fingers along a buttery-soft leather purse with no visible price tag.
Jake hovered behind you, blinking at the rows of gleaming handbags.
“How much do you think this is?” you asked, holding up a small purse.
“Mm… two hundred?”
You tilted the bag to find the tag. “Try two thousand.”
Jake recoiled like it burned him. “Does it read your mind? What are we paying for?”
“The aesthetic, obviously,” you said, striking a mock-model pose.
In another shop, you pointed at a pair of heels that looked like crystal. Jake pointed at a maroon scarf and said, “You’d look good in this.”
You scoffed. “If I can afford it.”
Jake tilted his head as he searched for the price tag. “Oh, I think this is the only thing we can afford from here.”
You hummed, narrowing your eyes like you were actually considering it. “Exactly how many crepes can we buy for one of those?”
He shrugged. “Twenty, give or take?”
“Yeah, nope.”
“Big nope,” he agreed, carefully putting the box back on the shelf.
By late afternoon, your feet were starting to ache. You tried to hide it, but Jake noticed.
“I know you’re tired, but we have one more stop. We’re gonna need to take a train, but I promise it’s worth it.”
You grimaced, and for a second, Jake looked like he was about to give up, but he shook his head and put on a determined face. “You can’t come to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower.”
That made you nod. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”
He took you to the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t part of the plan—you didn’t have one, but you weren’t expecting it, not really. You’d caught glimpses of it during the day, rising above the city like a paper cutout, but standing under it at dusk felt different.
It glowed. That was the only word for it. Golden lights stretched up into the sky, and there was this hush, like the whole city had quieted just for a moment to let you take it all in.
You ended up on the lawn across the street from the Eiffel Tower, eating sandwiches from a shop you passed on the way there. The sky was turning lilac. You chewed slowly, taking it all in—lights blinking, the faint sound of a violin from somewhere down the street, the grass slightly damp beneath your coat.
“I used to think I’d work for a big hotel chain,” you said after a while. “You know, like… the Four Seasons or The Ritz.”
Jake turned his head to look at you.
“But later on, I decided I wanted one of my own,” you went on. “A little hotel. Cozy and nice. Something that feels like home for people who are far away from theirs.”
Jake hummed thoughtfully, swallowing a bite before saying, “I’d stay there.”
You turned to him. “You would?”
He nodded. “But only if there’s room service. And robes. I’m very fancy.”
You snorted. “We’re eating 2 euro sandwiches in probably the most expensive city in the world.”
“Only for now,” he replied proudly. “We’d both be doing much better and earning much more by the time you’ve built that hotel.”
You didn’t say anything to that. You just smiled at your sandwich and took another bite.
In your dimly lit hotel room, you sat on the edge of your bed, laughing at something Jake had said. You were leaning your head against the four-poster as you watched Jake in his spot on the carpeted floor, fumbling with the wine bottle and the paper cup.
He’d brought it out casually in the elevator, half-joking that he’d bought it on his first day here to take back home, but he was willing to share it with you. One thing led to another, and now here you were, drinking warm Bordeaux out of paper cups and toasting to the kind of day that felt too good to leave unfinished.
Jake finally managed to pour without spilling and handed you your paper cup.
“I wish this place at least had room service,” he sighed, shaking his head at the cup.
“You should’ve gone to a bigger, more posh hotel then,” you teased before taking a sip.
It was fruity, a little warm, and probably not very good, but in that moment, it felt perfect enough.
You talked less now. The day had wrung most of it out of you. Jake had leaned back against the bed, long legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted toward the ceiling as he listened. He was just there—warm and a little flushed, wine-stained cup cradled in one hand.
He let out a contented sigh. “I don’t think I’ve ever walked this much in one day.”
You snorted. “You say that like you didn’t make me climb half of Montmartre.”
Jake gave you an indignant look. “I did make you climb, but it was me who almost died trying to keep up with you.”
“You’re such a baby,” you laughed, nudging his knee with your foot. He caught it in his palm.
You looked down, and so did he. Neither of you said anything.
Then his hand slid up, fingers wrapping loosely around your ankle—carefully, almost cautiously. You watched the way he tilted his head to meet your eyes, searching, communicating something you could understand clearly, oddly enough.
You could say it was the alcohol, willing you into something you usually wouldn’t do sober. But you knew that would be a lie. You weren’t drunk, not even tipsy. You knew what you were doing when you gave him the same look he was giving you.
Your heart picked up as Jake’s hand traveled up your leg, pausing at your knee. He leaned in, soft and slow, and planted a kiss on your skin.
You didn’t say anything. And to him, your silence—and the way you were looking at him—was encouragement enough to keep going.
He kissed the side of your knee again, a little firmer this time. When you still didn’t stop him, he shifted closer. His hand slid up your leg, pausing just above your knee.
“Tell me if this is—if I’m reading this wrong,” he said softly, his voice lower than before but you could hear he was a little nervous.
“You’re not,” you said softly, offering a shy smile.
Jake gave a small, almost bashful smile, like he was relieved but still a little uncertain. Then he leaned in, placing a hand beside your hip as he kissed you. He missed your mouth the first time, catching the edge of your lip.
“Sorry,” he muttered under his breath.
You laughed a little against his mouth. “It’s fine. Come here.”
That helped. He kissed you again, properly this time, one hand cupping the back of your neck while the other propped him up on the bed. Still, even as it deepened, he wasn’t rushing. You could feel how careful he was, like he didn’t want to startle you or like he wasn’t sure this was really happening.
When you tugged his shirt up, he hesitated for a second before helping you take it off, eyes darting to yours like he was checking again.
“You sure?” he asked in a whisper.
You nodded. “Are you?”
He let out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah. Just… kind of feels unreal.”
That made your chest ache in a good way. You leaned forward, pressing your lips to his cheek, and said, “It’s real.”
He let out a breath, nodding as he touched your waist, thumbs brushing your skin like he wanted to be gentle even now. His shyness didn’t last long once you pulled him close again, his confidence creeping in the moment he saw you responding with your hands on him, and your breath hitching under his touch.
Jake took care of the rest, his hands sliding under your top with more certainty now. His palms were warm, fingertips grazing up your sides, over your ribs, until you raised your arms and let him pull the fabric over your head. His gaze flickered downward, then back up again, clearly trying not to stare but staring anyway.
You felt beautiful under his gaze, the kind of beautiful that didn’t come from lighting or lingerie or careful timing, just the way he looked at you. Like he wanted all of you, and genuinely so.
“You’re—” he started, then bit his lip, trying to compose himself. “You’re beautiful.”
You reached for him, pulling him in until your lips met again, slower this time, deeper. When you moved further up onto the bed, Jake followed, crawling up between your legs as you tugged at the waistband of his jeans. He was quiet but not passive. His hands were all over you now, exploring, touching, squeezing with a gentle firmness that made your heart skip.
As he pulled your bottoms down and tossed them aside, his gaze trailed over every inch of bare skin with eyes of adoration and amazement. He hesitated just long enough for you to notice. His fingers were brushing the top of your thigh, his lips parting like he wanted to say something but couldn’t.
You reached for him instead, undoing the button of his jeans with more confidence than you felt. “Jake,” you prompted.
“Yeah,” he murmured, forehead resting against yours. “Yeah, I’m here.”
He kissed you again, one hand traveling down from your boob to your belly, and futher down to cup your sex. He worked you up for a few moments, fingers circling your clit clumsily but with just enough pressure to make you moan.
And when he finally decided to push into you, he did it painfully slow, still being cautious. He held still, breathing hard, his hand sliding under your thigh to pull you closer. His other hand gripped the sheet near your head like he needed something to hold on to.
You let out a soft gasp, your back arching as you adjusted around him, and he kissed your shoulder, your neck, anywhere he could reach.
“You okay?” he murmured.
You nodded again. “Yeah. You can move.”
He obliged and moved slowly at first, deeply, the kind of rhythm that made your toes curl. He kept it up until the tension coiled tight in both your bodies, until his restraint began to slip. The room filled with breathy, lewd sounds—your moans, his whispered curse when you clenched around him, the muffled thump of the headboard as his thrusts grew more desperate.
You bit your lip, eyes shut tight as you tried not to be too loud. The hotel was cheap, and the walls were unforgivingly thin.
“Jake, please,” you whimpered, mouth parting but barely making a sound, even as he drove you to the edge.
“Please what?” he asked softly, brushing a thumb over your cheek and kissing your forehead.
You gripped his arms tighter, holding his gaze. “Harder.”
He didn’t hesitate this time. With a low grunt, he adjusted his grip on your hips and drove into you harder, the rhythm picking up, deeper now, less cautious. Your head tipped back against the pillows, a sharp moan slipping out before you could stop it. Jake buried his face in your neck to muffle his own.
Each thrust made the headboard knock just slightly louder. You barely registered it anymore. All you could think about was the heat of his skin, the stretch of him inside you, and the desperation in the way he held you like he couldn’t get close enough.
“God, you feel so—” He cut himself off with a breathy groan, hands sliding up your sides. “You okay?”
You couldn’t answer with words. You just nodded frantically and wrapped your legs tighter around his waist, drawing him in deeper. He gasped, nearly losing his rhythm.
Your hand tangled in his hair as your other clawed at his back, trying to hold yourself together as he kept hitting just the right spot. The coil in your belly wound tight. You were close. His movements turned erratic, one hand slipping down to your clit, clumsily rubbing in tight circles until your body seized around him.
Your orgasm hit like a wave, crashing over every nerve. You clung to him, gasping out his name, your entire body tensing, shaking, unraveling.
Jake didn’t last much longer. The second your walls clenched around him, he let out a strangled groan, buried as deep as he could go, and spilled into you. His whole body trembled with it, the hand near your head fisting the sheet like he needed to anchor himself to something.
For a moment, neither of you moved. Neither of you said anything and it was just the sound of your breathing, oddly too loud in the quiet room.
He pressed a soft kiss to your shoulder. Then your collarbone. Then your cheek. And finally, your lips—slow and breathless and almost shy again.
Then, quietly, Jake asked, “Did you like it?”
You pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. His cheeks were flushed, his hair was messy, and he looked so earnest that your heart squeezed a little.
You nodded, a smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah. I really did.”
He let out a relieved breath, then grinned bashfully, like he couldn’t quite believe this had happened.
“Good,” he said, tucking his face into the crook of your neck again. “’Cause I really liked it too.”
You chuckled. “You did well.”
He let out a soft laugh, forehead pressed to yours. “I think I just saw stars.”
He fell on the space beside you, staring at the ceiling as you both caught your breath. You curled up beside him, nuzzling against his chest that was still damp with sweat. You wanted to say something, but sleep was already catching up to you.
Jake wrapped an arm around your shoulder, pressing a kiss to your forehead. Then he let out a deep, contented breath.
“I think I’m in love with you,” he said, barely above a whisper.
You blinked, suddenly wide awake. You shifted to look at him, but his breathing was already slowing, his features softening.
He was fast asleep before you could say anything.
The wind blew at you as soon as you stepped off the bus, salty and cool and strong enough to tug at your sun hat. You held it in place and squinted up at the sky. It was bright and beautiful, the vivid blue hue decorated with scattered clouds.
You adjusted the handle of your carrier and followed the other passengers toward the ferry terminal. A seagull screamed overhead. Someone lit a cigarette beside you. Around you, people were chattering in what you could make out was French and some Italian. It was much noisier here than it was in Paris. Less posh and polished, more human and real.
The morning felt raw, a little too bright after a night like that. But you didn’t look back. Corsica was next. That was the plan. That had always been the plan.
The port was small—just one wooden pier stretching out into the water, a few moored boats bobbing gently with the current. It was a far cry from Paris, or even the bus station you’d left this morning. Everything here moved slower, like time itself had decided not to keep up.
You walked up to the small booth, eyes darting to the analog clock above the door. 17:10.
Last Departure - 17:00Next Departure - Tomorrow, 7:10
“No, no, no,” you muttered, quickening your pace.
You shoved past a wobbly gate that probably wasn’t meant to be opened, lugging your bag like it was a boulder. “Wait!” you screamed at the ferry, your voice cracking as you sprinted along the creaky wooden pier.
“Wait for me!” you shouted, flailing your arms like a maniac.
The ferry let out a long, mournful horn and started to pull away, the wake rippling through the still water.
“Turn back!” you shrieked, weaving past a stack of plastic crates and an unimpressed fisherman. “Turn back! Damn it!”
You reached the end of the pier, panting, face red, chest burning. The ferry was already further on the horizon.
“Seriously?!” you yelled, flailing your hat in the air. “You couldn’t wait five more minutes?!”
You dropped your suitcase with a thud and bent over your knees, catching your breath. “Merde.”
“Missed your boat?” said a man from behind you.
You straightened, whipping around with a glare reserved for backhanded comments and people who cut in lines. “Wow, what gave it away?” you deadpanned. “The shouting or the visible despair?”
The man smiled smugly. His dark hair was pushed back neatly, his button-down was crisp and linen, and on his nose sat a pair of sunglasses you could swear you’d seen on display at Prada yesterday. Definitely not a local. And definitely not someone who’d taken three buses in the past ten hours.
“Both?” he said, tilting his head. “That’s too bad. The next ferry isn’t until tomorrow.”
You sighed, all the fight draining from your body at once. “Yeah. I can read.”
He clicked his tongue, stepping closer to the edge of the dock beside you. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he said, “if someone had a boat that could take you to the island?”
You let out a dry laugh. “It sure is. But it’s a little early to start hallucinating.”
“Mm,” he hummed, eyes flicking over you with mild amusement.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked past you, toward a gleaming white yacht docked not ten feet away.
You blinked.
He stepped onto the deck like he’d done it a hundred times before, then turned back to look at you with an infuriatingly pleasant smile. You lifted your chin, brushed your hair out of your face, and stepped forward.
“Looks like someone did have a boat that could take me to the island,” you said, flashing your best smile. “If only the owner was nice enough.”
He glanced at the yacht behind him, then back at you. “Oh, this isn’t mine. I just stand here pretending it is so women will fall for me.”
You snorted. “Gross.”
“Maybe,” he said, grinning. “But it works.”
You scoffed, laughing under your breath as you waved him off and turned away. “Right. Bye, then.”
“I’m kidding,” he called out, still laughing. “Come aboard. My boat’s heading that way too, and I’ve got spare rooms.”
Your feet moved before your brain could offer a single warning, climbing onto the docked yacht without hesitation. No passport check, no credentials, no double-take at the stranger with movie-star hair and designer sunglasses. Just vibes. Your mother would’ve had a stroke.
Or, more likely, she would’ve shaken her head and muttered something about how you always liked to fuck around and find out.
The man turned just in time to help you onto the deck, his hand warm around yours. “I’m Jay, by the way.”
You told him your name and he chuckled. “Next time, you might wanna do a double-take and get to know people before getting into their boat,” he said.
You laughed at that, though you agree he was right. “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”
You glanced around the yacht. Sleek, white, and clean enough to eat off of the floor. A compact galley gleamed to the left, and a staircase led to what you assumed were the sleeping quarters.
“This is Captain Luc,” Jay said, nodding to a man in a white polo who gave you a quick salute before going back to his maps. “That’s Sofia, our cook. Pierre and Manu help out with navigation and maintenance. Don’t worry, they’re all very well-paid and only mildly resent me.”
Sofia gave you a wink as she passed with a basket of fruit, and Manu barely looked up from where he was scrubbing something on the deck.
“Nice setup,” you said, setting your suitcase down with a thunk that felt very out of place on such pristine floors.
Jay smiled. “It’s not huge, but it gets the job done.”
“That’s what they all say,” you quipped, giggling.
His grin widened. “I like you already.” He turned and motioned for you to follow him below deck. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
You followed him down a narrow staircase and into a hallway of sleek wood and soft lighting. He opened a door to a small but clean room with a porthole view and a surprisingly fluffy-looking bed.
“This one’s cozy,” he said. Then, casually added, “Mine’s a bit nicer though. Bigger bed. Better sheets. Better lighting, if that matters.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Bet the women loved the lighting in your room.”
Jay leaned on the doorframe, still grinning. “They loved me more, but yeah, the lighting did suit their taste too.”
“Great.” You stepped into the room, tossed your bag onto the bed, and gave him a sweet smile. “I like dim rooms like this one better.”
But Jay wasn’t backing down yet. “You’d be surprised how effective dimmers can be.”
You gave him your fakest smile and nodded to the door. “Thanks for accommodating me. Please close the door on your way out.”
Jay chuckled and pushed off the doorframe. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll be dimming the lights in advance.”
He disappeared down the hall, leaving the scent of some expensive cologne lingering behind him.
You looked around the room again, shook your head, and flopped back onto the bed.
The sun had set by the time you made it up to the deck. The sky was starry and cold, and the sea was calm, stretching endlessly in all directions. Dinner had been set on a small table with linen napkins, wine glasses, and even candles.
Jay looked up from the magazine he was reading, straightening up when he saw you walking in. “Good evening. How was your nap?” he asked, motioning to the seat across from him.
“Refreshing,” you replied, eyeing the setup. “First, you tried to seduce me with good lighting. Now it’s sea bass?”
He laughed. “Can’t a guy just offer dinner without an ulterior motive?”
You sat. “Sure, he can. But to me, you’re a walking ulterior motive.”
“Please,” he chuckled. “I just like to make my guests feel special.”
“How many guests have there been?”
Jay poured you a glass of wine and handed it over. “Too many. You’re my favorite, though.”
You smirked as Sofia walked over to fill your glass with wine. “You’re really going for it, huh?”
“Just enough to keep you entertained,” he replied smoothly, taking a sip of his wine. “If I go too hard, you’ll run. If I don’t try, I’m wasting this view.”
“You mean me or the sea?”
He tilted his glass toward you. “Both. Though you’re slightly more distracting.”
Dinner was actually good. The fish was cooked perfectly, and the wine was expensive and tasted like it. Every so often, a crew member drifted in and out, clearing plates or topping off wine like it was just any ordinary day. Jay, for his part, didn’t stop flirting for more than thirty seconds at a time.
“So where exactly were you running to before you missed the ferry?” he asked, leaning in like he actually wanted to hear the answer.
“Some small village in Corsica,” you said, twirling your fork.
“Vacation?”
You shrugged. “Immigration? I’m moving there.”
His brows furrowed slightly. “Why?”
“Identity crisis?” you offered with a chuckle. “Nothing really. Just trying to figure things out. Make something for myself.”
“Ah,” he said, sipping his wine. “My favorite kind of woman.”
“I’m sure you say that about every kind of woman.”
“Not to every kind,” he replied, smirking. “Just the ones I like.”
You rolled your eyes but couldn’t help chuckling.
“Anyway,” he said after a beat, cutting into his food, “I may not look like it, but I’m kind of figuring things out too. So… I get it.”
“Thanks,” you said. “I’m sure you’ll get there eventually.”
“I feel like we should toast to that,” he said, lifting his glass. “To starting over and making something of ourselves.”
You clinked yours gently against his. “To strange men and questionable decisions.”
After dinner, the two of you drifted toward the front of the yacht. You leaned against the rail, watching the faint outline of the horizon and the stars dotting the night sky.
Jay stood beside you, close but not touching. His wine glass dangled loosely in his fingers. “Not a bad way to spend a missed ferry, huh?” he said.
You hummed. “Could’ve been worse. I could’ve ended up on a fishing boat with no wine.”
“Or worse,” he said, “with someone boring.”
You glanced at him. “Fine. I’ll concede and say you’re not that boring.”
Jay smirked, eyes on the sea. “I can already imagine how broken my heart would be once you leave this boat tomorrow.”
You snorted. “Did that line ever work for you? Don’t tell me it did, because I know it didn’t.”
He chuckled. “Oh, you’d be surprised. It’s my best line.”
“No, it’s not,” you replied, shaking your head and taking a sip from your glass.
“It is, though,” Jay insisted, bright grin gleaming under the light. “Although, I can see that it doesn’t work on you, and that’s just making me fall in love with you even more.”
“Stop,” you chided softly, nudging his arm with your elbow. “I won’t have sex with you.”
“Why not?”
You looked over at him, smirking. “We literally only just met.”
He bumped you back with a grin “And you’re not that kind of girl?”
“Absolutely not,” you said, then paused. “Usually,” you added, looking away.
Jay chuckled heartily, taking one step away. “Fine. But it is true that I’m falling in love with you.”
“Yeah,” you sniggered, rolling your eyes. “I'm getting that a lot these days.”
The next day arrived with the soft rock of the yacht and sunlight pouring through the porthole window. You stirred awake at noon, disoriented for a second before remembering the events of the day before—missed ferry, expensive yacht, handsome stranger with very white teeth.
By the time you made it to the deck, the coastline of Corsica was already coming into view. It was closer now and you had specifically pointed out a tiny village by the coast when the captain asked where you wanted to be delivered to.
The village was small, charming in that rustic way travel blogs loved to romanticize—whitewashed walls, terracotta roofs, little boats bobbing in a quiet harbor. It looked peaceful and safe. Like the kind of place where things might finally slow down for you.
Jay was already up, leaning casually on the rail with a coffee in hand and sunglasses perched on his nose like he hadn’t stayed up half the night trying to charm you out of your room.
“Sleep well?” he asked without looking.
You stepped beside him and inhaled the salt-thick air. “Like a sloth. Must be the ocean breeze. Or the sheer emotional exhaustion of your flirting.”
He chuckled. “You wound me. I’m not a flirt, I’m a charmer.”
“Does saying that help you sleep better at night?” you asked, stretching your arms over your head.
“Most of the time,” he said, grinning. Then he nodded toward the dock. “You’re up next. Corsica awaits.”
You glanced at the approaching land, heart flickering with something between nerves and excitement. “Oh, it’s a beauty. Are you sure you won’t stop by and explore the island before you head to Sardinia?”
“I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’m a little behind schedule.” He turned to face you fully, just for a moment. “It’s a shame, though. I was starting to enjoy your company.”
“Was?”
“Am,” he corrected, gently. “Though I suspect I’ll be enjoying the memory of you more than anything else.”
You rolled your eyes but found yourself smiling anyway. “Well, thanks for the ride. And the fish. And for not being a strange man who liked to kidnap unsuspecting tourists who missed their ferries.”
Jay laughed a little too hard, head lolling back. When he recovered, he was wiping small tears from the corners of his eyes. “We’ll see each other again, though. I’m sure of it.”
You blinked at him. “That sounded oddly ominous.”
He winked. “Then I said it right.”
The yacht bumped gently against the dock. A crew member waved you toward the exit. You gave Jay a last look, one corner of your mouth lifting in amusement.
“Take care, Playboy.”
“You too, Miss Not-That-Kind-of-Girl.”
You descended the ramp with your suitcase thumping behind you, the sun warming your shoulders and your next destination waiting just ahead.
Behind you, the yacht peeled away from the dock and disappeared around the curve of the coast. But Jay’s last words echoed anyway.
We’ll see each other again.
The village was even lovelier up close. Narrow stone streets wove between crumbling old buildings, flower boxes popping color out of every window. Locals moved slowly, like they had all the time in the world. It felt like a place untouched by urgency, like nothing truly bad could happen here.
You wandered without direction, letting your feet take you uphill, away from the port and toward the cliffs that framed the coastline. The sea stretched endlessly below, crashing in soft rhythms. For a while, you just stood there and stared at it, arms folded loosely, wind tugging at your clothes. You could already picture the postcards.
Then, further ahead, something caught your eye.
It sat like a relic from another lifetime: a grand, slightly crumbling mansion with tall shuttered windows and ivy crawling halfway up the walls. The gate stood open, a “FOR SALE” sign bolted crookedly to the wrought iron. Grass had grown wild, and the gravel path was broken and overgrown, but the bones of the place were beautiful. In your mind’s eye, you could picture the grandeur and the majesty of the place.
You hesitated for a second, then stepped through the gate. The front door wasn’t locked and inside, the air was stale but not unpleasant. The ceilings were high, the rooms wide and flooded with light from broken windows. It smelled faintly of dust and sea. You moved carefully, your footsteps echoing across tiled floors and creaking wood.
In your mind, it all changed. You saw fresh white paint, wide glass doors, airy curtains that fluttered in the breeze. You pictured soft linens and warm breakfasts, travelers coming in from the harbor with sand still on their skin. You could almost hear the clink of plates in a bright little dining room and laughter echoing through the halls.
You gasped at the sheer excitement of it all, covering your mouth as you looked around the place. Then you shrieked and started twirling around. You stopped just in time, breathless at the edge of the stairs.
“This is it,” you muttered to yourself, eyes still wide. “This is the place.”
You turned to leave, determined to find out if the place was still for sale and if your savings was enough to buy it. But just as you were stepping out of the big double doors, large drops of rain started hitting the floor and your head.
The downpour came instantly, heavy and fast, drenching the gravel path before you. You froze at the doorway, then stepped back inside. The once quiet halls were filled with the sound of raindrops battering the roof and the old windows, sheets of it cascading off the eaves. There was no point trying to make a run for it.
So you wandered a little deeper into the house, hugging your arms to yourself.
“Just for a few minutes,” you murmured aloud, brushing a cobweb off a dusty banister. “I’m sure it’s just passing by.”
But hours passed and the rain didn’t let up.
What started as a drizzle had turned relentless, and by late afternoon, it was hard to tell whether the sky was getting darker from the storm or the approaching dusk. The old house groaned occasionally with the wind. Water pelted the windows like tiny stones.
You paced for a bit, hugged your knees for a while, then tried pacing again. The floorboards creaked. Somewhere upstairs, something thudded. It could’ve been the wind. Or ghosts. You chose not to think about it.
“I love this place,” you muttered to yourself. “I just don’t want to die here.”
With the rain still going strong and no sign of stopping, you resigned yourself to the possibility of staying the night, miserable, damp, and slightly haunted. You pulled your bag closer, rummaging for something that could function as a light source. Cellphone? Dead. Flashlight? Obviously, you didn’t have one. You were sure you had a lighter, though. It was your friend’s that you’d nicked at some point before leaving for France.
Just as you were deep into your luggage looking for the lighter, you heard footsteps. Your head jerked up. Then another footstep, then the sound of the front door creaking.
You froze. You weren’t imagining it—someone was inside!
Your mind raced. Was it the owner? Were you about to be arrested for trespassing? Was it a real estate agent with unfortunate timing? Or worse, some awful drifter who wandered into empty buildings looking for lone women to murder in cold blood?
The footsteps were getting closer. Your heart jumped into your throat.
Without thinking, you grabbed the closest thing—a splintered piece of wood from a broken table leg—and backed into the shadow of the stairwell, gripping it like a weapon.
They were coming down the main hall with steady, heavy steps. When the figure appeared in the doorway, you lunged.
Or, well, tried to.
A startled yelp came out of both of you as the man blocked your swing just in time, catching your wrists with both hands. “Whoa—whoa—hey!” he gasped. “I’m not—! I’m not here to rob you! Or—or murder you!”
You stared at him, breathless, wood still clutched in your hands. “Then what the hell are you doing here?!”
“Trying not to die of hypothermia,” he said quickly. He had a soaked jacket, a backpack slung off one shoulder, and water dripping from the ends of his hair. “And, uh—avoiding flying furniture, apparently.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m—I’m Sunghoon! Park Sunghoon!”
You didn’t relax yet. “Are you the owner?”
“No,” he said. “Are you?”
You hesitated. “…No.”
He slowly let go of your wrists. You slowly lowered your arm. The two of you stared at each other, breathing hard.
“Well,” you said after a few seconds, sighing in relief. “This is definitely not how I imagined meeting someone today.”
He blinked. Then laughed. “Yeah, me neither.”
You both stood there for a while, listening to the rain hammering the roof like it had no plans of stopping. You glanced at him. “Think it’ll let up soon?”
Sunghoon didn’t even look outside. “Nope.”
“…You sound so sure.”
He shrugged out of his wet jacket. “I just know a thing or two about weather.”
“Okay, Weatherman.” You made a face. “Fantastic. So what, we just wait it out? Sit on the floor until morning?”
“There’s probably a fireplace somewhere,” he said, tugging off his shoes and shaking out his soaked sleeves. “A place like this has to have one.”
You sighed, shuddering at the sight of him in wet clothes. You then turned to your suitcase and flung it open. You first found the lighter, turned it on, and rummaged through your clothes for a t-shirt.
You found a plain white oversized sweater and handed it to him. “Here.”
Sunghoon hesitated. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“You said so yourself. The rain isn’t letting up anytime soon.”
He sighed, but he looked grateful when he accepted it. “Thanks.”
You turned away as he got dressed, fixing your gaze on a hallway up ahead. “I think I saw the fireplace over there earlier.”
Walking together, with the lighter illuminating the dark halls, the two of you found it the old, soot-caked hearth in what might’ve once been a formal sitting room. Tall windows lined the walls, and you could see lightning flash beyond the horizon. The fireplace was cold and cobwebbed but intact.
“Found our survival base,” you said, voice echoing off the high ceiling.
Together, you gathered anything burnable—splintered chair legs, bits of an old table that looked way beyond repair. Sunghoon kicked apart a broken door with a little too much enthusiasm.
You raised an eyebrow. “You do this a lot?”
“Breaking and entering?” he asked, dragging a long covered couch across the room. “No. But I’m good at winging things.”
He tugged the white cloth off the couch and sent a thick cloud of dust into the air. Beneath it, the upholstery was surprisingly intact—floral velvet with only one visible tear on the side.
“Not bad,” he said, flopping down. “Way better than the hostel I stayed in last night.”
You scoffed. “I appreciate your optimism.”
You dropped your bag nearby and pulled out your meager stash of chips, two chocolate bars, and a slightly squished croissant. You held them out. “Dinner?”
He held up a hand to his chest solemnly. “It’s an honor.”
You shared the food while he coaxed the fire to life. Soon enough, warmth began to seep into the room, and a yellowish glow illuminated your faces and the walls.
“Not the worst way to spend a storm,” he said, stretching out his legs toward the fire.
You gave him a look. “You realize we’re in a haunted-looking mansion, right? With barely enough food and no cell service?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, tilting his head back against the couch. “But at least we’re warm and dry, and not dead yet.”
You laughed quietly, pulling your knees up to your chest. The fire crackled between you. Rain kept pelting the windows, but in here, it was manageable. Almost safe. You were both quiet for a while, chewing in silence, listening to the fire crackle and the storm rage outside.
Then Sunghoon spoke. “I used to be scared of thunder.”
You glanced over. “Really?”
He nodded, glancing over his shoulders out at the tall windows. “I was maybe six or seven. My mom told me it was just the clouds yelling at each other.” He smiled faintly. “So I’d yell back. Thought it made me brave.”
You grinned. “Did it work?”
“Only when she was in the room.”
The fire popped, sending sparks up the chimney. He leaned back, his gaze on the flames. “You ever have something you were embarrassed to admit you were scared of?”
You thought about it. “I’m scared of spiraling out of control.” You chuckled. “You?”
He looked over, brows lifted slightly. “Me? I don’t know,” he said, then looked away. “I think I’m scared of staying still.”
You didn’t say anything at first, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, you asked, “Did you… run away?”
“Not exactly,” he said quietly. “I don’t know if I’m running away or taking a break. I had this perfectly reasonable life mapped out for me. Job, partner, apartment, future. All very respectable.” He let out a dry laugh. “But none of it felt like it belonged to me.”
You nodded slowly, understanding without needing every detail.
“So I left,” he added. “Just picked a spot on the map and left.”
For a moment, neither of you said anything. Then you said, “Good for you.”
He looked at you. “Yeah?”
You smiled. “Yeah. Sometimes walking away is the braver thing.”
You took a deep breath and fixed your gaze on the fire. “I ran away, too. Everyone back home had some plan for me. What I’d study. Where I’d work. Who I’d be. And I went along with it because it was easier than fighting. Until one day I looked around and realized nothing in my life felt like mine.”
You felt your chest loosen after saying that out loud, like something unknotted inside you. A long pause followed. Then you added with a smile, “Still doesn’t explain why I walked into a random old mansion.”
“It’s a beautiful one,” he said. “Kind of poetic, really. You leave your life behind and walk straight into a ghost of someone else’s.”
You chuckled, leaning back into the couch. “Well, when you put it that way…”
The wind howled outside, but the room felt warm. Not just from the fire—something else, too. Something like understanding. You looked at him again, really looked this time. He was soaked, probably tired, and definitely not what you expected to find when you first stepped through those gates.
But somehow, running into him made perfect sense.
You woke up to sunlight pouring in from the tall windows. The high ceiling and the dust floating in the rays of morning light reminded you where you were—an abandoned mansion where you got stuck waiting out a storm.
You sat up slowly, noticing that the spot on the couch beside you was empty.
“Sunghoon?” you called out, but there was no response.
You stood up, stretching your sore arms, and glanced around. The place was as quiet as it had been the day before. The broken furniture. The high windows. The eerie vibe.
You had almost thought Sunghoon wasn’t real. That he was just a figment of your imagination that your brain cooked up out of fear of being alone in this big house, but then your eyes landed on a dark denim jacket hanging near the fireplace, still a little damp.
You smiled a little. He was real after all.
But where was he? You had no idea. Maybe he’d left as soon as morning came and simply forgotten his jacket. Not that you were expecting him to stay, but you had assumed he would at least bid you a proper goodbye.
Well, it was no use sitting around waiting for him to come back and explain himself, so you decided to start your day. After gathering your things and running a hand through your hair, you made your way out of the mansion and back through the village path. The rain had washed the streets clean, and the morning had that fresh-after-a-storm feeling.
At the heart of the village, you found the inn. It looked like it hadn’t been updated in a decade, but it had flower pots on the window sills and a hand-painted sign out front that read Chambres.
The woman at the front desk wore a knit vest, bright lipstick, and had the energy of someone who’d wrestle a bear and win. She welcomed you like you were an old friend who’d finally come home, offered a nice room, and a hearty breakfast.
By noon, you were freshly showered, had eaten something good, and were strolling through the village looking for the real estate office. You found it near a patisserie, and the woman behind the desk raised an eyebrow when you mentioned the old mansion.
“That place?” she said. “You sure?”
You told her you were, and that you had the money ready.
She blinked, then smiled. “Well, no one else was ever interested in buying it, so it’s yours if you really want it. Paperwork will take a while, but you can go ahead and start fixing it up. No one’ll stop you.”
You were halfway through signing the first form when she added, “Funny. Someone else asked about it earlier today. Young man. Seemed curious but didn’t seem interested in buying.”
“Why was he asking about it?”
“Who knows? First-time visitors to this town are always curious about that place.”
You paused for a second, then shrugged. “As long as he’s not a potential rival buyer, I’m good,” you said with a smile.
“I assure you, Miss,” the lady said, stepping out of her desk to join you. “No one wants that place. Why do you think it’s much cheaper than it’s supposed to be?”
The real estate agent handed you note after the paperwork, tapping her nail against the words written on it.
“Since the place is gonna need to be fixed up, I suggest you talk to Jean-Luc. He’s a mason, but he has a group of carpenters working for him. He does a pretty good job, though he can be a little nosy.”
“Thanks. I was just wondering where to start looking for help,” you said, smiling as you examined the name and address on the note.
Before leaving the office, the agent told you what Jean-Luc’s daily rate was and to call out his bullshit if he ever asked for more than that. You thanked her again and turned in the direction of Jean-Luc’s shop.
You met him at his shop, a wiry man in suspenders and a flat cap. He asked a few questions, but he seemed to know more about the place than you did.
“I’ll come by tomorrow morning to have a proper look, then we can negotiate.”
After that, he pointed you to a local supply shop, where you bought items you could use in the meantime, including some sturdy brooms, a pair of gloves, a few rags, and a bucket. You debated getting bleach but settled for lemon cleaner and optimism.
By the time you made your way back up the winding road to the mansion, your arms were aching from the weight of the supplies. But there was something satisfying about the ache, the breeze, and the faint scent of damp earth left by the storm.
You were surprised to see a motorbike parked outside the gates. The rain from the night before had washed the dust off the path, and the sun lit up the gravel as you stepped through the front doors of the mansion again.
Inside, the sound of hammering echoed faintly through the halls.
You followed it to the study, where the fireplace was. Sunghoon was crouched beside a wooden table, sleeves pushed up, hair damp at the temples. He held a hammer in one hand and was steadying a broken leg with the other, completely focused.
He looked up when he heard your footsteps. “Hey,” he said, straightening. “You’re back.”
You blinked. “You’re here?”
“So are you,” he said, setting the hammer down gently. “I thought you’d left for good.”
“I thought you left,” you replied, stepping inside.
He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Just went out to grab some food. When I came back, you weren’t here.”
You looked around. A few chairs had been repaired. One of the broken shelves stood straighter than before. He’d clearly been busy.
“You’ve been fixing things?” you asked.
He nodded. “I had time. Figured it wouldn’t hurt to help the place along a little. The woman at the real estate office said I could come by if I wanted.”
You raised a brow. “You went to the real estate office?”
“Yeah. She was friendly.” He looked sheepish, then smiled. “She said no one was ever interested in the place.”
You smiled back. “Well… someone is.”
He paused. “You?”
You nodded. He let out a short breath, like he hadn’t expected that. Then he gave a small, thoughtful smile. “Then maybe it’s good I didn’t leave.”
You tilted your head. “Why is that?”
“I’m sure you’re gonna need extra hands around here.”
You chuckled. “Yeah, no thanks. I don’t need a man bossing me around my own property.”
“No, I don’t mean it like that.” Sunghoon laughed. “I’m an architect, you see. I know my way around structures. If you’re planning to restore the place… I could help.”
You studied him. He didn’t seem to be lying. “…I don’t know how much I can pay you,” you said.
“Well, you fed and dressed me last night, so I’m basically alive because of you.”
That made you snort. “You’re exaggerating.”
“Just a little,” he replied, laughing. “But I’m serious. If you don’t mind having me around… I’m happy to help. That’s all.”
You were quiet for a moment, then reached into your bag and pulled out a broom. “Alright, then. Since you’re so eager… how about we start with the floors?”
He took the broom from you with a smile. “Sure.”
The first few days were chaotic in the most exciting way. You had dust in your lungs. Paint flakes in your hair. And the occasional clatter of tools or startled yelp when someone stepped on a loose board made the once eerily quiet place into a rowdy construction site.
Jean-Luc’s team of local carpenters moved in and out with efficiency, restoring what could be saved and gutting what couldn’t.
You did what you could afford. No grand hotel transformation just yet because your savings wouldn’t allow it, but enough to make the place safe, clean, and standing. You patched up what you could and left the heavy lifting to people who actually knew what they were doing. Sunghoon floated somewhere between both worlds, neither a hired worker nor idle guest.
He showed the carpenters the original layout you’d uncovered, and offered suggestions they actually listened to. You noticed the way they nodded when he spoke, how they looked to him when unsure.
One day, when the particularly exquisite wooden double doors leading to a grand ballroom broke down, everyone said your idea of putting them back in place wasn’t possible. The broken hinges had chipped a piece off one of the two doors, making it hard to put it back.
“We can repurpose the other one. Use it to replace the library door. Then maybe forgo the doors and keep the ballroom open?” Sunghoon suggested, tilting his head as he examined the doorway. He turned to you. “What do you think?”
“You’re full of solutions, aren’t you?” you said, only half-teasing.
He shrugged. “Comes with the degree.”
The architect thing came up again and again—not because he bragged, but because he made it quite useful. He knew how to brace the weakened staircase, how to check for mold behind plaster, and how to tell the difference between salvageable and unsafe. And when you asked how he knew all this labor stuff when he was supposed to be an architect, he always said, “It comes with the job.”
Together, you made progress. Slow, sweaty, stubborn progress.
You’d sweep out a room while he cleared debris. He’d rig up temporary lighting while you picked tile samples you couldn’t afford yet. Some afternoons, you’d sit together on the back steps, drinking orange juice from the orchard behind the house.
Other times, when your arms were too tired to scrub anything else, he’d ask, “Want to get out of here for a bit?” And somehow, you always did.
You rode behind him on the motorbike, hands wrapped around his waist, wind whipping at your sleeves. The roads curved sharply along the cliffs, opening into views of the sea that looked almost too blue to be real. You dipped your toes in hidden coves, ate greasy fish sandwiches by the pier, and once spent a full hour watching an old man play the accordion in the town square.
Sometimes he pointed things out—a crumbling lighthouse, a fig tree blooming near the bend—and you found yourself asking about the island, even though you knew he was as new to the island as you were.
The nights were quieter. Sometimes you cooked, sometimes you didn’t. Once, when the electricity went out, you shared a bowl of fruit by candlelight and listened to the wind sweep through the shutters. He told you about a vineyard resort project he’d worked on in Nice. You told him how you’d found this place by accident a few years ago on a trip you were never supposed to take.
Opening up to him was oddly easy for someone like you who liked to keep to herself and not let people in. He was easy to be around. Charismatic without trying. Quiet, but never cold.
You soon noticed how he always let you talk first. How he’d fix something for you without being asked to, or wipe his shoes before stepping inside even if the floors were already filthy.
The house slowly took shape. And so did whatever this was between you.
Jean-Luc’s crew was just wrapping up for the day when you stepped out, putting on your jacket and smoothing down the skirt of your dress. You’d taken the time to pick it out, simple, soft blue, not too fancy, but it was much more sophisticated than your usual work shirts and sun-stained jeans.
Jean spotted you instantly. “Ah,” he said, wiping his hands on a rag and giving you a once-over. “That dress is new.”
You gave him a look. “I had this dress for years.”
He grinned, eyes gleaming with mischief. “You dressed up nicely for your date.”
“It’s not a date,” you said, out of habit more than conviction. “We’re just eating out because I didn’t wanna cook.”
The guys had heard Sunghoon earlier in the day when he invited you to eat at the pub in town. He did it because you complained about being too tired to make food, but Jean and his crew decided it was open to interpretation.
“Mm-hmm.” He raised a brow. “Sure. Too tired to cook, but not too tired to wear parfum, eh?” he added, glancing at his crew, who all started whistling.
You rolled your eyes, laughing under your breath. Their teasing had become a daily ritual ever since they started working in the house. You’d learned about Jean’s nosy nature from the get-go, but were surprised at first when you saw it firsthand. He’d asked you almost everything there was to know about you, from your education, your parents, and your decision to move into a foreign land and buy a haunted mansion.
Still, he didn’t pry too much and wasn’t annoying, so you took it all in stride. And as for his assumption that there was something going on between you and Sunghoon, well, you didn’t think much of it. If Sunghoon knew or was clueless that he was being shipped with you, you wouldn’t know because you never really talked about it.
“How about I hitch a ride to town?” you asked, already getting into their truck. “Would be a waste walking downhill in this dress, don’t you think?”
“It would be an honor to deliver you to your prince, mademoiselle.”
By the time you stepped out at the curb near the pub, the sun had dipped low, gleaming orange and gold across the sea. You caught your reflection briefly in the window and frowned. It was a nice dress. But why did you take the time to look pretty? You’d even put on lipstick, and for what? A casual dinner?
It’s just dinner! Right?
Or is it? You shook the thought away before you could overthink it.
Inside, the pub was lively but cozy, with fairy lights strung on wooden beams, a small local band playing mellow jazz near the back. Sunghoon was already seated at a corner table, nursing a glass of something amber. He looked up when you walked in and smiled.
“Wow,” he said, standing as you approached. “You look…”
He paused, and the way he searched for a word made you feel self-conscious. You hid your nervousness behind a smirk. “Weird? Disproportionate? Wicked with a hint of witchcraft and sorcery?”
He laughed. “Beautiful. Definitely beautiful.”
You smiled, sliding into the chair opposite him. “Thanks.”
He looked good, too. He’d shaved. Maybe even styled his hair. A waitress came by, dropped off menus, and you both skimmed through them, ordering a round of food that was heavier than you needed but comforting all the same. The band was playing a soft instrumental, and you leaned back in your seat, letting the atmosphere settle.
Sunghoon had been at the house every day this past week, but it occurred to you now how little you knew about his nights. He didn’t stay there, not even once. He always left just before dusk, riding off on that old motorbike. You never asked where he went, but vaguely assumed he was probably resting in his room at the inn. You were curious, but it didn’t matter much.
Until now.
Tonight, he was different. Still warm, still easy to talk to, but something in the air felt a little off-script. The way his eyes gleamed, the way he smiled when you caught him looking. It made you nervous and giddy at the same time.
“Didn’t take you for a dress person,” he said, sipping his drink.
You raised a brow. “And what kind of person did you take me for?”
He tilted his head like he was thinking of the answer. “Sawdust. Paint stains. And boots.”
You scoffed. “So… a disaster?”
“I didn’t say that.” His smile widened. “I like disasters. They’re more fun to fix.”
You narrowed your eyes, half-laughing. “Did you just call me a fixer-upper?”
“Well, no…” he trailed off, then blinked like he’d surprised himself. “Wait, did I? Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—you're actually kind of perfect.”
You laughed under your breath. “Okay, Charmer. Slow down.”
He leaned in, elbows on the table. “You’re blushing. I think you’re charmed.”
“It would take more than that to sweep me off my feet, Hoon,” you said, taking a slow sip of your drink. You smiled at him as you placed your glass back down. “But you’re on the right track.”
“Am I?” he asked, grinning, canines and dimples on full display. “Good to know. I’ll try harder then.”
He didn’t usually talk like this. You didn’t either, not with him. But neither of you stopped.
When the food came, the conversation didn’t stop either. It slipped in with the wine, with the melodic music in the background, with the occasional brush of his knee against yours beneath the table.
“You really didn’t have to dress up,” he said at one point, glancing at you over his fork.
“I didn’t,” you said. “This is me on a regular day. You should see me on a real date.”
He leaned back in his seat. “Am I not getting the real date version?”
“That depends. Is this a date?”
His brows lifted slightly, as if surprised you said it out loud. But his answer came quickly.
“I don’t know.” He smiled. “You tell me.”’
You sighed, feigning frustration. “Ugh, no. Wrong answer.”
Sunghoon winced, propped an elbow on the table, and buried his face in his hand. “Crap. Can I try again?”
“Nope,” you teased, giggling behind your glass.
The flirting stopped by dessert, and you fell into a conversation about the house and its grand architecture. Sunghoon talked about the dating of the design and the timelessness of it. At some point, you’d told him your plans of converting it into a hotel. It would take time since money was obviously a huge factor to consider, but you laid out your renovation plans, your vision, and the whole dream behind the project.
“For now, it’s just a dream,” you said, smiling as you stirred an olive in your drink. “But the first step was buying the place, and that’s a box ticked in my list.”
“That’s actually a big start.”
“Right?” you chimed, eyes gleaming. “I still have a long way to go, but it is something, right?”
“It is,” he replied, a smile gracing his lips as he watched you.
You kept talking, hands moving animatedly as you described the lounge you envisioned, the garden terrace, the way the morning sun would hit the breakfast room just right. And Sunghoon just watched you.
At first, you didn’t notice, too caught up in your own excitement. But then you glanced at him and caught the way he was looking at you—soft and focused, like he wasn’t listening at all but watching.
Your smile faltered slightly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He blinked, leaned back, and shrugged with a small grin. “Like what?”
“Like that,” you repeated, heat creeping to your cheeks. “I know you know what I mean.”
He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at you, eyes glinting under the dim pub lights. “No reason. I just… I’m just really proud of you.”
Your pulse raced at the way he said it. Like he meant it, and the affection in his voice wasn’t a figment of your imagination. You looked down at your drink. “Well. Thanks.”
He tilted his head. “That made you nervous.”
“No, it didn’t.”
He laughed under his breath. “You always get defensive when someone compliments you. It’s cute.”
You rolled your eyes, smiling now. “And you’re acting really out of character tonight. What’s up with you?”
“Sunghoon straightened up in his seat, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, a little too casually
Before you could say anything, he flagged down the server, asking for a pen and paper. A few minutes later, the order sheet was in front of him, along with your full attention.
“Alright,” he said, uncapping the pen. “Show me what you see.”
“What I see?”
“For your dream hotel,” he replied, beaming. “I’ll do a free sketch for you since you came here looking all pretty tonight.”
You laughed at first, but took him up on his offer. You walked him through it—the courtyard, the check-in desk, the sunlit breakfast room. He listened closely, nodding along, his hand gliding over the paper with precision. He added soft curves where you imagined sharp lines, windows where there were none, and little alcoves you hadn’t even thought of.
“This is where I’d put the courtyard,” you said, tapping the center.
“With some trees?” he asked. “A fountain?”
“Exactly,” you said. “But not a flashy one. Just charming and pretty.”
He sketched it in. You leaned over the table to get a better look, your shoulder brushing his. He didn’t pull away. You didn’t either.
When he finished, he slid the paper toward you. “It’s rough, but… this is what I see when you talk about it.”
You stared at the sketch, warmth blooming in your chest. “It’s kind of perfect.”
“You’re kind of perfect,” he said, and this time, he didn’t soften it with a laugh or a tease.
Your heart thudded. He was looking at you like that again—like you were the only one in the room, like it would hurt him to peel his eyes away, like he wanted to just stare at you as much as he could.
“So… what now?” you asked, one hand hugging yourself. You felt nervous under his gaze, and not in a bad way.
“I should drive you back, but…” he paused, leaning a little closer. “Do you want to take a walk before we call it a night?”
You nodded, slowly. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Outside, the air was cool and the streets mostly empty. The band’s music faded behind you as you walked side by side, a little closer than usual, not talking much. His hand brushed yours once, then again—until he finally just reached for it and laced your fingers together.
When you turned the corner and saw his bike down the road, he looked at you once with a smile before letting go of your hand.
“Will you be alright?” he asked as he mounted his bike and handed you one of the helmets. “You’re in a dress.”
“Yeah. I can manage,” you said, letting him help you put the helmet on.
His hand lingered on your jaw even after he’d fastened the helmet in. For a second, you thought he was gonna kiss you, but he just took a deep breath and turned back to his bike.
The ride was cool and quiet. You held onto him as usual, arms wrapped around his torso, balancing yourself behind him, making sure you didn’t fall. For some reason, despite the considerable distance of the town from your mansion, the drive ended too quickly.
You stopped in front of the gates but as you handed him his helmet back, something heavy settled in your chest. You didn’t want the night to end.
Neither did he, apparently. You could tell by the way he just sat there on his bike, staring at you and not saying anything but not moving to leave either.
“Do you want to come in?” you asked quietly after a minute.
He didn’t answer at first, just looked at you as if he was looking for any hint of doubt on your face.
Then, with a smile, he said, “I would love to if that’s alright with you.”
You didn’t say anything right away. You didn’t need to. Because all the overthinking, the second-guessing, the usual mental tug-of-war you went through whenever something felt too close and too good just stopped.
There was only the cool night air, the sound of crickets in the distance, and Sunghoon— at you with that steady gaze of his, like he’d wait forever for your answer if he had to.
Before you could talk yourself out of it, you stepped forward and kissed him. And he kissed you back like he’d been waiting for this all night.
His hands came to your waist, holding you. One of them slid up your back, pulling you in a little closer. You felt him smile into it and that was the moment your knees nearly gave out.
Because it was soft and sweet and beautiful and just so so melting.
When you finally pulled back, breath slightly uneven, he didn’t let go of you. “Is that a ‘yes’?” he whispered teasingly.
You giggled, eyes still closed. “That’s a yes.”
He kissed you once more. Urgently this time, like he couldn’t help himself, before reaching past you to unlock the gate.
Inside, the house was quiet, the lights were dim. You didn’t bother flicking them on. His hand found yours as you kicked your shoes off by the door, and you led him through the dim hallway like it was instinct.
You weren’t rushing, pausing every now and then at some corner to kiss and embrace each other like you couldn’t get enough.
In your room, you both paused not from hesitation, but awe. Sunghoon looked around the once lifeless space that now felt lived-in and warm. And then his gaze returned to you, and it softened, like you were the most beautiful part of the room.
“Are you nervous?” he asked quietly, holding your hands.
“A little,” you admitted, stepping close. “But not the bad kind of nervous.”
He smiled, reached up and cupped your face in both hands, drawing you in again. The kiss this time was different. Slower, surer. His hands slid around your waist, pulling you flush against him, and you could feel the way his breath hitched when your fingers brushed the back of his neck.
His touch was careful and tender, like he was asking permission with every move. You helped him out of his jacket, then reached behind yourself to pull the zipper of your dress down, but his hands stopped you gently.
“Let me,” he murmured.
You turned, and his fingers found the zipper. You felt the brush of his knuckles against your spine, the drag of fabric slipping from your shoulders. When you turned back to face him, he just stood there for a second, eyes roaming slowly over you.
“God,” he whispered. “You’re beautiful.”
He didn’t say it like he was trying to seduce you. He said it like he meant it. Like he’d never meant anything more.
You reached out, pulled him back to you, mouths meeting again as your hands slid down his stomach to the front of his jeans. He hissed when you pressed your palm to the bulge there, already hard for you. “Fuck,” he muttered against your lips. “Please don’t tease.”
“Sorry,” you whispered, grinning.
He picked you up gently and carried you to the bed. The sheets were cool beneath you, and the room warm around you. You pulled him down with you, mouths meeting again. His kisses grew deeper, needier, as he settled between your legs, grinding slow against your clothed sex.
You could feel him through the layers, thick and hard, and it made your body pulse with want. He slipped a hand down between your thighs, pressing the heel of his palm against your core. You moaned, soft and breathy, hips tilting up to meet him.
“You’re soaked,” he whispered, his lips grazing your throat. “Just from kissing me?”
“Don’t get cocky,” you mumbled, but your voice cracked on the end.
He smiled against your skin, then kissed down your body—between your breasts, your navel, lower—until he reached the edge of your panties. He looked up at you then, waiting.
You nodded.
He pulled them off slowly and settled between your thighs like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The first stroke of his tongue made your back arch off the bed.
He took his time, licking deep, sucking hard until you were gasping his name. One arm wrapped around your thigh to keep you open, the other hand slid up to lace your fingers together on the sheets. You came like that—shaking, eyes squeezed shut, hand clinging to his—his mouth still on you, working you through it.
When he kissed back up your body, you were trembling. “You good?” he asked, voice hoarse.
You nodded again. “Please.”
“Condoms?”
You shook your head. “I’m on the pill.”
He kissed you again, harder this time, and then positioned himself between your legs, his jaw tight like he was holding himself back. He slid into you languidly, lubricated by your own cum and his saliva.
He sank in slowly, with a deep, ragged breath, forehead pressed to yours. “Fuck,” he groaned. “You feel so good.”
You felt full, stretched in the best way. Your arms wrapped around his back, fingernails grazing his skin as he started to move—shallow at first, then deeper, rolling his hips in smooth, deliberate thrusts that made your toes curl.
He kept whispering your name, like he couldn’t stop himself. Kept asking if you were okay, if it felt good, if he should go slower—and every time, your only answer was to hold him closer.
It wasn’t rough. It wasn’t frantic. It was deep. Hot. And overwhelming in the most delightful way.
You kissed through it, tangled in sweat and soft moans and the sound of skin meeting skin. Your second orgasm built slowly, until he shifted your hips up just right, and you cried out, gripping his back as you came again.
He followed not long after, burying his face in your neck with a choked sound, holding you so tightly you could hardly breathe—and you didn’t want to, not if it meant letting go.
He stayed inside you for a moment after, catching his breath, lips brushing your shoulder. Then he pulled out gently and lay beside you, immediately pulling you into his arms again.
No one spoke for a while. You didn’t need to.
His fingers traced soft shapes of your back as your breathing slowed. Your cheek rested against his chest, where you could feel his heartbeat still thudding fast.
“I really like you,” he said eventually, voice low, almost shy.
You closed your eyes. “I know.” And you did. “I like you too.”
The next morning, Sunghoon made coffee while you stood barefoot in the kitchen, hair messy, wearing only his oversized shirt from the night before. He’d found the beans in your pantry, ground them by hand, and hummed under his breath while the moka pot hissed on the stove. When he handed you a cup, it was with a kiss to your temple and a sleepy smile you wanted to keep in your pocket forever.
He didn’t leave that day. And the day after that. And then again the next. It wasn’t even a conversation—it just happened. One minute, he was supposed to return to his little room at the inn. The next, his toothbrush was on your sink and his boots sat neatly next to yours by the door.
“I guess I live here now,” he said with a shrug one evening, holding up a bundle of clean clothes he’d brought over.
You tried to act unbothered, but your chest felt light and strange and full. “I guess you do,” you replied.
Days spilled into each other like honey, slow and golden.
You worked the orange orchard together, side by side under the sun. He taught you how to check the fruits for ripeness, how to prune gently, how to tell if the bees were happy. You teased him for being too serious about it. He teased you for wearing perfume to pick fruit. He stole kisses in the shade of the trees, juice sticky on your fingers, the scent of citrus clinging to your skin.
“You’ve got a bit on your mouth,” he’d say, only to lean in and lick it off with a grin that made you drop the basket you were carrying.
Sometimes you ended up lying in the grass instead of working. Talking about the past, the future. Tracing invisible lines on each other’s arms. Learning the things that didn’t come up in early conversations—how he hated raisins, how you cried watching documentaries, how neither of you had felt like this in a long, long time.
Nights were warm. He’d light a fire when it got cold and pull you into his lap while you ate dinner on the couch. The two of you would read—him with his architectural journals, you with whatever novel you’d found at the local shop. Your legs tangled. His hand on your thigh. You’d fall asleep with your cheek on his chest more often than not, waking up only when he carried you to bed.
He made love to you like he was discovering something new each time. Slow. Intentional. Always watching your face like it told him a secret he didn’t want to forget. There were times he didn’t say a word, just kissed you like he meant it, like he needed it, like he’d been waiting to do it forever.
Sometimes it was lazy. Sometimes passionate. Sometimes soft, with laughter in between. One time, he brought oranges into the shower, peeled them as water ran down both your backs, fed you slices from his fingers before pressing you up against the glass.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,” you told him one night, your voice quiet in the dark.
He rolled over to face you, hair a mess, eyes half-lidded with sleep. “Me neither.”
You explored the island on foot and by his bike, visited hidden beaches and ate at local tavernas where he introduced you as his “partner”—not girlfriend, not roommate, just something simple and solid and true.
He drew plans for your hotel idea, left them pinned up on your fridge, updated them with sticky notes that said things like “maybe French doors here?” or “do you like this arch style?”
You found yourself setting the table for two without thinking. Buying his favorite snacks when you went into town. Pulling his shirts from the laundry and holding them to your chest like a fool.
There was a routine now. A tenderness. A life. And it felt like forever.
One day, you were sitting on the dock just past the cove, legs dangling over the edge, fishing rods in hand and an old bottle of white wine between you. Neither of you knew much about fishing, but Sunghoon said that was part of the fun.
You’d caught nothing. He’d caught seaweed. Twice.
“Okay, but it looked like a fish,” he said defensively, flicking the green tangle off his line. “For a second.”
You laughed, tipping your head back as the breeze brushed your cheeks. You couldn’t remember the last time you laughed like this with someone other than your best friends. He looked over at you, half smiling, the way he always did when he thought you weren’t paying attention.
A peaceful quiet settled between you for a minute. Then you broke it.
“I’ve pictured this place for years,” you said softly. “Not this exact dock, or this exact sunset… but the idea of it. Of being somewhere like this.”
Sunghoon didn’t respond right away. He just turned his head to listen.
“I’d imagine buying a house on some forgotten island, fixing it up myself, turning it into a little bed and breakfast or a hotel. Starting something that was just mine. A place to breathe. A place to stay.”
You swallowed, not nervous, just careful. “And I was always alone in that picture. I wasn’t lonely, I was content. I thought that’s what I wanted.” You looked at him. “And then I met you.”
His eyes stayed on you, steady. Patient.
“And now when I picture it again… I see you. Just—there. Beside me. Part of it.”
You gave a small shrug, cheeks warm. “I know it sounds crazy. We haven’t known each other long, and there’s still a lot I don’t know about you, and maybe this is too fast, but… I was wondering if you’d like to be in that picture. For real. If you’d want to try building something together.”
Sunghoon didn’t answer right away. He just set down his fishing rod, then reached for your hand, fingers lacing between yours.
“Doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” he said quietly.
You looked at him. He looked at you. And in that silence, something deep and certain was decided between you. Llike two pieces of a puzzle finally clicking into place.
The fish still weren’t biting. But it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
That night, you lay tangled together in bed, skin still warm from the day’s sun and each other’s touch. The windows were open, and the sound of the waves slamming against the cliff below was oddly soothing despite its violence. Sunghoon’s arm lay heavy across your waist, fingers lazily stroking your bare stomach. It was quiet, the kind of silence that usually felt safe with him.
“I have to tell you something,” he said quietly.
You turned slightly to face him. “What is it?”
“I love you.”
You giggled, closing your eyes and nuzzling your nose back on his chest. “Okay, Lover Boy. I heard you.”
“And I’m engaged to someone else,” he added, making you force your eyes open.
At first, you didn’t react. The words didn’t quite register in your head. You blinked up at him, waiting for a punchline. But he just looked back at you, his eyes open and serious.
“What?”
“It’s not what it sounds like,” he said quickly, propping himself up. “It’s arranged. My family—back home—they… they set it up. I didn’t choose it. I barely know her. I’ve met her maybe three times. I don’t have feelings for her.”
Something cold seeped into your chest. You pulled away from him. “And when were you going to tell me?”
“I—I didn’t know how. I didn’t think it mattered at first. But then everything with us…” He reached for you, but you slapped his hand away. “I should’ve told you sooner. I know.”
You sat up, dragging the sheet around yourself. “You didn’t think it mattered? Are you hearing yourself?”
“I didn’t plan any of this,” he said, sitting up too. “I was just here for a little break. I didn’t plan to meet you and fall for you.”
You laughed bitterly. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t stand there and talk about falling for me like you didn’t lie by omission every single day. You let me build a whole dream around you. Around us. And you were promised to someone else this whole time?”
“It’s not real—”
“It’s real enough,” you snapped. “I don’t care if you love her or not. I don’t care if it’s just paper. You’re someone else’s, Sunghoon.”
He looked like he’d been punched. “I don’t want it! I choose you.”
“No. You don’t get to choose! You knew this would happen and you let it happen anyway.” Your voice broke then. You didn’t mean for it to, but it came out in a tremble. “Get out.”
He froze. “Please… Don’t do this.”
“Go. Just get the fuck out! Please,” you said, turning away and moving to the corner of the room.
You buried your face in your hands and sobbed, shoulder trembling, voice breaking. You could hear the soft sounds of Sunghoon’s footsteps approaching you, then his hand on your shoulder but you swatted it away.
“Just leave, Hoon!”
He left. And he never came back.
You hadn’t slept. Not really. You’d kept your eyes closed through most of the night, but your mind never let you rest. You could still feel the ghost of his arm around your waist, the weight of his words sitting heavy on your chest.
“And I’m engaged to someone else.”
The sun had fully risen and the ocean looked far too cheerful for how you felt. You opened the door to see Amy’s familiar grin and Lea’s arms already opening for a hug. They were glowing with excitement, sunglasses in their hair, bags slung over their shoulders, and not even an ounce of awareness that your world had collapsed less than twelve hours ago.
“There she is!” Lea beamed, pulling you into a tight squeeze. “God, it smells like citrus and freedom out here. I’m never leaving.”
“You look like you haven’t slept,” Amy said with a teasing frown. “Don’t tell me you and Lover Boy were up all night doing—”
You let out a soft laugh—more exhale than amusement—and stepped aside to let them in.
The massive house felt too full suddenly. Their voices bounced off the walls, light and warm. They talked about the flight, the heat, the funny guy at customs. You listened. Smiled when appropriate. Nodded at all the right times.
It wasn’t until you’d served them fresh juice on the patio that Amy tilted her head and said, “So where is he? You were going to introduce us, right? We were ready for the whole ‘meet the boyfriend’ thing.”
You looked down at your glass, then out at the sea. “He’s not here anymore,” you said quietly. “We’re done.”
Both of them froze. “What?” Amy asked, gently.
“He’s engaged to someone else. Back home. Doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
You didn’t look at them, didn’t want to see the sympathy you knew was coming.
Lea reached across the table and touched your hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
You sighed, unwilling to get into the details but wanted to share. “It’s really nothing. We were having a good time and I thought I’m in love with him. Now that he’s gone, I think it was just the moment, you know what I mean?”
Lea tilted her head, looking at you in confusion, but Amy beside her nodded in understanding. “Totally get it. I mean, two beautiful people together in a beautiful island? I’d think I’m in love too,” said Amy.
Lea shook her head. “No. It was serious when you told us about it on the phone. You sounded so…sure.”
“No, darling.” Amy tapped Lea’s cheek gently. “It was the weather. You have no idea how easy it is to mistake good vibes with being in love.”
They argued about it for a while, but they didn’t press. They didn’t ask for more than what you were willing to divulge. They simply shifted the conversation, as if by instinct, pulling you back into safer waters.
But even as they talked about their plans—about beach days and wine nights and helping you with the orchard—you couldn’t help but glance at the seat across from you. The one that had been his just yesterday.
It was supposed to be good day. You were gonna introduce him to Amy and Lea, your best friends, your true family. But that was a bust. And now it was just you again.
But at least you weren’t alone.
The week that followed blurred into a sun-soaked montage of tequila shots, sandy hair, and late-night laughter. With Amy and Lea around, it was impossible to sit still for too long. They pulled you out of the house, out of your head, and out of the quiet grief you hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with.
Amy dragged you away from the village and into the other side of the island where the beaches were packed with tourists, loud music, and overpriced mojitos. You danced barefoot in the sand, lip-synced into beer bottles, flirted with strangers you had no intention of remembering. You let the lights and noise and sea carry you for days—numbed and glowing all at once.
Amy flirted with every fine European men who so much as looked her way. Lea got into a tipsy argument with a street performer about astrology. You laughed so hard you nearly cried.
It didn’t make the pain disappear. But for a little while, it drowned it out.
And then, one afternoon, as you lay on a beach towel by the docks, the sand warm beneath you, skin glowing, a little drunk on Aperol spritz and good company, the sun suddenly vanished from your face.
You blinked up at the abrupt shadow.
And found a man holding an umbrella over your head like a knight with absolutely no armor, just absurd confidence and expensive taste. Linen shirt, half-buttoned. Sunglasses pushed up into dark brown hair. Smirk painted across his face like it had been there since birth.
“Hi there,” he greeted casually, his voice ringing with a familiarity that hit straight in your chest.
You pulled your own sunglasses down your nose and squinted up at him. “What are you doing here, Jay?”
He chuckled lightly. “It’s good to see you too.”
Amy and Lea looked between the two of you like they’d accidentally stepped into a scene from a movie they hadn’t seen the beginning of.
“No, seriously.” You sat up slowly, brushing sand off your legs. “What are you doing here?”
“Official business is concluded, so I’m heading home. But I figured I’d drop anchor for a bit.” He lowered the umbrella handle toward you. “And maybe see a friendly face.”
You blinked at him again, mouth parting slightly. This wasn’t just some coincidence. Jay was here. Jay, with his yacht and smirk and maddening presence, had found you again.
“I knew it was weird when you said we’d be seeing each other again,” you said, narrowing your eyes playfully.
He grinned wider. “Miss me?”
“In your dreams,” you replied, standing up. “How long has it been?”
“Oh, just thirty-three days, give or take,” he shrugged, closing the umbrella. “It’s not like I was counting the days till I see you again,” he added with a grin.
Of course. That was the Jay you knew. Shamelessly flirty, smooth about it, and tries to talk you in sleeping with him every chance he gets. You rolled your eyes and turned to your friends, both still looking clueless. “Oh, these are my girls, Amy and Lea.”
“Hi,” said Lea.
“Lovely to meet you,” said Amy, offering a hand to Jay. “I’ve heard nothing about you,” she added, glancing knowingly at you.
You gave her an apologetic scrunch of your nose.
“Ladies, I’d hate to disturb you, but,” Jay nodded toward the water, past the dock where his boat was glistening under the sun. “How would you like some cocktails on a boat?”
You chuckled at his blatant attempt at impressing your girls. Amy perked up immediately. “A boat? That boat?” she asked, pointing at Jay’s yacht.
“Yes, Ames,” you deadpanned, rolling your eyes at Jay. “Did I mention he’s got a yacht?”
Lea was already grabbing her tote. “Let’s go before he changes his mind.”
You shook your head, laughing as Jay offered you a hand up like he was inviting you to a gala. Dramatic, as always. You didn’t take it, but you did follow him, the three of you trailing after him barefoot across the sun-warmed dock.
Amy nudged your arm discreetly. “Who is he?” she whispered.
Lea leaned in on your other side. “He’s hot.”
“Hotter than the fucking sun,” Amy added.
You smirked, keeping your eyes ahead. “He’s just someone I met a while back. He helped me out when I first got stranded here.”
Amy gasped softly. “That’s the boat guy? You never said he looked like that.”
“I barely said anything,” you muttered.
“Exactly,” Lea said. “Suspicious.”
You rolled your eyes but couldn’t stop the smile tugging at your lips. Jay was ahead now, glancing back to make sure you were all still following. He tossed you a wink and kept walking.
Amy nudged you again, lower this time. “Okay but for real—are we allowed to flirt with him or is that off-limits?”
You gave her a look. “Behave.”
“Not a no,” she sing-songed.
You sighed dramatically. “He’s a player. If you can handle someone like him, then go ahead.”
They both exchanged a knowing glance. Amy shook her head. “Yeah, no. It’s pretty obvious he came all the way here to see you, specifically.”
You had a small yacht party, just the four of you, plus Manu, Jay’s crew member-slash-silent bartender who somehow knew exactly when to top up a drink or disappear entirely. There were expensive bottles, platters of seafood and fruit laid out by the excellent Sofia, and music drifting softly through the deck speakers. You laughed, drank, danced barefoot under string lights, and watched the sun dip into the sea.
By the time night fell properly, Lea had passed out on one of the long couches, clutching a throw pillow like a lifeline. Amy had disappeared below deck with Manu about thirty minutes ago and hadn’t been seen since.
Which left you, barefoot at the railing, half a drink in hand, ocean breeze blowing your hair, talking to Jay.
“Today, you became Amy and Lea’s favorite person,” you teased, glancing over your shoulder at him. He was leaning beside you, one arm braced casually against the rail.
He gave a lazy shrug, that usual smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “As I should be. I did try my best. Although my main guest of honor’s a little harder to impress.”
You chuckled, but didn’t say anything.
He chuckled too, eyes glinting as he looked at you for a long moment. “You look different,” he said. “Not in a bad way. Just… different. Your eyes don’t shine like they did when we met.”
The sudden comment caught you off guard. He smiled and added, “Must’ve been hard for you after I left.”
You snorted, shaking your head as you turned back toward the dark water. “Not at all,” you said. “But… a lot’s happened since then. Been kind of a rough patch lately. Don’t really wanna talk about it. I’ll just bore you.”
He didn’t press. Just nodded, like he understood. “You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “But for what it’s worth—I know you’ll be fine. You’re the strong, independent type. You don’t need anyone.”
You smiled faintly, touched by the unexpected sincerity.
Then, with perfect Jay timing, he tilted his head and said, “How was it? Am I sweeping you off your feet? Are you considering checking out my suite now?”
You turned to him, arching a brow. “Wow. Very subtle, Jay,” you said flatly.
He grinned, shrugging with fake innocence. “Can’t be too forward. You might think I’m desperate to have sex with you.”
That made you laugh, and he watched you with a fond smile on his lips. After a beat, you handed him your empty glass and said, “Lead the way, then.”
He blinked once. Then let out a short breath of disbelief, like he was laughing at his own luck.
“Damn,” he said, cocking his head. “Didn’t think you’d actually bite.”
You raised a brow, feigning nonchalance. “So? Lead the way.”
Jay paused. The smirk was still there, but it faltered a little. He avoided your gaze, then he leaned back just slightly, voice dropping lower.
“Nah,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Can’t mess around with drunk girls. Bad karma.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Still not gonna happen.”
You tilted your head. “That’s your excuse?”
He gave you a crooked grin, but he wasn’t meeting your eyes anymore. “It’s called principle, thanks. I’m being a gentleman for once, but don’t get used to it.”
You stared at him, trying not to laugh at his face. He was flustered. Jay, king of confidence, was caught off guard. He probably hadn’t expected you to actually call him on his bullshit. And now he was scrambling, all cool exterior but twitchy tells.
“Wow,” you teased, enjoying his struggle. “You’re not as smooth as I thought.”
“Well, whatever,” he deadpanned. “I’m gonna go make sure no one’s thrown themselves off the side of the boat.”
And with that, he turned and walked away. You smiled to yourself, shaking your head. Score one for you.
The next day was supposed to be a group outing. Jay had invited all three of you on his boat again, planning a full day of sightseeing, drinks, and whatever else the ocean had in store.
But that morning, when you stepped out in your swimsuit and cover-up, your hair still damp from the shower, Amy and Lea were both lounging on the patio, coffee mugs in hand and suspiciously smug looks on their faces.
“What are you guys doing? We have to go,” you said matter-of-factly.
Amy hummed as she shook her head. “You’re going alone.”
You blinked. “What?”
“You need this, girl,” Lea said simply. “He’s hot. You’re heartbroken. And we’re tired of watching you mope.”
You scoffed indignantly. “I did not mope. When did I—”
“Go,” they said in unison.
So you did.
Jay greeted you with a grin as you boarded his boat, wind tousling his hair and sunglasses perched cockily on his nose.
“No entourage today?” he asked, helping you aboard.
“They bailed,” you said.
He smiled, clearly pleased. “Smart girls.”
The day unfolded like something out of a travel magazine. The sky was endless blue, the sea even more so. He took you to hidden coves and quiet stretches of beach, pointing out rocky cliffs and ancient ruins. You swam in the clearest water you’d ever seen, laughed until your stomach hurt, shared cold drinks and warm glances.
By late afternoon, you were stretched out beside him on the deck, towel beneath you, the sun dipping lower in the sky.
Jay turned his head toward you, that lazy smirk still in place. “I would really be heartbroken once you leave my boat, but I guess it’s worth it if it’s you.”
You rolled your eyes. “Wow. Romantic.”
He chuckled. “I can be, if that’s what you’re into.”
You didn’t answer. Just looked at him, lying on his side, head propped on one hand, salt still glistening on his chest and sunglasses perched perfectly on his nose.
“I’ve been dying to be alone with you,” he said quietly.
You didn’t look away. “And now that you are?”
He gave a half-shrug, his smile softening. “Now I’m trying not to fuck it up.”
You smiled, leaned in just a little, and said, “Then don’t.”
It was all the permission he needed. With one swift motion, he hovered over you, his body blocking the sun as he looked down at you.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Are you?” you asked back, challenging him. “Or are you gonna get all flustered and adorable for me again?” you added, fingers tracing the curve of his abs.
“You’re playing a very dangerous game here, sweetheart,” he challenged.
“So what? Too hot for you?”
Jay smirked, visibly impressed. His eyes flicked to your lips then briefly back to your eyes before diving in to kiss you. It was warm, salty, sun-drenched. His hand was confident when it landed on your waist, rubbing, feeling. Yours curled into his damp hair as the boat rocked gently beneath you, the world narrowing to just the two of you.
Below deck, the second the door shut behind you, Jay had you pressed against it.
He kissed you deep, dirty, all tongue and teeth, his hands greedy as they found your waist and pulled you closer. You could feel the heat radiating off his skin, the seawater still drying in patches along his chest, the faint taste of liquor on his tongue. You reached down, tugged on the waistband of his shorts, and he laughed into your mouth.
“Impatient, are we?” he murmured, dragging your bottom lip between his teeth.
You kissed him hard, arms wrapped around his shoulders, and he groaned low in his throat as his hands slid under your thighs, lifting you to the bed like you weighed nothing. Your bare legs locked around his hips. Your thighs met the warm sheets and you gasped against his mouth when he bit your lip.
“God, I’ve been thinking about this all fucking day,” he muttered, kissing down your jaw, his hands roaming greedily over your sides. “You're so goddamn sexy when you tease me.”
You tugged at his hair. “When did I do that?”
He smirked into your neck. “You obviously had no idea, but don’t worry, I’ll make sure you feel very, very sorry about it.”
His lips were on you again before the words even registered. Kissing you deep, kissing you slow, until you were squirming beneath him. His hand slid up your thigh, pushed the fabric of your swimsuit aside, and his thumb brushed where you were already soaked.
“Wet and excited,” he muttered. “Just the way I like it.”
“Jay, stop talking and get on it,” you panted, hips chasing his hand.
Jay grinned. “Alright, since you asked nicely.”
You shot him a glare, but it melted fast when he dropped to his knees. Pulled your bottoms off with one fluid motion and threw them somewhere behind him.
You tipped your head back the moment his mouth touched you, one hand bracing on the counter, the other tugging at his hair again. “Jay—fuck—”
He moaned into you, rough and obscene, like he wanted you to know just how much he was enjoying it. The room was filled with wet, messy sounds, your breathy gasps echoing above it all. You gripped his hair, trying to stay still, but your body had a mind of its own, hips rocking up into his face.
“I can’t—” you choked out, thighs trembling. You came embarrassingly fast, clenching hard around nothing as you gasped his name.
Jay stood and kissed you, still tasting like you, and his hands were already pushing his shorts down. You reached for him, touched him, and he hissed in approval.
“Come here,” he growled, and then you were being turned, hands braced against the mattress, his chest pressing against your back. He slid inside you with a groan so guttural it made your toes curl.
The stretch stole your breath. “Oh, fuck—Jay—”
“God, you feel unreal,” he breathed against your shoulder, one hand gripping your hip tight enough to bruise while the other slipped between your thighs again. “You gonna take it like a good girl or do you want to tell me what to do?”
You tried. You really tried. But every time you opened your mouth, he hit something inside you that made your thoughts scatter.
“Uh-huh,” he chuckled darkly. “That’s what I thought.”
The pace turned relentless. Fast and deep, the sounds of your bodies slapping together echoing off the cabin walls, your breathy moans mixing with his filthy praise. He told you how good you felt, how gorgeous you looked, how he’d been dreaming about this since the day he met you. You cursed, clutched the sheets, back arching, completely unraveling beneath him.
“Fuck, you’re gonna be the death of me,” he muttered, pulling out and flipping you around.
He hovered above you, kissed you slow again, positioning himself between your legs. “You wanna ride me?” he asked, teasing.
You nodded, lips brushing his jaw. “Yeah. I do.”
He rolled onto his back immediately, hands behind his head. “Be my guest.”
It didn’t last long. You straddled him, sank down slowly, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head. “Jesus Christ—”
You tried to find a rhythm, something steady, but the way he felt inside you—thick, deep, rubbing every spot perfectly—made it impossible. Especially with the way he kept watching you, mouthing filth between clenched teeth, hips bucking up to meet yours.
“You’re so fucking tight—shit—look at you,” he groaned. “If you can only see yourself right now.”
His hands gripped your ass, helping you move, but then he sat up, mouth finding your collarbone, your shoulder, and suddenly he was thrusting up into you, hard and fast, stealing every ounce of composure you had left.
You clung to him, moaning shamelessly as he fucked you from below, his voice rough in your ear. “That’s it, baby. Come on.”
You did, again, harder than before—crying out as you clenched down around him, lightheaded and spiraling in euphoria.
Jay swore under his breath, then flipped you onto your back in one fluid motion. “One more,” he rasped, driving back into you, not giving you time to catch your breath. “You’ve got one more in you, don’t you?”
You didn’t even answer. Just held on tight, nails digging into his back as he slammed into you, rough, messy, perfect. He kissed you through it, swore again when he felt you start to come undone, and then with one final thrust, he spilled into you, gasping your name against your mouth.
The silence after was satisfying. Heavy with heat and broken by his occasional grunts and your panting. You stayed tangled, sweaty and half-laughing, while he buried his face in your neck and caught his breath.
“Well,” he said eventually, voice hoarse. “I’m amazing, aren’t I?”
That made you laugh. “You’re alright.”
He laughed and kissed your shoulder. “Okay, liar,” he quipped before rolling onto the bed beside you.
You said goodbye to Jay at the dock, the same spot he’d first said goodbye to you after taking you to this place. He helped your friends load their bags onto his yacht, cracked a joke about how he wasn’t running a taxi service, and kissed you once—quick and easy, no lingering promises. You smiled at him, genuine and grateful, and then he was gone, taking the laughter and chaos and comfort with him.
And just like that, you were alone.
You hadn’t truly been alone since you arrived in France. Jake had been with you in Paris on your first day, cute and shy. Sunghoon was on this island the day you got here, charming and kind, offering you help and himself. When he left, your friends arrived with wine and sunhats, and then Jay swept in like a storm, all noise and heat. But now the house was truly empty. You hadn’t expected the silence to feel so loud.
For a while, you didn’t do much. You walked around barefoot, let the days pass lazily, ate too much fruit, and stared at the ocean. You were scared, not of the house, not of the work ahead, but of the loneliness. You’d never admitted that before. But there it was, pressing into your chest like it intended to suffocate you.
Still, you carried on.
Since you didn’t have the finances to convert the mansion into a guesthouse yet, you found work in town. Mornings were spent in a café near the harbor, brewing coffee and scribbling names on cups that always got smudged. Tourists liked you, maybe because you smiled even when you were tired, or maybe because you looked like a tourist yourself if one would take away the uniform and the beret.
At night, you waited tables at corner street restaurant, where the wine was relatively pricey and the seafood never disappointed. The hours were long, but the pay was fair, and the staff became familiar. You didn’t tell them much about yourself, just that you were from a small village a few miles away and saving up for something big.
You kept working on your plans when you got home—sketching interior designs, tallying costs, researching permits and licensing. Some nights you fell asleep with your laptop still open on your stomach. Other nights you walked down to the beach alone, letting the cool sand soothe your body and mind.
It wasn’t a glamorous life. But it was good.
And slowly, you started to feel less fragile. You didn’t miss Sunghoon, not exactly. What you missed was the closeness, the feeling of someone else’s warmth in the bed beside you, the distraction from your thoughts. But you were proud of yourself too. You were building something. Even if it wasn’t a hotel yet, even if it was just a new version of yourself.
Two months passed like that.
Work, sleep, plan, repeat. The days folded into each other like pages in a worn book—some soft and golden, others heavy with fatigue. You had slipped into a routine without realizing it. Maybe that’s why you didn’t notice at first.
Your period was late.
It didn’t hit you until one morning at the café, when the espresso machine was hissing in the background and a wave of nausea hit you out of nowhere. You brushed it off, blaming the heat. But the feeling stayed until you had to leave because you couldn’t take it anymore without throwing up.
And then came the other things. The tenderness, the fatigue, the strange aversion to the smell of coffee that made your coworkers laugh but made your stomach turn.
You tried not to spiral. Maybe it was stress. You’d read that stress could delay periods. You'd been busy and tired. But still, something gnawed at you. So you had to check.
On afternoon, after your shift ended early, you walked into a clinic two towns over, where no one knew your name. You filled out the form with shaky hands and let the nurse lead you through the halls, your heart racing in your chest.
And then came the results that were impossible to misunderstand.
You were pregnant.
When you stepped back outside, the world was too bright, the sound of cicadas were roaring in your ears. You sat on a bench just outside the building, phone clutched in your hand but no one to call.
Because now came the real question: Who? Which one?
It wasn’t like you hadn’t thought of it. The possibility had been there, but hearing the confirmation made it real. And now your mind spiraled through the summer like a montage, playing back every moment, every night, every touch.
Jake. Sunghoon. Jay.
You weren’t reckless. It wasn’t about that. You had been careful—or at least you thought you had. But the lines blurred in your memory now, and all you were left with was the truth.
You were carrying a child, and you didn’t know who the father was.
You sat there for a long time. Just breathing. A little girl passed by holding her mother’s hand, chattering about ice cream. A breeze lifted your hair. Somewhere in the distance, someone laughed.
And you were still sitting. Still not sure what came next. But that night, you knew you needed to call Amy and Lea.
“This is why I always tell you to wrap it up,” Amy said immediately.
Neither of them knew what to say at first. You didn’t blame them. It wasn’t exactly news you could prepare them for.
“The raw way might be toe-curling, head-spinningly amazing,” Amy went on, “but it’s not worth it if it’s gonna get you knocked up out of wedlock.”
Lea scoffed audibly on the other line. “Shut up, Ames. You’re the one who always said condoms are cock-blockers and everyone should experience the ‘sheer delight’ of raw sex at least once.”
“I meant once, not—” Amy cut herself off. “Okay, never mind. We’re not talking about me.”
“You’re literally always talking about you.”
“Lea.”
“Sorry, sorry. Focus,” Lea said, clearing her throat. “So who do you think is the father?”
“Park Jay?” Amy ventured.
“Or Park Sunghoon,” Lea added. “You did say he was hot and brooding and emotionally intense, right? That sounds like potent baby-daddy energy.”
“Mm,” Amy mused. “But Jay has the boat and the abs. I’m leaning Jay.”
“Oh my god. It doesn’t matter. They’re both Parks, our baby will get the same surname regardless of who the father is,” Lea said excitedly.
You sighed. “Guys.”
“Don’t ‘guys’ us,” Amy said. “You invited us into the drama, now let us live in it.”
“Okay, but there’s someone else…”
They both went quiet. “...Don’t tell me you slept with someone else after Jay left?” Amy finally said.
You winced. “Actually, it was before. I met a guy name Jake Sim in Paris. Before coming to Corsica. Things happened.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then both of them erupted in squeals.
“Three guys in just one summer?” Amy shrieked.
Lea was laughing. “You are an icon. How does it feel to be the main character of an erotic French film?”
“I feel nauseous,” you muttered.
“Pregnancy symptom,” Amy deadpanned.
“I’m serious,” you said, running a hand over your face. “What if it was Jake and I was just insane this whole time? Like, genuinely hormonal and insane. What if that’s why I got so swept up with Sunghoon? I couldn’t keep my hands off him. Maybe I was already pregnant then. Maybe I wasn’t even in love—just horny and mental.”
“Hormones do make you horny,” Amy said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to fall in lust under the influence of progesterone.”
“No, girl. You cried over him,” Lea reminded gently. “And you don’t really cry over guys unless it’s real.”
“Yeah, but pregnant women are crazy women. How would I know what’s real and what’s not?” you whispered. “I just thought it was love but then it wasn’t. It was just me being reckless and careless and—”
“Babe,” Amy cut in. “I know what you’re doing. You’re denying that it was real. Even if it was love and even if it wasn’t, you’re allowed to have feelings. You don’t need to justify your heartbreak to anyone. Especially not to yourself.”
You were quiet for a second. “Thanks, Ames.”
Amy added, “And I still say it’s Jay. Sunghoon probably pulls out. He sounds like a good guy. Good guys pull out.”
“Oh my god,” Lea said, cracking up. “On that note, I’m hanging up before Amy gives this baby a horoscope reading.”
“Wait, I totally should—”
Click. You stared at your phone, smiling faintly.
And then you weren’t smiling. You were just sitting again, alone in your big bedroom. A child growing inside you. A thousand things left to figure out. But at least you had friends who made you laugh along the way.
You didn’t know what to do at first. The test had been positive, the signs were there, but your thoughts had scattered into every direction at once. You considered everything—your finances, your future. Your pride.
The sheer humiliation of having to call any of the three men, let alone all of them. What would you even say? That you had a summer full of crap decisions and now needed help guessing which one was the father?
No. Just the idea made you shrink into yourself.
You kept the secret close to your chest, rolling it over and over, sleepless nights spent making pro and con lists in your head. You had reasons—dozens of them—for why you couldn’t keep the baby. And everytime you came close to making the call, to booking the appointment, something stopped you.
And then it was too late to even consider it.
You gave birth to a healthy baby girl in a cool winter night, with the help of kind women in the village who knew what to do. They guided you through labor with gentle hands and wisdom, and when you finally held your daughter in your arms, all the noise in your head quieted down.
Your daughter was perfect. Warm and pink and wailing, with one little fist curled around your finger.
You named her together. Amy and Lea had flown in as quickly as they could, flustered and crying and loud as ever, and from that moment on, the baby was theirs too. Theirs and the village’s, because it really did take a village to raise a child. The baker who always snuck pastries into her bag. Old man Jean-Luc who carved a cradle. The innkeeper who watched the baby when you picked up extra shifts.
The little girl grew into a sweet, curious child with wide eyes and smart wit. Everyone said she looked just like you. You were near-twins, people would say, shaking their heads fondly.
“She’s your spitting image. Her dad’s genes didn’t even try!”
You raised your daughter with love. You taught her to be soft with the world but never small. To be good but not naive. To be strong but not unkind.
Meanwhile, you built the bed and breakfast from the ground up—slowly, with scraped knees and secondhand furniture, but with pride. It was small but beautiful. Cozy but polished. Tourists came, then returned, drawn by the warmth of the place and the magic of the island.
It wasn’t always easy—there were long nights, missed opportunities, tired tears—but it was yours. And you were happy.
Not the kind of happy that came with a man’s hands around your waist or whispered promises in the dark. The kind that looked like laughter over breakfast, like sun-dried sheets, like a child’s muddy footprints on a kitchen floor.
You didn’t need a man, and neither did your daughter. You had built a life of your own and it was enough.
“Mommy! Someone’s here!” your daughter called from the front door.
You had two hours left before guests would arrive for her birthday party. You were in the kitchen icing cupcakes when the doorbell rang, so you called out for her to answer it, assuming it was a parent dropping off a gift early—or Amy and Lea showing up with something too big to carry alone.
“I’ll be right out!” you called, wiping your hands on a dish towel as you jogged toward the front, hair tied up in a bun, frosting smudged on your arm. “Who is it, honey?”
You froze the moment you saw who she was staring at.
Standing on your porch were three men you hadn’t seen in years.
Jake, in a navy blue suit and tie, holding a bouquet of flowers. Jay, sunglasses perched on his head, casual as ever but visibly hesitant. And Sunghoon, his expression unreadable, eyes flicking from your face to the hand you’d unconsciously placed on your daughter’s shoulder.
You blinked. Once. Twice.
Then you let out a stunned, almost exasperated laugh.
genre: royalty au, soulmate au, fantasy elements, friends to lovers, angst
word count: 20.7k
warnings: jealousy, copious amounts of yearning, complicated family dynamics, swearing, magic and prophecies and other fantasy elements, arranged marriage, mild depictions of injuries and blood, a disgustingly romantic kiss
soundtrack: echoes - enhypen / no way back - enhypen ft. So!YoON! / ivy - taylor swift / too much is never enough - florence & the machine / if only - raveena / die 4 u - dean
note: Here it is! The second and final part to echoes. If you haven't already, read the first part (which you can find on my masterlist). If you have, then buckle up and enjoyyyyy ♡
⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖
In a kingdom marred by instability and unrest, a prophecy is made. Your bloodline - common, ordinary, unremarkable as it may be - will bring peace to the nation and ensure the long-lasting success of the royal family. As such, your elder sister has been in an arranged engagement with Jungwon, the crown prince, since before either of you could walk.
But despite the prophecy, people continue to suffer. The kingdom continues to decline. Cracks continue to form. And when time eventually reveals that you, not her, have a strange, supernatural connection to the prince, everything begins to change.
or, every word you say is on repeat. every thought of you is bittersweet.
⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖
Jaeyun is pacing when you finally pull Nabi’s reigns to a halt, the city unfolding beneath you as you finish your ascent up the familiar hill. This time, however, you have one overly curious crown prince in tow.
“___,” Jaeyun breathes as you dismount. “Finally. What happened? Why are you so la—”
The word dies on his lips as Jungwon follows in your wake, carried by Maeum. Even without his crown, he rides with the unmistakable posture of a royal. You do your best not to wince.
“Who the fuck,” Jaeyun’s lips flatten into a tight line, “is that?”
“Jaeyun, look at me,” you plead. “You have to promise me you’ll listen.”
But his eyes are already past your shoulders, watching Jungwon dismount with a practiced grace.
Immediately, he straightens his spine. Neither him nor Jungwon is particularly tall, but the way he stretches his neck makes you think he’s hoping for a sudden growth spurt.
“Listen,” you try again, urgent to say as much as you can before Jungwon has the chance to approach. “I promise I’ll explain everything later, but it’s okay. Really. It sounds absolutely inconceivable, I know, but this is—”
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Jungwon interrupts, although his tone is rather tight. Stepping forward, he doesn’t stop until he’s in line with your shoulder, directly at your side. “I am Crown Prince Yang Jungwon, son of the king and heir to the throne. May I know with whom I am conversing?”
Jaeyun’s gaze slides to you, a mix of incredulous and shocked. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Jungwon,” you hiss, “I think Maeum might want a treat.” Pulling a carrot from your bag, you all but shove it into his hands. “Why don’t you go feed him and meet us back here in a minute.”
Jaeyun’s mouth is still hanging open. “You’re on a first name basis with the fucking prince?”
Much to your horror, Jungwon opens his mouth as if he wants to answer that question for you.
“Please,” you beg before he has the chance.
Letting his lips fall shut, he gives a minute nod. Looking only at you, he concedes. “Very well.”
Jaeyun watches him retreat, shock still widening his features. And then, once he’s made it a few paces away—
“What, and I really do mean this, on the graves of my ancestors, do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s a terribly long story,” you try to explain. “But I wasn’t going to be able to come tonight unless he came too. But listen, Jaeyun. He found out. About the resistance network and me sneaking out from the castle at night. He discovered all of it.”
“What?” You’ve never seen your friend so pale.
“But it’s okay.” Switching to a whisper, you add, “At least I think it is. He says he wants to be different, Jaeyun. He’s not his father. He wants to listen to his people. Learn the problems of the kingdom and make a true attempt at resolving them.”
“And you believe him? Are they putting something in the castle water supply? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about what you said. About how maybe sometimes we just have to believe in something to make it real. You said it yourself. Everyone’s desperate for a chance at a better future. A little bit of hope. What if this, what if he, is exactly that?”
“That’s… He’s the prince, ___.”
“Exactly. What if this didn’t all have to be some dark, treasonous attempt to change things? What if we could work with someone with real power instead of just of against them?” His expression is still marred with distrust, and you can’t blame him entirely. “Look, I don’t know how fully I trust him yet either, but I do believe that he wants to try making things better. I’ll pass you the notes I have. You can review them later, if you want. I haven’t shown him anything. But,” you add, “he is expecting some information. I was planning to just divulge something small, but if you’d prefer, we can feed him a lie. See what he does with it and reassess from there. Maybe just something small to st—”
You wouldn’t dare.
You freeze as if you’ve been submerged in water. It’s him again. Wincing, you adjust your neck, as if that can make the sensation of whispers against your ear disappear.
“What?” Jaeyun frowns. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” You shake your head. “I just—”
You’ll tell me the truth. The reports you have. All of them. I don’t care what your friend thinks.
Forcing a smile for Jaeyun, you direct a scathing return message.
Would you stop that?
What? Even in your head, he manages to sound smug. Should I have just walked over an interrupted instead? I’m happy to, if you prefer it so. Maeum’s done eating.
He doesn’t bother waiting for a response. Before you can send any thoughts his way, Jungwon is once again taking long strides until he’s at your side.
“Jungwon,” you breathe. If tension were tangible, you would be able to cut the space between them with a knife. “This is Jaeyun. Jaeyun, this is Jungwon.”
“Prince Jungwon,” he corrects.
That little shit. “I thought you weren’t interested in maintaining titles.”
“I’m not,” he agrees. “With you.”
You can practically see the vein throbbing in Jaeyun’s neck.
“That’s not how this works.” You shake your head. “In our resistance efforts, we’re all equal. Status doesn’t exist, much less matter. If you truly want to be part of this, you’ll have to follow our rules.”
“Very well,” he agrees. “Just Jungwon will suffice then.” A beat of silence passes. Jaeyun looks to you, a mix of helplessness and agitation. “Well,” Jungwon finally speaks. “Don’t let me stop you. What reports have you received this week?”
Sighing, you pull your notes from your pocket. “Let’s sit.”
Sat on the grass, the three of you form a haphazard circle. In the center of it, you place your first gathered tidbit.
“From the kitchens,” you explain. “J— I mean, the informant—”
“Who?” Jungwon’s mouth pulls down in thought. “Jay?”
You balk. “How did you—?”
You practically shouted it at me.
Even as you look at him, confirm with your own two eyes the respectable distance between your bodies, you can’t help the heat that rises on your cheeks at the uncanny sensation of him whispering directly into your ear.
It’s hard not to panic at the insinuation. You resolve to keep a tighter reign on your thoughts.
“Anyway,” you press on. “Jay told me that they’ve been using potatoes in almost every meal, despite the king’s insistence on variety. It could point to crop shortages, or at least a lack of diversification. Sunoo confirmed this.” You pull out another report. “He looked through the ledgers, and potato crops have replaced multiple vegetables, both in the castle’s private gardens and in the fields allocated for common food production.”
Jungwon frowns. “I hadn’t even noticed. We have been eating more potatoes than usual.”
“Revolutionary,” Jaeyun drawls, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Life must be so hard for you.”
“But in a recent agricultural strategy meeting,” Jungwon presses on, ignoring him, “the senior groundskeeper advised this switch. He explained that the relatively lower cost and high nutritional profile of potatoes would mean a higher overall food production, especially in the common fields. It’s a good thing, no?”
“That is one possible explanation,” you agree. “Jaeyun, has there been any increase in food rations? Or potatoes specifically?”
Jaeyun shakes his head. “I wouldn’t call it an increase, exactly. Rations are just more limited now. The only vegetable most people can access is potatoes. The overall amount is comparable to before. If anything, it’s actually slightly lower, especially in the outer districts.”
“So the switch to potatoes may be an effort to bring more food to people,” Jungwon starts.
“But overall production is still likely decreasing,” you finish for him.
“Well, hopefully full production will be restored soon,” Jaeyun adds. “With your wedding approaching so soon.” He nods towards Jungwon.
The two of you freeze, equally statuesque where you sit in the grass. You’re not sure why it catches you so completely off guard. The man at your side is to be married in less than a month. And you’ve had an entire life to become accustomed to that knowledge. Still, something in you stirs at the reminder. Something not entirely pleasant.
Jungwon is the one to gain his composure again first.
Looking at you, he ventures, “You told him of the prophecy?” You can’t quite decipher if the narrowness of his gaze is scrutiny or disapproval. Either way, your answer remains.
“Of course,” you nod. “I trust him with my life.”
“That prophecy,” Jungwon begins, “was made by a seer on her deathbed, far before any of us were old enough to understand the gravity of it. Of course,” he reasons, and you see his training in diplomacy bleeding through the cracks, “I hope nothing more than for it to be true. I hope, with every fiber of my being, that this union will bring unshakeable peace and abundance to our kingdom. But,” he pauses, gathering his thoughts. You see a lone muscle in his jaw tick. “In a month’s time, I will wear a different crown on my head. Regardless of what magic may awaken, this kingdom and its people will be in my care. It is my duty to be informed and prepared, regardless of the manner in which this prophecy may or may not manifest.”
You admire it, the way he speaks with such conviction. He’s well-spoken, yes, but his words are rough around the edges. They lack the polish of rehearsal. You’re confident that when he speaks, it’s from the heart.
“That’s probably wise,” is all Jaeyun says, but you can tell he’s more satisfied with Jungwon’s response than he expected to be.
As the night continues to deepen, the three of you go through the rest of the reports in a similar fashion. At some points, you’re pleasantly surprised by Jungwon’s perspective. His attendance at royal strategy meetings offers an insight you and Jaeyun aren’t accustomed to.
By the end of it, Jaeyun’s eyes aren’t burning with quite as much hatred, his words aren’t dripping with quite as much distrust, as when you started.
Still, hours later, he catches your gaze. Dawn is on the horizon, and the town beneath you is just beginning to stir. Your unlikely trio is too exhausted to ponder any more hypotheses, to create any more plans for change.
When Jungwon stands to check on Maeum, Jaeyun’s gaze follows him. And then his eyes slide to you. “I still don’t like it.”
“I don’t expect you to.” You smile ruefully. Exhaustion weighs heavy on your bones. “Thanks for doing it anyway.”
“He’s…” His eyes fall to the space over your shoulder before returning to you. “He’s weird around you.”
“He’s just like that.” You roll your eyes. “You know royals. I think we ought to give him some grace. Growing up with those expectations on your shoulders must make anyone a little strange.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” Jaeyun shakes his head. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you, as if he’s trying to dissect your very thoughts. “You’re weird around him, too.”
“I’m not weird,” you deny, even though the observation has something uncomfortable settling in your gut.
“Just…” He trails off, searching for the right words. “Just be careful, okay? And be safe. You’ll send a note next time you’re ready to meet?”
“Of course,” you agree. “Just like always.”
“You won’t keep me waiting too long, will you?”
You grin. Scoffing, you reach out to push against his shoulder lightly. “Do I ever?”
A bit of playfulness drains from his gaze. Jaeyun is far too serious for your liking when he responds, “Always.”
A glimmer of confusion flickers across your face. “I’ll do my best,” you promise, not entirely sure what else to say.
“Good,” he nods. “I’ll see you soon.”
Spinning on your heel to meet Jungwon near the horses, you hear your name once again.
Turning your head back to Jaeyun, you’re surprised to find him already closing the distance. He brings his hands up, lets one land on your shoulder as he spins you fully, pulling you close as he brings you into a hug that’s almost crushing.
“Be safe,” he whispers again, this time against your hair. You feel the way his mouth moves against the crown of your head.
Behind you, a throat clears. It’s loud in the predawn stillness.
Jaeyun lets you go. Slowly, as if he doesn’t want to. As if he isn’t quite ready to say goodbye.
But your brain is exhausted and your body is heavy. You’re too tired to ponder it now. Instead, you follow Jungwon, accepting the hand he offers in assistance as you mount Nabi.
Handing you the reins, his fingers brush yours. Linger for just a fraction of a second.
“Goodbye, ___.” Jaeyun calls one last time. You wave to him, a small smile on your lips.
“Jungwon,” he nods, with decidedly less warmth in his eyes.
“Jaeyun,” he returns, inclining his head in a small bow.
And then, just as the day begins to break over the horizon, the two of you begin your journey back to the castle, Jaeyun fading further and further until he’s nothing but a speck in the distance.
…..
The following weeks continue in a similar fashion.
Despite the strangeness of it all, the unlikely routine surrounding Jungwon, Jaeyun, and the other palace informants you keep in touch with begins to feel routine.
Your sister wiggles her way in, too. With the wedding drawing closer and closer, you’ve been asked to attend more dress fittings, more cake tastings, and more salon appointments that you can count with your fingers.
Oddly enough, the impending ceremony has yet to make its way into a conversation between you and Jungwon. Other than Jaeyun’s brief mention on the hilltop, both with your words and inside your minds, the subject has never been breached.
But as the days continue, your abilities sharpen. Until speaking to him through your mind becomes almost second nature. Even when the physical distance between you is significant.
Where are you now? He asks one afternoon, nearly startling you off of Nabi’s saddle.
Riding, you tell him. And you?
In a meeting. Defense strategy. Terribly boring, I fear.
Pay attention, you urge. You might learn something useful.
Or I might perish before the hour is done. Tell me, ___, have you ever heard of a person dying of boredom?
You roll your eyes. Don’t be dramatic.
Easy for you to say. You’re out riding. I’d kill to be out with Maeum right now.
I’m sure you would.
A moment of silence passes. And then, Where are you going, anyway? Just taking her out for some exercise?
No, you explain. I’m going to see Jaeyun.
RIGHT NOW? It’s difficult to describe, the sensation of someone shouting at you inside your own skull. You can practically feel the way he suddenly sits up straight in his seat. It’s daytime. Are you trying to get caught?
Relax, you urge. I’m allowed to leave the castle. I’m not a prisoner. And now that I have a horse of my own, I don’t have to steal someone else’s. Besides, a daytime errand will draw far less suspicion than a midnight one, no?
Still. It’s not safe.
You resist the urge to roll your eyes. I’ll be fine.
With what? That tiny dagger you carry around? I doubt you even know how to use it.
Of course I know how to use it.
Really? He’s goading you now. How?
With the pointy end.
The silence is deafening.
You’re incredibly irritating.
Me? If you were face-to-face, your mouth would drop open in indignance. I’m not the one interrupting a perfectly lovely afternoon ride right now.
You should consider yourself lucky, he argues. And let me know when you’re back. I’ll have to add dagger lessons to my schedule today.
Yes, Your Highness.
We’re back to this again?
Well, you are ordering me around.
I’m trying to keep you alive.
A noble task.
I think you’ll find I’m very altruistic. Although…
What?
I do rather prefer it when you say my name.
Despite the fact that the conversation is in your brain, there’s nothing imaginary about the way your heart skips a beat.
Very well. Yes, Jungwon.
Much better.
If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was smiling.
Jungwon is waiting for you when you return to the castle. This time, you aren’t blindfolded for your descent into his secret chamber.
Although, you are rather distracted for other reasons. You’re not sure you’d be able to remember your way on your own.
The two of you fall into silence. It isn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but something in you is restless, begging to fill it.
“All is well with you?” You ask, turning down yet another impossibly maze-like corridor. Jungwon walks in step with you, following your stride, matching your pace.
“As well as it can be, I suppose.” But he sighs on the final syllable.
Not for the first time, you consider what daily life must be like for him. Strategy meetings, physical training, preparations for his upcoming coronation. For his wedding. It must be tiring in a way even you can’t quite imagine.
“Your coronation is less than a month away now, no?” Your words are quiet, not loud enough to echo in the halls. “You must be quite busy.”
“There’s much to prepare,” Jungwon agrees. “Although the majority of it does not fall under my scope of duty, actually.”
“That’s a relief.” Your words trail off into silence again. Only the sound of light, quick footsteps fills the space. And then, “And your… your wedding?”
Beside you, Jungwon’s steps nearly falter. He’s quick to correct the error. If you hadn’t been watching, you would have missed it.
“With that,” he finally says, voice quiet but sure, “I have even less involvement.”
He, much like you, does not seem interested in pressing the topic further.
Instead, after a few more paces, he informs, “We’re nearly there.”
You haven’t yet begun the descent, but you suppose that is the final step.
Desperate to bring back a bit of the lightheartedness, you ask, “You’re not going to blindfold me this time?”
“Don’t tempt me.” Jungwon smiles.
But your sight remains intact as you round one final corner, feet coming to stop in front of a nondescript door.
Jungwon steps forward, hand wrapping around the handle as he heaves it open. The lithe muscles of his back strain beneath his shirt with the effort.
In front of you is a set of stairs. Peering into the darkness, light swallows your line of sight before you can see where they end.
“I suppose it’s a bit ironic to ask if you’re afraid of the dark.”
All you offer is a knowing smile. You might be accustomed to the dark, and yet, your heart is pounding. “After you,” you nod.
The downward climb doesn’t feel quite so long the second time. Eyes forward, you can barely make out Jungwon’s shadowy silhouette in front of you. Instead, you focus on keeping your footsteps measured, even. The last thing you need is to go tumbling down these stairs.
After a matter of minutes, the two of you finally reach the bottom.
Jungwon strikes a flint and uses it to ignite the first torch.
You watch, in nearly as much awe as the first time, as the flame sets off a chain reaction, one torch giving light to the next. Before the next minute is done, the room is bathed in a warm glow once again.
Glancing around, you can’t help but offer a compliment. “You have excellent taste in secret chambers.”
“It’s not much,” is all he says. But the slight flush dusted across his cheekbones disagrees. After a moment, he clears his throat, then adds, “So, about that dagger.”
“I told you,” you remind, “I already know how to use it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t find ‘with the pointy end’ satisfactory evidence of that statement.”
“Still,” you protest, “I don’t n—”
Are we going to argue all evening or will you just allow me this one peace of mind?
He doesn’t ask you out loud. And despite the growing familiarity of your connection, you can’t help but gasp at the sudden sensation of his words against your ear.
“Very well,” you tell him, not daring to use your mind.
Bending down, you begin to lift the hem of your skirt to retrieve the weapon strapped to your light.
Across from you, the crown prince of the kingdom coughs. Loudly.
When you look up to ensure he’s okay, you find his gaze already pointedly averted. That same pink flush is rising high on his cheekbones, this time more pronounced.
Undeterred, you free the blade from the holster at your thigh, letting your skirts fall back into place.
“So,” you begin, “other than the pointy end, what should I be aware of?”
Jungwon’s gaze is still lost somewhere on the tapestries on the opposite side of the room from you. You watch as he takes a long, shaky breath before turning back to face you.
With a voice that only trembles slightly, he says, “Show me.”
Your brow furrows in confusion. He sighs. Adds, “Show me how you would hold your dagger, if approached by an enemy.”
Frowning, you begin to sink into a stance that feels natural. Knees bent, you try to keep your weight evenly distributed between both legs. Extend the dagger outwards, it does feel more foreign in your hand than you’d like to admit.
Jungwon turns his eyes to the ceiling, expression marked with exasperation. “Gods have mercy on us all,” he mutters beneath his breath. “The pointy end.”
Turning back to you, he assesses you once again. “That’s a good way to get disarmed.”
Despite yourself, you bristle at the insult. “Don’t be dramat—”
In one silent movement, he’s lunging towards you, knocking the dagger from your outstretched hand. It clatters to the carpeted floor with a muted thud.
Mouth open in surprise, you bend down to reach for it. Jungwon beats you to it. Before you can retrieve your weapon, he kicks it, just outside your reach.
Then, with a flourish you’re positive is more for show than function, Jungwon stomps on the handle, sending the blade spinning upwards into the air and landing perfectly between his fingers.
For a moment, shock renders you immobile. It all happened so fast, and your mind spins to keep up. Finally, you cross your arms over your chest.
“That’s hardly fair. I doubt most of my foes will have spent years training in royal… theatrical dagger flipping.” You wave him off dismissively.
“Don’t underestimate them.” Jungwon shakes his head. “There has been nearly constant small-scale warfare along every one of our borders for as long as anyone can remember. You’d be surprised what a man learns to do with a blade when he has things to protect.” He pauses for a moment, considering. “Although you’re not entirely wrong. I am highly competent in most forms of combat.”
“And exceedingly humble about it, too,” you mumble lowly.
Ignoring you, Jungwon presses forward. “For you, we’ll focus on the basics. Your stance is too low. Try not to bend your knees so much.”
Sinking back into your stance, you make an effort to keep your legs straighter.
“Good,” Jungwon praises, “but you’re still too tense. A dagger can only be used in very close combat. You need to be agile, light on your feet. Ready to move at a moment's notice. Before your opponent can predict it.”
Exhaling slowly, you try to release tension from your lower body.
You must be at least somewhat successful, because the only feedback Jungwon offers is a small nod of approval.
“And your arms,” Jungwon continues. “You’re holding them out too far. Your movements have to be quick, precise. You have no control when your limbs are extended. Keep them close to your body and only reach at the final moment of your attack.”
Nodding, you draw your arms up again, this time keeping them close to your chest.
“Right,” Jungwon nods. “Like that.” Stepping closer to you, he doesn’t stop until he stands directly before you, close enough to touch. Taking the dagger, he places it back into your hand, wrapping your fingers around the handle.
He’s still in your space. If he were to learn just a few inches closer, it would be just like it is when he speaks in your mind. His words ghosting along the shell of your ear.
“Out there,” he says, “your most likely enemy will be a man. Brute force and strength are on their side. You have to be quick,” he advises. “And you have to use this.” Reaching up, he taps the side of your temple with his fingertip. “You have to be smarter than them. Faster, on your feet and in your mind. Keep your core braced. Keep your chest up and your chin down. Aim for the weak points on the body, and keep yours protected.”
He’s so close. You can see the way his eyelashes flutter as he blinks. His voice grows more fervent as his instructions continue. “If circumstances allow, you run. All the way back here.” He inhales, a shadow crossing his features. “And if they don’t, you protect yourself at all costs. Even if it means doing the unthinkable. And with whatever is left in your mind, you scream for me. Do you understand?”
Your breath is shallow in your chest. “You act as though I’ve been getting in dagger fights daily. I’ve never even—”
“Do you understand?” He repeats, cutting you off.
“Yes,” you breathe, taken aback by the urgency in his tone. “I understand.”
“Good.” The lesson is over, the agreement is done, but he doesn’t back away.
It’s all a bit preposterous, this strange version of reality your life has become. You wonder what Jaeyun would say, if you told him you were receiving private dagger lessons from the crown prince himself. You wonder what Mina would say—
Mina.
It’s as if you’ve been doused in a bucket of water from the lake in the dead of wintertime.
You’re not doing anything… untoward, but Jungwon’s proximity is suddenly a difficult thing to miss. While she prepares for a wedding, you meet her fiancee in secret chambers. Letting him crowd your space as he insists on keeping you safe.
It’s necessary, you tell yourself. Not treasonous in the slightest. And yet. Something unpleasant simmers in your gut at the thought of your sister ever becoming privy to any of it.
Disentangling yourself from the prince, you step backwards until reasonable space separates the two of you once again.
“It’s getting late,” you say, even though you have no concept of time this far from the sunlight. “We should return.”
“Indeed,” Jungwon nods. “I will escort you back to your chambers.”
“That won’t be necessary,” you assure. “Besides, as you said, it’s probably best that the two of us are not seen together.”
Jungwon just shakes his head softly. “I know this castle more intimately than you could imagine. We will not be seen.”
Despite the nature of your relationship, something in you still hesitates to go against his wishes. And deeper yet, something in you mourns the thought of parting ways.
“Very well,” you nod.
True to his word, the path Jungwon leads is winding in its secrecy. You pass forgotten hallways, echoing chambers, an atrium filled with dust reflected by the starlight above.
After long minutes, you tell him, “I never knew any of this existed.”
“It’s by design,” he nods. “These passageways are intentionally difficult to navigate. Full of dead ends and false doors and hidden detours. You can reach nearly every corner of the castle this way.”
“Really?” Your eyes widen. “Where are we now?”
“Just behind the throne room, actually. It’s empty now, of course, but—”
Suddenly, you hear the sound of voices, muffled but near. Jungwon’s words die on his tongue.
The two of you turn towards one another, equal expressions of confusion on your faces. Jungwon motions you silently forward a few more steps.
Pressing your ear to the wall, the voices are still still difficult to make out, although you do catch some fractured fragments.
“...Proceeding as normally,” you hear one voice say, “considerations to be made in regards to the dowry…”
You frown. A dowry? The only upcoming wedding of royal concern is your sister’s, and it has long been accepted that her hand comes with no dowry.
“Avoiding retaliation,” the voice continues, “...ensuring the union can be blessed without formal annulment.”
Your frown deepens. Turning to look at Jungwon, you wonder if he can make sense of any of this.
“And the prince?” you hear a voice ask.
The response is too muffled to catch.
“...New trade routes, and a strong, unified ally,” is the last thing you manage to make out, until the voices fade, further and further. Then, they’re gone entirely.
You part your lips to speak. Jungwon just shakes his head, a deep line etched between his eyebrows. Wordlessly, he begins to move forward again. You follow silently.
A handful of moments later, the two of you reach a dark alcove. Only then does Jungwon stop, turning to face you.
“What was that?” you ask, still not daring to speak louder than a whisper.
“I don’t know.” Jungwon shakes his head. “But one of those voices belonged to my father. The other, I cannot be sure.”
His father. The king.
“Why was your father speaking of marriage dowries?” you wonder, trying not to let unease settle too heavily. Maybe there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all of it. “And annulments?
But Jungwon’s expression is no reassurance. “I have no idea.”
Despite yourself, a seedling of distrust begins to sprout at the edge of your mind. Regardless of what claims he makes about trying to rule the kingdom with a gentler hand, the man in front of you is the prince. There are far more things that would motivate him to remain loyal to his father than to you.
“Truly?” you ask. “None at all?”
Jungwon bristles, as if he can sense your thoughts. “Yes, truly. As I told you before, I have little to do with this marriage besides finding my place at the end of the aisle.”
“Okay,” you placate him. “Okay. I just don’t understand the purpose of such discussions. Considering the involvement of my sister, I’m sure you can understand my unease.”
Jungwon sighs, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. “I do understand. But I swear to you, on this matter, I truly know nothing.”
“Well then,” your eyes meet his, “I suppose we’ll just have to find someone who does.”
Your search begins fruitlessly.
It starts with Jay, who has heard nothing. And in an unfortunate stroke of bad luck, he’s been tasked by the king himself with locating a rare fruit that hasn’t grown locally for nearly a century. Although Jay makes time to talk to you, his answers are short and his time is limited as he tells you he cannot be late for his meeting with the royal importer.
Sunoo is equally clueless. You know crops have little to do with marriages, and you leave the fields empty handed and thoroughly disappointed.
Even Riki, who has the most direct involvement with the upcoming wedding, has no information for you. Dressmaking is proceeding normally, and no strange royal orders have reached his ears.
When he offers to let you try on your gown, you wave him off. “Later.”
“Are you sure?” he asks. “It’s absolutely gorgeous. Even more than I thought it would be. I think you’re going to love it.”
But you’re already halfway out the door.
Walking through the gardens as fast as your legs will carry you, you make a beeline for the stables. The sun is just beginning to dip on the horizon, casting a warm, golden glow over the earth.
Were your head less jumbled, perhaps you could enjoy it more.
Frustrated to no end at all of the dead ends, you figure maybe a ride with Nabi will help to clear your thoughts. But when you finally reach the stable, you’re not the only one paying a visit to the horses.
This time, it is no crown prince that disturbs your peace.
“Sunghoon,” you startle, even though you’re the one that snuck up on him.
“___,” he turns to greet you. “It’s been a while. How is Nabi doing for you?”
“She’s perfect,” you nod. “I couldn’t have selected a better horse myself.”
“The prince does have excellent taste,” he agrees. His words surprise you. You suppose Jungwon did say he asked Sunghoon to look after Nabi in the daytime, but something about the stable hand knowing the crown prince all but gifted you a horse has you shifting your weight uncomfortably.
“So does her owner,” you nod to the horse currently in Sunghoon’s care. With light, fur that shines even in dying light, she truly is a sight to see. With short golden fur, she’s not as stark white as Maeum, but she’s just as striking within her own right.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she,” Sunghoon agrees. “Princesses tend to be picky.”
“Princesses?” you echo. Jungwon has no siblings, no sisters to speak of. And he is not yet married. Unless you’ve missed something terribly important, the kingdom has no princess.
Sunghoon nods. “The princess from the northern kingdom. Her horse has been sent here to be cared for. To acclimate.”
“Acclimate?” At this point, you’re little more than a parrot. But why would the princess of the northern kingdom send her horse here to acclimate? Even if she were part of some political envoy or trade negotiation, it wouldn't make sense to send a horse here for such a short visit.
Sunghoon only shrugs. “I only know what I’ve been told. I’ve been asked to take good care of this horse until future notice.”
“Right,” you nod, gears in your mind beginning to spin. “It’s alright if I take Nabi out?”
“Of course,” he concedes. “She’s all yours.”
You wait until the castle is far enough away for comfort. No stray patrols or royal guards to be seen. And then you send a message.
Meet me at the edge of the forest outside the eastern gate. As soon as you can.
It takes less than a heartbeat for his response to come to you.
I’m on my way.
…..
Jaeyun is already waiting for you by the time you reach the hilltop. Again, the greeting he gives you is far warmer than the one he offers the prince, but your mind is far too jumbled to notice.
A handful of moments later, the three of you are sitting, facing each other in a loosely formed circle. And then you tell them what you know. All of it.
You tell Jaeyun what you and Jungwon heard, that night in the secret alcove. The voice of the king, discussing dowries and allies.
You tell them both about what you just heard from Sunghoon - the princess of the northern kingdom’s horse that has been placed in his care. To acclimate.
At that, the crease between Jungwon’s eyebrows becomes so deep you have to fight the urge to smooth it away with your fingertips.
“Did you visit the kitchens?” he asks.
“Yes,” you nod. “But Jay didn’t have much to tell me. He was busy actually. Something about a rare fruit.”
Jaeyun nods, waving it off as dismissively as you had. But Jungwon’s frown remains.
“What fruit?”
“Hm?” You’re not sure why you’re wasting time on this, when other matters feel far more pressing. “I don’t remember. Something exotic, I think. He said he’d have to talk with the royal importer.”
Jungwon won’t let it go. “Was it moonberry?”
“Yeah,” you nod slowly. “That does sound right, actually. Why? Do you know it?”
Jungwon nods, jaw tight. “It used to grow in the northern kingdom in abundance. Until they destroyed nearly all of their natural flora and fauna nearly three decades ago. Now, it’s considered a rare delicacy. It’s… it’s common, in marriage gifts for noble families.”
“Oh…” you trail off, trying desperately to ignore the sinking feeling beginning to form in the pit of your stomach. “That could be fine, then. Maybe they’re just preparing a gift. For Mina.”
Jungwon shakes his head. “It is not a tradition in our kingdom.” He avoids your gaze when he adds, “Only in the northern kingdom.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Your hands flip in exasperation. Turning to Jungwon, you add, “Unless you have some secret brother none of us know about, the only royal marriage happening anytime soon is between you and my sister. There’s no reason for the king to be thinking of dowries or preparing royal marriage gifts—”
Jaeyun is the one to interrupt. “Unless they’re not planning for the marriage to last.”
“What do you mean?” Your eyes widen, voice thinning. “Taking more than one wife is forbidden. And royal marriages cannot be annulled once the sacred oaths are taken.”
Jaeyun’s gaze holds no joy. But it does offer a fraction of understanding. “Unless…”
Jungwon’s gaze snaps to his, a flicker of shock crossing his features. Between them, something passes. A realization still outside of your grasp.
“Unless what?” you ask.
Jaeyun remains silent, something pained in his eyes when he turns to look at you.
The desperation in his gaze only makes you panic further. “Unless what?” you repeat.
“Unless my wife is dead,” Jungwon finally says, eyes trained directly on you. “There is no violation of the sacred oaths,” pausing for a moment, he repeats, “if my wife is dead.”
For a moment, the space around you is still. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t.
Mina was discovered; she was brought to the castle to be the bride of the future king. To fulfill the prophecy the king worked so hard to obtain.
She’s a promise, a beacon of peace and prosperity. Of course the king would have every reason to protect her, to ensure that any enemies never have the chance to touch so much as a hair on her head.
So why on earth would the king feel the need to make alternative arrangements? To prepare for her death? There might be instability among the people, yes, but there has been no real insurrection. It doesn’t make sense.
You cannot think of anyone in the kingdom who would want her dead, and even less of someone who would have the ability to do so.
Mina is protected by the castle, by the crown.
No one would be able to end her life except for—
No. You don’t say it out loud, but Jungwon’s eyes turn to you all the same.
“They’re going to kill her.” It’s hardly a whisper, but in the silence of the hilltop, it feels like you’re screaming. Realizations are churning through your mind, dots connecting in a way that makes you sick. “The king never had full faith in the prophecy. He’s been planning this. But he couldn’t just abandon the marriage fully, just in case the seer was right. He wants to see this marriage through but it isn’t enough for him.”
Your voice mounts in desperation, every sickening realization like a blade against your heart. “He still wants more. More resources. More power. Peace and prosperity were never enough. A common girl with no name and no gold was never going to be allowed to rule alongside his only son.”
You don’t know much of the northern kingdom. Neither friend nor foe, your neighbors have only limited interactions with you, primarily in the form of trade.
Even that is kept quite discreet, as their… methods used in ruling are far from favorable. Torture, forced servitude, food rations that are become even more scarce than your own.
The northern kingdom has funneled its resources into only two things over the last handful of decades: the royals’ lavish lifestyles and its increasingly large military.
They’ve accumulated massive amounts of wealth and power through terrible means. The thought of Jungwon’s father idolizing their methods, of killing your sister for a chance to superimpose them here, is enough to have your stomach rolling with nausea.
“Or maybe there’s something we’re missing,” Jaeyun suggests. “This prophecy… so much seems to be riding on it? I know the gist, but what does it say exactly?”
“I don’t know.” You shrug, helpless. “I’ve never heard the original form. I was only told that we were brought to the castle to ensure the prosperity of the kingdom. That a marriage between Mina and the prince would instill great favor upon his reign and all that come after.”
“That is what I know as well,” Jungwon agrees. “I have also never heard the prophecy verbatim.”
“Is it possible then,” Jaeyun asks, “that this could be part of it?”
You raise your eyebrows. “You believe a seer instructed the king to marry my sister and then murder her?”
“I don’t know.” Jaeyun shakes his head. “But we need to hear the original prophecy, not just what the two of you have been told.”
“And how should we go about that?” Your anger is misdirected, but you can hardly contain it now. It stings like a sharp blade. “What would you have us do? Roll the seer out of her grave and ask her ourselves?”
“That might not be necessary.” At your side, it’s the first time Jungwon has spoken in minutes. Despite the revelations of the night, his expression betrays little. All you see is a set determination as his lips draw into a thin, straight line. “The castle keeps archives of everything related to the royal family. Medical histories, anomalies, anything deemed worth noting. It’s possible an original transcription of the prophecy is housed in the archives as well.”
“The palace archives?” you echo. “Your wedding is in five days. How could we possibly begin to locate—”
“Heeseung can help,” Jungwon interrupts. Heeseung. You’ve nearly forgotten. Your escort to the prince’s chambers, all those weeks ago. Now, you remember. Jungwon had mentioned it, too. When he’s not running covert errands for the prince, he’s a scribe. In the royal archives. “He spends most of his time there. He’s well acquainted with the system of organization.”
“Okay, then.” Jaeyun nods. “We’ll start there.”
…..
It takes Heeseung two days to locate the prophecy in the archives. Two days of which you spend every waking moment so restless you think you may actually implode.
You’re summoned for a dress fitting with Mina. You hardly feel the fabric against your skin, can barely force a stilted smile when Riki asks if you like it. Can hardly even brush him off when he ventures further to ask if everything is alright.
And Mina. Gods, you can’t even look at your older sister. You’re certain she’s a vision of radiance. How could she not be, with so much careful attention on her? When she’s been prepared her entire life for this very moment?
But no matter how hard you force yourself to smile, all you can see when you look at that pristine, sparking, white dress is red.
Ruby red crimson that starts at her stomach and radiates outwards like some kind of sickening bloom. Staining the front of her dress, dripping down to her satin shoes. Her expression, forever frozen in a picture of youth.
Of muted horror. Because even in her last moments, she’s expected to be a lady.
The vision follows you, your sister, mutilated in her wedding gown, as you trace the familiar path back to your bedroom. Time feels like a thing suspended. Every ticking second is torture.
Lost in the violent visions of your head, you barely even remember arriving back at your room, closing the door firmly behind you. Sliding the lock into place.
It’s getting late now. The end of another day.
Where is Heeseung? Where is Jungwon? You’ve tried calling for him, but your mind feels like an endless spiral. Without something to tether you to reality, your control over your connection slips. Until it fades almost entirely.
You said it yourself: you’re no prisoner. But trapped in your bedroom, haunted by the confines of your own mind, it certainly is beginning to feel that way.
You’re not nearly ready to face another sleepless night, not prepared to toss and turn in anxious agony once again, but you’ve resigned yourself to it.
Maybe your sleep tonight, when it eventually finds you in the darkest hours of the night, will be dreamless. Maybe it will spare you some of your waking torture.
In the end, you never find out.
Long before sleep finds you, the knock comes to your door.
Sharp, rapt, and light, it’s the opposite of the pounding that summoned you weeks ago. Still, it puts the last of your nerves on edge, has even your bones trembling beneath your skin.
With shaking hands, you stand, drawing your robe tighter around your body. Securing it with a flimsy knot.
For a moment, you pause, just on the inside of your door. You take a deep breath in. Force it back out. You have to face this. You know you do. But the anxiety clawing at your throat is difficult to ignore.
It’s me. You hear, right against the shell of your ear. It’s okay.
Is it? You wonder. Some of the fear dissipates, but it’s replaced with a certain kind of sadness, a deep sort of longing. You don’t know how to put into words the way you suddenly feel like crying.
Still, you swallow your tears, hoping the last of your frayed nerves will go down with them. Sliding the lock to the side, you open your door. Slowly, as if this can be delayed any longer.
Jungwon, too, seems hesitant. Teetering at the edge of your doorstep, his eyes make quick work of scanning you head to toe.
In the deepest corners of your mind, you’re aware of the impropriety. Despite the fact he’s seen you in this state before, it’s hardly appropriate to be wearing nothing but nightclothes and a robe, hair loose around your face.
Jungwon, too, has foregone his formal clothing. Similar to the night in the stables, he’s dressed in nondescript, dark clothes. His head bears no crown. In his left hand, he holds a scroll.
This time, it feels different. Heeseung isn’t here to serve as a buffer. It’s just you and the prince. Clothing aside, it’s hardly appropriate for him to be in your bedroom.
He seems to sense it as well. “May I…” He clears his throat, voice suddenly scraped raw. “May I come in?”
Wordlessly, you open the door wider. You take a step back, a silent invitation for him to follow.
Closing the door behind him, it’s just the two of you. Moonlight streams in through the window. Along with the single candle on your bedside table, it’s the only light in the room.
Jungwon breaks the silence. “Heeseung found it,” he tells you, sparing theatrics as he holds up the scroll in his hand. “A transcription. Taken on the date the prophecy was foretold. Written by a royal scribe at the side of the seer’s deathbed.”
You can hardly get the words out, voice a shadow of a whisper. “What does it say?”
“I don’t know.” Jungwon matches your eye, the scroll still suspended between you. “I waited for you to read it.”
“Very well,” you nod.
Despite the way your heart hammers in your chest, you know you can’t delay any longer.
Now it is the prince who hesitates. “Perhaps…” he starts. “Perhaps we should sit down.”
Looking around your room, embarrassment enters your swirl of feelings. Your room is comfortable, yes, but it was not designed to be luxurious. You were not the sister afforded extra amenities. You have no table. No chairs.
Your voice is small. “I’m afraid the bed is the only place where we could.”
Jungwon’s breath is shallow. Still he nods, “It will do.”
Sitting at your side at the foot of your bed, Jungwon turns to you, eyes earnest. “This doesn’t…” He struggles for a moment, searching for words. “This doesn’t change anything. I still mean every word I’ve ever told you. I have resolved to be a good king, to make things better. No matter what this scroll contains, that remains my sole intention.” He pauses, looking at you. “And if some part of this implies any sort of harm towards you or your sister, I vow to do everything in my power to stop it.”
Moonlight dances over his resolve. All you can manage is a nod.
You tell him, afraid your voice may fail you if you delay too long, “Unfold it.”
Slowly, the scroll unravels. Until he must hold his hands in front of his body, one across from his chest, the other parallel to his navel.
In the faint light, the words are just decipherable. With a voice that trembles only slightly, he reads aloud in the silence of your bedroom,
“A kingdom torn is a kingdom lost.
Even royal blood is ruined by frost.
But salvation will come through an unlikely pair.
A royal prince and a blacksmith's heir.
She will bear no wealth, no gold, no fame.
But the kingdom will prosper all the same.
You'll find her where the river flows,
With braid full of flowers, and a heart that knows
The name by which you call your heir.
Despite never hearing it,
She’ll whisper it there.”
For a moment, neither of you says anything. Jungwon tugs at the bottom of the scroll, as if he expects it to unfold further. “That’s…” Jungwon frowns, “more vague than I hoped. But this doesn’t answer our questions. At least we now know there is no mention of anything… deadly.”
There’s not. It should provide a bit of relief. But your heart is dropping in your stomach for an entirely different reason.
Like Jungwon said, the prophecy is vague. It sounds more like a child’s nursery rhyme than a foretold fate. So much so that you can hardly believe the king would hinge the livelihood of an entire kingdom on its fulfillment.
And he was right, you think. All those years ago. Even with nothing but rhymes to work with, he found who he was looking for.
The prophecy matches Mina. A blacksmith’s heir. No wealth, no gold, no fame. The two of you had been playing, next to the bank of a river. And you had spent the afternoon finding the most beautiful flowers to weave into the identical braids your mother had given you that very morning.
But the last stanza. It echoes now, inside your mind. Like a death march on loop.
With braid full of flowers, and a heart that knows
The name by which you call your heir.
Despite never hearing it,
She’ll whisper it there.
The day was so long ago. The details are blurred, hazy around the edges. But there are things you know for certain. Call it memory or intuition or the same strange magic that allows you to speak with the prince inside your mind, you’re sure of it.
When the man, the king, approached the two of you, you were terrified. Barefoot in the grass, you were shaking. One year older, Mina was always the braver one between the two of you.
Even with the river roaring behind you, the king’s voice boomed like thunder. It made you flinch, tucking yourself even further into your sister’s shadow.
He had asked only one question. “What is my son’s name?”
For a moment, the two of you were silent. His request was strange, preposterous. You didn’t know what this man’s name was, much less that of his son. All you knew was that he dressed funny. Full of gold and furs and a strange looking hat.
Crown, you think your mother had told you once.
And as was tradition in your kingdom, the prince’s name had not yet been revealed to the public. Jungwon’s name would remain a mystery until his fifth birthday. Even if you had known this man to be the king, neither of you would have any way to name his son.
He repeated his question, even louder this time. It frightened you so much you thought you might die. In front of you, even Mina began to tremble.
“I don’t know,” you wanted to shout, desperate to do anything to make the man go away, leave you alone. You were too far from your parents. Even if you screamed, they would never hear you.
It started with a tickle, a strange sensation against the back of your mind. You craned your neck to the side, as if you could escape your own thoughts if you stretched just right. Your hand flew to the back of your head, as if that strange feeling would have some sort of physical manifestation.
It didn’t. But it grew stronger. Until sensation became sound. And sound became a word.
Jungwon.
The king repeated his question a third time, and you swear you saw even the trees tremble.
“Jungwon,” you whispered in Mina’s ear.
“What?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at you.
“Jungwon,” you repeated. You didn’t know where it came from and were even less sure of what to do with it. But you knew, somewhere deep down, that it would make his shouting stop.
Mina’s eyes were clouded with confusion, but she still nodded at you. Still gathered the last of her bravery and turned back to the king, shoulders straight in an effort at bravado.
“Jungwon,” she shouted, loud enough to be heard over the roaring of the river.
The king’s draw dropped open in surprise. And then he smiled.
It was done.
Now, sixteen years later, back in the sanctity of your bedroom, a different mantra whispers through your mind.
It was me.
It plays like a sickening loop, only grows louder the more you try to stop it. You have to get a reign on your thoughts. He can’t know.
You can’t tell him. You can’t say it. You can’t.
But Jungwon, much to your horror, turns to you and, breaking the silence, asks, “What?”
You shake your head. You feel three years old again, shaking in fear at the side of a river. “I… I didn’t say anything.”
But it’s already too late. He heard you, loud and clear. As if you had leaned in and whispered it, lips pressed against his temples, words ghosting over his skin.
“It’s not her,” he shakes his head, eyes darting over the scroll. Rolling it back into place, he sets it aside. “It was never her.” There’s something akin to wonder in his gaze when he turns to look at you. “It’s you.”
And then, like a stack of dominoes falling one by one, he’s clicking pieces of a magical puzzle into place with certainty. “That’s why we can hear one another in our minds. Why I feel this… this sort of magnetism whenever you’re near—“
He meets your eye, pleading. You can practically see the gears in his mind turning. You can feel the way they whir a million miles a minute. “It’s why the kingdom still suffers. The prophecy wasn’t being followed. It still is not being fulfilled. Of course.” He’s hardly pausing to breathe. “This will change everything—”
But you cannot listen to him any longer, can’t let him continue to draw his own errant conclusions. Before his realizations can continue to tumble out, you interrupt, “Mina can never know.” Your voice, quiet and steady, cuts through your bedroom like a knife.
At your side, Jungwon goes suddenly still. His brow furrows, confused. “Of course, you may be the first one to speak to her if you wish, but—”
You shake your head, expression resolute. You repeat, “She cannot know, Jungwon. Not from my mouth or yours or anyone else’s.”
For a moment, Jungwon’s lips do nothing but open. Close again. As if there are things he would like to say but can’t quite remember how to form words. “But you— but the prophecy—“
You force your voice into something cold, detached. “The wedding is in three days.” You shake your head. “A few moments ago you said this would change nothing. That you were willing to overlook such fickle magic. You said it yourself, it’s your new crown and title that will give you the power to make real change for your people, not the words of a dead seer.”
“This was before…” Jungwon trails off. It’s strange, you note offhandedly, just how favored he truly seems to be. With moonlight streaming in through your window and confusion overtaking his features, he still manages that effervescent sort of beauty. It feels too potent, too overwhelming, here on the foot of your bed, among the threadbare decorations of your room. “I was making adjustments based on what I knew then. But this… this changes things.”
Your brow furrows, eyes narrowing. You pray you’re misunderstanding. “I don’t see how.”
Sensing your unease, Jungwon ventures lightly, “Perhaps if the prophecy were to be followed truly, then—”
“Then what?” You shrug helplessly. “Then I can become a prop, a doll for the castle? Then my sister can despise me for all eternity? Then I can lose my connections and ability to help the resistance as I spend my days at your side, nothing but a false figurehead? Then your father can kill me too?”
“That won’t happen,” Jungwon shakes his head. “This will change things. People won’t suffer anymore.”
His naivety frustrates you to no end. Where has your level-headed prince gone? “It will change nothing! Your father has decided that peace and prosperity aren’t enough. Don’t you see, Jungwon? He wants power. Money. It doesn’t matter which one of us walks down the aisle toward you. I doubt he can even tell my sister and I apart. Whichever one of us it is, he’s going to murder, just as soon as he thinks the prophecy has been sealed into place. In fact, maybe he’ll just kill us both. We both know I’m just dead weight without her anyways.”
