honeymoonave

[honeymoonave777]

───SKIN TO SKIN, OH MY GOD.

[nephynes]

ONE TWIN TOO MANY ── .✦ jake sim

How would you describe the Sim twins? Jace Sim is your sweet, caring and nerdy best friend while his identical twin Jake is everything his brother isn’t—a hedonistic frat boy you want absolutely nothing to do with. Too bad it seems like he’s decided to stop hiding just how in love with you he is.

minors do not interact

pairing ── jake sim x afab reader

word count ── 42k (oops)

content tags/warnings ── campus au, angst, smut, strained family dynamics, sibling drama, miscommunication, angst with a happy ending? alcohol use, drug use, prescription medication, panic attacks, depression, implied/referenced mental health struggles, unrequited love to lovers, childhood crushes, emotional hurt/comfort, swearing, arguments, misinterpreted homophobia, mxm, coming out, appearances by enhypen’s jungwon and jay. lmk if i missed any it’s a whole lotta story.

nene’s note ── posting this after going on hiatus due to exams, i also happened to lose my friend during this period and all i can say is grief is a horrible thing, my girl made a tumblr account just to support my work and even started listening to enhypen too, i miss her so much. show some love to my girls @sunishake @siyalogue for the brainstorming session we did together for this story, love you guys down and i hope i did this justice! 💋

playlist ── “baby doll” by dominic fike, “the cure” by olivia rodrigo, “bloodstream” by alyssa grace, “hanging out to dry” by florence road, “undressed” by sombr, “family line” by conan gray, “work song” by hozier, “apocalypse” by cigarettes after sex, “steady” by bella kay.

nsfw warnings under the cut

face sitting/riding, attempted 69-ing, fingering, unprotected sex, handjob, creampie, messy pussy eating (twice), squirting, ass slapping, doggy style, passionate sex, crying. (the smut is really just a bonus)

This is not a good look. Walking down the fourth floor hallway of the honors housing building barefoot with your tiny dress and your heels in your hand is definitely not a good look. You’re pretty sure the honors students are not impressed to see you in such little clothing on this bright Saturday morning but you can’t even bring yourself to give a damn. Your face is twisted into a scowl so severe that one guy carrying a basket of clothes actually steps aside to let you pass, your hair is still messy from last night and yesterday's mascara is faintly smudged beneath your eyes.

Saturday mornings on campus are always strange, especially in Jace's building, the residents here think they're so self righteous cause they've probably already gone for a jog, written three essays and finished a research paper and it's not even nine yet.

You can barely register any of it because you're too busy replaying last night in your head for the hundredth miserable time. The Friday night date you had been looking forward to had started out badly and ended up even worse, the guy, whose name you're sure your brain will repress, spent twenty minutes talking about cryptocurrency. And if that wasn't enough, when the bill came, he leaned back in his chair with this smug little grin and said, "So...am I paying for this just to not take you home after, or what?"

You physically shudder remembering it. God, men are actually sick in the head. Maybe you're actually sick in the head too cause humiliatingly—you followed him and now that the sun is out and you can think clearly you know it was just your horniness that drove you to such a terrible decision.

It had been weeks, maybe even months since you'd been in with anyone and after two drinks and one existential crisis in the restaurant bathroom mirror, you'd convinced yourself maybe the mediocre man deserved a chance.

What a mistake.

You feel irritation surge through your body all over again and by now you've reached Jace's door. Not even bothering to knock, you shove it open dramatically. "Jace, I swear to God I think it's finally time for me to try celibacy."

Jace is sat up in his bed in gray sweatpants and a compression shirt, glasses sliding down his nose as he looks up from his laptop to blink at you slowly. "Mmm? Why?"

You kick the door shut behind you, "Cause men are the worst and I'm tired of kissing so many frogs just because I want a prince!"

"Tell me more."

He says softly and sets his laptop aside as you dramatically throw yourself onto the end of his bed with a groan loud enough to let him know you're genuinely upset. You stare at the ceiling before you start ranting again. "First of all, he had the personality of a plastic spork and I'm not even joking, the conversation was so bad, like a solid three out of ten."

"This man," you continue, pointing accusingly at absolutely nothing, "had the audacity to insinuate that he would only pay for dinner if I was going home with him!"

Jace's eyebrows immediately pull together. "What? That's so messed up."

"Exactly." You sigh before sitting up abruptly again. "He said it like he thought it was charming and sexy too. Like I was supposed to giggle and throw my panties at him across the table."

You watch as Jace grimaces at your words, "Please tell me you didn't stay after he said that?"

Damn. How do you tell your best friend that not only did you stay you actually went home with this guy and had sex with him? If you could call that sex. "I was very horny, okay? I'm literally ovulating and I thought ugh maybe the sex could be good?" Yeah, that works.

"Oh come on, Y/n. You're better than that." He seems so disappointed in you that you have to try to ignore the fact that he even let the conversation get this far.

"And not to add to your disappointment but the sex absolutely sucked. Just added a body to my count and that brings me to a whoppingggg...two." You say and start giggling to yourself.

Jace lets out the most disbelieving laugh imaginable. "Oh my God."

"It was so bad, Jace. Like genuinely horrible. I've had more chemistry with self checkout machines." You’re glad that manages to get a startled laugh out of him. "He kept asking me if I liked that every three seconds."

If you'd just slow down to take a look at your best friend's face, you'd see a smirk you'd never seen before but of course you don't cause you're so mad at the whole situation, more at yourself too. "And then when I tried to like guide him a little?" You gesture wildly. "He got defensive."

"Hmm, defensive how?" He asks, eyeing you weirdly now. "Defensive like when I tried to guide his fingers to my actual clit he—"

Your words are cut off by the door swinging open and your irritation immediately flares at the sight of who is standing in the doorway, shifting your gaze back to the twin on the bed, you let out a groan of annoyance. "Seriously, Jake? Can you give us five minutes of peace?" you mutter, rolling your eyes toward the doorway, expecting to see Jace's twin brother hovering there with his usual grating smirk.

But instead the room just goes dead silent and curiosity forces you to actually look at the person standing in the threshold. You rake your eyes over him, ready to snap some insult about him intruding on your conversation but the words die in your throat. Because why is he standing there so confused and wearing his brother's clothes and carrying his textbooks?

Why is the custom silver bag chain you had to hunt down for Jace's birthday hanging from Jake's bag?

Your stomach drops in a sickening free fall sensation. If that's Jace...then who the hell are you sitting next to?

"What are you even talking about?" the twin standing in the door asks, his voice threaded with a weary frustration. He looks between you and the bed, his brow furrowing deeper. "Jake, I told you—I don't know how many times I have to say this—stay the hell out of my room when I'm not here. Why are you even here?"

You slowly turn your head to look at the person sitting on the bed and he's already watching you, his gaze no longer just amused, it's now sharp and terrifyingly aware of the fact that you have just realized exactly who he is. He's also completely dropped the persona of his brother he'd been carrying, there's something in the way his eyes can go from earnest and sweet just like his brothers to predatory so quickly.

This isn't the first time, maybe that's why you feel the sting that makes your vision blur with heat so quickly. Jake has made a sport of this, a twisted game of shadows where he slips into his brother's life just to see how long it takes for you to figure it out. But your anger isn't just directed at him this time around, it's the way he makes you feel so stupid you can't stand. You've known Jace for years, he's your best friend and yet you just laid your entire sexual history bare to a predator in a compression shirt because he mirrored an earnest tilt of the head and a quiet "Tell me more."

Jace lets out a breath that sounds more like a groan, "Jake," he says in a frustrated but practiced tone. "Get off my bed. Now."

Jake doesn't move immediately, still lingering in the dip of the mattress and watching the way your chest pants with outraged breaths. Only when Jace takes a step further into the room does Jake finally rise, moving with an infuriating lack of urgency and stretching in the mirror. You watch as his muscles pull taut against that borrowed shirt—Jace's shirt.

"Relax, professor. I'm leaving," Jake says, his voice losing the faux earnest quality he'd used to bait you just a moment ago. Now he's just Jake, arrogant and loud Jake. "Mom called. She wanted me to tell you that if you don't call her back by six to confirm for Sunday dinner, she's going to stop by your lab and embarrass you in front of your recluse friends."

"That could have been a text, Jake. A five second text. You didn't need to come here."

Jake tilts his head, a lazy, jagged grin cutting across his face. "I know," he smiles wider, the amusement dancing in his tone. "But where's the fun in a text? I prefer the personal touch."

He begins to move toward the door, his shoulder intentionally brushing yours as he attempts to pass. But then he stops and leans in, letting the heat radiate off his skin in a way that makes you want to scramble backward but you're pinned by the stupid audacity of his proximity.

His lips hover inches from the shell of your ear, dropping his voice into a low volume that Jace couldn't possibly catch over the sound of his own frustrated rustling.

"For what it's worth, baby doll," he breathes, "I could definitely get you off. And I promise you wouldn't have to show me where anything was. I'd find it just fine on my own."

You immediately recoil as if he's physically burned you, it’s like a violent shudder of disgust racks your frame. He doesn't even wait for your slap him or scream at him, he thinks the chuckle that lets out is enough and with that he walks out of the door, leaving the air behind him feeling way too overcharged.

You remain sat on the bed as your heart hammers unevenly against your ribs. Across the room, Jace is already moving, you notice his hands trembling slightly while he tries to set his textbooks down with a finality that suggests he's trying to ground himself.

It is a familiar but such an exhausting dance.

You and the Sim twins have been in each other’s lives since before you could even form any memories. Since you were born barely a week apart, you were raised as a collective—like a trio bound by the inseparable bond of your mothers. Your childhood photos are a blur of shared birthday cakes and matching grass stained knees in a suburban neighborhood that felt like it belonged to the three of you alone.

Jake is technically the older one by a mere four minutes, a fact he used to brag when you were younger but the order of birth was rendered irrelevant a long time ago by the overwhelming difference in their personalities. Jake has always been some kind of force of nature, you found him childish even back then, to you he vibrated with a restless energy that left everyone exhausted in his wake. By the time you were sixteen, the neighborhood had already collectively decided that Jace was the older one because he was the one who carried all the responsibility, the one who navigated the world with a quiet dignity while Jake was busy being a headache to his parents.

Now they have become the very definition of a cliché, they are two halves of a whole that refuse to touch. It's why Jace occupies this sterile sanctuary in the honors housing, where he’s surrounded by the scent of old ink and high expectations while Jake is deep in the trenches of his frat house across campus.

"I'm sorry," Jace says, his voice finally breaking the heavy silence. "I should have changed the code to the door. I told him last time he crashed here."

You swallow hard on the bile still sitting at the base of your throat. "Ugh, he’ll literally never change, he’s just the worst. He sat there and pretended to be you and listened to me talk about my date from last night!" You raise your voice but the genuine guilt on the familiar lines of Jace’s features makes the anger in your chest soften into a dull flickering. It's the same face you've turned to for comfort for two decades and yet for a fleeting moment on that bed, you still hadn't been able to tell the difference.

"What did he say to you?" Jace asks, his tone cautious as if he's afraid the answer will scare him. "At the end. Before he left."

You wave a hand dismissively like you’re trying to physically swat away the lingering vibration of Jake's voice in the room. "Nothing. Just him being the typical douchebag he's been since forever," you mutter, though the heat still throbbing in your neck tells a different story.

You've spent the better part of a decade perfecting the art of hating Jake Sim and by now it’s a necessary armor, a defense mechanism against the wild gravitational pull he exerts on everyone around him. But as you look at Jace, you're hit with the stinging irony of your own history.

Irony because before the hatred came, all you had for Jake was love. At six years old you were convinced you’d be marrying him and had scrawled Mrs. Jake Sim in the margins of your coloring books with a confidence that only a child can muster, fully believing that life would eventually find you in a white dress and a life spent chasing him.

That was, until the day he decided to bless you with your earliest and most vivid memory of him. You can still see him standing in the driveway of his family home, gap toothed with devilish grin on his face as he looked you dead in the eye and delivered a piece of information that shattered your world.

"You know you were supposed to have a twin too," he had said, his voice flat and terrifyingly casual for a six year old. "But you got so hungry, you ate her in your mommy's belly."

The trauma of that statement had sent you straight into an inconsolable grief that lasted for hours. You had cried until your chest ached, genuinely horrified by the monster Jake had told you that you were. And then, Jace appeared by your side with a half melted watermelon popsicle and a hand on your shoulder. He hadn't laughed at you or teased you, he did sit with you in the grass and told you it wasn't true, effectively choosing your side over his brothers before any of you could even realize what was happening. That was the day the pedestal for Jake crumbled and the one for Jace was built.

You look at Jace, seeing the way his eyebrows are still knit together in that worried arch. "I hate the fact that I still can't tell you two apart when he's playing his little games...it makes me want to scream."

Jace moves closer. "It's not your fault," he says softly while his eyes search yours. "He's spent twenty two years learning how to mimic me just to get under people's skin. Especially yours."

You quickly brush off his statement by bringing up something else. Jake does not get under your skin.

"You know, you really should swing by the apartment from time to time, Jace," you say, clearly trying to shift the focus. "Unless you want Jake and his frat bros to completely take it over. Your parents got it for both of you, after all."

Jace just shakes his head with a look of real burnout crossing his face. "I'd rather not," he admits, taking a seat at his desk. "I can't study with the smell of cheap beer and whatever bullshit he's invited over."

You notice he looks a little distressed, a little distracted even and you know it’s not just because of Jake. "Where were you anyway?" you ask, squinting at him. "You look like you got a B or something."

"I was just grabbing coffee," he says but then he pauses, only to whisper the other half of his sentence. "With Jungwon."

You practically squeal and the bad date along with Jake's creepy comments are momentarily forgotten as you lunge at him, grabbing his arm. "Oh my god! Tell me everything. I need all the details like right now!"

Jace sighs, looking down at his feet. "I don't know. I don't think he's even into guys."

You pull back to give him a look of total disbelief. "Are you kidding? Of course he is! He literally hooked up with Sunghoon—you know, Sunoo's ex? It was a whole thing last semester."

Jace laughs but it sounds a little forced. "That was just a rumor, Y/n. Nobody actually knows if that happened."

"If it was such a rumor, then why would Jungwon want to hang out with you so much...alone?" you counter with a stubborn cross of your arms. "Men don't just hang out that much without a reason."

Jace lets out a real laugh this time, shaking his head at your logic. "He's probably just trying to get closer to you," he says, his eyes fixed on yours for a second too long.

"What? That's ridiculous," you huff. "Who would go through all that effort just for me?"

Jace looks away with a certain smile on his lips as he mumbles under his breath, "You have noooo idea."

"It's not just Jungwon," he continues, his voice sounding small and a little tired. "You don't realize how many guys have pretended to be my friend just this year, hanging out in the lab, offering to help with my notes, only to eventually pivot the conversation to you. They all want to know what you like, if you're single or if I can put in a good word."

You stare at him, feeling a familiar ache in your chest again. While you're busy dealing with mid tier dates and Jake's constant nuisance, Jace is dealing with a different kind of problem.

Your mind drifts back to the summer after freshman year when you were home from college, sitting on the edge of your pool with your feet in the water in the humid night air. You'd always had a hunch, like a quiet feeling that Jace's lack of interest in the girls in your small town wasn't just about all his focus being on his studies. So when he finally told you he was gay, it felt like a missing piece of the puzzle finally clicked into place and you were just glad it only took one semester away from your hometown for him to feel safe enough to realize who he truly was.

But that safety is still such a fragile thing because no one else knows, not their parents and definitely not Jake. Jace is terrified of what their reaction would be, he’s worried that his family's approval, which is something he's worked so hard for with his honors status and exemplary accomplishments would vanish in an instant.

And that’s exactly why every time Jake makes a crude joke about you and Jace being a secret couple or asks if you're finally giving Jace some sugar, you just take it. You let it happen, either rolling your eyes or firing back a witty comment, just letting Jake believe whatever he wants because you’d much rather the world think you're sleeping with your best friend than risk unintentionally outing him before he's ready.

"I have some idea," you say softly, patting the space on his bed next to you so he comes over and sits with you. "But maybe Jungwon is different? Maybe he's the one who actually wants to know about you."

Jace offers a weak but hopeful smile, unfortunately it fades quickly when he speaks again. "Even if he did...what then? I'm not even out out yet, I’m literally pretending to be someone I'm not. It's a lot to ask of someone."

The contrast between them is enough to give you whiplash. It's always been this way and you hate how Jake gets to be the reckless one, living his life at full volume without a single care for the consequences. You can still remember the awkward silence of their hallway back in high school with the sound of girls leaving Jake's room in tears, his trail of broken hearts just another part of his bad boy charm. He's always been free to be exactly who he is, no matter how messy it gets.

And then there's Jace, who is ten times the man his brother is and he stays huddled in his shell, scared to death that being himself will cost him everything. It makes your chest tight with sadness. He's spent his whole life being the reliable twin just to keep the peace while Jake burns the house down and gets a pass for it.

But you don't let yourself linger on the pity for too long, you know Jace hates it when you get that look in your eyes so you shake your head and force a bright grin onto your face.

"Listen, the lit majors are throwing a party tonight," you say, turning to face him with a spark of excitement. "And I'm telling you, it's not like those sweaty, overcrowded frat parties on greek row where your brother hangs out. It's actually always chill from what I’ve heard. You should invite Jungwon. I'll be there the whole time, so you won't be alone."

Jace's eyes go wide and he immediately starts backing up toward his headboard. "No. No way. I can't just...ask him to a party. That's too much."

"Oh, shut up!" you yell, launching yourself off the bed and tackling him onto the mattress. He lets out a startled oof as you scramble to grab his phone from the desk. "Life is all about risks, Jace! You're going to be an old man wondering what if because you were too scared to send a blue bubble?"

"Y/n, give it back!" he pleads, laughing even as he tries to reach his phone first but you're faster, pinning his arm down with your knee and waving the phone triumphantly. "You'll never know if you don't try! Do you want to spend tonight staring at a textbook or staring at him?"

He groans, his face turning a deep shade of red but he finally stops fighting. "Fine! Fine, just give it here. I'll do it."

You hand the phone back with a satisfied smirk and watch over his shoulder as his thumbs hover nervously over the screen. After a long, shaky exhale, he taps the send button. "There," he says, sounding too breathless for someone who just sent a text. "It's sent. If he says no…just pray he doesn’t say no, Y/n."

The next minute is straight up torture. You and Jace kneel on the floor at the foot of the bed shoulder to shoulder, both of your gazes locked onto the dark screen of his phone praying to god Jungwon just replies now. When it finally vibrates, the notification banner pops up—

Jungwon: Sounds like fun, meet there?

You let out a deafening squeal, hauling yourself up on the bed to jump up and down it with enough force to make the springs groan. "Yes! Oh my god, Jace! He said yes!"

Jace stares at the screen having his mouth hanging open in sincere astonishment. "Wait, no way," he whispers, locking and opening his phone again as if he expects the text to disappear. "No way he actually wants to go."

"What do you mean no way?" you say, dropping back down and shaking his shoulder. "Jace, look at yourself. You're literally so hot! You're going to go to that party and give him that good dick." The words are out of your mouth before you can filter them and for a split second, you freeze. You stop jumping and look at him with a dead serious expression. "Wait...are you a top or a bottom?"

Jace's face turns to a beautiful red and he buries his face in his hands, letting out a muffled, embarrassed groan. "I don't know! God, Y/n, let me actually kiss a guy first before I have to figure all that out!"

He starts to laugh, the tension finally breaking as he sits on the bed and leans back on his elbows. He looks at you with a cheeky twinkle in his eyes that is usually reserved for his brother. "You know, if you think I'm so hot, that means you also think Jake is hot."

The way your smile instantly vanishes is almost comical, you scowl at him. "No. Absolutely not. That is completely different."

"How?" Jace asks, grinning now because he knows he's got you. "We're identical, remember? Same face, same hair, same everything."

"That doesn't matter," you snap, crossing your arms over your chest. "Being hot also involves having a personality and yours doesn't make me want to walk into oncoming traffic. Jake's does."

Jace laughs so hard, he's clutching his stomach and falling back onto the bed. "Hmmm, you didn't think that when you were six though," he teases, his eyes dancing with mischief. "I remember you specifically calling yourself Mrs. Jake Sim over and over, just so nobody would accidentally think you were talking about me."

"Shut up!" you yell and grab a small paperback from his nightstand to chuck at his head. He ducks just in time and the book thudding harmlessly against the wall. "I told you that in confidence, you jerk!"

Your fake anger fades quickly because you feel determined to help your best friend. "Okay, enough of that. We need a game plan," you say standing up and heading straight for his closet. "By the end of tonight, I want you tongue deep in Jungwon's mouth."

Jace winces at your words and a bashful look crossing his face. "Could you maybe...not put it like that? Please?"

Ignoring his plea, you start flicking through his hangers, tossing aside his more boring, oversized sweaters. "If we're doing this, we're doing it right. You need to look like the honors student of his dreams but you know? Approachable."

As you sift through a row of button downs, you look over your shoulder at him. "So, what is it anyway? What do you actually like about Jungwon?"

Jace quietens down and you can almost sense his expression softening into something genuine and vulnerable without even looking at him again. You can bet he's staring at his hands. "He's just...he's really observant," he says softly. "Most people just see the smart twin or the quiet one but when Jungwon talks to me, it's so different. You know he didn't even know I was a twin? He makes me feel like I'm actually being seen for who I am, not just what I am."

You stop moving just to coo at him. "Awwww Jacieee, that is literally the sweetest thing I've ever heard. Okay, now I'm even more committed. We are finding you the perfect outfit."

‎ ₊ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 𓈒⊹

The rooftop of the english building is alive with low indie music and the soft glow of string lights but Jace is currently vibrating at a frequency that might actually shatter glass. He is shaking so hard you can feel the tremors coming off him in waves.

"I can't do this," he hisses, his face is slick with a layer of nervous sweat that the cool night air isn't helping. He reaches for the buttons of the jacket you spent twenty minutes picking out, his fingers fumbling. "It's too hot. I'm leaving. I'm going to go home and solve some differential equations."

"Jace, stay still," you whisper, swatting his hands away from his clothes. "You look incredible. Stop trying to undress! Someone will see!"

"Why are you so nervous anyway? You've hung out with him plenty times." You're genuinely trying to understand your best friend.

"Yes! But this is the first time I did the asking!" He whisper yells. "My socks," he groans, leaning in close so only you can hear his crisis. "Y/n, they're soaked. My feet are literally swimming in sweat. It's disgusting. I'm going to slip in my own shoes and fall on him."

You open your mouth to say ew and tell him that is way more information than you needed but the heavy metal door to the rooftop creaks open.

"Oh, you're here?"

Jungwon walks in, looking effortlessly cool in a loose cardigan. He blinks and a small smile forms when he sees the two of you. "Hey, Y/n. It's nice to see you again."

"Hi, Jungwon!" you say in a tone that's a little too bright. You give Jace a sharp shove with your elbow, nearly knocking the wind out of him so he's forced to acknowledge the guy.

"H-hi," he manages but his voice a little higher than usual it makes you want to cringe and coo at the same time—poor Jace.

Jungwon gestures toward the music and the crowd of lit majors. "You guys want to move over there? It's actually not too crowded near the edge."

"Oh! You know what?" You take a dramatic step backward, checking your phone as if you just got a life altering text. "I think I see...my friend? Over there? Yeah, I definitely have to go talk to her. It's a whole thing."

Before Jace can grab your arm and drag you back into his panic, you've already started backing away and as soon as Jungwon turns his back to lead Jace toward the far corner, you catch Jace's wide and comically terrified eyes. You mouth the words calm down with exaggerated lip movements, then proceed to wrap your arms around yourself to make a ridiculous show of making out with the air to remind him what the end goal is even sticking your tongue out at flicking it for good measure.

Jace looks like he wants to die on the spot but he takes a shaky breath and follows Jungwon further into the party.

The second they walk away leaving you standing alone at the door, the adrenaline fades and the reality of your situation finally sets in. You look around the rooftop and realize that while the vibes are great, you don't actually know a single person here. You're the engineering and fanfiction girl in a sea of people debating the symbolism of some nineteenth century poetry.

So to avoid looking like a total loser, you pull out your phone and start scrolling through old texts, pretending to be deeply engaged in a conversation with absolutely no one. You're just about to consider making a break for the exit when a familiar voice cuts through the indie folk music.

"Y/n? Is that you?"

You look up and you're instantly relieved to see a familiar face—Sloane, a girl you spent three grueling weeks with last year trying to finish a group project for an elective class.

"Sloane! Hey!" You tuck your phone away, happy to have a human shield. You exchange the usual pleasantries, asking about her classes and how her pet hamster is doing. But then she randomly tilts her head and looking around. "Who did you come with? I didn't think this was really your scene," she asks with a friendly grin.

"I came with Jace," you say, nodding toward the corner where you can just barely see the back of Jace's head near Jungwon.

Sloane's eyes go wide and she beams making her whole face light up. "Really? Oh my god! Jungwon is going to be so excited!"

You feel your heart skip a beat but you lean in anyway cause your internal gossip radar pinging at max volume. "Really? Why?"

"Are you kidding?" Sloane whispers, leaning closer like she's sharing a secret. "Jungwon has had this cute little crush on Jace forever. He's been trying to figure out how to tell him for months but he was worried Jace was way too into his books to notice him."

You let out a loud gasp and grab Sloane by her arm maybe too hard. "Really?! Jace likes Jungwon too! They're literally over there together right now. That's why I'm standing here all by myself—I am the ultimate wingwoman!"

"No way!" Sloane squeals, mirroring your excitement.

In an instant, the two of you have completely abandoned any sense of cool lit major chill and now you're just two girls huddled in the corner of the roof, squealing and gushing over how perfect they are for each other, occasionally peeking over your shoulders to see if any progress is being made.

"Do you know Jace was literally vibrating. I had to tackle him and steal his phone just to get him to send the text. He was convinced Jungwon wouldn't be into him," you laugh, shaking your head as you rest against the rooftop railing.

Sloane cackles and nearly spilling her drink. "Are you serious? I was sitting with Jungwon for at least twenty minutes trying to convince him that his text wasn't too thirsty. He was so worried he sounded like he was trying too hard!"

The coincidence is almost too much to handle and when you both turn your heads at the same time to peek over towards the edge of the roof, you see Jace and Jungwon tucked away in a pair of mismatched lawn chairs in the corner, far away from the thickest part of the crowd.

Jace must have finally stopped sweating through his socks because you catch a glimpse of him saying something with that softly sincere look he gets when he's actually comfortable. Whatever he says absolutely works because Jungwon throws his head back and laughs, the string lights catch the bright spark in his eyes and Jace doesn't look away, it's like he can't, so he just watches him with a hopeful expression that makes your heart swell so much you think it could burst any moment.

"They are going to be the cutest couple on this entire campus," Sloane gushes as she clutches her chest. Then, her expression shifts slightly and she lets out a little sigh mixed with a laugh. "It's so crazy how different Jace is from his twin. I saw Jake at a party last week and...yeah. Night and day."

You immediately roll your eyes so hard it almost hurts. "Tell me about it," you groan as the image of Jake smirking on Jace's bed flashing through your mind. "Living with that guy's ego is like living next to a literal sun. He's exhausting but he's always been a total hazard."

"I heard he got banned from the library for a semester because he yelled out some obscenity his frat bros dared him to," Sloane whispers.

"That sounds like him," you mutter, glancing back at Jace who is still looking at Jungwon like he's the only person on the roof. "I honestly don't know how they share dna. Jace has the soul of a poet and Jake...Jake has the soul of a frat boy who thinks body spray is a substitute for a shower."

You start praying the topic randomly changes but instead your heat drops straight to your ass at Sloane's next words, "Oh, speak of the devil."

You turn your back to see what she's referring to and there he is, at the makeshift bar. Jake is leaning against a table and deep in conversation with some girl who looks like she's already falling for his usual routine. A wave of nausea hits you because the last thing tonight needs is Jake spotting Jace and Jungwon together, you know he's either going make a scene or find a way to ruin the moment with one of his personal jokes and Jace would probably never recover from the embarrassment.

You feel the panic rising in your chest but when you whip your head back toward the lawn chairs, the corner is empty. Before you can freak out, your phone vibrates in your hand. It's a text from—

Jace: We're heading back to my dorm. I think it's going well? See you later!

You shove the screen in front of Sloane's face and the moment she reads his text, the two of you let out another synchronized squeal. It's the ultimate victory because they left before Jake could see them.

Unfortunately, that squeal acts as a homing beacon for the one person you wanted to avoid. You can practically feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up as his familiar presence closes in and the air suddenly smells like that expensive cologne he uses to hide the fact that he probably hasn't done laundry in weeks. He completely misses the sight of Jace and Jungwon slipping through the rooftop door because his focus entirely on you.

"Well, well," Jake says in a tone that makes your skin crawl, he immediately steps into your space and ignores the way you stiffen. He lets his eyes travel down your outfit with that same look from earlier when you were giving him all the details of your sex life. "That's a very pretty dress, baby doll. What aisle of the candy store did you come from? Cause you look incredibly sweet tonight."

You scowl and let your face twist in disgust at his stupid words. "That is the worst line I have ever heard, Jake. Seriously, stop."

He doesn't even flinch at your rejection because by now your harsh words have no effect on him.

"And hello to you too, Sandra," he says smoothly.

Sloane's smile drops instantly. "It's Sloane, Jake. We had a class together for an entire semester."

Jake just shrugs, completely unbothered by the fact that he doesn't know her name and indirectly embarrassed her. "Sloane, Sandra...both beautiful, just like you. What's the difference?" He counters before turning back to you. "So, where's my boring other half? I figured if you were here, he'd be trailing behind you like a lost puppy."

"He's not here, Jake. And for the record, you are the boring one," you snap and hitch your bag higher on your shoulder. "I'm actually leaving. Why are you even here? Lit majors don't care for people like you."

Even with that, he still manages to smirk and jerk his thumb back at the girl he was talking to by the bar, a girl who is currently watching him with an expectant, slightly dazed look. "Oh, you know me," he says crudely in a way that makes you envision slapping him already. "Figured I'd try out some lit major pussy for the first time. See if they really are as deep as they pretend to be."

He even puts on this fake, wide eyed look and clutches his chest, acting like he's nervous for a big exam or something. "Think I'll pass, baby doll?"

This time, you don't even give him the satisfaction of a verbal comeback but you do give him the most disgusted look you can muster and turn on your heel, heading straight for the rooftop exit. You can hear Sloane saying a quick goodbye behind you but your main goal is putting as much distance between yourself and Jake as possible.

Except, he doesn't stay put or go back to the girl waiting for him at the bar.

"Hold on for a sec."

"Go away, Jake!" you yell over your shoulder as you hit the stairwell.

"Wait up, I'm serious," he says and his footsteps come heavier and faster behind you but you keep moving, clattering down the stairs in your platform slippers, he's incredibly persistent though. And by the time you reach the second floor landing, his tone has shifted. The teasing layer is gone and he's suddenly being weirdly flat and intense. "Y/n, stop. I actually have something important I need to ask you. Just...hold on."

You're able to make it all the way to the ground floor, your hand already on the heavy metal handle of the building's exit. You're ready to burst out into the night air and bolt but Jake is right there, reaching his hand over your head to hold the door shut.

"I'm not joking, listen to—"

You've turned to him to scream for him to leave you alone but you notice his whole body tense up and he stops mid sentence. He's looking through the glass pane of the windows by the door at the shadows of the bike racks just outside.

"What the fuck?" Jake breathes in a deep exhale.

Your heart stops when you look to see what he's looking at because there, under the yellow hum of a streetlamp, Jace has Jungwon pressed back against one of the metal racks, his hands cupping the other boy's face with a desperate type of hunger. They're kissing, scratch that, they're making out and Jace looks more alive than you've ever seen him.

The silence in the stairwell is so consuming as Jake stares at his identical twin with a look of utter shock.

The second the shock wears off and his face hardens into something unreadable, Jake doesn't hesitate, immediately lunging for the door. You scramble after him with your heart lodged in your throat and grab his arm with both hands, trying to anchor him to the spot.

"Jake, stop! Please, just leave them alone!" you plead, your voice cracking as the first sting of tears hits your eyes. "Don't ruin this for him. Just walk away, please."

He doesn't even look at you, jerking his shoulder so rough it shoves you off, you stumble back against the cold brick wall of the stairwell, watching helplessly as he hurls the door open and storms into the night. You're already crying from a mix of terror for Jace and a burning hatred for the man currently charging toward the bike racks.

"Jake, no!" you gasp, rushing out behind him as fast as your slippers will let you but you're too late.

"What the fuck, Jace?!" Jake's voice booms through the quiet courtyard, making Jace and Jungwon spring apart, their breathing heavy and their faces flushed, only for Jace's to go deathly pale the moment he sees his brother standing there. He looks like he just got punched in the stomach, his hands immediately start trembling near Jungwon's shoulders as he stares at his brother.

"Jake..." Jace's voice is barely audible.

"Are you serious right now?" Jake steps closer, his posture aggressive and looming. "You're gay? You've been playing this whole honors student part while you're out here kissing dudes? Lying to our parents?" Jake goes on and on.

"So all those girls you liked but never dated in high school were just cover ups, right?"

"Why didn't you say anything?"

You finally reach them and throw yourself between the twins, pressing your hands against Jake's chest to shove him back. "Jake, shut up! Stop it right now!" you sob, willing your vision to stop blurring with tears. "This isn't the time or place. Leave him alone!"

But Jake doesn't budge, he's just a wall of muscle and misplaced anger now, looking over your head to stare directly into his brother's terrified eyes. Jace is frozen, too shocked to even defend himself because his worst nightmare unfolding in the middle of a campus sidewalk while Jungwon stands there, looking back and forth between the identical faces in total confusion.

You really have no idea how Jace will react, what he will say so you're shocked when he laughs but it sounds so bitter. He looks at the brother who shares his exact face but none of his heart and his eyes turn to ice.

"Wow," Jace spits. "You find out your brother is gay and your first instinct isn't to wonder why I was too scared to tell you. It's to accuse me of living a lie because it bruises your pathetic ego."

"You truly are a vile excuse for a human being, Jake. I've spent twenty two years sharing your face and every day I wake up wishing I could tear it off just so I don't have to look like someone so completely devoid of anything decent. You're not my fucking brother. You're just a mistake that happened four minutes before me."

Before Jake can even blink or think of anything to say, Jace grabs Jungwon's hand and pulls him into a run, disappearing into the shadows of the campus buildings.

"Jace! Wait!" You scream in a sob, trying to go after them but your foot catches on the edge of the bike rack and go down hard, scraping the skin right off your knees against the pavement.

The pain is sharp and hot and as you wince, Jake reaches down with shaking hands trying to grab your shoulders. "Shit! Y/n, let me—"

"Don't you fucking touch me!" you shriek, shoving his hands away with enough force to make him stumble. You scramble to your feet, simultaneously ignoring the blood beginning to trickle down your legs.

Blinded by rage and heartbreak for your best friend, you launch yourself at his brother, slamming your palms into his chest. You hit him, slap at his arms in wild movements fueled by a lifetime of suppressed anger. "You want to know why your brother never told you?!" you yell, the sound echoing off the brick walls. "It's because you're a selfish, black hearted asshole!" One of your slaps lands directly on his cheek.

"You're so fucking obsessed with yourself that you couldn't let him have one goddamn second of happiness without making it about your own confusion. You are the reason he's been living in a cage, Jake! He's terrified of you because everything you touch turns to rot and he didn't want you rotting this, too!"

You shove him one last time, your voice dropping to a hiss. "You're like this shadow he's been trying to outrun since we were kids. I hate you. I think I've always hated you."

Jake's face contorts when the words hit his ears, his jaw tightens as he stares at you with a look that's both furious and heartbroken at the same time. "You don't mean that," he growls but his voice cracks. "You're just upset because you're bleeding and tired. You don't actually hate me."

You let out a harsh laugh right in his face, "Oh, I fucking mean it, Jake! I mean every single word. Do you really think anyone loves the real you? People like the idea of you. They like the guy who buys the drinks and throws the parties, the guy who has no problem spending his daddy’s money on them but the second the lights go up and they see the shallow hollow mess underneath, they all run."

You step closer, ignoring the stinging in your knees to look him dead in the eye. "It is honestly fucking ridiculous how much you pride yourself on being the better twin. Look at Jace. He's so kind, so brilliant and so capable of caring about someone other than himself. And you’re just a cheap copy of a much better man."

"Stop it, Y/n," he mutters but you can see his hands shaking at his sides.

"Why should I? It's the truth!" you laugh again. "Isn't it just so crazy? You walk around acting like you're the prize but the only thing actually good about you is the fact that you share half your dna with Jace. Without him to balance you out, you're just a hedonistic frat guy with a pretty face that nobody is going to want to look at in five years. You're nothing, Jake. You're less than nothing."

You turn your back on him and every step is a sharp reminder of the gravel now embedded in your skin. You limp away, the salt from your tears stinging the small cuts in your palm as you wipe your tears. Crying because the secret your best friend spent years protecting was ripped open in the most violent way possible.

Somehow you’re not surprised when Jake gets in his car and starts creeping along the curb beside you.

He rolls the passenger window down. "Y/n, please just get in the car," he calls out to you in a frustrated but also strangely concerned tone. "Your knees are literally dripping blood. Just get in. I'll just drop you off, I swear I won’t say a thing."

"I'd rather get abducted and sold into human trafficking than sit in a confined space with you," you say without even looking at him.

He huffs and actually pulls over to hop out of the car. He tries to reach for your elbow lightly, like he’s afraid you’ll slap him again.

"Come on, you're shaking. You can barely stand. Let me just help you walk? Or at least let me hold you up until we get to the dorms."

You recoil as if his skin is made of fire, nearly losing your balance. "Please don’t touch me, Jake. I’m so tired of you."

He looks at you with wide eyes wide, trying to coax you with that soft, manipulative tone he always uses to get his way. "Baby doll, look at me. I fucked up, okay? I'm an asshole, I’m everything you said and you’re so right about me. But don't hurt yourself more just to spite me. Please."

You ignore him, focusing only on the rhythm of your limp and when he finally gets the hint, he gets back into his car and just drives slowly behind you. The whole twenty minute walk to the honors housing—he’s right behind you, lighting the road with his headlights until the brick facade of the honors housing building comes into view and you limp all the way into it. That’s when he finally floors it, the screech of his tires echoes through the empty street as he speeds off into the night.

The walk up the stairs is a special kind of hell, every step upward pulls at the scabs already forming on your knees and by the time you reach Jace's door, you're lightheaded from the pain but you still knock and wait.

When the door swings open, the sight breaks what's left of your heart. Jace looks absolutely destroyed, his eyes are swollen and bloodshot, his face is an angry red from crying. Behind him, Jungwon is sitting at the desk with his head in his hands, looking so small and upset that he looks like he's on the verge of a breakdown himself.

"Oh, Jace," you whisper, your voice breaking. "I'm so, so sorry."

You reach forward and wrap your arms around his middle and pulling him close. He immediately collapses into you, burying his heavy weight into you as he lets out a sob into your shoulder and all you can do is just hold him, whispering apologies over and over into his hair as he finally lets the terror of the night out.

The sound of Jungwon clearing his throat reaches you through the wet sounds of Jace's sobbing. Jace pulls back just enough to look toward the desk, his hands still clutching the sleeves of your cardigan as if he might fall over if he lets go. Jungwon stands up cautiously, with so much quiet sadness in his eyes for the boy who just had his entire world dismantled on a sidewalk.

"I'm going to head out," Jungwon says, his voice steady despite the visible tremor in his hands. He walks over, stepping into the small circle of light near the door and reaches out to gently take one of Jace's hands. "Listen, Jace. I really like you, like…a lot. That hasn't changed because of...anything that happened tonight."

Jace lets out a shaky breath, searching Jungwon's face for any sign of pity or regret but all he finds is only warmth.

"I understand if this is going to slow things down for us," Jungwon continues, stroking the back of Jace's knuckles with his thumb. "I know this is a lot. It's huge. And I'm ready to wait until you have it all figured out with your family and your brother. You don't have to rush into anything for me."

Your heart literally aches in your chest at his words. It feels so unfair that after finally finding someone who sees him for who he truly is, Jace has to put his happiness on hold because of Jake's selfishness. They shouldn't have to wait, they should be allowed to just be two college students enjoying a night out, not navigating a family crisis.

Jungwon leans in then, cupping Jace's tear stained face and pressing a soft kiss to his forehead before moving down to his lips. It's a quiet kiss but it’s so full of a promise that isn't going anywhere.

"Please don't cry anymore," Jungwon whispers against his skin. "I'll text you tomorrow, okay? Just breathe."

With one last supportive squeeze of Jace's hand, he gives you a quick hug and slips out the door. The click of the lock seems to echo in the sudden silence of the room and Jace stands there for a moment, staring at the wood of the door, looking smaller and more fragile than you've ever seen him in all the years you've been friends.

The adrenaline that kept you walking through the pain finally vanishes and leaves both of you standing in the middle of the room, with broken hearts and bleeding knees, wondering how everything went so wrong so fast. You sit on the bed and when he follows suit, you immediately reach for his hand.

"I hate him so much," he whispers and you almost catch the words so over the hum of the air conditioner.

He twists his hands together over and over. "I hate that I share his face. I hate that I have to look in the mirror every morning and see the person who just destroyed the only thing that made me feel like I wasn't just a collection of grades and expectations."

When he abruptly turns to face you, his knee bumps yours and you gasp in pain, making him look down. "Oh fuck. Y/n, your knees," he breathes, his own grief momentarily eclipsed by horror. "Did he—Did Jake do that to you?"

"No," you say, your voice cracking as you look down at all the dried blood. "I fell trying to catch up to you. He tried to help, but I wouldn't let him."

Jace pulls himself together enough to stand up and grab his first aid kit from under the bed. He's always prepared like that—the exact opposite of Jake, who probably doesn't even own a band aid. He kneels on the floor, his hands still a little shaky as he begins to gently dab at the gravel and dried blood on your knees with an antiseptic wipe.

"He's going to tell them, isn't he? He's going to tell our parents. He can't keep a secret to save his life, especially not one that makes him feel like he has leverage."

You reach down and run your fingers through his hair, trying to provide him with some kind of anchor in the middle of his storm. "If he does, we'll handle it. But Jace, look at what Jungwon said. He's staying. You're not alone in this anymore."

"I really just wanted one thing for myself," Jace sighs, continuing to clean your wounds. "Just one part of my life that wasn't shadowed by him or lived for someone else's approval. And he took it. He took it and he made it ugly."

He takes a cotton ball soaks with some rubbing alcohol. "This is gonna hurt," he murmurs but you can tell he's the one trying to focus.

"Forget that," you say even though you nearly scream when the ball hits your raw skin. "Talk to me about the rooftop. Before the disaster happened...how was it? Tell me everything about you and Jungwon."

Jace pauses with a mew cotton ball in his hand and for a second the devastation in his expression lifts. A shy smile breaks through his tear stained face and he ducks his head, looking down at your knees to hide his expression.

"I really, really like him, Y/n," he admits with a voice that has lost that jagged edge of despair. "He's so easy to talk to. We sat there for an hour just talking about movies and his architecture stuff and it felt like...I don't know, like I didn't even have to filter myself."

"I knew it!" you chirp, trying to keep the mood light. You lean back on your elbows, completely forgetting the throbbing in your legs. "So, come on, give me the details. Who initiated the kiss? Was it you, Mr. risk taker?"

Jace's entire face turns a beautiful shade of pink, the blush spreads all the way to the tips of his ears. "No," he mumbles, carefully placing a large bandage over your right knee. "It was Jungwon but…it wasn't even like it came out of nowhere. I—uh I kind of walked right into it."

"Explain. Now."

He lets out this sheepish laugh as he pulls out another bandage. "He asked me why I was shaking so much, if I was just cold or something. And I meant to say I was just a little overwhelmed, but my brain kinda did this weird thing. I looked at him and said yeah, well, hot guys make me nervous."

You let out a scream, even though Jace groans in embarrassment. "You didn't!"

"I did," he says, hiding his face in his hands for a second. "I realized what I said immediately and wanted to sink into the ground but he just laughed and told me I was plenty hot too, then he just...kissed me. I swear it was the best four minutes of my life, Y/n. Until I heard Jake's voice."

He sighs but the blush is still there like a small flicker of warmth in the middle of a cold night. "At least I know it's real. Jake might’ve ruined the moment but it doesn’t take away the fact that Jungwon called me hot."

Jace's hands go still as he finishes taping the final bandage. The brief smile vanishes as he stares at the floor. "I should probably tell my parents before Jake can get to them. I need to be the one to say it." Jace says quietly.

"You're right," you agree, nodding firmly despite the exhaustion deep in your bones. "He could do it tomorrow when he drives back for that dinner. You just have to get there first. Go before Jake even has a chance to pull into the driveway."

Jace looks up at you with pleading vulnerable eyes. "Will you come with me? Please? I don't think I can stand in that house and face them—or him—alone."

You feel a physical wave of revulsion hit you at the mere thought of being near Jake again. "Jace, I love you," you say. "You know I'd do almost anything for you. But I don't think I can see Jake right now. To be honest, after all the things I said to him tonight? I think I’ll just make things worse. If I see his face, I'm going to start screaming again and that's the last thing you need during a family talk."

Jace sighs and his shoulders slump but he nods in understanding. He knows you're right, the air between you and his twin is currently pure poison.

"I get it," he agrees, rubbing his tired eyes. "I just...I don't know how I'm going to look at him without thinking about how he tried to ruin the best thing that's happened to me in years."

"You won't look at him," you say, reaching out to squeeze his hand. "You'll look at your parents, you'll tell your truth and then you'll remember that Jungwon is waiting for you back here. Jake is just noise, Jace. Loud, very selfish noise."

Jace rests his heavy head on your thighs, finally letting his muscles relax as you slowly run your fingers through his hair. He lets out a long, shaky sigh that seems to vibrate against your legs, the quiet of the dorm room is finally settling in around you when he suddenly blurts something out.

"It was so hot, Y/n."

You pause your hand in his hair cause you’re startled by the jarring shift in his tone. He's staring at the wall now, even though his head is still in your lap, you can see his face warming in a way that puts his earlier blush to shame.

"I was literally trying so hard not to moan when he grabbed the back of my neck," he confesses, in both awe and embarrassment. "And then... I totally popped a boner. I'm so sure he felt it, too."

A laugh slips out of you but Jace isn't finished, groaning and burying his face deeper into your lap. "The whole time, that comment you made about who was going to be the top or the bottom just kept looping in my head," he mumbles, his voice muffled. "I was standing there thinking—Oh gosh, if things actually get that far tonight, what am I even doing? Am I topping? Am I bottoming?—I didn't even have a plan for that part of the game plan."

"Jace!" you gasp, all delighted that he's finally sharing the scandalous details. "Not the full on identity crisis in the middle of a make out session." You laugh harder.

"I couldn't help it!" he defends himself, peeking up at you with a pout. "I was too focused on not passing out from how good he tasted that when my brain started asking about logistics, my body panicked."

Despite the tragedy of the night, seeing your best friend this flustered over the actual mechanics of his crush makes him feel a little more like the Jace you know—always overthinking everything, including the best kiss of his life.

"Since you were so focused on not passing out...what did he actually taste like?" You ask, giving his hair a playful little tug to pull him out of his spiral,

Jace goes quiet for a second, his eyes drifting toward the ceiling as he actually takes a moment to process the memory. A foggy look washes over his face and he lets out an almost mortified little laugh before looking back at you.

"Like peaches and cream," he whispers so innocently.

The silence in the room hangs for exactly half a second before you both burst into a fit of laughter, your shoulders shaking so hard it jars your injured knees. "Peaches and cream?!" you shriek, clutching your stomach. "Jace, oh my god. That is the corniest, fanfiction level thing I have ever heard in my life!"

"I'm serious!" he protests, making his face turn an even darker shade of red as he tries to hide his smile. "He had this lip balm on or maybe it was his drink, I don't know! It was sweet and soft and that's just what came to mind."

"You are such a hopeless romantic," you tease, wiping a stray tear of laughter from your eye. "Peaches and cream. Next, you're going to tell me his eyes were shimmering like the morning dew or something."

"Shut up," he makes like he’s going to hit your knee before shoving his face back into your lap to hide his grin. "I can't help it if the guy tastes like a dessert."

"A dessert you wanna devour," you tease making him shake his head from side to side like he’s trying to shake out the image you’ve put in his head.

As you sit there stroking Jace's hair, his comments fade into the background of your mind and a bitter taste of old memories take their place. This isn't the first time Jake has taken a moment of joy and turned it into something horrible. He's been a horrible person since you've known him, always needing to be the loudest and cruelest person in the room.

Your mind drifts back to junior prom. Jace had asked you to be his date, promising and swearing on heaven and earth that it wasn’t out of pity but because you were best friends and he genuinely wanted to spend the night with you. At the time, your skin was a constant map of acne and your mouth was a mess of metal braces. You felt like a project, instead of a princess but your mom had found a soft, shimmering baby pink dress that made you feel almost pretty and Jace had carefully pinned a corsage to your wrist that matched the fabric perfectly.

The three of you were standing in the foyer of the Sim house, their mom was fussing with a camera and beaming about how handsome her boys looked and how lovely you were. Jace was smiling at you, making you feel like an actual princess, like you actually belonged in a ballroom.

Then Jake opened his mouth, you remember how he leaned against the banister and looked you up and down with a sneer that almost made you start shaking. "Wow, mom," he'd dragged out, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I didn't know the local zoo was doing a shave the sheep fundraiser tonight. Is that why she's wearing so much glitter? To distract us from the fact that her dress is holding on for dear life? Honestly, Jace, I know you're the charitable twin but taking the before picture to prom is a new low even for you."

You remember how the room had gone deathly silent, Mrs Sim had gasped and Jace had immediately started shouting at his brother but the damage was done. Every time you looked in the mirror after the dance, all you saw was the before picture. Your confidence had plummeted drastically after that, if Jake thought he’d just ruined your night, he was wrong cause he’d managed to ruin your body image perception for years. All because he couldn't stand to see someone else—especially his boring brother—being happy.

Looking down at Jace now, you realize he's been fighting the same monster his whole life. Jake doesn't just ruin nights—he ruins the people themselves.

The memory of that night still leaves a sour feeling in the pit of your stomach, even years later. Mrs Sim hadn't let it slide though, the second those words left Jake's mouth, her face had turned a shade of red that rivaled your own blush and she had immediately grounded him for the next month, stripping away his car keys right there in the foyer. But the discipline didn't matter to you then because the sting of his words had already sunk in too deep.

Jace had been so patient with you that night, his hands hovering near your shoulders as you stood by the front door with tears threatening to spill over. "Please, Y/n, don't cry," he had begged, his voice soft and desperate. He wasn't being dismissive, he was trying to save the one thing he knew you'd spent hours on. "If you start now, it'll ruin your makeup and you looked so happy when you finished it. Don't let him take that away from you. You look so beautiful, I swear it."

He had spent the next twenty minutes distracting you with stupid jokes until your breathing finally evened out, showing the same kind of protective loyalty he still shows today. It's a pattern you recognize now—Jace spending his life trying to patch up the holes Jake rips into people. You continue to rub your hand through his hair, realizing that while your appearance has changed a lot since that prom, the dynamic between the three of you hasn't shifted an inch. Jake is still the wrecking ball and Jace is still the one left standing in the debris with you.

