If you’re accepting requests and you like this prompt, would you consider writing something angsty? Maybe the reader and Jeff meet like now or sometime in 2020 when Jeff has seemingly been closed off romantically. You can tell there could be something there, but he’s closed off and not in the head space for a relationship. If you like it, please write it and end it however you’d like. I feel like you could write this really well 🥺😘😘
You pride yourself on bravery, heart and mind open as you settle into the city filled with often less honest folk, never quite capable of anything other than speaking your truth.
You have this one life, often too fleeting, so you stop taking ballet at the prime age of eleven, despite your mother’s disappointed rants.
Ask the cute boy in your Spanish class to go with you to the dance despite the fire burning your cheeks, tell your first boyfriend you love him but it’s over when you find a lipstick three shades too light to be yours in his dorm bathroom.
It’s second nature, to venture on despite your hammering heart and sweaty brow, storing things gets far too heavy, weighs on your chest in irreconcilable ways that drow your parents marriage before you’re old enough to walk the path to school alone as a child.
You promised yourself to never get to that point, shoulders drooping with the unsaid that’ll only haunt you in the night.
Until you meet brown-eyed man with shy smiles and fumbling hands.
Jeff is more reserved than his friends, barely says a word to you until you’ve crossed paths too many times, became familiar to those he surrounds himself with, it makes your irrational longing for him spurt bouquets in your chest, flowers growing at your fingertips up towards him, the sun.
They wilt quickly one night, their fate sealed with your head sprawled across a blanket at 2am, laid next to him while watching the stars in the sky, party long forgotten inside.
’I’m not looking...I’m not ready for love’ the words finally escaping past his worried lips while you retell stories of your pasts.
Jeff feels lighter the next morning while your mind spirals with memories of every innocent touch, arm around your shoulder on the couch, head in your lap, each coffee date, dog walk, hike, sleepover chosen over another wild party neither of you truly cares about.
For the first time in your life, you stall, fight with yourself every time your mouth opens and the words are right there on the tip of your tongue, I already love you, you fool, before you swallow them down and find an excuse to leave the room long enough to lock them away for some time.
Everything you feel returns to him somehow, one knowing smile across the room surrounded by chaos and laughter and you’re back at that hilltop, the sun blinding your eyes but not nearly as much as the man hiking up ahead of you for the umpteenth time that month while his friends pause to say hi.
It’s hard to conceal such affections, every small love whispering softly across the distance without your permission.
Jeff never notices, or at least, spares you the inevitable pain’ while your friendship grows in spite until the key to his apartment hangs off the chain attached to your own, his own set finding a home in the bowl on his kitchen counter.
Until it’s too late, you realise, months passing in this bliss that feels too good to let go, though you remind yourself friends don’t fall asleep in each other’s arms, speak without words, ground each other with a mere touch of hands.
You only realise the extent to which you’ve silenced these parts of yourself when a friend visiting town long enough for a coffee date makes an off-hand remark about how you’ve changed, ‘Just...seem different, somehow’.
Jeff finds you stuffing your things in a duffle back later that day, a sleep shirt here, toothbrush there until there are tears falling down your face, frustrated with yourself for allowing this to become so comfortable, so integral in each other’s lives.
‘Y/n? What are you - why are you crying?’ his questioning tone breaking your attention away from packing long enough to glance at his frozen frame in the doorway.
‘I’m fine’ you shrug, picking up the heavy bag before trying to head out. Jeff steps in your way, the entrance blocked by his broad shoulders you marvel on for a short second before his hands, another contender for your favourite part of him, an endless endeavour, cup your wet cheeks and lift your head high enough to look him in the eye.
‘What is really going on? Why are you taking your stuff?’ he’s lost, puppy eyes racing around your face.
You left this morning after sleeping over for movie night, five hours away from him suddenly long enough to make you want to wipe every trace of your presence from his home just like that.
You shrug, as if it explains everything, looking away from the golden hues when you reply.
‘I’m just taking some stuff back to my apa-’ ‘-stop, don’t lie to me’ Jeff pleads. He sighs, moving away to lean against the door frame, ‘What is this really about?’
The little room you were given to breath disappears just as quickly when his hands find their way to your own, prying the right open until your bag falls to the floor with a soft thud.
‘Tell me what’s wrong sunshine’ Jeff asks again, gently, heart beating wildly in contrast at the prospect of your leaving so abrupt.
It’s then you decide, inhaling his cologne with your forehead falling against the planes of his chest, feel what needs to be felt, then move forward.
Whatever that may look like. Jeff relaxes when your fingers tighten around his, once, twice, long lashes fluttering against his thin cotton shirt as you close your eyes.
‘I love you’ the words are spoken freely, flowers gifted from the garden that’s grown far too big for your pair of lungs.
‘Y/n I-’ you shake your head quickly, pulling away from the comfort of his torso with tears blurring your eyes.
‘No, no, Don’t say anything’ you beg.
‘I just...you need to open up your heart, maybe not to me but at least the world’ you swallow, the next words like knives as you add, ‘or someone else.’
Feel what needs to be felt, then move forward, you keep reminding yourself through shallow breaths as you pry your hands from his hold, shaky grip tightening around the belt of your bag.
There’s only the sound of your footsteps, down the stairs, of metal keys falling in the bowl on his kitchen counter, door slamming on your way out.
A deadly silence that follows and spreads the cold, seeping through every inch of the walls surrounding Jeff’s home and heart.