“Don’t say that.” His brow dips in frustration. “This isn’t… You’re not dead weight.”
“Whatever I am, I won’t be a prop for royals to use and discard as they see fit.” You shake your head, resolve tightening. Even if you can’t quite look him in the eye as you say it. “I won’t forever ruin the life of my only living family.”
Jungwon is begging for a bit of your understanding. Trying to chip away at an unbreakable wall. “Even if it means saving a kingdom? Preventing unnecessary violence and death?”
“I am not the one tasked with ruling the kingdom,” you remind him.
“No,” he agrees, “but you are one half of the prophecy designed to save it.”
It’s as if he forgot his earlier words. You remind him, “A prophecy you decided to place no faith in until mere moments ago.”
Jungwon suddenly rises from the edge of your bed. Standing, he turns to face you, forcing your gaze to his. “And even then I was willing to sacrifice everything on the feeble hope that it could be true!” His eyes are wide, chest heaving. “I wouldn’t do you the dishonor of complaining about my life, not when my circumstances are more favorable than most men could dream. But if you think that for even one moment, I rejoiced in the idea of being forever wed to a woman for which I hold no affection, you are sorely mistaken.”
In the dim light of your bedroom, it’s a confession that feels dangerous.
As his words heat, you force yours into ice. Your tone is considerably cooler when you reply, “I’m terribly sorry for your misfortune. The duty of marrying someone so far beneath your status is truly an unthinkable task—”
“Her status has nothing to do with it—”
“I didn’t pin you to be such a bleeding romantic,” you finish, sarcasm laced through every syllable.
The tension, the fight, drains from his shoulders. He’s not arguing now. He’s begging. And he’s looking deep into your eyes when he asks, helplessly, “How could I not be, when I’ve met someone who speaks to me inside my own head?”
For a moment, your bedroom is silent. Save for the sound of your breaths, heavy, heaving, mingling with his. You won’t ask him to clarify. You know what he means. You’d be a fool not to feel it too.
The first time you spoke, hidden beneath the castle. The orchids. The night in the stables when he gifted you a horse of your very own. Your silent arguments in front of Jaeyun. Checking in on one another no matter what distance kept you apart. Every moment in between.
This bond, this connection, is more than just functional. It’s tied you to him in ways you can’t explain, with feelings you’re afraid to admit.
It’s the most damning piece of evidence that the seer, all those years ago, was still lucid in her prophesizing.
It’s why you can’t look at him when you say, “I think it’s best if you take your leave.”
“___,” he says your name. Soft, quiet, pleading.
“Please,” you beg, shaking your head. You still won’t match his eye. “Please, just go.”
With your eyes trained on his shoes, you watch as they remain motionless for moments longer. “Very well,” he finally says. You wish you didn’t know him well enough to recognize the pain etched into his voice. “Call upon me, when you’re ready.”
He doesn’t tell you where, how to find him. You already know. All you have to do is think it, and he’ll be at your side.
But your lips and your mind remain equally guarded, motionless, as you watch his footsteps turn from you. Then disappear.
The door shuts behind him with a resounding click.
And you let the single, heavy tear fall onto the fabric of your robe.
…..
No matter how deeply sorrow burrows itself into your heart, the day of your sister’s wedding somersaults forward with little grace until it’s in an undeniable heap at your feet.
It’s both agony and sheer relief. With every passing second, you find yourself more and more tempted to do something. Anything. Some action that will make the restlessness beneath your skin disappear. Something that will have your mind cease its war with your heart.
It would be so easy to tug at that familiar connection. To send a message to Jungwon with your mind. But what would you tell him?
Please don’t marry her. It’s a selfish, vile wish. One with ugly green horns and a steadiness that remains even when you forget the prophecy.
Fulfill the prophecy. Marry me instead. It’s even worse. You can frame your desires as altruism, but you know yourself better than that. The guilt, the shame, regardless of the outcome would eat at you forever.
I’m sorry. For what exactly, you're not sure. But you hate the expression that was on his face when he left you three nights ago. Hate the way that it’s still burned into your mind, etched across your vision every time you close your eyes.
“Call upon me,” he’d told you, “when you’re ready.”
But now, sitting in your sister’s dressing room, watching her prepare for the ceremony that will bind her to Jungwon forever, you doubt you ever will be.
You don’t think you can stomach it, the polite distance expected between a prince and the sister of his bride. You don’t think you can ever look at him again and feel anything resembling detachment.
So instead, you forced a smile this morning when you dragged yourself out of bed. It was another sleepless night, full of dreams that felt more like mirages than rest.
You made your way to her dressing room at the time you were summoned, dressed in the gown Riki completed for you.
Sitting here now, looking at her, you pretend the unease in your stomach is something other than jealousy.
You try your best not to hate that version of you at the river’s edge, all those years ago, who wasn’t quite brave enough to look the king in the eye and whisper the name in your mind.
And then, on your next exhale, you do your best to let it go.
The dressing room, at least, does provide some distraction.
You’re not sure how the tailor managed to do it, but Mina’s gown is somehow even lovelier in the light of her dressing room than it was in his salon.
It’s white, starkly so, and the intricate beading that covers the corset only stands to make it more blinding.
You’re still having a hard time looking directly at her, though. Mostly because every time you do, that awful vision returns. The one where her dress, right at the center, begins to bleed crimson.
Your own reflection is difficult to observe, too. Riki was right. Gold is your color. And the attention the ladies maids paid to your hair and makeup have made you hardly recognize yourself.
You’re not sure if it’s pride you swallow or merely nerves, but you turn to sit in a way that angles you away from the mirror. This choice puts your older sister in your direct line of sight. She’s beautiful, truly. And it’s her wedding day, death sentence or not. You should tell her as much.
Once again, she beats you to it.
“You look beautiful, ____,” she says. “Truly stunning. That gold looks wonderful on you.”
“Please,” you shake your head. Your voice still sounds rusty, raw. You cough lightly in an effort to disguise it. “It’s nothing compared to you.”
She looks at you for a moment, as if she can’t quite decide what to say. For a moment, you feel transparent. As if she can see all the way to your bones, to the desires you swore to hide from her forever. But the moment passes as quickly as it comes. Eventually, she settles on, “I did not intend to compare.”
You’re sure she didn’t. But it happens anyway. Murmurs behind hand. Gossip between the castle ladies. Rumors at the dinner table. Your existence here has always been one of comparison. One you fall short of every single time.
“How could I not be, when I’ve met someone who speaks to me inside my own head?”
Well, except in one case, perhaps. Even now, Jungwon’s words echo in your brain like an omen. It feels like treason to sit here and trade pleasantries with your sister when less than three nights ago, you were sitting at the foot of your bed with her husband-to-be, trading secrets in the dark.
You shake your head, as if the action alone can clear your illicit thoughts. It’s no use. Your mulling, your questions, your feelings. They don’t matter. In the span of hours, your sister will be married and the prophecy will be left to die in your memory.
Then, your only objective will be to figure out the rest of the king’s plan. Discover exactly when he plans on murdering your sister.
For now, you simply need a moment.
Standing, you excuse yourself for some fresh air. You feel Mina’s eyes on your back until the door to the dressing room shuts firmly behind you. Leaning back against it for a moment, you place a hand over your hammering heart. Try to catch your breath.
It’s little use. The air outside the dressing room is just as stifling.
Deciding you’re in need of something fresher, you let your footsteps carry you further, all the way until you reach a small, secluded balcony overlooking the garden you’ve become so very fond of.
A fresh ache begins in your heart. Despite it all, the castle is your home. Even if it wasn’t of your own volition. Even if it never truly opened its arms to you fully.
This is the place where you grew up. It holds all of your memories, your secrets. Your deepest fears, your greatest desires.
And now, you fear it may steal the rest of your life just as surely. Something in you aches at the thought of growing old here. Living out the rest of your days as nothing more than the sister of the queen. Watching your sister and Jungwon build a life, a family.
You decide then, with your eyes on the roses and wind in your hair, that you hate prophecies. Magic and sorcery and seers, all of it. Who was the old seer to decide your fate? Who was the king to seal it in stone?
For a moment, you wonder privately if you’re glad the king set his sights on the wrong sister. The only thing worse than watching this marriage from the periphery, you suppose, would be existing at the center of it.
Then again, if things were different, you might disagree. Would the prophecy do to you what it’s done to Mina? Would time make you indifferent and malleable and perfectly suited to supporting the future king from the sidelines? You’re not sure. And somehow, that stings even more.
Silently, you watch as the wind plays with the flowing fabric of your sleeves.
Not for the first time, you imagine leaving all of this behind you for good. Closing your eyes, it’s all too easy to picture. Abandoning the castle. Leaving your sister a short note that conveys your affection but betrays nothing of your whereabouts.
Letting Jay, Riki, Sunoo, and Sunghoon learn through rumors that you’ve escaped into the night. Joining Jaeyun for good, living out the rest of your life as far away from the palace walls as the wind will carry you.
Letting Jungwon discover you missing. Mourning the loss, perhaps. Eventually moving on.
But whatever the fantasy is, it’s too late now.
No matter how you picture it, no matter what escape route this particularly mutinous version of yourself takes, he is always there. In the shadows. Echoing through your mind.
You’d have to escape on horseback, of course. And you can hardly look at Nabi without wondering what exactly made Jungwon know she’d be so well suited to you.
You can hardly return to the hilltop, once your favorite sanctuary, knowing that the ghost of his footsteps would only follow.
And even if you could find somewhere outside the incumbent king’s reach, you can never escape your own mind. No, peace will certainly never have you. Not as long as he keeps hold of the space he’s been given there.
Would he try, you wonder. Reaching out to you through that strange connection in your mind? Would it fade with time and distance? Or would it just lay there, dormant, unused, but always waiting?
He’s left you in peace the last three days, and you can quite decide if it’s a blessing or a curse.
Regardless of the prince, even if you truly wanted to, it’s not as if you can abandon the castle now. Not when Mina’s life could possibly be in jeopardy.
So instead, you open your eyes. Let them gaze over the garden just a moment longer. Try not to think too hard about what the roses would think of you, if they could speak.
And then, with one final breath and the last of your aching resolve, you turn on your heel.
Or, at least, you try to.
The sound of voices below has your feet faltering in their tracks. The hushed, secretive cadence reminds you of that day in the hidden corridors with Jungwon. Only, this time, they’re far easier to distinguish.
There’s no thick stone wall to serve as a barrier. Only the garden air.
“It’s a shame,” the first voice says. You don’t recognize it, but it sends a chill down your spine. It’s a man, you think. But that is all you can decipher. “I still don’t understand why it has to be today. It’s a wedding, for gods’ sake.”
At the mention, your breath stutters.
“I know,” the second voice responds, far more detached. Another man, you’re sure. This one with a sharper tone of haughtiness. “But the king’s orders are iron bars.”
The first speaker still isn’t sure. “It just isn’t right. Why should she die today—”
“Keep your voice down,” the second interrupts, voice bitingly cold. “It isn’t our place to question. Besides, you know how this works by now. It’s her or it’s us. Are you willing to take that risk?”
The first must shake his head. Or nod. Whatever his response is, it’s inaudible.
And your heart hammers in your chest, pulse pounding in your ears, for an entirely different reason.
Desperate for a glimpse, a clue, you lean as far over the balcony as balance will allow you. But it’s not enough. You can’t see anything but roses and empty space. Panic begins to claw at your throat.
Why should she die today? It’s a wedding.
Like a demented chant, snippets of their brief conversation echo in your mind. It doesn’t matter how you look at them, how you spin them. You don’t need a gut feeling or a strange stroke of intuition to guide you now. You know, no matter how terribly you wish you didn’t, exactly what they mean.
The clues you put together, they were right. Mina's life is in danger.
And for whatever terrible reason, despite the prophecy, the king is no longer waiting. Whatever death they’ve planned for your sister, it will happen before she says her vows.
Panic takes a firmer root now, somewhere deeper inside you. Through the haze in your mind, you search. Until it’s there. Like a muscle you’ve begun to train, a mechanism you’re starting to understand.
Desperation rising, you only hope his anger or hurt or whatever emotion he left with three nights ago isn’t enough to sever what lies between you.
Jungwon, you try. It’s as easy as ever, a practiced motion.
For a moment, there is nothing in your mind but silence. And then—
I’m here.
You can almost envision his expression. That gentle warmth. Those damn eyes. No matter what terms you ended your last conversation on, you knew it would come to this. He would never leave you to drown in your own silence.
I need you to do something, you tell him, mind spinning a million miles a minute. His response takes less than an inhale.
Anything.
Stepping back inside, you let your feet make quick work of carrying you back to the dressing room where Mina puts on the last of her finishing touches.
This is the day she’s trained for, prepared for, her entire life. Her childhood was stolen too, her parents left to die in the cold. This wedding, this future, is the only thing that's ever belonged to her.
And you're about to ruin it.
Bursting through the door, several pairs of eyes turn to you, widening at the sudden interruption.
“Mina,” you say, breathless as a plan begins to take shape in your mind, “I need you to trust me.”
…..
The grand hall is nearly blinding. Above you, the ceiling has been replaced with windows at intermittent points. Sunlight, high in the daytime sky, streams through in long, bright beams.
Even if the sky were more melancholy, the thousands of candles filling the room would illuminate it all the same.
The hall is filled with flowers. Rare, exotic blooms that catch your eye. And among them all, scattered in intentionally placed bunches, are orchids.
Looking down at your sleeve, you see them embroidered there too. It’s beautiful beadwork, truly. The tailor has outdone himself. Light reflects from every square inch of fabric, making you nearly as radiant as the sun.
Along the aisle, members of the royal court stand, eyes on you. For a moment, you’re grateful to the way your dress has become all but reflective. It makes it easier to ignore their assessing stares.
They’re all doing it, you know. Whether they’re smiling, frowning, or some odd mix of both. They’re scanning every inch of you for the sole purpose of finding something to criticize behind closed doors.
It’s a strange feeling, and one you certainly aren’t accustomed to. Like a zoo animal in a cage, meant for observing and picking apart.
Shaking their stares away, you look straight ahead.
Your vision is obscured, only slightly, by the thin, white veil that covers your face. It flutters against your skin as onlookers take a hushed gasp at your entrance. And, you hope, it conceals your identity.
Eyes trained on your feet, thoughts consumed with not tripping over your own skirts, the sudden intrusion in your mind nearly startles you into stumbling.
Your name. You hear it in your mind, clear as daylight, in a voice that doesn’t belong to you.
For a moment, you remain silent. You don’t even dare to look up at the end of the aisle where you know he stands, waiting.
He told you once, weeks ago, that his only role in this ceremony was to wait for his bride at the end of the aisle. You never imagined you would be the one walking towards him.
This time, it doesn’t matter. He tries again. It’s you. You pretend not to hear the hope in his voice.
Despite it all, you can’t leave him in silence forever. It is, you reply.
The orchestra’s march is agonizingly slow. Your steps are small, measured. The aisle that extends before you is still long. The space that separates you decreases slowly, in tiny increments.
Why—
I need you to listen to me. You cut him off. You were right, that night on the hilltop. They’re going to kill Mina. I heard voices, just now, before the ceremony. Your heart beats in your chest, pulse in your throat, thrumming in your ears. They won’t wait until after you’re married. They’re going to kill her now.
What do you mean they’re going to kill her now?
I heard them, you explain. Assassins, I think. They said they had orders from the king. To kill her today. At the wedding.
That means…
Under the veil, you nod. I think they’re here now.
Only then do you lift your chin. Only a matter of footsteps separates you now. The prince, Jungwon, is within reach.
Across from you, he looks every bit the royalty he is. Dressed in well fitted garments, color as deep as midnight, he is every bit your opposite. Your equal. Where your gown flows, his ensemble sits against his skin with structure, a rigidness meant for rulers. Where yours is light, airy, his is dark, stable.
On his head, he wears his crown. Golden, heavy, impossibly intricate where it rests across his forehead. His hair, dark and well groomed, barely brushes the tops of his shoulders. And his eyes, full of constellations, are trained directly on you.
Where? He asks. The desperation in his voice is difficult to mix as you step onto the small, raised platform. Stand directly across from him. He’s so close now, within reach. Where are they?
You shake your head, a minute motion. I don’t know.
To your right, the royal minister begins his speech. The traditional marriage rites of the kingdom.
Above him, in the only seat higher than the two of you in the room, sits the king. In his throne, he looks almost bored. Lazy with the indulgence of it all.
Beneath him, Jungwon and you stand facing each other. At the front of the grand hall, in the dead center. The position is intentional. Meant to provide a clear view for onlookers.
Now, you feel like little more than sitting ducks.
You watch as Jungwon does his best to remain inconspicuous, as his eyes rake over the audience, the room. For a moment, a deep sense of hopelessness overwhelms you. The room is too full, too crowded.
An assassin, especially one hired by the king himself, is like a needle in a haystack.
It strikes you then, in the middle of a marriage ceremony in a stolen gown, that you are not ready for death. Your life is something you mull over only occasionally. You’re not sure what impact you’ve made, what lives you’ve touched.
It’s a bit of a selfish desire, perhaps, to hope that it will extend longer than today. But there are things, so many of them, that you still want to do. Words you still want to say. Days, simple, unremarkable, routine, that you still want to experience.
Your dagger is still strapped to your thigh, even beneath a wedding dress. But what use is a dagger against what you’re sure will be a trained assassin? Fleetingly, you remember your lesson. The adjustments Jungwon made to your posture. The advice he gave you. To be smart. To be quick.
It’s useless now. On the precipice of what very well may be your death, your mind spins. It’s hard to concentrate, difficult to gather your thoughts into something rational. And your gown is as restrictive as it is gorgeous. It would be difficult to run in skirts these heavy, these long, much less flee for your life. Reality settles with a chill.
Grief feels like a sudden punch in the gut, a cold sense of clarity that cuts through the adrenaline and has you wanting to run back down the aisle the way you came.
Mina, you hope, will be safe. You pray she listened to your instructions, that she’s heeding them now. If life is waiting for her on the other side of this, you suppose you can make your peace with your decisions.
Looking at Jungwon for a moment, his eyes are still darting around the room, frantic in his search. You would join him, but there’s little use. The veil obscures too much of your vision. Besides him, you can’t make out much of anything. Not clearly, anyway.
With a startling suddenness, his gaze is back on you. You doubted him. Forgot, perhaps, that he has the vision of a trained hunter.
Again, you hear him in your mind. The balcony, he says. Behind you. Two men in dark clothes. Their faces are concealed.
Something akin to hope blooms in your chest. Maybe, you think, even if you hardly dare to believe it, you won’t die on this pedestal. A gruesome vision of crimson over white come to life.
Across from you, Jungwon’s eyes narrow. Almost as if he’s suddenly furious. You’re not going to die.
His words are sharp, angry. You hadn’t meant to send your thoughts to him, but as always, he heard them regardless.
Beside you, the minister’s words are beginning to slow. He motions for the rings, a symbol of your eternal devotion and connection to one another, to be brought forth. For the crown that will soon belong to you to be placed on a pedestal next to you.
The ceremony is drawing to an end. Whatever the king has planned, it must be happening soon.
Jungwon’s eyes fall back to the space above your shoulders, where you’re sure the assassins must be lying in wait. Next to you, the minister instructs the two of you to join hands.
Removing your gloves, your fingers tremble slightly. Placing them on a cushion next to you, you reach out, interlacing your bare fingers with his.
Beneath your touch, his skin is warm. Your hands aren’t quite sure what to do. They can’t decide if they should settle into his heat or jolt at the sudden contact. It strikes you then that despite the connection in your minds, the way it feels as if his lips are well acquainted with the shell of your ear, this is the first time you and the prince have truly touched.
His skin is smooth under yours. Calloused in the places he holds reins, a sword. Gentle as his fingers envelop yours.
Again, his eyes narrow in on the balcony behind you. You watch as his jaw sets in determination, a resolution made.
Next to you, the minister instructs you to release your hands, to gather your rings and place them on one another’s respective fingers.
You begin to disentangle your grasp to follow his direction, but Jungwon holds strong. His fingers suddenly a vice grip against your own. Looking to him, confusion marrs your features.
You reach for the connection, about to ask in your mind what he’s doing, but you never get the chance.
Before you can draw another breath, he pulls.
So suddenly, so firmly, that your center of gravity is thrown entirely. Unable to regain your balance, you fall. Down, down, down, impossibly fast towards the ground nearly a foot below the platform.
You close your eyes, bracing for impact that never fully comes.
Instead of hitting the stone floor of the grand hall, solid and unyielding, your fall is cushioned by the body beneath yours.
Jungwon.
Pulled tight to his chest, your head rests right over his heartbeat, legs tangled on the castle floor. Lifting your head, your vision is still partially obscured by your veil.
Your pulse hammers, blood rushing in your ears. Distantly, you hear the sound of screams. Chaos erupting around the hall as realizations begin to settle. Turning your head to the side, you can just make out the shape of a singular arrow, long as sharp, lodged into the podium. Exactly where you’d been standing seconds ago.
Your lips part in surprise. A hand over your head pulls you tight to his chest once again. You feel your body flip through the air, a sudden motion that nearly knocks the air from your lungs as you’re spun onto your back.
Eyes screwed shut, you open them slowly. Above you now, Jungwon hovers, caging you in with his body. Above you, desperation laces through his eyes as they bore into yours, every nerve a live wire.
His crown, lost somewhere in the chaos, lies alone in the space you’d been in moments ago. Next to it, a second arrow rests, useless on the ground.
Jungwon’s hair falls over his face, brushes the tops of his eyelashes. Your foreheads are nearly touching.
Around you, the room explodes as royal guests begin to flee, their terror echoing through the hall.
In your private sanctuary of Jungwon’s making, you hardly hear them. Your focus rests entirely on him. With one swift motion, he lifts his hand, pushing your veil back from your face. There’s no barrier between you now.
“We have to run,” he whispers, breath caressing your cheekbone. Even now, he’s gentle with you, delicate. It’s a stark contrast to the horror that unfolds around you.
“I know,” you nod, heart in your throat. “This dress—”
You don’t need to explain further. Before you can form another coherent thought, you feel his hand slide under the back of your knee, pulling it up until it rests next to his ribs, caging him in.
One palm rests by your ear, supporting his weight above you. The other you feel brush against your ankle. Suppressing a shudder, you feel it traveling higher, beneath your skirts now.
Despite everything, you feel heat on your cheekbones, confusion in your brow. Your throat is dry, nearly choking around a swallow.
Jungwon doesn’t leave you in the dark for long.
You feel the moment he finds it, long fingers wrapping around the dagger holstered to your upper thigh. It’s horribly intimate. It’s indecent, it’s obscene. It’s a matter of survival as he draws it out of its sheath, pulling it free and letting your skirts fall back into place as he removes his hand from your skin.
You feel the resistance as he puts his blade against the fabric, cutting away at months of effort. You pray the tailor forgives you as you hear beads scatter over stone, silk fraying as he cuts in frantic, uneven strokes.
And then he’s done. With the train of your gown gone, your legs are far less restricted. You can move. You can run.
We have to go, he repeats, this time in your mind.
You nod in lieu of replying. He stands first. You take his outstretched hand, placing your fingers in his.
And then you’re running. Only once, before leaving the grand hall, do you glance back. Your eye sweep over the upheaved seats, the strewn flowers. The candles that have begun to fall, flames extinguishing as wicks kiss stone.
And the king, high on his throne at the center of it all, has his furious, enraged gaze trained directly on your unveiled face.
Jungwon leads you with practiced speed, weaving once again through secret passageways and hidden chambers that he knows like the back of his hand.
Minutes blur in your mind. The only marker of time is the growing burn of exertion in your legs.
Just a little further, he assures in your mind.
True to his word, the two of you reach an exterior exit less than a minute later. Immediately, you recognize the eastern gardens. Crouching low behind the thickest of the foliage, the two of you follow the outskirts until you reach the stables.
Nabi is gone when you arrive, and you allow yourself a sigh of relief. Mina, you hope, is long gone by now.
Jungwon makes quick work of saddling Maeum. Holding you steady, he helps you mount him before following suit.
And then, the two of you are off, reins in his hands and wind in your hair as the castle turns to nothing but a speck on the horizon, far in the distance behind you.
…..
“Oh, thank the gods.” Jaeyun is nearly beside himself, pacing across the hilltop by the time you and Jungwon arrive.
Jungwon waits back for a moment, tying Maeum next to Nabi. He ensures he has plenty of water and food after carrying you both all the way here.
Meanwhile, Jaeyun pulls you into a hug so tight you think your lungs might be robbed of all their remaining air. Releasing you after another long moment, he pulls back, mouth opening. His words die on his lips as he scans you head to toe.
You imagine you must be quite a sight to behold. Hair coming undone haphazardly, dress a tattered mess around your legs, skin full of scratches and shallow cuts, you’re quite a striking image.
In the commotion of your arrival, your older sister breaches the crest of the hilltop, eyes glassy as she runs towards you. Again, you’re pulled into a hug, this one less crushing, albeit only slightly.
“Thank goodness,” she breathes against your ear. Pulling back, she keeps her hands on your shoulders. Looking directly into your eyes, Mina scolds, “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
You’re not sure why the sight of your older sister has you wanting to burst into childish tears. It’s sheer relief, perhaps. Or maybe residual guilt. A stew of feelings you’re not quite ready to observe.
“You’re okay,” you whisper, emotions plain on your face.
Mina nods. “Sunghoon helped me. Brought me here. Introduced me to your…” she trails off a moment, looking at Jaeyun, “friend.”
“Good,” you nod. Looking around, you ask, “Where is he now?”
“Back to the castle,” Jaeyun explains. “Said it would be too suspicious for him to stick around for long.”
A new thread of worry weaves its way through your heart. Wherever he is now, you hope he’s safe.
It had been difficult, back in Mina’s dressing room, asking Jungwon through your mind to send Sunghoon to you. You prayed that you weren’t sending him and your sister both to their doom when you asked, no begged, him to help her escape before the ceremony.
Quietly, Jungwon joins the three of you, coming to stand at your side.
If Mina notices your proximity, she doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she drops into a deep curtsey.
“My prince,” she greets, eyes trained turned the grass.
“You don’t have to do that out here,” Jaeyun smirks. In a voice that’s nearly a sing-song, he adds, “We get to call him Jungwon.”
“Oh,” she flushes, facing Jaeyun as she stands. “I could never—”
“Really, Mina,” you interrupt after giving your friends a withering glare. Your voice is gentle. “It’s alright.”
“I…” She trails off, eyes flickering between you and Jaeyun. Just once, they dart to Jungwon before lowering again in deference. “I don’t understand.”
You sigh, heart suddenly heavy in your chest. “Did Sunghoon explain anything?” you ask. “Or Jaeyun?”
“No.” She shakes her head.
“I wasn’t sure it was my place to tell,” Jaeyun says, voice suddenly solemn.
You nod at him, thankful for his tact. Turning back to your sister, you suggest, “Maybe we should sit down.”
In the grass, sat directly across from her, you find eye contact a difficult thing to maintain.
“Mina,” you start, trying to deliver your blows gently. “Today, at your wedding.” You pause, lips sealing. You can’t think of a way to make the truth cut any less sharply.
“What,” Mina presses. “What is it?”
“The king,” you start. “The king was going to have you murdered.”
Mina recoils as if you’ve slapped her. “What?” She shakes her head. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s true,” Jungwon says. Sitting at your side, his voice is solemn. “There were assassins at the ceremony. Two of them. With arrows. The grand hall has only one entrance. They must have been invited in.”
“But why—” she pleads, eyes wide.
“Sunghoon confirmed our suspicions,” Jaeyun nods. “He told me when he brought Mina. The northern kingdom gave an ultimatum yesterday. The king wouldn’t allow his daughter to be married to anyone who had already taken a wife, regardless if she was…” he trails off, looking at Mina, “you know.” The implication hangs heavy in the air.
“The northern kingdom?” Mina frowns. “I don’t understand. What do they have to do with this?”
“We think,” you start, “that our king was hoping to unite our kingdom with theirs. For more power, resources, maybe. We thought at first that he would still want to see the prophecy through, that he would proceed with your marriage ceremony and then later…”
“What?” Mina laughs, no trace of humor in her voice. “Kill me?”
“Yes,” you nod. The time for mincing words has come and gone. A flicker of shock, of hurt, crosses your sister’s features. “But with these new demands from the northern kingdom,” you nod towards Jaeyun, “he must have changed his mind. He would rather have this new alliance than a chance at peace.”
“That’s not all,” Jaeyun’s voice is grim. “Sunghoon also heard that the public nature of the assination was intentional. The plan was to frame it on vigilantes. Resistors. To use it as an excuse to superimpose the northern kingdom’s justice system along with the union between Jungwon and the princess.”
“The justice system?” you echo.
“Is barely even an excuse for justice,” Jungwon’s eyes are narrow. “The northern kingdom has long shunned any form of opposition. People are not allowed to speak freely, especially not about the royal family. Citizens are sentenced to death with neither evidence nor trial. In recent years, movement between cities has been restricted. Trade that doesn’t directly serve the crown has come to a near standstill. Any form of dissent, even if it’s only rumored, is punished,” he looks towards you. “Heavily.”
“But the prophecy,” Mina protests. “It was meant to change things for the better. Why would the king risk losing that?”
You can’t help but look at Jungwon. When you turn to find his eyes already on you, you’re quick to turn your gaze back to the grass.
“Did you two ever find it?” Jaeyun asks. “The original prophecy?”
“The original prophecy?” Mina echoes, breathless.
“We did,” Jungwon confirms, voice steady.
“And…?” Jaeyun presses.
A beat of silence passes.
Jungwon finally speaks. “It was what we knew, more or less. The seer foretold that a marriage between myself and…” he trails off for just a moment as your vice echoes suddenly in his mind
Don’t tell her anything.
“… A blacksmith’s daughter,” he finishes, “would bring peace and prosperity to the kingdom.”
“You must be wrong then,” Mina concludes. “The king wouldn’t make orders against that.”
“I think he would, Mina,” you argue, not unkindly. “He chose power over peace. Control over prosperity.”
“The prophecy,” Mina says. “I want to read it too.”
“Mina,” you sigh.
“Don’t Mina me,” she tells you. “I’m one half of it, aren’t I? I have just as much right as anyone.”
“It’s impossible,” Jungwon shakes his head. “The scroll is back in the castle archives.”
But the explanation isn’t satisfactory. She stares at you a moment longer, gears turning in her mind.
Then, so low you almost miss it, she says, “It isn't me.” It’s not a question.
“What?” You nearly gasp.
“Earlier,” she turns to Jungwon, “you didn't say me. You said a blacksmith's daughter.”
“He only meant—” you try, but Mina was raised among the court ladies. She's well versed in the language of secret glances and hidden meaning and conveying the truth with something more palatable. She sees right through you.
“Don’t tell me what he did or did not mean. You're my sister. I know when I’m being lied to. It isn't me, is it?”
“Mina…” you plead, eyes wide. You try to hide your surprise, your guilt, but it’s too late. She sees it all. She sees you. Everything you’ve been trying to bury ever since you learned the truth yourself. It’s no use now. She knows.
The wind on the hilltop whips against your skin, scatters your hair. Across from you, your sister wears an expression of shock. Of betrayal.
“It’s you.” She breathes.
“It’s not,” you shake your head fervently, lying through your teeth. “It’s not, I swear—”
“Stop,” she says. It’s the most authority you’ve ever heard in your sister’s voice. It’s not unkind, but it is firm. “Stop,” she repeats. Addressing Jaeyun and Jungwon, she adds, “I’d like to speak to my sister. Alone if we can.”
Jaeyun sends the two of you a wary look before nodding, making himself scarce. Jungwon lingers a moment longer but eventually follows suit.
In your mind, you hear, Are you okay?
I am, you assure. And then you turn to face your sister.
“Please,” she urges, “speak plainly with me. I am not the one named in the prophecy, am I?”
“No,” you shake your head. When eye contact becomes unbearable, your gaze falls back to the grass.
Mina’s lips draw into a thin line, but there is no trace of anger in her voice when she asks, “Is it you?”
It’s as if you’re a child again. Helpless, at the mercy of your own fickle emotions. You feel like crying, like shouting. You do neither. Instead, you nod slowly. “It is.”
Mina exhales, a sound that gets lost in the wind. “Why did you… why did you lie to me—”
“It didn’t mean to,” you rush to explain, words tumbling out faster than you can contain them. “I only found out myself a few days ago—”
“But you had no intention of telling me.” She sees right through you. “Did you?”
“Mina, please,” you beg. “How could I? You gave up your entire life for this—”
“Gave up?” she echoes, mouth falling open as she scoffs. “From the moment we were taken from that river, my life was never my own. You know as well as I do that I had nothing to give.”
“Which is why I could never tell you.” You fight the urge to reach for her. “This wedding, your marriage, was meant to be a perfect conclusion to your story. I couldn’t—”
“And what a story it was! Was this truly better? To let me live the rest of my days as a lie? To leave the prophecy unfulfilled and rule over a kingdom that continued to suffer? Alongside a man who will never truly love me? To take the choice from me and make it yourself?”
“Mina…”
“Did you think I would be angry?” she asks. “I’m not. Well, I am,” she amends, “but not for the reasons you think.”
For a moment, she says nothing. She simply looks at you, really looks.
You’re struck with the sudden realization that you may have misjudged your sister terribly. That all these years you spent thinking her life must be some kind of fantasy, full of material comforts and doting attention and lessons in royal etiquette, maybe she was suffering too.
Your suspicions are confirmed when she asks you, “Do you know what it's like to live a life that feels like it will never truly belong to you? To be prepped and pampered to become the perfect doll from someone else’s vision? I don’t even like embroidery,” she laughs. “I can barely tolerate tea ceremonies, and I find studying table manners and posture a terrible bore.”
She looks at you, gaze imploring. “The prince has never treated me with anything but polite, detached kindness. He owes me nothing more, nor do I think I truly want it from him. But do you know what it feels like to be told that you will marry someone who holds no affection for you? For whom you hold no affection? To know that you will spend the remainder of your life as little more than a prop? Even I was not delusional enough to think I’d ever be allowed to rule, no matter what title or crown they put on my head.”
“I thought…” you trail off, lost for words. You’re seeing your sister more clearly than you have in your entire life, and the adjustment has you feeling off-center. “I thought you enjoyed palace life. I thought you were excited for the wedding.”
“I did not wish my burden to become yours. I cannot imagine life was easy for you either.” She looks at you, voice gentle. “You know, I blamed myself for it all these years. For damning us to this fate.” She’s not angry, just in disbelief when she adds, “But it was always you, wasn’t it? Even that day at the river, all those years ago, you had to whisper his name to me.”
“You remember that?”
“Of course I do. His name felt wrong in my mouth even then. It always has.”
“I wish I knew.” You shake your head, tears in your eyes. “All these years…”
“What’s done is done,” Across from you, her eyes are glassy, too. You’ve spent so long thinking your sister frivolous, in need of your protection. Now, you remember your age. Your birth order. She sounds wiser, older, when she says, “From here, we can only go forward.”
“You don’t hate me?” You hate how small your voice sounds, how unsure.
“You’re my little sister,” Mina smiles. “I always have a little annoyance wherever you’re concerned. But not nearly as much as I have love.”
You can’t help the laugh that bubbles in your throat, falls from your lips. And this time, the tears do spill over. Across from you, Mina too begins to cry.
The sun begins to set on the horizon. The end of a day, the fall of an illusion. The hilltop glows with the last golden rays of the day, and the two of you reach for each other. You’re not sure who initiates the embrace, but your sister holds you close, just as you do her.
Eventually, the two of you separate again. Mina leans back on her hands, gaze conspiratorial when she asks, “So how exactly do you know - what’s your friend’s name again - Jaeyun?” She presses on before you can begin to answer. “And how are you on a first name basis with the prince? The two of you looked awfully cozy on that horse, you know.”
“Mina!” you whine, even as color begins to rise on your cheeks.
Your older sister only laughs. Leaning in to ask you another question that will make you blush, the two of you stay there, seated in the grass for hours longer.
There’s a kingdom to uphold and an insurgency to address, but for now, you’re here on this hilltop, making up for lost years with a sister you think you may finally be beginning to understand.
…..
Jungwon finds you late into the night. Despite the hour and the exhaustion weighing at your bones, sleep can’t seem to find you.
Your sister, luckily, rests a bit easier. She’s asleep in one of the makeshift beds Jaeyun prepared. Afraid to draw unwanted attention with a fire, you’re sure she’s grateful for the warmth. Even with the lingering heat of the season, the open air carries a certain chill at night.
Jungwon must sense your cold. He finds you where you sit, looking out towards the city. Settling in next to you, he wraps one of the blankets around your shoulders.
Grateful, your gaze settles on him as he sits beside you.
“It went okay?” he asks. “With your sister.”
“It did,” you nod. “Better than I could have hoped. This whole time, I thought I understood her, but I had no idea what she was feeling, what she was thinking.” There’s optimism in your voice when you add, “I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I think she may actually have a chance to be happier now.”
“She’s not interested in returning to the castle?” Jungwon asks.
“No.” You shake your head. You’re done putting words in her mouth. You tell him only what she told you, earlier this evening as the two of you passed hours together. “The king wants her dead. She doesn’t want to step foot there again.”
“Of course,” Jungwon agrees. “That must be difficult.” A beat of silence passes. He breaks it. “And you?”
“Me?” you question.
Jungwon nods. “Will you be going back to the castle?”
Will you? You’ve been warring with the same question all evening.
Instead of answering, you ask, “Is there a place for me there?”
It’s not the castle you’re concerned with now. Then again, neither is Jungwon.
He doesn’t hesitate for even a moment. “There is. There always will be, so long as you will have it.” He sighs, head dipping. “I cannot pretend it will be easy. It could even be dangerous. My father is… difficult. But the kingdom has suffered enough. I think we all have.”
“You have a plan, then.” You nod. You suspected as much. You’ve been running probabilities of your own, trying to craft the best steps forward. “What will you do? Marry the princess of the northern kingdom to appease him and then—”
“The northern kingdom and its princess,” Jungwon interrupts, “will never step foot here. And marriage,” he continues, “is not something I wish to use as a bartering tool. Ever.”
“What is it?” you ask, breath suddenly shallow.
“My plan?” he asks, “or marriage?”
“Either,” you feign nonchalance. “Both.”
“My plan,” he begins, “shall be revealed in due time. And as for marriage,” he pauses, turning his eyes to the stars, “I suppose that too shall be revealed in due time. When the proper… sentiments are involved.”
“Oh, my,” you tease. Here in the starlight, under the cover of partial darkness, it’s easy to pretend your heart is skipping beats for reasons unrelated. “Is the crown prince of our kingdom trying to say that he wishes to marry for love?”
“It could never be anything less,” he says, turning now to look at you, “when I know what it feels like to have a voice in my head.”
To that, you have nothing to say. At least none you're brave enough to tell him yet.
Instead, you join him in putting your eyes on the stars, focusing on the days ahead.
It won’t be easy, you’re sure. But there’s something there that wasn’t before. Hope perhaps, that your life is something you will take part in shaping, instead of being tossed around at the whims of others.
Dreams that you will have decisions of your own to make. Choices that may be wrong or right or exist somewhere in that gray space between. It hardly matters now. They'll be yours to make.
There is duty on the horizon, the threat of an uncertain future. But sitting here next to Jungwon, gazing down at the town below, you can’t help but think that no matter what outside forces conspire against you and what prophecies attempt to steer your destiny, the two of you will be alright.
…..
The end of summer always brings heavy rains. This season is no exception.
You watch in fall now, in heavy, thick, unrelenting sheets from your makeshift shelter in the garden gazebo.
Typhoons are unpredictable, and late summer rain is the same. The sky had been bone dry when you ventured out without so much as an umbrella to shield you.
You don’t mind so much, though. It’s become rather entertaining, in a mundane sort of way, to watch as raindrops gather on the leaves that snake around the gazebo. The vines that twist and turn, nearly covering the stone completely.
You only hope that Mina, wherever she and Jaeyun are now, is staying dry as well. She’s always been prone to catching terrible colds this time of year. Although maybe some fresh air is doing her well.
It’s been less than two days since you left her on the hilltop, waving goodbye until she and Jaeyun were nothing but specks on the horizon. She looked happier even then. Lighter, somehow. Unburdened and full of that same sense of freedom you’ve come to know rather well.
You only hope it lasts. That before too much time passes, the two of you will be able to see one another often. Speaking freely of topics as frivolous or serious as you please.
For now, you have the gardens. And its endless supply of rain-soaked flowers.
I hope I’m not disturbing you.
The voice against your ear is so sudden you nearly jump in your own skin. Spinning on your heel, you find Jungwon, closing the last of the distance between you as he ascends the gazebo’s steps.
He wears no crown, no regalia. Only the dark, fitted attire of someone who prefers to go unnoticed. Who chooses to let his actions, not his title, speak for themselves.
“You frightened me,” you admonish.
“My apologies,” he bows slightly, but his grin gives him away. He meant to startle you.
It would seem you’re not the only one who forgot an umbrella. Although you’re not sure what Jungwon’s excuse is. He didn’t come to find you until after the rain had started. And now, he’s just as thoroughly soaked as the petals outside.
“I hope I’m not disrupting you,” he repeats, this time out loud.
“Not at all.” You shake your head, trying to act as if you haven’t been waiting for him, for news, since the moment you stepped foot back on the castle grounds and the two of you parted ways.
Jungwon won’t leave you in agony of wondering any longer. “It’s done,” he tells you as a stray drop falls from his hair to his shoulder. “My coronation is to be held in three day’s time.”
You remember his father’s earlier conditions. The path to fulfilling the prophecy. The original claim that Jungwon must first marry before he can ascend the throne. You say, only partially teasing, “I hope you haven’t come here to ask me to marry you.”
“Without the prerequisite of a marriage this time,” he amends.
“How did you do it?”
“A good old-fashioned threat.” Jungwon smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “I told my father that I would expose his plan, his attempted murder, if he did not let me proceed with the coronation. He knew it was a losing gamble. Public favor is a currency more valuable than gold, and he knows he has little to spare.”
There are a million questions you could ask. How did he do it? How did he gather enough evidence of his father’s involvement to make him agree so easily? What will he do, now that the throne is nearly within grasp?
Above it all, another question rings in your mind. “And the prophecy?”
Your breath falters. You almost regret asking. You’re not sure you’re prepared for a response.
Jungwon just looks at you. “The prophecy remains.”
“Jungwon…” you sigh, trying to gather your spinning thoughts.
He presses forward before you have the chance. “But you were right. I refuse to use it as a crutch. I will have a kingdom in my care in three days.” His jaw sets, suddenly solemn. “There is plenty I can do, with or without ancient magic.”
You release your breath, not sure if the sudden feeling surging deep within you is relief or disappointment. “You’ve abandoned it, then.”
“I’m…” Jungown weighs his words carefully, “letting it rest. For now, at least. Although, I do have a favor to ask.”
That intrigues you. “What is it?”
“I won’t ask for your hand in marriage.” Despite yourself, a thrill races through your spine at the mere prospect. “But I do request that you stay here with me, if you so will it.”
You arch a brow. “If I will it?”
Jungwon nods. “You’re not a prisoner. But you are a rather well-connected source of information. I could use that brain of yours to help make the transition to my reign smoother, more peaceful. I meant it, that day in my chamber. I want to be different. I want to be better.”
It’s an echo of a similar request he made, not so long ago. You had been so unsure then, frightened of the prince’s true intentions. Too terrified of your strange connection to trust it fully.
Now, it’s easy to accept.
You mean it when you reply, “And for that very reason, I have every confidence you will be.” Around you, the rain begins to slow. Torrential downpour transitions to a gentle patter of scattered drops. Moisture strikes the earth in erratic patterns. It makes you bold. “Is my brain your only point of interest?”
Jungwon turns his head to the side, eyes widening in surprise. Between the two of you, he’s always been bolder, more giving in his confessions. His gaze makes quick work of scanning your features, searching for any sign of misunderstanding. Finding none, he tells you, “You know the answer to that question.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.” But the smile that stretches across your lips is playful, teasing. It only grows as you lean back from the gazebo’s rail, taking a handful of steps backwards towards the entrance. “You’ll have to elaborate.”
You’re nearly halfway down the stairs by now, stray raindrops catching in your hair, sliding against your skin.
Jungwon follows, first with his eyes. And then with his feet.
You take another step back, just as he reaches you at the base of the stairs.
You’re teasing me. He doesn’t say it aloud.
I wouldn’t dream of it. You send back.
Still, when he steps forward, you fall back. It’s like a dance now. A game. One that leaves you more and more soaked with every inch you put between you and shelter.
Jungwon fares no better. His hair is dripping again, weighed down across his forehead.
He follows your movements with the practiced ease of a hunter, gaze never straying from you.
It’s a terrible offense, you know, to torment a prince.
I should be careful, then. I can only imagine the extent of Your Highness’s wrath.
He’s nearly caught up to you by now, just as you reach the edge of the rose bushes.
But the garden and your boldness and the prince can only spare you for so long.
Just as you step to the left, ducking under the branches of a weeping willow, Jungwon decides he’s had enough of your game.
You feel it first. Warm fingers circling your rain soaked wrist. He always manages to catch you off guard, though. You expect him to pull you out, to continue this game of tag you’ve begun.
Instead, he uses your arm as leverage, until he too is half concealed beneath the branches of the willow.
“Pray tell, my prince,” you whisper as he closes in on your space, hair dripping, eyes locked on your mouth, “what is my punishment for such impudence?”
“You must think me terribly cruel,” he whispers, breath fanning over your cheek, “to be giving out punishments so easily.”
“I think nothing of the sort,” you shake your head as his hand comes to rest against the side of your face, thumb brushing along your cheekbone. His fingers splay against your jaw. Soft, desperate. “I only meant to prepare myself.”
“For what?” he asks, voice barely audible. He’s so close you think you could count the stars in his eyes.
Your hand comes to his elbow. To maintain distance or ensure he never breaks it, you’re not sure. “For whatever Your Highness sees fit.”
His lips are nearly brushing yours now. You feel his words as much as you hear them. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”
“Very well,” you nod, eyes fluttering shut. “Jungwon.”
The pressure of his mouth is undeniable then. Light at first, he hardly dares to breathe against you. Almost as if unbidden, his second hand comes to rest at your waist, bunching your skirts near the hem.
His fingers against your cheek widen, tilting slightly, angling you. And then, the pressure increases. His mouth becomes more insistent against yours.
It’s no longer a ghost of a kiss. Not with his hands in your hair and yours splayed helplessly against his chest.
Not as he presses you against the base of the tree, gasping in forgotten breath with his mouth still against your own, unwilling to break contact. Until he decides he finds the pulse point just under your jaw fascinating, that is.
Then, his attentions are on your neck, learning which places make you gasp, which make you whine, and his favorite of all, which make you say his name in that breathy little whimper he wants to taste right off your lips.
Beneath the branches, skirts soaked and hair loose, the rest of the world fades into a comfortable sort of nothingness. There’s nothing here now but Jungwon and the blossoming feelings that lie between you.
It doesn’t matter if it’s prophecy or your own doing or some wonderful mix of them both. You’ve had enough of magic, of bending to its whims, forcing yourself into something that will please it.
You won’t marry Jungwon just because old magic foretold your fate. Instead, you’ll spend long minutes, hidden beneath the branches of a weeping willow, with his lips against yours and his teeth making you gasp. Not because an old seer willed it, but because it feels good.
Because no matter what titles or crowns or royalty he wears on his shoulders, he will always be Jungwon. A name you knew even before you had a face to put it to. Magic is there somewhere, too. Whether it’s of your own making or far beyond your control, you’re glad it’s brought you here. To this.
Feelings blooming in your heart and echoes of a voice inside your mind, the future feels like something worth hoping for.
The kingdom is still in turmoil. People still suffer. There is work yet to be done.
But this feels like change, like progress. You won’t have to hide your wishes for better days to come in secret letters and illicit meetings. You’ll get to be part of something, someone with the power to enact real change.
You don’t know what Jungwon’s coronation will bring. If the king has truly left his scheming to rest or not. You’re not sure what the next year or day or even hour will bring.
But regardless of what comes to pass, you’re sure, now more than ever, that you have what you need to face it.
…..
epilogue
Keeping your footsteps light and your breath silent, you follow the familiar, winding path of the castle corridors.
It’s not that you’re hiding, not really. It’s just that you have a rather important errand to run. One that you don’t wish to delay. Not even for the latest report on crop yields in the newly planted fields near the southern border. Certainly not for the details of the recently reinstated trade routes with your neighbors to the west. Even if they’re the reason your personal favorite variety of strawberry is now widely available for all.
You don’t even wish to be stopped to hear about the progress of the schoolhouses you helped open a matter of months ago, the literacy rates that are beginning to boom across the country as citizens, old and young, gather to learn the rather ornate reading and writing system of your kingdom.
Mina’s been hard at work there, if the latest letter from Jaeyun is anything to go by. She’s nearly developed an entirely new strategy for teaching letter formation to children.
It’s amazing, your friend had reported, and you could sense his wonder even in writing. The kids actually like learning to write with her.
Even now, on your own stealthy mission, the thought makes you smile.
Finally, a handful of minutes later, you arrive at the closed door you’d been seeking. Knocking on it twice, you smile when a familiar face greets you.
“Riki,” you grin, “is the tailor in today?”
Riki gasps, feigning disbelief. “Look who decided to grace us with her presence today? Did I miss a holiday? A birthday? A special occasion?”
“Hardly,” you roll your eyes. “My presence is nothing special.”
“Are you kidding?” he asks. “You’re practically the most sought after person in the castle these days. Well, besides the king, I suppose.” You can’t quite help the small smile that threatened the corner of your lips at the mention of Jungwon. “I mean, that’s why you came here at the crack of dawn, isn’t it? To avoid running into anyone.”
“It’s not the crack of dawn,” you argue. “Breakfast was served an hour ago.”
“Regardless,” Riki points out, “it’s early. To answer your earlier question, no, he’s not. You even beat the tailor here.”
“Hm,” you hum, considering. “Could you pass along an order, then?”
“Sure,” he nods, “your stack of dresses isn’t sufficient these days?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” you shake your head. “You know I have more than I could possibly need. Mostly thanks to you. I just… don’t quite have the right thing for this.”
“For what?” His brow furrows. “That upcoming ball? When is it, again? Next month? I can do something green again, if you like.”
You shake your head.
“No?” Riki turns towards the stack of fabrics. “Alright, what color then? Blue,” he suggests. “Or we just got this really gorgeous maroon silk from abroad. Drapes like a dream.”
“What about something…” you trail off for a moment, “white?”
In front of you, Riki falters, hands freezing halfway towards his stack of silks.
Slowly, he turns back to you. “White?” he echoes, eyes wide.
“Yeah,” you nod, teeth pulling at the inside of your lip as your smile widens. “I think I need something white.”
𝓣he year is 1989. To escape his messy life, Heeseung Lee takes a job as a fire lookout in the Shoshone National Forest, where his one and only contact for the summer is you - his supervisor - through a small, handheld radio. Your life is no less miserable, and that's what originally brought you here, too, almost a decade ago. But when something external draws Heeseung into the unknown and threatens his and your safety, the veil between you drops, and your psyches begin to warp as you try to uncover the source of the turmoil. The wedding band on his finger is snug at first, but with every day that Heeseung spends in your company, it gradually slips off. And eventually - when all is said and done - he has to decide between honoring his sick wife or destroying the only meaningful relationship he's had in years.
𝓬ontent: eventual smut, morally gray reader & heeseung, mentioned character with dementia, suggestive comments and implications, very brief mention of suicide, heavy depictions of guilt, mentions of death, climbing accident, forest fires, main characters are being watched, psychological damages
𝓻achel ꨄ︎: i've been working on this since early january, and i will tell you that not one day has gone by that i haven't worked on this. firewatch is one of my favorite all-time games, and if you haven't played it, i strongly recommend - as for this fic, a few plot points have been changed for originality and story purposes to focus more on their relationship. in short, i poured my heart into this, so i hope you all enjoy! 𝓶asterlist
── smut tags below the cut .ᐟ
𝔀arnings: mutual masturbation, soft dom heeseung, fingering, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, cumming on pussy, doggy, morning sex
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
WHAT DOES SOMEONE DO when they hike for two days into the middle of nowhere, just to find nothing but a firewatch tower and a bunch of trees?
The year is 1989. The forest is peaceful this time of year, not quite warm enough yet for a fire to catch, though the heat slowly approaches. The sun beams onto the forest, no wildlife within sight, and the wind streams through the trees on the wide expanse. It’s tranquil, yet eerie in a way that those inside can’t quite place.
Heeseung’s mind plays its memories like a tape as he walks through the grass, climbs loose rocks, and pushes past thick bushes in his path.
He married Sooha five years ago. They’d met three years prior, at a small gathering of mutual friends from high school, where they’d connected almost immediately. Before the week ended, they were together. The three years they spent dating were nothing short of lovely, filled with dinners, drinks, dances, and a cheesy movie date that turned out to be one of the worst films they’d ever seen. They moved in together, and no sooner were they married off and living in the quaint house that they called home. It was equipped with a small color television and even had beige carpeted floors that were probably ten years old. But it was theirs.
Sooha got sick only two years in. The doctors said it was the early stages of dementia, after her first spell. But she’s only twenty-six, Heeseung had protested, yet they persisted, saying it was rare, and somehow, possible. He took care of her at first, often opting to stay home to make sure she was safe. He would take her out some nights until she could no longer, when her memory began to dissipate, slowly, but surely.
It was just two months ago that her ability to function faltered. She would wake up, forgetting where she was, and toy with the ring on her finger, stare at Heeseung as if she’d never seen him before. And gradually, her condition grew worse, harsher, until finally, she couldn’t live there anymore. Her parents swiftly removed her from the household, despite his protests, and nearly cut contact. Though—even when he could speak with her—she’d completely forgotten who he was.
Heeseung steps into a clearing and notices a tall firewatch tower peeking through the tops of the trees. He knows he’s close and continues, listening to the soft hum of a small stream nearby as he treks up the incline until the dirt beneath his feet turns to grass.
He saw the ad in the paper one morning, just a few days ago. FIREWATCH LOOKOUT NEEDED, the bolded letters read against the warm gray of the page. It didn’t pay much, and truthfully, it seemed like something quite miserable, but Heeseung took it. Because his life lost its direction, and he just needed to step away. Even if just for one summer.
When he finally reaches the tower, standing tall above him, he surveys the surrounding area. An old, dingy outhouse sits just a few yards away from one of the tower’s legs. It’s not large, and the door does not fully close, but it’s enough. Survivable. Beside it is a generator. Not much power, he thinks to himself, but it’s not meant to do more than provide some light.
He adjusts his backpack’s strap and starts for the set of stairs that wrap around the tower’s exterior. Their white paint is mostly chipped away, some of the weaker steps creak under his shoe, and he opts not to grip the railing too tightly (he doesn’t want to obtain a splinter that he will have no time to remove). But he reaches the top soon enough, where a platform no wider than two feet welcomes him, leading him to the tower’s door that hides almost nothing. Every wall is equipped with corner-to-corner windows, and the door isn’t much different, only equipped with a dusty set of blinds that don’t offer much when the rest of the windows have no curtains at all.
Privacy is a myth; then again, no human life resides for miles. Except,
“Hello? Hello?”
Heeseung’s eyes flit towards the startling noise: a female voice coming from the small yellow and black walkie-talkie sitting on top of the work desk. He hangs his backpack on the hook just beside the door and takes the radio in his palm, examining it for no more than a few seconds before pressing on the button on the side and speaking into it.
“Hello?”
“Oh, great—it works,” the unidentified female’s voice rings through the low-quality speaker again, and Heeseung’s brows furrow. “You’re the new lookout, right?”
“I—yeah, that’s me. I’m H—,” he pauses, looking down ashamedly at his feet before clearing his throat. “Evan. My name’s Evan.”
“Well, Evan, it’s nice to formally meet you. I’m Y/N.” You smile from the other end, where you’re perched comfortably inside a tower miles away from him, only able to catch a glimpse of his tower’s silhouette from so far away. You introduce yourself kindly, though Heeseung seems apprehensive, as if being here and taking this whole job is something he shouldn’t even be doing; perhaps, he shouldn’t.
“It looks like we’ll be in pretty close contact for the next few months. I’ll be like your byoss, you know? Sit up here, give you some tasks to do outside, whistle some tunes while you complete them,” you laugh. “But…I know that you’re probably tired. I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions tomorrow. So for now, I’ll let you get settled in and head to sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
You don’t spare him a moment to speak before turning the radio off and heading to sleep yourself. Heeseung confusedly sets the radio back on its charging station and turns with his hands on his hips to admire the place he’ll be staying for the foreseeable future.
There is just enough inside to keep living. A furnace rests in the corner next to the desk, a few cabinets sit on its opposite end with a sink attached to one, and a bed occupies the space in another corner. Only a thin sheet and a small blanket sit on top, alongside the pillow that looks anything but soft. Finally, a stand that looks to have a map on top centers the room, but he doesn’t touch it. Not yet, until his brain has enough rest to really study it.
It’s not comfortable. It’s not cozy. It’s barely clean. But again, it’s enough. It’s survivable.
And Heeseung will have to get used to it, because that’s what he’s being paid to do. This is what he chose to pursue instead of getting his life together at home, because it’s turned into such a mess that he doesn’t know what he’ll return to. But that doesn’t matter now. All he needs to focus on is a good night’s sleep and the forest not catching on fire.
Can’t be that hard, right?
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 1
A gentle breeze drifts through the pivot window; the thin piece of paper inside the typewriter flutters. The smell of fresh air wafts into the room, and Heeseung, who just woke up barely ten minutes prior, sits at the desk and presses away at the machine’s keys.
He types his issues to no one. Details the exact pit that has resided in his stomach since Sooha’s memory began to slip. It’s not much—and the grammar is quite poor—but it’s an outlet to put his thoughts into the world without speaking them to someone else. Someone who will know and see his vulnerabilities. Combined with the calm of the forest, it dulls the ache.
“Evan?” Heeseung’s head turns to the radio. “I know you’re awake—pick up when you’re ready.”
He loosens the paper from the typewriter and lays it over a few pencils on the desk. As he looks out the window at the distant mountains, his fingers drift toward the walkie-talkie and press the button.
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Morning, sunshine,” you quip into the microphone, your feet crossed over your desk. “Welcome to Two Forks—that’s your lookout. If you take a glance out your north window, you might just see the top of Thorofare. That’s where I am.” You pause to let him look. “I’m waving, but you can’t see me. Anyway, I’m sure the first thing you’d like to do is head outside after the long hike, but it’s good to get acquainted with the area.”
Heeseung nods. “Alright, so…what do I have to do?”
“Good question,” you reply. “I’m sure you’ve already noticed the map in the middle of the room. Sitting on the big pedestal-looking thing? You can use it to scout the area until you’re more familiar with it, and there will be a nice little indicator beside it in the form of a compass! You can take that, too. Y’know, to help with your direction, and all that.”
He stands from the creaky chair beneath him and walks toward the podium in the center. His eyes study the map, which reads Two Forks Region Overview at the top. He notes the landmarks, studies the paths he’ll have to take, and, most importantly, the small compass in the corner to indicate each direction.
“Yeah, I see it,” he finally says to you, grabbing the map from its place and folding it up to store in his pocket. “So, is there anyone else here?”
“Nope.” You lean forward, resting your chin on your palm. “I’ll be your only contact, really just to tell you where to go and what to do. Direct you, for lack of a better term.”
“Great,” he emphasizes the t.
“Love the enthusiasm,” you joke, only to be interrupted as you catch a glimpse of something unfamiliar in the distance. “Hey, Evan—look outside your westward-facing window.”
He glances to his left, “Fireworks?”
“Yeah, fucking fireworks,” you grit. “Looks like some stupid teenagers think they’re cool for lighting them off. God, do they even understand how dangerous that is?” You sigh, taking a sip of lukewarm water from the glass on your desk. No condensation even drips down the side—it’s been warm the whole time. “Well, now we have your first mission. You’re gonna have to head down there and put a stop to it.”
“What am I supposed to do, beat them up?”
“No! God, no,” you deny, “you just need to make sure they leave, not catch a lawsuit.” You assess the smoke and follow the trail down to find the source, grateful that your tower stands much taller than his. “It looks like they’re by the lake. You should see it on your map, it’s not too far. On the path, you should find a cache box marked 306. The passcode for the lock is 1-2-3-4; it’s the same for all of them.”
“Sounds safe.”
“Well, I didn’t make them,” you rebut. “Anyway, there should be some rope inside from the old lookout. You’ll need it to get down the shale slides.”
“Is that even safe?”
You perch a hand on your hip. “I don’t know what you expected from a job like this, Evan, but usually it entails a lot of climbing and being in unsafe areas. Why do you think nobody wants to do it, aside from the total isolation aspect?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I know,” you glare. “So, that being said—head down to the lake, grab the rope on the way, and shoo those teenagers away. Radio me if you need anything.”
Heeseung turns the knob on the old door, listening to the faint scuff of wood against wood, then the sound as it clicks shut. He carefully walks down the long set of stairs, admiring the gentle surroundings until he reaches the ground, where he unfolds the map to locate the lake. He trails a finger along the white pathway mapped out across the paper as he walks, careful not to misstep and send himself flying down an incline.
“So what’s wrong with you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Most people don’t take this job for fun. They usually do it to run from something, or to be alone,” you explain. “So—what’s wrong with you?”
Heeseung’s lips part to speak, but he refrains. The wedding band on his finger suddenly feels too heavy. He doesn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. “Nothing,” he settles, “just getting some fresh air.”
“Well…Escaping isn’t always a bad thing.” You swallow, toying with your fingers. “Just…try to remember that, or this stay is gonna feel a lot longer.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Sooha’s memory stains his mind when he lowers the radio. Sometimes, he wishes he could forget about the eight years they spent together, about how she declined so fast, about how he’d wasted so much time. But he shouldn’t. He’s not here to leave—he’s here to find direction, an answer that may not even be waiting for him.
But as he walks along the dirt path, pulse throbbing in his ears, he can’t help but wonder what his life will be like without her. Deep down, he knows that her parents will force the ring off his finger. He knows they never approve of him. And he knows that marrying her was comfortable, safe, sweet…only for it to become the nightmare he never expected, nor could he wake up from.
The hike after isn’t too long—only a mile or two—and he is quick to reach the supply cache you had mentioned. His thoughts fizzle out; he has something to focus on, now.
“Okay,” he whispers to himself as he steps in front of the lock and brings it closer to his face. “1…2…3…and…” he mumbles, “4.” The lock clicks; Heeseung pries the top open to reveal the tied-off rope inside, alongside a flashlight, and attached to the door is a small note that marks the shale slides closest to the cache. He copies the information onto his map and shuts the door.
“Hey,” he speaks into the radio as he continues forward along the path, noting the open area ahead. “I just got the rope. I should be coming up on the lake within the next—oh, ten, fifteen?”
“Wonderful,” you cheer, clapping quietly by tapping the edge of the radio, hoping it’s loud enough for him to hear. Heeseung only registers a muffled pang and doesn’t bother to comment on it. “You’re a real trooper, Evan. Keep up the good work.”
“Thanks.”
The first shale slide appears in the distance, and Heeseung, admittedly nervous, swallows as he approaches the fixture sticking out of the ground where he’s supposed to hook the rope. With an unsteady hand, he snaps the rope’s loop into the carabiner clip and tugs to make sure that it’s secure.
It isn’t so bad once the dirt is secure beneath his feet and the tentative steps he takes down the incline feel comfortable. But perhaps he gets too comfortable, and suddenly the rope snaps above him. The departure sends him hurling toward the packed dirt below. His back slams onto the ground and nearly knocks the wind out of him; thankfully, he manages to keep his head up and refrain from hitting it.
“Ow, fuck,” he groans, bracing his lower back with his palm.
“Evan? Are you okay? I thought I heard static, or something.”
“Yeah, but I almost just fucking died,” he complains with a hiss, shaking his head to regain some of his consciousness. “The rope you told me to get snapped right in my hand. I know my grip strength isn’t particularly great, but I know I heard and felt something break.”
You blink, unsure of how to respond. Sure, you sent him to the cache box where the faulty rope was, but how would you have even known it was too weak and would snap? Surely, it isn’t your fault. But you guess you feel a little guilty, considering the guy sounds absolutely winded, despite the speaker’s poor quality.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” you mutter, scratching the back of your neck. “Hope everything’s okay. You alright?”
“Yeah, just shaken.”
“Great. Let me know if you find anything or have questions.”
The line falls dead for about three seconds.
“Or if you suddenly drop dead from shock, or something.”
Heeseung wonders if someone dropped you on your head as a child. He doesn’t bother to respond.
His eyes catch on a cliff that staggers above a large patch of dirt and gravel. He follows the path straight, the pop of fireworks drawing closer, along with the faint sound of music mixed with teenage yelps. The clearing reveals a small campfire. He notices two backpacks leaning against the bottom of the overhang. Opposite of those is a large rock, where two sets of clothes lay haphazardly overtop.
“Hey, so, I found their camp—I think,” he radios in, at which you cock a brow. “They’ve got a fire going,” he stomps over the wood, “—had a fire going. And, uh…their clothes are…here, too.”
“What?”
“If I had to make a guess, I’d say that they’re skinny dipping out there. And they left their clothes on top of some rock near the fire.”
“Great, but that doesn’t solve our problem. Head towards the lake and stop the fireworks. Worry about the clothes later,” you press, and Heeseung sighs, muttering a begrudging “yep,” before moving forward. “Call me when you’re done.”
The water is closer than he anticipated. A thin pathway is visible through the overgrown vines that he assumes is what leads to the beach, so he steps into it. Upon rounding the corner, he notices a fallen tree branch hanging like an archway over the path. And on it, as he draws closer, is a cream-colored bra; when his eyes fall to the ground, they find the second piece of the set.
His hand shakes a little when he lifts the device to his mouth; what if the girl suddenly appears and finds some man ogling her underwear? “So there is…a pair of, uh,” he sputters, “panties.”
“P-p-panties? Oh, the humanity!”
You let out a shrill gasp that hurts his ears from the other end of the line. “Man up, Evan. Ever seen a pair of those before, or are we still a virgin?”
Heeseung rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he mutters. “I am not a virgin, nor am I scared of a pair of women’s underwear. But you have to admit that when a twenty-eight-year-old man appears out of thin air to talk to a couple of teenage girls, it’s a little bit weird, Y/N.”
“Well…Okay, I suppose you have a point,” you sigh. “But it doesn’t matter, because you are there, and I am here. Therefore, you can figure that out for yourself, while I sit back and relax in my tower—sorta.” You pout, leaning back in your chair. “It’s pretty hot today.”
“You don’t say,” Heeseung grits; you giggle.
“Go toward the lake, Oh Great One! You know what to do.”
Heeseung swears that he’d murder you if you weren’t miles away from him and tucked away behind a mountain range. Instead, he’s forced to follow your command, ducking beneath an arch of connected vines to finally reveal the lake, where his eyes follow the fireworks’ trail down to the silhouettes of two teenage girls, jumping and cheering in the far distance. Bingo.
“Hey! You out there!” he shouts, and the girls turn in his direction. He can’t see their faces, but his gut tells him that they’re already creeped out; he can’t particularly blame them, not yet. “You can’t light fireworks here! You’ve gotta stop, it could start a fire!”
“Ugh, don’t yell at us, weirdo!” one of the girls retorts, and Heeseung sighs.
“I’m not trying to be weird, but I’ve been told to come down and tell you guys to stop lighting these off, so please, could you just stop it and go home?”
“This guy is fucking weird, grown man staring at us from the edge of the lake like a pussy. He probably took our underwear, too!”
“I’m not here to—okay,” he breathes, “look! You’re not allowed to be here, and I’m just doing my job! So I’m going to say it again: Get the fuck out!”
“You know what? This guy is weird. Let’s just leave.”
Heeseung blinks. “That’s what I told—whatever.” He perches a hand on his hip and irritably pulls the talkie out from his pocket. “Taken care of. The girls are…gone, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, they kept calling me weird, and then they just kinda…left. Their clothes and everything.” He steps toward the boombox and promptly shuts off the grating music, releasing a breath of relief. “So I don’t know where they went.”
“Oh,” you blink, “okay. Well, be safe coming back. You’ll have to find another way around.”
Heeseung’s brows furrow, and he eyes his surroundings. As far as he can see, the lake is much too large to trudge through or around, and he took the only way he knew to get here, which isn’t doable now that his rope is useless. “So where the hell am I supposed to go?” He rips the map out and scans it angrily. “I took the only way, right? And now I can’t get back up.”
“No,” you counter. “Look above the path you took. There’s a small stream that branches off the lake.” His eyes follow the stream through the canyon just north of the original pathway he took. “You obviously can’t go through the canyon, so you’ll have to stay along the stream. If I remember correctly, there should be a cave somewhere around cache box 303.”
“I see it.”
“That’ll lead you to a clearing that should take you back to Two Forks. Then you’ll be home free, and you can go ahead and take a nice nap, or—whatever men do after they’ve had a long day.”
“Do I seriously seem that pathetic to you?”
“Kinda, yeah.”
You laugh when he gives no response and peer out at the horizon. Your smile falters; suddenly, loneliness aches in your chest. No amount of friendly banter through a useless walkie-talkie could possibly be enough to cure the feeling that bubbles in your stomach when the isolation kicks in. It’s not fun—it’s punishing. But that’s what you wanted when you took the job half a decade ago. And it’s what you still think you need, now.
So, what’s your story?
Nothing. And as comedic as it may sound, that’s why you’re here. You don’t have a concrete reason, anything to escape from like Evan, or even an explanation for why this even sounded appetizing (it didn’t). You’re just here because you have nowhere else to be. So maybe you aren’t so different from him. Maybe some invisible force pulled you here, and this is all happening for a reason.
Otherwise, the complete isolation and mental turmoil will be for nothing. Which is something you’re far too used to for someone so young.
The sun begins to set along the outline of the landscape, the mountains your tower sits upon, and the ones far, far away. Your eyes drift toward Evan’s empty tower, only a silhouette amidst the setting sun behind it, and wonder. What he looks like, if his hair is short, or if it’s long enough to run a hand through, what clothes he wears, and if he even changes them out here. A clock somewhere behind you ticks; the silence infiltrates your ears like a threat.
Don’t get too close to him, it wants to say. You know what that means.
But something about him is different. You feel it in your chest, in every flash of static in the radio, every soft inflection of his voice through the speaker.
“There’s a cave.” His voice breaks the deafening silence. You sigh.
“A cave?”
“Yeah, it’s,” Heeseung steps closer and draws his map until he pinpoints the location, “near the cache box. It’s the shortest way back. Shouldn’t be long.”
“Are you sure?” you ask, lifting a brow. “It could be dangerous—”
“—oh, oh, god! Oh, god!”
“Evan?”
Heeseung’s laughter drifts out of the radio’s small speaker, and your shoulders slump. Relief washes over you, but irritation bleeds through once your body composes itself, and you scoff.
“That’s not very nice. You could’ve died, you know.”
“Would that really be so bad?” he adds jokingly, stepping cautiously through the old, narrow cave. He notices a light in the distance, just above some loose rocks he can climb to resurface, and moves toward it.
“It was fine down there,” he says once he nears the surface. “There is nothing wrong with this cave.”
“Okay, so just say that next time. Don’t bring me into it.”
“Alright, boss,” he laughs as he climbs up the staggered rocks, grunting softly with each press of his foot into the jagged stone. When his head peeks into the air, his eyes adjust to the gentle light of the dark-blue sky, where the sun has almost completely set since he entered. He huffs out a breath and looks forward, noticing the path leading up the hill beside him and following it carefully.
A flash of light beams into his eyes, and they shoot up to the top, where a figure no different from a human stands, notices his gaze, and clicks the flashlight off before running. Heeseung blinks and continues, weary of his surroundings, a chill running through his body that he doesn’t expect; he hasn’t felt uneasy this entire time, yet now he does.
“Hey, someone, or—something, just shone a flashlight in my face. I think,” he radios in, and you swallow, feeling the same rush of adrenaline shoot through your veins like something ugly.
“Don’t look for them. Head back to your camp as fast as you can,” you instruct monotonously. “You don’t know what or who could be out there with you. It’s best that you don’t try to find out.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about that. I’m not fuckin’ curious.”
“Good. Get back, and let me know that you’re safe when you do.”
He spares a quick glance at his surroundings when his feet touch the top of the cliff. Whoever the figure was had left without a trace. Didn’t even spare a misplaced rock or footprint in the thinning grass-turned-dirt near the trees. So he moves up the hill and straight to his tower that stands barely two hundred feet away, and he lets a sign of relief breeze past his lips upon spotting it. Like his body actually feels comfort in the rickety wood structure that he questions the stability of.
But when he finally, finally, reaches the bottom of the stairs, a brick of discomfort lodges itself in his stomach. Just in front of the first step lies his typewriter, somehow still together from the fall he assumes it took, and he curses under his breath, almost forgetting to even grab the machine before he bolts to the top of the tower.
“Alright, motherfucker, who are—” but he freezes.
No one is there. Not a soul, not even a small insect that crawled its way inside. Yet the place is ransacked—blankets tossed across the floor, belongings scattered along the chipped wood, glass shattered near the leg of his desk, and…
The photo of him and Sooha smashed to bits.
“That piece of shit got in here,” he grunts, slicing his finger on a shard that still hangs off the broken frame and hissing sharply as he tries to place it back on the desk. “I don’t know who they are, but they destroyed the whole place. The window is broken, too. Fuck.”
“Oh, my god,” you swallow, blinking as you lean an elbow against your desk. “I…I don’t know anyone who’s out here. Or what they’d have against you, but—I’ll call it in. Alert them that someone’s here with not-so-nice intentions.”
“Yeah,” Heeseung grits, “not fucking nice.”
“I’ll report it. I’m…sorry, Evan.”
“It’s…fine. I’ll board it up in the morning,” he sighs. “I’m too tired, anyway. I’m just gonna hit the hay for tonight.”
“Alright. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Heeseung sighs as his fingers curl around the buttons on his flannel shirt and loosen them until the shirt falls open. He lazily yanks the damp fabric off, followed by his white tank top, and drapes them over the back of the chair at his desk, which is just about as comfortable as sitting on a two-by-four, but he guesses it has to suffice.
He flops onto the mattress and stares at the ceiling, one arm perched between his head and the sheets. An old spider web hangs in the corner, where the walls meet the ceiling. Spots of dust litter the wood like decoration. He wonders how long it’s been since anyone cleaned this place. Months, at least. Maybe years.
His head pivots toward the desk again; the broken picture frame stares back at him like a reminder. The painful memory of what he left and why he’s even here. Not because of her. Because he gave up on her. When her parents took her away, he simply accepted it, threw in the towel, and took the first job he saw in the paper as if he thought he could run away from it. But the photo staring back at him reminds him that he shouldn’t be here, and that? That scares him in a way he can’t put into words.
Whoever was in here trashed everything. But what if they know? What if they’re telling him to leave?
He supposes it’s not their decision. And Heeseung is set in his ways. He wants the escape and the isolation, and goddamnit, he’ll get it, even if he dies out here. It’s not like anyone is waiting for his return.
He turns to the wall and pulls the thin, torn blanket over his frame, letting the gentle gusts of wind brush the exposed skin on his upper back through the hole in the window. Slowly, he drifts off, yet sleep is anything but peaceful for him. Then again, he doesn’t think any of this will be.
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 2
“Rise and shine, camper,” you chirp into the radio at approximately 9:35 in the morning. “The sun is up, the sky is blue, and whatever else John Lennon says.”
Heeseung groans, reaching around the threshold for the radio from outside, where he stands with a plank of wood and a hammer. “Yeah, morning,” he mumbles, on no more than six hours of sleep. “I’m trying to fix this damn window.”
“Jesus,” you mumble, gnawing gently on your bottom lip. “It’s that bad?”
“Well, someone put a typewriter through it, so yeah—pretty fuckin’ bad.”
You sigh, “That sucks. I called it in, though. They’re keeping their eyes out for others, now.”
Heeseung plants the last plank of wood against the window without a response and hammers the nail in until it’s secure. He sighs, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his forearm and letting his hand rest at his waist. The other reaches for the radio and presses the button like instinct.
“Got anything for me?”
“Yes, actually,” you reply matter-of-factly and sit back in your chair until its front legs lift, balancing your weight with the tips of your fingers on the desk. “There’s a downed communication line up here. The storm last night must have knocked out the power lines. I tried radioing it in, but…nothing. It means we’re cut off.”
You take a long, theatrical breath, which leads Heeseung to cock a brow and wonder if you’ll finish speaking. “The power lines stretch to the highest cliff here, which isn’t too far from my tower. But I can’t leave, so you’re gonna have to hike up there and check it out.” You let the legs touch the floor again. “Sound like a plan?”
“Yeah, sure.” He grabs his backpack from the hook inside the door and shuts it behind him. “You said near you?”
“Yeah, up by Beartooth Point.”
“Okay,” as he looks at the map, “I’ll head there now.”
He makes his way back into the trees. A chill runs through his spine when he reaches the top of the cliff, where there is still no trace of the man he saw, and he hates it. The feeling of being watched, studied. Like someone knows something. Not even that they might want to hurt him.
He sits on the edge of the rock and jumps down. A cloud of dust rises around his ankles, and some makes it up to his face, forcing a cough from his chest as he tries to wave it off. Moving forward, his steps crunch over the cold ground, rocks lodged into the seams, as if it’s been packed down over the years of lookouts before him. At this hour, a coat of fog fills the air.
“It’s pretty cold out here,” he says as if it matters, and your head turns to the radio, not expecting him to say any more than he has to. To be so outgoing after the last few days, even if you’ve been kind. People don’t warm up to you fast; you assume nothing more from him.
“I’m sure you must be used to it,” you chuckle. “You’re from…”
“Korea,” he interrupts. “But I moved to Boulder when I was a kid, so I grew up here.” He jumps down the hole he climbed out of last night and back into the cave, where the temperature is far colder than it is at the surface.
“Oh, really?” You blink. “I thought you were—”
“—white,” he finishes for you, already knowing what you were going to say. “Yeah,” he laughs, “you wouldn’t be the only one. Not very PC of you, is it? Or—whatever they’re saying, these days.”
Ignoring his comment, you murmur, “It’s…it’s cool, Evan.” You swallow, glancing in the opposite direction, as if he can see you through the tiny screen on the radio. As if technology is that advanced. “So…Do you remember any of it? Home, I mean.”
“Yeah, bits and pieces.” He breathes, using a hand to brace himself when he wearily turns a corner. “But not much. I haven’t really been back. I speak the language and everything, used to with my parents, but…They never went back. And then I met Sooha, so…neither did I.”
His feet take him through the cave without heavy thought, as if they already know the path, despite only taking it once the opposite way. But that’s the thing about this whole place—everything seems too familiar, looks so similar that nothing has distinction. The cave is the only thing that has stood out; perhaps, the unfamiliarity is almost comforting.
“Sooha?” Your voice transcends his clouded thoughts. “Who is she? Ex, girlfriend, friend?”
“She’s uh,” he breathes, “my wife.”
“Like a wife, wife? Or like, ‘leave my clothes in your closet,’ wife?”
“We’re married,” but the words feel stale on his tongue. Like he doesn’t deserve to say them, or at least that he shouldn’t. He steps back into the sunlight, where the surface’s warmth suddenly greets him. It isn’t much like the other end. The sun doesn’t quite reach there. It’s blocked by the mountains surrounding it. He sighs, moves north without looking back.
“Oh, wow,” you blink. “So why come here, then? Pretty long time to leave your wife home alone, and…Well, a weird position to take. Isn’t it?”
“She’s sick,” he gnaws at his lip, “and I shouldn’t be here.”
“Oh.”
You lean forward, releasing a breath that your chest had been secretly withholding. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s fine. But I shouldn’t be here.”
Your fingers toy with a loose pencil on your desk, carving light scratches into the old wood. “Escaping isn’t always bad, Evan,” you whisper into the microphone, repeating the sentiment you gave him yesterday morning, the one that keeps you stabilized amidst the spikes of regret and loneliness. “Really.”
When he doesn’t respond, you close your eyes and draw a long, heavy breath. “Let me know what you find at the top.”
The line falls flat. Heeseung finally finds the start of the power line and follows its path upward. The wind blows harder as the path takes him higher, blocking the sun’s rays and casting a cold shadow over the terrain. He shivers, swallowing down the lump in his throat as his eyes finally find the pole you told him about. And when he approaches it…the line is sliced.
“Those fucking teenagers cut the line.”
You pick up the radio angrily. “What?”
“They left a note. Telling me to go to Hell. Seems like they think it will teach me a lesson,” he says, shaking his head with an expression that could kill if they were here. “I mean, what the fuck?”
“God, I knew something was up. I fucking knew it,” you spit, slamming your hand onto the desk. “Do they not realize that this can get people killed? I mean, fuck, something could’ve happened! One of my lookouts could’ve gotten hurt, I could’ve gotten hurt. You could’ve died, and I wouldn’t even—” you pause, suddenly too aware of your words.
“They’re idiots,” you grit out. “I want you to find them.”
“And do what, exactly?”
“Scare them. Trash their camp, or something,” you suggest with anger still laced in your tone. “Just make them regret coming and fucking with us. Screw those girls.”
Heeseung laughs and runs a hand through his hair. A few loose strands stick to the back of his neck, nearly black from the sweat dampening them. “How do you suppose I find them?”
“We know they’re messy,” you point out. “They leave those trails of beer cans everywhere, right? So follow those.”
“Right. Smart,” he nods. “Alright. On it.”
“Be safe.”
As he follows the irregular route that the teenage girls mapped out for him, Heeseung uses the time to think. The weather isn’t too hot, not for the spikes the forest usually gets. Not for a fire to bloom. The job lasts for months—he doesn’t even know what will hit him. But the temperature is just enough not to bother him.
The wind doesn’t whip as sharply here. The sun shines directly overhead, a nice contrast to the cold he’d suffered through trying to reach the end of the power line, only to be unfixable. But even in nature’s kindest conditions, Heeseung can’t shake the thought of your voice, how it faltered when you entertained the idea of him being hurt, or worse.
He shouldn’t dwell on it. It isn’t right—none of it is. Why should you be on his mind this way? He doesn’t know you. Hell, he’s barely held a conversation of real substance or emotional intelligence with you, and it’s only been one measly day. Yet, for some reason that he can’t understand, he feels like he’s known you forever. That, in the moments when the silence becomes deafening, even with the sound of nature coexisting with him, your voice calms him. Keeps him steady and reminds him that he isn’t alone, not fully.
But he isn’t the only person who is afraid of attachment. You know that song and dance far too well; like a rhythm that plays in your head until it’s all you can remember. Until all you know is yourself, and no one else, because no one ever stays long enough to let you in. And deep down, even worse, you know that it’s because of you; it always is.
Heeseung takes a route he hasn’t explored before. It’s calmer on this side of the forest, peaceful in a way that isn’t so uneasy. A few pine trees blow in the distance; the smell of almost-fresh air streams into his nose, and he hums softly, finally feeling a sense of true relaxation for the first time in years. He doesn’t hate it. Not entirely. Not at all, really.
“What does she have?”
Heeseung’s pulse stills; your voice isn’t always a warm reminder. Sometimes, it brings him back to the reality he doesn’t want to face. “What?”
“Your wife…What does she have?”
“Alzheimer’s,” he swallows. “Y’know…Dementia.”
“I—oh. That’s crazy, I mean—how old is she?”
He sighs, slinging his bag further over his shoulder; the fabric burns the skin beneath the shirt. “She’s thirty. She’s home with her parents in Australia. They, uh, took her. Not long ago. They said that I wasn’t fit to take care of her anymore.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. He looks up to spot a small backpack hanging from a loose tree branch above. Confused, he pulls the sack down to inspect it. The name Brian Goodwin is scribbled on the inner tab in black ink. “I found a backpack. It belongs to someone named Brian?”
Your chest aches. “Oh, Brian.”
“Who is he? Some ex of yours, or something?”
“No, no,” you sigh. “The lookout before you—Ned—he had a son, Brian. About twelve years old. He was a sweet kid, used to do his homework and read books while his dad worked. I never really liked the guy, and he wasn’t supposed to have a kid out here, but Brian was so well-behaved, so I kept my mouth shut.” A sad smile stretches across your lips as you look down at your hand, gripping the pencil from earlier again, only a little harder now.
“I don’t know what happened to him. Ned kind of disappeared, so he must have sent him home. I guess the home life couldn’t have been much worse than here.”
Heeseung nods, though you can’t see it. “Well, Brian’s good fortune extends to me, too. He had a bunch of ropes stashed in here, so I think I’ll put ‘em to good use. Thanks, Brian.”
You giggle, “Good kid.”
He picks up the only other item from the bag: a small camera with only a few frames left. As he inspects it, the camera flashes in his eyes, and he yelps, blinking away the spots and shoving the device into his pocket. “Jesus, fuck, ow.”
“What happened?”
“His camera happened—in my eye.”
“Ouch.”
He secures the rope and tugs at it, nodding once he’s sure that it’s properly in place. Giving it another go, Heeseung grips the rope tightly and begins to step down the shale—much more carefully this time around—feeling the tension beneath his palms, which brings him comfort, knowing it won’t snap on him again. As he nears the bottom, your muffled voice hits his ears from the radio attached to his side.
“I don’t mean to pry, but what was it like…finding out about her condition?”
Heeseung takes his lip between his teeth as he contemplates the answer. Of every layer the past few years have, he doesn’t know where to start; how to even summarize it. “Scary,” he settles on. “She was smart. She’d gone back to school and worked on a degree. One day, she hadn’t felt well, and…the doctor said it. We didn’t know what to think.”
He sighs, noticing another beer can in the distance and following it. “Neither of us thought everything would be lost so fast, though.”
“That’s…wow,” you swallow, unsure of what to say. “What are you gonna do when you’re out of here? You gonna see her?”
“She doesn’t remember me, Y/N.”
Guilt etches itself into your chest; you wish you hadn’t brought it up. Rehashing grief of any kind is never helpful, but this, here…maybe not the ideal situation. Though you can’t help but feel bad for the guy. Suddenly, his being here makes a lot more sense. And fuck, you can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone so close to you not even remember your name, or that you’re married.
“Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mean to be a downer.”
You shake your head, reassuring him that it isn’t the case, that you want to listen to him. “You shouldn’t be alone in this, Evan,” you add. “It’s good to talk about it. I’m glad that you trust me enough to.”
“Thanks,” he mumbles, approaching a downward slope and following it down to what looks like a campsite. “For listening, I mean. And all that.”
As you open your mouth to respond, you hear shuffling on Heeseung’s end—odd, since he must still be pressing down on the button for you to even hear it. You listen closer, trying to make out what’s happening on the other end. Know if he’s found something, a lead, or the source itself.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
You tilt your head. “Good?”
“Alright, well, the good news is that I found their camp,” he begins, waving around a piece of paper in his hand. “The bad news is that it’s already trashed. They left a letter. They thought it was me, and they threatened to report me for it, but…you know I didn’t do this. I wasn’t even here.”
“Fuck. Shit,” you groan, palming your forehead and leaning against the desk as you try to think. “If it wasn’t you, then it has to be whoever else was here. Whoever trashed your lookout tower. They obviously know how to avoid being seen, so…goddamnit.”
“Yeah.”
“You have that camera, right? Snap a few pictures for proof—y’know, that you found it like this—and go back, I guess. For now.”
Heeseung nods, “Good thinking.”
“Did you do anything that would make them think you did this?”
“No!” Heeseung shouts as he snaps a picture of the torn-up tent and disgruntled interior. “All I did was tell them not to shoot off the fireworks. I didn’t even touch their stereo—which was playing horrible music, by the way.”
“God,” you breathe. “Well, obviously someone did it. Maybe there are more of them, and this is all some sort of bad mushroom trip, or something. Or, I dunno.” You sigh, waiting for him to finish taking photos as you add a final comment on the matter. “Just come back, and we’ll take it from there. I’d like to enjoy a peaceful summer, for once.”
“Yeah, me too,” he adds before slipping the camera away and setting sights back for Two Forks.
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 5
The sun rises decently early today, about 6:30 in the morning. The air is crisp at this time, especially with the heat finally picking up after only a few days. It’s relaxing. A soft breeze pricks at Heeseung’s skin, bare again from the waist up as he perches quietly on the small bed in the corner of his lookout and drinks a cup of coffee. It’s a little too bitter for his taste, and there surely isn’t enough milk to ration for a daily coffee, but it’s enough to survive. Or, at least simulate normalcy.
“What do you look like?”
Heeseung’s head piques in the radio’s direction. He wonders how you even know that he is awake. He never turned a light on, and he knows that you can’t see him well. Yet, there you are. So he pads over to the desk and lifts the talkie from its charging stand, resumes his spot on top of the bed, and presses the button.
“Like a Korean Tom Cruise.”
You laugh gently into the microphone, and he hears it—a bit choppy, but easy to make out your voice. Like usual. “Well, that’s unfortunate. I read in People that he’s like five foot nothin’.”
“If he was tall,” Heeseung corrects. “I’m about six feet, give or take.”
You nod, scribbling it down. “That’s decent enough to work with, I guess, but I doubt that you really pass for Tom Cruise. All I can usually see from my scope is a white-lookin’ skinny guy wearing shorts.”
“Well, it’s hot. And for a scrawny guy, I think I carry my own pretty well.”
“I’ll give you that. It isn’t easy to hike out here,” you agree, pursing your lips. “But seriously, if you hadn’t already told me, I would think the opposite. You talk like the whitest man on Earth.”
You smile when he laughs. “So really—what do you look like, Evan?”
Heeseung pauses to think; he’s never really considered too much about what he looks like. He hasn’t always had to—he’s been married for years, and even before that, the only people he knew were in front of him. So now, as his fingers carefully grip his half-empty coffee mug, he wonders how someone would describe him.
“I have brown hair. Dark brown,” he begins, feeling the morning breeze slip into his tower from the cracked window on his left. He instinctively pulls his old blanket a bit closer. “It’s a little long. In my face, kinda, and down my neck.” He taps a finger on the side of the ceramic mug; it would echo in the quiet of the room, if it were somehow any emptier. “My nose is big, I guess?”
“Really?” You laugh at the stupidity of his statement, and he matches it.
“Well, I don’t know how to do this. I’m trying, okay?”
You huff out a sigh and reach for the warm bottle of water sitting at the corner of your desk. You’re not sure how long it’s been there for, but you remember it being somewhat cold when you refilled it last. Then again, the bottle is pretty old, and it rarely keeps your water actually cold these days. Maybe at the end of the summer, you’ll invest in a better one; maybe not.
“Okay, I’ll ask—do you have a beard?”
Heeseung shakes his head as if you can see it. “No, no. Absolutely not,” he denies. “One of the only things I brought here is a pack of razors. That’ll be the day. Let my hair get as long as it wants, but I do not look good with facial hair.”
“Evan, you’re a multiple-mile hike away from any and all civilization,” you point out, narrowing your eyes as you place the water down and pick up the pencil again to scribble no beard on the corner of your sheet of paper. “I don’t think you ‘looking good’ is going to matter to anyone.”
“Can’t hear you over the sound of teenage girls screaming my name.”
“Pfft,” you scoff, “you wish.”
“In another life, Y/N,” he assures you, at which you laugh again at the pure stupidity of his claim.
Sitting back against the wall with only his singular—and essentially rock-hard—pillow used for support, he lets the near-empty mug carefully fall to the floor and rest on the creaky floorboards. His fingers absentmindedly fidget with the gold wedding band on his ring finger; he feels as if he has to keep reminding himself of what’s real. Instead of focusing on you, someone he knows so little about that he thinks you might be a figment of his imagination.
“How about your eyes?”
“Alright, what are you doing?”
“Drawing you,” your voice almost a whisper, and he blinks, deciding if it’s a reasonable enough explanation for the out-of-the-blue questionnaire. “So…I need to know.”
“Oh, uh,” he trails, trying to think. “They’re big and brown, like my hair. And…people sometimes say they’re like, Bambi? I don’t really know what that means.”
“Like…the deer?”
“I think?”
“Okay…” you mumble, sketching a thin interpretation, “perfect. Sounds good.”
“So, what do I do today?” he asks as he stands from the bed and finds the aired-out tank top and flannel hanging on the edge of the wooden chair to change into.
“Me? Wouldn’t you know?”
He pulls the thin white material over his head and tugs it down until it wraps comfortably around his waist. Tucking the shirt into his shorts with one hand, he uses the other to man the talkie. “Well, you’re the one who’s been giving me tasks to complete for the last few days. I figured you’d have something.”
“How about…sit in your chair until September 1st and call me at the first sign of fire?” you tease with a grin you only wish he could see. “Sound good?”
“Great,” he mumbles, pulling the flannel over his shoulders and not bothering to button it. If all he’ll be doing here is sit and watch for imminent danger, he doesn’t see the point; besides, the tower provides the only real source of shade for miles, save for the few cliffs that offer it and the cave that makes him think far more than he wants to. “Sounds fun.”
“Hey, this is the job you signed up for, isn’t it?” you counter with a touch of attitude, sketching your best estimate of your favorite counterpart, despite not admitting it aloud.
“It is, yeah.”
“Sooo, deal with it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” as he sits in his rickety chair that you once told him they even provided him with, “okay.”
There are other lookouts—ones you still have to talk to, communicate with, the lot. But you never speak to them so casually. You barely hold a conversation with them. With some, you often have trouble forgetting their names or where they come from. You don’t bother to know their stories, even if it’s been years working alongside them, because they’re different.
You’re learning the little things about Heeseung; Evan, the name that ripples through your mind like a stone in water. Even if you don’t know that it’s only a pseudonym. You know his age, where he was born, about the family he grew up with. You’ve picked up on his tells, how the subtle inflections in his voice work—which, in the same breath, is so gentle. His natural tone is calm, soft, quiet; nothing like when he’s outside, forcing himself to shout to be heard.
You won’t even joke with the others; you’ve seen the job as too serious in the past to become so comfortable with them. But you’ve never clicked with anyone the way you did with Heeseung, and you don’t know how to not let it happen.
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 11
“Man, this feels great!” Heeseung shouts to…absolutely no one?
He can’t bring the talkie near water, and the lake feels far too refreshing to step out of in this weather. So what if it’s been just under two weeks, and he’s already resorted to mindless swimming, alone and yelling like some schizophrenic maniac? In this isolation, any type of activity that doesn’t require sweltering heat is his idea of fun.
Still, although the last thing he wants to do is leave the cooling comfort of the freshwater, he can’t help but want to rub it in a certain other lookout’s face.
“Y’know, you’re missin’ out, sweetheart,” he teases into the microphone as his hair drips with water, careful not to let any touch the already-weak device.
“Ew,” you grimace, “never call me that again. Blegh.”
“It’s fucking beautiful,” he adds fuel to the fire, basking in the sunlight’s warmth as it hits his golden skin, the thin coat of water making it feel more refreshing than ever. “You really should have accepted the offer and come down here. If I can leave my tower for ten to fifteen hours, then you can surely leave yours for a few.”
You sigh, flopping back onto your mattress and staring at the ceiling, holding the radio up to your face like a teenage girl on the phone with her friends. Except, it’s 1989, and you’re not being tied down by a wire. “I’ve told you, Evan—can’t do it. I’d have to take that extremely flimsy-looking cable car to leave my sector, which I’d especially rather not do and chance falling hundreds of feet into a ravine.” You roll onto your side, “And I’m really not supposed to leave. It’s dangerous out there, and I have more than you to focus on, here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Heeseung sighs, shifting uncomfortably as he realizes that he’s standing out in the open in only his boxers, which are now thoroughly soaked enough to show any passerby the exact print of his dick inside. Which is unlikely, but the thought is embarrassing. “Just a thought.”
“Enjoy your swim, Evan,” you chuckle. “Don’t get yourself into too much trouble. I won’t call you in.”
“Thanks,” he replies rather monotonously, “I won’t.”
He tosses the radio safely into the pile of folded clothes he left on the edge of the shore and wades back into the water until he’s submerged up to his chest. His head falls back, and the lake water soaks his hair again, offering a slice of ease to his mind. With his head underwater, the only noise drifting into earshot is that of a distant stream flowing into the large body of water. The sound is murky, loud, and normally unpleasant—but it’s steady, enough to clear his mind momentarily.
His thumb brushes along the polished gold around his finger again, without enough pressure to risk moving it and accidentally slipping it off. Briefly, he wonders about Sooha; how she has been holding up, and if her condition has somehow grown worse. Not that he can find out, aside from his dream last night that seemed too scarily real to be untrue, where she’d somehow been connected to him through the radio and spoke to him as if everything were normal. But, of course, it was only his mind’s sorry creation, and he isn’t sure if it was because it missed her, or if it was a threat; a reminder that he shouldn’t be doing this, wishing you were here, instead of her.
It is then that he submerges his head completely underwater, holding his breath and silencing his thoughts until the sun’s hot rays register on his body, and he has to come up for air.
Still, the thought flashes across his mind—if he’d let his lungs fill up with water, what then? He guesses that if he’s going to stay alive for anyone, it has to be you.
Right?
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 28
Heeseung’s legs dangle loosely over the edge of the canyon’s wall, perched perfectly between the two sides, allowing the picturesque view of the sunset to be seen by his eyes. He’d brought a small container with a sandwich that barely sufficed as dinner with him, and a cup for water—hydration, and whatnot.
“How does it look?” you ask softly, not to disturb him, though something deep down thinks that nothing you can say will have that effect. At least, not anymore.
“It’s gorgeous,” he says gently, taking a small bite of his sandwich and feeling a crumb roll down his chin until it lands on the hem of his top. “It’s a good way to end the day. Really…”
A position you often find yourself in when you talk to him—lying comfortably on the mattress, propped up only by your elbow as it rests over your pillow. Bed a little more comfortable, by Heeseung’s standards. Nearly a decade gets you improved furnishing, it seems.
“It’s nice from up here,” you say quietly, perhaps not loud enough for him to hear. Even if he can, you don’t know that the muffled quality will capture it.
And somehow—whether it’s by the instinct to listen or a not-so-bad transmission—he hears.
“It’s nicer down here,” he adds, even gentler. “I think you’d agree, if you could see it. Maybe…I dunno.”
A sad smile tugs at your lips; part of you does want to see it for yourself, even leave this tower just for a moment. But you know that you can’t, and you won’t, because you’re too afraid.
More of the bond with Heeseung than anything else that could be hiding in the shadows. Those you can fend off, hide from. But you can’t hide from him, and you can’t reverse the truth: that this thing with him—whatever it is—isn’t weak enough to tear with a butter knife.
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 33
Heeseung pulls out his map to pinpoint the path he’ll need to get to the supply drop you informed him of earlier this morning—jerky, rope, small goodies to store in his bag. It’s perched just west of where you’d sent him to check the downed line, a little closer to the cable car that leads to your sector.
As he climbs the shale slide—rope already placed from a few weeks prior—he remembers the day he found the intentionally-sliced line. You’d sounded so angry, nothing like the happy-go-lucky mood you’d maintained since the first time you spoke to him. But it isn’t particularly that part that sticks out like a sore thumb in his memory of you; it never was.
“When you get up there, remember that it isn’t all for you,” you remind Heeseung sternly, twirling a strand of hair around your finger. “There are three different sections inside the box, one for each lookout. Two Forks will be marked, and you can take what’s in there. It should have some nice goodies.”
Heeseung sticks a hand into his pocket to grab the radio. “Alright,” he says, catching a glimpse of the supply drop in the distance. “Why do I have to hike all the way out here just to get a few measly goodies? I mean, shit, the least they could do is drop it closer.”
“I get mine straight from the source.”
“Fuck you, Y/N,” he retorts.
“The perks of nearly a decade of service,” you giggle, lifting a pencil into the air. “You get to climb all the way out here for supplies, and I get to sit up here in my comfy tower and do crossword puzzles. Isn’t life miserably unfair?”
“Fuck you, I reiterate.”
“Oh, you wish,” you try to tease, but the words don’t roll off your tongue with the ease they should; when your mind catches up to your mouth, it doesn’t exactly seem funny anymore. Heeseung’s mouth goes dry, his brain racks the few responses he can make without making it inevitably worse, and he ultimately doesn’t settle on anything. “Er,” you stutter, breaking the silence, “well, maybe not the best worded joke. Ha-ha.”
“Yeah,” he adds, masking the hesitance in his voice (and his stride along the gritty dirt below him, which you can’t see). “Imagine if someone were listening to us? Tsk tsk,” he tuts. “Your job would be whoop—snatched.”
“Laugh it up, kid,” you roll your eyes.
“Surely, you can’t be that much older than me.”
“Unless you’re about eighteen, then no,” you sigh, lips pursed as the tip of your pencil taps along the edge of the desk while you try to make out a five-letter word for ‘big’. “I’m thirty.”
As he (finally) approaches the supply drop, Heeseung scoffs, putting the code into the lock to open the box. When it clicks, he parts his lips. “A whole two years, Y/N. Should I throw you a retirement party? Should we invite the President?”
“You’re a dick.”
“Aw,” he pouts, “that’s cute.” He grins at no one, letting his backpack’s strap roll down his arm and hit the ground with a thunk. He empties the contents of the box into the bag, packing everything in safely, as he doesn’t want to crush anything. “Found the drop, by the way. Just put everything in my bag.”
“See? Wasn’t so bad,” you wink, and Heeseung mumbles a low whatever as he slings the backpack over his shoulder again and heads back to base. “Hey…Evan?”
“Yeah?”
Your teeth gnaw at the inside of your cheek, biting with just enough pressure to feel a string of pain shoot into your jaw. “The other night…I heard something come through my radio,” you begin tentatively, digging a nail into the chipped yellow pencil between your fingertips. “I didn’t really know what it was; I was half-asleep. But…It sounded like you.”
You pause to listen for something—a reaction, a breath, even a small noise—but he doesn’t give one; he waits silently, urges you to continue without a cue. “You mumbled something about Sooha. Your wife, right?” You hesitate again, despite knowing the answer; of course, it’s her, you’ve known that. “Are you doing okay…with that? Her?”
Heeseung’s brow twitches. The ring on his finger suddenly feels heavier, straining. Like it will cut off his circulation if he becomes any more painstakingly aware of it. “I am, yeah. As good as I can.”
“Good.”
Taking a breath, you decide to level the playing field; he’s given you miles of himself, and you’ve barely given him an inch. “I was dating this guy, Johnny, about a year ago. Caring, smart, sexy as all hell. Had biceps bigger than my palm,” your voice trails off, softer at the seams as you drift into a trance. “He did martial arts, worked as a driller during the day.”
You sigh theatrically, “We dated for four years. I was doing this program during the winters, at the time. This…art thing, at a smaller university. It was expensive, but it was something that isn’t…this.” Clearing your throat, you stand from your chair and move out to the balcony, where the hot air greets you bitterly; the sun’s rays heat up the wood enough to burn your skin with a touch. “I thought for sure that I’d marry him. I was obsessed with the idea, maybe that was the problem. But we did get engaged, for a little bit.”
Heeseung doesn’t speak; he just listens, pads softly along the old dirt path, and admires the quiet scenery around him as your voice gently streams from the radio’s choppy speaker.
“Anyway,” you breathe, “his brother died when I was away, and I didn’t come back. He said he wanted to be alone for the planning, the service, all of that. Said it would be easier, or whatever. So I let him be.” You swallow. “When I came back, he ended it. It wasn’t like I didn’t expect it…and I don’t know, maybe I deserved it. Whenever people asked, I just told them that he fucked the neighbor, and I kicked him out. It felt…easier.”
Your finger taps the weathered wood once; a loose piece pokes the skin. “But I wanted to lift the weight off of my chest, and…I think you’re the easiest person to tell, someone I wanted to. So, there’s something about me, I guess.”
The words hang heavy in the air. Though you’re miles apart, the air is the same—shared, stale, still. You don’t speak; Heeseung processes the story. It isn’t much, barely a glimpse into the life you haven’t sugarcoated as pleasant to him to make yourself look happier, better, more worthy of something you won’t admit that you want. But it’s something. And that’s all he needs. Someone to know; nothing more.
“We’re both fucked up, then,” he finally says.
“Me, more than you, maybe.”
“I shouldn’t be here,” he says again, the phrase that replays itself in his head like a broken record every day, no matter the time—when he wakes up, when he toes the line between personal and professional with you, when he just wants to sleep. He thinks, if he’s reminded enough, he might leave.
“Evan, you can’t keep blaming yourself. There is nothing that you can do for her, and even if you could, you’d have a right to want to feel better. To be happier,” you say, as if he’ll listen. “She’d want that for you.”
You’re right; he knows it. He can’t pretend that things are normal; he can’t go back home to find it the same. Her belongings won’t be there. She won’t be there. The only trace of her being a few picture frames and the wedding band on his finger. So he should be here without guilt. He’s spent over a month here, and he feels a little freer, a little calmer, sometimes more at ease than others.
But being here isn’t what he feels guilty about, is it?
It’s the feeling that settles deep in his stomach when you speak to him gently. When your voice drifts from the speaker with some witty remark in response to his own. The pang of something in his chest when he sips on his morning coffee and hears your sleep-ridden whisper for the first time that day. How he’d considered moving the charging stand beside his bed to have easier access when he needs it.
The feelings for you that bloom carefully in his heart as the thought of Sooha fades away with each subtle moment, smile, and meaningful whisper into the forest’s dry air.
°༄𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 62
“Looks like you’ve got a front row seat for what might be the fire of the year.”
Heeseung leans over the balcony’s creaky railing, staring at the small fire burning in the distance. A few miles north, just close enough to feel a small warmth wafting towards his tower, though it isn’t enough to be a threat. Controlled, calm. With the moist, summer heat, he found earlier today that it’s more comfortable to omit the tank top and wear only his flannel top, fully unbuttoned by nighttime to expose his midsection.
“Seems likely.”
“I’ll call it in. They’ll get some hotshots out here to monitor it. Keep it controlled, and everything. But…from the looks of it, I think we’ll be stuck with her for the rest of the summer.” You turn to the cup of supplies that rests in the upper right corner of your desk. Scribble some information down on the nearest sheet of paper you can get your hands on.
“She doesn’t have a name, though. Usually, I think of something creative or risqué. Y’know, to keep myself entertained up here, because—as you can see—it’s not so exciting.”
Heeseung thinks, pacing back and forth along the narrow balcony. He treads back into his enclosure, past the threshold, and shuts the door with a quiet click. “What about your name?”
You chuckle gently; he smiles. “As flattering as that sounds, we can’t name the fire after an employee. Kind of a big eyebrow raiser.” You think, tapping the pad of your finger against your chin. “What about you? Do you…have a middle name?”
“Nope,” he hums, lowering himself onto the so-called comfortable desk chair. “We don’t have them in Korea.”
“Oh, right,” you nod, palming your forehead as if you should’ve already known that. “Alright…Mine is June. So, what about that?”
“Perfect.”
“Okay, then,” you answer. “We’re now looking at the June fire.”
Heeseung takes a minute to watch the fire, how it frays at the edges as small sparks disappear into the air. “Got any stories to tell? Anything in your head to talk about?”
“Err…” you ponder, pursing your lips. “Well, I have something. Not really anything groundbreaking, but if you want to hear it…it’s something to consider, maybe.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“So there’s this creek, a little ways down from me. And when I’m feeling up for it, I sneak out of here and take a bottle of whatever I’ve got with me. Don’t even bring my radio, just in case,” you tell him softly as he listens, glancing out at the dark silhouette of the forest around him. “I throw it deep into the water, let it sit in there all day, and I’ll slip back around to grab it. And then, on a night when it’s so disgustingly hot that I can feel the humidity in the air…I have something cold to drink.”
“You got alcohol out here?” he points out, and you huff out a breath.
“I give you a nice tip, and you make it about my drink. Ugh,” you scoff. “But I learned it from my sister in Santa Fe. She’ll do it with anything she’s got and make a bunch of mixed drinks, enough to last you a month.” Your eyes focus on the tip of the fire, distant in your field of view, but still visible. “I think you’d like it there.”
“I’m sure I would.” If you’re there.
He looks out the window, quietly, deep in thought. His fingers rest on the edge of the desk. Eyes flicker down to the place where his hand rests; what sits beside it.
His wedding band. Gold, a thin scratch along the outer edge, a glint of light reflecting off of it from a source he can’t place. Cold to the touch, despite the achingly warm weather around it. It lies flat on the wood, threateningly still in its place—where he left it exactly two weeks ago after taking it off to rinse it clean, but never put back on.
The mark it left on his finger doesn’t exist anymore; it wore off with time. Taking barely ten days to fade away, opposed to the five years it took to create it.
“I’m looking at it again,” Heeseung whispers, referring back to the fire. He doesn’t tell you that he hasn’t worn the ring for weeks; that fact shouldn’t hold any value to you.
“It’s…kind of beautiful, in a twisted way,” you whisper in response, voice gentler with each word, the tone you display after a long day that makes him melt into his chair. “During the day, it’s gray smoke polluting the air, too hot to function, gives off that smell of…” you trail off to think of the right word, “burning. Death, in a way.”
“But when the sun is down, and the sky is dark, the smoke disappears. And you can just…get lost in it all. It’s so…perfect.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, “it is.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” you murmur, just loud enough for the radio’s microphone to register. Nerves settle in your stomach at the weight of your words, but you don’t regret them, not like you always would.
“Me too,” he says back, and he means it. God, does he mean it.
You move yourself up and over to the small bed opposite your desk. The chair isn’t comfortable anymore, and though the bed isn’t much of an upgrade itself, you know the reason has nothing to do with where your body rests—it’s your mind. You swallow, words swirling around your head like a threat, as if speaking them into existence is…a risk. But you can’t hold them in again; you need to say them.
“I don’t…talk to other people, the way I talk to you, Evan,” you admit abashedly, curling into yourself on top of your mattress, knees bent into your chest. “The other lookouts…I barely know anything about them. A few have been here for years, but still…they’re not…you. And I know that it sounds horrible, and unprofessional, and crazy, but I don’t know, I just…feel the way that I do for a reason. I don’t get close to people, Evan. Not like this.”
Heeseung blinks, looks down at the wedding band, back to the fire; repeats the cycle a couple of times to make sense of what he knows he shouldn’t try to. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
“I do,” you counter, words harsher than you intend, though he doesn’t see it that way. “Sorry, I don’t mean to drop anything on you like this, but…I don’t know. I just…wish I were there.”
“Me too,” he replies without forethought, and your chest ticks, the balls of your feet shifting uncomfortably over the bedsheets. They’ve turned warm from the heat of your skin.
“We could talk, for real. Without these stupid radios,” you laugh, but it lacks amusement. “We could…” you hesitate, “you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” you echo, leaning back against the cold pillow, knees still partly bent.
Heeseung swallows as a pit resonates in his stomach, while an ache forms between his thighs. Beneath his shorts that suddenly feel too tight, too restricting. “What would we do?” he asks—a question he already knows the answer to, yet wants to hear the words come from your mouth; needs to.
“Evan…”
“Please,” he whines, his voice lower as his palm flattens against the strained fabric, “say it.”
“We’d sit, for a few minutes…admire the fire,” you whisper reluctantly, your breath unsteady as your mind jumps ahead—to something it shouldn’t. “And talk, and…” Your heartbeat pulses at your core, forcefully, like your body is sick of your head trying to deflect from what it so desperately wants. You shudder as your fingers ghost over your sleep shorts, a change of clothes you’re suddenly grateful for bringing. “…fuck.”
He hears your sigh, a tremor etched into it that tells him everything. Admits the unspoken without having to part your lips again. “Fuck, are you…” He swallows, another jolt of pain mixed with want shooting to his cock, pressing his palm further down as if it will dull the ache. Does he want to do this here? Not particularly. But will he? Well.
“Yes,” you answer breathily, dipping a finger tentatively into your shorts, over the thin underwear that covers your skin. “Do you not—”
“—No,” he groans, sputtering as he lifts his hand and takes the relief with it. “Or—yes. Fuck, just keep going.”
You close your eyes, using the pads of your index and middle fingers to apply pressure against your clothed clit. You bite back a moan, keeping the radio’s button pressed down hard enough that it might snap in your grasp. “Where are you? What are you,” you breathe, still staring out at the fire as if he’ll stop if you break contact, “doing?”
“In my chair,” he manages in a mumble. His fingers carefully work the tattered button on his shorts and pull the fabric open, then make contact with the constricting waistband of his boxers; you hear the quiet shift of fabric. His shirt still hangs open along the sides of his torso, brushing against his bare skin with every movement of his hand. “Shit,” he hisses, swallowing down a throaty noise that barely registers on your end. “Sorry.”
“Don’t…apologize,” you tell him weakly, gasping for air as your fingers rub circles against your clit, feeling the way the fabric sticks to the skin beneath it like punishment.
Oh god, he’s so fucking hard.
“Talk,” he muses with his hand wrapped around the base of his cock, spit dripping down the side. “C’mon, tell me what we’d do up here.”
“I shouldn’t—do that,” you trip over your words, leaning into the pillow behind you that provides almost no support for the heaviness of your body, tired with want that drips down the inner side of your thigh like a sick reminder. “Someone…What if someone hears? We’re in trouble.”
“Fuck, I don’t care if they all hear it,” he groans, brushing his thumb over the swollen, leaking tip. “What we’d do if you were here, as if it’s some kind of secret.” He tries to clear his throat, but all that surfaces is a breath that struggles to break loose. “You think that if someone was listening, they wouldn’t already know by now that I wanna fuck you? God.”
Your stomach drops at his honesty, filth dripping from the words with a bitterness that’s far worse than any cup of coffee you’ve drank out here could provide. “Ev—”
“—Heeseung,” he finally drawls with frustration. “My name isn’t Evan. Fuck, it’s Heeseung.” His fist tightens around his cock, another drop of pre-cum landing shamelessly onto the side of his thumb. “Just said that because it’s easier for you not to know it.”
Confused, you swallow, willing another response. “So why tell me now?”
“So I can hear it when you come.”
You damn near break the radio and shatter it; the inflection in his voice, the way it frays at the corners, sounds nothing like the easygoing demeanor he always speaks to you with. The words don’t sound like a statement. They sound like a promise, one you might be scared of.
It physically hurts that he isn’t the one touching you. That you’re the one who shoves their fingers hastily into your underwear and pushes them clean into your pussy, evoking a broken moan that slices against the back of your throat. The slide is far too easy, simple from the slickness building up along your walls, only from the boldness of Heeseung’s words and the aching wish that it was him doing this to you. Your fingers don’t reach far enough, can’t provide the relief that your body knows he could.
“Maybe, you will, then,” you whisper, a threat so powerful that he groans at the thought. If he doesn’t hear it, he thinks he’ll take that cable car himself and make damn sure of it.
“Good,” as his fist tightens again, squeezes down on the length of his cock as it pulses angrily in his hand, pretending that his hand is you; your cunt sinking onto him as you moan into his ear with no muffled static accompanying the noise. His eyes shut tightly, head falling back with pleasure because he hasn’t felt so fucking good in months. “Wanna hear your voice, fuck.”
“I’m here,” your voice honey-sweet as your fingers dip into your heat, then out, then brush against your clit in a rhythm that locks your knees in place. “I’m—I’m close,” you whimper, digits pushing back in with a loud squelch.
“God, I can hear it,” he sighs; the noise is barely audible through the speaker, but he knows what it is. He moves his hand faster, collecting the disgustingly slick mess his tip leaves onto his palm, all for a woman whose face he couldn’t pick out in a crowd, while his wedding band sits idly by on the desk in front of him, taunting him. “Fuck, Y/N.”
A bead of sweat cascades down the side of your face until it catches at the corner of your lip; salty and warm as the smell of charred wood begins to waft through the cracked windows. The smell is relaxing and revolting at the same time, a typically pleasant one, if not for the pulsing ache between your thighs that your fingers try so hard to satiate while the thought of Heeseung—hand wrapped around his cock—floats around your head. The moans slipping from his lips and drifting into your ears as the only fuel to your fire.
“Oh, my god,” you whine, inhaling a breath that pierces your chest as the tips of your fingers press into the spongy spot inside of you; a gush of liquid drips down your hand.
“Fuck, lemme hear you,” he pants, at which you don’t hesitate, shamefully lowering your other hand between your legs. Keeping the button pressed firmly down like your life depends on it.
“Hear it, Heeseung?” his real name rolling off your tongue in the most grotesque way you can use it. Your breath leaves in pants as the lewd, wet noises transcend into his ear to make his cock twitch in his hand. A mess of his whimpers bleeding into your earshot.
“Yeah,” he mutters, “I hear it.”
His mind flashes back to the first week he spent here with you, his only contact, as you taught him how to adjust and what to do. Before he felt anything for you, when the only thing burdening him was guilt. When you tried to mask being worried about him getting hurt.
Then, it thinks of now—you, spread out on the other end of the signal with your hand between your legs.
Getting off to each other’s voices, for fuck’s sake.
“S-shit, I’m gonna come,” you stammer, fingers cramping as they pick up their pace, hitting the sensitive spot so harshly that your hips jolt with a shooting pain.
Heeseung groans, his eyes rolling to the back of his head when he hears the words tumble from your lips. “Do it,” he grits through a clenched jaw, “fuck, please. Wanna hear you.” The coil in his stomach tightens, and he can barely form the words his mind desperately wants to say.
“Come for me.”
An agonizing shock of pleasure tears through your body, sending your heels deep into the thin mattress below you. Your head hits the wall behind you with a firm thunk, but you don’t care; too engulfed by the feeling of release. “Heeseung,” you moan so loudly that you swear the latter syllable echoes off the wall. Your fingers finally slip out, glistening in the gentle moonlight as cum gushes from your entrance and lands on the old, discolored bedsheets, staining them with white.
Followed by Heeseung, who comes at the sheer sound of your breathy gasps. A string of profanities in a low, whiny hum that he doesn’t bother to suppress because part of him wants you to know what you’re doing to him; needs you to.
His fingers finally loosen their grip, pumping himself carefully until spurts of hot, white release drip down his hand, land on his stomach, and reach as far as his lower chest. His chest heaves as the cold metal chain around his neck, hanging loosely in the center, presses into the warm, sweat-slick, and exposed skin. The bottom edge of the golden cross wields the same white residue, smudged along the valley of his chest from its dangling movement.
For a moment, neither of you speaks; you only listen to each other’s recovering breaths, lulling you into a state of jadedness amidst the gentle summer breeze and the fire that perches between your towers.
“I…” you want to apologize, but the words dissolve on your tongue; for once, you don’t want to.
“Don’t,” he whispers, as if he already projected what you were going to say.
A giggle brushes past your parted lips, a little tired, a little breathy, and he matches it gently. His eyes fall shut again as he slumps back into the rickety chair that doesn’t seem as uncomfortable as it once did. Ears focusing on your breathing as it streams through the speaker, while the slew of noises from before replay in his head like a tape reserved just for him.
And suddenly, Heeseung has forgotten all about Sooha.
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 77
“You’re seriously gonna go fishing without a license in a national forest?”
Heeseung rolls his eyes, “It’s one fish. I’m sick of the cheap—and repetitive, might I add—food I’ve got to eat. They’ll live.”
“Well,” you sigh, “I won’t tell anyone that you’re a poacher.”
You haven’t talked about what happened two weeks ago. In fact, neither of you has even mentioned it, thought of it since the morning after. Heeseung woke up still shaken, brewed a shitty cup of coffee that tasted like hell’s creation, and you…You woke with a stain etched into the sheets that you couldn’t bear to clean the night prior. Out of embarrassment, maybe, for instigating the ordeal, yet its lingering presence still haunts you, despite it being gone, for the most part.
Still, neither of you acted as if anything had changed; at least, not physically.
“Speaking of, I’ve been getting a bunch of calls from Fish & Game about some ‘problem bear’ they’re trying to keep tabs on? I dunno,” you shake your head, looking out at the controlled June fire. “If you’re heading to the lake, would you mind checking out the land and letting me know if you see any tracks?”
“Problem bear?” he repeats aloud, a bit skeptical. “What exactly do you mean by problem? Like, a death mission?”
“Pfft,” you scoff, “come on—all you have to do is look for bear tracks. Nothing’s going to eat you, and I promise, I doubt it will think you’re worth taking.”
“Well, that’s encouraging.” He huffs, stepping through the path of bushes where he once found the teenage girls’ underwear hanging from the downed tree-turned-archway. “I can’t believe I’m going to leave this planet as a pile of bear shit.”
“Thaaaank you, Evan,” you coo.
“Yeah, yeah, yep.”
You haven’t called him Heeseung since that night, either; you think it’s best to keep it that way.
He approaches the rock that still sits along the outer edge of the shore, where a clipboard lies across the hot surface, the sheet of lined paper blowing in the gentle breeze. He tosses his fishing rod into the sand and picks up the clipboard, eyes scanning the page until his heart sinks to his stomach.
“Y/N…”
“What’s up?”
“I found a clipboard down here, and I—I think something’s going on, something…something bad,” he stutters, clenching his jaw as he fixates on the paper, unable to tear his eyes away. “Someone’s been listening. Writing down what we say—have said.”
“…What—no, that’s not possible. Are you sure you didn’t eat wild mushrooms, or something? People seem to think that they’re pretty fun these da—”
“—I don’t get close to people, Evan. Not like this,” he reads. “I don’t care if they all hear it; They wouldn’t already know by now that I want to fuck you.” He rambles on, reading aloud the words you tried so hard not to relive, to forget in favor of saving whatever this relationship is. “Hear it, Heeseung. Believe me now?”
The sting of a tear brims at your waterline; you blink it back, and a feeling settles in your stomach that is far less pleasurable than you experienced that night.
“Oh—oh, my god, Ev—Hee—fuck.”
Footsteps rustle in the distance; Heeseung turns toward the sound, scanning the area before deciding which direction it must have originated from. “Someone’s out here.” He walks past the bushes until he reaches the dirt clearing, where the stream that leads through the canyon runs. There, planted in the dirt, rests an old, bright red device. “There’s a radio, Y/N,” as he picks it up, “There’s a fucking—”
Something hits his head, hard; he falls to the ground with a wince, bracing himself with flat palms. But as he tries to lift himself, another bash slams into the back of his head, and his body hits the ground, unconscious.
When his eyes finally flutter open again, he doesn’t know how long it has been.
“…Heeseung? Heeseung!” Your desperate voice rings in his ears, and it’s the most afraid he thinks he’s ever heard you. “Heeseung, please answer me.”
His arm weakly reaches for the dropped radio, holding it up to his mouth as he sits up, blinking in the sunlight. “I’m—here, I’m fine.”
A sigh of relief comes through the line. “Oh, thank god. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No, just…” he rubs the back of his head, “someone knocked me out. Punched me, or something. And…” He looks around, noticing the absence of the two extra items. “They took the other radio and the clipboard. Clearly, it was something I wasn’t meant to see.”
“God…Oh, my fucking god, Evan. What the fuck…is going on?”
“What is Wapiti Station?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Nothing? I mean—that doesn’t mean anything to you, after years of working here?”
“Relax, Evan! I don’t—” You sigh, closing your eyes and blinking them back open. “Okay…uhm. Wapiti Meadow, it’s on your map. It must be somewhere around there. Maybe, where you saw that fence a few months ago when you were coming back from the girls’ camp.”
“Okay, I’ll head there.”
You gnaw at your bottom lip, wincing as you nearly draw blood. “You’re sure that you saw…what you saw? I mean, that,” you falter, breath trembling with the will to continue, “night…was two weeks ago.”
“I know what I saw. The paper even had our goddamn initials on it, Y/N. Who’s to say there isn’t more?”
“Oh, god…Fuck, we—we fucked up, Heeseung. We fucked up bad.”
“Did we?”
Your chest aches for just a second. “We can’t talk about this…right now.”
“Yeah,” he breathes, “I—I know.”
With the oncoming silence, Heeseung treks northward to the meadow marked on the map. He tries not to think about it—you, two weeks ago, how you’d just brushed the topic off so quickly—but he can’t. He isn’t strong, not like you.
Once he passes the canyon, it doesn’t take long to reach the station he’d once passed. The fence stretches for acres and stands far too tall to climb, especially given the barbed wire that stretches along the top. When he reaches the gate, he notices a lock keeping it closed and tries to snap it off with a loose rock from the ground. But after a few useless attempts, he determines that this place—whatever it is—isn’t one he’s supposed to enter.
“I found the station, but,” he rattles the gate, “it won’t budge. I won’t be able to get in. Not without the key.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair, the roots at his hairline damp with sweat. “It’s protected. Whatever is in there is fucking protected, and I know that it’s about us. I know it.”
“Goddamnit,” you frown, leaning back in your chair as you try to think of an explanation that just doesn’t exist. “I reached out to some of the other lookouts, but…nothing weird has happened to them. Nothing, Evan.”
“Yeah, no shit,” he shakes his head. “The only people’s names on that fucking sheet were ours. They want something. They know something, probably everything.”
His breath leaves in a shudder as he tacks on, “They heard us, that night.”
“Don’t.”
“You can’t pretend that it didn’t fucking happen, Y/N,” he snaps, and you freeze; he’s never spoken to you like this, in all of the days, the countless hours you’ve talked. “They sure as hell won’t.”
“Hees—”
“Save it,” he bites, and you press your lips together silently. “Just—I can’t dick around out here for much longer. Someone’s gonna notice.”
“I…uhm…” you whisper, trying to grasp onto something that could help, reading over your map and glancing at the wad of transcripts you have from past conversations with the other lookouts and staff. “Okay, this—could be a stretch, but the river a little south of your lookout…I remember there being a controlled burn not too long ago. The guys are gone, but maybe they left something lying around that can help you get in.”
“Okay,” he answers, locating it on his map to head down.
“I’m…I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine, I—” he breathes, “just, forget it.”
You don’t respond.
Getting around begins to feel repetitive. Without your voice, your company—it feels stale, boring. Lifeless, in a way he doesn’t want to describe, and doesn’t think it should feel. For a job centered around isolation, he doesn’t want to feel it anymore.
“Before I was knocked out,” he finally says, too weak to hike the whole path alone, and you perk up. “I found a radio. It was red, it looked like ours. But what if, somehow…whoever it is was intercepting our frequency? Listening in through their radio, or radios, like that?”
“I just…don’t understand why us, you know?” you whisper, watching as the tips of the trees in the distance blow in the breeze, the smell of chilled air seeping through the cracks in your tower’s walls. A refreshing contrast to the humid scent that lingers during the hot days. “There are plenty of lookouts here, so many. What would we have to offer that they don’t? What’s so important?”
Heeseung can think of a few reasons.
“I don’t know,” he finally answers. “But whatever they’re doing, and whoever they are, I want to know.”
He finally approaches the clearing just by the river, and the scent of burned wood fills his nose. “I found it,” he says, walking through the remains of charred trees. “I can walk right through it now, to get to wherever it is that I need to go.”
“Yeah…Normally, they don’t burn fires so close to the water, but I think they were worried about another fire spreading all the way up to Two Forks. Y’know, where there is someone stationed there now.” You breathe, “I guess I’d have to be thankful for that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The sound of running water from the river perpetuates in his ears, and a relaxing breeze fans across his face, dusting a refreshing cold on his cheeks. He finds it easier to focus with the water’s noise, rather than nature’s usual quiet, save for the occasional coo of a bird in the distance or the rustle of a tree.
He thinks you’d like this. Or maybe you wouldn’t. Despite the personal nature of your conversations and the intimate moments you shouldn’t have shared, Heeseung has to remind himself that he doesn’t know you.
Two downed trees lay beside each other in the grass just beside the water, and a few scattered items sit beside them as if the men working here had once used them for seating. He steps closer, noticing a few pieces of trash in front of the logs, alongside what appears to be a tattered piece of fabric from a uniform. He finds a heat-resistant glove lodged between a log and the ground, where the tip of a finger is torn and useless.
Then, a glimpse of something red catches his eye from behind the makeshift seat; he steps around to find an axe leaning against the wood. Its handle wields a chip at the edge and two or three small soot stains from the men’s inner gloves. When he picks it up, it feels sturdy to the touch, and he assumes that it hasn’t been left here for too long.
Perched atop the other log is another clipboard that he almost doesn’t notice; momentarily dropping the axe, he rushes toward the paper, rips it out of the clip, and lifts it to his face.
“There’s another note,” he says, eyes scanning over the words.
“What does it say?”
“It’s on behalf of a doctor at…Wapiti Station. For something called Project Scylla.”
“Like, the thing from mythology?”
“Yeah, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Says it’s for some kind of wildlife research…It’s bullshit.” He throws the paper onto the ground. “If all this is about is elk, then what reason would they have to be naming it after some stupid monster? Not even telling anyone on the outside? I mean, fuck, Y/N, we’re in a forest. We work here.”
“Jesus Christ,” you moan, palming your forehead as you try to make sense of what he gives you. “I don’t even—I have no clue, Evan. Someone is listening to and writing down our conversations, and they’re just about as obvious as a soldier wearing neon yellow.”
“But…maybe they’re just studying us, or something, and we’re making too big a deal out of it. I mean, they’ve been pretty damn sloppy about hiding it, haven’t they?”
“I heard someone in those bushes before,” he mutters. “And my tower was trashed. And the girls’ camp was trashed. And I was fucking knocked out by whatever psycho was out there with me, so no, I don’t think they’re just getting some fucking intel on us, and I don’t think that their intentions are harmless.”
“Okay, yeah, you’re right,” you mumble. “So suppose you are being tailed…What would be the point of any of that? Carelessly leaving their ‘confidential’ shit around?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “That’s the problem.”
“Listening to us for this long, for so much time, it doesn’t—it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes any fucking sense.” You let your face fall into your hands as you breathe through the cracks between your fingers, willing away the tears of stress that threaten behind your eyes. “Where are you now? Do you see anyone? Did you hear anyone follow you?”
“I’m just walking through trees. It’s one path up to my tower and nothing else, so if someone were to follow me, they wouldn’t be able to take another route,” he says, scanning his surroundings. “But no, I don’t see anyone. I haven’t felt watched since the lake.”
“Okay…” you mumble, biting the corner of your lip, “so, you’re not being followed. At least, not anymore, and—”
Someone coughs. It isn’t you; it isn’t Heeseung. Someone runs behind him, but he stays firm in his spot, fingers tightening into a fist around the plastic in his hand. He doesn’t speak until the frequency falls flat again, a beat of silence passes, and the sound of your breathing registers.
Your mouth is dry; there is no water in sight. You don’t bother to look for any.
“They’re tapped,” he finally states aloud. “And someone was just fucking here.”
You swallow down the lump in your throat, lowering your voice to a stern octave that is unfamiliar when it drifts into Heeseung’s ears.
“Go back to your tower. Don’t go anywhere else. Don’t leave, and don’t use your radio,” you command. “Do not fucking use it. I will call you. Understand?”
“Yeah—fuck, yeah,” he sputters, “okay.”
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 78
“Y/N,” Heeseung calls into the radio for the umpteenth time in the past day, having heard nothing but complete silence on your end since last night. He’d become sick of waiting for you to call him, so he finally decided to take matters into his own hands, despite you clearly telling him not to. “Fuck, Y/N, answer the goddamn call. Please.”
Finally, your voice perks up. Finally.
“Hey,” you respond happily, as if nothing is wrong, as if you haven’t seemingly forgotten about him for over twenty-four hours and made him sit idly by until eight o’clock at night for an answer.
“Hey?” he echoes irritably. “Are you serious? It’s been a day, and that’s all you have to say to me?”
“I’m sorry, I—I had…things to do.”
“God, do you hear yourself right now?” he counters, and you wince, inching back into your chair. “Do you know something? Are you a part of this?”
“I—what?” you gasp, brows furrowed in offense, at the fact that after everything, he would accuse you of lying to him.
“This is all some kind of sick joke, it has to be. You wouldn’t just leave me in the dark like this unless I found something I shouldn’t have, right?” he laughs bitterly, shaking his head. “I should’ve known better than to trust someone I don’t even know. Or, or, maybe this is all just a figment of my imagination, and I’m so fucked up from everything that has happened to me that I just made you all up, and you don’t even exist at all!”
“I’m not lying to you!” you shout, shocked by the emotion that rises from your throat, hurt aching in your chest, just where your heart lies. “Do you seriously think that I would willingly do all of this with some ulterior motive?”
“All you do is deflect.”
“God, Heeseung do you think that I wanted anyone to hear that?” you finally snap back as a tear wells in your eye, long overdue with the number of times you’ve tried to hold back. “It was personal, and it was weak, and I gave that part of myself to you because I trusted you with it. And you think—just because I don’t have answers for you—that I would purposely do something like that with someone whose face I can’t even picture, knowing that someone else is listening? To what, get leverage?”
You breathe in his silence; it says more than it should. “That hurts. I can’t believe that you would think that of me, after everything.”
“I…”
“I didn’t want to talk about it because I was scared of what it meant. But if it really meant so little to you that you’d go as low as to think that I would ever want someone else to hear myself in that state, then maybe I was the one overthinking it, after all.” You sniff in a stinging breath, using the side of your finger to wipe away the tear that fell, and Heeseung flattens his lips into a line, feeling shameful for accusing you of something so damning.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers apologetically, voice tinged with regret as it returns to normal.
Heeseung doesn’t often lose his temper; in his whole life, he’d barely ever raised his voice. But the pressure of feeling so defenseless in all of this, mixed with the threat of betrayal, leaves him on the brink nowadays. He doesn’t want you to assume this is how he is; most people in his life have always seen him with such high regard.
“Do you still have that flora poster in your tower? The one with all of the different trees on it?” you ask, entirely dodging the argument and the emotions still bubbling in your stomach.
“Wh—”
“Do you?”
“Uhm,” he blinks, standing up and moving to the westward side of the room, where a small poster hangs on the wall, the same one you must be inquiring about. “Yeah, I have it.”
“Great. See the second one from the top?”
“Yeah, the C—”
“—Don’t say it. Keep it to yourself, yeah?” you ask, and he nods, though you can’t see it. You take his silence as a cue to continue. “There should be a place in your sector with those in it, named after them and everything. If you’re up to it, maybe you could swing down there and check around for some of those bear tracks again?”
“Oh,” he whispers. “Yeah—yeah. I’ll head there now.”
“Okay…Radio me when you’re there.”
Heeseung slings his backpack over his shoulder as he slips out of his tower; he wishes that he could put a lock on his door, especially now, and considers swiping one from a cache box on the way back. But for now, his primary focus is heading to the creek just southwest of his tower. The dismissive tone you’d used fuels his itching suspicion that it has nothing to do with bear tracks at all, but it doesn’t absolve the confusion that comes with it.
He takes the easiest route he can find, utilizing the faint moonlight to illuminate his path, not wanting to draw too much attention with the high beam of a flashlight. Quietly, he hikes down the path until he finds a small stream of water whose path matches that of the one on his map. The softer sound of water is calm at this time of night, the sky a dark shade of navy blue as a few clouds inhabit the air, a bright cluster of stars shining through and around them like a painting.
As he admires the sky, he presses the button on his radio to speak. But the words don’t come out. A noise distracts him—the faint sound of static in the near distance, a harsh slice as the noise cuts out. Slowly, his head pivots down until his eyes catch on it: the silhouette of a person, standing a matter of yards away from him. Not close enough to see, make out a face, or even any human feature. Yet something in his chest ticks, like his body knows before he does.
The figure’s arm extends outward, pointing to a supply cache just a few feet to his left. He nods, carefully stepping toward it, applying the code, prying open the cover until he finds what was planted for him.
A radio—gray, sleek, thinner than the one still in his hand. He tosses the old one into the box and takes the new one, pulling up the antenna and examining it carefully. Then, he presses the button; static sounds behind him again; he freezes.
“It took me all day to find it for you,” you speak from behind him, and his body goes numb. Completely fucking numb at the sound of your voice without any static, or cutting noise, or stupid device to separate you. “It shouldn’t be tapped—I hope it isn’t.”
“Y/N—”
“—Don’t turn around. Don’t come closer,” you interrupt firmly, your voice trembling as you try to stress the weight of this to him, that you’ve managed to sneak out of your tower to do this. That you could’ve done it alone, that you risked everything just to hear his voice in front of you. That you can’t bear the thought of seeing him, touching him, feeling him beneath your fingertips, because that’s a barrier that you both know you shouldn’t break. “Just listen to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Your head leans back against the tree, knees pulled into your chest to keep yourself hidden and maintain the distance between you. “I lied to a lot of people to get here, to get that radio,” you swallow. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I—I can’t figure it out alone. I need you to help me, and I can’t…I can’t do this if you don’t trust me.”
Heeseung’s chest swells at your words; he can’t focus on anything but your voice, how soft it sounds even when you’re shouting over the noise, how much smoother it is without the poor frequency that the radios give.
“I trust you, Y/N,” he answers honestly, hand trembling at his side. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear.”
“I know,” you want to whisper, yet the words come out in a yell, lacking the gentleness they should have because of the noise around you. “Please, just—go to the station, and find out what’s going on in there. I’m scared…Heeseung.”
“Okay,” he nods, closing his eyes, “I will.”