The rest of the weekend felt like a heart wrenching countdown, you hadn't even bothered going back to your own room that Friday night, crashing on Jace's bed right next to him seemed like the appropriate thing to do, the two of you talked in exhausted murmurs until the early hours of the morning.

When his alarm went off at exactly six in the morning, the room was still gray and Jace was a ghost of himself, pale and agonizingly silent as he threw a few things into his duffel bag. He had to beat Jake and be the one to set the narrative before his brother could twist it into something ugly. You watched from the window as his car pulled out of the lot and his taillights disappeared into the morning mist, then you spent the next three hours pacing your own dorm room, completely unable to sit still.

Then when your phone buzzed with a video call request from Jace, you swiped with a shaky hand to see him sitting at his parent's kitchen table. The camera was propped up against a fruit bowl or something, giving you a clear view of both him and his parents even though he was a little cut off, you could tell they were concerned but trying to keep calm. Jace's face was a mess, his eyes were already rimmed with red and his hands were shaking so violently on the tabletop that he had to clasp them together.

"Mom...Dad..." His voice was a thin thread that threatened to snap at any second. "I...I have to tell you something. I've been...so scared to say it because I didn't want anything to change but I can't keep it inside anymore. I'm...I'm gay."

The silence on the other end of the line felt like it lasted a century, it lasted so long that Jace let out a sob that sounded like he was choking and dropping his head as he waited for the blow to fall, like he was waiting for his life to officially be over.

But that never came.

You saw his mother immediately stand up and move around the table, she gathered her son's head against her chest, stroking his hair exactly the way you had the night before.

"Oh, my sweet sweet boy," she whispered, her own voice thick with emotion. "I knew. We always knew. We were just waiting for you to be ready to tell us."

Jace's dad leaned forward, his expression soft and pained. "Jaejun, why were you so scared? Did you really think we wouldn't love you the same? Why did you carry this for so long by yourself?"

"I didn't want to be another issue for you guys," Jace sobbed into his mother's apron. "With everything Jake does...I just wanted to be the perfect son. I didn't want to disappoint you."

Hearing that confession broke something inside you all over again as you sat on the edge of your bed with tears streaming down your face in silent solidarity. The relief was like a physical weight lifting off your chest—Jace was finally safe, he was finally his true self in the one place he had always felt he had to perform.

His mother looked up and finally noticed your face on the screen. "Oh Y/n, my love. Is that you?" she asked with a watery smile.

"Hi, Mrs. Sim," you managed to say, wiping your eyes and waving weakly. "I'm so happy for him."

"We are too, dear," she said. "Thank you for looking after him."

Jace pulled back and wiped his nose with his sleeve before giving you a look of nothing but gratitude. "I'll call you when I get back to campus tonight," he whispered. "I love you, Y/n."

"Love you too, Jace. Go be with them."

The call ended and you were left in your suddenly very quiet room, you spent the rest of your Sunday buried in your textbooks, the words had finally started to make sense now that the static of Jace's secret was gone. For the first time in a long time, the world felt like it was exactly where it was supposed to be.

Things fell back into place barely two days after that and by Wednesday afternoon when you’re sat at a table with Jace and Jungwon in the dining hall, they’re pretty much in their own bubble, leaning so close to each other that their shoulders are pinned together. Jungwon is whispering something into Jace's ear that makes Jace duck his head and actually giggle.

"Okay, look," you say, propping your chin on your hand and giving them a fake disgusted look. "You guys are adorable, really. It's sickening. But can you please stop rubbing your new love in my face while I'm trying to eat this subpar pasta? My eyes are bleeding."

Jungwon laughs and you watch his eyes crinkle at the corners but he does lean back, finally giving Jace some breathing room. "Honestly, Y/n, I really can't understand how you're still single. I've sat in the library and heard guys talking about how gorgeous you are. You could have your pick of anyone on campus."

Jace turns to Jungwon with a teasing smirk on his face. "Oh, don't let her fool you. She's a hopeless romantic but she has these impossibly high standards, which she should obviously but the second a guy trips up or shows a hint of a red flag, she cuts them off immediately. Total ghost protocol."

"Hey, it's not my fault most guys just want to fuck anyway," you add with a shrug, making them both laugh. "I'm not interested in being someone's weekend project."

You're all laughing, it really feels like the vibes finally light and normal again but that’s when you catch a glimpse of someone standing a few feet behind Jace and your smile falters.

It's Jake.

It's the first time you've seen him since that night and for a moment, you don't even recognize him. The cocky, golden boy glow is completely gone and he looks like a total mess, wearing a wrinkled and stained hoodie with his hair is unwashed and even from here, you swear you can see the heavy bags under his eyes. He's also very pale, in a way that actually unnerves you and his eyes look bloodshot and sunken. A small flicker of worry pricks at your chest but you’re quick to brush it off, reminding yourself of how he acted just a few days ago.

When your eyes catch his and he realizes you've spotted him, he doesn't smirk or offer some rude catcall. He just walks up to the table with his eyes entirely set on Jace, not even bothering to look at you or Jungwon.

"Jace," he says in a voice that’s devoid of its usual bravado. "Can we talk? Just real quick. Somewhere else."

Jace stiffens and his hand instinctively reaches for Jungwon's under the table. "Why couldn't you just call me, Jake? Or wait until I was at the dorm?"

Jake lets out a breath that sounds more like a wheeze. "I've been texting you for days, Jace. You haven't responded once. I...I really need to talk to you."

The lack of an argument or a snarky comeback is the most alarming part and it hits you like whiplash. Jace looks at you, then at Jungwon before letting out a defeated sigh. "Fine. Five minutes."

He stands up and follows Jake towards a far corner of the dining hall, where there are less people. You watch their retreating backs, noting how Jace's is rigid and very defensive while Jake's is slumped and almost defeated. Even though the villain of the story looks like he's finally been defeated, you can't shake the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Something is and feels very, very wrong.

Jungwon notices the way you're staring in the direction they’re in with your fork hovering aimlessly over your plate and he reaches over to give your hand a reassuring squeeze. "Hey, don't overthink it. It's probably just sibling stuff. They probably just need to yell at each other for a few minutes and get it out of their systems."

You nod slowly, trying to force the image of Jake's red eyes out of your mind. "Yeah. You're right. It's just...Jake didn't even look like Jake."

"Let’s focus on something else," Jungwon says, effortlessly pivoting the conversation. "Sloane's birthday is this weekend, remember? She's doing this big dinner on Friday and then after that, all the girls are heading to that club downtown. She really wants you there but she realized she lost your number after that project ended. She told me to make sure you were coming."

The mention of a night out with Sloane and some girls is exactly the distraction you need. You immediately beam as your excitement bubbling up. "Oh, I am so there! I haven't been out in forever. I need a reason to wear something sexy."

"I figured," Jungwon grins, sliding his phone across the table toward you. "Here, take her number and text her so she can add you to the group chat or something. She's already planning the pre game."

As you're typing the digits into your phone, you start to hear Jace’s footsteps as he makes his way back to the table looking very annoyed—his jaw is set tight and he's shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

"Everything okay?" Jungwon asks softly.

Jace just nods and drops back into his seat with a heavy thud. "Fine. Just Jake being Jake," he says but the words feel like he practiced them for you. He picks up his water glass but he doesn't drink and he starts looking at you and it’s not in his usual just admiring you way. It’s a weird and searching look, even a little hesitant but it makes the hair in your arms stand up. He keeps glancing at you, then quickly looking away the second you catch his eye, then looking back again.

"Jace?" you finally ask, setting your phone down. "What's wrong? You're looking at me like I've got a third head. Did Jake say something?"

Jace blinks, tearing his eyes away from you so fast he nearly knocks over his water glass. "No," he insists too hastily like he doesn’t even want you to think of Jake saying anything that would matter. "Seriously, it's nothing. Just Jake being a dramatic idiot as usual."

Before you can press him on it, he turns sharply to Jungwon, his knuckles whitening as he grips his fork. "Did you...did you tell her about Sloane's birthday yet? The dinner this Friday?"

"Yeah, just did," Jungwon replies, looking between the two of you with a curious lift of his brow. "She's already getting Sloane's number from my phone."

"Good. That's good," Jace murmurs, nodding rapidly. "You should definitely go, Y/n. You need a fun night out."

The knot in your stomach tightens again. You know Jace is usually a terrible liar but right now he seems to be vibrating with whatever secret Jake just dropped in his lap. The way he keeps avoiding your eyes feels heavy and almost protective, like he's trying to shield you from something.

Jungwon seems to want to ease the awkwardness settling over the table, he shifts in his seat and attempts to break the tension. "Hey, I just noticed," he says with a warm smile as he points a finger toward your collarbone. "You always have that gold necklace on every time I see you. It's really beautiful, Y/n."

You’re a little caught off guard by the sudden redirection but your posture soon relaxes and you beam, your fingers flying up to habitually trace the delicate gold charm resting warm against your skin. "Oh, thank you! Jace actually got it for me a while back."

Beside him, Jace cocks his head and his brow furrowing in blank confusion as he stares down at the jewelry. "I did? When?"

You let out a loud scoff before rolling your eyes dramatically at him. "Are you serious right now? You don't even remember? Wow, your memory is horrific, Jace. I literally wear it almost every single day."

It was the morning of your eighteenth birthday, it was also the bittersweet summer just before you all packed up to start college. You had woken up to a house smelling like your favorite pancakes but when you went back to your bedroom to change, you found it sitting right there on your unmade bed. A small box wrapped in deep red velvet and propped up against it was a cream colored card. There was no grand speech or birthday essay, just three words written in a hurried script—From J. Happy 18th.

When you snapped the velvet box open, the delicate gold chain had caught the morning sunlight and gleamed perfectly against the white satin lining. You had figured back then that he was just too shy to give it to you in person or maybe he didn't want to make a massive deal out of it in front of your family and friends. It was so classic Jace, so thoughtful and entirely lowkey. 

You shake your head, laughing it off as you snap back to the present, giving him a playful pout. "Anyway, since you clearly have the memory of a goldfish, let’s just move on, I'm definitely going to Sloane's birthday dinner."

You’ve already decided to let it all go, if Jace wanted you to know about Jake, he'd tell you.

"And you two better not ruin my vibe by being all attached at the hip if you come to the pre game."

Jungwon scoffs playfully, shoving Jace's shoulder. "Hey, I can be independent! Jace is the clingy one."

"I am not!" Jace protests, his cheeks flushing as he finally lets out a real laugh.

Just like that, the heavy shadow Jake left behind begins to dissipate again, melting back into the comforting clatter of the dining hall. You fall back into your breezy conversation, arguing over who has the worst taste in music and planning what you're going to wear on Friday night and willfully ignoring the sinking feeling that the other shoe is just about to drop.

Friday came quicker than you anticipated, probably because after the unsettling tension of Wednesday afternoon, the rest of the week had crashes into a montage of lectures and late night studying. But now it was the night of Sloane's birthday dinner and your dorm room looked a mess from you digging through your closet.

Meanwhile, your bed had been completely hijacked. With your back turned to the room as you desperately rifled through your closet, you could hear the unmistakable sounds of Jace and Jungwon behind you. The rustle of sheets mixed with soft murmurs and the distinct, wet smacking of their lips as they kissed. It was like they physically could not keep their hands off each other for more than thirty seconds.

"I love that you guys are happy but I am begging you to stop procreating on my comforter while I'm in the middle of a crisis," you groaned, throwing another hanger onto the floor in defeat.

You officially gave up, so in a dramatic display of frustration, you threw your hands in the air and let your body collapse backward, laying flat on the cold floor in just your bra and panties.

"I'm not going," you announced to the ceiling before letting out a miserable groan. "I can't find a single thing to wear. You guys should just leave without me, go have fun and let me rot in peace."

From the bed, Jungwon let out a loud laugh. You heard him sit up from between Jace’s legs and when you rolled your head over to look at them, he was leaning on his elbows, staring down at you on the floor.

"I know I said this before," Jungwon said, shaking his head with a grin, "but Y/n, your body is fucking insane. Seriously. If I did girls, I swear I'd be all up on you right now."

"Hey!" Jace immediately piped up, his voice spiking with a funny combo of mock offense and protective best friend energy as he swatted Jungwon's arm.

"I said if!" Jungwon defended himself, laughing and lifting his hands in retreat. "I'm just appreciating the view! She looks amazing."

Their ridiculousness finally cracked your bad mood and you sat up, crossing your legs on the carpet before offering Jungwon a playful hair flip. "Thank you, Jungwon," you said, sending a smug look in Jace's direction. "At least someone in this room appreciates the effort it takes to look this hopelessly single."

Jace rolls his eyes playfully, leaning over to drape his arm over Jungwon's shoulders. "Oh, please. Don't let Jungwon feed your drama. You have plenty of clothes. What about that black two piece?"

You blink up at him from the floor. "Which one?"

"The one you wore to that lounge downtown like three months ago," Jace says, pointing a finger at you like a detective solving a case. "I literally remember because I had to play bodyguard the entire night. Three different guys at the bar approached you within the first hour of us getting there. One of them literally choked on his drink when you walked past."

A lightbulb instantly goes off in your head. "Oh my god," you gasp, jumping up from the carpet. "Jace, you are an absolute genius."

You dive back into the depths of your closet, tossing aside a few stray cardigans and tops until your fingers finally brush against the familiar, sleek fabric of the two piece. It's perfect.

You quickly slip into the outfit, smoothing the skirt down over your hips and adjusting the top in your full length mirror. Turning around, you strike a dramatic pose for your audience of two. "Well? Does the bodyguard approve?"

Both boys look up and right on cue, they nod in total satisfaction. Jace looks like he’s proud of his own styling skills, while Jungwon lets out a low whistle, shifting back against your pillows with a grin.

"Yeah, definitely that one," Jungwon says, giving you a lazy smirk. "That's hot. Sloane is going to lose her mind."

"Finally. Can we go?" Jace asks, getting up from the bed and taking Jungwon’s hand in his.

"We are getting trashhh-ed, we are getting loose, no more books, just cranberry and booze!" you belt out at the top of your lungs as you step out of the room, doing a ridiculous, little shuffle right down the middle of the dorm hallway. You toss a dramatic hip shake into the choreography, the heels of your knee length boots clicking against the linoleum.

"Sloane is turning older and I am looking fly, if a frat boy breathes near me I am gonna make him cry!"

Behind you, Jace and Jungwon start losing it over your rap. "Oh my god, please lower your voice, the RA is going to write us up before we even hit the lobby," Jace wheezes, pressing a hand over his mouth as his shoulders shake with laughter. He jogs a few steps to catch up, playfully nudging your shoulder.

"Don't listen to him, Y/n, it's a lyrical masterpiece," Jungwon hypes you up from a few feet back, pulling out his phone to record your makeshift victory lap. He's grinning from ear to ear, clearly entertained by the striking difference between your stunning outfit and your chaotic energy.

"Give us another verse!" Jungwon challenges, keeping his phone camera pointed right at you as he jogs a couple steps to keep up with your backward walking pace.

You don't even hesitate before you drop your voice an octave, adopt a ridiculously serious facial expression and point a finger gun directly at his camera lens. "Pop the bottles at the table, yeah we doing it right, Jungwon's paying for the drinks so we can party all night!"

Jace lets out a loud gasp, slapping his hand against the wall as he cracks up. "Oh, shit! She got you!"

Jungwon drops his phone slightly, his eyes widening in a mix of genuine surprise and amusement. "Yo, hold on, that actually went hard," he says, nodding his head to an imaginary beat while Jace cheers you on. Jungwon steps up beside you, looking impressed by your quick wit. "The flow? Y/n, be honest with me, have you ever considered a career in rapping? Because I think you just found your true calling."

₊ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 𓈒⊹

Jake Sim has a lot of problems in his life, for example there's his absolute joke of his grades, his mountain of unread texts from people who only want him for his car or his fake ID and there's also soul crushing fact that his twin brother thinks he's a raging homophobe. But his absolute worst problem was the fact that girl he was completely and painfully head over heels in love with absolutely hated his fucking guts and honestly why wouldn’t you?

He didn't always mean to be a monster, it just always came out that way whenever he got within five feet of you, like a defense mechanism he'd perfected over years of watching you look at Jace like he hung the fucking moon.

For years, Jake had been trapped in his own head, completely convinced that you and Jace had a secret thing going on. You were always whispering with his twin, always sharing looks he couldn't quite catch, always a single unit. It was the exact reason he'd never confessed or ever opened up all these years, he simply couldn't face the humiliation of competing with his perfect brother for your heart. So instead, he played the role of the obnoxious guy cause it was easier to be hated for a fake persona than rejected for who he actually was.

The night of the lit major mixer while he was leaning against a makeshift table by the bar and running his mindless routine on some girl whose name he hadn't even caught. He wasn't paying attention to her, already bored of her giggles and pathetic attempts at flirting. His eyes were scanning the room looking for something or someone else more entertaining and that's when he spotted you standing with your friend.

You looked incredibly sweet, you always did in a way that always tugged at his heart. Your dress, the way your hair was styled, the sight of you landed like a hammer against his ribs, you were so beautiful in a way that made him feel that familiar, pathetic ache all over again. Then he heard you and your friend let out a synchronized squeal over a phone, you looked so happy and it couldn't help but want to be in your space immediately. So he abandoned the girl at the bar without a second thought, he moved into your space while he masked his pounding heart with his trademark smirk.

"Well, well," he said, stepping directly into your personal bubble, ignoring how you instantly stiffened. "That's a very pretty dress, baby doll. What aisle of the candy store did you come from? Cause you look incredibly sweet tonight."

Your face twisted in total disgust as usual. "That is the worst line I have ever heard, Jake. Seriously, stop."

He didn't flinch, definitely used to the lashings by now. He offered a smooth "And hello to you too, Sandra" to your friend, completely unbothered when she corrected him that her name was Sloane. He shrugged it off, eager to get back to the only person he cared about. "Sloane, Sandra...both beautiful, just like you. What's the difference?"

"So, where's my boring other half? I figured if you were here, he'd be trailing behind you like a lost puppy."

"He's not here, Jake. And for the record, you are the boring one," you snapped, ditching him to head straight for the exit.

Panic immediately spread in his chest, he didn't want you to leave, he was desperate and something in him told him he'd never get you alone without Jace like this again. But when you asked him why he was even here, his brain scrambled and all he could throw out was a crude comment, jerking his thumb toward the bar girl and making a vile joke about trying out lit major pussy, just to see if it would get a rise out of you. It worked but not the way he wanted. You looked at him, repulsed and swiveled to bolt down the stairwell.

"Hold on for a sec," he called out to you, his teasing facade shifting a little.

"Go away, Jake!" you yelled back.

"Wait up, I'm serious," he pleaded, his heavy boots clattering down the concrete stairs behind your platform slippers. By the second floor landing, the smug layer was entirely gone and he was completely desperate. "Y/n, stop. I actually have something important I need to ask you. Just...hold on." He needed to know, needed to finally ask if you and Jace were actually together because the uncertainty had started to eat at him.

You made it to the ground floor, your hand slamming onto the heavy metal handle of the exit door. Jake lunged forward, throwing his hand over your head to hold the door shut, trapping you. "I'm not joking, listen to—" But his eyes shifted to the glass and his words deserted him. He didn't need to ask you anything because his answer was right there just through the door, in the form of his twin brother pinning a guy to the bike racks and kissing him with such fervor.

"What the fuck?" Jake breathed out in a deep exhale and a massive puzzle slammed together in his head and it left him utterly breathless, in fact he wanted to faint.

Jace was not straight.

All those years...all those years of Jake staying away from you, trying to keep his mouth shut, torturing himself because he thought you and Jace were secretly dating or harboring feelings for each other—it had all been a lie. A massive and colossal misunderstanding. You weren't a couple, you were just best friends and Jace had been hiding this massive secret from everyone, including him.

The anger that boiled up in Jake in that exact second wasn't because Jace was kissing a guy. It wasn't homophobia, it was just a violent wave of betrayal and resentment. He was angry partially because Jace had hidden it but mostly because Jace's silence had accidentally locked Jake out of ever pursuing the only girl he loved, leaving him to waste years acting like a villain while his own brother kept him in the dark.

The shock hardened into an unreadable, defensive mask and without hesitating, Jake hurled the door open and stormed into the night.

"Jake, stop! Please, just leave them alone!" you sobbed behind him, grabbing his arm with both hands to anchor him. He didn't even look at you as he violently jerked his shoulder away, shoving you off so hard you stumbled back against the cold brick wall of the stairwell. He didn't mean to hurt you—he never wanted to hurt you—but his blood was boiling too hot.

"What the fuck, Jace?!" Jake's voice boomed through the quiet courtyard.

The two boys sprang apart and Jace turned deathly pale.

"Are you serious right now?" Jake stepped closer, his looming posture dripping with guard that fully looked like aggression. "You're gay? You've been playing this whole honors student part while you're out here kissing dudes? Lying to our parents? Why didn't you say anything?"

The questions were frantic, maybe too accusatory and completely lopsided by his own internal panic. He was essentially screaming—Why did you let me believe you guys were together? Why didn't you trust me? But that's definitely not what everyone else was hearing.

You threw yourself between them, pressing your hands against Jake's chest. "Jake, shut up! Stop it right now! This isn't the time or place. Leave him alone!"

Jake didn't budge, staring directly over your head into his twin's terrified eyes. He wanted Jace to explain, to say something that would make sense of the years of distance between them.

But Jace just let out a bitter, icy laugh. "Wow," Jace spit. "You find out your brother is gay and your first instinct isn't to wonder why I was too scared to tell you. It's to accuse me of living a lie because it bruises your pathetic ego."

Jace's eyes turned cold. "You truly are a vile excuse for a human being, Jake. I've spent twenty two years sharing your face and every day I wake up wishing I could tear it off just so I don't have to look like someone so completely devoid of anything decent. You're not my fucking brother. You're just a mistake that happened four minutes before me."

The words left an invisible wound in Jake, he could've sworn getting stabbed would've hurt less. He stood there frozen as Jace turned and ran, wanting to scream that Jace had it all wrong, that he wasn't mad about who Jace liked, he was mad because the lie had cost him everything, cost him time. He thought of you but the blinding hatred and tears he had seen in your eyes told him everything he needed to know. You would never believe him, you would always choose Jace.

The blinding rush of anger only broke when he heard the sickening sound of your shoes catching on the uneven pavement. He tore his eyes from Jace just in time to see you crash heavily onto the concrete sidewalk, your body tumbling forward in the dark. He rushed over, dropping to his knees, his hands hovering over your shaking shoulders. All he wanted to do was lift you up, clean the dirt and blood already seeping from the wound and carry you somewhere safe. He wanted to be the one to protect you.

But the moment he reached for you, you flinched away as if his touch were poison. The look of burning hatred you hurled at him through your tears froze the air in his lungs. You wouldn't budge. You screamed at him to stay away, even with your voice raw and broken and no matter how much he begged you to just let him help, you refused to let him near you. You tore into him, calling him a shadow Jace has been trying to outrun and finally saying the words that made his jaw tighten in unmistakable heartbreak. "I hate you. I think I've always hated you."

He tried to deny it, ignoring the crack in his voice as he growled out that you didn't mean it but it was more like he was trying to convince himself and not you. But you just laughed right in his face and doubled down, like you wanted to ensure every single word cut like a knife.

His hands were shaking violently at his sides as he muttered for you to stop, but you just wouldn't. Maybe you really did hate him and his presence was only making you spiral deeper into distress, so he finally backed off but he refused to just leave you bleeding in the dark. So, he got back in his car and kept his foot light on the gas, tracking your slow limping figure from the street, driving right beside you along the curb. He ignored the honks of other cars, keeping his lights blinking, purely focused on ensuring you made it across campus and straight to the safety of Jace's dorm building.

The second the heavy glass doors of the honors dorm closed behind your shivering form, the last string holding Jake together snapped.

He slammed his foot on the accelerator and the engine roared as he sped recklessly through the campus gates, tearing down the empty roads all the way back to his off campus apartment. He doesn't remember much of the actual drive or how he even managed to park the car without wrecking it, he does remember how his eyes blurred so violently from tears that the streetlamps bled into long streaks of yellow light down his cheeks. He remembers stumbling through his front door and wanting to not be around anymore the moment the gravity of his own wreckage finally collapsed on top of him.

What had he done?

He had wanted to fix a years long misunderstanding, maybe finally clear the air so he could be a man and tell you how he felt. Instead, in the span of less than ten minutes, he had severed his bond with his twin brother, terrified the girl he loved and cemented himself as the villain in both of their stories.

Jake inevitably fell into a deep, dark slump that very weekend. By Saturday morning, he was desperate to numb the static buzzing in his brain, so he took a random pill he'd bought off some guy at a party weeks ago. Which was a massive mistake because instead of taking the edge off, it triggered a severe drop in his serotonin, sending him spiraling into a hollow depression.

He spent all of Saturday and Sunday locked in his room, staring at the ceiling as his phone rang out with calls from his parents. He didn't make it to the Sunday family dinner, how could he? Jace wasn't picking up his calls or answering any of his frantic texts and the fear of facing his parents kept him paralyzed. He knew exactly what would happen if he went home—Jace had probably already told them everything about how he had acted and he knew wouldn't take his side, they never did.

Wrapping his arms around his head in the dark, he finally had to admit it to himself for the first time in his life, the armor and the denial wasn't working—he was depressed.

The thought felt heavy and bitter in his chest, it was a truth he had spent years violently sprinting away from. He had never, ever admitted it to himself before, sure he'd sat in those sterile therapist offices his parents forced him into. He'd watched the doctors scribble notes on their clipboards, speaking in those careful tones that made him want to rip his own skin off. And yeah, he'd been put on medication and he did the work, swallowing those little pills because it was easier than fighting his mother about it.

But taking them had never meant he accepted it. To teenage Jake and even to an older one, the diagnosis wasn't a medical reality for him, it always felt more like a verdict. It was proof that everyone around him, from even his mother to his twin brother, looked at him and saw something defective, maybe even broken that needed to be chemically altered just to be tolerable.

The meds were just a reminder that Jace was born right and Jake was born wrong.

So he'd hidden behind the noise and built this fuck boy persona, where he drank too much and laughed too loud, treating everything like a joke so he could prove to the world and to himself that he was fine and he was normal. He had convinced himself that if he just ran fast enough, that shadow wouldn't catch him.

But sitting there in the dark, with his serotonin and dopamine entirely depleted by a reckless choice, the noise was gone. Jace wouldn't answer his calls, you hated his guts and probably wouldn't even spit on him if he were on fire and his parents were a looming storm he couldn't face.

He didn't step foot outside his apartment until Wednesday afternoon and the only reason he did was because he absolutely had to see a professor for a class he was currently failing. His head throbbed, his skin felt itchy under his wrinkled hoodie and he hadn't taken a shower or eaten a single thing in days. He tried to make one good decision, to get some food in his system so after meeting with the professor, he made his way to the dining hall, only to be hit with the sight of you as soon as he walked in.

You were sitting at a table laughing with Jace and the guy from that night. Watching the three of you made a bitter thought loop in his head.

Jake had always been jealous of Jace, always and it wasn't just about you, though that was the sharpest ache in his ribs. It was everything, Jace got to be the real golden boy, the honors student, the twin who didn't have to put on a loud mask just to feel like he existed or have to choose between feeling hopelessly sad or being numbed by his medication. Jace got to be soft and people loved him for it, he got to have genuine friendships, while Jake was surrounded by leeches. And now, Jace had the love of that guy along with the freedom of being completely honest and out.

Most of all, Jace had you.

Even when you were all just laughing at a table he couldn't sit at, you were looking at Jace with that protective warmth Jake would have given anything to experience just once. Jace got the best parts of the world without even trying and Jake was left standing in the shadows with the exact same face but a drastically different result.

The sight of you laughing and smiling triggered a painful memory for him. May 2021, a week before junior prom when he was sitting at the breakfast table with his family, his fingers tightly gripped around a glass of orange juice. He had spent days building up the courage to finally say the words out loud.

"I think I'm going to ask Y/n to the dance," he had announced, trying to sound casual, even though his heart was hammering against his ribs. "I want to buy her a corsage and take her."

His dad had let out a low chuckle into his coffee cup but didn't offer a real comment. Jace on the other hand, had laughed right in his face. "Are you serious, Jake?" Jace had scoffed with a shake of his head. "Y/n wouldn't even want that. We already planned to go together anyway. You'd just make it awkward for her."

Jake's chest had tightened but the real blow had yet to come, then his mother came from his reached across the table, trying to soften the impact but her words only hurt him more. "Sweetie, your brother is right. You know how sensitive Y/n is. It's probably a better idea for Jaejun to take her instead. They're best friends and he knows how to look after her."

That rejection had upset him far beyond what he even thought he was emotionally capable of handling. He was only seventeen after all, just a kid who didn't possess the emotional maturity to process the concept of his own mother openly admitting that Jace was better suited for the girl he loved. In the mind of an insecure seventeen year old Jake, it felt like his family was explicitly telling him he wasn't good enough, that he was too rough around the edges to ever deserve you.

The hurt had turned into a toxic anger and a vow to make everyone else feel as small as he felt in that kitchen table. It made him cruel.

A week later, when he stood by the banister in the foyer and watched you walk in, the cruelty spilled over. You looked so pretty in your baby pink dress, despite the braces and the acne you were so insecure about. But the second he noticed that once again, you were looking at Jace like he was your whole world and Jace was smiling back as he pinned a corsage to your wrist, Jake's heart went cold. If he couldn't have you look at him like that, he was damn well going to make sure Jace didn't get to enjoy it either. He tore you down because his own mother had torn him down first and he had been repeating that same broken cycle ever since.

Unfortunately, the exact millisecond those harsh words left his lips in the foyer, the weak armor of his anger shattered. He watched the light completely drain from your face and the tears well up in your eyes, in an instant, a surge of regret hit him. He wanted to reach out and swallow the words back down his throat, letting you know he didn't mean a single syllable of it. He didn't even care that his mother had immediately stepped in and grounded him for the next month, taking away his car keys right there in front of everyone.

The punishment was nothing compared to the burning pit in his stomach, he only wanted to make it right, pull you aside and beg on his knees for your forgiveness but he never got the chance. Jace had seamlessly stepped in, guiding you out of the house to the safety of his car while comforting you and his mother had coldly pointed toward the stairs, sending Jake up to his bedroom like some pariah.

He spent hours in the dark, listening to the muffled silence of a house that felt like it was actively rejecting him. When Jace finally came back late that night, the tension in their shared bedroom was undeniable. Jace didn't even look at him as he changed out of his tux, then out of nowhere, Jace spoke into the dark, "You know, Jaeyun, I consider Y/n more of a sibling than I consider you. She's my real twin and if I ever had the choice, I'd pick her over you in a heartbeat. And after today, I don't want you to ever come near her again."

A clean snap, if everyone in his life thought Jace was the better twin, if even his own mother openly favored Jace's gentleness over him and now his own identical brother, the person who shared his actual face, would choose you over him without a second thought—where did that leave him? It left him with absolutely no one. He was entirely alone in his own home.

That was the exact night, five years ago, Jake Sim buried his feelings for you so deep that no one could ever dig them back up. If loving you meant constantly being reminded of how inferior he was to Jace, it was safer to pretend he didn't care at all, he figured it'd be easier to be the villain they all assumed he was anyway and if he couldn't be loved for who he was, he would make sure he was desired for what he could pretend to be.

The very next week, he had asked out the prettiest girl in school and basked in the shallow attention it brought his way, only to coldly dump her for her best friend three weeks later. He didn't care about the collateral damage, he just needed to feel like he had some semblance of power, some form validation to drown out the memory of Jace's voice telling him he'd never be chosen.

He carried that exact same toxic behavior right with him to college and when he arrived on campus, he quickly realized he didn't fit in with the honors students or the artsy crowd where you and Jace flourished. Instead, he found that he only fit in with the frat boys, guys who valued the same superficial bravado he used to mask his own emptiness. He became the guy who drank too much, laughed too loud and treated girls like conquests, all because the real Jake Sim was still a heartbroken seventeen year old kid hiding in the dark, terrified of being rejected again.

In the middle of the crowded dining hall, Jake felt completely hollow with his body aching from the lingering weight of a chemically induced weekend crash. He watched the three of you from a distance, before he saw your head shift in his direction and your smile instantly vanish at the sight of him, he knew you'd spotted him. A part of him wanted to throw up his usual, cocky armor, maybe to smirk or throw out a hollow catcall at you just to hide how empty he actually felt but he simply didn't have the energy. The fake golden boy act was dead but he forced his heavy feet forward and made a direct line for your table. As he approached, he deliberately locked his eyes onto his twin, completely avoiding your gaze. He couldn't look at you cause he couldn't bear to see more of the disgust and fear that was undoubtedly written all over your face after what happened on the rooftop. He just needed his brother.

"Jace," "Can we talk? Just real quick. Somewhere else."

He watched Jace instantly stiffen, his brother's arm defensively dropping under the table, likely reaching for Jungwon's hand. Jace glared up at him all tight and unyielding. "Why couldn't you just call me, Jake? Or wait until I was at the dorm?"

Jake let out a rough breath and used his eyes to beg his twin to just cooperate for once. "I've been texting you for three days, Jace. You haven't responded once. I...I really need to talk to you."

He didn't fire back with a snarky comment, nor did he roll his eyes. He just stood there, pale and exhausted, too exposed under the bright lights. He thanked a higher being that Jace seemed to sense the genuine desperation behind the lack of an argument.

"Fine. Two minutes," Jace muttered.

Jake immediately turned around and headed toward a less crowded corner of the room, he could feel your eyes burning into his retreating back but all he could focus on was the faint hope that he could finally make his brother understand the truth before it was too late.

"Look, Jace," Jake started, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie. "First of all...I'm really sorry. About that night, I shouldn't have blasted you out in the open like that."

Jace let out a dry scoff, he didn't look like he was believing a word of what his brother was telling him. "Are you serious right now, Jake? You think an apology fixes that? You cornered us and you made it sound like I was committing some crime."

"Because I was losing my mind, Jace." Jake erupted, his defense mechanism instantly flaring up as he went into a frantic rant. He paced a small line on the tile. "You don't get it. You've never gotten it. I didn't care that you were kissing a guy, Jace. I was angry because you hid it. I was angry because you let me believe that you and Y/n—"

"Don't—Do not drag her into this," Jace cut him off in a protective growl and Jake couldn't deny the anger in his twins eyes. "Do not bring Y/n's name out of your mouth, Jake. You've done enough damage to her to last a fucking lifetime."

"You're not even listening to me." Jake pulled his hair, feeling the desperation finally snap what was left of his restraints. He stopped pacing a little and stared directly into his twin's face. "I am dragging her into this because she is the reason. I have been helplessly, devastatingly in love with her, Jace! I've been in love with Y/n since we were like fucking fourteen and I stayed away because I thought you two were together!"

The part of Jake that thought Jace would finally see things from his point of view immediately died when his face didn't even move an inch, in fact his eyes narrowed in utter disgust.

"Cut the shit, Jake." Jace said, completely unyielding. "Seriously, just stop. Whatever twisted game you're playing at right now, it isn't going to work anymore. You don't love her. You just can't stand that she's part of my life and completely wants nothing to do with yours."

"I'm not playing a game." Jake choked out, crying already with tears finally pricking the corners of his eyes and blurring his vision. "I—I'm telling you the truth."

"You have issues, Jake. Real issues and I think you need serious help." Jace said softly before looking at him with agonizing pity—the one expression Jake absolutely loathed more than anything else in the world. It always made him feel small and broken.

"Have you even been taking your meds?" Jace asked, voice filled with concern. "Because you're completely spiraling and I'm not going to let you use one of your episodes as an excuse to wreck my life or Y/n's."

A tearful gasp escaped Jake's throat before he could stop it and his hands formed tight fists inside his pockets as the tears finally spilled over his pale cheeks.

"Screw you," Jake spat as he took a step back, shaking his head violently and backing away from Jace. "Screw you, Jace. This has nothing to do with that. You just...you never want to see me as anything else, do you?"

That question seemed to hurt Jake more than any insult his brother has ever thrown his way because the topic of his depression and his medication had always been strictly off limits in their family. It was the one deeply guarded secret that was kept hidden away from the rest of the world—even you didn't know about it. So for Jace to weaponize that private vulnerability and drag it into the light of a public space just to invalidate him, that felt like a level of calculated cruelty Jake never thought his brother was capable of.

Jace let out a long sigh and ran a hand down his face as if he was dealing with an exhausting chore rather than a breaking his own blood. "Look, I know how you get, Jake."

"So maybe...I don't know, maybe all of this is just a manifestation of you being off your meds again."

Jake stared at his twin and just felt completely paralyzed as the words hung in the air between them. He genuinely could not believe what he was hearing. The logic was so twisted that it left him breathless—the fact that Jace thought the only possible explanation for Jake truly loving you, the only way his years of silent and agonizing pining could ever make sense in his brother's mind, was if it were the byproduct of a severe depressive spiral or a manic episode. To Jace, Jake's genuine heart was nothing more than a chemical glitch and just another symptom to be managed.

A bitter laugh bubbled up in Jake's chest but it quickly turned into a sob as he nodded his head violently. He looked at the identical face staring back at him with that pity and the last shred of his attachment to his twin vanished into thin air.

"And I thought I was the vile twin," Jake whispered but didn't bother waiting for a response or giving Jace another second to dissect him. He simply walked away, fully intending to forget all about you and his brother too.

He threw the doors open, ignoring the way the heavy wood slammed against the drywall with a loud crack. On the drive back, he had squeezed the steering wheel until his hands went numb, staring so hard at the road his eyes burned. He hadn't let himself continue to cry, he had just breathed through his teeth, pushing down the lump in his throat because he refused to break down in his car over a brother who looked him in the eye and called his heart a clinical glitch.

He just needed to get inside his apartment, he was ready to lock the world out again and let the darkness take over.

Instead, when he unlocked his apartment door and pushed it open, his feet stopped dead. The lamp in the corner was throwing a little light across the living room and sitting right there on the couch she bought him was his mother.

The second she heard him come in, her head snapped up, taking a long look at his pale face, the deep bruises under his red rimmed eyes and the sad way his hoodie hung off his shoulders, and she stood up fast. Her face broke open with a look of real panic and maternal dread.

But Jake was blind to it.

His brain, already skinless by Jace's execution of his dignity, went into immediate defense mode. He didn't see a mother who had driven over out of worry for her son. He saw an intruder and the woman who had spent his entire youth looking at him like a problem to be solved, standing in his sanctuary and his walls went up, turning his agonizing hurt into razor sharp venom.

"What are you doing here?" Jake spat at her, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. He made sure the words came out harsh and deliberately ugly. "Why are you inside my apartment unannounced? Who the hell gave you a key?"

He could see his mother visibly recoil, her shoulders dropped as though she'd been struck but she didn't get angry at him. She took a tentative step toward him, her hands hovering in the space between them.

"Jaeyun, please, just stop," she whispered, her voice trembling as she glanced around the room. "I've been calling you for three days. You haven't answered a single text. I was just worried about you." She gestured helplessly to the state of the room—the stale air, the chaotic piles of dirty clothes that always signaled he had stopped functioning weeks ago. "Look at this place, Jake. Look at you. I'm worried about you."

He walked right past her, brushing his shoulder against hers as he headed deeper into the apartment. "There's nothing to be worried about," he muttered dismissively as he threw his car keys onto the messy kitchen counter. "I'm just tired. Leave it alone."

"Jake, please, just listen to me," she pleaded with him, her voice cracking as she hurried after him. She reached out, using her fingers to desperately catch the rough fabric of his sleeve, holding onto him to force him to stop moving.

Jake gave her one irritated breath and looked down, ready to wrench his arm out of her grip but his throat closed around the words.

In her other hand, clutched tightly against her palm, was his prescription container of Lexapro.

Through the translucent plastic, he could see the unmoved crowd of tablets inside. Yes, the bottle was still full with the exact same amount of pills it had contained a month ago when he'd first picked up the refill. She didn't just suspect it anymore—she knew with absolute certainty, that he hadn't been taking them.

Silence fell over the kitchen and his mother looked up at him with eyes shining with unshed tears, silently begging him to acknowledge the proof right in front of them.

Jake's rolled his eyes and a bitter sneer twisted in his features as he reached down. One by one, he pried her fingers off his arm, pushing her hand away from him.

"I'm fine." He said in an unyielding line as he stepped backward out of her reach. "I told you, I'm fine."

"You think a handful of pills fixes a broken son, is that it?" Jake asked her with a sickly smile on his face, "You think if I just swallow your little compliance capsules, I suddenly become the son you actually wanted?"

"Jake, stop it! That is not what this is!" She cried out, clutching the plastic bottle tight against her chest like a shield. Tears were streaming freely down her face now and her posture entirely broken. "It's medicine! You are hurting and you are spiraling and I am watching you destroy yourself!"

"Because I am defective, right?!" He suddenly roared, stopping in his tracks. "That's what you and Jace think! Even dad! That's what you've always thought! You look at him and you see the perfect child, the brilliant twin, the one who does everything right! And then you look at me and you just see a project that needs a chemical fix!"

"That is not true!" she sobbed, shaking her head so violently her hair fell out of its clip.

"Don't lie to me!" Jake screamed as his face turned an unhinged red. The years of suppressed emotion and agonizing reality of living in Jace's shadow, finally tore out of his throat in a breathless torrent.

"You love him more. Just admit it. You've always loved him more, every—every single day of my life, you looked at me and wished I was just like Jace. You wished I was quiet, you wished I was stable, you wished I didn't have a broken fucking brain! You look at my identical face and you just wish you could erase me and double your investment in him!"

"No! Jaeyun, stop, please, my god, stop!"

His mother dropped the pill bottle and the plastic clattered against the hardwood floor, making the tablets scatter across the floor. She lunged forward, not caring about his harsh words and grabbed his face with both of her shaking hands, forcing him to look at her.

"That is not true! It has never ever been true!" She wailed in his face. She held him tightly, digging her fingers into his cheeks as she forced his wild eyes to lock onto hers. "I love you, Jake. I love you. Just the way you are. I have never wanted you to be Jace. I have only ever wanted you to survive this . You are my son. My beautiful, fiercely loving boy and it hurts my heart to see you in this much pain."

Her words seemed to snap his violent armor as the heat left his body all at once, leaving him gutted to his core and trembling. Jake's eyes quickly welled up and the heavy tears finally spilling over his lashes, tracing hot paths down his pale cheeks. His mouth opened but not a sound came out at first, just a serrated gasp for air as his shoulders caved inward. He didn't pull away from her touch this time, he collapsed into it, letting his heavy hands come up to grip her wrists but instead of prying them away like he's sure she thought he would do, he used them to hold his body upright.

He was crying completely now, his breaths came hard with rattling sobs that sounded like a dying man. He looked at his mother, stripped entirely of his pride, his anger and his defense mechanisms, reduced to nothing but bleeding nerve endings.

"Then why doesn't Y/n love me back?" Jake whispered, his voice cracking so deeply it was barely a breath, entirely devastated. He stared into his mother's eyes, looking like a broken sixteen year old boy. "If I'm not broken, Mum...if I'm not less than him...then why doesn't she want me? Why does she look at Jace like he's the entire world and look at me like I'm nothing?"

To his surprise, a gasp of relief mixed with laughter

escaped her throat, it was like even through the agonizing weight of his confession, she was just grateful to have her boy back. She gave another little before she lunged forward, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling his heavy frame tightly against her chest.

Jake stiffened, as the sudden warmth caught him off guard. He was still crying when he felt his nose running and knew his face was a total mess of tears and snot. Realizing he was ruining the back of her cashmere sweater, he awkwardly tried to pull away, his shoulders tense. "Mum, wait, I'm getting..."

But she didn't care and she didn't let him go. If anything, she only squeezed him tighter, burying her face into his shoulder and rocking him back and forth as if he were still a little boy.

"Oh, my darling, darling boy." Her voice muffled against his hoodie. "My sweet Jaeyun...Y/n loves you more than you could ever even comprehend."

Jake froze in her arms, his breath went uneven in his throat. The words sounded so utterly ridiculous, so completely detached from the brutal reality of that night, that they felt like a cruel joke. He pulled back just enough to look at her and a sad laugh bubbled up through his fresh tears. He shook his head. "Don't...Mum, don't make fun of me. Please. You don't know what she said to me. She hates me."

"She doesn't hate you, Jaeyun," his mother doubled down instantly, her hands moving up to cup his face again, wiping away his tears with her thumbs. Her gaze was unyielding, and filled with so much certainty a part of him wanted to badly to believe her. "Y/n is just deeply hurt. Your actions...the things you did to protect yourself, they pushed her away. But that is not hate. You have to believe me."

Before he could argue or before his brain could spiral back into the darkness as your voice flooded his head again, she guided him toward the living room. Jake didn't fight her, he let her pull him down onto the thrifted couch, his long legs cramping up as he curled into her side and buried his face in her lap just like he used to do when the world got too loud. She wrapped her arms around him, stroking his hair with a gentle hand and whispering sweet nothings into the quiet room.

"You're going to be okay, my sweet boy," she murmured, kissing the top of his head. "We're going to fix this. I love you so much, Jake. You are so so loved."

For a long time, the only sound in the apartment was the steadying of Jake's breathing as the storm inside him finally began to pass. He felt exhausted drained but lighter than he had in years.

Suddenly, his mother's soothing hand paused mid stroke. Her head turned and her eyes set on the armrest right next to Jake's head. Sitting prominently on the plush of the expensive couch was a pair of dirty boxers he had lazily tossed days ago.

She exhaled slowly like her overwhelming maternal instinct instantly was shifting from emotional crisis mode to domestic intervention.

"First thing tomorrow," she started with her voice returning to its usual brisk tone as she kept one arm wrapped tightly around his shoulders, "I am calling professional cleaners. Because this is absolutely biological warfare, Jaeyun."

He laughed at her words, trying not to seem too embarrassed. Once his breathing finally leveled out, his mother gently nudged him up so she could get to work. She wasn't the type to sit idle for long and before Jake could even protest, she was moving through the apartment like a whirlwind. She cleared the mountain of beers cans and pizza boxes from the coffee table, threw his discarded clothes into a hamper and disappeared into the small kitchen to rifle through the bare refrigerator.

Jake stood leaning against the doorframe, his throat still felt raw from crying, he watched her slice vegetables, so confident in ways only a mother could be.

"Mum, you don't have to do all this," he muttered, crossing his arms over his chest. "I can cook."

"You can but you haven't," she pointed out smoothly, not looking up as she tossed chopped peppers into a pan. "Grab those glass containers from the cabinet. Let's meal prep ,okay? So I know you'll actually eat a real vegetable this week."

He did as she told him to, stepping up to the counter beside her. The domestic quiet was a far cry from the emotional explosion from earlier but it felt grounded and Jake felt safe. As they worked together, dividing the food into neat containers, she kept the conversation light, she deliberately steered them away from the heavy topics of Jace, you and his own head.

"Your father installed a greenhouse last weekend," she remarked with a little smile on her lips as she handed him a serving spoon. "He's gotten obsessed. He spent a good deal of time trying to explain the kind of soil required for heirloom tomatoes to me. I had to tune him out after twenty minutes."

Jake let out a real but still quiet laugh. "Dad and gardening? He barely manages to keep the lawn alive without the gardeners."

"Don't let him hear you say that," she chuckled and lightly tapped the back of his hand with a spoon. "He bought a wide brimmed straw hat and everything. He looks ridiculous."

By the time the kitchen was clean and the fridge was stocked with home cooked meals, the exhaustion of the emotional fallout finally caught up to Jake. His eyelids felt like lead, so his mum ushered him off to his bedroom, pulling the heavy blankets over his shoulders just like she used to when he was a kid.

"Go to sleep, Jaeyun." She whispered to him before brushing a lock of hair from his forehead. "I'll handle the rest."

He fell asleep almost instantly, slipping into a deep slumber. Sometime during the early morning hours, his mind drifted through a foggy state of semi consciousness. He vaguely heard distant clatters, the muted hum of a vacuum and the quiet murmur of voices in the living room but the sounds didn't alarm him. They felt like a background track to a dream and he simply rolled over to bury his face deeper into his pillow.

When he finally woke up the next day, the apartment was dead silent and he woke up to an unfamiliar lightness in his chest. He stood up and walked out into the living room and true to her word, his mother was gone but she had clearly unleashed a small army of professional cleaners on the apartment. The space was pristine, with the air smelling crisply of citrus and fresh linen, the floors practically gleamed and every single piece of clutter had been meticulously organized.

He walked into the kitchen, his bare feet cool against the spotless tile and resting in the center of the completely empty kitchen island was his container of medication.

Propped up perfectly against the plastic bottle was a bright yellow sticky note. He stepped closer, immediately recognizing his mother's elegant handwriting.

Just start with one, it read.

Jake stood frozen in front of the island, staring down at the little bottle for a quiet moment. His mind began to wander, the gears turning as he faced the wreckage of his life with a newly cleared head. The reality of everything he had broken over the past few weeks came rushing back but the paralyzing dread was gone and all he felt now was a quiet determination.

He thought about you, about the brutal words you had screamed at him on the pavement, the absolute hatred in your eyes, it all made his heart violently ache. How do I win you over? he wondered as his heart tightened. How do I even begin to show you that I'm not the selfish person you think I am?

But then there was still Jace and the disgust in his twin's voice during their hallway fight from yesterday still rang clearly in his ears. He knew the apology he had attempted had barely even scratched the surface. How do I make Jace forgive me?

He knew it would take time, in fact it would take proving to his brother that he wasn't just a ticking time bomb using his episodes as an excuse to wreck everyone else's lives.

He looked back down at the sticky note. Just start with one.

It just happened to be a terrifyingly small step, an admission that he couldn't fix everything on his own, that he actually needed the help he had spent his entire life rejecting. But as he looked around his clean kitchen, Jake didn't want to run anymore, he didn't want to hide behind the noise or the anger or even the bravado.

So with a steady hand, Jake reached out and unscrewed the cap. The plastic clicked and slowly, he tipped the bottle, catching a single pill in his palm, without giving himself another second to even overthink it or let the old demons drag him back down, he popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it dry.

The whole day passed for him in what he could only describe as his own hard won type of peace. For the first time in what felt like centuries, the constant buzzing of anxiety in his chest had subsided into more manageable hum. He actually ate his meals, sat down at his spotless kitchen table and devoured the containers his mother had left behind, forcing himself to chew and swallow until they were empty.

With his body finally fueled by something other than cheap liquor and adrenaline, he spent a solid chunk of the afternoon trying to patch up the mess that was his academic life. He stared at the brightness of his laptop screen as he drafted an uncharacteristically humble email to his economics professor. He practically begged for a chance to submit a heavily overdue assignment, trying to sound like a student who had simply lost track of time rather than one who had been entirely incapacitated by his own mind. It wasn’t easy and his brain protested the sudden inflow of words and numbers but he forced himself to stay glued to the chair until he finally clicked send.

By the time night fell, the clean apartment started to warm up to him. He put on his absolute favorite movie and watched the familiar dialogue and the predictable soundtrack filling the quiet spaces of the room. Then, he booted up his console and buried himself in video games for hours, letting the mindless reflex loops of the controller numb the remaining edges of his thoughts.

Throughout the entire day, his phone had vibrated periodically against the coffee table, lighting up with a steady stream of notifications from his frat brothers. He completely ignored them, not even bothering to swipe the lock screen open cause he already knew what they wanted and it wasn't because they were worried he had suddenly gone missing from campus. The previews on his lock screen told him everything he needed to know—they were asking about who was covering the alcohol tab for the upcoming mixer, where the keys to the frat house basement were or which girls were showing up to the pregame. It was all so agonizingly shallow, so painfully superficial and Jake for the life of him just couldn't deal with the exhausting effort of putting on the mask again. He couldn't fake that loud and hedonistic persona they all expected from him when his nerve endings were still this raw.

Yet, despite the movie, the video games, the textbook chapters and the deliberate isolation, he couldn't completely clear the air in his head. Through all of this, the one absolute constant was you. You stayed pinned to the very front of his mind, like a painfully beautiful fixture that he just couldn't escape. Every time the game loading screen went black, he saw the reflection of his own face and remembered the disdain on your face.

Every time he took a breath of the clean air in his living room, he wondered if you were still out somewhere with Jace, completely happy and relieved that he was finally out of your picture. He wanted to reach for his phone a thousand times just to type your name and beg you to just let him explain but the weight of his own mistakes held his hands still. He was working on himself, just like his mother had asked him too but the hardest pill to swallow wasn't even his own medication—it was the fact that even if he got better, he still had no idea if you would love him back or love him for him.

That same crushing burden of you on his mind carried all the way into Friday night. By then, the apartment that had warmed up to him, felt like it was itching to spit him out. He was sitting at the foot of his bed, working on another overdue assignment, when his phone suddenly vibrated against the mattress.

Jake swore he must have somehow summoned you into existence because there it was. Your name was glowing bright and impossible against the dark screen.

It was an incoming call from you and saying his heart skipped a beat would’ve been an understatement because it slammed into his stomach and back up into his ribs .

He felt paralyzed staring at the flashing letters, he also felt so incredibly confused and that made a thick wave of nauseating anxiety rise in his throat. Why were you calling him? Were you calling to berate him again? To deliver the sequel from that confrontation and finish stripping away whatever minor scraps of dignity he had left?

Or had something happened to Jace? His mind raced a mile a minute, he felt his chest tightening at the thought of his twin but he instantly shot it down. No, if Jace was hurt, you definitely wouldn't be calling him for help, you wouldn't even want him anywhere near a crisis.

He sat there overthinking, trapped in a loop of panic, watching the phone screen flash over and over. He kept debating whether to answer, his thumb was hovering an inch above the green answer icon, until the ringing abruptly stopped and the screen went dark.

A shaky breath left him and his shoulders sagged as a strange sense of relief washed over him. He wiped a sudden sweat from his palms against his sweatpants. It had to have been a mistake, maybe a pocket dial or an accident. You probably realized who you were calling and hung up in disgust.

The his phone started to vibrate again and your name flashed on the screen for a second time. This wasn't no accident, you were intentionally trying to reach him and he realized that ignoring it twice would completely kill whatever microscopic thread was left between you, the panic in his chest turned into raw adrenaline and he didn’t even give himself the chance to talk himself out of it, he reached out and swiped answer on the screen before pressing the phone tightly against his ear.

"Hello?"

"Jace?"

Your voice came through the speaker, but it didn't hit him with the sharp precision he had been bracing for. It was soft and unfocused, actually it was entirely wrong.

Jake's chest deflated and familiar pang of disappointment settling right in his heart.

Oh, yeah. It was a mistake, he thought to himself.

You hadn't meant to call him, you had meant to call the twin who actually mattered, you had probably clicked the wrong contact in a hurry.

He opened his mouth to tell you but before he could say even get a single word out, you spoke again.

"Jaceeee...where are you?"

He comically pulled the device away from his ear for a fraction of a second and checked the caller ID just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. You didn't sound like yourself at all, your voice was much whinier than usual and your syllables were dragging and bleeding into one another in a clumsy slur.

"Why aren't you here to pick me up yet?" You complained in a tone that had Jake thinking there was definitely a pout on your face. "The music inside is too loud and my feet hurt, Jace. You said you'd come get me." "But I—I’m looking around and there’s no you."

Jake stood up quickly as his brain started putting two and two together. It was Friday night and you were out somewhere and from the sounds of it, you were absolutely wasted.

His first instinct was to just tell you the truth—that you had dialed the wrong twin and he was the wrong person. He wanted to tell you to hang up and call his brother or he even thought about hanging up himself and calling Jace to let him know you were stranded somewhere. But the memory of his Wednesday exchange flashed in his mind and Jace's voice echoed in his ears. Have you even been taking your meds? I'm not going to let you use your episodes as an excuse to wreck my life or Y/n's.

Jace wouldn't answer his call. If Jake tried to ring his brother right now, Jace would see his name on the screen, assume it was another episode or another frantic rant and decline it instantly. Meanwhile, you'd be sitting wherever you were, completely incapacitated and unprotected.

He couldn't leave you like that, he really didn't care if you hated him, he wouldn’t let you be vulnerable.

"Hey," Jake started, trying his absolute best to mimic the steady tone Jace always used when things got chaotic. "Hey, it's okay. Just breathe for a second. Tell me where you are."

A loud giggle came through from your end of the line, followed by a wet hiccup. "You sound so funny," you muttered and he could hear the distinct sound of wind rushing past the microphone, like you were wandering around outside. "Why do you sound so serious? Are you mad at me? Don't be mad at me, Jacey."

"I'm not mad," Jake lied through his teeth, paying no mind to how his heart was pounding, he was already grabbing his car keys off the nightstand with his free hand. He began pacing the clean floorboards of his bedroom with his anxiety spiking. "I'm not mad at all, I promise. But I need you to listen to me. I need to know where you're standing right now so I can get to you."

"I'm at...um..." You trailed off, laughing softly to yourself as if you had forgotten the question entirely. "There's a really big sign. It's pink. No, wait, it's red. It looks like a giant grape."

"A grape?" Jake pinched the bridge of his nose, stepping out into his living room. He tried to think of every bar, club and lounge near campus. "Y/n, think for me. Is it a bar or a club? Are you downtown?"

"It's a secret." You whispered loudly into the phone and followed it with another fit of giggles. "If I tell you, you're gonna make me leave and the girls were being nice. Well, some of them. One of them spilled an entire gin and tonic on my boot, Jace. Look at it."

"I can't see your boot, Y/n," Jake said while his patience was fraying into terror for your safety. He could hear heavy bass thumping faintly in the background but the air around you sounded wide open. You were definitely outside the place, likely on a sidewalk or an alley. "Please, just look around you. Read the words on the building for me. Just play along, okay? Read the words."

"Fine, party pooper," you whined, huffed loudly into the receiver before he heard the sound of scuffing of your boots, then a quiet gasp. "Oh! It says…cellar. But it’s blinking. It goes click click cliiiiick. It's soooo annoying."

Cellar. Jake knew exactly where that was—it was an underground club a mile off campus but deep in the warehouse district.

"Okay. Okay, I know where that is," Jake said, already out of his front door. He didn't care that he was crossing a massive line or that when you sobered up, you would probably despise him even more for tricking you. All that mattered was getting you into the backseat of a car before someone else noticed how helpless you were. "Stay right there under the blinking sign, Y/n. Don’t move or go back inside and don't walk away. I'll be there right now."

Jake drove as fast as he could through the dark streets, the neon signs of the city blurring into long streaks of color against his windshield. He was definitely breaking speed limits but his heart was beating so wildly that it was the last thing on his mind, he was simply fueled by the dread of you being left alone in that part of town.

When he finally veered into the cracked parking lot of the club, he slammed the brakes and lo and behold, you were actually standing exactly where he had told you to, your small frame was illuminated by the flickering red light of the giant cherry sign.

As he looked at you through the windshield, all he could think of was how easily Jace could tell you to do something and you'd just do it without a single question, simply because you trusted his twin blindly. The only reason you were standing there right now, shivering and swaying on your feet under that broken sign, was because you thought Jace had told you to stay put.

Jake killed the engine and pushed his door open, moving quickly across the pavement toward you.

The second you caught sight of his figure approaching, your face completely lit up. That reaction alone made his heart physically ache but he ignored it. You thought he was Jace and he knew with outright certainty that if you were sober or if you had any idea it was actually Jake standing in front of you, you would have already turned on your heel and walked away into the dark.

Instead, you let out a slurred cheer, stepped off the curb and threw your arms right around his neck.

"You came!" you giggled and your alcohol scented breath brushed against his ear as you squeezed him tightly. "My sweet, sweet best friend. I knew you’d never leave me."

Before he could even process the sudden warmth of your body pressed against his, you leaned back slightly and pressed a drunken kiss right against his cheek.

Jake’s whole body couldn’t move, his breath was stuttering in his lungs. He had to stand there and pretend like his entire body wasn't going completely crazy from the gesture. This was the closest he had ever been to you in his whole life—closer than he had ever dared to dream during all those years of silent pining. Every fiber of his being felt like it was on fire from the ghost of your lips burning against his skin.

But right now he knew he needed to be the responsible one and get you somewhere safe.

"Okay, okay," Jake mumbled, his tone was a little rougher than he intended but still, he gently brought his hands up to grip your waist to try to guide you toward the passenger side of his car. "Come on, let's get you into the car before you freeze."

But you were being completely difficult, you whined and stuck your face back into the crook of his neck, your hands tangling into the fabric of his hoodie as you purposely made your legs go limp. "Nooo, don't want to get in the car yet. The ground is spinning, Jace. Carry me."

A real smile cracked on his face. He really couldn't help it though, he had never in his two plus decades of knowing you seen this side of you before. The you he knew was always guarded and fiercely protective around him, especially after high school, so to see you like this, just stripped of your walls, giggling and pouting like a sleepy child, was a view of you he never thought he'd be allowed to witness. It was beautiful and by God it was intoxicating, like the most bittersweet moment of his life.

"Jaceeee, take off my booooots." You whined and he watched in awe as you actually stomped one foot on the cracked pavement like a little child. The sight made him give a defeated sigh but there was no real annoyance in it. He simply reached down and carefully unzipped the tall boots from your knees one by one until you were standing in just your socks.

He managed to get you over to the passenger door to hold it open for you, practically hovering over you to make sure you didn't tumble over and carefully helping you slide into the seat. He leaned across the console, ignoring how the unfamiliar scent of your perfume filled his senses while he pulled the seatbelt across your lap, clicking it securely into place. After gathering your boots and your bag, he tossed them safely into the backseat and closed the door.

He took in a steadying breath of the cool night air before walking around to the driver's side but the exact moment he climbed into his seat and pulled the door shut, the atmosphere in the vehicle had shifted.

You were staring at him, very angrily in fact. In a way that made his heart violently drop right into his stomach again. A cold sweat broke out across his neck as he froze under your glare, terrified that the illusion had finally shattered. His mind raced frantically—had you finally realized he wasn't Jace? Maybe the interior of the car had given him away. Jace's car didn't look like this or smell like this and you knew Jace's things better than anyone. He braced himself for the screaming that he was so sure was coming.

Shockingly though, the anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared and you burst into another helpless fit of giggles before slumping back against the headrest.

"Wow," you shook your head, looking at him with your glassy eyes. "You and your brother are so identical." You said and threw your hand to his shoulder to play with the hair on the back of his head.

He hoped you were too drunk to notice how his whole body went stiff or how he wasn't even breathing.

You emptied your lungs in an exhale, staring aimlessly out the passenger window as the car started to move.

When he was stopped at a red light and he took the opportunity to look at you, there was a heart tugging smile at the corners of your lips as you murmured, "Remember when I liked him? And I was Mrs. Jake Sim..."

Jake had no idea it was even possible for his heart to drop any further but it did. It felt like his chest had completely caved in.

What? You liked him? Him?

His hands were shaking so violently he could barely g hold the steering, his mind was screaming, like a train wreck of shock and crushing regret. He forced himself to keep driving though and he needed to keep you talking, he needed to know more. So he forced a casual laugh through his teeth, pretending to be Jace just looking down memory lane. "Oh yeah?" He asked, "Remind me...when was that again?"

"You knowww—hiccup—Up until fresh...man year," you mumbled, your hand had dropped to the middle console by now.

Jake's foot twitched violently on the pedal and he nearly slammed on the brakes right in the middle of the street. Freshman year, that was almost four years ago. Four years of him pining for you, four years of him deliberately keeping his distance because he thought you belonged to Jace and all the while...you had liked him before?

"But he's just..." You trailed off, giving a hiccup that interrupted your words and shook your shoulders. Suddenly, your tone shifted and turned into a frustrated ramble as you stared out the windshield. "He's just so horrible, Jace. He's so mean to me. Why is he like that?"

Jake gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were numb, the leather even squeaked under his palms. Every word felt like an earthquake inside him but he stayed silent and let you speak.

"I wish..." You stumbled over the words, your hand coming up to wave vaguely in the air before dropping back on his shoulder to tug at his hair again. "I wish he were better. I wish he was just a little bit better so I could...so I could love him easier. But he makes it so hard. He throws those parties and...and sleeps with all those girls and he says the most awful things and he just...he pushes everyone away. Especially me." Another hiccup caught in your throat and your voice cracked, sounding like you were just incredibly tired. "He made it so hard to stay. I wanted to...I really wanted to but he's just...he's an asshole."

Jake kept his on the dark road ahead, hearing the exact words you had screamed at him not too long ago, repeated right now in this gentle confession was a new kind of torture. You hadn't always hated him, if anything you had wanted to love him and he had ruined it all by himself.

In no time he was pulling up into the parking lot of your dorm building, it was like you felt the car come to a halt and you came around. "We're here?" you mumbled, rubbing your eyes with the back of your hand like a sleepy child and tilting your head toward him.

"Yeah. We're here," Jake said to you and if you weren't so wasted, he's sure you would've heard how think with unshed tears his voice was. He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached into the back to grab your boots and bag before stepping out into the night.

He moved around to your side and opened the door, watching as you swayed immediately you unclipped your belt, your socked feet dangling over the edge of the car.

"I can't walk, Jace." You looked up at him with wide eyes and held your arms up in the air. "My feet are cold."

Without a word like he really needed the whole night to just end, Jake leaned down and swept one arm behind your knees and the other around your waist, lifting you easily against his chest. You hummed and rested your head right in the crook of his neck, your fingers knotting into the fabric of his hoodie. The heat of your breath against his skin made him shudder but he managed to carry you up the stairs to your dorm door.

"Keys?" He gently asked, not wanting you to fully wake up from the sleep you were already entering. "In my purse."

He was able to fish for them with you clinging to him and found a way to unlock your door, kick it open with his foot and carry you inside. He set you down gently on the bed and placed your boots and purse neatly by the door.

He knew he should leave because the second you woke up tomorrow and realized he was the one who picked you up, the disguise would blow up in his face. But before he could even pull back, you drunkenly snapped right out of your drunken sleepy spell and changed the subject completely, babbling at a hundred miles an hour.

"And another thing!" You announced loudly, waving a lazy hand in the air, your words running together in a slurred mess Jake found adorable. "Sloane's birthday dinner? Oh, it was a disaster, Jace. Complete disaster. You know why?"

Jake lingered right in front of you. "Why?"

"Because she has some absolute bitches for friends," you stated with utmost seriousness, pouting so hard your lip practically stuck out. "Like, total, certified mean girls. One of them looked at my outfit tonight like I was wearing a trash bag. A designer trash bag, maybe but still a trash bag!"

A laugh burst out of Jake's chest before he could stop it. He had always been helplessly charmed by you but this was new—you were funny as you grinned triumphantly, like you were proud of yourself for making him laugh and then you slumped back into the pillows. "I wanted to put her in her place so bad but it was Sloane's birthday and gosh I love Sloane so much. She's basically your sister in law." You giggled like you made a joke only Jace would get but Jake didn't get it.

As Jake stood there watching you giggling to yourself, a wave of crushing regret and bitter jealousy hit him hard. You were so funny like this. So real, affectionate, cute and so so unfiltered. Jace got to see this side of you all the time, this silly Y/n who laughed freely and let her guard down. Jake had spent years only getting the defensive glares and the cold shoulders, all because he was too wrapped up in his own anger to show you who he actually was. And while he was getting a glimpse of heaven right now, he had to remind himself that it was built on a lie.

"Get some sleep, Y/n," he spoke softly.

"Jace, wait." You slurred out, reaching up and grabbing his hoodie. Your grip was weak but it stopped him anyway. You squinted up at him and pulled your brows together as if the fog in your brain was finally starting to clear just enough to notice something was off. "Why do you...why do you look so sad?"

"I'm not sad," Jake lied immediately, trying had to make his voice sound convincing. "I promise. You're just tired and you need to rest up."

He eased your fingers free from the hem of his hoodie, he needed to leave fast. He quickly helped you settle beneath the covers, tucked you in and then paused, sweeping his eyes over the room. Knowing how much you had consumed, he grabbed the small plastic trash can from under your desk and placed it right beside your bed, within easy arm's reach cause he had a very strong feeling you were going to throw up at some point during the night.

Giving you one last look as your breathing slowed into sleep, he quietly slipped out of your dorm and left the building as fast as he could.

Many times, he contemplated leaving Jace a text, just a brief message to let his twin know you were safe, how you had called him by mistake and everything that had just happened. But every time he thought about typing such text, he pictured Jace's disappointed eyes and decided against it. Jace wouldn't listen, he'd probably just assume Jake was crossing boundaries again.

Minutes later, when Jake was lying flat on his back in his own bed and staring up at the dark ceiling, sleep was just impossible. His mind was practically vibrating from the insane influx of information he had just been handed.

You actually did love him. Or, at least, you used to.

His mum had been right all along, you didn't hate him because he was inherently unlovable, you hated the walls he built and the bitter distance he forced between you two.

He rolled over to nuzzle his face in his hands as a twinge of regret pierced his chest because knowing the truth didn't make the air any easier to breathe. Rather, it made the weight ten times heavier. Knowing you had once wanted him didn't mean he had any idea how to fix the broken pieces now or how to make you look at him without seeing the monster he had let himself become.

Jake had no idea when he actually managed to fall asleep, only that when it finally happened, it felt less like resting and more like slipping into a coma.

The next thing he knew, he was being forcefully pulled out of said sleep by someone yelling his name, the muffled shouts echoing off the hard surfaces of the clean apartment.

"Jake!"

A door slammed open down the hall, followed by the furious clatter of boots against wood.

"Jake! Where the fuck are you?!"

The voice was breathing hard and barreling through the rooms like a storm looking for a place to strike. Jake lay paralyzed on his mattress for a fraction of a second, he could feel his heart pounding in an immediate panic but his fogged mind struggled to process the sound, struggled to bridge the gap between his lingering dreams and reality, until the cadence of the voice finally registered.

It was Jace.

Groggily, Jake shoved his duvet off his legs and swung his feet onto the cold floor, rubbing his hands over his face to force his eyes open. "Jace...?" He called out, his voice deep from sleep.

He didn't even make it three steps toward the bedroom doorway before the door was thrown wide and hitting the drywall with a slam. Jake didn’t even get a chance to create to the sound before a pair of hands slammed into his chest and shoved him backward with enough force that he stumbled back a few steps.

"What the fuck is your problem?!" Jace barked, his face was red in anger and his eyes were wide and burning in anger.

Jake reeled back, lifting his hands defensively in front of his chest, still swaying slightly from disorientation. "What...what are you talking about? What?"

"Don't you play fucking stupid with me!" Jace yelled at him, stepping right into his personal space and pointing a finger directly into Jake's face. "Don’t sit there and pretend like you have no idea what you did!"

Jake blinked against the daylight flooding the room, of course he knew what he did, there’s only one reason Jace could be here yelling at him.

"Jace, just calm down for a second—"

"Calm down?" Jace responded with a harsh laugh, pacing a tight circle on the floor before snapping his eyes back to Jake. "I woke up an hour ago to a text from Y/n. Want to guess what it said? She was thanking me. She texted me thanking me for coming to pick her up from that club downtown and making sure she made it back safely."

Jace stepped closer again to his twin before delivering the other half "Except I didn't leave my dorm last night, Jake. I was with Jungwon all night and we fell asleep so I didn't go to pick her up. And there is only one other person on this entire planet she could have mistaken for me."

Jake's posture straightened as the sleep faded from his system and a flare of defensive heat rose up his chest. He took a step back and matched Jace's glare with a cold look of his own. "She called me, Jace." Jake said, his voice rising from how frustrated Jace was making him. "What do you think happened? You think I was just driving around that part of town at midnight looking for drunk girls to pick up?"

Jace crossed his arms tight over his chest as he glared harder at his twin. "Honestly, Jake? I wouldn't put it past you."

His words settled between them and normally, in the old days, like two weeks ago, before everything had shattered, that sentence alone would have been the exact trigger to blow the room apart. Jake's fist would have flown before his brain could even process the insult. He would have slammed his twin against the wall and proved every single vicious thought Jace had about him right.

Instead, Jake just stood there with his chest rose and fell but his hands never left his sides. He slowly shook his head and a look of quiet dissatisfaction settled over his features.

"I'm not going to fight you, Jace." Jake said calmly. "I'm not doing this with you."

Jace blinked, like he was momentarily thrown off by the lack of explosive rage but his jaw remained set and his eyes stayed burning.

"I did the right thing," Jake continued, staring his brother dead in the eye. "She was wasted, Jace. Standing outside some sketchy ass club in the middle of the night, slurring her words and thinking she was talking to you. I was going to hang up and call you—I really was. But I know damn well that if my name popped up on your phone at midnight on a Friday, you wouldn't have picked up. You would've let it go to voicemail thinking I was having another episode."

Jace opened his mouth to snap back but Jake cut him off by stepping forward until they were barely a foot apart. "So tell me, dear brother." Jake demanded, "What was I meant to do? Leave her stranded there? Let some random walk up to her while she was barely standing? I picked her up, brought her to her dorm, put her to bed and I walked out. That's it."

"And you know what else?" Jake added, like it was slipping out before he could stop it. "You're the one that promised to pick her up and you didn't go. Too busy shacking up with your man or whatever. So really, who the fuck is at fault here?"

Jace flinched as if he'd been struck and his chest hitched like he was about to say something but Jake didn't give him room to speak.

"You're looking for a fight and I'm not going to give you one," Jake said but now his tone was drained of heat. "Just see yourself out."

"This is my apartment too, Jake," Jace snapped.

Jake didn't even bother to respond, he had already turned his back on his twin to walk away from the confrontation and head straight back toward his bed, just ready to pull the sheets over his head and block out the rest of the world for another hour or two.

"I told you when we were seventeen to stay away from Y/n." Jace spoke after him, stepping fully into the room now. "And right now, I'm telling you again—stay the fuck away from her."

Jake stopped his feet and slowly turned to meet the pair of eyes burning holes into his skin. "Or what?" Jake asked softly.

Jace's eyes widened slightly and again, he was caught off guard by the unyielding challenge in Jake's eyes. But Jake didn't stop there. He walked around the side of the bed, moving deliberately toward his brother, every inch of his body felt tense, like he was radiating years of suppressed rage.

"No, really. What the fuck are you going to do that you haven't already done, Jace?" Jake asked in a louder voice. "What are you gonna do? Continue to hide the fact that she was in love with me too? Take it to your grave?"

The color drained from Jace's face for a fraction of a second but his expression quickly hardened into a contemptuous sneer. "Oh, please," he scoffed, throwing his hands up in mock disbelief. "You really want to take some stupid childhood crush seriously?"

"Oh yeah? And since when do childhood crushes last up to freshman year of college, Jace?"

Jace opened his mouth, like a sharp retort was sitting right on the tip of his tongue but no sound came out and for the first time since he had stormed into the apartment, Jace was totally at a loss for words, his defensive posture faltered as the silence stretched further between them. He didn't have a defense, Jake knew there was no lie he could spin or justification he could give that would erase the fact that he had kept that truth buried for years.

His jaw twitched, his throat was working hard as he seemed to swallow down his pride. Unable to meet his brother’s unflinching glare any longer, Jace's eyes darted away toward the floor. He squared his shoulders, as if to desperately try to piece back together whatever authority he had left but the cracks in his composure were wide open by now.

"Just..." Jace started, totally stripped of his earlier explosive rage. "Just stay the fuck away from my best friend, Jake. I mean it."

Without waiting for a response, Jace turned sharply on his heel. His heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway before the front door slammed shut behind him with a deafening, final thud that rattled the picture frames on the wall.

Jake's shoulders didn't drop for five minutes after he left, his body felt heavy again, like his muscles were aching in that same way. He was starting to feel like a brand new person cause this Jake immediately grabbed his medication and swallow, followed by the rest of a bottle of water on his nightstand. He was about to toss the bottle in the trash when his phone burst to life on the wooden surface with a call.

Jake was willing to let it go to voicemail but the caller caught his eye—Jay.

Out of all the guys in his fraternity, Jay was one of the very few Jake actually respected and was tolerate. Jay wasn't like the rest of the frat brothers who enjoyed the surface level pleasures, Jake could've easily branded him the most level headed person he'd ever met, he was sensible and rarely got dragged into useless drama, so if Jay was calling, it was usually important.

And that's why Jake picked up. "Hey, Jay," Jake said into the phone.

On the other end of the line, an unruly irruption of sound immediately hit him, there was the muffled sound of a speaker playing somewhere outside. He could hear the chatter of a crowd and the sound of the wind like they were in the middle of a backyard kickback.

"Jake! Man, where the hell have you been?" Jay's voice came through, loud but genuine as usual. "It's been like three days since anyone at the house saw your face. Are you good?"

Jake rubbed a hand over his face, dragging his palm down his jaw as he stepped out of his bedroom and walked into the living room. "Yeah, man. I'm fine." He lied without missing a beat. "Just...been handling some stuff at home."

"Alright, well, as long as you're alive. The guys were starting to think you went completely off the grid," Jay said with a short laugh.

As Jake was about to respond, a giggly female voice broke through the speaker on Jay's end, it was loud enough to cut over the background music. "Jay! Who is that? Who are you talking to?"

"It's Jake," Jay replied away from the mic.

"Jake?!"

Oh no.

A quick squeal of thrill reached Jake's ear, followed by a brief rustle of static like the girl grabbed the phone directly out of Jay's hands.

"Jakey!" Her voice sang into the receiver, immediately heavy handed and flirty. "Oh my goodness, where have you been hiding? I've been looking everywhere for you!"

Jake froze in the middle of his living room, his brows pulling together as he tried to match the voice to a face. His mind was a total blank, he couldn't remember her face, let alone her name but he knew her voice was familiar. She was the one of a girls he'd been hooking up with for the past month or so.

"I literally left my top at your place last week," she huffed playfully. "I've been needing it back so bad. Can I come over right now to pick it up? Are you home?"

"Oh hi...you." Jake greeted awkwardly, attempting to play along to cover up the fact that he didn't have the faintest clue who he was talking to. He cleared his throat, his eyes dancing around the clean surface of the coffee table and the back of his sofa. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, you can come pick it up."

Holding the phone tightly between his shoulder and his ear, Jake walked back to his room and actively began searching for the top.

"Oh yay! I'll be there real soon."

When the call finally ended, Jake tossed his phone onto the bed and ran a hand through his messy hair.

Finding the random pieces of clothing girls would leave behind used to be easy when his place looked like a hurricane had hit it but ever since the cleaners had gone through the apartment, everything was impeccably neat. Every surface was wiped clean and every stray item had been safely tucked away.

That's why it took him nearly twenty minutes of digging through his closet and then the stack of folded laundry before his fingers brushed against a cropped piece of fabric. He pulled it out and held it up by the straps, only to scoff at the sight of it. It was the most basic black tank top imaginable, something that couldn't have cost more than five dollars. She obviously didn't care about the shirt and it was just a weak excuse for her to come back over to his place.

He walked back out to the living room and set the top on the arm of the couch, then he pulled a meal prep container out of the fridge and quickly heating it up so he could force himself to eat every bite. Once he was done, he headed straight into the bathroom to wash off the film of the morning's drama that was hard to ignore.

He was vigorously rubbing at his wet hair after his shower and just as he reached the living room, an expectant knock hit the front door.

"Timing's great." He muttered to himself, dropping the

towel around his neck and grabbing the top off the arm of the sofa, just ready to hand it over and send her on her way.

But when he pulled the door open, she had other plans. He extended his arm to her with the piece of fabric in it before he even fully looked up. "Hey."

"Here's the top." The girl with her oversized sunglasses pushed up onto her hair didn't reach for it. She quickly pouted and crossed her arms over her heavy chest instead. "Really? What? You're not even gonna invite me in?"

"I'm actually pretty busy right now," Jake threw out, taking a small step forward to block the entrance.

"Oh, come on, it'll take two seconds." She rolled her eyes, already sliding right past his shoulder into the apartment and because she had spent the night there a bunch of times, she didn't hesitate for a second before heading straight to the kitchen as if she owned the place. "I am absolutely parched, Jakey. You have any iced coffee?"

"Look, you really need to go," Jake said to her as he followed her bouncing frame, his patience wearing dangerously thin. "I have stuff I need to deal with today."

She completely ignored him, opening his fridge and humming to herself as she scanned the shelves. "Ugh, the frat house has been so boring without you these past few days, Jakey. Honestly, it's been a total drag. Some guy from lacrosse tried to hit on me last night literally ten minutes after he came out of a room he was fucking my friend in. Like, gross, right?"

She grabbed a bottle of sparkling water, snapped the cap off and took a long sip, simply blatantly ignoring Jake's rigid posture and icy expression.

Jake leaned back against the edge of the kitchen island, tossing the black tank top onto the countertop beside him. "I'm serious. You got your shirt, now you need to head out."

Instead of moving toward the door, she closed the distance between their bodies, stepping right into his personal space so she was standing just inches away from where he leaned against the island. She tilted her head back to look up at him, intentionally arching her back so her low cut top left very little to the imagination as his gaze dropped for a split second.

"You're so tense." She drawled, reaching out to rest a manicured hand lightly on his bare chest, right over his collarbone where the towel was still resting. She looked up through her lashes, before dropping her tone into a suggestive whisper. "I really missed you, you know? You've been making yourself so hard to find."

Jake had to actively suppress the urge to cringe right in her face. The way her eyelashes fluttered and the exaggerated pout of her glossed lips felt so intensely performative that it almost made his stomach turn.

Before he could take a step back, both her hands slid up from his chest and wrapped tightly around the back of his neck, digging her nails into the skin just above his towel. She arched up on her tiptoes and tugged him down until their faces were barely an inch apart.

"Well?" Her eyes searched his face and she was clearly unbothered by his lack of enthusiasm. "Are you gonna answer me, Jakey? Did you miss me too or are you just gonna stand there looking pretty?"

Jake looked down at her, desperately trying to summon a name. Kylie? Chloe? Ashley? His brain remained a frustratingly blank.

She was pulling out every single classic play in her book, every calculated and seductively slow move that would have worked on him without a second thought just a week ago. Seven days ago, he would have picked her up, thrown her over his shoulder and taken her straight to his bedroom without asking a single question, just to use her body to drown out whatever residual noise was rattling around in his head.

But right now, none of it was working. The touch of her hands on his neck felt almost invasive, the smell of her perfume wasn't sweet this time.

The only reason he hadn't immediately untangled her fingers from his skin and marched her straight out the front door was because his brain was currently burning alive. The sound of your voice all soft and slurred, confessing that you had wanted to love him was still ringing in his ears. Jace's furious face, accusing him of crossing boundaries and being intrusive was flashing behind his eyelids every time he blinked.

The unbearable load of regret and anger was pressing down on his chest so hard that he could barely draw a clean breath.

He needed a distraction, needed something, in fact anything to make the noise stop, to tear your face out of his head and burn down the memory of his twin's accusations.

So his hands moved before his rational mind could stop them. Jake reached down his to grab her small waist with a firm pressure that had her gasping. He pulled her flush against his body, leaning down until their lips were close.

"Mm. You wanna remind me why I missed you?"

He just needed to lose himself in the mindless effort it would take to fuck this girl, all he wanted to do was drown out you and his brother, even if it was only for an hour or two.

When she tiptoed up to kiss him, he didn't pull back, leaning into it and encouraging her instead, his hands moved lower to grip her hips before lifting her completely off her feet. He hoisted her up and set her down on the edge of the island, the startling movement sent a stray glass sliding an inch to the side.

She let out a soft moan against his mouth as her hands moved, she even reached down to take his hand and guide it under her shirt, pressing his palm flush over her breast for him to squeeze. Jake obliged, his fingers tightened lazily over her skin as he groped her like he was just going through the motions.

Except something was deeply wrong because even with the heat of her body and the desperate way she was clinging to him and the low noises she was making as she kissed his neck, his body simply wasn't responding the way it was supposed to. Between his legs, he was completely numb. Yes, his heart was racing but it wasn't from desire, it seemed to be from the adrenaline of trying to force a reaction that wasn't there, in other words—he was flaccid.

She worked a trail of wet kisses down the side of his jaw, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered something breathless and needy. Jake squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw as he tried with everything in him to concentrate, he was trying to picture anything or anyone that’ll get his body to cooperate and drown out the mental noise.

Realizing the kitchen island was only making him feel more detached, he reached under her thighs and easily picked her up off the counter. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, giggling happily into his neck at the new shift as he carried her out of the kitchen and down the dim hallway toward his bedroom.

He tossed her onto the mattress with a soft thud, the heavy blankets shifted under her weight when she tumbled back. Her giggles buzzed against the quiet of the room, so high and eager, she was already pushing herself up onto her elbows and looking up at him through heavy lids, she really wasn’t wasting a second, quickly scrambling forward on her hands and knees across the bet to reach out and tug his sweats down.

Jake stood over the edge of the bed, panting in shallow breaths while his mind was still feeling like thunderstorm. He wanted this to work, he needed this to work.

She yanked the sweatpants down over his hips, pulling his underwear down with them. Then she froze. Of course she did, he still wasn’t hard one bit.

Her hands hovered right near his thighs as her eyes registered what was in front of her, the man wasn’t even showing a trace of an erection.

"Oh...?" She hummed, her flirtatious smile was already faltering into a look of confused disappointment. She tilted her head up to look at his face and a sharp spike of mortification hit Jake like a bucket of ice water, burning hot across his chest and cheeks. He quickly gave an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

"Ah...sorry," he muttered in a strained voice. "Just...give me a minute, yeah? It's been a long morning."

"Take your time, Jakey." She said sweetly but Jake could hear the faint edge of impatient judgment in her voice and it only made his skin prickle more. She sat back on her heels and watched him with expectant eyes.

Jake looked down at himself, biting his inner cheek so hard he tasted blood. He grabbed himself, wrapping his fingers around his cock as he stroked it roughly, he needed to summon the physical response that usually came so easily but his body felt detached from his brain, he was numb to the touch of his own hands and numb to the girl sitting on his bed waiting for him with her tits out.

Come on, he growled at himself internally. Come on. Get it together.

Frustrated, he squeezed his eyes shut to cut off the sight of the bedroom and the girl on the bed. He was trying to think of anything that turned him on, any primal thought that could pull him out of his own head and force his blood to pump where it was supposed to. He tried to recall old memories, random hookups, dirty videos, anything that had ever worked before but nothing stuck. Everything washed away in the overwhelming fog of his own exhaustion.

And then, unexpectedly, his mind supplied a memory from just a week ago and it wasn’t even a sweet memory.

It was you, standing on the cold sidewalk outside, illuminated by the warm streetlights, your chin tilted up as looked at him like he was the scum of the earth. He heard your angry voice slicing right through him, berating him, calling him every horrible thing you could think of, screaming at him for ruining everything.

He remembered the intoxicating power you held over him in that exact moment, the burning fervor in your eyes locked onto his, demanding his undivided attention, caring enough to hate him with every fiber of your being. It hit him like a lightning strike and his pulse spiked immediately, the blood rushed south and in seconds, before he could even push the image of you out of his head, his cock twitched and hardened in his hand until he was throbbing and leaking.

He opened his eyes to look at his, almost not believing it was real. The girl's eyes widened as she watched the sudden transformation, she let out a delighted laugh. "Well, damn," she beamed as her earlier annoyance disappeared instantly. "Guess you really just needed a second."

Without waiting another beat, she leaned forward and wrapped her fingers around the base of his length, taking him deep into her mouth.

Jake threw his head back, his fingers tangling in her hair, he couldn't deny that she was good at what she was doing. The physical sensation was undeniably amazing, she was swirling her tongue effortlessly around his sensitive tip, gliding down his length and taking him deep into her throat without even a hint of a gag.

Every wet suck sent a jolt of pleasure straight up his spine, forcing involuntary grunts to leave his lips. Yet, as good as it felt physically, his mind was miles away, still held hostage by the thought of you.

A wave of humiliation washed over him, turning his stomach into a tight knot. He had never felt so utterly wrecked and exposed in his entire life. How the fuck had the vivid memory of you tearing into him, screaming at him, scolding him with those furious eyes give him a rock hard boner when a gorgeous, willing girl naked on his bed couldn't even make him twitch?

Was it some sick, twisted masochism? Or was it simply the terrifying reality that it was you? That even your rawest anger and deepest hatred were more intoxicating to him than anyone else's pleasure?

He felt filthy. Was he really so tragically gone for you that even the memory of your anger was the only thing capable of pulling him out of a slump?

It was a dangerous realization, like a true loss of control that made his skin feel like it was burning from the inside out. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, gripping her hair tighter until she whined.

And then, just as he was getting close to edge, her tongue was doing wonders, the warmth of her mouth slipped away abruptly, her hands released his hips too and his eyes snapped open. He looked down at her sat back on her knees and staring up at him with a frown. Her lips were slick with his precum but it was the way her eyes narrowed with both confusion and rapidly mounting offense that threw him off.

"What?"

"What's wrong?"

"Who the fuck is Y/n?" She snapped in a clipped way that definitely wasn’t flirty or sexy anymore like it was minutes ago.

Jake froze and if he was about to deny it, he’s pretty sure the speed at which his features lost color would’ve given him away.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Don't what me, Jake." She sneered, throwing her hands up in utter disbelief as she scrambled backward toward the headboard, pulling the top sheet over her naked chest. "You just said her name. You moaned it, actually."

"No, I didn't," Jake said instantly, in all honesty he had no idea if he had actually said your name. "I didn't say anything. You're mishearing things."

"I am not mishearing things!" She shouted out of nowhere. She pointed a sharp finger straight at his face, her eyes widening even further as a memory seemed to click in her head. "Wait...hold on. Isn't Y/n that girl always trailing your brother around campus? His best friend?"

The room suddenly felt like a pressure cooker on the verge of exploding. Every muscles in Jake’s body locked all at once as panic gripped him tight.

"Shut up," Jake hissed at her. "Just shut the fuck up. You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"Oh, really?!" She screeched louder, throwing the sheets off her legs and scrambling off the mattress with embarrassed rage. She grabbed her discarded top off the floor and held it to her chest. "I don't know what I'm talking about? I literally had your whole dick in my mouth and you're groaning another girl's name!"

"You are fucking unbelievable! You could've just said you didn't want me here. You could've just told me you weren't in the mood instead of pulling this psychopathic shit!"

"What the fuck are you on about?!" Jake barked back at her as she walked out of the room, he was pulling his sweats from his ankles, yanking them up over his hips and following her into the hallway.

"I told you to leave like three fucking times! I literally blocked the front door! You're the one who forced your way inside, went to my fridge and came onto me!"

"Whatever, Jake! Whatever!"

Her voice hit a piercing frequency, like the sting of rejection had morphed into total scorn. "I can't even believe this! You're actually sitting here fantasizing about your brother's best friend? Are you insane?"

"Keep her name out of your fucking mouth." Jake snarled, stepping right into her space and towering over her frame.

"Why? Because it's the truth?!" The girl was unbothered by his glare, now that her pride was completely shredded. "Isn't Y/n basically like your fucking sister?! You guys grew up together! That is so incredibly sick, Jake. You are an absolute weirdo. A pathetic, sick fucking weirdo—"

"Just get the fuck out!" Jake yelled, his voice booming off the high ceilings as they spilled into the living room. His fists were clenched so hard his knuckles were stark white, his chest heaving as he pointed a rigid finger straight toward the front door. "Get your shit and leave my apartment right now!"

"Gladly!" She snatched her purse off the island with a clatter. She spun around like she was about to deliver one last insult but the words never came.

The front door was swinging close and standing right in the middle of the living room with Jace’s spare key dangling loosely from trembling fingers was you.

Your lips were parted and your breath panting in your chest while your wide eyes were darting between the half dressed girl standing in the middle of the living room and a shirtless Jake in stunned horror.

Every single word she had just shrieked had clearly met your ears, every accusation, every mention of your name, every sick detail of what had just transpired in his bedroom, they were still resounding off the walls of the living room.

The world around Jake went fully mute, like the ringing in his ears was melting into a sickening stillness as his eyes locked onto yours.

The girl's mocking laugh cut through all that very quickly though. "Oh my God," she wheezed in fake amusement as she looked between your frozen frame and Jake's stiff body. "Not the Y/n actually showing up. Wow. That is just...that is rich."

She turned toward you, crossing her arms over her chest with a malicious smirk. "Do you know that your childhood friend thinks about you when he's getting his dick sucked?"

Before another word could leave her mouth, Jake snapped, as if the last of his restraint broke. He crossed the short distance between them in one terrifying stride, his hand shooting out to lock around her wrist. He didn't say a word or even yell. He just hauled her backward, yanking her straight to the door and ignoring the offended gasp she let out, he was already slamming the door in her face though.

"I...I'm sorry," you stuttered out.

"I was looking for Jace," you blurted as the words tumbling out of your mouth in a desperate attempt to explain away your presence, seeing as you’ve never been here before. "His...his location said he was here. I was just worried he wasn’t answering his texts but...I uh I guess it's just his phone he left behind."

You pointed at the floor near the entryway rug.

Jake followed your line of sight to Jace’s phone, sitting right beside the baseboard, it must have slipped out of Jace's pocket during his explosive exit earlier and he just didn’t notice.

Jake stared at you, just speechless as you quickly bent down and scooped the phone off the floor, slipping it into the back pocket of your jeans with shaking hands.

"I'm...I'm just gonna leave now," you refused to even look him in the eye as you backed up toward the threshold again, your fingers blindly reached behind you for the doorknob. "I'm sorry. I'll just go."

The humiliation of the whole situation, the lingering chemical haze in his system and the agony of having you standing right there, looking at him like he was a complete freak, it all exploded into another wave of defensiveness.

"Yeah," Jake muttered under his breath, turning his back to walk to his room. "You're real good at that."

The words were low but in the quiet apartment, they hit like a whip crack.

"What is that supposed to mean?" You scowled at him.

Jake stopped by the couch and grabbed a shirt he had tossed there earlier and yanked it over his head in a harsh move. "It means what it means," he started, staring you right in the eye. "You're fucking amazing at running away, Y/n. It's basically your signature move."

"What the fuck does that mean, Jake?" You doubled down, stepping further into the apartment and letting the door click shut behind you. Your voice rose, trembling from leftover hangover nausea and a new anger. "I literally just walked into your apartment while you were—while some naked girl was screaming at you! I came here looking for Jace! What the hell are you even talking about?!"

Jake laughed in your face but it was a humorless laugh as he rubbed a hand aggressively over his face, only to push his damp hair back off his forehead. He took a long breath, before just waving an offensively dismissive hand toward the door.

"Whatever," he tossed out flatly, like he was trying to shut it down before he completely lost his mind. "Forget it. Just go."

"No. No, absolutely not," you snapped, planting your feet firmly and placing your hands on your hips as you glared at him. "Tell me what you meant. You don't get to say shady shit like and just tell me to leave. Tell me what I'm running away from, Jake."

"From me!" The sudden volume of his voice shattered the fragile air between you. He took two steps forward until he was looking over you. "You run from me! You run from whatever the fuck happened between us and you run from your feelings for me!"

You stared at him as your mouth helplessly dropped open in bewilderment, right before your features hardened into a wall of resistance. "I don't have any feelings for you, Jake."

"Are you out of your mind? I have never had feelings for you. Unless you’re talking about how much I hate you."

"Sure," Jake scoffed and smirked but it didn’t match the way his eyes looked broken. "Sure you don't. Newsflash, Y/n—I don't know if your brain was too fried from all the alcohol to remember anything from last night but I was the one who came to pick you up from that sketchy club downtown."

You blinked at him, your hands dropped from your hips to your sides as you stumbled over your own tongue. "What...? What are you...no, Jace took me home—"

"Yeah, Jace," Jake cut you off, throwing his hands up in mock celebration. "Oh great guy, Jace! Except Jace was sound asleep in his dorm with Jungwon all night! It was me, Y/n. I answered your call. I got in my car at midnight, drove twenty minutes downtown and dragged your wasted ass off the sidewalk!"

"You're such a liar," you whispered but you couldn’t ignore the dread you left as you flipped through your drunken memories from last night. "You're lying to make me feel insane—"

"Am I?"

"Do you want me to list everything out for you? Do you want me to remind you how you slurred your words into my shoulder while I carried you up three flights of stairs?"

"Stop it," you pleaded while your chest started to feel tighter. "Jake, stop—"

"You told me all about how I make it hard for you to love me," he just kept going even with pain in his voice vibrating off the walls. "You told me you loved me all the way up to freshman year. You said it, Y/n. You said it right to my face! Mrs Jake Sim"

"Stop!" You screamed and shoved his chest with both hands with enough force to make him step back. Tears of mortification were already spilling over your eyelashes. "You had no right! You had no fucking right to be there! You should have called Jace! You should have left me alone!"

"You called me!" Jake shouted back, throwing his arms wide in complete frustration. "You called my number! And even if you thought you were calling him, what was I supposed to do, Y/n?! Leave you stranded on the side of a dark road in the middle of the night?!"

"Why does everyone in my fucking life act like I'm some kind of monster?!" Jake yelled, his voice cracking down the middle. "Why does Jace and why do you think I'm horrible enough to just leave you stranded out on the road, just helpless for some random guy to pick up?! For fuck's sake, Y/n, no matter how much you hate me, no matter how much shit has gone down—how could you ever think I wouldn't come get you?"

"You are horrible, Jake," you spoke so calmly that it made Jake shiver but he was laughing right after.

"I'm not." He shook his head. "I'm not, Y/n and you know I'm not. If I was really as horrible as you keep pretending I am, you wouldn't have been so in love with me for that long."

Watching your wide eyed reaction, Jake saw the realization hit you like a train but he couldn't stop the dam from bursting. He had kept these poisons locked in his chest for far too long.

"I know I've been a bad person," he started. "I know I've fucked up! I know I've pushed everyone away, I know I've made terrible choices but I am trying, Y/n. I am trying so hard to fix myself and to make things better."

A tear finally escaped his right eye but he didn't even bother to wipe it away.

"Do you have any idea?" he choked out as each breath scraped his lungs. "Do you have any fucking idea how long I've been in love with you? Did Jace ever tell you how I was the one who wanted to take you to the dance? Did he tell you how my whole family basically bullied me out of it?"

Your heart slammed against your ribs so hard it felt bruised.

"Did I ever say a single word when you gave Jace all the credit and all your love for that necklace?" Jake continued as his eyes dropped down to your chest where said necklace sat. "The one you still wear around your neck every single day?"

He pointed right at the delicate chain tucked beneath the collar of your shirt.

"I got you that, Y/n." Jake sobbed out softly but a bitter smile was touching his lips as well. "I spent four months saving up my allowance to buy you that thing. I think I actually gave it to your mum but somehow you just assumed it was Jace."

The floor seemed to shift under you suddenly remembered Wednesday in the dining hall, when Jungwon had asked about it and Jace had no memory of buying it when you claimed he did, you had teased him for having such a terrible memory that he couldn't even remember buying his best friend her favorite piece of jewelry.

Except there was no memory for Jace to have, he hadn't forgotten buying it—he had never bought it at all.

It had been Jake. It had always been Jake, standing in the corner, watching you give his brother all the love, all the smiles and all the credit for a gift he took time out to get for you, while he took the blame for being the distant and heartless twin.

You had no idea when you started to sway where you stood but the room was spun sideways as the crippling heaviness of his confession hit you all at once. It was like the narrative you had spent years carefully constructing and believing was crumbling into dust and the next thing you knew he was catching you from falling.

"Woah—hey," Jake breathed out with his voice now filled of protective concern, his hands shot out to catch you by the waist, steadying your weight before you could lose your balance completely. The new proximity was so sudden and when your palms reflexively landed on his broad chest, all you could feel was the erratic beat of his heart.

The heat rolling off him was almost stifling the narrow space between you and when you slowly tilted your head up, your eyes wet with tears met.

Jake was also left in pieces, his eyes were glossy too but also lined with exhaustion and stripped of the usual cocky defiance you were used to. He looked down at you like you were the only thing keeping him tethered to the floor, like you were his whole world while his thumb was brushing a shaky circle against the side of your waist through the fabric of top.

The silence hanging in the air was so fragile, both of you knew it was stretched to its absolute breaking point but Jake still spoke.

"Please," he started, voice barely louder than a breath. "Please tell me you still love me, Y/n."

You couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth, Jake Sim loved you? Jake Sim loved you too?

"I—I’ve never stopped loving you."

New tears blurred your vision and poured down your face as you looked up at him through the haze. "You made it so hard, Jake...why did you do that? Why did you love hurting me?"

The heartbreak in your voice knocked the air right out of his lungs and his face contorted into a look of remorse.

"I'm sorry." His hands tightened around your waist, pulling you a fraction closer as if afraid you'd vanish, like his next words would have you leaving. "I'm so fucking sorry, Y/n. I was a child...but that doesn't even excuse a single thing I did. I was a fool. A blind and arrogant fool and I just…I didn't have the maturity to handle what I felt for you, I didn't know how to love you right."

He leaned down and pressed his forehead directly against yours, making you feel his uneven breath fanning over your lips.

"I can make it right," he pleaded in a desperate whisper, using his thumb to brush away a stray tear on your cheek. "I can make it right now, Y/n...if you just let me. Please, just let me."

You had no words left, every wall you had built over the years to keep Jake Sim out was gone, every argument burned away by the passion hanging between you. Your bodies were pressed flush together and his chest was rising and falling against yours with his hands placed tightly to your waist. This was the closest you had ever been to him, way closer than the years of stolen glances, closer than the shared childhood memories, closer than the bitter screams in your memories.

His lips were right there, inching barely a breath away and calling out to you in a way you had spent years trying to ignore and heaven help you, you couldn’t fight your feelings for a single second longer, you leaned up and kissed him.

Jake was immediately inviting, how could he not be? His mouth opening against yours with a starving fervor that made your head spin. His hands slid down to firmly wrap around your thighs, hauling you up just enough that your feet were barely tiptoeing on the hard floor but you were pinned directly into his heat and that’s all he wanted.

The kiss deepened in a matter of seconds, slick with tongue and an eager battle of years of unspoken yearning finally breaking through. When he parted his lips from yours, he dragged his mouth down the sensitive path of your jaw, burying his face into your neck and kissing over your skin, sending a helpless whimper tearing from your throat.

Your impatient self couldn't take the space, you were already reaching up and tangling your fingers tightly into the locks of his hair to forcefully tug his head back up and capture his lips again.

Jake groaned into your mouth and reality crashed over him through the sensory overload, he felt the dangerous momentum building between you two, he really did try to create a inch of distance, his hands shifted to press gently against your shoulders.

"Wait—Y/n, wait," he rasped out, trying to catch his breath. "Let’s—let's just breathe for a second—"

But it seemed like you weren’t having it, you were far too deep, too consumed by the thought of him actually loving you as heartbreakingly as you loved him.