He turns slowly on his heel, looking behind him in a weak attempt to cross the boundary that you’d set before. He looks for a sign of you—an arm, a strand of hair, anything—but he doesn’t find a trace. Until his eyes lock on something in the near distance: your knee, poking out from the side of the tree that you hid behind, knowing he would try.
“You’re looking,” you point out, calling his bluff when he said that he wouldn’t; you can feel his eyes on you without even having to check. But can you blame him? You’re only a few feet away, so close to him that if he takes even a few steps forward, he can touch you.
“I am.”
“You know that it’s better this way,” you tell him, chest aching with hurt, guilt, embarrassment, fear—every emotion that has somehow passed through your stupid, weak body for months. “That we don’t see each other. That we don’t know.”
“I know,” he nods, swallowing down a sigh as he remembers the reason he’s here in the first place, why he shouldn’t even be here, why there should be no reason to feel so guilty for knowing you, yet…he does. Because you exchanged the part of yourself to him that you weren’t supposed to, and he did the same, knowing that the one he promised it to was home, with no memory of any of it. All while his wedding ring—the symbol of his love for Sooha—watched. Or maybe—what once was. Maybe that’s the real guilt that he won’t admit.
“This isn’t happening to any of the other lookouts,” you add quietly, fingers pressing into your knees to ground them. “It’s up to us…to figure this out. So please, just—go, tomorrow night, and find out what’s been happening to us. And please…stay safe.”
“I’ll try.”
Heeseung finally steps away, leaving you behind against his wishes, against every nerve ending in his body screaming for him to go back, to see you, to look at you for once, in case anything happens to him. But he won’t, because you don’t want him to, and he can’t upset you. Not now; not ever, really.
As his footsteps slowly become quieter, until they make no sound in your earshot at all, you lean further into the tree’s stable support. A tear burns down your cheek; you don’t try to suppress it, and you don’t want to. For the first time with him, you do feel. If—for any reason—this is all you’ll ever get of him, then you have to savor it. So you accept the pain, letting it soak into the brushed-red skin on your cheeks until the remnants harden on your face and disappear. Until the ache is dull enough for you to stand and tread back to your tower, where you might just condemn yourself for the rest of the season.
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟𖠰˚.°
DAY 79
“I’m in,” Heeseung says into the microphone as he finally steps into the gated area, trudging towards the site. “There is…some serious shit going on in here, Y/N.”
“How…serious?”
“Communication equipment—wireless stuff, I—christ, there’s a twenty-foot transmission tower in here. It’s so buried into the valley that no one could possibly see it, even if they tried, and that’s why neither of us saw any of it coming. The size of this thing…They could listen to anyone they damn please.”
“Fuck.”
He moves further down the incline, practically running until he reaches the bottom, where three more contraptions stand on metal legs as wires mesh in and out of one another along the ground. He doesn’t know what any of it does—can only assume that it’s part of whatever bullshit they’re planning around you and him. He snaps a few pictures and turns to the tent that sits a few yards beside the equipment, padding tentatively inside to find whatever their secret is.
“My fucking god, their main tent…There is shit everywhere. Monitoring equipment that I don’t even know the names of,” he says, shaking his head as he walks over to the desk. “Papers, a clipboard, a map, a barometer, some sort of earthquake thing, I—I don’t know, it’s a mess.”
“Barometer…What the hell would they be using that for?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I wasn’t that smart in high school.”
He moves back towards the entrance, where a red light omits from the cracks in what looks to be some kind of storage case resting on an old wooden chair. Opens it to find a wave receiver that makes a sporadic beeping noise when he pulls the antenna up. He rotates in a circle, watching the light map change with each direction until the top turns green, and the beeping’s pace quickens. The signal leads back to the desk.
There—beneath the heap of old papers—rests a small, black box, the one setting off the receiver; he tosses it onto the ground and listens to it snap into pieces. Now uncovered lies a sleek binder, the same shade of black as the electronic box.
Marked with both of your names.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“What?” you ask, but he doesn’t reply. “Evan? What—what’s wrong? What did you find?”
“Y/N, they’re keeping tabs on us,” as his fingers unsteadily grip the edge of the plastic binder, holding it firmly in place to read it. “Odysseus; Charybdis; Manipulation…” His finger traces the page until it reaches your name. “Distraction,” he reads aloud, the letters bolded on the paper like a warning. Nausea floods his head in a wave.
“There’s stuff about Sooha in here. Things I’ve never even told you, how the fuck would they know this?”
“What’s in there about me?” you ask hesitantly, swallowing thickly as your fingers toy with your sleep shirt, heels digging hard into the mattress beneath you.
Heeseung drops his paper to read the one with your name on it, his heart dropping a little as the words process. “It says…that you and your boyfriend are still together.”
“What the,” you breathe, brows twitching with nerves, “we’re not. We haven’t been for over a year.”
“Y/N.”
“We are not together, do you hear me? We aren’t. Don’t try to accuse me again, because I swear to god, I won’t be able to handle this on my own,” you press, masking the fear with anger. “Everything I said to you, everything I risked to do this, and everything I gave you weren’t lies. They’re screwing with us. What I had with him wasn’t—”
You pause, “—this.”
“I’m sick of being fucked with. By everyone,” you whimper. “I just want to burn this whole goddamn place down. Ruin everything they’ve built and never come back.”
“We shouldn’t do anything that we can’t undo,” he mumbles. “The grass is dry here, unhealthy…it will go up in flames within seconds. Maybe they want to prove that one of us can’t be trusted. That this is what we’ll do. Prove ourselves unworthy, or something.”
Your stomach ticks. “You’re…you’re right, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he sighs, grabbing the papers—along with the other things he thinks he should take—and haphazardly stuffing them into his backpack. “Just—hold on. I’m leaving the site now.”
He runs out, taking cautious steps up the hill to not draw attention. Something settles in his chest; a deep feeling that something still isn’t right. That this all feels too easy, to get in and out without a soul noticing, all while he snatches half of the tent’s contents for himself. And—when he finally steps out of the pried-open gate and hears an explosion behind him—the feeling is unfortunately confirmed.
“Jesus Christ, there’s smoke coming from the site,” he shouts into the microphone. “The second I get out of here.”
“What happened to not doing something we can’t undo?”
“It wasn’t me! I knew I wasn’t in there alone, I fucking knew it,” he shakes his head. “Something is wrong, Y/N. Seriously fucking wrong. They wanted me to see that bullshit project. They wanted me to see those files. They knew I was there; whoever they are, they know.”
“Okay, so I’ll call it in like any fire. It’ll lift some suspicion off of us for now,” you huff. “And…I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s terrifying. I mean, shit, they’re burning everything down around us! We have to get out of here, Evan.”
“We both know that that’s easier said than done,” he sighs, running a hand through his sweat-ridden hair. “Just stay where you are; it’s my turn to instruct you for once. I’m going back to my tower…and everything will be fine. Just don’t worry, and we’ll figure it out tomorrow, okay?”
You’ve never heard him seem so…genuine. Soft-spoken consciously, rather than naturally. And where it should feel calming, grounding, warm, it instead feels cold and misplaced; undeserved.
“…Okay,” you nod, sinking impossibly deeper into your bed.
Heeseung returns to his tower unscathed, promising you thrice along the way that he isn’t being trailed and taking your quiet, sleepy breaths of relief as responses. He tapes the papers he collected onto the window in front of his desk, alongside the ones he’s snatched from supply caches and random spots throughout the forest. He sits quietly at the desk and admires the silhouette of distant mountains below the navy sky. A few clouds float around sporadically, and the stars shine between the crevices. He keeps the radio close, just in case you need him.
Suddenly, the receiver begins to beep again, just as it had earlier in the tent. Heeseung glances up at the clock; it’s nearly one in the morning. Picking it up, he inspects the device. He lets out a sigh, determining that he should follow it, despite the excruciatingly late hour. It could help end this, or at least, take him a step closer to figuring it all out.
“Hey, you awake?” he buzzes gently into the new radio, awaiting a response.
“Yeah, I—I’m awake,” you reply after a few seconds, yawning at the end of your sentence as your eyes flutter, fighting to stay open. “What’s up?”
“This…receiver thing that I found, it’s beeping again. I’m gonna follow it, see what it’s detecting.”
“Okay…” you hum, nodding slowly as you swing your legs over the edge of the bed and plant the balls of your feet on the wood floor, sticky with moisture. “Be careful. It’s late, and we don’t know who or what is really out there anymore.”
Heeseung follows the signal down to a small, grassy area just about half a mile away from his tower, surrounded by rocks and cliffs that stand just shy of a hundred feet tall. Like some sort of enclosure around him, another place that seems like a trap, amidst it all. He pushes through an overgrown cluster of vines, listening to the snap as he pulls them apart and steps through them to reveal what the receiver has been leading him toward.
A key, attached to a rectangular alarm, is duct-taped to the side of one of the rocks. As he swipes the key from its place, the alarm rings, and he smashes it to the ground, silencing it. Its frequency is what the receiver had picked up, meaning it was intentionally put here to be found. At this hour, in this location. And whoever put it there wanted his attention, knew he was awake, because they’re still watching, still lurking.
“It’s a key. Blue and green…Has a piece of paper taped to it with a shitty drawing of a tentacle,” he tells you, hoping you’ve managed to keep awake to hear it.
“What a tacky use of mythology.”
“It’s…for the cave, the one near the canyon. I remember seeing a gated-off area there a couple of times, and I thought it was strange back then, before all of…this. Not surprised that the key does still exist.”
“Why would they give…What?”
“I know, it’s weird,” he breathes. “It’s like they want us—me, I don’t know—to know, like it’s a trap, or something.” He shakes his head, “None of this makes any sense. First, they sneak around and invade my tower for god knows what, and now, they literally hand me the key?”
“Don’t go to the cave tonight,” you whisper, “please.”
He’d run laps if you asked him to in that tone. Hold a gun to his head. If you’re this worried about him, he might never walk into that cave, so long as he proves weak enough to keep bending his own will for you.
“I won’t,” he agrees solemnly, clearing his throat.
“Good. I don’t want you to get hurt,” you breathe. “Well…At least you’re back in your tower. Maybe all either of us needs is a nice, relaxing drink to mellow out.”
“I’m not in my tower.”
You furrow a brow, “I’m looking at a man standing in your lookout. And it’s…not…you?”
“It is not me.”
Your heart sinks deep into a crevice in your stomach that you didn’t even know existed before now.
“Oh my god, go,” you demand harshly, voice turning into a whimper somewhere in the middle as worry seeps into your blood like a virus. He scrambles his shit around and runs. And he hates the way your voice softens with worry and fear; even more that he lets you worry like this.
But the thought of someone appearing in your lookout rather than his own makes him more grateful, because if anything happens to you, he’ll never forgive himself.
Heeseung doesn’t care about you for the right reasons; both of you know that. And you feel like shit for it.
He’d slipped his wedding band into his pocket when he returned just over twenty-four hours ago, after making the switch with the radios. Watching it collect dust on the desk felt too harsh, too careless. He felt that it should be on him. The weight in his pocket should remain a constant remnant of what was, what should remind him that you can be nothing more than acquaintances, coworkers.
But he doesn’t deserve to wear it. That right was stripped away the moment his hand slipped into his pants at the thought of anyone other than his wife. Yet it doesn’t even matter. Because even if she could remember him when he returns, he’d be disgracing her if that ring was on his finger.
His hand palms over the circular print that the gold ring leaves in his pocket, and he breathes out an overdue breath as he stands in the middle of a lush part of the forest. He doesn’t quite recognize it, even with the countless days, weeks, and months he’s spent in nearly every explorable inch. He doesn’t have long to rest or catch his breath, to wallow in his guilt for the nth time.
But perhaps the very instance that has tugged at his heart since the day Sooha was diagnosed is the real source of that guilt. Less than his acceptance of this job and the complicated feelings he’s developed for you combined can provide.
Heeseung loved Sooha, but he wasn’t in love with her. And when she was diagnosed, he realized that “I do” was the most selfish vow he’d ever spoken, because he kept her from experiencing real, true love to its fullest extent. Because they settled. Because her parents didn’t approve, because he wanted to prove something that deep down, he knew was doomed from the start.
And that’s what haunts him, and he thinks will haunt him forever—not you, not any of this bullshit happening in Shoshone. That Heeseung’s marriage has been a lie since the beginning, and he can never reverse that. That Sooha will die thinking he still loves her the way he once did, if any fragment of her memory remains even slightly intact. And it’s the only lie he’s never spoken aloud, not even to you. Because Heeseung has secrets, too; everyone does.
As he approaches the Two Forks clearing, his eyes spot the tower, and he quickens his pace, heading up the stairs and nearly breaking a step in half with a forceful dig of his heel. At the top, no one resides. Where you’d spotted someone standing, no one remains. They left no evidence that anyone had even been there besides Heeseung, except…a Walkman taped to the door. With a frustrated grip, he rips the player off the door and presses play, slipping the headphones over his wind-swept hair.
“I’m sick of being fucked with. By everyone. I just want to burn this whole goddamn place down.”
Static.
“The grass is dry here. It will go up in flames within seconds.”
Heeseung throws the Walkman onto the balcony, nearly shattering it on impact. “There’s a tape. They have a fucking tape of us talking, Y/N.”
“What?”
“It was taped to the door when I got up here,” he shakes his head and tangles a fist into his hair. “Us talking at the site, when you said we should burn this place down. They made it sound like I agreed. They still have access to our radios, and they spliced together fake evidence that we did this.”
“No…No, no, no,” you panic, hands trembling as you try to compose yourself, but fail. “What the fuck is going on?!”
“I don’t—” he sputters, his overwhelming anger stunting his ability to hold his sentence. “We’re fucked. We’re so fucked if someone hears this.”
Grabbing the cracked device, he walks back into his tower and slams the door shut, locking it as if it will somehow help the situation. He tosses the Walkman onto his desk and sheds himself of his top, standing behind his chair and smoothing his hair back with his hands as the air finally hits his chest. The metal cross perched against his chest reflects and casts the moonlight onto the wall beside him. He’s not sure he’s ever been this disgruntled before.
“I need a cigarette.”
“You smoke?”
“I’m trying to quit,” he mumbles, free hand perched on his hip.
“Oh,” you nod. “Well, I think Ned used to smoke. Brian mentioned it, once or twice…Maybe he left a pack somewhere in the room, or something.” Not that you’re for smoking, especially in a national forest, but, well…The visual isn’t not appealing, and right now, you’d probably let Heeseung get away with murder.
Heeseung squints as he scans the room. He’s spent nearly a hundred days confined to this very spot and hasn’t noticed a single thing that even looks like a pack of cigarettes. But, he figures that if he had smoked, Ned would’ve likely kept it fairly hidden. So he checks behind a canister or two, cranes his head around the desk, and…his eyes land on a small box hiding between the desk and the wall.
He drops the radio onto the desk and reaches for the box. Picks up his bag and rummages through it to find a matchbook, messily ripping one out. His other hand works the box open and takes a cigarette with his index and middle fingers, perching it between his lips. The match strikes against the gritted strip and ignites; he brings the flame to the tip of the cigarette and shakes the match out as he inhales, eyes fluttering shut like it’s the best sensation he’s felt in weeks.
It’s almost erotic. The last time he felt this good was the night that the fire caught; the one both of you still dance around as if you’ll just forget something like that. Heeseung thinks he’ll always remember the neediness dripping from your voice, the slick sound of your fingers, and the whimpers…Shit.
Heeseung opens his mouth to tell you, but when he exhales, all that leaves is a moan. The fucker lets out a filthy moan into your ear as if what he’s doing is actually provocative.
“Evan…?”
“I found one,” as the smoke slips through his parted lips and rises into the air. “Fuck, that feels good.”
That stupid ache in your lower belly returns; you don’t mean to be so perverted, but when a man who sounds hot just speaking is moaning in your ear, what is a woman supposed to think? Set aside the cigarette smoking and the thought of him jerking off to your voice.
“Sooo…” you clear your throat, “So much for quitting, hm?”
“Yeah,” he laughs, taking another drag and blowing it up into the ceiling. “Not the best habit, but…Damn, I needed it.”
“Well…I drink a good bit. Maybe more than I should,” you shrug. “The trick I told you about with the creek and the hot night? Usually it’s with alcohol. Helps ease the loneliness sometimes. But I haven’t needed so much of it recently…Not really.”
The corner of his lip twitches, almost into a frown. “So…Were you—”
“—No,” you interrupt firmly, fingers toying absentmindedly with the hem of your shirt. “I wasn’t. I was sober then, and I’m sober now.”
“Now?” he echoes, sitting on the edge of his mattress, elbows nudged against his knees, the burning cigarette between his fingertips as he holds it still in the air. “Why does now matter?”
“Because I’m scared. And I’m tired, and I’m confused, and I’m angry.” The proclamation leaves your mouth in a whisper, not shy, not tentative. With a conviction they don’t typically hold. “And right now, all I can think about is…”
Heeseung’s lips press together.
“…you.”
His chest releases a heavy breath to your ear at the other end of the line, a sign that you cannot determine the connotation of. But what you can’t see is his face, the way his eyes squeeze shut, how his body reacts when a pulse of unwanted desire shoots through him. “Are you sure that that’s a good idea?” he asks, but the roughness in his voice betrays him.
“I don’t know,” you respond carefully, leaning into your pillow, thighs pressed together. “I’m sick of being used like a pawn. I just wanna feel something again.”
“Y/N, we shouldn’t,” he tries to reason; tries to ignore the ache in his pants as he forces another drag from the cigarette. “You have no idea…How much I think about this, about what we did. About you.”
He clears his throat, “But right now, we’re already toeing the line.”
“Right—yeah…I’m sorry,” you swallow. “You’re right, we shouldn’t. Especially not if whoever is listening is still…tapped.”
“Yeah.”
Your end falls dead after his final whisper of agreement, a low hum of static trickling into your ear, lulling your brain into a dazed state. Your body sighs, tired both physically and mentally from the strain that the last few days have brought onto it.
But what pains your muscles more than anything isn’t quite that, though it occupies a thorough chunk of it—it’s the way he speaks to you as if he is trying to spare your feelings, your heart. Perhaps you should have known better than to suggest something so personal, so intimate, to happen again, after it has become an unspoken truth that what you did that night was meant to stay limited to that night only. That—while it wasn’t a mistake—it can’t happen again.
But what blooms in your chest when he speaks to you, when you think of him, isn’t surface-level anymore. It isn’t mere attraction, a result of pent-up frustration from the bitter isolation of the forest like it was then. It feels real, almost tangible, and it scares you. And you think that Heeseung knows that, too.
Maybe he harbors that threatening feeling, too—the same lump in his throat, the same hint of want that strikes—whenever the conversation falls deep. The one you don’t think you’ve ever felt so strongly in your life, not for Johnny—who was nothing more than an idea you were obsessed with—and not for any person who steps into your life.
Heeseung—on the other end—leans into the same position you normally take, perhaps a bit more tense as he stretches his legs in front of him, palm perched over the upper inseam on his shorts. He doesn’t want to do it, even tries to take his mind off the idea, but it sticks—the desperate inflection in your tone as you toyed with the notion.
So, would it be as bad if you aren’t listening? He guesses the answer has to be a resounding ‘yes,’ because he doesn’t think he can sit on the bed for much longer with a growing hard-on that certainly won’t go away on its own. It must be the loneliness and lack of attention; nothing else, no other reason.
He’s shocked that wrapping a hand around his cock can actually feel this good with nothing to accompany it; no sound of someone in particular’s voice emanating from an old speaker, no shitty porno movie playing on a run-down VCR that glitches every 5.38 seconds and pauses for a few frames from film damage.
Just the sheer thought of some girl he’d met a few months prior, the echoing memory of her voice, and a dream. And admittedly, it’s better, feels deeper, pulls a throaty noise from his throat that he can’t deny the weight of. Which—as he breathes out another hefty puff of cigarette smoke into the air above him—renders the wedding ring in his pocket to be completely fucking useless by now, as it did essentially nothing to stop him from doing this.
But, then again, as a droplet of pre-cum cascades down until it reaches the side of his hand, you surely aren’t just sound asleep in your lookout. You were the one who suggested that you essentially have phone sex again, like it’s a viable temporary solution to your problems, so who’s to say that you aren’t in the same filthy position as him now?
He decides not to find out; he thinks he should stick to his word and not push that limit. Especially not let some freak tucked away in god knows where intercept that frequency, too. And he should stop letting himself feel so heavily for you—but that one’s a given, and one that he isn’t so great at maintaining.
His dick is heavy in his hand, sensitive when his fist constricts a tighter ring around it to speed up the shameful process. And finally—with not much time between—warm, white liquid is dripping down the length of his cock, down the back of his hand until it drips onto the mattress from the curve at his wrist. His chest rises, falls, lurches with every painful breath, eyes squeezed shut until the pulse between his legs subsides enough for him to regain strength. He leans over, putting the cigarette out on the floor beside the leg of the bed and using the nearest solid object to stomp it out.
Then, a quiet gasp from beneath him. Barely loud enough to hear, though his ears just catch it.
His hand frantically grasps the radio from where he’d dropped it, buried somewhere under a leg, and brings it closer to his face, quelling his huffs as he listens more closely. The usual, faint hum of static bleeds out, accompanied by the occasional soft noise of your breathing. You’re both there, listening. But neither of you parts your lips to speak, admitting to the reality of the situation aloud.
“Goodnight, Y/N,” he whispers.
“Night, Evan.”
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
DAY 80
You wake up the following morning to the sound of your name being called over a speaker. Your eyes slowly flutter open, and confusion washes over as your brows furrow, head piquing toward the noise. From what your tired ears can make out, it’s a lookout calling you; though, it isn’t who you want to be woken up to. Only one person can occupy that slot.
As your throat releases a tired groan, your arm extends outward until your hand meets the radio. You gather as much composure as someone who just woke up can muster and answer, wanting to know what is so important that it has to be reported to you this early in the morning. And what this man says is—well, enough to sober you right up.
“I…think I’m gonna be sick.”
Heeseung stops dead in his tracks. He’s been up for a few hours now, preparing to check out the cave. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I just received a call from one of the other lookouts, saying that an Evan from Two Forks called him late last night and told him that I know what started that fire at the site,” you tell him blankly, unsure of how to say it without sounding accusatory. “Something is wrong, Evan, really, really wrong.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know,” you huff, shaking your head. “I spent twenty minutes with him trying to explain that no, I don’t know what happened! And I don’t know what started it! That ‘Evan’ isn’t real, and I’m not fucking insane!”
You palm your forehead, “So that said—we’re being threatened.”
“Fucking Christ,” he exhales, stepping toward the cave’s entrance as the cold, brisk air from inside wafts out and fans his face; a decent contrast to the stale, smoky air outside. “I’m gonna find out what’s in this cave, if it’s the last thing I do.”
And with that, he disappears into the cave’s bitter darkness, leaving behind his signal to find out what secret is being kept inside.
Upon reaching the all-too-familiar gate buried deep inside the cave’s embrace, Heeseung’s hand rips the key he’d found last night out of his pocket. The frustration and confusion boiling inside of him is far too heavy a weight to carry alone, despite experiencing all of this alongside you. Your tower hasn’t been broken into; you haven’t been lured into the forest in the middle of the night just to find a key; you weren’t coaxed into coming here just to get what you know will answer only a fraction of the questions you harbor.
Heeseung jabs the key into the hole and turns it until the lock clicks and the door swings open towards him. He steps past the threshold, stuffing the key back into one of his pockets, not paying any mind to which one—he could drop it now, for all he cares.
The cold brushes his exposed forearms, seeps between the openings in the fabric between each tattered button on his flannel top. He considers ditching the whole damn thing sooner or later—its edges are fraying, the seams are begging to pop, a few small holes rest near the hem, and no amount of rinsing it in the lake can erase the wear left on the fabric. And especially now, any chill in the air drifts straight through it, rendering it virtually useless.
Would it be indecent to run around the forest shirtless? He’s grown some muscle; perhaps it would be a sight to behold, rather than condemn.
Heeseung jams the carabiner into a crack in a nearby rock, tugs to check its stability, and climbs further down into the cave, where he feels the temperature drop another two, three degrees. A subtle change that he only notices with the help of his useless top. The lone path leads him to a somewhat narrow stretch that lasts no more than two hundred feet until a ray of sunlight beams in from above, illuminating a sight for sore eyes. The exact thing that he came here looking for.
The body of a twelve-year-old boy. Buried beneath a pile of old rocks, just below a steep, long slide.
As he steps closer, Heeseung doesn’t need to ask to know who the skeleton belongs to. It’s Brian Goodwin, the son of his predecessor, and an old friend of yours. The boy you cherished, thinking he’d left to go back home, to return to his family and friends; instead, dead at the bottom of a cave, tucked away for no wandering eyes to see. Which answers one question, yet forms another:
Who wanted Heeseung to see this, and why?
“You poor kid,” he whispers, carefully stepping over the child’s half-buried body in an effort not to displace or disturb him. For a moment, he crouches down, hanging his head low as if to pay respect to a boy he never knew. But this was a child, and he was someone important to you; he figures it’s the least he can do, as one of the few people who even know he is here.
Then, he gently stands back up and heads forward, towards the nearest opening that leads him back to the surface. The hot, humid, and smoky air welcomes him back (though it isn’t exactly a warm welcome, despite the blistering heat), the sun casting his shadow on the rocks beside him as he stands before the cave’s exit, a somber expression stuck on his face. He knows now what he needs to do, even if he shouldn’t.
“Y/N…” he hums into the radio, taking tentative steps through the dirt and back towards his tower. “I’m…I’m out.”
“Hey, what’s up?” you ask, standing over the counter as you try to sew a button back onto your shirt with the old sewing kit your grandmother had gifted you ages ago. “What were they hiding in there?”
Heeseung’s teeth gnaw at the inside of his cheek; you sound so happy, occupied with whatever you’ve been doing, finally at ease after the mental turmoil you’ve put yourself through for no reason. The fear and ache in your chest that you finally managed to quell has vanished from your tone, and though he wants to tell you—needs to, by his standards—he can’t bring himself to, not yet.
“Nothing,” he lies in the most neutral tone he can manage. “It was empty. It has to be a distraction, or some kind of trap.”
“Oh, that’s…weird.”
Your fingers pinch the top’s material between them, holding the half-sewn button in place until both hands are free again. “Maybe it was a diversion? Something to distract us, or confuse us, from something else? Y’know, because they know we’re on their trail, so maybe they’re just…buying themselves some time.”
“Yeah,” Heeseung blinks; you’d have a point if that were the truth. “That’s probably it.”
“Okay, well…I’m trying to sew this shirt back together, and it’s a little bit difficult to do with a radio in my hand, so…I’m gonna sign off for a few,” you tell him, voice perkier than usual, perhaps from the rest and relaxation you gave yourself after the rough start to the day. This entailed a few sips of wine and a trip down to the creek, where you dipped your toes into the water and just took a breath. “Let me know if you find anything else. I’m assuming you’re just gonna head back?”
“Yeah, might stop by the lake, or something. It’s hot. Feels a little hard to breathe out here.”
“That would be from the joint fires,” you joke, as if he isn’t able to piece that together himself, but it earns a chuckle from your counterpart. “I wouldn’t take too long, it’s dangerous out there. Be safe.”
And with that, you toss the device onto your bed and continue with the meticulous work you’ve gotten yourself into, humming a soft tune and noting that you should bring a CD player next year to dull the silence. Though, that price tag might be damning; you guess you’ll have to look into it.
Heeseung—as he toyed with the notion of—heads westward to the lake, shedding his upper half and dunking his head into the cool water. He ruffles his hands through the wet strands of hair, allowing the water to act as a coolant as he tosses his head forward, elbows resting on his kneecaps in his crouched position. A few lukewarm droplets land on his shoulder, dripping down the expanse of his bicep as he forces out a heavy breath, long overdue.
Eyes closed, he remembers the day he trekked out here at the beginning of summer; the heat hadn’t quite reached its peak yet, and he’d floated mindlessly in the water until his fingers grew numb, the pads wrinkling with the submersion. The shot and a miss he took, implying that you should join him, only for you to not-so-politely decline and return to your work—whatever it was, at the time.
He felt then that things were finally beginning to settle in, not feel so lonely. That he could embrace the calm of the nature around him, and that he could finally start searching within himself for the answers he needed. Only…with time, he realized that they weren’t as satisfying as he thought they’d be. And that only led him here—alone, surveillanced, and…unfaithful, by the textbook. That day, it had been only a little more than a week since he arrived; he wishes that he hadn’t taken that freedom for granted.
Then again, meeting you might have been the only answer he needed, after all. Because he does make poor decisions—something he thought coming here would erase—but you showed him that they make him human. That his remorse is what solidifies that truth. Good people can do bad things, too; both of you are examples of that.
It’s what keeps you up at night, wondering if any of this is even worth it. If he’d leave you, too, if he even had the choice. If he would become just another fleeting moment in your life. Never a constant. Never anything. Just a memory you’re burdened with to add to the burning pile that already rests in the forefront of your mind.
You’ll never be anything more than a lesson to learn.
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
Heeseung stares up at the ceiling, night having fallen over him just about an hour after he finally returned to his lookout. The smell of charred wood has fully infiltrated the room, and even his tower is no longer an escape from reality; nothing is, or will be, anymore.
The truth about the cave still weighs down on his chest, and since the moment the lie slipped from his lips, he’s kicked himself for it. He should’ve told the truth, and he shouldn’t have tried to spare you, knowing how imperative it was that you found out. Time is of the essence; you don’t have any to waste. Which is what leads him here, preparing his conscience with a deep, weighted breath as he lifts his radio to his face.
“Y/N, can you sit down for a minute?”
“Evan, I’m always sitting down,” you laugh. “And it’s also,” you check your clock, “almost eleven. If I’m not in my bed by now, something’s wrong.”
He laughs in response, but the noise lacks its usual amusement, and it doesn’t sneak past you. Your brows furrow as you perch yourself a little further up into a half-sitting position, distributing your weight onto your bent elbow. “It’s…about the cave,” he admits gently, as if to ease your nerves. “I didn’t exactly tell you the truth about what was in there.”
“What…” you mumble, swallowing down the rest of your sentence until your mouth can form the words again. “What was in there, Evan?”
“Brian,” his voice a near-whisper. “Brian Goodwin. He’s…He’s dead, Y/N. His rope…snapped.”
You don’t realize that the radio is out of your hand until it hits the floor and cracks one of its plastic edges. You jump, eyes following the noise, though the rest of your body feels paralyzed. Every last suppressed emotion lurches into your throat, stuffs your lungs so full that you feel like you can no longer breathe. Tears—warm, wet, ugly—run down your cheeks; you hear Heeseung’s voice asking your name, muffled by your sobs as if it’s nothing but background noise. You’ve held the guilt in for so long that the dam built in your chest had burst on impact, his sentiment like the first fall of a domino.
“Y/N, are you okay?”
“No,” you admit angrily, tears streaming down your face for reasons he can’t even begin to imagine. “This is my fault, this is all my fault. If I had called it in, if I hadn’t lied—he would be alive. I got him killed.”
“You didn’t kill him,” he tries to reassure you, though he doesn’t quite understand, but he knows that his words mean nothing. “You were just trying to protect him, Y/N, there is nothing wrong with that.” His heart aches at the thought of you sitting alone in your tower with no one to comfort you, to help ease the pain and the guilt.
“You don’t understand, Evan, I—I’m not a good person. I’m a liar,” you shout to him, as if the way it registers can properly convey your message. Instead, the noise leaves his speaker choppy, loud, and ugly in his ears.
“Liar? Liar, how?”
Your eyes fall shut, and your stomach dips, a throbbing pain replacing the empty feeling that once sat there.
“The fire two years ago,” you begin softly, slowly, taking your time as you carefully decide what you’re going to say before the words escape your lips. You’re tired of hiding things; exhausted from carrying the weight on your own. “I didn’t call it in when I noticed it because of Brian. Because I thought that if too much attention was brought to the fire, they’d catch Ned with him, and they’d take him. So I gave them time to hide, get away from prying eyes.”
Heeseung doesn’t speak; he listens quietly, processing your story as he waits for you to continue.
“It got bigger, hotter, more dangerous. It was so much worse than any of this—I had to call it. I couldn’t wait again,” you breathe, pushing down the urge to hurl right then and there at the mere thought of it. “People came to manage it, but by then it was too much of a threat. A few…died. Trying to fix the mess I created. Ned told me that some of their gear had been lost in the fire; he was pissed—god, he was so angry.”
A sob breaks through, “The fire damaged the exact equipment that failed him. I killed Brian.”
“Y/N—”
“—I could’ve told you this whole time about that, but I didn’t. Because I wanted you to think higher of me.” Tears spill from your eyes, hot and angry and bitter. “Why do you think everyone leaves? It’s because I lie. I lie to make myself look better than I am, just for it to crash down on me like it always does,” you sob, gasping for air between words as the ability to breathe evades you and your chest heaves. “My fiancé didn’t leave for no reason. No one does, whether I push them away, or they make the decision for themself.”
Heeseung’s face contorts into a frown at your admission. You’ve been keeping this from him the whole time and lying to cover your own tracks—of course, he’s upset, disappointed, even a little angry. But the fragility in your voice makes it difficult for him to stay that way. He can hear your sobs and the sadness in your voice, and as much as he shouldn’t, he feels bad.
“Y/N, just—just calm down, okay? Everything will be fine.”
“No, it’s not fine, Evan! It’s not,” you shout back, not meaning to come off so harshly. “I’m not good for you. God, I’m making you cheat on your—”
“Stop.”
The line falls silent; it isn’t comfortable, not the way it usually is on nights like this.
“For your own good,” you whisper weakly, “just keep your distance.”
Something in the way you speak flips a switch inside of him. His consciousness slips as his feet meet the ground and practically stomp out of the door, down the stairs, into the grassy clearing around his tower. He’s moving north—down the exact path he’s traveled at least eighteen times by now—through the cave, past the formerly downed line, further around the bend until he reaches a cable car.
The one that leads to your sector; the one you’d told him countless times never to take. The one he steps onto and moves down the zipline and over the ravine in. Your voice doesn’t chime on his radio like it usually does, hasn’t spoken since you willed him off. His hand clenches around the edge of the wood, hard enough to splinter if his palm moves the wrong way, though he likely won’t notice if it happens; he feels too numb to care about something so insignificant.
Irritation rises in his stomach, bile to his throat as he climbs the stairs of a tower that is unfamiliar, with a conviction that rivals any step he’s taken out in that forest, any word he’s uttered into that microphone, and any shameless stroke of his cock in the confines of that dingy fucking lookout he’s been living in.
You hear the footsteps clear as day, daunting, echoing in your head loudly enough for you to jump to your feet and follow the noise. The pit that anchors in your stomach is answer enough to who it is, the forceful press of boots into wood unrelenting as the noise draws closer. You’re standing outside of your door, the bottom edge held open by your heel, bare against the weathered wood below your foot.
And then—for the first time—Heeseung’s face falls into view.
He freezes halfway through rounding the corner; lips parted just slightly as his eyes catch on your figure standing only a few lazy feet away, as if you’ve been waiting for him. He steps closer, tentatively, eyes drifting along the expanse of your body and landing on your face, studying every last inch of it until there is no feature that goes unnoticed.
God, you’re beautiful.
Your head tilts back once he’s close enough to stand taller than you, his gaze matching yours with an intensity that doesn’t allow you to speak; the shock overtaking your body barely lets you register him, the way his hair gently falls behind his ears and cascades down the back of his neck, curling outward at the nape. The softness in his face, his large, gentle eyes, his neck bobbing when he swallows.
“You shouldn’t be here,” you whisper, lacking the strength they usually have, the power they’ve held over him in the past. “I told you to stay away.”
“Good for me or not, I want you,” he answers back. The tips of his fingers slip beneath your jaw and land at the back of your neck; not forceful, just gentle, grounding. “I don’t care about what’s out there. I don’t care what’s waiting for me at home. I’m here, now, and whether we leave tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, I won’t step foot into that helicopter without having you first.”
“Ev—”
“—Heeseung.”
“Kiss me.”
And with everything he has, he does.
Your hand braces itself on the balcony railing from the binding pressure of his lips chasing yours with desperation that feels like he’s wanted to do this for years. And perhaps—in his own fucked up way—he has, after the torment of dealing with Sooha’s illness, after shamefully pretending that he did love her the way he should have. If anything, you’re the good one; not the reverse.
Heeseung backs you past the threshold and into your lookout, hand temporarily leaving your face in favor of the doorknob behind him to pull the door shut with a loud slam that echoes off of one of the walls. Every bone in your body wants to reject the feeling, resist the urge to continue, let him have his way with you, but it can’t; the devil on your shoulder preaches otherwise in a voice that sounds too similar to his.
His tongue coaxes your lips open, pushes itself past them and into your mouth, grazing gently along your top row of teeth as if to map them out; commit them to memory for the months to come, when all that’s left of you is limited to his head.
A small noise falls from your lips, the sound so sweet in his ears as his grip tightens in your hair. “God, your voice,” he hums into your mouth, the desperate edge in his tone impossible to miss. “All of you, fuck, you’re real.”
The backs of your knees bump against the tiny structure in the corner of your room—barely enough of a bed for one person—and they give out when he slips a hand down to the bend of one, hoisting it up to his waist. Your back hits the mattress while his grip remains constant around your knee, fingers offering a squeeze as he moves to hover above you; eyes glaze over your figure with admiration, something else hidden behind them that flickers when your gaze meets his again.
He doesn’t bother to loosen his flannel before pulling it over his head, his dark hair falling lazily back into place. You notice that he’s still practicing his no tank rule, eyes glazing over his bare figure—the sharp edge where his neck meets his shoulder, down to his chest. The gold cross between his pecs reflects in the light, dangles as his chest rises and falls between breaths.
His fingers curl around the first button on your top, mouth messily pressing wet kisses into the dip at your collarbone as he coaxes each one open, your back unwillingly arching closer to him. The fabric finally falls open, barely hanging onto your shoulders as the air hits your exposed stomach and flutters against your skin. His index finger slides carefully along the center of your midriff, tracing the dewy skin in an upward motion until his palm is curled around your neck, thumb angling your chin toward him.
“This is what you’ve been hiding,” he states as his lips kiss the corner of your mouth, heat rising to your cheeks with its bittersweet gentleness. “And you think I’d walk away from it?”
Your fingers squeeze his bicep, firm under your grasp. “It’s not about that,” you complain, squirming when his lips begin to travel south, pausing at your lower belly to glance up at you; you swallow down a moan at the sight. “It’s about this—doing it just to have you taken away.”
“Then I’ll make it good,” as he tugs your silk shorts down, sporting a deep teal hue with their lace beginning to lift from the wear.
You don’t hesitate to raise your hips, eyes drifting shut, and something between a whimper and a sigh leaving your mouth at the realization that your underwear left with the shorts; you’re laid bare, embarrassingly so. He pulls your legs apart carefully by your ankles, slowly, as he watches your pussy flutter open to him with hungry eyes. When his head sinks lower, your hand follows suit, tangling itself into the brown strands of hair he’d once described to you, and it’s now that you realize just how poorly he made himself out to be; you’ll reprimand him for it later.
His mouth is on your inner thigh, then up further—closer, until his breath grazes your clit, wasting no time before wrapping his lips around it. The sudden pressure pulls a moan from your chest that filters into his ears much clearer than either of the shitty radios could manage, deeper than any you’d let slip from your own fingers.
He knows that he doesn’t have much time with you, to savor this moment like he’s been wanting to for months, and a part of him regrets not giving in sooner; allowing himself to cross this boundary early enough to allot him days, weeks to get you out of his system.
“Taste good,” he murmurs into your pussy, arousal dripping onto his tongue as he laps at the mess you’ve already created; he wonders if this is what it had looked like those nights.
“Not much to compare it to,” you breathe back, but humiliation bleeds into your chest at the realization of how insensitive you sound. An example of what has pushed people away in the past, what you assume will keep the streak alive.
He pauses, but doesn’t look up. “No,” he confirms, fingers pressed firmly into your knee as he kisses your lower lips, slick from the mixture of spit and arousal gathered along their puffy shapes, “there isn’t.” Your face contorts with surprise, but doesn’t maintain it for long once his tongue dips inside, and your thighs constrict involuntarily around his head.
At your reaction, he works faster, diligent with his tongue as it alternates between your hole and your clit, circling around the bud until your throat makes that exact squeak he’d memorized from the first night you fucked yourself to him. Satisfied, he draws closer, emitting a slick slurp with every lick and suck he delivers to your pussy. He’s starved, and you’re moaning into the air with a sharp quietness that allows only him to hear you, trying to avoid wandering ears as best as you possibly can.
You watch the muscles in his back contract and release with each brief movement of his head; the sharp edges of his traps and shoulder blades on display, having been strengthened over his time here.
A part of you can’t believe that any of this is real, that the man between your legs and rushing heat through to your fingertips is Heeseung, the man who was meant to be nothing more than a colleague, one of the handful of lookouts that you have to direct, to tend to. You’ve spent so many hours listening to the soft lull of his voice, speaking about god only knows what until the latest possible minute. You’d started to think that you may never forget his voice, for you’d become so accustomed to it that you could hear him even when he wasn’t there.
His lips finally part from your clit, your walls absentmindedly clenching around nothing in a way that silently begs for more, despite your decently-kept composure. You let a whimper out with the loss of contact, hand tightening a bit in his hair. Wetness continues to drip out of your hole as Heeseung’s saliva coats its outer skin, glistening in the dim lamplight that glows from the top of your old, half-working refrigerator.
His face fades back into view, a little blurred by your weak vision, yet you think now that you could pick him out of a crowd as easily as you could recognize his voice, even if you’ve only caught a few minutes’ worth of glances at it. It’s soft—a few droplets shine along his chin that he makes no effort to remove or smear.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into your sternum as his fingers finally dispose of the top your body still rests on, exposing the latter of your chest to him. “I don’t have time.” His lips find the curve of your breast, kissing the flesh until he reaches your nipple, taking it between them. Sucking gently as an apology as the palm of his hand slips over the other, offering another small squeeze before his mouth lands on yours again, kissing you with a fervor that rivals any man you’ve ever kissed.
“It’s okay, Heeseung,” you breathe, the corners of his lips tugging into a smile at the sound of his name on your tongue—far better than the speaker could ever replicate. “I…” you try, losing the words as your eyes blink away the tears to see his face, so distractingly beautiful, despite his depiction of himself.
“I don’t want you to take your time,” your voice hardens. “Just want you to fuck me, Heeseung.”
You can’t breathe when he kisses you again. It’s sloppy and wet, a tangled mess of clashing teeth and tongues, moans blending into one another and soaking into the dense walls. The metal cross presses into the valley of your chest, its usual cold touch hindered by the hot forest air inside. One of his hands tangles in your hair, the other somewhere at your waist, while yours can’t find a place to rest. They map the expanse of his back, hold his face, mirror his own, too desperate to stay wherever they find.
“I’ll give you what you want,” he moans into your mouth, “I promise.”
His hips grind into yours, the bulge of his clothed cock brushing against your sensitive pussy—creating a wet spot on his shorts that he can feel through the thick material. He whines into your ear, the noise resonating heavily in your belly, pulling the imaginary coil so tight that you have to gasp for air.
“Heeseung, please,” you groan as your fingers prod at the zipper on his shorts. “Wanna feel you before the sun rises?”
A laugh brushes against your ear, and he rises to his knees to promptly remove the shorts and boxers beneath. Something metallic clanks onto the floor. Your eyes follow his motion and land on his cock, thick and heavy-looking in his palm; the tip swells, a flushed shade of red as pre-cum leaks all over it. His palm smears the liquid along his length, stroking it lazily as he draws nearer and hovers just centimeters above your face again.
“Can’t believe you’re real,” he whispers, applying pressure at your entrance until just the tip pushes in, and you gasp into the air, fingers pressing a tenacious grip onto his shoulders. “You’re so pretty.” His lips kiss your temple gently as the rest of his cock suddenly stretches your velvety walls entirely. He coos softly into your hairline, a hand on your knee, rubbing back and forth to keep you grounded.
“You’re so big,” you retort, and Heeseung laughs. “Fuck.”
“Just can’t drop the attitude, can you?”
“Don’t you know me by now?” you counter, wincing when your hips shift—and by association, him inside of you.
He brushes a damp strand of hair behind your ear. “Not as much as I want to,” he whispers low, letting the words hang in the air as butterflies flutter in your stomach.
Disregarding his sentiment, Heeseung presses his lips to yours firmly, craning his head to better the angle as his hips finally pull back and push forward; a moan reverberates from your mouth to his. His one hand steadies your bent knee and keeps you propped open for him, while the other rests just by the underside of your jaw. His touch is gentle, regardless of the desperate way he devours you, your saliva mixing messily and dripping out from your connected mouths.
He grinds his hips against yours in no particular manner, shaft stretching your inner walls to the fullest extent they’ve ever been opened to—larger than anyone you’ve ever taken, courtesy of the questionable men you’ve managed to wrap yourself up with before. Even if this ‘relationship’ with Heeseung far transcends the line of taboo, it means more to you. Which is—in all fairness—what forced your hand to keep such a distance from him until now, because you know that this can only hurt in the end.
But god, the way he feels inside of you is so gratifying, so perfect that you don’t care about the whines that spill from your lips, that he collects on his tongue as he somehow coaxes his cock deeper into your aching cunt. Wetness collects in a ring at the base of his cock, becoming increasingly thicker with his push and pull.
Your pussy squelches with a heavier thrust; he recognizes the sound from months prior, a noise he committed to memory without thinking he’d ever hear it again.
“You’re perfect—feel perfect, so good,” he mumbles into the air between you with his forehead pressed to yours, arm perching your leg on his waist to deepen the angle he hits. “He ever—ngh—feel this good?”
“Did she?”
Desperate eyes fall on his own with knitted brows, as if his answer will dictate the rest of your life. Despite knowing that nothing will change, no matter the answer. His expression mirrors yours—needy, eyes big with pouty lips that have your stomach in knots.
“No,” he whispers; a tear threatens to fall onto your cheek, but he captures it with his thumb before it can properly form. “Just you,” he adds, but the conviction laced within his words only adds salt to the open wound slicing into your heart.
“He didn’t, either.”
His lips envelop yours again as if to cut the conversation short; wasting time on something that is far too intimate for your situation isn’t worth it. It shouldn’t be, rather, not with the ticking time clock hanging above your heads. With someone still out there, waiting, watching. If his head was in the proper space, he’d wonder if they even know what they’re doing; how wrongful their behavior has escalated. Even still—he wouldn’t care.
“Mm,” you whimper when his tip prods at your sweet spot, hips involuntarily chasing his as your body tries to replicate the interaction. Successfully, he thrusts against it again; then again; then again, noting silently that he’d found it.
“‘m close, Hee,” the nickname tumbles out of your mouth, pulling a satisfied noise from his throat that sounds almost entirely unfamiliar.
“Right there?” he emphasizes with another push, earning a nod from you. “‘kay, baby.”
Jesus Christ, this guy.
His hands are all over you again; the edge of his chain taps against your bare chest, slick skin letting it glide over the area with ease. A palm slips off your shoulder and along the length of your arm, not stopping until his fingers are brushing yours and entwining themselves between them. Your eyes flash to his; a gust of wind blows in the distance; he meets your gaze gently and intensely at the same time.
“Heeseung…”
“Let me enjoy this—you,” he murmurs into the column of your neck; presses a kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Let me love…” he hesitates, “love it.”
He looks at you like no one ever has before. Like you’re something to be cherished, to be worshipped, to be cared for. Something you aren’t used to, that others decided you were unworthy of.
His eyes flicker between admiration and something deeper; his features appear so soft that you don’t think anyone has ever looked so beautiful. An ache throbs in your chest, around where your heart sits, and you think—just for a fraction of a moment—that you might love Heeseung.
Part of him thinks he feels it, too.
When his thrusts turn messy, a sudden sting forms between your thighs and creates a binding pressure that your body can barely withstand. Heat rises in your belly and snaps the coil inside when he whimpers into the air between you. His voice completely and utterly wrecked by the tight squeeze of your cunt.
The squelch that releases into the room is obscene—fueled by the hot liquid gushing out of your hole and down his cock, where the slick ring at the base builds thicker and whiter than once was. His mouth is on yours again, swallowing the near-scream that threatens to slip out to the forest with its volume and give both of you away to whoever may be lurking near; surely, they know Heeseung is here, by now. The weak bed creaks beneath you; his hand’s grip turns vice over yours, pinning the back of it to the useless pillow behind it. The metal bar on the headboard presses into your hand as if the pillow isn’t even there to serve as a buffer, drawing a wince from you when the pain becomes too strong.
In one languid motion, his forehead lifts to yours, and his free hand reaches between you to pull himself out; the searing stretch finally subsides, and he watches your cunt flutter around nothing. Then, another breathless, unsteady moan as spurts of white decorate your puffy folds. You gasp when his tip catches on your clit; cum still seeps out of your hole, runs along the crevice between your pussy and your inner thigh.
His chest heaves above yours as you watch. The metal taps your cheek, your neck, the curve of a breast with the rise and fall, each heavier than the last. His lips find the side of your head, trailing carefully down the skin as if to worship its softness beneath them. They land just underneath your jaw, lingering for a moment there, savoring the sweet scent of the fragrance you occasionally apply—or, what is left of it.
It’s only when your body is near-perfectly still beneath his that he lowers his weight onto you and loosens his hold on your hand, letting his fingers ghost tentatively away from yours until they’re resting somewhere off to the side. Your fingers lower to the nape of his neck, where they drift over a few loose, half-damp strands of hair. He hums quietly against your skin. A shiver shoots through his spine beneath your touch.
“‘ve gotta clean you up,” he says when he pulls up from your body; thin strings of release keep you connected. He reaches for the makeshift table beside the bed and takes the folded handkerchief between his fingers, wrapping it snugly around his index and middle to wipe the milky stains away. Your pussy—still sensitive—throbs under the cloth.
“Not very hygienic, is it?” you tease, at which he chuckles and nudges your shoulder. He tosses the cloth onto the kitchenette counter at the opposite side of the room. “Hey, be careful with that,” you pout, “that’s my good cloth.”
“I just used it to wipe up cum, and you’re concerned about a dusty countertop?”
“Heeseung,” you warn.
The brunette chuckles and lowers himself at your side, propping his head up with his elbow and pulling your frame an inch or two closer. His palm skates to your hip, rubbing circles in a soothing motion over the red-marked skin; courtesy of his former grip.
“You’re not a bad person, Y/N,” he whispers into the back of your head, breathing in the inescapable smell of sex that floats in the surrounding air. “You made mistakes with good intentions; you shouldn’t penalize yourself for that.”
The butterflies in your stomach suddenly jolt to life, and a sigh parts your lips as your fingers toy with a crease in the old bedsheet. Your eyes tunnel vision onto it as a mediocre distraction. “I wish it were that simple, Heeseung.”
Your body tears between what your head wants and what your heart wants; though only one of the outcomes is possible, as far as either of you is concerned, spoken aloud or not. The situation feels too familiar—Heeseung’s voice guiding you into the territory that you swore you wouldn’t fall into again.
But this time, it feels suffocating. Because he isn’t some guy on the other end of the line anymore; he’s here, he’s tangible, and he’s real—you couldn’t bare the thought of seeing him, because that would make it real, and when you inevitably have to go back to your lives, none of what happens within the perimeter of this forest can follow you.
Before, Heeseung was nothing more than an idea; now, he’s proof that your morality has bent itself into something unrecognizable, and there is no way to reverse it.
“The person you think I am…She doesn’t exist.”
“It’s not about that. It was never about that,” he counters, dragging the tip of his finger along your ribcage. “You may have tried to make yourself look better, Y/N. But the difference between me and whoever else you’ve lied to is that this was never about doing the right thing, because if it was, then I wouldn’t be here.”
Tears spring to your eyes because deep down, you know that he’s right. And it hurts to know that you helped orchestrate this mess of a relationship, if you should even have the nerve to call it that. You don’t try to suppress the cry that emerges from your throat; the pain—as wrongful as it is—is too severe, and you’re sick of pretending that you don’t feel it, that in some fucked up way, you care for him.
“You wanted to protect him, Y/N. And maybe that doesn’t excuse what you did, but you can’t spend the rest of your life kicking yourself over something you never could have predicted would happen.”
You take his hand with yours when you feel it start to lift off your body; you bring the two in front of your face, feeling the callouses on his fingertips brushing against yours. You think that, if you squeeze hard enough, it won’t hurt so much anymore. You try to speak his name, but it doesn’t form on your tongue as easily as it once had, as if your body is trying to resist it.
“So if lying—and if being here makes you a bad person, then so am I.”
You’ve bared every part of yourself and your body to him, and yet, you’ve never felt as vulnerable as you do right now, sobbing in his arms, as if the dam has finally broken inside of you. It all happens so fast, like a wave crashing into you, submerging your head underwater until you can’t breathe. All you can do is cling to Heeseung’s hand, internally reprimanding yourself over and over again for acting so childish.
Your friends are married, have children, have families, and what are you doing? Shacking up with a married man whose wife can’t even remember her own name? It’s embarrassing, and it’s humiliating, and despite every bone in your body wanting to pick yourself up, you can’t.
The brutal reality is that no one will treat you the way he does, and perhaps that’s what cuts so deep: that all of this is just because he can. Because he could walk out of this room right now, and nothing would change.
He whispers something unintelligible into your hair when he thinks you’re asleep. Though you’re halfway there, his voice is reduced to nothing more than a muffled noise that eases your muscles. You think, at one point, that he’s humming a song you’d mentioned once before; your lip curves into a smile, too tired to be noticeable.
There in his arms, you finally drift off, tear stains decorating your warm cheeks as Heeseung’s hand stays firm over yours, his thumb rubbing circles into your wrist.
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
DAY 81
Your body doesn’t expect another one to be closely pressed against it when you wake the next morning.
The early sunlight casts a warm glow into the lookout, amplified by the mixed fires’ orange hue. Smoke blooms in the air around your tower, almost as if to cast a warm blanket over your resting bodies. The scent of warm cedar fills your nose when your senses come to, and your eyes flutter open, falling onto the palm that rests over your stomach.
You notice Heeseung’s breath leaving his nose in favor of the nape of your neck, brushing over the skin with a gentle breeze that cools your body. You feel rested and a lot more peaceful after the night’s events; you can still feel the remnant of a dried tear at the corner of your eye. But before you can wipe it away—or at least, offer an attempt—Heeseung’s fingers slide below your navel, sweeping over the skin there.
“Good morning,” he hums, his sleep-touched voice a sultry purr. “You okay?”
“Mm…Mhm,” you nod. “Yeah.”
You don’t know why pressure builds so quickly in your belly when he speaks. His voice has always relaxed you, been something you tended to fixate on, where you had no other trace of him. But this morning, it’s as if your body hasn’t gotten the proper fix. That—more specifically—your core aches with a need for more, even if you’ve just woken up.
Heeseung seems to sense the shift; you don’t know what signals it to him, but you know that the message is delivered when his fingers dip lower to brush over your clit. The pads of his middle and ring fingers rub circles into the flesh, and your head shifts backward, pressing slightly into his shoulder.
“You want…this?” he emphasizes for confirmation, humming contentedly when you give a curt nod. “M’kay,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head.
But then, you’re shaking it. “N—ngh—no,” you swallow, “inside.”
“Ohhh,” he nods almost tauntingly, gliding his fingers down your slit before pressing just the tip of his middle finger inside; a whine tumbles out of your mouth, hips squirming beside him. He adds the ring finger alongside it, watching your eyes squint shut when they finally sink fully in with the wet squelch he attributes to your pussy. “Like this?”
“Yes, like that,” you groan, hearing how pleased he is to be giving you a taste of your own medicine for once. “Feels good.”
Luckily for you, you’re far too exhausted to complain about even this, as he’s still giving you what you want. Heeseung doesn’t tease for long, given the time constraint and his own messed-up desire building in his cock. Between both of you, the thick line of nearly three months’ worth of tension had been completely severed into two, and no amount of sex for the next week could make up for it.
Though if the recent fire development is anything to go by, you’ll be on your way home by nightfall. But you don’t want to think about that quite yet—you’d already suffered it last night, amidst the post-release vulnerability that plagued your ability to suppress those emotions.
Your hand snakes behind you and lands somewhere at the back of his head, palming his hair to stabilize yourself. Your pussy sucks his fingers in, already slick enough to make the push and pull that much easier, despite the tight ring constricting around them. He curls them deep inside, hitting the spongy spot buried too deep for your own fingers to reach; your hips jolt forward with the sudden blinding contact.
Even more unexpectedly, he yanks them out as quickly as they came. You whine with frustration, huffing his name before his arms pull you into a half-sitting position on your knees. Now pressing up into you, his fingers push back into your clenched hole, while his thumb works your clit until you’re falling towards him, breathing more stunted moans into the dry air. Your radio flickers on your desk; both heads turn to the static, but no one speaks, forcing the line back to silence.
Heeseung laughs, pressing his lips to your shoulder as he uses his free hand to brush your hair towards the opposite one. He kisses a line down to your bicep and back upward, landing at the crevice in your neck that makes your hips roll involuntarily and pries a sigh from deep within your chest. He sucks at the spot, nips the skin with his teeth as your hand tugs the long strands of hair between your fingers; he moans into your neck, fingers delving impossibly deeper into your throbbing cunt.
You can’t decide where this is more or less intimate than last night. The sun lights up the room enough for anyone standing close enough to see inside, yet you don’t mind. The intense fog that the joint fire creates around the tower blocks the view. A helicopter flies just closely enough to hear the chopping blades, but it isn’t close enough to worry about, not yet. And the thought of the person—or people—watching you hasn’t crossed your mind since the last call Heeseung made to you; it seems they’ve taken some kind of vacation, much like yourself and your counterpart.
He decides that if this is the last time he’ll get this chance with you, he’s not going to waste it on his fingers.
You’re so jaded by the time his fingers are replaced with his cock that you don’t notice until the grating seer returns to your pussy, rushing blood and heat all the way to the tips of your ears in one fluid motion. You quickly lean back, sinking yourself as far as your body allows into Heeseung’s lap, crying out when his tip slams into your cervix with no admonition.
“God, you feel so—fucking good.”
Without thinking, you lift yourself and fall forward, bracing your weight first onto your weak knees, then distributing it through to your palms as they flatten onto the mattress. Heeseung follows, never quite pulling out as his hands move to your waist and linger over the skin there, sweat already clinging to it in small beads that trickle down the sides of your legs. You wiggle your hips, pussy seeking the friction again, and he finally meets you halfway, pushing his cock back into you from behind.
“Jesus—fuck, Heeseung,” you groan with your eyes screwed shut, fingers gripping onto the bedsheet for dear fucking life. “You’ve just been carrying this thing around?”
“Pfft,” he scoffs, “you say that like it’s a bad thing,” and delivers a slightly deeper thrust that prompts a faint, reflexive whimper. Ha. “And besides—I wasn’t the one putting a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole between us. That was you.”
And now you’re shoving that pole in me; the thought flashes in your head.
“Because I—” you hesitate, rocking back on your knees to coax him in further until he hits that spot again. “Mmph—I was too scared.”
He leans forward, shifting his grip to your lower ribs and lifting his leg for a better angle, sacrificing the bed frame’s stability. Something beneath you creaks—the floor, the frame, maybe even the stairs leading up here, and someone is about to catch you two in just about the most compromising position you could possibly tangle yourselves into. A weak gust of wind blows through the cracked window, and his ring moves on the floor; no more than an inch.
“Scared of what?” he asks breathily, and your stomach ticks, spreading a not-so-pleasurable feeling up to your chest.
“You know what.”
Heeseung puts his mouth to better use, planting wet kisses on the expanse of your back and cementing a moan into each little spot with every sinful thrust of his hips. You’re quick to forget any of what you just said (and thought) when he slows his pace so tactfully that you assume there must be a reason, and it frightens you, just a little bit; a shiver shoots to your core, near-abused and still needy.
As if he’s finally completed mapping every inch of your body out, he angles the next push to make direct contact with the spongy spot buried in your pussy; your eyes sink to the back of your head, and your knees jolt, nearly giving out with the acute pressure that it creates between your legs.
And—fuck, it actually exists?
Curses spill from your lips; raw, unfiltered, desperate. Until now, you’d thought that the whole ‘G-spot’ thing was a myth made up by guys who couldn’t make their girlfriends come, or whatever. But this?
Your body doesn’t know how to counteract the blistering heat that scorches through your skin, fills your lungs, and renders your ability to breathe useless. You’re a mess on all fours for him, and yet, he’s barely moving at an intolerable pace. It’s neither slow nor is it fast; it’s deep, punishingly so when your ass rocks back to meet his lower stomach with every thrust.
Heeseung leans further forward—inadvertently pressing into the spot harder, at which you whine—and kisses your exposed shoulder. His teeth nip the skin, a shot of pain hits, and his tongue licks over the area to soothe the sting. The salty taste of your sweat collects on his tongue, and he swallows it down, pulling your back flush with his chest, holding you in place with his flattened palm over your belly.
The coil inside pulls tight again, and you squirm in his hold, breathing out a moan that borders on a yelp. You’re hot; sweltering in the mix of the forest fire’s unrelenting heat and the threat of your orgasm.
“Heeseung,” you pant, “Heeseung, fuck, I can’t—”
He pushes you closer with his hand; you grip the top edge of the headboard, digging crescent-shaped divots into your palms. “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he murmurs into your shoulder.
“No, it’s—fuck—” you whine, but he persists, shaking his head and massaging his hand over your stomach; you can’t tell if it tightens or loosens the knot there. “Okay, shit—don’t stop.”
Like hell, he will.
His kisses draw paths along your sweat-glazed skin, his own turning dewy with every passing moment, glistening like it’s honey in the warm, morning sunlight. He whispers praises into your back, your shoulder, your neck, your hair when he takes a gentle fistful and tugs your head to him, just to envelop your mouth with his own.
His tongue pushes into your warm mouth, saliva dripping grotesquely down your chin as if you’ve already been completely fucked dumb. Your throat no longer harbors the strength to produce a sound any louder than a strained huff of breath—maybe the occasional whimper, if your body gives—as Heeseung’s hips begin to collide with yours almost mercilessly.
You’re so close that he can feel it; not in the way that a cocky fuck would say it when they’re about to get off, and you’re barely even close to an orgasm—oh, no—your pussy fucking strangles him like he’s her lifeline. He’s found the sweet spot, he’s bruising it with every deep push of his hips into yours, his lips and hands are all over you, and he doesn’t even have to touch your tits, or your ass, or finger your clit until you come apart around him to make you feel this way.
Maybe he’s just that good, maybe you’re addicted to the idea of him, maybe that fucked up part of you really does love him, or maybe it’s none of that, and you’re just so fucking turned on by the fact that this is the dead last thing you should be doing with him that your body has conformed to his.
But you know—your heart knows—that it’s all of it.
His name rolls off your tongue with a filthy, guttural moan that sounds like every ounce of built-up tension since the moment you first heard his voice trickle through that shitty radio, all exiting your body in one breath. Heeseung holds you like something precious, something fragile, thrusts unrelenting in their pursuit of your release, yet his touch is so feather-light on your skin that you wonder if he’s really there.
His voice brings you down—wrecked in its own way while he tries to combat the pressure building in his stomach, waiting for your muscles to relax before he even thinks about coming. Heeseung worships your figure, holding it upright until it falls limp in his arms, while gushes of liquid drip down your inner thighs; another shameful display that will haunt you for years to come, when this is all said and done. Even when you’ve relaxed, his hold stays intact as he carefully pulls out of you, pumping himself once, twice, before painting your lower lips white again.
His palm trails up and down your spine, the brush so gentle that a shiver runs just below it, and you sigh, fingers loosening their grip on the painful metal crossbar. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into your shoulder blade, reaching between your legs to collect as much of the mess as he can onto his thumb. “Did I hurt you?”
You shake your head. “No,” you breathe, “just—tired.”
“Good,” he whispers back, finally lowering your body onto the mattress with practiced tentativeness, his touch never quite leaving your lower stomach. He smiles down at you—gently—and you mirror it, eyes flitting to his thumb sitting upright and away from his palm.
Your eyes move back to his face, proposing a silent suggestion within their gaze; Heeseung brings the pad to your lips, coaxing them open to wrap around it. Your tongue swirls over the skin, gathering his taste onto the buds, and you swallow it down carefully, parting your lips again with a sigh.
His lips plant a kiss on the curve of your jaw; he smiles against it. “You’re beautiful.” A hand trails upward to hold your face, thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone. “Prettiest girl in the world.”
“You’re married.”
“Still you,” he murmurs, mouth ghosting over yours. And words like that should make you want to push him off you; instead, you pull him closer, letting your own palm rest upon his face, fingers brushing the loose bangs that fall in front of it as you study every feature and curve. “This is more like the Y/N I know,” he adds quietly, and you quirk a brow.
“What do you mean?”
“The one from last night, who hated herself,” he explains, fingers opening and closing over your waist, toying with the flesh there. “It wasn’t you; not the you that I know.”
“You…don’t know me. Not really,” you admit carefully, voice a little softer.
“You’ve never taken any shit from me. You always kept me on track and grounded when I needed it,” he begins softly. “You taught me not to kick myself down for being here, that taking a breather isn’t a bad thing. You told me that one of your favorite songs is by Phil fucking Collins, and when I picked on you for it, you doubled down and said that I had no taste.” You laugh when he recounts it, remembering the exact conversation as if it happened yesterday, much like any of them.
“That’s you, Y/N. The person I’ve come to know over the last three months, who would tell me that I’m a fool if she believed it. Not the one who lies, who doesn’t even have to.”
“Hee…”
“You’re not a bad person,” he repeats from last night like a Bible verse, as if you’ll finally start to believe it, too, if he says it enough.
“I’m glad you’re here,” you tell him earnestly, a tear slipping down your cheek that his thumb is quick to collect. “Even if…this is it.”
“What if I don’t want it to be?” as his hand closes over yours, the skin-to-skin contact sending heat to your fingertips.
“You know it has to be.”
And he nods—against his wishes—turning his head to kiss the inside of your hand.
Suddenly, the wave receiver attached to his bag beeps—slowly, two or three beats between each ring—and he sighs, dropping his forehead to your shoulder. “I have to go,” he mumbles, words muffled by your hair. “Need to settle this bullshit once and for all so we can get the hell out of here.”
“Agreed,” you nod as your stomach curls into itself at the thought of the whole situation. Amidst everything, you’d nearly forgotten that the whole reason Heeseung had shown up here was because of a domino effect the “research” project caused, which seems more like a cover-up after he saw what he did. “I’m sick of feeling toyed with for what—their pleasure, or something?”
You shake your head, his hand steadying your lower back as you plant your feet onto the ground, reaching one forward to try and catch some of your clothes on the floor with your toes. Not your proudest moment, but you don’t feel like bending over to grab them. Heeseung still laughs.
“It’s stupid. It’s like the universe cooked up the worst thing to happen to us, in spite of our very obviously questionable behavior,” you roll your eyes, pulling on your panties—which are clean—then folding your sleep clothes and setting them on the bedside table.
“Do you think it’s all connected? To Brian, I mean,” he suggests, standing up to tug his own clothes back onto his body. “The surveillance, Ned, even. And—you know—those supposedly ‘untapped’ radios? You got them from someone involved here, right? They’re clearly still tapped; they’re on the inside, Y/N.”
“Fuck, I didn’t even think of that. I mean, it’s obvious that something is happening within this forest, but…Clearly, it isn’t just some randoms.” A chill runs through your spine as you reach behind you to take your shirt off its hanger, “It’s orchestrated.”
“I’m gonna follow that stupid signal, and I’m gonna find out what the hell it is that they’ve been doing to us. And who they are, and what this stupid Schylla bullshit is.” He shrugs his top over his shoulders, fingers tactfully buttoning it closed. “Even if I have to die trying.”
“Motivational,” you hum. “I should put that on a shirt when I get home. Maybe I’ll make millions off of your last words.”
Heeseung rolls his eyes. “This is a serious matter, and you’re laughing. See?”
“This,” his fingers rise to pinch your cheek, pulling it back and forth tauntingly, “is the woman I have the displeasure of knowing.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
His hand smooths over your cheek, fingers caressing the rosy skin. “I’m not gonna forget you, y’know,” his tone hushed; body standing tall over yours, your eyes aligned with his lips.
“Good. Don’t,” you tease in return, and he chuckles quietly, fingers pressing a fraction deeper. “I don’t want you to. Even if all I am is the escape.”
“I think you’re more than that.”
“But we both know that it’s what I should be,” you wink, nudging his chest with the tip of your finger. “You needed a lesson to learn, right? So I’ll be that.”
“My favorite lesson,” whispered as he cranes his head and leans down, while you rise to your toes.
“Yeah,” you mumble, smiling when his lips slot with yours, so gently that you almost don’t feel it, at first. Your fingertips land on his biceps, resting, rather than gripping. His free hand sweeps over your waist, not tugging—just there. “Okay,” you smile sadly as you break the kiss, lips hovering just a centimeter or two away from his. “Go.”
He nods, slipping his hands off your body, though the ghost of his touch still lingers on every inch. He steps toward the wall, where his bag slings against it in the place he’d tossed it as he stepped inside last night. Picking it up, he detaches the radio, metal actually decently cool in his grasp. Perhaps, from the heat still radiating off his body.
He turns back, and you motion your head toward the door.
“I’m still here. Just through that,” you point to the radio in his hand. “Go end the torment, Hee.”
When he finally steps outside, he feels your presence pull clean out of his chest, as if you were never even there. Like every physical trace of you will forever remain locked inside the four walls, destined never to reach him again.
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
“I’m getting close.”
The receiver beeps faster now, green dots lining up perfectly in the center of the device. Heeseung keeps walking forward—south and past his what may be former lookout—to find the source of the signal.
“Okay. Good, I’m glad you made it. The fire, it’s…bad.” You sigh, stuffing your belongings into one of your duffel bags with your free hand. “I just got the call. They’re coming to pick us up today at my tower. You can just…take the tram back over and pretend you were never here. I think, because of the fire interfering with vision, they don’t even know that you ever left your tower last night.”
“Good, that’s…Good.”
“Be safe. Be careful. I’m here if you need me.”
Finally, he reaches a clearing with nothing but a tall cliff and a rope dangling over the edge with his name scribbled in some sort of ink on the rock; definitely punishable by defacement of national property, he notes, stepping forward as he realizes that the signal linking him to this very spot is from some kind of tracking device—attached to another cassette tape. He presses play.
“Hey, Evan. Or Heeseung—whatever you go by, these days.”
It’s a male voice; one he doesn’t recognize.
“You’re probably wondering who this is, and I wouldn’t blame you for that. My name is Ned Goodwin, and from what I’ve heard, I don’t think I need to say more than that for you to know who I am.”
“We’ve been causing each other a lotta headaches this summer. I’ve been living here for two years, dolling up the site you’re about to find at the top of this cliff. I’m the guy who bumped into you back in May, down by the cave. Because of my carelessness. After that, I had to keep an eye on you.”
Heeseung’s feet touch the dirt at the top of the cliff; he looks around until he finds a hidden hatch made out of an old sign that had been broken down. He steps toward it, opens the door, and climbs into the bunker that Ned had crafted over the years.
“I had that antennae rigged up not long after I found this place. In case you’re wondering, no—I’m nowhere near ‘ya, not anymore. By the time you’re listening to this, I’ll be halfway to some other desolate part of the forest to find somewhere as fit as there to stay in.”
“Y/N…She’s something else, isn’t she? I can see why Brian took to her. She’s a record you don’t gotta flip. You and I both know that you took an interest in her, too…Unfortunately.”
Heeseung grimaces.
“About a week ago, I stopped trying to hide what was going on. Stopped caring if you guys knew what I was up to. That’s about when everything went shit-house with you two. Led to…Well, I saw you leave the tower. You finally grow the balls to fuck her? Probably. But here’s the thing—you guys don’t know nothin’ about having kids. It ain’t easy, and I know I wasn’t the best dad on Earth, but you gotta know that I didn’t kill him.”
“That brings me to all of this. I was working with the team of researchers at the station…In the beginning. I refused to believe that any of this was a mistake, and that Y/N would just ‘accidentally’ not call in the biggest fire of the fuckin’ year. Then we get the shit end of it, have to move all of whatever is left of our equipment, I get no goddamn answers, and my son is dead.”
“I contacted them right after the fire was put out. Told ‘em I had reason to believe that she’d been doin’ somethin’ shady, behind everyone’s backs. They listened to me. Did some digging and tapping into your radios and came up with some code name for it so they wouldn’t get caught. But after you two got up to…whatever the fuck you got up to—they didn’t take me seriously, and I had to start takin’ matters into my own hands.”
“I planted the files in the tent. I replaced the ‘new’ radios. Tryin’ to scare you off didn’t work, and you got closer. Doctors figured this wasn’t goin’ nowhere, and I tampered with their files, stole the key—you know the rest.”
Heeseung refrains from touching anything inside the bunker, pausing to look out at the horizon when Ned’s voice falters.
“And then she finally admitted it. You gotta know, Evan—Brian wasn’t her fault. I went back…could barely look at him…but the rope wasn’t anchored right. He didn’t sink the damn thing the way I taught him to. The rope wasn’t faulty because of her…It was me.”
Ned sighs.
“Don’t come lookin’ for me. Just get outta here before the whole place burns up. And…I’m sorry about your wife.”
Heeseung blinks; a beat passes before any words fall out of his mouth. “I found the surveillance operation. It was Ned Goodwin; he was the one listening to us.”
“Ned? What—what? He made the tapes?”
“He thought…that you had something to do with the fire, and with Brian. He tried to work with the station, but that didn’t really work, so he took matters into his own hands, and…He did all of it, Y/N. Tapped the radios, trashed my lookout, started the fire…All of it.”
“He—what the fuck? I loved his son, why—why would I try to get him killed?”
“I don’t know, but…Y/N, he went back to the cave. It wasn’t equipment failure. Not calling in that fire…That’s not what killed Brian. It was just a freak accident.” He steps out of the bunker and makes his way over to the edge of the cliff where he’d climbed up.
“Oh…my god, Heeseung. Where is he?”
“He’s gone,” he shrugs. “He went deeper into the forest. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s still here, or about…you know.”
“Jesus…” you mumble, blinking out at the forest, as if he can see you. “Well, you’d better get back here, then. They say the helicopters are making rounds now. Be fast.”
“Okay.”
Heeseung trudges back down the steep incline and maps out the route back to your tower—the place he shouldn’t have been at in the first place. It’s much harder to see now, with the fire’s smoke emanating through just about every inch of land he’s touched over the summer. He tries not to inhale too much of the thick air, already feeling lightheaded from the hike all the way down here on no food, no drink, no anything, really.
Time passes more slowly on his way back. He passes his tower for the final time, glancing up at the structure as he bites the inside of his cheek. Perhaps, if he had more time, he would go back inside and check for loose belongings. But anything Heeseung wants to leave behind is already in there, and he figures that maybe it should stay that way.
So he moves forward, back into the trees, and back to the cave, where he takes a faster trip through its cool, enclosed air. He takes a long, deep inhale from the inside, the air a sliver thinner, cleaner, less polluted by the fire’s fumes and debris. When he steps out, he hears your voice, a bit muffled by his pocket until he shoves his hand inside to grab the radio he didn’t think he would need again.
“They’re here, Heeseung. I told them that you’re out there, and they said they’ll come back, but…I think I’m gonna go with them.”
His heart drops—or, however someone would describe the feeling that transpires in his chest.
“Yeah, I—yeah, you should,” he nods, swallowing down the lump rising in his throat. “If I don’t get back, and something happens to you…I’ll never forgive myself.”
You pull your bottom lip between your teeth, wincing softly when the edges prick the inside. Your stomach aches as if you’d expected a different answer; the one you know you shouldn’t.
“Okay,” you whisper. “Get back safe. Please.”
“Will do.”
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
When Heeseung finally finds the tram, crosses the ravine, and climbs the stairs to your tower, he just…studies. He hadn’t focused on anything but you when he was here earlier. But one glance at your walls really does explain it all—every inch of this place defines you.
He starts at the kitchenette counter, where dust still accumulates on the ancient-looking granite. Running a finger along the edge of the cool surface, he looks to the shelf above it, where a couple of water coolers, extra storage bags, and a few containers rest; he rubs the dust off his finger. A plant sits in the corner, on top of a small end table that doesn’t quite match anything else in the room.
He moves to the bed—just about the only thing in here that he is even remotely familiar with. The sheets are neatly folded over, the flat pillow resting at the head as it looks directly at the makeshift bedside table, where all that is left is an old desk lamp.
Finally, he finds your desk, where time seems to stop. The drawing you made of him is perched above the desk, a little off-center and barely held up by a single piece of tape. His fingers brush over the page, contemplating for a moment before taking it and reading the words on the page.
What we know is scribbled in the top corner, followed by a small numbered list of Korean, Tom Cruise, Long Hair?
Heeseung chuckles.
He places the paper flat onto the chipped wood and sits in the chair, noticing the pair of headphones resting in the center; the ones that carry the frequency to the helicopters. He picks them up and places them onto his head, listening first for the faint chopping blades in the background, then releasing a breath into the air.
“Y/N?”
“Oh, you made it,” you smile from inside, pushing the headphones’ pads further against your head to hear him a little clearer. “We’re just landing, and—hey, I think I see your truck. What a piece of shit.”
“Thanks.”
“They said they’ll come back for you shortly. I told them not to leave until you were there,” you say, fingers picking at the skin on your forearm. “So hopefully, they won’t have to break that promise, now.”
“So…taking stock—we helped scare a couple of teenage girls off, found that the last lookout killed his son and became a lonely hermit, broke about eighteen different rules and regulations, and prevented…one fire?”
“But we kinda started another.”
“So a wash, then,” he adds, and you laugh. “What’s next for you?”
“I…I don’t know, to be honest. I just…know that I’m not going back. I need to find myself, and it starts with losing this hellscape of a job. I think…I’m gonna stay with my sister, at least for now.” You look down at your feet, pursing your lips as you think of something else to say; in all your time together, you’ve never had difficulty speaking to him. “I found your ring on the floor, by the way. It must have fallen. I left it on the desk.”
Heeseung scans the desk until he sees the glint of light reflecting off the gold band, brushing away a few loose wires to find it resting gently in a folded handkerchief. The one he’d tossed onto the counter last night. He swallows, tracing the fabric as if it will disintegrate if he puts any pressure on it.
“Your silence is telling, Hee,” you prod with a giggle. “Keep it. It’s yours, now. And don’t worry, I’m not gross—I washed it.”
He takes the handkerchief between his fingers and wraps it around the wedding band. The gesture feels like a signal of something deeper, closing a chapter in his life that shouldn’t have been so long. He carefully adds it to his bag, alongside the other belongings stuffed inside.
“You need to go back home, Heeseung. And…you need to go see her. You can’t…” Your words dwindle as you look for the right words. “You can’t move on without letting her go first. I know that it sucks, and I know that this—complicated everything—”
“—I didn’t love her, Y/N, not…not really.”
You blink. “What?”
“It’s…I have a lot of guilt, too. In…other ways than just this,” he breathes, and you nod, deciding not to pry into something that you should’ve never been involved in, in the first place. “I wasted her life, and now she doesn’t even remember.”
“Then that’s more reason to go,” you tentatively add, fingers pinching your skin. “Give her a good ending. Fix what you should have years ago. Your problems…They don’t go away, out here. They just get worse.”
“Yeah,” he swallows. “I’ll go. Make things right.”
“Good.”
The line is quiet; the helicopter’s noise is much duller than it once was, and a few voices chirp in the background, though he can’t make out what they say.
“Heeseung?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” you whisper, “for everything. You…made me feel really cared for, for once. Good luck, and…Be safe, okay?”
“For you…Always.”
Another chopper draws closer, and Heeseung notices the wind blowing in the distance, just a few yards away from the bottom of the tower. A clearing forms in the air, just enough for him to see it landing, waiting to pick him up. He pulls the backpack tighter on his body and stands, hand coming up to the pair of headphones around his head.
“They’re here. I have to go,” he sighs gently, uncertainty lacing his tone. “Bye, Y/N.”
“Bye, Evan.”
°ৡ𓂃.𖠰ᨒ↟˚ৡ.°
FOUR MONTHS LATER
The truck’s dingy radio blasts current hits into the air, bleeding out through the rolled-down windows and turning passersby’s heads. A constant, cool breeze blows into the truck’s interior, and Heeseung’s freshly-trimmed hair cascades behind him, occasionally hitting the headrest. His fingers tap the leather steering wheel cover, which doesn’t offer much protection, given its run-down state.
The weather is calm, Eric Carmen’s new single trickles into his ears, and his perpetual smile stretches for about six miles straight; his life has finally fallen into place, and he has one person to thank for it.
He’d gone to Australia immediately after arriving home, just as you had told him to. He first settled back into living again—eating full meals, sleeping in a real bed, rather than a mimicry of one—and then he packed a bag and flew across the world. Sooha’s parents didn’t exactly greet him with warm smiles, but after many hours’ worth of convincing, he finally managed to make them budge.
Though her memory would not return, Heeseung stayed by Sooha’s side. He told her stories about the forest, although she’d often forget by the end of the day. He’d sing her to sleep when she asked, when a stagnant memory would surface, though she couldn’t place why she would know such a thing about the strange man staying in her home. He treated her well and made her feel loved and cared for in every way he knew how, up until her dying moment.
She passed away just a few weeks into August, barely thirty-one years old. Heeseung sat beside the bed, holding her hands in his as she took her final breaths, her parents standing by in the corner as her mother sobbed into her father’s chest.
He’d helped plan the funeral, choose the arrangements, and notify those close to her and the family. Her parents—as hesitant as they were about him—found solace in his presence, deciding that they had been wrong about him. They’ll never know what happened within the bounds of that little forest in Wyoming; the silence a choice Heeseung had made before he set foot into their home, knowing that extending that knowledge to them would only sever their hearts further.
Closure; that was what he needed to move forward. And once he knew that Sooha could rest easy, Heeseung returned home. He kept a decent life for himself, explored a few short-lived jobs to find what he did and didn’t like, and finally tried his hand at fashion (which threw him into a spiral he didn’t even know was a possibility).
Yet even after everything, once he finally settled into the present, his mind kept returning to the one aspect of his past that he just couldn’t shake. He thought that by bettering himself, he would be able to let this summer go—let you go—but he couldn’t.
“Hungry eyeeees; one look at you, and I can’t disguise,” Heeseung hums along with the music, the fresh scent of cool, crisp air wafting into his nose and brushing against his skin—still golden from the extensive time he spent in the sun this summer. “I feel the magic between you and I…”
His smile grows wider as night begins to fall. He finally approaches the city, and he sighs beautifully with relief after the long, six-hour drive. He’s dressed all wrong, his palms are a little clammy over the steering wheel, and his stomach admittedly drops a sliver when he approaches (and passes) the Santa Fe sign.
So, maybe the fashion exploration results are a little taboo for the southern Midwest, but he really thinks he came into his own with it.
As if a switch has flipped inside him, he reads every street sign attentively, pulling the piece of lined paper out of his pocket with a random address scribbled on the page in faded black ink. His head flicks between the paper and the road; then a sign; then rinse and repeat. Until he finally turns onto a little two-way street, lined with an array of beautiful homes that he could only dream of seeing back in Boulder.
His foot eases on the gas, dragging along the street in a slow, careful manner as he scans the homes’ numbers. He nearly slams on the brake pedal upon reaching the number he’d written a week ago with the pen that read “Shoshone National Forest” in grossly-worn white lettering along the side.
1009, in bold numbering just beside the door. He pulls into an empty spot on the opposite side of the street, crumpling up the paper and tossing it into the passenger seat as he opens the truck door and steps out. Heeseung sticks out like a sore thumb; a bright red Ford Ranger parked near a bunch of small, neutral-toned Pontiacs and Hatchbacks, almost there to taunt him. On a normal day, he seems out of place, but in a realm of unfamiliarity, it’s multiplied tenfold.
The truck locks with a click, and he crosses the road with a jog, walking down the long, intimidating driveway until he steps onto the porch surrounding the home’s front entrance. His feet thump on the wood; he tries to keep quiet, given the late hour.
He plants his feet in front of the door and takes a long, careful, deep breath that resonates in his stomach. With trembling hands, he adjusts his collar and smooths over the fabric at his waist. He dons a white blazer with a turquoise t-shirt underneath and a pair of jeans that just barely match. But what truly sticks out is a small handkerchief, tied carefully around a belt loop at his side. His outfit contradicts the one he wore consistently in the forest. And his hair slicks back with a small glob of gel that he’d applied earlier, before leaving his house.
Then, his fingers lift to the doorbell and press; just one soft ring that he barely hears through the thin veil separating him from who he believes to be on the inside. And finally—just a few short moments later—the door slowly swings open, revealing exactly what he hoped he’d see.
Your hand falls limp at your side, and your lips part, damp hair emitting the gentle scent of cherries and blossoms from your shampoo. The strength in your body reduces to the size of a walnut, lodging itself in your throat and making it impossible to breathe. Your eyes light up—study the figure of the man who’d flipped your world upside down without even realizing it, now standing before you with soft eyes that beg you not to close the door.
“Heeseung,” your voice a frail whisper as your fingers press firmer around the door’s edge, knuckles slowly turning white.
Heeseung steps closer, a smile glued so perfectly onto his face that no amount of soap and water could rub it off. His fingers brush over yours at your side, carefully slipping further until they’re meshed together as one, the memory of summer suddenly at the forefront of your mind.
“Can I come in?”
The smile he’d grown accustomed to after just one night slowly lights up your face, and your fingers curl tighter around his, returning his hold as if his hand is the only one ever meant to be slipped into yours again. The moment your head dips into a nod—so gingerly that he nearly doesn’t notice—his feet carry him another inch closer, then another, until he’s looking down at you like you’re the most precious thing the world has to offer.
“You found me,” you whisper, only loudly enough that he can hear. “You really think I’m worth it?”
“You’ve always been worth finding, Y/N,” he whispers back, and with that, cranes his neck down slowly, leaving room for you to pull back.
But you don’t; you meet him halfway, instead, with more conviction than you’ve ever had. And the moment his lips finally touch yours after so many months of uncertainty, the ache buried in his heart finally begins to subside. He swears he can feel the final piece of his life finally slide into place.
He decides then—in the middle of the night, standing on the porch at some random house in Santa Fe—that he never wants to let you go, again.
Seven years ago, a parasite fell from the sky and rewrote the boundaries of biology, blurring the line between host and invader. Park Jongseong, now exists in the in-between, neither fully human nor entirely parasite, a hybrid organism shaped by adaptation and survival. Hunted by those who fear what they cannot categorize, he searches for meaning in the world—and finds it in you.
content tags/warnings: sci-fi— bio thriller, parasite hybrid pjs, parasite hybrid reader, they fight when they first met. body horror, graphic violence, injury and blood, death/near-death experiences, militarization, post-traumatic themes, mild animal endangerment. explicit content (smut): unprotected sex, fingering, cunilingus, multiple sex position (their refractory period is broken, they keep going and going), double penetration, tentacles (?), monster fucking. READER DISCRETION IS ADVICED. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT!! WC: 23.1K
note: the idea of monster and parasites in the story is inspired by the kdrama and anime: parasyte. but the biology, and how they merged was slightly different and some of it was my own writing.
Human psychology is deeply rooted in a survival mechanism that instinctively reacts with fear toward the unknown.
This fear, often manifesting as hostility, arises when individuals encounter phenomena that defy their understanding. When faced with the unfamiliar—particularly that which cannot be categorized within existing frameworks—the response is often defensive aggression. The unfamiliar is perceived as a threat, and in the absence of comprehension, elimination becomes the perceived solution.
Approximately seven years ago, Earth began experiencing a biological incursion in the form of a parasitic organism of unknown origin. This entity operates by infecting human hosts, initiating a fatal transformation process. The host is systematically destroyed at a cellular and cognitive level, as the parasite integrates with and ultimately overrides the nervous system and bodily structure.
Upon successful assimilation, the parasite reconstitutes the human form into a highly adaptive biomechanical entity capable of extreme morphogenesis. These entities exhibit advanced shapeshifting capabilities, able to reconfigure their structure into a variety of forms and tools, limited only by mass and matter conservation principles.
Neurologically, the parasite erases the host's personality and emotional spectrum, replacing it with a singular directive: to propagate through predation and infiltration. These organisms display a rudimentary form of consciousness, retaining fragments of the host's memories for navigational or social camouflage but are devoid of empathy or emotional regulation. Their cognitive processes are entirely geared toward strategic murder and survival.
Park Jongseong is different.
He adjusted his glasses, eyes fixed on the monitor displaying his own cellular data. Streams of biological activity lit up the screen—cells dividing, mutating, adapting. He was lucky to have access to advanced medical equipment. After all, he was a doctor.
Humans are naturally afraid of what they don't understand. It's part of how the brain reacts to threats—if something doesn't fit into what's familiar, the instinct is fear, often followed by violence. That's how humanity responds to the unknown: eliminate it.
Jongseong had become the unknown.
He didn't know what he was anymore. His thoughts still felt like his own. He still felt emotion, empathy, fear, curiosity. Yet something deep inside had changed. His body was no longer entirely human. Something else lived in his blood.
But with Jongseong, something went wrong—or maybe something went right.
The parasite had merged with him, not replaced him. His cells had changed, yes—they were stronger, more adaptive. He could feel the shift in his physiology: faster reflexes, enhanced senses, the strange ability to alter parts of his body at will. Yet his mind remained intact. His identity remained intact.
He was both parasite and human. A hybrid. An anomaly.
From a biological standpoint, it shouldn't be possible. The parasite is known to override the host completely—shutting down the brain, rewriting the nervous system, restructuring tissue on a molecular level. But in Park Jongseong's case, the process didn't go as expected. His consciousness remained. His emotions remained. He wasn't fully human anymore, but he wasn't fully parasite either.
And that made him dangerous—to both sides.
Creatures like him were being hunted by the government. Classified as biohazards. The official statement warned the public daily:
"Be careful around your friends, relatives, family—anyone could be infected. Parasites look just like us, until they kill."
Murder cases connected to parasitic activity filled the news. Victims were often found mutilated beyond recognition, their internal organs rearranged, their skin marked with unfamiliar growths. Fear spread faster than the infection itself. Jongseong watched the reports from his house, barely breathing. Every passing day made it harder to stay hidden.
If the government found him, they wouldn't ask questions. They'd dissect him alive—tear his mutated body apart in the name of research and national security.
"How do you identify a parasite?"
That was the question echoed by media and scientists. For humans, the method was crude but effective: parasites can't fully mimic human hair. A simple hair sample under a microscope reveals the truth—parasitic tissue lacks keratin structure, instead made of a flexible protein-carbon lattice designed to replicate appearance.
But parasites had their own way of detecting each other. A subtle biological signal—an acoustic resonance picked up only through the inner ear. Like a hidden frequency, only recognizable to those with the altered cochlear structure. Jongseong had experienced it more than once. He would walk past someone, hear that strange, low echo in his skull—and feel a sudden, icy stillness in his blood.
He wasn't alone. Parasites were organizing. At first, they were random killers. Now, they were moving in packs—coordinated, methodical. Adapting. Evolving. And so is he.
"That'll be 700 won," the cashier muttered, not bothering to meet his eyes.
Jongseong kept his head down, slipping the coins onto the counter. No conversation. No eye contact. He took the plastic bag with a silent nod, his fingers tightening around the thin handles before he turned and stepped back into the cold night.
Even with the parasite inside him, he still felt hunger—raw, physical. His body demanded energy like any other, though now his metabolism ran hotter, faster. He still craved food.
He still felt the ache of sadness, the longing to return to something normal. Something human.
But that life was gone.
The night air of Seoul stung against his skin, the cold seeping through his coat. He moved with the crowd, head low, blending in with the blur of footsteps, voices, and passing cars. Every sound echoed. The parasite had enhanced his senses, and sometimes the world was simply too loud.
Then he felt it, a low, familiar vibration in his inner ear—a biological resonance only detectable by parasite-modified auditory systems. His breath caught, and a pulse of instinctual fear ran through him. He looked around carefully, eyes scanning faces, shadows, movement. One of them was nearby.
His pace faltered. That's when he saw you.
You stood out—not because of your appearance, but because of what you did. In the middle of the crosswalk, your hand casually brushed your ear. A subtle motion, barely noticeable to anyone else, but to him it screamed recognition.
You were a parasite.
His brows drew together. Something was off. Parasites usually acted in groups—hunting together, assimilating their targets with military precision. If you were one of them, you should've engaged him.
But you didn't. You kept walking, fast and purposeful. Almost like... you were running away.
Jongseong stayed still for a moment, the bag of food hanging from his hand, forgotten. His heartbeat was heavy in his ears, half fear, and half curiosity. Why would a parasite avoid confrontation?
Jongseong moved. Not fast, not slow—just enough to stay behind you without drawing attention. He weaved through the crowd with quiet precision, his eyes fixed on the back of your coat. The city noise drowned under the low pulse still humming in his inner ear. It wasn't strong. Just enough to confirm you were still nearby. Still parasite.
The further you walked, the thinner the crowd became. The bright shops faded behind them, replaced by rusted gates, shuttered storefronts, and flickering neon signs. This was the forgotten edge of the city. The place people passed through quickly. The place no one paid attention to.
You turned down a narrow alley.
Jongseong hesitated at the entrance. The cold bit harder here, funneled between brick and concrete. His fingers curled, feeling the familiar tension in his muscles—his body silently preparing to shift if needed. Bone could become blade in less than a second now. But he held it back.
He stepped in. The alley stretched narrow, damp, littered with the scent of oil, metal, and old rain. Pipes hissed from the walls. Ahead, your footsteps had stopped. You were waiting.
When he turned the final corner, he found you standing in front of a rusted service door leading into a forgotten subway access station.
You didn't move. Neither did he.
"If you're looking for another kin," you snarled without turning, "then get the fuck out and leave me alone. I'm not one of them."
Your voice was sharp making Jongseong's body tensed instantly. The shift in your tone, the unnatural dilation of your pupils, set off every instinct in him. His hand inched slightly to the side, fingers twitching, ready to reconfigure.
Then it happened. Too fast to follow with human eyes.
Your right shoulder warped violently—tissue splitting and reshaping into something jagged, organic, and grotesque. It extended outward, not as a limb but as a weapon—wing-like in structure, but edged with hooked thorns.
You lunged, Jongseong barely reacted in time, his arm snapping up, skin splitting as a skin liked carapace laced with tendon grew along his forearm—absorbing the blow with a sickening crack of thorn against hardened flesh.
He staggered back, eyes narrowed, breathing sharp.
"You kept your mind," he growled, muscles tensed, his cells humming beneath his skin, ready to shift again. "But you're still dangerous."
Your shoulder pulsed with unnatural motion, the wing-like appendage twitching as it began to fold back. "I don't want to be part of your kin," you hissed, your voice jagged with fury. "Leave me the fuck alone. I am not a monster like you!"
Jongseong's eyes widened. He barely had time to respond before you surged forward. The air tore around you as your body shifted mid-motion—bone spiking from your forearm like a serrated blade. You slashed.
He ducked, sparks flying as your weapon scraped against the metal wall. He twisted, arm reforming into hardened muscle and armor-like plating, launching a counterstrike aimed at your ribs.
You blocked with an organic shield that burst from your side—scaled and ridged like insect chitin. The impact sent both of you skidding back across the damp concrete.
Your eyes met again. Rage. Confusion. Pain.
Jongseong lunged first this time, his limbs reshaping with practiced speed—flesh snapping, tendons stretching. A blade grew from his wrist like a fang of obsidian, and he swung it toward your shoulder.
You caught it, barehanded.
Your arm, now half-shifted and armored, trembled with force as it held his blade in place. But what caught him wasn't your strength—it was your face. You weren't snarling anymore. You were breathing hard. Your eyes... they were terrified.
Your reaction wasn't instinctual. It wasn't predatory. You had hesitated. Controlled your form. Redirected the attack instead of going for the kill. Just like him.
Jongseong pulled back, staggering a step. His breathing slowed. "You're... like me."
You stood still, chest rising and falling. The bone blade on your forearm quivered, then receded slowly, melting back beneath your skin.
"Don't say that," you whispered, voice cracking. "Don't compare me to you."
But the truth was there—in the way your limbs didn't shift fully, in the way your face still held emotion, conscience, even after a violent clash. You hadn't killed him when you had the chance. You chose not to.
"I'm a hybrid," Jongseong whispered, "I'm not a monster. I'm not human either. I assume you are too."
You didn't answer right away. Your eyes flicked toward the tunnel, where the distant clicking echoed like something crawling just beyond the light. Then, slowly, you turned back to him. Your jaw clenched, the muscles in your cheek twitching like you were holding something in.
"I'm a human." It sounded more like a plea than a statement. "I was—" you paused, blinking hard, "—I was a person. I had a name. A home. I worked a job. I went to cafés and hated Mondays. I had a cat."
Jongseong didn't move.
"I wasn't this," you went on, your voice rising. "I didn't ask for it. I woke up one day and everything was... different. My skin felt wrong. I couldn't stop hearing things. Smelling things. My body... it started moving on its own. Changing. Splitting open."
Your breathing quickened. "And now I can feel it, all the time. In my bones. In my mind. Whispering. Pulling that doesn't belong to me."
Your eyes met his—wide, wet, terrified. "I don't want to be what you are."
Jongseong lowered his gaze for a moment. He understood that look. He'd seen it in the mirror more than once.
"I didn't want this either," he said quietly. He took a slow, cautious step forward, then crouched to your level, his voice soft—human.
"I was a doctor," he said, almost with a tired smile. "Worked long shifts. Rarely slept. I used to stress-eat... corn, of all things. Still do. I don't know why. Guess the parasite didn't kill that part of me."
You blinked, confused by the strange confession. But it grounded you, if only for a moment.
"I think about who I used to be all the time," he continued. "That guy who thought medicine could fix anything. Who didn't believe in monsters—just diseases, mutations, pathology." He paused, watching your face. "Then I became the thing we used to study. And I realized something... I'm still here. Somewhere beneath all of this."
His fingers lightly tapped his chest.
Your gaze dropped, lashes trembling as you stared at the space between your knees, the damp concrete still stained from your earlier strike. You didn't say anything right away. Your breathing was shallow—measured, like you were trying not to fall apart.
"I used to love the rain," you said quietly, almost to yourself. "Now it just smells like metal and rust and... blood."
Jongseong didn't interrupt. He stayed crouched, steady, watching you.
"I haven't slept in two weeks. Not really. I keep waking up in the middle of the night with my hands turned into something else. Blades. Claws. Once, it was... wings." You gave a bitter laugh, dry and hollow. "I think they were wings. They tore the ceiling fan clean off."
"I keep thinking if I ignore it, if I just pretend hard enough, it'll go away. But it's always there. Under my skin. In my head."
Jongseong's voice came calm, anchored. "You're not imagining it. It's real. And it's not going away."
Your hands clenched into fists. "Then what's the point of fighting it?"
He didn't answer immediately. He sat down fully, folding his arms over his knees, not trying to lecture you but to just exist beside you.
"I fight it because I still remember what it felt like to make people better," he said. "Because I don't want to lose that part of me. Even if it's buried under everything else." He glanced at you. "Because maybe... if I keep holding onto it, I can be something in between. Not human, not parasite. Something new."
You shook your head. "That sounds like a lie people tell themselves to feel less afraid."
"Maybe it is," he admitted. "But it keeps me sane."
Another silence settled in. Then, a small voice escaped you—quiet, brittle. "I used to sing. Just... badly. In the car. In the shower. Everywhere. And now when I try, nothing comes out. Like my voice doesn't belong to me anymore."
Jongseong looked at you. "That part's still there. Buried, but not gone."
You blinked rapidly, jaw tightening. For a moment, neither of you spoke. The air between you carried a strange weight—grief, recognition, something neither of you could name but both felt. The bond of shared monstrosity. Of shared humanity refusing to die.
Then, softly, Jongseong added, "We don't have to be monsters, even if that's what we've become. We get to choose."
You were quiet for a moment, staring down at the cracks in the pavement. Your voice came small, almost like you were afraid the answer would make it more real.
"How long have you been... like this?"
Jongseong's gaze drifted for a second, remembering. "Two and a half years," he said quietly.
You looked up at him, your voice trembling. "Two months. That's how long it's been for me."
He nodded, listening.
"I ran away from home when I realized what was happening to me," you continued. "I couldn't stay. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I couldn't even trust myself." You exhaled shakily, brushing your palm across your face as if trying to wipe the memory away.
"I ran into a parasite once," you said. "Fully changed. No humanity left. Said he'd been like that for two years."
"What did he do?" Jongseong asked, already suspecting the answer.
"When he felt that I wasn't like him... he didn't speak. He just attacked. Like I was an error. A mutation. Something that needed to be erased."
Jongseong's jaw tightened. "You barely survived."
You nodded. "He tore my side open. I didn't even realize I could heal until after." The memory made you shudder.
"I thought maybe I could hide. Blend in. Pretend I was still normal. But that encounter changed everything. I knew then... there was no going back."
Jongseong looked at you, really looked, and said gently, "You've made it this far on your own. That counts for something."
You laughed bitterly. "Does it?"
"It does," he said. "Because most wouldn't have."
"The parasite in us... it doesn't understand mercy. Or hesitation. The fact that you've held on this long, that you chose not to give in—that means you're still you."
Your eyes flicked to him, unsure. "And if I stop choosing?"
"Then I'll stop you," he said, not as a threat, but as a promise. You blinked, searching his face for cruelty and finding only empathy.
It was strange, in a quiet way—comforting—to be near someone like you. Someone who understood. That's how you would describe it. A sense of relief wrapped in unease. You were still hiding, but not really. Not anymore.
You learned his name is Park Jongseong. He told you in passing, but you held onto it. Jongseong, meaning "collecting stars." It made you smile softly, secretly. How fitting, you thought, for someone piecing himself back together from fragments of something once human.
He gestured toward a small kit laid out between you. "Try to relax. I'm going to insert a needle—just a quick sample," he said, already prepping the syringe.
You stared at him, arching a brow, half laughing. "You know I merged my body with blades, right? A needle isn't exactly nightmare fuel, Dr. Park Jongseong."
He let out a quiet breath of amusement, the corner of his mouth lifting into a subtle, reluctant smile. It was the first expression that looked genuinely human since you'd met him. Still, he moved with the calm, clinical precision of someone who'd done this thousands of times. His hands didn't shake, and his voice stayed even.
You extended your arm, the skin unusually smooth where it had once morphed—no visible scars.
He carefully inserted the needle into your arm. The sensation was oddly muted—your pain receptors dulled, altered by the parasite. Your blood didn't flow quite like before; it was slightly denser and darker.
"This should be enough," Jongseong murmured, capping the vial. "I'll isolate the DNA structure, run it against my own. I want to see how your immune system adapted. If your T-cells underwent the same mutations."
You looked at him curiously. "You think we mutated differently?"
"I think we merged differently," he said, eyes flicking to his portable scanner. "The parasite doesn't always follow the same pattern. In most hosts, it hijacks the immune system completely—overrides all genetic repair functions, takes full control. But in us..."
"It coexists," you said softly, finishing his thought.
He nodded. "Exactly. It integrates rather than eliminates. Your T-cells should be producing chimeric proteins—part human, part parasite. Like mine."
You tilted your head, intrigued despite yourself. "You ever seen that happen before?"
He shook his head. "No. Just us."
You both sat in silence for a moment, the quiet hum of his scanner whirring softly as it began processing. Data streamed across the small screen, lines of genetic code scrolling faster than most could read.
"It's weird," you said. "I hated this thing inside me. Still do. But sitting here... I feel like I'm finally studying it. Like it's not just happening to me anymore. I'm taking it back."
Jongseong looked up from the scanner. "Exactly. That's what I've been doing for two years. Trying to understand it."
You watched him work. There was a quiet intensity to the way he moved, so focused, almost surgical. His fingers danced over the scanner's interface, eyes tracking streams of data with an ease. But your gaze wasn't on the screen.
You studied him. His nose was too pointed, almost sculpted. His jaw, sharp like it had been carved with purpose. The light caught on the angles of his face, shadows tracing across his skin like ink. His raven-black hair fell slightly over his brow, just messy enough to look deliberate, and yet... it suited him perfectly.
And his eyes, sharp, eagle-like. At first glance, they looked cold. Angry, even. The kind of gaze that could cut. But as you kept watching, you saw through it. There was no rage behind them. Only exhaustion and softness.
"I can feel you staring," he said suddenly, not looking up from the scanner.
You blinked, caught off guard. "You have a strangely symmetrical face."
He smirked faintly, still focused on the readout. "Years of stress must have evened me out."
"I think you're too pretty to be a walking biohazard," you added dryly.
That made him glance at you, a flicker of amusement breaking through the wall of control. "That's not usually the first thing people say when they see me split my arm open."
You tilted your head. "It's the second thing."
He huffed a quiet laugh. Just for a moment, you saw it—the man beneath the monster. The one who used to save lives, who still wanted to, even if he didn't say it aloud.
"I used to keep my reflection covered," you admitted, your voice softening. "Couldn't look at my own eyes. I was afraid one day they'd stop looking like mine."
He didn't respond right away. Just stared down at the glowing genetic map on the screen, jaw tight. Then he said, "Your eyes still look human to me."
Your cheeks flushed, the blood rising unbidden. A strange irony, considering how much your blood had changed, but it felt too human.
After the blood draw, he insisted on running a full assessment—"purely diagnostic," he said, slipping back into the old habits of a physician. His voice turned more analytical. But his touch remained cautious, and gentle.
You sat on the metal examination table, legs swinging slightly, eyes drifting over the cluttered shelves and half-finished notes pinned across the wall. He moved in the background, scanning a new set of neural data. But your attention wasn't on the screen.
"Do you feel lonely in here?" you asked softly, not looking at him.
He didn't answer immediately. Just continued working for a few seconds, then said, "I don't notice anymore."
You didn't believe him. You don't think he did either.
After another minute passed, your voice returned, gentler. "What happened? When you first realized you were like this? Did you just... stop being a doctor?"
Jongseong paused, then turned slightly, leaning back against the counter. The light from the scanner flickered behind him, "I was attacked by a gang," he said flatly. "Back alley. They thought I had money. I lost count after the twentieth cut."
You stared at him, stunned.
"I had thirty-five knife wounds across my torso, chest, and abdomen," he continued, "deep lacerations. Organ damage. Multiple perforations. I was dying. I think... I was dead."
You swallowed hard, eyes fixed on him.
"I assume the parasite entered my body when I hit the threshold," he said. "Critical condition. Immune system collapsed. Internal bleeding. It's my theory that the parasite thrives more when the host is on the edge—when the system is weak enough to take, but not too far gone to recover."
His gaze lowered to your arm where the sample had been drawn. "My theory is... I wasn't strong enough to resist it. That's why I didn't die like the others. The parasite didn't need to fight me. It just filled in what was already broken."
"So, you think it chose you because you were weak?"
He met your eyes again. "I think it needed someone weak. It needed space to grow."
A pause. His voice softened. "But maybe... maybe that's also why we didn't become them. Because we didn't fight it like a war. We... merged."
You shifted slightly, the sterile metal of the table cold under your fingertips. "You think that's why I'm still here, too?"
Jongseong nodded. "Your neural scans still show strong activity in the amygdala, the hippocampus. Emotional processing, memory retention. That's rare in infected hosts. Most show degeneration within a week of full takeover."
"And mine?"
He turned the screen slightly to show you. "Yours are still human. Intact. Maybe even more responsive than average."
You blinked. "So I'm... emotionally stronger?"
He gave a faint, crooked smile. "Or just more stubborn."
You laughed under your breath, soft eyes lingering on him, the curve of your smile not wide, but real. For a moment, Jongseong couldn't look away.
There was something in your expression that unsettled him more than any mutation, more than any parasite or hybrid anomaly. It was the trace of comfort. The ghost of peace in a body that shouldn't have had room for it.
On another day, beneath the soft whir of outdated HVAC vents and the mechanical rhythm of genetic sequencing equipment, your voice stirred.
"What happens to the parasite inside us?" you asked. "Where does it go?"
He didn't answer at first. Jongseong stood across the room, bare-chested, his skin partially illuminated by the sterile blue glow of the diagnostic interface. He was facing a mirror bolted to the wall—cracked slightly near the corner, the silver peeling at the edges. He hadn't looked into it for a long time. Not really.
But today, he was watching himself. And in the reflection, he saw you, standing behind him, the question still hovering in the air. He held your gaze for a second through the mirror, then turned back to his own reflection.
"I don't know," he said eventually. His voice was calm, but not detached. He was thinking—hard. "At least, in my case, I don't feel anything inside anymore. Not like those early days, when it felt like something was pushing... crawling beneath my skin. That pressure's gone."
He paused, lifting his hand, flexing his fingers slowly—watching the tendons shift under his skin.
"It's like... I consumed it," he said quietly. "Or maybe my body did. My cells stopped resisting. Stopped treating it as foreign. They absorbed it."
"You think your immune system... adapted?"
"Yes," he said, nodding faintly. "I've run thousands of blood scans. The parasite's original RNA is still there, but it's no longer dominant. It's dormant. Integrated. Like mitochondria."
You raised your brow. "You're saying it's symbiotic."
"More than that," he replied. "It's part of my physiology. My T-cells don't fight it. They use it. They've evolved—specialized to incorporate its functions. Shape-shifting, cellular regeneration, neural acceleration. My body didn't reject the parasite."
The parasite didn't dominate him. It became part of him.
You exhaled slowly, your voice soft, almost like you were speaking to yourself. "You're still human, after all..."
He didn't respond, his gaze lingered on you.
You looked down at your hands, turning one over, flexing your fingers. "You and the parasite... you didn't fight each other. You merged." You hesitated, the word strange on your tongue. "I don't even know if merge is the right term. That makes it sound clean. Voluntary."
Jongseong turned to face you fully now, taking a slow step closer. "It wasn't clean," he said. "And it sure as hell wasn't voluntary."
You looked up at him again.
"It was pain. Constant. Days of fevers, hallucinations, muscles tearing themselves apart. My nervous system was rewriting itself in real-time. I could feel my own memories slipping... then coming back sharper. Warped, like they'd been filtered through something else."
He tapped his temple once. "I didn't think I was going to survive it. I shouldn't have. But something inside me didn't break. It adapted. And when the parasite realized it couldn't overwrite me, it... integrated. Not by choice. By necessity."
Your brows furrowed slightly. "You're saying it didn't want you like that?"
"The parasite wants dominance," Jongseong said. "Control. But when it senses it can't win, it changes strategy. Tries to preserve itself through compromise. It's not a thinking organism, not in the way we are—but it learns."
You nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the cracked mirror behind him. "Then maybe it's not about merging or fighting. Maybe it's about outlasting it."
He studied you carefully, the muscles in his jaw flexing just slightly before he spoke.
"Exactly. If you can hold on long enough, if you can stay yourself through the pain... you don't lose. You evolve."
You looked down again, thinking of all the moments you thought you were slipping. All the nights your body changed without your permission. All the times you'd woken up shaking, afraid of your own skin.
And yet... you were still here.
You looked down at your hands, flexing your fingers slowly. The skin looked normal now. "My hand hurts sometimes," you admitted, voice quiet. "It's like... a pressure building under the bone. I can control my shifting, but sometimes it feels like something else is doing it for me."
Your eyes lingered on your arm as if it might betray you in the next breath.
"I feel like I'm not me."
"That's normal," he said. "You're still only two months in. Your body's not fully stabilized yet. It takes time. The neural pathways between your conscious mind and the parasite's reactive systems are still syncing."
You glanced up at him. "That sounds way too clinical for my hand turns into a blade without asking."
He smirked faintly. "Point is—you'll get used to it. Eventually, the signals align. You won't have to fight for control. You'll just be in control."
You hesitated, chewing the inside of your cheek. "But what if I don't?"
His smile faded, but his expression didn't turn cold. "Remember what I said when we first met?" he asked.
You nodded slowly, eyes narrowing as the memory stirred. Jongseong gave a soft tired smile. "I'll stop you."
You stared at him, reading the weight behind the words. "And you'd really do it?" you asked.
"If it came to that," he said, without hesitation. "If you lost yourself completely—if there was no coming back—then yeah. I would."
"But not because I see you as a threat," he added. "Because I'd want someone to do the same for me."
"I don't want to become something I'd have to be stopped from," you whispered.
"Then don't," he said simply.
Another day blurred into a week, and somehow, it became routine.
You and Jongseong were always near each other now. You simply showed up, and he never asked you to leave.
Every morning, without fail, you arrived at his doorstep. Sometimes barefoot, sometimes holding a plastic bag of random things you'd picked up—food, spare clothes, old electronics scavenged from forgotten corners of the city. Always with that same wide smile and a casual wave, like the world hadn't tried to erase you.
His home sat far from the crowded parts of Seoul, nestled in the quiet sprawl of the outer districts—secluded enough that no one asked questions, yet comfortable in a way that surprised you. It wasn't sterile or abandoned. It was... lived in. Warm wood tones, clean tile, books stacked in corners, a faint smell of roasted coffee in the mornings.
You didn't expect someone like him to have soft blankets and expensive sheets. But then again, he had been a doctor. Years of relentless work had filled his bank account even as it slowly emptied him. He rarely touched the money now, except to keep the house running and the lab functional. The rest stayed untouched, gathering dust, like a forgotten version of himself.
Still, his kitchen was well-stocked. His bed was always made. And now, somehow, you had become part of that space.
One quiet afternoon, sunlight filtered through the wide windows, casting long golden shadows across the hardwood floor. You stood barefoot in his living room, playfully holding your arm out as it began to shift.
Jongseong watched from the couch, sipping lukewarm tea, his eyes narrowed in equal parts curiosity and caution.
"It's my first time encountering someone who can shape their hand into wings," he said.
You smirked and raised your hand, flesh trembling, tendons coiling and restructuring. The skin along your forearm peeled open in seamless, silent motion, splitting into more organic. A full wing unfurled—sleek and wide, nearly as tall as you. Its edges were curved like a crescent, the shape aerodynamic but jagged, ringed with short, blade-like protrusions.
It was the color of your skin, yet it glinted faintly in the light.
"Most parasites use their heads," Jongseong murmured, leaning forward slightly. "They split open like flower petals—exposing core structures for attack or communication."
He stood and stepped closer, gaze fixed on your transformed arm. "But this... this is different. It's not just offensive. It's built for movement. Flight, maybe. Or at least gliding. Your body's adapting beyond the base strain."
You watched his fascination with a faint grin. He spoke like a scientist.
"Does your head still hurt?" he asked, finally meeting your eyes.
You hesitated for a moment, then shook your head. "Not anymore," you said softly. "I started doing what you told me. Focusing on breathing. Slowing everything down when it starts building up."
He nodded, approving. "The headaches come from pressure. When the nervous system tries to regulate a function it doesn't fully understand. But when you center your breathing, you give the brain a stable pattern—something to anchor the mutation against."
You laughed a little. "You sound like a meditation app."
"Doctor first," he replied, raising a brow. "Monster second."
You folded the wing back into your arm slowly, watching as the skin sealed over again, leaving no sign it had ever been anything else. Jongseong handed you a towel to wipe the sweat off your hands—it wasn't painful anymore, but it still took effort.
"Do you ever get tired of analyzing me?" you teased, dabbing your brow.
"Not yet," he said. "You're the only other hybrid I've ever met. Every reaction you have, every adaptation—it all tells me more about how this thing works."
You leaned back against the kitchen counter, looking at him with warmth. "So I'm your favorite test subject?"
He smiled faintly. "You're the only one who smiles back."
You started living around him—and it wasn't planned. It just... happened.
There was no formal moment when it became your place too. You simply never left. You came in, stayed for a while, and then stayed a little longer. Your bag ended up in the corner of his hallway. A change of clothes appeared on the back of his chair. Your toothbrush found its way into a cup next to his. No one said anything.
His laboratory is tucked beneath the basement. Stainless steel counters were cluttered with vials, blood samples, biofeedback equipment, and an old centrifuge that rattled every time it spun. Some walls were covered with whiteboards, sketched with frantic genetic maps, neural networks, protein structures, and lines of code that only made partial sense to you.
You stood in the doorway for a long time watching him. Despite not wearing a coat or a stethoscope anymore, he was still a doctor. He spent hours down there, alone, dissecting the mystery of what you both had become. Studying the hybrid genome, comparing tissue reactions, tracking metabolic rates, rebuilding broken sequences.
He never said it, but you knew he wasn't doing it for science.
He was doing it to keep himself sane.
So, you stayed. And while he worked, you started moving through the rest of the house. Dust had gathered in the corners of rooms he didn't use. Shelves were layered with months of settled particles, and forgotten books lay unopened beneath it. So you cleaned. One room at a time.
You cooked, mostly for yourself at first. But eventually, you started making enough for two. He always ate. Silently, usually. But he ate. Sometimes with a quiet compliment, sometimes with a small smile.
Later, you found the backyard—overgrown, wild, and tired. The flower beds were choked by weeds, the soil cracked from neglect. You didn't ask permission. You just started clearing it out. Pulling weeds. Watering the roots that still had life left in them. Then you bought seeds, colorful ones: snapdragons, asters, cosmos. Something bright. Something that still dared to bloom.
He noticed, of course. But he didn't stop you.
Sometimes, at night, when the house was still and the garden smelled faintly of wet soil, you found yourself staring at the ceiling of the guest room—Jongseong's oversized hoodie draped around your shoulders, warm with his scent—and wondered:
Is this what being human still feels like?
You asked yourself the question over and over, unsure of the answer. You still laughed. You still dreamed. You still loved food, flowers, music. You still worried.
Your mind drifted to things you hadn't let yourself think about in weeks. Your mother. Your cat. Your home.
The lie you told when you disappeared—telling your family you'd run off with someone. You'd sent one message. Just one. And never replied again.
Do they hate me for it? you wondered. Do they think I'm alive? Do they sit at the dinner table and leave your place empty, hoping?
The thought made you smile—but it was the kind of smile that didn't reach your eyes.
You snorted under your breath, turning onto your side.
Because now, in some twisted, literal sense, you were living with a guy. A guy who wasn't exactly human anymore. A guy who slept only four hours a night and spent the rest of his time trying to outsmart biology. A guy whose hands could become blades. Whose eyes still softened when he thought you weren't watching.
A guy who hadn't kicked you out. Who never would.
"You can shift your hands without blades?"
Your eyes widened as you stared at Jongseong, the question tumbling from your lips. The very idea felt foreign—impossible, even. Your own shifting had always come with sharp edges, bone-splitting pain, and the quiet terror that you might lose control if you shaped too far.
Jongseong glanced down at his hands, calm and controlled. Then, with a quiet exhale, he lifted one hand and extended it toward you, palm up. "Watch," he said simply.
His dark eyes shifted—pupils dilating slightly, the irises deepening in color until they almost looked black, consuming the natural brown. You knew what that meant. It was a physiological marker—hybrid activation. Your eyes did the same when you shifted. His were sharp, but not hostile, focused, but unthreatening.
The structure of his hand started to ripple not violently, not like yours usually did. No sharp angles, no sudden protrusions of bone or blade. The skin thinned and stretched, flowing in a fluid-like motion that reminded you of melting wax. It wasn't grotesque—it was graceful.
His fingers elongated and curved slightly. From the base of his palm, tendrils began to unfurl—slender, flexible, organic. Not quite like vines, not quite like tentacles, but something in-between. Soft ridges lined their surfaces. They pulsed faintly with life, reacting to the air, to temperature, to you.
They didn't glint like blades. They didn't threaten. They moved with purpose.
Your breath caught as you watched, caught between horror and awe.
"How...?" you whispered.
Jongseong didn't smile, but there was a quiet light in his eyes. "The parasite doesn't only build weapons. It builds tools—if you teach it to."
You stepped closer, cautiously, drawn to the strange, mesmerizing movement of his altered hand. "I thought it only knew how to kill."
"So did I," he said. "At first. But then I started thinking like it. Observing. Not just resisting. It reacts to survival instinct, yes—but it also responds to intention. Will."
He slowly closed his hand, the tendrils retracting fluidly, vanishing back into his skin as the flesh reformed and returned to normal.
You blinked, letting out a slow breath. "Wow. That's impressive but... completely useless," you said, your voice laced with sarcasm.
Jongseong's eyes returned to their usual deep brown, pupils shrinking, the hybrid dilation fading. He looked up at you, a beat of silence passing then he laughed.
It was soft, unguarded. A sound you hadn't heard often from him, but when it came, it felt genuine, surprisingly warm. "Well, thanks," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Glad to know my non-lethal biological innovation gets such rave reviews."
You shrugged, trying not to smile. "Sorry, Dr. Frankenstein. I just can't think of a practical use for creepy space noodles."
"Tactile sensory extensions," he corrected with mock offense. "They can be used to detect surface tension, pressure shifts, chemical traces—"
"So basically... weird science-fingers."
Jongseong gave you a long, theatrical sigh, one hand dragging down his face in mock despair, though the amused curve of his mouth betrayed him.
"You know what? Fuck it," he muttered, turning back to his workstation, but not before you caught the upward twitch of his lips.
Another month drifted by.
You woke, cooked, trained, experimented, and sometimes just existed with Jongseong in quiet companionship. The world outside still cracked and groaned with danger, but within the walls of his house, it was a different season.
And outside, life was starting to bloom.
The garden you once cleared had transformed. Where dry soil had stretched beneath tired weeds, color now flourished. The seeds you planted with no real hope had taken root. Soft petals in pinks, purples, and golds opened under the late spring sun, nodding gently with every breeze. You had come to love the quiet act of watering them in the morning, a grounding ritual. Something beautifully, stubbornly normal.
This morning, as dew still clung to the flowerbed leaves and your fingers dripped with the cool mist from the watering can, a small sound broke the usual silence.
A tiny cry. High-pitched. Fragile. You turned, instinctively alert. But it wasn't danger waiting for you in the corner of the fence.
It was a kitten. A small, orange-furred ball curled beneath the bushes—wide green eyes blinking up at you, damp fur clinging to its sides. It looked no older than a few weeks, its tiny ribs shifting with every shaky breath.
"Awww," you murmured, your voice softening as you crouched slowly to its level.
The kitten tilted its head but didn't run. You extended a hand carefully, fingers open, palm low.
"Hey, sweetheart... Where's your mommy?" you whispered.
It answered with a soft meow, barely more than a squeak, and nudged its head forward until it touched your fingers. Warmth bloomed in your chest, before you realized what you were doing, you scooped it gently into your arms, pressing it to your chest.
You didn't hesitate. You brought it inside.
When Jongseong stepped out of the lab hours later, adjusting the settings on his neural scanner, he stopped in the middle of the hallway.
You were sitting cross-legged on the couch with a towel-wrapped bundle in your lap. The orange kitten, freshly cleaned and fed, purred softly as it nuzzled your hand.
"You brought home a cat," he said flatly, blinking.
You looked up at him, eyes wide with innocent pride. "I named him Jongjong."
His expression flickered. "Jong... jong?"
You nodded with complete seriousness. "Because he's small. And soft. And a little grumpy."
Jongseong blinked again, then exhaled through his nose, half a laugh, half disbelief. "I can't decide if I'm offended or flattered."
"Oh, definitely flattered," you said with a grin. "He's the cutest thing I've seen since I moved in."
The kitten let out a mew, as if to confirm the sentiment. Jongseong stepped closer, crouching beside the couch to get a better look. The kitten stared back at him, unblinking, then gave a dramatic yawn and immediately fell asleep on your lap.
"He trusts you," Jongseong said, softer now.
You looked down at the little creature and ran your thumb gently between its ears. "He doesn't know what I am."
Jongseong was quiet for a moment. "Maybe that's the point."
You glanced at him.
"Maybe he just sees what's real," he added. "And not what we're afraid we've become."
You didn't answer right away. You just watched Jongjong breathe, tiny chest rising and falling against your arm, and felt the quiet weight of peace settle in the room like sunlight through the window.
Jongseong had spent years alone his house, surrounded by machines and memories. He thought solitude was necessary, that isolation kept him safe. That by keeping others out, he could contain the thing growing inside him, the part of him that wasn't entirely human anymore.
That was why, when you first asked him if he ever felt lonely, he hadn't known how to answer.
Now, he had an answer.
Yes.
Because since you arrived, he'd started to remember what it felt like not to be alone. And that contrast made the emptiness he'd grown used to feel sharper, heavier in retrospect. The silence he once embraced had been suffocating. But he hadn't noticed until it began to lift.
You filled the space with little things—sounds, gestures, life. The clink of ceramic mugs in the morning. The quiet murmur of your voice as you read out diagnostic data. The rustle of your clothes as you passed him in the hallway, always brushing just a little too close, like your gravity had started to pull on his.
He never told you that he started waking up before his alarm—not for research, but to hear you moving through the house. The sound of water boiling. The soft click of the stove. The faint hum of your voice when you thought no one could hear.
He never mentioned how he started leaving notes near your table. Little reminders. Jokes hidden inside formulas. Once, a crude sketch of a protein chain that somehow resembled a flower. You'd found it, looked at him with one raised brow, and said nothing, but your smile had lingered for hours.
Maybe you already knew.
Because some nights, when the house fell silent again—when the tunnel lights above the basement flickered and the lab's hum faded into a deeper hush—you would sit beside him on the couch, not asking questions, not filling the air with unnecessary words. Just being there. Shoulder to shoulder. Warm. Quiet.
And the silence didn't feel empty anymore.
"Peek-a-boo!"
Jongseong spun around and froze.
Your face had split clean down the middle, skin peeled open like flower petals under pressure, revealing the intricate folds of your brain, glistening and wet. Thorned tendrils coiled from within the exposed cavity, twitching slightly as if sensing the air. Despite the grotesque transformation, one half of your mouth was still smiling, playful, unbothered, as if this was just another joke between the two of you.
And somehow, impossibly, Jongseong found himself staring—not with fear, but with a strange, quiet awe.
Even like this warped, twisted, exposed, he still thought you were beautiful.
Terrifying, yes.
But beautiful.
Jongseong let out a sigh and pressed his lips to the rim of his coffee mug, hiding the curve of his smile behind it. He didn't laugh—barely. It wasn't that it wasn't disturbing. It was. You looked like something torn from a biology textbook on alien evolution.
With a twitch of muscle and membrane, your face knit itself back together, seamlessly folding in. The thorns retracted, the skin closed, the tremors stopped. You bounced on the balls of your feet, practically glowing with excitement.
"I learned that yesterday!" you said, beaming. "Can you do that too?!"
You looked at him like a child begging for a party trick, eyes wide, shining with that strange joy that came with discovering just how far the body could stretch before breaking.
Jongseong tilted his head, smile lingering at the edges of his lips. He set his coffee down on the lab table and stood slowly. "It's not exactly the same," he murmured, voice low and calm, "but... sure."
His jaw tightened, and for a moment, nothing happened.
Then his skin split—not down the middle like yours, but in five clean diagonal lines across his face. The motion was quiet, each line peeled open slightly, like vents adjusting to pressure. From the top of his forehead, the bone shifted and stretched, revealing a sliver of cerebral tissue beneath a thin veil of skin—pale, veined, faintly glowing. A single blade unfolded with a smooth, mechanical grace, jutting forward from the frontal bone, not sharp enough to kill, but certainly enough to threaten.
"That's... beautiful," you whispered.
He let the mutation retract slowly, each fracture sealing with precision. No blood. No pain. Just practiced control.
"I thought we were past the point of calling brain blades 'beautiful,'" he teased, reaching for his coffee again.
You shrugged. "I think we're past the point of pretending we're not fascinated with each other."
That silenced him for a second. You stepped in a little closer. Not touching—just close enough to share breath. Close enough to see your reflection in his eyes. "Is that why you looked at me like that?" you asked, voice quieter now. "When I split open?"
Jongseong didn't answer immediately. He studied your face—not the skin, not the features, but the you beneath it. The remnants of humanity still clinging to something that should've been lost. The way your voice still held inflection, still carried joy. The way your smile wasn't entirely biological, it came from memory, not muscle.
"Yes," he said finally. "Because no one's ever shown me something monstrous... and looked so alive doing it."
You didn't move. Neither did he.
You stood there, close enough that you could hear the soft intake of his breath, the quiet thrum of his altered heart beneath his ribs, beating in a rhythm that no longer matched human biology... yet somehow still made your chest ache.
You reached up slowly, not asking permission, not speaking, just brushing your fingertips along the faint lines that remained on his cheek. The skin was smooth, impossibly warm, as if something still lived just beneath the surface, twitching, waiting. He didn't flinch. If anything, he leaned into your touch, just a fraction subtle enough to be instinct, but intentional enough to mean something.
"You're always so careful," you whispered, your voice barely more than breath.
Jongseong's eyes met yours. "If I'm not, I might hurt you."
You smiled faintly. "Maybe I don't mind."
That earned a small, broken sound from him. He reached up, slowly, carefully, and took your hand in his. His thumb traced the inside of your wrist.
"I don't know what this is," you said softly, searching his face. "I don't know if it's real or just chemical—just mutation convincing us we're closer than we are."
His fingers laced between yours.
"Maybe it is chemical," he said. "But if that's true, then so is every heartbeat. Every kiss. Every touch humans have ever shared. Maybe we're just... another version of it now."
You stared at him for a long moment. Not a word passed between you. Then you leaned forward slowly, testing the air between your mouths like it was charged and he met you halfway.
It wasn't a desperate kiss. It wasn't rushed, or hungry, or tangled in panic. It was precise.
His lips were warm—almost too warm. His body still carried that inhuman heat, like the parasite burned deeper than blood. But you kissed him anyway, because in that heat, you felt something real. Something yours.
He drew you in gently, hand sliding behind your neck. You felt your body respond, you tilted your head, lips parting slightly, angling the kiss deeper, fuller. He tasted like cheap coffee and the metallic hint of sterile air, but it didn't matter.
"I used to think I'd die without ever feeling something like this again," he murmured.
You ran your fingers along his jaw, still touched by the faint lines of his previous transformation. "I thought I had already."
He smiled against your skin. "Guess we were both wrong."
Then his mouth was on yours again, this time deeper, more certain. Not rushed, but hungry. His hand slid down your spine, fingers curling at your waist as he drew you in until there was nothing but heat between you.
You gasped softly against his lips, the sound spilling from you before you could stop it. Your hands moved up, wrapping around his neck, fingers threading through his hair. He took that moment, his tongue slipped past your lips gliding against yours.
His hands were on your thighs, firm but gentle, and you responded without hesitation. In one motion, you jumped, legs wrapping around his waist, your bodies moving together. He didn't break the kiss—not even for a second—as he carried you with careful steps.
And then you felt it: the shift beneath your back, the familiar give of fabric and old springs. The soft mattress beneath you.
You exhaled as your spine met the bed, his weight settling over you. His lips moved from yours, dragging downward, slower along the edge of your jaw, then to the tender skin just below your ear, and further down to the place where your pulse fluttered.
"Jongseong," you whispered, your voice shaky, half-lost in the sensation, as his mouth lingered at your neck. You felt the sharp heat of his breath, then the sudden sting of teeth—not enough to break skin, just to claim it.
He groaned against your throat, the sound guttural, vibrating against your skin as his hips pressed down, grinding against yours with a rhythm that sent sparks through your nerves.
"Do parasites get this horny?" he murmured. You laughed, high and breathy, your hips tilting up to meet his. The movement drew a sharp moan from both of you as friction met heat, and the space between you disappeared again.
"Maybe it's just us," you said, fingers digging into his back. "Maybe we're the broken ones who feel too much."
His forehead pressed to yours, his lips hovering just above your mouth as he whispered, "Then I never want to be fixed."
He shifted his weight, sitting back just enough to reach for the hem of your shirt. You lifted your arms without hesitation, eager, your skin already humming with anticipation. The fabric peeled away easily, and the moment the cold air kissed your bare skin, a shiver ran through you.
Jongseong's gaze darkened.
"Shit..." he murmured under his breath, almost like he couldn't help it. Then his mouth was on yours again—hotter now, more desperate. His hands braced your hips as you reached between your bodies, finding the waistband of his pants and slipping your fingers underneath. You cupped him through the fabric, palm slow and the sound he made into your mouth was something deep. His hips jolted, twitching into your hand, hungry for more.
Your bra was the next to go, tossed carelessly across the room. The moment it was gone, his hands returned to your body. He paused, looking down at you. His fingers traced the lines of your waist, thumbs brushing the curve of your ribs, his breath shaking as though the sight of you unraveled something inside him.
He looked into your eyes—asking, without words.
And you answered. "Please... touch me more," you whispered, his mouth lowered, finding the curve of your breast, lips brushing the delicate skin before closing around your nipple. His tongue moved slow at first, teasing the areola in gentle circles, and then with more pressure—suckling, tasting, devouring.
Your back arched off the mattress, every nerve lit in a low, burning ache that made your breath catch in your throat. A breathy sigh slipped past your lips as you tangled your fingers in his hair, holding him there, needing more.
"God—Jongseong..." you moaned.
He responded with a groan of his own, vibrations rumbling against your skin as his hands slid down again. His mouth moved across your chest, his tongue leaving trails of heat as he worshipped every inch he could reach.
Beneath it all was something that had nothing to do with instinct. You weren't two creatures responding to any programming. You were two broken people learning how to feel again, how to love without shame—even if your bodies weren't built like they used to be.
"Remove it," you whispered, fingers curling in the fabric at his waist.
His mouth left your breast with a soft pop, his breath warm against your skin. He met your gaze and then rose onto his knees, hands moving quickly to strip the last layers away. Shirt, pants, boxers—gone in seconds, discarded to the shadows around the bed.
Your breath caught. Your eyes dropped, landing on his body, honed, powerful, beautiful in a way that bordered on unnatural. And then your gaze found his cock: thick, flushed, already aching for you. The sight sent heat spiraling through your core, a pulse deep between your thighs.
Your mouth watered.
You sat up, hands reaching for him, fingertips tentative at first, then bolder—wrapping around his length, feeling the weight of him, the twitch beneath your touch. Your movements were a little clumsy, a little hungry.
Your thumb grazed over the slick at the tip, smearing it down the shaft with a slow drag that made his breath hitch.
He was so hard. So warm. You could feel his pulse there, alive in your palm.
You looked up at him, your eyes searching his face. And God, how could someone look so divine?
The dim lights above caught on his sweat-damp hair, his chest rising and falling with every uneven breath. His lips were parted, his eyes hooded but fixed on you like he was watching a miracle unfold. Like you were the miracle.
You stare at him back, and it hits you. He wasn't human—not anymore. Because no human was this breathtaking. No man could look so effortlessly beautiful, even when his body was wrapped in scars, mutations, and power.
Ethereal, you thought.
You arched your back slightly as you leaned down, breath skimming along his length, and you kept your eyes locked on his. The second your tongue flicked out to lick the tip—slow, teasing—he let out a low, guttural sound that made your whole body throb with need.
His hands gripped the edge of the mattress, muscles tightening.
You ran your tongue along the underside of his cock, your lips ghosting over the sensitive skin, teasing him. You loved the way he watched you.
"Fuck..." he whispered, voice hoarse.
You smiled against him, mouth opening wider as you took him in again—inch by inch, savoring the feel, the taste, the heat. Your fingers stroked what your lips couldn't reach, working in tandem as your pace gradually deepened, your body moving with quiet, desperate rhythm.
His hands found your face, thumbs gently cradling your cheeks as he looked down at you with that subtle, crooked smile—soft and filled with adoration. His gaze was half-lidded, dark with desire, but calm, too.
You hummed around his cock, the vibration making his stomach tense and his breath falter. You continued your rhythm, your head bobbing as your tongue worked him. Each motion earned a different sound from him, deeper now, breathless and ragged, his self-control rapidly fraying.
"Stop for a while," he breathed, voice tight, hand sliding to your jaw as he gently pulled you back.
You let him go, a thin string of saliva still connecting your lips to his tip, glistening between you. He didn't look away, his thumb brushed the slick trail from your mouth, and with a smirk, he pressed it between your lips.
You closed your mouth around it instinctively, eyes locked with his.
"Fuck," he whispered, as if the sight of you like that physically hurt. "You're so goddamn hot."
His hand slid from your cheek to your side. He guided you back down to the mattress, kissing you softly between each motion, your cheek, your shoulder, the center of your chest—as his fingers hooked the waistband of your pants and pulled them down, taking your underwear with them.
Cool air hit your thighs, and you shivered—but not from the temperature.
His breath hitched audibly as the scent of your arousal flooded the space between you. His cock twitched visibly, a strangled groan catching in his throat as his eyes dropped to the heat between your legs. And when he saw you—really saw you—his hands gripped your thighs, thumbs pressing into the soft flesh as he gently, but insistently, pushed them apart.
There you were. Glistening. Dripping. Your pussy visibly clenching, aching around nothing. Open to him.
"Haah..." he moaned. "You're perfect."
"Jongseong," you whined, hips tilting upward, searching for friction, for touch, for him. "Please... touch me already."
He leaned down, his mouth met your clit in one hot, wet stroke. You cried out at the contact, your back arching, fingers flying to his hair, gripping tight. He groaned against you, vibrating straight through your core.