Without pause, you grabbed the hem of your top and yanked it over your head to toss it blindly onto the floor. Before he could even process the sudden flash of your bare skin and commit it to memory, you reached for his shoulders again and jumped this time, wrapping your legs tightly around his waist so he was forced to catch you.

Jake’s arms reacted on pure instinct and his hands shot out to firmly scoop under your thighs, supporting your entire weight as his chest heaved against yours and looked up at you like he was putty in your hands, you could ask the man to kiss your feet right now and he’d do it without thinking.

All you could think of in that moment was how many nights you had spent deep in this exact fantasy. A stray thought crossed your mind—would the girl who had just stormed out get a kick out of finding out that you had always fantasized about Jake, too? That all her cruel insults were useless because you had wanted him just as terribly?

Jake turned and carried you straight down the hallway toward his bedroom, your legs locking firmer around him and your hands buried in his hair. He was fully aware of the sickening irony that you were the second girl he had carried down this exact hall in the space of two hours but as he looked up at you, he knew you were the only one that actually mattered.

When he set you down on the edge of the mattress, his hands lingering on your hips for a fraction of a second before slipping away. He just stood there, just frozen and watching as you kicked off your shoes and shed your jeans. He was totally enthralled by you, taking in every single inch of bare skin like a man seeing water after a lifetime in the desert.

Following your lead, he quickly stripped off his sweatpants. "You're so gorgeous, Y/n." He said to you. "So fucking gorgeous."

He closed the distance between you again, leaning down to capture your mouth in another deep kiss, his hand slid around to your back and his fingers made quick work of your bra clasp. The front popped loose and as his palm immediately cupped your bare breast, his thumb and forefinger lightly pinched your sensitive nipple.

A gasp broke against his lips, one he could feel in his chest. His grip tightened around your waist as he pulled you along with him and sat back on the edge of the bed, guiding you to straddle his lap. As you settled over his thighs, you tried to ignore his bulge poking against your thong, he was already leaning down to bury his face in your chest, taking one of your nipples deep into his mouth.

He sucked it into mouth, swirling his tongue around the peak until your hands scrambled for purchase against his broad shoulders and your back arched further into him. "Mmm Jake." You moaned out, unable to help the way your hips began to roll and tilt over his lap.

Jake grunted against your breast, gripping your thighs to keep encourage your movements, moaning at the feel of your wet folds against the bulge in his boxers. He was about to switch to your other breast but before his mouth could move, your hands shifted up to his shoulders and you firmly pushed him back.

He let himself fall at your will, landing flat against the mattress with a laugh. "Oh, okay," he grunted softly, a smirk full of ecstasy catching the corner of his lips as he looked at you.

You shifted your flimsy thong to the side and you your body turned in his lap, reversing your position so your back was to him. He didn’t get the chance to even ask what you were doing before you were lowering yourself over his face, bringing your wet folds right above him.

Jake’s eyes widened at the view but he quickly regained composure and his hands immediately locked around the sides of your hips and he knew exactly what to do.

He also knew he was amazing at it, too and an arrogant confidence settled into the way his hands gripped your thighs, holding you firmly in place.

He parted his lips and buried his mouth right into your dripping pussy, wrapping his wet mouth around your swollen folds. The first touch of his tongue sent a shudder straight through you, making you moan instantly.

"Nghh—Jake. Fuck."

He seemed to be taking his time with the way he glided his tongue deliberately around your throbbing clit, setting a steady gentle tug that made your hands scramble wildly for purchase against his knees and the sheets. The heat of his mouth was utter torture, every flick of his tongue kept hitting the exact right spot, precisely driving you over the edge until your hips began to roll helplessly against his lips and you were riding his face not even caring if you smothering the man.

Jake was just as drunk on the pleasure as you were, so lost in the scent and taste of you as you rode his face, also not caring that you were smothering him. His hands dug firmly into the plush of your thighs and add, holding you down against his mouth as his tongue worked in the best strokes you’d ever felt.

"Ohh shit! J—Jake!" You sobbed out. "Mmm yes."

He met every roll of your hips with long, wet licks, sealing his lips tightly around your swollen folds. Every time he got a moan out of you, he vibrated a muffled chuckle straight into your skin, just loving every second of how you were using him. He loved the total weight of your body pressing over him, loved the helpless way your thighs shook against his ears and he loved knowing that every winded gasp echoing through his bedroom was because of his mouth.

"God, fuck...you taste so good, Y/n," Jake said against your wetness. "So fucking good for me."

Overwhelmed by the fervor, you tried to reach down for the waistband of his boxers. "Need...need yo—," You attempted to speak but your words were cut off when he wrapped his lips around your clit and started to suck just like he did your nipple.

You hooked your fingers under the elastic and dragged his boxers down just far enough to free his thick length. You were totally driven by the desire to drive him just as crazy as he was driving you, you adjusted and lowered your head down toward his lap to take his cock into your mouth. But the moment the warm head brushed past your lips and tasted his precum, Jake swirled his tongue directly over your clit again and your entire train of thought shattered.

"Oh god Jake! Your tongue—! Ahah—!" You cried but your voice was muffled with his shaft slipped into your mouth.

The pleasure was simply too much for you to function, so you ended up just resting your lips over the head of cock. “Mmmph...Jake, you’re gonna make me cum,” you whined softly around him, not able to actually suck him off the way you intended because your mind was far too fractured. You just hovered there, moaning and trembling, letting your hot mouth wrap around his tip while you rode the wave of agony his tongue was pounding into you.

Jake let out a moan of his own into your folds as your moans vibrated directly against his cock. His hips twitched up beneath you, his nails curled into the softness of your thighs while he picked up the pace.

"It’s okay, love. You don’t have to suck it, just moan around it." You heard him say. "Mhmm, just like that. Let me feel you."

He shifted his focus to your clit, flicking the tip of his tongue over the swollen knot in fast licks that grew sharper and faster with every second.

"Jake—Jake, stop, wait—!" You wailed sitting up as your whole body started to shake cause you were right at the verge of cumming. "I'm—ah!"

He realized you were about to try to run away so he held on tighter as your back arched and your thighs trembled uncontrollably against his head.

"Can I put a finger inside you?" Jake asked you but the tone of his voice made you completely freeze up.

There was no suave or cocky authority in it. It was thick with desperation in a way you hadn’t expected.

"Please, Y/n," His whines were softly muffled against your pussy and a small, pathetic sound caught in his throat as his forehead pressed hard against your hip. "Fuck...please? Just one. Let me..."

You gasped, the shock of it really cut through your pleasure. For years, you had built up this image of Jake in your head—imagining that if he ever got you into his bed, he would be completely in control, demanding and just ruthlessly dominant. But here he was, literally squirming beneath you, with his voice high and breathless while he begged for your permission like a boy who couldn't bear the thought of taking a single thing without you giving it to him first.

A squeal tore from your throat. "Yes! Yes, Jake, please—"

The moment the words left your mouth, he let out a needy breath of relief and not wanting to waste another second, he slid a thick finger deep into your tight heat.

"Ah! Jake! More!"

"God, you're so damn tight...fuck," Jake said, his other hand trembling as he began curling his finger downward, desperately seeking out that one spot inside you.

He didn't hold back at all, already pumping his finger in and out in deep thrusts, opening you up and working you until your pussy gushed wet heat all over his hand. The whimpering noises he made against your skin were unhinged, he was practically sobbing into your core as his tongue lapped up every single drop of slick pouring out of you while he continued to finger you. He moved his tongue on your clit, turning your moans and cries into music like he was begging you with every stroke to just let him give you more.

Before you could even catch your breath or get used to the finger inside you, Jake slid a second finger right beside the first.

"Jake…that’s..hmmm yes!"

He pumped them in and out so good, crooking them downward to hit places deep inside you that you couldn't possibly reach on your own. Every targeted thrust had you bucking against his face, losing your mind over the depth he was reaching.

Driven completely out of his mind too, Jake latched back onto your clit again, harder this time like he had forgone all restraint. He was gloriously messy about it, sucking hard, spitting and slurping at your swollen pussy with loud, wet noises that bounced around the room. A continuous moan coiled straight from his throat directly into your pussy as your wetness gushed freely, running down his jaw and dripping onto his neck.

He pulled his fingers out with a wet pop, but instantly replaced them with his tongue. He thrust it deep inside your entrance, curling and working it to stretch your pussy as far as it would go, mimicking the exact rhythm of his fingers while his hands clamped onto your hips to keep you still.

In the blinding veil of it all, you managed to lift your heavy eyelids open and through your blurry vision, you looked down past your chest to find Jake’s hips twitching involuntarily against the mattress, his thighs shook with every stroke he gave you. His hard cock was twitching against air, unattended with steady stream of precum leaking from the tip and making a path down a prominent vein.

He was so overtaken by giving you pleasure that his own body was weeping for relief, yet completely at your mercy. You watched with lust as he shifted his heels firmly into the mattress, digging them in as his hips began to thrust up into the bare air.

Watching him twitch and squirm beneath you was intoxicating and driven by curiosity and a sudden surge of power, you reached down to wrap both of your hands tightly around his leaking cock.

"Ahhh—no, please—!" Jake yelled into your pussy, his whole body jerked at the sudden contact and his hands tightened on your hips so hard his knuckles turned white. "Y/n, fuck, don't—"

But you didn't listen, you twisted and pumped your hands over his slick length, establishing a tight rhythm. The combination of your hands working his shaft and the taste of you on his tongue threatened to send him completely over the edge. His tongue started faltering, like he was losing all focus, even starting to slur unintelligible words directly against your wet folds.

"Oh...shi—, Y/n...please..." He begged but his hips were thrusting upward directly into your grip and he was chasing the friction of your palms with needy little twitches.

You were simply amazed at the sight, the sight of this loud, guarded, stubborn guy completely unraveling in your hands, whimper for whimper, totally at your mercy. He was so close, he knew he as and he couldn’t stop his core from shaking as he bucked into your touch.

"I'm—I'm gonna cum—Stop! Shit, Y/n, I'm gonna cum! P—Please!" He cried out and before he could let go completely, he suddenly grabbed your wrists and stopped your pumping hands in their tracks with a harsh tug.

He was flipping you over quickly and the world spun as he manhandled you onto your back, pinning your wrists beside your head as his bigger frame settled over yours.

He closed his eyes for a painful minute, the he dropped his head into the crook of your neck, letting out a low stream of curses into your skin, every muscle in his shoulders locked tight as he fought back the edge he had almost tumbled over.

"Fuck...fuck," he groaned in a shaky voice. He lifted his head and opened his eyes to look into yours with nothing but desperation. "I was so fucking close...but I can't. I want to make love to you first, Y/n. Please? Can I please?"

You didn't answer with words, you reached down between your bodies, wrapping your fingers around his pulsing cock to line the thick head directly against your drenched hole.

Jake gasped at the sensation, his hips twitching forward but as his hand moved down to shove your thong further out of the way, the thin lace gave out under his eager grip, tearing down the middle with a loud rip.

He paused for a second, looking at the torn fabric hanging in his hand. "Oh...I'm sorry," he mumbled, looking back up at you but the expression on his face completely betrayed him—his eyes were blown out with lust and a faint smirk tugged at his lips that showed he wasn't really sorry at all.

Before you could scold him for it, he grounded his hands firmly into the mattress on either side of your head, resting the hot tip of his cock against your entrance, his jaw clenching as he slowly began to push inside.

"Jake...mmh, wait—it's so big..."

The moment the words hit his ears, Jake had to tightly shut his eyes again. "Don't—fuck, Y/n, don't say that," he pleaded with a voice so strained as he fought the urge to just slam all the way home.

Realizing how tight you were around him, he forced his hips to stay still for a moment and reached down between your bodies, using his thumb to find your swollen clit and began to rub soothing circles against it, deliberately trying to coax your body into relaxing for him.

"Breathe for me, love," he whispered against your skin, leaning down to press soft kisses to your lips, then to your cheeks and down to the corner of your jaw.

As your body melted under his touch and the tension in your thighs began to give way, Jake took advantage of the shift, groaning low in his chest and slowly pushing the rest of his cock all the way inside your tight pussy, burying himself to the hilt.

The sheer feeling of him stretching you to your absolute limit was overwhelming and every small shift of his hips brought another helpless whine spilling from your lips.

"Jake, fuck...it’s too big," you repeated, your fingers dug into his shoulders as your breath hitched in your chest. "You’re so...ah, Jake...Mm my pussy."

Jake gave a tormented grunt, trying to pull back just an inch to establish a new pace but your walls were clamped so tightly around his length that he could barely move.

"Y/n, shhh—fuck, stop whining like that." His words choked him. He buried his face into your neck again, like he was fighting for control. "You’re so fucking tight, love...I swear to God, if you keep making those noises, I’m gonna cum right now."

He managed to stay completely still for a second, locking his hips flush against yours while his breath came out hot against your skin, he was trying with everything in him not to lose his mind inside you before he even truly started.

Tears welled up in the corners of your eyes, blurring the sight of him as he finally established a deep pace. The sheer size of him, mixed with how deep he was sinking into you with every roll of his hips, made your head spin.

"Jake...fuck," you moaned out as you looked up at him. "You’re—you’re in my stomach..."

Jake’s eyes snapped to yours, suddenly drunk on how vocal you were being for him. A possessive spark lit up his face. "Where?" he asked, pausing his hips for a second but making sure he was deep. "Where, my love? Show me."

Shaking uncontrollably, you lifted one hand from his shoulder and pointed to the lower curve of your belly, right where you could feel the solid pressure of his cock stretching you.

A melting look softened his sharp features and a breathless coo escaped his lips as he looked down at your hand. "Right there, doll? Hmm? I'm right there?"

You gave a quick nod, so pathetic while your bottom lip trembled as more tears ran down your face.

"Fuck, you're so sweet for me," Jake was undone by the sight and now driven by the urge to get even deeper, he

reached down and grabbed your ankles, hauling your legs up and tossing them directly over his shoulders.

The new angle opened you up completely, plunging him straight to your absolute limit in one sharp, powerful thrust.

"Oh my god! Jake! I—I can’t!" The new depth hit the sensitive sweet spot inside you that Jake had been looking for.

"Mm? You like that?" Jake growled out, a triumphant smile catching on his lips as he picked up the pace a little more. His broad palms slammed flat against the mattress beside your head and his hips thrusted into you with a faster pace, every deep stroke brought out even louder moans that drove him out of his mind.

"I want to cum...fuck, Jake, I want to cum so bad!"

The unbearable coil in your lower belly tightened to a breaking point and driven wild by the deep pounding, your hand scurried down between your sweaty bodies. Your fingers found your swollen clit and started rubbing fast circles over the tender nub. That made your walls clamp down on his cock harder, literally sucking him deeper with every involuntary pulse.

Every nerve ending in his body screamed at him to just let go and cum inside your pussy right then and there.

"God—You’re driving me crazy, Y/n."

He dug his knees into the mattress, the muscles in his shoulders and thighs locked up as he fought with everything in him to keep his own orgasm at bay. He refused to end it yet, too intoxicated on the sight of you taking him so well, too addicted to the unfiltered sound of your moans and the loud slapping of your bodies colliding together.

"That's it, love…mmhm take it," he grunted through his gritted teeth, pushing his hips forward in intentional grinds that pushed your fingers directly into your clit. "Cum for me. Come on. Let go."

The unrelenting pressure inside you snapped all at once and a gasp was caught in your throat as your orgasm shattered through you like an earthquake. Your pussy walls contracted so tightly and with so much force, that you practically expelled his cock, pushing him back out of your entrance as your whole body arched off the bed.

Jake let out a startled noise, eyes dropping down to look between your legs where your pussy was pulsing in hard waves and your folds were fluttering, literally soaking the mattress beneath you in hot gushes that spurt freely over his thighs and the rumpled sheets.

"Fuck...fuck, Y/n." Jake gasped out, awestruck as he stared down at the wet mess you were making all over his bed.

"Hmm...no, don't look!" You squealed, as embarrassment suddenly washed over you, you threw both hands over your eyes, trying to hide your face from his gaze.

"Don't look?" Jake echoed but his voice was so dark with possessive satisfaction that you had to look at him. "God, I am so fucking in love with you. Look what you did to my bed, love."

You couldn’t even offer him another word of defense or tell him that you loved him too, he had grabbed your hips and flipped you over onto your stomach. You gasped as he gathered your hips, pulling your lower body back to bring your trembling thighs flush against his.

Then he guided his thickness right back against your pussy. "Look at you hiding your face like you didn't just wreck me."

He was already thrusting and pulling you back to meet him. "Oh fuck mr! Jaeyun! Yes yes yes!" You screamed into the pillow.

Jaeyun?

Now that he had already seen you completely unravel, all his restraint was gone. His grip on your waist got tighter and began pounding into you with a powerful rhythm. Every thrust was harder, faster and deeper than before, the wet slapping sound of his hips against your ass hit your ears as he took you over and over again.

"I love you, Y/n." Jake grunted right against the shell of your ear. He slammed forward, his hips drove his fat cock straight into exactly where you needed it. "Fuck...I love you so much."

You couldn't even form proper sentences anymore, your body was reacting on pure instinct and your tight walls were pumping slick cream all over his shaft with every single hit.

"Oh godddd! Jaaaake!" Your hands clawed at the sheets beneath you. "Right there—fuck, right there Jake!"

"I'm so fucking in love with you, baby...I can't even think straight..." He pulled your body up so your back was to his chest and his palm was pressed to your belly, right where he could feel his cock thrusting into you.

The confession plus the blinding sensation of his cock grinding against your sweet spot, broke down whatever remaining barrier you had left.

"I love you too!" You threw your head back against his shoulder. "I love you, Jake! Ah—!" "You—You’re going to make me cum again!"

Hearing those words spill from your lips was the final straw for Jake, he gave one last guttural sound from the back of his throat, his grip tightened around your stomach as he placed kisses and bites on your neck, his thrusts turned fast and unhinged as he chased his own final peak right along with you.

He grabbed you by your hair and slammed you down into the pillows, pinning your face firmly as he delivered his final thrusts. The possessive weight of his hand held you completely anchored, leaving you helpless under his hips.

"Cum with me, love." "Fuck...cum on this cock right now. Please."

"Yes! Yes, Jake!" You responded, sliding your arm between your wet thighs, you pressed your palm flat against your swollen clit, slapping and grinding against the swollen knot.

The visual shattered whatever fragile hold Jake had left, watching your hand work wildly over your clit while he pounded into you, mixed with the tight spasms of your walls suddenly clamping down around him again, it all pushed him right over the cliff.

"Fuck—! Y/n!" Jake roared, his entire body locking up, he slammed his hips all the way forward and shoved his thick length to the absolute hilt deep inside your pulsing pussy. His chest heaved as he came violently, an endless torrent filling you up completely as your body shuddered under his. His grip on the back of your head softened into a tender hold, his forehead dropped to the pillow beside your head as you both rode out the overwhelming waves of your shared release.

Jake collapsed over you, carefully keeping most of his weight propped up on his forearms, refusing to crush you. His skin sweaty just like yours and when he shifted his weight, reaching down to wrap a thick arm around your waist to pull you flush against his chest because he wanted nothing more than to hold you close while your heartbeats slowed together.

"Hey..." he called out to you and leaned in to press a gentle kiss to your shoulder.

"Don't." you choked out, pressing your hands hard against his broad chest.

Jake’s heart almost stopped beating. He looked down at you and his brow squeezed together in instant confusion. "Y/n...?"

As the feverish haze of the moment rapidly cleared, the air in the room suddenly turned cold and when he looked down into your face, he didn't see the soft look of someone who had just confessed their love. He saw the sudden panic and a crushing look of regret staring back at him and a sharp spike of fear shot straight through Jake's chest,

"No...no, wait," he muttered, watching as you forcefully pushed yourself up off the mattress, breaking away from his touch as if his skin burned you. "Y/n, baby please wait,"

"Don’t—Don’t call me that, Jake. We...God, we shouldn't have done that."

"What?" Jake sat up instantly, not knowing what to do while you searched the room for your discarded clothes . "Y/n, what are you talking about?"

You didn't look at him, your hands were trembling so badly you could barely function as you frantically searched the floor, snatching up your shirt and scrambling to pull the pieces of your clothes together.

"This was a mistake," you whispered. "Jake, I...I have to go."

"Y/n, stop! Please, talk to me!" Jake panicked, throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and quickly pulling his boxers on. His eyes were wide and terrified as he realized you were pulling your clothes back on, the confident, loving man from seconds ago entirely shattered by the sudden distance between you.

"Look at me! Please, don't just leave like this—what do you mean a mistake?"

"I mean we shouldn’t have had sex!" You blurted out loudly, shoving your arms through the sleeves of your top. The panic in your chest was consuming, making your hands shake so badly you could barely button it. "Oh God...what would Jace say?"

Jake went completely still. "What?" Jake asked in disbelief. "Jace? What the fuck does Jace have to do with this?"

You didn't answer, you just couldn't, so you grabbed your shoes from the floor, desperate to reach the door and escape the room. But before you could take two steps, Jake moved, stepping directly into your path, using his hands to grip your shoulders gently and blocking the doorway. His touch wasn't forceful but it was solid enough to ground you and stop your escape in its tracks.

"Y/n, stop. Just—please, calm down for a second so I can speak." He pleaded, eyes searching yours. He took a deep breath, sliding his hands down to wrap around your trembling wrists.

"Look, I know I sound like a broken fucking record by now," Jake started, "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Yes, I know we shouldn't have just had sex right now. I know the timing is fucked up and I know everything between us is so complicated. But I can't take it back, Y/n. And...Fuck me, I'm not even sure I would take it back."

You were already starting to cry again.

"I know I can't ever take back the things I've done to hurt you," Jake continued, softly stroking over the pulse points on your wrists with his thumbs. "I know I fucked up in the past. But by God, Y/n...I want to try. I want to learn how to love you the way you actually deserve to be loved. I'm so done running from this." He swallowed hard and clenched his jaw as he addressed the name hanging like a rainy cloud between you.

"And Jace?" Jake said softly, looking straight into your eyes without flinching. "I know he's going to have his reservations. I know he's going to hate me and I know he's going to try and protect you from me. And I'm ready for that. I'm ready to deal with whatever Jace throws at me because losing you again? Not fighting for you right now? That's the only thing in this whole fucked up world that actually scares the shit out of me."

The tears welling in your eyes fell down your cheeks and Jake’s thumb quickly brushed them away. His own eyes were glossy as he continued to speak.

"I know I can't fix everything in a day, or a week, or a month," he whispered. "I know it might take a whole fucking year—or longer. But however long it takes for me to make it up to you, Y/n...I'm here. I'm not going anywhere this time. I am fucking anchored to you."

He took a shaky, ragged breath, his broad palms rising to cup the sides of your face, holding you like you were made of glass, like he was terrified that one wrong move would cause you to shatter right through his fingers.

"I've been in love with you my whole life," Jake confessed, "I know this is what I want. I've always known. I want the fight, I want the mess, I want every single piece of you. But...if you don't want this? If being with me hurts too much, if looking at me just reminds you of everything I broke...I'll understand. I'll step back and let you hate me."

You stood utterly frozen in his hold, the violent trembling of your shoulders slowing as his words settled deep into your chest. You looked up into the dark depths of his eyes.

Through the wet sheen of your tears, the light caught a warmth in your expression, there was something undeniable and overflowing in it, like a quiet truth you couldn't hide even if you wanted to.

Just pure love.

Jake's eyes widened as he caught it and his grip on your jaw tightened just a fraction, his heart hammered in his chest as he waited on the cusp of his entire life. Your lips parted and a ruined gasp left them as you opened your mouth to finally give him your answer—

‎ ₊ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ 𓈒⊹

The fabric of the silk floor length gown, the jaw dropping piece you knew for a fact had cost more than your entire university tuition, courtesy of Jake’s ridiculously deep pockets, well it was currently bunched in heavy folds around your waist.

Instead of walking out the door toward the car, you were pressed flat against the back of the small sofa in the entryway, your heels digging uselessly into the rug as Jake buried his face between your bare thighs.

"Jake—fuck, stop!" You gasped out, your fingers tangling frantically in his styled hair. "We don't...Oh fuck—! We don't have time for this!"

He didn't listen, apparently sight of you stepping out in the backless dress had wiped his composure off the map and now his hands were locked around your thighs, holding you pinned while his tongue lapped relentlessly at your dripping center.

Every time you tried to push him away, he’d flick his tongue just right over your clit, turning your stern protests into embarrassingly pathetic moans that were music to his ears.

"I'm serious!" You whimpered, your head falling back against the cushion as a heavy surge of heat coiled low in your belly. "Jace and...oh God, Jace and Jungwon are going to kill us if we're late for their anniversary dinner!"

A low vibration hummed straight against your wet folds as he chuckled and the vibration alone sent a shudder straight to your belly.

"I’ll handle them," Jake’s voice came out completely muffled, his words slurred against your drenched skin before he clamped his lips over your clit and sucked hard, letting go cause he just couldn’t shut up. "They can wait...you look too fucking good to leave this room..."

He flicked his tongue deep into your entrance, tasting the slick mess he was making of you, his hands pushed harder into your hips to pull you even closer into his mouth, just indifferent to the clock ticking down on the wall.

His tongue got messier, slicker and even ruthless, sending wet licks all the way up to your clit before dragging his tongue straight back down into your tight entrance and shoving it in.

"Jake, nooo—your shirt!" You tried to remind him as you felt the crisp cotton of his dress shirt against your inner thighs. "You're gonna ruin it, baby, come on—"

"Don't give a fuck," he grunted out against your skin, not slowing down at all.

His mouth went completely wild, lapping at you with heavy, frantic strokes as he used his grip on your waist to guide you into riding his lips.

The angle was lethal, your heel clad feet were kicking in the air from the pleasure and as you dug your fingers deep into his scalp to keep yourself steady, the small band of the gold promise ring he’d given you for your six month anniversary pressed firmly into his skin. The subtle bite of the metal seemed to turn him on even more and a low groan rumbled through his chest.

A breathless smile broke across your face, followed by a helpless little giggle as the pleasure began to build in your belly.

"Jake...oh God, it feels so good," you whimpered out, your hips rolling helplessly over his tongue. "I'm—I'm gonna cum, Jake, I'm so close!"

"Mmh I know, baby. Cum on my face," he encouraged, squeezing your hips to keep you riding his mouth through the rising tide.

Your back arched as a breathless cry tore through you, your whole body trembling as a drenching climax crashed over you. Your inner walls fluttered desperately, flooding his mouth with your sweet release.

Jake didn't miss a single drop, holding you firm and humming in satisfaction as he greedily licked up every trace of your orgasm, lapping at your sensitive folds until you were completely weak and breathlessly melting back into the sofa cushions.

He grinned up at you from his position on the floor, then he stood up to help you slide your panties back up over your legs, smoothing the delicate fabric over your hips with entirely too much care. But the second they were in place, his palm came down with a stinging slap right against your ass.

"Hmm...mine," he rumbled with a smug grin.

Before you could swat his hand away, he was kissing your lips and taking your hand to his hair so you could tug at his hair just the way he likes. But as your fingers tangled into his locks and his tongue parted your lips, your thoughts drifted backward, sinking deep into the blurred timeline of the past year.

It really hadn't changed overnight.

Those first few months had been a delicate tightrope. As expected, Jace had been violently skeptical, refusing to even sit in the same room as Jake without a tense silence filling the air. There were nights you spent crying, terrified out of your mind that loving Jake meant losing Jace forever. But slowly, so painfully slowly, they had started the long process of repairing what had been broken. It wasn't perfect but the wall between the twins was finally coming down, inch by inch.

Your mind flashed back to the day you finally sat down with their family, terrifyingly nervous, to announce that you and Jake were officially together. You had prepared a whole speech, only for their mom to look up from her tea, roll her eyes dramatically and mutter, "Finally. It only took you two a decade." Before giving you a hug.

When Jake’s tongue brushed against yours, you remembered last summer at the Sim lake house. With the heat, the smell of pine and freshwater, the endless sound of laughter echoing off the dock with Jace, Jake, Sloane, Jungwon, and even Jay. You had spent the days swimming until your skin burned and lounging in the sun, surrounded by the people who mattered the most.

Jake really couldn't keep his hands off you for more than a few hours at a time that entire week. The memory of him sneaking you away from the group to drag you behind the boat house or locking the door to the guest cabin, just to push your sundress up or shift your bikini bottoms out of the way and bend you over whatever surface was closest because he was so starved for you.

You moaned into his mouth, kissing him deeper as you remembered the morning after one particularly loud night in the cabin, sitting at the breakfast table while Jay and Sloane relentlessly teased you about the wooden bed frame creaking through the thin walls until sunrise. Before you could die of embarrassment, Jake had just casually raised an eyebrow as he poured his coffee, instantly turning the blame on his twin and his boyfriend, claiming they were the ones keeping the whole house up with their own late night activities. The sheer chaos that exploded at the table after that had given you both just enough time to slip away unnoticed again.

"See? Perfect," Jake bragged, breaking the kiss and snapping you out of your head, pointing to his spotless shirt. "Didn't ruin it at all. You worried for nothing, baby."

"You are unbelievable," you muttered, rolling your eyes but the softness in your chest from every memory brought you right back to him, grounding you completely in the present.

Jake just chuckled, stepping in close to wrap his arms around your waist. He pulled you flush against his chest and leaned down, pressing another lingering kiss directly to your lips and now that you weren’t elsewhere you could taste yourself on his lips.

"I love you," he whispered against your mouth, his eyes softening into that warm, devoted look that always made your chest ache.

"I love you too," you murmured back, then he leaned back with a dangerously playful spark lighting up his eyes. A smirk spread across his face as he offered you his arm.

"Shall we...Mrs. Jake Sim?"

Your jaw dropped. "Jake! Stop!" you squeaked out, smacking his shoulder in pure embarrassment as you tried to hide your face from him. "Stop teasing me with that! Oh my God, I was like six!"

"What? It's a nice name," he teased, laughing softly as he caught your hand and kissed your knuckles then your wrist, definitely enjoying how flustered you were over the childhood nickname you used to call yourself. "Okay, okay, I'll stop."

He offered you his arm again, leading you out the door toward his car but as you stepped into the hallway, a quiet determination settled deep in his chest.

Until I make it true, he thought to himself.

taglist i ── @fancypeacepersona @usuallyunlikelyfox @starry-eyed-bimbo @strayy-kidz @mheretoreadff @bloomiize @xoenhalover @mamuljji @gabrielinhaa @ieatwon @rialikesbts @lunacrtk @dulcetnostalgia @lovel1z @kristynaaah @c1eod1n3 @pqrkjyx @tojiworshipper @loverseon @yazmike @ravenslocked @enhxlvr @mangoescrazy @hees-h0e @stayalittlelonger143 @hazevelyn @sour-chaos @skzenhalove @mochi-mika @isagistar @baedreamverse @jvngw0nlvr @deobitifull @prettygirlthings-world @ravenslocked @ricecakeslove @lenolalalie

© nephynes 2025

all works are pieces of original fiction, do not repost, translate, or adapt without explicit permission.

[honeymoonave777]

started on that heejake stepbrothers ask and alr 3k+ in teehee anon if you see this just know it’s coming sooon

[honeymoonave777]

6k and done! just need to make the graphic and format the post all pretty yayay

[kissued]

UNDER PRESSURE ─── 박성훈 PARK SUNGHOON

GENRE + PAIRING ⋮ pure smut. your (seemingly) vanilla boyfriend discovers ropes after your accidental retweet ❤︎⁠

PAIRING ⋮ park sunghoon x fem!reader.

CONTENT WARNINGS ⋮ as stated above… smut. +18 only. piv 、 unprotected (do not) 、 mean dom!brat tamer hunghoon 、 bondage 、 he’s so fucking RUDE omg 、 spanking 、 edging 、 filming 、 reader watches porn and is a brat 、 sunghoon is so Jealous 、 petnames (slut, good girl) 、 degradation + praise 、 let me know if i missed any!

AUTHOR’S NOTE ⋮ u guys r nasty as fuck!! I AGREE!!! based on this request also idk why this keeps getting taken down urgh sorry

you love your boyfriend. truly.

nothing could ever change that, nor do you think anything would—but god, was he gentle. it sounds a little ridiculous now that you say it out loud, even more when you recall the ridiculous plan of yours in your head, but it’s true. there are millions of girls who get on their knees and grovel at their lover’s feet for some gentle, passionate sex, but that just wasn’t you.

okay, that’s a little unfair to say—you loved it, yes, the same way you love how sunghoon groans every time he sits down on a chair because his back hurts, or when he’s a little too blunt for you not to laugh at. you love it because it’s him. god forbid you needed a little more, and the heavens knew you’d do anything but just ask.

too shy, too embarrassed, same thing. you don’t have enough courage, or any at all, to look park sunghoon in the eye and ask, ‘can you tie me up?’—so instead, you resort to secret retweets on an account no one looks twice at. who else is there to blame for the ache between your legs, if not you?

need hjm to tie me up n use me alll nightfuck [Post]

biiiig mistake. prime example of why you shouldn’t tweet half-asleep with your hands down your shorts, like some horny loser. posting tweets is an unusually fast affair—this would seem convenient to the average shitposter, but lord, not to you.

the tweet appeared in three seconds, right at the top of your timeline, next to a very mesmerizing selfie of yourself. you remember sunghoon picking the picture out, talking about how gorgeous your eyes looked, the way your lipstick shined on your lips, the glow of your skin through the screen—you laughed it off, nudged his shoulder, and made it your icon the same night.

so weird. your private account has a picture of chiikawa, not… you. why are you on your own timeline? hit tweet? is it glitching?

“oh my fucking god.”

the exact second you realize that the tweet was indeed not made on your private account, your heart drops straight through the mattress. any sleep that lingers in your body is immediately washed off of you in cold, shocking waves, leaving nothing behind but a gaping jaw and wide eyes.

deleting said tweet was also a fast affair, thank god. if you were lucky enough, nobody would’ve seen it. sunghoon, as chronically online as he may be, might still be at work and hence too busy to check your tweets—there’s just no way he got that notification, right? or maybe he doesn’t even have notifications on for your tweets at all, and you’re just spiralling for nothing.

the video was of this guy—he looked a little like sunghoon. smooth skin, warm underneath the dim light emanating from his desk lamp, cock flushed a dark pink from how pent up he is. it reminded you of your lover, though you had to admit that sunghoon’s was a little bigger (and prettier). you wonder if he’s waited all day to fuck the girl underneath him, the same way park sunghoon waits all day to come home to you, and the thought had survived all five seconds before it dissolved completely.

his arm reaches behind the camera. he pulls out red rope, thick and swirling in it’s pattern, vibrant compared to the scene of white bedsheets, stark in contrast to the woman’s flushed skin. she flinches when his fingertips run down her ribs, to her navel, stomach tensed like she knows what’s about to come—like it’s something she should be afraid of.

the video cuts to her face-down. her spine is arched so much that it reminds you of a crescent moon, bending at the man’s will, chest flush against the sheets with her ass perked up and slamming against his hips like it’s personally done him wrong. his hands are gripped around the rope tied around her hips, driving her back every time she tries to run away, and all she does is moan and cry and scream at how fucking good it feels.

the orgasm hit you so hard that it was humiliating. sunghoon will never have to know, he won’t ever need to know. sweet, innocent sunghoon, who’s never laid a hand on you, never offering a single touch that seemed to much to handle.

alls well that ends well. the tweet’s gone, your thighs are still shaking, and sunghoon’s probably too focused on driving to check your timeline. there’s just no way he would’ve seen it—

ding!

hoonie: Baby, is this what you want? 21:50

hoonie: [Attachment] 21:50

hoonie: You want me to tie you up and use you? 21:52

hoonie: Ignoring me isn’t gonna work. 22:00

hoonie: I’ll be home in 5. 22:00

oh, okay.

“stay still, won’t you?” sunghoon mumbles under his breath, an exasperated sigh leaving his lips before he pulls again. the veins in his biceps bulge under his skin as he works his way around your body, looping the black rope intricately, tight enough for it to leave your flesh spilling around the sides of it. “didn’t you ask for this? i even got the rope you wanted.”

your legs are the only parts he’s allowed freedom of movement. your arms bound to your back, a soft whimper claws it’s way involuntarily out of your throat when he tightens the final knot.

“i used to be good at doing these. a little sloppy now,” he clicks his tongue. sunghoon’s eyes glaze over you, almost in admiration of his own work. “summer camps came in handy. didn’t they, y/n?”

you grit your teeth, looking up at him through the gaps in your hair. you’d have moved them out of your face by now, but given your current predicament, you can’t do much else but stare at the man towering above you—clad in nothing but boxers that restrict his leaking cock, dark eyes lingering over your exposed chest where the thick rope leaves red imprints—one line crosses over your sternum, and another just under your breasts.

“what do you think? tight enough?”

god, if this isn’t karma, you don’t know what is. “shut up.”

sunghoon offers you a sympathetic yet equally infuriating smile. his knee dips into the mattress, in the space between your knees. “thank you for telling me. i never would’ve realized how gorgeous you look like this otherwise. such a blessing you are.”

“yeah, okay. i didn’t even—i was gonna delete it. i did, actually. were you fucking refreshing my page?”

“i have notifications on,” he responds bleakly. before you know it, his arms are reaching for the knot in the centre of your stomach, sitting an inch above your navel. “looks like you’re too slow, huh?”

is this what eve saw her first night on earth? in this moment, park sunghoon looks like temptation if it had a physical body. he smiles so cunningly that his teeth bares it’s fangs, glinting even under the warmth of your shared bedroom’s light, eyes never leaving yours. every breath that manages to escape your lungs is shaky, and for a brief second, you wonder if he can hear the fear in it.

“so? you just gonna tie me up and do nothing?” you manage to cough up. your gaze moves from his sharp v-line to his face, all dark and hungry and terrifying in it’s own right. “boring. you’re all talk. just surprised you could even get this far,” you wriggle your arms behind your back to show him. “now untie me.”

your lover doesn’t respond.

he stands still, one arm still resting against your belly with the other spreading your thighs apart—it’s instantaneous, abrupt, the moment the pressure on your inner thigh. sunghoon’s thumb digs deep into the flesh, making you squirm.

“i’m all talk?” he exhales, “i’m not untying you until you apologise.”

you scoff, blowing a puff of air towards your forehead. the hair falls obediently to the sides of your face, unfortunately, because sunghoon’s terrifying expression comes into full focus just seconds after. “for what? it was an accident. are you that sensitive?”

“don’t know. are you?”

“the fuck—“

you don’t realise that sunghoon’s hands have moved further down until his thumb presses firmly against your clit. “…are you sensitive, y/n?”

fucking hell. this is starting to piss you off, if anything. park sunghoon’s looking down at you like some poor creature, pout worn as if he had any real concern for you. his cock is literally growing bigger the longer you look at it.

you bite down on your lip as his fingers move—his middle finger traces your folds before eventually, he lets it sink into you. just one, not even down to the first knuckle, just shy of half his finger. you try to buck your hips, but without your arms, it’s plain useless; they just wriggle pathetically underneath him instead.

“fuck you.”

he frowns, pulls his finger out. it was nothing, but you whine anyway. any part of him feels better than being empty at this point.

“watch your mouth,” sunghoon takes a deep breath in. his other hand hooks around the spandex of his dark blue briefs, the letters ‘calvin klein’ warping when he finally shoves them down his thighs, and it’s like your chest has collapsed in on itself. how the fuck will you ever fit that inside of you? “you don’t even deserve this. i should just fuck you right now.”

it’s a dumb thought, admittedly. you have fit him inside of you. multiple times, in fact, but something about your boyfriend seems so much more… different. all you can hear is his heavy breaths, a string of curses as he spreads your folds wider with his fingers—and then the sound of spit hitting right where you’re leaking for him.

“f-fuck,” you whimper, “it’s not gonna fucking fit.”

“don’t be dramatic,” sunghoon sighs, shifting his hips closer to yours. he strokes his length just to spread the pre all over, and it’s just mesmerizing how pretty his cock is when it’s glistening in his own mess. “i’ll make it fit.”

you open your mouth to curse at him again, but it’s cut short by the feeling of his dick slapping against your clit—he spreads his pre-cum all over your entrance, ‘till you’re almost sparkling in your mixed fluids. park sunghoon is a tease, now more than ever, with how slowly he pushes his flushed tip in and back out.

“now sit still. don’t wanna hear a sound.”

“f-fuuuh.. fuck, fuck, oh my god—“

the pace at which sunghoon moves is nothing short of lethal. you think that if you didn’t have your cheek pressed flat against the sheets, you’d be screaming by now.

the room is quiet, except for the cacophony of moans and wet slaps of skin. your boyfriend’s cock is busy hammering itself into your walls, reaching spots that you don’t even think should be allowed, poking and prodding and it’s just mind-numbing.

“fuck… y-yeah, such a fucking slut,” sunghoon moans so lewdly that it sends heat crawling up your spine, till it reaches your neck and it makes you dizzy all over again. the rhythm of his hips is so brutal yet so hypnotic—his cock feels so hot, so big, so disgustingly rude. “so fucking pretty. look at you, can’t even run away, huh? just—shit—taking whatever i give you. so good for me.”

you nod like you can hear him. you don’t. either way, you feel him grip a little tighter at the knot behind your back, tightening it around his knuckles; as if he can’t bear to be apart from you, can’t stand your cunt not being full of him for just a second.

“hnngh, sunghoon, please—t-too rough, i feel something.”

he grips onto the red rope like a lifeline. every time you try to breathe, or to move your hips a little further away from his for just a moment longer—he pulls you right back in. you’d done just that, trying to catch your breath, but unfortunately for you, you really are too slow.

“reeaaally?” sunghoon pants, one hand around the knot and the other hanging freely by his side. he doesn’t even need to guide you anymore—the freedom he has to shove you back on his cock whenever he needs you, it’s driving him *crazy. “*wanna show me how good you feel on my cock? yeah?”

sweat trickles down his back. he’s never felt heat like this before; sunghoon’s always thought that sex with you was the best he’d ever have in his life, but this?

it’s transcending everything he’s ever known.

he’s seeing stars. they burst in his cloudy vision, his mind nothing but a thick haze. all he can really focus on is how your ass looks rippling against the base of his pelvis—jiggling with every pull at that damn knot, shoving you right back where you belong.

“that fucking post,” he spits, free hand raising before it slices through the air and lands straight on your right asscheek, “ngh—say… say you’re sorry, and i might let you cum tonight, hm?”

your jaw falls open in a silent scream, fingers curled into the bedsheets, trying not to scream out his name. “you’re—haah—insane—“

smack. smack. smack.

“don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

fuck those hands of his. so stupidly large and rough as they knead and fondle with your flesh like you’re some fucktoy—though, in a sense, you really are. your arms continue to thrash around, still bound tight by the rope, and it’s rubbing against your skin so much that it’s beginning to sting. sunghoon’s eyes narrow at the way you’re sobbing, and the confusion sneaks up on him then;

why hasn’t he done this before? this is genius. it’s like a whole new side of him has emerged, like an alter ego that he’s tried so hard to suppress; it’s all coming to him now. all the blood in his body’s rushing straight to his cock, and he feels electric, watching your tears spill onto the sheets—spine arched like the good slut you are, even when you fight back, like you know your place.

“s-sorry, i’m sorry, hoonie—i’m sorry! please, please—i’m gonna fucking cum, please let me cum.”

sunghoon’s hand grips tighter at the length of rope stretching across your back. he loops it around his knuckles again, which only brings you closer, your hips now flush against his pelvis—he feels so impossibly deep. the tip of his cock’s twitching when he buries himself to the hilt, and the greedy fucker even adjusts his position—just to make sure he’s feeling as much of you as possible.

he’s officially lost it.

“good girl, that’s it—such a good girl for me,” he breathes, looking down at the mess he’s created between you two. your juices are dripping down his swollen balls, his thighs, nothing but a sticky mess where your cheeks press against his body. “what’re you sorry for?”

fuck park sunghoon.

“i’m s-sorry—”

he rolls his hips once. a low sound leaves his throat, and you, a pornographic moan, effectively cutting off your apology—god, you feel so heavenly when he’s this deep inside. your walls flutter around him, crying, begging for more, squelching shamelessly.

“uhuh,” sunghoon nods, “what’s my baby sorry for? being such a whore? posting that shit for everyone to see, fuck—did you want me to find it? is that it?”

you’re choking on your words. the way sunghoon grinds into you is plain addictive, his thick girth swelling inside your softness, too busy focusing on how you’re practically nothing underneath him. wrecked and at his mercy, taking every stroke, every roll, every single taste of friction you manage to get your hands on.

“too fucking dumb to answer,” sunghoon scoffs. your walls clench around him at the words, and it’s just ridiculous how hard his cock twitches inside of you—like a chain reaction, he’s unfolding, mind unravelling itself until there’s nothing but one clear goal: make you cum.

not too hard. you’re already 90% there.

“f-fuck, baby,” sunghoon’s temple is slick with sweat, eyebrows knitted in sharp focus as he continues to rut into you—slow and deep strokes that hit every sweet spot inside your heavenly cunt. “could die in you—you feel so fucking good.”

fucking animal. his tongue darts around his lips—he’s so shameless with it, rolling his hips in tandem, looking up at you occasionally to see the fucked out expression on your face.

his heart feels so full. you’re breaking beneath him, voice crossing between moans and sobs and whimpers and everything in between; his name sounds like it’s drizzled in honey when spoken by your tongue. if only you could turn around, oh,you’d be able to see how absolutely lovestruck park sunghoon looks: soft pink lips parted, his golden brown hair falling over his forehead in damp strands, mumbling your name like a prayer he’s spoken every night.

“h-hoon, r-right there—fuuuck…” your wrists strain against the rope, your consciousness slipping from you with every passing second. this angle is even more torturous. what you wouldn’t you give to plant your palms into the sheets and just get on with it; you suppose that it’s drilling some patience into you. literally. “don’t stop—haah—p-please, hoonie.”

“wasn’t gonna,” sunghoon mutters in response. it barely reaches your ears, because your attention quickly shifts to how his weight shifts forward once more—cock curving into that sickening bundle of nerves that have your feet thrashing against the mattress. so sweet. sunghoon moans shakily, before he draws a sharp inhale through his nose.

the room smells like sex. a mix of your sweat and his combined, a tinge of your shampoo lingering from the bathroom, and his cologne rubbing off on you. he can’t help the smile that creeps on his face when he hears your heightened moans next—so loud, louder than you’ve ever been, despite all the useless tears and protests.

“i’m gonna fucking cum,” you whine, perking your ass up just enough for him to notice. greedy girl. even when you can’t take what you’re given, you still ask for more. the more you want to speak, the faster you find yourself unravelling, and eventually you just settle on his name, like it’s the only thing you truly know.

“thought i was all talk? look how quick you are.” sunghoon chortles before his lungs catch up to him. he’s panting heavily, feeling every nerve in him start to buzz, his cock starting to twitch unbearably inside of you. “don’t fucking disappoint me, then.”

it’s an understatement to say you break.

“c-cumming—i’m fucking cumming, hoon—!”

your legs shake so violently that it sends sunghoon into a frenzy—he yanks on the knot on your back again, smiling while he watches you struggle against him. your cunt spasms so beautifully around him, tight, squeezing him for everything he’s got and his balls ache so much that he practically snaps mere seconds after you.

“mhhm,” he groans when he feels you clench around him—like you’d die if he ever pulled out. he indulges, just this once, retracting his hips halfway before slamming back into you with a newfound motivation; his jaw ticks when you continue to fuck back against him, driving your ass against the base of his cock. so needy, so filthy, squelching around his length like it’s never going to be enough for your greedy hole. “nasty fucking girl. gonna fill you aaaall the way up, won’t i, baby?”

every touch burns so deliciously that it feels like sin. you’ve fallen right into it’s lap. “y-yeah, yes, please, give it to me—“

you’re bucking your hips back. where you found the energy to is lost on you, but it doesn’t matter. all that’s important is that sunghoon’s fucking you so right, hitting every sensitive spot, running his veins along every hidden crevice like it’s learning your body all over again.

“fuck, i’m gonna cum,” sunghoon moans. his teeth are grit so tight that he thinks he might shatter a tooth. his knuckles are on the brink of bleeding from how tight he’s wound the rope around them—they’re turning red from the friction, burning under pressure. “shit—all mine, aren’t you? come on. say it, say you’re mine, please.”

you barely have any time to come down before sunghoon gives you one, long stroke, plunging his cock as deep as he can until his cockhead kisses your cervix.

a long, pathetic moan is drawn out from you before it’s broken up by your cries.

dreaming. you’re dreaming. your legs begin to lock up and every muscle in your body feels like it’s on fire, every knot and bind of restraint snapping free. stars explode behind your eyelids and it occurs to you once again how utterly helpless you are; your legs go limp underneath him, lips mumbling his name into the sheets in a broken prayer, like this is the salvation you’ve been waiting eons for.

just as your lungs fill with air again, all of sunghoon’s weight disappears from on top of you. his hand is loosened from the binding behind your back and your arms finally stop fighting altogether. whew! you’re free—

smack.

your heart drops straight to your stomach. the pain bites at your skin and stings all over, sending chills up your spine until it pricks at your neck. you’re sure that you’ll have to ice your ass tomorrow—but with the ache thrumming in your veins, you think it’ll be futile.

“spread your legs,” sunghoon mutters. his voice is further away now. you try to, you really do—but you’re so sore, and the way the rope sinks into your flesh does nothing to help. “since you love telling everyone what you want, i’ll show them what you need.”

“make sure you arch for the camera, okay? just like the video. you know how, don’t you?”

the words don’t sink in until the tears in your eyes finally clear. your foggy vision blurs for a second, before focusing sharply on his phone in the corner of the room—landscape, flash on, exactly how that fucking video angled it.

“are you serious?” you laugh, but nothing’s really funny. “untie me. fuck, i wanna touch you, hoon—“

“you need to watch what you wish for,” he tuts. sunghoon’s hands find their way to your cheeks again, smoothing over the handprint he left, and you hiss at the contact. “gonna use you allll night. we’ll speed up the footage, and then you won’t have to rely on shitty porn, right?”

“please, hoon. i’ll be so good, i swear, i’m sorry—“

“there it is,” sunghoon flashes a smile at the camera. “waited so long to hear that—too bad i don’t care. sluts don’t get to touch. just take it.”

you’re deleting twitter. no retweet will slip by without a council to approve it, because with the way this is going—the way park sunghoon spreads your folds apart just to spit at your glistening hole, the way he fucks into you with the exact same pace as that damn video, the way he pushes down on your spine so your arch is practically identical—you might collapse.

ynln67: need hjm to tie me up n use me alll nightfuck

↳ psh1009: done [20:35]

© kissued 2026 — do not repost, edit, redistribute or translate my work without prior permission and credit. all my work is strictly fictional and not an accurate representation of these people in real life.

[honeymoonave777]

this theme is soo atrociously pretty lordd

hiii thank uu i was trying to give it that 2000s vibe 💋

[honeymoonave777]

started on that heejake stepbrothers ask and alr 3k+ in teehee anon if you see this just know it’s coming sooon

[opiuons]

ex for a reason : 26 our baby misses you..

𝘄𝗰 𝟣.𝟩𝟦𝟫

“hi.” jake greeted you once the door swung open, a faint smile accompanying him.

the corners of your lips tugged upwards easily as you looked jake up and down with hidden fondness—which probably wasn’t discreet to anyone who wasn’t jake.

you stepped aside, allowing him to enter before starting to walk off. he silently tailed after you, hands dug in the pockets of his hoodie while you led him to the living room.

the tv had already been switched on in preparation, and you wordlessly patted the spot next to you, signaling for him to take a seat. jake cautiously lowered himself, daringly closer than the last time both of you found yourself in similar spot, yet neither of you took it upon you to say it.

the moment was cut short once jake’s attention landed on the table in front of him, his eyes suddenly wide with surprise. “did you buy these?” he nearly exclaimed. how he hadn’t noticed the two plates, each holding a slice of tres leches cake, was beyond him.

“i made them.”

“they look good.” he remarked, his arm reaching to grab a plate before remembering his limits. he looked over at you, expecting some form of approval before taking one. you simply nodded, a silent gesture which was enough for jake to lean forward, taking the fork in his hand and admiring the creation in front of him.

you chuckled. “thanks. should we start the movie?” you leaned over to grab the other plate before settling back against the cushion behind you. you picked up the remote, ready to browse through the movies categorised as rom-com when it suddenly hit you.

“wait actually—” you didn’t finish your sentence, instead jumping to your feet before rushing out of the room. jake’s fork was frozen midair, unsure of whether to wait for you or continue eating.

it was less than a minute later that you re-entered the room, this time with none other than clover in your arms. “i told you she missed you.”

jake’s face lit up, watching clover nuzzled into your elbow. “missed me, but wasn’t here to greet me.” he raised an eyebrow before bringing the fork to his mouth, relishing the flavours of the cake.

you sat down with a soft hum, stroking clover who relaxed in your lap. “she gets shy around cute guys.” you said with casually.

jake’s second bite didn’t go as smoothly as his first. he coughed at the impact your words had on him, the sweet treat suddenly burning the back of his throat. he must’ve heard you wrong, he thought. but the small, knowing smile that grew on your face as you barely spared him a glance made him dare to think otherwise.

“let’s watch this.” you decided, and jake didn’t protest, too caught up in trying to process the casualness of your flirtation.

the movie began. you and jake continued to eat what was left of the cake, and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t taking sneaky glances his way whenever he put another bite of your food in his mouth, the obvious enjoyment on his face making you smile inwardly.

by the 30th minute, clover had settled into jake’s lap, his sturdy hands moving over her in a slow, rhythmic pattern that somehow held your attention more than the film itself.

“i think she really likes you.” you muttered loud enough for jake’s head to turn. the confusion lasted barely a second before he softly laughed, looking down at the topic of discussion in question. “how can you tell?” jake asked, using both his hands to rub her.

you watched in silence at the way clover seemed to ease right into his palm, at the way jake’s hands handled her with nothing but pure care. and in that moment you thought, who wouldn’t like jake?

someone filled with so much love in him, and care for those around him, was hard not to fall for.

“she looks comfortable.” you observed. “i think she feels safe with you, or likes being near you.”

the room seemed to grow quieter after that, the movie fading into a background noise as your words lingered.

you’re sure the implications didn’t go unnoticed by him. how just like clover, you seemed to share the same sentiment for being around him.

but then again, this was jake—the kind of guy who approached affection with hesitation.

it was hard not to fall for him.

with jake’s presence so close beside you, you could barely pay any attention to the movie. you felt the brush of his sleeve against your arm every so often, and you’re not exactly sure how and when the distance placed between you became nearly nonexistent, but it felt all too natural. too domestic.

so you took a risk. you leaned closer—just a little bit more, to gauge his reaction.

jake stilled, before slowly relaxing. a small, breathy exhale following.

he didn’t move away, which felt like encouragement. you placed your head on his shoulder with precision, making sure to give him enough time to stop you. jake let you, his body still stiff. you noticed, of course.

“sorry” you whispered, suddenly growing too conscious of your impulsive action. jake shook his head, unable to turn and look at you. “no.. it’s okay.” he assured you.

his body felt rigid beneath you. “you’re tense.” you pointed out, slowly lifting your head back up. you barely got away before jake’s hand shot out, placed on your temple as he lowered you back onto the line of his shoulder.

without a word, he adjusted himself, angling his body for your head you lean more comfortably.

you could feel an eruption of various feelings in your lower abdomen, unable to hide the ecstatic smile.

you really couldn’t care less about the movie, not when you were pressed into jake’s side, and he seemed into it.

you almost let out a laugh at the irony of it all. would you have told yourself a few months earlier that you’d be in this position—jake sat in your living room, caressing clover as if she was his daughter, and your head rested on him, you would’ve found it ridiculous.

and now, you don’t think you would’ve wanted it any other way if given the chance.

you didn’t notice the ending credits rolling in, too lost in your own thoughts until jake gently nudged you. “that was fun.” his voice came out hushed.

you nodded in agreement, remaining your position on his shoulder. “so.. what now.”

“i don’t know.” you shrugged. “i kinda don’t want you to leave yet.”

you could feel the sharp intake of a breath jake took, his body going tense again for a short moment before it eased, the weight of his head suddenly on top of yours. “me neither.”

so you opted to silence. staring at the home screen on your tv with nothing to say. both you and jake basking in the warmth, as well as comfort of each other’s presence.

it was stupid, and you barely lasted 3 minutes before you scoffed out a laugh. “i can’t believe we’re just sitting here in silence.” you humoured.

“i don’t mind it.”

“me too.”

you carried on for another few minutes, nothing but the sound of each other's breathing as well as your heart beating rapidly filling the room.

“i meant what i said, by the way.” you started. “about enjoying spending time with you and stuff.”

“i never thought i'd get this close to you.” you chuckled further. jake’s hands twitched in his lap, trying to bite back the smile that was forming on his face.

for a moment, he wondered if you could feel the pulsing of his heart from where you laid on him. if you could see the way his hands were starting to get a little clammy, and if the burning heat emitted from his body was obvious.

“i don’t think i expected this either.” jake decided that was the safest thing his mind could conjure in that moment. had he let himself think too long, he might say something stupid. such as how he couldn’t tell you what went on in the last 50 minutes of the movie, his mind and body too busy trying to not feel things with you pressed into his side.

his phone buzzed beside him, and it felt like the bubble he lived in got bursted with it. he eyed the time, a sudden reminder of how late it was getting. he sighed, reluctantly. “i should probably go before it gets late.”

this time, you froze. jake felt it, and it was enough to make him want to eat his own words and promise you a few more minutes like this. “okay.” you nodded, getting off him.

the walk to the door felt bitter. as if both of you knew the other wanted nothing more than to stay a little longer. you watched him put his shoes on before he straightened back up.

“get home safely.” you reminded him. jake nodded. he should’ve taken that as his cue to leave, but you looked at him in a way that told him you couldn’t bear the thought of him doing so.

and then you did something neither of you expected. you leaped forward, wrapping your arms around jake’s shoulders before pulling him into a hug.

jake hardened, both his hands stranded on each side of his body, unsure of where to place them. the lack of response made you aware, and you panicked, ready to pull back and pretend this never happened.

you felt jake’s hands on you before you could do so. cautiously, because jake was nothing if not cautious. and suddenly he was against you again.

the hug was awkward at first as jake tried to withhold his overwhelming need to touch you. but then you tightened your arms by a little, and jake took it further. his arms circling around you fully until there was no space left.

he held you as if you were everything he had, or everything he needed. it wasn’t awkward anymore, but intimate in ways neither of you could voice.

you stayed like that for a little longer, held in jake’s arms as you both enjoyed the feeling of each other.

“i should go.” jake whispered into the side of your head, yet neither of you made a move. wanting the moment to last just a bit more.

previous masterlist next

𝗇𝗈𝗍𝖾𝗌𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺𝖾 : the jakeyn date. they’re so in love with each other. and clover cameo too. and also yn got to feed jake her tres leches. a little bit of this a little bit of that.

taglist : @noirellee @luv444erin @ikeumiu @simjaeyunlvrclub @isoobie @woninlove @writtenbysunoo @riiseiis @gownluvr @honeymoonave777 @asaapjwons @ik3u @rijakecentral @zenhypen @bamikeu @wonkiipiilled @jxqk3 @bensabrifirildak @1009beats @kikizzz0 @scarredbytheworld @amb4rluvs @jazzygirlengene @oveenchana @breadlover01 @stealthyutopiaabyss @zoe1love @softblaqn @dina-10s-blog @xerophyides @lingxio @lili-thewriter @ikeu05 @saaaaaaaai @jay-j4y @gyuguys @vikeuchu @aesthelia @coupsarchive @yoshidoshida @oreomuncher4life @kamxstar @nanilis @luv4dani @simjaeyunslut @fleumurr @leeknowstoes00 @aeruchiaorchids @cosm1cgarbag3 @phonkdemon

[honeymoonave777]

big brained amazing gorgeous opiuons does it again 🍰🍰

[honeymoonave777]

las prec𝑖osas

@s1mp4jaeyun @wonderikii

[stwryun]

JUNO — LEE HEESEUNG | part three

ꪆ୧ now playing JUNO by sabrina carpenter ⌢ !

synopsis : living next door to lee heeseung has always been a nightmare loud, cocky, and impossible to ignore until one reckless night at a party leaves you waking up in his bed and running before it can mean anything you try to forget it ever happened, until two lines change everything, and suddenly the one person you can't stand is the one you can't escape.

pairing : basketball captain heeseung x neighbourf!reader

trope : accidental pregnancy + forced proximity

word count : 29.9k words

warnings : tw / oral, penetrative sex, fingering, creampie, shower sex, sex during pregnancy, toxic family dynamics and emotional abuse from heeseung’s parents ,harassment and career threats, public slut shaming and campus gossip ( including being called a whore and accused of baby trapping ), pregnancy symptoms, mild power imbalance, jealousy, emotional guilt, anxiety, panic, crying, guilt, self-doubt, fear of the future, and emotional breakdowns

🗯️JO's NOTES < 🐼 3 ! : bye.

unknown : stay away from Heeseung or else your career and his especially are doomed. i will make sure of it.

You stared at the message, blood running cold.Your hand instinctively moved to rest on your belly.The threat hung in the air like a shadow, shattering the fragile warmth you had felt just moments ago.You stared at the glowing screen for what felt like an eternity, the weight of the words pressing down on your chest until it became hard to breathe. Your hand trembled as you lowered the phone, pressing your back harder against the door. The apartment felt too quiet, too empty, the silence amplifying every racing thought in your head. Your pulse hammered in your ears, loud and frantic, while fresh tears stung your eyes.

You couldn’t do this, you couldn’t let yourself get any closer. From your point of view, keeping your distance was the best , the only thing you could do. If you stayed near him, your feelings would only grow stronger, and that would only put him at greater risk. You couldn’t let your heart get in the way of his future. You couldn’t let your love become the reason his career and everything he had worked so hard for got destroyed. Bambi deserved a father with a bright future, not one whose dreams were ruined because of you.

You hugged your knees tighter to your chest, phone still clutched in your hand, the decision settling over you like a heavy, painful blanket. It hurt, it hurt more than you expected. But it was the right thing, the safe thing and the only way to protect him.Just then, another notification popped up.

heeseung : thank you so much for standing up for me tonight , tomorrow we go out somewhere ?

Your thumb hovered over the screen. The message was simple, sweet, and full of the quiet care you had come to expect from him. Your heart ached fiercely. You wanted to reply, you wanted to tell him yes, that you’d see him in the morning, that you’d face the day together like you had been doing. You wanted to hear his voice, feel his hand in yours, let him make you breakfast and hold you when the world felt too heavy.

But you didn't, you ignored the message.You turned your phone face down on the floor and hugged your knees closer, fresh tears silently sliding down your cheeks. If you didn’t draw a line right now, your feelings might get out of hand. And that would only hurt him and his career even more.You sat there in the dark for a long time, tears flowing freely now, one hand still protectively over your belly. The apartment felt too quiet, too empty. The love you had just realized was now tangled with guilt, fear, and a painful resolve.

You didn’t know what the future held but you knew one thing for certain ,you didn’t want to hurt him, especially not his career.The realization that you were in love with Heeseung and that you wanted a family with him suddenly felt both precious and terrifyingly vulnerable.You stayed on the cold floor until your legs went numb, the weight of your decision pressing down on you like a stone. You stayed on the cold floor for what felt like hours, knees hugged tightly to your chest, tears drying on your cheeks. The weight of the threatening message, the realization of your feelings, and the painful decision you had just made pressed down on you until your body felt too heavy to move.

Eventually, you forced yourself up. Your legs were numb, your eyes swollen. You moved through your nightly routine on autopilot washing your face with cold water, brushing your teeth, changing into an oversized tshirt. Every motion felt mechanical, like you were watching yourself from outside your body. When you finally crawled into bed, you pulled the covers over your head and curled up on your side, one hand resting protectively over your belly.

The apartment was silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic outside. You closed your eyes, willing sleep to come. It took a long time, but exhaustion eventually won. You drifted off with Heeseung’s face in your mind his gentle smile, the way he had held you earlier, the way he had kissed your forehead like you mattered.

The next morning, you woke up to sunlight streaming through the curtains. Your body felt heavy, your eyes still puffy from the night before. The decision to keep your distance sat like a stone in your chest, but you knew it was the right thing. You reached for your phone on the nightstand and opened your messages to Heeseung. Your fingers hovered for a moment before you typed

you : hey, I’m going to my parents’ place for the weekend since we have holidays now

you : i’ll be back on monday morning, sorry that I can’t go out with you.

You stared at the message for a long time, thumb hovering over the send button. It felt cold and distant but it was necessary. You couldn’t let your feelings get out of hand, you couldn't risk hurting him — or his career. you hit send and then you turned your phone face down, got out of bed, and started getting ready for the trip to your parents’ house. The weekend away felt like a necessary escape, a chance to breathe, to think, to put some space between you and the complicated feelings that were growing too fast.

But even as you packed your bag, a small, quiet part of you already missed him.The decision sat heavy in your chest like a stone, but you didn’t let yourself dwell on it.You moved quickly, almost frantically, through your apartment. You pulled out a small suitcase and started packing as fast as you could clothes for the weekend, your laptop for capstone work, toiletries, and a few comfort items. Every motion felt mechanical, like you were trying to outrun the feelings that threatened to overwhelm you. The threatening message still burned in your mind, but you pushed it down, focusing instead on the practical steps in front of you.

Once your bag was packed, you grabbed your keys and left the apartment without looking back. The hallway felt too quiet, too empty. You didn’t glance at Heeseung’s door as you passed it fuck you couldn’t. On the way to the bus stop, you pulled out your phone and called your parents. The line connected after a couple of rings, and your mom’s cheerful voice filled your ear. “Sweetheart! Is everything okay?”

You forced a smile into your voice. “Hi mom im coming home for thanksgiving break. The university has a short break, so I thought I’d surprise you guys and spend the long weekend with you.”Your mom gasped happily. “Oh! That’s wonderful! We’ll prepare your favorite room and make all your favorite dishes. Is Heeseung coming with you? We’d love to see him again and celebrate Thanksgiving together as a family.”You swallowed hard, the lie tasting bitter on your tongue. “No, he’s busy with basketball practice. He couldn’t make it this time.”

Your dad’s voice joined in the background, sounding a little disappointed. “Ah, that’s too bad we really liked him. But we’re so happy you’re coming home, honey. We’ll see you soon!”They sounded a little sad about Heeseung not joining, but their excitement to see you won out. You ended the call with a promise to text when you reached the bus station, then quickly messaged Yunjin and Soobin to let them know you’d be away until monday morning.

you : hey guys, im heading to my parents’ town for the weekend since there’s a short break i’ll be back on monday morning and take care!

you : also happy early thanksgiving !

Yunjin replied almost immediately with a string of heart emojis and a promise to catch up when you returned. Soobin sent a simple, caring message wishing you a safe trip.You reached the bus stop just in time for the earliest bus to your hometown. You climbed aboard, found a window seat near the back, and settled in with your bag on your lap. The bus pulled away from the stop, the familiar streets of campus slowly fading behind you.As the scenery changed to highways and open fields, your mind wandered back to Heeseung.

You thought about him and Bambi. About the quiet mornings when he brought you breakfast. About the way he held you when you cried. About the gentle way he spoke to your belly, calling the baby by the nickname you both loved. About how safe you felt in his arms. About how much you wanted to build a real family with him but nothing could be done now.His career was important. He had worked so hard to get where he was — the captain of the team, the one with real NBA potential. According to whoever sent that message, you looked like a threat. You couldn’t be the reason his dreams crumbled. You couldn’t be the reason his future was ruined.

You hugged your bag tighter to your chest, staring out the window as the bus rumbled along the highway. Tears pricked at your eyes, but you blinked them away. This was the right thing this was the only thing you could do to protect him.The bus continued its journey, carrying you away from him, away from the complicated feelings that had grown too strong, too fast.You leaned your head against the window, watching the world blur past, heart heavy with love and sacrifice.

The bus finally pulled into your hometown station by early afternoon. The familiar sight of the small, quiet terminal and the surrounding streets brought a strange mix of comfort and nostalgia. You stepped off the bus with your bag, scanning the area, and spotted your dad waiting near the entrance.The moment he saw you, his face lit up with the warmest smile. He rushed forward and pulled you into a big, tight hug, holding you like he hadn’t seen you in years.“My girl,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “You look beautiful come here, let me see you properly.”

He pulled back slightly, then gently placed both hands on your shoulders before lowering them to rest lightly on your belly. His eyes softened with pure joy as he leaned down a little. “Hey there, little Bambi,” he whispered to your belly, his voice full of wonder. “How is my little grandbaby doing today? Grandpa can’t wait to meet you.” You felt tears prick your eyes at the tenderness in his voice. Your dad straightened up and hugged you again, kissing the top of your head.

“Let’s get you home, your mom has been cooking up a storm since you called.”You climbed into his car, the familiar smell of leather and faint bakery scent ( from years of him driving to and from work ) wrapping around you like a hug. As he started the engine and pulled out of the station, your dad began chatting happily. “The bakery has been so busy lately,” he said, smiling. “Thanksgiving orders are pouring in and we're fully booked for the next few days. Oh, and guess what? Sangwon started working with us three months ago.”You turned to him, shocked. “Sangwon? When did he come back from pastry school?”

Your dad chuckled. “About three months ago he finished his program early and wanted to come back home. He’s been a huge help at the bakery and the customers love his new recipes. He’s really grown into a fine young man.”Sangwon your first love, your first and only boyfriend. The two of you had dated in high school a sweet, normal relationship filled with study dates, walks home, and innocent kisses. The breakup had been mutual and gentle. The distance during university had simply made things too hard, so you both decided to part ways before starting separate schools.

You had stayed friends, occasionally checking in on each other’s lives through social media, but it had been years since you last saw him in person.

Hearing his name now felt surreal. A wave of nostalgia washed over you, but it was soft, not painful. You wondered how he was doing, how life had treated him since then. Your dad continued chatting warmly about the bakery, your mom’s excitement to see you, and how they had prepared your old room with fresh sheets and your favorite snacks. You listened, smiling softly, letting his voice fill the car and ease some of the heaviness you had carried from the city.

But in the back of your mind, Heeseung’s face kept appearing his gentle smile, the way he had held you last night, the way he had kissed your forehead before leaving.You pushed the thoughts down this weekend was for your parents for some distance and for some clarity. Even if your heart was still back in the city with him, Heeseung woke up slowly around 10 a.m., the sunlight filtering through the curtains of his bedroom. For a moment, the events of the previous day felt distant the loss at the game, the painful dinner with his parents, the comforting way you had hugged him and kissed him before he went to sleep alone then reality settled in.

He sat up, rubbing his face with both hands, and reached for his phone on the nightstand. He had planned to take you out today to a quiet movie or a walk, just the two of you, something normal after the chaos of yesterday. He had been looking forward to it. But when he opened his messages, there was no new reply from you.He frowned slightly, you must have been exhausted and fallen asleep, he thought. The day had been long and emotional for both of you. He scrolled up to check the conversation again, hoping he had missed something. There it was your message from last night.

you : hey, im going to my parents’ place for the thanksgiving break since there’s a short break. i’ll be back on Monday morning. sorry that I can’t go out with you

The words felt… off too polite, too distant. Nothing like the way you had been opening up to him lately the soft smiles, the way you leaned into his touch, the quiet conversations in the dark. This message sounded careful and guarded like you were putting space between you both again. Heeseung stared at the screen for a long time, thumb hovering over the keyboard. Did something happen yesterday? The thought gnawed at him. The dinner with his parents had been rough. His father’s words had cut deep, and he had seen how you had stood up for him. Maybe it had been too much, maybe you were pulling away because of that or maybe… you were just tired.

He didn’t want to pry he couldn’t. You two weren’t actually dating. This was all supposed to be for show for the baby, for appearances. He was the one who had developed real feelings. He was the one who lay awake at night thinking about you and Bambi, imagining a future that felt real. He couldn’t push you he wouldn’t.So he typed a simple, careful reply.

heeseung : did you reach safely?

He sent it and set the phone down, running a hand through his messy hair. The apartment felt too quiet without you. He got up, made himself a quick breakfast, and tried to focus on the day ahead. But his mind kept drifting back to you wondering if you were okay, if the trip was a good escape for you, if you were thinking about him at all. He told himself it was fine if you needed space. You needed time with your family.

But the quiet ache in his chest told him it wasn’t fine he missed you already.Thanksgiving Day started quietly for Heeseung.He woke up early, the apartment feeling too empty without the soft sound of your breathing or the faint scent of your shampoo on the pillow next to him. He spent the first half of the day trying to keep busy. He went to the gym for a long, intense workout pushing himself harder than usual, lifting heavier weights, running longer on the treadmill. The physical exertion helped quiet the restless thoughts in his head.

After showering, he settled on the couch with one of the parenting books he had ordered. He read about the second trimester, about how the baby was developing, about ways to support a partner through mood swings and fatigue. Every page made him think of you how you had been feeling lately, how your belly was starting to show more, how you tried to hide your exhaustion behind a brave smile. He highlighted passages and made mental notes of things he wanted to ask you about or prepare for.

Later, he cleaned his apartment thoroughly, wiping down surfaces, organizing the kitchen, folding the blanket you had used the last time you fell asleep on his couch. The small tasks kept his hands busy, but his mind kept drifting back to you. He wondered if you had reached your parents’ house safely, if you were resting, if you were thinking about him at all.By late evening, he still hadn’t heard from you.He checked his phone again as he got ready to head out for Thanksgiving dinner with his teammates. No new messages. The silence felt heavier than he expected.

Fuck I miss you so much

The thought hit him as he stood in front of the mirror, adjusting the collar of his shirt. He wanted to take you along with him tonight. He wanted to show you off to everyone to walk into the restaurant with your hand in his, to introduce you as his girlfriend ( even if it was still fake to you ), to let his teammates see the girl who had changed everything for him. He imagined how proud he would feel, how complete the night would feel with you by his side. Instead, he would be going alone. Most of his teammates would be there with their girlfriends. Jake had mentioned bringing his girl. Jay was bringing someone too.

The thought of sitting there, watching everyone else paired up while he sat by himself, made the loneliness feel sharper. He grabbed his keys and headed out, the cool evening air doing little to ease the ache in his chest. The restaurant was lively when he arrived. Laughter, clinking glasses, the smell of roasted turkey and warm pies filled the air. His teammates greeted him warmly, clapping him on the back and teasing him about the game. But the moment he sat down at the long table, the emptiness beside him felt glaringly obvious.

He smiled and laughed at the right times, joining in the conversation about the season and holiday plans. But his mind kept drifting back to you wondering if you were having a good time with your parents, if you had eaten something gentle on your stomach, if you were thinking about him even a little. He missed you more than he had expected to. He missed the way you leaned into him when you were tired. He missed the soft way you said his name when you were half asleep. He missed the quiet moments where you let him talk to Bambi, your hand resting over his on your belly.

He took a sip of water, forcing another smile as his teammates joked around him. The loneliness sat heavy in his chest, but he pushed it down. He had chosen this to be there for you, even if it meant sitting through a holiday dinner feeling like something was missing. He pulled out his phone under the table and checked it one more time, still no reply from you.He put the phone away and tried to focus on the conversation, but his thoughts kept circling back to the same quiet hope

Come back soon.

Come back to me.

Heeseung sat at the long dinner table with his teammates, the restaurant buzzing with laughter, clinking glasses, and the rich smell of roasted turkey and warm pies. The Thanksgiving dinner was lively, exactly the kind of celebration the team usually loved after a tough season. But tonight, Heeseung felt detached from it all. Ten minutes into the main course, Beomgyu walked up to him with that signature mischievous grin, slinging an arm around his shoulders.“Yo, captain,” Beomgyu teased loudly enough for the whole table to hear. “You look like a loser in love sitting here all by yourself. Where’s your girl?

The table erupted in laughter. Jake, Jay, and a few others joined in with playful jabs. Heeseung forced a small smile, trying to play along, but the words landed heavier than they should have. Jake, who knew the full truth along with Coach, Jay, and Beomgyu, shot him a sympathetic look but didn’t say anything. Heeseung shrugged, keeping his tone light. “She’s at her parents’ place for Thanksgiving family stuff couldn’t make it.” Beomgyu raised an eyebrow, still grinning. “Is she avoiding the team dinner because she knows how chaotic we are?” The teasing continued, but Heeseung’s mind wasn’t fully there.

He laughed at the right moments, contributed a few comments about the lost game and holiday plans, but the loneliness from earlier still sat heavy in his chest. Most of his teammates had come with their girlfriends. The empty seat beside him felt glaringly obvious. He pulled out his phone under the table and started scrolling through Instagram to distract himself. Stories popped up one after another. Then he saw it ,you had reposted a story.

It was a picture of you smiling brightly next to a guy — tall, good looking, holding a freshly baked pie. The two of you looked comfortable together, arms casually close, the background clearly a warm home setting. Heeseung stared at the photo something sharp twisted in his chest. Jealousy? No, it couldn’t be, it was just a picture. You were allowed to have friends. You were allowed to spend time with people from your past. You had the time to repost that, but not to reply to his message?

He told himself it was nothing. You two were just faking it anyway. But to him, it had started to feel real. The way you had hugged him two nights ago, the peck on his cheek, the way you had defended him in front of his father — it had started to feel real from your side too or maybe he was just being delusional. The thought stung more than he wanted to admit.He slipped his phone back into his pocket, the food on his plate suddenly tasting like nothing. The laughter around the table felt distant. “I’m tired,” he told Coach a few minutes later, standing up. “I’m gonna head out enjoy the rest of the night, guys.”

Coach gave him a knowing look but didn’t push. “Get some rest, Lee, see you at practice.” Heeseung drove straight to the basketball court instead of going home. The arena was empty and dark, but he had a key. He turned on the lights in the practice gym, the familiar smell of polished wood and sweat hitting him as he stepped inside. He changed into practice clothes he kept in his bag and started doing drills dribbling, shooting, defensive slides, anything to clear his head. The ball echoed loudly in the empty gym, each bounce and swish a small release of the frustration and jealousy he didn’t want to name.

Every shot he took, he thought of you every time he caught the ball, he remembered the way you had looked at him after the game, the way you had hugged him, the way you had stood up for him in front of his father.He kept playing until his muscles burned and his mind felt a little quieter.But even then, the image of you smiling next to that guy lingered.

He didn’t know what this was between you two anymore. But he knew one thing for certain he missed you and he didn’t know how much longer he could pretend he didn’t.

Heeseung sat on the edge of his bed, phone in hand, staring at the dark screen. The apartment felt too quiet after the team dinner. The loneliness from earlier had only grown heavier on the drive home. He had tried to distract himself with a quick shower and some stretches, but nothing worked. He opened his messages and typed a simple text to you.

heeseung : happy thanksgiving looks like you’re busy with family hope you’re having a good time

heeseumg : take care of yourself and bambi

He stared at the message for a long moment before sending it. No reply came. He waited a few minutes, refreshing the chat, but the screen stayed silent.He sighed, setting the phone on the nightstand.You’re probably busy with your parents, he told himself. It’s fine she needs time with her family.But the silence stung more than he wanted to admit. He missed the little replies you usually sent even the short ones that made his day feel a little brighter. He missed the way you had started opening up to him, the quiet conversations, the way you let him hold you.

He changed into comfortable clothes and lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The room felt too empty without you. No soft breathing beside him. No warm body curled against his chest. No gentle hand resting on his stomach while you slept. He closed his eyes, trying to push the thoughts away. She’s not mine, he reminded himself this is all fake she’s doing this for the baby not for me.But the lie felt thinner every day. He turned on his side, pulling the blanket higher, and tried to sleep.

The last thing he thought about before drifting off was you smiling in that Instagram story, looking happy and carefree with someone else. And how much he wished he had been the one standing next to you instead.You were sitting on the edge of your old bed in your parents’ house when your phone buzzed. The screen lit up with Heeseung’s message.

heeseung : happy thanksgiving looks like you’re busy with family hope you’re having a good time

heeseung : take care of yourself and bambi

Reading his words made something twist painfully in your chest. Guilt flooded through you, heavy and sharp. You could almost hear his voice saying it soft, caring, the same tone he used when he brought you food or held you through a bad night. You felt like the worst person in the world for ignoring him earlier, for pulling away when he had been nothing but good to you. But you had no choice , you typed back quickly, keeping it short and neutral.

you : happy thanksgiving to you too, good night

you : yes, I was hanging out with my family

You hit send and immediately turned your phone face down on the nightstand. You couldn’t let yourself think about him right now. Not when you were trying so hard to keep your distance. You had spent the day helping out at your parents’ bakery. The place was busy with Thanksgiving orders, the warm smell of fresh bread, pies, and cookies filling the air. You had tied on an apron and worked alongside your mom and dad packing orders, decorating cakes, and chatting with regular customers. It felt good to be useful, to lose yourself in the familiar rhythm of the bakery. Your mom kept fussing over you the whole time, reminding you to sit down, to drink water, to take care of yourself and the baby.

“You’re growing a little person in there,” she had said, gently patting your belly. “Don’t overdo it, sweetheart we’re so happy you’re home.” You had smiled and nodded, letting her worry over you. It was comforting in its own way.

You had also run into Sangwon earlier that day.He was working behind the counter at your parents’ bakery, focused and efficient as he helped customers with their orders. When he looked up and saw you standing there, his eyes widened in genuine surprise, then lit up with that familiar, warm smile you remembered so clearly from high school. The same smile that used to make your teenage heart flutter.

“Wow,” he said, stepping around the counter to pull you into a quick, friendly hug. “It’s really you you look different in a good way.”The two of you had talked for a while during a quiet moment between customers. You had found a small table in the back corner of the bakery, away from prying ears. You told him everything the pregnancy, that Heeseung was the father, and that the two of you were in a pretend relationship for now, mostly for the sake of the baby and to keep things stable.

Sangwon had been really shocked. His eyes went wide, and he leaned back in his chair, processing the news in silence for a few seconds. He asked a few careful, gentle questions how you were feeling, how far along you were, if you were okay emotionally.

Then he promised to keep it all to himself. “You know I won’t say anything to your parents,” he had said seriously, reaching across the table to squeeze your hand. “But… are you okay? Do you need anything? Money, a place to stay, someone to talk to anything at all.” You had hesitated before answering his next question.“Do you like him?” Sangwon had asked gently, his voice full of understanding. You had paused for a long moment, the truth sitting heavy on your tongue.

“I love him,” you had admitted quietly, your voice barely above a whisper. “But it just wouldn’t work out we’re from two different worlds his career, his family expectations, the pressure he’s under… it’s too complicated. I can’t drag him down with me.”Sangwon had looked at you with deep understanding, then pulled you into a gentle, comforting hug right there in the back of the bakery. “Whatever happens, you can come to me,” he had said softly. “I’m always here, never hesitate to call me day or night.”

You had smiled, grateful beyond words. It felt good to have someone who had your back, someone who didn’t judge, someone who remembered the girl you used to be before everything became so complicated.

Now, back in your old room, you lay on the bed staring at the ceiling. The house was quiet, your parents already asleep after a long day at the bakery. The realization that you were in love with Heeseung still sat heavy in your chest, warm and terrifying at the same time. You wanted him. You wanted the quiet mornings, the late night talks, the way he held you like you were something precious. You wanted to build a real family with him and Bambi.

But the threatening message from earlier made your decision feel even more necessary. You closed your eyes, trying to push the thoughts away, but Heeseung’s face kept appearing in your mind his gentle smile, the way he held you when you cried, the way he spoke to Bambi like the baby was already the most important thing in the world. You turned onto your side, hugging a pillow to your chest, and whispered to the quiet room “I’m sorry…” But you knew you had to stay away — for him for Bambi for both of you.

The weekend went by quickly you spent most of your time with your family, helping out at the bakery whenever you could. The familiar rhythm of packing orders, decorating cakes, and chatting with regular customers felt grounding. Your mom fussed over you constantly making sure you ate small, frequent meals, reminding you to rest, and gently patting your belly while whispering sweet words to Bambi. Your dad was over the moon, constantly talking about future plans for the baby and how excited he was to be a grandfather. The warmth of their love helped ease some of the heaviness you had carried from the city.

You also spent time with Sangwon. The two of you talked a lot during quiet moments at the bakery or while walking home in the evenings. It was easy and nostalgic reminiscing about high school, laughing about old memories, and catching up on life since then. He was supportive without being pushy, and his presence felt like a safe, familiar anchor.But throughout the weekend, you barely texted Heeseung. He had messaged you several times asking how you were doing, how your parents were, if you were resting enough, if the nausea was better.

Each message was caring, thoughtful, and full of the quiet concern you had come to expect from him. You replied briefly, keeping your answers short and neutral. You told yourself it was for the best. Keeping distance was the only way to protect him. On Monday morning, your dad didn’t want you to travel back by bus. He insisted Sangwon drop you back to your apartment. “It’s safer this way,” he said. “And it would have been better if Heeseung was here to pick you up, but I understand he’s busy with practice.” You forced a small smile. “He is busy it’s fine, Dad.”

The drive back with Sangwon was pleasant. The two of you chatted casually about old times funny high school memories, how life had changed since then, and light updates about mutual friends. It was fun talking to him. The conversation flowed easily, and you didn’t realize how fast the time had passed until the car halted right in front of your apartment building. Sangwon helped you carry your bags and all the stuff your parents had sent homemade snacks, some clothes, and a few things for the baby they had already started buying. He carried everything up to your door without complaint.

When you reached your apartment door, Heeseung’s door suddenly opened. He stepped out, looking like he had just come back from somewhere. His eyes landed on you first, then on Sangwon standing beside you with your bags. Something passed through his eyes in a quick flash you couldn’t quite figure out surprise? hurt? jealousy? It was gone too fast to read.“You’re back,” he said quietly, his voice neutral but his gaze lingering on you. You nodded, suddenly feeling awkward with Sangwon still standing there. “Yeah… just got back.”

Sangwon gave a polite nod to Heeseung, then turned to you with a warm smile. “Take care, call me if you need anything, okay?” You thanked him and watched him leave. When you turned back, Heeseung was still standing in his doorway, watching you. The air between you felt heavy and didn't know what to say. You stood in the hallway for a moment, the silence after Sangwon left feeling heavier than it should have. Heeseung was still standing in his doorway, watching you with that unreadable expression. The air between you felt thick, charged with everything that had happened over the weekend and everything that remained unsaid.

You shifted your bag on your shoulder and tried to sound casual. “Do you… want to come inside?” you asked, gesturing toward your apartment door.Heeseung shook his head slowly, his voice gentle but firm. “No, you must be tired from all the traveling. You need to rest.” He paused, eyes flicking to your face as if checking for any sign of exhaustion. “Do you have any classes today?” he asked. You shook your head. “No, the one I had in the evening is cancelled.”

Heeseung nodded once, a small, almost curt movement. He didn’t say anything else no “how was your weekend,” no “I missed you,” no offer to bring you dinner or check on you later. He simply turned and walked back into his apartment, the door clicking shut behind him with a quiet finality.You stood there for a few seconds longer, staring at his closed door. The hallway felt colder now emptier.

You turned and walked into your own apartment, locking the door behind you. You set your bags down and leaned against the door, letting out a long, slow breath. Yes, you thought, closing your eyes. This is how it should be. This is how it should have been from the beginning. Keeping distance was the right thing, the safe thing. The only way to protect him from the threat, from his father’s expectations, from the complications your feelings would bring. You couldn’t let yourself get any closer. You couldn’t let your heart get in the way of his future.

You unpacked your bags slowly, folding clothes and putting away the snacks and gifts your parents had sent. Every motion felt mechanical, like you were trying to outrun the ache in your chest. The apartment felt too quiet without his presence no soft knocks on the door, no warm food waiting on the table, no gentle voice asking how you were feeling. You sat on the edge of your bed, hand resting on your belly, and whispered to the quiet room. “This is better for him and Bambi.”

But even as you said the words, a small, stubborn part of you ached for the way things had been just a few days ago the easy conversations, the forehead kisses, the way he made you feel safe. You pushed the thoughts down, telling yourself again and again that this was the right choice. You had to keep your distance.

The following weeks blurred into a painful routine of deliberate distance you ignored Heeseung. Every morning, when he knocked softly on your door with breakfast, you pretended you were already gone or too busy to answer. You left earlier than usual for campus, taking the side stairs to avoid the hallway. When he texted asking how you were feeling or if you needed anything, you replied with short, polite messages — “I’m fine,” “Thank you,” “No need.” You stopped letting him come inside. You stopped the late night talks. You stopped the quiet moments where you used to watch him cook or let him hold you, it hurt.

Every time you saw his name on your phone, your heart clenched. Every time you heard his door open or close, you pressed your back against your own door and reminded yourself why you were doing this. The threatening message still lingered in your mind like a shadow. You couldn’t risk his career. You couldn’t risk Bambi’s future. Keeping distance was the only way.Soobin and Yunjin noticed something was wrong.

They caught the way you went quiet whenever Heeseung’s name came up. They saw how you avoided the usual routes where you might run into him. They noticed how tired and distant you seemed. But they didn’t dare ask. They simply stayed close Soobin walking you to classes, Yunjin sending funny memes to cheer you up, both of them offering silent support without pushing.

Heeseung still tried.

He kept showing up.

Some mornings he left breakfast containers outside your door with little notes “Eat something for Bambi.”He texted every day asking how you were feeling, if the nausea was better, if you needed anything. When you gave short replies, he still followed up the next day. He waited in the hallway sometimes, hoping to catch you, but you always slipped away before he could say more than a few words. One evening, he knocked on your door with dinner. You opened it just a crack, thanked him politely, and took the container without letting him inside. The hurt in his eyes was impossible to miss, but he didn’t push. He simply nodded and said, “Take care of yourself.”

It broke your heart a little more every time. During this one month, your parents sent Sangwon every single week to bring food they had made for you. Homemade meals, snacks, and little notes from your mom reminding you to rest. Sangwon would drop them off with a warm smile, sometimes staying for a short chat. He never pushed, never asked too many questions. He was just there, a safe, familiar presence.

Every time Sangwon came, Heeseung’s door would open. He would step out, see the two of you in the hallway, and go dead silent. His expression would tighten, something unreadable flashing in his eyes, before he quietly went back inside without a word you noticed it every time.And every time, it made the ache in your chest worse.

You were ignoring him to protect him. But it felt like you were hurting him anyway. You sat alone in your apartment many nights, hand on your belly, whispering to Bambi about how sorry you were, how you were doing this for both of them, how you wished things could be different.But you kept your distance because you loved him too much to let anything happen to him. It was a random Wednesday afternoon. ( like it was a random tuesday march 10 )

You were walking down the familiar hallway toward your next class, bag slung over your shoulder, mind lost in thoughts about your capstone project and the gentle flutter you had started feeling in your belly lately. The campus was busy as usual, students rushing between classes, but something felt off the moment you turned the corner and people were staring. Not the usual quick glances, these were prolonged, deliberate stares. Groups of students huddled together, whispering as you passed. Some gave you disgusted looks, others smirked or shook their heads. A few pulled out their phones, clearly taking photos or sending messages. The air felt thick with judgment, and your steps slowed as unease crept up your spine.

You kept your head down, pulling your hood a little lower, trying to ignore the growing discomfort. It’s nothing, you told yourself. Just rumors from the game or something but then it happened. One of the girls standing with a group near the lockers suddenly shouted loud enough for the entire hallway to hear

“Whore!” You stopped dead in your tracks, heart slamming against your ribcage. “What?” you whispered, turning toward her in disbelief. She crossed her arms, smirking with clear malice. “Aren’t you such a slut for baby trapping Heeseung? Everyone knows it you got pregnant on purpose to trap the basketball captain pathetic.”

The words hit like a slap. Your face burned with humiliation as more whispers erupted around you. The hallway seemed to close in, the stares growing sharper, more vicious. Your hand instinctively moved to your belly, protecting the small swell that was starting to show. Before you could even process what to say, Yunjin came running from the other end of the hallway, pushing through the crowd. “Get away from her!” Yunjin snapped at the girl, grabbing your arm and pulling you away. “Come on.”

She dragged you down the hallway and into the nearest empty classroom, slamming the door shut behind you. The room was quiet, the noise from the hallway muffled. Yunjin turned to you, her face flushed with anger and worry. “Are you okay?” she asked, searching your face. You nodded shakily, but your legs felt weak. You leaned against a desk, trying to steady yourself. Yunjin pulled out her phone, scrolling quickly before turning the screen toward you. “Look at this itt’s been circulating all morning.”

It was a post on the anonymous campus page

@decelisconfessions : The only reason Heeseung is with the girl from the arts major is because she baby trapped him. She got pregnant on purpose to lock down the basketball captain disgusting he deserves better.

The post had hundreds of likes and comments already, many agreeing with the accusation, calling you names, speculating about your motives.Your heart dropped. The room spun for a second. You felt sick not from pregnancy, but from the sheer cruelty of it all. The rumors had been bad before, but this was vicious, personally designed to hurt.Yunjin put her phone away and pulled you into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “People are idiots, you know that’s not true heeseung knows that’s not true ee know that’s not true.”

You hugged her back, tears stinging your eyes. The weight of the secret, the distance you had been trying to keep, the love you were trying so hard not to feel it all crashed down on you at once.You didn’t know how much longer you could keep pretending everything was fine.You didn’t know what to do. The words on Yunjin’s phone screen blurred as fresh tears spilled down your cheeks. You couldn’t stop crying. The accusation“baby trapped him” felt like a knife twisting in your chest. Who would do this to you? Who would spread such a vicious, cruel rumor? Why? What had you ever done to deserve this kind of hatred?

Your shoulders shook with silent sobs as you stood in the empty classroom, the world outside the door feeling too loud, too cruel. Yunjin immediately pulled you into her arms, holding you tightly as you cried against her shoulder. “Shh, it’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing your back in slow, soothing circles. “It’s okay those people are idiots. They don’t know anything they’re just jealous or bored or whatever. This isn’t true you know that i know that and moreover Heeseung knows that too.”

You clung to her, the tears coming harder. The weight of the past few weeks the hormones, the secrecy, the distance you had forced between you and Heeseung, the love you were trying so hard not to feel all of it crashed down on you at once. You felt small exposed and terrified.Yunjin held you until the worst of the sobs eased, then gently pulled back and wiped your tears with her thumbs. “Do you want to go home?” she asked softly. “Skip the rest of the classes today? It’s okay if you do.” You nodded, unable to speak. The thought of walking through the hallways again, facing more stares and whispers, made your stomach churn.

Yunjin nodded understandingly. “Okay, I’ll call Soobin. He can bring his car and pick us up at the side entrance so we can avoid the main crowd.” She quickly dialed Soobin while you tried to steady your breathing. Your hand stayed on your belly, gently rubbing small circles. I shouldn’t stress myself out too much, you thought, fresh tears slipping down your cheeks. It isn’t good for Bambi. I have to stay calm for you, little one. Soobin arrived quickly. He didn’t ask questions when he saw your tear streaked face he just gave you a gentle, concerned look and helped guide you out through a quieter side exit. You kept your head down the entire way, hood pulled low, trying to make yourself as small as possible so no one would notice you.

The walk to the car felt endless, every distant whisper or glance making you flinch. Once you were safely in the backseat with Yunjin beside you, Soobin started the car and drove away from campus. The silence in the car was broken only by your occasional sniffles.Yunjin rubbed your arm gently. “Hey… it’s going to be okay those rumors are bullshit people love drama, but it’ll die down. You’re strong, you've got us and you’ve got Heeseung.” Soobin glanced at you in the rearview mirror, his voice soft and reassuring. “Yeah and if anyone says anything to your face, tell me. I’ve got your back.”

They spent the entire car ride trying to cheer you up. Yunjin told funny stories about her latest disastrous date attempt trying to move on sunghoon. Soobin played some of your favorite calm music and cracked a few light jokes about how the three of you should start a secret society to fight campus gossip. Their efforts were sweet, and you managed a few watery smiles, but the ache in your chest didn’t fully go away.When Soobin pulled up in front of your apartment building, Yunjin helped you out of the car and walked you to your door. “Call us if you need anything,” she said, hugging you tightly. “Even if it’s just to cry we’re here.”Soobin gave you a gentle hug too. “Rest up we love you.”

You nodded, thanking them both before stepping inside. The apartment felt too quiet too empty. You locked the door, leaned against it, and let the tears come again. You couldn’t stop thinking about the rumor. About how it could hurt Heeseung’s reputation. About how it could affect Bambi one day. About how you had to keep your distance to protect him even if it broke your heart a little more every day.

You curled up on the couch, hand on your belly, whispering softly to Bambi. “I’m sorry, little one. I’m trying to do the right thing for you and your dad.” The tears kept coming, but you held on to the small comfort that at least you weren’t completely alone.

Only ten minutes had passed since you had curled up on the couch, tears still flowing freely as you hugged a pillow to your chest. The weight of the rumor, the stares, the whispers, and the overwhelming fear of what it could do to Heeseung and Bambi felt crushing. Your phone lay silent on the coffee table, the ignored message from Heeseung still open on the screen. You didn’t have the strength to reply. You didn’t have the strength to face anyone right now.

The doorbell rang and your heart jumped you thought it was Heeseung. He must have heard about the rumor somehow, or maybe he had come to check on you after his practice. You didn’t want to face him right now — not with your eyes swollen from crying, not with the guilt of ignoring him weighing on you, not when you were still trying so hard to keep your distance to protect him.

But the doorbell rang again, soft but persistent.You wiped your tears with the back of your hand, took a shaky breath, and forced yourself to stand up. Your legs felt heavy as you walked to the door. You opened it slowly, expecting to see Heeseung’s concerned face.

It wasn’t him it was Sangwon.He stood there with a small bag in his hand, likely another care package from your parents. His expression was relaxed at first, the familiar warm smile starting to form on his face. But the moment he saw you eyes red and swollen, cheeks streaked with tears, shoulders hunched his smile vanished completely.You broke down the second you saw him.

The tears you had been trying to hold back came rushing out again. A sob tore from your throat as you covered your mouth with one hand, the other gripping the doorframe for support. Your body shook with the force of the crying, the exhaustion of the day, the fear, the guilt, and the overwhelming love you were trying so hard to suppress all crashing down at once.

Sangwon’s eyes widened in alarm. He stepped forward immediately, startled and deeply worried.“Hey, hey — what happened?” he asked, voice full of concern. “Are you okay? Did something happen at campus? Talk to me.”You couldn’t answer right away. The sobs kept coming, your legs feeling weak. Sangwon didn’t hesitate he gently guided you inside, closing the door behind him with his foot. He led you to the couch, making you sit down carefully, and sat beside you, his hand resting lightly on your shoulder.

“Take your time,” he said softly, his voice steady and reassuring. “I’m here just breathe whatever it is, you can tell me.” You cried harder, leaning into his side as the words finally started spilling out between sobs the rumor on the campus page, the girl shouting “whore” in the hallway, the stares, the whispers, the fear that it would ruin Heeseung’s career and reputation. You told him how you had stood up for Heeseung in front of his father, how you were trying so hard to keep your distance to protect him, how much you loved him but couldn’t let yourself get closer.

Sangwon listened without interrupting, his arm around your shoulders, rubbing gentle circles on your back. He stayed quiet and steady, letting you cry it all out, his presence calm and comforting in the middle of your storm. Sangwon stayed with you on the couch, his arm around your shoulders as you cried out everything that had been weighing on you. He didn’t rush you. He just listened, rubbing gentle circles on your back, his presence steady and comforting in the middle of your storm. When your sobs finally quieted into soft sniffles, you pulled back slightly and wiped your eyes with the back of your hand. Sangwon looked at you with deep concern, his voice gentle but firm.

“Is there anything else?” he asked. “You look like you’re carrying even more.”You hesitated, then nodded. The threatening message had been burning in your mind since last night. You took a shaky breath and told him everything the anonymous text, the warning to stay away from Heeseung, the threat to both your careers.Sangwon’s expression darkened. He sat up straighter, his hand still on your shoulder.

“Did you discuss this with Heeseung?” he asked.You shook your head, eyes downcast. “No.”Sangwon sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Why not? Heeseung should be the first person to know all of this he’s the father of your baby. He’s been there for you every step of the way you can’t keep carrying this alone.”

You looked down at your hands, voice small. “I don’t want to ruin his future. If I tell him, he’ll worry, he’ll get involved. And if whoever sent that message finds out… it could hurt his career even more. I can’t do that to him.” Sangwon stared at you for a moment, then gently flicked your forehead. “You’re dumb,” he said, but there was no real bite in his voice, only fond exasperation. “If he didn’t care about you, you would be alone here. Even though you’ve been ignoring him, he still shows up, he still brings you food and he still checks on you that he wants this baby. Do you think some anonymous threat is going to stop him? I think you’re too blind to see that that man is in love with you.”You shook your head quickly, cheeks burning. “No it’s not like that this is all fake it’s just for the baby he’s just being responsible.”

Sangwon gave you a long, knowing look, but he didn’t push further on that point. Instead, he squeezed your shoulder. “I want you to call him up and tell him that you wanna talk to him. This is much needed, he deserves to know. But right now go to sleep, you need that rest. You’ve been through enough today.”

You nodded, too exhausted to argue. Sangwon helped you to your bed, tucking the blanket around you like an older brother ( ex boyfriend turned older brother 🥰). He dimmed the lights and quietly started cleaning up your apartment picking up the scattered snacks from earlier, washing the few dishes in the sink, folding the blanket on the couch.You watched him for a moment, grateful beyond words, before your eyes grew heavy. As you drifted off, the last thing you thought about was Heeseung and how much you wished you could tell him everything.

The entire day had been a blur of motion and focus for Heeseung.He had woken up early, the apartment feeling too quiet without you. The first thing he did was prepare breakfast mild porridge with ginger and some fresh fruit slices, exactly the kind of thing that wouldn’t upset your stomach. He packed it carefully, wrote a short note “Eat something and have a good day”, and quietly left it outside your door before heading to practice. He didn’t knock, he didn't want to wake you if you were still resting. After that, he was completely immersed in basketball.

He arrived at the coaching center and didn’t even glance at his phone. Practice was intense drills, strategy sessions, weight training, and full court scrimmages. He pushed himself harder than usual, channeling every ounce of frustration from the previous night’s loss and the painful dinner with his parents into every sprint, every shot, every defensive slide. Coach noticed his intensity and gave him approving nods, but Heeseung barely registered it. His mind was focused, sharp, and deliberately empty of everything else.