His tongue moved with hunger, circling your clit, then flattening against it, then flicking with just enough pressure to make you gasp. His hands held your thighs open, possessive and steady, his mouth working you like he was starved for you.
Then he dipped lower.
His tongue slid down through your folds, gathering your slick, then pressing against your entrance—probing, pushing, entering.
You moaned, loud and breathless, as his tongue fucked into you, warm and firm and impossibly deep. It was intimate and wild, like he wasn't just tasting you—he was making out with your cunt. Every slurp echoed in your ears, every flick sent sparks crawling up your spine.
You could feel his tongue twisting inside you, exploring every inch, curling upward, coaxing you open in ways no one ever had. His mouth moved between your clit and your core, switching seamlessly, building pressure until you were panting, writhing beneath him.
"Are you gonna cum, my love?" Jongseong murmured, lifting his head just slightly to look at you.
My love.
The words hit deeper than his fingers ever could. Your chest fluttered, warmth blooming beneath your ribs. You couldn't answer with words—only a frantic nod, your fingers tightening in his hair, mussing it, holding him
His mouth returned to your cunt, tongue working your clit with firm, relentless pressure. He licked harder, faster, each stroke pushing you higher, your body already teetering on the edge.
You were twitching, panting, the heat spiraling out from your core in waves. You'd forgotten what it was like to feel so alive, so overwhelmed in the best possible way—like every nerve had come back to life.
You shattered with a cry, orgasm tearing through you like fire.
But Jongseong didn't stop.
Even as your thighs trembled, even as your body jolted with sensitivity, he kept his tongue swirling over your clit. And then, as if he knew just how to break you open all over again, he pushed two fingers into you, his middle and ring finger, long and strong and perfectly angled.
He curled them inside you, then began to thrust, steady and deep, knuckles brushing your entrance on every stroke.
"Ahhh! Jongseong!" You gasped, sitting up involuntarily, hips bucking against his face. Your body screamed with overstimulation, but it was too good to stop. Too much and not enough, all at once.
Back when you were still "normal," an orgasm like that would've left you limp and done. But now? Now you felt supercharged, every cell vibrating, your skin buzzing with more instead of fatigue.
You needed more and so did he.
The same fire burned beneath Jongseong's skin—evident in the way his hands gripped you tighter, in the flush blooming across his cheeks, in the heat radiating from his body like a furnace stoked too long.
He pulled himself up, chest heaving, and kissed you hard. Your tongues tangled instantly, messy and desperate, your panting breaths shared between kisses.
His fingers never stopped, still inside you, still thrusting, now with an animalistic rhythm that had you whining into his mouth. Each stroke sent a sharp jolt of pleasure through your core, your thighs twitching around his hips.
He swallowed every sound, every moan, and you could feel the satisfaction in the way he kissed you.
"More," you breathed against his lips.
His gaze darkened, his fingers thrusting deeper. "Then I'll give you everything."
He kissed you again, slower this time. You could feel his cock, hot and heavy, pressed against your thigh, throbbing with the need to be inside you.
He slowly slipped his fingers from you, your body twitching at the sudden emptiness, and shifted forward, positioning himself between your legs. His hand wrapped around his length, stroking himself once, then guiding the tip down between your folds. He didn't rush—he dragged the head of his cock through your slick, coating himself in the warmth of your arousal.
You whimpered, legs spreading wider, instinctively offering yourself to him, chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
"Put it in," you whispered, desperate, lifting your hips to meet him. "Please..."
But he held you still, fingers tight on your hips. "Not yet," he murmured, teasing your entrance with the head of his cock. "I want to feel you beg for it."
You moaned softly, hips twitching, the heat between your thighs unbearable now.
He finally pressed forward, just the tip breaching you and both of you cried out in unison. It wasn't just the physical sensation. It was the shock of connection.
"God—your pussy's sucking me in," Jongseong groaned, his head tilting back slightly, neck tense, jaw clenched. "Oh, fuck..."
When he pushed deeper, you choked on a moan, head dropping back into the pillow, hands gripping the sheets. Inch by inch, he filled you completely, the stretch perfect, overwhelming. You could feel every vein, every pulse, your body clenching desperately around him as he reached places you forgot were there—almost brushing your cervix, almost too deep, but just right.
Jongseong leaned into you, pressing his body against yours, skin to skin, chest to chest. His arms wrapped around you. He hugged you—his full weight over you. His face buried in your neck, breath warm against your pulse as he finally began to move.
Slow thrusts, measured and deep. Every time he pushed inside you, it felt like a wave crashing over your soul—bringing back color, sound, breath. You clung to him, your arms around his back, legs locking around his waist.
"I feel so alive," Jongseong whispered against your ear, lips brushing the sensitive skin as he kissed it.
The room was filled with heat. The sound of breath, of skin meeting skin echoed through the space only the two of you could hear. Outside, the world moved—wind howling through the tunnels, distant animal sounds sharp on the air, senses heightened by your altered bodies.
But none of it mattered.
The only scent in the air was arousal—yours and his. The only sounds were gasps, moans, curses whispered into sweat-slick skin.
"Nghh... Jongseong..." you cried, voice cracking as you pulled him closer, fingers digging into his back like you could drag him deeper inside you.
His rhythm shifted, harder now. More forceful. And then he angled his hips just right—and hit you there.
Your scream tore through the room as his cock slammed into your g-spot, stars bursting behind your eyes. You clenched around him, tight and involuntary, your body no longer yours—only his, only this.
"Fuck," he cursed, head dropping into your shoulder as your walls fluttered around him. "You feel like heaven."
"Harder... please," you begged, your voice a broken whisper. "Want it harder."
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his breath uneven, eyes blazing with raw intensity. "Yeah? This not enough for you?" he rasped.
You could only shake your head, tears brimming at the edges of your lashes from how good it felt. His hand reached up, fingers gently sweeping the damp strands of hair from your face. Then he kissed you again. Pouring every ounce of feeling into it, swallowing your moans as he slammed into you with brutal precision.
Each thrust shook your entire body. He moved faster now—faster than any human could. "Want more?" he growled against your lips. "You want to be filled, baby?"
You nodded desperately, too far gone to speak, your hips rising to meet every thrust, chasing the edge you could feel surging again. He groaned into your mouth, losing himself completely, fucking you.
When your orgasm hit, it tore through you, your whole body tensing, twitching, legs locking around his waist as you came hard, gasping his name.
And he felt the every pulsing wave, every clench of your slick, desperate walls around his cock—and he came with a broken sound, burying himself to the hilt as his release surged into you, thick and hot. You could feel him throbbing inside you, filling you deep, but he didn't stop.
Jongseong kept moving. His thrusts slowed but stayed deep, grinding into you. Your eyes rolled back, heat still pulsing violently through every inch of your body.
And for him—it was more than pleasure. He felt something inside himself realigning. Cells reorganizing, adapting again, responding not to survival... but to you. His body recognized yours, welcomed it.
The usual limits of human bodies didn't apply to either of you anymore. You should have been spent. Exhausted. But your broken refractory periods meant nothing now. The hunger didn't fade—it simply deepened.
He shifted without warning, flipping you effortlessly beneath him—then pulling you back, guiding you to straddle him instead. He collapsed onto his back, chest slick with sweat, arms open.
You took it. You climbed over him, breathless, body still buzzing, and sank down onto him in one smooth motion. A choked sound escaped both of you. You were so sensitive, your walls gripping him tight, but your need, your craving was louder.
You started bouncing, fast and messy, hips slapping against his thighs. "Fuck—yes, just like that," Jongseong growled, hands locking around your waist. His hips bucked up into you, matching your rhythm.
You braced your hands on his chest, fingers curling into his skin as your body began to spiral again. Your thighs trembled, knees shaking as your orgasm crept up again. You could barely breathe, barely think, only ride.
Jongseong shifted beneath you, planting his feet firmly into the mattress for leverage—and thrust up into you with such force you cried out, nearly collapsing over him. He fucked you through your orgasm, each thrust dragging the climax out longer, deeper, until your whole body convulsed, your cries echoing off the walls.
"Ahh—want more," you slurred, voice ragged, utterly cock-drunk.
Jongseong didn't speak. His breath came in hot, heavy bursts as he kept thrusting up into you. His hand reached up, slipping two fingers between your lips—quieting you. You moaned around them, muffled, your tongue swirling instinctively.
He watched you, eyes half-lidded, wild with lust. "You can't get enough, huh?"
Your moans vibrated around his fingers, still buried in your mouth, muffling your cries as your body kept bouncing on his cock, fast and needy.
You clenched around him again, and another guttural groan tore from his lips.
Jongseong slid his fingers from your mouth, glistening with your spit. He brought them to his lips and sucked them clean, eyes never leaving yours. The simple act made your pulse spike, your rhythm falter for a beat before you recovered.
Your hands slid back to brace against his knees, your back arching sharply. The change in angle made him slip deeper inside you, and you both gasped—his cock visibly outlined beneath your skin, filling you to the hilt. You saw the way his chest stuttered with each breath, eyes tracing every inch of your exposed body.
Then Jongseong laid back, propping himself up on his elbows to get a better view of you. His gaze locked with yours, you gasped softly when you notice the change in his appearance.
His pupils had gone completely black, pure darkness, blown wide.
Something else wrapped around your waist—slick, warm, textured like stretched skin, soft and strong at once. Your eyes widened as you looked down to see tendrils—tentacle-like extensions—curling from his body, wrapping around your midsection, your hips, your thighs.
"Jongseong..." you breathed.
He smirked and thrust into you hard enough to make your vision blur.
You cried out, body jolting, and then you felt another tendril—longer, thinner—slide between your legs. It pressed against your clit, stroking with an eerie, perfect pressure.
Your whole body keened.
"Oh—fuck!" you moaned, louder than before, your voice cracking as the sensation detonated through your core. It was too much. It was perfect.
Jongseong's other hand gripped your hips tighter, his fingers now stretching with inhuman dexterity, more of him wrapping around you, holding you. His cock kept thrusting up into you, the tendril at your clit stroking in sync, teasing the edge of your next orgasm.
Your breath hitched, your mind unraveling, the next orgasm building fast and hot, just out of reach.
"Need more?" Jongseong teased. More tendrils slithered around your body, responding to his command, flickering against your nipples—tight, wet licks of pressure that made you arch and whine, your chest thrusting forward instinctively. Your hands clawed at his shoulders, your head falling back, lips parted in wordless pleasure.
Your mind was far too hazy at this point, soaked in ecstasy and sensation.
Then you felt something soft and cool brushing the tight ring of your ass.
You flinched, hips jerking instinctively, but the tendrils around your thighs clamped tighter, anchoring you. Keeping you still. Keeping you open.
"Shh," Jongseong whispered against your neck, his voice patient, tender even as his body dominated yours completely.
The tendril at your ass was thinner than the rest, careful as it pressed inward—probing, stretching, sliding slowly. You gasped, muscles tightening, overwhelmed by the double penetration. His cock still thrust into your soaked cunt, fast and deep, while the tendril began to move inside you, teasing your second entrance.
You were so full, stuffed, surrounded, owned and every part of your body lit with fire.
"Why are you not talking?" Jongseong whispered, lifting his gaze to yours.
His eyes were fully dilated, pure black, wild and beautiful. You stared at him, mouth open, gasping—because God, he looked so hot. That face. That voice. That control.
The tendril inside your ass began to thicken, stretching you further, matching the rhythm of his cock as your body struggled to keep up. Your legs shook violently, your core fluttering as another orgasm surged too quickly to contain.
You were crying out, words lost to moans and breathless gasps. Jongseong thrust harder, faster; his hands, his cock, his tendrils working in unison. Every inch of you was stimulated. You were locked in his arms, caged in his grip, the hybrid strength in him overpowering but not brutal.
"I can feel you," he groaned. "All of you. You're squeezing me so tight, fuck—don't stop. Cum for me again."
And you did, you shattered, screaming his name, your entire body shaking as pleasure tore through you in electric waves. Your cunt clenched violently around his cock, your ass pulsing around the tendril still buried deep, and everything inside you collapsed into white heat.
Jongseong held you through it, driving into you with steady, desperate rhythm, chasing his own high, his body burning beneath yours, jaw clenched as he thrust one final time and groaned as he came deep inside you again.
Your head rested against his shoulder, your breath shaky in his ear. Slowly, the inhuman tendrils that had wrapped around you began to withdraw, pulling back into his arms, retreating beneath the skin.
His human hands replaced the tendrils, sliding around your back, palms soft as they cradled you. Then his lips pressed to your forehead, he brushed the hair from your face, fingers gliding through it carefully, over and over. The small, unconscious motion soothed something deep inside you.
The affection made you smile. You let your body melt into his, sinking deeper into the curve of his neck, where his scent surrounded you.
"Love you," you whispered in confession, your voice barely there . You felt the subtle shift in his chest, the rise of a soft laugh beneath your palm as he smiled against your hair. “I don’t want to regret any day I didn’t say that,” you continued. “Even if what I feel is just parasitological reaction, even if it’s some rewritten instinct pretending to be love—I don’t care. I love you.”
His hand pressed gently against the curve of your spine. "I love you," he whispered back, and the way he said it—so simply, made your heart throb.
You lifted your head slightly to look at him, eyes still half-lidded, dazed from pleasure and affection. You took in the mess of him: sweat-slick skin, tousled hair, the soft flush across his cheeks.
Beautiful, you thought again.
You smiled, lazy and warm. “More?”
Jongseong’s lips curved slowly into that familiar, crooked smirk.
The morning crept in quietly.
No alarms, no machines humming, no scans running downstairs in the lab. Just the soft amber light of dawn leaking through the half-closed curtains, casting warm streaks across the floor and the tangled mess of sheets.
You stirred first.
Jongseong’s arm was still wrapped around you, his chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sleep. His warmth radiated through the blankets, his breath steady against the back of your neck. You could feel his hand resting against your stomach.
You didn’t move right away.
You let yourself lie there, blinking slowly at the ceiling, muscles pleasantly sore, body still humming in a low, contented way. You could still feel the echo of last night in your bones, in your skin. The way he touched you. The way he looked at you.
You turned slowly in his arms to face him.
He was awake. His eyes were open, soft with sleep but focused entirely on you. The moment your gaze met his, his lips curved into a small smile, tired but intimate.
“Morning,” he said, his voice still rough from sleep.
“Hey,” you whispered. “How long were you watching me?”
“A while,” he admitted. “You twitch when you dream.”
You groaned, burying your face briefly in his chest. “Great. Bet I looked terrifying.”
He chuckled low in his throat, the sound vibrating through your cheek. “No. You looked... peaceful.”
You shifted, resting your chin on his chest to look at him properly. “You sleep?”
His hand brushed up your back in a lazy, soothing arc. “I do. When you’re here.”
That silenced you for a moment. “You always say things like that,” you murmured, “like you don’t expect this to last.”
Jongseong was quiet for a long breath. His fingers slid into your hair, combing it gently, thoughtfully. “I don’t take it for granted,” he said. “Not when everything about what we are could change tomorrow.”
You watched his face, trying to read between the words. “Do you think it will?”
He met your gaze. “Maybe. Our biology’s still in flux. Your last scan showed increased neural conductivity in your spinal column. Mine too. Whatever’s happening to us—it isn’t done yet.”
You nodded slowly, tracing the skin of his shoulder with your fingertip. “Do you think we’ll stop being us?”
He caught your hand and pressed it against his chest, over the steady beat of his heart. “I don’t know. But if I do change... I want to remember this. You. This moment.”
You leaned in, forehead resting against his. “Then let’s make more of them.”
His arm tightened around you, pulling you close until your nose brushed his. “Deal,” he whispered.
“Pathology of Parasites.”
You glanced up from your spot on the floor beside Jongseong’s lab table, brows lifted as you read the scribbled title on the datapad he'd just tossed aside.
“Wow,” you said, lips curving. “Very romantic.”
Jongseong looked up from his microscope, clearly unamused. “It was a working title.”
You held back a laugh as you pulled the datapad closer, scrolling through the contents—notes, schematics, overlapping neural maps. Some of it made sense, some of it looked like nonsense equations written in a fever dream. But it was his—every word a window into how his mind worked. Clinical. Focused. Relentless. And yet… there were margin notes scrawled in a different tone—curious, reflective.
One read:
Subject B demonstrates emotional regulation post-mutation. Possibly adaptive. Possibly… intentional?
You knew Subject B was you.
“You study me a lot,” you said softly, setting the pad down beside you.
Jongseong looked at you for a long moment, eyes steady, warm. “I don’t study you,” he corrected. “I try to understand you.”
You smiled faintly. “That’s somehow worse.”
He snorted. “Maybe. But you’re fascinating.”
You turned your head to rest it against the side of the table, eyes drifting upward to where he sat, perched in his rolling lab chair, hunched slightly over some slide under the scope.
“Do you ever miss it?” you asked. “Being a normal doctor?”
His jaw tensed, and he leaned back slowly, pulling away from the microscope. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “I miss helping people and knowing what I was fixing. Now... I’m just making guesses. Mapping new anatomy no one’s ever named. Studying nervous systems that grow new endings when I’m not looking. It’s not medicine anymore. It’s—”
“—exploration,” you finished.
He glanced at you again, his lips twitching slightly. “That’s one way to put it.”
You reached up and tugged at the end of his sleeve. “Come down here.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.”
He hesitated only a second before pushing the chair back and sliding to the floor beside you. You leaned against him immediately, head settling on his shoulder, your knees brushing his thigh.
“You ever think,” you murmured, “if we weren’t like this… if we were just two strangers in a city... we would’ve passed each other without a second glance?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Maybe.”
You looked up at him. “Do you like that idea?”
He met your gaze, something soft flickering behind his eyes. “No.”
You tilted your head. “Why not?”
“Because if we were normal,” he said, “I wouldn’t have seen you split your face open like a flower. Or sprout wings. Or smile after turning into something terrifying. I wouldn’t have seen all the parts of you that are beautiful because they’re impossible.”
Your throat tightened. “You always say the nicest horrifying things.”
“I mean every one of them.”
You turned toward him fully now, your legs folding under you, fingers brushing against the back of his hand. “Do you think we’d still fall in love?” you asked.
He paused. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe we’d never look close enough.”
You nodded slowly, fingers tracing invisible lines over the back of his hand. “Then I’m glad it happened like this.”
He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers through yours. “Even if it hurts?” he asked.
You looked up at him, smiling just a little. “Especially because it hurts.”
His thumb brushed over your knuckles, slow and grounding. “You know what I think?”
“Hm?”
“I think our pathology isn’t just parasitic. It’s poetic.”
You laughed under your breath. “Are you writing love poems in medical terms now?”
He smirked. “Only when I’m inspired.”
You leaned in and kissed him. The kind of kiss that wasn’t about heat or need—but about knowing and choosing.
When you pulled away, you stayed close, your forehead against his.
“I like this version of you,” you whispered. “The one who smiles when I mess with your research notes.”
He chuckled, his voice low in your ear. “And I like this version of you—the one who pretends not to be touched when I leave you notes shaped like protein chains.”
“You thought I didn’t notice?”
“I was hoping you did.”
You smiled. The datapad beside you still read Pathology of Parasites, but under it, someone had added in smaller handwriting—And the ones who survive them together.
The weather was quiet—eerily so.
Outside, the garden swayed gently under a pale morning sky. The another flowers you'd planted weeks ago had begun to bloom in earnest, soft bursts of color dancing in the breeze. Petals fluttered open toward the sun.
Inside, the air was still. Calm. The kind of stillness that didn't last.
Jongseong sat hunched at his lab desk, deep in a web of data. The neural scanner whirred quietly beside him, tracking changes in his cellular rhythms. Graphs rose and fell on the screen. Numbers blurred into pattern. His brow furrowed, fingers flying over the touchscreen, eyes sharp with focus.
The sound of wheels.
Faint at first. Too faint for most ears.
But not his. Jongseong body tensed instinctively.
Wheels. Two vehicles. Tires on gravel. He closed his eyes for a second, counting.
One... two… four sets of footsteps. Three kilometers.
Getting closer.
Jongseong rose from his seat with calculated calm, brushing a hand back through his hair, then pulled off his glasses and set them on the desk. His movements were controlled, but fast. He strode to the reinforced lab door, locking it with practiced ease before tugging a small, folded rug from under the emergency shelf. He draped it over the entry seam, concealing the frame as if it were just a storage hatch, then adjusted a nearby cabinet to further obscure it.
Once satisfied, he stepped back, exhaled sharply, and turned toward the stairs.
By the time he reached the living room, you were already there.
You stood at the edge of the hallway, barefoot on the wooden floor, arms wrapped around Jongjong. The little orange cat was tense in your grip, ears back, tail stiff, sensing the same wrongness that you did. Your eyes met Jongseong’s—and they were wide with fear.
“Who are they?” you whispered, your voice trembling. “I heard—cars, and footsteps. They're close.”
Your brow furrowed, panic rising, but Jongseong was already moving toward you. His expression was calm, but you could see the tightness in his jaw. He cupped your cheek with one hand, his thumb brushing gently beneath your eye. “Shhh… don’t be afraid,” he murmured, voice low and steady. “I don’t know who they are. But I’ll protect you.”
You swallowed hard, nodding once, clutching Jongjong closer to your chest.
The knock came sharply. Jongseong froze, he took a slow breath, then stepped forward, unlocking the front door with careful precision, standing just beyond the threshold was a man in a dark-gray uniform, flanked by two others. Another figure stood beside the nearest vehicle, partially obscured.
The man at the door wore a clean, crisp jacket with a silver emblem pinned near the collar. His expression was unreadable, polished. Government.
“Good morning, Dr. Park Jongseong,” the man said evenly. “I’m Lee Heeseung. Task Force Division Five. Anti-Parasite Intelligence Unit.”
Jongseong’s eyes flicked down briefly to the ID badge clipped at the man’s belt, then back up to his face. His features didn’t move.
“I wasn’t aware I was still listed under my former title,” he replied coolly.
Heeseung’s lips twitched into something close to a smirk. “Well, it’s been what… two years since you resigned after your incident. You can imagine it took some digging to find this place.”
He gestured loosely toward the landscape—gravel winding through old pine, the isolation of the hills, the unmarked road that led to nowhere. “Your house is… subtle,” he added. “Almost like you didn’t want to be found.”
Jongseong didn’t miss a beat. “I didn’t know that was illegal.”
“It’s not,” Heeseung replied, smile sharpening slightly. “Not yet. But you know how we work—we keep tabs on anyone with a profile like yours. Especially those who survived and then disappeared without a trace.”
“I resigned because I was hospitalized with thirty-five internal injuries,” Jongseong said evenly. “I’m sure you read the files, didn’t you? Spent a few late nights combing through the classified parts?”
Heeseung gave a quiet chuckle. “I skimmed the highlights. They don’t make many survive cases like yours, so you’re... of interest.” His eyes flicked past Jongseong’s shoulder—and landed on you.
You stood near the far end of the hallway, half-visible in the doorway, Jongjong cradled in your arms. You tried to stay still, neutral, but the weight of his gaze made your grip tighten. The kitten stirred with a faint mewl as you forced a smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes.
Heeseung’s head tilted slightly. “Girlfriend?”
There was something in his tone—probing, too casual to be genuine.
“Quite a familiar face,” he added. “I think we flagged her name once. Ran away from home, wasn’t it?”
You swallowed, every muscle in your body tensed beneath your skin.
Jongseong stepped forward, subtly blocking the doorway with his body to cover you. “We’re getting married,” he said flatly.
Heeseung’s brows lifted a fraction, but the smirk never left his face. “Well. Congratulations, then.” His tone made it sound like anything but a blessing.
Jongseong’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
Heeseung’s smile faded slightly. Not gone but tempered. “There’s been parasite movement in this region,” he said. “We’ve been tracking electromagnetic fluctuations coming from your grid. Spike patterns. Irregular heat signatures. Even some satellite interference.”
He paused, studying Jongseong's face for a flicker of reaction that never came. “Nothing conclusive,” Heeseung added, “but... interesting. Enough to warrant a visit.”
Jongseong didn’t flinch. “Congratulations,” he said dryly. “You found a retired doctor with backup power.”
“Maybe.” Heeseung tilted his head slightly. “Or maybe we found a man who’s been hiding something more than outdated diagnostics.”
Jongseong stepped back half a pace—not in retreat, but to take a stronger stance. The door remained open behind him, but his presence filled the threshold like a barricade.
“If you had proof,” he said, voice low, “you wouldn’t be here asking questions.”
Heeseung’s smirk returned. “That’s true. For now.” His eyes flicked to the hallway again—just a second too long, settling on the space where you'd stood before he arrived. His gaze lingered, speculative.
“Thing is,” he continued, tone softening just enough to unsettle, “it’s only a matter of time. Sooner or later, all hosts lose containment. Doesn’t matter how strong they are. Or how careful.”
Jongseong’s jaw flexed. “And if they don’t?” he asked.
Heeseung’s eyes gleamed with the hint of something darker—curiosity, maybe. “Then they become something else. And that’s when they’re really interesting.”
Heeseung stepped back. His smile returned as he reached into his coat and pulled out a small card, placing it gently on the railing beside the door.
“If you ever decide you want to talk,” he said. “I’d be happy to listen.”
Jongseong didn’t respond. He didn’t take the card. Just watched.
Heeseung turned away, nodding once to the officers near the car. As he walked down the steps, his voice carried over his shoulder:
“Take care of your fiancée, Doctor."
The car doors shut with a dull clunk, and the engines rolled back to life.
Jongseong waited until the sound faded completely before closing the door. Not slamming it, just quiet.
The room was still again.
The echo of car engines faded into the distance, swallowed by the thick silence of the woods. But the unease didn’t leave with them. It settled in the corners of the room, in the shadows of the hallway, in the hush of the air itself.
Jongseong stood unmoving for a long moment, staring at the door. Then, slowly, he backed away, step by step, until he reached you.
His voice was low. Bitter. Tired.
“Government’s so fucking fake,” he whispered under his breath. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around you, pulling you tightly against his chest.
Your body responded before your brain could catch up. Your arms encircled him, clutching Jongjong between you, the little cat still tense, mewing softly with each shift of breath.
You could feel Jongseong’s heart beating faster than usual. Not panic—but calculation. Instinct already grinding into motion.
Your own chest ached with the weight of it. “They’ll raid us,” you said, your voice strained. “You know that, right? It’s just a matter of time.”
“I know,” he murmured into your hair.
He was already thinking, you could feel it in him—muscle memory kicking in, mind running down contingency plans, routes, caches, what to take, what to leave behind. But for one more second, he just held you there, breathing in the moment. Then he pulled back, hands firm but gentle on your shoulders.
“We need to move. Fast.”
You nodded, eyes wide but steady. “Where?”
“There’s a site. Old observatory, two hours east. No power grid, no satellite interference. It’s buried in forest. Abandoned for years.” He was already turning, heading toward the concealed panel in the hallway, the one that led down into the lab. “I used to store backup gear there. We can set up a new node. No one should find us.”
You followed him, Jongjong tucked against your chest, your footsteps light and quick on the floor. Down in the lab, the air was cooler—sterile, humming with faint electricity. But this time, the room didn’t feel like safety. It felt like a ticking clock.
Jongseong moved with swift. He was already pulling storage drives from the mainframe, detaching power cells, collecting physical records. “Grab your scans,” he said without looking. “The ones from last week. The DNA strand with the tertiary mutation—we can’t leave that behind.”
You rushed to the desk, locating the labeled folders, the encrypted drives. “Do we take the entire core?”
“No. Too heavy. Just the segments I isolated in Case File Delta-11. Everything else, we burn.”
You paused, breath caught. “Burn?”
He turned, locking eyes with you. “If they come here, they’re not just looking for us. They’re looking for proof. If they find it, we lose everything.”
You swallowed hard and nodded.
He returned to packing—the slow dismantling of a life that had once felt permanent. The garden. The house. The bed. The scent of tea in the morning and soft footsteps on wood. All of it, now just a risk.
“You’re doing okay?” he asked suddenly.
You looked at him, startled by the question. “What?”
He paused. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m trying not to fall apart,” you said honestly.
Jongseong walked to you, took your hand, laced his fingers through yours. “Then fall apart later. Right now, we survive.”
You blinked fast, refusing to cry, and nodded.
For the next hour, the house came alive with motion You cleared out the bedroom, pulling your few clothes into a duffel bag. Jongseong moved through the kitchen, the basement, the lab—grabbing rations, medical supplies, essential tech. Caches were unlocked from beneath floorboards. Batteries charged.
Jongjong mewed at your heels, sensitive to the sudden shift. You scooped him into a small reinforced carrier, latching the top shut gently as you whispered, “It’s okay, baby. We’re not leaving you.”
When everything was ready—what little they could carry—the rest was rigged.
Jongseong stood by the lab console, thumb hovering over a small interface.
“Are you sure?” you asked softly.
He looked around the room. The whiteboards, the shelves, the soft glow of monitors that had flickered through endless nights of quiet obsession. “I loved this place,” he said. “But it was never meant to last.”
Then he pressed his thumb to the screen. The countdown began: 120 seconds.
He turned to you.
“Let’s go.”
The two of you moved quickly through the trees, boots crunching against the uneven trail that led away from the house. The duffel bags strapped over your shoulders weighed heavy, and Jongjong’s carrier bumped gently against your side as you kept pace with Jongseong. Every breath burned in your chest, lungs tight from urgency, but you didn’t slow.
The road wasn’t far. Behind you, the first hint of black smoke coiled upward into the sky—thin at first, then thicker, darker, alive with the scent of something ending. Chemicals. Plastic. Burnt paper. Memories.
You glanced back once, just once, and saw the roof of the house begin to buckle in the distance, flames licking hungrily through the glass of the greenhouse.
The safehouse was gone.
You turned your face forward again, biting down hard on the grief rising in your throat.
Then, just as you and Jongseong stepped out from the treeline onto the narrow, cracked road, you heard it—engines. Multiple.
Too close.
Jongseong’s hand shot out instinctively, halting you in your tracks as headlights cut across the road ahead. Then another flash of light from behind. The hum of electric motors shifted into full roar as a wall of vehicles emerged from the forest—sleek, matte black, no visible insignia.
One car. Then two. Then four. They encircled you with military precision.
“Fuck,” Jongseong breathed.
Your heart kicked into a sprint.
The tires screeched as the cars completed the circle, trapping you both in the center. Doors slammed. Boots hit gravel. From the trees, two more massive transport trucks rumbled into view—large, reinforced, bearing symbols you didn’t recognize.
Your pulse rang in your ears. Jongjong whimpered inside his carrier.
Around you, agents moved into formation—helmets, rifles, armor too advanced for local law enforcement. These weren’t just military. This was containment.
You felt Jongseong’s hand slip into yours, grounding. His grip was steady, but the tension radiating from him was unmistakable.
They’d come fast. Too fast. Someone had been watching long before Heeseung ever stepped onto the porch. The visit had been a test—a warning disguised as politeness. And now, the real answer had arrived.
Jongseong stood still beside you, his body calm but coiled like a spring. Eyes scanning every angle—counting rifles, reading stance, calculating distance.
“We don’t run,” he said quietly, his voice low and measured.
You nodded, barely. Your mouth had gone dry. Every muscle in your body was buzzing with restrained panic, but his steadiness held you together. Barely.
Then the voice came, amplified by a mounted speaker from one of the armored vehicles ahead.
“Park Jongseong. Parasite host that evolved with retained intelligence. Subject Code 1072. You are surrounded. Surrender peacefully.”
Parasite. Host.
You felt something clench in your chest. They thought Jongseong was gone. That he was nothing but a skin-walker—a parasite wearing his face. They thought he had taken Jongseong’s memories. Not kept them.
And if that’s what they thought of him… what did they think you were? You were both still yourselves. Still human in the ways that mattered. Conscious. Feeling. Choosing. How could they not see that?
It was easier to reduce you to subjects—to codes and categories. It was easier to eliminate anomalies than to understand them.
You flinched as the quiet clicks of safety switches echoed around you. One by one. Like a metronome of dread. The hiss of containment coils charging up, the faint hum of EMP disruptors warming beneath the truck chassis. Cold, impersonal tools built to restrain monsters.
This is it. This is how it ends.
You choked back a cry, your vision blurring with panic, heart jackhammering in your chest.
A hand, warm and steady, wrapped around yours. You looked up instinctively, drawn by that calm pull, and saw Jongseong’s face turned toward you. No fear in his expression.
Only you.
His thumb brushed gently across your skin—once, twice, the motion grounding. His eyes held yours, soft and unwavering, and in them was a message louder than the voice still barking orders from the trucks:
We’ll be alright.
No matter what happened next. Whether they fought, ran, or burned it all down—he would not leave you. Not now. Not after everything.
You swallowed hard, pressing your forehead briefly to his shoulder.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” he said. “I’m not a host. I’m not a parasite."
But they weren’t listening. Before the next breath, the soldiers moved.
Shadows broke from the perimeter—six of them, black-clad, rifles raised, moving with ruthless efficiency. You barely had time to react before they were on you, splitting you apart.
“Jongseong!” you screamed, voice raw, panic lacing. You twisted violently in their grip, but they were trained for this. One of them was already behind you, and then—Cold metal—pressed hard against the back of your skull.
“Do not touch her!” Jongseong roared, voice losing all calm. “I came out here on my own. I’m trying to handle this peacefully—hear me out first!”
“What a nerve for a parasite.”
Heeseung stepped forward from the rear of one of the vehicles, casual as ever, a tablet under one arm and a sleek black coat whipping slightly in the breeze. His expression was between amused and disappointed.
“You know what fascinates me about your kind?” he asked. “You think memory makes you human. That because you remember who you were, that gives you the right to pretend you still are.”
Heeseung smiled thinly, but his eyes were sharp and gleaming. “You’re not a miracle, Park Jongseong. You’re a malfunction. A parasite too stubborn to wipe clean. An error in the code.”
“You’re wrong,” Jongseong said, voice low and shaking with barely-contained rage. “I’m not pretending. I am still me.”
“Oh?” Heeseung lifted an eyebrow, then glanced at you, pinned and trembling. “Then why does your biology say otherwise?”
“This,” Heeseung continued, “is not human. And it never will be again.”
He stepped closer to you now, far too close, gaze crawling over you. His hand reached for your face.
You flinched and Jongseong snapped. “Don’t touch her!” he bellowed. His body tensed, pulsing with barely contained energy, the hybrid signature humming just beneath his skin.
But the soldiers were faster this time. Before he could fully shift, they surged forward, slamming him to the ground with blunt, brutal force. A shriek tore from your throat as metal restraints clamped around his wrists, locking into his nerves with a cruel hiss. Another device—a containment collar—was pressed to the base of his neck and activated with a low whine. It snapped shut, injecting something through the skin.
"No!" you screamed, trying to lunge toward him, but two soldiers seized you by the arms and yanked you back. From the corner of your eye, you saw them dragging Jongseong toward one of the trucks. His head lolled forward, jaw clenched, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. But his eyes—his eyes—were still locked on you.
“My cat,” you whispered hoarsely, panic rising in your throat as you clutched the carrier tighter to your chest. The soldiers didn’t stop—they reached for it too.
"Please don’t hurt Jongjong,” you begged, voice cracking as the straps were torn from your hands, the warm weight of the carrier suddenly gone. “Please.”
The truck doors slammed behind Jongseong. Heeseung approached you, boots slow on the gravel, his expression unreadable. You expected amusement, or cold detachment. Instead, he looked… fascinated.
He stopped just in front of you, gaze flicking over your face, then lower, he reached out and plucked a strand of your hair.
You jerked back, but he already had it between his gloved fingers, holding it against the light.
It twitched. A subtle motion, almost imperceptible. The strand pulsed—flexed—like something living beneath the keratin. A ripple of parasite-altered structure, responsive to stress. Adaptable.
Just like Jongseong’s.
“Fascinating,” he murmured, more to himself than to you. You stood rigid, breath shallow, refusing to give him the satisfaction of fear.
He didn’t need you to speak. He already knew. You moved differently too.
Not like the ones they captured in the early waves—parasites that tore through their hosts in hours, leaving nothing behind but mindless hunger. Those were feral. Primitive. No self-awareness, no identity. They moved in twisted packs, bonded by instinct and survival programming alone.
You showed restraint. Expression. Emotion. A parasite that retained host memories wasn’t unheard of, but this level of cognitive mimicry? This illusion of selfhood? It was advanced. Dangerous.
Heeseung’s gaze flicked toward the truck where Jongseong was being restrained, injected, monitored. Still conscious, still resisting. Still looking at you.
The way you’d screamed for him. The way he’d fought back. The way your bodies moved in sync when threatened, like one half of the same adaptive system.
Heeseung’s brow furrowed faintly as his mind worked. Two parasites. Two separate hosts. And yet—shared behavior, matched speech patterns, mirrored stress responses.
Coordination. There was no record of parasite hosts operating this way.
No. These two were different.
They operated like a bonded system—distinct, but synchronized. Reflexively connected. Conscious units that didn't just act... they adapted. They evolved in tandem.
Like they remembered how to be human.
Heeseung turned from you without another word and walked briskly toward the rear vehicle.
The heavy doors of the transport truck slammed shut behind him with a hollow thud, sealing away the forest light. Inside, the air was sterile and close—metal floors, reinforced paneling, containment restraints bolted to the walls.
Jongseong sat chained at the wrists and ankles to a steel platform welded to the floor. A neural-suppression collar wrapped around the base of his neck, blinking with slow, pulsing red light—designed to keep his nervous system dormant. His breathing was shallow, restrained by the collar’s influence, but his eyes…
His eyes were alert. Fixed on a spot on the floor in front of him, still burning with thought.
The soldier at the rear finished checking the restraints, nodded once to Heeseung, then stepped out, leaving the two of them alone as the engine rumbled to life.
The truck began to move.
Heeseung sat across from him, there was a moment of silence before Jongseong spoke.
“Where did you put her cat?”
He didn’t look up—just stared at the floor, wrists loose in the restraints, posture deceptively relaxed.
Heeseung blinked, caught off-guard by the question. Not a threat. Not a plea. Just calm, focused concern. That tone again. Human, not host mimicry.
“She was worried,” Jongseong continued. “Even when they put a gun to her head. She didn’t cry for herself.”
“Your first question,” he said at last, “after all this—after being tranquilized, collared, contained—is about a cat?”
Jongseong’s jaw shifted slightly. “He’s all she has left."
Heeseung leaned back in his seat, watching him, trying to see where the parasite ended and the man began. “You say that like you care.”
“I do,” Jongseong said simply.
“You’re not supposed to,” Heeseung said flatly. “Parasites don’t care. They consume. They replicate. They preserve function only long enough to blend in and feed. Emotions aren’t in the architecture.”
Jongseong finally lifted his eyes. And when he did, the calm in them unnerved even Heeseung. “Maybe your data’s outdated.”
Heeseung didn’t answer right away.
The collar blinked again—another suppression pulse. Jongseong winced slightly, just a flicker. But the control was slipping.
Jongseong tilted his head. “You think that’s the parasite, don’t you? A mimicry of love?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No,” he replied quietly. “It’s something stronger than that. Something your experiments can’t replicate.”
Heeseung watched him for a moment longer, then pulled a tablet from his coat. He tapped the screen once, bringing up a live feed.
On it—your containment cell.
You were seated on a cold bench, hands cuffed, staring at the wall with red-rimmed eyes. Jongjong’s carrier sat in the far corner, intact. The kitten was curled up inside, asleep, breathing shallow but steady.
“She’s safe. For now,” Heeseung said. “As long as you cooperate.”
Jongseong didn’t speak. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. Just kept his eyes on the screen showing your containment room. The only motion came from his fingers—subtle, rhythmic tension in the knuckles as they flexed against the cuffs around his wrists.
The low rumble of the truck filled the silence between them as the vehicle rolled down the cracked road. The steel walls vibrated faintly with every turn, every bump. The hum of the suppression collar echoed with each pulse, a soft, almost inaudible thrum designed to keep the nervous system in check.
Heeseung sat opposite him, tablet resting on one knee, but he wasn’t looking at the screen anymore.
He was watching him. Heeseung had spent years studying parasite behavior. He’d seen the aftermath of outbreaks, the scorched ruins of cities where hosts turned feral. He’d dissected bodies whose minds had been consumed, hijacked by instinct. He knew how the infection behaved. The timeline. The neurological decay.
Heeseung leaned forward slightly, watching every twitch of the man’s jaw, every micro-movement in the corners of his eyes. There was no vacant, drone-like stillness. No flickering dissonance between body and mind. Jongseong moved with control. With memory.
“Two years,” Heeseung said quietly. “Since your incident.”
Still, no reply.
“No symptoms of degeneration. No neural collapse. No regression to instinctive behavior. Not even a shift unless provoked.”
Heeseung’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Parasites don’t do that.”
“You should’ve lost cognitive function by now,” Heeseung muttered, as if to himself. “Or at least shown instability. But you’re not twitching, not fragmenting. You’re still here.”
Jongseong didn’t answer.
Heeseung studied him harder now. “You responded to pain. But you didn’t lash out. You defended her first. Like you weren’t the one being contained.”
He stood slowly, pacing a step across the cramped transport cabin. “You aren’t fighting for survival like the others. You’re fighting for her. And the cat.” He said the last part with disbelief.
“And even now—with everything shut down inside you—you’re not asking how to escape.” He tapped a knuckle lightly against the wall. “You’re asking about a cat.”
Heeseung exhaled slowly, almost reluctantly, he muttered the thought that had been coiling in the back of his mind since he first saw the two of you together:
“…What if we didn’t catch a parasite?”
Across from him, Jongseong finally lifted his eyes. “You didn’t,” Jongseong said quietly.
His voice was calm. Too calm. It made Heeseung’s spine tighten.
“You didn’t catch a parasite,” he repeated. “You caught me.”
Heeseung turned toward him, narrowing his eyes, the flicker of doubt still not strong enough to override years of indoctrinated procedure. “So what are you then? The host pretending to be alive? Or the thing that took his name?”
“I’m not pretending,” Jongseong said, sitting straighter despite the restraints. “I never stopped being me.”
Heeseung folded his arms, cautious. “Parasites can adapt to memory. Form neural imprints. Replay emotions. It doesn’t mean they feel them.”
“I remember my mother’s voice,” Jongseong said. “The smell of mint in my lab. The first time I stitched a wound clean."
He leaned forward just slightly, eyes locked with Heeseung’s. “Tell me. What kind of parasite chooses restraint?”
Heeseung didn’t answer.
“I should have attacked when you put the collar on,” Jongseong continued. “When you touched her. When you threatened a cat. But I didn’t. Because I still have choice. I still have will. And if I wasn’t me... you’d all be dead.”
Heeseung’s jaw tightened. “That’s not proof of humanity. It’s control.”
“It’s both,” Jongseong said. “That’s what you can’t see. You’ve been fighting a war against an infection—but you never stopped to consider that maybe, some of us… integrated.”
Jongseong nodded once. “Symbiosis. On a level your science hasn’t reached yet. Our cells merged. Our minds remained intact. Not corrupted."
The idea clawed at the edge of his discipline. It wasn’t just unorthodox—it was heretical in the field of parasite containment.
“This isn’t a theory we can test,” Heeseung muttered, as much to himself as to Jongseong. “There’s no model for what you’re describing. No neural map that explains how host and parasite can both retain identity—”
“Because you’ve never looked,” Jongseong cut in. “You see symptoms. You don’t see survival. You isolate, contain, and kill before you understand.”
Heeseung stopped, and look at him again. “Why her?” he asked again, softer this time. “Why protect her like that?”
Jongseong’s gaze didn’t waver. “Because I love her. Not because the parasite remembers it. Because I do."
Heeseung was silent, the silence between them thickened.
“If you're going to cut us open, then leave her out of it. I’ve already run my bloodwork. The cells in our systems—they’re nearly identical. If you need a subject, take me.”
Heeseung narrowed his eyes. “You’re admitting you’re infected.”
“I’m saying I know more about what’s happening inside me than you ever will,” Jongseong said. “I’ve seen the mutation pathways. I’ve watched how the parasite interacts with host DNA. It doesn’t consume. Not in our case. It synchronizes. Rewrites with us, not over us.”
“You expect me to believe this is some kind of... biological partnership?”
“I don’t care if you believe it,” Jongseong said coolly. “I care if you let her live.”
Heeseung stood motionless, his fingers tightening slightly over the edge of his tablet. His mind clearly spinning, trying to stitch logic back together with a theory that had no precedent, no documented case, no rules.
Then a sudden bang was heard at the front of the transport.
The front of the transport jolted sideways, metal groaning as something massive rammed into the vehicle’s outer shell. Jongseong’s head snapped up, his body jerking violently against the restraints. The suppression collar flared with a pulse of light as it tried to regulate the surge in his nervous system.
But instinct was already rising. From deep in his bones, something ancient and sharpened stirred.
Warning sirens shrieked from the cockpit, pulsing red light flooding the interior. A violent, inhuman screech tore through the walls of the transport, piercing and layered with a sound that no natural throat could make.
Heeseung spun toward the back, eyes wide, gun already in hand as static exploded over the comms.
“—under attack—Sector Four breached—multiple signatures—non-registered forms—”
Then: silence. The comm cut out with a sharp burst of static.
Another impact—closer now.
The left panel of the truck ripped open, jagged claws punching through the hull. The interior sparked, wires torn from the wall. Screams erupted outside, brief, panicked, human—and were immediately silenced.
Gunfire flared, distant and fast. Then stopped. The truck screeched to a halt. Everything inside shuddered.
Jongseong’s breathing slowed. His pupils dilated. A sharp ringing started in his ear, piercing and constant. A signal. An echo. He knew that sound. The ferals were here.
Heeseung backed toward the wall, cursing under his breath, eyes darting toward the ruptured seams of the truck. “Shit—ferals. We’re not the only ones who tracked your signal.”
The vehicle hissed, locking down in emergency containment mode, blast doors grinding into place—but it wouldn’t hold.
It never held against evolved ferals.
A voice crackled in over the emergency channel, panicked and distorted.
“They’re cutting through the outer convoy—unit integrity compromised—blades—gods, their heads—!”
Heeseung turned toward the hatch with frantic precision, slamming a hand against the biometric reader. It blinked red.
Denied. Lockdown protocol in effect.
He snarled and spun toward one of the soldiers just as they dropped in from the front cabin, blood on their chest armor.
“What the hell are they doing here?!” Heeseung barked, breath ragged.
The soldier stumbled forward, panting. “We were being tracked. They're grouped, coordinated. They sensed the suppression signals. We were too focused on the subject—on capturing him—we didn’t see them grouping up!”
Heeseung’s face twisted, horror blooming beneath the sweat on his brow. He hit the external door override and shoved it open.
The wind roared in—along with the sharp scent of blood and ozone. He stepped out onto the highway and stopped cold.
The road was carnage.
Vehicles overturned. Trucks in flames. Smoke coiling into the sky. The asphalt was smeared with streaks of red. Civilian cars had been caught in the chaos, crumpled in the crash zone, some still running. The sound of alarms blared faintly beneath the screams.
And all around them—parasites. Dozens of them.
Moving in brutal synchronicity. Their heads had split open, revealing rows of blade-like bone and twitching sensory tissue, extending into curved, serrated weapons. Limbs bent at impossible angles. Some crawled low, others leapt over crushed vehicles.
One slammed a containment soldier into a guardrail, slicing through armor like foil. Another dragged someone beneath a flipped transport, the sound that followed barely human.
“Fuck!” Heeseung shouted. “We’re on a highway! Civilians are here!”
He watched as one parasite tore through a family vehicle. And suddenly, Heeseung understood the truth he’d ignored for too long:
While the government hunted for anomalies, the real parasites were already evolving—together.
"Jongseong!" Your voice cut through the gunfire, the sirens, the screeching metal—and Jongseong’s body reacted instantly.
His head snapped up, muscles tensing, eyes blown wide with instinct. The suppression collar hissed against his neck, trying to contain the surge of parasitic activity pulsing beneath his skin, but it was failing—overloaded by the ambient energy from the ferals outside. He pulled against the restraints, harder than before, the reinforced cuffs groaning.
Heeseung spun, eyes wide, curse caught in his throat as he raised his pistol again and fired into a cluster of parasites tearing through the defensive line.
Shots rang out, shells clinking against the scorched metal floor. Smoke billowed from one of the downed trucks. The soldiers had formed a defensive circle around the transport, rifles raised, trying desperately to hold position. Their formation was tight focused on protecting the anomaly inside.
But they didn’t see you. Your form moved like a blur—inhumanly fast—leaping across the crushed hood of a nearby vehicle. Metal dented under your weight as you sprang upward, hair whipped by the wind, eyes burning.
“How the hell—” one soldier stammered. “How did she escape containment?”
Another parasite lunged toward you, its jaw split wide in three directions, blade-arms drawn back to strike—but you twisted mid-air, your arm morphing as it flared into a winged shield, catching the creature mid-swipe and launching it backward with a bone-cracking crash.
You landed hard on the ground, crouched and panting, blood spattered on your cheek but your eyes were locked forward.
“Get away from him!” you screamed, your voice tore through the cacophony.
More soldiers had arrived—reinforcements spilling onto the blood-slick highway, shouting over their comms, rifles raised, movements tight and confused. But they couldn’t keep formation. They couldn’t keep up.
The parasites were everywhere crawling over the wreckage, tearing through armor. Heads split in jagged, serrated formations. Limbs bent backward, adapted for slicing, climbing, killing.
Heeseung stood in the center, spinning in place, trying to process it all.
Too fast. Too many. His team was trained for containment, not war.
“Sector is compromised—” a soldier barked through the radio before his voice was swallowed in static and a wet, bone-snapping crunch nearby.
All around him, his men were falling. One circle formation collapsed entirely, parasites tearing through the armored bodies within seconds. Another squad tried to regroup behind the burning transport, but were picked off before they even knelt.
Heeseung turned, frantic, searching for something to ground the moment. His eyes locked on you again.
You were in the open now—half-covered in smoke and ash, crouched behind a twisted heap of steel. Your breath was ragged, chest heaving, your once-formed wing-arm flickering with strain. Bone pushed through skin, not cleanly. It was raw. Exhausted. Overused.
You lifted your hand again but it refused to hold shape. Too many eyes.
The soldiers had seen you, so had the parasites.
And now everyone was targeting you. They didn’t care if you were like them or not—they only knew you weren’t theirs.
Gunfire cracked again, a warning shot grazing the steel beside your head. You ducked, eyes wide, hand burning as it twisted, half-shifting into something between claw and shield.
“Jongseong!” you cried out, breath shattering on his name. You didn’t know if he could hear you, but he felt you.
Body twisting against the chains as the parasite beneath his skin surged upward. The steel groaned. Jongseong’s wrists ripped free from the restraints in a burst of heat and sound. Sparks rained down as his hands—half-shifted now, gleaming with dark, fluid armor—tore the collar from his neck with a violent crack, tossing it against the wall where it exploded in a flash of white.
One leap carried him from the open truck, landing on shattered pavement just a few meters from you. Smoke curled from his shoulders. The wreckage of the convoy burned behind him. But he wasn’t looking at the fire.
He was looking at you.
“Stay back!” one of the soldiers shouted, stepping into his path.
Another raised a weapon and then they shot him.
The crack of the rifle echoed.
A high-velocity round tore into Jongseong’s back, slamming into the base of his spine, his arms dropped slightly.
And that’s when something inside you snapped.
The sound of the bullet, the sight of him being hit—again—sent a wave through your chest that wasn’t fear.
"No!" Something inside you responded. Your ears rang—not from the gunshot, but from a deeper frequency. Like pressure under water, like something old and waiting inside your blood suddenly woke up.
Heeseung saw the shift too late.
“No! Hold your fire!” he shouted, voice cracking as he pushed through the chaos, waving his arm wildly at the squad still taking aim. “Cease fire—stand down!”
Jongseong’s body hit the pavement hard, a low, guttural groan tearing from his throat. The bullet had struck at the base of his spine—the most sensitive part of his body, where parasite and host tissue merged deepest. His limbs trembled, nerves crackling like snapped wires. The world around him blurred.
Sound fractured. Vision swam. But even through the fog, his body moved.
He forced one arm forward, dragging himself across the cracked asphalt, blood trailing behind him. Grit tore into his palms. Every movement lit his back. He had to reach you.
His breath hitched, when he looked up and saw you.
You were standing amidst the ruin, body trembling, chest rising, your head is split. Down the center, your skull had begun to peel open, petals of bone and skin folding back in a horrifying symmetry.
Inside, the interior of your skull pulsed with living tissue—luminous, intricate, organic architecture sculpted into motion. The folds moved, shimmering with pale bioluminescence beneath layers of exposed membrane. Thorned tendrils extended into the air, twitching like antennae, reaching in all directions—reading everything.
You weren’t looking at anyone. You were looking at everything.
And anything that moved was a target.
Jongseong watched, breath stuttering in his throat as he pushed himself to his feet, limping, wounded, bleeding, but still moving toward you.
“No…” he whispered, his voice frayed with pain. “Please—look at me.”
But your head remained split open, the sensory limbs on full alert, searching, flinching, vibrating with threat-perception. You were caught in something deeper than instinct. Something merged. Not fully parasite. Not fully human.
Hybrid rage.
He saw your hands flex—one already reshaped into a half-scythe, twitching.
His steps faltered. You didn’t recognize movement anymore. Only motion. Only danger.
And that’s when a memory crashed through him.
“If I stop choosing?” you asked him, voice fragile, small in the silence of your shared bed. “If I lose myself?”
He cupped your face and smiled faintly, "remember what I said when we first met?"
"I’ll stop you,” he said.
Jongseong staggered closer, lifting a hand.
“Come back to me,” he whispered, blood dripping from his fingers. “It’s me, remember? You asked me to stop you. But I know you’re still in there.”
Your tendrils twitched, one sweeping dangerously near his face. Another moved to your back—coiling instinctively, ready to strike anything that came close.
He didn’t move faster. He moved slower. One step at a time. No aggression. No sudden gestures. Just presence.
Your exposed mind pulsed again, recognition flickering across the movement sensors.
The rage inside you paused.
Jongseong was right there, wounded and reaching. His hand stretched toward you, fingers trembling, eyes full of you.
You saw him. He saw you.
For a moment, the chaos faded beneath the ringing in your head. The rage had cracked open, flared, and then wavered. The kill-reflex that had overtaken you flickered like a faulty circuit. Jongseong was there—his body broken, bleeding, limping toward you, arms out like he wasn’t afraid. And you weren’t afraid either.
He was calling you back. You could feel it in the weight of his gaze, in the tremble of his voice, in the way he said your name like it still belonged to a person, not a monster.
But the world never gave you time to breathe.
“Target in range!” came the voice, sharp and too close.
A soldier burst through the smoke to the left of the wreckage, rifle raised, armor streaked with ash. He’d broken rank. His orders were panic now, and his eyes were locked not on you—but on Jongseong.
He didn’t see the moment between you.
He saw a parasite protecting another parasite. He pulled the trigger.
And the world snapped back into motion.
Your body reacted faster than thought. Your limbs twisted with violent precision, burning pain ripping through your shoulders as tendrils re-flared wide. The trajectory of the bullet was instant, and so was your movement. You lunged—not toward the soldier, but toward Jongseong.
The shot rang out.
It hit you in the side of the head. The force snapped your body mid-leap, the angle of your descent faltering as the impact twisted your momentum. You crumpled in the air, before collapsing into Jongseong’s arms.
He didn’t process it at first. His mind refused to.
He had just seen your face—your eyes, focused and full of something fierce. You’d moved to shield him. You had chosen. And now your weight was in his arms, limp, warm, and wrong.
Jongseong’s eyes widened, his pupils blown wide as your body hit him. You slid into his chest, your limbs folding over him.
“No—” The word broke from him. Your blood was already pooling in his lap, hot and thick, soaking through the front of his shirt.
Your head lolled against his shoulder, and for one breathless, agonizing moment, he thought it was over. That whatever part of you had held on through mutation and fear had finally let go.
Then, you moved.
Your fingers twitched against his chest, searching weakly, as though your body still knew him. As though your nerves had memorized where he was. His hand flew to your cheek, cradling your face, feeling the fresh, searing heat of the wound just above your brow, where the bullet had grazed—not pierced—just grazed, carving a shallow line along the temple instead of burrowing deep.
It hadn’t gone through.
It hadn’t gone through.
“Hey—hey,” Jongseong whispered, his voice trembling as his thumb brushed away the blood streaking down the side of your face. “Stay with me. Look at me. Come on, open your eyes.”
You stirred faintly in his arms, eyes fluttering open halfway. Blurry. Unfocused. One pupil dilated, the other slow to respond. Your breathing came shallow, uneven. But you were still there.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, slurred. “You were in the way.”
Tears welled in Jongseong’s eyes, stinging hot. “You think I care about that?” he said, a bitter laugh breaking through his grief. “You shouldn’t be protecting me. I’m supposed to protect you. That was the deal. That was the whole damn deal.”
Your mouth twitched into the ghost of a smile. “We keep switching places.”
He let out a breath—part sob, part laugh—and pulled you tighter against him, pressing his forehead to yours. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna get out of this. Just don’t close your eyes, okay?”
Around you, the world was still burning.
The smoke curled through the air, lit red by fire and violence. Parasites clashed with soldiers. Screams rose and fell. Metal groaned as the transport vehicles burned. But inside this circle, there was only the two of you.
Jongseong cradled your body close, arms trembling, holding you. You were breathing but just barely, and each breath was a battle. Your eyes were open, unfocused, but searching only for him.
“I said hold your fucking gun!” Heeseung’s voice tore through the smoke, sharp and furious. He stormed forward, boots crunching glass and debris.
But halfway there, he froze. A small, unmistakable sound pierced the tension.
"Meow."
Heeseung blinked, momentarily disarmed.
Out from behind a crushed tire, padding softly on tiny feet, came the orange kitten. Its fur was matted with soot, but it was unharmed. It limped slightly, dazed but determined, weaving its way across the field of bodies and broken machines. It meowed again, louder this time, heading straight toward the two figures curled together on the ground.
Heeseung watched, stunned.
The kitten crawled into the small space between your arms and Jongseong’s chest, nudging at your hand until your fingers curled faintly around its fur. A soft sound escaped your lips—almost a sob. Jongseong let out a broken breath, head bowed low, tears trailing silently down his blood-streaked face.
Heeseung had seen hundreds of parasite cases. Dissections. Failures. Living corpses. He’d seen what it looked like when something wore a human face like a mask.
They weren’t mimicking emotion.
They were feeling it.
And suddenly, something cracked in him. Maybe it was the way Jongseong hadn’t fought back. Maybe it was the way you had shielded him without hesitation. Or maybe it was the cat—meowing stubbornly like it belonged in this hell, like it belonged to someone who mattered.
Heeseung turned away. “Take them to the hospital,” he said gruffly. "Now.”
The remaining soldiers hesitated. He turned his head slightly, eyes hard. “They are just normal beings. You hear me?”
The sun was bright—too bright, almost unreal after everything. You lay on your back in the grass, eyes half-lidded, your arm stretched above your head as your fingers tried to catch the warmth. The heat soaked into your skin that reminded your body it was still alive.
The breeze danced lightly across your face, carrying the scent of earth and new flowers. Birds chirped somewhere distant, lazy and indifferent to what the world had gone through.
For once, it was quiet.
Jongseong dropped down beside you, his breath soft as he settled into the grass. His shoulder brushed against yours.
“You’re happy?” he asked, you turned toward him, giggling gently as you scooted closer, resting your head against his arm until your nose touched the soft fabric of his shirt.
“Yes,” you whispered, eyes closing. “The house you bought has neighbors. Real ones. I hear them laughing sometimes through the trees.”
You let your hand slide down into the grass, brushing over a patch of tiny purple flowers that had just begun to open. “The flowers are blooming again,” you added.
You felt his arm slide under your neck, pulling you gently into him. The warmth of his chest against your back. The sound of his heart, steady and strong.
“You’re blooming again too,” he said quietly, lips brushing the top of your hair. You smiled, tucking yourself in closer, your fingers playing absently with the hem of his shirt.
“I talked to my mother,” you said after a pause, voice barely more than a breath.
Jongseong tensed slightly behind you, just surprise. His fingers paused mid-stroke along your arm.
“They cried,” you continued, your voice catching somewhere between joy and guilt. “Not because I ran… but because I was alive. Still me. I don’t think they fully understand what I’ve become, but they—believed me. That was enough.”
“That’s more than most people get,” he said softly. “More than I thought either of us would get.”
You turned just enough to look up at him over your shoulder, your cheek still resting on his chest. “They asked about you too, you know.”
He smiled faintly. “What’d you tell them?”
“That you were the reason I came back. That you weren’t a monster. That you were the most human thing left in the world.”
He didn’t answer that. Just held you tighter.
The breeze passed again, ruffling his hair, and for a few long moments, you stayed like that.
“I… got a job offer.”
You blinked, lifting your head slightly. “A job?”
He nodded. “From the Anti-Parasite Intelligence Unit.”
You sat up just a bit, your brow furrowing as you turned toward him. “Huh? That doesn’t even make sense—they tried to kill us. You think they won’t dissect you the moment you scan wrong on their monitors?”
He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “Not this time. Heeseung vouched for me.”
You stared at him. “The guy who raided your house and locked me in a steel box?”
Jongseong gave a small shrug, like he was still trying to believe it himself. “He said watching us changed something. That they need people who understand—not just destroy. Someone who’s walked both sides.”
You exhaled slowly, processing that. “And… do you trust him?”
“No,” he said honestly. “But I trust myself.”
You looked at him, eyes soft but filled with worry. “I don’t want to lose this. What we have. What we made.”
“You won’t,” he said, brushing his thumb against your cheek. “I won’t let them take that. I just… I want to be part of shaping what comes next. So no one else has to live like we did.”
You were quiet for a moment, then reached up and ran your fingers through his hair.
“So…” you murmured with a crooked smile, “I’ll just be the one staying home? Waiting for you to come back from your mysterious, morally ambiguous government job?”
He chuckled, his eyes crinkling. “That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”
You shrugged, teasing. “I don’t know. I was hoping for something a little more… exciting.”
Jongseong’s hand found yours, his fingers lacing between yours gently. “Then marry me,” he said.
You blinked. “W-What?”
He turned slightly onto his side to face you, pressing a kiss into the back of your hand. His voice didn’t shake. His eyes didn’t stray.
“Marry me,” he repeated, lips still brushing your skin. “Not because it’s perfect. Not because we’re normal. But because we survived. Because I want to spend every day I have left choosing you again.”
Your heart slammed against your ribs. You sat up slowly, stunned, the words echoing louder now in the silence between you. The wind quieted. Even the trees seemed to hush.
“You’re serious,” you whispered.
He sat up with you, his face close now, eyes full of something more vulnerable than fear. “I don’t know how long this peace will last. But I know I want to build something with you. Something that no one can take from us. Not science. Not governments. Not even time.”
You laughed. “You idiot,” you said, tears in your eyes. “You didn’t even bring a ring.”
He smiled. “You’d say no if I did?”
You shook your head, laughing again through the tears. “No.”
Then quieter, as your hand pressed to his chest, you whispered:
“Yes.”
And when he kissed you this time, it was full of sunlight and the sound of blooming things.
“Pathology of Parasites.”
The words glowed dimly on the top corner of Jongseong’s datapad screen, the title of a document he’d first created over two years ago.
Rows of categorized data: genome sequencing, mutation rates, cellular instability markers. Diagrams of parasite-host binding sites. Bone marrow compatibility. Immune rejection cycles. Timelines of when the parasite first entered his nervous system. His own handwriting, still neat back then, filled the digital margins—observations in shorthand, notes from sleepless nights.
Date: March 4
Neurological sensitivity peaked at 3:21 AM. No external triggers. Breathing accelerated. Controlled.
Note: Dreamed in third person again. Strange.
But the pages had changed with time.
What began as cold, methodical data shifted the moment you entered his life. Your name didn’t appear at first. Then it did.
“Unconfirmed bond pattern. Same cellular merging. Same control.”
But eventually, it wasn’t numbers anymore. He'd begun sketching you—rough outlines in the corner of the file margins. Not parasite diagrams. Just you. The curve of your jaw when you smiled. The ripple of your morphing wing when light hit it just right. The split of your skull the first time you showed him what you really were—and how he still found you beautiful.
More files were added. Pages documenting the moments no microscope could capture:
“She laughed while watering the flowers today. Her breathing pattern returned to baseline immediately afterward. Possibly tied to emotional regulation.”
“Her T-cells adapted faster than mine. She smells like copper and summer rain when she’s shifting. No documented reason. Just… her.”
The datapad buzzed faintly beneath his fingertips. He sat in the quiet of his study, your silhouette just visible through the open window—standing in the garden, laughing at Jongjong as the cat tried to chase a butterfly it would never catch.
Jongseong looked down at the title again.
Pathology of Parasites.
He stared at it for a long time. Then, slowly, he raised a finger and tapped on the word Pathology.
He highlighted it, then deleted it to typed something else.
EVERY SIDE OF TENDERNESS ──.୨ৎ park sunghoon one shot
Married to a prince who chooses silence over all else, you must learn to love him through gestures and the weight of words not said. When the truth of his past fractures your understanding of him, desire and grief blur until restraint finally breaks. This is a story about a voice stolen and what happens when devotion is no longer enough to stay silent.
sfw warnings ── NO SMUT, depictions of muteness, hand gestures depicted as some sort of sign language, crying, mentions of violence and blood, tenderness, lil bit of angst.
4k
The first thing you ever learned about your husband. the prince, came only three days before your engagement ball. It was told to you in a quiet sitting room while servants adjusted hems and measured your waist, while the palace prepared to parade you like a promise already kept.
"You should not expect him to speak to you," your mother said at last.
Her voice was almost too calm, the way people spoke when they had rehearsed a sentence many times before actually saying it aloud. You remember how her hands never stopped moving as she spoke, smoothing fabric and fixing wrinkles that weren’t there.
You asked what she meant and she hesitated for a second, long enough for you to notice though.
"He does not use words," she said. "Not with anyone."
That was all, no explanation or story ever followed, not even reassurance from your parents. You waited for more, for why, for since when, for will he ever but nothing came. The women around you kept working, pretending not to listen, pretending this wasn't the most important thing you'd heard about the man you were meant to spend your life with.
Later, one of your ladies whispered to you that it had been his choice, another murmured something about an accident years ago. Someone else crossed herself and said he'd been different since childhood. None of what you heard felt solid, just fragments and rumors, maybe even soft warnings disguised as concern.
That night, while you were all alone in your room you tried to imagine what a silent husband would be like. You realized, embarrassingly, that you had never considered a marriage without conversation. You wondered what arguments would look like, what comfort would sound like, whether silence would feel like peace...or punishment.
By the time the engagement ball arrived, you were already exhausted from thinking. The ballroom was overwhelming with light and music and voices crashing into one another, but you noticed him immediately anyway.
Prince Sunghoon stood apart from the noise, near the throne where his father sat, dressed impeccably, his expression composed to the point of stillness. He looked carved rather than dressed, like someone had shaped him for duty and forgotten to soften the edges.
He didn't speak when nobles greeted him, he didn't even laugh when jokes were offered, he did acknowledge people with small, precise movements though—a nod or a shift of attention.
And yet people watched him more than anyone else in the room.
When you were presented to him, your heart pounded so loudly you were sure he could hear it. You curtsied and he bowed, the silence between you stretched a little awkwardly.
"My betrothed," you called to him, only then did he look at you properly, his eyes flicked to your mouth, as if registering the sound you'd made, then back to your eyes. There was no irritation or impatience there but there was something so guarded.
He didn't respond with words, instead he extended his hand. You remember how careful he was when you took it, how he didn't rush and his grip adjusted minutely, like he was making sure you were comfortable before himself. During the dance, he never once stepped on your foot. He guided you without force, without hesitation, as though he had already learned the rhythm of you.
When the music ended, you murmured a thank you out of instinct, unsure if it mattered. He paused, then placed a hand briefly over his chest and inclined his head, it was so restrained and deliberate, it felt more intimate than any polite phrase.
That was when you understood something important, something no one had thought to explain to you. It wasn’t that you were marrying a man without a voice, you were marrying a man who had learned to speak in other ways and you were just going to have to learn how to listen.
Marriage did not change him all at once but it did changed him unmistakably. The softening began so quietly, in ways so small you almost missed them at first.
On your first morning as his wife, after you had spent the night in his chamber because the council insisted, you woke before he did and lay there watching him breathe, convinced you were intruding on something sacred. When he eventually stirred and found you awake, there was a brief moment where his shoulders tensed, bracing for expectation.
Then you smiled at him, shy and uncertain, and the tension eased, he reached for your hand without looking, his thumb brushing once over your knuckles. You later learned that this was how he said good morning.
You learned many things like that. He never spoke, but he listened with an attentiveness that bordered on devotion. In the evenings, when the palace finally quieted and the weight of the day loosened its grip on both of you, you would sit together close enough that your knees brushed and you would tell him everything about your day.
You told him about the ladies who gossiped too loudly in the halls, about the steward who always forgot your tea exactly how you liked it, about the way the gardens smelled after rain, and how it reminded you of home.
At first, you worried you were boring him. He rarely reacted outwardly, but then you noticed the way his eyes followed you, steady and focused. The way he leaned in ever so slightly when you spoke and the way his hand would shift closer to yours as if drawn there without conscious thought.
Sometimes, when something amused him, the corner of his mouth would twitch before he caught himself. Other times, he didn't even bother hiding it at all. His smiles were rare, but devastating, small things that felt like secrets meant only for you. The first time you made him smile fully, you stopped mid sentence because you were stunned.
He tilted his head, confused by your sudden silence, and when you laughed, a little disbelieving, his smile lingered longer than it should have.
Dinner became sacred, no matter how long his councils ran, no matter how heavy the day, he always made time to eat with you. The servants learned quickly not to interrupt unless it was absolutely urgent. It was during these meals that you saw the man beneath the crown most clearly.
He had habits. He always poured your water before his own, he pushed the dishes you liked closer to you without comment. When you forgot to eat while talking, he would tap lightly against the table to draw your attention back, then gesture pointedly at your plate until you laughed and obeyed.
When you asked him about his day, he answered very differently than you did. He would reach for a small piece of paper sometimes, writing a few careful words before pushing it toward you, other times, he simply showed you, with his hands moving slowly, shaping meaning in the air between you. You learned the signs quickly. How he described frustration or expressed pride. How he spoke of exhaustion without ever making it seem like complaint.
At night, when the palace grew still, he watches you at the mirror as you brushed your hair, watching the motion with a softness that made your chest ache. Sometimes he reached out to help, fingers gentle, reverent, as if afraid of doing something wrong. When you thanked him, he shook his head slightly, a familiar gesture that meant you don't need to.
The tenderness did last, but not as long as you had hoped it would. You were sitting in the morning room when you heard it, your cup warm between your palms, steam curling lazily toward the tall windows, the palace was still waking up in that gentle hour before the day truly began.
You hadn't meant to listen, truly. It started out as background noise, the soft shuffle of footsteps, the murmur of servants passing through the corridor just beyond the open doors.
Then you heard his name and you stilled, their voices dropped instinctively, the way people spoke when they knew they shouldn't. You knew then, that you should clear your throat and make your presence known, remind them sharply that discussing the prince was not their place.
But you didn't, you held your breath instead. They spoke of him in fragments at first, of rumors and things the older servants whispered to the younger ones late at night. That your husband was not truly mute. That he could speak, if he wished to, that the silence was a choice.
Your heart thudded painfully in your chest.
Then one of them spoke fully. He had been four years old when he was kidnapped in the dead of night, taken as leverage in a failed attempt to overthrow his father. They said he cried for hours, terrified, calling for a mother who never came, a father who could not reach him. His captors, frantic and cruel and desperate to keep him quiet, had hurt him in a way no child should ever be hurt.
The details were not lingered on, but you felt them anyway, suffocating. The servants spoke of damaged vocal cords, of maesters summoned too late, of a small boy found bloodied and alive against all odds. They said the healers had saved his voice technically, the sound still existed, fractured, but it was never right again.
They said he had tried to speak once after, only once. That the sound startled everyone in the room, including himself and after that he simply never spoke again.
Silence fell in the hallway and you realized your tea had gone untouched, your hands trembling so badly the liquid rippled in the cup. Your throat ached inexplicably, as if your body were mourning something your mind had only just learned.
The servants moved on eventually, their whispers fading down the corridor. You sat there long after they were gone and thought of his careful gestures, of the way he hesitated before expressing himself and how controlled and gentle he was.
You thought of the boy he must have been, so small and frightened. Hurt so deeply that silence became safer than sound.
Suddenly, so many things made sense that it hurt. That evening, when he joined you for dinner, you watched him more closely than ever before. You finally realized you had never seen him without a piece of clothing covering his neck, maybe it was hiding the scar.
At one point, he noticed your gaze lingering and tilted his head, questioning. You smiled back, quickly, reassuringly but you didn’t say a word.
When you reached across the table and covered his hand with yours, squeezing just once, you felt him still beneath your touch before his fingers curled around yours in return, he set his cutlery down with deliberate care and looked at you fully, brows knitting just slightly. He lifted one hand, palm up, fingers moving in a question you knew well. Tell me.
You froze, the truth pressing at your chest but you couldn’t bring yourself to lay it at his feet, not like this, not yet. You didn’t want him to wonder if you looked at him differently now or be the reason old wounds stirred.
So you panicked. "My lord," you blurted, the title slipping out when nerves got the better of you, "would you…would you want to have children?"
For a heartbeat, he stilled before his head tilted to the side, slow and thoughtful, eyes narrowing just a touch as comprehension dawned. And then that small, knowing smile appeared, the one that crept up when he thought he understood something important.
His shoulders relaxed and his expression softened into something amused, fond. Almost teasing even.
Oh, his smile seemed to say. That’s what this is about.
Heat rushed to your face.
"No—no, not like that," you rushed out, hands lifting instinctively as if to physically push the idea away. "I mean—yes, eventually, maybe, but that’s not— I wasn’t—" You stumbled over yourself, mortified. "I didn’t mean it like…that."
He watched you unravel with open affection, a quiet sound left his chest, not a word, but not quite a laugh either, it was something warm and breathy. He reached across the table then, brushing his thumb against your wrist in that grounding way he had.
You swallowed and forced yourself to slow. "I just…I was thinking about the future," you said more carefully. "About what you want. About what kind of life you imagine."
His teasing quickly faded after that as he studied you for a long moment, eyes searching you, and then he brought your hand fully into his and squeezed once, firm and certain. His other hand lifted, moving with intention now, his index finger pointing between you and him before nodding, as if to say with you, yes.
You felt your chest loosen as he smiled again, even gentler this time, and tapped his temple, then his heart—his way of telling you that he thought deeply about these things, that they mattered to him, you mattered to him.
The worry didn't leave his eyes completely, he reached up, brushing his thumb along your knuckles again, a silent question lingering there. You smiled back, steadying yourself. "I'm okay," you said softly. "I promise."
The heaviness doesn't leave you though, it settles into your chest in quiet moments, like when your ladies are helping you get dressed, when you sip tea that's gone way too cold, when you listen for his footsteps in the hall and realize you've been holding your breath without even noticing. Sunghoon is the same as always, still gentle and attentive and so careful with you, it actually somehow makes it all worse by making the unasked questions louder in your head.
One afternoon you go looking for him, only to find his study door slightly ajar, light spilling across the carpet, the room smelling faintly of ink and old paper. You step inside, expecting to find him bent over his desk, sleeves rolled with his expression focused. Instead, the room is completely empty, the chair pushed back with papers neatly stacked on the table.
You turn to leave but your eye catches the sight of a small leather bound book on the desk, it’s worn at the edges, its spine creased in a way that speaks of frequent use. You recognize it immediately, though you've never seen it up close, it’s your husband’s diary, the one he always keeps locked away.
Your feet stop moving even though you will them too, you will yourself to leave cause you know better, but your heart is pounding so hard and your thoughts are too tangled, and before you can stop yourself, you’re at his desk, lifting your hand towards the book.
Just a glance, you think. Just to know him better.
You open it and the page is filled with his script, all neat and deeply personal. You barely have time to register the first line before you hear the door slam shut.
The sound makes you jump as your breath stutters painfully in your throat. Sunghoon stands right in front of you, his jaw tight in a way you've never seen before. His eyes lock onto the book in your hands, and something dark flashes across his face, it’s shock followed by raw and unguarded fury.
He crosses the room in long strides and you can speak or even fully turn the book toward him, his hand comes down hard, slamming it shut against the desk.
His hands tremble and when your eyes finally meet, his are burning—hurt layered beneath anger so intense it makes your stomach drop. You've never seen him like this, never seen him look at you as though you've shattered something fragile and irreplaceable.
"I—I'm sorry," you choke out, tears spilling before you can stop them. "I didn't mean to—I wasn't trying to—please, I'm so sorry—"
Your words tangle and fall apart, useless against the weight of his silence. He doesn't even touch you or gesture anything for you to understand. He just stares at you with his chest rising too fast, as if he's struggling to rein himself in.
That hurts most of all. You feel the shame crashing over you so hot and suffocating, you can't bear the look in his eyes, the distance that suddenly feels cavernous.
So you run.
You run past him and flee the room, skirts gathered in your shaking hands, sobs breaking free as you rush down the corridor. You don't look back or hear him follow you and you feel your heart break even more.
Behind you, in the study, the diary remains on the desk while Sunghoon stands frozen in place, staring at the door you disappeared through, fury giving way to something that feels a lot like regret.
When night finally comes, you don’t bother pretending you might sleep, you stay seated at your desk with your shoulders curled inward, staring down at the ink blurred from your tears on the page in front of you. You hadn't written a single word like you had intended, your hands rest uselessly in your lap, fingers twisting together again and again as if you can wring the feeling out of your chest. The image of his face when he caught you, the sharp anger, so unlike the man you knew, keeps replaying until your throat aches.
A knock at your door startles you and before you can answer, it opens just enough for your lady in waiting to peer inside.
"My lady," she says quietly, "His Highness is here."
Sunghoon steps in behind her, tall and unmistakable even in the low candlelight. He lifts his hand in a small, practiced gesture and all the servants bow, slipping out at once, the door closing with a muted click that sounds far too final.
You stay seated cause your body is heavy, rooted to the chair, hands clenched in your skirts. When you look up at him, your eyes already burning with fresh tears. He stands there for a moment, watching you with a worry so naked it almost hurt to see, so you rush to fill the silence.
"My lord, I'm so sorry," you say quickly, voice trembling. "I shouldn't have touched it, I know it was wrong, I just—" He crosses the room before you can finish.
Instead of stopping in front of you or gesturing for you to stand before him like you expect, he sinks down slowly until he’s kneeling between your knees. The movement knocks the breath from your lungs, as he leans forward and lowers his head into your lap, resting the side of his head against you. His hands slid to either side of your hips, palms flat against them. You feel his breath through the fabric of your gown very uneven.
The apology comes without a single sound, his shoulders bow inward, the tension in them finally breaking. He stays there, unmoving, trusting you not to push him away. Trusting you with something that he’s never offered anyone else.
Your hands hover uselessly for a second, unsure and afraid to do the wrong thing again. Then you touch him, your fingers threading gently through his hair, careful at first, then softer and cradling. You feel his breath stutter and a tear slips down your cheek, landing somewhere in his hair, and you don’t bother wiping it away.
"Oh," you whisper, the word barely surviving the lump in your throat. "Sunghoon..."
He lifts his head just enough to look at you, his eyes red and stripped bare of all princely composure, there was no anger left there, only fear and regret tangled together, the quiet terror of someone who thought he might have lost the one place he felt safe.
You’re already crying openly now. "I shouldn't have looked," you say softly. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I just...I heard things. And I didn't know how to ask."
He raises one hand slowly, hesitantly even, as if afraid you might pull away. His thumb brushes beneath your eye, catching a tear with aching care, before leaning in again to rest his temple against your stomach this time.
You let your hand settle on his shoulder, in that stillness, with candlelight flickering over the walls and the world kept firmly outside your door, the silence between you felt different, kind of like understanding and you even feel your chest loosen enough for you to breathe.
You feel yourself lean down before you can overthink it. It’s barely a kiss, in all honesty, it’s more breath than pressure. Your lips brush his like you’re testing something fragile and the moment lingers for half a heartbeat before reality crashes in and you pull back sharply.
"I— I’m sorry," you whisper, flustered and embarrassed. "I forgot myself."
You don’t get the chance to finish because he moved and kisses you himself this time, without hesitation. His mouth claims yours with a quiet urgency that immediately steals the air from your lungs. It’s deeper and firmer than yours was, his kiss leaves no room for doubt.
He rises to his feet without breaking the kiss and lifts you with him in the same motion. Your feet barely find the floor before you’re pressed close, your body fitting against his as if it has always known where it belongs.
His hand comes up to the back of your head in a possessive hold, fingers threading into your hair as he tilts your face exactly where he wants it. The sensation makes you whimper softly, the sound surprising even you. He pulls back just enough for you to see his face.
The look in his eyes makes your knees go weak, it’s all want and it makes your stomach curl as you tremble with anticipation.
You can feel him growing needier when he leans down to kiss you again, in a way that feels almost instinctive, like he’s been holding this inside his body for the months you’ve been married and now that it’s been unlocked, he doesn’t know how to stop.
His hand comes up, firm and warm, cupping your breast through the thin fabric of your dress, pulling you closer until there’s no space left between you, his lips press there, along your jaw, just beneath your ear, and the sensation makes your knees wobble. You cling to his sleeves, fingers tightening as you gasp.
"My lord—" you stutter, voice trembling. "Please…slow down."
And he does, immediately even, he stills as if struck, pulling back to look at you. He lifts both hands to your face, cradling your cheeks cause to him you’re something so precious, something fragile. His thumbs brush beneath your eyes, wiping away the tears you didn’t realize had fallen.
Then his mouth opens and you freeze, at first nothing comes out. His throat works, jaw tight, his breath uneven. When sound finally does emerge, it’s broken and cracked. It hurts to hear and yet it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever known.
"I—"
The word fractures halfway through and his voice catches painfully. He swallows but his eyes never leave yours, refusing to look away or retreat.
He tries again.
"Y—Y—ou’re…s—s—o b—beautiful."
The words come out uneven, carved straight from his chest, you can proudly say. You gasp, your hands flying to his wrists, your whole body going still in shock. Your eyes burn, vision blurring as the weight of it crashes into you and it’s not just the words, but the effort it costs him to say them.
He doesn’t stop, he’s not done. His thumbs press more firmly into your cheeks, his voice shakes and cracks again, but there is no hesitation now, just undeniable determination.
"I…I love you," he says, broken and raw. "So…much."
It sounds like a vow, like a confession torn out of years of silence.
You sob quietly, forehead falling against his chest as he pulls you in, holding you like he’s afraid the world might take you away if he makes the mistake of letting go. His chin rests on top of your head, he huffs out a breath, as if saying those words has finally let him breathe properly for the first time in his life.
He doesn’t need to speak again.
He’s already said everything.
nene’s note ── thank you to my love @ikeukiss for titling this one for me, guys i was too lazy to make a banner im sorry, i hope you enjoy! i love feedback💋
──────── synopsis: jake's never been needed by anyone in his life, ever. so when he's paired with yn for a project, the most independent girl he's ever met he becomes conflicted on wanting to look out for her when she claims she doesn't need him, or anyone for that matter.
genre: strangers to lovers, college au, angst, this was supposed to be a romcom... forgive me, hurt/comfort, slowburn, boy who has never been needed x girl who has never needed anyone, miscommunication, he fell first she fell harder
warnings: profanity, mentions of drinking/smoking, college stereotypes, kissing, mentions of sexual harassment/assault but not in detail, reference to drug addiction, a lot of this will be in jake's pov, mentions of child abuse but not in detail, mentions of character death, corrupt society/rich people, classism, yn and jake both have rough upbringings, switch!jake, possessive!jake, mutual oral, heavy kissing, fingering, cum swallowing, dirty talk/praise, bigdick!jake, tummy bulge, pinv, spanking, breeding, handjob, mating press/missionary, tit play, choking, squirting, overstimulation, biting, finger sucking, dumbification, jungwon is yn's bf and he's an asshole </3 , yn slaps won, slutshaming but not said directly, kind of cheating? like emotional cheating? idk, 18+ sorta proofread but i doubt there will be no typos lol (ty @xylatox for being my spelling/grammar checker)
⋮ ⌗ ┆ib. "for once in my life" stevie wonder
⤷ wc: 32335
for as long as sim jaeyun could remember, no one has ever asked anything of him. he always remembered life to just go by quite easily for him, no demands, no restraints, and no limits. he spent everyday the same way: he woke up, looked out his window to see the small sparrow's nest perched on the tree just outside, cooed at the small bird to get it's attention every morning only for it to fly away, and then he'd get his day started.
he'd get out of bed and do his usual routine of brushing his teeth, washing his face, messing with his hair until it looked good enough, and then he'd have breakfast.
breakfast was the same everyday too. a waffle, an egg or two, some kind of protein— usually a sausage of some kind, chicken mostly because he didn't like pork. then he'd wash it all down with a glass of apple juice, not orange because it was too tart and always had too much pulp in it.
then, when breakfast was done, he'd go on with whatever he had planned for the day.
everyday was the same for sim jaeyun— and he hated it.
every mundane and boring task practically drove him insane to the point that he tried to stay up for a total of 72 hours one week just to see if anything would change about the world— his world— that he would usually miss while sleeping, he did end up falling asleep after staying awake for 36 hours but in those 36 hours nothing changed.
he was tired of the same old shit, he was tired of having no purpose, and he was tired of not being needed. to him, not being needed was the equivalent of not being important enough, and not being important enough made him not only feel small and useless but also… well that's it. he didn't want to be useless and even when he thought he found his purpose or found where he's needed, he's proven wrong.
for example, when he was 16 he got his very first job at a bakery— nothing fancy or special. he was just the cashier and after a month of working there he realized that most customers would go to a different coworker for help rather than him even if he was just standing there, apron tied across his chest, hand drumming on the counter from boredom, and nothing to do.
sim jaeyun was fired shortly after he finally noticed because he accidentally yelled at a customer who blatantly ignored his attempts at helping them— ever since then he hasn't stepped inside of a bakery. the smell of freshly baked bread and butter practically brings him back to that memory— although he did love to just eat bread every now and then because, well bread is bread. it was yummy and easy to eat— convenient, he'd say.
another time where being needed proved to be a hindrance to sim jaeyun was his first day of university. he got to his lecture early so he could get a great seat, somewhere in the middle so he wasn't too close to the front so he wasn't easily called on nor too far in the back to the point where he couldn't hear anything. he found a spot just in the middle of the endless rows of seats and when more and more students filed into the lecture hall, he watched as students all seemed to take seats just around him but not next to him.
until a kid who was late showed up and the only seats left were the ones next to him. the kid seemed to be around his age so sim jaeyun thought that they could be friends. he could hear the kids stomach grumble so like the kind person he was, he offered him the granola bar he packed and threw into his backpack— the kid smiled and said thanks before peeling it open and eating it, only for him to start becoming itchy a few seconds later and eventually his windpipes were starting to swell.
come to find out, the kid had a severe nut allergy.
how was he supposed to know that? maybe the kid should've read the wrapper before tearing it into it— regardless of that, sim jaeyun stopped buying granola bars altogether. the kid's fine— thankfully he had his epi-pen and in the heat of panic all he could do was watch while another classmate next to him pushed him out of the way and rummaged through the other kid's bag for his epi-pen; saving his life.
the savior of that situation later turned out to be his best friend, he just didn't know it at the time.
lee heeseung.
heeseung was the guy everyone wanted to be or wanted to be with. sim jaeyun would be lying if he said he wasn't in the slightest bit jealous of heeseung, everyone gravitated towards him like he was a magnet and he wished he had the smallest percentage of charisma heeseung did. sim jaeyun even went as far as changing his name to seem cooler, he thought that if he had a more interesting name or a name that sounded 'cool' that people would see him more. notice him more. pay more attention to him.
well, it's now his final year of university and things are still the same, except now he goes by jake.
that and he was also known as 'heeseung's best friend', he didn't mind it— usually. some days he'd just roll his eyes when a group of people walked up to heeseung and didn't pay him any mind, other days he'd try to join in on the conversation only to just be ignored altogether.
it was like jake was invisible and the more he wanted to be noticed, want to be needed, and wanted for someone to just see him— the more it seemed like that dream was farfetched.
he tried not to be sad over it but it didn't help that most of his favorite songs were sad R&B love songs. on top of that his home life hasn't changed much either. his mom worked a job that paid enough where she was able to buy jake a place of his own at 21 and ever since he barely hears from his family unless it was a birthday or holiday.
it was easy for him to feel the sorrow of being useless— he tried not to let it get to him, but some days he couldn't help but feel like his dream of being needed by someone was never going to come true, that the only thing that could fill his empty heart was that purpose that seemed to only be fulfilled by someone else— yet he's always felt alone.
now, he's got just a few months until graduating from university and with the major he's chosen— surely, he'll finally be needed. he just hoped that life after graduation would finally turn things around for him. jake was tired of wanting to be needed, he was going to find the path that led him in that direction one way or another, he just wishes it would come sooner than later.
it all started when he was little. he was the store with his dad browsing through different aisles of snacks he wanted to ask for when he saw a girl his age who looked like she was on the verge of tears. he asked why she was crying and she told him to go away at first but when he didn't she finally said that she doesn't have enough money for milk— he smiled before running off and the girl continued to cry.
he came back just a few minutes later though and he smiled when she was still there— still crying.
he handed her a few dollars and when she looked up at him and saw his smile, she cried even more. he doesn't know why it made her cry harder but he urged her to take the money and she did. he watched as she got up and walked to where he knew the milk was, watched as she struggled to grab the giant carton of milk to which his dad appeared and helped the girl. he told his dad he needed some money and when his dad asked why, he just said it's for a friend.
his dad didn't know what that meant but he gave it to his son anyway— watched as he ran off with his tiny feet towards something; someone. he watched as his son handed the dollars to the girl and watched as she struggled to grab the milk that was too big for her to carry on her own— stepping in to help and allowing the small child to pay for it herself because she looked like she didn't want the help despite looking like she needed it.
he never saw her again after that day but it felt nice to help.
── 𖹭
"for your final project in this course, you'll be pairing up and putting together a presentation about a successful case from a list i'll be providing— your job is to identify why this case in your opinion is unsuccessful with viable reasoning and what you would do differently. this project will run throughout the whole semester and is 60% of your final grade, so don't think you can wait until the last second to get it done and that i won't notice.
pair up— go." professor kang says before taking a seat at his desk.
the class instantly erupts with conversation as people try to find who they want to work with, everybody walking by jake like he wasn't there— a classmate even ran into him and didn't apologize, jake did even though he was just sitting there and wasn't even his fault. after a few minutes, everyone's back in their seats with their partners in mind while jake remains on his lonesome.
jake got up from his and walked the down the steps to professor kang's desk, there he sat typing away on his computer for almost 3 minutes before he even noticed jake standing there awkwardly, unsure of when to make his presence known. "oh— jake. do you need something?"
"uh, everyone's got a partner. i don't think there's anyone left." he muttered, fidgeting with the sleeve of his hoodie like a small child.
professor kang looked over to the crowd of students, all of them doing their own thing, "hmph. it does seem like that, doesn't it?" he says, pursing his lips before going back to typing on his computer.
"so.. uh i don't have a partner. what should i do?" jake asks, even more awkwardly than before.
"well— it looks like you're going to have to work on this project on your own." he says, not even bothering to look over to him. jake had no energy for this conversation, he just wanted to go back to his apartment and sleep, maybe play videos games or watch a movie he's seen 10 times already.
but then just before he was about to walk back to his seat, the doors to the lecture hall opened and in came in someone he's never met before. granted— it's the first day of the semester and he didn't expect to know everyone, when he saw you for the first time it not only felt like time stopped but something shifted in the universe because when you walked in it was like for the first time in jake's life, the first step of his path to achieving his dreams finally appeared.
"sorry, i'm late mr. kang. something came up with my tuition and i had to get it sorted out— did i miss a lot?" you asked and professor kang looked over at you almost instantly, a smile on his face like he just saw his daughter or favorite baseball player walk into his lecture hall.
"miss yn— perfect timing." he begins.
"jake, this is yn. you're in luck, here's your partner." is all he says before turning back to his computer and continuing, "yn, if jake was paying attention he'll know what to do. jake, please catch up yn on the final project and get to working on it."
he doesn't say anything else and when yn looks over at jake with soft eyes, he feels like he's known you his whole life.
"jake? hello?" she says, waving her hand in front of his face after noticing he's just standing there with nothing behind his eyes and mouth slightly ajar. "do you wanna get to work on this or do you like need to go to the nurse?" your voice was just as soft as your eyes. it was like a calm ocean breeze on a hot summer day, jake thought he could listen to you talk all day, even if it was about something boring.
"so– sorry. uh, yeah. i'm seated over here, i'll go over everything with you."
"can we keep it short? i'm not going to lie i was going to leave after mr. kang went over the gist of everything, i don't really need a full explanation. something brief is preferred."
jake stops in his tracks after what you said, "oh— uh yeah. totally, i can just email it to you if you need?"
"not necessary—" you say, grabbing his phone and tapping your number into his texts. "just text it all to me, i need to go. thanks jake!" was all you say before you slip out the very door you just entered through a few moments ago, glancing over to mr. kang who hasn't noticed and probably won't.
when jake looks down at his phone, all he sees is a text message to your phone that said: jake political science 301— and that's it. you sent yourself his name and the class you were in together and nothing else. it was like that was all you needed and nothing else.
it got him thinking: this is it.
you were the one that was going to give jake his purpose. sure, it was just information you needed for a final project but that was the first step. you needed to work together with jake which meant someone needed something out of him and that was enough for him to smile and for his chest to swell with satisfaction. it didn't feel like any other group project he's been in before, it's never been just him and one other person.
all of the previous ones were at least four other people and to which they would always say, "it's alright, jake. we've got it covered, we don't need anything." and before he knew it, the project was done and he wasn't even sure what his contributions were besides his name that wasn't even added by him.
── 𖹭
it's a week after that day that jake finally sees you again.
you hadn't been showing up to class and missing out on several lectures, but today you showed up; if he wasn't so irritated over the fact that you've been skipping class which meant not working on the final project, he'd probably be swooning over how pretty you looked. how your hair laid on your head so perfectly, how your eyes twinkled underneath the lecture hall lights, and how your lips always looked so soft.
jake was about to call out to you to tell you that there was an open seat next to him so you two could work on the project since today wasn't a lecture day, but you didn't even notice him and went straight to the back of the hall and sat in the corner, throwing your bag onto the floor before you cross your arms across the small desk and rest your head on them.
he furrows his brows with pout, tilting his head to the side when your body just remains still among the organized chaos of students in political science 301. the class was not quiet whatsoever, it was filled with overachieving students who thought they were all going to change the world or watched too much criminal minds or how to get away with murder for their own good.
jake turns around in his seat with huff, fiddling with his pen, twirling it between his long and slender fingers before he turns back around again to see that you are in fact still napping in the class you haven't been to for the past week.
so, even though he doesn't think it's a good idea, he gets up from his seat and makes his way to the back of the room where you're peacefully napping, but not without accidentally running into someone— or more like them running into him because they didn't notice he was there.
"oh shit! my bad bro." the guy says, tapping jake on the shoulder.
"uh, it's all good." jake mutters in response.
"yo, i didn't know you were in this class?" the guy says and jake recognizes him from one of his other lectures earlier in the week.
"i sit right in front of you?" he responds.
"no way? really? cool!" and with the that guy goes back to doing whatever he was doing before he had that conversation with jake, like nothing even happened and how this conversation didn't really need to happen in the first place.
jake just rolls his eyes before making his way to the back, eventually standing just a foot away from you as he stares at your sleeping figure. he's mentally running through what he's going to say to you.
'where have you been?' maybe not that. it makes him sound like a stalker.
'are you sleeping?' well no shit sherlock.
'do you wanna work on the project?' okay, not bad. let's go with that.
jake opens his mouth to speak but your voice comes out before his does, "are you just gonna stand there? i'm trying to sleep and i can hear you breathing really loudly." your voice is a bit muffled because of how your face is stuffed into your arms but he hears it loud and clear that it makes his eyes widen in shock, causing him to step back a bit.
when you finally raise your head, jake can see how tired you look from this close, your usually sparkling eyes are more dull up close and your skin looks— dull? was that rude? he probably should keep that to himself.
"well? do you need something?" you ask again, resting your cheek on your arms so you were looking at jake but still laying your head.
"uh— you noticed i was standing here?" he stutters.
"you aren't very quiet. your shoes squeak, your keys on your belt loop are kinda loud, and to be honest you're breathing way too loud. these stairs aren't even that steep for you to be out of breath." your voice came out bored, like you were bored of this conversation and bored with jake.
"uh.."
"do you start every sentence with 'uh'?"
okay. what is your problem? jake was starting to get frustrated with how cold you were coming off and it was starting to make you less cute.
who was he kidding— not it wasn't. you're even cuter up close, but that's not the point.
"look i'm really tired and i wanna get some sleep so if you're gonna stare at me can you do it from a far so that i can sleep in peace? thanks." you say before turning your head towards your arms again, faced down so that you can block out the bright lights of the lecture hall.
"where have you been? we have a project to work on." jake finally says and his voice comes off more annoyed than he intended but maybe it didn't matter since he was quite frustrated anyway. he didn't care if you were pretty and had pretty eyes, and pretty hair, and pretty lips and how the small keychain of the small golden maltese on your bag was the same one he had back in his apartment.
okay, maybe he does care.
just a bit.
"do i even know you?" you say while turning your head to him, eyes squinted.
if it was possible jake's face would turn into a giant question mark as a reaction to what you just said. "yes? we're partners for the final project in this class! you haven't been here all week and that's precious time we could be working on that project. professor himself said not to wait til the last minute to do it and i won't fail because you skip class and when you do show up, you nap!"
"ohmygod— can we go back to when you barely spoke and said uhhhh at the start of every sentence?" you scoff.
"if you cared so much about this project then why didn't you text me? you have my number don't you?"
you've got him there.
"you don't even show up to class! we could be working on the project on days where we don't have a lecture since professor kang blocks out lectures just for the project." jake huffs, crossing his arms like a child who wasn't getting his away.
this is probably the longest conversation jake has had with someone that isn't his friend in months.
it felt kind of nice even though they were arguing. he enjoyed talking to someone— as sad as that sounds.
"since you want to work on this project so bad, then just text me to schedule something. i just want to take a nap, k?" you say before turning your head back so you could continue your nap but jake wasn't having that.
"we're in class! you should be paying attention, not napping! it's not even that early in the day for you to be this tired, especially since you skipped all week—"
jake was rambling now and you were growing tired of it so you raised your head with a huff and grabbed your bag to prepare to leave, jake barely noticing until you're walking past him with the quietest "excuse me", watching as you walk down the stairs and away from him.
"hello? i'm talking to you?" he says, throwing his arms in the air.
you stop in your tracks, rolling your eyes at jake while turned around so that he doesn't see.
"yes. you are— too much! i told you, you have my number just text me and we can plan something to work on the project." you say before turning back around and towards the exit of the lecture hall.
"where are you going?" he asks, a bit louder but no one seems to notice.
"somewhere i can nap— and don't follow me!" your voice getting further away as you push through the doors and they close shut behind you, leaving jake standing there, confusion written all over his face at the interaction the two of you had.
he couldn't even count it as productive because he didn't understand most of it anyway.
he was more confused now than he was when the conversation first started.
── 𖹭
it's been a few days since jake's unfortunate run in with you and every day that has passed since, you've been on his mind. as much as he'd like to say it was because you left him seething with anger at your dismissive and overall don't give a shit attitude, it was probably because of how pretty you looked that day that he found himself replaying that argument with you in his head so he never forgets how you looked, especially since he had no idea when the next time he'll see you again considering you have a tendency to skip class.
i mean, how could he, you were gorgeous. he didn't wanna say he was obsessed but he definitely tried searching for you on instagram. he doesn't want to admit it but in order to find your profile he looked through the roster for the class you have together to find your last name and unluckily for him, he couldn't find you at all.
'she must be one of those girls who has a complicated username that has nothing to do with her real name.' jake thought to himself as he swiped out of instagram and dropped his phone next to him.
his instagram username was just 'jakesim1115' his birthday. simple and easy.
maybe he could use one that's a bit funnier but he didn't have the capacity to think of any cooler ones that would make people want to follow him. he had 7 followers in total on instagram, one of them being heeseung and the others being bots that he didn't care enough to remove. he didn't post much on there in the first place.
speaking of, just as he was about to give up on his day and just take a nap at 6pm, jake's phone started to ring. at first he didn't want to answer it but then his anxiety started talking and somehow he became convinced if he didn't pick up the phone then something bad would happen.
spoiler: nothing bad was going to happen.
"heeseung? why are you calling?" jake groans as he pulls himself up from lying down.
"jake! you free tonight? i got a date with this girl and she's got a friend, you should come! double date, you feel me?" heeseung says on the other line.
"ehhh i don't know dude. i got assignments to work on plus i'm real stressed about this final project thing with that girl i told you about."
"yn? she's really living in your head isn't she. why not come on this double date to forget about it! it's only a month into the semester, you still got time to work on that project." heeseung reasons and the first thing jake can think of is: how dare you think i'd want to forget yn… that's the last thing he wants! matter of fact, he wants the opposite of it.
jake is completely fine with you taking up real estate in his head. in fact, he'd prefer it over the anxiety of constantly being ignored by everyone around. at least with you, you acknowledged him— albeit by yelling at him, but still! a win is a win.
"alright— fine. fine. i'll go. send my the details." jake huffs.
"sick! it's in 15 minutes at the diner we had that mixer at one time." heeseung says.
"dude? that's like 30 minutes away, what the fuck?" jake says, shuffling out of his bed to get ready.
"better get going! see ya, man!" and with that heeseung hangs up the call with a small giggle that makes jake roll his eyes. "this fuckin' idiot." he says, throwing his phone on his bed and picking out a pair of pants that he hasn't worn that week yet.
── 𖹭
that's how jake found himself sitting next to heeseung at a diner with two girls. they were pretty but god damn can he only think about you right now. the fact that his supposed 'date' wasn't even paying attention to him didn't really bother jake because all he wanted to do was go home, maybe work on some assignments, and definitely ponder on what you were doing right now.
"so—" jake starts, picking at his food that's long become cold from the way he's chosen to ignore it the way the girl has chosen to ignore him. "what kind of music do you like?" jake continues and he knows he didn't mumble it like usual because the jukebox at the diner was unusually loud so he had to speak up, even then— the girl didn't acknowledge him.
"yeah.. me too. love— that … artist.." he says, voice getting smaller and smaller. jake continues picking at his food. he barely even touched his food because he had lost interest in this whole thing as soon as he was ignored. jake tries start conversations. ignored. he tried joining in on conversations. ignored.
it was always like this and it's gotten to a point he doesn't even bother him anymore— sorta. he only agreed because heeseung begged him and now he was regretting it because not once has he really been spoken to since he got there. the waitress even almost forgot to take his order, heeseung had to speak up for him like he was a child who wasn't capable of doing anything on his own.
"you know, my friend jake here is studying to be a private investigator. he's gonna be like a detective or some shit." heeseung says, patting jake on the shoulder and if he hadn't said his name jake probably wouldn't have even noticed the conversation was about him. "that's not what i'm studying— i'm studying criminal justice.."
"same thing? like cia, csi, fbi type shit?" heeseung asks, tilting his head at jake silently tell him: 'bro i am trying to get you involved in this conversation. LOCK IN.'
"ohmygosh— like criminal minds?" the girl across from him says, eyes wide and glossy lips parted.
"ye– yeah.." jake lies.
"heeseung— do you watch criminal minds? it's like my favorite show!" the girl completely moving on from jake, maybe she didn't even direct that question to him in the first place because now heeseung's got both of their attention again.
jake just sighs, completely over this whole thing. he silently gets up, sliding out of the booth and heeseung's the only one to notice as his friend walks towards the register. he's watching jake from a distance while the two girls continue their conversation that heeseung's tuned out.
heeseung watches as jake comes back but he doesn't slide back into his seat. "uh— i'm gonna head out. it's late and i still got some assignments to work on. i paid for our meal by the way.." he mutters the last part towards the girl who was supposed to be his date but she doesn't respond as she was too busy in conversation with heeseung's date.
"see ya." jake says, waving at heeseung and his friend just watches as jake walks out of the diner. a clear disappointment and melancholic aura following jake. heeseung felt a bit responsible for how jake was feeling even if he wasn't actively contributing to whatever was making jake feel that way but if it was enough for jake to feel sad then he knew that it was enough for him to avert his attention to jake.
his best friend.
jake's walking with his head down, kicking at the pebbles at his feet as he dragged himself towards the bus stop. it was almost 8pm when he left the diner and he was mentally planning what he was going to do the rest of the night when he heard heavy footsteps running towards him from behind. jake flinches just as heeseung's arm wraps itself around his shoulder.
"come on— i'll drive you back. can't let my homeboy take the bus home late at night." heeseung pouts like jake was some damsel in distress.
"dude, what happened to your date? sorry i just left." he says as heeseung turns the two of them around to walk towards his car. "nah, it's cool. wasn't really feeling her anyway. you mind if i crash at yours tonight? your dorm's closer to my class tomorrow."
jake nods and heeseung thanks him while they walk in silence. heeseung knew better than to bring up what happened back at the diner. jake chose to be silent about it so heeseung chose to silently be there for him.
── 𖹭
jake wasn't expecting it but it was 6 bottles of soju and an empty 8 pack of terra beer later when he realized that heeseung doesn't have class the next day and neither does he because it's a friday.
the two were drunkenly talking about whatever came into their heads at 3am. heeseung was definitely more drunk than jake was but they were both incoherent to an extent. conversations ranged from the first time they met, heeseung's ex girlfriend who he definitely wasn't over, and now it was about jake's inability to talk to you.
sure— it was mostly because you were never around to actually talk to but when he told heeseung about your conversation the other day in class, suddenly the alcohol was gone from heeseung's system and he was speaking clearer than ever.
"let me get this straight… you have her number and you're complaining about her never being around? i don't know have you ever considered maybeeeeee… texting her?" he says while shaking his head at jake who is sat across from him, limbs sprawled out on the floor while he leaned on his dresser.
"it's not that simple!" jake groans, taking another swig of his drink only to remember he's out.
heeseung rolls a can of beer towards him and he opens the tab with one hand before speaking again. "she's just never around— i don't want to just randomly text her, it's weird. i'd rather she show up to class so we can plan out the project in person— then maybe, i'll text her so we can plan meeting up outside of class.
BUT SHE NEVER SHOWS UP." he says the last part too loud considering the time.
"did she tell you why she isn't showing up?" heeseung asks, opening a beer for himself.
jake just shakes his head and heeseung rolls his eyes at him. "dude, if she's not showing up then she's probably got something going. i understand skipping class a FEW times but if you're saying you've only seen her twice since the semester started then maybe she's got something going on. classes are expensive as shit so i don't think she'll skip just because."
heeseung strikes again. damn that intuitive motherfucker.
"i guess so…" jake says with a pout, fiddling with the tab of his beer can.
"it's just like— uuuggh." he groans, unable to say anything else because he genuinely has nothing else to say. heeseung was right. jake didn't even consider if you had anything going on in your personal that would cause you to skip class. maybe you're chronically ill. maybe you have shit transportation resources like his does. maybe you have insomnia and you're awake at super later hours of the night to the point that when you finally fall asleep the sun has already started to rise… it would explain why you were so hellbent on taking a nap during class a few days ago.
jake didn't even realized he was being inconsiderate of you. it could've been because he was so focused on project— and how pretty you were— that he didn't think of anything else. he found whatever reason to talk to you but after heeseung has knocked some sense into him, he was surely going to right his wrong with you. even if he didn't need to.
"look— i'm drunk as shit so i'm going to pass out any second but remember this: just talk to her. it's that simple." heeseung says, yawning right after.
"but i just can't. i mean i tried talking to her that one day and it started out fine but then she got mad at me because i woke her up! we're in the middle of class? at least try to make it look like you're paying attention. we have this huge project due and she hasn't contributed once— okay, i've barely done anything either but that's only because she's never there and i don't want to make decisions without her just in case she hates my idea and—
and you're asleep… cool."
jake's voice trailing off when heeseung's snores start to fill his dorm. his best friend was now slumped over in his gaming chair, beer still in his hand as a trail of drool falls from his mouth. "nasty.." jake mutters as he tries to grab the can from his friend to avoid him spilled it if he moved all of a sudden in his sleep.
in the past, when heeseung's slept over it was always in his gaming chair. he'd say "i'm a true gamer, this stuff is meant to be ergonomic." whenever jake said he didn't mind sharing the bed. he'd just laugh it off and throw a blanket over his friend.
when jake slips into his bed, grabbing one of his pillows and hugging it close to his body, alcohol still in his system as his mind wanders over to you like it has the past month— he begins to think about all the ways he's dismissed the endless possibilities of why you never show up to class. jake started to feel guilty the way he's chosen to ignore that part of the situation and it doesn't help that he knows that feeling all too well.
so— the next time jake sees you he's going to do his best to make sure he's there. he doesn't know how yet but he's somehow convinced himself that you just needed someone to be there for you and maybe then you'll warm up to him enough so you could work on the project together.
jake just hopes its sooner than later since the semester would end in just a little over two months from now.
he was grateful that it was the weekend coming up or else he'd have to fight off the impending hangover that was going to rudely greet him in the morning. hopefully he can guilt trip heeseung into paying for breakfast since it was definitely not jake's idea to drink when heeseung did a quick detour to the liquor store before they eventually stopped at jake's dorm.
that and the fact that jake was going to be awake much later to think about nothing
── 𖹭
over the course of that weekend, jake drafted up several text messages that he was going to send you asking when the two of you could work on the final project. it's about halfway through the semester now and they've got roughly a month and a half to complete; jake tried his best not to panic over this but he'd be lying if he said it didn't worry him just a bit. especially since he knows that his peers have made a lot more progress than the two of you.
after some thinking and 10 other drafts, he finally sends his text.
to: yn from poli-sci 301
hey. are you free any time this week to go over our project? let me know if you aren't coming to class so we can set up a time to meet. thanks!
fuck. was that too forward? what if you think he's being an asshole because of this and you choose to just ghost him and causing him to potentially fail the class.
to: yn from poli-sci 301
i really need to pass this class.
please show up.
or like let me know when you can work on it.
Please.
the one text message has now turned into five and he had to force himself to throw his phone aside before he panic texted you anymore. surprisingly though, his phone dings just a few moments later.
from: yn from poli-sci 301
who is this?
really… you didn't even save his number? jake sighs.
to: yn from poli-sci 301
it's jake. from poli-sci 301?
from: yn from poli-sci 301
oh right.
to: yn from poli-sci 301
okay so when are you free?
from: yn from poli-sci 301
free for what?
to: yn from poli-sci 301
for our PROJECT??????
are you serious right…
from: yn from poli-sci 301
i don't like your tone.
…
are. you. serious. right. now.
you've got to be fucking with him at the point. jake was staring at his phone with wide eyes and his mouth parted. he's gripping his phone so tightly in one hand that his veins are appearing and he's got his other hand grabbing onto his hair out of frustration. were you this clueless or are you simply trying to piss him off? —because either way, jake was annoyed.
he got to typing a response, planning to tell you off and absolutely forgetting heeseung's advice from the night before when another text from you appears.
from: yn from poli-sci 301
not going to class on monday but i can meet you on wednesday at like 3?
oh.
he's definitely free wednesday at 3pm, it's a perfect time actually.
jake blinks several times at his phone, mouth dry from how long it's been left hanging open, swallowing the dryness away. he has to shake his head to get rid of the lingering feelings of being annoyed— it wasn't very hard to get rid of anyway because as soon as that text came in he instantly relaxed and all he had in his head was 'thank god i can finally see her again'.
he types out a quick response agreeing to the time and suggesting a place to which you end up saying that you'll just go over to his dorm if that was fine with him. jake looked around at the empty beer cans, the overflowing trash can in the corner, and his several hoodies that are laying on his floor— fuck.
to: yn from poli-sci 301
sure. my place at 3pm, i live at the southern dorms on campus.
from: yn from poli-sci 301
ugh thats far.
k. see you wed bye
and that was it.
jake sighed like the whole interaction with you had taken so much energy out of him and honestly— it did. but now he's got the hard part done, right? he reached out to plan when to work on the project and now you guys have a date to work on it. wait— no! not date like he's going to take you on a date to a fancy restaurant, bring you your favorite flowers, drive you wherever you wanted and open the door for you— mostly because he doesn't really have the money for a fancy restaurant, he's allergic to flowers, and he doesn't have a car.
what he means is— you have a date… on the calendar… for when he is going to see you… for the project, of course.
now all he has to do is make it to wednesday.
and clean his dorm. definitely going to need to clean his dorm.
── 𖹭
come wednesday, jake was more nervous than when he bought alcohol for the first time when he turned legal age. he was pacing back and forth in his dorm, moving things around because they just looked a little too far on the right then it was too far to the left— he sprayed air freshener about 10 times and even lit a candle he bought from homegoods before deciding to blow it out because he didn't want to make a weird impression with a candle… that and it smelled bad; he didn't even bother smelling it at the store.
it's 10 minutes past 3pm when jake starts to get worried. he's sitting at his desk, leg bouncing like 100 times per minute as he waited. he checked his phone several times, nothing. he looked out his window to maybe see if he could spot you, nothing. he checked his phone again, nothing. he was started to think you weren't going to show up and given your track record of showing up to class, he was definitely sure you weren't going to show up at all.
jake pulls his phone out again to send you a text to ask where you are when a knock on his door grabs his attention.
he drags himself towards the door thinking it's you; he cracks his neck, does a deep breath and silently hypes himself up but is just met with heeseung. he groans and his shoulders slump when he sees his best friend, walking away from the door. "wow— nice to see you too, man." heeseung says as he enters, shutting the door behind him.
"what do you want, heeseung? my partner's about to come over for our project." jake says as he plops down on his bed, arms spread out like a starfish as he stares at the ceiling.
"relax— i'm just here to grab my beanie. i left it here the other night… what's that smell? did you… did you buy a candle?" heeseung asks, voice getting louder as he walks over to jake's nightstand where a barely burnt candle sits. "sandalwood...? what the fuck is sandalwood?" heeseung scoffs, furrowing his brows at jake.
"i don't know either— i just grabbed the first one i found." jake says, not bothering to look over at his friend.
"wait… did you get this because yn is coming over? holy shit you have a crush on her!" heeseung's laughing, eyes crinkled as he bobs his head back with a laugh. jake rushes out of his bed and snatches the candle out of his hands and puts it into a random compartment of his desk. "can you get out— you have you beanie, now go!" jake says, shoving heeseung towards the door where heeseung does everything he can to make his body feel heavier so his friend struggles as he teases him.
when jake reaches for the doorknob and pulls it open, the two boys are frozen in their spot when they say you're standing there. bag slung over your shoulder, jeans baggy and t-shirt loose around your body— your hand is in the air like you're about to knock but was interrupted when the door swung open before you could.
"oh—" you say, surprised to see jake and some other guy you weren't familiar with.
"yn! hey— sorry he was just leaving." jake says, chuckling awkwardly as he pushes heeseung past you, still trying to stop him. your eyes move from the two boys and inside of jake's dorm— a solo.
you blink at them a few times, "you guys share a bed?" you ask and jake's eyes widen in shock.
"what? no? what makes you say that?"
"well there's two of you and one bed in there." you say, pointing towards jake's bed tucked into the corner of his dorm.
"yeah— he prefers to be little spoon." heeseung adds which earns him a slap on the back of the head. jake shooing him away but not before he says, "see you later honey." in a mocking voice, laughing down the hall.
"sorry about him.. uhh— no, i don't share a bed with him. i have a single dorm it's just me here, he just came by to pick up something he forgot…" jake explains and you just nod, no verbal response. you're both standing awkwardly outside of his dorm, jake's hands folded together like he was waiting for you to do something.
"so— are you going to invite me in?" you ask.
"fuck right sorry, you're not a vampire right?" he chuckles.
"you know cause they can't enter places without being invited and… right okay yeah please come in. welcome to casa jake." he says, gesturing for you to enter first and when you're no longer looking at him as you walk inside he rolls his eyes at how embarrassing he's acting right now, mentally slapping his forehead in shame. he closes the door behind him and let's you know you can sit at his desk and he'll be on his bed.
"or you can be on my bed and i'll take the desk— you know my bed's really comfy and i got these pillows that mold to the shape of your body so it's even more comfortable but i'm not sure if it actually works but the lady at the store was really convincing however she did leave mid-conversation so i didn't get to try out any other pillows and i was just left with this one so i ended up buying it and ohmygosh don't even get me started on how expensive it was— i'll sit at the desk."
you cut him off and jake doesn't realize he was rambling until you speak up to interrupt him.
"yes— right desk.. it is." he says while turning around, grimacing at how he's acting right now.
'get it together sim jake!' he says to himself.
"alright, so i came up with some ideas we can do for our project. i looked over the list of cases professor kang gave us and i highlighted some of the ones that were more interesting. let me know what you think." you say, handing him a few sheets of paper with some notes, pink highlighter across some of the key points, and yellow sticky notes of extra information you thought were important to take note of. "wait—" jake starts, pausing for a second to sift through the papers as he sits down on his bed.
he looks up at you, "you started working on it?" he asks.
"sorta, it's just some ideas. what? you thought i was stupid or something?" you ask, pulling out his chair and sitting down.
"n— no! i just meant like… you're never in class. i didn't expect you to have gotten started on… anything." he says the last part a bit quieter, afraid to offend you but jake will soon learn that nothing really affects you. especially not words that come from some guy she doesn't even know.
"just because i don't show up for class? you do realize that lecture isn't mandatory and he uploads them onto the course portal, right? i only show up when i have another class that day that's mandatory. i've been doing most of the coursework from home it's just easier that way." you explain, rummaging through your bag to pull out your laptop, a pink pencil case that's covered in stickers, and a notebook.
"you look over those ideas and tell me what you think— i'm going to get started on putting together our document." you say as you begin to start typing things into your laptop.
jake's still staring at you, partly because he can't really believe you're in his dorm right now but also because he wasn't expecting that out of you. heeseung was right.
damnit.
there is so much more to you that jake doesn't know and now he feels bad, but he's got until the end of the semester to make it up to you even if you didn't voice to him that you were offended. jake has become determined to not only get to know you but also get closer to you.
crush or not; you were intriguing and jake wanted to know more.
he just had to make sure he doesn't fuck it up.
── 𖹭
it's an hour into working on the project with jake when you yawned for what seemed like the 5th time in the last 20 minutes.
"we should take a break." jake says, clapping his hands together and seemingly startling you awake. "oh shit— my bad." he says with a chuckle. you tell him it's fine as you try to rub the sleep away from your eyes— and failing as another yawn escapes your lips.
"you're pretty sleepy." jake doesn't know why made the comment and he hopes it doesn't offend you— and it doesn't because he's right. you rarely get a normal amount of sleep and it's been like this for the past year. you average about 4 hours of sleep at most these days and that's only if you could even sleep fully without interruptions. "yeah— i am." you say with a sigh as you force yourself to stay awake.
"do you want some coffee? i've got these really good canned ones in my mini fridge?" jake says as he gets up from his bed and heads over to the small fridge tucked away in the corner of his dorm. "yeah— that sounds nice actually, thanks." you take the small can of coffee in his hands and your fingers brush against his and for a moment jake freezes at the feeling of your skin against his even if it was for less than one second.
he grabs one for himself and the two of you crack open the cans at the same time, cold and slightly bittersweet coffee going down your throats at the same time, the two of you even wince at the bitterness of the coffee at the same time; but it all goes unnoticed as the two of you are both in your own worlds for a few moments. "wow— that's pretty good. i feel less tired already." you take another sip before you look over with a smile at jake who is already smiling at you and trying to hide that he was admiring you for a second.
"glad it's helping— why are you so tired by the way? you were napping in class that one day; sorry for that argument by the way, i guess i was just stressed about the project and i didn't mean to upset you or anything." jake takes another sip of his coffee before setting it down on his nightstand where there's a crochet coaster of the inside of an orange.
"oh— yeah about that; you don't have to be sorry. honestly it was my fault i was so tired and barely slept the last few days so i was really irritable. you just happened to be the first person i spoke to that day and i kinda blew up on you… sorry." you say with an awkward chuckle, trying to avoid eye contact but when you hear jake's laugh you can't help but look over at him.
"don't be sorry. i was being kind of annoying that day" he chuckles himself.
"yeah— you kinda were." you try adding onto the joke but jake's face drops when he hears you confirm him being annoying.
"no! sorry i'm just joking you weren't being annoying ohmygod i'm so sorry— yn it's fine i'm just messing with you." you start but he cuts you off when he realizes you couldn't tell he was also joking. you breathe a sigh of relief as the two of you share another laugh. "but seriously. what's got you so tired? it can't be good if you're saying that you barely sleep these days."
you sigh as you fiddle with the tab of the can before answering, "i just work a lot." you kept your answer simple because you didn't want to over explain to your project partner who you barely know. it was better to just give him the short answer opposed to the why behind you work so much because at the end of the day it wouldn't matter anyway. he was just another person you were going to meet for a brief moment in time and then eventually part ways with.
there was no use giving him the logistics of your life, especially when it usually sounds like a cry for help and the last thing you need is help from someone. you were perfectly find taking care of yourself.
"work? do you work at like santa's little workshop or something why do they have you so busy?"
you open your mouth to answer but the ringing of your interrupts. "you should get that, your phones been buzzing since you got here." it was true. your phone has nonstop been vibrating against jake's wooden desk for the better part of the hour and you knew it was your mom sending you a plethora of text messages that all consisted of her asking you for money for your little sister when in reality you knew it was going to be for something else that you refused to fund.
for the last 8 months you had stopped giving your mom money for your sister and directly gave it to her instead. you arranged to meet her at the library near her school and gave it to her in an envelope with a bag of her favorite snacks and some clothes you saw that you thought she'd like. you told her to make sure to hide it so that your mom doesn't see it and get upset. she'd nod and tell you updates about her week. you don't see your little sister that often these days but you tried your best to visit her when you can.
you would help your sister pack the things you gave her into her duffel bag. your mom thinks she's at soccer practice and she usually is but every now and then you'd meet her after soccer practice and you would walk together to get something to eat close by since you didn't have a car. she'd tell you about the boy she has a crush on to which you'd tell her to focus on school and then proceed to ask her for more details, she tells you about how she could potentially be soccer captain that year but she has some doubts and as a big sister it's your job to tell her to never downplay her capabilities.
she'd smile and mutter a small thank you and it would remind you of how you were as a kid. ambitious and had so much drive yet could not accept a compliment for the life of you because you felt like you weren't doing enough to receive them. you made a silent vow to make sure that your sister didn't grow up insecure like you did, that she believed in herself, and to make sure that she had everything you didn't have.
you rolled your eyes at your phone when you finally decide to pick it up and see who has been texting you and just as you thought, it was your mom. she was asking for a few hundred dollars for your sister and then shortly after she started demanding the money followed by various colorful messages about how your a terrible and selfish daughter and that she regrets ever having you.
nothing new.
you were about to respond to her to say that you're busy with university and don't have any money when you receive a phone call.
"shit— sorry i need to get this." you say to jake before swiping to accept and stepping out of jake's dorm. you don't give jake enough time to respond but he watches you leave his dorm as you're answering the phone in a hushed tone.
jake patiently waits on his bed for you to come back, he takes sips of his coffee to the point that he eventually just finished it. he flips through a few pages of notes that you two have worked on in the last hour or so, and when he was just about tired of waiting for you to come back with no other reason besides the fact that he wanted to talk to you again and maybe get back to work— you finally come back inside.
there's a furrow in your brow and a slightly annoyed glare in your eyes.
"hey? everything cool?" he asks, straightening up in his bed when you come back inside.
"um— yeah." you breathe out while packing up your things.
"you're leaving? we've barely even got any work done?" jake's trying not to sound annoyed but he kept help it. it took so long to even set up a day to work on this project and it's barely been two hours and you're already leaving.
"yeah, i'm really sorry my boyfriend just called and he needs me for something." you don't bother looking up at jake as you put your things into your bag. you're in such a hurry that you accidentally knock over the can of coffee and spill it over jake's desk. "shit!" you hiss before quickly picking up the can so it wouldn't spill anymore. the coffee is spreading across jake's desk and you're mumbling about some tissues.
"in the drawer right there." jake points out as he jumps out of his bed. you reach for the drawer and pull it open, eyes landing momentarily at the candle, "sandalwood?" you ask him and jake looks at you like you're insane as you grab tissues to wipe up the mess. "the candle— you don't strike me as a sandalwood type of guy." you mutter and jake doesn't even know what you mean by that even in reference to the candle.
what do you mean he doesn't seem like a sandalwood type of guy? is that a bad thing? what if he wanted to be a sandalwood type of guy? does he want to be a sandalwood type of guy?
"sorry about that—" you say once you've finally cleaned up all of the coffee.
"it's all good." he says with a shrug, a bit disappointed that you were leaving so soon.
"we'll set up another day to work on the project— just text me." you say as you swing your bag over your shoulder and head for the door, texting someone on your phone— probably your boyfriend— and jake can't help but grimace at the thought of this mystery man that's getting in between the two of you.
'wow— i sound insane.' jake says to himself.
"oh, by the way. we should probably meet somewhere else the next time. see you around, jake." and with that you were gone. didn't let him say bye or even ask why you suddenly said to meet somewhere else and then it clicked for jake. you probably told your boyfriend where you were— at the dorm of another guy— and he most likely got upset.
"pfft— loser." jake scoffs as he locks his dorm.
he plops down at his desk and fidgets with a pencil you left behind before his eyes wander over to his drawer. he slides it open and pulls out the candle and lights it so he can give it a good smell— he makes a face at the scent and blows it out quickly. huffing to get the smell out of his senses. "yeah— definitely not a sandalwood guy."
── 𖹭
a week passes since that day in jake's dorm.
the two of you haven't met since and you haven't showed up to class at all that past week but he's learned to work around it. he no longer faults you for not showing up especially since you told him that you were always working— he felt bad that you were balancing so many things between school and work; he just wishes you're taking care of yourself and getting enough sleep.
you've kept in contact with him through text and have worked on the project remotely. you've even done a lot of the work when it comes to putting together the information jake would gather and send over to you. you put together a document of everything, sorted research into proper categories, starting compiling all of the details that would go well in defending your case, others in categories to be revisited later when you might need more information.
it was surprisingly going well and jake no longer felt worried or anxious at the lack of in person setting when it came to working on the project together. that was until he walked inside of a cafe that he had never been to before and saw you behind the counter taking orders and calling out names to let customer's know their order was ready.
he hadn't seen you since you left his dorm abruptly that day because of your boyfriend who he learned through heeseung is jungwon. jake didn't like the guy. not only was jungwon somewhat known as the campus asshole but some months ago before jake even met you he was sitting in the library and catching up on some work when jungwon came in, smug as ever, and knocked into jake's table that ended up making his drink spill all over the table and soaking one of the textbooks in iced americano.
now, jake wouldn't have gotten so upset if jungwon just apologized but he didn't. all jungwon said was, "damn— who put that there?" and walked off. didn't pay any mind to jake, didn't apologize, and certainly didn't care that he just ruined a textbook that jake ended up having to pay for as the librarian watched a few feet away shaking her head at him like it was his fault.
he asked heeseung if he knew anything about your boyfriend and because he was mr. popular, he figured it out quite quickly. you and jungwon started dating your first year at university and have been together since. there were rumors that he cheated on you several times but considering that you and jungwon were still together, maybe they weren't true?
jake eventually found your instagram when he found jungwon's and his assumption about your instagram was true. it was minimal, only a few pictures, and your username was a combination of numbers and letters that didn't necessarily make sense but it somehow suited your personality.
the first photo was you at your high school graduation with who jake assumed was your little sister.
the second photo was a photo of a full moon— pretty and poetic.
and the third was a photo of you and jungwon with the caption 'year 3' to which he audibly gagged at.
jake almost had a heart attack when he thought he accidentally clicked the heart button but it was just a false alarm. he stared at the photos you had on your profile and weirdly wanted for there to be more. he looked at your tagged photos and nothing, not even any from jungwon; did you have no friends like he did?
your following was set to zero and he didn't know if it was because you didn't follow anyone or because you chose to keep that setting private. either way it just made him want to know more about you— hell, he just wanted to see you again. he doesn't know why he felt the way he did with you, maybe it was just an innocent crush or maybe there was a sense of comfortable familiarity he had with you that he couldn't quite explain how or why.
so after days of thinking about you and wanting to see you again— to study, of course— he was surprised to see you at the cafe. a brown apron wrapped around you and a warm smile on your face. a smile he saw on your face in the photo with your little sister but not the one with your so called boyfriend.
he shyly ordered from you and when he saw you, you were just as shocked.
"hi jake." you said as you tapped random things on the register. "what can i get you?"
he orders an iced americano and a croissant. the interaction goes by fast with no extra filling of awkwardness or tension. he doesn't even bring up the fact that you work there— which you're grateful for— and he doesn't bring up the project either. you assumed he was just there to grab a coffee and a bite before class but then you watch as he walks off to the far side of the cafe and sets up his things on a table. a laptop with random stickers on it, a notebook and writing utensils, a textbook or two— and then he just gets to work.
the only other time he gets up or looks up from his study material is when you call his name to grab his order and even then he doesn't strike up conversation— just a small thanks and then he went back to his spot in the bustling cafe.
'weird' you thought to yourself but you only pondered on it for a few seconds before you went back to work. jake not crossing your mind ever again until much later in the day when everyone's mostly left the cafe as the moon began to rise— except for jake who was still tirelessly studying. his cup of coffee now filled with melted ice and small crumbs of his croissant scattered across the table.
no one's noticed the way he's been here all day and your boss certainly didn't notice that he was there when he began to yell and scold you.
"are you kidding me, yn? that is not how we treat customers now we're going to receive negative reviews and lost money having to accommodate that gentleman." he says in a sharp tone. jake can't see you or your boss but he can hear it clearly. you're being scolded over an altercation with a customer— one that jake remembered because he watched all of it go down.
the asshole lied about his order being wrong despite having eaten everything and because you were unfortunately working at the time, he chose you as his target to belittle and manipulate. gaslighting you into believing that you forced him to eat his incorrect order and escalating it to the point of raising his voice and gaining the attention of other customer's who were now paying attention when they weren't before. you apologized even when you didn't need to and compensated the individual with a free meal then he left with a smile on his face like he had just won something he didn't deserve to.
obviously, you had to tell your boss about it and instead of being met with a understanding comprehension of the customer taking advantage of you, you were met with anger and frustration. claims of being useless and terms he didn't dare repeat were thrown at you and when he slowly walked over to where he could see all of it, you just stood there and took it like it was nothing.
but the way your hands were clutched behind you into a fist— he could tell you were holding it all in.
"ex– excuse me?" jake interrupts and your boss' face instantly shifts into shock at the sight of another customer. he tries to tell jake that they were now closed and to return tomorrow but jake cuts him off. you turn around just as jake begins explaining himself and he can see the way your eyes have begun to get glassy.
"i actually saw all of it happen— she didn't do anything wrong, sir. the customer took advantage of her kindness and practically forced her to give him a free meal. it's not her fault…"
jake was defending you.
why?
you were looking at him with a crease in your brows trying to silently tell him to drop it— but he doesn't take the hint.
he continues to explain to your boss about what happened and how he saw everything. how the customer raised his voice at you to pressure you into folding and how jake watched as the customer ate everything on his plate and only complained once he was finished with his meal. your boss was silent for a second before he nodded his head and thanked jake— and then that was it. he walked to the back of the store without another word, leaving you and jake behind like he wasn't just yelling at you moments before that.
"what was that?" you whispered to jake, stepping closer to him.
"i– i was trying to help you. you were getting accused of something you didn't do. that guy was an asshole so i wanted to help." jake explained and you scoffed at him, rubbing your forehead with frustration.
"i don't need your help— i don't care what my boss has to say about me because it doesn't change the fact that the customer and my boss are both assholes. you should've just minded your own business and let me take care of it." you were trying not to yell but the frustration was getting the best of you.
jake was taken aback at your reaction. he thought you would've been glad he stepped in, grateful that he saw all of it happen and defended you— "it sounded like you needed help— i'm sorry are you mad that i helped?" he squinted his eyes at you like he couldn't grasp the concept of your reaction. you frantically nodded your head at him and before you could explain why you were upset, your boss called for you from the back.
"just— we're closed now so please head home jake. thanks." you say sternly and turn on your heel, leaving jake dumbfounded and confused.
did he not do the right thing?
he just wanted to help?
did you cross some line with you?
'fuck— am i stupid?' he thought to himself as he packed his things, still utterly confused at what just went down. he pushed the door open to leave the cafe, turning around one last time to glance around to see if you had appeared again but it was just empty tables and a fluorescent light overhead that was getting more irritating the longer he looked at it. he left with a heavy sigh as he pushed past the door, checking his watch to see what the time was— he'll have to wait for the next bus that would be coming in the next 30 minutes.
so jake sat on the bench and waited.
meanwhile, you were back at the cafe and still getting scolded by your boss— only now jake wasn't there to interrupt him.
you still took everything he said, didn't talk back or try to explain yourself because you knew it was better to just hold your tongue, you refused to look at him and glued your eyes to the brown tile floor of the kitchen as he spat his frustrations and inaccurate claims of who you are as a person at you.
you couldn't give any less of a shit about what people thought about you— all because you didn't need any of that. you didn't need nor care for what someone thought of you, you didn't anything from anyone— especially help from a guy you barely even knew. you didn't care if it looked back from his end and that you 'looked' like you needed help. you didn't need anything besides for the conversation to end.
and end it did.
what jake didn't know was that this wasn't your only job— in fact it was your third job. it's why you spent so many hours awake and even less hours asleep. hence why you never show up to class because you're either picking up a shift or trying your best to catch up on sleep. why you needed three jobs? none of anyone's business but your own.
so when you walked out of the cafe wiping your eyes as you made your way towards the bench at the bus stop, jake couldn't help but straighten up when he saw you. "he— hey.." he mutters, swallowing the lump in his throat because he was definitely not expecting to see you again tonight.
you looked up and huffed an exhausted sigh— still slightly irritated about what happened and the last thing you wanted was to have to talk to jake right now. you stood instead of taking the seat next to him on the bench, opting to lean on the side of the small cover that hung above the bench instead.
"there's some room— you can sit here." he says, sliding over.
"no, thanks."
"okay."
silence.
"are you mad at me? i was just trying to help— it sounded like you needed some help so i spoke up. i don't get why you're upset?"
"because i don't need your help— i don't need any help." you turned to look at him and for the first time the softness in your eyes was gone. it didn't sparkle like how they usually do and instead they looked tired. they were red like you had been awake for hours and didn't both to blink. it made him step back for a second to really look at the bigger picture of it all.
or at least he tries to— but fails.
"i don't get it? why is it so but that you needed help?" jake asks, clearly frustrated.
"i don't need help! that's the thing! when did i ever say i wanted or needed help? never— because i didn't." he's never heard your voice this loud before and whenever a car drove by their headlights shined into your eyes and made the growing tears become more visible.
"it's not like i did something bad? i'm sure your boss appreciated what i said—"
you cut him off, "i got fired, jake. i got fired." was all you said before turning back to staring into the darkness of the streets, fighting the urge to cry because you definitely didn't want to cry in front of some guy.
"wh— what? why? that's not fair— you didn't do anything wrong? let's go back in there and talk to him!" jake grabs your wrist before thinking and tries to walk back to the cafe but you're quick to snatch your arm back.
"there's no fucking point— i lost the job and i'm not going to beg for it back."
"you won't need to beg! i'll do it— i'm the reason you got fired anyway." jake tries to reason but he can tell it's not working when you shake your head at him, hand gripping your temples.
"just drop it! okay? i don't give it a shit i have two other jobs that i can just work more hours at— it's fine." you weren't very convincing and in all honesty, you weren't even convincing yourself. each job paid you just enough for the amount of money that you needed every month and now that you were down one job, your monthly income was going to take a serious dip.
and picking up shifts at your other jobs wasn't an option because you were already working the amount of hours allowed, any more wouldn't be allowed and someone could get in trouble— and you didn't need that either.
"okay— my friend he works at the local radio station. i can get you a job there, i just— fuck." jake felt so guilty to the point that he was beginning to hyperventilate. like he was a little kid again getting in trouble for something he did when all he wanted to do was help. when all he wanted was to be there for someone in need where it ended up backfiring at him in the end.
"i– i'm sorry. fuck— i'm so sorry. i'll get you that job at the radio station, i'll spot whatever money you'll miss from this job, anything. i'm so sorry." you weren't sure why jake was reacting so heavily to this. you barely knew each other but jake was acting like you had known each other your whole lives. you slowly turned towards him and when you saw that his face was starting to get red and the way his eyes were reflecting light like glass— you paused.
you didn't need jake's help— never asked for it— so why is he so adamant on helping you.
"jake. it's fine. i can take care of myself and i don't need help. you don't have to be sorry." your voice was no longer loud and shaky. it was like all negative emotion had left your body and you were just—
"please let me make this up to you. i can get you the job at the radio station if you need it really bad." he tries again but it's just making the frustration return to your body.
there it was again. the word 'need'.
you didn't need help. never did and won't.
"please stop trying to help." was all you said when the bus finally arrived. you stepped onto the bus without another word, scanned your pass and gave the driver a small smile before walking to the back and sliding headphones over your head and staring out the window, hoping that jake will take the hint and leave you alone.
and he does.
sort of.
he does the same, scans his pass and smiles at the driver before walking all the way to the back— behind you, where he silently watches you the whole bus ride. he takes note of the way your shoulders don't relax and despite the silence that was on the bus due to it only being the two of you plus the driver, he couldn't hear anything coming from your headphones— assuming there wasn't anything playing at all.
and he was right.
you weren't playing anything when you put them. you were wearing them simply to let jake know that you didn't want to talk to him nor did you need to continue this conversation.
it still didn't help the growing pit of guilt inside of jake.
he doesn't really know it yet but whenever he sees you— now and moving forward— he'll have the urge to want to help you.
the biggest decision being: should he help the girl who doesn't need anyone or not?
── 𖹭
a few days has passed since the night after the cafe at the bus stop and you'd be lying if you said you weren't already facing the consequences of getting fired. your tips at the cafe were good enough that it allowed you to buy some meals throughout the week without worrying of dipping into your funds for things like your dorm or sending money to your little sister. it was frustrating that it came to this and even more frustrating when you open your chat message with jake and send him a text to meet at the campus' cafeteria.
he responds rather quickly and it's because he was already hovering your texts in his phone— but you didn't need to know that.
you met with jake half an hour later and he's sitting in the far corner, hoodie over his head and hands tucked into the pocket of his hoodie.
"you look like you're doing a really bad job at hiding from the authorities." you say before even saying hello or hi.
"i'm not hiding…" he says, sliding his hood off.
"soooo… why'd you want to meet?" he asks, sliding the chair out for you so you could take a seat. you weren't going to at first but you ended up sitting down next to him anyway.
"i'm really sorry for how i spoke to you that. it was rude and i was emotional and i'm sorry. i was just really frustrated that you weren't hearing me out and you kept trying to insist that i needed help when i didn't need it." you played with the loose hem of your sweater, trying your best to avoid eye contact.
"it– it's fine. you don't have to apologize. i've been thinking about it every day and i feel so bad— i'm not trying to insist that you're helpless or anything. i really just wanted to help and i'm sorry i made things worse. it just doesn't make sense to me that he would fire you over that?" you could tell jake was being sincere, which hurt a bit considering how rude you were to him that night.
"because people like him don't care about anything besides being right. they don't care if they're right by being wrong— just being right is enough to them. they don't care how they got to being right as long as they just are— you interfering with this idea in his head only frustrated him and i just happened to be the one he took it out on.
that fuckin' asshole." you rolled your eyes.
"i'm sorry." jake says again and you finally raise your head to meet his gaze. you've never really taken the time to observe jake before, not this close. you noticed how his eyes were round and soft like the way the sun looks when it's hugged by clouds, his lips seem to naturally form into a pout and they were always a shade of pink you could never achieve despite all the makeup you owned. he was really hands— "the offer is still up, by the way." he pulls you out of your train of thought.
you hum in response, wondering what he meant.
"the offer for the radio station— i promise i'm not trying to overstep a boundary again and trying to help where you don't need it but i just feel really bad and who knows; maybe you'll like it there more than the cafe." he says with a shrug, a small hopeful smile on his lips when he sees you're actually considering it.
and after a moment, you accept.
"no way! really?" he almost jumps out of his chair and his voice is louder than either of you expected but it didn't seem to bother anyone around the two of you. you nodded in response and told him that you were honestly considering begging your job back despite saying you weren't going to but maybe working at he radio station would be a lot better. it's a lot closer to campus and it seemed like something that was more lighthearted.
hell— anything is more lighthearted than working for your ass of an ex-boss.
"cool! oh— please don't be mad… i kind of already told my friend at the radio station you were taking the job so it's kind of… already yours…" he says with a slightly guilty grin, squinting his eyes and raising his shoulders in defense like you were going to yell at him again but it doesn't come.
"thanks jake. text me the details— i really appreciate it." you say before sliding out of your chair. "oh and i'm free the rest of the week to work on our project by the way. just let me know when you are." you smile at him and give him a wave before walking off. a huge weight off the both of your shoulders as you both breathe a sigh of relief once the other is gone.
"great." jake says to himself when you're no longer insight. he texts heeseung that you accepted the job and heeseung just responds with several questions marks followed by 'i thought she already accepted?' to which jake just responds with, 'yeah. i just said that.' he slides his phone back into his pocket with a prideful smile on his face.
it was the first time something like this worked out for him— sure it was because of something like getting you fired but he made up for it in the end. it felt nice. jake felt accomplished and he felt… happy.
── 𖹭
some weeks past by and everything's going great for jake— and you.
you started working at the radio station with jake's friend, heeseung, and it was great. the pay was definitely a lot better, no tips, but the pay was enough to make up for that. your boss was a lot nicer and she accommodated a lot of your restraints when it came to your two other jobs. heeseung was cool, he makes dad jokes a lot and you choose to laugh at them even when they aren't funny because the one time you didn't laugh he looked at you like a pitiful hamster and it kinda broke your heart.
you've laughed at all of them ever since.
it was great.
jake seemed to also being doing well. he didn't really mind when he went unnoticed by a lot of people because these days you were noticing him more and more. you texted him regularly— about the project— but a win is a win. you two would often meet at a different cafe in town to work on the project as per the request of your boyfriend who claimed that if you were going to meet with another man that it should be in public so that 'if you cheat there are witnesses'. jake wanted to insult him but chose not to out of respect for you— definitely not because he hated your boyfriend's guts.
one night, after your first shift alone at the radio station where you were left in charge of the late night segment, jake just so happened to also be waiting at the bus stop like he was the night you got fired.
"this feels like deja vu." you say with a smile as you take the seat next to him on the bench— something you didn't do last time.
"promise i won't get you fired this time— other times? not so sure."
"oh? you've got jokes, sim. too bad i think my new boss likes me too much to ever fire me. she said i don't talk half as much as heeseung does and she prefers it sometimes over heeseung's constant yapping." you retort and it makes jake chuckle.
"she's right, though. heeseung can talk like enough for everyone in a 10 mile radius." he jokes and you laugh. for real this time. not the fake laughs you've been giving heeseung or the small laugh you give to your boyfriend when he says a slightly rude remark but you choose to laugh instead of addressing it.
jake loves your laugh.
the bus finally arrives after some time and he lets you on first and when you reach for your wallet that should be in the pocket of your puffer coat— it's not there.
slight panic washes over you when you realize you must've misplaced it— left it behind at the radio station somehow. "fuck.." you mutter under your breath, now unsure of how you were going to get home. it's too late to run back to the radio station as this is the last bus ride for the night and a ride share service would cost an arm and a leg at this hour.
"here— i got you." jake doesn't say anything else as he reaches past you and slides a few bills and some coins into the machine, a tiny sliver of paper rolls out soon after— your bus pass— and the driver urges you to take it and to have a seat. "thanks." your stutter out and head to the back, same spot you were in last time. you turn around to see jake scanning his pass— same one you had left behind at work— before you take a seat. he walks towards the back and gives you a smile, for a second you thought he was going to sit next to you but he eventually continues walking and takes a seat behind you.
you don't know why but it made you a bit sad when he chose to sit somewhere else.
the bus slightly jolts forward when it starts to move and the drive back to dorms begins.
it's not long after that you carefully get up and walk to the back where jake is, plopping down next to him. he's looking at you with wide eyes when you sit next to him, "just didn't feel like sitting alone." you say with a shrug and he just nods, trying his best to hide the way he's getting excited over the fact that a pretty girl like you is sitting next to him right.
correction— chose.
a pretty girl like you chose to sit next to him amongst all of the empty seats on the bus.
a win is a win.
jake turns to look out the window as you both sit in silence when he suddenly feels something on his shoulder.
you.
you've somehow fallen asleep and are now resting your head on his shoulder. he looks down at you as a corner of his lips tug towards his eyes. you looked so peaceful. you didn't have that usual exhaustion written all over your face these days, you probably still aren't getting enough sleep but the fact that you not only are catching up on a bit of sleep on his shoulder right now but also felt safe enough to do that.
well, that's all he cared about. it was like he was slowly becoming someone you could rely on— and jake liked that.
── 𖹭
jake wasn't planning on doing anything this fateful saturday night.
he was going to work on his parts of the project, work on some other assignments to get ahead of them, maybe play a game or two of league of legends— most likely sleep the whole day, but when heeseung showed up at his dorm unannounced— like he usually does— with a lime margarita cutwater in both hands, all he could was shake his head and grab the can of alcohol from his friend.
what was supposed to be jake's chill night in now turned into jake attending a frat party where he knew exactly one person, heeseung.
scratch that— two: you.
he saw you in the far corner of the frat house, sticking to yourself as you nursed a red solo cup in your hand. you'd glance around every now and then like you were waiting for someone but judging by how you're constantly checking your phone— it doesn't look like whoever you're waiting for will be showing up any time soon.
"yo– jake! let's do some beer pong. you're on my team." heeseung suddenly appears at jake's side, tapping him on the chest as he drags jake towards the beer pong table and when he turns to glance back to your direction, you're gone. there's a slight disappoint in his face but it's quickly replaced by a rush of alcoholic adrenaline when heeseung shoves another can— this time it's beer— into his hand and has jake drink it all before the game even starts.
"alright! house rules: get one ball in a cup, the other side drinks and you keep shooting 'til you miss. side who finishes all their drinks first loses— no bouncing and if the ball goes in then out, it's considered out." some guy who jake assumes is in the frat says. he wasn't sure who any of these people were but because he was dragged here by heeseung he kind of had no choice but to participate or look like a complete loser standing by himself.
"this side we've got sigma chi's very own park sunghoon and park jongseong" the two guys who jake assumes are sunghoon and jongseong do a chest bump— hooting and hollering as they pump their fists, slap their chests, and flex. very typical frat-boy behavior and jake can say that this is truly the first time he's been around this type of male archetype. "and on this side! we've got the campus favorite, lee heeseung and! .." then there's a pause.
the guy announcing the game looks at jake with a head tilt, "sorry, bro— what's your name again?" he asks and jake can feel everyone staring at him.
he whispers his name to the guy and he clears his throat to go back to his over the top announcing, "lee heeseung and sim jake!" everyone cheers and claps and although it made jake feel fuzzy on the inside— maybe it's from the alcohol— it was kind of nice. they could've just been cheering for heeseung and not him, but he'll take it. that's just the thing when it comes to being lee heeseung's friend.
"alright— let's play fair. loser does a keg stand… go!"
the game starts before jake can even fully process everything, he's drank more than he has ever drank in one night than he has in his whole life and there wasn't even any specific reason as to why this party was happening. it just was.
ping pong balls are being thrown across a table and before jake knows it, he and heeseung are in the lead. they've taken down seven out of ten cups on the opposing side and he's still got eight on his side. maybe he wasn't so bad at beer pong after all— maybe he's found his new talent— and maybe– just maybe, he's really loving all of the attention. people cheered for him like he's never heard before, they even chanted his name when he got the ball into a cup that was isolated in the far corner of the table. it was nice to be appreciated and noticed like this but he couldn't help but let his drunken thoughts wander back to the last time he saw you that night.
alone and seemingly anxious for something… someone..?
by now there's only one ball left to get rid of before jake and heeseung win the game— it was intense, the crowd has gotten even bigger and by the looks of his opponents 'the park bros' who he has learned is the nickname they've given themselves, their drunken state was enough to see that they want this game to be over just as much as jake does. of course he wants to win and have people cheer him on even more but he can't help but just want to explore the frat house and look for you.
jake's about to throw the ball into the last cup when he hears your voice cut through the music that's pounding throughout that house. it's not loud and you certainly aren't yelling— but it was loud enough that it got his attention. his head whips to the direction of your voice and his eyes dart around until he can find where you are and his face drops when he sees the situation that you're in.
you're backed into a corner of the kitchen with some guy towering over you, your first screams disgust and by the way you're crossing your arms it looks like you just want to be left alone. so, instead of throwing the ball properly, he just drops it onto the table and walks off— leaving heeseung dumbfounded and the park bros cheering as this gives them more of an opportunity to turn the game around and win.
heeseung tries calling for jake but he's too focused on the scene playing out in front of him, feet moving on their own until he finds himself in the kitchen just an arm's reach away from you and the strange man who won't leave you alone.
"you good, yn?" he says, gaining both your attention.
your eyes perk up at the sight of a familiar face and when the guy gives you enough space, you manage to sneak past him and wrap your hands around jake's arm for security. "you know this guy?" jake asks just loud enough and you shake your head. jake looks over at the asshole who won't leave you alone and stares him down— he doesn't care if the dude is taller than him. jake's got enough alcohol running through his body that he could probably run a marathon on hot coal or lift a tractor over his head.
that paired with the fact that you were clearly uncomfortable and needed help— he could do anything if it was for you.
the guy scoffs, "yeah— cuz you'll have a lot more fun with this prick. didn't wanna fuck you anyway." he says before walking off into the distance, most likely going to find another girl to bother. jake flinches at the guy, hand already balled into a fist but you're quick to pull him back, "not worth it— you'll just hurt your hand on his hard ass face." you mutter as you let go of jake's arm, making him slightly upset at the loss of contact.
"you alright? he didn't do anything did he?" jake's voice is dripping in concern, like it usually does when it comes to you. he's looking you up down and he can't help but slow down when he realizes you're wearing a tight black dress that hugged your body in all of the right places, making you look equally soft and sharp at the edges.
you shake your head, "no— he just wouldn't leave me alone. kept asking if i wanted to fuck even when i told him i had a boyfriend." you rolled your eyes in annoyance, jumping up on the counter in front of jake and he has to force himself to look away from your exposed thighs that are now on full display for him.
"should've kicked him in the nuts when he touched my ass though— fucking dick." you spit, glaring off in the direction the guy walked off in. "whatever— what are you doing here by the way? didn't take you for the frat party type." jake laughs for a second as the alcohol catches up to him again— heat washing over his face.
"yeah, i guess you could say that— heeseung dragged me here." he says with a nod.
"what about you? what are you doing here alone?" he asks and your lips form into a pout at the reminder. "right.. uh— my boyfriend was here earlier then he saw how i was dressed and got upset so he left. didn't even wanna show up tonight but he insisted that his girlfriend needed to be there because it's his frat— whatever." you shake your head, clearly annoyed and that's when jake realizes that your boyfriend must be in the frat.
loser.
"well, i, for one think you look beautiful." jake says, alcohol talking for him.
you quirk your brow at him with a smile, "i never said i didn't look beautiful jake— just said he didn't like my dress." you tease and you can see the panic spread across his face.
"no! i meant like your dress is beautiful and i don't agree with jungwon— you AND your dress are beautiful… you look.. yeah. fuck." he mutters the last part, shutting his eyes and dropping his head backwards in awkward shame.
you giggle at how cute his reaction is. cute? should you be using that word with someone that isn't your boyfriend?
"i'm just messing with you jake— you're kinda fun to mess with to be honest." jake loves the way you laugh, even if it's because you think it's cute how he's embarrassing himself in front of you. there's a beat of silence between you two when you finally decide to speak up. you jump off the counter and landing right in front of jake, your chest lightly pressed up against his. "think im gonna head home— don't drink anymore, okay?" you say, tilting your head at him and fluttering your lashes.
"um ye– yeah. do you need a ride home?" he asks
"from you? i didn't know you drive— plus you're really drunk that's not safe."
"no! i would never drink my drive— i mean drunk and drive– shit! i mean—" he keeps stuttering over himself and once again you're laughing at the way he's just so naturally clumsy in that way. it's endearing and you liked that about jake.
"can i call you an uber?" jake asks, fishing for his phone in his pocket but your hand reaches to grab his wrist, stopping him.
"i've got it taken care of, big boy. you have a good night and no more drinking, promise me."
god— your voice was so fucking hot. it was smooth like honey and addictive like seeing you for the first time. he could listen to you talk about anything for hours and he'd never grow tired of it. jake realizes he probably looks a fool just staring at you with his lips parted so he shakes himself back to reality just in time. "good night, jake." you say once again with a side hug, jake's arm wrapping around your waist and he takes in the moment like it's going to be his last.
"goodnight.." he mutters but you probably couldn't even hear it over the music— or perhaps the way his heart is pounding so loudly inside of his chest. fuck— did you hear it when you hugged him?
"she smelled so nice…" jake says, a drunk smile spreading across his face as he tries to savor the last of your scent before the smell of spilled alcohol and sweat takes over again.
"who smelled nice?" heeseung says out of nowhere, sipping on a red solo cup.
"fuck— dude! scared the shit out of me." jake says, grabbing his chest like he was having a heart attack.
"bro, why did you leave the game? we fuckin' lost because of you— had to drink all that warm beer." heeseung pouts, gesturing to the cup in his hand as he finishes off the rest of the drink, discarding the cup on the kitchen counter with a burp. "you're gross—" jake says, shoving heeseung away who is pretending to blow a kiss at jake.
"come on— we lost so you gotta do the keg stand." heeseung says as he wraps his arm around jake's shoulder, pulling him back towards the room where they had beer pong. "you know we were doing so good and then you just left—" heeseung was going on a drunken ramble, burping in between sentences but jake eventually tunes him out when he thinks about the way you smelled so heavenly despite being in a place that's filled with things furthest from something holy.
besides you, of course.
"ready?" heeseung asks, slapping jake on the chest.
"fine— but if i throw up you're helping me." jake says, glaring at his friend.
"yes, sweetheart. whatever you want, sweetheart." heeseung says with a kissy face.
before jake goes upside down with the help of heeseung and the park bros, his last and final thought is to make sure he texts you after he's up right again to make sure you got home safe.
── 𖹭
over the course of the next few weeks, you and jake have gotten quite close. having spent a lot of time together working on the project will do that, especially if it's just you and one other person, but you didn't mind— jake certainly didn't. he tried his best not to let his little crush on you get the best of him but he's still fumbling over his words when you look into his eyes or sometimes he completely just stops mid sentence when you get a bit too close— he prefers the latter.
"i am so tired—" you huff, dropping your head onto the table.
you and jake are working on the group project at the university library quite late in the night. the project isn't due for another week or so but because of your busy schedule, you and jake agreed that getting it done before the deadline would be a good idea. the two of you really only spend time with each other when it's for the project and it just so happens to be the only time jake ever really leaves his dorm.
even when heeseung tries to drag him out to go grab something to eat, jake will refuse.
but if you were to message him and say you're free to work on the project, no matter how last minute, he was suddenly ready and his schedule was miraculously open— not that he had much plans in the first place.
"you're always tired.." jake mutters, flipping through some of his notes he wrote a few days ago and typing it into the shared document you two were working on. you shoot him a glare as your head rests on your forearms and he just laughs, seeing your expression from the corner of his eye.
"want me to grab us coffee?" he offers but you shake your head, stuffing your face back into your arms.
you suddenly raise your head and sit up straight with a gasp— a dramatic and unnecessary one that makes jake turn his head towards you in a startle. "no coffee— let's just take a break and talk. i think if i write one more sentence for this case study i'm going to throw my laptop out the window." you say, slouching into your chair and pushing your laptop a few inches away from you.
"well, you can't do that because we aren't done with this project and you can't just go out and buy a new one— so, no. no throwing laptops out the window." he says while also sliding his laptop to the side. you fake sigh in annoyance like you're upset you can't throw you device out of the window but you know he's right. you can't really afford to break the most valuable item you own— you just loved complaining.
"what do you wanna talk about?" jake says, leaning back into his chair and folding his arms behind his head. the sleeves of his shirt slightly inch back on his arms, exposing his biceps.
you swallow the lump in your throat, hoping jake doesn't notice that you were staring for a moment— "umm… you!" you respond.
"me?" … no one's ever asked about me before, jake thinks to himself.
"what do you wanna know?" he asks, blinking rapidly at you. jake doesn't know what to expect from you sometimes. there were days where you were like his best friend and other days he can tell you've had a lot on your shoulders that you barely spoke more than 10 words at a time. you lean forward and rest your chin on your propped up elbows, observing jake for a second like you were studying him.
"anything."
that simple word was enough to make his heart skip a beat— several actually.
you? wanted to learn more about him? jake? sim jaeyun? the guy who everyone seems to forget. the guy who usually goes unnoticed by practically every single person he comes across— and yet, here you are; the prettiest girl he's ever seen asking to learn more about him.
and not some surface level 'what's your favorite color?' type of deal, but a 'i want to learn anything about you.'
did you care about jake as much as he cared about you? was this the point where his life of being unnoticed, not looked at, not cared for, and never needed— someone people did not consider at any point. someone who has yearned for the day he'd be someone that played an important role in someone's life. someone with a dream that most would find useless or silly— to be that someone that experiences love to it's fullest, with the good and the bad, the moments where love bleeds into the seams of every cracked and fills itself with something he can call his.
"um—" jake stutters, unsure of where to start.
"relax, jake. it's not that serious— figured since we spend so much time together i'd get to know you. you're practically one of the few people i've kept in contact with regularly this whole semester." you explain, lightening the mood when you noticed that jake was way too deep in thought for a simple question— was it simple though? to ask someone to tell you about themselves? it's not like jake has a prepared script since he rarely ever gets asked to talk about himself— let alone gets asked anything in general.
"what's your major and why— let's start there." you chose a question to make it easier.
okay. major and why. 'i can do that— easy.' jake thinks to himself.
'shit— what am i studying again?' he starts to get confused. it's not his fault you're so pretty and your eyes look so soft against the warm lighting inside of the library, like he could just melt inside of them.
"seriously? even that has got you stumped?" you laugh at him, bringing your hand up to your face to cover it while you laughed.
"that's it? just because you're 'passionate'— why are you passionate? where does that passion stem from? come on, give me something jake!" you tease, pouting your lips at him and jake thought your eyes were his weakness but seeing the way your lips form into a pout— that's definitely got him feeling weak.
jake hesitates for a second, unsure if he should explain the real 'why' behind his passion.
the story isn't exactly… lighthearted.
"fine— i chose to study criminal justice because of my dad." he responds, pausing for a beat.
"did he also study criminal justice?" you ask and he shakes his head.
"no… definitely not." jake looks down and begins fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
when jake was 8 years old, before he even started thinking about what major he was going to be studying in university, his father was arrested— wrongfully arrested. jake's dad worked day and night as a welder. it was long days of working and even longer nights when his company was hired to work on projects by rich folk. one morning after jake's dad worked until 3am— they received an unexpected knock on their front door at 7 in the morning.
it was the cops.
"hey there, bud. your mom or dad home?" the officer said when jake opened the door, he peeked through the small crack and kept the top lock on because his dad taught him to never let strangers into the house. jake shyly nodded and the officer asked him to grab a parent because they 'just wanted to talk'. it's never just a talk.
one thing led to another.
jake softly walked to his father's room and carefully pushed the door open to see his dad still sleeping. he poked his dad and when that didn't work he tapped him on the shoulder until he finally woke. "dad… there's police outside." was all he said. his dad got up immediately, not even bothering to put on his glasses as he walked to the front door and pulled it open— and just like jake said. there were cops outside.
one second they were 'talking' and the next they were turning jake's father around and cuffing his hands behind him, telling him that he was under arrest. all jake's dad said was to call his mom— the cops didn't even care that they just took a child's father away without a second thought. jake had to watch the way his dad was pushed into the cop car from the window in his living room. when he turned around to see the front door still unlocked, he couldn't do anything about it because the lock at the top was far too high for him to reach.
he sat there for a few moments until he remembered his dad's words.
"call mom." so he did that.
jake's parents were divorced and he rarely called his mom, so when she received a phone call from her baby boy, she knew something was wrong.
what was supposed to be his dad just being held at the station for a few hours for questioning turned into a sentence that landed him behind bars for a number of years jake couldn't even fathom at the time. they claimed that he was responsible for a machine back at the factory being wrongfully put away— that it wasn't properly switched off and when someone came into work the next day to use that machine it went wrong. an injury that eventually led to a casualty that jake's dad was sent to jail for.
but jake knew he didn't do it.
even at such a young age, jake knew that his dad wasn't at fault— and in honesty, he wasn't
the lawyer that jake's mom hired was able to gather evidence that proved his dad innocent. that the machine was carefully put away— video evidence proving so— but because the investors that paid thousands of dollars for their service and the company not wanting the press to get wind of the 'freak accident' that happened, they thought it was best to just sweep everything under the rug; jake's dad included.
he became their scapegoat.
no matter the evidence that the lawyer gathered to prove his dad's innocence, it wasn't enough.
the rich used their money and power to put away jake's dad— basically paid him for his silence except there was nothing in return.
until jake's 18th birthday when his dad passed away— behind bars— not able to say goodbye to his one and only son. jake hated his 18th birthday and any birthday that followed. after his dad died, an attorney showed up at his house, by now he's moved in with his mom and even though his parents were divorced, the situation with his dad was enough to make his own mother dissociate from everything.
she barely acknowledged her own son because he looked so much like his dad.
the attorney smiled warmly at jake and explained everything he needed to know.
jake thought that his dad lost the case because of how rich the people were— and he wasn't wrong— but there was more to it that he didn't know until his 18th birthday when he received a letter from the attorney, instructed by his dad to give it to him when he passed away— or when he turns 18.
both just happened to fall on the same day.
the letter explained everything— that money was at play just not how jake thought it would be. before the court hearing, some very rich and very scary people met with his dad in jail. they explained that with some thousand dollars jake's future would be set— he could go to university without the worry of money being a problem. all jake's dad had to do was plead guilty no matter what and jake was set.
and he did just that.
jake's dad spoke to the attorney and said that no matter what happened out there in that courtroom— he was going to jail. he didn't know what he meant by that— he learned about everything the same time jake did.
as jake read the words on the letter his fingers began to tighten around the paper until it completed was crumpled between his hand. tears brimmed along the outlines of his eyes as his jaw tightened. he didn't know what to think, he was angry, sad, hurt, confused— everything.
he dad may've just died that day but he lost his father years ago when he was sent to jail for something he didn't do— but for jake.
how was jake supposed to live with that guilt?
that the one person who's ever cared for him threw everything away— including his own life— for jake.
he wanted to cry. he wanted to scream. he wanted to break things— he just couldn't, because that's not how his dad raised him.
jake's never told anyone about this before, not even heeseung, he's also never repeated it even to himself. sometimes his mom would try to bring it up and he'd just brush it off— eventually jake became someone he didn't recognize, someone his father wouldn't recognize. he became even more invisible to everyone and he honestly preferred it that way— even if it hurt.
it didn't bother him until he started to realize how pathetic it was— then he started thinking about his dad and it made him feel sad. his dad wouldn't like for him to live his life like that; the life his dad worked so hard to work on to make sure his son had everything he needed. so after all of the years of being invisible and never being seen or noticed, he finally wanted to break out of that.
but years of being invisible was hard to break out of— until you came along.
"jake— i'm so sorry.." you whispered, afraid that if you spoke too loud it would shatter something fragile.
you looked up at jake and he had tears in his eyes threatening to fall as he stared at the wooden table. his hands were gripping the bottom of his shirt like he was holding on for dear life and you could feel the weight of his words. like he was letting go of something he didn't know he was clutching onto— something he's avoided like a dam with cracks that's being held together but thread.
"you have nothing to be sorry— shit, didn't mean to cry that's embarrassing." he says, wiping the tears away with one of his hands but he freezes when he feels your hand on top of the other.
"it's not embarrassing… i don't know how long you've been holding that in and i'm so sorry you've felt like you needed to. that's not fair to you, at all. i wish someone would've told you that it's okay a lot sooner…" jake finally looked at you and just as he thought, there was that glint that's always in your eye.
you were crying just like he was— you cared.
you care.
you pull him into a hug, rubbing his back and he finds himself laying his head onto your shoulder. a sense of comfort he hasn't felt in ages— a hug from someone that cared about him. that does care about him. even when he gets a hug from his mom when he sees her— which is rare— it doesn't feel like this. it felt more like distance despite being so close.
jake sniffles when you pull away, silently wishing you could've stayed there for just a moment longer.
"are you okay?" you ask even if you knew there was probably a lot going through his head.
he nods, wiping another tear away.
"definitely wasn't planning on crying in the library with my partner at— 2 in the morning." jake says with a half chuckle as he checks the time on his phone.
you laugh along with him to lighten the mood— "friend." you say and jake looks over at you.
"crying in the library with your friend." you correct him and he can't stop the smile that spreads across his face. the corners of his lips twitch upwards towards his ears, his eyes crinkle, and the apple of his cheeks become full.
"we're friends?" he asks like he didn't properly the first time but he just wanted to hear you say it again.
"yes, jake. we're friends— i mean unless you don't want me as your friend then i guess we aren't." you tease, playfully rolling your eyes at him and he's quick to deny.
"no no! friends! yes… friends." he says, nodding with a smile.
he wished you were more than friends though.
"enough about me— tell me about you? what are you studying?" jake says, clearing his throat from the overflow of emotion that poured out of him unexpectedly. he wasn't expecting to ever share that part of his life with someone, let alone that someone being you. "social work." you said simply before shifting in your seat to find a more comfortable position.
"shit— think it's gonna be my turn to cry now." you said, already sniffling.
jake became even more of an eager listener when you said that, if all of his attention wasn't on you before then it definitely was now.
you began to tell jake about the reason behind your major like he did— and like jake, it started when you were little.
responsibility came to you at a very young age.
5 years old to be exact.
your little sister was born when you were 5 years old and ever since that day, you had silently found your purpose. to take care of her— you didn't need anyone's help to do it either, not your parents, not from a trust adult— or any adult for that matter. you saw the home that your little sister was born into, you lived in that home, and god forbid would you let your little sister become a product of the very house that you learned to hate at just 5 years old.
emotion doesn't come easy at that age but you knew better than anyone else that it wasn't going to be easy navigating your life and now your little sister's as well. no one dropped her onto you as a responsibility but because of the way you were raised at just 5 years old— you knew that you needed to be the one to step in and that you didn't need anyone to help you with that. it was your duty as an older sister and you owed it to her to make sure the world didn't taint her innocence.
your parents— if you could consider them as parents— weren't the best people to rely on.
you learned to feed yourself before you could speak complete sentences. counting to 10 wasn't something that came from a teacher but because you had to make sure you counted long enough to pretend to be asleep to avoid having to interact with your father while he got ready for work in the morning. your mother didn't see a daughter but saw a burden.
their first born— a mistake.
at 10 years old, your father disappeared— took a bag of his things, left his ring on the nightstand, and by morning he was just a memory. your mom hated talking about him and you hated remembering him. your little sister barely had memories about him because by the time she was forming memories he was already practically a ghost. 10 was also the time you had to get your first job. nothing crazy but definitely not something a child should have to worry about. you ran errands for the aunties at the market in your town, helped them with small things like cleaning, picking up orders from other people in the market and delivering them, taking orders from customers, things like that.
you'd get paid, of course, but that money went to your mom— not you.
you never gave up on your studies thought and you made sure your little sister didn't give up on hers either. everyday after school you would go to work for a few hours, grab something small to eat to bring to your sister that she could eat quickly so your mother doesn't see, then you'd spend hours helping her with her homework until it was time for her to go to bed.
once her eyes shut and she was asleep, you'd spend the next few hours working on your own studies— essays, math worksheets, endless chapters of reading and before you knew it there would be about 3 hours left where you could sleep before having to restart all over again. this routine of yours last years; you'd eventually start working better jobs— sort of— that paid you better but not enough that you could rely on one source of income. at 16 you're working two jobs, juggling high school and preparing yourself for university, taking care of your sister, and still fighting off the resentment your mother had for her two daughters.
it was hard but you knew you could do it— it didn't matter how tough it got or how many nights you went without food or sleep; you knew that it was all on you and you didn't need anyone's help to get through any of it.
even when your little sister offered to start working, you gave her a stern talking to— told her that her focus needs to be on studies and not working and that it's not her responsibility to make money, it was yours.
eventually your little sister got into sports and for the first time in a while, you had a smile on your face as you watched your little sister score a goal at her very first soccer game. she looked over at you in the crowd as soon as it happened and the smile on your face mirrored hers. you were flushed with pride and it was at that moment that you made a silent promise to her, that for as long as you are alive, your little sister will always be happy.
when you turned 18 and officially became an adult you did something that would forever change the course of your relationship with your mother. you tried to file for custody over your little sister and with the amount of money you secretly hid and saved, you used that to work with an attorney to help you with the case. your mother screamed, her eyes widened in a type of anger you've never witnessed in someone before, she pointed her finger at you like you weren't her daughter and by the end of it— you weren't.
it came at a loss.
you not only lost the case and the court deemed the evidence you brought as insufficient to become your sister's legal guardian but you also lost your mother that day but you knew deep down that the day your were born was the real day you lost your mom. you moved out almost immediately, rented a room in a nice old couples house while you prepared for university, continued working three jobs to make ends meet and despite your mother's mistreatment towards you, you still gave her money because she promised it would be for your little sister.
lies.
it wasn't a year into university that your sister finally told you that the money you were giving your mom barely went to her. it was meant to cover your little sister's food expenses, sports fees and equipment, help give her some pocket money when she needed it, but instead you found out that your mother had found herself coping with the decline of her life through drugs. you don't know where she got them from and you didn't care to find out— ever since then you started giving the money directly to your little sister and if your mother tried to ask you for some you'd simply tell her you had nothing left over.
you were afraid that she'd force your sister into working and ruin her studies to make money for her addiction but thankfully she didn't. your sister was fine— despite having to live with your mother— and she was happy even though she was far from the one person who has ever cared about her.
"i'm not the only person who cares about you— so many people do and don't forget that." you'd tell her whenever she would get sad about not being able to live with you. you'd remind her of all of her friends, that boy she has a crush on, the teachers who did their best in making sure she was prepared for university— resources and people that rallied around her for her success. something you didn't have— something you didn't need.
"that's why i'm studying social work— i want to get into child welfare and help kids who can't help themselves; so that they don't need to make the same sacrifices i did." your voice was just above a whisper, eyes getting blurry as tears begin to coat them— you laugh it off. "fuck, this is the most depressing study session i've ever done." you say to cut through the tension and thankfully jake laughs along with you.
"tell me about." he says, shaking his head with a laugh.
he doesn't know how to respond to what you've just told him and he kind of felt bad because he didn't know what to do. you gave him such kind words— you even hugged him but right now all he could do was look at you— look at the girl he's silently watched for the last few months and tried to understand and tried to be the person you could rely on, and it all finally made sense.
your lack of sleep being a direct result of your countless hours working so you could care for your little sister.
and your independence.
your natural instinct to refuse help and to nod need anyone because it was ingrained in your by the very people who were supposed to help and care for you. you didn't need anyone because everyone has failed you to the point that you've had to create solutions on your own— no one else has ever been reliable enough for you— for your sister; and it broke jake's heart to know that you've had to endure all of this on your own.
burdening the troubles so that your sister could live a life you also deserved.
jake wanted to let you know how much he admired you, how strong you are, how smart you are, how beautiful you are, and how capable you are despite having endured so much but he didn't and he doesn't know why couldn't bring himself to do it.
but when you finally looked up at jake after taking a moment to yourself and you saw the way he was looking at you— that was enough.
── 𖹭
"aaaaand— submit! we're done!" jake says as he clicks his mouse and the word 'complete' appears on his screen after he hit submit on the final project. originally you were planning to be the one to submit for the two of you but you were having some computer problems but thankfully jake— as usual— came to the rescue and ended up saving the day. he told you not to worry about it and that he'd submit everything after you spent the last hour trying to fix your laptop, you thanked him endlessly and he just laughed and told you it wasn't a big deal.
"thank god! it's finally over— i need a drink." you say over the phone, slumping into the pillow you were leaning on.
"speaking of drinks, there's that end of the semester party tonight— you coming?" jake asks and you furrow your brows at him through your phone.
"jake are you suddenly a party animal? beer pong has changed you…" you said jokingly and you can hear him laugh through the phone. you found his laugh quite cute— infectious even.
"you comin' or not?" he says through a laugh.
"yeah, i am. i'll be there with my boyfriend— oh! i'll introduce you guys, you'd get along." you say it like he didn't leave you alone at a party just some time ago because he didn't like how short your dress was. jake has to stop himself from scoffing audibly but he definitely rolls his eyes since you can't see him anyway.
"jake?" you ask since he's gone silent.
"sorry— yeah! sure, totally. i'll see you there!" and then he just hangs up, not giving you any time to say goodbye.
'weird' you thought to yourself but you believed it was just jake being jake.
your silly friend.
── 𖹭
jake is 2 beers and 4 shots into the night when he finally sees you at the party.
it was at a different frat house this time, heeseung's somewhere having 3 conversations at once, and you're looking beautiful as ever as the annoying cheap strobe lights flicker across the room. your hair is done up extra special with small clips, your dress is perfect— like always— and he's smiling at you from across the room, trying to get your attention.
he's about to walk over to you when someone comes into his line of vision.
your boyfriend— jungwon.
and he's not look happy and neither are you.
jake walks over a bit closer to hear your conversation better over the loud music, he's hiding behind a corner and it's close enough to hear everything and not be seen. jungwon's yelling at you about how you're dressed— that it's annoying see how many guys are staring at 'his girl' like you were some object to be own. he's telling you to go back to your dorm— by yourself— to change. he says something about always having to care about what other people think because you can't think for yourself and that you don't care about what other people think of you because you don't know better.
jake was starting to get angry hearing all of the ridiculous things your boyfriend was spewing, trying his best to hold back and not reveal that he's been eavesdropping but just as he's about to round the corner and defend you— like one should— a loud slap rings through whole house that it has everyone's head turning towards you and jungwon.
he finally peers from the corner and he sees you standing there staring at jungwon who has got his face turned to one side, hand clutching his face in shock, confirming what jake just heard cut through the loud music.
"fuck you, we're done." is all you say before walking off, pushing past the stares and leaving the party.
jungwon's still holding his face, stretching his jaw with a wince when he sees everyone staring. he glares at everyone before walking off towards the opposite direction— towards jake. jungwon sees the way jake is staring and he stares back, looking him and down, "fuck you lookin' at?" he says before shoving past jake.
jake ran after you that night, afraid that you had gotten far as he pushed out of the house but he could see the way you were starting to get smaller and smaller as you walked down the side walk. you could hear footsteps getting louder behind you thinking it was your ex but when you whipped around all of a sudden, you come crashing into jake.
"shit!" the two of you say at the same time, clearly in shock.
"ohmygod— jake? what are you doing?" you say with a sniffle, trying to wipe your tears away like he hasn't seen you cry several times before.
"um…" he tries to think of a way to respond without making you feel like you're being put on the spot for what just happened.
"you saw that didn't you.."
jake nods like he's just admitted to do something he shouldn't have done— "look, i'm fine. you don't have to worry about me— honestly it was bound to happen, he was an asshole anyway." you confessed it like you had to justify yourself but with jake you never have to explain anything— he just knew.
"let me walk you back to your place— it's late i don't want you out here walking alone."
jake doesn't let you protest as he's already turning the two of you around and walking down the sidewalk with his arm around your shoulder like it's always been there— like it's meant to be there.
you don't say anything though because it felt nice. you thought that maybe it shouldn't feel nice, that maybe you shouldn't be this close to another man less than 10 minutes after breaking up with you boyfriend— that maybe you felt something for jake before you even broke it off with jungwon.
maybe it's fine.
maybe you deserve to feel the way you do when you're around jake.
it's nice.
"actually—" you pause, stopping mid step.
"do you think we can go back to your place instead? my roommate's home and i don't really wanna explain all of this to her— can i stay at yours tonight?" you're looking up at him with those same eyes that jake's found himself drowning in every time. the way your eyes reflected the moonlight and the way your lips formed into a silent plea of "please, i don't want to be alone." and it's enough to have him nodding and walking off with you into the direction of his dorm instead of yours.
it doesn't take long before the two of you are entering jake's dorm and silently tugging your shoes off. it's quiet between the two of you even if jake wants to say what's on his mind. that you can rely on him for anything— lean on him when you need, use him to take out your frustrations on, cry on his shoulder and use his sleeve to wipe your tears, but he's afraid of scaring you away. that if he treats this moment between the two of you too seriously and say something, then it would become all too real between the girl who has never needed anyone and the boy who has never been needed.
the two of you clearly need one another— so why can't either of you face that?
"you can sleep on my bed— i'll take the floor and–" you cut jake off by pulling him in by the collar and slamming your lips together. it catches jake by surprise and he almost falls over but he's quick to catch himself on the wall behind him, wrapping his arms around your waist soon after. he deepens the kiss, not caring about why you're kissing him right now as all he can think about is the way your cherry lip gloss feels on his lips and how sweet you taste.
"fuck—" you say, out of breath when you pull away. you take some steps back, sitting down on the edge of jake's bed with shock on your face after what you just did. you wipe your face with your hand, lips still parted. "ohmygod, i shouldn't have done that— fuck i'm so sorry jake i don't know why i did that." your bottom lip quivered as you bit down onto it.
"hey hey– it's cool. i liked it, why are you sorry?" he asks, rushing over to you and sitting onto his knees on the floor beside your feet.
"i don't know— i don't want to use you, i just broke up with my boyfriend if we do this then you're like a rebound. i respect you more than that to treat you like a rebound, jake." you stutter through your words but jake just reaches forward, gently cupping your face like a frame does a picture and he pulls you into another kiss. your hands find themselves resting on his biceps to ground yourself as he pushes you down onto his bed, back flat against the mattress.
the kiss feels like a tug of war— both of you fighting for more as your lips lock into place, tongue roaming your mouths to find a treasure inside of the other.
"do you want this?" jake says into the kiss.
you pull away to look into his eager eyes, "i don't want you to be a rebound.." you whisper and he shakes his head. "i don't give a shit— i want you and if you want this too then i'll be more than happy to be a rebound." his voice is desperate and his eyes are pleading for you to look past him as a rebound and just as jake— the guy to make you feel better.
"okay.." you're barely able to answer before jake is kissing you again, sloppier than before like he's been waiting for so long to get to taste you; and he has.
jake trails kisses along your jaw and neck, breath hot and wet against your skin. a breathy moan slips past your lips and the sound shoots through jake as his cock hardens in his pants. his hands travel across your body, briefly grazing your breasts until they're settling at your hips with a light squeeze. jake stands up to get a good look at you laid out on his bed, eyes hooded with growing lust.
he begins to take his pants off, leaving him in his boxes with an obvious tent that mirrors the growing wet spot on your soft white panties that's covered by the fabric of your dress. jake gently hooks your legs with his arms and moves you towards the center of the bad into a more comfortable position, helping you nuzzle a pillow behind your back so you have some support. "ca– can i see your tits?" he asks and it makes you laugh.
"you don't have to ask.." you respond as you grab his hands and place them over your breasts, massaging your tits with his hands under yours. "fuck—" you moan out when jake gropes them a harder, your own hands sliding off of his as your head falls back. jake pulls the low collar of your dress over and your tits spill out the fabric, bouncing slightly. his mouth waters the sight of your breast— soft and supple, he just wants to latch his mouth onto your nipple that hardens at the slightest touch.
"so sensitive.." he says while giving your nipple a pinch that makes you whimper as your hips buck up into him.
your hand reaches for the waistband of his boxers and without another word you pull it down to reveal his hard on, cock bouncing with a trail of precum flying across your stomach from how much this interaction has got him horny. you're surprised at the size of his cock— it's throbbing, veiny, leans slightly to the right, and his tip is staring back at you as more precum slowly drips from it. one hand isn't enough to grab the whole thing— neither is two but when you give the base of his cock a squeeze the pressure of your grasp was enough to make jake hiss.
you begin to pump his cock with both your hands at a steady pace and you can see the way jake's eyes have shut close— teeth gritted and jaw set as he holds himself back. he doesn't want to embarrass himself by cumming too early but your hands just feel way too good wrapped around his cock, he can't even begin to imagine how your mouth or pussy would feel.
jake leans forward, bringing his cock closer to you face as he leans onto the wall behind you, both hands out in front of him.
his hips grind into your hands in the same rhythm as your pace. you spit into one of your hands to coat his cock when you feel like the friction was getting dry between your hand and his cock— "i know what can help" jake says before grabbing the back of your head and pushing you closer to his cock, tip pushing your lips apart as he fucks into your mouth.
"shit— that's it, right there." he moans, eyes falling onto your face below him.
you're looking up at him with wet eyes and for the first time in a while it's not tears because of something that hurt you.
"just like that, pretty girl." jake says as he continues grinding into your face. his cock touches the back of your throat for a moment when he pushes all the way in with a stifled groan— trying his absolute best not to cum too soon but the way your throat bobs and vibrates against his cock is too much; too good.
he suddenly pulls out and you gasp for air. jake's hand moves to pump his cock, fucking his fist with speed, "i'm gonna cum— gonna paint these pretty fuckin' tits. you want that?" he asks and you nod, biting down on your lip as a mixture of your spit and jake's precum dribbles down your chin in a sloppy wet mess.
"please, jake— cum for me, please." you whimper just as his cum shoots out in long white ropes across your chest. it lands in hot strips from the base of your breasts, across your sensitive nipples, ending just at the peak of your collar bone. jake's a moaning mess, whimpering your name and profanities as his cum shoots out of his cock and covers your tits like icing on a cake.
"shit shit shit—" he breathes out in disbelief at the amount of cum coming out of his cock that your nipples are practically drowning in it. jake stares down at you with a gaze you've never seen in his eyes, usually they're cute soft and welcoming but right now they were sharp and determined. his chest rose and fell with each breath and the hand he's got cupping your face slowly makes it's way across your tits, gathering some of his cum on his two fingers and smearing it against your lips until you part them so he can push it inside.
the taste of his salty and warm cum spread across your tongue as jake pushes it further inside of your mouth, "good girl." he says before pulling them out when you've cleaned them all the way.
"you're turn, pretty girl." he says before moving off of you and settling in between your thighs. "open up for me, baby." he says as he gently grabs onto your thighs, encouraging you to spread them. by now your skirt has bunched up around your waist and your soft white panties are exposed, showing jake the growing wet spot at the center of the fabric. "this for me?" he says, raising his brows at you teasingly.
jake doesn't even move your panties aside before he starts eating at your cunt. his mouth moves desperately against the fabric, not bothered by how it's in the way because he can taste you through it. he sucks on the fabric, licks, bites at it like it's the real thing. he's got his eyes closed in pleasure and he's moaning every time he feels your body slightly jolt against him.
he grabs your panties by his teeth and tugs them off of you, finally revealing your dripping pussy that's craving the feeling of his mouth without the fabric in the way— "please, jake. please do something.." you moan, arching your back and moving your hips closer to his face to feel something. anything.
jake doesn't waste anymore time, he can't keep his pretty girl waiting any longer so he attacks your pussy like a starved man. hands are gripping your hips in place so that he can fully bury his face into your cut. his tongue licks long stripes against your folds so he can gather your juices on his tongue— he's pushing it deeper inside of you so he can taste what the deepest parts of your pussy tastes like. "so fucking wet and so fucking sweet." he groans against your pussy.
you're moaning more than you ever have before, hands gripping at jake's hair as your legs threaten to squeeze shut. he's slurping up every part of your pussy— you jump and try to pull away when he latches his mouth until your clit; jake bites ever so gently and tugs onto it before sucking on your sweet bud like a piece of candy. "uh-uh, don't try running from me baby. you can take it." he says with your clit still between his teeth.
you can feel the way heat washes over your body like tidal wave.
"jake— fuck! i'm gonna–" you can't even finish your words when your ears start to ring as jake pumps his tongue faster into your cunt and sloppily makes out with your pussy like he's pushing you over the edge that you're too afraid to jump over. to both of your surprise— you squirt.
everywhere.
for the first time.
it comes out like waterfall— jake is only caught off guard for a few seconds before he opens his mouth up and brings himself closer to your twitching cunt so that he can catch everything— not wanting any of it to go to waste. he doesn't even realize you've stopped cumming with the way he's completely lost in the way he's eating you. jake's got his nose nuzzles against your clit as he continues to bury his face into your pussy like he never wants it to end.
the feeling of your orgasm builds up and tears through you but you can't even process your orgasm because of the way jake is still eating you out like it's his job.
"ja– jake— fuck! s'too much– jake!" you moan as your back arches, one of your hands grips tighter on his hair that it makes him moan while the other is frantically tapping at him, body overwhelmed with the sensation.
"shit– i'm sorry, are you ok? i'm sorry." he says when he finally breaks out of his trance and pulls away.
he crawls over you and cups your face in an attempt to calm you down.
you nod in response, "yes… sorry it was just a lot— it was so good but a lot.." you say in between breathes.
"don't apologize— i'm sorry i was doing too much." but you tell him that he doesn't need to apologize either.
"you did so good, pretty girl. so good." he says while wiping the sweat off of your forehead with the back of his hand, placing a few kisses on your forehead and cheek before connecting your lips again. the kiss is sweeter now— less chaotic and more tame like you both have resided in a mutual oasis.
jake falls onto his back next to you, grabbing a blanket to pull over both of your bodies.
he grabs hold of your waist and pulls you against his body, your back facing his chest. he gives your shoulder and neck a kiss as the two of you lay in silence.
after sometime of just laying there with nothing being said, jake assumes you've fallen asleep. "i won't do any wrong by you— i'll prove to you that i'm all you need. i'll be the one you can fall onto when you're tired of being strong.." he whispers, slightly tightening his grip around your waist in a secured possessive manner.
"goodnight, angel."
jake drifts off to sleep soon after without realizing that you were awake to hear what he said.
his words repeat themselves in your head for the rest of the night— stopping you from falling asleep as you continue to think about how all of this is getting a little too real and going too fast. your head beginning to spin against everything you thought you knew about yourself— how you don't need anyone and yet it feels like maybe you do need jake.
but you weren't sure if you were okay with that.
── 𖹭
when morning bled through the blinds of jake's window, you found yourself in waking up with a cold chill. the blanket around you has slipped off of your body, exposing your shoulders and somewhat bare chest, there's a slight headache waiting to turn into a migraine, and an arm around your waist that's knocking you back into the events of the night before.
jake hovering about you with his cock down your throat.
jake burying his face into your cunt.
and jake whispering a sweet confession that you weren't ready to here— and maybe not ever.
you slowly craned your neck around to see if jake was still asleep and thankfully he was. you weren't sure how you were going to face him now— like a morning walk of shame except it was guilt. the desperation in jake's voice last night replayed in your head, begging you to use him and that he doesn't care about being a rebound, it was fine up until then but when the heat settled and your breathes synced up as you laid in his arms, it all felt a little too real when he told you his feelings in hushed tone, assuming you had long fallen asleep.
carefully, you reached to pull jake's arm off of your waist, trying your best not to wake him up. the blanket slides completely off of your body and the stale air in jake's dorm brushes against your unclothed core, sending a shiver down your spine. you cringe at the idea of being panty-less as you begin to look around for your underwear— finding it tossed aside underneath jake's dresser. you quickly slip it on and do your best to put yourself together, tugging your dress down to an 'acceptable' length, and looking at yourself in jake's mirror to see the way your mascara has smeared and your lipstick has stained your chained.
"damn— bitch." you whispered about yourself before turning around to slip your shoes, afraid that if you take any longer that jake would wake up and you'd have to face the awkward encounter of jake seeing you leave without saying goodbye after a night of exploring each other's bodies and acting like what happened last night wasn't a result of desperation and a lack of emotional stability.
you reached for the door, slowly turning the knob and gave jake one last glance.
he looked so peacefully. his long lashes, soft skin, and plump lips parted slightly— you felt a pressure in your chest the longer you looked at him and just before you decide to leave and hide from jake and your feelings, you go back over to his sleeping figure and pull the blanket more securely over his body. "sor— bye, jake." you whispered then crept through the door, hoping that since your project was completed and submitted, you wouldn't have to see jake for a while and hopefully by then the feelings of last night would've disappeared.
you're long gone by the time jake finally wakes up— last night taking more out of him than he thought. he imagined himself waking up with a smile on his face by how happy he was about how last night went but when he felt the emptiness of his bed and the lack of your body next to his, his smile dropped.
he looked around for you like you could be hiding somewhere— and you were hiding, just not in his dorm.
he scrambled out of bed, tried to look for any signs of you but there was nothing. you didn't leave a letter, there was no text, your shoes were gone, your panties that he threw across the room were gone— you were gone. and the emptiness in his chest was a clear representation of the way you've managed to slip past jake without a trace.
jake put some pants on and slumped back into his bed with his phone in hand. he scrolled through all of his notifications— although not many— he was still disappointed to see nothing from you even now. he didn't even know when you left but aside from you leaving, all he could think about was why.
did he scare you off from how desperate he was?
do girls not like yearners anymore?
did he overthink and misread everything?
fuck— 'i shouldn't have listened to heeseung's sex tips…' he thought to himself, slapping his forehead in shame.
jake stared at his ceiling in deep thought, wondering if he should reach out or let you have your space even if that was the last thing he wanted to do. sure, he did say he was fine being a rebound but he didn't expect you to treat him like a one night stand— hell, you guys didn't even fuck! he just ate you out and you sucked him off but god damn was it so good that jake couldn't even complain there was no penetration.
wait— was it as good for you as it was for jake?
did he have more fun than you?
holy shit, this is embarrassing. now he definitely can't see your face again, he was too caught up in the moment of his own pleasure that he didn't realize that you may've not been enjoying it as much as he was. was he that bad in bed? no… no? maybe? fuck, he really needs to get laid more often.
several thoughts began to spiral in jake's head except for one thing, the reason you left without another word— his confession.
── 𖹭
day 1 of no contact
jake tried to act like it didn't bother him. the day after it all happened we forced himself to keep busy, he bothered heeseung to hang out despite the guy being very hungover, he ran errands with heeseung forcing his friend to drive him around town to complete his to do list, he cleaned his dorm, he even got a haircut.
but no matter how many things he did— hearing heeseung complain about his hangover, buying snacks at the grocery store, sweeping his dorm, trying and failing to make small talk with his barber, all jake could think about was you.
nothing's really changed except now paired with the thought of you was the lingering taste of your body on his tongue.
day 2 of no contact
he showed up to class trying his best to act like he wasn't constantly glancing over at the door to see if you'd walk in.
you didn't.
day 3 of no contact
"so she just left? no text or nothing?" heeseung asks as he spins a pen in between his fingers.
he and jake are laying parallel to each other on jake's bed, staring at the ceiling.
jake hums in response, shaking his head.
"damn— tough shit bro." heeseung says, earning him a punch on the shoulder.
day 4 of no contact
by now jake was staring at your message thread. he thought that if he stared at it long enough then he could will a text message from you. that you and jake had a mental connection so good that you would just pick up on his telepathic message and you would send him a text.
why hasn't he sent you a text instead of waiting for one from you?
don't ask him that. he doesn't know either.
day 5 of no contact
you didn't show up to class the whole week which didn't surprise him but it still was disappointing. jake thought that if he saw you at some point during the week then it would just be easier to come up to you and talk rather than desperately be waiting by his phone only to get disappointed when it finally dings with a notification only for it to be heeseung asking if he could borrow notes from a class he skipped.
jake's walking out of his last lecture of the week and heading back to his dorm when he sees you.
you're some ways ahead of him, facing the opposite direction— walking away.
he could feel his heart immediately begin to beat faster when he sees you. he runs his hand through his hair, checks his breath, straightens out his hoodie and jobs over to you; tapping you on the shoulder to get your attention.
"hey— haven't seen you all week, i missed you." he confessed just as you were turning around.
only… it wasn't you.
it was some random girl who just so happened to look exactly like you from behind— maybe she didn't even look like you in the first place but he's just so desperate to see you that he's beginning to hallucinate things.
"do i know you?" the girl asks.
"oh shit— sorry, thought you were someone else." jake responds, awkwardly scratching the back of his head before walking off.
great. now he's embarrassed himself in front of another girl.
day 6 of no contact
you've been working tirelessly all week. you picked up extra shifts at your other jobs at the pet store and student accommodation services building.
jake didn't know you had an on campus job— if he did he probably would've been there the first day of no contact; maybe even the same day he noticed you were gone in the morning.
you could barely keep your eyes open and it was times like this where you wished that sleep came easy to you. spending so many hours awake to work, you'd think that your mind would just be focused on completing whatever task you had at work but all you could think about was jake.
jake, that night, and his confession that you didn't see coming.
his words replayed in your head constantly— you hated that you could remember it word for word. the tone in his voice, the intonation of each word, and how coming from him it meant so much more than it should've.
"yn— you can head out early today." your boss at the pet store said, explaining that she was planning to close the store early because there's meant to be a rain storm to come and everyone would probably stay home to avoid the rain. "go ahead and finish whatever you're working on and head home, ok? don't want you to get caught in the rain." she says. you nod in response and do just that.
you swept the floor, tidied up around the entrance, made sure tomorrow's shift had whatever they needed ready, and then you said your goodbyes and left.
the sky was beginning to darken— a clear sign that rain would be coming.
if only you knew to bring an umbrella.
the walk to the bus stop wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, but in those same ten minutes the rain came out of nowhere. it started as small widespread droplets, not enough to panic but enough to make you pick up your pace. by the time you're halfway to the bus stop, the rain has become a barrage. it was heavy, fast, and felt like everything you were trying to avoid. you didn't have anything to cover yourself besides the knit cardigan that provided little to no protection at all.
you could see the bus stop just a few blocks ahead— such little distance but with the rain it felt like it would be an uphill battle just to get to the small bus shelter. you took in a deep breath to prepare yourself to run, avoid puddles, and to watch your step so that you don't slip and fall— then suddenly, the rain stops.
not really.
it's still going on around you but it's stopped right above you.
you looked up and saw an umbrella overhead with jake on the end of the handle, looking over at you like he's glad to have found you when he did. your heart skips a beat when you look up at him, he's got the umbrella hovering over you as rain begins to beat down on him, hair dampening, skin becoming wet, and clothes soaking. he was choosing to cover you from the rain and letting himself get pelted by the rain— sacrificing his well being and potentially getting sick just to make sure that you didn't have to suffer through the rain any longer.
"ja– jake?" you asked like you weren't sure if he was actually in front of you or just the rain playing tricks on you.
"long time no see, yn. catching the bus?" he asks so calmly as if the two of you aren't caught in the worst rainstorm you've ever experienced. you looked at him with eyes that searched his for answers— why was he here? why is he choosing to help you? why is he acting like everything is sunshine and rainbows?
"how'd you know i was here?" you say, pulling him closer so that he was now also underneath the umbrella. you hadn't been this close to him since that night— your chest was flush against his, you could see the streaks of the rain across his forehead, and the longing in his gaze was evident. you could tell he's been waiting to see you again and you can't fight the guilt building up inside of you.
"just happened to be here—"
jake wasn't lying.
but maybe it was because he remembered you saying you worked at pet store on the other side of town and this just happened to be the first one that he found when he looked it up— nonetheless, he was here and he was here with an umbrella. you didn't know whether to believe him or not but right now the cold was starting to settle deeper than your cardigan and jeans, it's soaked further and now coating your skin like a second layer and it was getting hard to figure out if you were shivering from the cold or shaking from the nerves of seeing the boy you've been avoiding for the past week.
jake notices the way your shoulders carry tension and the tremble in your lips as you avert your gaze, trying to avoid his eyes.
he uses his free hand to rub your arm up and down, attempting to cool you down but your instinct was to flinch, move away from him like you were scared what would happen if he touched you a little too long. "sorry.." he mumbles, clearly noticing the way you basically jumped back and away from him.
"no– no! it's fine…" you pause for a second, swallowing the dryness in your throat. it was hard to avoid his gaze especially when you could feel the way he's staring at you, not daring to break away for a second even if you won't look at him. the silence between the two of you is filled with the sound of rain against his umbrella, against the pavement, against your bodies as strong gusts of wind tilt the direction of rain from vertical to horizontal.
it was getting unbearable.
waiting to see you all week was getting unbearable.
from behind jake's shoulder you can see the bus getting closer and when you try to step past him— he steps in the same direction, blocking you from leaving. he's a lot bigger than you so it wasn't hard, "jake— my bus is here i have to go." you explain, still avoiding his gaze.
"i'm going to take that bus back to campus too— so either we have this conversation here or have it on the bus… why have you been avoiding me all week? after that night? did i do something? i'm sorry if i did, just tell me so i can it right; i'm sorry if i—" you could barely him through the rain and the sound of cars speeding past the two of you.
when you finally raise your head to look at jake— your vision is blurry.
tears have begun to well at your eyelashes.
"you have nothing to be sorry. please don't say sorry, i just—" you don't know how to explain it with coming off selfish or insecure.
you didn't want to tell him 'it's not you it's me' because it sounded like a cliche cop out and even if that was the truth. that you knew deep down that you're the reason why you ran off that morning because you couldn't process the emotions that jake brought out of you— you knew that jake didn't deserve that. he didn't deserve a half-assed explanation where you resort to blaming yourself with a clear reason and then expect him to just be fine with that— because you knew he wouldn't.
"please talk to me—" he pleads, voice trembling.
"yn, i like you. i don't know if i didn't make it obvious enough last night but i do. i don't care if you just broke up with your boyfriend and i'll look like some pathetic rebound because everyone already sees my as pathetic anyway and that's if they see me in the first place.
i've liked you since the first day i met you, i liked you when you didn't show up to class, i liked you when we argued the day you finally showed up, i liked you when you yelled at me for what happened at your job, i liked you all those times we spent working on the project together, i liked you even more when you let me open up to you about my life and when you told me about yours. i liked you when i saw you break up with your ex, i liked you when you asked to stay the night and i still liked you after you avoided me all week.
yn ln.
i like you.
please let me."
his lips are parted when he finishes talking, chest heavy with emotion every breath he took, and not once did his eyes ever leave yours. he didn't blink, he didn't stutter, he didn't flinch— he didn't quit.
and he never would.
"why? you don't know me— everything you know about me is something you just made up in your head! you don't like me for me you like that you can help me, that i just so happen to always need something from you and that it makes you feel like you have purpose— you don't like me! you like that i need you!
and i don't!" you scream at him like he offended you.
like his confession, the way he professed his love, and laid his heart on the line was offensive. like he shouldn't have said that not because it was a lie but because it was the most true thing you had ever and it scared you. you didn't like that his words didn't feel like lies— they held weight, they were meaningful in every sense of the word, they were from the heart and they cut through the very walls you put around yours.
so, because jake told the truth— you lied.
you told him that you didn't like him. that his feelings were invalid and that they were coming from a place of pity and not love. that you didn't like him and never would, that he's just some guy you know from your class— that there was nothing between you guys besides unspoken tension and neglected emotions from your end.
you didn't know what else to do but lie.
jake looked at you like you just broke his heart— and you might as well have.
like you tore it straight from his chest and crushed it with your hands and dropped it at your feet without a second thought and when he opened his mouth to respond, you didn't let him. you pushed past him and began to walk towards the bus that was arriving, thankfully acting like savior so that you didn't have to continue this confrontation. you jogged to the bus stop, hopped on the bus and walk to the back— not noticing that jake was right there behind you.
he did the same.
paid for his fair and walked to the back of the bus like you guys have done several times, except he pauses for a second when he walks by your seat— he looks at you with eyes that are begging for you to take everything you said back. to tell him that they were lies– and they are– but he didn't know that. his lips formed into a pout when you forced yourself to avoid his gaze despite looking at him through his reflection on the glass.
when you didn't both to turn around, he took one deep breath and kept walking.
he took a seat at the very back, gave you one last glance, and came to terms that was probably the last time he'll ever see you again.
── 𖹭
when you got home later that day, your shoulders had a slump in them like you carried everything on your back. like the burden of everything you knew increased in size and you were barely holding yourself together. regret was starting to creep past your other emotions and it was swimming in your mind like jake has the past week— you felt terrible.
you looked at yourself in the mirror, wet hair, mascara smudged, and face flush with shame.
"what the fuck did i do.." you muttered to yourself before tearing away from the mirror, no longer able to look at the girl looking back at you. you stood there for a moment, hand on your temple in frustration like you weren't feeling this way because of your own actions.
your foot tapped rapidly.
you chewed on the dried skin on your lips.
you closed your eyes with a deep breath before making your next decision.
back at jake's dorm, he was dripping onto his floor and he didn't care. when he walked inside he tugged his shoes off and stood in the middle of his dorm in a daze; devoid of emotions like a zombie who's heart got ripped out of him. he couldn't even blink without his eyes burning because of the tears he was fighting off.
his body swayed without him trying, like he was being swept away by every wave of negative emotion, like an ocean pulling him under.
jake sniffled, unsure of what to do next.
the rain battered down on his window in large drops, millions of reminders of what happened just a few minutes ago, his umbrella tossed aside by his shoes, still dripping wet.
jake peels himself free from his rain soaked clothes that's begun to stick to his skin, tearing away at the drenched fabric when a knock sounds from his dorm. he doesn't even bother looking up, just completely ignores it— but it doesn't stop. its incessant, rapid, and desperate. like whoever was on the other side was pleading to get his attention and wasn't going to leave until he opens the door.
and you weren't going to.
when jake finally opens the door with an annoyed huff he's got no shirt on and is just in his wet jeans when he sees who is behind his door. you're still soaking wet like you were when he found you in the rain— you were dripping and breathing heavily like you ran over to his dorm which wasn't the closest to yours.
"yn?" he asks, blinking at you in disbelief.
"jake—" you began, pausing for a second to catch your breath.
"look if you're here to tell me off again, i get it. i don't know what made you hate me but i got the hint— i'll leave you alone from now on." he said, voice dry and dull.
"no! that's not why i'm here— i didn't mean any of that. i said all of those things because i was scared— scared of my emotions and letting someone in because i don't know what i need. i've gone through my whole life never needing anyone and then you came in. you helped me when i didn't ask for it, helped when i didn't even need, and it's not because you were trying to find your own purpose but because you're a good person and you don't deserve how i treated you.
you're right— i do need help. i need you jake and i'm tired of being strong. i'm tired of holding it together being the one to hold myself together— i'm tired of acting like i don't need help because i'm afraid of looking weak and i'd rather suffer in silence…
please, jake. i need you— i'm sorry, please don't leave me.."
tears are streaming down your face like it was the rain outside, coating your flushed skin as your eyes turned red.
you had never made yourself this vulnerable in your whole life— never let yourself feel like you could need someone let alone a guy you met for a group project, yet here you are, standing outside of his dorm with tears covering your face as you bear your heart to him like he did before, only now you're praying that he doesn't respond in the way you did to him.
jake doesn't use any words to respond— his hand reaches forward and grabs onto the back of your neck, pulling you into a kiss that burns through your bodies. your lips instantly match his rhythm like it was a choreographed routine, moving in unison and complete harmony as your body molded against him. you two stumbled back into his dorm, closing his door with your foot as he tore off your clothes and discarded them to the side without another care.
as you inch closer to his bed, he flips the two of you around so that you fall onto your back on his bed.
jake breaks the kiss to hover and look at you, hand cupping your face.
"do you mean it? do you mean everything you said?" he asks.
"everything i said here, yes. back at the bus stop? not one bit." you respond and he crashes his lips back onto yours, barely giving you time to react or take a breath. his mouth is pressed against yours with vigor— his lips ever so plump against yours as he pushes his tongue into your mouth with a whimper, like he's been seeking for the pleasure inside of you his whole life and in a lot of ways he has.
jake's hands travel across your body just as his kisses do.
down your jaw and neck, where his hands give you a light squeeze— hard enough to send a shock through your body, settling at your core. he sucks on the side of your neck until he's satisfied with the way he gathers at your pulse, licking at your skin before moving lower.
jake's mouth waters as he sucks on your collar bone, licking across your chest as he stops at your breasts, looking up at you with dark and lustful eyes, silently telling you to say goodbye to your bra as his hand snakes around your back to unhook it and like your other clothes— it's tossed aside. his mouth finds your nipple, teeth carefully but intently biting down on your sensitive nipples.
his lips wrap on one nipple as his hand roughly massages the other— you moan and wriggle underneath him but he's got one arm around your waist, holding you in place. "don't run, let me enjoy you." jake says, teeth not letting go of your nipple as he looks over at you through the curve of your breast.
he switches back and forth from both tits, sucking and licking and biting at your breasts like a starved man and you were his meal.
your hips are grinding against jake's jeans, the rough and wet fabric barely providing any relief but the feeling of his body laid on top of yours and his mouth on your nipples was enough to make you want to grind into him like you were in heat. jake laughs when you whimper in pain as he gives your nipple one last bite, your body jolting against his but it doesn't stop you from humping him as you chase that feeling.
"jake— ple– please!" your voice breaks as you beg. pleading for him to do more as he teases your body with peppered kisses across your tummy, his face stopping right at your pussy that's grinding the air now, clothed pussy centimeters away from bumping against his face.
you can feel his breath against your damp panties— the only thing that was dry from the rain now drenched in your slick as jake teased your body with his tongue.
"patience, angel— you made me wait now you gotta learn to." he whispers, every word heavy on your cunt as he brings his lips closer to you.
he eats you out through your panties again, lips, tongue, and teeth flat against the fabric of your underwear. his eyes fall shut as he moans in euphoria, mouth moving in ways to pleasure the both of you despite the thin lacy fabric that's in the way. your back is arching as you crave more— and so does jake. his hand finds the waistband of your underwear and in one quick movement he's tearing it apart like it was nothing; and it basically was.
your pussy's shining with your slick— jake spits onto your cunt before pushing in two fingers without a heads up.
a moan rips through your chest as you grip jake's sheets, him smiling pridefully from in between your legs. "so fuckin' wet— all for me, huh angel? you get so wet for me and you wanted to deny that." he tsks, shaking his head in a feigned type of disappoint. "no— no jake.." you moan.
"i want it— i want you, please please– don't stop— fuck!"
his fingers continue pumping inside your dripping pussy as his eyes lock onto your clit. his body moves before his brain thinks and he's already sucking on your sensitive little bud before he even fully forms the thought to. a high pitched moan fills the room at the overwhelming sensation of jake's fingers working you open as he sucks on your clit like it's a lollipop he's trying to break in between his teeth.
"ja— jake! fuck fuck fuck i'm gonna cu—" you can't even finish your sentence before the heat flushes through your whole body and your orgasm tears through your core like thinnest veil shredded by the pressure of jake's lust. "yeah, baby. cum all over me— give it to me." he says as he licks stripes against your gummy folds, lips lathered in your cum as he scoops it into his mouth with his tongue.
"so fuckin' sweet—" he says.
"my sweet sweet fucking angel." he gives your clit kisses in between each word.
"you ready f'me pretty girl?" jake asks as he stands up from his kneel position, sliding off his pants and boxers to reveal his hard on that you swear has gotten bigger since the last time you've seen it. his fingers have done their job to stretch you open but by the size of jake's cock and the way his head pokes at your sopping wet entrance, you were going to be stretched out even more.
he aligns to your hole— spitting onto his head and smearing it across your folds as if it needed to be even more wet.
jake pushes into your cunt and there's an evident stretch as his dick goes further and further inside of you.
"fuckin' tight—" he hisses, hands grabbing your waist for leverage until his hips are flush against yours, cock buried deep inside of your pussy; so far that you can almost feel the pressure in your chest. he stops for a second so the two of you can catch your breath, he's looking at you with hooded eyes as yours are struggling to stay open— "you with me, angel?" he asks, giving your hips a slight tap.
you nodded— barely but it's there.
"please, jake. move." you beg and he doesn't need to be told twice.
your pussy's gripping onto his cock with each thrust, body in motion like a machine as sweats drips from jake's neck and down his bare chest. your bottom lip is caught in between your teeth as you bite back your moans but jake shakes his head in response— "let me hear you, pretty girl. wanna hear those pretty moans while i ruin you, hmm?" he says, thrusting into you with more pressure that he can see the way his cock bulges at your tummy.
your body is soft and moldable underneath him, his hands are squeezing at your flesh to ground himself but he's in too much ecstasy to hold himself together. he's moaning and spitting a mixture of 'shit' and 'fuck' with each thrust— growling when he feels you clench around him like you don't want his cock to slip out.
"so fucking perfect— my perfect angel." jake says as he leans forward, pressing kisses on your cheek while he caresses your face.
"feel s'good jake so so so good." your voice is breathy, hard to speak when your breath is knocked out of you every time you feel the tip of jake's cock punch your cervix. "fuck— right there jake! fuck fuck fuck–" your back arches when he quickens his pace. the stretch is unbearable in the same type of way the heat inside of a sauna becomes suffocating but you can't bring yourself to leave because it's just too good.
jake suddenly grabs your your legs, hands wrapped around your calves as he pushes them up and across your chest— folding you in half. the pressure continues to build at your core when jake's got you in the meanest mating press like he doesn't want you moving or going anywhere— he's got you just where he wants and you don't plan on leaving any time soon.
he presses a kiss to your ankle before he continues pounding into your cunt again.
pornographic moans leave both of yours lips, the sound of skin slapping against skin is loud, and the wetness of your pussy rivals the sound of the rain sloshing about in the streets. jake's eyes bore into yours and when yours begin to close as your eyes roll back, he gives your cheek a few light slaps to wake you up— "stay with me now, pretty. can't have you passing out before i'm done ruining you, now can we?" he says teasingly, a smug grin across his face and he can feel the way his words have an affect on you the way the pulsating inside of your cunt intensifies.
"yeah— there it is; pretty girl loves being used, doesn't she. wanted to act like you hated me and here you are now folding in half with my cock ruining this cunt." jake chuckles with pride.
you have no response but to whine and whimper as he continues fucking his cock into you like there's no tomorrow.
"ja– jake— please don't stop baby, keep going!" you moan with each word like it's tearing at your body to speak.
"yeah? pretty girl wants me to breed her, huh? tell me who's pussy this is—" he says, already knowing the answer.
"yo— yours.." you stutter as jake purposefully thrusts into you with long and heavy strokes.
"what was that, pretty? couldn't quite hear ya— tell me, who's pussy this is and i'll reward you." he says as he tongue darts out to swipe across his bottom lip, nodding at you as encouragement to answer him.
"you! you, jake! it's your pussy, baby! all yours— i'm all yours!" you sounded pathetic but to jake it was everything he wanted to hear from you— the only thing better would be hearing your wedding vows for him. "good job, pretty baby— now lay still so i can fuck this pussy and fill you up, hmm? you want that, don't you?" he taunts, wiping sweat and stray hairs from your face as you lazily nod in response.
"so fucked out can barely even talk anymore— s'okay, let me jakey do all the work." he says before placing a kiss on your lips and quickening his pace.
your moans get stuck in your throat as each thrust makes it harder to breathe— to think.
"i'm getting close, baby. gonna fuckin' cum— shit! look at me while i breed this pussy— fuck" he groans as he grabs your face, forcing you to look at him, eyes connecting as you feel the way his hot cum pools deep inside of your pussy in large globs. he pushes his cock even deeper in your cunt to make sure his cum reaches as far as it can— you're so filled with jake that a mixture of your cum and his– white, milky, and sticky– is overflowing from the sides of your pussy as his cock softens inside of you.
jake's got his forehead pressed against yours as he pumps a few last thrusts into you, small moans slipping past your lips with each one. his sweating is dripping onto your chest when he raises his head, eyes still filled with lust but not laced with satisfaction at how fucked and ruined you are because of him.
"did so good, angel— very very good." he says, pressing a kiss onto your forehead.
── 𖹭
aftercare is easy with jake because care comes easy with him.
he treats you the way you deserve to be treated— he's gentle like he didn't just ruin you. he holds you against his body like he isn't the reason you're going to wake up more sore than you already are. he's your salvation and you've come to accept that. the boy you tried so hard to convince yourself that you didn't need— that you would never need anyone and yet here he was. he came to you like light in a dark tunnel, like shelter in a storm, and like love in a place where love is forgotten.
jake's never been needed in his life the way you've never needed anyone.
now, for once in jake's life he's needed by the one person he'll be spending the rest of his life with, making sure that whatever you need, no matter the cost, when, where, or why— that the how will always be him.
he's got the two of you wrapped under his covers in a calm warmth. night has fallen across the sky and you're both talking about anything just so that you didn't have to sleep— not wanting this to end even if you will have tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.
and forever.
"you know— the first time someone's ever helped me without me asking or wanting for it was when i was little. it's kind of weird because it was also the last. i was at a market trying to buy milk for my little sister but because i was a kid and i didn't know better— i didn't have enough money.
this little boy that reminds me of you came out of no where, asked me why i was crying then left. i just kept crying in the store until he came back, handed me a few dollars so i could buy milk.
i was too small to carry it though so his— dad helped you."
jake finished your sentence like he knew the story all too well.
and he did.
because he lived it.
you both looked at each other as you both reveled in the silent realization that the first time you needed someone to help you and the first time jake has ever been needed by someone was also the first time you both had crossed paths.
genre: royalty au, soulmate au, fantasy elements, friends to lovers, angst
part one word count: 15.4k
warnings: jealousy, copious amounts of yearning, complicated family dynamics, swearing, magic and prophecies and other fantasy elements, arranged marriage, mild depictions of injuries, minor character death
soundtrack: echoes - enhypen / no way back - enhypen ft. So!YoON! / ivy - taylor swift / too much is never enough - florence & the machine / if only - raveena / die 4 u - dean
note: I am splitting this into two parts, because post block limit got me once again. It's alright though! You get to enjoy this now and look forward to the rest of the story soon. It's nearly all finished and will be posted within the next few days. For now, this is part one. I hope you enjoyyyyyy
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In a kingdom marred by instability and unrest, a prophecy is made. Your bloodline - common, ordinary, unremarkable as it may be - will bring peace to the nation and ensure the long-lasting success of the royal family. As such, your elder sister has been in an arranged engagement with Jungwon, the crown prince, since before either of you could walk.
But despite the prophecy, people continue to suffer. The kingdom continues to decline. Cracks continue to form. And when time eventually reveals that you, not her, have a strange, supernatural connection to the prince, everything begins to change.
or, every word you say is on repeat. every thought of you is bittersweet.
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The palace gardens are most stunning at sunset. Bordering the eastern gate of the royal pavilion, the grounds are extensive. Flowers in full bloom, winding labyrinths, crystal blue ponds that nearby ducklings make a habit of visiting.
There's a serenity here. One that becomes especially prominent as the last rays of sunlight begin to die on the horizon. The roses face the light, too. As if they want to kiss the day goodbye.
Wordlessly, you run a gentle finger over a stem, careful to avoid the thorns. It’s quiet. The only sounds that reach your ears are the gentle flow of a nearby stream and soft calls of birds in the trees above.
One, a blue jay, captures your attention as it flits between branches. Captivated, you watch as it jumps to a different tree. Dipping its beak as if to assess its new landing spot. It doesn’t stay in one place long. Restless, you think. Itching for something new. Or perhaps craving the comfort of familiarity. It’s difficult to tell.
You inhale sharply at the prick of pain that suddenly radiates from your fingertip. In your absentmindedness, you threw caution to the wind. Retracting your hand from the rose stem, you’re met with a tiny drop of ruby red blood.
At least, you consider, life here hasn’t yet been able to strip you of your ability to feel. Even if it is pain. And surface level, at that.
Letting your fingers drop to your side, the singular drop of blood rolls to the tip of your finger, hesitating for a moment before falling to the ground below.
Swallowed up by grass and dirt and earth. Now forever a minuscule, insignificant part of the palace around it.
Again, you turn your gaze to the sky. The trees that line it.
The blue jay tests one last branch before it inevitably decides it’s had enough. With one final assessment of the garden, it spreads its wings. And then, with little fanfare, flies in the direction of the sunset.
You watch until it becomes nothing but a blip. A blur of motion on the horizon.
It’s long gone by the time the last rays of light vanish at the edge of the earth.
The garden isn't dark, not entirely. The lanterns and torches that intermittently line the perimeter make it easy enough to find your path, as long as you know your way around.
But they are a bit more conducive to stealth, to concealing things that don’t want to be found. Avoiding the most well lit paths, you let quiet, expert steps carry you through the winding labyrinth until you arrive at the stables.
The palace horses have been fed and groomed for the night. You know. You’ve memorized the stable boy’s routine. And found that even on the nights he strays from it, is quite willing to turn a blind eye under the correct circumstances.
Just like you’ve memorized which horses are less predisposed to whinny when taken out for the evening.
Just like you’ve memorized which palace gates are less heavily patrolled. What time the guards switch shifts. Which ones take longest to station themselves into position.
The palace is a well-oiled machine. But even the most streamlined systems have their flaws, their cracks. The best part about being someone of little consequence within the palace walls is that you have ample time to find them.
As long as you’re present and accounted for on the rare occasion your presence is required, no one notices if you slip through the gates most nights. No one cares if the dark circles beneath your eyes become a bit more prominent every harvest season.
No one keeps track of your unusually high number of trips to the tailor’s assistant for all of the strange tears and rips you always seem to have in your clothes.
Closing in on the stable, you wrap a silent hand around the handle. The door creaks, ever so slightly, when you open it. Despite the fact that you know there are no patrols in this area this time of evening, you can't help the way your heartbeat picks up speed anyway.
You close the door behind you, just as quietly as you opened it. Taking quick, measured steps, you approach your favorite horse’s stall.
Rounding the corner, your brow furrows in confusion when you find it empty. Glancing around in worry, it takes your eyes a moment to land on the tiny, folded piece of paper wedged between the stall door and the wall.
With steady hands, you pull it free. Unfolding the paper, you bring it close to your eyes in the dim light.
It’s a letter, you realize, once you open the paper fully. From the stable boy. You’d recognize Sunghoon’s rather neat handwriting anywhere.
Sorry, it reads.
Blossom’s front left hoof was bothering her, so she’ll be in the western stable until the vet has a chance to assess her. Maeum’s in the fourth stall from the door. He’s not quite as quiet as Blossom, but he’s fast and wicked smart. Have him back by dawn.
And at the bottom lies one final instruction.
Burn this letter.
Sighing, you read the message once more. Twice. It’s hardly ideal. You and Blossom have come to know one another like the back of your hand, but you suppose you’ll have to make due. You tuck the letter into the pocket of your dark, fitted jacket, fingers brushing against the small stack of papers already there.
And then you look up again, silently counting four stalls from the door.
Approaching slowly, you pull the door open as quietly as you can, doing your best not to startle Maeum.
And you know he’s only trying to help, but one glance at the stallion in front of you has you wondering what the hell Sunghoon is thinking.
Blossom was built for stealth. With a midnight black coat and the softest whinny you’ve ever heard, she always knew when you needed her to be quiet. The perfect trait for late night, unauthorized rendezvous from the most secure place in the kingdom.
Maeum, however, is white. Startlingly so. And the second you have the stall door open enough to reveal yourself, he whinnies at you. Loudly.
“Shhhhh,” you whisper, eyes widening in panic. You hold your open palms towards him, hoping he’ll understand the sign that you’re not a threat. “It’s okay.”
It takes him a minute. With large, intelligent eyes that seem almost a bit too cognizant, Maeum takes a moment to assess you. Finally, with one final, and thankfully much quieter, sigh, he acquiesces, tilting his neck towards you.
Reaching forward, you stroke his mane in a long, gentle rhythm.
“It’s okay,” you assure once again. “What do you say, Maeum? Are you up for an adventure?”
It sounds ridiculous to think it, much less say it, but you swear something sparkles in his eyes at your question. In either case, he lets you saddle him without so much as a peep of protest.
And when you climb up onto the saddle, he gives only one experimental stomp before settling into stillness. Acceptance, you think.
Turning his reigns towards the eastern gate, you check the position of the moon just beginning to rise in the sky. It’s late. Nearly time for the next guard shift switch.
Perfect, you think.
And without so much as a glance back, you and Maeum are off into the night.
…..
“What the hell is that?” Jaeyun is whispering, albeit rather harshly, despite the fact that this hilltop is isolated. WIth the city stretching far beneath you, there’s no one else around for miles.
Sliding off of Maeum’s back, you gently pull him a few steps forward before offering an apple from the bag at your waist.
“A horse.” You don’t even bother to look in Jaeyun’s direction. You already know what you’ll find if you do. With a friendship that spans nearly ten years, his expressions have become second nature to predict.
“Yes, thank you very much.” His voice drips with sarcasm. “I can see that it’s a horse. Why is it white?”
“I don’t know,” you shrug. “Something to do with recessive genes, probably.”
“Are you trying to get spotted? A coat that bright practically screams ‘I’m from the palace.’”
“Blossom was out of commission,” you explain. Finally turning to face your friend, you add, “Sunghoon said one of her hooves is hurting. She’ll have to see the vet.”
“And this was the next best option?” Jaeyun eyes your substitute horse warily. “He’s so… pristine. I mean, seriously. If you told me he was the prince’s horse, I wouldn’t even question it.”
The sudden mention of the prince has you curious. Does he have a horse? You suppose he must, but the thought of him doing anything other than attending strategy meetings and making carefully curated appearances with your sister at his side is almost unimaginable.
Shaking the prince from your thoughts, you argue, “It’s not like Blossom’s exactly shabby.”
“No, but she is far less conspicuous.”
“I still managed to get out, didn’t I?”
“Please.” He rolls his eyes. “Palace security is lax these days.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one putting it to the test every night.”
Jaeyun’s lips part like he wants to say something else, like he wants to keep the banter going, but then he looks at you. Really looks.
Takes in the deep shadows beneath your eyes. The exhaustion that has your shoulder slumping forward, words losing their bite around the edges. The work the two of you do is taxing in nature, but few people ever feel the strain as acutely as you do.
At this point, you’re practically living a double life.
During the day, you’re the younger sister to the future heir of the throne. It’s true that you’re largely left alone. While she attends dress fittings and lessons in etiquette, you’re left to your own devices. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still appearances to maintain. Expectations to meet. Like it or not, you’re still a product, a belonging of the palace. You’re expected to maintain a smile and respond appropriately when spoken to. It’s a shallow life, yes, but draining in its own right.
And with the wedding date creeping closer and closer, you’re doing your best to provide support to your older sister. Even if the distance between the two of you only ever seems to widen.
And then there are the nights. While Mina and the rest of the palace are asleep, you’re usually out on an errand like this. Meeting Jaeyun on a remote hilltop with a fresh stack of secrets to trade.
Because no matter how picture perfect life in the palace appears from the outside, there are cracks in every surface. Pressure points in every household.
Much like you, there are plenty of people inside the palace walls who don’t come from money or nobility. They’re cogs in the machine. Their existence, their purpose, is to serve the crown.
Like Sunghoon, the stable boy. And Sunoo, one of the groundskeeper’s assistants. Jay, who works in the kitchens, and Riki, the tailor’s apprentice.
Despite the roles and the palace they’ve sworn to serve, they have identities outside of their titles, just like you. They have family and friends and people they love that live outside the palace walls. Who suffer from the hunger and unrest and turmoil the royals could easily mitigate if they had any interests outside of themselves and their firm grip on power.
It’s how you ended up in the palace in the first place. Power. Or, at least, the illusion of it.
Sixteen long years ago, three years after you were born, the royal seer became gravely ill. It wasn’t all too devastating, considering that for several years, the royal family had stopped relying on prophecy and started relying on military power to maintain their control of the land.
But it was considered bad luck to lose a seer, and considering that the old woman had no children or family to carry on her legacy, the king became nervous. Ancient myths of crumbling kingdoms and vanishing wealth after the death of a seer began to haunt him.
With a young son of his own, the only heir to the throne, the king was determined to protect his family at all costs.
He visited the seer, as she lay in her deathbed. And he begged her for one final vision. One last prophecy that would ensure the longevity of his reign, the safety of his family.
Barely cognizant, the seer used the last of her remaining power to reach through the veil and foretell one final prophecy.
The king’s son, now just past his fourth birthday, would live a long, prosperous life. He would succeed the throne on his twenty-first birthday with little difficulty. He would enjoy a stable reign with absolute power and adoration from the kingdom at large.
But there was one condition. He must marry first. His queen would not come from nobility. She would bear no wealth, have no resources that the royal family could possibly benefit from. Instead, she would have a connection to the prince. One born of ancient magic, one that supersedes mortal understanding and wisdom.
She would be the daughter of a blacksmith, the seer told him. He would find her before the end of a fortnight. With flowers in her hair and the ability to tell him his son’s, the prince’s name without ever hearing it. After all, it was customary to wait until a royal child’s fifth birthday before publicly announcing their name.
The king begged for more information. The kingdom was vast, and blacksmiths were as abundant as trees. But the seer has used the last of her energy. Her heart had stopped beating. And his pleas fell on unhearing ears.
Still, it unfolded just as she foretold.
And your life was swept out from beneath your feet when you were three years old.
The memories are faint, hazy around the edges. It happened so long ago, and you were so very young. But you do remember playing with Mina near the river. Finding flowers to weave in each other’s hair. A man, scary and strange, approaching you both.
He asked only one question.
“What is my son’s name?”
As children, Mina was always the braver between the two of you. There was no fear in her eyes when she looked at the king and whispered.
“Jungwon.”
The king had only wanted her. But your parents, struggling to keep their daughters fed and cared for, begged him to take you as well. In a rare stroke of kindness or perhaps just impatience, he agreed.
You were raised in the palace, parallel to your sister but never quite touching. After all, she was a miracle. A beacon. A prophecy come to life.
You were nothing but extra baggage. An unextraordinary and damningly unimportant presence that faded into the castle walls as easily as moonlight on a dying day.
You didn’t hate the palace. People there didn’t waste their kindness on you, but they weren’t cruel. You had everything you could ever need, and every month, you were allowed to leave the palace walls with your sister and a chaperone to visit home.
For ten long years, your life proceeded in similar strokes. You studied. You played. You wandered. You felt moments of joy learning to ride a horse for the first time and swim in the lake without sinking. You felt the icy grip of loneliness, of isolation. Of being left in the dust as your sister began to take on more and more of her role as the future queen.
In the dead of one particularly brutal winter, you learned to knit. Your monthly visit to your parents was approaching soon, and you thought your mother might like a warm pair of mittens. Thought your father might appreciate a new scarf. One without holes and the faint scent of dust and metal that always lingered no matter how many times it was washed.
When you, your sister, and your chaperone finally set out, snow piling around you as you peered through the carriage window, dread was already gathering in your stomach. You weren’t sure why, but something was wrong. You could feel it, deep in your bones.
The closer you came to your parent’s home, the stronger the feeling became. By the time your feet dragged up to the doorstep, nausea was rolling so hard in your stomach you thought you might actually be sick.
What greeted you inside was no remedy for illness.
It was the cold, they told you. Frostbite. Weakened immune systems. While you had been huddling behind blankets and fire hearths inside the palace, your parents froze to death.
You were thirteen, Mina fourteen.
You didn’t want to hate the palace, the nobility, the royal family. Even then, you understood how inextricably you were bound to them. How much of your fate rested between the fingers of their iron grip.
But the strongest thing you felt that day wasn’t sorrow or loss or even despair.
It was hatred. Burning, deep, fiery hatred.
You hated the way they told you these kinds of things were common in winter. The way the king didn’t look the slightest bit surprised to hear the news. The way the death of a commoner was as revolutionary as sunset, as predictable as sunrise.
Jaeyun had lost his parents too, that very same winter. Only he didn’t have a palace to return to. Just the same four walls that the only family he ever had passed away in.
The mittens meant for your mother were too big on his hands, but they were still warm. And that was enough. Combined with your shared sorrow, shared tragedy, shared hatred, it was enough to build a friendship. A resistance.
Even now, thinking back, you only remember one person in the palace bothering to check on you. To ask how you were.
Hidden in the depths of the library, you had been searching for something to distract yourself. Something to numb the pain of losing both parents in a single day.
The voice that came behind you was careful, quiet. “I heard about what happened.”
Started, you whipped around with wide eyes, book of fables falling from your fingers and landing with a dull thud by your feet.
Across from you, scant feet away, stood your sister’s betrothed. The prince. Jungwon.
You gave him no response, brows furrowing.
“I’m sorry,” he continued. “You must be devastated.” He was only one year your senior, but the gap between you felt larger. You had been educated, yes, but not in the manner of princes. He used words you didn’t fully understand and spoke with the gentle grace of a scholar you’d never be.
“I…” You trailed off. It was hard for the initial shock to wear off. In the last ten years, you can count on one hand the number of times you’ve been in the same room as the prince. You’re not sure if he’s ever spoken to you directly before. But even in your grief, you remembered some of your propriety. Your curtsey wasn’t nearly deep enough, but the prince was kind enough to let your misstep slide. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
His lips dipped at the edges. “Please, ___. You don’t have to call me that. Just Jungwon is fine.”
But even then, in your adolescent brain, it felt wrong. He was a prince. The future heir to the country. And you were nothing but a blip. One prophecy and a stroke of luck away from dying alone in a freezing house with no one to mourn you.
You didn’t want there to be any familiarity, any common ground between you and the prince. It was all an illusion, anyway. The two of you would never share anything but a connection through your older sister, a girl he never would have looked at twice under different circumstances.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” you repeated, voice guarded, “for your condolences.”
Something had flickered in the crown prince’s eyes then. Disappointment, contempt, you couldn't quite be sure.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Quiet as the stray cats you sometimes crossed paths with in the stable, he had only turned and left the same way he came.
Now, years later, sitting on a hilltop with Jaeyun, you can only wonder if the prince remembers that short-lived conversation, too. If he revels in his palace comforts or finds them rather stifling. If he’s excited for his upcoming wedding or dreads it with every fiber of his being.
If he has any idea that the sister of his betrothed who refuses to call him anything but his title, along with several members of the palace staff beneath his nose, engage regularly in treason.
Pulling Sunghoon’s note, along with a stack of others, from your pocket, you turn to your friend. “Enough about horses. I have a new round of reports.”
“Anything of note?”
“Not particularly.” You shake your head. “Jay says the kitchen is operating normally, although a few spices have been difficult to come by these days. Potential disruptions to trade routes on the western border, maybe.”
“That could be.” Jaeyun frowns. “I’ve been hearing about some recent skirmishes up in that area. What about Riki? That old tailor he works for is an awful gossip.”
“Usually, yes,” you agree, “but these days he’s quite consumed with a certain white gown.” The flatness in your voice is difficult to miss.
Jaeyun pauses, eyes scanning you warily. Finally, he ventures, “How is that going? I mean, it’s pretty soon right, the wedding? How are you feeling about things?”
“It’s proceeding normally,” you tell him, ignoring the last part of his question.
“Right,” he doubles down. “And you?”
“Don’t do that.” You shake your head. “I’m fine. Besides, it doesn’t matter.”
He looks like he has more to say, but you’re pressing forward before he can question you further. “Sunoo had an interesting report, actually. It looks like crop yields may be down this season. They’re being stingy with the plans for the new fields.”
“That’s odd,” Jake frowns. “The weather’s been pristine. Ideal for cultivation.”
You give him a meaningful glance. “It must not be the weather, then.”
“Skirmishes on the western border, lower crop yields even though the last census still shows significant population growth.” He pauses for a moment, considering. “It’s strange.”
“It’s suspicious,” you amend. “Everyone’s convinced that a wedding and a new king will make things better, but the royals are doing what they’ve always done. They’re hiding things. Overexaggerating peace reports. Underreporting crimes. They’re building an illusion. Trying to create a population that trusts them blindly.” You shake your head. “It’s not a coincidence.”
“Maybe,” Jaeyun considers. But he’s always been more optimistic than you. “But border skirmishes are nothing new. And low spice and crop production doesn’t automatically mean anything bad. Maybe they’re planning to relocate some of the fields. There were rumors about more arable land down south, too, remember? And who knows, maybe that old seer was right. Maybe this wedding will lead to a long period of peace.”
There aren’t many people who you’ve shared the truth with. Even now, saying the word prophecy makes you feel like a fool.
You scoff. “Don’t tell me you believe in magic.”
“Why not? Jaeyun shrugs. “I’ll believe in what I can. People here have suffered. Food shortages. Increased crime.” He pauses for a moment, gaze on the horizon. “Long winters. If believing in magic means better days are coming, then I’ll take it.”
You shake your head. “Believing in something doesn’t make it real.”
“Doesn’t it?” he counters. “Believing in something is the only thing that makes it real.”
To that, you have nothing to say. You wish you could agree, that blind faith could guide you somewhere worth being. But time and trial and error have taught you to only believe in tangible things.
Things you can wrap your fingers around. Hold between your own two hands.
Looking down at the city from the top of the hill, it’s easy to believe that nothing there is real. That this world is made only of you and Jaeyun and his optimistic dreams for a better future.
The silence extends comfortably before he breaks it, gaze against the side of your face.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” Jaeyun speaks softly, carefully, as if trying to soften his words. “I don’t mean this in a bad way, but you just look… tired.”
“Yeah, well, never sleeping will do that to a girl.”
Jaeyun isn’t so easily convinced. “You’re sure that’s all it is? You haven’t been having more of those… visions?”
You sigh. “No, but –”
“But?”
“They’re not visions,” you correct. “Not exactly. I don’t see images, or anything. It’s just… feelings.”
“Feelings?” Jaeyun presses.
“Yeah,” you nod. “Like intuition, almost. Sometimes it’s this overwhelming urge that I’m in the right place or the idea I have is true even though I don’t have any real evidence. But sometimes, it’s the opposite. Like everything is wrong and my body wants to fight it.”
He frowns. Extends his arm as if he wants to wrap it around your shoulders where he sits next to you. Drops it back to his side as he thinks better of it. “That sounds exhausting.”
“It is. It’s like using an entirely different part of my brain. Overusing it. Until it’s sore and aching and I can’t think straight. And sometimes… never mind.” You trail off, shaking your head. It sounds too ridiculous to say out loud.
“What?” Jaeyun urges. He won’t let it go so easily.
You sigh. “Sometimes, I have these thoughts. But they don’t… they don’t feel like mine. I mean, they’re in my brain, in my mind, but they feel like they’re coming from somewhere else. Like it’s someone else’s voice.”
His brow furrows. “Have you told anyone? Seen a healer or anything?”
“And then what?” you scoff. “Have them tell the king that the future queen’s sister has gone insane? Is a liability to the crown and should be locked away for the wellbeing of the kingdom? Yeah, right.”
“Still,” he insists. “It sounds like there could be something else going on.”
You shake your head. “I’m sure I’m just tired. All these nights were bound to catch up to me eventually. I’ll sleep more the next few days, and I’m sure it will all be fine. Everything will go back to normal.”
“Okay,” he finally agrees, even if you can tell he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t quite believe you. “But I want you to tell me if it doesn’t change or if it gets worse. You know you can talk to me about these things too, ___. It doesn’t always have to be border skirmishes and crop yield reports.”
Despite yourself, you can’t help the way your heart swells a bit with fondness. “I know,” you nod. “Thank you, Jaeyun. You know, you’re my only real friend.”
“Well, now that’s just sad.” But his grin is stretching ear to ear. Even when you land a slightly too hard punch right on his solar plexus.
And a handful of hours later, tucked into a bed that’s never quite felt like yours, sleep begins to tug at the edges of your consciousness.
Despite your exhaustion, rest doesn’t come easy. Especially when that familiar, unpleasant feeling starts to build in your bones. It starts in the pit of your stomach, a deep discomfort. A distinct feeling of wrongness. Of being misplaced. Not belonging.
It radiates through your limbs, over your skin, screams in your mind until you feel it everywhere, from the erratic beat of your heart to the very tips of your fingers.
Until finally, finally, exhaustion outweighs the sensation.
Still, when you fall asleep, it’s with a singular phrase looping through your mind on repeat. Like the mutterings of someone out of their mind. Like a demented chant you can’t escape from.
Not her. Not her. Not her. Not her. Not her. Not her.
Not her.
…..
One of your favorite perks of being someone of little consequence within the palace walls is that your mornings are mostly undisturbed. Other than the illicit errands of your own making, that is.
Often, the meager hours of sleep you manage to find are here, extending late into the morning as sunlight streams through your window in increasingly long slants.
Dawn had nearly broken the horizon by the time Maeum was tucked safely back into his stable. Usually, the sun is allowed to creep across the sky for hours before anyone is in need of you.
Tucked away in the small but pleasant room you’d been given once you were old enough to require very little supervision, you sleep. It’s a wing of the palace rarely touched by anyone other than an occasional palace maid.
Your window is small, but the west-facing orientation makes the sun dance beautifully across your few belongings and gives you a rather stunning view of the palace grounds.
Most mornings, it’s the birds that wake you. Or the general chatter of a day in a motion.
Increasingly, it’s been a feeling in your gut, the same one you tried explaining to Jaeyun last night. A voice in your head that you’re sure doesn't belong to you.
Rarely, if ever, is it a knock on your door. Especially not one that thuds heavy and harsh against the quiet stillness of mid-morning.
Startled from slumber only a handful of hours after finding it, the knock comes again. This time, even louder than before. It pounds in a way that rattles your door and has a deep sense of unease surging through your stomach.
“One moment,” you call, but your voice is weak as you search for a robe to throw over your night clothes. Your hands are frantic, shaking, as the pounding starts again.
Finally, you locate your plain, deep burgundy robe. Shrugging it over your shoulders, you wrap it around your body. Hardly daring to draw a breath, you take small, light steps to the door.
With no peephole, dread gathers deep in your body as you turn the lock, slowly opening your bedroom door.
Across from you stands a man. Fist raised to land another round of knocks, you’re sure, but his position is also perfect for delivering blows. Despite yourself, you flinch.
At the sight of you, he drops his arm. The tension in his posture, the tight set of his shoulders, remain.
“Miss ___.” His voice is as tense as he is. There’s no question in his voice. He knows who you are.
Dressed in simple, utilitarian garments, you assess him for any hint of his position. Well acquainted with the inner workings of the palace, you know what the people who serve it wear.
This man puzzles you. There’s no kingdom sigil over his heart to mark him a guard, no silver cuff links to identify him as a healer. Just loosely fitted, nondescript dark clothing. Not entirely dissimilar from what you wear on your nighttime errands. Built for stealth.
“I am her,” you nod. Your gaze becomes more narrow in its assessment the more dead ends you run into. “May I ask what this inquiry is about?”
He spares little fanfare. “You’ve been summoned, Miss.”
“Summoned?” you echo. Immediately, your mind jumps to terrible conclusions. You’ve been noticed. You’ve been seen. You’ve been caught.
Forcing a steady breath, you reel in your thoughts. Panic isn’t logical. The most likely reason for your summoning is surely something to do with your sister. Perhaps she’s requested your presence for some flippant reason. Perhaps she’s come down with a head cold and craves the nostalgia of a once familiar presence.
Still, your heart won’t rest entirely until your question is answered. “May I ask by whom?”
The man just looks at you for a moment, eyes revealing nothing but a faint trace of distrust. “Come with me, Miss.”
His words ring with finality. Brow furrowing, you feel your heart lurch somewhere near your throat. Surely they wouldn’t be so vague if it was merely something concerning your sister.
But you also know better than to argue with a summoning in the palace. Especially from a man whose uniform likely hides at least a dagger, if not a weapon of more lethal consequence.
Shifting slightly, you confirm the location of your own small, metal blade. Tucked away between your innermost layer of clothing and the warmth of your inner thigh, it sits snug to your skin. Even clothed in nothing but a nightdress and your rather flimsy dressing gown, even in slumber, it remains.
Forcing away the waver that threatens your voice, you agree, “I’ll just take a moment to dress and—”
The man shakes his head. “We’ll go now.”
Any last semblance of calm is shaken from your system. You’re barely dressed. Your hair is an unkempt mess around your shoulders.
It’s improprietous to walk around the castle like this. It’s scandalous.
You falter for a moment, confusion and fear marring your features. But the man remains stoic, insistent in his unrelenting posture.
“Very well,” you nod. Your voice is small as you cling to your last threads of composure.
Your bedroom door closes behind you with a quiet click. You can’t bring yourself to spare a backward glance, nor can you shake the deep growing sense of unease, as you fall into step just behind the man’s shoulder.
At the very least, he doesn’t seem interested in parading you in a state of undress around the castle. With the quick, practiced steps of someone well-versed in stealth, he leads you silently through winding corridors and back passages.
Just who is this man? Only an expert could lead you so wholly undetected through the winding maze of palace passageways.
Even you, with your wealth of knowledge, are having a hard time keeping up as you try to commit your path to memory.
Eyes tracing over the man’s back, your mind spins through plausible explanations. Eventually, you land on two.
Either resistance forces have fully infiltrated the castle or your illicit activities have been discovered. The thought sends a shiver down your spine.
You’re not sure what they would do, if they discovered your role in the network of resistors actively working against the crown.
Scenarios have crossed your mind on sleepless nights. Perhaps you’d be brought in front of the king. Made to answer for your crimes and tortured to reveal the names of others doing the same. Perhaps you wouldn’t have to speak at all. Considered an enemy and a traitor to the king, maybe you’d just be executed without trial.
You wonder what would happen. If your sister would still be wed to the prince. Or if your treachery would be dire enough to overrule even something as sacred as prophecy.
Footsteps never faltering, you suppose it’s not worth mulling over now. You’ll know soon enough. The man who you follow now is either a friend or a foe.
And in either case, he’s leading you somewhere. To something. Perhaps someone.
Whatever your fate is, it doesn’t rest on a messenger’s shoulders.
You reach the end of another impossibly long, dimly lit passage. The man in front of you stops so suddenly you nearly walk straight into his back.
Startled, your eyes widen as he turns to you.
He pauses a moment, something almost apologetic in his gaze. “I’m sorry, Miss, but I’m afraid I’ll have to conceal your sight from here.”
Reaching into his pocket, he reveals a nondescript black scrap of fabric. It’s frayed at the edges, just slightly. A makeshift blindfold.
“I’m not permitted to see?” This time, you can’t quite contain the tremble in your voice. You work in dying daylight, yes, but the thought of losing your vision frightens you more than you care to admit.
The man only shakes his head.
Taking a deep breath, you nod. As if he needs your permission to secure the fabric over your eyes, tying the ends into a firm knot against the crown of your head.
With a surprisingly gentle grip, he places your hand against the crook of his elbow. And then you’re walking again.
At first, you try to remember your steps.
Straight. Approximately seventy paces. A left turn, followed rapidly by a right.
But the longer minutes continue to pass, the more unsure you become. Was it a right turn followed by a left? Or two right turns in a row?
Your mind begins to falter, unsure of itself. Unease increases steadily.
Surely if this were the work of the resistance, blindfolding you would be unnecessary. You would need to learn this path, find your way back to their stronghold independently.
You refuse to panic. You’re alone with nothing but a dagger strapped to your thigh. With every step, it begins to feel more and more like a wooden sword. A table knife.
You think of your sister. Of Sunghoon and the others.
Of Jaeyun.
You never got to say goodbye.
The arm beneath your hold pauses, steadies the both of you. You hear hinges protesting as a door opens. And then you're going down.
Down, down, down an endless set of steps. So far that you’re sure you must be walking yourself straight to the deepest castle dungeons.
Minutes pass, or maybe hours. It’s difficult to tell, in this blanket of darkness.
Until suddenly, you’re on flat ground again. The man’s voice, still curt, instructs, “You may remove your blindfold.”
Pushing the fabric upwards, it doesn’t take your eyes long to adjust.
The lighting is dim here, but far warmer than you’d expect so deep beneath the ground. Glancing around, you find yourself in the center of a small chamber. Seats, full of cushions and fine fabrics, line the spaces where you expected to find prison cells.
There’s a carpet on the ground. One embroidered by expert hands, if the detail work is anything to go by. Paintings on the walls. Landscapes, primarily. Scenes from flowing rivers and dense forests and wide, open fields blossoming in the springtime.
There are maps, too. Of the kingdom and its neighbors. Some that center the castle and others that extend far beyond it. You could easily locate your childhood home if given a few seconds to concentrate .Several are marked with ink. Scribbles, lines, symbols you don’t recognize but wish you had a chance to study.
And in front of you, at the head of the room, in a chair that is no throne but bleeds authority all the same, sits the crown prince Yang Jungwon.
Immediately, you drop into a curtsey. Even under the strangest of circumstances, it would seem that old habits die hard.
“Your Highness,” you breathe, gaze trained on the floor as your heart hammers against your ribcage.
When the prince speaks, it’s not to you. “Good heavens, Heeseung, did you drag the girl out of bed?”
Remembering your current state of dress, heat gathers in your cheeks. You’re suddenly grateful for your position that obscures your face from view. Although you rather wish the ground would just swallow you whole.
“You said it was an urgent matter,” the man, Heeseung, explains. “That no time was to be wasted.”
“I didn’t…” The prince’s words trail to a sigh. “Please, Miss ____,” he addresses you. “Stand.”
Rising to full height, your eyes make slow work of trailing the ground in front of you, flickering over the carpet beneath your feet without really seeing any of it, continuing forwards until your head stands straight on your shoulders, eyes landing square on the kingdom’s only son. Your sister’s betrothed.
For a moment, he just looks back at you, lips slightly parted.
You suppose the prince is handsome, in an untouchable sort of way. Your sister has always spoken highly of his looks, and you can’t fault her for it.
Dark hair kisses his cheekbones, frames delicate, almost feline features. His skin is smooth, unblemished. High angles and sharp lines and the prominent, traceable slope of his nose, his jaw, his neck.
The prince wears a lithe frame, coiled in muscle won from function, from use. Long afternoons on horseback, refining skills in archery and swordsmanship.
And his eyes. God, his eyes. Sharp and distinguished. Burdened with the knowledge of a scholar and diplomacy of a politician. Assessing, searching, reflecting the few sources of light in this chamber like they’re made of stolen stars.
Deep beneath the castle, time holds little meaning. But you know it can’t be much later than noon. Suddenly, you’re struck with the strangest urge to see him in sunlight. Watch it dance over his royal features with favor.
Across from you, the prince does the same. He assesses you, silent as his eyes find new places to land. You’re not sure what he’s looking for. What he finds. But eventually, you grow tired of the impasse.
“Forgive me, Your Highness, for speaking out of turn.” The prince takes the slight with nothing more than an arched eyebrow. “But if I may, I would like to know the meaning behind this… visit.”
“You’re bold, Miss ____.” It’s the second time he’s said your name, and it rattles something deep inside you. “First you steal a man’s horse and then you speak out of turn to beg him for answers.”
There’s no trace of malice in his voice, but your blood runs cold all the same.
“Forgive me,” you repeat, chest tightening, “but I’m not sure I understand—”
“Allow me to be plain, then.” he interrupts. “Let us establish a common truth first. Last night, approximately five bell chimes after the midnight hour, you left the castle grounds.”
Panic claws at your throat. “Your Highness, I—”
The prince won’t hear your excuses. “All I require is a simple true or false.”
There’s no use lying. He knows. He knows.
Rocks forming in the pit of your stomach, you whisper, “True.”
“Excellent,” he levels, voice betraying nothing. “We’ve established one truth, then. Now, for our second. When you fled, you did so on horseback.”
The white horse. That damn white horse. You want to laugh at the irony, at the terrible absurdity of it all. Jaeyun said it himself:
“If you told me he was the prince’s horse, I wouldn’t even question it.”
Now, all you can do is stand as dread gathers in your gut. Was this all some sort of elaborate scheme? Was the note from Sunghoon falsely planted? Is Sunghoon a palace spy?
Your mind is whirring. Against every nerve in your body screaming in protest, you whisper, “True.”
“Right. This horse, he’s kept in the eastern stable, near the gardens. Responds to the name Maeum.”
“True, Your Highness.”
“I suppose you may not have known,” the prince pauses, “but Maeum is my horse. He was a gift, actually, for my sixteenth birthday.”
The words are tumbling out before you can stop them, “Forgive me your highness, please.” Dropping to your knees, you plead for your life, “I meant no disrespect to you or your stables. It was foolish, I know, but I was craving a bit of fresh air, and Maeum seemed to be the horse with the best temperament. I had no idea he belonged to Your Highness. If I had, I would have never—”
“Fresh air?” The prince’s voice is controlled, but something simmers beneath it. As if he knows something you don’t. “Is that how it’s referred to these days?”
“I mean no disrespect, Your Highness. The air inside castle grounds is of course excellent, as well—”
“I am not concerned about air quality but rather your excuse itself.” The prince leans forward, eyes narrowing. “Unless fresh air suddenly refers to trading insider secrets about crop production and diplomatic peace reports, then I’m afraid I find your explanation rather lacking.”
No.
No.
No no no no no no.
He knows. The crown prince knows. You’re not sure how much, but it's enough. It’s treason. It’s a death sentence.
This chamber may not look like a prison, but you're suddenly confronted with the reality that you very likely won’t make it out of here alive.
“Please, I—” Begging for your life feels useless. “Please, my sister. She has nothing to do with this, I swear.”
A crease forms between his eyebrows. “I’m not… your sister has no place in this conversation.”
Oh, thank the heavens. If nothing else, at least you can rest knowing your sister won’t be punished for your crimes. “Thank you, Your Grace, for your mercy. I know my life holds little value, but I swear to you that if you spare me, I—”
“You misunderstand. Please, Miss ___. Lift your head.”
You remain on your knees, but you know better than to ignore a prince’s command. Dragging your head up, you lift your eyes until your chin is parallel to the floor.
Looking you directly in the eye, he says, a bit softer, “I’m not going to kill you.”
Confusion, relief have you forgetting propriety. “You’re not?”
The prince shakes his head. “What you’ve done is treason, yes, but I find that things are rarely that simple.”
He takes a slow breath. “You’ve lived in the castle since you were a child. You are no fool. You know the expectations and the rules. And the consequences of breaking them. So it begs the question, Miss ___. Why?”
“Why?” You echo.
“Why you risk your life multiple times a day, gathering intelligence, obtaining secrets, passing along parcels of information. I imagine it’s not for lack of entertainment. From my understanding, most palace ladies of your age enjoy hobbies such as painting, embroidery, and the occasional dance lesson.”
“I’ve never been much of a painter.”
“Regarless,” the prince shakes his head, “your painting skills do little to change the fact that outside the castle walls, food rations continue to shrink. Failing diplomatic policies are leading to unrest with our neighbors. Disruptions in trade that people rely on for their livelihood.”
It takes a good deal of effort to keep your mouth from dropping open in shock. Never once have you heard even the slightest whisper of a royal caring what happens outside the palaCe walls. “I wasn’t aware that the strain had reached all the way to Your Highness.”
“It hasn’t.” He shakes his head. “Not directly. Our tables are full. Our finery well stocked. But a good king looks beyond his castle, does he not?”
Here, you must tread carefully. “I won’t pretend to know the burden of ruling. But goodness is subjective. It seems a king would have many other considerations to make.”
“Perhaps some do,” he agrees. “But only a fool with a crown considers himself before his people.”
Matching his eye, you say, “This kingdom will be lucky, then, to have a ruler who holds them in such high esteem.”
“I hope so,” the prince nods. Pausing for a moment, he continues, “My wedding is to be held at the end of the month. And my coronation shortly thereafter. I know it sounds strange given my position, but there are things, whispers, rumors, that I believe you are far more well versed in than I. I would appreciate any… guidance you could provide me. At least until then.”
“Guidance?” You echo.
The prince nods. “Which systems are failing, which people are feeling the strain the most. Which royal decrees have a favorable impact outside the castle grounds and which do not. This sort of thing.”
For a moment, it’s difficult not to doubt your own ears. It’s ridiculous, all things considered. “Are you saying…?”
“That I want your assistance in committing crimes against the crown? Yes, I suppose I am.” Across from you, the prince sighs. “This kingdom has been allowed to run at the mercy and whim of its rulers for too long. People are suffering. Relations are collapsing. My birth, my reign, they’re meant to bring peace. Prosperity. I’ve warred and struggled with myself, and I’ve always come to the same conclusion. Can it really be called treason if done for the betterment of the kingdom? Can it really be called allegiance if done solely for a king?”
For a moment, silence stuns you. And then—
“I wouldn’t dare to speak my thoughts on kings in front of Your Highness.”
“Why not?” He’s looking at you now. Really looking. “Because it’s improprietous? Because it’s treason? I was under the impression that you’re rather well acquainted with both already.”
Your lips remain fully sealed.
“Very well,” the prince acquiesces. “I won’t push any further. The man who escorted you, his name is Heeseung.” A glance around the chamber reveals that sometime during your conversation, Heeseung has made himself scarce. It’s just you and the prince. Glancing over your state of dress, a faint flush rises on his cheeks. “I apologize for his… imprudence earlier. He works as a scribe in the royal archives. You can pass information along to him. Or to me, of course, although I may at times be a bit more difficult to find.”
He has it all figured out, your arrangement. But you’re still hung up on one crucial piece of information. One you find thus far to be rather lacking.
“How do I know I can trust you?”
The prince pauses for a moment, considering. Eventually, he says, “I suppose you don’t. But isn’t trust a bit superfluous? I don’t mean to speak too bluntly, but I don’t believe you’re operating under any illusions. If I truly wished it, you’d be dead.”
You won’t give in so easily. “I trust that you want me alive for the time being. That is not what I inquire. How do I know that our views are aligned, that any information I may pass along will be used in a way I also see fit? How can trust be… superfluous, when it’s what builds empires, what crumbles them?”
For a moment, your prince does nothing but look at you. His expression is guarded as he weighs his words carefully.
A moment passes. Another. An all too familiar feeling of nausea begins to roll in your gut.
You try your best not to let the sudden urge to be sick affect you, but you can’t quite suppress the wince that crosses your features.
And then, as if he’s whispering it directly into your ear, you hear, “A leap of faith, then. It will have to be. And in time, I’ll hope to earn just a fraction of your trust.”
It’s the voice. The one that's been haunting your dreams. Your waking visions. The source of your migraines, the interruptions to your intuition.
And in front of you, the prince’s lips remain shut.
Still, you ask, “What?”
He sighs, and this time with his own mouth, tells you, “I am your prince. Soon to be your king. Fortune may not be a fair thing, but it has decided for the both of us that your trust belongs to me. I hope to use it well.”
You have a million questions. A thousand unfinished thoughts. But no matter what voices speak in your mind, he is right about at least one thing.
He is your prince. He will be your king. He holds your, your sister’s, and an entire kingdom’s lives in his hands.
And this, you realize, is an order.
Ignoring the tremble in your legs, you once again stand to full height. And immediately drop into the deepest curtsey you can manage. “Very well, Your Highness.”
…..
Despite it all, life proceeds with an almost uncanny sense of normalcy. You begin your morning the day after meeting with the prince in the same way you always do. With a visit to the castle kitchens.
Jay is expecting you. An apron tied around his waist, and a small plate of fresh fruits he slides across the counter towards you, he speaks in hushed tones while he dices vegetables for tonight’s supper.
“Potatoes,” he whispers. To anyone else, it would look like a simple meeting between friends.
Your brow furrows. “What of them?”
Jay nods to the cutting board currently beneath his hands. “It’s the fourth evening in a row we’re serving them.”
You frown. “Is that strange? They’re a hearty vegetable, and they grow in abundance this time of year.”
“Right,” Jay nods. “But the king grows restless if served the same dish more than once within a fortnight. The last head chef was demoted to kitchen help less than a year ago for a much less egregious repetition.”
“What does that mean? Low crop production?” You speculate.
“Perhaps,” Jay agrees. “It could also be trade issues. More valuable crops being used to barter for other necessities.”
It’s confusing. Just yesterday, the prince told you that the royal kitchens were still well stocked. The royal family was still eating well.
“Is this a recent development?” You ask.
“Fairly.” Without ever pausing his cutting, Jay adds, “The choice of potatoes is also interesting within itself. Nutritionally, they’re quite dense. It’s much easier to create a full, hearty meal, or at least the illusion of one, than it is with other vegetables."
“I’ll speak with Sunoo,” you nod. “He mentioned last time that the plans for new fields are quite conservative this year. I wonder if low overall production, or at least low variety, has anything to do with it.”
Taking a bite of the apple slices he prepared for you, you add, “Thank you, Jay. Take care of yourself.”
At that, he does pause. Setting the knife down, he looks up at you for a moment. “You too, ___. Be careful.”
You smile, easy and bright. “I always am.”
The straight set to Jay’s lips doesn’t budge. “I mean it, ___. Things are… strange these days. I know how valuable your information is, but you need to look out for yourself too.”
You frown at the sudden urgency in his voice. “I know, Jay. I will. I think people are just on edge with the upcoming wedding and coronation. Transitions in a kingdom are always a bit unnerving. Especially since Mina’s just… well, you know.” You shrug. “We’re certainly not royalty.”
“Could have fooled me.” Jay grins, but the tension in his shoulders doesn’t quite disappear fully. “Look at you, sitting like a lady, eating my apples.”
You roll your eyes, taking another bite with an exaggerated crunch.
“Right. Well, this lady has a groundskeeper to visit.”
“I won’t keep you, then.”
“Thank you, Jay,” you tell him, standing up from the counter. “For the apples and the… conversation. I’ll see you again soon.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Making your way back through the corridors, his words play back in your mind. First, you wrestle with the idea of poor crop production. It’s strange, but you won’t know anything for sure until you have a chance to speak with Sunoo.
Tucking that away for later, your mind spins through some of Jay’s other claims.
Lady. Despite the childhood you’ve spent in the castle, you’ve never really considered yourself such. You and Mina were brought here as children, but the distinction was always clear. The separation was always made.
The only reason you were behind these walls instead of outside of them was because of a prophecy. One you were far too young to understand.
Even if you had been older, it’s not as if you had the chance to hear it from the seer’s mouth yourself. Instead, it had been divulged to you in the one direct conversation you’ve ever had with your king.
That night, so many years ago the memory is beginning to blur around the edges, the king of your nation told you and your sister in plain words that the two of you were to come to the castle. To live there.
That in due time, your sister would marry his son, the prince. Even now, you remember how he spat the words like venom, as if they tasted bitter on his tongue.
The world could never know, he said. Prophecies were a fickle thing, and the less people to know, the better. To the kingdom’s knowledge, you two would be the daughters of his late wife’s dear friend from a distant kingdom. Children whose parents had been lost to senseless violence.
Not royal, not noble, but at least somewhat respectable members of society instead of the daughters of an impoverished blacksmith. A symbol of the king’s graciousness and goodwill.
You would be trained, of course, in the manners of court. How to sit, how to speak, how to walk. The bulk of this particular attention had always gone to Mina, the future bride of his son, but you were not exempt entirely.
Looking down at your hands now, you wonder, not for the first time, where the truth begins and ends. Your hands are well versed in embroidery, in poetry, in penmanship.
But they’re also rough, full of callouses from you illicit nightly errands on horseback.
Are you a lady? You’re not really sure. It’s never been the identity you’ve pondered when others feel far more pressing.
Rebel. Traitor. Forgotten sister.
And now, apparently, personal informant for the crown prince.
Whichever it is, you still have a job to do. And Sunoo’s expecting you.
By the time you make it to the eastern crop fields, Sunoo is taking fertilizer inventory. Sunlight shining on his dark hair, he startles a bit when you clear your throat behind him.
“Oh!” He turns in surprise. “How many times do I have to tell you not to sneak up on me like that?” But he’s smiling at you like an old friend.
“Sorry,” you apologize. “I didn’t realize fertilizer could require so much fascination.”
“Fascination, no,” Sunoo corrects. “Concentration, yes. You might find this interesting, actually. We’ve been asked to ration it.”
“Ration fertilizer?” Your nose scrunches. “Isn’t it just made of cow dung?”
Sunoo’s lips flatten. “Among other things, yes. Primarily a nitrogen-rich soil that we’ve been trading with our northern neighbors for decades. I guess it’s becoming a bit more difficult to come by these days.”
“Or,” you counter, “something is disrupting trade.”
“That’s possible as well,” Sunoo nods.
Pausing for a moment to consider, you press forward, “I actually came here to ask about something. Potatoes. Has there been an increase in potato allocation?”
A mild flicker of shock crosses his features. “Yes, actually. I’d have to check the records to be sure, but some of the other fields, mostly carrots, beets, and radish, were ordered for replanting with potato crops. How did you know?”
“The kitchens,” you explain. “They’re serving potatoes almost nightly. Do you know why they increased potato crops?”
Sunoo shakes his head. “I haven’t heard anything directly, but potatoes have always been fairly abundant. They grow well here. And it is cheaper overall to have less diversity across the fields.”
“So it’s a way of cutting costs, then.”
Sunoo nods. “Probably.”
“Have any other crops been removed?”
“Nothing’s been taken out entirely, but there have been similar orders, particularly in fruits. They’ve reduced vineyard production, as well as plums, figs, and strawberries. The only place that was expanded was the apple orchard.”
You think of the apples Jay gave you this morning. “Another less expensive crop.”
Again, Sunoo nods. “It is.”
You pause for a moment, considering. “Thank you, Sunoo.”
“Of course.” He hesitates for a moment. “Is there… I know there have been rumors. Increasing unrest. More disrupted trade routes. Is it true?”
“I don’t know,” you tell him truthfully. “But I think it very well could be. You know as well as I do that the people outside these walls are no stranger to struggle. But the king has always gouged himself on grapes and wine and exotic vegetables. For even the royal kitchens to Jace such limits… Something else must be happening.”
Sunoo pauses for a moment, thinking. “I hope what they say is true, about the prince.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just speculation.” Sunoo shrugs. “Likely wishful thinking, but people are ready for change. The fact that the prince selected a bride without a crown—” He pauses, suddenly remembering your relation. “I mean no offense, of course.”
“None taken,” you shake your head. “It’s the truth.” And only a fraction of it.
“Well, people hope that it’s a sign. That their new king values power and status less than his father. That he’ll consider the needs of his kingdom and not just live out a reign in search of self-serving pleasures.”
You can’t help it, the way your mind immediately goes to the prince.
“But only a fool with a crown considers himself before his people.”
“It’s unfounded, I know,” Sunoo adds when you remain silent. “Nothing but a fool’s hope.”
“Perhaps,” you nod. “But perhaps not.” Turning to him, there’s a genuine earnestness in your gaze when you say, “Perhaps our prince will surprise us yet.”
Despite yourself, you hope it’s true too.
You’ve nearly made it back to your bedroom when the second summons in the span of days comes.
This one, at least, is a bit less terrifying. Although it does inspire a similar sense of dread.
The ladies’ maid waiting outside your door holds only a letter in her hands. One she passes to you with a bow and a customary greeting before hurrying back down the hall.
Unlocking your bedroom door, you close it tightly shut behind you before sitting at the foot of your bed. Then, you slide your finger under the seal of the envelope, feeling nothing but slight resistance as it opens in your hands.
Miss ____, the letter reads.
Your presence is requested at the eighteenth hour of the same day this message is delivered. Please arrive promptly to the royal tailor’s fitting rooms at the requested time.
You’re not entirely sure what to expect. When Riki has information, he usually goes about summoning you in less formal manners. But it’s difficult to think of any other business you could possibly have with the royal tailor.
Well, you suppose, looking at the clock, you only have approximately an hour before your summoning time. You’ll find out soon enough.
…..
It’s a shame you aren’t in need of more gowns. The royal tailor is in possession of one of the loveliest rooms you’ve ever seen.
Surrounded in golden dipped mirrors, the room reflects shiny things like it loves them. Instead of a traditional ceiling, the space above you is lined with windows. Skylights, they’re called. Designed to maximize the amount of natural light inside the room. To show how fabrics will looks and dresses will move beneath the sun.
In the early hours of the evening, candlelight picks up the slack for dying rays of sunlight. Still, the room is beautiful. Sparkling in a way that’s almost alive.
In the center of the room stands the royal tailor. Hands always full of fabric and pincushions and a measuring tape, he places another pin in Mina’s bodice.
Mina. Your sister. Despite the fact that the two of you technically share a home, this is the first time you’ve seen her in nearly a week.
A year your elder, age has been nothing but kind to her. She may not be royal yet, but she’s been groomed for queendom since she was a toddler.
Her skin glows with a certain vitality, hair shines from the efforts of custom hairbrushes and rare, expensive serums.
You see some of your own features reflected on her impossibly beautiful face, and you can’t quite explain in words the way it makes you feel like hiding.
Beauty has never been at the top of your list of concerns, but it would be a lie to say you didn’t care at all. To say that the sight of your older sister positively glowing at her wedding dress fitting doesn’t make you simmer with something akin to jealousy.
Even if Mina’s beauty weren’t so certain, the gown she wears would certainly pick up the slack. Much like the room around it, it’s less white than it is iridescent. It glows and glimmers and glides across each plane of your sister’s body like a lover’s caress.
She’s practically dipped in starlight. Ethereal, stunning, painfully beautiful.
She must know it too.
Still, there’s a hint of uncertainty in her voice when she catches your gaze in the mirror. “What do you think?”
“It’s beautiful, Mina,” you tell her truthfully. “You’re glowing, truly.”
Still, something in her wavers. “Is it fit for a queen?”
“How could it not be, when it’s fit for you? And you are to be queen.” In this moment, you almost wish you knew her better. It’s a strange thought, that her ladies’ maid could probably provide her more comfort than you. Abate her woes with a more expert hand.
“I suppose so. Have you thought more, about what you might wear to the wedding?”
You scoff. “No one cares what I wear.”
“Of course they do,” Mina counters. “Youre the sister of the queen. It would be foolish to think no eyes will be on you.”
“Whatever you think will suit me, then.”
Mina sighs, shaking her head slightly. “You’re hopeless. I’m to try on my coronation gown as well. Come, stand with the tailor and decide on a fabric while I change.”
“Forgive me,” the tailor speaks, “but I’m afraid I must accompany you, my lady. I would like to place a few more pins.”
“Very well,” Mina nods. “Then your assistant can accompany my sister.”
“Indeed,” the tailor agrees. “Riki,” he calls, “would you please assist Miss ___ in finding a suitable fabric?”
Stepping to the center, Riki bows in agreement. “Of course, sir.”
Your sister takes careful, measured steps on the arm of the tailor, and you watch as they exit to the adjoining room, door clicking shut behind them.
“Let me guess,” you mumble wryly, “lemon yellow would be just perfect for my features.”
Riki just laughs. “I was thinking vomit green might suit you more.”
“Of course you were.” You roll your eyes.
“Stand up,” he instructs, tone still light. “Come stand here.”
Your feet drag, but you follow his instructions. Stood in the center of the room, you can’t help but find the mirrors rather unforgiving. You understand Jaeyun’s concern from a few nights ago. You really do look like you haven’t slept in ages.
Even if you were well rested, Mina is a difficult act to follow. Your clothes are plain. Utilitarian. Clean and well-made, yes, but nondescript all the same. Eyes trailing upwards, you can’t help but think the same of your face.
Everything is duller in comparison. Your hair doesn’t shine the way hers does. Your skin doesn’t glow with radiance. There’s nothing special or royal or extraordinary in your reflection. You’re just… you.
Still, Riki treats you like a high paying client.
When he returns to your side, he holds two fabrics. One a rich burgundy and the other a deep violet.
“What do you think of these?” he asks. In the mirror he holds them up to your chest, eyes narrowing as he tests them against your reflection.
“They’re pretty,” you nod, suddenly finding it hard to maintain eye contact with your reflection. “Either’s fine.”
Riki drops the fabrics back to his side, exasperation crossing his features. “That is not the reaction I want from someone choosing a gown.”
“How can I?” you ask. Riki turns from you, takes a few steps back towards the dresser. He sets his original choices to the side and begins searching for another fabric. “You of all people know I have other things on my mind.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he says, back still turned.
“Speaking of which,” you glance over your shoulder, ensuring the door to the adjoining room is still firmly shut. “Anything new to report these days? Any more tidbits from the palace ladies?”
After all, no one has a better penchant for gossip than them. It’s why you’ve learned some of your most valuable secrets from Riki. It’s amazing what people will divulge in the presence of someone they deem lesser than themselves.
“Nothing much.” He shakes his head. “More of the same, mostly. Complaints about not being able to purchase their favorite tea leaves or jewelry or rouge anymore. A lord’s daughter did request a pair of leather shoes that we had to deny. Our stock has been low for months. Reserved for the royal family only.”
“Low leather supply?” you echo.
“Yeah,” Riki confirms, still rifling through drawers. “It’s unusual, but not uncommon. Supplies ebb and flow. Some things are hard to come by for a while and then suddenly, they’re available in abundance again. I’m not sure if it’s anything worth noting.”
“Right,” you nod, but you tuck away the information regardless.
After another moment of searching, Riki stands back up to full height. Turning to face you, he asks, “What about this?”
Your lips press together. “Gold?” you inquire flatly.
“Something shiny for the vision of radiance herself.”
You roll your eyes. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not.” He shakes his head. “I really think this would suit you.” Stepping back to your side, he holds the shimmering fabric against your reflection in the mirror.
You hate to admit it, but he might be right. Immediately, your features look softer. Something about the shimmer brings out your eyes, makes the curve of your lips appear almost more feminine.
“See,” he urges. “It looks nice.”
“Isn’t gold a bit much for a wedding guest?”
“You’re more than a guest. You may not be queen, but this wedding will make you royal, too, you know. Even if it’s by relation. Eyes are going to be on you. You may as well look the part.”
A moment passes. Another.
And then, you nod, almost imperceptible. You watch in the mirror as your chin moves. Quietly, you acquiesce, “Okay.”
“Good, then,” he nods. “It’s decided. Now, for silhouette—”
“I’ll leave that to you,” you interrupt. “Really, Riki,” you add when he gives you a look, “I’m sure you know much more about silhouette than I do. Besides, I trust you.”
“Okay,” he agrees, “I’ll send you a summons when it’s time for fitting.”
“I’ll await it eagerly,” you tell him, trying not to let yourself sound too sarcastic. Glancing again towards the door, you ask, “Do you think I can sneak out before Mina starts her coronation gown fitting?”
Riki smiles, but shakes his head slightly. “Probably not. She values your opinion, you know. Besides, you’re not the only one who will be giving input.”
“What?” you ask. “Who else—?”
A knock sounds sharply against the main door, interrupting your question.
With an exaggerated sense of urgency, the adjoining room opens, the tailor practically running to the source of the knock. In his wake, your sister trails. This time, the gown she wears is far less ornate.
It’s a beautiful shade of violet, not dissimilar from the first fabric sample Riki showed you earlier. Fit for royalty. Perfect for a new bride to celebrate the ascension of her husband to the throne.
To your left, the tailor falls into a deep bow as Riki slowly pulls the door open.
And in walks the crown prince of the kingdom.
It’s hardly been a day since you saw him, but still, the sight makes you draw in a sharp breath.
It feels different. He feels more real, more solid somehow here, above the ground than he did in the chamber in the underbelly of the castle.
At your side, your sister drops into a curtsey.
Across the room, the prince’s eyes land on you. He holds eye contact, and you forget yourself for a moment longer.
The sound of rustling fabric breaks your trance. Remembering yourself, you fall into a curtsey identical to Mina’s.
“Your Highness,” you whisper beneath your breath, too low for him to possibly hear.
“Please,” he addresses the room. “Stand.”
“Thank you,” your sister says, voice breathier than you’ve ever heard it, “for joining us, Your Highness.”
“Of course,” he responds. The edge from his voice, the tremor of desperation, is nowhere to be found. He’s every bit the measured prince when he adds, “It is tradition for an incumbent king to approve the coronation gown of his bride.”
Your eyes are still trained on the floor. You can feel his flickering over your features.
“This is what we’ve decided on, my prince.” Your sister speaks with an even tone. “A violet color to represent the transition to the highest form of royalty. With flowers, lillies, embroidered into the sleeves to represent luck and prosperity for our kingdom.”
“It suits the occasion,” he nods. “Perhaps I too could have lilies embroidered on my sleeve.”
Orchids, you think, still not daring to look up fully. Your sister is a well-trained royal, but you were always a bit better at your studies. Particularly with details requiring memorization.
Botany was a favorite subject of yours, reinforced by the time you still spend in the gardens. Even now, you remember the text as if it were laid in front of you.
Lilies for harmony and fortune, peonies for wealth and honor, lotus for inner peace and spiritual growth.
And orchids. For luck and prosperity.
You dare not speak to correct her. It is hardly your place. And, you suppose, in the end, it will make little difference. Harmony and fortune are fitting wishes for his reign as well.
“Of course,” the tailor agrees. “It would be an honor to add a lovely lily motif to your sl—”
“Or perhaps,” The prince interrupts. “We could change the flowers to orchids.”
At that, your gaze does snap up. And it locks right onto his.
“Forgive me,” the prince continues. “Botany was never my strongest subject, but I believe it’s orchids, not lilies that have historically symbolized luck and prosperity.”
It’s a terrible offence of propriety, the way you stare at the crown prince as if he’s grown a second head.
But to hell with propriety. If you didn’t know better, you would think that the prince just read your mind.
“I apologize,” he says. “I know you must have already dedicated much time and effort to embroidering such lovely lilies, but orchids were practically shouting at me.”
“Please!” the tailor practically exclaims. “It would be an honor to do the embroidery a thousand times over if Your Highness so wished it. And what a great mind you have. I should be embarrassed to have made such an egregious error, but I am rather so very impressed with your knowledge of flowers.”
“Thank you,” he inclines his head. “For your gracious understanding. With the changes, I approve this coronation gown.”
There’s a moment of suspended silence. The prince's mouth closes. Opens again.