The only breaks he took were for water and quick stretches. He didn’t check his messages. He didn’t think about the unanswered text he had sent you last night. He didn’t let himself wonder why you had suddenly pulled away again. By the time evening practice ended, he was exhausted but satisfied. The team headed to the locker room, the air filled with the usual post practice chatter jokes about the game, plans for the weekend, complaints about sore muscles. Heeseung was changing his shirt when Jay walked over, phone in hand, his expression unusually serious. “Hey, man,” Jay said, lowering his voice. “You should check the university confession page there’s something posted about you and her.”

Heeseung’s stomach dropped. He took the phone from Jay and opened the page. The post was right at the top, already with hundreds of likes and comments.

@decelisconfessions : The only reason Heeseung is with the girl from the arts major is because she baby trapped him. She got pregnant on purpose to lock down the basketball captain disgusting he deserves better.

Heeseung’s blood boiled his grip tightened on the phone, knuckles turning white. The words felt like a personal attack not just on you, but on everything the two of you had been trying to build. The casual cruelty, the assumption that you would do something so manipulative, the way it painted you as some scheming villain it made his jaw clench so hard it hurt.

What do these people think? he thought, anger surging through him. What do they actually think of themselves? Spreading lies like this, ruining someone’s reputation for clicks and gossip? They don’t know anything about her. They don’t know how hard she’s trying, how scared she is, how much she’s already giving up to protect this baby. He handed the phone back to Jay without a word, his mind racing. He wanted to find whoever posted it. He wanted to shut it down. He wanted to protect you from this.But right now, all he could do was breathe through the anger and try to stay calm.

The locker room fell into a stunned silence as the post spread through the team’s phones.Heeseung’s blood was still boiling, his grip on the edge of the bench so tight his knuckles turned white. The words on the screen, the casual cruelty, the baseless accusation that you had “baby trapped” him made his jaw clench so hard it ached. He wanted to find whoever posted it. He wanted to shut it down. He wanted to protect you from this vicious gossip that was clearly spreading like wildfire across campus.Before he could say anything, the door to the locker room burst open.

Coach rushed in, phone in hand, his face a mixture of concern and anger. The rest of the team looked up, the atmosphere shifting from casual post-practice chatter to tense worry.

“I just saw the post,” Coach said, voice low but urgent. “It’s been up for almost 8 hours. The whole campus is talking about it. Heeseung — are you okay? Is she okay?”The guys gathered closer, their expressions shifting from shock to genuine concern. Jake stepped forward first. “Man, this is messed up,” Jake said, voice serious. “If you need anything, if she needs anything we’ve got your back.”Jay nodded. “Yeah this isn’t right people are assholes.”Beomgyu looked furious. “Who the hell posts something like this? We need to find out who runs that page.”Heeseung ran a hand through his damp hair, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I’m going to find out,” he said. He turned to Jake. “Can you try to find the admin of the page? Anything you can dig up.”

Jake nodded immediately. “On it.”Heeseung didn’t wait for more. He grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the door.“I need to check on her,” he said over his shoulder. “She’s not answering my messages, and her calls are going straight to voicemail.”The team called out words of support as he left, but Heeseung barely heard them. His mind was racing. The rumor had been out for almost 8 hours. You must have seen it. You must be hurting. And the fact that you weren’t answering him only made the worry twist sharper in his chest. He drove straight to your apartment building, heart pounding the entire way. The streets blurred past as he pushed the speed limit, his mind replaying every moment of the past few weeks the way you had stood up for him in front of his father, the way you had hugged him after the game, the way you had slowly started opening up to him.

He parked quickly and took the stairs two at a time. When he reached your door, he knocked firmly.No answer he knocked again, louder still nothing. He pulled out his phone and tried calling you straight to voicemail. “Fuck,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.He stood there for a moment, worry and frustration mixing with a deep, protective anger. He didn’t know who was behind the post, but he knew one thing for certain he wasn’t going to let this hurt you. Not if he could help it he knocked one more time, calling your name softly through the door.

“Baby… it’s me please open the door if you’re in there.”The silence on the other side only made his chest ache more.Heeseung stood outside your door, heart pounding, worry and frustration mixing in his chest. He had knocked again, called your name softly, and tried your phone one more time. Straight to voicemail.The silence on the other side was deafening.

Just as he was about to knock again, the door finally opened. But it wasn’t you it was another guy — tall, good looking, carrying a small bag. The same guy from the Instagram story you had reposted. The one holding a pie, smiling comfortably next to you. Heeseung’s heart hurt it was a sharp, unexpected twist in his chest. You had relied on another man instead of him. He didn’t even know who this guy was or what his relationship with you was. All he knew was that this same person had been visiting you every single week for the past month, bringing things from your parents. And now he was here, in your apartment, when you weren’t answering Heeseung’s calls.

The jealousy was instant and ugly. He tried to push it down, but it burned.Sangwon looked at him for a second, then offered a polite, slightly awkward nod.

“I think I’ll leave now,” Sangwon said quietly. “I was waiting for you to come back.”Heeseung just nodded, jaw tight, unable to form words. Sangwon grabbed his stuff, gave a small wave, and left down the hallway.Heeseung stepped inside your apartment, closing the door behind him. The place was dimly lit, quiet except for the faint sound of your breathing from the bedroom. He walked in slowly, his eyes adjusting to the low light.You were curled up on the bed, eyes red and swollen from crying, looking small and exhausted. The sight broke something in him. He crossed the room in a few quick steps and knelt beside the bed, gently brushing a strand of hair from your face.

“Hey,” he whispered, voice soft. “I’m here.”You looked up at him, fresh tears slipping down your cheeks. Heeseung’s heart twisted again. He climbed onto the bed and pulled you into his arms without another word, holding you close as you cried against his chest.He didn’t ask what happened. He just held you, one hand stroking your back, the other resting protectively over your belly.“I’ve got you,” he murmured against your hair. “I’ve got both of you.”

He stayed like that for a long time, letting you cry it all out, his own worry and jealousy fading into the background. Right now, the only thing that mattered was you.You stayed curled against Heeseung’s chest for a long time, the sobs slowly easing into quiet sniffles. His arms were steady around you, one hand gently stroking your back, the other resting protectively over your belly. The warmth of his body and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat slowly grounded you.

When you finally felt calm enough to speak, you pulled back just enough to look at him. Your voice was hoarse and shaky. “People are talking shit about me,” you whispered. “On that confession page they’re saying I baby trapped you. Some girl shouted ‘whore’ at me in the hallway today. Called me a slut for trapping you. Everyone was staring… whispering…”Heeseung’s expression darkened, but his touch remained gentle. He brushed a tear from your cheek with his thumb.

“That isn’t true,” he said firmly, voice low and steady. “You know it. I know that those people don’t know anything about us they don’t know how hard you’ve been trying, how scared you’ve been, or how much you’ve already given up to protect this baby. They’re just bored and cruel. Their words don’t define you. They don’t define us.”He leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead, holding it there for a long moment. You took a shaky breath and continued.

“There’s more,” you whispered. “The day we came back from your parents’ place… an anonymous number threatened me. They said to stay away from you or they’d ruin both our careers. I… I got scared I didn’t want to ruin your future. That’s why I started avoiding you. I thought if I kept my distance, it would protect you.”

Heeseung’s eyes widened slightly. He searched your face, then let out a slow, pained breath. “It was probably my dad,” he said quietly, voice tight with frustration. “He’s been like this my whole life always comparing me to Heedo, always putting pressure on me. I should have told you how bad it was. You should have told me about the message. We’re supposed to face this together.” You nodded, tears slipping down your cheeks again. “I couldn’t,” you whispered. “I was scared I didn't want to ruin your career you mean a lot to me, Heeseung, more than I ever thought you would.” Heeseung’s eyes filled with tears. He pulled you into a tight hug, burying his face in your hair.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough, thick with emotion. “Don’t ever hide anything from me again,” he whispered. “Not the hard things not the scary things. Not the messages that make you cry. I don’t care how busy I am, or how important the tryouts feel, or how much pressure my dad puts on me. You come first always.” He pulled back just enough to look at you, his hands coming up to cup your face, thumbs gently wiping the tears from your cheeks. His own eyes were shining.

“I want to be the first person you come to when something hurts, when you’re scared, when you need something, anything. Even if it’s just to sit in silence and let me hold you. I don’t want you carrying things alone just because you’re trying to protect me. That’s not how this works, we're a team now you and me and Bambi.” His forehead rested against yours as he continued, voice softer but no less certain. “I know I’ve been focused on the NBA stuff. I know I’ve been distant sometimes because of it. But that stops now. If my dad sends another message, if anyone tries to make you feel small or unwanted, you tell me immediately. I will handle it i will protect you. I will never let anyone make you feel like you have to choose between my dreams and your peace.”

He kissed your forehead, lingering there, then pressed another soft kiss to each of your damp eyelids.“Promise me,” he murmured. “Promise you’ll come to me first. No more keeping things inside because you’re afraid of what it might cost me. You’re not a burden, baby you’re the reason any of this matters. You’re the home I want to come back to every single time.” His arms tightened around you again, one hand sliding down to rest protectively over your belly.

He thought to himself it is now or never fuck it “I have to tell you this,” he said, voice thick with emotion. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you ever since the first day you walked into this building and banged on my door calling me an entitled asshole. I loved how you never backed down, how you called me out, how you were so real with me. I fell for you long before the baby. I fell for you when you were still miss morals, yelling at me through the wall. I love you. I love Bambi. I want this — us ,to be real. I don’t care how complicated it is i want to build a life with you. I want to be the one who’s there for you every single day i love you.”

His voice cracked on the last words, tears slipping down his cheeks as he held you like you were the most precious thing in his world. You felt your own tears fall faster. You pulled back just enough to look at him, then leaned in and kissed him soft at first, then deeper, pouring everything you had been holding back into it.When you pulled away, your voice was shaky but sure. “I love you too,” you whispered. “I’ve been trying so hard not to admit it, but I do, I love you, Heeseung.” He smiled through his tears and pulled you back into his arms, holding you like he never wanted to let go.

Heeseung’s confession hung in the air between you, raw and honest. His eyes were glassy with tears, but the smile on his face was real soft, vulnerable, full of love. You didn’t have words left, you just leaned in and kissed him.

The kiss started slow and tender, lips brushing gently, tasting the salt of tears that still clung to both of you then it deepened. Heeseung cupped your face with both hands, thumbs stroking your cheekbones as he tilted your head and kissed you like he had been starving for this exact moment for months. His tongue traced the soft curve of your lower lip, teasing, asking. You opened for him without hesitation, and the kiss turned hungry desperate in the best way. Your tongues met in a slow, deliberate slide, wet and warm, exploring each other with a thoroughness that made heat pool low in your belly.

You tangled your fingers in his hair, gripping the soft strands at the nape of his neck and pulling him closer. He groaned into your mouth, the low, rough sound vibrating straight through your chest. His hands left your face and slid down, roaming over your back with firm, open palms. Fingers slipped under the hem of your shirt, finding bare skin. The first touch of his warm hands against your lower back made you shiver. He stroked upward, slow and deliberate, mapping the line of your spine, the soft curves of your waist, the sensitive skin just beneath your shoulder blades.

You pressed closer, shifting until you were straddling his lap fully. The solid heat of his thighs beneath you, the unmistakable hardness growing against the softest part of you, sent a fresh wave of need through your body. He pulled you down against him, rolling his hips once just enough for you to feel how much he wanted you and another deep groan spilled from his throat into the kiss.

The kiss broke only for quick, shared breaths before you found each other again. His lips were swollen, wet, insistent. He sucked gently on your lower lip, then your upper, then kissed you deeper still, tongue sliding against yours in a rhythm that felt almost indecent. One of his hands slipped higher under your shirt, palm gliding over the side of your ribcage until his fingers brushed the soft underside of your breast. He didn’t rush he just held you there, thumb stroking back and forth in a feather light tease that made your breath catch. The other hand stayed on your thigh, fingers spreading wide, squeezing the soft flesh as he pulled you even tighter against the hard line of his cock.

You rocked against him without thinking, a soft, needy sound escaping into his mouth. He answered by kissing you harder open mouthed, messy, full of heat while both hands moved with purpose. One stayed under your shirt, now fully cupping your breast, thumb brushing over your nipple through the thin fabric of your bra until it tightened into a sensitive peak. The other hand slid higher up your thigh, fingertips tracing the edge of your underwear, not quite slipping underneath yet, just teasing the sensitive skin there in slow, maddening strokes.

You kissed for what felt like forever slow, then deeper, then almost frantic his tongue stroked yours. Your teeth grazed his lower lip. His hands never stopped moving, squeezing, stroking, mapping every inch of bare skin he could reach. The air between you grew warmer, heavier. Your fingers tightened in his hair, his hips rolled up against you again, deliberate and slow, letting you feel every hard inch of him through the layers of clothing.

When Heeseung finally pulled back just enough to look at you, both of you were breathing hard. His eyes were dark with desire, pupils blown wide, but underneath the heat there was something softer, almost worshipful. His hands remained on you one still under your shirt, palm curved possessively over your breast, the other resting high on your thigh, fingers still tracing lazy, intimate patterns against your skin.He didn’t speak he only watched you, lips parted and shining, as if the sight of you flushed and breathless in his lap was something he needed to memorize before he kissed you again.

“I love you,” he whispered, voice cracking. “God, I love you so much. I’ve been losing my mind over you for months. Every time you smiled at me, every time you let me hold you, every time you trusted me with Bambi… I fell harder. I’m such a loser for you i can’t even pretend anymore.” He laid you down gently on the bed, hovering over you. His hands were reverent as he slowly undressed you, kissing every inch of skin he revealed. When you were bare beneath him, he took his time, lips trailing down your neck, across your collarbone, and over your swollen, sensitive breasts.

He sucked gently on one nipple, then the other, making you whimper and arch into him.bHis hand slid between your thighs. You were already wet, aching. He teased your folds with his fingers, circling your clit slowly before sliding two fingers inside you. He pumped them deep and steady, curling them just right against that spot that made stars burst behind your eyes. His thumb rubbed your clit in perfect rhythm, and you whimpered, hips rolling against his hand.

“So good,” he murmured against your breast, voice wrecked. “So wet for me I love you like this I love you so much it hurts.” You moaned loudly, fingers digging into his shoulders as he worked you closer and closer. The pleasure built slowly, deliciously, until you came with a soft cry, clenching around his fingers.

Heeseung kissed you through it, then gently withdrew his hand. He stripped off his own clothes and settled between your legs in missionary. He entered you slowly, inch by inch, filling you completely. You both moaned at the feeling. He stayed still for a moment, forehead pressed to yours, breathing you in. “I love you,” he whispered as he started moving slow, deep thrusts that made you feel every inch of him. “I love you I love you so much.”

You wrapped your legs around him, hands on his back, matching his rhythm. The pace was sensual, loving, every stroke deliberate. He kissed you the entire time, whispering sweet, adoring words between thrusts how beautiful you were, how much he loved you, how happy he was to have you and Bambi.

After a while, the need to feel even closer overwhelmed you. You gently pushed at Heeseung’s shoulder, and he understood immediately, rolling onto his back without breaking the kiss. You followed, straddling his hips, your hands braced on his chest as you slowly sank down onto him. The new angle made you both moan deeply. He filled you completely, thick and warm, stretching you in the most delicious way. You paused for a moment, adjusting, breathing each other in as your bodies connected fully. Heeseung’s hands found your hips, fingers digging in just enough to ground you, his eyes dark and full of awe as he looked up at you.

You started moving slow, rolling hips that dragged him in and out of you with exquisite friction. Every downward motion made you whimper softly, the angle hitting that perfect spot deep inside. Heeseung’s breath hitched with every roll, his hands guiding your movements, thumbs stroking the skin just above your hips. When you placed your right leg on his chest, bending it so your foot rested near his shoulder, he took it gently in both hands. He kissed your calf tenderly, lips brushing the sensitive skin, then moved to your ankle, pressing open mouthed kisses there as you continued riding him. The contrast between the sweet, reverent kisses on your leg and the way his cock filled you so perfectly made your head spin.

“Look at you,” he groaned, voice wrecked and full of wonder. “Riding me so perfectly you’re so beautiful like this. I’m such a loser for you I can’t even think straight when you’re on top of me I love you I love you so much it hurts.” ( my man is pussy drunk ) His words, combined with the deep, rolling thrusts and the way he kissed your leg like it was something sacred, pushed you over the edge again. You came hard, trembling on top of him, walls clenching rhythmically around his cock as pleasure crashed through you in waves. Your moans filled the room, raw and unrestrained. Heeseung followed right after, groaning your name as he spilled deep inside you, hips jerking up to meet yours. He held you down on him, pulsing inside you, his hands gripping your hips like he never wanted to let go.

Afterward, he gently pulled you down onto his chest, arms wrapping around you tightly. He kissed your forehead, your cheeks, your lips soft, lingering kisses that spoke more than words ever could. You both stayed like that, naked and tangled together, hearts beating in sync, his hand resting protectively over your belly where Bambi was growing. The room was quiet except for your slowing breaths. Heeseung held you like you were the most precious thing in his world, his fingers tracing lazy patterns on your skin as you drifted in the warm afterglow.

The next morning, you woke up slowly to the soft clinking of utensils and the faint, comforting smell of something warm cooking in the kitchen. Sunlight filtered gently through the curtains, casting a soft glow over the room. You were still naked under the blanket, the memory of last night’s intimacy lingering in the pleasant ache of your body and the warmth in your chest. Heeseung wasn’t in bed beside you. You sat up, rubbing your eyes, and smiled faintly when you heard him humming quietly in the kitchen.

You slipped on one of his oversized shirts that had been left on the chair and padded barefoot toward the kitchen.

Heeseung stood at the stove, wearing only sweatpants, his back to you as he stirred something in a pot. The sight of his broad shoulders, the way his muscles moved as he cooked, the domestic ease of it all made your heart flutter. You walked up behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist, pressing your cheek against his bare back in a back hug. Heeseung startled for a second, then relaxed into your embrace with a soft chuckle. “Good morning,” he murmured, turning his head slightly to kiss the top of your head. “Did you sleep well?”You nodded against his back, tightening your arms around him. “Better than I have in a while what are you making?”

“ porridge with ginger and some fruit on the side,” he said, continuing to stir. “And ginger tea thought it would be gentle on your stomach.” You smiled, pressing a soft kiss to his shoulder blade. “You didn’t have to.” “I wanted to,” he replied simply, turning off the stove and turning around in your arms so he could face you. He cupped your face with both hands and kissed you gently on the lips, then on your forehead. “Morning looks good on you.” You blushed, burying your face in his chest. The two of you stayed like that for a while you wrapped around him, his arms holding you close, the quiet morning sunlight warming the kitchen.

Heeseung eventually pulled back just enough to serve breakfast. You sat at the small table together, eating slowly. He asked how you were feeling, if the nausea was better, and you asked about his practice schedule. The conversation was easy, domestic, and full of small, sweet moments, him reaching over to brush a strand of hair from your face, you feeding him a piece of fruit from your bowl, both of you laughing when he accidentally got a bit of porridge on his chin.

After breakfast, you both got ready for campus. Heeseung helped you choose a comfortable outfit, making sure it was loose enough for your growing belly. Before leaving, he pulled you into another hug, kissing your forehead.

“Ready to go?” he asked.You nodded, taking his hand as you stepped out together.You walked to campus hand in hand, the morning sun shining down on you. A few people stared, but you didn’t care. For the first time in a while, you felt like you were exactly where you were meant to be. The walk to campus hand in hand with Heeseung felt both surreal and strangely right.Everyone in the campus looked shocked. As you both walked through the main gates, heads turned. Students who had been whispering about the rumors just yesterday now stared openly, eyes wide with surprise. Some pointed discreetly. Others pulled out their phones.

The sight of Heeseung the basketball captain, campus royalty walking hand in hand with you, his arm occasionally brushing protectively over your small, rounded belly, was clearly not what anyone had expected. The news had spread fast. The confession page rumor had painted you as a manipulator. But seeing you two openly together, Heeseung looking at you with soft, obvious adoration, and the visible sign of your pregnancy under your loose sweater it shattered that narrative in real time. People whispered, but the tone had shifted.

Some looked curious, some looked surprised, a few even smiled.Heeseung didn’t seem to care about any of it. He walked with quiet confidence, his fingers intertwined with yours, occasionally squeezing gently as if to remind you he was right there. When you reached the building for your first class, he stopped and turned to you. He cupped your face with both hands and leaned in, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your lips right there in the middle of the busy pathway. “I’ll see you after class,” he murmured against your lips. “Text me if you need anything take care of yourself and Bambi.”You nodded, cheeks warm, heart fluttering. “You too.”He gave you one last soft smile, then walked away toward his own building, glancing back once with that same adoring look.

You stood there for a second, still a little dazed, before Yunjin and Soobin appeared beside you, both grinning like idiots. Yunjin squealed and linked her arm with yours. “Oh my god, that was so cute! He just kissed you in front of everyone! Heeseung Mr. Cool Captain is out here openly simping for you. I’m living for this.” Soobin chuckled, shaking his head. “He looked like he was ready to fight anyone who looked at you wrong. Madly in love is an understatement how does it feel to have the whole campus talking about you two in a good way now?” You blushed harder, trying to hide your smile as you walked with them toward class.

“It feels… weird,” you admitted. “But nice I think.”Yunjin bumped your shoulder playfully. “Weirdly nice is the best kind he’s whipped and you’re glowing pregnancy looks good on you, babe.” Soobin nodded in agreement.You laughed softly, the teasing from your friends helping ease some of the nervousness. As you walked into the classroom, you couldn’t help but glance back toward where Heeseung had gone, a small, private smile on your face.The campus was still staring but for the first time, it didn’t feel like judgment.It felt like the beginning of something real.

The rest of your classes went by surprisingly smoothly. Nobody dared say anything to your face. The stares were still there, but they were quieter now more curious than cruel. The rumor had spread, but the sight of Heeseung openly kissing you goodbye in the morning seemed to have shifted the narrative. People whispered, but no one shouted insults no one followed you. You kept your head high, hand occasionally resting on your belly under your hoodie, and focused on your lectures. Yunjin and Soobin stayed close, offering silent support and the occasional funny comment to keep your spirits up.

By the time the final class ended, you felt tired but lighter. The campus still felt watchful, but it no longer felt hostile.

In the evening, you met Heeseung in the parking lot like you had agreed. The moment he saw you walking toward him, his face lit up with that soft, genuine smile that made your heart skip. He didn’t say anything at first. He just pulled you into a big, warm bear hug, wrapping his arms around you tightly and lifting you slightly off the ground. You laughed softly into his shoulder, hugging him back just as hard.

“I missed you today,” he murmured against your hair. “How were your classes?” “They were okay,” you replied, still in his arms. “No one said anything mean. Just staring it was… manageable.”Heeseung pulled back enough to look at you, his hands resting on your waist. “Good if anyone bothers you, tell me. I mean it.”

You nodded, smiling up at him. He looked so happy just to see you eyes bright, shoulders relaxed. It made the earlier anxiety feel smaller.Heeseung brushed a strand of hair from your face. “I was thinking do you want to go on a date? A real one there’s a restaurant not too far from here. Good food” You felt a flutter in your chest a real date with Heeseung after everything. You smiled. “I’d like that.” His face lit up even more. “Great let’s go home first and get ready i’ll drive.”

You both walked back to the apartment hand in hand. Once inside, you changed into a comfortable but cute outfit a flowy dress that hid your bump nicely and made you feel pretty. Heeseung changed into a simple button up shirt and jeans, looking effortlessly handsome. He waited patiently while you did your hair and a bit of makeup, complimenting you every time you caught his eye in the mirror.“You look beautiful,” he said softly when you were ready. “Ready to go?”You nodded, taking his hand as you left the apartment together.

The car ride to the restaurant was peaceful. Heeseung played soft music and asked about your day in more detail what you learned in class, how Bambi had been moving, if you were feeling any new symptoms. You asked him about practice and how he was feeling after the loss. The conversation flowed easily, comfortable and warm, like you had been doing this for months.

The restaurant was quiet and cozy, with soft lighting and gentle background music. You and Heeseung sat at a corner table, the atmosphere intimate and warm. He had chosen a place with light, pregnancy-friendly options, and the waiter had been attentive without being intrusive. As you both ate, the conversation flowed naturally. You talked about your classes, how Bambi had been moving more lately, and how your parents had been sending care packages. Heeseung listened with that soft, focused look he always gave you, occasionally reaching across the table to hold your hand.

Toward the end of the meal, Heeseung set his fork down and looked at you with a small, excited smile.

“I have some news,” he said, voice low but full of quiet pride. “During my next match, an NBA scout is coming. My coach told me today. It’s a big one someone from a team that’s been watching me for a while.” Your eyes widened, a genuine smile spreading across your face. “Really? That’s amazing, Heeseung! You’ve been working so hard for this.” He nodded, looking a little shy but happy. “Yeah it’s a huge opportunity I’m nervous, but… excited. I want to show them what I can do.” You squeezed his hand across the table. “You’re going to do great i know it. I’ll be there cheering for you with Bambi.”

Heeseung’s smile widened, his thumb brushing over your knuckles. “Having you there means everything. I’ll play better knowing you’re watching.” There was a comfortable pause as you both finished the last bites of your meal. Then Heeseung’s expression shifted slightly, a hint of cute, boyish jealousy creeping into his voice. “So… who is that guy who has been coming over to your place for the past month?” he asked, trying ( and failing ) to sound casual. “The one with the pie in your instagram story”

You blinked, then couldn’t help but smile at how adorably obvious his jealousy was. “He’s an old friend from high school,” you explained gently. “My first boyfriend, actually we broke up mutually before university because of the distance. He’s been helping at my parents’ bakery and dropped off some food they made for me. That’s all.” Heeseung nodded, but his ears turned a little pink. “Ah okay just… curious.”

You teased him lightly. “Were you jealous?” He looked away, a shy smile tugging at his lips. “Maybe a little I saw the story and I don’t know. I didn’t like seeing you smiling with someone else even if it’s fake between us, it felt… real to me.”Your heart melted at his honesty. You squeezed his hand again.“It’s real to me too,” you admitted softly.

Heeseung’s eyes lit up, and he leaned across the table to kiss your knuckles. The rest of the dinner was filled with light conversation about the upcoming game, what he was preparing, and how you could support him. The mood was warm and hopeful, the earlier tension from the campus rumors feeling far away.

After dinner, Heeseung drove you back to the apartment. You both walked into his apartment hand in hand. It felt familiar now the clean, minimalist space with the faint scent of his cologne. Heeseung closed the door behind you and pulled you into a gentle hug, kissing the top of your head.“Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “I’ll get you something to change into.”

He handed you one of his oversized shirts. You changed in the bathroom and came out to find him already in sweatpants, turning down the bed. He smiled when he saw you in his shirt, eyes warm and adoring. “You look good in my clothes,” he murmured, pulling you into bed with him. You both slipped under the covers, naked except for the shirt you wore. Heeseung immediately wrapped his arms around you, pulling your back against his chest in a spooning position. One hand rested protectively over your belly, the other stroked your arm.The room was dark and quiet, only the faint city lights filtering through the curtains. You felt safe warm and loved.

Heeseung pressed a soft kiss to the back of your neck.“Goodnight, baby,” he whispered. “Sleep well i’ve got you and Bambi.”You smiled in the dark, intertwining your fingers with his over your belly.“Goodnight,” you whispered back. You fell asleep like that safe in his arms, his breath warm against your neck, the steady beat of his heart lulling you into peaceful rest.

The next morning, you woke up to the soft sound of Heeseung humming in the kitchen. The smell of gentle breakfast filled the apartment. You smiled, stretching slowly, feeling the warmth of the night before still lingering in your body and heart.

You got up, wearing his shirt, and walked to the kitchen. Heeseung turned when he heard you, his face lighting up with that soft smile. “Morning,” he said, pulling you into a hug and kissing your forehead. “Sleep well?” You nodded, hugging him back. The two of you spent a sweet, slow morning together eating breakfast at the small table, talking about nothing and everything, stealing soft kisses between bites. Heeseung’s hand never strayed far from your belly, a quiet, protective gesture that made your heart feel full.

When it was time to head to campus, he took your hand as you left the apartment together, walking side by side like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The walk to campus hand in hand with Heeseung felt both surreal and strangely right.The morning air was crisp, the sun shining gently as you both made your way through the familiar paths. Heeseung’s fingers were intertwined with yours, his thumb occasionally stroking the back of your hand in a soothing rhythm. You felt the small, rounded curve of your belly brushing against the fabric of your loose sweater with every step a constant, gentle reminder of Bambi growing inside you.

You glanced up at him, heart full. After the sweet night spent in his apartment, the warmth of his arms still lingered on your skin. You took a deep breath and decided to share the news that had been on your mind since the last checkup. “I have an appointment today with the doctor,” you said softly, squeezing his hand. “Today they’ll be able to tell us the baby’s gender. Maybe if you want, we can have a small gender reveal? Just something simple with our parents, or even just the two of us.” Heeseung stopped walking abruptly. He turned to you, eyes wide with pure, unfiltered excitement. Then, right there in the middle of the campus pathway, he literally jumped a little, a small, boyish hop of joy that made you laugh out loud.

“What do you mean ‘if you want’?” he exclaimed, grinning so wide it lit up his entire face. “We need to hold a huge gender reveal celebration! Balloons, cake, a big sign the works! I want everyone to know. I want to celebrate our baby properly.” You couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm. His happiness was infectious, and for a moment, all the worries about rumors, his family, and the future faded into the background.

Heeseung pulled you closer, wrapping his arms around you in the middle of the pathway, not caring who saw. He rested his forehead against yours, voice soft but full of wonder.“And I want a daughter who just looks like you,” he whispered, eyes shining. “With your pretty brown eyes, your smile, your laugh. A little girl who’s as strong and kind as her mom. Though a mini me would be cute too. As long as they have even a little bit of you in them, I’ll be the happiest dad in the world.”

Your heart melted. You felt tears prick your eyes as you hugged him back, burying your face in his chest.“You’re going to be an amazing dad,” you whispered. Heeseung kissed the top of your head, holding you for a long moment before pulling back with a bright, excited grin.

“Let’s do this,” he said. “After the appointment, we’ll plan the gender reveal. Big or small — whatever you want but I’m definitely celebrating our baby.” You nodded, smiling up at him as you continued walking hand in hand toward campus. The stares from other students didn’t bother you as much today. Not when Heeseung was looking at you like you were his whole world. The future still felt a little scary, but with him by your side, it also felt full of hope.

It had been a week since you entered your fifth month and three weeks of pregnancy. Your bump was now clearly visible a soft, rounded curve that made your clothes fit differently and drew more curious glances on campus. You had started wearing looser tops and dresses to accommodate it, and every time you caught your reflection, a mix of wonder and nervousness filled you. Bambi was growing, and the reality of it all felt more real with each passing day.

You and Heeseung were now openly together. The rumors had slowly died down, replaced by a mix of surprise and tentative acceptance. People still whispered, but the public affection the way Heeseung walked you to class, held your hand, and kissed your forehead in front of everyone had shifted the narrative. He was proud and protective and you were slowly letting yourself believe it was real.

Today, you were sitting on the couch in your apartment, feet propped up as Yunjin took full control of planning the gender reveal party. Yunjin had declared herself the official planner the moment you told her the gender reveal was happening. She had taken over everything — decorations, venue, guest list, even the cake. She had told you in no uncertain terms that you were to take full rest and not worry about anything. “This mama needs her beauty sleep,” she had said dramatically, pointing at you with a pen. “You just sit there, look pretty, and let me handle the rest doctor’s orders well, my orders same thing.”

You laughed softly, rubbing your belly. “You’re really going all out, aren’t you?”“Obviously,” Yunjin grinned, scribbling notes on her planner. “This is Bambi’s big day we’re doing it right pink and blue everything. Balloons, confetti It’s going to be perfect.” She looked up from her notes, tapping her pen against her chin. “Okay, so who do you want at the gender reveal? I need the final list.”

You had already thought about it. “My parents and heeseungs parents , obviously. Soobin and you, Heeseung’s teammates — Jake, Jay, Beomgyu and Sangwon.” Yunjin nodded, writing everything down. “Got it I’ll handle the invitations you just relax.” Later that evening, you called your parents. Your mom answered on the first ring, her voice bright and excited.

“Sweetheart! How are you feeling? How’s my grandbaby?”You smiled, rubbing your belly. “We’re doing good. The bump is getting bigger I wanted to let you know we’re planning a gender reveal party soon. I’d love for you and Dad to come.” Your mom gasped happily. “Of course we’ll come! We wouldn’t miss it for the world. And do you think you and Heeseung could visit for Christmas? Stay for a day or two? We’d love to have you both here.” You glanced at Heeseung, who was sitting beside you on the couch, listening quietly. He nodded with a small smile.“Yeah,” you said. “We’d love that.”

Your dad’s voice joined in the background, sounding emotional. “Tell Heeseung we’re looking forward to seeing him too. Take care of yourself, okay?”You ended the call with a warm feeling in your chest. Your parents’ support had always been unwavering, and it meant the world. Yunjin continued planning with relentless enthusiasm, texting you updates and ideas late into the night. You let her take the lead, grateful for her energy while you rested more.The gender reveal was coming and for the first time, you felt excited instead of scared.

The messages had started again. Even though you had blocked the first number, they kept coming from different ones. You had tried blocking each new number, but they always found a way. At first, you had been terrified every time your phone buzzed. Now, you were just tired. You sat on the couch in your apartment, legs tucked under you, hand resting on your growing belly. Bambi was moving more these days gentle flutters that made you smile despite everything. You opened your phone and looked at the latest thread from an unknown number.

unknown : you think blocking me will stop this? Stay away from Heeseung

unknown : i know where you live. I know your schedule don’t test me

unknown : if you don’t leave him, I’ll make sure both your careers are over the baby too

unknown : you’re ruining his life leave before it’s too late

You stared at the screen for a long moment, then locked the phone and set it face down on the coffee table. The threats had lost some of their power over the weeks. They still scared you, but Heeseung’s constant reassurance had slowly built a shield around your heart. He had told you again and again that nothing would happen. That he would protect you and Bambi. That whoever was behind the messages was just trying to scare you. He had even talked to his coach and a few trusted friends about keeping an eye out, and he had started walking you to and from classes more often.

You were happy ,truly happy with the choice you had made. The fear was still there, but it was quieter now. You had Heeseung. You had Bambi. You had a little family that felt more real every day. You rubbed your belly gently, smiling as you felt a small kick. “You’re going to be so loved,” you whispered. “Your dad and I… we’re going to figure this out i promise.” Heeseung walked in from the kitchen, carrying a plate of fresh fruit he had cut for you. He saw your phone on the table and the tired look on your face. “Another one?” he asked softly, setting the plate down and sitting beside you, you nodded. “Different number again.”

He pulled you into his arms, kissing the top of your head. “I’ve got you nothing is going to happen to you or Bambi i won’t let it we’re in this together.” You leaned into him, breathing in his familiar scent. “I know I’m okay and I’m happy, Heeseung really happy with you with Bambi with us.” He smiled against your hair, his hand resting on your belly. “Our little family is perfect,” he whispered. “All that’s left is waiting for Bambi to arrive and I can’t wait.” You closed your eyes, letting his words wrap around you like a warm blanket. The threats were still out there but so was your little family and for the first time, you truly believed everything was going to be okay.

The next day, Heeseung drove to his parents’ house alone. He had decided to invite his mother personally for the gender reveal party. He wanted to do it face to face, hoping to keep the conversation civil and away from his father’s influence. The drive was quiet, his mind drifting between excitement for the reveal and the lingering tension from the last visit. When he arrived, his mom greeted him at the door with her usual warm smile, pulling him into a tight hug.

“My son,” she said happily. “Come in i made your favorite tea.” Heeseung followed her inside, the familiar scent of the house bringing back a mix of memories some good, some painful. They sat in the living room, and his mom asked about you immediately.

“How is she? How’s the baby? Are there any problems? Is she resting enough?” Heeseung smiled softly, the mention of you and Bambi instantly warming his chest.“We’ve never been better,” he said honestly. “She’s doing well the bump is growing, and Bambi is active. She’s strong and we’re both excited for the gender reveal.” His mom’s eyes lit up with genuine joy. “I’m so happy for you both. I can’t wait to meet my grandbaby.”

They talked for a while about the party plans, about how you were feeling, about Heeseung’s basketball schedule. The conversation was light and comfortable, the kind of talk he wished he could have more often with his family. Then his mom stood up. “Can you go to my room and get me my reading glasses? They’re on the dressing table.” Heeseung nodded and headed to the master bedroom. The room was neat and elegant, as always. He walked to the dressing table and spotted the glasses immediately. As he reached for them, a spare phone lying on the table lit up with a notification. The number on the screen looked oddly familiar ,it was your number. The message preview read

you : i don’t know who you are and why you hate me so much and why you want me away from Heeseung stop it

Heeseung’s hand shook as he picked up the phone. His heart pounded in his chest. He unlocked it with the passcode he knew his mom used for everything and opened the messaging app the thread was long. Dozens of messages from different numbers ( let’s forget common sense here you guys ) all sent to you. Threats, warnings, cruel words telling you to stay away from him. The same anonymous number that had been harassing you for weeks it was his mom.

The realization hit him like a punch to the gut. His own mother had been the one sending those messages. The one threatening your career, his career, the safety of you and Bambi.

His hands trembled as he scrolled through the messages. The words were vicious, calculated to scare you into leaving him. His mom had done this. The woman who had welcomed you with open arms, who had cried happy tears at the news of the baby she had been behind it all. Heeseung stood there in the middle of the room, phone in hand, the weight of the betrayal crashing down on him. He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at the screen, before he heard his mom’s voice calling from the living room.

“Heeseung? Did you find them?”He took a deep, shaky breath, slipped the phone into his pocket, and walked back out.The conversation continued as if nothing had happened, but inside, Heeseung’s world had shifted.His own mother had tried to tear you away from him.

And he had no idea what to do with that. Heeseung sat across from his mother in the living room, the spare phone burning a hole in his pocket. His mom acted like nothing was happening smiling warmly, asking about your health, about the baby, about how the two of you were managing. She poured him tea, chatted about the weather, and even asked if you had any cravings she could help with.He couldn’t hold it in anymore.“Mom,” he said, voice low but sharp. “Did you ever contact her?”

Eunae blinked, setting her teacup down. “Contact who, dear?” “You know who the woman I’m with the mother of my child.” She laughed lightly, waving her hand. “How can I? I don’t even have her number. Why would I contact her?” Heeseung pulled the spare phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table between them. The screen lit up with the thread of messages the threats, the warnings, the cruel words.His mom’s face paled.

Heeseung’s voice shook with anger. “This is you, these are your messages, you threatened her, you told her to stay away from me or you’d ruin both our careers why?”Eunae stared at the phone, then back at him. Her expression shifted from shock to defensiveness. “She isn’t good for you, Heeseung,” she said, voice steady but cold. “She isn’t from the same league, she's just a normal girl and a child now is just a distraction you have a future in the league. Your brother Heedo never let anything like this happen. He stayed focused and succeeded. You’re throwing everything away for her and that baby.”

Heeseung’s hands clenched into fists. “She is good for me she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She stood up for me in front of Dad when you both stayed silent, she’s carrying my child ,our child. And you tried to scare her away you threatened her how could you do that?” Eunae’s eyes hardened. “I did it for you for your future a baby now will ruin your career. She will ruin your career you need to focus on basketball, on the league. Not on playing house with some girl who got pregnant to trap you.”

Heeseung stood up, voice rising. “She didn’t trap me I love her and i want this baby. I want this family if you can’t accept her and Bambi, then I don’t want to be a part of this fucking family you all are dead to me.”The words hung in the air. At that moment, the front door opened. Heedo walked in, back from wherever he had been. He stopped in the doorway, taking in the scene Heeseung standing, face flushed with anger, their mom looking shocked. Heedo looked at Heeseung, then at their mom

“He’s right,” Heedo said quietly. “If you can’t accept them, then you don’t deserve to be part of their lives.”Heeseung was taken back. His older brother, the golden child, the one their father always compared him to, had never spoken up for him before. Never defended him, never said anything against their parents.Heedo looked at Heeseung with a small, rare nod of respect. Heeseung swallowed hard, then turned back to his mom. “Never fucking contact me again,” he said, voice breaking. “Or her or my child.”

He stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him. The drive back was a blur. His hands shook on the wheel, tears blurring his vision. But underneath the anger and hurt was a strange sense of freedom.

He had chosen you.

He had chosen Bambi.

And it felt like the right choice.

You were sitting on the couch, still trying to process everything that had happened, when you heard a soft knock on your door. Your heart jumped when you thought it might be Heeseung. You hadn’t expected him so soon, but the moment you opened the door and saw him standing there, something in you broke.

Heeseung looked devastated his eyes were red and glassy, shoulders slumped, hair messy like he had run his hands through it too many times. The moment he saw you, his face crumpled. He stepped inside without a word and broke into tears, pulling you into his arms as sobs shook his body.

You held him tightly, stunned. Heeseung the strong, steady Heeseung who had been your rock through everything was crying in your arms like his world was falling apart.“I’m sorry,” he choked out between sobs.“I’m so sorry.” You rubbed his back, heart aching. “Shh, it’s okay you’re here i’ve got you.” He pulled back just enough to look at you, tears streaming down his face. His voice cracked as he spoke. “The anonymous person was my mom.”The words hit you like a slap. You froze, eyes widening in shock. “What?”

Heeseung nodded, crying harder now, his shoulders shaking. “Out of everyone… it was her, she was the one sending those messages. Threatening you telling you to stay away from me she used a spare phone. I found it when I went to their house today. She denied it at first, but I saw everything, all of it.”

You were completely shaken. His mom the woman who had welcomed you with open arms, who had cried happy tears at the news of the baby, who had been so kind and warm had been the one behind the cruel messages? The one who had terrified you for weeks? You didn’t know how to react your mind spun. You had thought she liked you. You had thought she was happy for you and Heeseung and Bambi.

Heeseung buried his face in your neck, crying harder. “She said you weren’t good enough, that you were a distraction and that the baby would ruin my career. She compared me to Heedo again and said I was throwing everything away. I told her if she couldn’t accept you and Bambi, then I don’t want to be part of this family anymore.”

You held him tighter, your own eyes filling with tears. You rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles, trying to be the steady one for once. “I’m so sorry,” you whispered. “I didn’t expect this she was so nice to me. I thought I thought she was happy for us.” Heeseung shook his head against your shoulder. “I didn’t either. I thought she was on our side. I thought I don’t know what I thought anymore.” You pulled back gently and cupped his face with both hands, wiping his tears with your thumbs. “Hey… look at me we’re okay we’re together bambi is okay. That’s what matters right now, we don't need their approval we have each other.”

Heeseung nodded, eyes still wet, but he leaned into your touch. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you and Bambi so much. I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.” You kissed his forehead, then his cheeks, then his lips — soft, reassuring kisses. “I love you too, we're going to be okay all three of us.” You held him for a long time, letting him cry it out, stroking his hair, whispering comforting words. The betrayal hurt especially coming from his mom but having Heeseung here, choosing you and Bambi over everything else, made the pain feel a little more bearable you were in this together and that was enough.

The silence in your apartment felt heavier than it ever had.Heeseung sat on the edge of your bed, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. His shoulders were still shaking slightly from the tears he had shed earlier. You sat beside him, one hand gently rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles, the other resting protectively over your belly. Bambi had been kicking more today, as if sensing the storm around you. Neither of you had spoken for several minutes. Finally, Heeseung lifted his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, voice hoarse.

“I can’t believe it was her,” he whispered. “My own mom. She welcomed you. She cried when she heard about the baby. And behind our backs she was threatening you trying to scare you away from me .”You swallowed hard, your own throat tight. The woman who had hugged you so warmly, who had asked about your health and the baby with what seemed like genuine care she had been the one sending those cruel messages. The realization still felt surreal.“I didn’t expect it either,” you said softly. “She seemed so nice I thought… I thought she was happy for us.”

Heeseung let out a bitter laugh, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “That’s what makes it worse. She played the perfect mother in law. And all this time, she was the one trying to tear us apart. Because I’m not Heedo because I’m not ‘perfect’ enough because having a baby with you is apparently ‘ruining my future.’” You shifted closer, wrapping your arms around him. He leaned into you immediately, resting his head on your shoulder. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone,” he murmured. “The messages, the fear you were protecting me, and I had no idea. I should have known something was wrong when you started pulling away.”

You kissed the top of his head. “I didn’t want to add more stress. You already have so much on your plate basketball, your dad, everything. I thought if I stayed away, it would keep you safe.” Heeseung pulled back to look at you, eyes still wet but full of fierce determination. “You don’t have to protect me by disappearing,” he said. “We protect each other, that's what this is supposed to be us ,a team for Bambi.”

You nodded, tears slipping down your cheeks again. “I know im sorry I was scared I still am but I don’t want to run anymore.”Heeseung cupped your face with both hands, thumbs wiping your tears away. “We’re going to figure this out together I love you I love Bambi and I’m not letting my family or anyone take that away from us.”

The two of you stayed like that for a long time, holding each other in the quiet of your apartment. The betrayal still stung, but being together made it feel a little less overwhelming. Later that evening, Heeseung made you both tea and sat with you on the couch. You talked for hours about what to do next, whether to confront his mom again, whether to tell his dad, how to move forward with the gender reveal party. Heeseung was hurt, but he was also resolute.

“I don’t want to cut them off completely,” he said quietly. “But I won’t let them treat you or Bambi like this. If they can’t accept us, then they don’t get to be part of our lives.” You leaned your head on his shoulder. “We’ll do whatever feels right as long as we’re together.”

He kissed your forehead, hand resting on your belly. “Together always.” The revelation had shaken both of you. But it had also brought you closer. The love you had both been afraid to fully admit was now out in the open, stronger because of the storm you were facing. You fell asleep that night in his arms, his hand protectively over your belly, whispering promises to Bambi about the family you were building — no matter what anyone else tried to do. The road ahead was still uncertain but you felt ready to walk it together.

The next two weeks passed in a surprisingly peaceful rhythm. Life had settled into a gentle, busy routine that felt almost normal. Heeseung had gotten really busy with practice. The NBA scout was coming to his next big match, and he was pushing himself harder than ever. He left early in the mornings and came back late in the evenings, but he always made time for you. He would text you during breaks, send photos of his meals to show he was eating properly, and still managed to drop off breakfast or dinner whenever he could.

You were equally occupied with your capstone project. With the third trimester approaching, you had decided to take a break from university after this semester to focus on the pregnancy and the baby. The pressure was on to finish strong, so you spent long hours at the library or at home, working on your art curation proposal. Heeseung would often find you hunched over your laptop when he came over, and he would gently pull you away for breaks making you tea, rubbing your feet, or simply holding you while you rested your head on his chest. In between all the busyness, you both started apartment hunting.

It was exciting and a little overwhelming. You looked at several places together, small but cozy apartments closer to both campus and the basketball facilities. After a few viewings, you found one that felt right: a two-bedroom unit with a bright living room, a small balcony, and enough space for a nursery corner. The rent was reasonable, and the location was perfect. You both signed the lease the same day, smiling at each other like it was the beginning of something real.

During Christmas, you and Heeseung visited your parents’ house for a couple of days.The trip was warm and joyful. Your parents were over the moon to have both of you there. Your mom had prepared a feast all your favorite dishes and pregnancy-safe versions of everything. Your dad kept pulling Heeseung aside to talk about baby names and future plans, treating him like a son already. Heeseung fit in seamlessly, helping your dad with small tasks around the house and charming your mom with his thoughtfulness.

One evening, the four of you sat around the Christmas tree, exchanging small gifts. Heeseung had gotten your parents thoughtful presents, and they had prepared something special for both of you baby clothes and a beautiful journal for you to write letters to Bambi. The night ended with Heeseung falling asleep with his head on your shoulder while your dad told old family stories. You felt safe loved like you were already building the family you had dreamed of.

The visit was exactly what you both needed a break from the campus rumors, a reminder that there were people who supported you unconditionally.Back in the city, the gender reveal party planning was also in full swing. The gender reveal party planning was also in full swing. Yunjin had taken complete charge, sending you daily updates and mood boards. She had booked a small venue, ordered decorations in soft pinks and blues, and was handling the guest list with military precision. You and Heeseung helped where you could, choosing the cake flavor, deciding on simple games, and finalizing the guest list. Your parents were coming, and close friends from both sides were excited.

Through all of it, Heeseung was incredibly attentive. He made sure you rested, reminded you to eat, and massaged your feet when they swelled. Some nights he would fall asleep with his head on your belly, talking softly to Bambi about the future. Other nights, when the hormones made you needy, he would make love to you slowly and sweetly, whispering how much he loved you and how beautiful you looked carrying his child you were happy.

The distance you had tried to keep had dissolved completely. The love you felt for him was no longer something you fought against it was something you embraced. Heeseung felt the same. He told you every day, in small ways and big ones. One evening, after a long day, you were both lying on the couch. Heeseung had his hand on your belly, feeling Bambi’s kicks. “I can’t wait to meet them,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to start this life with you for real.” You smiled, turning to kiss him softly. “Me too.” The two weeks had been peaceful, productive, and full of quiet joy.

The morning of the gender reveal party, the air in your apartment felt charged with nervous excitement.You stood in the bathroom, slowly undressing for a shower. Your hands trembled slightly as you pulled off your shirt, revealing your six month pregnant belly and swollen, tender breasts. Today was the day the day you would finally find out if Bambi was a boy or a girl. The day your friends and family would celebrate with you. The day everything felt incredibly real.Heeseung leaned against the doorway, watching you with soft, adoring eyes.

“Are you nervous?” he asked gently, his voice low and warm. You turned to him, a small, shy smile on your face. “A little happy, nervous I just… I can’t believe we’re really doing this finding out who Bambi is.”

Heeseung stepped closer, his gaze tracing your body with reverence, the curve of your belly, the fullness of your breasts, the way your skin glowed from pregnancy. He looked almost reverent, like he still couldn’t believe you were his. “Can I join you in the shower?” he asked, his voice dropping to that husky tone that always made your knees weak. His eyes had that unmistakable puppy dog look soft, pleading, full of love and desire.

You couldn’t say no you nodded, a shy smile tugging at your lips. “Yeah come here.” Heeseung stripped quickly. The moment he pulled his pants and boxers down, his cock sprang free, already hard and heavy, slapping against his stomach with a soft sound. The sight made heat pool between your legs instantly.

You raised an eyebrow, teasing him even as your cheeks warmed. “Are you sure you only want to shower?” Heeseung let out a low, embarrassed laugh, stepping into the shower with you. The water started running, warm streams cascading over both of you.

“I swear I’m trying my best,” he groaned, pulling you against him. His hands slid over your wet skin, one cupping your swollen breast, the other resting on your belly. “But mama seeing you like this, carrying our baby, these beautiful swollen breasts I can barely control myself.” You smiled, turning in his arms to face him. Water ran down your bodies as you kissed him deeply, tongues sliding together in a slow, sensual dance. Heeseung groaned into your mouth, his hard cock pressing against your belly. He was gentle but desperate, hands roaming your curves with adoration.

He broke the kiss to trail his lips down your neck, sucking softly at your pulse point. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he whispered against your skin. “I love you like this heavy with my baby so full and sensitive ”You whimpered as he cupped your breasts, thumbs brushing over your sensitive nipples. They were darker and heavier now, and every touch sent sparks straight to your core. Heeseung leaned down, taking one nipple into his mouth, sucking gently while his hand kneaded the other. You moaned, fingers threading through his wet hair, hips pressing against him.