Your head is still spinning, racing a million miles a minute. It could just be a coincidence, but you have that feeling again. Deep in your gut. Something that burns like nausea but begs you to lean in. To embrace the discomfort and discover what lies beneath.
Then the prince looks at you and asks, “What will you be wearing?”
You must have misheard him. He must be addressing someone else. He must.
“Me, Your Highness?”
But the prince only nods.
“I…” You trail off, lost for words. “I don’t know. It hasn’t been discussed yet. I—”
“Something light, I think,” he interrupts. Looking directly at you, he tilts his head to the side, considering. “A pale blue, perhaps. Or maybe gold. With orchids too, of course. I’d like to be consulted before you make a final decision.”
Heat rises in your cheeks, your skin flaming as he assesses you.
The tailor coughs. “Oh, I… of course, Your Highness. You shall be the first to know when we’ve decided on a color for your bride’s sister’s gown.”
“Very well,” he nods. “I’ll take my leave, then. Thank you for your time” Glancing around the room, his eyes land on you once again. Linger for a moment too long before he breaks contact. First, he addresses your sister. “Until next time, my lady.” And then he says to you, “Goodbye, Miss ___.”
And then, just as quickly as he came, he’s gone once again.
A rather uncomfortable silence settles around you as the room reels in his absence. The tailor is the one to break it.
After another forced cough, he says, “Well, I think we have our work cut out for us, Riki.”
Riki, doesn’t even spare the man a glance. Instead, he looks at you, gaze sharp and all too knowing. “Indeed we do.”
…..
The eastern stables are quiet tonight. Just as they always are.
No matter how many alarming pieces of information you pick up around the castle and how many ways the prince manages to catch you off guard, at least this is always the same.
You haven’t had a chance to speak to Sunghoon yet, so you’re praying that Blossom has made a full recovery and will be waiting for you behind the stable doors. If she’s not, you don’t know what you’ll do. Jaeyun’s expecting you tonight.
But if Blossom is out of commission, you can hardly ride Maeum again. Not after what happened with the prince.
Pushing open the door at the far edge, you avoid the pressure points that make the hinges whine. The last thing you need is a startled horse. Especially one that whinnies.
Pulling the door closed behind you, the light is too dim to make out much of anything. Counting down to Blossom’s usual stall, you nearly give a shout of joy when you find it occupied.
“Good girl,” you whisper, pulling a carrot from your bag. “Good job, Blossom. You made a full recovery, didn’t you.”
But as you reach up to stroke her mane, you realize that something is amiss. You’re at Blossom’s stall, yes, but the horse in front of you is not Blossom. The light is too dim to make out much of anything, but you can tell through touch alone that this horse is taller. By at least several inches.
Squinting, you try to make out any details. You can tell that the horse’s coat is dark, but that’s about it. Reaching into your bag, you pull out your lantern. Striking a flint, you’re careful to avoid any wood and hay as you light the candle inside.
Holding it up, you assess the horse in front of you.
Lips pulling downward, you frown. “You’re not Blossom.”
“No, but she might suit you even better.”
In your surprise, you nearly drop your lantern. A certain disaster in a stable full of hay.
Spinning on your heel, heart hammering against your ribcage, you whip your head around to find none other than the prince of the kingdom. Leaned against the wall of the stable like it was made to do so. Like there’s nothing strange about him being here well past midnight.
“What,” you hiss, still finding yourself short of breath after the fright he gave you, “are you doing?”
It’s no way to address a prince, but in the cover of midnight, he hardly looks the part. Wearing black head to toe, gone is the regalia, the finery that marks his position.
His head is bare. Empty of the crown you’ve come to associate so closely with him. It makes him look strange. Younger, maybe.
And you never realized just how long his hair was.
In the glow of lanternlight, he doesn’t look like a prince. Just a boy. A young man. One you can’t seem to take your eyes off of.
“I could ask you the same,” he counters.
“I…” you trail off, remembering yourself. Your status. Dropping into a curtsey, you say, “Forgive me, Your Highness. I did not realize it was you. You startled me.”
“Please, ___.” Your name sounds strange in his mouth, without the ‘Miss.’ More intimate somehow. “Stand up. You can forget your propriety now. Just Jungwon will suffice.”
Jungwon. Jungwon.
Distantly, you’re aware that it’s his name. But it’s not as if you’ve ever used it before. Even in your mind, the most private of your thoughts, he’s always been the prince or Your Highness. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Is it really so strange?” he asks. “To call me by my name?”
Your eyes fly to his. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Speak to me as if you can hear what’s in my head.”
For a moment, he does nothing more than look at you. His expression betrays nothing.
After another beat of silence, he finally says, “Close your eyes.”
“What?” you balk.
“Please,” he says. “If I need to command it, I will. But I’d rather you just trust me.” His eyes are imploring, begging for a bit of faith. Again, he asks, “Close your eyes, ____. Please.”
You stare at him a moment longer. What you’re searching for, you aren’t entirely sure. And then, despite your better judgement begging you not to, you draw your eyelids closed.
Losing what little light your lantern provides, the world around you goes dark. Hands clenched into fists, you can only hope your small shreds of trust haven’t been misplaced.
A beat passes. Another. Nothing happens. The night stands still.
And then, as if whispered against the shell of your ear, you hear it. Clear as day.
Hello.
It’s his voice. You're sure of it. Eyes flying open, you expect to find him standing so close you could touch him. But the prince is still motionless, still leaning against the wall of the stable. A good four paces from you.
“You heard it,” he asks, lips drawing thin as if he’s just confirmed a hypothesis. “Didn’t you?”
“I… I heard you, but it wasn’t real. It was like—”
“Like it was coming from inside your own mind,” he finishes.
You stare at him, lips parted.
He laughs humorlessly. “Yeah. For months, I’ve been hearing this… this voice in my mind. It wasn’t mine, but sometimes it felt like it was. It was impossible to tell where my thoughts ended and this voice began. I thought I was losing my sanity. The stress of the upcoming coronation was making me insane.”
He looks up at you, eyes assessing. “But then, that day in my chamber beneath the castle. You spoke to me, and it was familiar. Too familiar. And yesterday. In the tailor’s room. It was you, was it not? With the orchids.”
You nearly gasp. You hadn’t been imagining things. He had read your mind. “I thought of them, yes, but I certainly did not intend to… speak to you.”
“I didn’t either.” He shakes his head. “Just now was the first time I attempted to send my voice to you. But it wasn’t the first time you heard it, was it?”
“I cannot be sure—”
He won’t let up so easily. “If you had to guess, then.”
You’re quiet for a moment, weighing your answer. And then you tell him truthfully, “No. No, I suppose it was not.”
The prince looks at you, considering. “There’s something strange between us. A connection.”
With the way your cheeks flame, you're suddenly grateful for the cover of darkness.
“I cannot pretend to understand it, Your Highness, but—”
“For heaven’s sake,” he exasperates, pushing himself off the stable wall, “we hear one another in our heads. Please, call me Jungwon.”
“I… I couldn’t possibly—”
“Fine,” he says. “Don’t say it then. At least not out loud. Speak it to me. In my mind.”
“I don’t know how,” you protest.
“Try.”
You stare at him.
The prince doesn’t give in. Instead, he suggests, “It may help to close your eyes.”
For a moment, you just look at him, everything in you screaming in protest. Then, on a long exhale, you close your eyes.
First, you let the thought pass through your mind.
Jungwon.
Even in the sanctity of your mind, it sounds like treason.
Next, you try again. This time, you imagine shouting it across an open field, sending it as far as the wind will carry it.
Jungwon.
It’s to no avail. You open your eyes. Across from you, the prince just shakes his head.
It’s not about volume, then.
This time, you close your eyes, let your eyelids relax as if you were sleeping. You don’t shout. You don’t whisper. Instead, you search.
For something, anything that might lead you to him.
The inside of your mind feels like a chamber. Vast, expansive, but entirely self-contained.
You think about what it sounds like, what it feels like, when he speaks in your mind. The way it always seems as if he’s whispering against your left ear.
Opening your eyes slowly, you ask aloud, “When you hear my voice, where does it come from?”
He doesn’t need to ask for clarification. The prince knows what you mean.
Wordlessly, he draws his hand upward, taps the space just beside his right temple, next to his eyebrow. “Here.”
Nodding, you close your eyes again. This time, you imagine closing the space between you. Your hands tremble, heart racing as you picture this phantom of yourself leaning in, far closer to the prince than you could ever dream of being.
You imagine leaning forward, lips tracing that spot against his temple, feeling a stray strand of hair rustle beneath your lips.
It’s like using an untrained muscle, stretching a long forgotten ligament. It strains a little. Burns with effort. But it’s there, and it’s real. At least in the expanse of your mind.
Jungwon, you whisper. But your lips never move.
You don’t even need to open your eyes. You know he heard it.
When you do finally look at him again, he’s already staring at you, lips parted. And those eyes. Those damn unnerving eyes that seem to see right through you.
Now, he’s looking at you in awe. As if you’ve just performed a miracle for him.
“Do it again,” he whispers.
“Jungwon…”
“My name,” he nods. “Good. Was that so difficult?”
The look you send him is withering. “I hate to part ways early, but I do have a rather important errand to run.”
“More important than the duty you discussed with me?” He arches an eyebrow. “Do you have anything to report yet?”
You shake your head, trying to be firm while remaining subordinate. “I’d be happy to have this discussion at a later time, but I’m afraid I’m occupied at the moment.”
He won’t let you go so easily. “With what? Where exactly do you sneak off to in the night? And don’t tell me it’s for fresh air.”
“No,” you pause for a moment, deciding how much of the truth you should give him. “I have a meeting.”
“A meeting?” He echoes.
“Yes.” You nod. “A rather important one. Hopefully, I’ll have more information to share with you when I return, so if you’ll excuse me—”
His gaze never strays from your face. “Who are you meeting?”
You frown, suddenly defensive. “I don’t see how that's any of your concern.”
The prince disagrees. “It’s entirely my concern. You're an informant for me now. Highly valuable. If anything were to happen to you, I could lose a very important source of information.”
“I haven’t even told you anything,” you protest.
“So you understand my problem.”
It takes a great deal of effort not to roll your eyes. “I’m meeting a friend.”
He’s unrelenting. “Who?”
“I hardly see how that information is relevant to you.”
“I should like to know where to look, who to question, if anything were to happen to you. After all, you are planning to leave the safety of the castle.”
It’s infuriating, the way he has an excuse prepared for every rebuttal you make. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. This is a routine meeting. One that I am now going to be late for.”
“Still, I insist.” An edge of command, of order slips into his tone. One you’d have to be a fool to miss.
The information you’ve divulged thus far already feels like too much. You’re not sure how much more you can bear to give. “He’s part of the resistance,” you sigh. “He’s like me. Someone who talks to people and monitors tensions and skirmishes and other strange patterns.”
“He?” If you didn’t know better, you’d think there was an echo in the stable.
“Yes, he.”
“What’s his name?”
Jungwon’s been begging for your trust, but this is pushing too far. Jaeyun is one of the only people in the world you consider a true friend. Someone you’d protect with your life. It doesn’t matter if Jungwon’s intentions are entirely aligned with your own. You’re not giving up his name.
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Very well,” he agrees easily. Too easily. “Then I’m coming with you.”
Your lips draw into a thin line. “You most certainly are not.”
For a moment, Jungwon just looks at you.
“Fine,” you throw your hands in exasperation, still mindful of the lantern in your grasp. “Fine. His name is Sunghoon. Will that information suffice?’
His voice is low now, dangerous. “How lowly you must think of me, to assume that I don’t even know the name of the castle’s own stable hand.”
A burst of surprise flickers through you. In all honesty, you didn’t think he would know Sunghoon’s name.
Then, the prince gives you an ultimatum. “Either I come with you, or neither of us goes. And I believe you did say something about already being late.”
You sigh. There is no way you can bring the kingdom’s prince to an illicit, treasonous meeting. Jaeyun will just have to forgive you the next time you manage to sneak out.
“Fine then,” you drop your shoulders. “We’ll stay. The horse I usually ride seems to be missing, anyway.”
“You didn’t hear me earlier?” Jungwon raises an eyebrow. “Her name is Nabi. She’s new to the castle. A young mare with a sweet temperament. She rarely whinnies even when startled. And she’s quite tall. Long legs. She has one of the fastest gallops I’ve ever seen.”
“A horse that impressive is surely valuable.” You shake your head. “People will notice if she’s ever missing. More tired than she should be.”
Jungwon just looks at you for a moment, and you feel you’ve missed something entirely.
“She’s yours, ___, if you’ll have her. I know Blossom’s a good mare, but her hoof is taking longer to heal than the veterinarian thought. You won’t be able to ride her for a while. Plus, I happen to know her owner.” Jungwon winces. “Not a very pleasant man, despite his excellent taste in horses. Not someone you wouldn’t want to cross.”
But you’re still stuck on his earlier words. “What do you mean, she’s mine?”
“I mean just that. She won’t be ridden by anyone else here. Sunghoon will take her out for general exercise and care, but she’ll be able to rest during the day when she needs. You won’t need to worry about overworking her at night.”
“I…” you trail off, lost for words. “You did this?”
Jungwon’s expression betrays nothing. “An informant needs to be quick, do they not?”
Turning your back to him, you approach the horse, your horse again.
“What did you say her name was?”
“Nabi,” Jungwon repeats. “It means—”
“Butterfly,” you finish for him. “Yes, I know.” Taking a deep breath, you turn back to face him, “Listen, Jungwon.” His name still feels strange against your tongue, but that sensation of wrongness is fading quickly. “I understand that you want to rule differently than your father.” You’re not sure when you lost your inhibitions, but something about the low light of the stable is making you feel bold. “I admire it, actually. But my friend, this network of resistance, they’re important to me. I know that you’re used to giving orders, but please just… please listen to me while we’re out there. I don’t think anything out of the ordinary will happen, but if it does, I need to know that I can trust you.”
For a moment, Jungwon says nothing. And then you hear it, quiet and familiar as a lover’s caress in your ear.
I promise.
The shudder that runs the length of your spine has nothing to do with the nighttime chill.
And then, a handful of minutes later, dressed in black and trading in secrets like a pair of bandits, the two of you set out from the stables into the inky darkness of the night.
synopsis ₊˚⊹⋆˙⟡ jake's life is built on routine. early mornings, packed lunches, and a five-year-old daughter who knows exactly how to cause the right amount of chaos. he's content with keeping things easy and predictable. until you move in across the hall one day, slowly and quietly becoming part of their every day. from accidental run-ins to forced dinners to shared mornings and lingering touches, jake realizes that sometimes—home isn't a place you build on purpose. maybe it's the one you stumble into, and maybe she's just across the hall.
warnings ✦ ݁˖ 18+ // family & domestic themes // sim jiuen is a menace // angst angst, miscommunication, very confusing feelings // avoidant attachment issues // lots & lots of tension, HEAVY on the slowburn // jake is still awkward bc it's jake but like hot awkward // mentions of parent abandonment // profanity // alcohol consumption // features uncles enha LOL // heavy pining // LOTS of domesticity // y/n is younger, ages not explicitly mentioned ˗ˏˋ nsfw tags ᝰ.ᐟ soft dom!jake, unprotected sex, oral sex, fingering, dry humping, rough sex, doggy, praise kink, daddy kink, creampie, heavy on the breeding kink (...jake never learns), calls reader 'momma', anddd choking kink.....bc yeah
°˖➴ .ᐟ addie ── wow ok so im sad im done writing this fic bc this truly has had me in a chokehold bc i LOVE this concept so much :') like wdym dad jake with a lil daughter and he's hot and awkward and takes care of her and is just so soft ㅜㅜ anyways prob the quickest i've written a fic given usually it takes me months so ty for everyone's luv & support & excitement <33 a massive shout out again to juni @yuons for this idea and then of course special mentions to my luvs ronnie & kiki for planting some ideas thru out this fic & beta reading & their support i luv my frens @heejamas @hoonieyun <3 i genuinely had so much freaking fun writing this,,dilf jake & sim jiuen i luv u LOL HOPE U ALL ENJOY ! ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻)
they say having kids will change your life.
your sleep schedule. your priorities. your definition of love. and jake agrees with all of that, obviously. he’s not an idiot.
but what no one really tells you—what none of those parenting books or late night reddit threads or overly cheerful pediatricians mention? is how much kids also sharpen your life. how they turn it into something precise. measured. carefully arranged so nothing spills over.
jake’s mornings start the same way every day. alarm at 6:12AM (not 6:10, too early. not 6:15, too risky). coffee brewed before the sun is fully up. socks paired and re-paired because somehow they never match. and then a five year old’s voice drifting down the hallway asking questions that absolutely do not need to be asked before sunrise.
he packs lunch with muscle memory. apple slices. sandwiches. no peanut butter because of that one kidin class with an allergy whose mom sends passive-aggressive emails. a juice box that he knows will come back unopened. a sticky note with a doodle and a message that he pretends is just something he does because it’s cute, and not because his daughter reads them like they’re the law.
and life is…fine. quiet. predictable in the way that feels earned, safe, and steady. and jake likes it that way.
which is exactly why, when sim jiuen barrels full-speed down their apartment hallway one afternoon after being picked up from school—ignoring every rule jake has ever taught her about inside voices and walking feet—jake already knows something is about to go wrong.
this is what he gets for disrupting the routine.
for the record, routines are sacred. they are survival. and today, jake had broken it—slipping an extra sugar cookie into jiuen’s lunchbox this morning because she looked particularly sleepy and small at breakfast and he felt particularly soft and he’s clearly trying to uphold his title as World’s Best Dad.
an avoidable mistake. a sugar-fueled one.
“ji—slow down!”
but it’s too late.
because right as she rounds the corner, there’s a collision. a gasp. and then a very loud, deeply concerning thump.
and because jake is 1) tired, 2) a father, and 3) a man who works out maybe twice a week on a good month, he’s too out of breath from sprinting after his child to fully process what’s happening at first.
one hand is still gripping jiuen’s backpack, the bright pink, aggressively sparkly thing swinging wildly by his side—while his free hand instinctively goes to his hair, attempting to smooth down what he’s fairly certain is day-two-and-not-washed.
but he finally looks up. and that’s when he sees you.
jiuen stands directly in front of you, eyes blown wide, hands planted firmly on your knees like she’s just discovered something monumental, maybe life-altering even, in her very impressive five years of existence.
you, on the other hand, have a cardboard box labeled kitchen??? in messy marker, the question marks thick and uneven like you added them after the fact, once you realized you had absolutely no idea what was supposed to go in there. your hair is pulled into a messy knot that’s surrendered in multiple places—stray strands loose around your face in that very specific way that suggests nothing except moving day exhaustion, and you’re blinking down at his child like you’re not entirely sure what just ran into you either.
jiuen grins.
“hi!” she says immediately, the bright smile on her face saying she’s completely unbothered by the concept of personal space or strangers.
jake closes his eyes. just briefly. just long enough to mentally sigh and add stranger danger refresher to tonight’s ever growing list of things he’s probably forgetting to do as a parent. but when he opens them again—he feels it. the shift. the stutter. the barely there change in the air, like the moment right before something tips over and the trajectory of everything changes.
because now the confusingly labeled box that was in your hands sits abandoned on the floor beside you, and you’ve crouched down in front of jiuen without hesitation, meeting her at eye level like it’s second nature. your smile mirrors hers—it’s warm, wide, completely unguarded—and jake doesn’t process what you’re saying at first, but it’s the way your voice sounds. the way it doesn’t feel practiced or forced or overly polite in that adult talking to a child way.
and that’s when he knows.
jake already knows, deep in his bones, with the certainty of someone who’s survived long enough to recognize danger when it’s standing right there in front of him—that whatever calm, careful rhythm he’s built for himself?
you’re about to ruin it.
because here you are, and now that jake’s actually looking—he takes you in.
you can’t be that much younger than him, judging by the faint, familiar look sitting just beneath your eyes, the kind that doesn’t come from staying up too late partying or bad decisions, but the quieter kind. the kind that comes from long days, early mornings, and figuring out in real time how to answer when life already started asking things of you.
your cheeks are pink and flushed, probably from hauling boxes up and down all afternoon, and there’s a soft sheen to your skin that tells him it has nothing to do with sweat and effort and everything to do with the fact that you just…look like that. it’s subtle and unassuming, the kind of natural glow from within that isn’t trying to be noticed—and yet somehow demands jake’s full attention anyways.
and your hair, despite the chaos of it, falls perfectly around your face anyways—enough for jake to have to blink twice when he finally sees your face—and you’re wearing nothing but a simple white tank top and shorts, casual and effortless in a way that feels almost illegal considering there is, in fact, a five-year-old child living directly across the hall from you and this is, very clearly, meant to be a family-friendly building.
jake swallows hard. he feels his pulse kick somewhere hard and low all because he’s witnessing the new neighbor’s tank top cling to her like second skin, and he almost wants to scold himself for acting like a pathetic thirteen-year-old-boy discovering girl's shoulders for the first time.
he has to look away. he has to. because if he doesn’t, he’s going to stand here like an idiot, staring, while his five-year-old watches and the hallway slowly catches fire.
life is…fine. this is fine, completely fine. a normal reaction to the new neighbor. nothing to read into. except his brain, traitor that it is, offers the deeply unhelpful thought that if you look like this on moving day? then jake might be absolutely, unquestionably screwed. and he hasn’t even learned your name yet.
he clears his throat, once. then again.
“uh—sorry,” he starts, gesturing vaguely between you and the small human still beaming up at you like she’s already won at life at the age of five. “she, um. she runs.”
jiuen starts nodding enthusiastically. “i run really fast!”
jake sighs, squeezing his eyes, “too fast.”
you giggle, the sound soft and surprised, like you hadn’t expected this interaction—and it immediately makes something in his chest tighten in a way he does not appreciate.
“it’s okay,” you say easily, pushing yourself up from your crouch. “honestly the highlight of my day.” your eyes flick briefly to the box still sitting near your feet. “you know how it is, moving day.”
jake’s eyes follow yours to the box before looking back at you, humming in agreement, “yeah, that…pretty much tracks.”
then there’s a beat. a small pause where he knows he should say something else. introduce yourself. be normal. adult.
instead, what unfortunately comes out is, “you’re…uh—new.”
brilliant.
you tilt your head at him, a small look of amusement on your face, like you’re very aware of the obvious fact and are choosing to be kind about it.
“is it the boxes,” you tease lightly, “or the fact that i look disheveled and smell like cardboard?”
jake pauses for another beat before he exhales a quiet laugh. “…little bit of both?”
then, realizing he’s still standing there like an idiot, he straightens slightly and finally does the thing he should’ve done ten seconds ago. “i’m ja—”
“i’m jiuen!” the tiny human standing between you and jake beats him to it with enthusiasm, thrusting her hand out toward you, grin wide and eyes crinkling at the corners, clearly thinking this moment is about her and not her dad. “and that’s daddy!”
your smile softens immediately as you look back down at the little girl, taking her hand and giving it a very serious shake.
“well, hi jiuen,” you say warmly. “that’s a pretty name for a pretty girl. nice to meet you.”
your voice is gentle, easy. the kind that makes jake have to consciously remind himself that he needs to keep breathing because he’s being weird for no reason and this is simply what nice people just sound like.
then, slowly, you lift your gaze.
“and you too…” you add, eyes flicking back up to his, lips curling faintly. “…daddy.”
forget about breathing.
jake thinks he forgets how lungs work. literally.
he lets out a breath that sounds more like something he’s been holding in for too long by accident.
“jake,” he says, clearing his throat and finally extending his hand. it’s awkward. a little stiff. like it’s been a while since he’s introduced himself to someone who isn’t five years old or a teacher. “i’m jake. we, uh—we live right there.” he nods towards his apartment door, unnecessarily.
you glance down at his hand, then back up at him, smiling as you take it.
“y/n,” you reply easily. then you tilt your head, gesturing toward your obviously still open door, “and i live right there.”
and something small and traitorous flutters in jake’s chest at that. at how light your voice is, like you’re not overthinking this at all—like you aren’t at all aware of the way his pulse is racing, or how thoroughly you’ve already disrupted any sense of balance he thought he once had just by standing there.
he shifts his weight awkwardly before glancing down at the box still sitting by your feet. then at the few others stacked haphazardly just past your open doorway. then back at you.
“do you, uh—” he starts, already regretting it halfway through. “do you need help with those?”
it’s an offer he makes automatically, reflexively. years of carrying groceries one-handed while holding a sleepy kid with the other have rewired the way his brain works permanently.
you follow his gaze and smile, shaking your head.
“i’m okay,” you say simply, “i think i’m gonna call it a night anyways, it’s been a long day.”
“i can help!” jiuen then announces, voice loud and enthusiastic as she’s already stepping forward like she’s ready to carry the entire box herself.
jake gently grabs the back of her collar, halting her mid-step, her back softly thudding against his legs with an oomph. “you helped enough today.”
she pouts. “but y/n needs help.”
and jake has to pretend that your name doesn’t sound different coming from her voice, like it already belongs there.
you giggle softly, “i’ll survive, promise. but thank you, jiuen.”
jiuen studies you seriously, like she’s deciding whether or not to believe that. then her face brightens again, sudden and sincere. “you’re really, really pretty,” she says as if this is important information you should have. “do you wanna come over?”
jake’s head snaps up.
“ji—”
you blink. then laugh again, this time a little louder, glancing at jake with amused surprise.
“wow,” you say, looking back to smile at jiuen. “that’s very generous of you.”
jake clears his throat. “she’s…friendly.”
you tilt an eyebrow at him. “that’s one word for it.”
“daddy says i’m really good at making friends," jiuen nods proudly.
he exhales, rubbing a hand over his face, muttering, “i say a lot of things.”
you tilt your head, watching him with a soft smile before you bend slightly back down to match jiuen’s height. “hey,” you say gently. “i think you should probably get some rest, yeah? you had a big day.”
jiuen considers this seriously. then sighs long and dramatically. “okay.”
jake feels relief for only exactly half a second. because then his karma—small, loud, and wearing light-up sneakers—points a finger between the two of you, “but you have to come over soon!”
you glance up at jake again, eyes bright with amusement, but laced with something else jake refuses to acknowledge for his own sake.
“i’ll…think about it,” you say, and he tries to ignore the tone behind it.
jake feels like he should say something. anything. step in. regain control of the situation.
but instead, he hears himself say, “she’s usually in bed by eight.”
he has no idea why he said that.
why. did. he. say. that.
a flicker of surprise crosses your face before it softens into something small and knowing.
“good to know.”
jiuen beams, clearly satisfied—and clearly oblivious—finally allowing herself to be guided inside. jake opens the door, nudging her gently forward, but she looks back one last time.
“bye, y/n!”
“bye, jiuen!” you reply warmly, just as the door closes.
and suddenly, it’s just the two of you in the hallway. everything settles differently now, thicker somehow. enough to make jake shift his weight again, sliding his hands into his pockets, very aware of how close you’re standing. close enough to notice the faint scent of laundry detergent and something citrusy and…yeah, cardboard.
“well,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “i’m right across the hall. if you, uh…need anything.”
you meet his gaze, smiling softly. “i’ll remember that.”
another pause. and not awkward exactly, but just the kind of linger that happens when neither of you is in a hurry to be the first one to leave.
eventually, you step back towards your door, fingers brushing the doorframe as you turn.
“i’ll see you around, jake.”
jake nods immediately, too fast, eyes wide in a way he can’t seem to control.
“yeah. see you around.”
and as your door closes, jake stays where he is for a beat longer than necessary, pulse racing. because this—this is another thing they don’t teach you about kids:
sometimes, they know what belongs to you long before you do.
jake learns that life goes on. it always does.
no matter the disruption—no matter how unexpected, how citrus-scented, how unfairly and distractingly pretty that disruption might be—life keeps moving forward. coffee still brews. mornings still come too early. a five-year-old still needs lunch packed and hair brushed and shoes tied.
life goes on, yes. but change? change has a way of slipping in quietly. unannounced. making itself comfortable before you realized it’s even there.
a few days pass. not enough time for anything to really change drastically. not enough time for routines to fully unravel or for habits to break. but just enough time for jake to become aware of you in the quiet, peripheral way when people notice things and pretend they don’t matter.
like in the damp little cluster of wet shoes you leave outside your door after it rains, lined up neatly like you meant to deal with them later and absolutely did not. or in the simple welcome mat you’ve placed outside your apartment, like it’s always been there. or in the way certain evenings suddenly smell like garlic and butter and something warm and familiar drifting from across the hallway, making him pause and think, oh. someone’s cooking.
and it definitely isn’t him.
but you.
he hasn’t actually seen you much, though. no hallway run-ins. no brief waves or awkward small talk. not even a coincidental meeting in the lobby or the package room. just evidence of your alleged existence, scattered quietly around him like proof he keeps pretending not to collect.
which is fine. good, even. he tells himself that.
until one evening, everything takes a turn. and that turn comes in the form of his own blood—powered by fruit snacks, unfiltered opinions, and, apparently, a complete disregard for social decorum.
she’s already tired. a long day of coloring inside the lines (mostly), playing house on the playground jungle gym, and surviving on dinosaur nuggets and chocolate milk finally caught up to her. her backpack is slipping down one shoulder, sparkly shoes half-scuffed from dragging her feet, energy running on stubbornness and stubbornness alone.
and jake’s already bracing for it. he tightens his grip on jiuen’s hand, mentally flipping through his usual de-escalation techniques when the typical evening meltdown comes. calm voice. eye level. he likes to think he’s good at this whole parenting thing. a professional, even.
they make it exactly three steps down the hall.
“—I WANT Y/N TO COME OVER FOR DINNER.”
jake freezes mid-step.
“ji,” he hisses quietly, already crouching to her level, hands gently but firmly holding her arms. “inside voice.”
“no,” she says and definitely not with her inside voice. her tone wobbles dangerously, “you never invite her. you promised!”
“i didn’t promise,” jake says carefully, whispering now as he glances instinctively toward the neighboring doors. “she just moved in, and we don’t—”
“I LIKE HER,” jiuen announces, louder now, voice climbing as tears prick the corners of her eyes. “AND YOU’RE BEING MEAN.”
the hallway suddenly feels too long. too narrow. too echoey. jake can feel it. he can feel his neighbors’ heads turning from behind their doors with curiosity.
“okay,” he says, taking a deep, slow breath, attempting calm. he gives his daughter a stern look as best as he can. “let’s go inside first, and then we can talk about—”
“no!”
jiuen stomps her foot. once. then again. then repeatedly, her palms now balled into fists at her sides.
“I WANT HER. I WANT THE PRETTY NEIGHBOR OVER NOW.”
“shhh—ji—”
“she’s really pretty, daddy,” she adds, as if this is the final, irrefutable point he can’t argue against.
jake squeezes his eyes shut. this is happening. in public. in the hallway.
“please, princess—” he whispers again, desperation slipping through despite his best efforts as he tries, and fails, to gently steer her tiny body toward their apartment door. “we can talk about this after dinner.”
“I DON’T WANT DINNER,” she cries. okay. she’s crying now. this is happening. “I WANT HER.”
and then—
your door opens.
jake’s soul leaves his body.
you step out, brows furrowed, hair loose and down this time, concern softening your face as you take in the scene in front of you: a very teary-eyed five-year-old, a very stressed dad crouched beside her, and one very sparkly pink backpack abandoned on the floor.
“uh,” you say gently, one eyebrow lifted. “everything okay?”
jake stands up immediately, mortified. “i am so sorry. she’s—she’s just tired. i’m so sorry.”
you smile, amused more than anything, walking towards jiuen and crouching down in front of her before jake can stop you.
“hey,” your voice cuts in softly, gentle and grounding all at once. one hand lifts instinctively to wipe the tear slipping down jiuen’s cheek. “what’s going on?”
jiuen sniffles dramatically. “daddy said you’re not allowed to come over.”
that’s when you tilt your head up and glance at jake, eyes bright with humor, mischief flickering there like you’ve already decided to enjoy this.
“wow,” you say lightly, “that’s harsh.”
jake blinks. he feels his ear’s burning already.
“it’s not—” jake starts, panicking. “i didn’t—”
jiuen turns back to you, another tear rolling down, another sniffle, “he’s being mean.”
you nod like this is serious business. “well, that's not good.”
jake lets out a quiet groan. he briefly considers banging his head against the door. just once. for clarity.
“and now,” jiuen continues, voice trembling again, “he said you can’t come over ever.”
jake’s head snaps up. “that’s—what? that’s not—”
you stifle your giggle, pressing a hand to your chest as you gasp softly. “ever?”
jiuen nods quickly.
the hallway suddenly feels very, very small.
“well,” you say thoughtfully, glancing between the two of them before your gaze settles back on jake—your smile turning into very specific kind of dangerous. “i do happen to have some free time tonight.”
jake stiffens. he silently prays to whatever higher power that might still be listening that this is a joke. that this is where you laugh it off and go back inside and pretend none of this ever happened.
“and,” you continue, tone easy, playful, teasing, “if daddy doesn’t mind me crashing dinner…”
and then jiuen’s face lights up instantly.
“YES!” she cheers, grabbing your hand with both of hers and tugging it excitedly.
jake opens his mouth. closes it. opens it again.
“i—uh,” he clears his throat, scrambling. “i mean, you don’t have to—”
“it’s okay,” you shrug, standing now, still smiling at him, still holding jiuen’s small hand in yours. “i don’t mind.”
jake looks at you. then looks at his daughter. then back at you again. and realizes—too late—that this is his fate. that his fate is being emotionally blackmailed by his own flesh and blood, simply because she has perfected the art of puppy eyes and is currently holding hands with the pretty neighbor who smells good and laughs easily. and so, how exactly is he supposed to say no?
he exhales slowly, the sound less about the situation at hand and more so about grounding himself because in a few seconds you’re about to be in his apartment. with him. and with his child. and it suddenly feels like a much bigger deal than it should.
“…okay,” he says finally, voice a little strained. “dinner sounds good to me.”
jiuen’s already tugging you toward the door, bouncing on her heels as she waits. jake unlocks the front door and steps aside to let you both in, his heart thudding a little harder than it should over something as simple as letting someone inside.
“uh—” he starts, then stops as he follows you in from behind, because welcome to my humble abode feels both too formal and wildly insufficient when you’re already stepping past him.
and jake's apartment is nice, he'd like to think. spacious, but not in a way that feels empty. it’s cozy and lived in, in the way that matters. the kind of space that’s clearly been shaped by routine rather than decoration. there’s a shoe rack by the door with pairs in varying sizes—tiny sneakers with light up soles shoved randomly next to bigger ones. a half-folded jacket draped over the back of the couch like it was meant to be put away and simply wasn’t. crayons and coloring books stacked neatly on the coffee table, and next to them, a lone plastic dinosaur guarding the tv remote.
you glance around politely, curious but not nosy, and jake suddenly becomes painfully aware of everything.
the family calendar stuck to the fridge with mismatched magnets. the crooked drawing taped beside it, stick figures holding hands under a sun that’s a little too big, labeled ME & DADDY in uneven marker. the faint smell of laundry in the air because he forgot, again, to move the wet clothes into the dryer this morning, and the small pile of plates still in the sink from breakfast, abandoned sometime between packing a backpack and tying shoes.
it’s not messy. it’s not spotless either. it’s real. you smile at the thought.
jiuen kicks her shoes off immediately, shoving them toward the corner of the rack before darting into the living room like she owns the place (and, well, she does). you hesitate for half a second, then slip your own shoes off, lining them neatly by the door as jake watches.
“sorry,” he says beside you, gesturing vaguely at the space like he could somehow explain it. “it’s…not usually this chaotic.”
you shake your head, smiling, “it’s cute.”
and that word—small, simple, probably something you said out of politeness—lands somewhere in his chest and stays there.
there’s a brief moment of silence after that, just long enough for jake to realize he should probably, definitely say something, considering you’re just standing there now, inside his apartment, and he’s doing a very poor job of pretending he isn’t staring.
“i’ll be in the kitchen,” he finally says, pointing toward it as if it isn’t directly in front of the both of you. he gestures again, unnecessarily. “make yourself at home, jiuen usually watches her show while i prep dinner.”
you hesitate for a second, like you’re deciding where you belong in the space, before trailing after him anyways as he heads towards the kitchen.
“i can help,” you offer.
he shakes his head immediately, “you’re a guest.” he’s already pulling things out of the fridge—chicken, leftover vegetables, a half-used bottle of sauce.
you arch a brow, leaning lightly against the counter, watching him with an expression that’s equal parts amused and thoughtful, “i invited myself over, jake.”
jake lets out a small laugh, defeated.
fair.
“okay, fine. you can, um—wash and cut the vegetables, if you want.”
jiuen’s head immediately pops out of nowhere as she climbs onto her chair at the dining table, chin propped on her hands as she watches from across the kitchen bar.
“daddy never lets me help cook,” she states casually. then, after a thoughtful pause, adds, “he must really like you.”
jake chokes on absolutely nothing.
“i—princess,” he says, recovering far too slowly, eyes avoiding yours, “that’s because you can barely reach the counter.”
you laugh, the sound easy and warm, already rolling up your sleeves as you move toward the sink. you grab the vegetables jake set out without asking, rinsing them carefully under the water like you’ve done this, in his kitchen, a hundred times before.
and everything after that kind of falls into something that almost feels like routine.
not the routine jake’s used to, no. not the familiar soundtrack of a cartoon playing too loudly in the living room while he stands at the stove, squinting at his phone and failing spectacularly to follow a “simple” cooking tutorial that somehow requires three different pans just because jiuen had a specific craving. no, tonight is different.
instead of high-pitched characters singing nursery rhymes, it’s jiuen’s voice carrying across the kitchen as she narrates her entire playground adventure from today to you—you, who’s listening, genuinely, and reacting to all the right parts. instead of jake cooking alone, there’s the soft steady sound of you chopping vegetables beside him, your elbow slightly bumping against his in a way he doesn’t seem to mind.
he pretends not to notice the way you cut everything into careful, bite-sized, jiuen-sized pieces without being asked. pretends not to notice the way you slide the vegetables into the pot he’s currently stirring, easily and unintrusive, like you already know where things go. the way you move easily in his kitchen, not hesitating, not hovering…just fitting.
dinner itself goes smoother than jake expects. which surprises him, because he’s not exactly known for being smooth—especially not in situations like this. especially not when his own child is a small ball of chaos and he’s never quite figured out what to do when he’s in unfamiliar situations. and having someone like you sitting at his dining table—like it’s normal, like you belong there—definitely counts as an unfamiliar situation.
nothing about this is normal. and it’s not because you’re sitting in his usual seat besides jiuen (because she insisted, and as has been clearly established, jake is powerless against that), but because he can’t remember the last time it was just him, his daughter, and someone else at this table.
maybe last month, when his parents surprised them and showed up with new toys and enough meal prepped food to last weeks. but that doesn’t count. that was grandparent obligation. this feels different.
“do you cook a lot?” you ask from across the table.
“eh,” jake shrugs, spoon clinking awkwardly against his bowl of rice. “enough to keep us alive.”
“that’s impressive,” you tease. “high bar.”
he huffs a laugh before he can stop himself.
and the conversation slips easily into place after that, weaving itself between the sounds of jiuen slurping her soup and attacking her noodles with her newly acquired chopstick skills. you ask about where he’s from. he asks why you moved. how long he’s lived in the building. what you do for fun. what he does for a living.
and jake answers carefully, not guarded, but deliberate and thoughtful. like he’s choosing his words because he hopes they land somewhere that matters to you. and you do the same. nothing heavy, nothing rushed. just the quiet sense of two people learning each other in real time. observing. taking mental notes. letting something small and unspoken take shape between them without neither noticing it.
jiuen’s stories find their way into the conversation too, popping up between bites and questions.
“and then,” she says proudly, pausing dramatically, “i colored outside the lines.”
you gasp at her. “a rebel.”
jake shakes his head, lips twitching, “i raised a menace.”
you grin at him, the look sharp and playful, “she gets it from you, doesn’t she?”
he pauses, eyes narrowing slightly, something playful yet unreadable flickering there before he recovers, “hey.”
you just smile back, innocent.
dinner eventually winds down slowly, but not all at once. just in the way that good things do, stretching themselves out like they’re reluctant to end. plates get cleared, except jiuen’s, who casually pushes hers towards jake across the table as if asking him to finish it for her like this is a long-standing silent agreement.
her stories taper off into softer commentary. words replaced by yawns. her head droops, then rights itself up, then droops again. the kitchen light hums quietly overhead, and somewhere in the living room, the clock ticks steadily, marking time neither of you seem eager to acknowledge.
eventually, jake stands and gathers the plates, stacking them carefully in the sink like he’s buying himself time.
“alright,” he says, glancing at the clock before turning to jiuen. “bath time.”
she groans instantly, slumping dramatically in her chair. “already?”
“yes, already,” he replies, tone firm but familiar, the kind of stern that doesn’t actually mean he’s serious. you catch the exchange and smile before you can stop yourself. “say goodnight to y/n.”
and jake barely has time to process it before jiuen hops off her chair and goes to where you’re standing in the kitchen, wrapping her arms around your waist without hesitation and pressing her cheek against you like this has always been happening. like this is normal, and you’re not the neighbor he met only last week, standing in his kitchen, quietly rearranging his sense of self.
it shouldn’t hit him the way it does. but it does, and he fails to ignore it. something about the way you instinctively hug her back, one hand resting between her shoulder blades, the other smoothing over her hair—like you’ve done this before and like you’ll continue doing it. it makes something in jake’s chest shift, something unfamiliar. and terrifying.
not because he’s standing in his own apartment, surrounded by the life he’s already built for himself—but because suddenly, somehow, that feeling of home seems to be tied to a person that, for once, isn’t the five-year-old little human he raised.
but to you.
jake’s throat tightens.
“goodnight, jiuen,” you murmur softly. “sleep well, okay?”
jiuen pulls back just enough to look up at you, short arms still looped around your waist. “you’ll come over again?”
you smile at her. “if your dad lets me.”
she turns and squints at the innocent man caught off guard, standing not too far behind her. “you better.”
jake exhales, something like a laugh slipping out, “go get ready.”
she grins, satisfied, and soon disappears down the hallway, calling out, “goodnight, y/n!”
and when she rounds the corner, it’s suddenly quiet again.
jake clears his throat just to fill the air. “well,” he says, breaking the stillness. “that was fun.” he says it because he means it. and he hopes, quietly, that you don’t hear it as just politeness.
“it was,” you agree, just as softly, not moving from where you stand. “you’re really good with her, you know.”
something warm creeps up jake’s neck. he shifts, arms hanging awkwardly at his sides as he searches for a response that doesn’t feel too much for a moment like this.
“oh—” he starts, then shrugs lightly. “i mean. i try. most days.”
you let out a small laugh, but nod, watching him with an understanding that feels deeper than the moment calls for. then, you simply add, “she’s lucky.”
jake rubs the back of his neck. and because he doesn’t know what to say and panicks, he then gestures toward the door, suddenly aware of how close you’re standing in front of him and because his five-year-old is just down the hall. “i can, um—walk you back.”
he immediately realizes how ridiculous that sounds when you live ten feet away. maybe less. but he hopes you say yes anyways.
“yeah,” you nod, moving to slip your shoes on as he opens the door for you. “thank you.”
he walks beside you for all ten feet of it, close enough to feel your warmth, but far enough to keep things safe. he stops in front of your door, hands slipping back into his hoodie pockets.
“well,” you say quietly, turning to face him. “thanks for having me.”
he smiles, small and genuine, eyes steady on yours, “thanks for inviting yourself over.”
you laugh under your breath, eyes flickering away for a moment before finding his again. there’s a pause again, as you both seem to register the natural lack of space between you, the shared breath, the way neither of you is in a hurry to end this.
eventually, your hand finds the doorknob behind you. it lingers there for half a second before you turn it.
“goodnight, jake,” you say, glancing back at him one last time.
“goodnight,” he replies, and it comes out quieter than he intends.
your door closes with a gentle click.
and jake is left there, exhaling slowly, staring at the wood of your door like it might finally offer him answers it didn’t the last time he stood in this exact spot only days ago. days ago, when he was actively choosing to ignore the feeling that stirred in his chest the moment he first saw you at the end of this hallway, white tank top, hair up, kitchen??? box and all. but now—whatever this is, whatever slipped so quietly into his life—it’s asking him to notice it. and this time? jake doesn’t think he wants to look away.
he sighs quietly to himself, retreating back to his own apartment and silently shutting his door before turning around.
and nearly jumps out of his skin.
“—JESUS, ji—”
and jiuen is standing right there. at the end of the hall, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
“you told me not to ever use God’s name in vain,” she says sternly, marching towards him with purpose before planting herself in front of him.
jake ignores her. “why are you staring.”
“i’m not staring,” she says defensively, folding her arms again. “i was waiting.”
“for what?”
“for you.”
he sighs tiredly, “i thought i told you to start the bath.”
she tilts her head, studying her dad with an intensity that makes him deeply uncomfortable. then, very matter-of-factly, and very much ignoring what he just said, “i like her.”
jake rubs his face. “you’ve mentioned.”
“she’s really pretty.”
“yes,” he mutters, sidestepping her and continuing down the hall. “you’ve mentioned that too.”
jiuen spins around to follow him and squints. “so you don’t think she’s pretty?”
jake stops. slowly, he closes his eyes, debating if he wants to choose peace for the night.
“princess,” he says carefully, opening them again, “that’s not what i said.”
“that wasn’t an answer.”
he exhales through his nose. then—
“she is,” he admits quietly. “she’s pretty.”
jiuen gasps. an actual, audible gasp. the light enters her eyes again.
“i knew it,” she says, spinning around once before marching toward the bathroom, a new bounce in her step. “i knew you were acting weird, daddy.”
“i was not acting weird, what—”
“you were,” she insists. “your voice did the thing.”
“what thing.”
“the thing where you don’t talk a lot because you’re nervous.”
jake nudges the bathroom door open and flicks on the light, his voice deadpan, “you are five.”
she hums casually, climbing onto the little step stool by the sink, legs swinging as she watches jake start the water. “when is she coming over again?”
“okay, woah—,” jake stares at the running water, dipping a hand to check the temperature. not too cold, not too hot. “slow down.”
“she can help me color,” jiuen continues, completely ignoring his attempts at creating boundaries. “and we can watch movies. and she can sit by me again.” a pause. then, thoughtfully, and very seriously, “and maybe she can sleep over and stay for breakfast.”
jake freezes.
he looks back at her, at the way her feet swing innocently, like the implication of what she just said won’t casually rearrange his entire life’s trajectory.
“breakfast?” he repeats.
“yes,” she nods, very seriously. “pancakes. my favorite.”
he turns back to the tub, now squeezing bubble bath into the water like this conversation is not happening. “you’re planning very far ahead, princess.”
“she said she might come over again.”
“she said she’d think about it.”
jiuen hums, unbothered. “that means yes.”
jake snorts, hands now guiding her towards the tub. “you’re very confident, ji.”
she beams up at him with nothing but the unfiltered opinions and innocence of a five-year-old, “i like her, daddy.”
he pauses again, looking down at her with something in his expression softening in a way he doesn’t bother to hide anymore.
“yeah,” he says quietly. “i know.”
and silently, to himself, he acknowledges the part he hasn’t said out loud yet. the part he’s been circling around since the hallway.
me too.
jiuen steps into the tub, splashing immediately. “she feels nice.”
jake blinks. “…feels nice?”
“yeah. she hugged me,” she states like it’s obvious. “and she smells good.”
his chest tightens. he ignores it. clears his throat. “okay. bath.”
she giggles as he hands her a toy, distracted and already moving on. until, “daddy?”
“mm?”
“you should be nice to her.”
jake swallows, eyes squinting. “i am nice.”
“no,” she says, humming thoughtfully, head tilting. “nice nice.”
jake closes his eyes again.
“bath,” he repeats, voice tired but fond and full of something else knowing he’s not ready to name quite yet.
something warm, something hopeful. and something that already feels a little like home.
jake tries—really, really tries to snap everything back into place.
tries to pretend that he didn’t lie awake far longer than he should have that night, staring at the ceiling long after jiuen had fallen asleep, replaying moments he keeps telling himself don’t mean anything. tries not to linger on the sound of your laughter, or the way you soften without thinking around his daughter. the way your eyes light up when you smile. the careful sincerity in your voice, like you choose your words because you mean them.
he tries. tries to get back into the rhythm over the next few days. back into the carefully constructed routine he’s spent years perfecting. because routines are reliable. predictable. safe. and whatever you are, you are none of those things.
but he doesn’t know if he even seems to mind anymore.
6:12AM. the alarm goes off exactly once. coffee brewed. mismatched socks. apple slices packed into tupperware, a peanut-butter-free sandwich wrapped just right.
and one cookie.
only one. no matter how small and cute jiuen looks this morning in her uniform, hair clipped back with the ones she picked out, coat buttoned up crookedly because she insisted on doing it herself. no matter how she smiles up at him over her breakfast pancakes with crumbs on her lips and sleepy eyes.
he cannot and will not risk another sugar-fueled sprint down the hallway. he has learned his lesson.
the routine continues. he grabs his keys, her backpack, checks the clock, and out the door. jiuen’s hand slips into his automatically as they step into the hallway, her fingers small and warm and safe in his palm.
and then your door opens.
jake stops.
you step out in workout clothes, hair pulled back, ear buds dangling loosely around your neck. there’s a brief second where all three of you just pause. like the universe is giving him half a second to prepare.
he does not.
he cannot, because you’re standing there, wearing that, and looking like something he has no business imagining at 7:15AM in the morning with his five-year-old daughter holding his hand.
“oh!” you say softly, surprised, but smiling. first at jiuen, then back up at jake.
jiuen lights up, the sleepiness in her eyes immediately fading. “good morning!”
“good morning, jiuen,” you reply, crouching just slightly so you’re closer to her height. “you look very official today.”
she beams, both hands holding the straps of her backpack proudly, “i have school.”
“i can tell,” you reply seriously. “very important business.”
jake watches the exchange like he’s witnessing something sacred and mildly terrifying. like this is a glimpse into a life that feels far too close for comfort.
you straighten up, your eyes moving to him now. “—and good morning, jake.”
“morning,” he manages, and his voice lower and rougher than usual. and he hopes you blame it on the early hour and not the fact that he feels a strange and unfamiliar heat pooling low and tight in his gut just from seeing you like this.
it’s too early for this. too early for you to look good in the way no one warns you about. fresh. awake. effortless. like you didn’t even try, and somehow that makes it worse.
“are you guys walking over?” you tilt your head, ponytail sliding over one shoulder as you shift your weight from one foot to the other, the motion small but enough to make the cropped hoodie on you ride up, exposing another small inch of the curve of your waist and the faint dip where your leggings sit low on your hips.
jake’s eyes drop before he can stop them. automatic, unintentional, but fully unavoidable. he forces his gaze back up. too late. the image is already burned in.
“uh—” he clears his throat, trying to sound normal. “yeah. it’s not too far from here.”
jiuen then tugs at his hand, suddenly bouncing slightly in place, “wait—are you walking me too, y/n? is that why you’re here?”
jake’s head snaps to you above jiuen’s head.
you look back.
and for a split second, something unspoken passes between you. a question, an invitation, then, like crossing a line neither of you were ready to acknowledge out loud, you smile.
“yeah,” you nod easily, smiling at jiuen like this was always the plan and not, in fact, a three-mile run. “totally.”
jiuen’s smile stretches wide.
jake doesn’t miss the way your eyes flick back to him, gentle and reassuring. he knows the look on his face gives him away—eyebrows lifting just slightly, mouth pressing thin in that i am so sorry way.
you answer it with nothing but a small smile in your eyes. and something in jake warms at that. something subtle that he definitely didn’t need to contribute towards his already confusing feelings, but now undeniable and evidently, there.
and that’s how it happens.
that’s how the three of you end up walking together down the block together, the morning air still cool and damp with dew, the neighborhood waking up around you. a dog barks somewhere in the distance. the sun still hangs low in the sky. a school bus passes by.
jiuen chatters the entire way. about school. about her favorite color (it was pink yesterday, purple today). about how she’s very fast at running but not allowed to race in hallways anymore, not after the incident.
and jake watches as you listen—nodding, reacting, laughing at all the right parts like every detail matters. because to jiuen, it does. he catches it from the corner of his eye, pretending he’s focused on the traffic lights and crosswalk signals instead of the way you lean in just a little when jiuen speaks. the way your attention never wavers. and the way his heart beats a little quicker at the view.
“do you run, y/n?” jiuen’s small voice cuts in, peering up at you as her hand still swings lightly in jake’s larger one.
“sometimes,” you answer. “mostly when i think too much and my brain needs to quiet down.”
jake smiles to himself before he can stop it. you catch it.
“what?” you ask, tilting your head slightly, already half-smiling.
“nothing,” he says, shaking his head. “that just…yeah. that makes sense.”
because it does. because he understands the need to outrun your own thoughts—how they can pile up when you slow down. the constant calculations. the quiet questions he never says out loud ever since five years ago.
is he doing enough? is he doing too much? is she happy? is he happy?
because it’s not just his life he’s trying to keep steady anymore. it’s hers. every choice carrying some sort of weight, every mistake feeling like it echoes louder and lingers longer when you’re responsible for another human being.
so yeah, he gets it. gets the impulse to move. to breathe. to find a rhythm that drowns out the noise if even for a little while.
you don’t push for more. you just look at him for a second longer, soft and curious, like you’re piecing something together without needing him to explain it out loud.
jiuen skips a few steps ahead, then suddenly stops short, gasping dramatically as she spins back around to the both of you.
“today’s friday!” she exclaims like everyone is supposed to know what that means. “it’s movie night!”
she then plants herself directly in front of you, halting both you and jake mid-step.
“you should come join us!” jiuen’s eyes grow wider as she stares up at you with excitement.
jake pauses.
he really should’ve seen this one coming.
a quiet sigh slips out as he makes, again, a mental note to have a conversation with his daughter about asking dad for permission before inviting people over.
he looks at you. then back at her. then squeezes his eyes shut and questions how he somehow raised a child completely unburdened by social anxiety.
this is on him. absolutely his fault.
“—okay, look,” he cuts in quickly, both hands already on jiuen’s shoulders and turning her back around towards the school’s entrance in the short distance, “we’re here. let’s get you to class.”
at the school gates, it’s chaos in the way only elementary schools can be. kids everywhere, backpacks too big for their own bodies, parents lingering, coffee cups in hand and sleepiness in their eyes.
and jiuen forgets everything the moment she spots her friends. she’s gone in an instant, running towards a small cluster of just-as-tiny-beings already show-and-telling their new bracelet, new hair clip, look what my mom packed for my lunch today!
but then, just as quickly—they all notice you.
“jiuen—” one of them whispers but it’s not really a whisper because they’re five and so, naturally, it’s loud and clear, “—is that your mom?”
and jake chokes. actually chokes. he inhales wrong, coughs hard, eyes flying wide as his head snaps towards you before darting back to the small cluster of children now openly staring at where the two of you stand side by side.
“what—no—” he starts, words tangling somewhere between his brain and his mouth because how did he let himself get in this situation?
but you’re already laughing, instinctive and bright, lifting a hand to cover your mouth like you’re not entirely sure what the correct response is either when both of you clearly know what it is.
“no,” jiuen shakes her head firmly, turning back to her friends matter-of-factly. “she’s my dad’s really pretty lady friend.”
jake stops breathing.
oh. god.
there’s a collective pause.
then—
“ooooh,” a random kid says—jake doesn’t know which one, but he’s pretty sure it’s the same kid with the peanut allergy and passive-aggressive mom. “she looks like a mom.”
“yeah,” another voice adds from the group. “can she play with us?”
jiuen perks up immediately, spinning back toward you and jake, eyes shining. “can you?”
you giggle and crouch slightly, meeting her at eye level like this is the most reasonable request in the world.
“maybe later,” you say softly. “after daddy picks you up. then we can do movie night.”
jake swallows.
hard.
you really need to stop calling him that. for his own mental health. for his continued ability to function normally. especially in public.
and especially when you just naturally included the casual we in your proposition and he’s now too busy short-circuiting to register it. the easy way you already folded yourself into their evening like it was already decided by fate itself.
he might’ve missed it entirely if jiuen didn’t light up on the spot, joy and excitement blooming all across her face.
“YES!” she cheers. “you’re going to love movie night!”
and jake barely has time to recover before she spins on her heel, throwing one last wave over her shoulder.
“bye, daddy! bye, y/n!”
and just like that, jake’s left standing there, mind several seconds behind his body, very stunned and very well aware of the fact that you’re still standing next to him.
“so…” your voice slips in quietly as you turn to look up at him. you tilt your head, expression open and curious in a way that looks innocent—but jake is starting to think there’s nothing accidental about the way you do that anymore. “movie night?”
he blinks, needing a moment to fully reenter his own body. “uh—yeah. yeah. if you’re down, i mean.” he clears his throat, instinctively straightening up. “she, uh…she gets excited quickly. just kind of throws ideas out there without thinking.”
you give him a smile. soft, small, understanding. “she’s five, jake. she’s not supposed to think too much.” a light shrug. “that’s kind of the magic of that age.” then you pause, like you’re deciding whether to say the next part. “plus, i technically invited myself over. again.”
jake lets out a quiet laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as his gaze drifts briefly towards the school doors before finding its way back to you. “well—” he exhales. “clearly, jiuen loves you. so…you’re welcomed over anytime.”
the words settle between you.
between the way he’s standing just a little too still and how you haven’t stepped back and the quietness of the early morning where everything feels a little too real.
you study him for a beat, something amused and unmistakably intentional flickering in your expression. like you’re deciding how honest you can be. deciding just how far to push.
“mmm,” you hum softly, the corner of your mouth lifting. “is that for before or after eight?”
jake’s breath stutters. his thoughts derail, scattering somewhere between what you’re implying and the way you’re looking at him right now—like you’re aware of the line and choosing to hover right at the edge of it.
he searches for words. any words. something smart, something adult.
something that doesn’t give him away—but maybe gives him away just enough. enough to let you know that he’s thought about it. about what crossing the line would look like, about what after eight might look like.
nothing comes. his mind is both painfully blank and full in the worst way.
and before he can even attempt to say something smooth, something that might maybe, maybe help his case, at all—
“alright, well,” you say casually, stepping back like nothing just happened and jake isn’t standing in front of you and having thoughts he shouldn’t be having this early in the morning in front of his daughter’s elementary school, “—gonna go on my run now.”
you adjust your earbuds, already moving to turn away.
“i’ll see you later?” you add over your shoulder, looking back at him one more time, and it’s just long enough to make him wonder if this moment meant the same thing to you as it did to him.
and as he watches you jog away, something in jake finally settles.
which says a lot, because jake has never been good at certainty. he doesn’t really know how to fold fitted sheets. doesn’t know how to answer when jiuen asks questions that start with why and end somewhere completely out of his realm. still doesn’t know what her kindergarten teacher means when she insists on a five-subject notebook versus two-subject on the school supply list.
jake’s spent most of his life figuring things out as he goes. adjusting, learning by necessity.
but this? this, he knows.
because as he watches your figure grow smaller down the block, his thoughts still stuck where you left them—on the way your voice dripped sweet but dangerously only a minute ago and the look in your eyes enough to say more than he needed to ever hear—
jake understands something with nothing but clarity.
he now knows nothing about you is coincidental anymore. not the timing. not the teasing. not the way you look up at him then pull away like you know exactly what you’re doing.
and that jake doesn’t just want movie night.
he wants it all. everything that has to do with you.
you, not as a passing thought or a harmless curiosity or the girl-across-the-hall, but as something chosen. something built, something real, something that feels like home.
he wants what comes after eight. before eight. and everything in between.
jake is at a crossroads.
which feels dramatic. but also, accurate, considering he’s currently standing in the middle of his living room, staring down at his couch like it might give him all the answers he’s been silently begging for.
and the couch in question has definitely seen better days. one armrest sinks a little too much, the springs on the far end squeaks faintly if you sit down too fast, and there’s a barely noticeable dip in the middle from years of movie nights that were really just him and jiuen slowly falling asleep to whatever animated movie was playing.
but now it’s suddenly important. because tonight isn’t just movie night.
it’s movie night.
and jake is painfully aware of two things:
one — he does not know how to host another adult without spiraling.
two — he does not know how to be around you without spiraling.
which makes the idea of hosting you in his apartment, for the second time no less, an objectively terrible plan.
and yet.
he’s still standing there, staring at the couch, questions firing off in his head in rapid-fire.
which seat is y/n going to take? is it weird if i sit directly next to her? should jiuen sit between us? is that too domestic? or somehow less domestic? do people think about this? do normal people actually think about this? would she want a blanket? an extra pillow? does she get cold easily? what movie snacks does she like? why didn’t i ask what snacks she like?
jake looks down at the coffee table. the bowls are out. popcorn in one, chips in another. napkins neatly stacked. remote control placed intentionally at one end of the table, positioned just right so it doesn’t look like he tried too hard (he tried very hard), but also so it’s clear he’s not the kind of man who loses the remote every night and blames it on the couch gaps like a liar.
this is stupid, he tells himself. he’s being stupid.
“y/n’s here!”
jiuen’s voice rings through the apartment before jake even has time to look up, her tiny hand already swinging the door open with the enthusiasm of someone who has never once her life considered stranger danger.
“ji, what did i tell you about opening doors before asking me—“
and then jake stops.
because there you are.
and you’re standing in the door like you’ve stepped straight out of a very specific fantasy he absolutely will not get into the details of right now.
you’re wearing pajamas, real ones. not the cute, intentional matching set kind—although he’s not sure he’d survive that either—but soft sweatpants that hang low on your hips and an oversized sweater that he thinks could probably double as a dress if you felt like it. your hair is loose, a little messy in that end-of-the-day way, and in your hand sits a tub of ice cream like this is the most normal thing in the world and not simultaneously his worst nightmare and saving grace all in one.
jake forgets how to blink.
this is…worse than this morning. worse than workout clothes. worse than a white tank top. because this feels intimate in a way his brain absolutely did not prepare him for. this is what you look like when you’re home. when you’re comfortable. when you’ve stopped trying and started existing—unfiltered, unguarded, entirely yourself. like this is the version of you reserved for quiet nights and people you trust.
jake’s brain was not built for this.
every thought he prepared, every carefully constructed plan about seating arrangements and blankets and snacks and emotional readiness immediately disappears. nothing left. not a single coherent thought in sight. just the overwhelming, bone deep realization that movie night was a terrible idea.
“i brought ice cream!” you lift the tub and spoons like a peace offering in one hand, your smile bright and instant.
jiuen gasps, both arms shooting up on instinct before she, evidently, realizes she’s very much too short and settles for grabbing your free hand instead.
“ICE CREAM?” she squeals, already tugging you inside without waiting for permission. “daddy never lets me have ice cream on movie night!”
“that’s because movie night is already ninety percent sugar,” jake says automatically, still standing there with the door wide open like an idiot, “and ice cream makes you sleepy—and also…hi.”
you glance back at him. he’s leaning against the doorframe, watching you in that way he’s started to do without realizing it—like he’s trying not to stare, but he’s memorizing anyway.
you smile at him, soft and knowing, “hi.”
and it all seems casual. seems normal. like this is nothing. like you didn’t just walk into his apartment in your house slippers and soft clothes and that familiar citrusy scent and quietly rearrange his entire evening the way you have been doing ever since you moved in.
“i hope this is okay. i figured movie night deserved ice cream.”
jake finally steps aside, letting the door close behind you. and the apartment immediately feels smaller, in the best way possible. warmer. familiar. like the space shifted to make room just for you.
“yeah,” he says, letting out a small laugh as he follows you and jiuen to the living room. “of course. i’m a dad, not a monster.”
jiuen’s already climbing onto the couch, scrambling straight for the middle cushion—no hesitation, no second thoughts. unlike her own father, who absolutely would have overthought it for the next ten minutes if it were left up to him (and well, he did).
“i’m sitting in the middle!” she’s already making herself comfortable under a throw blanket before she pats the space beside her and points determinedly, “y/n here.”
then the other side.
“and daddy here.”
well, that’s one of jake’s problems solved.
he watches as you sit down next to jiuen without question, turning toward her with full attention like this seating arrangement has always been decided ever since he bought this couch years ago.
“so,” you say seriously, hands folding in your lap as you look at her seriously. “what movie are we watching?”
“we’re watching the princess one!” jiuen announces immediately. “the new princess one!”
“you mean the one we watched last week?” jake asks exasperatedly as he sits down on jiuen’s other side.
“yes,” she replies, unwavering. “but again. because y/n wasn’t here.”
you laugh again, and jake watches the way you tuck your legs beneath you without thinking. the way the tub of ice cream already sits on the coffee table with three spoons laid out next to it, two big, one small. the way that nothing about this should feel normal, but it does.
jake tries not to think about it.
“alright,” you say, reaching for the remote and hanging it to jiuen. “princess movie it is.”
and then everything settles into place, in that quiet, familiar way things do when they’ve been done a hundred times before and will be done a hundred times more. like if a stranger took a good look at the moment in front of them, they might think this is what every friday looks like in the sim household. except it isn’t. this is the first time. and yet, somehow, it already feels like something they’ve been doing for years.
jiuen insists on turning the lights off because “it’s cozier that way,” and jake lets it happen even though he knows she’ll be out cold in forty minutes. she narrates the first ten minutes of the movie, loudly. you react to every single comment like it’s important, nodding when she nods, gasping when she gasps, leaning in when she leans. jake watches that more than the screen. watches the way your hand absently smooths over jiuen’s hair. the way you tilt your head slightly when she murmurs something about the princess’s dress. like it matters that you hear her, like you want to.
the ice cream gets passed back and forth too—jiuen to you, you to jake, jake back to you, then back to jiuen, spoons clinking softly against the tub, the rhythm of it so easy and unthinking it almost feels practiced.
somewhere around the second act, jake realizes his shoulders aren’t so tight anymore, that he feels less hyperaware of your every move and your overwhelming presence. he allows himself to shift comfortably, stretching one arm along the back of the couch until his fingers brush your shoulder accidentally. accidentally, but enough. enough to send a spark through his entire being, but still so light that maybe you don’t feel it. if you do, you don’t pull away. and neither does he.
eventually, right around the forty minute mark like jake had predicted, jiuen shifts. her head dips, body rolling instinctively onto her side. and before anyone can stop it, she’s curled into you, cheek resting in your lap, small legs stretched across jake’s, tangling the three of you together beneath the blanket.
jake adjusts the blanket automatically, careful not to wake her. you don’t flinch at any of it—the closeness, the way it happens so naturally, the strange domestic weight of the moment. he watches from the corner of his eye as your hand keeps moving through jiuen’s hair, slow and steady, until her eyes finally flutter shut.
“she’s asleep,” you eventually whisper, barely moving as your eyes meet his.
jake nods, throat tight as he looks at you. “told you it was the ice cream.”
you let out a quiet laugh, gentle enough not to disturb her, eyes drifting back to the screen. his hand still rests near your shoulder. you still don’t move.
the movie keeps playing, but it’s long forgotten now. everything feels too soft, the room dim, only lit by the glow of the tv and the warm lamp from the kitchen. jake tells himself not to stare. tells him to focus on literally anything else.
he fails.
your breathing eventually evens out and jake realizes you’ve drifted off too—your head slightly tipped to the side now, resting close to where his hand sits on the back of the couch. and you look so soft—unguarded, lashes resting against your cheeks, hair framing your face perfectly. the glow of the tv paints your face in warm light, catching on the gentle rise and fall of your chest.
jake doesn’t move. he just watches. watches the way one of your hands still cups jiuen’s head, fingers absentmindedly threaded through her hair like you’re keeping her safe even in her sleep. the way you’ve leaned towards him without even realizing it. like instinct. like he’s where you belong.
jake looks back at the screen when he thinks he’s been staring for too long, but the movie means nothing now. animated colors flicker past, a princess sings, and he’s pretty sure some frog is talking. he absorbs none of it. all he can feel is the silent weight of the moment. the warmth of his daughter against his leg. the warmth of you just inches away. the fragile, impossible peace of it all.
eventually the credits roll and jake has to face the fact that he’s being selfish. that he’s been sitting here, not moving, just watching you breathe like this moment is something he’s allowed to keep. that’s you’re someone he’s allowed to keep. that you’re more than just the neighbor he just met and somehow already can’t imagine not knowing.
he turns back to you, takes in the vision in front of him one more time, then gently nudges your shoulder.
“hey,” he murmurs as you slowly stir awake. “you can stay. i mean—if you want. the couch—”
you blink the sleep from your eyes, clearly disoriented for half a second before smiling up at him softly. “hey.”
jake’s breath stalls, quiet and helpless, as you look up at him like that. he thinks his heart is going to jump straight out of his chest right here, right now, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
“hi,” he whispers back, because he thinks his brain can’t manage to think of anything else in his moment.
for a moment, neither of you move. not because you don’t want to, but because something about the space between you feels fragile. feels aware—of the look in his eyes as he looks as you, and the look in your eyes as you look at him. of how easily this could become something else. of how much it already has. and—definitely not for the first time tonight—jake realizes that, for once he isn’t overthinking about jiuen, or the overly animated princess and talking frog, or the way his couch creaks when someone shifts. he’s only thinking about you.
you eventually rub your eyes carefully before letting out a small yawn. “let me help.”
he watches as you carefully slide one arm beneath jiuen’s shoulders, one under her knees, and lift her from your lap with a slow, practiced ease. she stirs a little, a quiet, involuntary sound leaving her throat as she wiggles then settles to press her cheek against your shoulder, tiny fingers curling instinctively into the fabric of your sweater. you adjust your grip, one hand coming to cradle the back of her head, the other holding her close. she doesn’t wake still—just settles, breathing soft and steady again, like she knows she’s safe.
jake watches it all happen like it’s something holy.
you follow him down the hallway with quiet steps, the apartment hushed around you, the only sound filling air the low hum of the fridge and jiuen’s gentle breathing as you carry her to her room.
jake leans against the doorway of her dim room, heart caught somewhere between his stomach and his throat as he watches you tuck jiuen into bed—smoothing the blanket over her small shoulders, nudging her favorite stuffed animal closer to her chest, pressing a gentle kiss to her head.
“goodnight, princess,” you whisper.
something in his chest cracks open.
by the time you both make it to the front door, everything feels impossibly quiet. you step into the hallway that separates both your places but turn back toward him, lingering just inside the frame of his doorway. jake doesn’t move and neither do you.
“thank you,” you say softly. “for tonight.”
“anytime,” he replies, the word coming out more honest than he meant it to. then, after a pause, “and…thank you for inviting yourself over. again.”
you laugh under your breath, eyes dropping to the floor before lifting back to his. and suddenly, there’s a pause. the kind that stretches. the kind that tells him something is about to happen.
jake steps closer before he can talk himself out of it.
you don’t move away.
you’re close enough now that he can see the small changes in your expression, the slight part of your lips, the way your pupils are blown wide in the dim overhead light. his hand lifts almost on its own, as if he was in a trance from looking at you alone, brushing a loose strand of hair back from your face, knuckles grazing your cheek.
you inhale slightly, your breath hitching sharply as his thumb lingers there, warm against your skin. for a moment, he just stays like that, eyes searching yours, as if memorizing the feel of you, the way you look standing beneath his touch, so still and so impossibly his in this stolen pocket of time.
slowly and carefully, he leans in.
he watches you swallow.
your eyes flicker to his mouth for a brief second before back to his eyes, now wide and dark and wanting.
“goodnight, yn,” he murmurs, voice low and barely above a breath.
“goodnight, jake,” you whisper back, but neither of you move.
his hand settles at your jaw, not even thinking as he lets his body take over, his thumb sliding to rest against your bottom lip, pressing down just enough to part it further. the pad of his thumb is warm, slightly rough from years of holding jiuen’s hand, fixing toys, carrying grocery bags. it feels almost obscene in its gentleness.
your breath stutters, and a tiny, involuntary sound escapes your throat that makes his stomach drop. you’re so close now that he can feel the exact shape of your lips without contact, the faint tremor in your exhale over his mouth like an agonizing tease.
every nerve in his body is screaming at him to close the distance, every ounce of restraint he has gone, especially as he watches the way a small, “jake…” slips out of your lips like a confession, half plea, half surrender as his thumb presses a little harder against your lip. and then he watches as your eyes flutter closed and the way you lean in, lips ghosting his in an aching hover—
“daddy?”
jiuen’s voice cuts through the moment.
you jump apart. jake spins so fast it almost makes him dizzy.
a soft gasps leaves your lips at the same time as a quiet, frustrated curse slips from under jake’s breath as he turns and sees jiuen standing in the hallway outside her room, eyes half-lidded, one hand rubbing at them, her stuffed animal in the other one.
“you forgot to tell me goodnight,” she mutters sleepily, completely unaware of the scene occuring in front of her.
jake inhales sharply through his nose, eyes squeezing shut for a split second in what looks like pure frustration, heat crawling up his neck as he straightens up and eventually settles for something halfway between a sigh and a laugh as he walks over and bends to scoop her up.
“’m sorry princess,” he murmurs, “come here.”
you’re still standing there, frozen, cheeks flushed under the building’s hallway lights, lips parted like you forgot how to close them as you watch him.
“i—um,” you start, voice too high and a little too breathless, “i should…i should go. goodnight. again.”
jake nods quickly, still holding jiuen close. “yeah. yeah.”
you hesitate for just a second longer, eyes heavy as they meet his.
“goodnight, jake.”
“goodnight,” he says one last time before he watches you unlock your door with fumbling fingers and click the door shut behind you.
so jake doesn’t really know how this works.
or more accurately, it’s been a long time since he’s found himself anywhere near this kind of situation.
having a five-year-old daughter tends to do that to a person. dating doesn’t exactly slide neatly into a life that revolves around bedtime routines and color-coordinating outfits and making sure tiny humans don’t put rocks in their mouths. and he’s had…opportunities, sure. maybe not normal ones per say, but they’ve existed.
like back when jiuen was still a toddler and his friends had decided it was their personal mission to get him back into society…by attending mommy and me classes.
“maybe you’ll meet a hot mom there,” heeseung had said once, bouncing a one-year-old jiuen on his lap as she happily tugged on his hair like she discovered uncle hee is her new favorite toy now.
jake had shot him a look so serious that heeseung thought he was about to be threatened.
“do not say that in front of her. and also, those classes are for the baby. and it’s literally called mommy and me. not daddy and me. i’m not going.”
heeseung just shrugged in a way that said well, i tried before going back to making ridiculous faces at jiuen. from the other end of the couch, sunghoon looked up from his phone. “i think you should go. isn’t it supposed to help with development or something? social skills. brain stuff. seems good for her.”
jake slumped back on the couch, muttering, “doesn’t change the fact i’ll be the only dad at mommy and me.”
“so what?” sunghoon shrugged, clearly not having ever experienced the stress of a twenty-something-year-old with the responsibility of raising a toddler. “break the patriarchy or whatever.”
jake stared at him, horrified. “that is not how that works.”
and yet, that following thursday, jake found himself sitting cross-legged in a pastel-colored room, jiuen balanced on his lap, singing songs about farm animals and hand motions and friendship and feelings, surrounded by a circle of moms and their respective mes doing the exact same thing.
and yeah, sure, there were some cute moms. a few of them even approached him afterward, cooing at jiuen like it was their only opening line.
“she’s so cute,” one of them had said brightly. “looks just like you.”
and jake, because he’s jake, had panicked and blurted something about diaper brands. so needless to say, none of those conversations went anywhere.
so yeah, it’s safe to say it’s been a while since jake had anything to do with feelings.
but then you came into the picture. and now jake doesn’t really know how this work. because how exactly do you go back to how things once were after you almost kissed the girl across the hall? the same girl who now occupies far too much space in his thoughts. the one he thinks about when he’s lying awake at night. when he’s packing lunches in the morning. when he’s stepping into the hallway and secretly hoping, every single time, that her door will open.
but that’s just the thing. he hasn’t seen you ever since that night, which he thinks is almost a cruel joke sent from the universe itself, considering just less than a week ago, he froze at the sight of you in workout clothes, half-convinced and half-hoping you were joking when you offered to walk jiuen to school with him.
now? now he’s going out to check the mail a little too often than necessary, even though he’s lived in this building long enough to know deliveries only come on tuesdays and thursdays. he even started looking through the peephole every time the elevator dings, only to frown when it’s just another neighbor, and very much, not you. and yeah, okay, he’s not proud of that one.
but now, he doesn’t know what to do.
because now, it's late at night on a wednesday, rain tapping steadily against the windows, jiuen fast asleep down the hall. and jake should be getting ready for bed too. but because jake is still jake, and old habits die hard, he’s sprawled on the couch, watching late-night reruns of glee when at exactly 9:27PM, the tv flickers once. then twice. then goes dark.
the lamp on the side table follows. then the kitchen light that he had left on.
shit.
jake should’ve expected as much. blackouts always happen during storms, and this building—charming as it is—has never been known for its hasty speed when it comes to generators. that’s why, over the years, jake has learned to invest in a few backup LED lanterns for nights exactly like this.
he sighs to himself as he pushes himself up, already heading for the hall closet. and that’s when an intrusive thought makes its way to his head.
he wonders if you’re okay.
you’ve only been here a few weeks. you wouldn’t know about the power issues. wouldn’t know how long they last. what if you’re sitting alone in the dark right now, rain beating against the windows, the apartment suddenly too quiet? what if you happened to hate the dark? what if you happened to hate storms? the idea twists something in his chest.
he should check in on you. that’s reasonable. neighborly. normal.
except—what if you’re already asleep? what if he knocks and wakes you up just because he couldn’t stop thinking about you? and what if this is a lot less about neighborly concern and more about wanting an excuse to just see you again?
jake stands there, in his own hallway, one lantern in his hand and an extra one tucked away on the bottom shelf of the closet, staring back at him, his heart doing something quite unhelpful to his chest.
and next thing he knows, jake finds himself in front of your door.
he stares at your door, hesitating for just a second. the hallway is dim, lit only by the window at the end of it and the bright red EXIT sign next to it. he looks down at your welcome mat, with the slightly crooked letters that always makes him smile.
he raises his hand, knocking once, then twice. it sounds louder than it should, but then he hears a few footsteps, a soft shuffle.
then the door swings open, and there you are.
“oh,” you’re blinking at him, standing there in a long hoodie and socks, definitely not expecting company. he glances behind you for a second to see your apartment lit by a few candles. “jake?”
“hey,” he manages. for a moment, neither of you move, and jake is thrown back to just a few days ago, when he found himself in his same exact situation, standing so close to you at his doorway. “uh—sorry. i didn’t mean to bother you. the power went out and i…i just wanted to check on you.” he then lifts the extra lantern in his hand, like proof. “you okay?”
you glance past him down the hallway, then back at him. “yeah. i mean, it was kind of scary for a second, but i lit some candles.” a small smile. “you don’t have to worry about me.”
of course he does.
“jiuen?” you ask quietly, eyes flicking to his door across the hall.
“she’s asleep,” he replies. “in bed by eight, remember? didn’t even flinch.”
you nod, relieved. there’s a pause as the rain taps harder against the windows behind you. the candlelights flicker.
“do you…want to come in for a bit?” you ask after a moment. “it’s kind of creepy standing out here.”
jake’s heart skips. “yeah,” he says too quickly, then softens it. “yeah. okay.”
you step aside to let him in, the warm candlelight wrapping around him as he crosses your doorway.
jake hesitates for a moment before toeing his shoes off. he then takes in his surroundings—the way you’ve managed to make the place yours in just the few weeks you’ve been here. a woven basket of throw blankets sits beside the tv stand, a corner of one draped lazily over the side like it was returned in a hurry. a couple of books rest on the coffee table next to a mug with a silly cartoon on it. there’s a tall green plant that looks like it’s actually being watered that’s sitting near your window, and a stack of half-unpacked boxes sit near the hallway, labels scribbled in marker—bathroom, bedroom???, misc—and it makes him smile to himself.
he follows you into your living room, where you’re already moving the laundry basket that was sitting on the couch, clothes half-folded, a stray sock hanging over the edge. “sorry,” you murmur, setting it aside. “i was in the middle of folding when everything went out.”
“it’s fine,” jake says, moving to sit on the couch, trying not to take up too much space even though his knees brush yours when you settle beside him. you tuck one leg under yourself, turning towards him, the soft candlelight painting the entire room and your face in a warm gold that almost makes his heart ache at how soft the entire image is. ”um…so,” your voice is gentle, as if aware but avoiding the tension, “how have you been?”
jake almost laughs. almost laughs, because he’s been anything but okay.
because he doesn’t know how to tell you that ever since friday, his world has been shifted and devastatingly tilted in a way that is just slightly in only your direction. that everything, every small detail, keeps circling back to you in ways he didn’t expect and can’t seem to stop. that on saturday morning, while he and jiuen shared pancakes, he kept wondering if you’d felt it too—that moment where you lips had almost met his—and wondered if you wanted it as much as he did. that on sunday, he thought about knocking on your door just to ask if you wanted to come to the park with them, like that wouldn’t mean something more. how jiuen came home monday morning with a new stick figure drawing—not just ME + DADDY anymore, but ME + DADDY + Y/N. and how yesterday night, he laid there awake, staring at the ceiling, realizing something real and terrifying. how he doesn’t want things to go back to how they once were.
“good,” he lies straight through his teeth, a barely there smile tugging at his mouth because he doesn’t know how else to answer. “i’ve been okay, i guess. you know, work. jiuen. busy.”
“yeah?” your brows knit just slightly, concern flickering in your eyes in a way that makes him feel sick. “you’re taking care of yourself?”
and he nods immediately, like he needs you to believe him.
“and jiuen? she’s been okay?” you ask next, and the look on your face says you genuinely are wondering, and not just asking to be polite.
“yeah. yeah, she’s good.” a small smile sneaks in. “she misses you, though. keeps asking about you.”
you laugh softly, glancing away for a second. “tell her i miss her too.” you pause, as if a thought crosses your mind. then quieter, more sincere, “i really meant it when i said she’s lucky, jake. she really is.”
he just smiles back, not really sure what else to say when the moment settles between you and the air suddenly feels heavier. you then shift slightly, sitting to sit up straighter now, as if giving yourself the mental courage to say what you’re thinking next.
“can i…can i ask you something?” you say carefully.
he looks at you. nods.
“about jiuen,” you continue, almost hesitating. “about…her mom?”
jake lets out a short breath, like he knew this question was always going to find its way here, no matter how much he avoided it and no matter how prepared he was to fully answer it.
“yeah. she—um,” he pauses, eyes dropping to the material of your couch suddenly. “we were young, just…having fun. not thinking too far ahead. and then when it happened, it was a lot. everything changed all at once.”
he swallows.
“she wanted to keep the baby. and i respected that, of course. i still do. but when jiuen came along…it all got real really fast. and i mean, it did for everyone, you know? but i think for her…it was just too much.” his tries to keep his voice steady, but something tight sits underneath it. “so she left. i haven’t heard from her since…and now here we are.”
you don’t say anything right away. you just look at him.
“that’s…a lot,” you eventually say gently. “i’m really sorry, jake.”
he then looks up to meet your eyes, and he shakes his head almost immediately. “don’t be. i mean—yeah, it hurt back then. and it still does sometimes, but not in the same way. and i got jiuen out of it.” a faint smile pulls at his mouth. “and she’s everything. she makes all of it worth it.”
you can hear it in the way he says her name. not anything rehearsed, not anything forced. just true.
“and honestly,” he adds quietly, “it was probably for the best. we weren’t good together. not the kind of people who should’ve been reckless or trying to build a life like that.”
you don’t push, don’t interrupt. you just watch, eyes not leaving his once as if giving him the space to keep going if he needs it—like he needed this safe space to confront his own thoughts that he’s been pushing away for so, so long.
“i think…i think it hurts in a way that—” he says, voice dropping, “—that makes me wonder if i’m doing enough, you know? enough for her, enough for myself.”
you shake your head immediately, as if that’ll physically reject the thought from his own head.
“you are, jake,” you add, soft but sure. “and i know i haven’t been around long, but i see it. she looks at you like you’ve given her everything and more.”
something shifts in his chest at that. and then jake looks at you, really looks at you, like he’s weighing something in his head and tired of holding it in.
“yeah,” he says quietly. “almost.” the words hang there between you, heavy with intent, and your breath catches. just a little, but he still catches it. his eyes don’t leave yours. “but not…everything.”
and that’s when everything breaks.
you inhale sharply, like the truth you’ve been avoiding just brushed against something raw and tender.
“jake…” you murmur, turning away, like if you keep looking at him you won’t be able to stop yourself. “we can’t—”
“y/n,” he cuts in, already learning forward without even realizing he’s doing it, voice low and urgent, “you can’t tell me you didn’t feel it too. friday. what happened between us, we can’t just pretend it didn’t.”
you squeeze your eyes shut, exhaling hard. “i know,” you whisper, breath unsteady. “i know, and it’s not that i don’t feel it. i—i did. i do. it’s just—we can’t—”
“why?” jake asks immediately, closer now, knees brushing yours, searching your face like the answer is written there and he just has to read it right. “why not? because we’re neighbors? because of jiuen?” he can’t help the way his voice cracks a little. “because that clearly didn’t stop us from what almost happened.”
you finally look back at him, eyes wide and honest, mouth parted open and too close to his.
“jake,” you say quietly, almost like you’re begging him to understand and maybe begging yourself too, “it’s because of how much it matters.”
he stops.
“you don’t get it,” you continue, voice trembling now. “if this was just a stupid crush or some harmless flirting, it wouldn’t scare me like this. but it’s not. it’s you. it’s her. it’s—” you gesture weakly between the two of you. “…it’s this.”
“you think i’m not scared?” he says, blinking hard, voice barely above a whisper. “you think i don’t lie awake at night thinking about everything this means? how much it changes everything?”
he leans in even closer, not touching you, but still close enough you can feel the heat radiating off his chest, the faint tremor in his breath against your skin. the light of the lantern flickers across his face, catching the way his jaw clenches, the way his throat swallows hard.
“you make it feel like something’s missing when you’re not there,” he admits, quietly now, almost like he’s afraid the words still break on their own. “like something’s wrong when i don’t see you. you somehow make my own home feel empty without you in it, y/n.”
your eyes shine up at him, your breaths becoming more shallow, more uneven. jake’s gaze drops down to your lips, then back to your eyes. and then, without thinking, his hand lifts slowly, as if he’s giving you every chance to stop him, and settles lightly on the bare of your thigh, his warm touch brushing the sensitive skin just below where your hoodie cuts off.
you let out a small exhale, the sound barely audible. your hand finds his chest, not pushing, but just resting there, feeling the way his heart is pounding just beneath your palm. “jake—”
his other hand lifts, fingertips grazing the line of your jaw before cupping your cheek. his thumb brushes the apple of it, like he’s memorizing the way you look, the way you feel. the way your eyes flutter shut slowly, as if you’re trying to fight against your own restraint. the hand on your thigh starts moving higher, thumb stroking slower circles that make you press your thighs together instinctively. a low, broken sound escapes him when he notices before he breaks all his restraint and leans in, mouth hovering just over the corner of your jaw.
your head tips back against the couch, hands now fisting his shirt as his mouth moves, barely a kiss. the lightest brush of his lips against the side of your throat. then another. and another. each one soft, open-mouthed, each one lingering a second longer than the last. his hand slides higher, fingers curling gently around the inside of your thigh, making your hips shift restlessly. your hoodie rides up just enough that his fingertips brush your bare hip underneath it—and he stills for half a second as he realizes, with a choked sound, that you’re not wearing any shorts underneath the hoodie.
“fuck,” he breathes against your pulse, his teeth grazing the skin there, just slightly, and you let out a small sound before you could stop it.
“jake, please—”
“please what?” he murmurs, lips dragging up to your jaw, then moving to hover over your mouth again. “please stop?” another ghost of a kiss along the corner of your lips. “or please don’t?”
you’re trembling now, twisting the material of his shirt even harder, legs shaking, breaths coming in short, desperate pants.
“you’re…you’re emotional right now,” you barely manage, voice cracking. “you’re confused and not—” another kiss to your neck. “fuck—not thinking straight.”
jake pulls back just enough to look at you—eyes dark, pupils blown, chest heaving, but entirely real.
“no,” his voice comes out rough, needy, and raw and he doesn’t even care. “no, it’s not about that, nothing about us is about that. this is about you and me, and the way you look at me like you want this too. and you know that.” his hand moves higher now, deliberate, slow, until he reaches right where your hip meets your leg and he squeezes hard, making you gasp. “so tell me to stop. right now. and i will.”
and everything stretches thin, the moment frozen in time as you stare at him with your hands still bunched at the chest of his shirt—at the flush on his cheeks, at his parted lips, at the way you can feel his hand shaking with how badly he wants to keep moving, and the way he’s still giving you the out if you want it.
“please,” he murmurs, borderline desperate, eyes dark and pleading. “just—”
you let out one last, shaky breath. then your fingers tighten in his shirt, pulling him forward, and you crash into him.
and everything happens immediately, desperately. his mouth claiming yours, hot and hungry from the wait, tongue sliding against yours with a groan that vibrates through your whole body. you gasp into him, fingers threading through his hair, pulling him closer as the dam holding everything, all the tension, all the quiet glances, all the lingering touches, finally broke.
hands go everywhere, one of his fisting in your hair to angle you better against his mouth, the other fully sliding up to grip your ass, easily lifting you until you’re straddling his lap. you moan almost immediately, feeling the hard length of him pressing up against you through his sweatpants, the friction making you rock down instinctively. his head falls back against the couch for a split second—his eyes shut tight and his jaw hangs open in a silent moan before he surges back up to capture your mouth again.
“fuck, y/n,” he pants against your lips, hands sliding up your back, palms hot and rough on your back. “feel so goddamn good. wanted this—” your lips find his throat. another groan. “—so bad.”
you kiss him harder, moving your hips down harder, faster, as his hand roams greedily—up your sides, cupping your breast, thumb teasing over the sensitive bud until you let out a whimper. you arch into his touch, pushing down harder, the slick heat between your legs soaking through your underwear as all the tension breaks between you two.
jake thinks his head is spinning. or the room, or both. he groans again, deeper, more desperate as he bites lightly at your bottom lip, “god, so responsive,” he murmurs against you, every word punctuated by another kiss, another grind. one hand slides down to grip your ass, squeezing hard and pulling you tighter against him as he guided your movements now, his own arousal throbbing heavy against your core. the other stays tangled in your hair, tugging just enough to tilt your head back so he could have access to your neck, leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses that leave a wet trail, his teeth grazing your skin, marking you with gentle bites that make you moan louder.
“jake—oh my god,” you break the kiss just long enough to take a breath, but it comes out more like a broken gasp before he chases your mouth again, his own low moans vibrating against your lips. the room is nothing but the slick sounds of your mouths meeting again and again, the faint creak of the couch beneath your shifting weight.
he nips your bottom lip again, sucking it between his teeth, slow and deliberate before releasing it with a pop before going right back in, tongue thrusting deeper, slower this time, like he’s savoring every inch of you, like he can never get enough.
he doesn’t stop. he can’t stop. not when you’re straddling his lap like this, soft skin bracketing his hips, your own heat soaking through and straight onto the material of his sweatpants. not when every desperate roll of your hips drags your swollen core over the thick ridge of him, making him throb harder and feel like he’s going to lose his mind from the friction alone.
jake’s voice fills the air as he groans against the throat, voice wrecked and hoarse, lips brushing the sensitive skin there between words, whispering how good you feel, how long he’s wanted this, telling you to keep going, just like that, don’t stop. his hips buck up, chasing the pleasure, grinding harder, the roughness of his sweatpants scraping deliciously against you. “fuck, you’re dripping all over me.”
his name spills from your lips like you’re in a trance, the sound coming over in broken whimpers over and over, like a prayer you can’t stop reciting. your fingers dig into his shoulders, anchoring yourself as your hips circle faster, desperately trying to chase the building pressure. your hoodie now sits bunched up above your waist, exposing the soft curve of your hips, where jake’s fingers hold you so hard you think it might bruise, but you don’t even care. jake starts to trail his mouth from your lips to jaw, then down the column of your neck, sucking hard enough to leave blooming marks until you’re gasping his name louder than you mean to. his hands clamp down harder on your hips, guiding you, controlling the pace, pulling you down harder and harder until it almost becomes too much.
you’re both utterly lost in it—frantic, greedy, boundaries dissolving until there’s no longer a place where you end and he begins. every stolen glance, every trembling breath, every moment from the last few weeks narrows to this single point, the way your skin feels under his touch, the sweet taste of him on your tongue, the broken sounds neither of you can swallow down any longer. nothing else processes to jake—not how much time has passed, not how the rain finally slowed down outside, not how jiuen sleeps easily just across the hall, and definitely not how he feels like a trembling teenager on the edge of ruin, so close to pathetically spilling in his sweatpants from nothing more than the friction of you grinding against him. and yet he doesn’t care. not even a little.
at least, not until he pulls back just enough to hear a faint buzz overhead. a small one at first, and then—the lights flicker on.
everything stutters back on in a full, unforgiving snap. the hum of a generator kicks back in, every lamp in the room coming back to life in a single moment. the warm light of your candles and jake’s lantern drowns out almost immediately, replaced by the harsh brightness pouring over everything—your flushed skin, his parted lips, the way your thighs are still shaking against his.
jake blinks, dazed, pupils struggling to adjust and chest heaving. his hands stay still on your bare waist, fingers spread wide, thumbs resting in the soft curve of your waist. and you’re still, very much, straddling him, still pressed flush against the hard line of him, your hoodie scrunched up, your panties exposed and soaked through.
you look absolutely wrecked.
your hair is everywhere from his fingers, lips swollen and glistening, cheeks a deep red. your breaths come in shallow, uneven waves, and your wide, glassy eyes meet his for one beat.
jake thinks, in that split second, that he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
reality rushes in quickly.
“oh god,” you whisper, voice small and cracked, as if the lights stripped away every layer of the moment you two just shared. you scramble off his lap in a frantic rush, legs unsteady, tugging your hoodie down with trembling fingers like it can hide what just happened. “okay—well. thank you for the light. and the…neighborly check in.”
the words tumble out all too fast, too polite, too hollow.
jake just sits there, stunned, like someone pulled the plug on him. his chest rises and falls and he feels something ache. one hand is still lifted, palms up, fingers curled slightly as if he’s still trying to remember the feel of you. but now the air where you were feels too cold and too wrong. he stares at the empty space in his lap, at the slightly damp spot you left on his sweatpants, at the way his body is still vibrating, still aching for you.
“y/n—”
you force a shaky smile, the kind that doesn’t quite reach your eyes, stepping back toward the door. your fingers close around the handle too tightly, knuckles white. “check in complete, right?” the laugh you let out comes out thin, fragile. “goodnight, jake.”
he just stares for a second, before he finally exhales, the sound landing somewhere between frustration and something softer, something more broken. slowly, he stands, legs unsteady, adjusting himself with a grimace that does absolutely nothing to hide anything. he walks to you carefully, like he’s fighting the urge to close the distance again and buy more time.
he stops just inside the doorway, close enough that you can still feel him, close enough that the light catches the faint clench in his jaw.
“yeah,” jake says, barely above a whisper. he looks at you, taking in the way your shoulders are hunched now, the way your eyes won’t quite meet his, the way he’s watching you build walls brick by brick right in front of him. “goodnight, y/n.”
and the thing about getting kicked out of someone’s apartment at nearly eleven at night is that there’s nowhere for the feelings to go.
which is how jake finds himself in his own kitchen five minutes later, barefoot on the cold tile, staring into the open fridge like he’ll find a solution in there. the light hums. the shelves are half-empty. the milk is definitely expired. none of this is helpful.
which is how, ten minutes after, jay is now sitting on jake’s couch with a mug of something warm in his hands that he doesn’t remember accepting, while jake sits beside him—knees bouncing, jaw tight, staring at absolutely nothing.
“wait—wait,” jay leans forward, elbows on his knees, squinting like he’s trying to make sense of everything. “so. you almost kiss your neighbor. then you do kiss your neighbor. and then—” he gestures with both hands, “—she kicks you out?”
jake groans, tipping his head back against the couch. “yes. didn’t say anything else. just opened the door and thanked me for the neighborly check in, whatever that even means.”
jay stares at him for a second, like he’s trying to replay the whole thing without knowing the full details and yet trying to figure out where exactly it went off the rails.
“okay,” he says slowly. “so you guys talked.”
jake drags a hand down his face. “yeah.”
“and then…you guys didn’t talk—”
jake winces. “yup. very big jump from talking to…not talking.”
“and then the lights came on and everything…felt too real?”
“pretty much.”
jay leans back against the couch, mirroring jake now. “so…she just freaked out basically.”
jake shifts, one knee bouncing faster now. “i don’t know, jay. maybe. i think we both did.” he exhales through his nose. “it just—everything happened all at once. and i think it all got real, real fast.”
“yeah, well.” jay hums. “that tends to happen when you kiss someone you actually care about.”
jake opens his mouth to argue. stops. closes it again. he pushes up to his feet, pacing two steps before sitting right back down like he can’t get comfortable in his own body.
“this is so fucked,” he mutters, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “why did i even go over there? why did i think that was a good idea? should’ve just left her alone, god.”
jay squints, tilting his head to the side. “i’m getting wildly mixed signals here, man. i thought you wanted something to happen.”
jake exhales, long and tired. “it’s just—this isn’t just some girl. she’s not just someone i met at a bar and can pretend doesn’t exist if things get weird.” he shakes his head at himself. “she lives across the hall. she’s in my kid’s life. she’s in my life.”
his voice is more hushed now as he gestures down the hallway, where jiuen’s door is closed and quiet.
“maybe she was right. because if this goes wrong, it doesn’t just go wrong for me,” he says softer now, “it goes wrong for jiuen. and i can’t—i can’t be reckless about that.”
jay doesn’t say anything right away, just leaning back into the couch and crossing his arms loosely over his chest, looking up like he’s looking for the right way to phrase this without sounding like a jerk.
“okay,” he says eventually, “so you’re just scared of the possibility of this going wrong.”
jake just looks at him. “because it could. of course i’m scared.”
“yeah. i can tell.” jay turns towards him. “but you’re talking about it like you already decided it will.”
jake frowns. “i didn’t say that.”
“you didn’t have to,” jay says matter of factly. “you’re acting like your only two options are: everything blows up, or you don’t try at all.”
jake shifts, restless in his seat. “i want to try. i want this. i want—” jake stops, jaw tightening. “i want her.” he swallows hard. “i just don’t have the luxury of screwing this up, man.”
the expression in jay’s eyes softens just a little. “i know. you’ve got jiuen, i get that. that’s real.” he puts his mug down on the coffee table, looks back at jake. “but jake, you don’t get to shut the door just because you’re scared of what happens if you open it.”
jake goes still.
“you think jiuen doesn’t notice stuff?” jay continues. “she’s smart. she’s watching how you do this. how you let yourself care, how you let yourself—” he hesitates, then says it anyways, “—be happy.”
something in jake’s chest cracks. he looks away, eyes drifting down the dark hallway where jiuen’s door is. where the soft shine of her nightlight bleeds under the door crack like a reminder of her presence.
jake’s spent years doing this. measuring every want against what she needs. every late night, every skipped invitation, every almost. he’s taught himself how to fold his life smaller, quieter, safer. how to make room for her and take up less space himself.
and now here you are.
and you’re just natural. bright, warm, laughing in his living room. sitting at his table. holding his daughter like you’ve always been here. and it feels like something he didn’t know he was missing until it was right there in front of him.
and that’s exactly what scares him.
“no,” jake says quietly, shaking his head. “y/n was right from the start. i shouldn’t have said anything, done anything. i shouldn't have—” he pauses. exhales sharply. “i shouldn’t have let it go there.”
jay opens his mouth, but jake keeps going, everything finally spilling now that he’s started.
“i can’t risk this falling apart, jay," he says. “i can’t. because it wouldn’t just be some bad breakup and awkward run-ins in the package room.” his voice drops, almost to a whisper. “it’s jiuen asking why y/n doesn’t come over anymore. it’s her asking what she did wrong. it’s her losing someone she didn’t even know she wasn’t allowed to get attached to yet.”
jay exhales slowly. “you don’t know that’ll happen, jake.”
“i know it could,” jake lets out a short, humorless laugh. “and that’s enough.” he leans back into the couch, dragging a hand down his face. “i already messed up once,” he mutters. “i don’t get to mess up again.”
jay straightens, tone firmer now, but still low. “that’s not fair. and you know it.”
jake just looks at him.
“this,” jay says carefully, slowly, “is not the same as before.”
and deep down, jake does know it. knows that this is different, that you’re different.
knows that even through a short span of time, he can’t ignore the way everything shifts when you’re around. the way everything feels like this is it. like you’ve found the spaces he built for himself and his daughter and stepped into them without any warning.
and it all feels too close, too comfortable, too much like there could be more than the home he built within these walls between him and jiuen and breakfast pancakes and uneven pigtails and dinners that came from a phone screen propped up on the counter.
and jake knows, deep down, that’s what scares him. not that he wants you, but that part of him that already knows where you fit. and that’s exactly the problem. because knowing where you fit means knowing exactly what it would cost to lose you.
jake doesn’t sleep much after jay leaves.
he lies in bed, arms folded behind his head and staring up at the ceiling, listening to the soft, intermittent drip of raindrops making slow taps against his windowpane, replaying everything he shouldn’t be replaying. the way you carried jiuen into bed, the way your eyes shine whenever you smile at him, the way your skin felt against his, the way your fingers twisted into his hair with you in his lap, and the way you taste—sweet, dangerous, and still refusing to fade from his memory.
by the morning, jake decides to play it safe. the routine helps, it always has.
6:12AM, coffee, pancakes, one cookie—no matter how jiuen looks at him. jake tells himself that it he keeps moving, if he keeps the day ordinary enough, maybe everything will fall back into place. maybe the feelings will fall back into place. that maybe you’ll slide back into the category he put you in before—neighbor. friend. safe.
and it all almost works. almost.
because, again, the universe works in funny ways. in cruel ways, jake thinks. because right when he thought his day was over, that he managed to get through the entire day without running into you—it just happens.
he’s halfway down the hallway, jiuen’s hand soft and warm in his, her backpack slung over his shoulder because she insisted on carrying it herself and then immediately got tired one block away from school. and they’re only a few feet away from the door when it happens. when your door opens.
jake looks up before he can stop himself.
you walk out into the hallway, keys in hand, hair pulled back like you’re on your way somewhere. you freeze the same way he does, caught mid-step, like the world decided to press pause on this very moment.
for a moment, everything else disappears. the hum of the overhead lights, the distant ding of the elevator, jiuen swinging his hand—it all fades into the background.
jiuen lights up instantly. “y/n!”
you blink once, before your face softens into a smile as you crouch down, arms already opening without hesitation as she gives you a hug. “hi, princess.”
jake feels it in his chest. that small and sharp hit he’s pretending not to notice.
you stand back up and turn towards him. “hey, um—”
he looks away first. at the wall. at the floor. anywhere that conveniently isn’t you. his head already feels too full, his heart moving too fast, and he hates that you do this to him. hates that even without trying, no matter how carefully he stacks his safe mornings and routines, none of it holds when you’re standing right there. as long as you exist in his life.
when he looks back, you’re smiling—it’s small, soft, familiar. like nothing changed, like everything is still there, waiting for him.
jake straightens up instead.
“hey,” he says carefully, measured. “uh—do you have a second? can i talk to you?”
you still at his words, caught off guard, then nod. “yeah. yeah, sure.”
he turns, unlocking his door, guiding jiuen gently inside with a hand on her back. “go wait for me inside, okay? y/n and i need to talk for a minute.”
jiuen pouts immediately, already halfway through the doorway. “fine. but we have to hang out with y/n soon.”
you laugh softly, the sound a harsh contrast from the tension in the narrow hallway, lifting a hand in a small wave as the door closes, “soon, okay?”
when the door clicks shut behind her, jake turns back to you. his eyes are a little too wide, his breaths already a little too shallow. everything is telling him not to do this. to let it go. to let himself have this—just this once.
“listen,” he starts, then stops. runs a hand through his hair. tries again. “about the other night.”
your shoulders shift. your eyes snap to his, sharp and hopeful all at once, as if trying to read what he’s about to say before it comes out. “yeah—actually, i wanted to talk to you about that too. i can’t stop—”
jake cuts in before he loses his nerve.
“i think,” he says, staring at your door across the hall, at the scuffed spot by your feet, at anything that isn’t your face, “i think it was a mistake.”
the word lands.
you stop.
your mouth hangs slightly parted as jake watches you still, the smile on your face fading slowly. he pretends not to see it. pretends not to feel the way something in his chest sinks with it.
“a…mistake?” you repeat, voice smaller now.
jake swallows hard. “yeah. you were right. i shouldn’t have let it go there. i shouldn’t have crossed that line.” his voice tightens. “i just…i wasn’t thinking.”
you don’t say anything for a moment, just searching his face like you’re looking for the part of him that doesn’t mean it.
“this—” he exhales, frustrated, gesturing slightly, “—i don’t even know what this is.”
everything in him is screaming at him to stop. to take it back. to say anything else. that he’s already hurt you enough, he doesn’t need to make it worse.
“it was just…in the moment,” his voice cracks at the end. “it felt bigger than it was and didn’t actually mean anything.”
you hands stay at your side, and jake has to look away when he notices them trembling.
“so that’s all it was to you?” you ask eventually. “just…timing?”
jake almost flinches.
“that’s not what i meant.”
“but that’s what you said.”
jake opens his mouth. stops. rubs a hand over the back of his neck, eyes dropping to the floor like it might save him from the way you’re looking at him now—eyes shining but not with brightness this time, just hurt.
“i’m just—i’m trying to do the right thing, y/n.”
you let out a small, breathy laugh that doesn’t sound amused at all. “for who?”
he doesn’t answer right away.
“for everyone,” he says quietly. "for jiuen."
your expression softens, but it doesn’t erase the sting in your voice.
“right,” you murmur, nodding like you accept it. “for her. not because it’s easier to walk away.”
jake looks up.
“don’t tell me this is about you being scared,” you continue, voice steady even if your eyes aren’t. “maybe i was too. that’s why i pulled back, that’s why i hesitated.” you pause for a second. "but i can’t turn what happened into nothing now, jake."
everything feels too narrow. too close, too tight, too confusing. jake’s head buzzes, every thought and feeling tripping over the next, trying to gauge how he even let this happen in the first place. how everything flipped, how he’s now the one backing away when you’re right there standing still in front of him.
“y/n—i can’t—we have to, okay?” he hesitates, finally looking back at you, trying to swallow down the tightness in his throat. “i don’t get to…i can’t want things that might break everything else.”
“i get that,” you say, stepping closer to him. “but you don’t get to decide that for me, jake. i’m telling you right now—i was wrong. i don’t want to walk away from this, i want to try. whatever this is.”
and for a second, jake sees it. he sees it all in a rush—the dinners, the couch on movie nights, the walks to school, the way jiuen says your name. how easily his life blended into yours so naturally, how you slid into the quiet, stable routine of his life and made it feel full instead of small, repetitive. and he feels it, too. how much he wants to keep you there. and yet, even though every part of him fights them, he forces the words out.
“i’m deciding for me, y/n,” he lets out in a shaky breath. “we should just—let’s just go back to before. neighbors, normal.”
the word sounds wrong the second he hears it. jake almost wants to laugh. because he doesn’t think anything about you has ever felt normal. not from the first day you stood in the hallway with a box in your arms and shifted his life just a little to the left.
“normal,” you echo quietly. you take a step back.
jake hesitates, then nods. like if he keeps moving, he won’t have to think about what he’s just done.
there’s a long pause.
then you smile. and it’s nothing like the ones you usually give him.
“right,” you say. “i get it.”
and jake hates how relived he feels for half a second. hates how how easy it was for you to say it. hates how wrong it feels that he’s the one who made you say it.
you step down the hall.
“i guess i’ll see you around, jake.”
jake doesn’t say anything, just nods again, because it’s the only thing he seems capable of. and when you disappear into the elevator, jake stays there in the hallway, heartbeat pounding in his ears as the quiet finally catches up him and it sinks in a little too late that what he just protected wasn’t his life, or jiuen’s for that matter.
it was his fear.
the next week is exactly what jake asked for. normal. routine. quiet. but the thing about quiet is that it echoes. everything still passes in the same small, careful way. grocery bags and laundry cycles. cartoons in the morning, bedtime stories read a little too slow because jiuen keeps asking questions about the pictures instead of the words. normal. and yet, jake keeps checking the hallway out of habit, like his body hasn’t quite caught up to the decision his mouth made.
monday morning smells like pancake mix while jiuen sits on the counter as jake flips her mini ones over the stove.
“can y/n come for dinner tonight?” her legs swing innocently, unaware of how hard the simple question hits him.
jake doesn’t look up. “not tonight, princess.”
“tomorrow?”
“she’s busy, ji.”
jiuen hums, not pushing. “okay.”
tuesday, they run into you on the way to school.
“y/n!” jiuen doesn’t even wait for you to turn before her shoes are already squeaking against the floor as she runs into your figure, arms tight around your legs.
you laugh softly, dropping down to her level without thinking, “good morning, princess.”
jake watches the way you smooth her hair back, the way your thumb brushes a crumb off her cheek. when you stand, your eyes don’t fully meet his, “hi, jake.”
“morning,” he answers, too quickly, already stepping back and pointing down the hallway before he mutters something about getting jiuen to school on time.
wednesday is rain tapping softly on the windows and jiuen’s coloring books spread across the coffee table, pages crumbled and curled slightly at the edge from where she spilled water earlier and jake tried to fix it with a napkin.
“daddy, is y/n mad at us?” jiuen asks, like it’s a normal question as she draws a third stick figure onto her paper.
jake freezes. “what?”
jiuen shrugs, picking up a red crayon and scribbling a flower that’s too big to be realistic and halfway floating into the sky. “she doesn’t invite herself over anymore. and you don’t look at her like you used to.”
jake stops. because what does his five-year-old know about looking at someone? about how his eyes used to follow you without him even realizing it? enough for her to notice it?
“she’s not mad, ji,” he says, because it feels like the right thing to say, even if he’s not sure it’s true. “sometimes people just get busy.”
jiuen nods, clearly unconvinced. she adds a sun in the corner of the page and it comes out crooked. “i liked it better when she was here more.”
jake doesn’t answer. because so did he.
thursday night comes with leftover pasta and a show he’s already seen twice, but keeps on anyways because it’s jiuen’s favorite and she laughs at the same parts every time. friday is another elevator ride where he stands on one side and hopes, like an idiot, that the doors will open to you on the other side. saturday morning smells like dish soap and lemon cleaner and five loads of laundry.
and somewhere, down the hall, you’re doing your own version of this.
jake thinks about it without meaning to. you in your apartment, lights turned low, sitting cross-legged on your couch with your own version of your favorite show playing in the background. maybe you made that garlic-and-butter dish you promised you’d share with him one day, and now he may never get to try it. maybe there’s a laundry basket next to you on the couch, clothes half-folded, one sock still missing its pair. maybe you’ve already moved on. or maybe you haven’t.
maybe you think about the way his hand felt on you. the way he said your name like it meant something to him. the way he told you that you felt like home—and then took it back like it hadn’t already settled, soft and certain, somewhere deep inside you.
jake doesn’t know any of this, of course. because his saturday night comes with the soft sound of jiuen’s breathing as he tucks her in. saturday night comes with him lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about all the things he wants to take back. all the things he wishes he did instead.
saturday night comes with a knock at his door.
he sits up immediately, heart already jumping into this throat like, deep down, he knows who it is. he tells himself it’s probably a neighbor. maintenance. someone who got his mail on accident and is returning it. anything that isn’t the thought already forming in his chest.
he walks to the door anyways, and when he opens it—
it’s you.
you’re already standing too close, like you weren’t entirely sure where to put yourself either. your eyes are wide and glassy and looking up at him with a new expression he hasn’t seen before. jake can’t help but rake his eyes over your figure. the way your hair is done nicely, your makeup more intentional, the way your dress fits you tightly enough to convince him that he really needs to teach you about family-friendly-building-etiquette.
he notices everything. your cheeks are flushed deeper than usual. your eyes blink a little slower, your breaths a little softer, a little looser around the edges. the way you sway slightly in your spot.
“y/n?” he says in a low voice as he watches you carefully. “are you…okay?”
you shake your head immediately, too fast. “no—i mean, yes. i mean—” you huff out a quiet, breathy laugh. then as if you’re reminding yourself it’s way past eight pm, your voice drops. “i only had a little wine. i swear. just a few sips. i’m not drunk.”
you stop. swallow. your eyes drop to the floor between you before lifting back to his.
“i tried not to come here.”
jake doesn’t move. he watches the way you swallow, the way your fingers absentmindedly play with the hem of your dress.
“i—i went out tonight,” you continue, eyes steady even though your voice definitely isn’t. “i tried to forget everything, like you wanted. because—because it hurt so bad. what you said, that i meant nothing—”
jake squeezes his eyes shut, as if that could block out your words from his head. he starts to shake his head, but you keep going.
“—i tried to block it out, everything. the way i felt with you, the way you felt. the way you made me feel after only a few weeks but enough to know i want more.”
“y/n—”
“so i went on a date,” you say. and the words land heavy. heavy enough that he lets out an exhale without meaning to.
jake’s jaw tightens before he can stop it. something sharp twists low in his stomach, hot and ugly and very, very real. he hates the picture in his head, hates how easily he imagines you across from someone else, smiling the way you used to smile at him, giving pieces of yourself to a space he thought already belonged to him.
“…and i hated it,” you add quietly. “because all i could think about was you, jake.”
you keep talking, the words tumbling fast now, like you can’t stop now that you’ve started. “then i came back home and i told myself that whatever this is was just…tension or loneliness, or whatever. that i could forget everything. and i—” you stop, breath hitching, eyes now shining wet in the light. “i’m sorry. i’m so sorry, jake. i know you said we can’t, but—”
and when jake hears your apology, when he sees the way your eyes shine, all his restraint snaps immediately.
he cuts you off mid-ramble, not thinking, just moving. one hand cups your cheek, gentle at first, thumb brushing the damp corner of your eye, before the other slides to your waist and pulls you inside in one sure motion. he backs you up against the door instantly, his mouth finding yours before the door even clicks into place, everything tasting like pent-up frustration, the slight taste of the wine on your tongue, and the confession you just spilled.
you gasp against him, hands flying to his shoulders, fingers digging in to hold yourself up. his body presses flush against yours, hips pinning yours to the door. both hands grip your waist now, thumbs pressing into the soft dip above your hips, holding you exactly where he wants you.
“stop apologizing,” he rasps when he finally pulls back just enough to speak, forehead pressed to yours, both of you breathing hard and ragged. “don’t you dare apologize for this.”
he kisses you again—this time softer, slower, like he’s trying to memorize the taste of you. one hand moves to hold your face, thumb stroking your cheek again, the other still tight on your waist. “i’m sorry,” he murmurs against your lips, voice thick with everything. regret and need and pure desire. “’m so fucking sorry, y/n. i shouldn’t have said what i did. all i think about is you.” his hand on your face slides down your side, slow and deliberate, fingers tracing your outline before settling on your hip, gripping hard enough to make you arch in his hold. “about finally having you.”
you let out a sound at his touch, and it breaks him completely. he crashes back into you, mouth back on yours deeper this time, slower, savoring every second now that he’s finally letting himself have it. “want you so bad,” he breathes against your lips, voice wrecked and low. your hands find their way into his hair, and you tug gently enough for him to groan into your mouth, him tilting your chin up with gentle fingers so he can angle the kiss even deeper.
“i’m sorry, baby,” he whispers between kisses, each one softer and hungrier. “i’m all yours.” his mouth trails down your neck. you moan—quiet but broken enough—and he pauses, head lifting enough to quickly glance down the hall where jiuen’s room is.
“she’s asleep,” he murmurs, eyes dark. “we have to be quiet. think you can do that for me?”
you nod frantically, lips swollen and breathless, and that’s all he needs. he lifts you easily, your legs wrapping around his waist on instinct. he carries you down the hall with careful, deliberate steps, trying his best not to make any sound as he kicks his bedroom door shut behind him.
the second the door closes, he sets you on the bed like you’re something fragile, his hands lingering at your hips for a heartbeat longer than necessary, thumbs stroking slow, soothing circles over the material of your dress, the warmth of his hands leaving a spark in its trail. his fingers find the side zipper of your dress, and slowly peel the material off completely with deliberate slowness, eyes tracing every new inch of skin revealed like he’s committing it into his brain—the soft rise of your stomach, the delicate dip between your ribs, the way your chest rises and falls faster under his gaze.
“beautiful,” jake exhales a low sound, almost a groan. “so fucking beautiful, baby.” he leans down, pressing hot, messy kisses along your collarbone, teeth grazing just enough to make your arch. one hand cups the back of your neck, thumb stroking the skin there as if grounding you, while the other slips right above the thin material of your underwear, fingers spreading wide over the curve of your ass. he squeezes once, firm and possessive, then soothes the spot with a gentle rub.
your underwear is off in one smooth motion, his hands dragging the fabric down against your thighs, tossing them aside without looking. then he’s back between your thighs, spreading them wide with his palms, your skin cool underneath the heat of his hands as he settles on his knees at the edge of the bed so he can really look at you. his pupils blow wide and dark, but there’s something soft in the way he exhales your name like it’s a prayer.
“god, look at you,” jake breathes, voice wrecked and vibrating against your skin as he leans closer. you involuntarily shift your hips at the sensation of his breath against your thigh, and he lets out a small chuckle before moving back up, as if teasing you. his mouth finds yours again, softer this time, lips parting yours with a tenderness that made your stomach flip, his weight pressed right up against your heat. the kiss deepens quickly, his tongue tracing the outline of your lips before slipping inside, exploring with lazy strokes that sends warmth pooling low in your gut. you sigh into him, hands roaming up his arms, and he lets out an exhale without meaning to. “you’re perfect,” he murmurs against your mouth, his hand tracing the bare skin of your hip lightly.
suddenly impatient, your hands fumble at his waistband, fingers clumsy with need, hooking into the elastic of his sweatpants, already feeling the hard outline of his own arousal straining against it. you tug down just enough to free him, not wasting any time to wrap your hand around the base, the sensation releasing a deep sound from him. jake squeezes his eyes shut as his hips jerk forward into your touch, a bead of precum already slicking your thumb.
“fuck—” he breathed, head dropping to your shoulder, but then his hand catches your wrist, stopping you with a firm squeeze. “not yet, baby. wanna take care of you first.” he moves your hand away and pins it to your side against the bed as he starts to make his way down, his mouth trailing kisses along your jaw, your neck, your chest, leaving light nips that sting just enough to make you gasp. he settles back between your legs, broad shoulders pushing your thighs apart, the heat of his breath fanning right over your core, groaning softly as his eyes fix on the way you’re already dripping for him.
“look at you, so wet for me already,” he whispers, voice thick with awe, thumb brushing lightly over your folds, collecting the slick there and circling your clit with agonizing slowness. “such a good girl, getting all worked up just from kissing me.” he drags two fingers through your folds—slow, teasing, the slick sound obscene in the quiet—the pad of his fingers collecting your wetness, gliding with ease. he watches the way your hips twitch, your breath hitching in short pants. then he pushes them inside, deep and fast, curling just right against that spongy spot deep inside you.
“fuck—jake—”
your head falls back against the pillow as you whimper desperately, already clenching around him instinctively. and before you could even fully process the sensation, his mouth quickly replaces his fingers, tongue flat and broad, licking up a stripe up your center that has you arching off the bed, fingers twisting onto the sheets at your sides. “oh my god—” you gasp, eyes squeezing shut as the feeling washes over you all at once. the taste of you on his tongue draws a hum from his throat, the vibration buzzing against your core as he sucks gently, then harder and quicker, his hands forcing your thighs open when they try to close around his head.
“jake—” you gasp, voice breaking, but he just murmurs into you, “shh, baby. let me hear your pretty sounds, just quieter for me, yeah? can’t wake her up.” his fingers then join his mouth again, one slipping inside, then two—curling deep and slow, the wet slide filling the room with obscene sounds. his eyes watch you the whole time, eyes dark and half lidded, praising you between each lick—“fuck, so tight” “gonna feel so good around my cock”—his fingers pump faster now, curling harder, filling up the quiet room quickly before he suddenly plunges a third, stretching you full with a careful twist. “that’s it—open up for me.” jake moves like a man possessed, eyes fixed on where his fingers are moving at an impossible pace now, disappearing in and out of you easily with your arousal spreading everywhere. everything burns so sweetly, the fullness making your thighs tremble, and jake feels your walls flutter around him. “doing so well for me, baby. wanna feel you cum around my fingers first, yeah?”
the pressure builds quickly, jake moving without a care in the world, his tongue circling your clit with precise flicks, the pressure building hot and tight in your belly, his fingers pumping in the same rhythm until he feels you shatter—back arching, a muffled cry escaping you as one of your hands fly to clamp gently against your own mouth. he feels you squeeze around his fingers in waves, walls clenching around his fingers in pulsing grips as he works your through it, tongue gentling but not stopping, lapping up every last drop you release, fingers easing out slower and glistening now until you were limp and oversensitive. “there you go, so perfect—so good for me, baby—”
he sits up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes dark and hungry as he watches you sprawled out in front of him, the aftershocks making your hips twitch, your skin flushed and glistening with sweat. a knowing smirk sits on his face as he shed his sweatpants fully this time, his cock springing free, tip already flushed and leaking. he strokes himself slowly, hand slick from your arousal, eyes locked on yours as he settled between your legs again, one hand bracing beside your head.
“you okay?” he instantly softens his demeanor, bringing his free hand up to your cheek, thumb brushing softly as his eyes search your face. you just nod, pulling him down by the hair for a kiss, tasting yourself on his tongue as he groans into your mouth, his hand now moving down to position himself at your entrance. he stops there for a second, just rubbing the head through your folds, coating himself in your slick like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you, nudging your clit before pressing just the tip in, then pulling back. your hips lift instinctively, chasing him, but he stays still for a moment, eyes dark yet amused, breath coming in shallow pants against your mouth. “patience, baby,” he murmurs, but his voice cracks at the end, like he was torturing himself too.
“please, please jake—” he hears you mumble softly with a whine and jake just chuckles, but his eyes stay locked on where you connect, watching as he pushes in inch by inch, the stretch burning sweet, both of you gasping quietly in unison. “fuck,” he groans, head falling forward as he sinks in deeper and deeper, the heat of him filling you completely, walls instantly fluttering around him. you moan softly, nails digging into his shoulders, the sharp sting of pain making him inhale sharply.
his eyes fly shut when he finally bottoms out, hips flush against yours and stills—breaths syncing, his forehead on yours, sweat beading at his temple. “so fucking good,” he breathes, voice breaking. “you feel so good.” he starts moving then, slow thrusts at first, the rough drag of him against your walls sending sparks up your entire spine. the pace builds naturally, hips snapping harder, skin slapping softly, the bed starting to creak beneath you.
jake watches the way you bite your lip, cheeks flushed, eyes staying shut at the sensation like you’re struggling to hold yourself back, and he feels himself twitch inside you from the sight alone. he tilts his head, a wicked smile curving at his lips as his hand slides to one of your wrists, pinning it gently beside your head.
“why so quiet, baby?” he murmurs against your ear, voice teasing as his grip on your wrist stays firm, but careful, thumb stroking the inside. “gonna call me daddy in front of my kid all normal, but now you’re shy?”
your eyes snap up to his and widen in surprise at the boldness in his tone as he watches your reaction, your cheeks burning hotter and mouth parting in a silent moan. you squirm under him, too fucked out to even find the words when his thrusts turn harder, sharper, hips snapping with more force, his tip hitting that perfect spot deep inside you over and over again, almost like a punishment.
“jake—”
jake grunts, thrusts faltering for a second. “not jake,” he murmurs, thrusting a little more forcefully at that, “say it. let me hear you.”
“daddy,” you gasp, the word tumbling out shy and needy and he lets out a louder groan, rewarding you with a deeper thrust, his hips now moving in a filthy rhythm, as if out of his own control.
“fuck, yeah—that’s my girl. say it again.”
and you do, the word dripping more confidently this time from your tongue despite the pink on your face as he rises up slightly, still buried deep, knees dipping into the bed to steady himself. his hand stays wrapped around your wrist firmly, the other one now moving to your throat when your moans get louder, fingers wrapping gently, thumb pressing just enough to feel your pulse racing, keeping you in place as he pounds deeper.
“look at me,” he demands softly but everything intensifies quickly, his hips slamming now, skin slapping wet and loud, the bed creaking louder under the brutal force. his hand on your throat tightens just a fraction, possessive but always checking your eyes. “gonna make you feel so good, baby—gonna ruin you for anyone else.”
jake feels himself slipping. just a little, control fraying as the pleasure coils tighter, louder than he should allow in the quiet apartment—knows the low groans and ragged breaths and creaks of the bed are carrying further than they should, but the thought dissolves the second it forms. his mind is a beautiful and wrecked, jumbled haze now, narrowed to the wet, desperate sounds of your whimpers against his ear, the slick velvet grip of your walls clenching around his cock with every thrust, the sharp sting of your nails raking down the muscles of his back—digging in hard enough to leave marks he’ll wear proudly tomorrow and never once regret.
he knows he’s slipping. knows he’s losing himself, maybe a lot more than just a little—because his body now settles fully over yours again, skin sliding together with every roll of his hips. his mouth finds the crook of your neck, lips brushing hot and messy against the sensitive skin there, words spilling out a in low, broken babble he can’t hold back.
“gonna fill you up, baby,” he whispers, voice wrecked and trembling against your pulse, each syllable punctuated by a deep, grinding thrust. “gonna make jiuen a big sister—gonna make you a momma, all swollen and round and mine. you want that? want daddy’s baby?”
the words tumble out raw and reverent, half plea, half promise, his breath hot and uneven against your throat as he presses one last open-mouthed kiss there, teeth grazing just enough to make you let out a whimper, before the rhythm of his hips turns frantic again, chasing the edge with you.
“oh my god—jake, gonna cum, gonna—”
jake watches as your eyes squeeze shut as his words finally push you over, feeling the way your walls flutter harder around him, slick heat suddenly flooding between you as your body arches off the bed as much as his hold allows, thighs shaking, a fresh wave of wetness coating him and dripping down to the mattress. he follows seconds later, slamming deep inside you with a choked moan—spilling hot inside you in thick, pulsing waves, the warmth immediately spreading deep in your core, filling you until it leaks out, sticky and warm around him.
when he finally pulls out, both of you hiss at the sudden emptiness, the wet sound of him leaving you sharp in the air, a string of your combined slick connecting you for a moment before breaking. your body lies spent and boneless, trying to catch your breath. but before you can, you feel jake’s hands on you again and he’s flipping you onto your stomach in one fluid, strong motion, hands rough but careful as they grip your hips, pulling you onto your knees.
“not done,” he pants, and he doesn’t wait for a response before he slams back in all at once, the new angle hitting deeper than before, the stretch making you cry into the fabric of the bed sheets, the fullness overwhelming with his cock dragging new spots that make stars burst behind your eyelids. his hand trails down on your lower back, pressing you into the mattress to hold you steady, arching your back while the other spanks your ass lightly at first, then another one—harder this time, the sharp sting blooming red before soothing it with a slow rub, the contrast making you clench around him, the wet sounds even louder and filthier now.
“c’mon, baby. take daddy’s cock like a good girl,” he mumbles, thrusting relentlessly now—skin slapping loud against skin, his balls hitting your clit with every snap, the headboard of the bed tapping rhythmically against the wall, the wooden floors creaking in protest beneath. he moves to lean over you, chest to your back, his breath hot and ragged against your ear as he feels himself twitch violently inside you. “fuck—’m gonna cum, baby. tell me you want it, please—”
“—yes, please, want it so bad daddy—” and then you cum harder this time, walls clamping down around him as your orgasm washes over you in blinding waves. jake follows right after with one last final thrust, spilling deep inside you for a second time tonight, your name and broken praises tumbled from his throat in a rush as he feels his cock swell and twitch against your tight walls—”yeah, take it all” “my perfect momma, so fucking perfect”—hips grinding slow and deep to keep every drop inside, until he finally collapses over you, both of you panting, bodies tangled and slick with sweat, the room heavy with the scent of sex, his heartbeat pounding wildly against your back.
when jake eventually rolls off of you, he pulls you with him without hesitation, your body wrapped into his arms, head buried into the crook of his neck, cheek pressed to the warm of his chest where his pulse still races. his hands are gentle now, soft strokes through your hair, fingertips outlining lazy patterns along your spine. he presses a kiss to your temple, then your cheek, then the corner of your mouth and it lingers, the kind of kiss that feels like a promise.
the shift is almost a harsh, stark contrast from just a few minutes ago. the same hands that gripped your hips hard enough to bruise now cradle you like something priceless, the same voice that growled filthy commands now murmuring soft, soothing nonsense into your hair. the same guy you met down the hall with eyes that didn't quite meet yours then and nerves in his voice.
“are you okay?” his voice is soft, concern lacing over every word, every feature on his face, as his thumb brushes your cheek and his eyes search yours—pupils still blown, still dark but filled with something tender and protective. your lashes flutter open, just barely, but enough to glance up at him and give him a small, sleepy smile as you nod slowly. exhaustion takes over your body as you curl into him like it’s instinct now, like your body already knows where it belongs, his nose nudging into your hair, his heartbeat steady against your ear, slowing you down with it.
jake exhales quietly, like the moment he's in is fragile. his thumb traces slow circles at the small of your back, and somewhere in that simple motion it hits him. it hits him how wrong he was to think he could ever keep you at a distance, how impossible it feels to imagine his nights without this, without you. how every careful, measured routine he's spent years building suddenly makes sense only because you're standing in it, changing it, softening it.
“good,” he whispers, pressing another kiss to your forehead.
and you’re already drifting when you hear it, soft and hopeful against your skin.
“stay with me tonight, yeah?”
and you do. you stay that night. and the night after. until it stops being a decision and starts being a habit, one that happens naturally.
and somewhere in between all of that, jake realizes how you've become threaded through each and every one of his routines, soft and steady and unmistakably his. how he wakes up at 6:12AM to you now, your hair in his mouth because you always steal the corner of his pillow in your sleep. how he makes two coffees now instead of one. how you carefully pack jiuen's apple slices into her lunch box and sneak an extra cookie in there when you think jake isn't looking and he lets it happen anyways.
a few months down the line—somewhere between jake learning that you never finish your dessert and you realizing that he rubs the back of his neck every time he gets overwhelmed—you finally teach him your garlic and butter recipe.
t’s a tuesday and it’s nothing special, just one of those in-between days where jiuen has a spelling testing tomorrow and jake forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer, which means you’re in charge of dinner by default.
you show up with your keys in hand, hair twisted into a messy knot from your long day. you kick your shoes off by the door without thinking and they land next to jake’s, tipping one over. and the kitchen eventually fills with the kind of smell that settles into the walls. butter and garlic and something else that’s warm and soft that doesn’t feel like it comes from a recipe.
jiuen hums to herself as she sits at the table, swinging her legs, erasing the same spot over and over again because she likes the squeaky sound the eraser makes. you’re in the kitchen, next to jake and rambling about the most recent thing your coworker did at work to piss you off when you lean over and dip a spoon into the pan he's stirring. you taste it, squint a little, then tilt your head.
“hmm,” you smack your lips. “needs salt.”
jake has already stopped.
he’s just standing there, wooden spoon frozen in his hand, watching the way you continue to move in his kitchen like it’s yours too, now. the way your hair falls out of the messy knot at your neck, soft pieces catching the light. the way you’re wearing one of his sweatshirts—too big in the shoulders, sleeve bunched up so they don’t cover your hands—like you changed into it the second you came home without even thinking about whose it was.
jake feels it then. the quiet, steady shift in his chest, like something finally settling where it was always supposed to go.
you notice and stop what you’re doing, the sink running behind you where the vegetables you were washing sit abandoned now. you glance up at him, a curious smile already tugging at your mouth. “…salt, jake.”
“salt,” he repeats, but his eyes don't move from yours, like the word is foreign to him. like he forgot what the two of you were even doing in this room. he doesn’t move.
your eyes peer with amusement, your cheeks now a degree warmer. you move to close the distance, reaching past him to grab the salt from the cabinet. when you press it into his hand, your fingers linger for a half a second too long.
“there,” you murmur. “salt, in case you forgot what that is.”
jake looks at the salt in his hand. then at you. then, without really planning to, because jake is still jake and doesn’t really think sometimes—
“i love you.”
and the world doesn’t stop. the sink keeps running behind you. something sizzles on the stove. jiuen’s quick footsteps creak somewhere down the hall. the salt still sits in jake’s hand. so the world doesn’t stop, not exactly. but you do.
you turn back to him slowly, like you want to make sure you heard him right. there’s already a smile pulling at your mouth, impossible to hold back.
“yeah?” you ask, soft and quiet, almost teasing.
jake nods, like he’s confirming something for himself even though he's pretty sure he's known all along.
“yeah.”
you just stare at him for a moment. only for a moment, before you close the distance and your hands find their way around his neck and into his hair, and you kiss him. right there in the middle of the kitchen, with the sink still dripping and the smell of burnt garlic in the air because jake didn’t listen and left the stove on for too long earlier. and it’s just a simple, soft press of your mouth against his. warm and easy and familiar. yet jake still fumbles and drops the salt on the counter with a clatter he absolutely does not care about as his hands settle on your hips, pulling you in just enough.
he kisses you back slow, fighting back the smile against you, his fingers pressing in gently to hold you in place. like he’s got nowhere else to be. like he plans on staying right here for a long time.
”—DADDY WHERE DID YOU PUT MY BACKPACK?”
jake stops. he lets out a sound that lands somewhere between a laugh and a groan and drops his forehead against your shoulder. you’re already giggling, your hands still in his hair, your breath warm against his cheek. you pull back just enough to look at him, eyes bright before you give him one more quick, soft kiss.
“i love you,” you say. jake grins.
then you turn and call out, “coming, princess! check mine and daddy's room, ji.”
jake laughs under his breath, low and fond, and squeezes your hips once more before letting you go. he watches you disappear down the hall like it’s the most normal tuesday in the world.
so yeah. they say having kids will change your life. but they don’t tell you many things about having them.
they don’t teach you how to do braided pigtails without watching three youtube videos and still messing up. they don’t explain how to stay calm when you realize your three-year-old can be allergic to strawberries but somehow stay immune to falling off the couch. they don’t tell you how much money to leave as the tooth fairy, or how to sneak a bill under the pillow of a light sleeper, for that matter.
they don’t warn you that one day, your hallway will start to smell like citrus shampoo and butter and garlic. that there will be an extra pair of shoes by the door that aren’t yours or your daughter’s. that your fridge will slowly fill with things you didn’t buy—oat milk you’ll never drink, a bottle of hot sauce you pretend you can handle, a half-eaten container of ice cream that’s now a must have on every friday’s movie nights.
they don’t tell you that home can change shape without you realizing.
it happens in the small ways first.
in the way jiuen starts calling your apartment “the other house.” in the way that jake learns, somewhere between aisle seven and the checkout lane, that different pasta shapes actually matter to you—not for any logical reason, but just because you like how farfalle looks like little butterflies on plates and that makes jiuen smile. in the way movie nights turn into mornings, and mornings turn into you standing in the kitchen in one of his shirts, arguing about whether pancakes count as a balanced breakfast if there’s fruit involved.
it happens in the quiet.
in the way he learns the sound of your keys in the hallway. in the way you learn which floorboard outside jiuen’s room creaks and how to step around it on bare feet at two am. in the way you’ve gotten used to the one cushion that sinks a little too much on the couch and yet find it more comfortable that way—your body naturally curling into the dip, jake’s arm stretched along the back, fingers idly tracing soft patterns on your shoulder on purpose this time while jiuen snoozes away between you.
it happens in the soft moments.
in the way jake lets himself lean into you when he’s tired, head dropping to your shoulder after a long day, face buried into the crook of your neck, inhaling the faint scent of your shampoo and the warmth of you like it’s the only thing keeping him stable. in the way you naturally turn toward him in your sleep, your body seeking his even in your dreams, head against his chest, one leg sliding between his, hands fisting loosely in his shirt while he holds you close, palm splayed wide over the small of your back, fingers making lazy circles until your breathing evens out against his collarbone.
and it happens in the intimate moments.
in the way jake knows exactly what makes you feel good—the precise angle that makes your back arch off the mattress, how the slow, deep grind has you gasping his name into his shoulder so jiuen doesn’t hear, exactly how much pressure you like when his thumb circles your clit, in the way he knows the hitch in your breath when he sucks a bruise into the skin beneath your ear, knows how to whisper good girl against your pulse when you’re nearly close to breaking, how to pin your wrists above your head just firm enough that you melt under him, trusting him completely.
in the way you let him fill you completely—each and every time, and he’ll still check, voice low and rough but still nonetheless soft—”you okay baby?” “gonna fill you up, yeah?” “my perfect pretty momma”—even when he’s buried deep inside you, hips rolling slow and deliberate, sweat slicking the space between your bodies, the sheets tangled around your ankles.
in the way you reach for him in the dark after, fingers threading through his, legs still trembling as he pulls you against his chest, lips brushing your temple, murmuring soft nothings until you drift off again, safe and full and his.
and maybe that’s the part they don’t really tell you.
that home isn’t the walls, or the lease, or the schedule you've built for yourself over the years. sometimes, it’s a five-year-old asleep in the middle of the bed, a half-finished bowl of ice cream melting slowly on the nightstand, and you—on the other side of her, already drifting off, fingers in her hair, looking like you chose this. like you chose her. and like you chose him.
and jake thinks, while watching his future fall asleep in front of him, that maybe this is the thing he’s been looking for all along. not just a life. not just a routine. but something that looks a lot like you.
something that looks a lot like home.
꩜｡⊹ ࣪ ˖ & as always,,,,tytytyty for reading! mwahmwahmwah!
PAIRING. biology professor!nishimura riki x student!reader.
SYN. an upcoming anatomy final leaves you teetering on the edge of exhaustion, buried under stress and self-doubt. but when professor nishimura offers a steady, guiding hand, the pressure starts to lift — and suddenly, the lines between mentorship and something more begin to blur.
WC. 29.5k (what the hell lol)
CW. 18+ mdni, age gap (reader is in early 20s // riki is in his late 20s/early 30s), porn with some plot, power dynamics, angst, fluff, secret relationship, sexual fantasies >_<, college au, praise, degradation. piv, unprotected (pls don’t) creampie, breeding kink, spit kink (yes he spits.. on u), petnames (good girl, etc.) mentions of alcohol and drinking, skinship, riki is terrible w admitting his feelings, slowburn (?) fem!reader, spanking, dumbification oral sex (f!rec)
AN. IT’S FINALLY FUCKING HERE OH MY GOD. firstly i want to say thank you to my gorgeous beautiful @d2iose for being my beta reader + hyping me up all the time n @dolllnini for being the biggest prof!riki fangirl. i would not have bothered to finish this hot mess if not for u guys.. i’ll send ass pics soon as a real thank you gift alright… ;)))) jk. maybe if u guys rlt want it. i genuinely feel indebted bc u had to listen to me crash out over this shit like at least 5 times over.. anyways it’s crazy cus i started this fic in like november and i’ve only now come around to finishing it. incredibly slow of me.. sorry. i hope it touches all ur souls and makes u wetter than anyrhing imaginable bc only the father, the son and Holy Spirit know how down bad professor nishimura got me feeling. i’m so sorry for the long ass word count too cus it was originally meant to be like 10k but i have terrible self control n i didn’t want to make everyone wait for like a Mehhh short fic. might as well lengthen it am i right???!!! okay. enjoy it u freaks!!!
PLAYING. summer by brockhampton, blue eyes by illusion hills, beside you by 5sos, stateside by pinkpantheress, he gets me so high by beabadoobee, love me harder by ariana grande, slut me out by nle choppa, glory box by portishead, master of none by beach house, everybody here wants you by jeff buckley, pyramids by frank ocean.
IT IS 5 IN THE MORNING.
birds are chirping and the sun is barely peeking over the buildings across from your modest apartment, kissing your skin in the most overstimulating way possible — your curtains have shifted slightly open due to the long night’s wind, and you are tired of hearing cars honk this early into dawn.
you’re clicking through the right arrows on your keyboard mindlessly, eyes barely processing the stream of images flashing across your macbook screen. the air in your lungs feels heavy, leaving your lips in slow, tired sighs — each one spelling out ‘why did i choose this major?’ in the shape of fading smoke.
two semesters worth of content to get down before your anatomy final. you’re angry, understandably: it’s less than a month back from your term break and you’re already slammed back to back with tests, projects, and tiny, worthless assignments you couldn’t be bothered to start.
“fucking ridiculous.”
microsoft word is minimized, a blank document laying dormant from 10 hours ago when you said you’d start on that small-scale literature review for your sociology elective.
spoiler: you have not, and you really don’t think you’ll have time to unless it’s a day before submission.
your first actually important hurdle was the anatomy final coming up. you’d done surprisingly decent so far — the warning words of your seniors had served you well up till now — but apparently, someone in the biology faculty decided to up the stakes and test all the majors on every single chapter instead of the usual, “too-easy” and “relaxing” ten.
you’d read the email two tuesdays ago, right leg folded over the left as you sat in a local coffee shop.
one moment you were sipping a rich, smooth caramel latte, enjoying your one blessed day of starting classes at noon — and the next, you were crying into your palms.
for a moment, professor riki nishimura’s face flashes in your mind. with a face like that, you had half a mind to tell him to fuck off and get a job in modelling instead.
he, presumably, was the one making things ten times harder for you. though, you couldn’t exactly point fingers at who decided on the sudden syllabus change, with a lack of proof and all that.
on the bright side, it’s nice to know that he had that much faith in you and your peers. bellcurve and whatever, if you’d just get those 500 cards down, you think you’ll outperform many of them. still, it doesn’t mean that the chronic sleep deprivation feels any more worth it.
You: dude i’m not getting anything done for anatomy 5:12 AM
Sooha: me neither 5:13 AM
Sooha: im telling u it was prof who added those fucking chapters 5:14 AM
You: literallt why does it matter im stillleft eith 250 fuckign cards 5:16 AM
Sooha: i emailed him this morning asking him to reconsider so it woudl be kinda embarrassing if it wasnt him 5:17 AM
You: fuck thats genius 5:17 AM
You: why r u even awake btw 5:17 AM
Sooha: creative writing assignment due at 8am lol 5:19 AM
genius indeed, sooha — perhaps one or two emails would help persuade your kind professor to reevaluate his expectations of class of 2025.
it wasn’t that you were incapable. it was just too little time, too many priorities; being twenty something and in university, in not to mention one of the most competitive education systems in the world, definitely takes it’s toll on you.
walk around campus and you’d see at least five people with sunken eyes and some kind of posture problem from bending over wooden desks for hours.
you wonder how people get through this with stellar gpa’s and a spotless attendance. you’re already down to 90% for some classes, and it feels like sand slipping between your fingers with how desperately you’re clinging onto the last bit of sanity college has left you with.
you lean back into your beanbag, nose tipping towards the ceiling as you exhale heavily. the air is freezing cold this time of year, and your fingers lay still on your keyboard, mind repeating sooha’s words. you’re stumped.
i wrote an email asking him to reconsider.
you sit up, shifting around, the sounds of plastic beads rustling inside of the fabric of the beanbag. your eyes glaze over the bright, fluorescent screen that lights up your entire living room with it’s glow.
the bookmark to outlook practically speaks to you in your sleep-deprived state, and you’re oh-so close to imagining eyes and a mouth growing from the icon.
so you click on it. press the notebook button with knit eyebrows and your teeth clenched, jaw twitching in a slowly brewing mix of anger, stress, and sadness.
To: NISHIMURA RIKI
prof im suffering so bad with these fucking chapters. 10 was already bad enough and u want us to do ALL OF THEM?????? are u crazy????? havent u been thru this before?? u have a phd??? do u not understand how students feel?????.?. this is incredibly inconsiderate actually. its either you help me get this A and maintain my gpa or i am not shwoing up for that damn test
strange. it sounded more formal in your head, still equally vulgar but with a little more tact. you’d written plenty of informal emails before; ever since college started, lecturers seemed more relaxed than the typical high school teacher. some you called by name, some you’d chat with over coffee in the cafeteria. you’d even met a few of their kids during school events, like that one campus-hosted marathon last year when you accidentally bumped into mrs. lee’s ten-year-old son.
still, nothing had ever felt this charged. your literature professor might’ve called it poetic — maybe even commendable — as if that would somehow justify the string of inappropriate words you were typing. but even in your half-awake state, you knew this was going to go sideways, upside down, and sideways again.
nevermind that, your mind whispers. it is tomorrow’s problem.
with that, your index finger slams down on the touchpad, the cursor darting across the screen until it hovers over the large X in the corner of your browser. another click and it’s gone, and it’s another second for your eyes to screw shut.
Email sent to NISHIMURA RIKI.
─────────────────────────
PROFESSOR NISHIMURA WAS A PHENOMENON AROUND CAMPUS.
young, rich, handsome, smart, disgustingly so. a man holding such traits was bound to be under the watchful eye of colleagues, lecturers and students under the same institution — highly revered and wildly desirable to all the girls in your year.
he was only a few years older. an impressive feat, agreed by many: the walls of his office were decorated in certificates, plaques with his name inscribed, all praising his research and contribution to the field of biology. his shelves were taken up mostly by books, or framed photos of him receiving awards, standing alone with a polite smile that barely showed how proud he really was of where he stood.
naturally, he was wanted everywhere he went — by universities, research labs, private companies who would’ve splurged to their last cent to have him under their belt.
but still, nothing compared to teaching something he loved — no amount of awards could ever give him the same satisfaction as seeing a student get a grade they worked so diligently for, under his guidance.
it was a selfless kind of addiction.
professor riki shows up to class in tight button-ups, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms as he leans against the lectern, laptop open to slides he knows no one will really care about. the real lesson begins when he picks up that thick black whiteboard marker, sketching every muscle, vein, and layer of skin from memory — movements so precise it feels like watching art unfold.
even the lowest-scoring student can’t help but stare, chin propped in their hand, caught somewhere between awe and disbelief at how effortlessly professor nishimura draws, how sure he seems of every line, every curve, every minute detail that other lecturers couldn’t replicate.
who the hell wouldn’t want a guy like that? remembers what’s important and loves working with his hands. it’s pure fantasy sitting right in front of you.
in pure, uncensored, and shameless honesty, you’ve thought about it once or twice during his classes. thought about him.
it’s the way he looks at you when he leans over your desk, voice low, explaining something gently and meticulously, all the words clicking in your head as he mumbles on about pulmonary ventilation and respiratory pumps.
“mm. that’s right, smart girl. you don’t need my help after all.”
it doesn’t help that he calls you to his office after a few sloppy mock tests, isolating you from the rest of your class in that sleek, quiet office tucked into a far corner of the administrative building. you’re not there often, but every time you are, it feels unreal — because professor nishimura doesn’t seem entirely human.
“tell me what you want,” he would mutter, flipping through papers at his desk as you shift your weight nervously. “use your words, like a big girl. i can’t read your mind.”
he’s too composed, too annoyingly blunt, acting as if the words that roll off that sharp tongue don’t make you squirm, dizzy in the head while you remind yourself that this is professor talk, not hot-nerdy-tutor talk.
so why the hell is he still so sexy, then, despite the constant self-reminders?
it’s a pain in the ass. it’s not working. at all.
you catch yourself wondering if he has a wife, maybe children, or a secret past he left behind in japan. whether he ever regrets it — trading familiarity for this polished, lonely kind of brilliance in korea.
or maybe he was really just an oddly cold guy, by nature, who also happens to be really hot.
well — you couldn’t ask your professor that. not for as long as he was your professor, of course.
it goes without saying that if he were a classmate of yours, you’d have sunk your claws into that man centuries ago; stared at him like he was the sweetest eye candy you’ve ever had in all your years of schooling as he passed by you in the halls.
you’d ask him for help with homework, run your hand over his bicep when his jokes get a little too funny.
“riki, are you free tonight? help me with my assignments… please?”
you’d smile, bat your lashes, play innocent until he couldn’t ignore it anymore. he’d drag you into an empty classroom to take care of the problem in his pants, the one that emerges every single time you get too close — close enough to get a whiff of your perfume, or your sweat, or your hair.
or just you.
you’d unbuckle his belt, pull his pants down in one swift motion, wrap your lips around that stupidly thick tip of his. he’d fist your hair, guiding you up and down, drooling all over his cock where he knew you belonged.
then, the late night homework-slash-study sessions would lead to your hands palming his bulge through his sweats, your lips messily crashing against his — he’d moan your name as you sunk down on him, right on your desk chair, the lamp on your table shaking with every wet thwack of skin. he’d shove his fingers in your mouth, trying to shut you up before your roommates come barging in.
“o-oh fuckkk,” you imagine him panting, big hands holding your hips as he helps you bounce on his dick. “pussy s’fucking good—so perfect, [name], made for me.”
in another life, professor nishimura is not your professor, and he’s folding you in half in your dorm every friday night after your last class. his glasses thrown somewhere onto the floor, your shirt riding up your chest, his pants barely down his thighs cause he’s just so needy and impatient.
“this what you wanted?” he’d grunt, your knees folded against your chest, thighs slick with sweat and cum and every other fluid you can’t bother naming. “dumb slut. didn’t even do half of your work right—fuck—rubbing all up on me the entire fucking week. can’t wait for some dick? huh?”
“s-sorry, riki, i’m sorry—mmph—!”
saturday brunch plans with jiwon and sooha would be automatically cancelled. instead of cruel reality, where you’re just too sleep deprived to make it out of the building — in this fantasy, your legs just simply won’t let you get out of bed.
“good for nothing,” riki would tap your cheek with his fingers, your tongue lolling out for him to spit on. “just for me to fuck. waiting all damn week just to be filled—felt so empty without your riki inside of you—huh, baby?”
he’d rut into you, rough hands feeling your tits, your moans starting to amp up. he’d fuck you like he’s known you his entire life — like he knows your body better than you do — because in truth, he does.
“i just m-missed you so much, riki,” you’d whine, grinding your hips against him to meet his thrusts halfway, each hit making your toes curl behind his back. “o-oh fuuuck—right there!”
“yeah? show me how much you fucking missed me, then, dumb bitch.”
it’s that damn degree, those framed certificates, that impossible air of authority — standing between you two, spelling out the line you can’t cross. the one that divides student from mentor, fantasy from a painfully brutal reality.
“that’s all the time we have,” professor nishimura’s voice rolls through the lecture hall, low and smooth, the kind that sinks into your skin and lingers long after the sound fades. even through the mic, it carries that calm, deliberate rhythm that always makes you sit up a little straighter.
you’re half-asleep, six rows back, barely holding yourself upright after another night of terrible decisions and too little rest. still, you catch every word — because somehow, you always do when it comes to professor nishimura.
his back turns to the whiteboard, eyes scanning the room for the same few students who raise their hands to ask ridiculously specific questions. professor nishimura answers each one in turn, unhurried and precise, his tone steady, his explanations effortless. it’s unnerving how smooth it is, no pauses, no haste, just knowledge flowing out of him like it’s second nature. his mind seems like a library built from years of quiet obsession, and he speaks with the calm certainty of someone who’s never once needed to guess.
you wonder if he could memorise all 500 flashcards of yours in less than ten minutes. you’d bet $5 he could. it’s too bad you don’t have as much of an obsession with biology like your beloved professor does.
“i hope i don’t need to remind you all to study for your final. email me if you have any queries.”
his final words dissolve into the usual chaos — backpack zippers, chatter, the quite thudding of chairs against cheap carpet. you exhale, already feeling the weight of the next two hours pressing down. your next class isn’t until later, but the library fills up fast around this time.
you spot sooha near the door, standing on her tiptoes like a soldier ready to sprint, determined to claim one of the few coveted study spots before the lunchtime crowd floods in. for a moment, you just watch her go, too tired to follow, too comfortable basking in the faint echo of your professor’s voice still looping in your head.
“studied?” jiwon’s hand brushes over your slumped shoulders, your forehead kissing the surface of your desk. you look up to meet her gentle, concerned eyes. an angel all in all, before her expression morphs into one of genuine shock. “oh my god. what time did you sleep last night?”
those damn cards. again. you’ve still yet to finish them.
“don’t even ask me that,” you huff, index fingers rubbing your eyes, trying your best to get blood moving inside of your body. “you going for lunch?”
“i have class in twenty,” jiwon frowns. she looks genuinely crushed, and all it does is make you smile up at her. “we’ll eat tomorrow?”
“i can’t—too many things to do. next week?”
she nods at your words before turning back around, hugging her pink laptop to her chest as she walks off — her stride still as light and cheerful as the first day you met her at freshman orientation. it’s comforting, in a way, knowing that even when sooha’s busy spiraling over her chaotic study habits, jiwon’s calm, steady presence always balances it out. around them, the world feels a little softer, and for a fleeting moment, you believe there’s really nothing worth stressing about.
you slump over your desk once more, the quiet hum of air-conditioning lulling you to back to sweet, comforting sleep — until something begins to tap at the turn of your shoulder.
“miss [last name].”
you smack your lips together, hair falling over your face as you tilt your head up, meeting professor nishimura’s heavy, lingering gaze. his glasses sit slightly askew, a little too low to be comfortable, and you can’t help but notice the way his middle finger moves to push them back up the slope of his nose.
“yeah?”
from this distance, he doesn’t seem all that unattainable. realistically, he’s only… what, five, six years older than you? maximum seven, if you’re pushing your luck. not a wrinkle in sight, he must take care of his collagen levels.
still, standing this close, that tiny gap feels even smaller — like the space between student and teacher was never really there at all. he looks like any guy you might’ve shared a homeroom with back in high school, or a friend of a friend you’d spot shooting hoops during a study break. maybe even someone your age working part-time at the local café, trying to chip away at student debt before it piles up.
he looks ordinary. familiar. like someone you could know.
professor nishimura blinks slowly at you, slightly surprised by your casual tone — still, he wasn’t one of those teachers with a stick up his ass about authority, because he himself knew that he was not all that old with grey hairs.
“are you okay?” he asks.
you smile lazily at him. you don’t imagine you look cute right now, but you do it anyway. “i’m great, professor.”
his skin looks flawless. his hair is amazing. his lips look so moisturized, soft, pillowy. he speaks to you with the same gentleness and concern you never got used to, even after attending his classes for weeks.
“are you sure?”
he raises an eyebrow, expectant expression written all over. what the hell does he want you to say? no, i’ve been studying all night for your stupid exam and now i have to show up for your stupid classes 10 in the morning?
yes, professor, i am as jolly as a student can be! albeit i am running on four hours of sleep, two cups of black coffee, and dying airpods, everything’s going great—
“i’m sure, professor.” you grit your teeth in a pleasant smile. he hums in satisfaction at your reply, eyes squinting, as if he was quietly analysing every detail of your very fake grin. you’re worried he might catch the flicker of disdain in your eyes, but even if he does, he doesn’t poke at it.
smart guy.
“by the way, i answered your email.” professor nishimura says finally, clearing his throat as his voice slices cleanly through the heavy air. it feels tense, awkward even, though the feeling seems to exist only on your end. he remains composed, collected as ever, while under the sleek surface of his desk, your leg won’t stop bouncing.
“huh?”
if only for a second, something flickers across professor nishimura’s face — amusement. like he finds you funny, maybe a little entertaining. it’s strange, seeing that expression on him of all people.
no — most of all, it is terrifying.
this is the same professor nishimura who rarely entertains small talk outside his field, who wears no ring on his finger, who still has the default iphone lockscreen. the one whose phone occasionally buzzes mid-lecture with microsoft team messages — notifications he never bothers to mute, because in his world, work has always come before life.
“have you read it?”
there it is. that twitch in his lips, a short breath that comes out as a scoff, before he grins.
he finds you funny, in the way an old friend from high school might, with that same teasing edge in his expression, like he’s just waiting to see how you’ll react. there’s something disarming about it, familiar in a way that doesn’t fit the setting or the title he carries, yet it lingers between you all the same. now, he’s smiling down at you with an expectant grin, watching your brain scramble in real time for an answer.
only then you realise what he’s just said — your email. your half-asleep, drowsy, fuelled email that was keyboard mashed with furious fingers.
your throat goes dry. his hands slip into the pockets of his slacks, fingers fidgeting in the small space that seems too tight to hold anything of importance.
“hm?”
professor nishimura leans forward, just enough to cast a shadow over you — the harsh white lights of the lecture hall still blaze above, but beneath him, the room somehow feels dimmer than when you first walked in.
he reeks of cologne.
you’ve smelled it before: expensive, heady, the kind that lingers for days. you remember considering that same scent for your ex, the one a year above you, the one you met at a frat party back when you were still a freshman. but now, all that memory dissolves into this moment — into the scent that clings to him, to the way professor nishimura looks down at you with that smug, unreadable grin, like he’s studying something rare under the lens of a microscope.
“yeah! yeah, i have,” you force a smile, “but could… could you refresh my memory? i was reading it on the way to class, and i was just so incredibly busy—“
his jaw.
the smug bastard’s jaw.
it twitches.
under this lighting, you see it clear as day, the way he shifts his weight and tilts his head: as if he was amazed by this reaction he was managing to pull from you.
professor nishimura leans his frame closer. the air shifts completely: every thud of your ventricular walls squeezing blood echoes in your ears, your skin warming under the sudden proximity, your breath faltering as the sharp, unyielding man in front of you closes an already (inappropriately) small gap between you two.
your gaze drifts to the line of his neck, and — as if the universe insists on being cruel — a fresh wave of his cologne fills your senses. it’s strong enough to sting, to make your eyes prickle with heat. you can’t tell if it’s because of the way he’s looking down at you, heavy and deliberate, or because you’re genuinely fearing disciplinary action. either way, your stare darts to the wall behind him, anywhere but the place where his eyes are anchored on you.
“i’ll be more than willing to help you,” he speaks, clearly and smoothly, as if it was really nothing much that you harassed his inbox last night. “why didn’t you ask sooner, hm? i’m almost offended.”
just another tuesday for the likes of someone so brilliant. it makes you roll your eyes — he notices, tongue poking into his cheek as he does so.
“i thought you’d be busy with other matters, is all,” you smile up at him, pretty irises peeking through your lashes as you bat your eyes. “aren’t you, professor?”
fucking minx, he thinks.
“i’d always make time for you, you know that. you’re a smart girl,” professor nishimura says, the smirk now fully formed, carved into his face like it belongs there. “however…”
his hands brace against your desk as he leans further in, close enough that you can hear the faint rustle of his shirt when he breathes, the sharp inhale of air before he speaks. “if you need a little extra help, of course, i’ll do anything.”
it’s the way the words land and hang in the air. he isn’t talking about academics.
it’s an invitation with sharp teeth, slipped between the lines and delivered in a voice that knows exactly where the boundaries soften — where they blur just enough for you to start decoding.
it’s up to you to decipher him, and you do, your eyes narrowing ever so slightly as you meet his, reading him in a way he definitely meant for you to.
“i’ll take you up on that, then.”
a knowing smile is all you receive.
─────────────────────────
IT’S THE NEXT AFTERNOON and you find yourself sinking into a leather seat situated in front of a dark oak desk. your eyes trail the swirls in the material, glazing over the tiny details in this cold, relatively lifeless office — professor nishimura’s not much of a decorator, it seems.
he was late. completely unlike him, and much to your disfavour, especially since you had another appointment in an hour — his email had outlined what you’d be reviewing today, and a dozen questions started buzzing in your head as you reread it, eyes skimming over chapters you hadn’t even touched yet, blindsiding you entirely.
From: NISHIMURA RIKI
Hope 4pm is okay for you.
do you even have a fucking choice?
From: Y/N L/N
of course, 4pm’s great! thanks
that’s what you get for uploading the entire slide deck into some random ai flashcard generator instead of making them yourself. still, he’s worked his magic before, turning complete disasters into stellar students by their next quiz — and you weren’t that far gone, were you?
just then, the sharp click of dress shoes starts to echo down the desolate fifth-floor hallway, each step bouncing off the sterile walls of the administrative building.
you exhale slowly, index finger tapping a nervous rhythm against your thigh.
seconds later, the metallic rattle of a doorknob turning sounds through the office. your lungs expel a breath that you didn’t even know you were holding — it hitches again when professor nishimura finally pops into view, looking clean and sharp as ever, hair slicked back with what looked like gel.
a few loose strands fall over his forehead, just enough to show he’s been busy today — but the rest of him still looks irritatingly put-together.
his white button-up is tucked neatly into tailored slacks, the sleeves rolled just high enough to expose the veins running along his forearms. his glasses frame his face perfectly, catching the faint reflection of the overhead lights, and there’s a faint crease at the corner of his eyes that tells you he’s been squinting at his laptop for too long.
even his cologne arrives before he does, cold and expensive, settling into the room with the same quiet confidence he carries everywhere. and yet, despite looking like he walked straight out of a modelling gig, he’s here — giving up an hour of his afternoon to tutor you.
“hello, [name].”
you notice his shoulder bumping into the tall bookshelf next to you, just as he walks by to sit himself down on his office chair — you stare at him from across, nose taking in all of him, smiling politely as he begins to pry open his laptop.
“so, uh…” you mutter, fingernails scratching the back of your neck. “this won’t take long, right?”
the sounds of his keyboard echo through the office, your question hanging in the air for a few seconds before he turns his neck slightly to meet your gaze.
“usually, students start with a ‘thank you for seeing me, professor’,” professor nishimura deadpans, before turning back to the bright, white-lit screen in front of him. “but you’re welcome.”
you swallow. “sorry.”
“not an issue at all.”
it takes a while for him to get through everything. he angles his laptop toward you, finger resting over the right arrow key as he moves through each slide from last week’s lecture — nearly ninety of them, all crammed into a single chapter.
by the time he reaches slide forty-five, a dull ache creeps into your spine from sitting too straight for far too long. you start leaning forward, shifting in your chair once, then twice, the subtle scrape of fabric against wood too loud in the quiet room. professor nishimura notices — his eyebrow lifts, just barely — but he says nothing, simply resumes clicking through the material with that same steady composure.
“you see, right there,” he emphasises, other hand reaching from behind the screen to circle around a pair of arteries. “you got it?”
you bite down on your bottom lip, eyebrows pinching together like you’re really, really trying.
the truth is, you have no idea what he’s talking about.
it’s one of those cursed slides with a giant arrow pointing at nothing in particular; the next slide is supposed to reveal the answer, but for now you’re staring at ten different arteries in the upper body and every single one looks exactly the same.
yes, he did point it out… or circle it out. not very specific.
“uhm…” you mumble, eyes flicking up to meet his.
and for some strange, impossible-to-explain reason, your heartbeat spikes.
“[name],” professor nishimura says your name with a patient smile — the kind someone wears when they know they already gave you the answer, but you weren’t paying attention. frustrated, but soft about it. “show me. where are your carotid arteries?”
your stomach twists.
show him.
you lift your hand toward the screen, index finger uncurling from your fist, trembling just slightly as you reach forward.
“you don’t know?”
his voice lands like an accusation. of course you knew — you studied this. it wasn’t new. maybe if he weren’t here, it’d be easier to recall, but now that he’s sitting across from you — with that strict expression, slick hair, with sleeves rolled up so tight that his biceps are stretching the fabric… who the fuck would care about some arteries?
“uh,” you mutter in an annoyed voice, even though you’re the one who asked for this, for his help, for his guidance. “could you show—“
professor nishimura doesn’t wait for you to finish your sentence. his chair glides forward, wheels murmuring against the oak floor as he leans over the desk. his hand reaches for you — fingers brushing warm against your neck, right beneath your earlobe, settling on the soft patch where your jaw tapers.
“here, [name]. external carotid artery.”
he blinks slowly, watching you, like the frantic pulse thudding against his fingertips isn’t already giving you away.
your hair rustles against his hand as his fingers slide back an inch, tracing heat along your skin. “internal’s behind it. deeper.”
your throat bobs once, a small, involuntary motion against the steady press of his fingers. each beat beneath his touch gives you away, loud and frantic, betraying every ounce of composure you’re trying so hard to hold onto. the man looks as calm as ever — not a hint of suspicion, not even a gentle smile.
professor nishimura’s gaze flickers, just briefly, to the spot where his hand meets your skin — then back to your eyes, sharp and unreadable.
“feel it?” he asks quietly, tone softer now, almost coaxing. “that’s the point of reference. you can’t forget it once you know where to look.”
his fingertips linger only a moment longer before he withdraws, hand returning to the edge of his laptop as if nothing had happened at all. still, the ghost of his touch stays with you, warm and impossibly present, pulsing beneath your skin long after he’s pulled away.
“now,” he says, voice steady, “show me again.”
your pulse answers first, tripping over itself — and you’re sure he can feel it, even from where he sits.
you smack your lips awkwardly, searching for something to fill the silence, tension making your thighs press closer together, pulse thrumming in your ears as you continue to stare at him.
“like, on the screen?” you mutter, eyes fixed on the swirls and dots of his lecture material.
a soft snicker escapes professor nishimura, and it somehow eases the moment, making you giggle at the ridiculousness of your question.
“yes, on the screen, [name].”
the day passes on just like that — full of ridiculous questions, popping up in your head as the lesson goes on.
professor nishimura doesn’t scowl. doesn’t tilt his head with judgment. doesn’t squint his eyes as if he can’t quite believe how little you’ve retained — which is true, by the way — instead, he’s gentle. tentative. clear with every word, like he’s not rushing you; a quiet confidence that you’ll get it because that’s just who you are.
you lean over his desk, head resting on your forearm, ear pressed lightly against it as you watch the screen at a 90 degree angle. answers come easily, almost automatically, and you barely notice the hour slipping by or the exhaustion settling in. he remains upright, clicking through slides and offering study tips and mnemonics, a steady presence guiding you without hurry.
yes, the day passes just like this — calm, quiet, with professor nishimura, who seems to grow more handsome as the diffused evening sun bathes his skin.
are you sleep deprived?
“you need to remember your values,” he mumbles, “oxygen and carbon dioxide. partial pressures. they’re important, don’t for—“
the blonde strands in his hair catch the light, glowing golden. the room is warm, dust motes drifting lazily in the sunlight, bouncing off the sheer curtains that do little to soften it. and somehow, you find yourself grateful for that.
“professor,” you interrupt, softly. “i know. you’ve been saying that for the past ten minutes.”
he’s been focused on the screen all this time, but your words pull his gaze toward you. you notice the faint tug at the corner of his lips as he turns, his eyes meeting yours while you lounge against the desk.
“hm?”
one thing your professor would never admit: he, too, is thankful for the evening sun.
casting light over your hair, kissing the skin of your arms, making it impossible not to notice. though, all of it’s quite boring compared to the blush spreading over your cheeks, blooming all the way to your ears — you hide your face in your sleeve, a half assed attempt at covering up the flush.
he pretends not to care about that. he can’t care about that. “it must be getting late. i didn’t notice.”
you sigh, somewhat disappointed at the change if topic — as if professor nishimura would ever admit how gorgeous he thinks you are, right to your face. “me neither.”
the few moments of silence that follow feel like eternity. there’s you: smiling like you were seeing an old friend for the first time in forever, and there’s him: attempting to pretend like all the air in his lungs haven’t been lost to the atmosphere.
he must be sleep deprived too. you’ve robbed him of his evening coffee run, he realises.
“same time tomorrow,” he speaks, finally, voice low and hushed — as if it was a secret, something reserved for only you. “i’ll be waiting.”
“yes, professor.”
─────────────────────────
IT STARTED OFF AS A JOKE. sooha was stressing over creative writing, and you over sociology.
except that the joke = “i would fuck professor nishimura if he was the 3rd last guy on earth, because he’s probably better in bed than other two who were spared with him”
“you’re so fucking weird,” sooha’s kicking her feet up, right leg over the other as she swivels in your chair. “you’d actually fuck him?”
“judging me isn’t going to make him any less sexy,” you murmur between sounds of chips snapping between your jaws. it leaves a spicy burn on your tongue, quickly forcing you to reach for your water bottle on the nightstand. “and can you blame me?”
she looks up from her phone, right at you. the dim, blue light illuminates her face in the dark and gloomy atmosphere that is your dorm room, highlighting every disgusted curve on her face.
“you’re crazy.”
you shrug, tying the bag of chips up before throwing it at sooha. she catches it instinctively, eyebrows narrowing at your lack of an answer, hands reaching into the snack anyway.
“i don’t like him, by the way. he’s hot, but nah,” you click your tongue, eyes drifting over the popcorn ceilings of your cramped and poorly lit bedroom. “he’s probably engaged or something. doesn’t bring his ring to work because he thinks it’ll distract people from how stupidly big it is.”
“i’ve seen him drive around in his black porsche,” sooha giggles, licking her fingers clean of chip dust. “it’s something from a movie. this guy doesn’t know when to stop.”
“right?” you laugh a little too hard at the absurdity of it — the hot professor with tightly rolled sleeves, who owns a ridiculously expensive car, who probably lives alone in a three story minimalist house in the corner of an upper class neighbourhood. “i need to know if he’s married.”
she flicks an ant off her knee. “why the hell does it matter to you? are you actually going to—“
“well,” you smack your lips, thinking hard of an answer that wouldn’t sever your friendship, but knowing sooha — nothing you say could ever make her flinch. “not if he’s married.”
sooha snickers at your brutal honesty, chomping down on three chips stacked on one another, and for a moment you almost snort at how completely unfazed she is — how she really doesn’t care that you just admitted something like that.
“so… you’ll fuck, find out he’s married, and by then you’ve ruined a family. next thing you know, you’ll get hit by his wife’s car and have to go to graduation in a brace.”
“he’s literally only… like, twenty eight,” you argue, a playful tilt in your voice that makes sooha crack up, the chair she’s in starting to swirl around. her face is a mix of disbelief and pure entertainment. “he’s not a father. god, i’d hope not. i don’t want my grad pictures to be terrible.”
“nah…” she waves you off. “a husband, though? maybe. look both ways—“
“shut up!”
sooha shrugs, pulling her phone out from the deep pockets of her sweats. “you don’t even know how old he is?”
“i do,” you say quickly, defensive. too quick, because she raises a brow. “okay— not exactly, but i know the range.”
“so… you have no idea.”
you groan. “sooha, he teaches people our age. if he had kids he’d be shoving them into every conversation like those weird dads who think having a baby is a personality, and using his mediocre son as an example for every case study.”
“that’s called being proud, if you didn’t know,” she deadpans, unlocking her phone. “anyway, what’s his full name again?”
your stomach drops. “why?”
she gives you a look. “why do you think? i’m gonna look him up. if instagram’s no luck, i’ll check linkedin.”
it’s too late. her thumbs are already flying across the screen, furiously mashing in every combination of nishimura she can think of.
“pro… fessor… nishi… mura—”
“who the fuck calls themselves professor on instagram…” you groan, hands finding your face to cover the look of humiliation.
“oh. nishimura riki, was it? he’s right here—”
“sooha,” you warn. “if you request him on instagram, so god help me—”
“if he’s married,” she declares, louder than necessary and absolutely ignoring you, “he’ll have a wife pic somewhere. at least one. married men always post their partners—or a baby hand. blurry stroller. maybe a family photo where his hands are a little too tight on her waist.”
you don’t answer. the anxiety in your stomach prickles, rises, climbs up your ribs. sooha’s face is blank in the glow of her screen, eyes narrowed, scrolling with ruthless determination. her thumb leaves tiny streaks of chip-oil every time she flicks.
“stop scrolling like that,” you hiss, leaning forward. “you’re going to summon something.”
she doesn’t even blink. “i’m summoning the truth. hold on.”
you press your palms together in your lap, pulse beating way too fast for something this stupid. the soft, frantic swipes on her phone make the whole room feel tense.
“oh.”
your spine straightens. “oh?”
“dude,” she says, voice flat with shock, “i didn’t even need to request him. his shit’s public.”
your heart drops. “public as in… some posts public? or—“
she turns the screen to you, slow, dramatic, cruel with tension.
“public as in everything,” she says. “and he posts. a lot. this guy is so performative, it’s crazy.”
your breath catches for a second. you hadn’t expected that — not from him. not the man who seemed allergic to small talk and immune to anything remotely personal. professor nishimura seemed like the type to be composed of 60% work instead of 60% water.
“you’re lying.”
you crawl across the bed on all fours anyway, eyes squinting to take a closer look at sooha’s screen.
she swipes.
the first photo is him in a mirror, dress shirt half-tucked, sleeves rolled just enough to show forearms that make your stomach flutter. the caption’s in japanese — a short one — but the date stamp tells you it was posted only two weeks ago, at a café a few streets away from campus.
you blink. “recent?”
“mhmm,” sooha hums, already moving on.
the next photo is painfully cliché: books stacked on a windowsill, sunlight cutting across his living room. the one after that is him at another café, reading, his glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose.
then, a shot of a fountain pen with notes so neat it makes your head ache, talking about his love for academia in the caption.
you lean in closer. “no way. he uses instagram like a lifestyle blogger.”
“he totally does,” she snorts. “no father of four has time for this.”
she keeps scrolling, and you’re right beside her, holding your breath like your life depended on this — unintentionally, completely against your better judgment. half-dreading and half-hoping that this menace of a man was not unavailable. because if he was, you’d never hear the end of it.
sooha would ruin you. absolutely humiliate you for years to come. mention this in front of your own kids once you’re old and married:
“oh—your mom was such a rebel back in college, you know that? so crazy! we couldn’t take her anywhere, right?”
not to mention, once jiwon’s caught wind of it, she’d shake her head in that same way she always did when you made a questionable life choice — disappointed, amused, and a little too understanding for comfort. too angelic for you to ever get defensive about it. jiwon’s disappointment wasn’t the loud kind; it curled quietly in your gut, heavy and soft, the kind that made you hang your head low.
“could you please scroll slower? how the hell do you expect to see anything?”
sooha snorts. “scared, are you?”
she does as you ask, anyway. her thumb eases down the screen, inch by inch, slowly scanning the array of curated images professor nishimura’s chosen to publicize.
a photo of his desk. coffee. food. trips all over the world, in museums, restaurants, expensive wine that he savours alone, or with the occasional handsome friend that he tags in the caption. his circle seems larger than you expected — full of geniuses, much like him — and still, no wife. no ring. no girlfriend.
“he travels a lot.”
“apparently.” sooha mutters. “he’s kind of—”
“do not.”
sooha continues scrolling as you bite your nails. “i was going to say cool. he’s the complete opposite of your ex. speaking of that guy—don’t know what you were thinking, honestly.”
your face heats immediately. “wasn’t thinking. that was the problem.”
“yeah,” she laughs, tapping another photo to zoom in. “meanwhile, this guy posts his morning latte art like he’s running a lifestyle blog. i mean, look at this. he’s insane.”
“you’re so fucking annoying,” you whine, flopping back into your sheets. they rustle under your weight, and all you can do is tangle your hands in your hair trying to cool the blush that’s burning your face off. “you’re giving him too much credit. his ego’s still huge.”
and just then, sooha gasps loud enough for the sound to echo through the corridor outside.
“what? what?” you scramble to sit back up again, meeting your best friend’s eyes.
and there it is — wedged between other stories in his highlights, low exposure but unmistakably him. a mirror photo taken in a gym mirror. sweat dripping down the hollow of his throat. his shirt lifted enough to display a chiseled set of abs, defined enough to count. lighting low but warm, highlighting the curve of his waist, the slope of his shoulders, the insane spread of his back. his forearm flexes where he holds the phone. veins on display. chest (probably) heaving.
absolutely sinful. he looks like he’s been sculpted by someone with a personal vendetta against your sanity.
your jaw literally drops. your breath leaves you in a single, pitiful sound, almost reminiscent of a whimper. sooha scoffs.
that’s your professor.
god, if they used this as a model for your classes, you’d have passed your first test with stellar results. you, a few months ago, would be skipping home with that full credit score.
“he’s fucking ripped!” sooha cackles, and you can’t tell if it’s disbelief or sheer joy at your impending meltdown. it’s probably both, now that you see her lips beginning to curl into a sickeningly wide grin. “oh my god—”
you feel your soul exit your body. “this isn’t real. he’s ai.”
“you think ai could get the sweat bead rolling down those things?” her other finger points to his disgustingly well-developed chest, “dude. he’s gotta teach naked the next time we see him.”
“stop that!” you groan, grabbing a pillow to shove your face into. your hair’s a mess, your cheeks feel like they’re going to fall off and run away, and sooha’s enjoying every single second of it. “i’m going to die. it’s over. i can’t look at him the same after i’ve seen all this.”
“why? shouldn’t this motivate you?” your best friend turns her phone off, satisfied at the amount of info you two have dug up. two things were learnt today — one, your biology professor is sexy as fuck (confirmed) — and two, he is available. “he’s free game now, [name]. do not let this opportunity slip through those greedy fingers.”
“are you forgetting he is literally our teacher?” you speak, muffled by fabric. “i can’t fuck our teacher—and even if he wasn’t our teacher, his ego’s still huge, and i’m not trying to date a narcissist.”
somewhere, professor nishimura is probably drinking tea and highlighting articles, completely unaware that his students have just discovered he has the body of a greek god.
the pillow drops to your lap, exposing your flushed face. “how the fuck do i look at him in the eye now?”
“bet he’d like that, huh?” sooha cackles, and you know it then with the way your stomach does that backflip thing: you are beyond fucked.
─────────────────────────
IT’S FRIDAY.
“next question.”
you’re sitting next to him.
on the expensive leather couch across from his desk, you see papers sprawled over the glass coffee table, textbooks flipped open to colour-coded pages — and still, the only thing you can focus on is the dull warmth in your belly from brushing shoulders with your professor. an empty coffee-stained mug sits at the centre, surrounded by books.
“you don’t have any more questions about this topic?”
your knees brush once against each other. the heat radiating off his thighs and through his black, ironed slacks make you endlessly nervous.
“i’ve been… watching your lectures. they help,” you mutter, eyes trained on the drawings of arteries laid beneath your fingers. “i don’t know why i didn’t do it earlier.”
professor nishimura chuckles momentarily, his elbows resting on his thighs as he leans forward. the smell of his shampoo hits you, a crashing wave against your nostrils, and all it does is make your heart thump.
“no wonder you’ve been struggling,” he sighs, teasing you ever so slightly. “you haven’t been listening to me as often as you need to.”
“well, yeah.” you reply dryly, throat refusing to let anything but a squeak out. for some odd reason, being back here always makes you choke up. “i just… didn’t realise how helpful it’d be.”
“i don’t spend 2 hours recording useless videos, [name],” professor nishimura’s weight leaning back into the sofa causes the leather to creak.
you swallow, shifting your notes just to have something to anchor your hands. the sound of him settling behind you shouldn’t affect you, but it does — a low, warm reminder that he’s close enough for the air to feel different.
“i didn’t say they were useless,” you murmur, hoping your voice doesn’t tremor enough to show how tight your chest is. “i just haven’t had the time.”
“mm..” professor nishimura purrs lowly, deep voice rumbling through his chest. “most students don’t. they still do well.”
your jaw clenches. “well, i’m not like other students, am i?”
“that’s the first thing you’ve managed to answer right today,” professor nishimura murmurs, draping an arm across the leather backrest. “been sleeping at all? you’re slower than usual. you weren’t this lagged yesterday evening.”
“i’m doing fine, thanks,” you provide no excuses, straightforward with your responses — you sense the tension in his voice, and oddly enough, the care hiding behind the nagging. “i’ve had coffee.”
“you know that’s not good for you. coffee doesn’t replace sleep,” professor nishimura continues. “must i tell you that, too?”
you sigh, feeling his eyes burning through the back of your skull. you shift in your seat, conscious of every movement, knowing he’s leaned back to watch.
“i don’t need you nagging.”
the shift is immediate. his jaw tightens, his eyebrow raising as he repeats your words, “i’m just observing.”
“well, i’m old enough,” you mutter, flipping through your notes, ignoring how he’s leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees again. the room is painfully quiet, silence ringing in your ears, tension floating thick in the air like it wanted to taunt you. “i don’t need to be observed.”
“[name], you may talk to your friends this way, but you asked me for help.” his tone remains steady, reminding you that he isn’t getting as worked up as you are. for some reason, it makes you even more irritated. you freeze mid-page flip, feeling him watch you, every twitch of your fingers with the kind of attention that makes your heart bang against your ribcage. “so this is my help.”
“there’s a difference between helping and hovering,” you scoff, “you act like you’re so much older and wiser than me, it’s so fucking annoying—”
seeing professor nishimura every evening had it’s downsides. two days ago, you’d just discovered his influencer persona, and every night since then you’d been scrolling through his posts and watching his highlights silently, trying to uncover a mystery you didn’t know existed.
he’s not that much older than you, clearly. no wife, no kids, no mystery gap in his posts that indicate he’d left to go on a soul-searching experimental trip to gain wisdom. just pure, unfiltered genius that he’s been praised for ever since he was in his teens — no mistaking where his voluptuous ego came from.
“what on earth are you talking about?”
his expression shifts ever so slightly: those eyebrows, once relaxed and calm, now knit together in something similar to calculation, like he’s trying to guess what you’ll say before you even think of it. his lips part, then pressing together in a thin line once again. “you looked me up.”
“everyone does,” you say a llittle too quickly. “you’re literally public—”
silence hangs in the air, thick and impenetrable. his gaze doesn’t avert. it’s unreadable, and when he speaks, it’s low with a new kind of calm that eats away at you, making you feel guilty for ever snapping at him; “could you tell me how my age is relevant to this conversation?”
in this stillness, your throat refuses to open up, a giant ball forming where your voice is supposed to be. it’s painfully clear that you’ve crossed a line, and professor nishimura isn’t having any of it.
“you come in my office every day, unfocused and exhausted, drinking coffee like it solves anything at all. am i supposed to accept that?”
“accept what? i asked you for help, so just give it to me,” you scoff, throwing the paper onto the coffee table. you turn around partially, enough to catch the bewildered look on his face. “stop acting like—”
“like i don’t see how sloppy you’re getting? it’s your final, and you’re not taking care of yourself.”
the retort dies on your tongue, dissolving, and instead you’re left staring at the scattered papers on the table with a tight jaw. your pulse drums in your ears, blood thumping, and all you can think about is how he’s right — and how much you hate that he says it like he’s genuinely worried.
the room feels too small for this. for the both of you.
“i know.”
“then we’re done for tonight,” professor nishimura states, hands on his thighs, beginning to stand up. “go home and rest. it’s late. i have plans, too, so it’s better for the both of us.”
the sudden pull-back startles you. he doesn’t even tell you to get out — just says to go home, rest, like your health was a priority to him.
he begins to walk back to his desk, turning his back to you, taking a mug out from his drawer. you watch him, silent, as he brings the cup to his coffee machine, the same one you drank from earlier into the session. you scoff, beginning to gather your things, annoyed with the way he doesn’t even try to hide it — he doesn’t have plans. he just wants you to listen to him.
“i still have three chapters, you know.”
“you think you’ll retain any of it?” professor nishimura’s back is still turned to you, and your eyes train on the slow drip of espresso that falls into his mug. his shirt is tight on him, rustling as he tucks his hands into his pockets, still not looking back. “you won’t.”
“that’s not your call—”
“you asked for my help. this is it,” he repeats again, and all it does is make you want to lunge at him and punch his stupidly pretty face. one of his hands reach for the mug, fingers looping around the handle, bringing it to his lips. “get home safe. come back when you’re able to stay awake for more than an hour.”
and when you step out of his office, books in hand, you realise the flush on your face is far too unprofessional for whatever that was; the warmth in your cheeks lingers, stubborn, betraying you each time you replay the way he looked at you like he was disappointed, worried.
perhaps what was even more terrifying was that you couldn’t name what you saw. he looked over his shoulder, face only three quarters visible, soft and glassy eyes with his eyebrows knit together. you tried to open your mouth, force yourself to snap back, or to thank him for today, but nothing comes out.
the small pit in your stomach is even worse — too familiar, too much like the quiet ache that follows a lover’s quarrel, that strange mixture of wanting to leave and wanting to turn back.
you walk down the hall anyway, pretending your pulse isn’t still skipping, pretending the air doesn’t still feel different around you, when even he can sense that it is.
─────────────────────────
TWO MORNINGS LATER, ON A SUNDAY, you’re without coffee, eyes puffy from a long night’s rest.
you faintly remember stumbling into your apartment, eyes threatening to shut any moment — you were about to doze off on the short walk to your dorm hall, blinking slowly, feet dragging against the concrete, cold air biting your cheeks. you fell asleep on the couch, woke up at four, and crawled to bed.
right now, you’re back in this god forsaken building. it was part of professor nishimura’s study regimen: only one day of the weekend should be used to study, because then, your brain can do a ‘true reset’ before lessons begin on monday. no baggage from the previous week, kind of tricking your mind into thinking everything’s going to be fine and that the workload wasn’t actually all too bad.
no. it was still bad, because one) you were still pissed off at professor nishimura, and two) you don’t have a sugary caffeinated drink to keep you going.
it’s 10 am, and by now, you’d be on the way to get your usual order — that little trip always made you look forward to something, like a sick reward system for studying nine hours a day. your psych professor would’ve called it conditioning, but you still hate studying, coffee or no coffee.
your hand reaches for the metal door handle, teeth biting the inside of your cheek before you push it open. you wonder momentarily why you couldn’t just suggest a zoom meeting — you’re sure he must have had some stupid plans, cafe hopping and whatnot, with his stupid friends, drinking stupid coffee that he’d nagged at you for—
“[name],” professor nishimura’s voice is calm, like always. you don’t realise you’ve been staring at the floor until you look up, meeting his annoyingly gorgeous face. he isn’t wearing his glasses today. “you’re early.”
“i’m prepared today.” you mumble, but knowing him, he would’ve heard it loud and clear.
nevertheless, he doesn’t give you a response. just a raised eyebrow and slow blinks, like he understands why you’re upset, but not enough to apologise.
the usual routine follows: you put your bag down on the couch, sit yourself down into the leather cushions, unzip your bag and take your study materials out. professor nishimura doesn’t sit down immediately, instead heading for the small kitchenette in a corner of his office, where his coffee is; you wonder if he’ll make you a cup, or drink one just to taunt you.
your eyes follow his movements. you realise he’s dressed much more casually today — if you didn’t know him, you could’ve mistaken him for a student — wearing a hoodie and jeans that you know he planned for his instagram feed. it almost makes you giggle. he rolls his sleeves up to his elbows, reaching for an electric kettle in the cupboard below.
of course the man drinks tea.
you try your best to shake the irritation off, instead redirecting your focus to the array of papers underneath you. the sounds of water filling the kettle almost make you doze off, and all you manage to think about is how you wish you had a big cup of warm coffee next to you, up until the point professor nishimura sets a mug down on the table, nudging it towards you.
you blink once. twice. look up, and he’s holding one too.
“don’t fight it,” he takes a slow sip, one hand in his hoodie’s pocket, another clasped around the mug handle. “it’s herbal. it’ll help your nerves.”
and just like that, he’s got you doing that stupid stomach-flipping thing.
“thank you,” you mutter quietly, delicate fingers wrapping around the mug like it was the finest china, careful not to let the tea tip over the rim. “professor.”
“it’s the weekend, and i’m off the clock,” he says, “riki is fine. i’m barely older than you, remember?”
you feel your face heat just at that. it’s lighthearted, not meant to judge you, but it still induces that feeling of wanting to crawl under a rock and die. you can practically hear the smugness in his voice, his smirk hiding behind that mug. “right. sorry about ye—”
“no,” he interrupts gently, lowering the mug from his lips. “you were stressed. i get it.”
it’s odd how easy your heart calms and how fast that pit in your stomach closes up, almost as fast as it opened two days ago. “still. i shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
professor nishimura — or riki — shrugs, eyes lingering on you a milisecond too long. “i’m not going to give you a detention slip for being angry. you’re in not high school anymore, [name]. we’re both adults, and i’m telling you — i get it.”
you take another careful sip. it warms you up, letting the ice cold air from outside dissipate in your body, heat spreading all over. it tastes earthy, soothing in the way warm coffee never manages to be, and when your muscles start to loosen and your breathing gets slower, you know you’ll have to quit caffeine.
“you do this for all your students?” you ask, half-teasing, half-curious. “tea service included?”
riki chuckles, smiling at you from where he stands. “don’t get used to it.”
“i might,” you lean back into the leather cushions, one knee folding over the other. you watch as he leans onto his desk, working to finish his cup. “on a weekend, too. i must be important.”
“no one’s home to enjoy it anyway,” he shrugs. “keep all my tea here. helps me stay awake while grading.”
you hum softly, letting that settle. something about the way he says it — casual, unguarded — makes you glance around the office again. you’re reminded of the neatness. the lack of personal clutter. no framed photos turned face-down, no childish drawings taped to the walls. just books, papers, him. you wonder if his house is just as empty as this, or if he even cares that it is.
“not lonely?”
he raises an eyebrow at you before shaking his head. “no. too busy to feel it. did i give that impression?”
you put your mug down, eyebrows knitting and gears turning, really considering your words now. “i don’t know. you’ve got that tired look on your face, and you’re responsible. and you nag like crazy.”
“i told you i was observing—”
“it’s the same,” you smile lazily at him from across the room, and you watch how your professor’s lips twitch, almost breaking into a soft smile. “you give off married man.”
he chuckles, shaking his head again, and something about the moment feels softer now. a misconception quietly corrected without either of you making a big deal of it, and it makes you appreciate how calm of a man he is, all over again.
“well then, now that that’s been cleared up,” riki pushes himself off his desk and gestures toward your notes. “finish your tea. then we’ll start with the chapters you keep avoiding. page 232.”
“how—”
“i observe.”
it’s striking, the smile you see. unguarded, nothing like the polite curve he wears in lectures. it softens him, makes him look younger, less composed, less like a man built entirely out of credentials, and for once: you see someone you could know.
─────────────────────────
NISHIMURA RIKI REMEMBERS HIS FIRST LESSON, at the age of somewhere between ten to thirteen: how to be alone, and how to pretend like you’re good at doing so.
it wasn’t difficult. it’d been confusing, yes, especially when he’d seen his peers from middle school posting instagram stories of them at internet cafe’s — or on late night convenience store runs, or playing a game of basketball at three in the morning. in the beginning, there was an influx of questions in his mind: how, and why is my life so different?
he’d pick up his phone, tapping away at his screen, scanning the once familiar faces of friends he’d long let go of: after middle school, it just seemed like a good idea to be homeschooled, after numerous ‘complaints’ that he was far too advanced for his current grade.
at some point, a few weeks after he turned sixteen, he’d thrown every toy and video game away.
it was clear he was never like other children. it wasn’t like his parents moulded him into the studious genius he was: perhaps that was the most painful part, the fact that this was just him, and that he had no one else to pin this curse on. exceptionality became an excuse — from classrooms, friendships, normalcy.
don’t get him wrong, though. he wasn’t unhappy — there was, in his mind, nothing to complain about. riki had never known a life outside of this: outside of tightly packed schedules engineered for maximum efficiency, outside of a fixed circadian rhythm he followed with near-religious devotion. this structure was not a constraint to him; it was proof that things were working, that nothing was slipping through the cracks.
he guesses this is why he hasn’t shut you out yet. you show up every damn day, at the same time, asking the same questions to the same chapters he’d been studying for years: you are familiar, predictable, consistent in every sense of the word.
riki will tell himself it’s convenience. you fit nicely into his schedule, slotted between office hours, grading, meetings, between the balanced meals he eats at the same time, every day, every night. you don’t disrupt him, don’t demand change — except you do.
you do disrupt him.
you’re lingering by the door, fingers fidgeting with your bag strap as you ask one last question. riki answers without hesitation, even though there’s a meeting across campus he absolutely needs to get to. his explanation stretches longer than it should, his voice gentler than necessary, and he only realises the time once you finally nod, satisfied.
he tells himself it’s nothing — that this is what he’s meant to do. that answering questions thoroughly is part of the job, it’s what he was hired for, and it’s what all his students love about him.
still, he keeps two mugs out instead of one: not because it’s efficient, but because he knows you’ll be back. when the cashier at the cafeteria charges him double for a sandwich, he doesn’t correct them. he doesn’t think about it at all, actually, not until later; when the receipt is crumpled in his pocket and your laugh replays in his head, your teeth flashing in a way that makes him sick.
“yeah. keep going,” riki reassures you, laid back in his own chair as you sit further away, on his (or yours, because you refuse to sit on the tiny chair across his desk again) beloved leather couch — sunlight seeps in through the curtains, bathing the room in a familiarly golden warmth — he’s not sure if the tightening in his chest is because of the way the light lands on your hair, or the way your eyes get sparkly in the sun when you turn your head just right.
it’s tuesday again, and he’s exhausted. you’re ruining him.
“circle of willis…” you mumble, tucking your knees into your chest. your arms hug them close, socks slipping off the smooth leather material. “base of the brain, ring of blood vessels. if one’s blocked—”
“rest is relatively unaffected, preventing ischemia,” riki interjects, calmly, eyes still trained on the pen he’s been spinning in between his fingers.
you blink once, twice. “i was going to say that.”
he doesn’t even realise he’s uttered your notes word for word, not until the silence stretches a second too long — his pen stops spinning, before his eyes drift towards your wide-eyed ones.
“sorry,” riki apologises, only after he’s scanned your face and realised that he was indeed not meant to do that. “go on.”
and you do — you finish the chapter, and he answers every remaining question lingering in your mind, being careful not to do whatever the fuck he just did again. you stretch your arms above your head, a quiet sigh leaving your lips and all nishimura riki can think about is how tired you look, or how your lips curve into that soft, gentle smile after you yawn, and how it makes him sick to the stomach that he can’t put his hand on your jaw and feel it first-hand on his lips.
“i’ll see you tomorrow,” you wave, and he hears the keychains on your bag jingle obnoxiously loud as you rush back to your dorm. riki wonders why you insist on staying so late when you know you have classes early the next morning, but he could ask himself the same thing, so he shoves the thought to the back of his mind and calls it a night.
he’ll do the same thing tomorrow. the day after. the week that follows. as long as he can predict you, there’s nothing to panic about.
─────────────────────────
“YOU LIKE HER?”
once those sacred words leave park sunghoon’s lips, nishimura riki knows he’s done for — because once someone else sees it, he knows he’s messed up, for real.
sunghoon holds a glass of red wine in his hand as he sits casually on the L-shaped sofa. a furry pillow lays on his lap, and his phone is somewhere in the kitchen; they’ve been drinking for a while, and things were getting a little more honest as the evening sun sank further into the ground.
“that’s inappropriate,” riki mutters, taking a slow sip of his own glass. he’s sitting on the other end of the couch, half-lidded eyes watching the screen of his phone, waiting for it to light up — an email from you. an impromptu text to meet at the cafeteria to share a decaf. or you’d tell him you aced the mini quiz he assigned you last week. “i don’t mix with students.”
“you don’t mix with anyone.” sunghoon snickers, head tilting, as if he was observing the way riki’s expression shifts just slightly at the mention of his feelings. “and i don’t see what’s so wrong with it. she’s not a high schooler.”
“her age isn’t the issue. we could’ve gone to school together — but still. i’m her mentor.”
sunghoon’s lips press into a thin line. “you know what jake would think of this?”
riki rolls his eyes, a grin still creeping on his face nonetheless. jake was an entirely different story. “i don’t want to know what that guy has to say about my love life.”
“love life?” sunghoon cackles, eyes narrowing in his triumph, almost spilling the expensive wine all over riki’s expensive furniture. he tenses up just watching. “so we’re talking love, now?”
“that’s obviously not what i meant.”
you see, the truth was that nishimura riki was discovering things about himself that he didn’t know how to… organise. it was difficult to name that stupid warmth blooming in his chest, or how lightheaded he felt when your soft hands would brush his whenever he sat next to you.
he never had time for those things. he’ll never be able to scribble your name next to his in blue ink, in a big lopsided heart, or to gift you a jelly ring because he thought your hair was cute that day. it feels juvenile, almost embarrassing — like the crushes his classmates once described, the ones he never had the time or patience for — something he’s late to experience.
and still, now, of all times, his mind keeps reaching for you: uninvited, persistent, and entirely out of order.
sunghoon watches him in silence, like he knows better than to rush a man who’s spent his whole life keeping his emotions in neat, labeled compartments. the wine sits untouched in riki’s hand, now forgotten, his thumb tracing slow circles against the glass stem as if familiar repetition might organize the thoughts crowding his head.
“you’re thinking too hard,” sunghoon says finally, voice softer than before. serious sunghoon usually meant a big deal.
riki lets out a quiet breath through his nose. “i don’t know how else to think.”
the confession earns a soft smile. “i know.”
the problem now wasn’t temptation. it was recognition, acknowledgement. accepting that the way riki’s body reacts to you is not something normal, or something passing. the way his focus fractures at the tiniest things — the crinkles in your face as you concentrate, the creases between your brows, or the way you hold his expensive mugs like it meant everything to you, when he couldn’t care less if you dropped them in pieces.
he’s kept his desires locked in a box for a while. ever since that first email, he should’ve deleted it and thrown the key into the nearest bin. now, he’s left to deal with them trying to pry their way out.
“i’ve felt this way for a bit,” riki admits. “hasn’t gone away.”
sunghoon hums. “holding yourself back? what a gentleman.”
riki scoffs, but there’s no real humor in it. he stares ahead, eyes unfocused, seeing not the apartment but the ghost of your presence — the way you lean forward when you’re engaged, the way your voice drops when you’re unsure. small, human details that shouldn’t matter this much to him, yet finds himself remembering.
“i don’t want to be careless,” he says. “i can’t be careless.”
sunghoon nods slowly. “just don’t beat yourself up for nothing, riki.”
that lands somewhere deep, loosening something tight and knotted in his chest. riki has always been good at restraint. discipline, or just plain denial dressed up as professionalism — but he’s begun to crack, ever since that first evening together, when his fingertips laid against your pulse.
he felt you. the very thing that gave you life, he touched.
“i’m not reckless.”
sunghoon looks across the couch, despite knowing the statement wasn’t meant for him. that’s precisely the reason he doesn’t respond just yet, instead, reaching for the wine bottle on the marbled coffee table — pouring himself more wine.
riki watches the dark red settle, thinking about how carefully he’s always moved through the world — measured steps, clean lines, no wasted motion. recklessness implies impulse. chaos. things he’s trained himself out of, much faster than his peers.
and yet: he hasn’t trained himself not to care about you.
“i know you’re not, riki.”
this isn’t right. he knows he shouldn’t, and yet all he thinks of is how much he wants to. it’s been weeks of painful restraint, sitting by your side, taking in your scent, unintentionally registering every cute habit of yours, tucking them away in a quiet drawer of his mind that keeps all the important stuff — like deadlines. conferences. flights. dinners with people he can’t afford to displease.
you weren’t supposed to belong there.
“fuck… when did it get this bad?” sunghoon scoffs through his nose, the sound sharp, amused, and just a little exasperated. his eyes narrow at riki, who has picked up his phone only to lower it moments later, the blank screen a disappointment at the absence of your name. “last i checked, you were content staying single.”
two evenings ago.
you were holed up in his office, the night stretching around the harsh glow of his desk lamp. it was nearing midnight. he had dinner plans with jake and heeseung, a rare night off from meetings and other callings, but instead, he found himself lingering in the quiet space between his books and your scattered notes. he remembered stepping out around seven, phone in hand, muttering about ‘taking a call,’ though his thoughts had never really left the room.
heeseung said it was alright, but jake wouldn’t let it go. riki supposes he had a reason not to.
he noticed how your shoulders tensed when he returned. the way you shivered from december’s harsh, freezing nights — it seemed like your skin was much thinner than his, because he felt fine. perhaps it was the way you begged him to go harder on the revision; he warned you that you’d be overworked, but he promised he’d be there, nonetheless.
you tucked your arms around yourself, avoiding his worried gaze from across the room. his shoes tap against the floor as he makes his way towards you — quicker than he could admit himself.
“you’re cold,” he murmured, reaching for his jacket hanging on his office chair. he pulls it off in one swift motion, holding it to you.
“it’s okay,” but you didn’t fight him when he draped the fabric over your shoulders, anyway. riki watched you loosen up — almost melting into the warmth of his clothes, and it all seemed so mundane to him then — until he realised his heart wouldn’t stop doing that thudding thing, and his cheeks wouldn’t stop burning.
by the time the clock struck one in the morning, your eyelids had begun to droop, the tea hastening your descent into drowsiness. before long, your legs curled up against your chest, his jacket wrapped loosely around you, and your head found its way to a place it shouldn’t — resting gently on his shoulder.
he stayed frozen, most of the night. barely allowed himself to breathe. riki felt it all: the warmth, your weight, the prick of your hair at his neck that almost made him twitch. he fought hard not to wake you.
the night was outlined by the faint scent of winter and tea and uncapped highlighters lingering in your hair. gentle breaths that he swore sounded like his name. he felt like he was hallucinating. he was spiralling like a teenage boy all over again, even if he didn’t even really know what that meant himself.
your breath hitched a few times, and you stirred quite a bit in your sleep. riki found himself tripping over the tiniest things, about how you smack your lips even in your sleep, or how your fist balled into his shirt when he thought he could try to pull away.
the next morning, your head rested against his chest, and his heart thudded relentlessly in his ribcage. his back ached from the hard armrest and lack of pillows, but time seemed suspended, the soft rhythm of your breathing brushing his collarbone as if you were exactly where you were meant to be.
everything collapsed then — every wall, every boundary he had meticulously built over the years. he knew it was over when his hand traced your hair once, twice, then resting lightly on the small of your back. you woke a few hours later, around nine, still too drowsy to remember how you ended up there, or just how nicely nishimura riki fit beneath you.
“oh, i must’ve dozed off—shit, i’m so sorry,” you yawned, knuckles rubbing against your eyelids as riki simply watches you sit upright. “did you have plans today, professor? oh my god—”
the title made him twitch. you didn’t notice it, thankfully. he called off every study session after that. two days of what was meant to be productive revision — all because he can’t keep himself in check. you thought he was just sick.
nishimura riki’s fate was sealed. he was falling, and park sunghoon could see it: from the way he loosens at the mention of you, to how that genius persona of his starts to slip. for once, he doesn’t know any of the answers, and all of them at the same time.
“you got this handled, don’t you?” sunghoon mutters, voice low and hushed, as if he knew how heavily this was weighing on riki’s shoulders.
riki doesn’t respond immediately, instead reaching for another sip, now a practiced motion, a way to quiet his mind. his dark eyes lock on the floor, tracing the wood patterns with a tight jaw, and silence only stretches the distance between the two men.
sunghoon almost shivers.
“sure,” the blonde mutters in response, head slightly turning to ignore the way sunghoon’s line of sight. he hates how piercing it is — sunghoon always had that effect, like he knew riki’s thoughts before he could word them — but right now, he’s looking away, as if that’d hide anything important, or anything that sunghoon couldn’t already see.
─────────────────────────
THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWS IS PAINFULLY MEDIOCRE.
when you step into his office for the first time in 3 days, it’s already warm, and there’s no tea waiting for you on the coffee table — he’s sitting at his desk, glasses resting low on the bridge of his nose, fingers flipping through papers you haven’t seen before.
he doesn’t bother to look up, “[name].”
nothing’s wrong. this is how it was supposed to be. class, lunch, class, study — you leave before dinner, almost always at his discretion, and under the pretense of ‘meetings’ and ‘papers for other classes’ when you know he only teaches two. it feels like a lie that you can’t confront, because it’s not like you know the truth.
you didn’t know much at all, actually.
perhaps that’s why you settle into this — accepting it when he doesn’t comment on your posture, your tired eyes, or the can of coffee you throw into his office bin.
you do your work, and he does his. that’s how it’s been, and how it should’ve continued.
your knees still brush under the table. the warmth doesn’t make professor nishimura pull away — almost as if the desk hides his own hypocrisy from his eyes. sometimes, he’ll lean over your shoulder, the mixed scent of cologne and tea leaves making you ease into him, but he’d pull away before you ever brushed the fabric of his shirt.
you’d look up from your notes and catch him staring at you. pretty, brown irises that barely leave your tired figure — his arms are folded, voice flat and monotone instead of soft, curious, and everything you’d known him to be in the past few weeks.
you raise an eyebrow, because that’s all you can do.
“you’re getting better,” he mutters, leaning back in his chair as you ramble on about action potential initiation, sodium and potassium pumps, practically reciting word for word. “we’ll meet less often.”
he doesn’t even leave you room to negotiate.
it’s almost ridiculous how much you don’t care about this. you’re talking just to talk — just to feel like his eyes are on you, like before — it’s oddly humiliating, and the feeling claws at your chest uncomfortably; you tell yourself it’s just the weather getting chillier, or a bad start to the day that led to an even worse week, and that’s why you’re tripping over something as ridiculous as this: your professor, acting like your fucking professor.
“thank you,” your fingers twitch slightly. even if professor nishimura notices it, he doesn’t say a thing.
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YOU BROUGHT COFFEE ALONG in hopes of waking yourself up, but the lecture hall is still too quiet for your mind not to doze off.
professor nishimura is speaking into the microphone, his voice resonating through the large, brightly lit room. the lights above buzz, and there’s chatter all around: you can’t remember what he asked everyone to do, and at the same time, can’t be bothered enough to ask.
your head leans into your hand, chin propped up, the words of everyone around you starting to sound like a foreign language. everything’s priming you for a nap — slightly warm, sunlight slicing through the windows, catching dust in tiny specks. you’re seated in the sixth row, far enough for professor nishimura not to notice (you can only hope).
“so, uh,” you hear in your left ear, “[name], right?”
you blink slowly. you hadn’t bothered to learn the names of anyone in this class other than jiwon and sooha — for a minute, you wonder if it’s one of them trying to do one of their stupid frat guy impressions. so you turn, your neck muscles sore from a long night of staying up the night prior, grimacing when you feel the tension deep in your posture.
so much for taking care of yourself.
“yeah,” you say, but it almost comes out as a grumble. you don’t bother to apologise. you try not to tilt your head too far, eyes flicking towards the boy leaning in beside you — he’s grinning, a little too confident for a guy of his nature, hair messy from running his weirdly large hands through them. “were we supposed to do something?”
“i didn’t come yesterday, and i was just wondering if you could send me your lab notes,” he continues. “i had practice. super important.”
the words come out like a script, rehearsed in it’s tone, but he doesn’t seem embarrassed. not one bit.
“uhuh,” you nod, slowly and deliberately. “i’ll send them. your number?”
he freezes for a heartbeat, then gasps — a little too loud, a little too dramatic. you blink, genuinely caught off guard. then his smirk settles in, that ridiculous half-serious, half-playful expression you’ve seen on one too many guys before: “i thought you’d never ask.”
you laugh quietly at the absurdity, more out of habit than anything. he takes it as an invitation, of course, and before the end of class, right after you’ve sent him your notes, he slides a link to some random tiktok across your screen.
you glance at it, stare at the preview image for a moment, and promptly roll your eyes. you’re too tired, too uninterested, to bother reading the subtle flirtatious undertones in his posture, the way he leans in just a little too eagerly, or the smug satisfaction on his face when you glance back in his direction — like he was waiting for your approval, another laugh, another anything.
anything that you can’t give. not to him.
it’s not long before professor nishimura finishes his lecture, the chatter of closing notebooks and rustling papers filling the room. you shift in your seat, feeling your shoes press against the floor as you stretch your legs beneath the desk. sooha isn’t here today, you notice, and jiwon’s already packing up, hands moving faster than yours — she’s ready to leave long before the lecture actually ends.
you look around, and for a moment everything and everyone feels like a timelapse, and you’re the only one in slow motion. notebooks slam shut, pens click, laptops shoved into backpacks. you remain seated, letting everyone pass you, and it feels like reliving a memory. muffled voices of your classmates fill the room, underscoring the strange lag you feel.
your head rests against the table, ear to the wood. you see professor nishimura in your field of view, and somehow, even with his glasses low on his face and his fringe covering most of his expression, you can feel his eyes burning holes through you.
“so,” he mutters, walking up the carpeted stairs to your row. it’s just you two now. “you don’t need my help anymore, hm?”
his words make you sit up. “what?”
“exchanged numbers. studying together?” his voice is low but firm, not accusatory, as if he was begging you to prove him wrong, despite his neutral face. “with him?”
“it’s just notes,” you scoff, a tad bit more defensive than you intended it to be. “he missed the previous lab.”
“he was here.” he corrects. you can’t help but sigh. “you should watch who you’re studying with. he’s barely paid attention in class as it is—“
“still, was or wasn’t. i can manage myself. i don’t need your permission.”
professor nishimura straightens slightly, hands resting on the edge of the desk, gaze steady. “i’m not talking about permission,” he says evenly. “i’m pointing out that your focus matters. you want to keep progressing — i’ve guided you this far. that hasn’t changed.”
you frown, arms tightening across your chest, eyes tearing away from him to look at the chalkboard in front of the room. it’s half erased, perfect diagrams smeared in white. “so now…i have to justify every interaction to you?”
“no,” he replies. “i’m not policing you. but i will call out distractions when they matter. that’s part of my role. your attention isn’t something to waste — you know that.”
you turn to stare at him for a moment, searching for some trace of softness, some hint that he’s overstepping, only to find there isn’t one. just the steady weight of someone who expects attention, precision, and respect — nothing like the man you got to know, everything like the professor you’ve always seen.
“so you push me away, and now you want me to stay focused on you?”
professor nishimura doesn’t flinch. he meets your gaze evenly, calmly, unshaken despite his absurd words. “if i’m the only non-distraction, yes.”
you feel heat clawing up your neck, reaching all the way up to your ears. you can’t bring yourself to look at him, turning away once more. “what the hell is wrong with you? why do you think you can just act like this?”
“act like what?”
ironically enough, that’s the line that gets you. your head snaps back in his direction, and you’re quick to rise to your feet; you sling your bag over your shoulder, ready to leave, but he takes one step to the side to block your exit.
“i’m asking you a question.”
you scoff, sharp and breathless, the sound cutting through the quiet lecture hall. it comes out through your nose before you can stop it, bitter and disbelieving, and it hurts him more than he can show — his eyebrows knit together, glassy eyes staring into yours, searching for something.
“you don’t get to do this,” you say. your voice shakes despite your best effort, and it makes you want to crawl into a hole and never come out — but the reaction it gets from him is raw, his shoulders stiffening, fists clenched by his sides. “you don’t get to decide who i talk to, or what’s a distraction, or—”
you gesture vaguely between the two of you, anger clawing its way up your throat. you don’t manage to say anything more. he looks at you, still expecting.
you shove him out of the way, and riki doesn’t stumble backwards — before you’ve gone too far, he’s got his hands clasped around your wrist. his jaw tightens, muscles tensing underneath his skin, eyes low and zeroed on your fingers.
you brace yourself for anger, for reprimand, for the cold snap of authority sliding back into place. anything to prove that who you were talking to was someone you didn’t know.
it doesn’t happen.
his grip loosens almost immediately, like he’s realised what he’s doing a half-second too late. his thumb slips away first, then the rest of his fingers, hands dropping back to his sides as if they’ve burned him.
“don’t,” riki says, low. not a command. a warning — to himself, more than to you. “i don’t want you to get the idea that i want to control you.”
you shake his hands off. “then don’t fucking give me it.”
silence stretches between you, sharp and unforgiving. his jaw works, once, like he’s biting back something that would only make it worse. when he finally speaks again, his voice is steadier than it has any right to be, and all it does is make you want to scream.
you look up at him, glass-eyed, lashes wet — and something twists in nishimura riki’s chest. he assumes it’s his heart, even though the teacher in him knows better; it’s just anxiety, he tells himself, a physical response he’s long since learned to name and adapt to.
it’s definitely not his heart breaking at the thought of hurting you. definitely not. hearts don’t break.
no. he’d be dead, on the floor, if his heart really broke.
he’ll repeat this in his head for as long as it takes.
“you’re right,” riki mumbles. it unsettles you more than if he’d argued.
he steps back, deliberately, putting space between you like it costs him something (it does). his hands curl into fists at his sides, then relax again. “you can go,” he finally adds.
you hesitate — just for a second — and you hate yourself for it. he notices. of course he does. a man of his genius can’t help but see everything.
his eyes flicker, briefly, before he looks away, fixing his attention on the desk like it’s the safest thing in the room.
you leave without another word.
he doesn’t stop you.
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WHEN YOU STEP INTO HIS OFFICE THE NEXT MORNING, expecting cruel, impatient silence, nishimura riki remains neutral.
his glasses sit on the edge of his nose bridge, and he’s grading while you study — a rare sight, considering he always manages his time well. it’s kind of funny how you’ve never seen him in the process of it, considering how much time you spend together.
it hits you, embarrassingly fast, that you’ve never actually seen him in the middle of anything other than teaching you despite how many hours you’ve spent here. the furrow of his brow, the way he taps the end of his pen against the paper when he’s annoyed, the quiet sighs he lets slip when something displeases him — it’s all strangely human.
nothing you haven’t known before. it’s just that with all the distance, you forgot.
you hover by the door for a second, unsure if you should sit, wondering if yesterday carved a line between you that you aren’t allowed to cross anymore. you’re sure he can see you awkwardly leaning against the doorframe, so you end up pushing yourself off of it, feet crossing the threshold of his office anyway.
“you’re late,” he says without looking up. “where were you?”
you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, taking your seat on the familiar couch flushed against the window. the silence that follows is different — soft around the edges, still thick with tension, with two people pretending they didn’t almost tear each other apart the day before.
minutes pass. his pen scratches against paper. you start unpacking your things just to fill the emptiness, and to give your hands something to do.
then, unexpectedly gentle, professor nishimura says, “did you get home alright?”
your head lifts a little. you blink. “mhhhm. just fine.”
the bite in your voice is testing him, and it earns the exact reaction you were looking for: a raised eyebrow, a shift in his weight. “you sure?”
it makes you shiver.
you nod, beginning to flip open your textbooks. even if he notices how anxious you are — he doesn’t say a thing.
before long, you’re hunched over the table, your sticky notes and highlighters all over the place.
you remember when you first decided to take a seat in this empty, cold office. it’s a completely different place, a different time, a different you — his awards and certificates still remain, though — but now there’s two mugs on the shelf, a pen in the cup on his desk that you’re certain he never uses because it’s the wrong weight, and before you can think too hard about how much his office (or him) has changed, professor nishimura’s voice jolts you out of your daydream.
“focus.” his stern voice travels from his desk, the sounds of his keyboard mashing underscoring it. “you’re zoning out.”
“sorry,” you tilt your head back down, hair falling in your face, eyes trying to scan for the word you stopped reading at.
you spend an awfully long time staring at one page, trying to make sense of what was printed. your mind’s still flooding with what-if’s from yesterday — whether that was really all that was meant to be said, if that was what everything boiled down to.
what if this was it?
your eyes move mindlessly, jumping from word to word, restarting paragraphs when a thought gets too loud — barely noticing a weight sinking into the empty space next to you.
your gaze drifts to the pair of shoes next to yours, shiny and professional and expensive in all it’s glory; but when you feel a finger tuck your hair behind your ear, gentle, as if you’d crack if just a little force was behind the motion, they trail upwards to the man next to you.
“you look like you just woke up.”
you snort, unintentionally, feeling the burn of your cheeks and the spinning in your head — this stupid professor of yours always seemed to have that effect.
“what are you doing?”
he mumbles in response, “nothing.”
and perhaps it really was nothing, because he slips back into his work without comment, typing quietly while you sink deeper into the sofa — the hours slide by unnoticed, evening tapping softly against the windows until the room grows too dim.
when he sits back down, your head has already tipped against his shoulder, your notes slipping from your hands, and without thinking — or maybe thinking too much — he reaches for the thin blanket folded at the arm of the couch, draping it over you with a care so practiced and gentle it almost feels like he’s done it a hundred times before.
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EVERYBODY THINKS YOU JUST KNOW WHEN YOU MEET THE ‘RIGHT ONE’. you’ll ask for advice from friends, siblings, even your parents — but there’s a big chance that they’ll tell you that you’ll eventually know, and that there’s no big sign over someone’s head stating that yes, this is the one for you, come get me!
if only.
you hoped falling in love would be easy. people say that if it’s good for you, it would be, and you’re sure that it’s true to some degree —because things did feel easier with nishimura riki. extremely easy.
studying wasn’t a burden — sleeping wasn’t a chore, nor did it feel like a waste of time or a reason to feel guilty. but now, things were starting to get difficult.
you’re beyond fucked.
“just say you like him,” sooha says, and her voice snaps your eyes open again. you’re staring at the popcorn ceiling of your dorm like it personally wronged you. of course you’re back here — sprawled on your bed, overthinking, while sooha lounges beside you like she’s at a spa. “it’s pretty fucking obvious.”
“i just don’t know if this is okay,” you groan, fingers running through your hair. “can you imagine dating your fucking professor? i could get him in trouble—“
“please,” sooha scoffs, not even looking up from her phone. the little snippets of music that keep changing every ten seconds — she’s definitely deep into her edit rewatches again. “he looks two seconds away from quitting his entire academic career for you.”
the sheets rustle under the weight of your head turning towards her.
“what? you think a fully grown man with a salary and a social life—well, questionable social life—spends every free hour he has tutoring one student?” she side-eyes you, finally pausing her scrolling. “come on. he doesn’t do that because you’re struggling. you’re not that hopeless.”
you chew on your bottom lip. “but—“
“you’re so stupid,” she continues. “he looks at you differently.”
your heart does something in your chest — it’s that familiar warmth nishimura riki always managed to trigger, with his soft hands and low voice, like he was personally crafted to make you fall to your knees.
he doesn’t have that sign on top of his head. he isn’t a guarantee, or a ‘at first sight’ thing, or someone with a ton of pros and no cons. he isn’t the easy, simple kind of right that everyone in your life insists you’d “just know.”
he’s just riki — too confusing, too gentle, too quiet riki — and you’re stuck somewhere between wanting him and being terrified that even thinking of him is the biggest mistake you could make, for both yourself and him.
“everything’s just a mess right now. we’re fine, but it doesn’t even feel fine.” you groan, rolling onto your side so you’re facing sooha. your head settles against your bicep, hair spilling across your face like even it has given up. “i don’t know whether to pretend the past few weeks haven’t been eating me alive, or ask him what we are — because we aren’t even anything. he’s my fucking teacher.”
“this anatomy test is really fucking you up, dude.” sooha sighs, dropping her phone her lap with a soft thud. “like, really bad.”
“i’m being serious,” you insist, voice flattening under the weight of all the thoughts you haven’t said out loud. “every time i see him, it’s like—what the hell are we doing?”
“you know what,” she leans her head back further into your chair. “worst case scenario, you can fuck him once, he gets fired and you never see him again—“
“oh my god.”
sooha looks at you like she genuinely doesn’t know where she messed up. you’re holding a handful of your hair in your fist, ready to pull it out.
“i like him. i fucking like my fucking professor,” you grimace, your hands sliding down to your face. “just put me in a fucking porno already.”
“i think you two would look great,” sooha offers, and all you manage to do is peek at her through your fingers with a look that makes her crack up.
“you’re supposed to say thanks.”
“fuck off!”
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THIS PARTY WASN’T IN YOUR SCHEDULE.
it’s crowded, you’re brushing shoulders with every 1 in 2 people you pass, and it’s too fucking loud — the music is booming in your ears and the bass makes your legs shake, the lights are too dark, and your glass is empty. you feel out of place, out of body, out of everything.
“heeeelloooo,” sooha waves her hand in your face before you finally snap back into this plane of reality. once she finally has your attention, her fingers clasp around your wrist, dragging you into the huge living room that belonged to jiwon’s parents. “jiwon’s looking for you, and you’re zoning out under the stairs—come on!”
you bite on your bottom lip, stumbling on your feet as sooha moves too much, too fast through the sea of people. the music choice is truly horrible, you realise as you approach the huge speakers sitting on top of the marbled kitchen island.
you told jiwon to put this off until after finals. at least then, you wouldn’t have so much on your mind — but sooha cried out, said you needed a break from studying so much with that beloved professor of yours — and jiwon could only shrug and agree.
it wasn’t a secret, you and nishimura. there was nothing to be secretive about, and so you couldn’t blame anyone when sooha and jiwon begun to piece things together: the late night texts, leaving early in the morning only to come back in the ass crack of dawn. they figured you were just studying non-stop, cause if you were truly sleeping with your professor, they would’ve heard it first.
“fuck, it’s too loud in here—”
someone bumps into you from behind and mutters a slurred apology. it’s enough to make you flinch, and sooha finally releases your wrist once you’re standing in the middle of the living room: the air is thick with smoke and perfume and every cologne to ever exist, the lights dimmed with the occasional flash of purple and pink in uneven bursts. bodies are packed together on the couch, the one with faux fur pillows that are nowhere to be seen, and it reminds you how this place is too expensive to be hosting this many drunk college kids.
jiwon spots you two immediately from behind the kitchen island. she tilts her head, taking a good look at your already obviously irritated expression, and lifts her cup to point at you with one finger. “you okay? you look like you hate it here—”
“i do,” you admit, watching sooha step a feet or two away into the crowd, chatting with a guy you’d seen around the engineering block. you shake your head, unimpressed before anything else. “i told you. we should’ve waited till after finals.”
she hums, unconvinced. “you wouldn’t say this if you weren’t so busy studying.”
“with riki!” sooha snorts, and your head snaps in her direction. the guy with her looks momentarily lost, and you offer an apologetic smile. “oh, sweet, brilliant riki.”
when you shift your gaze back to sooha, she’s barely containing herself.
“what?” sooha still does so, anyway, unrepentant. “it’s not like we don’t all know. you disappear every night, come back half-dead in the mornings, and somehow you’re still calmer than i’ve ever seen you. it’s suspicious.”
jiwon raises her eyebrows in a moment of pleasant surprise. “so that’s why you’re not drinking.”
you look down at your empty glass, remnants of coke zero still sitting unsipped. somewhere between the terrible music and people brushing against your back, your mind is drifting to that familiar blonde head of hair, with eyes so pretty and brows so strict it makes your pulse falter. gentle, even if he looks everything opposite of.
you were wrong about him, and you found that out in the best way possible, but now, you’re in too deep and everyone’s starting to see it too.
“how else am i supposed to get that A?” you sigh, and you practically feel the way sooha and jiwon see right through you. “i can’t fail this. i really, really can’t.”
they accept the half-assed answer. you weren’t going to admit you were in love with your professor half way into a party full of judgy nepo babies; you were too smart for that.
the night stretches on without you, and at some point, sooha disappears entirely. you’d guess she’s busy making out with that guy from earlier, and even in your sour mood, you snicker at the thought. somewhere in the kitchen, you see jiwon chatting with a group of girls that you’ve never seen her hang with before.
you’re hovering at the edge of the living room, your back against the cold wall. your phone feels infinitely heavier in your hands, and the music choice hasn’t improved in the last hour. it’s aggressive, insistent, as if it’s trying to get you to come loose and forget about what’s supposed to be stressing you out.
you bring your phone to your face, the screen lighting up immediately, and you realise it’s too late to text him, and far too early to leave without everyone assuming you’re pissed off.
a guy with a lopsided middle parting stops in front of you. “heeey, pretty. i was gonna get a drink. you want one? saw your cup was empty—”
“no thanks.”
you drift towards the balcony for air instead, pushing past stumbling bodies until the glass door finally slides shut behind you. it’s barely snowing, but it’s obviously getting chilly, the air biting your cheeks and freezing your lungs. it’s relieving, compared to the humid warmth of other people inside.
you lean against the railing, breathing slowly, savouring every second before you anticipate sooha coming to drag you back inside. momentarily, you wonder if riki lived his college days like this — at parties, sitting at the sides, thinking of where else he could be.
just then, your phone buzzes in your hand.
you swallow, fingers tightening around your phone. the cold doesn’t feel as harsh anymore, replaced by an oddly familiar warmth blooming in your chest. you shove your phone into your purse, weight shifting between your feet, unsure of whether to stay or to leave. somewhere behind you, the door slides open and shut again, laughter spilling onto the balcony before being lost to the wind. you don’t turn around.
the glow of headlights cut through the dark, and the slow fall of snow reminds you of how warm it was a month ago, when you were still whining over that one sociology assignment, when you still hated seeing professor nishimura’s face.
and now, you can’t imagine yourself staying away.
you’re already thinking about how he’ll look when he gets here. dark brown coat hugging his broad, tall stature, snow falling on his head. his brows drawn together in that quiet, familiar concern that he knows never to overdo, because he trusts that you’re a smart girl, and the realization stabs you in the stomach then.
you want to see him.
why the hell do you want to see him?
─────────────────────────
SUNDAYS WERE RESERVED FOR YOU, but for some reason, you’re waiting for nishimura riki at twelve thirty in the morning, in freezing temperatures.
you lean against a lamppost, its warm glow spilling over you and carving soft shadows into your face. your scarf is gone, abandoned somewhere inside oh jiwon’s penthouse, probably slung over the back of a dining chair you’ll never be able to identify again. somehow, you’d still made it out here, rubbing at your nose in a futile attempt to keep the frost from biting too hard.
you sniffle, shoulders curling inward, arms wrapped tight around yourself. professor nishimura had been right — you were sensitive to the cold. you just hadn’t noticed how much, not when he’d always been there before, quietly closing windows, handing you his jacket without comment, turning the heater up a notch like it was second nature.
and then, an expensive looking car pulls up, the sound of snow crushing under the tires making your ears perk. you don’t look up immediately, but you know.
the engine cuts, and the door shuts closed — his footsteps crunch against the pavement lined with ice, unhurried but still purposeful, and something loosens in your chest before you can even say hello.
“you should’ve told me you didn’t have a scarf.”
when you look up, you see exactly what you’d envisioned, with an addition of a black scarf covering the lower half of professor nishimura’s face. his voice is slightly muffled due to the thick cotton — slightly edged with restrained concern slipping through the cracks. your notes are tucked under his arm, neatly stapled, unlike how you kept them, because you ran out of staples and forgot to refill them a few weeks back.
“i thought you’d nag,” you mumble, guilty.
“i would, and i am,” he says, strictly, to make his point. before you can protest, he’s already unravelling his scarf from his neck, and stepping closer to you. the fabric is still warm when he drapes it around you, careful in his movements, fingers brushing against your jaw as he fits it nicely for you.
his cologne lingers. it makes you dizzy, in a good way that party didn’t.
“you’re still so careless, [name].”
his head hovers just above yours, and you swore if he leaned in any closer that he’d be able to hear how hard your heart was beating. your eyes look at anything else but him — the trees in the distance. the passing cars. the one or two people taking a night stroll with their dogs. anything to avoid the way you can hear his breath in your ears, the warmth of his fingers brushing against your skin. anything.
he tucks the end of the scarf into your coat with careful precision, and you think your timing couldn’t be worse. when you dare to glance up, his eyes meet yours. they’re glassy, faintly red at the edges — exhaustion, probably from the nights you’ve kept him awake with your relentless studying — and despite everything, it makes you smile.
“you’re too careful.”
your eyes peek through your lashes, fluttering slowly, coaxing him into everything he’s taught himself to restrain. in the small space between you two, your breaths mingle, albeit yours just warm your face right back up — still, you watch his skin flush, lips trembling slightly at the proximity.
you’ve never seen him this close. he looks absolutely breathtaking. from the sharp turn of his jaw, the sparkle in his eyes as he looks into yours, to that impossible glow on his skin that you’ve never been able to make sense of.
nishimura riki’s heart is racing faster than humanly possible. this cannot be good. he remembers learning this in his first year of university: tachycardia was what they called it.
yes. he’s tachy. so very tachy.
and he also wants to kiss you. really, really bad.
there wasn’t anything in the textbooks for that.
riki swallows, his throat tightening, and his fingers still hold onto the scarf that he’s draped around you. for now, there’s only you, and the warmth of your face radiating so close to his — only the sound of your soft, gentle breath, the one he’s gotten so used to hearing.
his index and middle finger hook onto the fabric of his (now technically your) scarf, pulling it down slightly, enough to reveal your entire face.
“riki,” your voice is barely audible, a whisper against the cold wind, but it’s enough to make his pulse skip. he’s been holding his breath the entire time. “it’s late.”
he leans in, unintentional, just a fraction closer, enough for your hearts to echo in tandem. “i know,” he murmurs, voice low, quiet, restrained in words but not in feeling; he says it like he wants you to stay, despite.
“i should get inside,” you mumble, beginning to tilt your head up anyways.
on this chilly december night, nishimura riki tilts his head as well, inches apart, almost as if he’s analyzing the exact way to fit against you. his lips brush yours softly, a fleeting ghost of warmth, breath fanning over the plush of your lips.
“i know.”
you know this is wrong, and still, you meet him halfway.
suddenly, your body ignites with warmth, eyes fluttering shut as your arms instinctively loop around his neck. his hands find your waist without thought, drawing you close, steadying you as you rise onto your tiptoes. the cold air disappears, replaced entirely by this small, perfect cocoon of heat and closeness — it’s warm, comforting, like coming home to something you’ve been missing all year.
the scarf is tickling his chin. his annoying glasses are in the way. but you taste sweet, and he can smell your perfume — and your shampoo. just you, actually. everything he could ever possibly ask for is right here, in his hands, against his body. leaning into him like she needed him as much as he needed her.
your notes are somewhere on the floor. professor nishimura resolves to help you rewrite them later. hell, he’ll rewrite the whole textbook, as long as you let him have this.
“fuck,” he curses as he pulls away, his breath leaving him in the shape of warm smoke — you giggle, hearing him curse for the first time — and it’s almost ridiculous how fast his face flushes at the sound of your amusement. “you’re so pretty.”
his eyes leave yours, drifting down to your glossy, saliva-covered lips — they’re calling for him. so kissable, parted, breathless like he’d just stolen all the air from your lungs.
“riki—” you try to speak, but it’s pointless when professor nishimura’s lips crash against yours again. you feel like you’re on fire, your fingertips brushing against the nape of his neck once more; it sends shivers down his spine, and when his palm presses flat on the small of your back, you’re arching into his touch.
riki’s tongue swipes against your bottom lip, yours opening up for him like clockwork — it’s making your head spin, your nerves raw, legs weak trying to close the already minute gap between your bodies. he’s curious with you, clearly, with the way his hands roam up and down your waist, clingy, like he’s never going to have you again.
and if that ends up being true — he’ll make sure, just this once, it’ll be worth it.
you follow him, silent, as his hands find yours. the cold nips at your fingers before his calloused ones warm them up: the streets are emptying out, snow lining the asphalt, collecting on the roof of his car. he turns, pulling you with him, the crunch of snow breaking underneath both your feet.
he opens the passenger door for you, a gesture that makes your cheeks burn, and you slide in carefully. the leather seat is too comfortable, nice and warm, expensive before anything else. it reminds you of jiwon’s dad’s car, and the thought makes you snicker, just a little.
“hands,” he murmurs, and you instinctually tuck your arms in before he shuts the door. you watch him walk in front of the headlights — crossing over to the driver’s seat, and soon enough, his hands are on the wheel.
the engine roars to life and warmth floods the car, chasing away the bite of december air. your fingers are still entwined with his, resting lightly in your lap, and the contact is enough to send little jolts through your chest. the soft glow of the dashboard lights highlights his profile — jawline sharp, eyes focused on the road, yet you can feel the awareness behind them, the subtle glance he gives you through the rearview mirror.
your phone is buzzing in your coat pocket. you recognise the text tone — oh jiwon, park sooha. that little group chat you’ve been using since first year. it’s enough to remind you how wrong this is, but not enough to forget how right it feels — professor nishimura riki feels like fate.
the streets are quiet. snow glinting under the streetlights, the tires crunching softly over the thin white layers. the silence between you is comfortable, heavy with everything left unspoken: the kiss, the heat between your bodies, the lingering warmth of his scarf. everything that you’ve gone through in the past few weeks.
you blink slowly, trying to figure out if this was one of your fucked up dreams again — you’ve had quite a few of those ever since you started this… whatever this was.
“you’re still cold,” riki says, eyes still trained on the road. you’re somewhere in gangnam, further away from jiwon’s neighbourhood, streets filled with locals and tourists. his fingers tighten around yours slightly when you don’t respond. “i’ll warm you up when we’re inside.”
you flush, head turning towards the window, not entirely sure of the meaning of his words.
what the hell does he mean by warm you up?
is he flirting with you?
“mm..” you hum, smiling anyway, thankful his scarf was there to save you. “i’d like that.”
─────────────────────────
IT’S ALMOST LIKE A MOVIE.
you’re stumbling into the entryway of his home, coat slipping off your shoulders, and riki’s trying to kick his dress shoes off. it’s the ones he just bought, the ones that cost more than he knew was necessary — it’s pathetic how hard you both are fighting to keep your lips together, heavy pants being the only thing you hear as your fingers find the buttons of riki’s top. you almost snap all of them off with how careless you undo them: you want to apologise, but riki’s smiling against your lips anyway, so you take it as a green light to be as reckless as you want.
almost like a movie — no, scratch that. it’s more like those sex dreams you’ve been having.
the ones you told sooha about, where she was oddly interested and claimed she had to try out with someone else. you smacked her in the shoulder after that. funnily enough, she did end up trying one out of the six positions you detailed greatly to her, and said nothing but “good stuff”.
still, right now, nothing’s funny. you feel heat pooling between your thighs, and riki’s fingers are too rough and needy for you to hold yourself back.
you don’t have time to register his furniture, or his paintings, or his strange plants. the lights aren’t even on. nishimura riki’s spent his early adulthood decorating his home to fit his lifestyle perfectly, and he’s a little hurt that you’re too horny to even appreciate it. he’ll have to give you a proper tour tomorrow morning, if you’re not too sore to deal with it.
“fuck,” he moans into your mouth, feeling your nails graze against his chest as you take off his shirt — he’s too sensitive when it comes to you. he can barely word anything right now with the way he refuses to leave your lips alone. “[name]—you’re sure?”
“so sure,” you pant, arms looping around his neck as his arms find your hips. soon, they tuck under your thighs and it’s almost like you’ve done this millions of times before: you rise to your toes, and he lifts you without much effort. you still squeal, feeling him smirk against your lips; in this moment, you remember just who he is, that ego still lingering behind his touch.
your salivas mix, tongues sopping wet as he settles you onto the cold kitchen island. nishimura riki’s head is spinning — you feel too damn perfect underneath him. he’s never had you like this, his rough hands grabbing and playing with the plush of your ass like it was always meant for him, your soft moans filling his ears like a new kind of music he’ll never stop replaying.
he’s addicted, and he hasn’t even had you fully, not yet. he wants to take his time.
he has to.
“riki,” you whimper, pulling away from the kiss. a string of saliva connects the two of you, breaking soon after, your heart skipping at the sight of him — messy hair, bare chest heaving, a thin veil of sweat coating his forehead and making streaks of hair stick. “please—”
everything is painfully quiet, aside from your heart thumping in your ears. you’re certain he can hear it, too.
his eyebrows knit, breathing trying to even itself out — your hands wander up his chest, not believing it’s the same one you and sooha drooled over a month back — it feels ridiculously firm, your nails tracing his skin, making the hair on his neck stand. it makes him shiver, every touch making his nerves fire up again and again.
you’re doing things to him. things he doesn’t have an explanation for. no textbook could encompass the low, simmering feeling in his abdomen, watching you like this.
riki’s impatient, crashing his lips against yours again — teeth clashing, moans mixing, and you arch your body into his chest once more. your arms loop around his neck as he pushes his body closer to yours, almost leaning over the counter, feeling your weight hold onto his body as he feels you closer.
“tell me you want me,” he groans in your ear, tongue pressing flat against the frantic pulse hidden underneath the skin of your neck. he licks one long, delicious stripe from the ball of your throat to the patch of skin underneath your earlobe, savouring the taste of your sweat, breathing in the raw smell of your fading perfume. “come on—don’t act all shy now.”
you whimper when he sucks, lips latching onto your neck, hard enough you’re sure it’ll leave memories of tonight. you’ll have to borrow sooha’s expensive concealer, you think, but for now — your eyes roll to the back of your skull, hips grinding against the tent in his pants, teasing him so painfully slow.
“mm..” you moan, “can’t you tell, professor?”
riki groans when you grind down harder, the title making his jaw go slack, your legs locking behind his back. he’s so achingly hard, he thinks he might cum in his pants like a pathetic teenager from your stupid antics.
professor. professor. professor.
he’s spent so long drilling that title out of you, and now, he’s hard just hearing it.
“stop fucking teasing, brat,” and he’s trailing down your neck, rough hands pulling the collar of your shirt down. his plush lips leave a trail of kisses along your collarbone, nose nudging the skin of your shoulder, and you feel him breathe you in. “it won’t get you what you want.”
his teeth graze against the round of your shoulder. “you’ll give me what i want, anyway.”
he tsks. you shudder when he bites down, just enough to leave a mark, but not to hurt. your thighs squeeze on instinct, pulling him closer, and you feel him exhale a short, knowing laugh — like he’s finally figured out exactly what gets you — and it makes your stomach twist.
“should we just fuck right here? huh?” riki whispers against your skin, his hands running along the side of your waist. “the way you’re acting—you deserve it. on the cold, hard floor, like the slut you are. sounds good?”
you bite down on your bottom lip, head tilting back as riki makes his way up again. his nose bumps against you, sending little shocks of electricity all the way down to your fingertips. your nose points to the ceiling, lips parted as you try to control every sound that riki’s earning from your pretty lips.
“should we drive back to my office? i’ll fuck you on the desk, on the sofa… against my shelves? i’ll let you pick.”
you feel him right where you need him. impossibly hard, aching, rubbing up against your panties through his slacks. he must’ve been somewhere important before meeting you. that expensive shirt’s tossed onto the floor, somewhere you can’t bother to remember. all of your mind is being taken up by the man in front of you, the one panting in your ear like a dog in heat, like he can’t wait any longer to bury himself inside of you until you’re fucked dumb — not the man of importance, of professionalism, the one that demands respect.
“answer me.”
scratch that. he’s still demanding respect.
you whimper in response — he chuckles, continuing to press gentle kisses to your jaw, up to your cheeks, then your lips. you meet them happily, too eager, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to care for your ego when he’s got you chasing an impossible high.
“n-no, riki. want the bed, please—”
his left hand runs up your body, thumb grazing your bottom lip. “my baby wants to feel special?”
you nod frantically, eyes glossy as they stare into his — his pupils are blown. you swore if you looked a little closer, you’d see little hearts dancing around; the thought makes you dizzy.
you feel him twitch against you, just once. so impossibly thick and hefty, you drool at the vision of him stretching you out, holding your hand as you take him slowly, perfectly, sucking him in ‘till he has nothing left to give.
“mhm, please, riki,” you mutter, feeling your body heat in embarrassment. “don’t i deserve it?”
and then, he’s got your jaw in a firm grip, his own tense as he watches you squirm.
“address me properly.” riki tilts his head, smiling mockingly, memories of that class flooding your mind. it’s terrifying how fake it is — but the effect is the same. you’re leaning your cheek into his open palm, needing more, shameless in it all. “then i’ll think about it.”
you swallow, vision blurry from how impossibly needy you’re getting; it’s one of those times where you think you could die from how empty you are, you’d do just about anything to get some relief — grinding shamelessly, whimpering like a mutt against your professor’s pants, leaving a wet patch right where he’s thickest.
“please, professor.”
his lips don’t leave you, but your clothes do. he’s practically ripped your skirt off of you, your shirt is thrown somewhere below the stairs, and everything is a mess. your legs stay locked around his waist as he brings you up the stairs effortlessly, thighs tensing as he climbs each step, briefs stretching as his cock twitches harder by the second.
“tell me if you wanna stop,” he whispers into your ear, and all you do is nod. “i’ll stop.”
it’s a long walk to his bedroom, tucked away at the very end of the corridor — except you’re barely aware of it, because riki is carrying you. one arm is firm beneath your thighs, the other braced around your back, holding you like it’s the most natural thing in the world. your weight doesn’t seem to faze him; if anything, his grip tightens with quiet intention as he moves.
modern abstract paintings blur past in your periphery, bold shapes and muted colors bleeding into one another as your focus narrows to the steady rhythm of his steps. a clock with no numbers hangs near the top of the stairs, its hands gliding forward soundlessly, time stripped of meaning. you don’t look at it for long. you’re too aware of the way his shoulder presses into your chest, the warmth of him bare against you.
his breath is heavy but controlled, brushing against your hair with each step. you curl instinctively closer, fingers clutching at his back, and he adjusts you without breaking stride — a subtle shift, careful, practiced, like he’s been doing this far longer than he has any right to.
by the time he reaches the door at the end of the corridor, the rest of the house feels impossibly far away. he pauses there, forehead dipping briefly toward yours, as if grounding himself before crossing whatever line comes next — before pushing the door open and carrying you inside.
he drops you onto the thick mattress, and a squeal escapes your throat. the sheets rustle under your weight. riki hovers above you, still for just a moment. you catch him admiring you: his eyes wandering, scanning your body, drinking it all in before his hands reach for the clasp of your bra.
“you’ll tell me if it’s too much,” he reminds you, and riki’s fingers are working to undress you fully, peeling your bra off you by the straps. “got it?”
you nod sheepishly, eyes darting to the ceiling, anything to avoid the hungry stare in his eyes. you’ve never seen such a look from him — it’s predatory, hungry, the kind of expression that would usually make your blood run cold, given professor nishimura’s already stoic personality — but all it does is make your thighs press closer together.
“what’d i say about using your words?”
you take one quick look at him, before your stomach flips itself inside out; he’s panting, chest heaving, hair disheveled from all the tugging you’ve done.
the warm light above casts shadows across his face, making his eyes seem deeper, darker, more insistent. his brows are drawn together, expectant, waiting for some kind of answer from you.
you’re not eager to see what happens if you don’t give him one.
“yes… yes, i got it,” you manage, words tumbling out too quickly, blending together like one frantic, made-up syllable.
somehow, you feel like you’ve fucked up on that, because his hands are off of you, and you’re whining like you’re going to die. soon enough, his knees are coming off of the mattress, and he’s sinking to the floor.
riki kisses his teeth, left eyebrow raised as he looks at you with a new found curiosity. he wonders where all the impatience came from — he swears you were willing to bend backwards if he asked you to, and now you’re acting like a spoiled brat that he has to set straight.
“careful,” his warm breath ghosts against your thigh, too close for you not to squirm. his palms are quick to press flat against the inner sides of them, prying you open, pinning you flat to the sheets with minimal strength. “be good and i’ll fuck you right. you can speak to your friends like that, but not me. watch the tone.”
“and if i don’t?” you sigh, already picturing it.
riki purrs lowly, sharp nose running against the inner side of your thigh, inching closer to where your clothed cunt practically calls his name. “then you’re gonna be empty all night. dripping for me, begging, and i won’t do anything about it.”
you bite down on your bottom lip so hard you can taste the metal in your mouth. you sit up slightly, resting on your elbows to get a better view of the blond between your legs — he’s breathing you in, nose flush against your soaked panties, and he swears he’s so hard that he could die right here and be satisfied his life has led to and concluded with this — you smell so good, so tempting, like sin wrapped in a pretty bow arriving at his doorstep.
you’re going to fucking kill him. cause of death: pussy too good for his cock to handle not being inside.
but still, he’s a gentleman, and despite your unsatisfactory tone and attitude, he’ll let you have this — he stands up again, fingers hooked on the band of your panties, sliding it off your thighs. the cold air hits your cunt uncomfortably, and your eyes gloss over the man shifting between your legs, dropping to his knees, never breaking the stare.
“need you to take all of me,” riki kisses up your inner thigh, while your legs hang off the bed. his biceps brush against your calf, arms looping around your lower thigh. “prettiest pussy ever. you’ll look so good around me, hm? bet you’re tight, too.”
you feel feverish. hair sticks to your forehead in clumps, nose flared and jaw slack as you try to even your lungs out.
“rikiiii…” you whine, “hurry. just fuck me already—“
“i’m doing this out of kindness,” and his voice drops even lower, like you were teetering on the edge of his patience. “don’t forget that. could very well fuck you right now, but i wouldn’t want you crying the whole time i split you in half.”
the words make something bubble deep inside of you, and you’re sure that even if he flipped you over and fucked you right now that you’d be just fine — arousal is pooling between your legs, almost dripping onto the sheets, enough to last you a lifetime of quickies with nishimura riki — something tells you that he’s doing this because of his own selfish hunger, despite the cocky words leaving his lips.
“who says you’ll make me cry?” you bite, and riki’s eyes flick up to yours momentarily. it’s crazy, laced with something wild, and it almost feels like you’ve caught him red-handed in a lie.
“you’re practically crying for me down here,” and he’s spat right on your clit, eyes narrowing on the way you’re glistening for him. you have no right to be demanding things from him, not when you’re spread open at his discretion. “can’t answer me during our sessions, and now you’re running your mouth? should’ve i guessed from the beginning that you were just a slut waiting for some dick?”
you clench around nothing, visibly flustered at the way he doesn’t even flinch at the remark. he watches your reaction, smirking, inching closer to heaven.
“can’t even wait a few minutes for something to fill you up. you’re filthy.”
he sticks his tongue out, pressing it flat against your folds, licking one slow stripe towards your clit. you shiver at the warmth — it makes your head spin, the feeling of his nose bumping into your clit, his lips plush lips sucking on your swollen bud.
“too bad you’re g’na have to wait. spread, wider.” his fingers tap at your thigh, and you find yourself doing exactly as he demands. “yeah, just like that—my smart girl. so obedient.”
you whine at the praise, hips wriggling in his grip as he eats you like a man possessed; tongue lapping away at everything your cunt has to offer, which now seemed like an endless stream of arousal — riki’s eyes narrow as he peeks up at you, and the chuckle rumbling through his chest vibrates through your body, and it’s almost reflex how your fingers fly to his locks to get a firm grip.
“fuck,” he hisses as your nails scratch his scalp. you grab by the roots, smiling lazily at him as he does nothing but let it happen. “greedy fuckin’ thing.”
your knees bend and lock behind his neck, the heel of your foot rubbing against his back, feeling every dip and rise of muscle — his tongue circles around your clit faster, the pressure now increasing by tenfold. he finds himself shoving his face into a space that doesn’t exist. riki simply can’t get enough as he rocks his hips against his dark oak bed frame (the one he spent too long picking out online), chasing a high he knows he won’t be satisfied with — pre stains his briefs as his cock stretches the spandex out, wet and sticky like homemade honey.
“y-yeah, riki—“ you moan, “oh my god, fuck,”
you don’t even realise that his face is pulled away until your orgasm barely slips from you.
“wrooong. again.” riki mumbles, lips glossy from your slick and his saliva mixed in something similar to alcohol — he was getting so pussy-drunk that he was starting to slur his words, more focused on how sweet, how perfect you taste on his tongue. he was beginning to strategise just how he’d be able to savour this every day for the rest of his life.
well… the only answer was to make you his, of course.
he lets saliva collect in the shallow well of his tongue, before spitting thickly onto your clit. his aim is comically good.
“my patience is running thin. address me properly.”
nishimura riki can’t possibly let anyone else enjoy this. he’ll fuck you so good, so right, that he’ll be the only man you think of for the rest of your life.
his middle and ring finger apply pressure to the throbbing cunt, and you practically scream with how sensitive you are. riki has that smug fucking look again,
“p-professor,” you whimper, grinding your hips against his face. the tip of his nose runs along your folds, up and down, and you’re practically riding his face now — he can only groan in response, your arousal dripping down his chin and running down his neck. “s-sorry, professor, i’m sorr—“
“i forgive you,” riki coos between sucks, “taught you sooo well. my most perfect girl. all fucking mine.”
it’s almost embarrassing how compliant you are when it comes to professor nishimura. he tells you to cum, and you do, coating his wet tongue with sweet fluid that makes his eyes roll back — he tells you to ride his face, squeeze his head between your thighs, cum again on his sharp nose this time — and you do. you bite back a moan when he tells you not to cum yet. you take his fingers in your mouth as he tells you to be quiet. you grind your hips even when they’re sore. you keep pushing because he tells you to.
the pained, pussy-drunk expression on his face is enough to make it all worth it.
you think you have nothing left to give by the time you cum all over his mouth for the 3rd time, his adam’s apple bobbing as he drinks you up, lips bitten raw from making out with your pussy like it was his first meal in days.
“fuckfuckfuck—i’m gonna cum, riki—!” he lets the name slip, because he thinks you look beautiful when your lips are parted and screaming his birth name. how merciful, he thinks he earned a pat on the back for being so kind.
“then cum.”
how could you ever deny him?
“where’s the attitude gone?” riki grins, rough, large palms gripping at your hips as he comes off his knees. he towers over you again, a dark shadow cast over you from his large stature blocking the lamp’s golden bleed — he looks down at you, tongue running over his bottom lip, heart thumping hard in his ribcage. “fucked dumb already? haven’t even been inside.”
you feel heat crawl up your neck, face visibly flushing as riki fits himself snug between your thighs — your eyes can’t help but to travel down, eyeing the bulge in his slacks, so impossibly thick and long and everything you could ever possibly need for a lifetime of godly sex.
you’ve been with big guys. enough to say you know what’s big and what’s just average, but it was safe to say nishimura riki was big. thick, throbbing, twitching underneath the fabric as if it was trying to spell your name.
“you gotta do better than that, miss [name],” professor nishimura pouts, though his expression is nowhere near one of genuine sympathy. you see the red flush of his cheeks, that pussy-drunk face of his that you know you could definitely get used to, and the way his jaw slacks when he rubs his bulge against your bare pussy — strings of sticky arousal stretch like honey, and you whine at the raw friction of it all — his eyes constantly ping-pong between your face and the way your folds spread open to slot the tent between the slit.
“stop teasing, ki!” you blurt out, and his head tilts, as if lost in thought. he doesn’t look back up at you this time, his pupils instead locked on the mess you’re making down there.
you’re not going to fit him. he knows this, but he’ll make it work. brainstormer, he remembers his old mentors calling him, so he’ll find a way to have you stretched out ‘till his balls touch your ass, or he’ll just make you cum a few more times on his face, or fingers, anything it takes to let him have you fully.
“you’re so fucking wet,” riki smiles, “think you can take me?”
“yes, yesyesyes, please,” you babble, nodding frantically as riki stares on. it seems kind of unreal how desperately you need him — he wonders if he always had this effect on you, if you were always this pliant and good and absolutely breathtaking. if he’d known, he would’ve fucked you right then and there, in his office during that first study session. “want it—i want you, please, professor.”
you’re so fucking perfect, he feels like he’s dreaming.
he doesn’t waste any time unbuckling his belt, the metal clasp clinking loudly as his fingers work at the hook. he rolls his belt into his hand, and for a brief moment, riki wonders just how you’d react to a little leather spanking.
“oh?”
the corner of his lip tugs, and a familiar smirk only grows from there. the one that makes your skin crawl.
he didn’t need to think for long, after all.
he feels your pussy throb against him, your glassy eyes ogling the expensive belt looped around his left hand.
“like it, baby?”
you don’t even manage to respond.
“want me to use it on you?”
there’s a moment of hesitation from you — you’re not really sure why, because it’s just a fucking belt, but you’ve been rubbing up on him like a feral cat in heat. something about professor nishimura using his belt on you makes your mind go blank, as if every word you’ve learnt in your twenty something years of living has suddenly been rendered useless.
all you know is that you want it, so you nod, and pray that this is the meanest he can get.
“should i tie you up? spank you? tell me which you want, sweetheart,” and the corners of his lips are curving upwards, almost sinister in nature, as he unravels the belt so that it just hangs free from his grip. the slight change in tone when the word ‘spank’ slips makes your thighs twitch hard. “i’ll do it. anything to make my good girl happy, hm?”
you’re heaving, chest falling and rising at a rapid rate as you try to conjure the right words. who was going to tell you that it’d be damn near impossible to speak comprehensible english when your professor’s huge cock is twitching against you?
he waits for an answer, head tilted, eyebrows pulled together in this painfully expectant way — the kind of expression that drags you straight back to your case study presentations, where every slip-up had professor nishimura giving you that exact same look. same stupidly handsome face. same unfairly perfect eyebrows lifted like he was judging both your academic ability and your life choices at once.
“i-i—“ you mutter, “want.. i want—“
“clearly didn’t teach you well enough to use your words,” he scoffs, hands working to grab the other end of the belt. it forms a lop-sided circle, long enough to hurt, short enough not to make you bleed. “that’s fine—i’ll pick for you, mmkay?”
he isn’t asking for your permission.
in the next 10 seconds that follow, professor nishimura has you on your belly, ass bent over the edge of the bed. your thighs dangle off the mattress, twitching, as if you’ve just come down from your 5th orgasm (even though that was 10 minutes ago) — and all nishimura riki can do is stare at the perfect canvas laid beneath him, so blank, so ready for him to bruise.
you moan, loud, when his palm fondles your right ass cheek, pressing you further into the mattress.
“sorry, i’ll have to keep her waiting.”
his thumb spreads your empty cunt wide, watching how your glistening hole clenches around nothing, and it’s gross how fast his heart fills with pride. you’re so fucking easy it makes him want to take you right now, waste no time, fuck you all night until you’re both on the brink of exhaustion, but that little sick voice in his head tells him to test the waters with you — how far you’d go for him before your nails are drawing blood from his chest and begging him to slow down — because right now, you’re bending over backwards for him, and he finds it adorable.
“‘s okay,” you mumble, cheek pressed flush against the sheets. “hmph—please, just hurry.”
oh, so forgiving. with how kind you were being —he’d make sure to reward you tenfold.
smack. “ooookay, baby,” riki sing-songs, smiling down at your figure, your spine arched and your ass fully rounded out for him.
smack.
the sting follows immediately.
“fuck—!” you squeal, body writhing as the red outline of his belt blooms on your skin. riki’s jaw slacks watching the print form, a dreamy sigh leaving his lips — you’re still wriggling your ass for more, even as he sees the tear slip down your cheek.
“dirty girl,” riki tsks, working to bundle the belt around his palm again. “you get off to this? shameless.”
you don’t respond, anticipating the second smack that riki eventually ends up giving you.
“a-ah,“ your throat rasps, broken moan escaping, “professor—i’m sorry!”
“oh,” smack. “i always knew. just a slut, aren’t you? probably thought about me doing this looong before today. didn’t you? thought about your professor setting you straight in front of everyone?”
you nod desperately, too many times than necessary, and a deep chuckle sounds through the dim room. “that’s my girl. so honest. so good. so obedient.”
“fuuuck,” you moan at the praise. riki watches your thighs squeeze, tensing up as you drip down, down, down. “w-want you to fuck me, please, professor, i can’t wait anymore—“
smack, smack, smack. your hole squeezes around nothing with every harsh hit.
“barely been five minutes,” riki taunts, and when you turn your head to look back at him, you swear there’s hearts in his eyes. “but okay. since you’ve been so good for me, i’ll indulge.”
and just like that, the sting on your skin is replaced by the cool bite of expensive linen sheets — you’re back here again, caged underneath his chest, eyes locked on the way his blonde locks stick to smooth skin. sweat rolls down his chest, down to his abs, your heart racing at the divine sight above you: his chest heaves, gaze hungry and dark with everything you’ve been too afraid to confront, fingers firm on the flesh of your waist as he pulls you closer.
“tell me if it hurts,” riki adds, his hands pulling back from your figure to slide his slacks off his legs. “but i know my girl can take it all, can’t she?”
“yesyesyes, i can take it, i can take it—please.”
oh, he feels his heart swelling. riki sees how your eyes never leave the imprint in his briefs, widening when his thumbs hook into the waistband to pull them down — and when he finally frees himself?
he replays the way your breath hitches again, and again, and again, only snapping out of it when your eyes dart back up to meet his.
he’s stupidly long. thick, heavy, swollen red and leaking pre-cum; it leaves a sticky layer on his tip, shining under the light, veins running down the side of his shaft — for a moment, you’re upset that he didn’t make you suck him off before this, give you a chance to run your tongue along the blood vessels. you’d trace and memorise them, eyes looking up as he’d throw his head back.
“you’re so fucking perfect,” he mumbles, head dropping low, jaw slack from how your cunt is essentially calling for him to fuck you full. “wanna fuck you ‘till you can’t forget me.”
he lines his cock up with your dripping entrance, already tempted to just slam his hips into yours. with how sticky and wet it is from both your fluids, riki’s sure there’d be no problem fitting all of him — but he’s a gentleman, and he doesn’t want you screaming and waking the entire neighbourhood up.
you whine when his hand grabs the base of his dick and taps his tip against your clit, his hips grinding forward just to slide his cock between your folds once or twice. fucking tease.
“you’re so annoying,” you drawl, teeth biting down on your lip as you feel just how thick he was compared to you. you find yourself out of air just thinking of how you’d be able to accommodate the girth.
“you love me,” riki smiles. “jus’ let me make you feel good, hm?” he leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead, biceps caging your head, chests pressed against the others. your head rests against his shoulder, heavy sighs leaving your lips right next to his ear, and all it does is make him even hungrier.
“i do love you,” you whisper. nishimura riki feels something shift inside of him at the words, oddly enough, despite the fact that you two have seen each other fully by this point: no, it makes everything real, despite the constant reassurance that it always has been, but now he knows that he can’t let you go.
“i love you too, [name].”
so when he finally lets himself sink into you, tip pushing past the folds of your heaven-sent pussy, riki fights every sinister voice that begs him to just bottom out and fuck you silly until you remember that he, the man who never loved, loves you.
“fuuuck,” he groans into your ear. he feels you squeeze him tighter, almost pushing him back out at the sound. “you gotta relax, baby. breathe. too fucking tight, it’s gonna kill me.”
“t-too fucking big,” you squeal, legs wrapping around his waist. you try to follow his advice, taking slow, deep breaths in an attempt to calm yourself down. “i can’t, riki, i can’t—“
“you can,” riki corrects you. “you’ll take all of me, won’t you? can’t fuck you right with only a quarter of me.”
well, fuck… quarter?
he pulls his face away from your neck, forehead pressed against yours in something sweet. your eyes lock onto his blown pupils, laced with love and addiction, and you genuinely feel so full that your throat clogs up.
your walls stretch as he sinks further in, now half-way over. his jaw hangs open, heavy breaths mingling between the tiny space between you, and when he feels your heel dig into his lower back for that final push — he breaks.
so warm. so snug. so wet and perfectly moulded to fit his cock. it was divine, to say the least.
“fuuuck,” riki moans, eyes screwing shut, as if he couldn’t believe how warm and heavenly this felt. when he opens them, he sees your pretty face, lips parted with half-lidded eyes staring up at his. “god, i love you—you’re perfect everywhere.”
his hot mouth meets yours in a sloppy kiss, spit and saliva exchanging, smearing all over both your lips and dripping down your chin. riki feels your tongue run over his, your soft moans that go straight his throat and the way your hand tangles in his hair, pulling him impossibly closer as his balls kiss your ass.
“rikiii…” you drag sweetly, lips curling into a familiarly maddening smile. “fuck me ‘till i can’t think, please, want it so bad. i can’t wait anymore—“
he exhales a shaky breath before pulling out, just barely leaving any of himself inside of you. “still so fucking impatient.”
riki slams his hips into you, and the stretch almost knocks you out cold. you’re still adjusting to him as his hips pull back before sinking back inside. the sounds of your pussy and his cock plunging deep into you sounds borderline pornographic: wet squelches and skin slapping against each other, along with the moans that he rips from you.
“fuck, s-so perfect, just like how i imagined.”
riki leans back just to get a better view, and your hands immediately fall to his wrists. your nails dig into his forearm, and riki almost cums on the spot watching your tits bounce and your face morph into one of obscene, shameless pleasure.
plap, plap, plap.
his tip kisses your cervix with every needy thrust, and you’re trying your best to not scream riki’s name every single time his pelvis flushes against yours. you brace yourself, feeling him all the way in your lungs, knocking the wind out of you with every wet slap of skin.
“r-rikiii…” you moan, about to go cross-eyed, “so good, so fucking good—oh my god—“
“yeah?” he mumbles, thumb pressing against your clit to rub frantic circles, and it’s ridiculous how fast your eyes roll to the back of your head. “my good girl, taking me so well—want me to fill you up, too? would my baby like that?”
nishimura riki thought he was the one in control here, but when you scream ‘yes’ and ‘please’ at least ten times over, he finds his pace quickening and his hips slamming into yours with newfound motivation. you’re a mess: a thin veil of sweat coats your skin, and you’re crying riki’s name like a desperate prayer.
“ngh—d’you get tighter thinking about me cumming inside this pussy? so fucking dirty.”
he doesn’t care if his neighbour comes knocking on his door. he’ll fuck you on the balcony if it meant everyone knew that he was the only man who has you like this.
riki’s hand runs over the bulge in your lower belly, applying delicious pressure as your mind slowly unravels underneath him. you can’t speak anymore, a cacophony of moans and cries being the only thing filling the room, and the man above you can only chuckle as he witnesses your descent into madness.
your hands find their way to your face, covering the fucked-out expression on it. riki doesn’t take to well to it, opting to grab at your wrists, pinning them over your head. “don’t get shy on me.” he mutters.
“my good little slut,” riki spits, and the way your hands fit right into his palm makes him go crazy. you’re thrashing against him, thighs twitching hard as you feel that familiar pressure build inside of you. your mind is turning to mush as his cock relentlessly slams into you, and you swear he gets bigger with every second that passes. “o-oh fuuuck, i love you—love this pussy so much—you’re taking me so good, sweetheart.”
you’ve been wanting this for so long. ever since that night your hands slid underneath the band of your sweats, touching yourself to his gym pictures on instagram, and now he’s finally here: fucking into you like you’re all he’s been wanting, too.
“i w-want a kiss, riki, please,” you manage to blurt out. riki’s quick to fulfill your request, plump lips meeting yours in another heated kiss. the closeness lets his hips rut into you, slow and nice as they angle to brush against that sweet spot deep inside of you.
“mmngh—haa, shit—i’ve wanted you for so long, [name],” riki mumbles between kisses, “thought about fucking this perfect pussy… in my office. in class, in front of everyone. make you feel sooo good, you’ll never look at anyone else.”
your heart skips at the confession.
“tell me you’re all mine,” he moans into your mouth, kissing your lips raw. “all mine to fuck,” thrust. “kiss,” thrust. “to have like this—fuck, please, [name]—“
“i’m a-all yours, riki,” you smile lazily, feeling the drag of his cock in and out of you. “y-yes, all yours—oh fuck!”
you’re so sensitive to the point that his touch burns. riki feels hot against you, the weight of his body and the thick stretch of his dick convincing you that this might be your last night alive.
“h-harder, riki,” you cry, “want you harder—“
you drive the man crazy. absolutely feral.
he’s half sure that he’s running on pure horniness, because his thighs hurt and his back stings from all the scratches you’ve left. the pain feels secondary to this, to having you milking him for everything he has, that he refuses to slow down.
you want it harder? he’ll give you harder, no questions asked.
“needy fucking thing,” riki teases, and the flush on your face is almost immediately intensified. your nose scrunches at him, a scowl worn before it’s quickly washed away from how deep you feel him; every hit makes you dizzier, his words going into your right ear and out the left, nothing on your mind but the impending orgasm that’s about to wash over you.
riki kisses the tears on your cheek, cock twitching at the taste of salt and the look of your visibly flushed face. the admission triggers something in him, because now, he’s pistoning his dick like this was the last time he’ll ever have you — he can feel your walls pulsing, squeezing him tight, and it’s turning him into a fucking animal.
“that’s right, baby—all mine, all fucking mine.”
that does it for both of you. his thrusts become sloppy, haphazard, nothing that resembles careful.
you make him so, so messy. a part of him that he’s never bothered to awaken, like a flip of a switch at your hands.
“i’m gonna fucking cum, riki,” broken sobs rip through your body, and he feels himself lose every last bit of sanity he’s kept tucked away.
riki buries himself deep inside, to the hilt, working his hips to close any remaining distance between you two. he chases his high as you thrash violently underneath him with nothing but a cry of his name, walls clamping down on his cock like you’d die if he so much as moved a centimetre out of you — you coat him in your juices, warm and hot, and the guttural groan that rips from his throat only pushes you further over the edge.
“o-oh shit,” riki rasps, feeling you gush around him. “oh fuuuck, yeah, cum all over this dick baby. just like that.”
you can’t stop cumming. his hips begin to falter, his stamina draining as you milk him for everything that he has, but riki refuses to stop; he’s so achingly close to filling up that perfect pussy of yours, ‘till you’re leaking for hours and have to ask him to plug you closed.
oh, he can’t stop thinking about it now.
“fuuuck—” you scream, and riki’s lips are crashing into yours as he continues fucking into you, fast and hard. the sounds of his cock fucking you through your orgasm remind you of rain puddles: those wet and cold mondays on the way to his class, unsuspecting, innocent, still believing that he would never would see you this way.
“thaaat’s it, pretty girl,” riki’s praise lands right between your thighs. your ankles lock behind his back, the squelch of your cunt and his cock plunging deep inside making riki’s head spin. he could replay the sound for days. “s’cute when you’re gushing all over me, baby. so fucking hot.”
you whine, feeling shy at his words, hands coming close to hide your face from his dark gaze. “told you not to hide,” riki mutters, peeking at you through your fingers. “w-wanna see your adorable face when i cum inside—please?”
his voice gets all whiney, eyes softening, and you know he’s close when you feel his pace quickening, although sloppy and with a new rhythm, and his breath gets shaky as his jaw hangs open.
your hands move to grip at his forearms, as if to brace yourself from how hard he was fucking into you — like he wanted a family of six, excluding you both — the bed creaks with every wet slap of skin, his balls clapping against your ass, and you watch how his jaw tenses as he inches closer to his orgasm.
“mmngh—riki, too much—“ your head tilts back, spine arching off the mattress as you feel that sickening coil in your stomach start to tighten again — the way he notices this scares you. his thumb flies to your clit, pressing and circling, doing just about everything to make you cum all over him again.
“s-shit, gonna cum,” riki rasps, head dropping low to let his eyes admire the beautiful sight: you, dripping, and him, glistening.
his fingers interlace with yours, tight, as if you’d disappear if he let you go. riki’s unravelling, every muscle in his body tensing as you clench around him again — soft, sticky gummy walls welcoming him back in, and riki knows he has no choice but to give them what they deserve: his load, his cum, just him.
don’t get him wrong. you’ve cum on his face, in his mouth and on his tongue. but this is different. this time, he’ll be able to give you a piece of him, too, after a long night of being on the receiving end — and it somehow makes everything seem ten times better.
“c-cum inside of me,” your head tilts into the sheets, eyes rolling back and splotches of white.
“can’t ever s-say no to you, mm?” he tsks, eyebrows knitting, knowing what’s to come. “you’re fucking killing me.”
professor nishimura has lost his sanity, officially, when you cum for the second time. your clit throbs against his shaft as he drives himself in and out, slower, because this is just fucking perfect — too perfect for him not to do anything about it — he cums, hard, for the first time in what seems like centuries (it’s only been 1.5 hours since you got out of his car, but he swears otherwise).
“o-oh fuck,” nishimura riki moans right into your ear, and it sounds like a snippet from a porno from how loud and absolutely lewd it is.
his cock pulses, throbbing hard inside of your weeping cunt. hot spurts of him make you squeal, and you thrash underneath him as you both come down together.
he collapses on top of you, still buried inside — because he’s genuinely convinced you’ll start leaking like a broken faucet if he doesn’t plug you up — a heavy, contented sigh leaves his lips, before he presses a gentle kiss to your bare shoulder.
you’re panting, he is too. riki’s fingers lace with yours again, and you hiss when you feel him still twitching inside of you. you feel hot inside and out, the warmth from his body making you feel ten times more tired. for a moment, you just lay, two naked bodies intertwined as you try to even your breaths and sync your heartbeats — his chest is flush against yours, and it almost feels as if you were one.
“are you alright?”
riki’s voice is quiet, gentle. familiarly sweet and caring, still sounding as mature as the first day you met in that bright lecture hall.
“mmm,” you hum. “just tired. and sore.”
the blonde pulls away from the skin of your neck, instead resting his forehead on top of yours. his eyes look impossibly beautiful, laced with love and everything that he’s been too scared to name, but you know this: he wants this, and he wants you.
“was i too rough?”
“you were perfect,” you tell him, and the smile that slowly tugs at his lips is worth every second of the chaos that led you here. “professor.”
he leans in, kissing you with a kind of lazy tenderness — slow, sweet, almost careful, like he’s afraid to break the moment. “saturday,” he murmurs against your mouth. “it’s riki to you.”
“riiight,” you breathe out in a giggle, your lips brushing his skin. your hands, suddenly useless and soft, come up to cradle his jaw. you pull him closer, and your mouths meet again, fitting together in a way that feels dangerously close to perfection — as if neither of you ever stood a chance against this fate. “riki.”
“miss [name],” he mumbles against your mouth, almost dazed. “my girl.”
“[name] after classes,” you correct softly, fingers still curled at his jaw, the words slipping out warmer than you intend. “no need for the formalities.”
“agreed fully,” riki chuckles, the warmth of his breath ghosting against your lips. “fuck, i’ve been waiting to hear you say that.”
you can feel his smile against your skin before his mouth finds yours again, deeper this time — less careful, more certain, like he’s finally letting himself want you out loud.
the kiss ends only when you’re both out of air, foreheads pressed together, sharing the quiet that settles between you. his thumb sweeps once across your cheek, almost reverent.
“so,” he murmurs, voice low, “after classes… i get to keep you a little longer?”
you don’t trust yourself to speak, so you nod, and his answering grin is all boyish triumph and barely contained affection.
“good,” he whispers, kissing you once more, softer than the last. “i’m not ready to let you go yet.”
“you won’t have to.”
oh, yes. professor nishimura will have to hand in his letter of resignation tomorrow.
─────────────────────────
“DRINKS TONIGHT?”
sooha slings an arm around your neck, hanging off you like a very cheerful, very heavy scarf. you stumble forward a step trying to keep both of you upright, while jiwon watches from your right with that warm, amused smile she gets whenever sooha becomes your problem.
“i can’t,” you mumble, staring hard at the floor like it might save you. “i have plans.”
“finals are literally over,” sooha groans, squeezing your shoulders. “what do you mean you have plans?”
jiwon raises an eyebrow, interest sparking. “yeah. plans with who?”
you press your lips together, pursing into a thin line as your brain scrambles to invent some brilliant excuse — any excuse — to feed them this time. because, unfortunately, exams were over, and you could no longer dodge their house parties and drink invites with the trusty “i have to meet professor nishimura” line, for obvious reasons:
one: professor nishimura has left for better job prospects, in a university much less privileged and competitive than yours, and
two: he is no longer professor nishimura to you, much less on weekends.
your pulse jumps at the thought of admitting this to them, heat crawling up your neck. they’ve known of his resignation ever since he bid goodbye a month back, but it’s been surprisingly easy keeping your relationship under wraps.
sooha narrows her eyes, leaning closer. “why do you look like you’re hiding state secrets?”
“i’m not!” you hiss, which — if anything — makes you look way more suspicious.
and the conversation spirals exactly the way you feared: rapid-fire accusations, ridiculous theories, the two of them gleefully feeding off each other as you try to keep walking in a straight line.
“she’s pregnant,” sooha whispers to jiwon, directly across you. you almost want to drag them both by the ears and throw them into incoming traffic at the laugh that makes the entire hallway look in your direction.
you’re about to tell them to stop when you see him — leaning against his car, arms crossed, head tilted, wearing that unfairly composed expression that’s become dangerously familiar.
professor nishimura. riki, on weekends, or rather every single day now that he’s no longer working in this cursed institution.
his eyes lift when he spots you, and he pushes off the car with a small, easy wave.
“you ready?” he calls out, like your friends aren’t right there losing their minds. his keys jingle as he reaches for the passenger handle, completely unfazed.
you freeze, but somehow you still manage to look left and right, taking in the absolute horror plastered across both their faces. you mouth a tiny “sorry,” grip your bag like a lifeline, and dart across the road with so little caution that riki actually winces and shakes his head at you.
“so no drinks tonight?” sooha yells after you, loud enough that half the parking lot turns to stare. jiwon doesn’t move an inch — wide-eyed, stunned, still trying to connect every dot she didn’t even know existed. for a second, you almost forget she had no idea, all this time.
“tomorrow!” you shout back, breathless, already reaching for the open passenger door. riki smiles as you duck your head, hopping into the seat that’s already moulded with your figure.
the door shuts, and you watch riki cross over to his side of the vehicle.
when you turn to look out the window, sooha screams something unintelligible and jiwon finally exhales, before they both turn to each other and start laughing hysterically.
“how was it?” he asks once you’re both settled in the car, hands casually resting on the wheel, glancing at you without turning his head.
“how was what?” you reply, feigning innocence, tightening your grip on your bag like it’s a shield.
“the finals i prepped you for,” he says, voice light but teasing, like he’s expecting you to cave.
you snort, rolling your eyes. “you left a month ago,” leaning back in your seat, pretending nonchalance.
“and?” he challenges, eyebrows raised, daring you to give him credit.
“meaning it was practically all me,” you counter, smirking, because honestly, a little credit never hurts.
riki shoots you a look, one brow arching in that infuriatingly perfect way. “don’t get ahead of yourself,” he warns, but the corner of his mouth twitches in amusement.
“i’m serious,” you say, leaning slightly toward him, voice low, “zero guidance. pure, raw talent.”
“right,” he mutters, finally glancing at you, mock-skeptical. “that’s why you called me five times last night. asking me questions i’ve already touched on months before today.”
“four,” you correct immediately, raising a finger like you’re marking a point in a debate.
“five,” he insists, smug, turning the wheel with one hand, eyes flicking to you again. “you facetimed me to show me your new cereal.”
you groan, slumping back. “okay, maybe four and a half.”
riki hums, satisfied, hands gripping the wheel. he puts the car in gear, the engine purring beneath you both, and glances sideways just long enough to catch your eye. there’s a warmth in the look he gives you that makes your stomach flip, the same teasing edge still lingering, but softened now, like he’s letting you in on something only the two of you share.