He eventually dropped to his knees in front of you, water cascading over his shoulders. He kissed your belly reverently, whispering to Bambi before spreading your legs and burying his face between them. His tongue was slow and thorough, licking and sucking your swollen clit while two fingers slid inside you, curling perfectly. You cried out, one hand braced on the wall, the other in his hair, as he brought you to the edge with expert precision. When you came, it was with a broken moan, legs shaking as pleasure washed over you.

Heeseung stood up slowly, water cascading down his toned body as he captured your lips in a deep, possessive kiss. His tongue swept into your mouth, letting you taste the sweet tang of your own release mixed with the heat of him. You whimpered into the kiss, fingers threading through his damp hair, pulling him impossibly closer. He groaned softly against your lips, the sound vibrating through you.“God, you taste so fucking good,” he murmured, voice husky and low. “I could eat you out for hours, baby. But I need to feel you now.”

He turned you around with gentle but firm hands, pressing your front against the cool, slick tile wall. The contrast between the chilled surface on your breasts and the hot spray of water on your back made you gasp. Heeseung’s chest molded to your back, his hard length nudging insistently against your ass. One hand splayed protectively over your rounded belly, cradling it tenderly, while the other slid down between your legs, fingers circling your sensitive clit with expert precision.“You ready for me, love?” he whispered hotly against your ear, nipping at the lobe. “Tell me you want it.”

“I want you,” you breathed, arching back into him. “Please, Heeseung fill me up.” With a low, satisfied growl, he entered you in one smooth, deliberate thrust, burying himself to the hilt. The angle was devastating, deep, intimate, every inch of him stretching and claiming you perfectly. You cried out, forehead pressing against the tile as the water made everything impossibly slick and heated. “Fuck yes,” he groaned, staying still for a moment to let you adjust, his breath ragged against your neck. “You’re so tight, so warm around me like you were made for me. I love you… I love you so much it hurts sometimes.”

He began to move slow, sensual rolls of his hips that dragged against every sensitive spot inside you. The hand on your belly held you steady, protective of the life growing there, while his fingers between your legs never stopped their teasing rhythm on your clit. Steam filled the shower, the sound of skin meeting skin mixing with the rush of water. “Heeseung fuck right there,” you moaned, pushing back against him, meeting every thrust. “Feels so good don’t stop.”

“I won’t, baby never,” he promised, lips trailing wet kisses along your shoulder and neck. “You’re perfect like this carrying our little one so strong, so beautiful I’m so excited to meet Bambi. Boy or girl, I already love them more than anything just like I love their mama.” Your heart swelled at his words, the emotion blending with the building pleasure. He picked up the pace just slightly, thrusts still deep and controlled, grinding against you with every stroke. The hand on your belly rubbed soothing circles, while his other worked your clit faster, drawing desperate sounds from your throat.

“Say it again,” you gasped, clenching around him. “Tell me you love me.” “I love you,” he growled, voice breaking with pleasure. “I love you more than yesterday, and I’ll love you even more tomorrow you and Bambi you’re my everything come for me, sweetheart let me feel you.” The coil inside you snapped hard. You came with a sharp cry of his name, walls pulsing tightly around his cock, vision blurring from the intensity. Heeseung followed right after, burying himself deep with a guttural moan that echoed off the tiles. “Fuck—yes, just like that taking all of me,” he panted, spilling hot and thick inside you, hips stuttering as he rode out his release. He held you close through every pulse, arms wrapped around you like he’d never let go.

For a long moment, you both stayed like that, breathing hard under the warm spray. Heeseung kissed your neck softly, whispering, “My beautiful mama you did so well.” He pulled out carefully, turning you to face him. His hands were gentle as he cleaned you both with soapy hands, massaging your shoulders, your belly, your thighs with reverent touches. “Does that feel okay? Not too sore?” he asked, eyes full of concern and love. You smiled, cupping his face. “Perfect I love you, Heeseung.”

He kissed you softly, lingering under the water until it started to cool. Shutting it off, he wrapped you in a huge, fluffy towel, then scooped you up effortlessly into his arms. You laughed lightly, nuzzling into his chest as he carried you to the bedroom.Laying you down on the bed, he climbed in beside you, pulling the covers over both of you. He immediately pressed kisses to your belly, murmuring against your skin, “Hey, little Bambi daddy loves you so much already. Can’t wait to find out if you’re our princess or our little prince today at the reveal but either way, you’re going to be so loved.”

You ran your fingers through his hair, watching him with soft eyes. “You’re going to be the best dad.” He looked up at you, eyes shining. “Only because I have the best partner come here.” He pulled you into his arms, holding you close, one hand still resting on your belly. “The gender reveal’s going to be amazing but right now? This is everything I need just us three.” The room was quiet except for your mingled breathing, the world outside forgotten. Everything felt warm, safe, and utterly perfect.

As soon as you both came down from the high, you dressed slowly, still glowing from the intimacy. You chose a soft white dress that flowed beautifully over your 6 month pregnant bump, the fabric hugging your curves gently and showing off the roundness of your belly. You left your hair in loose waves, adding a touch of natural makeup that made you feel pretty and confident. Heeseung wore a simple white shirt and white pants, looking effortlessly handsome and matching you perfectly.

When you stepped out of the bedroom, Heeseung’s eyes lit up. He walked over and gently placed both hands on your belly, leaning down to kiss it softly.“You look absolutely stunning,” he murmured, voice full of awe. “Our little family is going to have the best day today.” You smiled, heart full, and took his hand as you both left the apartment. The drive to the venue was peaceful. Heeseung held your hand the entire way, occasionally rubbing his thumb over your knuckles or glancing at you with that soft, adoring look that always made your stomach flutter. When you arrived, the venue took your breath away.

It was magical.

The outdoor garden space Yunjin had chosen was decorated beautifully with strings of soft fairy lights, arches covered in white and blush flowers, and delicate deer themed decorations everywhere in honor of Bambi. There were tables with pastel blue and pink accents, a beautiful reveal box in the center, and a small stage for the announcement. Balloons in soft colors floated gently, and the whole place felt warm, intimate, and full of love. The moment you stepped inside, Yunjin spotted you and came running. She pulled you into a tight hug, careful of your bump.

“Oh my god, you look so beautiful!” she squealed, pulling back to admire your dress. “That bump is perfect and Heeseung you two match so well. This is going to be the best gender reveal ever.”You hugged her back tightly, laughing softly. “Thank you for doing all of this it’s perfect really.”

Heeseung smiled beside you, wrapping an arm around your waist. “You outdid yourself, Yunjin thank you.”Guests started pouring in slowly. Your parents arrived first, your mom tearing up the moment she saw you. She hugged you carefully, then hugged Heeseung like he was already family.“You both look so happy,” she said, eyes shining. “We’re so excited to meet our grandbaby today.” Your dad pulled you into a warm hug, then patted Heeseung on the back. “Take care of my girl, son.”

Close friends and Heeseung’s teammates filled the space Jake, Jay, Beomgyu, and others congratulating you with wide smiles and teasing Heeseung about how whipped he looked. Soobin and Yunjin stayed close, making sure you were comfortable. Soobin brought you a chair when you looked tired, and Yunjin kept checking if you needed water or snacks.

Then Heedo and his fiancée arrived. Heeseung’s older brother walked in with a calm, confident stride, his fiancée beside him looking elegant and kind. The moment Heeseung saw them, his entire face lit up with genuine happiness. He hadn’t expected them especially after the tension with his parents and the surprise showed in his eyes. “Heedo,” Heeseung said, voice warm as he stepped forward to hug his brother. “You came.” Heedo hugged him back, clapping him on the back. “Of course I did ,couldn’t miss this. Congratulations, little brother, you're going to be a dad.”

His fiancée smiled warmly at you, stepping forward to give you a gentle hug. “You look absolutely radiant we’re so happy for both of you.” Heeseung’s happiness was palpable. He stayed close to you, arm around your waist, but you could see how much it meant to him that his brother had shown up. For the first time in a long time, there was no comparison, no pressure just family showing up for him.

The atmosphere was joyful and full of love. Everyone congratulated you and Heeseung, commenting on how cute your bump was and how excited they were to find out if Bambi was a boy or a girl. Heeseung stayed by your side the entire time, hand on your lower back or gently on your belly, looking at you like you were the center of his world.As the party continued, you felt a deep sense of peace.

The gender reveal was about to begin.And no matter what the result was, you knew you had everything you needed Heeseung, Bambi, and the people who loved you.The moment finally arrived. Yunjin stood in the center of the beautifully decorated garden, holding a microphone with a bright, excited smile on her face. The guests had gathered around in a semi circle, the fairy lights twinkling overhead and the soft pastel decorations creating a magical atmosphere. The air was filled with anticipation and joy.

“Alright everyone!” Yunjin called out, her voice bright and clear. “It’s time for the main event! Can we please gather around the couple? Heeseung and our beautiful mama to be are about to find out if they’re having a baby boy or a baby girl!” The crowd moved closer, phones ready to capture the moment. Your parents stood near the front, your mom already tearing up with excitement. Heedo and his fiancée were smiling warmly beside them. Soobin and the rest of your friends formed a supportive circle, while Heeseung’s teammates cheered loudly, clapping and whistling.

Yunjin gestured dramatically as two staff members wheeled out a beautiful, two-tiered cake. It was white with delicate gold accents and small deer figurines on top a perfect tribute to Bambi. The cake sat on a special stand with a hidden compartment inside.Yunjin handed both of you a small silver spoon. “Okay, lovebirds,” she said with a grin. “You’re going to dig into the cake together on my count. If it’s blue inside, it’s a boy and if it’s pink, it’s a girl ready?” You looked at Heeseung, heart pounding with happy nerves. He smiled at you, eyes full of love, and took your hand.“Ready,” he said softly.

Yunjin raised the microphone. “Alright… 3… 2… 1… Dig in!”

You and Heeseung leaned forward together, spoons sinking into the soft cake. The moment the spoons broke through the white frosting, bright pink filling spilled out vibrant, beautiful pink. The crowd erupted in cheers and gasps of delight. Pink poppers went off all around you, showering the air with pink confetti and ribbons. The entire venue lit up with pink lights as everyone celebrated. You and Heeseung were having a baby girl.

The moment you saw the pink, tears filled your eyes. Heeseung’s reaction was immediate, he dropped his spoon and pulled you into his arms, hugging you tightly as happy tears streamed down his face.“We’re having a girl,” he whispered, voice thick with emotion. “A baby girl our daughter.”He held you close, one hand on your back and the other gently on your belly, crying softly against your shoulder. “Thank you,” he murmured, voice breaking. “Thank you for giving me this for giving us her. I love you so much, I love both of you.”

You hugged him back just as tightly, tears falling freely down your cheeks. The joy was overwhelming pure, unfiltered happiness. The guests cheered louder, clapping and whistling as pink confetti continued to rain down. Yunjin was crying happy tears too, jumping up and down. “A girl! Bambi is a girl!” Your parents rushed forward, hugging both of you. Your mom was sobbing with joy, your dad wiping his eyes as he patted Heeseung on the back. Heeseung didn’t let go of you for a long time. He kept whispering against your hair, “Our daughter, we're having a daughter. I can’t believe it ,I’m the luckiest man alive.”

In that moment, surrounded by love, pink confetti, and the people who mattered most, everything felt perfect. Your little family was growing and it was going to be beautiful.The car ride back to your new apartment was quiet but full of warmth.

The gender reveal party had been magical pink confetti still clung to your hair and clothes, and the joy of knowing you were having a baby girl lingered in the air like a sweet aftertaste. Heeseung drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting gently on your thigh, thumb stroking small circles. Every now and then, he would glance at you with that soft, adoring smile that made your heart feel too big for your chest.When you finally stepped into your new apartment, the feeling was surreal.

The space was still mostly unfurnished, but it already felt like home. The living room had a comfortable couch, a few boxes waiting to be unpacked, and a small corner where you had already started imagining the nursery. The balcony doors were open, letting in the cool night breeze. The moment the door closed behind you, Heeseung stopped in the middle of the room, looking around with tears in his eyes.

“We’re going to have a daughter,” he whispered, voice thick with emotion. “A little miss morals, a mini version.” You turned to him, smiling through your own happy tears. “Yeah we are.” Heeseung’s eyes filled with fresh tears. He looked so overwhelmed, happy, grateful, a little disbelieving like he still couldn’t quite believe this was his life now. “Can I hug you?” he asked softly, almost shyly, as if he was afraid to ask for too much. You laughed gently, stepping closer. “Why are you even asking me? Of course you can.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled you into his arms, wrapping you up in a tight, warm hug. His face buried in your neck, and you felt his shoulders shake as he started crying again soft, happy tears that soaked into your shoulder.

“I’m so lucky I found you,” he whispered, voice breaking. “You are my lucky charm, miss morals. From the first day you banged on my door and called me an entitled asshole I never stood a chance. You changed everything and you gave me a reason to be better. You gave me Bambi you gave me this — us. I love you so much I love our daughter so much I can’t believe I get to do this with you.”You held him tighter, one hand rubbing his back while the other rested on the back of his head. Tears slipped down your own cheeks as you listened to him pour his heart out.

“You’re going to be the best dad,” you whispered. “I know it and I’m so happy it’s with you.” Heeseung pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes red but shining with love. He cupped your face with both hands, thumbs wiping your tears away. “I’m going to give her the world,” he said, voice thick. “And you too everything you both deserve I promise.” He leaned in and kissed you slow, deep, full of all the love and gratitude he couldn’t put into words. When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours, hands sliding down to rest on your belly.

“Hey, little one,” he whispered to your bump, voice soft and full of wonder. “It’s Daddy we found out today that you’re a girl. My little miss morals I can’t wait to meet you. I’m going to love you so much your mom and I we’re going to be the best team for you.” You smiled through your tears, placing your hand over his on your belly. The moment felt sacred to the three of you, in your new home, starting this new chapter together. Heeseung kissed your forehead again, then your nose, then your lips. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For choosing me, for choosing us.”

You hugged him again, resting your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. The future was still full of unknowns, the scout, his family, the challenges of parenthood but in that moment, wrapped in his arms in your new apartment, everything felt exactly right you were home.

The arena was packed, the air thick with tension and the roar of the crowd. You sat in the stands with Yunjin beside you, your hand resting protectively on your rounded belly. At sevenmonths pregnant, the bump was impossible to hide now, and every time the crowd cheered, you felt a mix of excitement and anxiety twist in your stomach. Today was one of the most important matches of Heeseung’s life a crucial game that could determine whether his team made it to the finals, and with the NBA scout in the audience, the pressure was sky- high.

Yunjin nudged your shoulder, grinning. “You look even more nervous than Heeseung out there. Girl, breathe you’re going to give yourself and Bambi a heart attack.” You let out a shaky laugh, but it didn’t ease the knot in your chest. “How can I be calm? This is huge for him. The scout is watching yhe team is neck and neck with the opponents if they lose this…” You trailed off, eyes fixed on the court. Heeseung was in the middle of it all, sweat dripping from his hair, face focused and determined. The score was tied, and the clock showed only 30 seconds left. The entire arena was on edge, the noise deafening.

Yunjin rubbed your arm gently. “Hey, he’s got this he’s been playing like a beast all season. And even if they don’t win, he’s still going to be okay, you’re here for him, that's what matters.” You nodded, but your heart was racing. Your free hand stayed on your belly, feeling Bambi’s gentle kicks as if the baby could sense your nerves. The final seconds ticked down agonizingly slow.

The opponents had the ball. A quick pass, a shot missed. Heeseung grabbed the rebound, his movements sharp and fast. The crowd erupted. He dribbled down the court, eyes scanning for an opening. With only 5 seconds left on the clock, he drove toward the basket, leaped, and released the ball in a perfect arc.

Time seemed to slow

The ball sailed through the air

It swished cleanly through the net

The buzzer sounded

The arena exploded

Your team had won by one point

You jumped to your feet, tears of relief and joy spilling down your cheeks. Yunjin screamed beside you, hugging you tightly. The crowd was chanting Heeseung’s name as he was swarmed by his teammates on the court. He looked up toward the stands, eyes searching until they found you. Even from a distance, you saw the pure joy and relief on his face.He pointed at you, mouthing “For you” before his teammates pulled him into a group hug. You cried harder, hand on your belly, whispering to Bambi, “Your dad did it, little one he really did it.”

The celebration on the court was chaotic and beautiful. Heeseung eventually broke away from his teammates and jogged over to the sidelines, looking up at you with the brightest smile you had ever seen. Security let you down to the court edge, and the moment you reached him, he pulled you into his arms, lifting you slightly off the ground despite your bump. “We did it,” he whispered against your hair, voice thick with emotion. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” You hugged him back tightly, laughing through your tears. “You were incredible I’m so proud of you.”

He kissed your forehead, then your lips, right there in front of everyone. The crowd cheered louder at the sight heeseung didn’t care. He held you close, one hand on your belly, the other on your back. “Bambi’s dad just won the matcg ,” he said with a watery laugh. “And maybe just maybe the NBA is next.” You smiled up at him, heart full. “Whatever happens, we’ve got this all three of us.” The scout was somewhere in the stands, but in that moment, none of that mattered. Heeseung had won the game, and you had won each other.The future felt brighter than ever.

The team had to stay back for a post game meeting with the coach and the scout, so you, Yunjin, and Soobin decided to grab dinner together. The three of you went to a quiet, cozy restaurant near campus the kind with warm lighting and comfortable booths. Yunjin ordered all your favorite pregnancy safe dishes, making sure nothing was too spicy or heavy. Soobin kept the conversation light, cracking jokes about the game and how Heeseung had looked like a superhero in the final seconds. You tried to laugh along, but your mind kept drifting back to the court, to Heeseung, and to the scout who had been watching him so closely.

After dinner, they dropped you off at your apartment. Yunjin hugged you tightly before you got out of the car. “Text us when Heeseung gets back, okay?” she said. “And try not to stress too much. He played amazingly today.” Soobin gave you a gentle smile from the driver’s seat. “You’ve got this both of you rest up.”You nodded, thanking them, and waved as the car drove off. The moment you stepped inside your apartment, the silence hit you no messages no calls. Your phone screen was empty except for a few notifications from friends congratulating you on the win.

You paced the living room, hand resting on your belly, anxiety gnawing at you. What was the scout going to say? Would Heeseung even get a chance at tryouts, or would he get selected straight away? You would be happy, so happy even if it was just tryouts. He had worked so hard he deserved this.

An hour passed then another thirty minutes. You sat on the couch, knees bouncing, checking your phone every few seconds. The silence was deafening. You imagined the worst, the scout saying Heeseung wasn’t ready, that the loss had hurt his chances, that the pregnancy rumors had reached him. Your heart ached thinking about how devastated Heeseung would be.The apartment door finally opened.You jumped up and ran to the front door, heart pounding.

There stood Heeseung his face looked downcast, shoulders slightly slumped, hair still messy from the game. Your heart dropped. You thought the news was bad. You stepped forward without thinking and wrapped your arms around him in a tight hug. “It’s okay,” you whispered, voice thick with emotion. “You did great today you played your heart out I’m so proud of you. Whatever the scout said, it doesn’t change that we’ll figure it out together.”

Heeseung stood still for a second, then his arms came around you, holding you close. You felt him exhale shakily against your hair. Then he whispered into your ear, voice breaking with joy “I’m selected.” You pulled back, eyes wide. “What?” Heeseung’s face broke into the brightest, most beautiful smile you had ever seen. Tears glistened in his eyes as he laughed a happy, disbelieving laugh and carefully picked you up, twirling you slowly and gently, mindful of your belly.

“I’m selected,” he repeated, voice thick with emotion. “The scout loved my performance. He said I have real potential, he thinks I have a real shot.” You laughed through happy tears, wrapping your arms around his neck as he held you. “Heeseung I’m so proud of you , you did it you really did it.” He set you down carefully, but kept his arms around you, forehead resting against yours. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he whispered. “You being there today, cheering for me, believing in me, it gave me strength. I love you, I love you and Bambi so much.” You kissed him, soft and full of joy, tears mixing with your smiles.

The joy in the apartment was palpable, filling every corner of the living room like sunlight breaking through clouds after a long storm. You pulled back from the hug just enough to look up at Heeseung, your hands still pressed against his chest, feeling the rapid, excited thrum of his heartbeat beneath your palms. His eyes were shining with happy tears that refused to fall, his smile wide and unrestrained, the kind of pure, boyish grin that made your own heart skip.

The news that he had been selected for the NBA felt like a dream you had both whispered about late at night but never fully dared to believe would arrive so soon. Months of grueling practices, early mornings, and late night strategy sessions had finally paid off. “Oh my god,” you said, laughing through your own tears of happiness as you cupped his face. “We should celebrate this properly, should we throw a party? Invite everyone—Yunjin, Soobin, your teammates, your coach, my parents. We could order a ton of food and just let it all out!”

Heeseung chuckled warmly, the sound deep and rich, as he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He shook his head, still smiling that dazzling smile, his thumbs gently brushing away a stray tear from your cheek. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said softly, his voice thick with emotion as he cupped your face with both hands, tilting your chin up so your eyes met. “I want to celebrate with you first, baby just us. Let’s go somewhere really nice tomorrow night, a quiet, upscale restaurant with a view, dress pretty for me, please? I want to spoil you a little.”

You felt your cheeks warm under his gaze, a shy smile tugging at your lips as butterflies fluttered in your chest alongside the gentle kicks from Bambi. “Okay,” you whispered. “I’d like that alot.” Heeseung leaned in and kissed your forehead, lingering there for a long moment, his lips warm and reverent against your skin. “Good,I’ll make the reservation right now so it’s perfect.” He pulled out his phone briefly, tapping away with one hand while the other stayed firmly on your waist, as if he couldn’t bear to let go.

You both eventually settled back down on the couch, the excitement still buzzing warmly between you like electricity. Heeseung kept one arm wrapped around your shoulders and the other hand resting on your rounded belly, gently rubbing small, soothing circles over the fabric of your shirt. Every so often, he’d pause when he felt a little kick or movement, his eyes lighting up with awe. “Feel that?” he murmured, pressing his palm a bit firmer. “She’s celebrating too our little Bambi is already so strong, just like her mom.”

After a comfortable, contented silence stretched between you broken only by the soft hum of the city outside the window he asked, voice low and thoughtful, “Is there anything left to add in Bambi’s room? Any extra furniture or decor we should get before she arrives? I was thinking maybe that soft cloud shaped night light we saw online, or those blackout curtains with the little stars”

You smiled, leaning your head against his shoulder and breathing in the familiar scent of him clean soap mixed with the faint trace of his cologne. Shaking your head, you replied, “We have spent more than enough already, the room is beautiful as it is she is going to love it. You shouldn’t spoil her too much, Heeseung. She’ll have you wrapped around her tiny finger the second she’s born.”

Heeseung grinned, his eyes sparkling with that signature mischief you loved so much. “I can’t guarantee that,” he teased, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of your bump. “What if she wants the softest blankets, the cutest little outfits in every color, and all the storybooks she could ever dream of? I want her to grow up knowing she’s loved beyond measure, safe and cherished just like her mom makes me feel every single day.”

You laughed softly, the sound light and full of affection, before leaning further into him. Heeseung pulled you closer without hesitation, his strong arms enveloping you as he captured your lips in a slow, deep kiss. It was full of all the love, gratitude, and overwhelming joy he couldn’t quite put into words the taste of salt from happy tears, the warmth of his breath mingling with yours, his fingers threading gently through your hair. The kiss lingered, turning tender and unhurried, as if the rest of the world had faded away.

You both stayed like that for a long while, wrapped up in each other on the couch. His hand never left your belly, and you traced lazy patterns on his chest, talking quietly about the future: the tryouts, what it might mean for your little family, the names you’d already picked out as backups, and silly dreams about teaching Bambi basketball one day.

Eventually, the exhaustion of the emotional day caught up with you. Your eyelids grew heavy, and Heeseung noticed immediately. “Time for bed, love,” he whispered, helping you up with careful hands. He guided you to the bedroom, tucking you in gently under the soft sheets, fluffing the pillows just the way you liked them. He changed quickly into comfortable sleep clothes before climbing in beside you, pulling you into his arms once more. One hand rested protectively over your belly, his thumb brushing back and forth in that soothing rhythm, while the other stroked your back.

“Sleep well,” he whispered against your hair, pressing a final kiss to the top of your head. “Tomorrow night is going to be a good one. Just you and me, celebrating how far we’ve come. I love you both.” You closed your eyes, safe and warm in his embrace, the steady beat of his heart lulling you. A content smile played on your lips as you drifted off to sleep, dreaming of emerald dresses, city lights, and the bright future ahead.

The next morning, you woke up slowly to the soft morning light filtering through the sheer curtains of your new apartment. Golden streaks painted the walls, and the faint scent of last night’s lingering cologne still clung to the pillows. Your hand automatically reached across the bed for Heeseung, fingers seeking the familiar warmth of his body, but the space beside you was empty and already cool to the touch. You sat up carefully, rubbing your eyes with the heel of your hand, a small frown forming as the realization settled in.

That was unusual.

Heeseung almost never left without waking you without at least a warm kiss pressed to your forehead, a soft murmur of “I’ll be back soon, love,” or the gentle brush of his fingers over your belly. The apartment felt too quiet without the sound of him moving around the kitchen, the low hum of him talking nonsense to Bambi through your skin, or the quiet clink of mugs as he prepared your morning tea. A faint ache of absence bloomed in your chest.

You pushed the blanket aside and carefully swung your legs over the edge of the bed, one hand resting protectively on your rounded seven month bump. The weight of it had become familiar now, a constant, grounding presence. As you walked into the living room, the hardwood cool under your bare feet, you noticed a small white note left on the kitchen counter, weighted down by a glass of water and a plate with a carefully prepared light breakfast two slices of lightly toasted bread, a small portion of sliced fruit ( strawberries and banana, your current favorites ), and a cup of warm ginger tea still faintly steaming. Typical of him. Always thinking of what your stomach could handle these days.

You picked up the note his handwriting was neat and precise, but the message was strangely short.

I’ll come pick you up at 7, get dressed and be ready <3 — Heeseung

That was it. No “I love you.” No “Have a good day, baby.” No explanation about where he had gone so early, or why he had slipped out before the sun had fully risen. You stared at the paper for a long moment, a small knot of nervousness forming low in your chest, just beneath the gentle flutters of Bambi shifting. Heeseung was being weird.

Last night he had been emotional after the selection news soft, overflowing with love, holding you like he never wanted to let go. This morning he had vanished without a word and left nothing but a brief, almost formal instruction. Something about it felt intentional like he was carefully planning something and didn’t want you asking questions that might ruin the surprise.

You sat down at the small dining table and slowly ate the breakfast he had left for you, trying to push down the restless feeling in your stomach. Part of it was the usual pregnancy nerves hormones making everything feel sharper. Part of it was the lingering excitement from yesterday the scout’s call, the selection, the dream that suddenly felt real enough to touch. And part of it was simply Heeseung’s unexplained absence, the quiet that felt too heavy. Throughout the day, the nervous energy only grew.

You tried to keep yourself busy. You organized a few things in the apartment folding the soft blankets that had arrived for Bambi’s room, rearranging the growing stack of tiny onesies and socks your parents had already started sending. You worked a little more on the final sections of your capstone, typing out paragraphs only to reread them three times because your mind kept drifting. Every so often you caught yourself staring at the clock, the quiet of the apartment pressing in.

What was he planning? Why did he leave so early?

Why did the message feel so different from the way he usually spoke to you?

By afternoon, you found yourself checking the time more often than usual.

5:30

6:00

6:30

You stood in front of the full length mirror in your bedroom, carefully choosing an outfit. He had said “get dressed and be ready,” and the way the words had been written so deliberately that made you want to look nice for him. You chose a soft, elegant white maternity dress that flowed gently over your curves. The fabric was light and breathable, the neckline modest yet flattering, the skirt draping beautifully around your seven month bump without clinging too tightly. It made you feel pretty, almost bridal in its simplicity. You left your hair in loose waves that framed your face, added a touch of makeup soft pink on your lips, a little mascara and slipped on comfortable white flats.

By 6:50, you were ready and sitting on the edge of the couch, one hand resting on your belly, the other holding your phone. No new messages from him. No calls. The nervousness sat heavier in your chest now, a quiet tightness that made your breathing a little shallower.

What if something is wrong?

What if the scout called him back and the news had changed?

What if he’s pulling away again the way he used to when things felt too good to be true?

You shook the thoughts away and took a slow, deliberate breath, rubbing small circles over your belly where Bambi gave a soft answering kick. “It’s okay, Bambi,” you whispered, voice barely above a breath. “Daddy’s just being weird today, we'll figure it out together.” At exactly 7:00, there was a soft knock on the door.Your heart jumped hard against your ribs.

You stood up carefully, smoothed the white fabric of your dress over your bump, and walked to the door. When you opened it, Heeseung stood there in a dark, perfectly tailored suit, looking impossibly handsome and a little nervous himself. The soft porch light caught the sharp lines of his jaw and the quiet intensity in his eyes. Those eyes softened the moment they landed on you taking in the white dress, the way it framed your growing belly, the slight uncertainty on your face.

For a second, neither of you spoke.The evening air was cool against your skin. Somewhere down the street a car door closed. The quiet stretched, charged.Then he offered you his hand, palm open, a small, almost shy smile curving his lips.“Ready?” he asked quietly, voice low and warm. You nodded, still unsure what was going on, but you placed your hand in his anyway. His fingers closed around yours, steady and familiar, grounding you instantly. Whatever he had planned you were about to find out.

The restaurant Heeseung had chosen was elegant in a quiet, understated way that felt deliberate rather than showy. Soft golden lighting spilled across crisp white tablecloths, catching the edges of crystal glasses and the gentle curve of silverware. The low murmur of other conversations blended with the distant notes of a piano playing somewhere near the back of the room something classical and unhurried, the kind of music that settled into the background without demanding attention. A single candle flickered between the two of you, its flame steady, casting a warm, shifting glow across the small table and the space between your hands.

Heeseung pulled out your chair with careful hands and waited until you were fully settled before taking his own seat across from you. Throughout the dinner he kept looking at you not the quick glances of someone checking in, but long, quiet looks that lingered. His eyes were soft, full of that particular kind of overwhelming love that always made something tighten in your chest, as if your heart had momentarily forgotten how to beat properly. Every time you caught him staring, a small, almost shy smile would tug at the corner of his lips before he looked down at his plate again, as though the intensity of his own feelings had caught him off guard.

But he was also fidgeting.

His fingers kept tapping lightly against the side of his water glass in an uneven rhythm. He adjusted the cuff of his dark suit jacket more than once, smoothing fabric that didn’t need smoothing. At one point he reached across the table and took your hand, holding it for several long seconds, his thumb brushing over your knuckles with a tenderness that felt almost reverent then he let go again, as if the contact itself had become too much to hold onto all at once.

You tilted your head, watching him carefully over the soft candlelight.“Is something wrong?” you asked, voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond your table. Heeseung looked up, momentarily startled, then shook his head with a small, reassuring smile that didn’t quite erase the nervous energy still humming around him. “No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong i just… like looking at you that’s all.”

He tried to shrug it off, but the restless edge never fully left him. Still, the conversation between you stayed warm and easy. You talked about the quiet of the apartment that morning without him, about the way Bambi had been especially active after lunch, rolling and stretching in small, determined movements that made the fabric of your white dress shift. He asked how your back felt after the long day, whether the ginger tea he’d left had settled your stomach. At one point his voice softened further as he looked at you over the rim of his glass.

“We’ve come a long way,” he said quietly. “From everything that used to feel uncertain to this to you to her.” His gaze dropped briefly to your belly before returning to your face. “I don’t think I ever really believed we’d get here this soon.” You smiled, the words settling warmly beneath your ribs. “Yes,” you answered. “We did and we’re still going further.”

The rest of the dinner passed in a gentle haze of soft conversation, shared smiles, and the quiet pleasure of simply being near each other. When the check was paid, Heeseung stood and offered you his hand. His palm was slightly warmer than usual against yours as he guided you back through the restaurant and out to the car waiting under the soft streetlights.

The drive home was quiet in the best way. He kept one hand steady on the steering wheel and the other loosely holding yours across the center console, his thumb tracing slow, absentminded circles over your knuckles. Every so often he would glance sideways at you, that same soft, almost nervous expression still present on his face as if something important was waiting just ahead and he was trying not to let it show too early. The city lights slid past the windows in long, blurred streaks of gold and white. Outside, the night felt calm. Inside the car, the air between you felt charged with something unspoken.

When you finally reached the apartment building and stepped out of the elevator onto your floor, Heeseung walked slightly ahead of you. He unlocked the door with careful fingers, then turned and gently took your hand again, his grip light but certain. “Close your eyes for a second,” he murmured, voice barely above a whisper you did.

He guided you carefully inside, one hand at the small of your back to steady you, the other still holding yours. The soft click of the door closing behind you sealed the quiet of the hallway away. For a moment there was only the sound of your breathing and the faint, sweet scent of flowers already beginning to fill the air. When he whispered, “Okay you can open them,” you slowly lifted your lids. The apartment had been transformed.

Fairy lights were strung carefully across the ceiling and along the walls in soft, deliberate lines, casting a gentle glow that made everything look warmer, softer, almost dreamlike. Flower petals soft white mixed with the palest pink were scattered across the floor in a gentle path that began right at the entrance and curved forward, inviting. The air smelled faintly of fresh blooms and something warmer underneath, familiar and comforting, like the scent of home itself made sharper by the care that had gone into arranging it.

Your breath caught in your throat. Heeseung didn’t say anything at first. He simply took your hand more firmly and began leading you along the trail of petals. They guided you through the living room, past the couch where you had fallen asleep in his arms the night before, and down the short hallway until they stopped right in front of Bambi’s nursery door.He opened it slowly.

Inside, the nursery glowed with the same soft fairy lights, their warm light reflecting off the pale walls and the carefully arranged furniture. More petals were scattered across the wooden floor in a loose circle near the center of the room. A few small candles safely placed on the low shelves, away from anything that could catch flickered gently, their flames steady and calm. The room looked even more beautiful than usual quiet, peaceful, full of quiet promise. Everything about it felt intentional, as if the space itself had been holding its breath for this moment.

Heeseung led you to the middle of the room, where the petals were thickest. Then, still holding your hand, he slowly lowered himself onto one knee.

Heeseung stayed on one knee in the middle of the softly lit nursery, his hand still holding yours as if it were the only solid thing keeping him steady. The fairy lights cast a gentle, golden glow over his face, catching the faint sheen of moisture already gathering in his eyes. For a long moment he simply looked up at you really looked taking in every detail as though he needed to memorize the exact shape of this second before he spoke. His chest rose and fell with a careful breath. The quiet of the room pressed in around you both, broken only by the soft crackle of the candles and the distant city hum beyond the windows.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and a little unsteady, rough at the edges with emotion he no longer tried to hide.

“I love you,” he said, the words coming out like a confession he had been carrying for years. “I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone more than basketball more than any dream I used to chase alone. I want to spend the rest of my life with you— not just the good days, not just the easy ones. I want every morning when your hair is messy and you’re half asleep. I want every hard day when you’re tired and scared and need someone to hold you up. I want every quiet night when the world feels too loud and the only thing that settles it is the sound of your breathing next to mine. I want to be the person you lean on without thinking twice. The one who holds you when things feel too heavy. The one who never, ever lets you face anything alone.”

He swallowed hard, his eyes already glistening. A single tear slipped free and traced a slow path down his cheek, but he didn’t wipe it away.

“When I first met you, you were just miss morals to me. The girl next door who kept yelling at me to turn the music down. The one who rolled her eyes every time I opened my mouth and looked at me like I was the last person on earth she wanted to share a hallway with. I thought you hated me and maybe part of you did. I was loud and careless and full of myself, and you saw straight through it. But somewhere along the way you became everything. You became the first thought when I wake up and the last one before I sleep. You became the person I want to come home to, the person whose laugh I want to hear when everything else feels wrong. You became the love of my life — the only one I want to build a future with.”

His thumb brushed gently over the back of your hand, trembling slightly. Another tear followed the first.

“Today it reminds me of the first time I asked you to marry me. Right after we found out you were pregnant. I was scared and hopeful and so sure that marrying you was the right thing to do because I already loved you more than I knew how to say. And you turned me down. You said marriage needed more than just a baby. You said it needed love and trust and knowing each other all the way through. You were right I didn’t understand it then the way I do now. I thought love was enough if it was loud and certain. But you taught me that real love is quieter. It’s choosing someone every single day, even when it’s hard. It’s growing together instead of just holding on.”

He let out a soft, shaky breath, the sound almost a sob. More tears fell freely now, catching the fairy lights like tiny stars on his skin.

“I promise you I’ll take care of Bambi. I’ll strive every single day to be a better father and a better husband — not perfect, just better. I want her to grow up seeing how much I love her mother. I want her to know that she was wanted from the very first moment, that she was chosen, that she has two parents who will fight for her and for each other no matter what comes. I want our family to be real not because we have to stay, but because we choose each other over and over again. I want her to see what it looks like when someone loves another person so completely that even the hard days feel like home.”

He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a small velvet ring box. His fingers trembled as he opened it, revealing a simple, elegant ring that caught the soft light of the fairy lights and held it. The band was delicate, the stone modest but clear, chosen with care rather than extravagance.He looked up at you, tears fully in his eyes now, voice barely holding together. “Will you marry me? Will you let me spend the rest of my life learning how to love you better every day?”

Your own tears had already started falling, warm and steady against your cheeks. Your free hand covered your mouth as a soft, watery laugh escaped you half joy, half the overwhelming weight of everything you had survived together. For a second you couldn’t speak. The fear, the growth, the nights you almost walked away, the mornings you chose to stay all of it settled in your chest at once, heavy and bright. Then you nodded, voice breaking into a whisper that still managed to fill the room.

“YESSSSS Yes, I will.” ( FUCKKK YEAHHH, bawling as im editing this )

Heeseung’s face broke into the most beautiful, relieved smile you had ever seen wide and open and shining through the tears. He carefully took your hand and slid the ring onto your finger, his touch gentle and reverent, as if he were afraid the moment might shatter if he moved too quickly. The metal settled against your skin, cool at first, then warming with your pulse. The moment it was in place, he rose to his feet and pulled you into his arms, kissing you deeply soft at first, tasting of salt and joy, then fuller, pouring every unsaid promise into the press of his mouth against yours. His hands cradled your face, then slid down to rest over your belly, holding both of you as if the three of you had always belonged in this exact space.

When he finally pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours, both of you still crying and smiling, breath mingling in the quiet.

In the soft glow of the fairy lights, with white and pink petals scattered like quiet confessions across the nursery floor and the steady, living presence of your daughter moving gently between you, the years that had once felt uncertain suddenly folded into something whole. All the almosts and the nearlys and the nights you both almost gave up became the foundation of this one perfect yes. You could feel it in the way his arms held you — not as if he was afraid you might leave, but as if he finally understood that you never would. And in that small, glowing room, with the future already breathing softly against your heart, it felt less like the start of a marriage and more like the quiet, inevitable homecoming of two people who had been walking toward each other the entire time.

PERMANENT TAGLIST : @wonscrchy @miniij @ni-kichromeheartzz @evansfangz @jakeycakeys @addictedtohobi @babydumplingpandabamboo @simjakeyjake @angelhyuka @nodoubtily @chanchamm @ni-k1ttie @yangw0ni3 @mystgene @enheenie @jeongspetal @mokacoca @8naqvg @cherryhwajoong @k-ra05650 @hsngx @hoonguin @yamzz67 @chaostudee @jayrassicpaaark @jakeswifey @rinaarii @mayouar @dolikecherrycoke @sugarcwtie @simj4k3 @simjaeyunslut @hwasencore @kristynaaah @heehoonki1009 @korilakkumastrawberry @hvseungxbambi

[stwryun]

good night pookies , i hope you guys enjoy reading the last part of JUNO. it was definitely an emotional roller coaster and the fact that i couldn’t post it made everything 10x worse but here we are <333 im going to start reading a new bl 🥰

[honeymoonave777]

Oh I’ve been WAITINGG for this

[honeymoonave777]

hiii babies yes I did see all ur asks and working on them expeditiously !!! One of them I’m so excited abt oouuuhh

[honeymoonave777]

hi beautiful people PLEEK send any requests I’m running out of ideas 🥺💔💔

[avizrx]

bf!jay punishing virgin!reader by making you ride him! drabble , wc: 257 words, 1456 characters, inexperienced!reader, kind of mean dom!jay, porn-no-plot.. bigdih!jay, daddy kink, idk what else sowwy, REQUESTS ARE OPEN!! (pls i need requests). this drabble is bad but it ok

“h-how—ahh-“ you gasp, you were at least trying to sit on jay’s thick cock — “nghhh.. i-i can’t-!” you whine, leaning back on your arms, “sure you can, babydoll,” jay spoke slowly “you were acting like a big girl in the store, but now you’re just a little baby?” he coos.

“turns out you’re not a big girl..” he chuckles, running his hand up and down your thigh, gently squeezing your tit with the other one. “you need daddy’s help, eh?” jay speaks up, by now your brain is almost mush, you just wanted — no, needed a release.

“y-yeah-yes, yes i need daddy’s help!” you squeak, now rubbing up down up down on jays cock. “sshit..” he groans, grabbing at your hips, and slowly pushing your soaking hole down on his thick length.

“ah—ahhh! j-jay-! ‘s too much!” you shake, scratching at his thighs, “mhm.. you can take it tho, right baby?” he breathes out while chewing on his lower lip, “fffuckk—squeezing me just right, hm?” jay stifled a moan as you took him completely.

“you can do it, cmonnn move your hips angel..” he groaned, now biting on his bottom lip, “c-can’t-i-it’s waytoomuch!!” you squeal, your eyes squeezing close. “noonoo, none of that.. princess, look at me, yeah?” jay laughs. you’re doing your best trying not to cum just by his intrusion.

you scratch at his arms, shaking violently as you cum around his cock — a slutty moan ripping from your throat, which made jay just chuckle in amusement, gently holding your hand.

“awww, you came from this only? maybe you’ll have a proper orgasm if you behaved..” jay teased, bringing your hand to his lips. “‘msorryyy..” you whine out, already sleepy…

“you’re okay my princess..”

[honeymoonave777]

Oh I KNOW dada

[seongjesdoll]

in my restless dreams

pairing: insomniac!jake sim x dream guardian!f! reader  with guest features from: dream guardian! jungwon, bffs!jayhoon 

wc: 23.6k

summary: as a dream guardian specializing in nightmare cases, you are assigned to Jake, a college senior whose severe night terrors have plagued him since high school. when his night terrors prove so relentless that standard intervention fails, you break protocol to give him the relief he desperately needs. it works too well. for the first time in years, jake can sleep without fear, and he becomes addicted to the safety you provide. he begins testing the edges of his dreams, searching for proof that someone is there, while you struggle to maintain the professional distance that is rapidly dissolving.

tags/content: extreme night terrors and nightmares, sleep deprivation + insomnia + caffeine dependence, unhealthy attachment and codependence, allegories to suicide (jake tries to sleep for extended periods of times with medication + tries to hurt himself in dreamscape in an attempt to draw reader out), guilt tripping, desperation and yearning, slight power imbalance, attempted baby trapping, p in v, raw sex, oral sex (f! receiving), brief nipple sucking, subby desperate jake who else cheered, normal pda such as kissing and cuddling, 

⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔

Jake's fork scraped against the plate, a grating sound that made Jay wince. It had been sitting there for the better part of three minutes, trapped between Jake's fingers and the congealing remains of his pasta. His hand was still. His eyes were open, but barely.

"Dude." Nothing. Jay kicked him under the table.

Jake jerked upright, blinking hard. The fork clattered onto the plate. "What?"

"You were asleep." Jay leaned forward, arms crossing over his chest. 

"I wasn't!" Jake rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his palms into his eyes hard enough that Jay could see the pressure whiten his knuckles. When he dropped them, his eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused. "I'm awake."

"You were holding a fork and drooling," Jay said. There was something almost gentle underneath the bluntness, the kind of concern that came out sideways because saying it straight felt too vulnerable.

"I wasn't drooling."

"You were definitely drooling." Sunghoon hadn't looked up from his phone. He was scrolling through something, thumb moving in lazy circles, but Jake knew he was paying attention. Sunghoon always paid attention, even when he pretended not to.

Jake looked down at his plate like he was trying to remember how it had gotten there. His pasta was half-eaten, pushed around more than consumed. The garlic bread sat untouched, cooling into something dense and unappetizing. He'd ordered it specifically because Jay told him to eat something with actual calories in it, and now it was just taking up space, another small failure in a series of them. The café around them hummed with the low murmur of conversation, the hiss of the espresso machine, the scrape of chairs against tile. It smelled like burnt coffee and something sweet that had been sitting under the heat lamp too long. The afternoon light slanted through the windows in pale, exhausted streaks, and Jake felt every bit as wrung out as the day looked.

Jay was still staring at him. "When's the last time you slept?"

"Last night."

"For how long?"

Jake didn't answer right away. He picked up his water glass instead, drank from it slowly, buying time. The ice had melted into pale slivers, and the water tasted faintly metallic. He could feel both of them watching him, waiting, and the weight of their attention made his shoulders want to curl inward.

"Jake."

"I don't know. A few hours."

"A few hours." Jay repeated it like he was testing the words, seeing if they sounded any less absurd the second time. He looked at Sunghoon, who finally glanced up from his phone, expression unreadable but pointed. "That's what we're calling it now?"

"It's fine," Jake said, and even he didn't believe it.

"You're falling asleep into your lunch. That's not fine." Jay's voice had gone quieter, which was somehow worse than if he'd yelled. Yelling, Jake could brush off. This careful, deliberate concern was harder to ignore.

Jake set the glass down too carefully, concentrating on not spilling it. His hands weren't shaking, but they weren't steady either. "I'm just tired."

"Yeah, no shit."

Sunghoon pocketed his phone, which was when Jake knew this had escalated past casual worry into something heavier. Sunghoon only put his phone away entirely when things were serious, when he needed both hands free or both eyes focused. He didn't say anything yet, just watched Jake with that patient, unblinking attention that made people confess things they hadn't meant to. It was the same look he'd had two years ago when Jake had finally admitted the night terrors had started, the same look he'd had last semester when Jake showed up at his door at three in the morning because he couldn't be alone in his apartment anymore.

Jake looked away first.  "You're both looking at me like I'm about to keel over."

"You literally just fell asleep holding a fork," Jay said. "We're a little worried."

"I'm fine." The words came out automatic, reflexive, the same thing he'd been saying for weeks now. Months, maybe. He'd lost track.

"You're not fine. You look like shit." Jay said it bluntly. 

Jake's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "Thanks."

"I'm serious." Jay leaned forward, elbows on the table, and his sandwich sat forgotten beside him, half-wrapped and leaking sauce onto the paper. "When's the last time you actually slept through the night?"

Jake looked toward the window, where a couple of students were walking past with their backpacks slung over one shoulder, laughing about something he couldn't hear. The world outside looked normal. He wondered what that felt like.

"I don't know," he said finally, because the truth was he genuinely couldn't remember. The nights had started blurring together sometime around midterms, a smear of dark hours and fragmented sleep and waking up with his heart trying to punch through his ribs.

"Weeks?" Sunghoon asked.

"Maybe." Jake picked up his fork again, stabbed a piece of pasta, and put it in his mouth without tasting it. Chewed. Swallowed. The motion was mechanical, something to fill the silence with other than the answer they wanted.

Then Jay sighed, the kind of exhale that said he'd made a decision. "We can stay over tonight."

"No." The word came out faster than Jake meant it to, sharp enough that the girl at the table next to them glanced over.

"You're not fine, and you know it. We can just crash on your couch. You don't even have to talk to us. We'll bring food, we'll stay out of your way, we'll just be there."

"I said no." Jake's grip on his fork tightened, knuckles going white. He could feel the panic starting to creep up the back of his throat, that familiar tightness that came whenever someone got too close to the truth of how bad it had gotten. They'd stayed over before, back when the night terrors first started, back when he still thought they might go away on their own. They'd seen him wake up gasping, seen him cry without knowing why, seen him stumble out of his bedroom at four in the morning looking like he'd been through a war. But that was years ago, and he'd gotten better at hiding it since then, better at managing it alone. Or he thought he had. Recently, though—

The sharpness in his own voice surprised him, and the table went quiet. Jay sat back, jaw tight, that muscle jumping near his ear the way it did when he was biting back something he wanted to say.

"We've done this before," Jay said, softer now, and there was something almost pleading in it. "It's not a big deal."

"It is to me," Jake said. His voice came out quieter than he meant, almost lost under the ambient noise of the café. 

"Why?"

Jake didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat had gone tight, and swallowing felt like work. He could tell them that the night terrors had changed, that they weren't just bad anymore but unbearable, that he'd started dreading sleep the way some people dreaded plane crashes or terminal diagnoses. He could tell them that last week he'd woken up on his bedroom floor with no memory of how he got there, that two nights ago he'd woken up screaming so loud his neighbor had knocked on the door to make sure he was okay. He could tell them he was afraid that if they stayed over and saw how bad it really was, they'd look at him differently, like he was broken in a way that couldn't be fixed.

Sunghoon spoke before Jay could push further. "We've seen each other at our lowest. You know that, right? I mean it. Jay cried for two hours when his dog died sophomore year. I had food poisoning so bad I couldn't get off the bathroom floor. You held my hair back while I puked into your toilet. None of us are keeping score."

Jay nodded, picking up the thread. "We're not going to judge you for having a bad night. Or a bad week. Or however long this has been going on. We've been there before, remember? You've let us stay over when it got bad. This isn't new."

"It's different now," Jake said, the words coming out before he could stop them.

"Different how?"

Jake set the fork down. His hands disappeared under the table, into his lap, where they could curl into fists without anyone seeing. "I don't want you there when it happens."

Jay frowned, leaning forward slightly. "When what happens?"

"The—" Jake stopped. His jaw clenched hard enough that it ached. "You know."

"The night terrors," Sunghoon said, not a question, just a statement of fact.

Jake flinched. He nodded once, a sharp, reluctant jerk of his head, and hated how small it made him feel.

"We've dealt with those before too," Jay said. There was something almost desperate in the reassurance, like if he just said the right thing, Jake would let them help.

"Not like this." Jake's voice was flat, drained of inflection.

"What do you mean, not like this?" Jay asked, and he sounded genuinely confused, like he couldn't fathom what could be worse than what they'd already seen.

Jake shook his head slowly. "It's worse. It's been worse.” He stopped again, exhaled hard through his nose, the breath shaking slightly on the way out. "I don't want you to see it." 

Jay wanted to push. Jake could feel it, the way you could feel a storm building on the horizon. But instead, Jay just exhaled slowly and said, "Okay."

Jake's head snapped up. "What?"

"Okay. We'll drop it." Jay picked up his sandwich, unwrapped it the rest of the way with deliberate, careful movements.

Jake blinked, caught off guard. They never dropped it. Jay especially never dropped it. "Really?"

"Yeah." Jay took a bite, chewed, swallowed, all while maintaining eye contact. "But you're still texting us when you get home."

"Fine," Jake muttered, because arguing would take more energy than he had, and besides, he could always just... not text them. They'd be annoyed, maybe, but they wouldn't actually show up. Probably.