“i’ll let you have that,” he murmurs, fingers drumming lightly on the wheel, “only cause you worked hard for today.”
you bite back a smile, shaking your head, but the tension in your shoulders eases just a little as the car rolls forward. “not because i’m your girlfriend and i’m always right?”
he snorts, laughing when you reach to pinch his thigh. it barely hurts, but he winces anyway.
nishimura riki shakes his head, still chuckling, and glances at you through the corner of his eye. “nah, that’s a bonus,” he says softly, voice low enough that it almost gets lost in the hum of the engine.
you let out a small laugh, leaning back in your seat, and for a second the world outside the car blurs into nothing — just the two of you, the soft rhythm of the road beneath, and the warmth lingering where your hands brushed.
riki reaches over, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face, and it’s gentle, careful, like he’s afraid you might vanish if he moves too fast. “don’t get used to it,” he murmurs, and you just shake your head, pretending like you don’t know how stupid you look smiling at him.
the sun bleeds through the windshield and into your hair, painting your skin bright and glowing, and riki feels his heart slow at the sight — so you, so beautiful, that he thinks he’s waited his whole life for this.
nishimura riki presses a soft kiss to your lips, warm and close enough to feel the steady rhythm of his pulse.
“i’m so proud of you,” he whispers.
“i know.” you respond.
he pulls away, head turning towards the front; the car rolls forward, smooth as it takes you closer to his place. you know exactly how this’ll end — curled up beneath his sheets, chest to chest, the steady rhythm of him keeping you anchored. riki had always joked about letting you sleep for a full day straight, even if he knew it was extremely unhealthy, a reward for surviving finals.
you think back to the last time it happened. it had been over a short call — him at his new office, grading papers with a quiet intensity, and you, slumped over a random table in the school library, eye bags sinking into your face with lips so chapped that you think you could grate cheese with them. the memory brings a small, fond smile to your face, but riki doesn’t catch it with how focused he is on the drive.
but after a few silent minutes, he speaks. “i’m off tomorrow. took a sick day.”
you gasp. “oh my. who even are you?”
riki glances at you, quickly, before his smirk softens into something warmer. “just thought it’d be nice to take care of you.”
that sounded utterly useless and unproductive, to be quite honest — and yet, somehow, completely necessary. you were an adult, perfectly capable of handling yourself. this wasn’t like him at all. a year ago, riki would be twitching at the edges of his schedule, itching to tick off every item on his never-ending to-do list.
but now… now his to-do list was almost frighteningly simple. it began and ended with you. everything else could wait, fade, or fall apart, and he wouldn’t care. the thought made your chest tighten in a way that was equal parts tender and dizzying.
oh, this is bad.
it happens just like this: nishimura riki, the guy with endless awards and certificates and letters of recommendations, wakes up an hour later than his usual alarm, your head still resting against his bare chest beneath the thick sheets. panic flashes across his face as he scrambles to hit ‘stop’ on the alarm, clearly afraid you’d grumble and jab his chest in protest.
and then he’s two hours late to breakfast because you’re still drooling all over him. next thing you know, he’s splitting leg day into mornings and nights just so he can stop by your apartment after work.
and why don’t his bank statements match up?
also, why the hell is he letting you use his toothbrush?
shit. this is really, really, really bad.
thank you so much for reading once again <3 if you’ve made it this far n liked it, please reblog! it helps me more than u think :) mwamwa until next time :3
pairing: park jongseong x reader
genre: alien!jay x scientist!reader, strangers to lovers, romance, angst, betrayal, slowburn, futuristic au
warnings: dubcon, profanity, kissing, alien fucker i guess... tentacle sex, virgin!jay, self fucking anal m!rec, switch!yn x switch!jay, experimenting on living organisms (aliens), yn's job is really mentally and emotionally draining, there are a lot of morally grey scientists that yn works with, violence, mentions of blood, big dick!jay, mutual oral, aphrodisiac sweat, hyperspermia/squirting, breeding kink, mentions of sedatives/tranquilization, needles/injections, dissecting living organisms, usage of restraints ie, shock collar and chains, confinements, sweat/scent kink, mind control, knotting, yn is an orphan, mentions of various weapons, minor character deaths, lmk if i forgot smth !! 18+ not proofread at all guys the typos are probably diabolical i wrote a lot of this half asleep
synopsis: jay, an alien on planet earth learns to love.
wc: 32868 (dont ask)
──────── shout out to @soulofsim @intromortal @s1rawb3rry @xylatox @heejamas for giving me so much encouragement to write this and helping me step out of my comfort zone. they were such great friends for supporting me and sharing their brains to help with ideas, plot points, and world building. i've really wanted to try to write something different and it's kinda my first time writing this type of fic ifykyk so i'm really excited to share it with all of you c: i hope you guys enjoy it <3
“this is dr. ln– the date is january 12th, 4044; time is 245am.” you say while glancing down at your watch, the bright cyan and white glow illuminating your face in the dim laboratory as the band on your wrist projects a holographic image of the current time of day alongside the weather, the date, and other irrelevant details that you never paid attention to.
it was another tireless night in your lab, a day filled with research and experiments that blended well into the night and eventually into the sunrise of the next morning. that was your routine, so much so that it consumed a great portion of your own personal life that there was nothing left of who you were outside of being a scientist.
a life's long dedication to research where you felt no other choice but to continue.
most days you wouldn’t care about the strenuous length of work because it was for the progression and study of alien life. your job as a scientist was to study behavioral patterns and alien species. you’ve dedicated your whole life to studying them ever since the incident with your family when you were a child, leaving you an orphan; it molded who you are as a person and the thing that took your family away was now filling every crevice of your mind.
you wanted to study them to get to know them better and with time maybe humans and aliens could reside on earth without fear or the need for violence. aliens became known to humankind just a little over 100 years ago and although subjectively 100 years is a long time, the knowledge we have on them didn't compare to 100 years of research.
aliens were smart— most of them— so they mostly resorted to leaving humans alone; aside from the occasional alien that found it's way onto earth who do one of two things. they either learn to adapt and try to hide among the humans
or they wreak havoc until government officials catch wind and a hunt to capture them begins. aliens weren't ever executed when captured. instead, they were taken to your research facility where you and several other scientists took part in researching them— most of the time it would result in their death,
but it was all in the name of science.
and for people on earth— that was enough to not give two shits about aliens. that and the fact that there are around 400 alien related deaths per year— and that's just what's recorded, not including all of the ones that go unheard of by the news.
like what happened to your parents and siblings all those years ago.
saying that you didn’t have any resentment for the type of alien that killed your family would be a lie, you were only doing this so you could figure out their way of life and in turn, understand how to eradicate them from the face of the universe.
but that was proving to be a tougher task than you anticipated. after years of work and university, long hours of studies and research, space expeditions that left you wandering in outer space for weeks on end you'd think that you would’ve encountered the alien species that attacked you and your family all those years ago— but nothing.
you’ve come in contact with almost 100 different alien species and yet none of them share any similar characteristics as the alien from that night. 100 alien species out of the unknown number of total aliens out there, all of them just scattered across the universe, some hidden in the darkness, some closer than you think. you were going to complete your research one way or another.
there was a burning flame inside of your chest that fueled you to keep going. a small flame that you've chosen to hide in the depths of your soul, afraid that if you ever let it burn too bright or too big that it would just result in you burning yourself.
and you didn't need that when you're still so far away from what you've been looking for.
"species identified as 'Arma-44' brought into the lab approximately 72 hours ago after being captured in central city. subject was living among humans— a barista— before a sudden outburst that led to the subject exposing itself as an alien to every patron inside of the establishment.
enforcement was contact immediately and the subject was contained." you continued to speak into the small device clipped to your lab coat, recording your voice for later referencing as you begin your routine check up on the alien that was laying unconscious on the cold silver table.
it's arms and legs were chained securely to avoid escaping if it ever came to— which would be difficult because all aliens undergo a 24 hour sedation process. when they arrive at the facility they're injected with 100cc's of tranquilizer once every 4 hours while they're chained up in a chamber that fills the room with a constant flow of sleep gas— only turning off when it's time to inject them again.
the species you were currently studying was called "Arma-44" a newer type of alien species only discovered this year, hence the number in it's species name. 'Arma' comes from it's similar characteristics to an armadillo, the alien has a protective outer shell that it uses as a defense and that's pretty much all you knew about it.
but it was your job to study the alien so that you could learn more.
you walk a few feet to reach for blue sterile gloves, sliding them over your fingers with a snap, cracking your knuckles as you head back to where the alien is laying. it's scales were still present as it was captured during it's original form, unable to shift back into it's human— more acceptable— form.
when the alien was captured and it was time for sedation, the extraction team broke almost 20 needles trying to penetrate it's skin— the outer shell proving to be very tough— but because they were focused on brute rather than brain, they didn't realize that if they just took one second to pay attention, the alien's neck was vulnerable and free of any protective scales.
you prodded around the base of the subject's neck, feeling around for where their pulse could be, surprisingly enough, like humans a lot of alien's have their pulse in similar places but this alien wasn't providing you with any as far as you know. you checked every common place you knew of, the spots that humans have them plus the spots that you've learned from other aliens— and nothing.
deciding that finding it the traditional way wasn't going to work, you chose to drag the alien across the room, using your feet to unlock the wheels of the table and pushing it towards the large x-ray machine tucked away in the corner of the lab.
the machine lights up with bright LED dots that blink in configuration before the artificial intelligence behind the machine comes to life, instructing you to place the alien in the empty space to begin the scan. the machine begins to close, covering the subject in a metal sheath as the x-ray begins, a low hum from the mechanism fills the room as you lean back on one of the various tables laid out in the lab.
a sigh slips past your lips when you remember the time, your sleep schedule wasn't even a schedule anymore these days, it was more random and sporadic, becoming difficult to fit sleep into your busy schedule as if it wasn't an important thing that someone needed to regularly have.
the bags under your eyes only prove the existence of your lack of sleep.
"doctor ln, still here?"
your head snaps upwards towards the voice as the automatic doors shut behind the owner of said voice. you can see the hallway chamber releasing a sanitizing gas behind him when the door closes. everyone had to go through several sterilization procedures before entering the lab— safety measure and what not.
your eyes followed dr. kim as he reached for gloves and slid them on like you did just moments ago. you hummed in response before telling him that you're behind on some research and chose to stay late to catch up— gesturing with your head to the alien being scanned in the x-ray machine.
dr. kim was quite new to the facility, he's only been here just a little under 6 months but he's shown great promise with his attention to detail, extensive knowledge on animals that have helped with identifying alien behavior and creating connections between other species, and above that— he was really kind.
much kinder than all of the other people in this place.
much kinder than you.
"i find it hard to believe that you— dr. ln— are behind on anything." he responds, walking over to a table just a few feet away, squinting his eyes at the different vials of various colored liquids. his fingers carefully hover over some of them, he reaches for one and gives it a slight shake and it shifts from a dark red color to a bright cyan.
it was the blood of another alien species— the Aeros-Cline; a bird like alien that constantly adapted with the slightest change of weather, making it more obvious that they're not human because they're continuously changing appearance. you had the most information about them in the files but lately dr. kim's been looking into them after hearing that their progression as a species was coming to a halt when he noticed that the most recent Aeros-Cline that was brought in had traits that weren't compatible with the current weather.
it's currently late winter yet the alien was showing signs of regression, it's features proving that it hadn't adapted since spring from the year before.
"aren't you the one who yelled at a senior scientist for sending out a file late? you had him so scared that he asked one of the officials to transfer him over to a different facility." he says while putting the vial back into it's place.
you laughed at the memory— it wasn't your fault that a majority of scientists here were not only incompetent— they were also men. you already had a repulsion towards men— minus dr. kim— and that fact that he was useless for a 'senior' just pissed you off. you needed that file sent over to a different facility because they had a small window before a species they were studying was going to reach the end of it's lifespan.
the idiot scientist didn't send it in time and therefore the window of time of research closed which meant they not only didn't get the information they needed from the alien but ever since then they've never run into that species again.
"not my fault that guy was an idiot. glad he's not here anymore." you responded and it makes the two of you giggle.
"careful… they're always listening." dr. kim whispers and the two of you avert your gaze to the security camera that was watching over the entire lab— it makes the two of you laugh because you of all people couldn't give any less of a shit when it came to things like that. you were quite the controversial addition to the facility when you were hired on at 18 and after facing a wave of doubt and misogynistic comments from your peers, you surely proved them wrong when you were merely promoted to head scientist two years later.
you and dr. kim became quite close very quickly when a few colleagues made homophobic comments about him— you were all having lunch when someone made a slick comment under their breath like you wouldn't hear it— but you did.
needless to say that guy not only never made a comment again, he also had to learn to breathe properly through his nose again when you grabbed him by the back of his lab coat and bashed his head into the white cafeteria table, staining it red.
"i can't believe they couldn't get that stain out—" dr. kim says after the two of you recall that memory. it was true; they never removed the stain off of the table, it was there as a constant reminder to not be a fucking asshole. it gave more of your colleagues a reason to be scared of you— which you didn't mind because you didn't want them speaking to you anyway.
"yeah, well if your boyfriend heard that he probably would've made a bigger scene than i did."
dr. kim smiles at your comment as his eyes wander upwards like he's having a dream sequence of his loving boyfriend— park sunghoon, head of security at your facility. he was a quiet guy, nice and treats dr. kim well; the two of them started dating just a little over a month of dr. kim getting assigned to this location.
it was quite evident that sunghoon had a crush on dr. kim when he let him slide for certain things that he otherwise would've given others penalties for like smoking inside the facility or accidentally leaking his PIN to get into the building.
sunghoon was ready to protect dr. kim in many ways and it was endearing to see them be that way.
"scan complete. stay clear of entrance— species active."
the machine whirs and both of your heads whip around towards the machine at the voice stating that the alien was now awake. it didn't make sense— just before you pulled the alien into the lab it had just received another dosage of tranquilizer, it shouldn't even wake up for another few days if you were to pause its dosage.
dr. kim is quick to come over to you, gently grabbing your elbow to pull you further away from the machine as the metal doors slide open, releasing a white gas after sterilizing the inside.
but nothing happened.
the alien was just laying there— still— just like it was when you put it inside the machine. you slowly walked over but dr. kim tries to hold you back, you turn around to give him a reassuring gaze, that it was fine and there was nothing to worry about.
you were fearless in ways dr. kim wasn't— he admired that about you.
as you got closer to the alien you could feel your heart pounding against your ribs more and more, you had no choice but to check on it, confirm it's awareness and then call for enforcement.
when you're finally close enough to see it's face, the alien's eyes are shut like it was before, no signs of activity of being awake. you turn to dr. kim to tell him that it was just a false alarm— the machine having an error of some sort but when you make eye contact with him his eyes widen in fear, causing you to turn back around to see the bubbling inside of the alien's chest.
there was merely seconds of you noticing the deformity and the alien's chest bursting open, giving you practically no time to react.
the alien's brightly colored blood spews across the machine, some of it splattering onto your lab coat and skin— a gasp rips from both of your lips as you stumble backwards to rejoin dr. kim who was reaching for you. the two of you run towards the safety lever that was on the other side of the room but you're both left frozen in your place when a high pitched screech cracks through your panic.
just a few feet away stood the alien, it's hard exterior left lying on the table as it drips in it's own blood— thick, slimy, radioactive in appearance.
the alien stares the both of you down as it stalks forward in your direction.
"sunoo, the lever!" you yell, pushing him away as the alien swipes at the two of you with sharp claws. you didn't even know that the alien had the ability to produce talon like fingers— something you'd later need to document once you're out of this mess.
you manage to dodge it's attack, falling to the ground with a groan.
the alien shrieks once again and it makes you shut your eyes in grimace— "fuck! sunoo, the lever!" you shout again just as he's smashing the glass casing open and pulling at the safety measure set in place specifically for this type of situation.
the room erupts in a blaring alarm as lights shift from a dim white glow to a blinking red flare.
sunoo quickly runs over to you, helping you off the ground as the alien staggers from the flashing lights and alarm. the two of you cover your ears as you try to run towards the exit but the alien is quick to ground itself and with a type of speed you'd never seen before in an alien, it's dashing towards the two of you— grabbing sunoo by the nape and tossing him towards the wall, knocking him unconscious.
meanwhile, it lunges at you once again.
you dodge it's attack like before but not the next one, it's talon slashes through your coat and cuts into your back, your blood painting the white fabric. a pained groan leaves your lips as you fall to the ground, scrambling backwards towards a wall while your eyes scan the room to find sunoo laying on the ground— not moving.
that small flame inside of your chest was beginning to burn just a bit hotter as your mind shifts from flight mode to fight. when your back hits the surface behind, you notice that it's a temperature chamber and with quick thinking it gives you an idea.
just as the alien swipes its talons at you again, you slide out of the way as it crashes into glass, breaking the door of the chamber. you take this as an opportunity to run towards sunoo, pulling him behind a shelf so that he's not just out in the open before running back over towards the alien who has already turned back towards your direction.
it begins running at you but you're able to stop it by quickly undoing the locks on another table and driving it towards the alien, the heavy material of the tables crashes into it's midsection. it shrieks once again at the pain as you grab a fire extinguisher from a shelf and swipe one of the vials from the temperature chamber. the alien falls onto it's back, writhing in pain as it tries to turn over back onto it's feet.
in one motion you smash the vial at the alien— the glass breaks and spills it's contents, the blood of an alien you studied just a week ago where you found that if not in a controlled space like the alien's body or inside of a temperature chamber, the blood begins to boil into the highest temperature; so high that in can burst into flames.
within just a few seconds the blood erupts into a bright green flame, latching onto the alien and burning it— it's piercing shrill echoing throughout the lab as it burns, charring it's skin that hasn't recovered fast enough from peeling it's previous exterior— not giving it the opportunity to protect itself without it's defensive mechanism built into its DNA.
just as the alien releases it's final hiss, a squad of officers file into the room, weapons at the ready, sunoo's boyfriend at the front of the group. he yells a string of commands to his team but you're quick to cut them off with the sound of the fire extinguisher putting out the flame.
due to it's insanely hot temperature it took longer to extinguish— using up almost all of the canister.
everyone stops when the smoke clears and reveals a burnt alien smashed into the ground, the table toppled over it's body, pinning it in place.
"you ok?" sunghoon asks and you brush him off, telling him to focus on his boyfriend who was just waking up. he rushes over to him, panic clear on his face but he wears it well— concealing his worry with a stone cold expression as he pulls his boyfriend into his arms, rubbing his back and asking a million times if he was okay.
"i'm fine, sunghoon. yn took care of it, look—" sunoo says, pointing at the alien when suddenly it's body lurches forward with a hiss, shocking everyone including the fire squad who hesitate at shooting it, but not you.
you snatch the gun out of the hands of the officer standing next to you and before he's able to protest, you're blasting the alien straight through the head with the beam of the gun. the laser like bullet piercing through it's skull with a squelching sound as it falls back down.
"now it's dead…" you say before shoving the gun back into the officer's hands.
you turn around to leave but sunghoon calls out for you.
"thanks for looking out for sun— i don't know what i would've done if i didn't get here in time and something happened to him."
sunghoon wasn't an emotional person— he was when it came to sunoo— but everything else? not at all.
you stop him, telling him that it's fine and he didn't need to thank you, that it was your duty as sunoo's senior to protect him anyway. "go take care of him— i know he hates it when the aliens die." you mutter and sunghoon turns around to find sunoo pouting at the site of the alien— who despite trying to kill him just a few moments ago and knocking him unconscious, still felt a type of guilt and empathy towards it.
he was so kind— you only wished you could have a fraction of the kindness he had.
"yn— where are you going?" sunoo calls out and you stop just before you enter the sanitation hallway.
"i'm covered in blood" was all you said before walking out of the lab and into the hallway.
sunoo and sunghoon watching through the small window of the door as the sanitation gas fills the hallway. "you okay?" sunghoon asks for the nth time as he wraps his arm around sunoo's shoulders. sunoo smiles at him and answers that he's just fine— answering the same way each time sunghoon asked him.
you wished for that type of love.
they're so perfect for each other despite being so different. their differences compliment each other so well that it seems like they've been together for ages. you envied them— not in a negative way though. you simply yearned for the time you're able to find someone like that.
someone, who despite being different from you, still matched you.
someone who would look out for you— protect you even though you were capable of protecting yourself.
someone who could show you what true love is.
as you enter the anteroom and slide off your dirty lab coat and change into a pair of clothes that aren't covered in blood, your mind travels to the wound on your back that was still oozing blood that's now drying onto your skin. you wince at the pain— adrenaline subsiding as the pain gets worse.
the pain was so unbearable that you had to force yourself to make your way to the medical wing, stumbling into through the doors as dr. sim watches with wide eyes at your state. your face looks drained, eyes reddening and struggling to stay open.
"dr. ln! what's wrong?" he asks in a panic but you're not able to respond when you fall forward, falling into his arms as his eyes land onto the large gash on your back, blood seeping through the fabric of your clothes as you fall unconscious from the loss of blood. dr. sim throws out orders to the medical staff to get you immediate help, concern in his gaze as he lightly taps your face, begging for you to open your eyes.
✶
when your eyes flutter open, you're greeted with a bright overhead light, so bright that you're forced to keep your eyes shut, moving your hand in front of you to block the light until you're able to open them just enough to look around.
"wake up sleepyhead."
you turn your head to the side to find a smiling dr. sim, stethoscope hanging around his neck, wire rimmed glasses pushed up over his hair, and twinkling eyes looking at you. "you've been out for a minute now— no worries though, dr. sim's got your back." he says before offering you his hand to help you sit up right, "no pun intended."
you wince slightly as you move, your back still aching from the events that took place earlier. you're thankful dr. sim was still on the clock when it happened, he was the only doctor at your facility and it would've been a whole different story if there wasn't anyone available from the medical team. "just relax– gonna run some final tests and you can go home, alright?" you nod as he brings his stethoscope to his ears and gently does his check up.
"scared us you know… we thought you were a goner…"
"c'mon dr. sim, give me more credit than that. some alien isn't gonna take me outta the game."
the two of you chuckle at your lighthearted response, dr. sim slightly shocked at how you could joke around after the attack but he figures humor was just your way of coping. dr. sim was another person at your facility you trusted and could be comfortable around— a friend one would say. he likes to call you his 'best friend' but if sunoo heard that he'd probably start an argument.
you were definitely one of the quieter ones at your job— most people would say you're intimidating, but the people you've grown close to at work definitely didn't care about any of that, they didn't let it stop them from befriending you and you were grateful for that. you've never been one to know how to make friends so knowing they wanted to become your friend despite not really showing any friendliness was sort of nice.
"woah… this is weird."
"what?" you furrowed your brows at dr. sim when you can see the clear confusion on his face. "you're— you're mutating…"
"what the fuck are you talking about? what do you mean mutating?" you were beginning to panic, hand grabbing dr. sim's arm, pleading for him to explain except all he does is laugh. your face only gets more confused as he continues laughing, wiping a tear away from how hard he's laughing at you— "what the fuck?"
"oh shit, you should've seen your face, yn! i'm fucking with you— thought we were joking around."
"are you fucking— fuck you, jake."
"that's dr. sim to you miss scientist."
"no it's dr. idiot— fuck off." you shake your head at him after flicking his forehead, he pretends it hurts and dramatically reacts by clutching his chain in pain even though that wasn't even where you hit him.
"okay okay— sorry, you're all good, yn. i'll send you home with some antibiotics and you should be good to go. keep your dressing dry and clean, change it out once a day and apply the ointment and you should be dandy." he says while helping you out of the bed, your hospital gown crinkling around you.
"if you need help changing it you, you know where to find me." he winks and you roll your eyes in response. jake was nice, he was funny, thoughtful, and handsome, maybe in another life you would've pursued him romantically but dating your colleague just seems like something you didn't want to be a part of– let alone have as your first ever relationship. he was always flirty with you— in a friendly type of way but he never stepped over any boundaries.
jake was just lovable in that type of way, he even flirts with sunoo sometimes to piss off sunghoon and you would all just laugh it off, except for sunghoon who would glare at jake with a pout as he wraps an arm around sunoo's waist, pulling him closer.
"i've got your keys and things from your office, let's go."
"what do you mean?"
jake turns around to look at you, "i'm driving you home. you think you're in any condition to drive? yeah, right."
he doesn't even let you protest before he's grabbing your belongings from a tiny cubby in the corner of the room and taking your hand in his, gently guiding you to the garage beneath the facility.
the elevator hums as you two descend below the facility, jake still carrying your things in addition to his own belongings, white lab coat still draped over his shoulders as you're standing in silence. your eyes are fixated on the cold metal floor of the elevator and jake takes notice of how you look like there's a million things running on your mind.
"penny for your thoughts?"
"what are you a grandpa?"
"what's that supposed to mean?"
"sorry— i feel like i've only ever heard 70 year old grandfathers use that phrase."
jake laughs at your explanation and patiently waits for you to answer regardless. "it's just— the attack reminded me a lot of what happened when i was a kid. it could've gone so much worse, i'm just glad sunoo wasn't hurt more than he already was." your voice was small and had a slight tremble. jake could tell it had shaken you up even if you tried your best not to make it seem that way.
"you're the reason sunoo's safe. you did one hell of a job protecting the two of you, i know it may not mean much but you should be proud of yourself the way you handled all of that. we watched the footage and the way you thought on your feet? the way you made sure sunoo was protected before you even chose to act? it was like watching a hero."
you scoff, "i'm far from a hero…"
there's a silence before either of you speak again.
"still— i know it must be traumatic but it's over now."
you nodded, eyes still glued to the floor.
your mind travels to that night all those years ago. the terror that took place in your childhood home, the blood of your family splattered on the walls, soaking the framed family photos that were hung up, their insides spilled onto the carpet, staining everything in red as you watched in horror.
an alien tearing through you family like they were pieces of paper being fed through a shredder.
"hey, we're here."
you snap out of your trance and realize the elevator doors were opened, jake standing just outside with his hand out, waiting for you to step out of the elevator so the two of you could head out for the day.
it's almost 7am when jake helps you step into the passenger side of your car. he carefully places your things and his in the trunk before jogging around and sliding into the driver's seat. you didn't even question why jake was doing this for you because you knew that he'd probably just say, "because i'm your friend." with that cheesy smile you couldn't deny was charming.
"alright, you call me if you need anything. stop acting like a stranger, we're passed that." jake reminds you as he's rummaging through your fridge to put your medicine away. he acts like the place is also his and you don't mind. he was right, you two have gotten quite close even though you didn't want to at first. "thanks jake.."
"a 'thank you' from miss yn? dr. ln? where is yn… what did you do to her— oh my god, you are mutating, aren't you?"
he jokes around and you laugh with a roll of your eyes, shoving him slightly and shooing him away to the door. "seriously though… you take care of yourself and you call me, or sunoo, or even sunghoon's bitchass if you need something." he looks at you with a stern gaze but his overall soft demeanor makes it look cute rather than intimidating.
"yes, doctor. i will." you respond just as his holo-cab is arriving. an invention from a few years ago that's basically your own personal cab driver that operates on a link system connected to the cloud where you can map out routes of your own choice like your workplace, home, etc.
"alright. you take care, yn. i'll see you in a few weeks."
"a few weeks?" you look at him, unsure of what he meant.
"are you going on vacation or something?"
"no, yn. you're injured and with the lab totally messed up, commander lee is putting your unit on hold until further notice— shit, i probably should've waited til you got the briefing on that."
you shut your eyes in frustration, telling jake that it's fine and he should go, "you're probably exhausted too. you should head home, thanks for everything, jake."
he smiles as he gets into his holo-cab, waving at you until he's too far away to be seen.
you huff as you shut your door behind you, a series of clicks and soft whirring sounds as it locks behind you with your biometric system. a security protocol you had set in place when you got your house built.
a lot of your life choices as an adult were a direct result of everything that happened to you as a child— especially after the night you lost your whole family.
you didn't even have any energy to figure out what jake was telling you about your unit being put on pause by commander lee. too exhausted to do anything and if commander lee was the one who set it in place, there was no use in arguing with the person who signs your checks. you figured you'll check your email when you can but for now, you're going to sleep for as long as you can.
you let out another sigh as you roll into bed, careful to not make any sudden or big movements to avoid reopening the stitches jake did on your back. you're phone is finally back on after losing battery several hours ago and you spend just a bit of time scrolling to make sure you don't miss any important messages.
there's a few from sunoo, asking if you're doing alright and telling you how grateful he was that you were there. he adds that he'd love to go to lunch with you when you're a lot better, saying that he wasn't going to take no for another. you send him a quick response to let him now you're home and that you'll take him up on his offer once your body was feeling better.
he responds almost instantly to tell you how worried he's been and that he's so happy to hear from you.
you even got a message from sunghoon, something short, just him thanking you for taking care of "his sunoo" and then wishing you a speedy recovery. you chuckle softly at the way he's always making it obvious how much he likes sunoo by doing things like saying sunoo is his, slipping it into normal conversation.
sleep soon takes over as your eyelids get heavy and it becomes harder to keep scrolling on your phone. a quiet yawn leads to your eyes fluttering closed, your phone slipping from your hand and landing next to your head as you drift off to sleep. no longer wanting to think about all of the things that transpired just some hours ago.
✶
what you expected to only be a week suddenly turned into a whole month of being away from work. at first you were starting to appreciate the time off since you've never really given yourself the grace to take any breaks, your days off at home were also filled with research, but the longer the hold went on, the more you got frustrated.
your studies and research were being left behind. samples and lab work have probably reached their expiration without anyone tending to them properly and months of research and studies are now lost because of what happened a few weeks ago. you curse at yourself for even letting it happen, blaming yourself for not being more diligent and aware that something like that could happen— even though nothing could've prepared you for it in the first place.
it was a lot like how you treated yourself after the incident.
you just hid while your family was slaughtered, fear striking you frozen as you watched your family been torn apart limb by limb, so afraid that a scream couldn't even escape your tiny body as the alien who took your family away from you dowsed itself in your mother's blood, drained your father's life through his skull, and fed off of the fear of your two siblings who weren't fortunate enough to get away like you did.
fortunate.
a lot of people liked to say that about you.
"yn, you're so fortunate to have gotten away."
"how lucky that you didn't get found."
"it's a really good thing that alien didn't get you too."
was it though?
were you all that lucky or fortunate to have gotten away knowing that you could've done something to help but instead you sat in fear as your family was killed right in front of your eyes while you cowered behind the flimsy door of the laundry room— wooden panels providing ample view of the horror that played out in your living room, right where you used to spend time as a family— whole, together; and then never again.
✶
"ready to get back to work?" sunoo asks as the two of you stand next to each other in the elevator. he had the same wide smile and blushing cheeks you saw on him just a few days ago when you got lunch together. the two of you met up after receiving an email that your facility was finally done being put back together after the alien attack and that there'd be a few changes happening moving forward— none of which they specified but if it didn't interfere with what research and study you were doing before then it didn't matter to you.
all you wanted to do was get back on track and continue your hunt— sure the month break was nice but the longer you were away the more you became restless and eager to come back.
"yeah— definitely been too long. my lab tests are all probably messed up now and i'll have to restart everything, gather new samples and just hope the extraction teams are doing their job and plucking aliens off the street instead of polishing their stupid guns…"
your response comes out long winded and sunoo's just staring at you with a blank stare, "sorry, i'm restless…" you sigh and he just laughs. "i can tell. don't worry, i'm sure you'll be able to pick back up wherever you left off— plus you have me as an extra pair of hands and another wrinkly brain to work with!" sunoo's relentless optimism would be annoying to some but you appreciated it even if your face didn't seem to show that.
"you're right… let's get back to work, dr. kim." you say just as the elevator rings and the metal doors slide open to reveal your new facility.
"let's do it, dr. ln!"
the two of you walk through the shiny new floors of the facility, now a dark obsidian black to avoid the visibility of stains on the previous white floors— from the blood. the ceilings were higher, the lighters were brighter, and the atmosphere was… different. you couldn't quite put your finger on it but there was a stark difference in the way things felt inside of the facility.
like there was something looming— impending– that was waiting for the final straw to break the camel's back. everyone smiled differently, greeted you differently, spoke differently, but no one could sense the difference besides you. sunoo was too focused on catching up with everyone to notice how some people's eyes
"lighten up, yn. the place looks great!" jake suddenly emerges from around the corner, glasses low on his nose, lab coat around his shoulders, and stethoscope in hand. you and sunoo turn towards him and jake's approaching the two of you as you're scanning your badges, a short beeping sound comes out of the mechanism as it scans your figures before opening the entrance to let you in.
"like the new stuff?" jake asks and you scoff.
"new stuff? like the unnecessary security system? you think an ID scanner is going to stop an alien from getting in here?"
sunoo and jake giggle at your remark, brushing off the fact that you're right and the new implementations they added to the facility doesn't really stand as a new line of defense but just a bunch of fancy bullshit to make it look like the corporation cares for the well-being of the people at the facility when they really didn't.
"plus— it's not like they actually care about protecting us; if they did they would've done more than a shitty lever that makes the whole building alarm." you added and suddenly there was an awkward shuffle between you and the boys.
"what would you like then? guns and combat training?" someone speaks up from a few steps away. a new voice in the conversation that you couldn't recognize nor cared to— but you were sure he was going to introduce himself even if you didn't really care.
you, sunoo, and jake turn your heads to find sunghoon and another guy walking by his side. his eyes were sharp, nose tall and lips pursed. the way the stranger's jaw line clenched and unclenched made no difference in it's sharpness and the way his eyes spoke of nothing but an unidentified determination that he kept close to his chest— that chest that gave the buttons of his white dress shirt a challenge to hold on. you blink your eyes as the two men get closer and you could feel the stiffness that takes over sunoo.
typically he'd be giddy and all smiles at the sight of his boyfriend but you figured the man at his side made him feel some type of way; like he couldn't be his usual self around the stranger.
"hello, dr. ln." he begins, extending his hand towards you.
you glance down at his hand before glancing back up at him, hand left unshaken— but he's not fazed by your reluctance and cold welcome.
he clears his throat as he retracts his hand, shoving it into his pocket.
"i'm park jongseong— you all can call me jay; i'm the new lab director for this division and after the incident one month ago i intend for things to change around here."
jay goes onto shake the hands of sunoo and jake as they exchange a few pleasantries. "director park here is the youngest person to ever become a director at the corporation. his initiation was broadcast to every facility in our nation. he'll be a great addition to our facility." sunghoon adds, patting jay on the shoulder and you can see it in jay's face that he wants to shove his arm off but he doesn't.
an attempt to create a welcoming rapport with everyone so that he doesn't raise any red flags with anyone.
sunghoon's about to continue his ramble of useless knowledge on jay but he's cut off by the man himself to let sunghoon know that his achievements have nothing to do with what he's doing there— "i'm here to create change. i hope we can all do that together." the group murmurs a mutual agreement but you remain silent, just observing and doing your best to not seem cold— and failing.
at some point you all finally part ways to get to work, sunoo and sunghoon going off on their own to do whatever it was, jake needing to take care of a patient— like jungwon or ni-ki from the junior enforcement team who went a little too hard during sparring. you're trying to get back into your old office but the new badge scanners prove to be an issue.
you've sighed 100 times in the last minute as you continue to be met with a buzzing red light every time your badge doesn't work.
"new badges will be given out later today. your previous badge will only work at the entrance and after your shift today it will no longer have access to anything in the building."
you're startled at the voice behind, jumping slightly to find jay standing a few feet away, hands folded behind his back and shoulders tall; gaze still unreadable.
"sorry— i didn't mean to creep up on you like that." he chuckles softly and for the first time his usual stoic face softens around the edges in a kind and unsuspecting smile.
"it's fine." you turn back around and try to scan your badge again and just like before, the buzzing red light emerges and denies you access— and that's when jay suddenly comes closer, shoulder slightly pressed against yours as his arm stretches around you, a badge of his own in his hands as he scans it and a green light beeps before the door to your office slides open.
you turn around to look at him and he's just staring at you, not in the type of way where he's waiting for a response or a thank you, but in the type of way where he was trying to read you, study you, and get to know you with just his eyes. no words exchanged but it was enough for jay to learn about you just from the way you stand a little too far, arms are tense, and the way your eyes flicker with a certain type of distaste.
"your new badge will be ready soon, yn. it's nice to meet you." jay reaches his hand out again for a handshake and you find yourself glancing down at his hand again.
just when jay thinks you're going to leave him hanging again, you reach out and place your hand into his, a solid grip with a singular shake to 'welcome' him. "—and jay?" his eyebrows raise in curiosity at the way you've said his name.
"it's dr. ln; and i'd appreciate it if you didn't have access to my office moving forward." you pull your hand away and retreat into your office— which has thankfully remained untouched. jay watches as your door slides closed, the small window into your office giving him enough vision of you're still standing there, eyes boring into with a gaze that says things should be left unspoken.
✶
"god— what the fuck– hello??" you let out what seemed to be the thousandth frustration filled sigh in the past hour. you've been on your computer in your office trying to look through your past documents and saved research to see where it was best to continue your study but unfamiliar protocols and programs have not only been put into place in the building but also the tech.
your computer asks for credentials almost at every checkpoint, even to open your own personal files, and there was no way to get around besides inputting the same string of 20 characters, an authentication test, and surpassing a pop up that wanted confirmation almost every 10 minutes.
it was tedious work that took up more of your time than actual work.
you tapped the side of your monitor in irritation and slumped back into your chair, it's wheels slightly rolling your backwards enough until the back hit the wall behind you with a soft thud. your eyes traveled to your old badge that was thrown haphazardly onto your desk after jay had left, his words about your new badge being ready rings in your head and as much as you didn't want to see him and just wanted to get work done, you figured it was the only thing getting in between you and your research.
with another frustrated sigh, you hauled yourself off of your chair, straightened out your lab coat and pushed your glasses up higher before making your way to the front office to ask if your badge was ready.
it had only been a little over an hour since you got there but if you had to beg— threaten even– someone to get your badge into your hands within the next 3 minutes, then you would. the walk from your office to speak to janice at the front desk was short but every step you took on the new floors felt like an uphill battle, like the facility you spent so many years in before was weirdly unfamiliar even if some of the changes were minor.
"hi janice—" you started, leaning elbows first onto the counter of her desk. "is my new badge ready? i've been running into so many complications trying to get access into my work stuff and my old badge isn't very helpful."
janice raises her head to respond, except it's not janice, it's a different lady who you didn't know and definitely didn't notice before when you got to work that day. "oh! i'm sorry, you're not janice—" you quickly apologize and the girl at the front desk laughs before responding.
"don't worry about it. i'm tina, janice actually left a few weeks ago and i'm her replacement."
you had no idea janice left and the fact that no one seemed to bat an eye at janice's departure was a bit strange to you since janice was practically known to be the most loved member of your whole facility. no one ever had issues with her, she was always kind, and often made baked goods for the whole office. you were a bit sad to know she was gone and made a mental note to reach out to her at some point when you've got the time.
"as for your badge, we actually need to you to meet with director park; he's made a notice of some of your information in our system being out of date and as for the new protocol we'll need you to update some things before we can get you that new badge."
tina's voice was calm but it didn't help with the burning frustration inside of you. great— another thing to have to get through that's just going to prolong your return to your research. none of these new protocols seemed to be doing anything but piss you off and now you have to spend more time with the one person you seem to have a grievance with despite only knowing him for less than 2 hours.
"i can schedule you an appointment to meet with director park, he's got an opening at— i'm good tina." you cut her off. she just smiles at you before getting back to work, hands moving quickly across her keyboard as she types out whatever it is onto her computer.
you give her a small thanks before walking off.
if you weren't going to get any work done today then you might as well familiarize yourself with the new protocols set in place— especially if they're proving to be more annoying than helpful like a certain director claims they are.
as you walk throughout the facility, you begin to notice small details that have changed and if you were to point them out to anyone, they'd probably call you crazy— like the way air feels different in different chambers, the fact that there were now less sanitizing stations, machines that usually made several sounds during startup and activity now made little to no sound out all, some parts of the facility were considerably colder than the rest— little things like that you noticed yet nobody else seemed to bat an eye at.
maybe you were just thinking too hard but if you were going to mention it to someone, there were two people at your job you knew would listen to you.
"the air is different? what are you gonna say that the walls smell different too?" jake jokes around as you gather in sunoo's office.
"shut up, jake. i'm being serious— like there are just certain things that feel… off." you tried to explain and jake just kept making jokes but sunoo gave you a comforting gaze.
"i get what you're trying to see, yn." he adds, patting your back.
"what? sunoo, you think the walls smell different too?" jake questions and you roll your eyes, "i don't think the walls smell different, i didn't even say that!" you begin to argue back but sunoo is quick to put a hand between you two.
"i'm going to be honest, i don't notice a lot of the differences that yn's pointed out but i do agree that there's something different here. maybe it's that jay is trying to make the environment different in some way, he did say things were going to change, so you're technically not wrong when you say that things are different now."
sunoo looks over at you and your eyes are glued to the floor, deep in though as you pondered on what sunoo just said.
"jay? you guys are on first name basis?" jake asks and sunoo throws a pencil at him, to which jake dodges and picks up, sticking a tongue out at the younger boy.
"well, he did say we can call him jay. i don't think he's too bad, he does look a little intimidating but i think he means well." sunoo adds. jake shifts across from you, crossing his legs as he sits down on the chair just a few feet away. "i don't know, something's off about that guy, can't quite put my finger on it but i feel it. he's probably a taurus or some shit."
you scoff at jake's remark, zodiac sign being completely irrelevant to the matter, "what? it's true, taurus men are like so intense." he says, hands out in front of him for emphasis that you nor sunoo are buying.
"whatever— i'm telling you guys, just watch." jake says, throwing his hands in the air in surrender before slumping backwards into the chair. your eyes went back to staring at the floor, mind simultaneously running with so many thoughts but also drawing blanks. "what's wrong, yn? why are you so worried about these changes?" sunoo asks.
"nothing— maybe i'm thinking too much about it…" you muttered and you could see out of the corner of your eye that jake and sunoo send each other glances but decide not to say anything.
"i'm gonna go— have to get some work done." you say, hopping off of sunoo's desk and heading towards the door.
"you gonna have lunch with us later?" jake asks and you turn around to them before leaving. "maybe? we'll see how much work i get done. bye guys— oh wait, did you guys know that janice left?" you stopped again just to add that last question, curious to see if they've noticed.
both boys nod and your brows furrow at their reaction.
"okay… bye!" you quickly made your exit and although their reaction didn't warrant any red flags, it still felt weird. why would janice just randomly leave? she always told you about how much she loved this job even if it was just simply working at the front desk. maybe something personal happened where she needed to leave but even then, you couldn't help but think that something was off.
you're mindlessly walking throughout the facility, trying to avoid noticing small changes and once again, failing. it's not until someone calls out from behind you that you're pulled out of your thoughts, your head swivels around to find the voice and it's none other than jay. head poking out of his office and his big eyes waiting for you to react.
"dr. ln, do you have time to meet with me right now?" he asks as he fully walks through his door, leaning onto the wall.
"you sure i don't need to make an appointment with tina first?" you try not to bite back but it's practically instinct. jay chuckles softly as he walks closer, hand slightly rubbing his chin as the other is placed on his hip, just above the brown leather belt tied around his slacks.
"dr. ln, you're a very decorated and intelligent scientist, i can assure you i'll always have time for you." his voice is smooth, no signs of a stutter, hesitation, his tone doesn't peak or drop— completely smooth.
"lead the way." is all you say before jay is turning around and letting you walk first, hand out in a gesture to allow for you to walk first, head slightly bowed. you don't know what to expect with jay, you thought you did when you first saw him earlier that morning but with this being your 3rd interaction, he's not exactly how you've expected him to be.
he's a lot calmer, quite warm, and gentle.
when you walk into his office the first thing that you notice was the temperature. it was cold and not in the type of cold that makes you tug your lab coat just a bit tighter around your body, but the type of cold where you can see your breath crystallize in front of you.
"is it always this cold where you're from?" you try to joke but you can sense jay slightly stiffen as he rounds the corner of his desk, taking a seat in his chair across from you. "certainly not. i just like having my space at this temperature." he answers as he straightens out his shirt.
there's no semblance of cold in jay however.
sure his face could give off that demeanor at first but it was more his reaction to the cold that you were focused on. you were rubbing your hands together, you could feel your skin get slightly stiffer, and your lips get drier; but jay? he was acting as if the temperature in his office was at a comfortable middle ground.
"is it too cold, dr. ln? i can adjust it for you if you'd like." jay offers and you're quick to decline. "there's no need for that. i'd like to just get my badge so i can continue my studies. it's been a month since and i'm behind on research and i'm going to need to start off on some and just hope the enforcement team is able to extract aliens so that i can continue where i left off."
jay just stares at you for a moment before he smiles and gets to typing on his computer. his fingers moved across the keyboard in a type of speed you hadn't seen before. sure, a lot of people were able to type quite fast, you included, but the longer you watched jay you began to notice that his fingers almost blurred at the speed he was typing.
"dr. ln–" he breaks you out of your thought and you make eye contact with him, thoroughly, and for the first time you're looking into his eyes without disdain or reluctance.
"ye– yes?" you stutter, eyes rapidly blinking at him.
"i hope you know i'm not here for any other reason but to make this place better. what happened one month ago could've been a lot worse and your quick thinking and bravery prevented it from being worse.
it's people like you that makes me hopeful. i want to make change and i'm sure you do too." you weren't sure where jay was going with this but you chose to remain silent, trying your best to not let your eyes squint at him in suspicion.
"so tell me, what is your goal, dr. ln?" he finishes his question by leaning forward onto his desk, elbows propped up as he rests his head onto his fists.
you can't help but notice his features when he got closer. the way his eyebrows anchored his face, the height of his nose paired with the curvature of his lips, and the way all of this almost draws you to his eyes; making you want to look into them.
for a second your eyes almost go unfocused and his pupils shift in shape but when you blink the blurriness away they've not changed at all.
"my goal?" you ask, a sudden wave of vulnerability washes over you and suddenly you're a little girl again being asked by endless adults what you were going to do now that you're whole family was gone.
your answer to these things never changed. ever since that day, you knew what you needed to do, and it was going to remain the same until you achieved that.
"my goal is remove every alien from the face of earth— and to make sure no other alien harms another human again." your voice came out icy and sharp, rivaling the temperature in the room and as you spoke, heat returned to your face like you were getting riled up just from that sentence alone.
"an interesting perspective, dr. ln— here's your badge." you stare at jay's hand which is yet again stretched forward but this time a rectangular piece of metal sits in it. he explains to you that this new badge will allow for you to have access to all authorized areas in the facility that's connected to your status within the team.
"it also has security measures to ensure that it can't be duplicated, a security encryption that will not only keep you safe but also the facility." jay adds.
"security measure? i don't think we need protection from people but aliens? definitely." you say while grabbing your badge from jay, hand slightly grazing his in the process.
"violence isn't the answer— i understand your past and i can assure you that nothing like that or the incident from a month ago will happen again. not under my watch." his remark made you angry, he was speaking like he knew the severity of what happened to you as a child and although it was public knowledge and you didn't care to hide it, no one will ever understand.
you stand up in haste before jay's even done speaking. "don't bring up my past again. i don't care what you think you know or what you've heard— i lived it and it's my purpose. thanks for the badge." was all you said before you walked out, lab coat floating effortlessly behind you and when you return to the hallway outside of jay's office and his door slides behind you, you feel like you can finally let out of breath of relief.
the warmth from outside finally returning as you try to shake away the cold air that clung to your skin like ice.
you didn't fully understand what this interaction was with jay. it felt like such an odd push and pull but only by you. jay didn't do anything to make you want to push nor pull, but you were doing it anyway, like you were doing it out of your own will because he just managed to bring that reaction out of you with the way he spoke or looked at you.
you tried to shake the frustration out of your head but it only gave you a slight headache, your vision doubling as you lose balance, leaning onto the wall beside you for support and just when you think you're about to lose consciousness, a pair of hands find your waist and raise you in support.
"dr. ln? can you hear me?" he asks and when you try to look up at him, your vision fails you. black and white spots fill your vision as objects continue to multiply and when you can't respond coherently, jay takes it upon himself to carry you— scooping your legs with one arm and the other securely across your back. his legs swiftly move to the med bay with ease, carefully setting you down on one of the beds before calling out for a doctor.
by now you've lost consciousness, jay doesn't leave your side as jake arrives, worry on his face when he sees you on his hospital bed once again. "what's wrong, director park?" he says in a rush, pulling his stethoscope over from his shoulders and into his ears as he carefully listens for your heartbeat.
jay explains that he found you passed out in the corridor outside of his office, choosing to omit any information aside from that.
"i can take care of her, director park. thank you for bringing her here." jake adds as he begins to run a few tests on you and when jay doesn't budge from his spot next to you, jake looks up at him.
"don't you have a facility to run? i can take it from here." jake adds, turning back to you as his fingers gently press across your arm to find a good place to insert an IV drip. "you're a great doctor, thank you for taking care of everyone, dr. sim." jay smiles at him and jake's guard is instantly down. whatever animosity he had towards jay had melted away just from the singular sentence. in all honesty he had no idea why he was so against jay in the first place, maybe he was just intimidated by another handsome face in the office or maybe it was just the gut feeling he had that he couldn't really explain.
either way, jake gave jay a reassuring nod before the director left, leaving jake to look after you once again and to try to figure out what made you faint. "come on, yn… what's going on with you?" he whispers to himself as he carefully sets up the IV drip.
jay watches from a distance, observing jake in his environment without getting noticed, taking note of how close you and jake must be, how he seems to care for you a lot more than other people at the facility, and how jake's heartbeat sped up tenfold when he saw you on the hospital bed. the way small beads of sweat appeared on jake's forehead and slid across the worry on his brows, or the way he was so quick to figure out what was wrong, and the way jake seemed protective over you.
it wasn't hard to notice, jay saw all of these things without even having to use his alien abilities but with his heightened hearing, the sound of jake's blood rushing through his body in a sea of worry at the state you were in was like putting a conch up to your ear and hearing the waves of the ocean.
loud and clear.
✶
when your eyes open you're met with a wave of de-ja vu as the bright lights of the medical wing are the first things you see. your head is slightly aching but definitely not in the same way it was before you fainted— everything before then was blurry and the last thing you remembered was hobbling into the hallway.
"second time this month—" jake says as he walks over to you. "i'm starting to think you're fainting on purpose just because you like being taken care of." he continues as he grabs his holo-pad, a piece of technology like a holographic tablet, on a stand next to you, jotting down some numbers as he checks the monitor you're currently hooked up to.
you scoff at his joke before asking him what happened and how long you've been out.
"yn… it's been a week since you fainted.." jake sighs and his eye droop just a tad when he tells you. at first you blink at him, how could you have fainted and been asleep for a whole week without any specific reason, but shortly after because jake is jake, a shit eating grin breaks out onto his face and you figure out he's joking. "nah, i'm fucking with you. you were only out for like an hour."
you reach over to try to punch him in the shoulder but he's quick to dodge your attempt.
"you missed lunch— had to sit through sunoo and sunghoon be a couple all by myself." he says with a forced pout and all you can do is roll your eyes. "you're just jealous they're in love and you're single." you mutter and he feigns offense. "well, there is this smart and pretty scientist at me job…" jake starts and you're quick to cut him off.
"not happening, sim."
"— you didn't let me finish. i was going to say, but she's too busy studying aliens and making fun of me to date." he continues and the two of you share a quick laugh. "i told you, i don't have time for dating when i've got my research— plus dating in the workplace gets messy, sunoo and sunghoon only work because everyone is scared of sunghoon." jake agrees as he finishes the last of his check up, quickly letting you know that he'll grab you some pain killers for your headache and you're good to go.
"i mean, i could give you scary dog privileges. that's practically what sunghoon is to sunoo."
you give him a deadpanned look but you silently agreed in your head.
"please, you're more like a stray dog that follows me around for food." you say while sitting up as jake takes out your IV drip and carefully bandages you.
"you wound me, dr. ln…"
again, the two of you share a laugh but there's a part of you that isn't 100% sure that jake is joking and a part of jake that wished you knew he was partially serious.
but you're right, workplace romance does get messy and after all of these instances where he's had to look after you on his hospital bed, it would only hurt more if your last name mirrored the one he had.
"am i all good to go, dr. sim?" you ask, raising your brows at him tauntingly and he playfully rolls his eyes at you before saying yes. adding that he'll have your painkillers brought to your office later and to take it easy on whatever you're doing that got you fainting. he figured it's just your mind taking on too much after a month off work and you may've just overworked yourself on the first day back and although you weren't completely sure that was the reason, you settled with it anyway.
"by the way, you might want to give director park a visit." jake adds just as you're about to leave. you turn around with a slight furrow in your brow, unsure of why jay was suddenly brought up, especially since the last time jake talked about him, he was agreeing that jay was slightly… off.
"why?"
"he's the one who brought you here."
oh.
you weren't aware of that. hell, you weren't even aware what made you faint in the first place. although your memory was still a bit hazy, you were starting remember that you did meet with jay just before you fainted in the hallway, your new badge tucked safely into your pocket proves as evidence of when you met with him. "right!" you said, a little too loud like you were trying to convince jake you knew that.
"thanks jake! see you around." you wave him off, quickly getting out of there so he wouldn't ask about your strange behavior and to jake, you were being strange indeed.
he brushes it off with a chuckle and a shake of his head, gathering new and clean supplies to replace the dressing on the hospital bed you were just on. jake smiles to himself at your relationship with him. sure, he wanted something more but he respected you enough to not push especially because of how much he knew you were dedicated to your work.
but it didn't mean he couldn't wish that love would find him in ways he's always hoped.
✶
for the next week or so, as you try to return back to your usual routine at work while adjusting to all of the new protocols that jay has set in place, you've also tried your best to avoid him but it proves all too well that wouldn't be possible when he just seemed to not only be everywhere but also appearing out of thin air.
no one ever notices when jay walks into a room not because he's not of significance, but simply just from the fact that he's light on his feet and very quiet. sometimes people only notice he's there when they actually see him or he speaks up, usually followed by a "you startled me" or something similar to that phrase.
when sunoo asked about why he's so quiet or how he's able to make such little noise, he explained that it was from his training at a military base where his commander focused on stealth rather than brute strength and almost instantly, sunghoon's ears perked up.
"yeah but strength is good. if you get caught being quiet how will you get out of that?" he asked and jay answered, "i don't get caught." before walking out of the cafeteria, an orange in his hand halfway peeled.
"he's so cool…" sunghoon whispered and everyone at the lunch table rolled their eyes at him. sunoo making a comment about how if he thought jay was so cool then he should go date him and sunghoon could only pout before he continued to eat his protein heavy and light on flavor lunch.
it was the end of the week when jay was able to finally catch you alone.
every other time you managed to slip past him before he could pull you to the side for a one on one, when he sent you emails to ask if you had any availability to have a meeting you'd show him your calendar that was filled minute to minute, and if he tried to strike up conversation during lunch you would just change the topic or keep your answers minimal.
you're back to working late at night, it's 3am when jay creeps up on you in the new laboratory that was built after the incident. new safety measures, new equipment, it was bigger and like most things lately, it was different; but you didn't mind it. it was one of the things you appreciated that came with the changes, it allowed you to be more efficient with your work and you found yourself getting more done with all of the new tech.
"working late, dr. ln?" he asks as he stands just a few feet behind you.
"jesus fuck!" you jump at the sudden voice. you turn around to find jay sliding on sterile gloves over his hands before he walks over to you.
"sorry, didn't mean to scare you." he apologizes as he stops right next to you. you can feel him watching as you organize the test tubes with various alien dna, writing down observations onto your holo-pad. "you don't scare me— is there anything i can do for you jay?" you ask, not bothering to raise your head at him as you continue to work even with him in the room even if you preferred for him not to be.
"do we have a problem dr. ln?"
this definitely makes you raise your head to look at him.
he's got the same unreadable expression on his face, his eyes occasionally blink at you as he waits for a response, and you almost feel bad, like you've treated him like shit since he got here and that question alone has made you question who you were as a person.
you knew you weren't the most friendly or the most kind, but were you unwelcoming? and the type of person to make others uncomfortable? you didn't want to admit it but you already knew the answer to that without having to give it much thought.
"n– no. no we don't, jay." you clear your throat awkwardly and jay smiles after.
"great. i was starting to think you hated me." he laughs with a sigh. you didn't hate him. at least you don't think so. maybe you're just not good with change and that's what jay was. change. he appeared out of no where— like he usually does— and things started to change. sure, it's been a week and the changes have proven to be quite helpful in the grand scheme of things but change wasn't easy for everyone.
change is the reason why you were so devoted to your research.
how your family changed from 4 to 1.
how you changed from a daughter to an orphan.
and how you changed from happy to whatever you were now.
"i'm sorry…" was all you could say and by the expression on jay's face, you could tell you caught him off guard. he wasn't expecting an apology and neither were you. "i just wasn't expecting all of these changes to happen after being away for a month and i'm not going to lie it caught me off guard but they've been more helpful than not.
i'm sorry if i seemed like i was unwelcome to you and… i'll try my best to be a better colleague— director park."
jay wasn't looking for this type of response. he wasn't sure what he was looking for actually, he just walked into the laboratory because he felt like it and you just happened to be here. jay liked to wander the halls of the facility sometimes, he'd visit the containment facility where aliens were kept when they aren't being actively worked on. he would sometimes even talk to them but never for too long and all under the guise of "research".
he couldn't get caught spending too much time with the aliens, afraid that it'll raise some red flags with people even if the field he does work in involves aliens.
not a single person or alien on planet earth knew that jay was an alien.
he hid it well and he planned to keep it that way.
no one's ever gotten close to figuring him out and he wasn't going to let that happen.
"you can still call me jay. director park is too formal and makes me look like a hardass." he says with a soft chuckle. jay was weirdly calm and comfortable with you— not that he was standoff-ish to everyone else but with you there was a certain type of ease even jay himself wasn't sure where it was coming from.
you took note of his easy going attitude around you despite you giving a cold welcome and tucked it away in the back of your mind where you kept details about people that you felt like would add reason later on. you forced yourself to smile at him even if you didn't need to, you met his warm eyes with a soft gaze and awkwardly raised the corners of your lips before returning your attention to the glass tubes in front of you.
"you're a very hard worker, dr. ln. i admire your dedication to this facility— you know i've heard of you way before i even switched over to this branch. you're quite popular among the higher ups for being the young and determined scientist whose got a keen eye for detail and a sharp tongue— that paired with a mind like yours you're easily the smartest person in this whole operation; not just this division." jay was speaking like he was telling you things you didn't know about yourself.
but he was wrong.
you knew how smart you were, you knew how much smarter you were than everyone else, and you knew full and well that your capabilities was a driving force within this whole ordeal— you just never said it out loud because arrogance was something you didn't need to add to the lengthy list of things snotty old male scientist already didn't like about you.
"sounds like i'm not the only one doing research. tell me, jay— do you look into all of your employees like this or am i the special one?" you raise one brow like you're halfway teasing and halfway trying to figure out why he knew so much about you and was reciting it to you like it was a commandment. "the latter" he simply puts and the two of you move in unison to a different side of the lab where there's machines and monitors that receive and store all of the data across several compositions within each division.
"and i don't like that word." jay pauses for a second as he pulls out a stool for you to sit on, right next to him. you look down at the chair and up at him then back at the chair before you take a seat, muttering a small thank you as you begin typing out observations into a never ending document. "employee— makes it seem like i'm way above all of you." he continues and once again you're raising your brow at him.
"you basically are. you're our boss, hence the 'director' in your title." you shake your head with a breathy chuckle and jay kept help but laugh alongside you because you were right. he was technically your boss but he wasn't ever one for superiority and hierarchy, it left a sour taste in his mouth.
"you me there but let's drop titles, hm? i want this to be a team not a pyramid, i don't care who is on top or the bottom, we should all be working together towards a better cause. plus— we're all equal here, aren't we?" he says with a shrug and you turn to him and just stare for a moment.
equal.
you knew that was the furthest from the truth, especially in a place where they treat seniority like a shiny badge on their chest that's an instant pass to authority to those below them rather than fair leadership.
"i don't know about equal but i guess i can be okay with dropping titles. you're very eager for that anyway and as my boss— who am i to argue?" you're teasing him and jay doesn't realize this at first until you're bursting out in laughter. "relax— it was a joke. thought we were easing up, jay?" you ask and he finally catches on, laughing alongside you but just a little too loud and a little too eager.
like he didn't fully understand the joke but laughed anyway.
"right. easing up! i hope we can continue making jokes together, yn!" he says almost as if he's never heard a joke before and he's excited for more to come. maybe jay wasn't as bad as you thought, a simple conversation like this was enough to get you to open to him— albeit barely— and it was… nice?
you hadn't made a friend in a while, all your friends worked with you, and now add jay, you were starting to be okay with the idea of having him around. weirdly enough it didn't take long for you to warm up to him but you figured it was better to do that than constantly push back, that wouldn't get you very far.
for the next few hours you and jay get to talking and weirdly enough, you both have quite a lot in common. you shared a lot of the same hobbies which consisted of staying indoors and lounging at home, both enjoy the same type of music, and even liked the same type of food.
it was a bit weird because you were the one stating the subject and jay would smile widely before saying he agreed or 'me too' in an enthusiastic voice. it was weird but not weird to the point where you thought he was lying, just weird in the type of way where you never expected to have so much in common with him.
neither of you realize how late is it until you yawn and jay checks the time and it reads 5am. the two of you are quite shocked how late— or early?— it was and it was like time just seemed to pass by so quickly the more the two of you got to talking and working together. jay wasn't doing much work, he'd do a little of logistical work every now and then, give you a hand in some research but for the most part he was kind of just there to be in your presence.
he didn't mind it though. he was really enjoying being around and getting to know more about you. it was a complete 180 from the way your first interaction went and he was grateful it took a turn for the better.
"yn– it's late, you should head home." he suggests and you're finishing your yawn and blinking the exhaustion away when you decide to agree. you nod, telling him that you're a lot more tired than you thought and although you wanted to work even more, jay used his 'boss powers' –his word not yours– to tell you to clock out for the day and to take the weekend to rest up.
"can't have my best employee too tired." he said, gently nudging you with his elbow. you furrowed your brows at him and he immediately straightened himself up as if you were the one in a position of authority. "it was joke! right? i thought we were making jokes with each other now?"
you can hear the panic in his voice just as clear as you can see it on his face.
"i'm just messing with you, jay. yes, we're making jokes now." it sounded weird coming out of your mouth. "and yeah, i should head home. i'll just finish up here and make sure i've got everything secured before i leave."
"no— i can do that. you can barely keep your eyes open, you've rubbed them four times in the last ten minutes. go home, yn— i'll close up." you try to protest but he's practically shoo-ing you out of the laboratory, telling you that you have nothing to worry about and he'll take care of everything before leaving for the night. "i've got it, yn. don't worry." he says with a reassuring smile and just like most things throughout the night, you're weirdly inclined to listen to him and believe that he's got it handled.
the walk from your office to the reception to the parking lot to your car and then the drive home felt longer than it should've. sleep was heavy on your mind but the only thing you've managed to put in front of that was jay.
you didn't expect for tonight to go this way and frankly, you didn't expect a lot of things when it came to jay overall, but here you were now, settling into your bed for the night even though it's almost six in the morning. you've got your blanket pulled up towards your chin and the silk of your pajamas hugged gently across your body and you've only got one thing on your mind before drifting off to a peaceful sleep.
how much you were looking forward to monday and seeing jay again.
✶
the weekend goes by quite fast and suddenly it's monday and you've got a weird excitement in your step as you walk out of your car and through the parking garage. the usual hum of the elevator fills your ears and there's a tiny smile on your lips as you think about the work week when really you're just in denial about looking forward to seeing jay again.
you're so in your head about things that you almost don't notice the blaring red light and booming alarms that fill the facility until you're further into the building. your eyes widen in a controlled type of panic when you see the emergency erupting through the facility.
your mind is instantly trying to piece things together about what is going on. with the way this feels like an urgent matter, there was a lack of people running in a panic. you quickly scanned your badge to be let it, pushing through the security gate and running throughout the facility to see what's going on.
the first place you think of looking is sunoo's office as you try to remember if you saw sunoo's car in the garage.
your feet pads through the red filled halls with haste as you try to get to sunoo's office when a pair of hands suddenly grab your arms and drags you into a random room. a shriek threatens to slip past your lips but a hand quickly covers your mouth as the door shuts behind you. you turn to face who was responsible and come face to face with jay who has now let go of your arm and brought a finger to his lips, encouraging you to remain silent.
"what is going on?" you ask in a hushed voice when he removes his hand from your face, skin cold to the touch. jay explains that a category 5 alien has broken out of the chambers and is now running rampant throughout the facility. "thankfully i got here just as it happened and there wasn't a lot of people here— did you not receive the alert i sent to all personnel?"
you shake your head and you can see the way his face hardens in a protective type of way. like he was now devoted to keeping you safe and out of harms way.
"which alien is it?"
"Tyran-X13"
it sends shivers down your spine. a type of fear that you only remember feeling years ago. the tyran-x13 was an alien species that was captured long ago and bared similarities to it's predecessor, the tyrannosaurus rex. an alien species was able to absorb it's DNA from the fossil of a t-rex that was stolen from a museum before you were even born.
through advanced alien technology and years of breeding on a planet far far away from earth, they were able to adapt the t-rex dna into their own and evolve into the dangerous predators they were now. not only were they extremely violent and cunning, but they had a type of consciousness that stood as a challenge for not only humanity— but also other alien species.
they were so dangerous that they had their own chamber in the alien wing, where alien's are held in captivity. there's an extensive security measure to get close to them and there's a team of 10 enforcement officers guarding the chamber at all times. you can only imagine that if it broke out, then that means the guards are long gone.
hoping that it meant they escaped rather than the more morbid— and obvious— assumption.
"why are you hiding in here? is no one from the main enforcement team coming?" you asked him as you settled across from jay, leaning back onto a wall behind you.
jay explains that sunghoon's enforcement team are doing scans of the building and slowly making their way throughout the whole facility to find the alien— but it's been almost an hour and more enforcement has yet to arrive even after jay called for them.
it didn't make sense.
someone of jay's authority could instantly have a whole army at his call if he needed. that's how decorated and respected he was as a director— yes, you did your own research over the weekend— and yet they were taking their sweet time like this wasn't the biggest threat any facility has seen in years.
"we have to make another call— there's no way we can just sit here while that thing is probably picking off the officers one by one. if sunghoon gets hurt in any type of way sunoo will be devastated and i can't handle seeing my best friend like that." you try to get up and slip out of the small room but jay's hand grabs onto your wrist to stop you.
"don't try to stop me— i have to do something." you plead and he pulls you back down with a persistent grip. "i agree, yn. i've been hiding out here because sunghoon said he can't afford for the director to get hurt but now that you're here we can work together to help them, but we need a plan. we can't just go out there without any preparation. for all we know it can be waiting around the corner for us.
we've got to work together."
you nod at his words and they somehow manage to calm you down. you were starting to feel the panic in your chest but with jay by your side and his oddly cold touch— you were able to breathe slower and think clearer.
"okay— here's what we'll do." you say after giving it a short thought.
you told jay about how you didn't see anyone on the main floor and there weren't any signs of the alien like scratch marks of any kind or the scent of sulfur— the alien's natural scent when it's hunting; which is practically all the time.
"we can make our way back to the front office, use the direct line at tina's desk to call for help and then use the elevator to get out of here. i'll use the intercom to notify sunghoon and his team of the plan and hopefully they'll know to just leave instead of trying to find that thing.
i don't want to run from this but i'm thinking that if we face it head on we'll lose more people than we know we've already lost."
jay watches as you wrap your mind around the situation. the way your glasses hang low on your nose as the lens frames your sharp eyes and fluttering lashes, he takes note of the way you use your middle finger to push them up higher as you continue explaining your plan. how you can easily curate a plan with the lack of information you had about the circumstance and the way your hard exterior seemed to crack into a protective barrier.
in a lot of ways your walls that you've placed around yourself was that protective barrier, he was just lucky enough to not have to break them down as you let him in freely. he admired how fast your mind worked, the way your eyes darted side to side as you were in deep thought, and the way you bit down on your lip after you said something risky like separating momentarily to clear the entire floor just in case anyone else was still here.
"jay— are you listening?" there's an edge to your voice. urgency and… fear?
he was trying to pick up on your emotions but your face was always unreadable. it's why jay was so adamant to speaking with you. he's never met anyone like you before and the best way to learn about anything is just talking, observing, and listening.
jay nods and reassures you that he understood everything. just before the two of you leave the room he grabs your wrist again, gentler this time, you look down at his icy hand on your skin and look up at him. "be safe, yn. please." is all he says before he's pushing himself in front of you, clearing the hallway before pulling you out with him, keeping you safely tucked to his side with a direct will power and singular goal: get you out of here safely.
the halls are filled with a terrifying red light, the alarm has consistently continued blaring, and an unnerving danger coated the walls which each careful step you and jay took. your feet moved in a quiet unison, urgency and caution with each breath as uncertainty of where danger lurked remained consistent.
you figured since jay was naturally a leader with the way he's kept you behind him, acting like the first point of contact if anything were to jump at the two of you, but what lingered on your mind aside from survival was his steadiness.
he didn't flinch, his breath remained controlled, and not once did it feel like he was afraid. worried? sure. uneasy? maybe. afraid? definitely not. your eyes would occasionally wander behind you to make sure nothing what creeping up on the two of you but each time you ended up turning back around, your eyes would land on the way jay's kept his fingers laced with yours.
this was the most contact you've had with anyone that wasn't jake who was patching you up from an injury.
it felt all too surreal in the situation the two of you were in right now but there wasn't a lot of time to give a thought as the hallway finally opened into a clearing and the front office was just a few feet away.
you and jay quickly go to working on the plan. scouting the area to make sure it was safe and there wasn't anyone else hiding. jay took it upon himself to clear surrounding rooms and areas where people could be hiding while you made your way to tina's desk, quickly punching in your code into a device and setting off a transmitter that would notify the main site of the breakout and call for urgency to send over reinforcement.
"all clear— there's no one on the floor." jay says as he rounds a corner just as you're picking up the microphone to announce to sunghoon the plan, hopefully he and his team— and anyone else who could possibly still be here will know what to do.
"wait!" jay says, reaching forward and stopping your from pressing the open mic button.
"what? what's wrong?" you ask and he explains that the alien is going to hear the announcement since it will play throughout the whole building and because of it's heightened intelligence there's a very strong chance that the alien will make it's way to the front exit and block anyone else who tries to escape. "fuck— you're right…" the two of you stand without another word as you try to think of another solution.
"i've got it." you say, meeting jay's eyes.
"with the alarms still going on, if we mix it with a low pitched frequency sound together it'll temporarily impair the alien's hearing." you explain and jay instantly catches. "that way after the sound has played for long enough you can send out the message without worrying about the alien hearing it. yn, you're a genius!" jay says enthusiastically, almost reaching forward to pull you in for a triumphant hug but he ultimately stops himself.
"exactly— except where are we going to find something that gives out a low frequency?"
road block. again.
"yn, you know this building better than i do. there must be something we can use." jay speaks over the alarms and although it's hard to hear him, his voice is clear enough to get you thinking. he's right, there has to be something but you aren't able to think as straight as you want with the sirens still on. "okay— change of plans. we turn off the alarms and head to security wing. there's a log in the main computer that shows when the last time a door is opened to each division of the facility.
we turn off the sirens with your authority bypass, monitor the log to figure out where anyone else could be, and then we exit through the southern exit. it's on the other side of the building but it's the only plan we've got now."
jay's eyes wander around for a moment as he thinks yet his face remains unreadable as always. you can't tell what he's thinking except the fact that he's got something he wants to say. "what? you don't think it's a good idea?" you ask and wipes his hand across his jaw before speaking.
"it's not that it's just— we can leave. it's sunghoon's job, it's the enforcement team's job to take care of this. they're meant to protect us, the exit is right there; we can leave."
your eyes furrow at him in disbelief. you couldn't believe the director of all things was encouraging you to turn your back on your team. sure, all you really cared about was sunghoon but at the end of the day you aren't as heartless as many like to believe. you care deeply, you just choose not to show that, and the last thing you're going to do is abandon people who need help when all your life that itself has plagued your existence.
"i don't know how you do things where you came from director park but i'm not abandoning anyone. you can either stay here or leave or— you can come with me and do the right thing." you don't know where this courage is coming from because in all honesty you knew your plan was risky. roaming the building while a dangerous alien was on the loose was practically a death sentence but the guilt you've harbored your whole life was heavy in your chest and you felt as though this was the only thing you could do.
you brush past jay but he grabs your wrist again to stop you just like before.
"director park, let me go— jay." he cuts you off with a low and stern voice. "it's jay. stop calling me director park. i'll go with you but the second this gets more dangerous it is now as your director i'm using my authority and dragging you out here myself. i can't lose you."
his words weigh more than they should. what did he mean he can't lose you? you've barely known each other for that long and the way he's determined to keep you protected even if you were once so cold to him. "fine— let's go." is all you say as you tug your arm out of his grip and get to moving to the south wing where the security division is.
it's tucked away all the way on the opposite end of the facility because it's much closer to where the aliens are held in confinement but as of lately, the idea of having the enforcement team somewhere more convenient for the whole building was starting to make more sense.
the way to the security wing is long and awkward. there's something hanging between you and jay. something that remained unsaid but you weren't sure who it should be uttered from. you're constantly keeping your head on a swivel, occasionally ducking into hidden spaces or behind corners when something feels a little too risk. carefully checking corners before entering another hall and keeping your footsteps quick and light— and eventually, you arrive at the security wing with jay close by.
"okay, you turn off the sirens and i'll check the logs." you instruct and jay follows along like you're the one in charge. jay scans his badge and inputs a string of characters into a holographic keypad while you scan your badge on the opposite side of him into the computer. your finger moves across the screen as you look for the logs within the last hour and there you find that the last entrances that were active are the one at the front— you and jay, the scanners near the medical wing and the scanner in the central tech unit.
your brows furrowed at the second log.
why was there a recent entry at the entrance. something got scanned in that area meaning there was someone there and unless it was sunghoon or any other enforcement team member, there was no reason to be down there unless…
"shit."
"why? what's wrong, yn?" jay asks and you show him the log.
"someone recently entered the tech unit— 2 minutes ago. i don't want to jump to conclusions but i doubt the enforcement team will waste time checking such a small space, which means it could possibly be the alien."
"what does that mean? why is that a problem, yn?"
before you can answer the lights in the whole building and the sirens all shut down. "fuck! that wasn't me!" jay groans as he continues pressing codes into the machine.
"jay— it's the alien. it's been looking for the tech unit so it can malfunction the building's wiring and leaves all of us with no tech— meaning all security doors are open." every cell that kept the alien's behind bars was now left unlocked and it also meant locking features on doors no longer worked, which meant that the very room you and jay were in could easily be opened by an alien.
jay opens his mouth to speak but a loud shrieking noise echos through the vents about the two of you before he has the opportunity to. you move your finger in front of your lips to let jay know to be quiet because that sound alone let you know that not only an alien was nearby but a dangerous alien at that.
the screech comes from a category 3 alien. it's nature isn't inherently violent however in high stress situations and unfamiliar terrain, it actives it's defense mechanism that's stored inside of it's gullet. this alien doesn't bare any comparisons or relation to an animal species from earth. it comes from a planet light years away from earth that's only been visited one time before being deemed to dangerous to land on.
why?
sound doesn't exist there. the alien species that inhabit that planet never make noise because of wave interference that completely eliminates the sound based on it's frequency. the planet itself is alive and any deliberate sound that's made, the land will counteract that sound to cancel it out but the alien species on that planet have adapted throughout the years and as their species began to hunt and gain more cognitive abilities, they developed their high pitched shrieking as not only as a way to hunt and protect, but communication.
their screeches can range in pitch, frequency, volume, all of it. meaning that they can control how loud it goes and you've seen the way the they've killed test subjects like rats and snakes when they sense danger and right now, although they are a danger to you and jay.
you are just as much a danger to them.
"yn— stay here. i'm going to see if i can find sunghoon or anyone from the enforcement team towards the medical wing and we'll come back for you. barricade the door and don't let anyone in unless it's me." jay instructs and you're about to protest when your vision suddenly gets blurry, shadows and minimal light blend together and jay's face is barely recognizable. "you can't go out there, it's too dangerous." you mumble.
jay grabs hold of your shoulders and rubs your arms gently, "i'll be fine. yn, as your director i command you to stay here and if you leave this room i won't have any choice but to terminate your involvement at this facility."
"you can't do that. jay we need to stick together, what if something happens to you before you can even find sunghoon?"
"trust me, yn. nothing is going to happen to me. please just stay here, i promise this will be over soon— just stay here. please say it."
"i— okay. i'll stay here."
he gives your arms a tender squeeze before heading towards the door but you call out for him just before he can leave. "jay— please be careful." your vision is back to normal and you can clearly see the way jay's face softens at your words. again, you find yourself unsure of why you're not only so warm to jay all of a sudden but there were more pressing issues than unidentified emotions between you and jay.
"i will, yn. don't worry about me."
✶
it's been about 10 minutes— or so you think, none of the technology in the room work anymore except for the small emergency light that outlines the ceiling in a low soft blue color. you barricaded the door with file cabinets, chairs, and whatever else you could find. it probably didn't provide much defense but at least you'll know if someone was trying to get in if the objects started to move.
you've probably let out a sigh every minute that jay has been gone. you don't know why you're so worried about him especially if you were so unwelcome to him just some time ago. why were you so suddenly so at ease around him? there was a weird magnetic pull that you felt with jay and the more you recall your interactions, you can remember that feeling at each one except for the very first time you met.
you didn't understand it.
jay was the first person to make you feel at ease and warm— you didn't even mean to feel that way towards him. sunoo and jake took some time to get you to even agree to eating lunch with them and yet you feel so familiar with jay in the short time you've known him.
there was a certain type of aura that surrounded jay. it was like he had a way of making you comply and listen to him. you were so against him at first but after just simple moments with him like chatting in the lab, you find yourself wanting to not only get to know more about him, but to be around him more often too.
the only way you could describe it was weird.
jay was weird. you're weird. your emotions are weird. all of this is so weird.
"get it together, yn ln." you say, lightly slapping your forehead with yet another sigh.
you're restless inside of the room that's meant to protect you but all you have on your mind is worry. anxiety was building inside of you the longer jay was gone and just when you were about to say fuck it and leave the room, a soft knock can be heard at the door.
"yn! it's jay, open up!" he says and you feel a wave of relief wash over you but before you could begin to move the objects blocking the door, the hairs on the back of your neck suddenly perk up, raising a red flag in your mind.
you slowly begin to back away from the door, fearing that the thing calling out from behind you isn't jay at all. you remain silent, afraid that it'll suddenly react violently if it hears you and judging from the assumption you have that this could be the copycat alien that has been in your custody for years, you could only imagine that animosity it has against you.
it was rude, played mind games with it's ability to shape shift into any living creature it's seen even for only one second, and can copy their voice.
unluckily for you, you aren't paying attention when you back away and knock over an object on the desk, causing the alien behind the door to bang on the door to be let in. "dr. ln i know you're in there! i've known you long enough to be able to hear your breathing pattern. i can hear the blood inside of you flowing through your veins— dr. ln i know it's you. LET ME IN." it's violent thrashing against the door is getting harder and harder and there was nothing you could use inside of the room to protect yourself.
you were beginning to feel just as helpless as you felt when you were a little girl all those years ago and that anxiety was beginning to boil over in bubbling rage.
the rattling at the door suddenly comes to a halt and there's only silence left. you begin to carefully walk towards the door again, hand slowly reaching forward for to move the objects out of the way but a voice calls out to you again. "yn! it's me. i promise it's me please, it's safe now. i promise."
it's jay.
or is it?
"i killed it— it's not out here anymore i promise." there was different tremble in his voice. you really couldn't decipher whether it was jay or the alien until another voice can be heard from the other side of the door.
sunghoon's.
"yn, it's clear. we're here to get you and get out of here. we need to go." his voice was stern and low, like the sunghoon you knew and although you couldn't decide if there was any inkling in your body that it couldn't be sunghoon, you chose to push aside the objects blocking the door and pull it open.
outside stood jay.
and only jay.
"shit—" suddenly hands are pressed against your throat and you're being slammed against a wall and raised into the air.
"fool." the alien says before shifting into it's natural appearance. prickly green skin with scales that are constantly moving in waves across it's muscles.
"let me go." you choke out as your hands grab onto the alien's wrist to try to pull yourself away but you prove to be much weaker than the creature. it laughs in your face with bitterness, flashing it's sharp teeth. "where's the fun in that, dr. ln? i've waited for this moment for years.
to get my hands on your human neck and squeeze tighter and tighter until the life slowly seeps out of your eyes. you and all those scientists tested on me until i could barely recognize myself anymore— do you know how hard that is for my kind?
you guys stole so much from me; it's only fair i do the same."
the grip gets tighter around your neck and you could feel your eyes beginning to bulge out of their sockets and breathing was beginning to feel like a far option. you try battering at it's arms, reaching for it's face to scratch at it but it just pretends to bite at you, laughing when you pull away in fear.
"keep trying little human. seeing your fight for survival disappear will make you taste all the better." their kind weren't even carnivores and yet the treatment they've received from the studies and research has driven it to resort to a savage violence that's uncommon in their nature.
utterly destroyed from their natural being and shaped into a violent creature because of they were treated by society, scientists— you.
"hey!" a voice shouts from the side and you both turn your heads to find jay standing there, eyes glowing red in a fiery glare as he rushes forward, tentacles breaking through the skin on his back and attacking the alien that's choking you half to death.
the alien's grip finally lets go of you and you fall to the ground gasping for air, hands reaching for your throat to soothe the pain as jay lunges forward against the alien. he uses his dark purple tentacles that reflect like silver and fights off the alien, clearly stronger as he tears the alien apart with ease, bright yellow blood splattering against the walls and on his skin as the alien who previously tried to kill you was nothing but lifeless pieces of muscle on the ground.
you're still trying to catch your breath when jay turns towards you, his once red eyes instantly dulling down and tentacles retreat back into his back like nothing.
that's when you realized something— the tentacles look more familiar than you were comfortable with.
"it's you… you're— you're the alien that killed my family." you say while scrambling on the floor, trying to create more distance between you and jay as he walks over to you like everything was normal. he was back to normal— but you're never getting the sight of his tentacles out of your head no matter how hard you tried.
"no– no! yn that wasn't me, i swear to you i would never hurt anyone you love. i just— fuck! i couldn't let that thing kill you, i'm sorry." jay was pleading to you like he was the one at your mercy but as he stood— towered— over you while your body trembled on the ground beneath him, there was a clear difference in power, titles aside.
"get the fuck away from me. you're a monster!" you began to shout, finally able to get on your feet so you can create more distance between the two of you but jay is relentless. he's got nothing but remorse on his face and for the first time you can read his expression.
it was almost like he was guilty. for what exactly? the fact that he was an alien and lied to you and probably countless others? or the fact that he had to expose himself.
"i promise you i'm not like all of them. yes, i'm an alien but i've never killed a human before, you have to believe. i'm not the alien that killed your family but it was my species. you have every right to be angry— angry?" your voice cuts him off like a blade.
"angry is the least of my emotions. you lied! you betrayed my trust, how fucking dare you try to plead for forgiveness when you stood in my face and looked me in the eyes while you told me yourself you knew what happened to my family.
what your kind did to my family.
you must be out of your mind if you think i have any other choice but to turn you in."
you can see the frustration on jay's face at your disgust towards him. it wasn't supposed to go this way. jay wasn't even meant to fall in love with you— that was the furthest thing he wanted. he didn't even know what love was and yet when he thought of the word that humans used with someone they held dear, the first person he could think of was you.
he didn't care that your time together has been short because the way you feel around him was unlike any other emotion he's tried to learn from the humans around him. you were different in the type of way he wanted to become a part of your life, wanted to learn endless things about you, and to learn what kind of future it would look like if you were by his side.
but he fucked it all up trying to save you even if he didn't regret saving your life, he had no idea what to do now that he's exposed himself to be an alien.
"please, yn. it's still me, i'm still jay."
"i don't even know you. we've barely known each other what makes you think i'm ever going to listen to anything you have to say now. you're lucky i have no weapons on me because i'd have you laid out on the ground by now." your voice cut sharper than his tentacles and jay would be lying if he said that your words didn't hurt.
he hated seeing you so afraid of you him but not only that, so disgusted.
were you simply just an alien to him? a monster, like you said?
jay tried to stutter another string of pleas but is cut off when sunghoon and his enforcement team round the corner. "sunghoon! get him! he's an alien!" you shout, hiding behind your friend who is shocked at your claims.
"what are you talking about? director park?" jungwon, a junior enforcement team member asks. you nod in response and they all take position, forming a human shield formation around you with blasters aimed at jay.
"enforcement team division beta as your director i command you to stand down." jay says but they all stand firm in their spots except one. ni-ki, another junior enforcement member who is torn between abiding by the laws of being an officer and continuing pursuit of protection against aliens or listening to his higher up.
"ni-ki, position. do not lower your weapon." sunghoon commands and the younger boy is instantly raising his gun again and steadying himself.
"yn– are you sure? how do you know?" sunghoon asks and you have no choice but to step in front of him to prove it. you snatch a weapon that's strapped to sunghoon's hip and push yourself in front of him, cutting him off when he tries to ask what you're doing.
"show them, jay." you say and he just stands there. staring you and everyone else down to try and prove you wrong. it was almost like you had no other choice to prove that jay was an alien so you aim your gun at him which makes sunghoon reach forward to try and stop you but you merely just shove him off. "do it, jay. fucking show them or else!"
"or else what, dr. ln? put the gun down please." he says while raising his hands in the air as if he's innocent.
once again– you feel like you have no other choice.
everyone assumed you were about to shoot jay but you do something else, catching them all off guard. you move the tip of the gun towards your temple and just before you're able to press on the trigger, a tentacle rips out of jay's back and snatches the gun away. you knew you could leverage yourself against him. for whatever reason, jay was inclined to protect you and you knew now that it was out of guilt.
you can hear gasps and strings of curses behind you at the spectacle of jay's tentacles reaching forward, the gun previously in your hand now wrapped in between a tentacle.
"i told you." you mutter as your gaze gets sharper.
"you guys have to understand that this is who i am. i'm not violent, i will never hurt any of you but please.
please. do not give me a reason to defend myself." jay says, taking one slow step back as he brings the gone closer to him and tosses it to the side before his tentacle retracts back into his body.
"then surrender. you don't want to hurt us?" you say while turning around again and grabbing something off of sunghoon's utility belt. "then surrender yourself and put this on. i can assure you that you may be strong and dangerous but you're not coming out of this without a scratch on you." you say before tossing something at his feet.
metal clanks against the marble floor and when jay looks down he sees a shock collar sliding towards him.
he couldn't believe it. you were treating him like every other alien you've ever encountered. jay knew about your history and yet he chose to get close to you anyone because of what he knew. was it guilt? partially. but was it a desire to change your opinion on aliens as a whole and to show you that if he could get close to you then you'll see that not all aliens posed as threat.
that aliens and humans can live in harmony together.
but it wasn't looking like that at all the longer he looked at the collar at his feet.
"put it on or im putting a bullet into your fucking head." you spit at him, patience wearing thing.
"i highly doubt that's possible, yn— but i will surrender because i do not want to hurt you. any of you." he says softly while leaning downwards to pick up the collar.
the tip of sunghoon's gun and everyone else's follows his movement with stable precision and you all watch as he opens the latch and wraps the collar around his neck, closing it with a click. jay opens his mouth to speak but writhes in pain at the shock it sends across his body. you're pressing onto the controller, shifting the intensity to the highest point to incapacitate jay until he's crumbling to his knees, begging for you to stop.
you walk over to him and kneel downwards so you're closer to his level before shutting off the collar.
"yn— please.." he breathes out and you scoff at him.
"pleading won't get you anywhere." is all you say before walking away and heading over to sunghoon. telling him that you all need to leave before more aliens arrive and that backup should arrive shortly to close off the building for lock down.
"and director park? what do we do with him?" he asks.
"he's an alien. there's no more director park— bring him with us. when the enforcement alpha gets here i'll have him transported to another facility." you explain as jungwon and ni-ki grab jay by the arms and drag him behind you all.
"what are you going to do with him yn?" you can sense worry in sunghoon's voice and it irks you in the slightest way. you didn't understand why there was a weird tone in his voice that made you feel like you were acting irrationally when you felt like you could've acted worse than you did.
"what i do with all aliens. throw them into a cage and study them until i know how to break them down."
✶
jay's cell is hot.
it felt like his home planet and he hated it. he found his way to earth just to get away from the heat, to get away from his animalistic relatives, and yet here he was chained inside of a cell like he was a savage.
sweat dripped across his body as his muscles tenses against the chains. it shined like stars against his skin, sweat cascading across his muscles like a river through mountains.
it's been exactly three days since it all happened. since the outbreak at the facility, since he exposed himself to you, since you saw him as the monster you wanted to see him as.
he hated that this is how it resulted but he couldn't do anything about it. all he wanted was to learn, to be more like a human, and to jay, that was you. you weren't perfect. you were didn't know the right things to say, your emotions weren't complete and your mind was filled with more than it can hold.
that's what made you human.
but your reactions also proved your humanity.
you treated jay like a monster because all your life that's what you knew aliens to be.
monsters.
he just wishes he could've done more to show you that he wasn't violent. that he wasn't a monster and that he was telling the truth when he said he would never hurt you.
nothing rings truer than that.
jay is deep in thought when the sound of heels tapping against the pavement outside of his cell gets closer and closer. at first he doesn't look up but when he hears your voice he quickly snaps his head towards your direction.
"yn…" he whispers just loud enough for you to hear.
he wasn't expecting to see you so soon. he thought that you'd take some time away to process all of this but you were here now. standing in front of him, heels on your feet, glasses low on your nose, and hair sleeked back out of your face.
"this is dr. ln, the time is 7AM on february 23rd. this is the first recording with new alien species, identification to be determined. logging research now. subject is conscious in confinement and responding to my presence." your voice was robotic.
jay is slightly offended that you're treating this like any other day.
like he was just some alien that's been captured on a random thursday that's been presented to you to study.
"yn— can we please just talk?" jay's voice is hoarse and low. the lack of hydration paired with the blazing heat that's being blasted into his cell has left him drained.
"subject is speaking fluently like a human. most likely due to years of exposure and assimilation." you say while walking closer, before taking a seat on the floor just outside of his cell, the glass separating the two of you. you're parallel from jay who is slightly elevated into the air by his chains as you cross your legs on the floor.
"please. let's just talk." he says again.
"don't worry, jay. we'll talk—" you pause for a second to make sure the gadget on your wrist is recording your conversation.
"tell me everything. from the beginning til the day at the facility and don't leave anything out or else i won't hesitate to use this." you say while pulling a device out of your pocket. it was similar to the controller that you used to activate the shock collar he was wearing before, only now he wasn't wearing one.
"i'm sure you're wondering what this is for. so, let me show you."
and suddenly there's an intense pain shooting through jay's body that started from his arms that make his muscles spasm as electricity shoots throughout the chains that's holstered around him.
"not so fun is it? i hope you know that pain doesn't even compare to the pain that i've had to face as a young girl seeing my family torn apart in front of my very eyes." you finally turn the device off and the shock of the electricity disappears but the pain remains on jay's skin like a reminder of his betrayal.
"you wanted to talk. so talk. tell me everything."
and he does.
jay tells you every detail about his life. his species of alien. even details that weren't helpful like how he got his job or shows he watched to learn the language of the humans he was surrounded by.
he did all of that alone.
jay told you about how at a young age he learned how to pilot a spaceship that his species had from his home planet and how he escaped to earth with no idea what to do next. once every few years his species sent out groups of aliens to come down to earth and live amongst humans with no other reason aside from the fact that they were no longer of use to the aliens back home.
it was either they stayed on their home planet and got killed or they got sent to a different planet with nothing else. a lot of the time the aliens sent away ended up dying, others assimilated like jay. he hated it. he hated how aggressive his kind was and from a young age his parents saw this in him.
they hated him for it.
ostracized him. called him weak. useless. worthless.
he managed to sneak onto a ship being sent out one day and the rest was history.
the same night that jay landed on earth was the same night your family met their demise. you later learned that with more detail from jay's arrival to earth.
he told you more about his home planet. how it's temperatures were unmatched, growing even hotter than venus itself. he never called it home though. jay would refer to his home planet as 'ustrina' and corrected you when you called it his home.
"that's not my home. earth is my home, yn…" you'd just ignore it, move on after because you didn't have the energy to argue with him about whether or not earth was his home or not. jay told you that ustrina was naturally very hot and because of it, his alien species developed a hunting skill that made them excellent predators.
their sweat.
the sweat that comes out of their pore glands acted as a sort of aphrodisiac. it made those close enough to smell it be allured and fall into a trance like state, almost following the scent until their close enough for the predator to lunge— because his planet was so hot his kind was always sweating and the more they were sweating, the stronger their scent became.
you didn't even know this when you had jay thrown into a cell. you simply remembered the way he was so cold before that you assumed temperature had something to do with his species, you just weren't sure what. in hindsight it wasn't very helpful to keep him in a cell that was thousands of degrees high where he's practically swimming in his own sweat but he told you that the affects don't work on his kind.
it almost felt like he was suggesting that it would work on you.
not suggesting. telling.
he was telling you that a singular whiff of his scent would work on your. you'd easily be prey to him.
"— but i like to be cold. i don't like be hot and sweaty because i don't like the way it leaves people unable to act for themselves. i don't want them to feel like i'm manipulating or taking advantage of them— of you. that's why i had my office so cold and overtime i learned that when i'm around someone i can trust, my body naturally cools down."
his words remind you of one of your first times meeting. when you shook his hand, skin cold as ice, and how his office was freezing. there was rhyme to his reasoning and it irritated you that his icy skin was because he found comfort in you despite not knowing you at all.
"i knew the second i met you that i could trust you even if i didn't know who you were. i was able to naturally let my guard down around you, that's why i was so cold. yn i would never lie to you, please believe me.
if you turn off the heat in here and touch my skin, i promise you that i will instantly cool down. you have to trust me— please…"
he was pleading again and although you wanted to keep your composure and not listen to what he says, your vision began to blur and you slowly stood from your seat on the ground and walked over to the keypad to the side of the door that led to his cell.
you're about to scan your badge but suddenly your vision comes back and your mind is no longer fuzzy.
"what the fuck was that?" you asked, clearly aggravated.
"that's another one of our traits. i can control your mind in different ways… sometimes it feels like just a small nudge to encourage you to do something, other times i can leave you completely unconscious and take over your body if i wanted to…"
"you've done this before to me haven't you?" you began to recall all the other times you felt that similar sensation and they all involved jay. the time in his office when you came to grab your badge, the time in the facility when he willed you to stay hidden while he scouted the building for sunghoon; it was him.
he was controlling your mind and yet, you weren't upset.
you were intrigued.
"fascinating…"
in all of your years of studying aliens, none of them have ever shown any capabilities of mind control. it was usually more physical traits and intelligence but mind control? never. that was a new discovery that you've now just stumbled upon and this new information only fueled your curiosity.
"if i walk in there and you try to use that on me again— i'll fucking kill you."
"i won't! i promise i won't— yn– i.."
jay is cut off by the sound of beeping and suddenly the door to cell opens. the once blazing heat coming from the ceiling is gone and he can feel slight relief on his skin.
when you walk into the cell, the residual heat fills the air but you're more focused on the floral yet musky scent that fills your nose. it was pleasant in a disarming type of way and the closer you walked over to jay whose bent forward on his knees, arms raised behind him like wings held into the air by the chains, the scent smells sweeter and sweeter.
"touch me…" is all he says before your hand presses against his bare chest.
it's covered in his sweat and it instantly soaks your hand when you touch him. his skin is warm but almost instantly the heat is gone and his skin begins to feel like ice. you jump back at the sudden change and look over at jay who's looking at you with big pleading eyes, mouth parted in exhaustion while his tongue lulls past his lips in a thirsty desperation.
you place your hand on his chest again and you can see the way his muscles relax. his skin no longer bore a blushing red from the heat and returned to it's natural color. your mouth slowly parted at the sight of jay's body, toned and muscular in all of the right places but he also had valleys of soft and tender flesh that felt equally reliable to settle yourself against.
your tongue darts past your lips to wet your bottom lip, teeth slowly biting down on the flesh.
"jay…" you whisper and his gaze intensifies in a way he's never even felt before. like he was looking at you like his prey the way his nature intended yet he felt no urge to destroy you— violently that is.
"what is this feeling.." you say, breathing getting heavier as you kneel down in front of him, hand still pressed firmly against his sweaty chest. jay meets your eyes at a common level and your face is a lot closer to his than you've ever been. he can count the lashes on your feathery eyes, he can see the slight quiver in your lip, and can feel something radiating off of you that he's never felt from anyone else.
"it's me— you're being lured in by my swear you need to leave— no!" you interrupt jay and he's taken aback. he wasn't expecting you to want to stay so close to him but that's what his scent does. dulls your senses so that all you think about is the sweet smell that you don't want to pull away from.
"it's so—" you swallow momentarily.
"so sweet…" and before jay can respond you're bringing your face closer to his and lick a stripe of his cheek. his sweat coating your tongue as your eyes close in pleasure. "i was right…" you whisper while licking your lips as if you were trying to taste more of jay with whatever could've stuck to your mouth.
"yn— this is.. you have to go you can't think straight right now." you cut him off with a kiss, tasting his sweat that's pooled around his mouth as your tongue licks at his skin like it was the most delicious thing you've ever tasted.
jay whimpers into your mouth and pulls a moan out of you as you continue lapping at his skin. tongue gently swiping across his cheek, nose, slurping at the sweat on his forehead.
he tries to tell you that you're not acting of the right mind and he's met with your hooded gaze. "i want it, jay… but i'll stop if you want me to."
"i— jay's torn between wanting to continue feeling you against his body and the idea that your mind is only feeling this way because of his scent.
"are you sure? you know that you only feel like this because of my scent, right? without you wouldn't feel so inclined to do… to do all of this." he says referring to the way your arms have now wrapped itself loosely around his neck while you're practically pushing your hips against his. "trust me… i want nothing more than to feel you." you whisper, lips gently touching his before you kiss him again. this time jay kisses back— hard.
his mouth explores yours like untouched territory, tongue fighting for dominance as they graze over your teeth, sweat continues to drip across his skin and it feels your senses in a euphoric way that makes you desperate for something more filling.
"let me taste you— please. you've tasted me, now it's my turn." jay says into the kiss before he bites down onto your bottom lip, tugging on it in a silent dominant way.
your body naturally moves with ease as you pull down your pants, tossing them aside with your feet as you stand up, jay's face perfectly leveled with your pussy that's now began to soak the soft white cotton panties you're wearing.
"you want to taste me? so do it." you've barely finished your sentence before jay is pressing his face against your clothed pussy, licking and biting at the fabric to taste your juices through the fabric, ringing out your slickness with his tongue. "just like that— fuck." you moan out, eyes slowly fluttering shut and head lulling backwards.
jay's teeth tear through the fabric in a desperate motion and the air blows against your exposed pussy that covered in your slick, jay quickly brings his tongue forward to catch it before it drips onto the floor wastefully— although he'd probably be more than willing to lick the ground to taste you.
he's sloppy in the way he's got his tongue lapping at your folds, collecting your sweetness into the curvature of his tongue while his lips suck at you in an inhuman way. his alien physique proving to be beneficial in intercourse as he continues eating you out, starved and deprived.
you're the first thing jay has taste in three days and my god were you the best thing he's ever tasted.
"fuck— jay i'm– gonna cum!" you bite down on your lip to muffle your moans and even though jay's been living among humans for a long time now, sex has never interested him in this way until you. he was eager to make you cum like how it happens in the books he's read or the movies he's seen— even porn he's watched out of pure curiosity.
"cum for me please. please cum, yn— please." he's begging you to cum all over his face like he was the one being pleasured but the with the way his eyes close in pleasure while eating your soaked pussy, jay was fill with pleasure more than you think.
he quickens his pace, tongue almost growing in size as it pushes further inside of you while his nose pokes at your clit at just the right amount of pressure to pull you over the edge. your pussy clenches around jay's tongue and he can feel the way your pussy floods with your sweetness that he can't help but to slurp up even quicker than before.
you're spitting pleasure filled curses as you cum, hand now gripping his hair for stability as your knees get weak from your orgasm, almost buckling beneath you but you manage to hold yourself up.
"fuck— jay that was… wow" you're breathless as jay pulls away from your pussy even if he doesn't want to. long sticky webs forming as he gets further away, his chin is soaked in your cum and you notice that he's no longer sweaty but the feeling still remains on your mind. "yn… are you ok?" he asks quietly while looking up at you.
you're deep in thought when you realize something. your pants are tossed to the side, your panties are ripped, and a mixture of your cum and jay's sweat coats your thighs but there's one thing you've now realized— something you aren't sure you want to say out loud.
was this for science? was this because of jay's hypnotizing scent?
or was this you finding a reason to justify the fact that you wanted to jay?
whatever it was— you were going to have to do a lot of thinking before you told jay anything you just said in your head.
"i have to go— um…" you say, looking around for your pants.
your heels click clack against the floor as you run over to them, slipping them on and trying to make yourself look composed before having to go back out there.
"jay—" you clear your throat before continuing.
"don't tell anyone this happened.. ok?"
he nods slowly, "okay, yn. i won't."
jay thinks that's all you have to say as he watches you leave and lock the door behind you but you walk back towards him, pressing your hand to the glass as he looks at you with an expecting gaze.
"i won't turn the heat back and i'll lower the temperature in here. i don't know what i'm feeling right now but i can tell you one thing…" you pause and jay bites his lip in anticipation.
"i think i want you in ways that i shouldn't."
✶
over the course of the next seven days, you and jay spend a lot more time with each other. you've created a personal authorization with his cell, meaning that only you have access to it.
you put it all under the guise of research and that you were studying him— and you were, even if sunoo, or sunghoon, or jake said that you seemed to be less angry at him— you kept telling them that this was all purely for science and that they should worry more about their jobs rather than what you're doing.
you are studying jay but that didn't mean you had to continue harboring resentment to him.
it was weird— like always.
just a week before today, you were angry and wanted him dead but now… you've told things to jay you've never even uttered out loud before.
today was like any other day. you've now moved past the chains as you and jay sit together, tucked away into a corner of his cell, his arm around your shoulder as your rest yourself against him.
you provided him better clothes and an even better atmosphere in his confinement. you did however, still had to chain him up after each meeting because you didn't want anyone to grow suspicious even if your friends were already questioning you.
"your skin is so soft…" jay mutters before pressing a kiss on your crown.
"it's called moisturizer, ever heard of it?" you tease and the two of you share a laugh. "alright, i may be an alien but i have lived on earth for long enough… i'm just saying it's so— so so so soft" he says, peppering kisses across your knuckles. it makes you giggle at how domestic it all felt. how just almost two months ago you wanted nothing to do with jay and now here you are, breaking a code of conduct with your job as your feelings begin to bloom for the alien you wanted dead before.
sometimes you still teased jay about it. calling him little nicknames like "my alien" and what not and he pretended to hate it but he secretly loved the way it made his heart pick up in speed.
only you can do that. only you could make him feel this way and he knew now that feeling he felt when he first saw you, that unidentified bond and attraction he never said out loud, the way you felt so comfortable with in such a short amount of time— it's because of this. the fact that you're a human learning about aliens and he's an alien learning about humans, it creates the perfect opportunity of two hearts coming to one.
that neither of you are perfect beings yet you learn about what perfection is and the scale of perfection that's gauged by the humanity that jay can learn from you and the humanity you can find in yourself because of jay.
jay watches as your hand moves towards your face, your gentle finger pushing your glasses up onto your face, and then back towards his hand to lace them together.
"i really like your glasses— they're… pretty." his voice is gentle like he was almost afraid to compliment you. "my glasses?" you ask slightly confused. you've never been complimented on them before so it was a bit surprising especially since they were simple wire rimmed glasses, nothing special.
"yeah— they're pretty like you. they capture your eyes really nicely like a framed picture."
you turn towards jay with a touched expression on your face, bottom lip slightly jutting forward. "that's.. that's so sweet, jay.." you say before placing a kiss onto his cheek and you can see the way it makes him blush.
jay smiles at you and suddenly your glasses are being snatched off of your face, his long tentacles taking them hostage as he pulls them away. "hey— jay, come on." you whine as you try to reach for them and he tauntingly moves it away just before you can grab it. "gotta try harder than that, dr. ln." he teases and you scoff at him.
"seriously?" you ask and he shrugs, sliding out and creating distance between the two of you. you try to chase after him but he's just too quick and his tentacles are way too long as they stretch upwards, bringing your glasses all the way up to the ceiling where you definitely cannot reach.
"that's not fair!" you huff with a pout and he eventually gives in, bringing his tentacle back down so he can return your glasses to you but before he can you're pouncing on top of him, the two of you falling backwards as jay uses his tentacles to break the fall.
"okay— THAT was unfair." he says, referring to you jumping on him while he's not paying attention, ultimately catching him off guard. his tentacle returns your glasses onto your face, the tip of the fleshy muscle pushing them up comfortably and you smile before muttering a thank you. "can i ask you something…" he says quietly, a bit timid.
you nod in response and he takes a minute to ask but something tells you that you already know where this was going as you can feel the hardness growing beneath you, his crotch pressed up against your abdomen.
"can— can i feel you?" jay asks, stuttering over his shyness but you found it endearing.
"feel me? in what way?"
"like— like how i tasted you before. i want you to taste me but—" he pauses and you smile at him with nothing but adoration in your eyes. "do you want me to suck you off, jay?"
"when you say it like that it sounds so vulgar.." he grumbles and looks away, making you laugh at his semi-prude behavior. "well that's exactly what you're asking for— except this time no mind control, no aphrodisiac sweat— do you want me to?" you ask and he turns back towards you.
"none of that. i want it but only if you want it. i don't want anything interfering with your perception. i shouldn't have ever let it get that far at first— i'm sorry."
you grab his face tenderly and place a kiss on his lips, "it's okay— as angry as i was at you before, deep down i wanted it just as bad." you slide across his body, hands trailing across his chest and stomach. his eyes hold your gaze as your face stops just above the waistband of his soft linen pants. "please don't make me wait…" he breathes out.
your fingers loop his waistband as you pull them down and just like you expected, he's hard.
jay's cock is one you've never seen before— even in your field of work where you examine alien bodies, none of them have ever had a member like jay's his cock was large— insanely big; it bulged in different areas, curved with thickness that pointed with a bulbous tip that was leaking with something just as sweet as his sweat.
"fuck—" you mutter and it makes jay panic.
"you don't have to if you don't want to! i'm so sorry— i'm being so selfish, i'm sorry." he says while scrambling to pull his pants back up but you reassure him that you want this and the sight of his massive alien cock makes you want him even more.
your mouth waters at him and the way you can see his member throb.
"i don't even know if this could fit…"
he looks at you bashfully like he's embarrassed by his large cock but you were just so amazed by it. "you'll make it fit, right?" jay says, voice low with fervor.
you nod at him as you begin to lick his tip. jay hisses at the contact of your warm tongue creating wetness around his cock with just a few licks. "shit—" he cusses as his hands form into fists. you try to work your throat open when you wrap your lips around his cock, you're only able to fit 1/5 of jay inside your mouth at first.
saliva drips from the sides of your mouth and coats jay's cock as you bob your head up and down, trying your best for him to fit more and more of his cock inside of your pretty mouth but he's just utterly too big for you— it makes you even think about how he'll fit if you eventually decide to have sex.
"that feels amazing— yn fuck!" he moans, punching the ground in pleasure.
"this is the best i've ever felt— please don't stop— shit! keep going, baby" you've never heard him this vulgar before especially considering how shy he was being just a moment ago. "i'm gonna push more inside, okay baby?" he says, raising his brows at you before his tentacle wraps around your head, from crown to chin; while another tentacle holds back the hair that's fallen loose from the way you're sucking him off with determination.
jay can feel his cock go deeper into your throat, stretching you open that you've managed to get just about half of him now inside of your mouth. he feels like he's in heaven and a sense of pride fills him when he hears the way you're whimpering and moaning against his cock, vibrations adding to the pleasure he's feeling.
the way your spit has moved past drooling and basically flooding out of your mouth, coating your chin and his thighs in soft white bubbles.
"i could die happy like this— fuck baby. you're perfect— so so perfect. doing so good taking that cock. you like it don't you, pretty?" he asks and uses his tentacles to nod for you as you're too occupied taking him into your mouth. jay's even more impressed by the way you've managed to breathe through your nose and not once asked to come up for air, it just makes him even harder.
something that he didn't mention was the fact that intense moments of pleasure— like right now; would make his cock grow. not only that, but his alien species cums. a lot.
so when jay starts singing pleasures and moans from delight, his cock grows inside of your mouth like no other. like a water balloon that's ready to burst from inflating too large, the sensation of his cum fills your throat like an endless waterfall.
hot, sticky, gooey, bioluminescent cum fills your mouth. you try to swallow it and to no surprise— it's sweet like everything about jay but it proves to be all too much as your eyes begin to water, patting his leg with urgency so he can let you go and he instantly does. even through his pleasure filled daze, he's attentive to your needs.
when you pull jay's cock out of your mouth he's still cumming. the hot glowing liquid squirts everywhere, majority landing onto your glasses that become sticky with his essence, decorating it like melting wax. there's puddles of his cum on the ground as they drip from your chin, your cheeks, forehead— everywhere.
his cum is almost never ending and because you want to show jay you're serious about him the way he is about you, you lick up the cum that's pooled around his thighs and stomach, lapping at it like a little kitty drinking milk.
jay's eyes are half lidded, mouth agape with heavy breaths as he looks down at you, face practically covered in his honey like cum. he tries his best to not let the sight of you covered in his essence make him harder but the way you're looking up at him through the small gaps in your glasses that aren't covered in cum just turns him on to no end— more cum shoots out of his tip that's now glowing with slickness and throbbing more than before.
"fuck me— i've never seen that much cum before.." you're breathless like jay is, your breathes matching in unison.
"i– well i don't think i've ever cum that much before." you giggle at his confession, licking another stripe along the underside of his cock from his balls to the tip, he shivers at the sensation and more cum dribbles out from his cock and perfectly lands on your tongue.
"we should probably get you cleaned up—" jay pauses for a second as his tentacles fully retract back into his body. "as much as i like seeing you like this; i don't think i can hold back if we keep going."
you ponder on what jay just said. 'keep going'
there's a sense of relief inside of you when you realize that he was thinking the same thing. he wanted it just as bad that's no denying and the fact that you want to keep going but know that you shouldn't says something about how you feel about one another. there's clearly something more between you two and that was enough to allow you to say the following words.
"we'll get there eventually. just not here— i know i'm the one that got you inside of this cage and i'll be the one to get you out." you pause for a second to adjust your glasses and it makes jay smile. your pretty glasses on your pretty face— maybe even prettier with the way his cum drips off of you.
"i promise, jay."
✶
the next day as jay sat in his cell, arms strung up by chains and back sore from the uncomfortable position he's been in for hours, he's still got a simmering smile on his lips as he waits for the hour that you arrive. he's been keeping track of the time in his head and at the hour on the hour, you arrive just when he's expecting you.
except now, you're not alone.
when jay raises his head to meet your figure walking down the long path to get to his cage, his smile fades when he sees you accompanied by two other people. officer sunghoon and commander lee heeseung who he hasn't seen in ages— way before he even switched over to this facility.
jay's never liked commander lee, he was abrasive, blunt, spoke with a condescending tone, and never took anyone seriously. heeseung thought he was way above everyone else and to him, he didn't care if it rubbed people the wrong way.
he knew he was smart, strong, and his role as a commander definitely went to his head.
you've only spoken to him a few times— met him once outside of right now, and like jay, you weren't a fan of heeseung. you shared the same opinion as jay without even knowing his own dislike for your boss. heeseung was the head of the alien studies program and although he appreciated a lot of your ideas and typically supported everything you wanted to do with your studies on alien species— you just couldn't ignore his brash attitude and unlikable demeanor.
"park jongseong— how disappointing to see such a gift mind like yours be contained like this." heeseung says, crossing his arms as he stares at jay through the glass. jay's glaring him down as you stand behind heeseung, sunghoon to the other side of the commander. you're looking at jay from the side with sympathetic eyes, your heart aches at the position he's in right now— because of you.
you didn't expect yourself to feel this way about jay, especially after everything and yet after spending a few days with him and learning everything about one another, you're more than willing to turn your back on the humans who have helped you fuel your hatred for aliens for the one alien wh has changed your mind on everything you thought you knew.
"commander lee.." jay says through gritted teeth, he hasn't looked at you once and he knows it should stay that way. he's afraid if he looks at you even the slightest that his face will give it away that the two of you have something you shouldn't. afraid that if he looks at your face, heeseung will see how his eyes will soften when looking at you which would put the two of you in a compromising position.
"doctor. ln; you said the alien has exhibited violent behavior and needs to be extracted correct?" heeseung asks, barely turning his head towards you, jay's eyes following even if he tries not to. he watches as your face sharpens at the way heeseung calls your name and you just give him a singular nod, eyes devoid of emotion. jay feels an ache in his chest when he sees how cold you are. "sunghoon—" heeseung says.
"prepare for the alien's transportation. we're moving him to the category 5 unit bunker."
that bunker was where they put alien's deemed to dangerous to society but aren't necessarily useless. they leave aliens down there until they need to be studied again or used in some sort of manipulative way like extracting their dna for scientific progression or using them as members of a task force of some kind.
"wh– what? why are you taking me there? yn? tell me that's not true!" jay's got no idea what's happening when a group of enforcement officers file into the room in a single line, guns tucked into their arms while sunghoon scans his badge to get access into the cell. jay's still calling for you, asking for you to explain and why you're doing this to him— heartbroken over seeing you not even bat an eyelash as sunghoon activates the electricity in the chains that's wrapped around him.
bolts of electricity shocking into his body until he's incapacitated enough to no longer speak, only able to watch as his eyes get blurry while watching your figure get smaller and smaller with commander lee at your side. you're trying your best to remain stoic like hearing jay's pained groans and pleads isn't shattering your heart, but because commander lee is right at your side, you can't do anything about it.
"great work doctor. ln. your contributions to the alien division are greatly appreciated, i'll be sure to tell the higher ups of everything you've done. at this rate you'll move up in ranks and be able to do what i do for mankind.
talk soon."
that's all heeseung says before he gives you an unwelcome pat on the shoulder that you try not to scoff at, watching him leave with a fake smile that you finally drop when he's no longer in view.
you wanted to turn around and run back inside of jay's cell block but you know that wasn't a good idea. you just wish that he won't hate you after this.
inside his cell, sunghoon's got a relentless grip on the controller that activates the electricity, jay who is strong tries his best to bare the pain of the shock but eventually his body just falls limp, eyes barely open. sunghoon finally turns it off and walks over to jay, crouching down to his level and whispering something into his ear.
"i'm going to give you something— grab it with your tentacle while no one's looking. it's on your back." he gives jay a harsh slap on the back that he disguises as 'punishment' for speaking back, trying to remain like a hard ass in front of the enforcement squad. jay's barely conscious when sunghoon tells him all of this but he manages to subtly grab the slip of paper that's stuck to his back, sliding it into his body where his tentacles reside just as he falls unconscious.
the last thing he hears is sunghoon shouting commands to grab the high grade cuffs and confinement tools to prepare jay for extraction.
✶
jay wakes up when the truck that he's in drives over a bump in the road, jolting him awake when his body shakes and thuds against the walls of the truck. he's got a state of the art biotech cuffs locked around his wrists, a shock collar on his neck, and electroshock braces strapped to his chest— the works.
all commands from you to make it seem like jay was the dangerous and unhinged alien monster that you've told heeseung he is.
except you aren't— you were wrong. jay's the furthest from a monster and you knew that now. it's why you were doing all of this in the first place. with trust placed into your friends, sunghoon, sunoo, and jake; they all took part in helping you break jay out of his cell.
sunghoon was the main person in this plan who helped you— sunoo and jake were just in on it just in case something were to happen. you trusted all of them and they could all see the way you spoke about jay and the emotion behind your eyes; they had never seen you this serious about anything aside from aliens and right now, there was one alien that needed helping.
jay.
you devised a plan with sunghoon that you knew would work without fail. why? because you came up with it after all. you would call commander lee with a request to extract and transfer jay to a different facility under sunghoon's supervision; during the transfer the truck would get 'attacked' and amongst the chaos, jay will escape.
sure— it paints jay as an escaped fugitive and would probably get him labeled as a category s, high risk danger alien on the loose; but it meant that he wasn't going to be confined anymore. you're the reason he was there and you were going to get him out even if it meant breaking several laws and putting multiple people's jobs at risk— sunoo said it himself when he say the way you talked about jay.
"it's all in the name of love."
so when jay blinks the blurriness away from his eyes and sees where he is, all he believes is that you've turned your back to him— completely forgetting about the note that sunghoon slipped into his tentacles before all of this, all jay could think about was the coldness in your eyes as you walked away from him like before; not recognizing how you're trying to hold it altogether.
"you good?" jay didn't even realize sunghoon was sitting next to him, black tactile suit on with a weapon strapped to his body. sunghoon's face was blank as he looked at the man he once respected— maybe still do; just a bit less perhaps. "sunghoon…" jay pauses for a beat before continuing, swallowing the dryness in his throat.
"you've got to listen to me— yn and i we're… she's— this is all a misunderstanding. please just let me talk to her."
"you don't have to worry, jay. you'll get to talk to her in just a few hours." sunghoon speaks in a hushed whisper and jay doesn't quite understand why until the younger of the two is leaning forward. "i'm going to 'accidentally' let go of your restraints and you're going to get the fuck out of here. use the note i left you to find yn. don't look back, don't think twice— just go." and with that jay hears a few clicks and beeps and his restraints come undone and fall off of his body.
"subject is lose!" sunghoon suddenly shouts and the officers at the front of the truck can be heard shouting back— the truck coming to a halt. sunghoon gives him a nod, letting him know that it's okay and if he needed to use force against him, then do it. "just don't fuck this up. she's waiting for you— and mind my face, ok? sunoo'll get upset if you leave a scar."
jay chuckles for a second before his tentacle cracks from his spine and it lashes towards sunghoon, trying his best to make it believable that he knocked him out while the doors to the back of the truck fly open, revealing three guards with weapons already pointed at jay. he's got no choice but to protect himself and just like he does with sunghoon, he uses his tentacles to hit them only hard enough to knock them out and not do any major damage.
he quickly scrambles out of the truck but not before turning around and looking at sunghoon who is watching him, "thank you" jay says and sunghoon shakes his head at him.
"what did i say? don't look back— go!" sunghoon says through an aggravated whisper and watches as jay smirks at his friend and dashes away, using his tentacles to reach for branches and swing from tree to tree until he's far enough into the forest that surrounded the city to take a break and gather his bearings.
"this is officer park— the alien escaped and is on the run. i've got no idea where he's headed, three other officers are currently unconscious; notify doctor ln and send in medical backup. over."
sunghoon's transmitter crackles momentarily before a voice on the other side confirms his request and he's left to do nothing but wait and hope that this plan of yours doesn't come back to bite any of you in the ass.
✶
when jay finally feels he's far enough into the dense forest to take a break, he's breathless. he doesn't know how long he's been swinging amongst the trees and running from nothing. he doesn't even know if he's being chased after, he's just listening to what sunghoon said and getting out of there before something could happen.
he finds a small clearing in the trees where he sees a tree that's fallen to the ground, using it as a place to rest for just a moment— just to catch his breath and think of what to do, like what you would. you've always came up with great plans and he admired that about you, you're intelligent in ways that surprised him even if he came from a planet with technology and knowledge far superior to humans.
and that's when he remembers the note.
the skin on his back crack open and one of his tentacles wraps forward with the note at the tip of the flesh. it's folded neatly with just a few stains from his body's essence and when he opens it, he realizes it's a letter from you.
it reads:
to jay,
if you're reading this letter it means that i've turned you in once again— but this time it's within reason outside of my disdain for aliens.
it's because of you and doing what's right. in the time that i've known you, i've learned more about myself than i have ever learned in the years that i've been alive. i thought i knew everything and because i was constantly searching for answers in the aliens that i studied, i thought that i was untouchable in ways that no one would understand.
but you did.
you barely knew me and yet it felt like you knew exactly who i was as a person. you never judged me for being a flawed human when i so harshly treated you like a monster for something you had no control over— and for that i'm sorry.
right now, as you're reading this that means that my plan to get you out of confinement is working. sunghoon must've told you everything you needed to know about what's going; i worked with him, sunoo, and jake to get you out. they're my friends and i trust them like i trust you— they thought i was crazy for all of this but i guess at the end of the day they believed me enough to help.
this was the only way i could see you getting out of the cell. i would request for you to be transferred to a different facility and during that time you and sunghoon would stage the whole thing like you miraculously broke out but it would just be sunghoon letting you free.
i've attached where you can find me at the bottom of this letter and i'm sorry for keeping you in the dark with all of this, it's already been hard enough to think about and i just know it'll be even more difficult seeing your face when you hear about everything. i wanted to have you in on the plan but i didn't want to risk anything especially with commander lee present— i'm sorry and i hope that you can find it in yourself to forgive me when we're together again.
you can find me at these coordinates: 47.606° N, 122.332° W or 47°39' N, 122°18' W
i'll be waiting for you.
sincerely and apologetically yours, doctor ln.
the letter ends with a faint pink kiss mark, jay's thumb hovers over and he can feel his heart begin to beat faster just at the thought of finally having you without constraint or laws. he memorizes the coordinates and brings the letter close to his chest, closing his eyes and steadies his breath before his tentacles reappear and he's quickly making time to head to wherever you're waiting for him.
"i'll be there soon. thank you for waiting for me." he mutters to himself as the wind flies past his skin, blowing through the air as he clears the forest and eventually makes his way through the city, using the darkness of the night and shadows to remain hidden, afraid that by now there must be a warrant for his arrest and an ongoing search to capture him.
✶
you're sitting on your couch in the living room with your knees tucked close to your body as you watch the news, they've already sent out a nationwide alert of him escaping and he's being treated like a monster and it was all your fault. you couldn't imagine how he must be feeling and it was starting to fuck with your head how bad a person you must be compared to jay, an alien who you previously called a monster and now everyone would be calling him one too.
except jay didn't care.
he couldn't give any less of a fuck of what others thought about him when he's tried so hard to bare himself to you. he knows you feel remorseful but right now all you can feel is pain. hurting from the fact that you hurt him in ways that he never would've done to you— that you were more of a monster than you are human.
your eyes are trained on the screen in front of you as the clueless news reporter calls jay inaccurate words, describing him as vile, dangerous, and a flesh eating monster when he's been nothing but gentle to you. you've seen humans— kids– much more violent than jay is. you feel your eyes begin to water when a shadow dashes past your window.
the tears in your eyes suddenly dry up as you begin to wonder if what you just saw was a figure of your imagination or something lurking in the shadows outside of your home.
you get up to check it out, slowly walking towards the window you saw the movement and sure enough, there's another shadow that moves quickly past the glass. you gasp, stepping back in shock, almost running into your dining table but when the shadow reappears and stands right in front of you, on the opposite side of the glass it reminds you of just how you and jay were the first day of his confinement.
each of you on opposite ends of the glass, one looking in the other looking out; yet you both still felt the connection that was developing between denial of the truth and wanting to remain loyal to the nature you understand but ultimately choosing love over law.
when the shadow lurks forward, the moonlight shines just enough across his face to reveal jay with tired eyes and craved lips. "yn— please let me in." he didn't even need to ask before you're sliding your window open and helping him inside, not a care in the world for the dirt he tracks into your home or the fact that he looks like he's been through hell.
"jay—" he cuts you off with a kiss, hands cupping your face in a desperate act to hold you close like you'd be gone if he didn't do it in that exact second. the kiss isn't any like you've shared before. it's passionate and laced with a spirited type of devotion that you've never bore into anyone you knew.
jay kissed you like it was his last, tongue against flesh, teeth pressed against teeth, and breath so close they'd become one.
"i fucking missed you—" jay says in between kisses, tongue darting forward to twist with yours and you can feel the way his tongue grows in length, almost falling into the your throat and traveling down your esophagus. your fingers fisted the thin shirt he's wearing that's now covered in dirt and sweat— his sweet sweet scent that you've grown addicted to but you wanted jay in so many different ways that you didn't even need his scent or his mind control to act.
this was all your own doing. your own will. your own mind.
jay doesn't let go of your face even when he pulls away from the kiss, both your lips a tad swollen and covered in each other's spit. "i'm so sorry, jay. i'm sorry for all i did to you i—"
"hey.. hey… it's okay. it's okay." he hushes you with a hug, pulling you into his big arms and resting your face against his chest like his body was armor to protect you. he whispers in your ear everything you need to hear while rubbing your back, soothing the hurricane of worry and doubt in your head.
"there's nothing to be sorry for. i've forgiven you before you even apologized. you didn't even need to, i know how you must be feeling and i hold nothing against you. i promise, baby. you're good. i'm good. we're good. okay?" he says, grabbing your face gently again to make you look up at him, round glassy eyes that he just loves so much— even without your glasses.
"okay?" he asks again and you finally nod, reaching upward to kiss him again.
"can— can i make love to you, yn?"
you pause when he asks you. even now— even when he's just run from his captors and into your arms, the person who is responsible and the very reason why he's on the run in the first place, he's put you first, asking to make love to you in the gentlest voice and kindest eyes. even now, he wants you despite how you've treated him but that's because jay can see the humanity in your eyes.
not the kind of humanity that made you hateful and violent towards alien, but the kind of humanity that's rooted in empathy and guilt that makes one want to become better for someone else— then for yourself.
"yes."
the simple three letter word falls from your lips like an anchor and it drags your faces together again, lips locking in a heated kiss that moves the two of you in a stumble towards your bedroom, knocking over paintings and framed pictures off the walls; bedroom door slamming open as you fumble with the doorknob and eventually, your back lands softly on your mattress with jay on top of you with nothing but unadulterated lust in his eyes.
a whiny gasp leaves your lips when you fall onto your bed, jay takes in the way you're laid out underneath him, he's breathing with his lips pulled apart like he can't breathe unless you're pressed against his mouth, tongue on skin, muscles against flesh.
jay tears at your clothes easily, ripping the silk fabric with swiftness and hunger, quick to get rid of the fragile barrier of your body and his possession on your skin. "mine. mine. mine. mine." he says in between placing kisses from the center of your chest and down your stomach.
small wet kisses trail down your body as jay stops just above your pussy, the fabric of your soft pink underwear already soaking at the touch of jay's mouth against your body. "so wet for me, aren't you? bet you want me to eat you up, huh?" jay asks teasingly, slightly biting into the flesh of your thighs, earning him a whimper and a slight nudge of your hand as you play with his hair.
"jay– don't tease me please." you whine and he laughs at how desperate you are even if he hasn't done much. "don't worry baby, i'll give it all to you but right now, i want to try something, you trust me right?"
you nod rapidly, biting down on your lip; "words baby."
"yes, jay. i trust you just — please do something." you're bucking your hips upwards in an attempt to feel anything aside from his warmth breath on your sensitivity. you can hear the way his back splits open and a singular tentacle— long, thick, and covered in his essence stretches from behind and slowly slithers along your body.
jay uses his tentacle to massage your tits, covering them in a thick goo-like substance before it tugs your panties down, your hips instinctually raising so it's easier to remove them. he crawls over your body, stopping right when his crotch is hovered over your face and before you can let out another whine, jay's tentacle flexes at your folds, the squishy yet firm tip prodding at your pussy before it pushes inside of you, stretching you open as it gets thicker the further it goes down from the tip.
"fuck— jay fuck fuck fuck" is all you can say as his tentacle pushes deeper and deeper. the way you're getting wet allows for him to get inside of you with ease, sopping wet sounds fill the room partnered with your foul curses as jay uses his tentacle to fuck you. "you like that? such a filthy mouth— have i ever told you that?" jay asks, tilting his head mockingly.
you can't even respond because jay's pressing his aching cock against your lips, asking for entry. "let me in baby— let me in that filthy mouth of yours." your lips pull apart to take him inside of you, tears pooling at your lashes as jay fucks into your mouth, nose pressed against his skin.
"god– you're fuckin filthy. always saying so much with that pretty mouth of yours; finally got you to shut up with a cock in your mouth, huh?"
you don't know where this attitude of jay's came from but by the way your clenching around his tentacles and your back is arching, you both can tell it's making you feel real real good.
"yeah, baby— just like that. got you so fucking stuffed, don't i?"
jay pulls his cock out of your mouth, you're gasping for air as he leans down to your face, grabbing you by the hair and pressing your lips together in a sloppy and spit filled kiss. "m'close jay.." you whimper against his mouth and he smiles into the kiss.
"cum for me, baby. want you to soak me again, i've missed it." he says before crouching over and placing his face at your pussy, replacing his tentacle with his tongue, lapping and sucking at your pussy that's been stretched wide for him. jay hooks his arms underneath your thighs to pull you closer to him while his tentacle finds your neck, squeezing lightly; the other massaging your breasts— putting you into a position that's got your body restrained by his in a pleasure filled disposition.
your pussy clenches around and you're barely able to moan out his name because of the tentacle wrapped your throat as you cum, juices squirting over jay's face as he drinks up every ounce like it's water from the fountain of youth. "pussy tastes so good— could eat you for hours– fuck." jay groans against your pussy, stickiness pressed against his face as he goes back in for more.
jay's long tongue stretches out of his mouth as he licks your cum off of his face, once again crawling over your shaking body as he stops when his face is just above yours. "i'm gonna fuck this pussy full— you think you can take that, baby?" you reach forward and pull his face down into a kiss, you can taste yourself on his tongue and it drives the two of you insane. "jay?" you ask, breath heavy.
"yes, baby?"
"have you ever fucked yourself?"
jay blinks at you, unsure if he heard you right. "wh– what?" he asks.
"the way you fucked me just now with your tentacle— have you ever done that to yourself?"
"i don't think i can say i have– why? do you want me to?"
you nod shyly, "fuck me with your cock while you fuck yourself— we'll be tied up like we're one." you whisper such nasty things in such a sweet tone that jay finds himself getting excited, cock growing and growing inside of his pants that it's begun to poke out of the waistband.
"i've never done that before but for you? i'll do anything, baby." he says, placing another kiss on your lips before removing his own clothes. he's situated on top of you but you stop him just as he's positioning his cock at your entrance.
"what's wrong?" he asks.
"i want to ride you— you'll fit inside me better if i ride you; i want to feel all of you."
fuck. you're going to be the death of him.
jay's tentacles wrap around the two of you, flipping you both over with swiftness with you now straddling his hips, your pussy soaking his cock as they rub against each other. jay's got his knees propped up as you hover above him, grabbing his massive cock that needs more than your own two hands to even wrap around it. his cock is huge in an unserious way, comically large that it leaves you laughing at it's size being so unreal yet intimidating.
"just ease onto it, baby. it's my first time too— we're in this together." jay says, referring to your first time fucking an alien and when you push the tip of his cock slightly into your folds, the stretch from before allows you to slide down just enough— about a third of the way before you find yourself grabbing on his knees for support.
his tentacles grab hold of your waist and arms, securely holding you above him so that you won't have to do too much of the work and after some encouraging words that jay coos at you with swollen lips and his tentacle padding at your clit, you finally feel the way the thick base of his cock leaves you gaping and stretched open— taking all of jay's cock inside you to the point the silhouette of his cock is very apparent against your stomach.
"shit— that's me right there." jay says while using his hand to trail the outline of his cock inside of you. "i— i don't think i can move."
"it's okay, baby. let's— let's do what you said, hmm?"
one of jay's tentacles moves towards the softness of his ass and he hesitates for a moment, looking over at you for reassurance and you nod at him with half lidded eyes, your bottom lip in between your teeth in a quiet excitement; jay's cock still buried deep inside of your cunt that you swear you can feel him near your heart.
jay slowly pushes his tentacle into his ass, his hole stretching open slowly like he did to you and he can't lie and say it felt bad because the way his eyes rolled backwards and a whimper left his lips the more he felt his tentacle go deeper inside of him the more he became a moaning mess.
"feel good, jay?" you ask and he's whimpering and moaning like no other, body vibrating so much that you can feel the way his muscles are contracting inside of you— hips rutting into your pussy, digging into your guts in a routine motion of jay's hips moving so that he can fuck you and himself at the same time— an overwhelming pleasure that neither of you want to end.
"so— so fucking good, baby."
jay's got you elevated into the air, the one wrapped around your waist moving you up and down on his cock with ease as he bucks his hips, wet noises filling the space as he fucks you and himself like a cycle. you're both clenching, holes wet and sopping; moaning each other's name like gospel and prayers.
"fucking nasty for me— fucking yourself while you fuck me 'cause you like me so much don't you? so. fucking. nasty." you say with each of jay's thrusts as your bodies fight for control over the other.
he's got another tentacle that slithers across your body before it wraps itself around your neck, tip opening your mouth to fill your holes in a possessive way where jay wants you to be filled with nothing but him.
you're barely able to breathe as jay's in absolution— face filled with bliss and pleasure as his eyes lock yours, hips moving faster and faster as he pounds into you from below, tip of his cock pushing at your insides to make room for him like he was going to find permanent residence inside of you.
"feel s'good jay— don't stop please don't stop." you manage to mumble past the grip of his tentacle around your neck, back arching as your hips ass bounces on jay as he uses his tentacles to fuck you like some sex toy he can just manhandle into any position to fuck you as much as he wants.
jay can feel you clenching around him and it drives him over the edge— "shit– don't do that you're gonna make me cum— fuck!"
"cum– cum in me jay. please i need it— i want you to fill me please please."
his incredible physique helps in the way he's fucking you faster and faster, the two of you now too fucked out to even say any words— just gasps, whiny moans, and broken whimpers blend together as your bodies move in concert.
jay's cock grows and throbs inside of you as he pumps his cum deep inside of you, painting your insides with his sticky and glowing cum, rutting and knotting your pussy so that he can make sure he fucks his cum so deep that you'll be leaking for hours and feel the indent of his cock inside you for days.
"fuuuck" you both huff as he presses you firmly against himself, skin to skin as he pumps his cum into you in an never ending stream that begins to cream at the base of his cock, spurting from your pussy and bubbling at your thighs the more he fucks into you.
the two of you come down from your high even if neither of you want to. breathing in unison as your chest falls and rises together— skin damp in sweat with jay's scent filling your nose in an addictive nature. his tentacles finally let go of you and you fall forward and onto jay's chest, he catches you with secure arms; hugging you like a quiet celebration. "did so good, baby. good job." he says, brushing your hair and pressing a kiss on your temple.
"did you like it, jay?" you ask, referring to jay doing anal on himself with his own tentacle and he's been in so much lustful pleasure that he's forgotten about the way his ass is filled with himself. he moans in your ear as he pulls out, the empty feeling leaving him wanting more and expecting more in the future. "i loved it, baby— you're so fucking filthy; i love it."
you can feel the way his cum leaks out of you, sheets soaked and coating the both of your legs. "should we clean up?" jay suggests and he feels you shake your head against his bare chest. "no— let's just sleep… i don't want to let you go." you're so soft for him, body pressed and molded to his as he hugs you closer to his body— "i won't let go. never."
✶
the next morning when you wake up with your face pressed against jay's chest and the blanket pulled over your bodies, the sun lightly beaming through the blinds, you feel like nothing could be better than this.
"you awake?" jay asks, yawning and blinking at the light in his face.
you hum in response as the two of you sit up against your headboard, blanket clinging to your bodies. "you feeling alright?" and before you can even answer everything else comes flooding inside of your brain— the momentary bliss of laying in silence in jay's arms cracks when you think about how you got here in the first place.
"hey— hey, what's wrong?" he asks, reaching forward and grabbing your hands, massaging them. "i just— what are we going to do now? you're wanted and i'm scared they're going to take you away from— jay i can't let that happen. i won't."
"it's okay— i'm not leaving i promise. i won't leave you i won't let them take me away. they can try all the want but nothing is tearing us apart. i'll spill blood if i have to."
there's a moment in everyone's relationship where something happens that compares to an attempt of saying "i love you" when you know it's too early to say it. some couples will show this type of devotion in physical actions, heartfelt words, or meaningful moments— for you and jay it was just a bit different.
you both know that love lies between the two of you for longer than you may've known but when you chose to turn your back against everything you knew about yourself and chose an alien over humanity in a flawed type of fashion that contradicts the law you raised yourself in and when jay told you that he would kill and spill blood in order to keep the two of you together when he said himself that he hated his species natural violent ways, there was a silent agreement that this was the way you both showed love to each other.
"can i ask you something, jay?" you say, looking down at your hands, jay's thumb rubbing calming circles on your knuckles. "anything."
"why don't you hate me?"
jay wasn't expecting that but he knew the answer right away.
he smiles at you tenderly as he looks at the small pout on your lips. "because you're not someone to be hated. you're you— unapologetically and that's what i like about you. i could never hate you for anything because you taught me humanity even if you didn't know it."
"but i'm a terrible person— i treated you so terribly, you should hate me"
"but i don't. i told you you're not someone to be hated, you're someone to be loved despite what flaws you think you have. i want to show you how i've learned to love because i knew you and—" he pauses for a second as your eyes meet together.
"i just want you to like me— regardless of who i am."