"Good," Jay said, and some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. He took another bite of his sandwich, and the conversation shifted, drifted toward safer territory. Sunghoon mentioned an assignment he was procrastinating on, something about a group project where half the group wasn't pulling their weight. Jay started complaining about a show he'd been watching, talking too fast the way he always did when he got excited about something, gesturing with his half-eaten sandwich in a way that made the guy at the next table lean slightly away.

Jake contributed when prompted, but his answers were short, distracted. His eyes kept losing focus, drifting toward the window or the middle distance, pulled somewhere else entirely. The exhaustion sat behind his eyes like a physical weight, dragging at him, making his thoughts feel slow and thick. He picked at his pasta without eating it, moved the garlic bread from one side of his plate to the other, drank his water in small, measured sips. The conversation washed over him like white noise, familiar and distant at the same time.

By the time Jay flagged down their server and paid the check, Jake looked worse than when they'd arrived. The brief nap, if you could even call it that, hadn't helped. If anything, it had made him look more wrung out, like his body had tasted rest and resented being denied it. His eyes were heavier now, lids drooping despite his best efforts to keep them open. His face had that grayish tint that came from too many sleepless nights strung together, the kind of exhaustion that went bone-deep.

Outside, the late afternoon air was cool, almost cold, carrying the first real bite of autumn. Jake shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind, which cut through the fabric like it wasn't there. The sun was already starting to sink, casting long shadows across the pavement, and Jake felt a familiar dread settle in his stomach. Another few hours until he'd have to decide whether to sleep or keep himself awake, whether to face what waited for him in his dreams or suffer through another night of forced consciousness.

He didn't say goodbye, just nodded once in their general direction and started walking in the direction of his apartment, his stride a little uneven, his gait slower than usual. He could feel their eyes on his back, the weight of their concern following him down the block, but he didn't turn around.

────୨ৎ────

The file lands in your assignment queue at 11:47 PM, which is typical. They always send the hard cases at night, like the timing will soften the blow.

You open it. Male, early twenties, severe night terrors since adolescence, chronic insomnia, three previous guardians rotated off due to lack of progress. Of course. You scroll down. History of sleep avoidance, documented panic attacks during REM cycles, persistent nightmares characterized by looping scenarios and high-intensity fear response. The notes from the previous guardians are clinical, but you can read between the lines.

You close the file and stare at the ceiling of the archive room.

Jungwon is sitting across from you, already reading through his own assignment with that focused, unbothered expression he always has. He's been a guardian longer than you have, but somehow he still manages to look peaceful about it, like this work hasn't worn him down to raw nerves and resentment yet. You don't know how he does it. 

"What did you get?" you ask, even though you already know the answer won't make you feel better.

He glances up, blinking like he's surfacing from deep water. "Eight-year-old. Scared his teeth are falling out. The adult ones are coming in, and he keeps dreaming they all come loose at once."

You stare at him. "That's it?"

"Well, there's some anxiety around the dentist, and his parents recently divorced, so there's probably some underlying fear of instability manifesting as—"

"And mine," you interrupt, because if you let him finish that sentence you're going to scream, "is a twenty-something with severe night terrors, chronic insomnia, and a history of three failed guardian rotations."

"That does sound difficult," he says, and he means it, which somehow makes it worse.

"Difficult." You laugh, sharp and humorless. "That's one word for it."

"What would you prefer?"

"Impossible. A waste of my time." You open the file again, skim the details you've already read twice. The previous guardians left notes. Dreamer exhibits extreme resistance to standard interventions. Nightmares intensify with direct contact. Recommend specialized assignment, which is code for we couldn't handle this, so we're passing it to someone who can.

That someone is always you.

"Have you asked for reassignment?" Jungwon asks, and his voice is careful, gentle, like he's trying not to spook you.

"To what?" You don't look at him. You're still reading, even though you've memorized every word by now. "Another hard case? They'll just give me something equally bad. Or worse."

"You could request a break."

"When's the last time you saw anyone get a break?" You close the file again, rubbing your eyes with the heels of your hands hard enough that spots bloom behind your eyelids. "I'll manage."

"I know you will," Jungwon says, and he sounds so certain, so completely convinced of your competence, that you want to tell him to stop. 

You just nod, pick up the file, and stand. The archive room shifts around you, responding to your intention to leave, the walls thinning and curving until there's a doorway where there wasn't one before.

"Good luck," Jungwon says behind you.

You don't respond. Luck has nothing to do with it.

The dreamer's name is Jake. You learn this from the file, along with a dozen other details that paint a picture of someone who has been suffering for years and will likely continue suffering for years more. The night terrors started when he was sixteen, seventeen, somewhere in that range. 

You've handled cases like this before. The protocol is straightforward: observe, stabilize, regulate the dream cycles, minimize harm. Do not intervene beyond what is necessary. Do not get involved. Do not stay longer than three months unless there are extenuating circumstances.

The first night, you don't do anything. You just observe.

Jake falls asleep at 2:17 AM, which tells you everything you need to know about his sleep schedule. He's been awake for hours, fighting it, and his body finally gave out. The dreams start almost immediately, bypassing the usual descent into deeper sleep. His subconscious is a mess, fragmented and volatile. 

You stand at the edge of it and catalog what you see. The dream has no coherent setting, just a series of overlapping spaces that bleed into each other without logic or transition. A hallway that becomes a staircase that becomes a room with no doors. The lighting is wrong, too harsh and too dim at the same time, casting shadows that don't match the objects creating them. Everything feels precarious, like it's barely holding together.

And then the nightmare starts.

You've seen worse, but not by much. It's a classic looping scenario, the kind that traps a dreamer in repetition until they wake from sheer exhaustion or panic. He's looking for something, searching through the nonsensical architecture of his own mind, and every time he gets close, the dream resets. The walls shift. The doors disappear.

The nightmare cycles three more times before his body forces him awake. He sits up in bed gasping, and you can feel the echo of his panic even though you're not fully inside the dream anymore. His heart rate is erratic. His hands are shaking. He reaches for the lamp on his bedside table and turns it on, flooding the room with light. He just sits there, breathing hard, waiting for his body to believe that he's safe.

He's not going to fall asleep again. You can tell from the way he's already reaching for his phone, the way he's pushing the blankets off like the bed is contaminated. He'll stay awake until morning, running on fumes and adrenaline, and tomorrow night will be the same.

You pull back, disconnecting from his dream space, and return to the archive room, where Jungwon is probably already asleep and dreaming pleasant, uncomplicated dreams about children who are afraid of dentists.

────୨ৎ────

You try again the next night.

Jake's dreamscape is there, technically, but it's barely holding form. You've seen this before in dreamers with severe insomnia, the way their subconscious becomes hostile territory when they've been awake too long. The space rejects you before you can even fully enter, pushing back like a hand against your chest. The edges are serrated, sharp with exhaustion and anxiety, and the few images that do surface are fragmented beyond recognition. A door handle. The corner of a ceiling. Someone's voice, distorted and layered over itself until it's just noise.

He's not asleep. Not really. His body might be horizontal, his eyes might be closed, but his mind is still running, still fighting, caught in that terrible in-between state where rest is impossible and waking is unbearable.

You pull back. There's nothing you can do here. The protocol is clear: you can't stabilize a dreamer who isn't dreaming.

The second night is worse.

You enter the edges of his dreamscape and immediately feel the wrongness of it. The space is collapsing in on itself, folding and refolding like paper in a fist. His subconscious is eating itself, turning inward with nowhere else to go.

You try to anchor yourself somewhere stable enough to work, but the dreamscape lurches and spits you out. The rejection is almost physical, a shove that sends you back to the archive room with your equilibrium spinning.

Jungwon glances up from his own work. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," you say, even though you're not. Your hands are trembling slightly, residual feedback from the ejection. It doesn't usually hit you this hard, but Jake's dreamscape is particularly volatile. Two nights of forced wakefulness have turned his subconscious into a minefield.

The third night, you don't even bother trying to enter. You can feel the dreamscape from a distance, and you know it's pointless. He's still awake, still fighting, still running himself into the ground. The file didn't mention this level of avoidance, but maybe the previous guardians never pushed hard enough to see it. Maybe they rotated off before it got to this point.

You're in the archive room, not really reading through Jake's file so much as staring at it, when the dreamscape snaps into sudden, sharp existence.

It's not gradual, the way sleep usually is. One moment there's nothing, and the next moment the dreamscape is there, fully formed and pulling at you with desperate urgency.

He's crashed.

You enter without thinking, without the usual careful approach, because the dreamscape is already destabilizing and if you don't act now it's going to collapse into a full night terror before he's even fully unconscious.

The space is dark. You can feel Jake's presence somewhere in it, his consciousness flickering like a candle in a wind tunnel. He's not aware, not really. His mind is too exhausted to form coherent thoughts, too wrung out to do anything but freefall into the void his body has forced him into.

The darkness ripples. You can feel the nightmare building underneath it, gathering mass and momentum, fed by days of accumulated fear and exhaustion. It's going to be bad. This is the kind of night terror that leaves psychological scars, the kind that traumatizes a dreamer badly enough that they'll avoid sleep for weeks afterward, which will only make the next crash worse, which will make the next nightmare worse, spiraling down and down until something breaks permanently.

You step forward into the darkness and begin to work.

The nightmare doesn't want to be dismantled. It fights you, surging up like a wave, trying to solidify before you can break it apart. You can feel its shape, all teeth and drowning and the terrible certainty that something is coming and there's nowhere to run. It's pulling from Jake's worst fears, from years of accumulated dread, and it has momentum on its side.

But you're faster. You've done this before, too many times to count, and your hands know the movements before your mind has fully processed them. You reach into the fabric of the dream and pull, unraveling the nightmare thread by thread. You soften the darkness, diluting it with gray, with the suggestion of light. You take the weight out of the air, the pressure that makes it feel like drowning. You find the thing that's chasing him, the shapeless terror that his mind has conjured, and you erase it.

It's not easy. The nightmare keeps trying to rebuild itself, keeps reaching for the worst possibilities, but you're patient and precise. Eventually it gives up. The dreamscape settles into something calm. 

Jake's consciousness is still flickering, barely aware, but you can feel the moment his body registers the shift. His mind, finally, mercifully, stops fighting.

You stand in the dreamscape and watch as it begins to shape itself into something gentler. A room, plain and unremarkable. Four walls, a window, soft light that doesn't come from any particular source. He'll sleep through the night, maybe longer, considering how badly he needed this.

Jake enters the dreamscape slowly, like someone wading into water they don't trust.

He looks around, his movements careful and deliberate despite the dream logic that should make everything feel fluid and easy. His shoulders are tense. His hands are loose at his sides, but there's a readiness to them, like he's prepared to fight or run at the first sign of wrongness. He's looking for the trap. 

Of course he is. His subconscious doesn't believe in peace anymore. It's just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He takes a step forward, and the dream holds. The floor doesn't dissolve. The walls don't shift. 

"This isn't real," he says, and his voice is rough, scraped raw from exhaustion. He's not talking to anyone, just stating a fact, trying to orient himself in a space that feels wrong because it feels too right.

You stay silent. You're not supposed to interact with dreamers directly unless absolutely necessary, and you've already broken enough protocol tonight just by intervening this much. Talking to him would cross another line, one you're not ready to cross yet.

He walks to the window and looks out at the nothing beyond it. His reflection is faint in the glass, and you can see the toll the last few days have taken. Even in a dream, he looks exhausted. 

"What are you?" he asks the reflection, or the room, or maybe himself. His hand comes up to touch the glass, fingers spreading against the surface. "You're different."

He turns away from the window and walks to the center of the room. He sits down on the floor, cross-legged, like he's claiming the space. His eyes are moving constantly, tracking things you haven't placed, looking for patterns that aren't there.

"I know you're not going to last," he says, and there's something almost conversational about it, like he's talking to the dream itself. "Nothing does. So you might as well just get it over with."

He's waiting for the nightmare to start. He doesn't believe this is real, doesn't believe it will hold, and some part of you feels something uncomfortably close to pity.

Not sympathy. You're not supposed to feel sympathy for dreamers. That's how guardians get compromised, how they start making decisions based on emotion instead of protocol. But pity is different. Pity is just the clinical recognition that someone is suffering and that the suffering is, objectively, unfortunate.

You can feel pity without it meaning anything.

He sits there for a long time, waiting for something terrible to happen. The dreamscape holds because you're holding it, maintaining the stability with the same steady pressure you'd use to keep a wound from bleeding. It's work, more work than it should be, because his subconscious keeps trying to assert itself, keeps reaching for the familiar patterns of fear and panic.

Eventually, slowly, his shoulders start to lower. The tension doesn't leave entirely, but it eases, just enough that you can tell his body is overriding his mind's insistence that this is dangerous. He's so tired.

His eyes start to close. He fights it for a moment, head jerking back up, but his body has made the decision for him. He tips sideways, slow and ungraceful, until he's lying on the floor of the dream with one arm pillowed under his head.

"Fuck," he mumbles, and his eyes close fully. "Fine."

The dreamscape shifts around him, responding to his surrender. The room softens further, the floor beneath him becoming something closer to a bed, though you're careful to keep it subtle enough that he won't notice the change and wake himself up with suspicion. The light dims, just enough to signal that it's safe to sleep.

You stay at the edge of the dreamscape and watch his breathing even out, watch the frantic energy finally drain out of him. His face smooths, losing some of that hunted look. 

────୨ৎ────

The next night, there's nothing.

You reach for Jake's dreamscape at the usual time and find the same hostile, fragmented static from before. He's awake again, or something close to it, his mind grinding itself down to nothing while his body screams for rest he refuses to give it.

You pull back and wait. When you check again an hour later, there’s still nothing. Two hours after that, the dreamscape is even worse, jagged and bleeding at the edges like a wound that won't close.

He's doing this on purpose.

The realization settles over you with a particular kind of frustration you've felt before, with other difficult cases, other dreamers who self-sabotage in ways that make your job impossible. He finally got a night of real sleep, the first in days, and instead of taking it as relief, he's treating it like a threat.

Of course he'd interpret one peaceful night as an anomaly instead of a turning point. Of course he'd go right back to running himself into the ground rather than risk hoping for something better.

You close your connection to his dreamscape and return to the archive room, where Jungwon is humming quietly to himself while he works. He's probably weaving together a dream about playground equipment or favorite stuffed animals, something gentle and easy that will make his eight-year-old dreamer smile in his sleep.

You don't say anything. There's nothing to say. Jake isn't sleeping, which means you can't work, which means you're just sitting here waiting for him to crash again.

The day passes. You check on Jake periodically, more out of routine than hope. His dreamscape remains inaccessible, a churning mess of exhaustion and anxiety that won't coalesce into anything workable. You can feel him deteriorating from a distance, the way his consciousness is starting to fray at the edges from lack of proper rest.

Jungwon finishes his shift and leaves with a quiet goodnight. You stay. There's no point in leaving when you're just going to have to come back and check again in a few hours.

By the second day, Jake's dreamscape has degraded to something almost unrecognizable. You've never seen a dreamer push themselves this hard for this long. A month of near-constant wakefulness, broken only by that one night you forced stability on him, and now he's right back to it. His subconscious is fragmenting in real time, splintering into pieces that don't fit together anymore.

If he keeps this up, he's going to cause permanent damage. 

It's mid-afternoon, earlier than you'd normally check, but something pulls your attention toward his dreamscape. It's still there, still barely functional, but there's a change in the quality of it. You reach for it carefully, ready to be rejected again, but this time the dreamscape doesn't push back. 

Jake's consciousness is flickering in and out, caught in that terrible half-asleep state where the body has started shutting down but the mind is still trying to fight it. You can feel him slipping, his awareness dimming and flaring and dimming again as he loses the battle against his own exhaustion.

He's not in bed. The dreamscape tells you that much. He's somewhere else, somewhere his body decided it couldn't stay upright anymore. A couch, maybe. Somewhere he sat down for just a moment and couldn't get back up.

The dreamscape is starting to form, pulling itself together out of the wreckage of his consciousness, but it's unstable. He's too wound up to dream peacefully. This is going to go bad fast if you don't intervene.

You don't hesitate this time. Protocol be damned. You find the center of it, the place where the nightmare is trying to anchor itself, and you sever the connection. The darkness writhes, tries to rebuild around a different fear, but you're already there, already cutting it off. You work quickly, methodically, the way you've learned to after years of doing this, finding each thread of terror before it can weave itself into something solid. The nightmare collapses under your hands, dissolving back into the shapeless anxiety it came from, and you smooth even that away until there's nothing left but empty space.

The dreamscape shudders and settles into something neutral. Jake's consciousness is barely present, a flicker of awareness that doesn't even register where he is or what's happening. He's too far gone for that, too exhausted to be anything other than a passenger in his own mind.

Good. That makes this easier.

You shape the dreamscape carefully, gently, building something that won't trigger his suspicion when he surfaces enough to notice. A bed this time, simple and unremarkable. Soft light. No windows, no doors, nothing that suggests an exit or a trap. 

His consciousness settles into it like a stone dropping into water, sinking down and down until there's nothing left but the slow, even rhythm of actual sleep. 

Hours pass. The dreamscape holds. Jake sleeps.

The dreamscape remains stable without much effort on your part now. You've done the hard work already, dismantled the nightmare before it could take root, shaped the space into something that won't trigger his hypervigilance. Now it's just maintenance, small adjustments when the edges start to fray, gentle corrections when his anxiety tries to bubble up. Easy work. The kind you could do in your sleep, if guardians slept.

You should leave. He's stable enough that another guardian could monitor him, or you could just let the dreamscape run its course and check back in a few hours. You've already spent more time on this than you should have, more energy than a single intervention warrants.

But there's something almost peaceful about watching him rest. Not peaceful for you, exactly. You're not sentimental enough to pretend this is enjoyable. There's a satisfaction in it, the same satisfaction you'd get from solving a difficult problem or finishing a task that everyone else said was impossible. He's sleeping. After days of watching him tear himself apart and feeling his dreamscape reject you over and over, he's finally resting.

It won't last. You know that. One good sleep doesn't undo weeks of damage, doesn't fix whatever is broken in him that makes the nightmares so severe in the first place. Tomorrow night he'll probably go right back to avoiding sleep, and you'll be back to square one.

But for now, for these few hours, you've done your job. You've given him what he needed, even if he doesn't know you exist.

That should be enough.

You're starting to pull back, preparing to disconnect and return to the archive room, when something shifts.

Someone is waking him up.

You feel it before it happens, the way the dreamscape starts to destabilize in response to stimuli from the waking world. Sound, first. A voice, muffled and distant but insistent. Then touch. A hand on his shoulder, shaking gently.

The dreamscape flickers. Jake's consciousness rises toward wakefulness like a bubble rising through water, slow and inevitable.

No. Not yet. He's barely been asleep for three hours, maybe four. His body needs more than that. He needs more than that.

You try to hold the dreamscape together, to keep him under for just a little longer, but you can't fight the physical world. Someone is actively trying to wake him, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The dreamscape is already dissolving around the edges, losing coherence as his awareness surfaces.

The voice comes again, clearer now. "Jake. Hey. Wake up."

Sunghoon. You don't know how you know that, but you do. Maybe it's something in the tone, something Jake's subconscious recognizes even as it's being dragged back to consciousness. 

"Come on, man. Library's closing. We have to go."

The dreamscape fractures. Jake's consciousness pulls away from sleep like a riptide in reverse, and you're left standing in the ruins of the peaceful space you built for him, watching it collapse into nothing as he wakes.

You disconnect fully and return to the archive room. All that careful intervention, all those hours of monitoring and maintaining and making sure he got the rest he so desperately needed. And for what? Three hours, maybe four. Barely enough to take the edge off his exhaustion, nowhere near enough to actually help.

You pull up his file and add another note. Dreamer achieved stable sleep for approximately 3-4 hours before external interruption. Will continue monitoring. The words are clipped, professional, but you can feel the irritation bleeding through them anyway.

────୨ৎ────

You shouldn't do this.

The thought occurs to you as you're already reaching back into Jake's consciousness, toward the memories that sit just below the surface. 

You're looking for Sunghoon and Jay specifically,  the two names that keep appearing in Jake's dreams, always associated with a complicated tangle of trust and shame and guilt.

It takes almost no effort to find what you're looking for. The memories are right there, worn smooth from repeated examination, the way Jake turns them over in his mind when he can't sleep. You pull one forward and let it unspool.

Jake's apartment. Nighttime. The layout is slightly wrong, the way memories always are, details filled in incorrectly or left vague because they weren't important at the time. The emotional content is clear. Jake is sitting on his bed, exhausted and afraid. Sunghoon on the floor with his back against the wall, controller in hand, playing something on muted volume. Jay sprawled in the desk chair, scrolling through his phone but glancing up every few minutes to check on Jake.

"You should try to sleep," Jay says, and there's worry underneath the casualness.

"I'm fine," Jake says, automatic.

"You're not fine. You look like death."

"Thanks."

They go back and forth like this for a while, the same circular argument you've heard variations of in Jake's other memories. Jay pushing, Jake deflecting, Sunghoon watching quietly and occasionally interjecting with something that cuts through the tension. Eventually Jake lies down, and Jay and Sunghoon stay, and the memory ends with Jake staring at the ceiling while his friends pretend to be absorbed in their respective distractions.

You pull another memory. Similar scene, different night. This time it's worse. Jake wakes up mid-nightmare, and Sunghoon is there immediately, hand on his shoulder, voice low and steady. "You're awake. You're okay. It was just a dream." Jay appears in the doorway, hesitant, unsure what to do. Jake is shaking, can't seem to catch his breath, and Sunghoon just stays there, grounding presence, until the panic passes.

Another memory. Jay bringing him food because Jake keeps forgetting to eat. "You need to take care of yourself, man." Said with frustration, with helplessness, because Jay is the kind of person who needs to fix things and this is something he can't fix.

Another. Sunghoon staying up with him through an entire night, not saying much, just being there. 

You watch memory after memory unspool, and a picture forms. Two people who care deeply, who have tried everything they can think of, who have watched their friend suffer for years and never figured out how to make it stop. They've done research, suggested doctors, offered medication, stayed over countless times. They've seen him at his worst and never left.

And none of it has worked.

They can't touch the dreams themselves. They can't reach into his subconscious and dismantle the nightmares before they form. They can't do what you do.

You're pulling back from the memories, vaguely annoyed at yourself for the detour, when you feel Jake's consciousness starting to sink again, pulled down by exhaustion that three hours of sleep did nothing to satisfy.

He's falling asleep.

You shouldn't enter yet. He's still too close to wakefulness, still aware enough that the dreamscape will be unstable and potentially dangerous. Standard protocol is to wait until he's fully under, until his consciousness has settled into proper REM sleep.

But you're already moving, already reaching for the dreamscape as it starts to form, because if you wait he might fight it, might pull himself back to wakefulness out of habit or fear, and you're not letting that happen.

The dreamscape materializes around you, half-formed and flickering. You can feel the waking world bleeding through, sounds and sensations that shouldn't be present in a dream. Voices. Movement.

You push deeper into the forming dreamscape and the shapes resolve into something more concrete. Jake's bedroom. The details are sharper than they should be, more accurate, because he's still aware enough to be pulling from recent memory rather than letting his subconscious improvise.

He's in bed. Or his dream-self is in bed, which amounts to the same thing. There are two other figures in the room.

Sunghoon and Jay.

They're trying to help him sleep. You can see it in the way the dream has shaped them, turned them into gentle, supportive presences. Sunghoon is adjusting the blanket, making sure it's covering him properly. Jay is messing with something on the desk, probably the white noise machine that you can hear humming in the background.

"Better?" Sunghoon asks, and his voice is soft, careful.

Jake makes a noncommittal sound. He's tense, you can see it in the line of his shoulders, the way his hands are fisted in the blanket. His eyes are closed but he's not relaxed. 

"Try to sleep," Jay says from across the room. "We'll be right here."

"I know," Jake says, and there's guilt in his voice, thick and obvious. Guilt that they have to do this, that they're spending their night watching over him instead of doing literally anything else.

They mean well. You can see that clearly. The dream has rendered them with affection, with trust. These are people Jake loves, people he feels safe with.

But they're not helping.

Sunghoon sits down on the floor next to the bed, settling in like he's planning to stay there all night. Jay turns off the overhead light, leaves the desk lamp on. They're making him physically comfortable. All the external factors are right. 

None of it matters, because the problem isn't external.

You can feel Jake's anxiety from here, radiating through the dreamscape like heat. He's afraid to fall asleep. Having Sunghoon and Jay there helps in the waking world, gives him people to ground him when he wakes up screaming, but it does nothing to prevent the nightmares from happening in the first place.

The dreamscape flickers, unstable because Jake is still too aware, still caught between sleeping and waking. You've already broken protocol twice with him. What's one more time?

You reach into the dreamscape and start making adjustments. Small ones, subtle enough that he won't consciously register them. You dim the anxiety first, not erasing it but muting it, turning down the volume on the fear response that's keeping him wired. The tension in his shoulders eases slightly. 

Then you adjust the dream-versions of Sunghoon and Jay. They're already helpful, already supportive, but you sharpen that, make their presence feel more solid, more grounding. The white noise machine is too loud. You soften it. The lamp is too bright. You dim it further. The blanket is the wrong weight. You adjust the dream-logic until it feels exactly right, heavy enough to be comforting without being restrictive.

Jake's breathing starts to even out.

You work carefully, precisely, making change after change so small that Jake's conscious mind doesn't flag any of them as wrong. This is the kind of intervention that takes skill, that requires you to understand not just what the dreamer needs but how to give it to them without triggering their defenses.

This is what you're good at. This is what the elders keep you around for.

The dreamscape stabilizes. Jake's consciousness finally, finally lets go, sinking down into proper sleep. The dream-versions of Sunghoon and Jay fade into the background, becoming less distinct as Jake's awareness of the waking world dims. They'll disappear entirely in a few minutes, replaced by whatever his subconscious decides to populate the dream with.

You'll make sure it's nothing that hurts him.

────୨ৎ────

Three weeks in, and Jake is sleeping almost normally.

You’re not a miracle worker, and his subconscious is still a minefield of anxiety and trauma that will take months to fully stabilize, if it ever does. But he’s sleeping through most nights now, going to bed at reasonable hours instead of fighting consciousness until his body gives out. The night terrors still happen, but you’ve learned to catch them early, to dismantle them before they can take root and traumatize him badly enough to send him back into avoidance.

You’ve also started giving him actual dreams instead of just neutral space, just small scenes that feel normal enough to be forgettable. The kind of dreams regular people have, the kind that don’t mean anything and don’t leave any residue when you wake up.

Tonight he’s eating ice cream.

It’s a simple dream, almost aggressively mundane. He’s sitting on a bench in a park you’ve constructed from generic elements, with trees, grass, and a path winding into the distance. The ice cream is vanilla, melting slightly in the sun that you’ve calibrated to be warm but not uncomfortable.

His dream-self seems content with this. He takes another bite, watches a bird hop across the path in front of him, tilts his face toward the sun. There’s no tension in his shoulders, no hypervigilance in the way he scans his surroundings. 

You’ve been maintaining dreams with small, peaceful moments like this for over a week now. Jake having coffee with Jay and Sunghoon at their usual café. Jake walking through campus between classes. Jake reading in his apartment with rain pattering against the window. Nothing exciting, nothing memorable, just the texture of a normal life rendered in dream-logic.

Last night you gave him something a little more dynamic. He was at the café with his friends, and Sunghoon knocked over his coffee. Jay laughed so hard he choked on his sandwich, and Jake just sat there grinning while Sunghoon tried to mop up the mess with a handful of napkins that kept disintegrating. It was light, silly, the kind of thing that happens in regular dreams. The kind of thing that would make someone wake up and think huh, weird, before forgetting about it entirely.

You’ve been careful to include small anxieties too, the normal kind that don’t spiral into terror. Dreams where he’s late to class, or can’t find his keys, or accidentally wore mismatched shoes. Yesterday he dreamed he overslept and missed an exam, woke up in a panic, checked his phone, and realized it was Saturday. The fear was real but proportional, manageable, the kind of stress that didn’t require your intervention.

It’s important that the dreams don’t seem too good. Dreamers notice when everything is too pleasant, when nothing ever goes wrong. Their subconscious rebels against it and tries to assert the anxiety that’s being suppressed. You learned that early in your training. The best dreams are the ones that feel real, complete with minor frustrations and small embarrassments and moments of awkwardness.

Tonight’s ice cream dream is going well. You’re monitoring it with half your attention, which is all it requires at this point, when something shifts.

Jake stops eating.

You focus fully on the dreamscape, scanning for problems. Did something slip through? A nightmare trying to assert itself, a spike of anxiety you missed?

Jake is looking directly at you. His dream-self has turned on the bench, ice cream forgotten in his hand, and he’s staring at the exact spot where you’re standing at the edge of the dreamscape.

Your presence isn’t visible. It shouldn’t be visible. You’re not part of the dream, you’re separate from it, existing in a space adjacent to his consciousness but not inside it. Dreamers can’t perceive you unless you choose to manifest, and you have never, not once, chosen to do that with him.

But he’s looking right at you.

You don’t move. You’re not even sure you could. The dreamscape continues around him, the sun still shining, the bird still hopping along the path, but Jake is completely still, ice cream starting to drip down his hand, eyes fixed on a point in space that should be empty.

Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe he’s just looking in that general direction, staring at nothing the way people sometimes do in dreams.

“Hello?” he says.

The word drops into the dreamscape like a stone into still water. You feel the ripples of it, the way his consciousness sharpens slightly, awareness increasing in a way that’s dangerous for someone who’s supposed to be dreaming.

Jake’s eyes narrow slightly. He’s still looking at the same spot, and his expression has shifted from curious to something more intent.

“I know you’re there,” he says, and his voice is quieter now, more certain. “I can feel it.”

No. No, he can’t. That’s not how this works. Dreamers don’t feel guardians. They don’t perceive the maintenance happening around them. You’re as invisible to them as the mechanics of their own heartbeat.

Except he’s still staring at you, and the dreamscape is starting to shift in response to his focus, the edges sharpening as his awareness increases. He’s getting too lucid. If he keeps this up, he’s going to wake himself up, or worse, he’s going to destabilize the dream enough that the nightmares can slip back in.

You need to do something to redirect his attention.

You reach into the dreamscape and manifest a dog. It’s medium-sized, friendly-looking, the kind that people smile at automatically. It trots up to Jake’s bench, tail wagging, and pushes its nose against his free hand.

Jake doesn’t react.

“You’ve been here before,” he continues. “Every time I sleep now, you’re here. Aren’t you?”

The ice cream slips from his hand and falls to the ground. He doesn’t notice. The dog sniffs at it and then looks up at you, like it’s waiting for instructions, because of course it is. You created it, it’s just an extension of your will.

You pull the dog back, dissolve it before Jake can notice that it’s not behaving like a real dog would. The dreamscape flickers. His awareness is spiking, consciousness rising toward wakefulness, and you’re losing your grip on the stability you’ve worked so hard to maintain.

You need to leave. Now.

You disconnect, pulling back so fast it’s almost violent, severing the connection and returning to the archive room with your equilibrium spinning. Your hands are shaking slightly, residual feedback from the abrupt exit, and there’s a cold feeling in your chest that you don’t want to name.

He saw you.

No. He didn’t. He couldn’t have. Dreamers can’t perceive guardians. It’s impossible.

You pull up his file with hands that are still unsteady, scrolling through the notes from previous guardians, looking for any mention of awareness.

There’s nothing about lucid dreaming.

You wait longer than usual before entering Jake’s dreamscape the next night. You enter more cautiously than you have in weeks. The dreamscape is already formed when you arrive, which is normal. Jake’s subconscious has gotten better at constructing stable environments on its own, now that it’s not constantly bracing for nightmares.

He’s in the café this time, the one he frequents with Jay and Sunghoon. You settle at the edge of the dreamscape and watch. Everything seems normal. His awareness is at the usual level for this stage of sleep, present enough to engage with the dream, but not so present that he’s analyzing it. He takes a sip of coffee. 

You start to relax. Last night was nothing. He happened to look in your direction at the same time he was surfacing toward lucidity, and his mind tried to make sense of the vague awareness by addressing it directly. It doesn’t mean he actually saw you.

Then Jake’s gaze slides toward your position, and your chest goes cold.

He’s looking at you again.

His eyes are clearer than they should be. This is lucidity, or something close to it, and it’s spreading through the dreamscape like ice across water. You can feel it in the way the details sharpen, the way the café becomes more solid. The dream is stabilizing around his awareness instead of existing independently of it.

This is bad. This is very bad.

Lucid dreamers are difficult to work with under the best circumstances. They fight intervention, try to control the dream themselves, destabilize carefully constructed environments. If Jake takes control of the dream right now, if he pushes too hard, the whole thing could collapse into the kind of nightmare you’ve spent weeks protecting him from.

“You’re here again,” Jake says, and his voice is quiet but certain. He sets his coffee down, leans forward slightly. “I thought maybe I imagined it last night."

You pull back immediately, preparing to sever the connection, but the dreamscape resists. It’s too stable now, too anchored by his lucidity. Disconnecting abruptly could shock him awake, could trigger exactly the kind of panic response you’ve been trying to avoid.

His awareness is sharpening further. The café around him is gaining details you didn’t place. His subconscious is filling in the gaps, making this more real, and the more real it becomes, the harder it is for you to manipulate.

“I know you can hear me,” he says, still looking at you, and there’s something in his voice that makes your throat tight. “I don’t know what you are, but you’ve been helping me, haven’t you? The dreams are different now because of you.

You reach into the dreamscape and manifest a figure behind Jake. Sunghoon. You pull the image from Jake’s memories, render him as accurately as possible, and place him in the chair across from Jake like he’s been there the whole time.

“Jake?” Sunghoon says, because you need him to say something to redirect Jake’s attention before this gets any worse.

Jake doesn’t turn around.

“I’m not crazy,” he says, still looking at your position. “I know something is—”

“Jake,” Sunghoon says again, louder this time, and you push urgency into his voice, making it impossible to ignore.

Jake’s head turns, finally, breaking eye contact with the space where you’re standing. He blinks at Sunghoon like he’s surprised to see him there. He looks around the café, then back at Sunghoon. “Have you been here the whole time?”

“Yeah?” Sunghoon says, and you’re controlling him directly now, puppeting him through the conversation because you need this to work. “You good? You zoned out for a second there.”

Jake stares at him. You can see the confusion working across his face, the dream-logic trying to assert itself against his lucidity. He was talking to someone. Something. But Sunghoon is here now, has apparently been here, and dreams don’t always make sense. Maybe he was talking to Sunghoon the whole time. Maybe his mind invented the presence he thought he felt.

“I’m fine,” Jake says slowly. “Just tired, I guess.”

“You want to get out of here?” Sunghoon asks, because you need to move the dream somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t have Jake staring at the spot where you’re standing.

“Yeah. Sure.”

They stand up, and you guide the dream into transition, shifting the café into a sidewalk, the sidewalk into campus, giving Jake’s mind something to follow so he stops trying to analyze what just happened. Sunghoon walks beside him, asking about classes, about an assignment due next week, normal conversation that sounds like something they’d actually talk about because you’re pulling it directly from Jake’s memories of similar conversations.

Jake responds, but he’s distracted. His eyes keep moving, scanning the dream like he’s looking for something.

You stay as far back as you can, maintaining the dream from a distance, keeping Sunghoon’s presence solid and distracting. The lucidity is fading slowly, his awareness dimming back to normal dream-consciousness. He’s accepting the dream again instead of questioning it.

But every few minutes, his gaze drifts toward empty spaces. 

────୨ৎ────

You enter Jake's dreamscape at the usual time, prepared to avoid anything that might trigger his awareness again.

The nightmare is already waiting. It’s fully constructed, massive and hungry. This isn't the usual gradual onset of a night terror that you can catch and dismantle before it takes hold. This is something that materialized the moment he fell asleep, something his subconscious has been building in the background while you've been giving him peaceful dreams.

The dreamscape is dark and cavernous, all wrong angles and oppressive weight. Jake is somewhere in the center of it. You can feel his terror from here, sharp and overwhelming. The nightmare has him caught in something, you can't see what yet, but it's bad. 

You don't hesitate. You throw yourself into the dreamscape and start trying to dismantle it, reaching for the threads of fear and yanking them apart. The nightmare fights back harder than anything you've encountered with him before. It's dense, layered, pulling from years of accumulated terror. Every time you break one piece apart, two more surge up to take its place.

The darkness ripples and reforms into a hallway that stretches endlessly in both directions. Jake is running. 

You reach for the thing that's chasing him, try to erase it, but your hands pass through it like smoke. It's too deeply rooted in his fear, too fundamental to the nightmare's structure. You try a different approach and lighten the darkness, shortening the hallway to give him an exit. The dreamscape resists. It's pulling from Jake's consciousness, feeding on his terror, and he's giving it so much fuel that you can barely make a dent.

The hallway splinters into multiple paths, each one worse than the last. The nightmare is fracturing, multiplying, becoming too many things for you to fight at once.

You're losing.

The realization hits you with a force that makes you stumble. You've never lost to a nightmare before. You've always been able to dismantle them, always been fast enough and skilled enough to break them apart before they could do real damage. But this one is too big, too entrenched, and Jake's fear is making it stronger with every passing second.

You try again, pulling at the fabric of the dream with everything you have. The hallway shortens slightly. The thing chasing him slows. You can feel his consciousness fragmenting, trying to escape by waking but unable to because the terror has him locked in place.

You need to do something drastic.

You reach for the core of the nightmare, the central fear that's powering everything else, and you wrench it sideways. The dreamscape shudders violently. Jake's terror spikes, but you don't stop. You tear at the nightmare's foundation until it starts to collapse.

The hallway dissolves. The thing chasing him dissipates into smoke. The darkness fragments into gray, into light, into nothing.

The dreamscape goes completely still.

You're shaking. You can feel it in your chest, residual feedback from how hard you just had to fight. That shouldn't have been that difficult. You're good at this. You've handled worse cases, more severe night terrors. Something about Jake's nightmare was different, like it had been gathering mass for weeks while you kept him safe.

Jake's consciousness is still there, flickering in the wreckage of the dream. You can feel his terror still overwhelming even though the nightmare is gone. He's not calming down the way he should, not settling back into peaceful sleep now that the threat is gone.

You should leave now, while the dreamscape is still unstable and formless, before he can latch onto anything. You're too shaken, too wrung out from the fight, and you hesitate for just a moment too long.

"Please," Jake says, and his voice cracks through the empty dreamscape like thunder. "Please don't leave."

He can't see you. You haven't manifested. You're just a presence, just the vague sense of something other that his consciousness has learned to associate with safety.

You can feel it, the way his consciousness is groping through the formless dreamscape, searching desperately for the thing that's been protecting him. 

"I know you're there," he says, and he sounds so young, so afraid. "I can feel you. Please, I just—I need—"

His consciousness finds you.

It's desperate, clinging, the way a drowning person grabs onto anything that might keep them afloat. His awareness wraps around your presence with crushing intensity, pulling you closer, refusing to let go. You can feel the shape of his terror, the depths of how afraid he just was, how afraid he still is. And underneath that, the bone-deep relief at finding you, at knowing he's not alone.

He's associated you with safety, as if the only thing that's protected him from the worst parts of his own mind. Now he's holding on like you're the only thing keeping him from drowning.

You try to pull back, to extract yourself from his grip, but his consciousness tightens further. He doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't understand the mechanics of the dreamscape or how guardians exist within it. He just knows that you're here and you're safe and he can't let you go.

The pressure increases. You can feel it compressing around you, forcing you into a shape you don't want to take. If he keeps this up, if he doesn't let go, he's going to pull you fully into the dreamscape. He's going to force you to manifest.

You need to break free. You wrench against his grip, trying to sever the connection, but his fear is too strong. His need is too strong. He's holding on with everything he has. You're not strong enough to fight both him and the residual nightmare and your own exhaustion all at once.

The dreamscape solidifies around you.

It's excruciating, like being turned inside out, pulled from the abstract into the concrete. The dreamscape renders you in three dimensions, gives you weight and substance and presence.

You manifest.

The gray nothingness of the post-nightmare dreamscape sharpens into something more defined. A room, plain and empty, with soft light coming from nowhere. In the center of it, Jake is on his knees, looking directly at you.

His eyes are wide, red-rimmed and wet. He's breathing hard, body shaking. He looks destroyed.

"You're real," he says, and his voice breaks on the last word.

Before you can move, before you can even think about disconnecting, Jake lunges forward and grabs you.

His arms wrap around you with desperate strength, his face pressing into your shoulder, and he's holding on like you're the only solid thing in the universe. You can feel him shaking against you, the raggedness of his breathing, and the way his hands are fisted in the fabric of whatever your manifestation is wearing.

"Please don't leave," he says into your shoulder, the words muffled and broken. "Please, I can't—I can't do that again, I can't—"

"Jake,” Your voice sounds strange to your own ears, foreign. You haven't spoken aloud in years. Guardians don't talk. There's never been a reason to.

"I know you're the one who's been helping me," he says, and he's talking fast now, words tumbling over each other. "I know it's you. The dreams, they're different now, they're better, and tonight when that thing was chasing me I could feel you fighting it." His grip tightens. "Please don't go. Whatever you are, wherever you came from, please just stay."

This is wrong. This is so fundamentally wrong that you don't even know where to begin cataloging the violations. Dreamers aren't supposed to see you. They're not supposed to know you exist. And they are absolutely, under no circumstances, supposed to be able to touch you.

The nightmare is gone but the fear hasn't faded. He's terrified that you're going to disappear, that he's going to be alone again with nothing between him and the worst parts of his own mind.

"You need to let go," you say, and you try to make your voice firm, authoritative, but it comes out too gentle.

"No." His arms tighten. "No, please, I'll do whatever you want, I'll stop trying to find you, just don't leave yet. Not yet.” His breath hitches. "I'm still so scared."

He's clinging to the only thing that makes him feel safe.

You.

He's clinging to you.

Some terrible, treacherous part of you doesn't want to let go.

"Please," he whispers. "Just a little longer. Just until I'm not so afraid."

Your arms come up slowly, carefully, and you hold him back.

"Okay," you hear yourself say. "Okay. Just for a little while."

Jake's breath shudders out of him, relief and residual fear tangled together. His grip on you doesn't loosen, but the desperation in it eases slightly.

You stand there and let him hold on, and you tell yourself this is just damage control. It doesn't mean anything.

You're already very good at lying to yourself.

────୨ৎ────

Jake's hands are shaking.

It's subtle, barely noticeable, but the coffee in his cup is rippling slightly, tiny waves lapping at the sides. He's staring at it, watching the surface tremble, and he doesn't realize Jay is saying something until a hand reaches across the table and plucks the cup from his grip.

"Hey!"

"You were about to spill it all over yourself," Jay says, setting the coffee down on the far side of the table, well out of Jake's reach. "When's the last time you slept?"

Jake blinks. "Last night."

"For how long?"

"I don't know. A few hours."

Jay and Sunghoon exchange a look. Jake catches it, that wordless communication they've perfected over years of friendship, and he knows what they're thinking. He was doing better. He was sleeping normally, going to bed at reasonable hours, waking up looking less like a reanimated corpse. And now he's back to this, jittery and distracted in a way that makes him miss entire chunks of conversation.

"What happened?" Sunghoon asks. His voice is even, careful, the way it always is when he's worried but trying not to show it.

Jake doesn't know how to answer that. What is he supposed to say? That he had the worst nightmare in weeks, maybe months? That would explain the exhaustion, the relapse into caffeine dependency, but it wouldn't explain the other thing he can't stop thinking about.

"I had a bad night," he says, which is true but insufficient.

"Night terror?" Jay asks.

"Yeah."

Jay hesitates. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." Jake reaches for his coffee automatically, forgetting Jay moved it. His hand closes on empty air. He pulls it back, shoves both hands under the table so they can't see the tremor. "It's fine. I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Jay says flatly. "You look like you're about to vibrate out of your skin."

"I just need more sleep."

"So sleep."

"I will."

"Tonight?"

Jake doesn't answer. He's looking out the window now, at the quad where students are sprawled on the grass between classes, talking and laughing and living normal lives where sleep is just something you do, not something you have to brace yourself for. The sunlight is too bright. Everything is too bright. He didn't sleep enough to process light properly, and his eyes keep losing focus.

"Jake." Sunghoon's voice cuts through the fog. "What's going on?"

Maybe it's the exhaustion, or maybe it's the fact that he's been carrying this alone for too long, but Jake hears himself say, "I met someone."

Both of them go still. Jay's eyebrows climb toward his hairline. "You... met someone?"

"Yeah."

"Like, a person? A real person?"

"Yes, Jay, a real person." Jake's mouth twitches, almost a smile. "What other kind is there?"

"I don't know, you've been acting so weird I wasn't sure." Jay leans forward, and there's something eager in his expression now, excited. "Okay. Tell us about her."

"How do you know it's a her?"

"Is it?"

"Yeah."

"Called it," Jay says to Sunghoon, who rolls his eyes. "Okay, so. Who is she? How'd you meet?"

Jake opens his mouth. The explanation that made sense in his head at three in the morning sounds insane now, in the middle of the day, sitting in the café with his friends looking at him expectantly. "She... helped me. With the nightmares."

"What, like a therapist?" Sunghoon asks.

"No. Not a therapist."

"Then what?"

Jake's fingers are tapping against his thigh under the table, restless, anxious. "I don't know exactly. She’s just been there when I sleep. She makes it better."

Jay and Sunghoon exchange another look, this one more concerned than before.

"Makes it better how?" Jay asks slowly.

"The dreams. They're different when she's there. Peaceful. The nightmares can't touch me when she's around." Jake knows he's not explaining this right, knows it sounds wrong, but he doesn't know how else to say it. "Last night, when I had that terror, she fought it off. I could feel her doing it. And then after, when I was still scared, she stayed."

"Okay," Jay says, drawing the word out. "So... she's in your class or something? And you've been hanging out?"

Jake runs a hand through his hair, frustrated. "It's not like that."

"Then what is it like?"

"She's..." How does he explain this? How does he put into words something that doesn't make sense even to him? "She's the reason I've been sleeping better. These past few weeks, when everything was good, that was her. She's been helping me."

"That's great," Jay says, and he sounds genuinely pleased, like this is normal, like Jake is describing a regular person who exists in the regular world. "You should ask her out."

"What?"

"Ask her out. If she's been helping you this much, if you're this into her, just go for it."

"I can't—it's not—" Jake's hands are back on the table now, fingers drumming arhythmically against the wood. "You don't understand."

"So help us understand," Sunghoon says. "What are we missing?"

Everything. They're missing everything. Jake looks at both of them, at their patient, concerned faces, and tries to find words that won't make them think he's lost his mind. "She's my savior."

The word lands heavy and strange. Jay blinks. "Your what?"

"She saved me from the nightmares." Jake's voice is getting more intense, more urgent, and he can hear it but he can't stop it. "You don't understand what it was like, every night, just waiting for it to get bad, knowing it was going to get bad, and then she fixed it. She made it stop. I can sleep now because of her."

"Okay," Jay says carefully. "That's... that's good, Jake. I'm glad you found someone who helps."

"She's not just someone." The words are coming faster now, tripping over each other. "She's the girl of my dreams. Literally.”

"Wait." Sunghoon holds up a hand. "Literally?"

Jake realizes his mistake too late. "I just mean—"

"You said literally." Sunghoon's eyes have sharpened, focused. "The girl of your dreams. You mean she's in your dreams."

"That's not—I didn't mean—"

"Jake." Jay's voice has lost its encouraging tone. Now he just sounds worried. "Is this girl real?"

"Yes." The answer is immediate, defensive. "She's real. I've seen her. I've talked to her. I've held her." The memory of it crashes over him again, the weight of her, the solid reality of her presence. The way she'd put her arms around him and told him it was okay, he was safe and she wasn't going anywhere.

"In your dreams," Sunghoon says. 

"No, listen." Jake leans forward, desperate to make them understand. "She's real. She exists. She's been protecting me this whole time. Every night when I sleep, she's there, and she keeps the bad things away." He's gesturing now, hands moving frantically. "She's the only reason I've been okay. Without her, I'd be back where I was before, terrified of my own mind.”

"What's her name?" Jay interrupts.

Jake stops. "What?"

"Her name. What's her name?"

The question sits between them like a trap. 

"You don't know her name," Jay says flatly.

"I haven't—we haven't—" Jake's hands are shaking again, worse now. "It's not about that. Names don't matter. "

"Jake." Sunghoon's voice is gentle, which somehow makes it worse. "I think you need to hear how this sounds."

"How what sounds?"

"You're talking about a girl you've never met outside of your dreams. A girl whose name you don't know, but you're calling your savior."

"Because she is." Jake can hear the desperation in his own voice. "You're not listening. She's real. What she does for me is real.”

"Do you hear yourself right now?" Jay asks, and there's something almost pleading in his voice.

"I sound crazy. I know." Jake slumps back in his chair, suddenly exhausted. The adrenaline that's been keeping him upright drains away all at once, leaving nothing but bone-deep weariness. "But I'm not. I'm not crazy. She's real."

"Maybe you should talk to someone," Sunghoon says. "A professional, just about the nightmares.”

"I don't need a therapist."

"Jake.”

"I need her." The words come out more raw than he intended. "I need her, and I know that sounds insane, but it's true. Without her, I'm—" He can't finish the sentence. Without her, he's drowning. Without her, he's back in the dark with nothing but his own fear for company. "I can't lose her."

"You can't lose someone you don't actually have," Jay says, and his voice is so gentle it feels like a knife.

They think he's breaking. They think the sleep deprivation has finally pushed him over some edge, made him lose his grip on reality.

"Forget it," he says quietly. He reaches for his coffee, remembers again that Jay moved it, and stands up instead. "I should go."

"Jake."

"I'm fine." He's backing away from the table, hands shoved in his pockets to hide the shaking. "I'll see you guys later."

Outside, the sunlight is still too bright. Jake squints against it and starts walking. His mind is racing, thoughts tumbling over each other in an exhausted tangle.

She's real. He knows she's real.

But he's never seen her outside of his dreams. When he tries to describe her, to explain what she looks like or anything concrete about her, the details slip away like smoke.

────୨ৎ────

You've been maintaining distance for three days now.

The elders didn't yell. They simply summoned you to their chamber and stated, with calm, inflectionless voices, that your recent reports showed concerning patterns of extended intervention and that you needed to recalibrate your approach to align with established protocol. 

You enter Jake's dreamscape only when absolutely necessary, dismantle nightmares from a distance, and leave before his consciousness can latch onto your presence.

It's destroying him.

You can see it in the way his dreamscape has started to fray again, anxiety creeping back into the edges like mold. His sleep is deteriorating, not as badly as before, but trending in that direction. He's fighting rest again. When he does sleep, his consciousness is agitated.

Tonight his dreamscape forms into something unstable, flickering between locations like he can't decide where he wants to be. The café. His apartment. Campus. Back to the café. Nothing settles.  His subconscious is too restless, too focused on something other than the dream itself.

You stay at the very edge of the dreamscape, monitoring from a distance. A nightmare starts to form, and you reach in just far enough to dismantle it. The nightmare dissolves before it can take hold.

Jake's consciousness sharpens immediately.

You pull back, making yourself as small and unnoticeable as possible. You can feel his awareness sweeping through the dreamscape, searching for the thing that just intervened. 

"I know you're here," he says to the empty café around him. His dream-self is standing in the middle of the room, turning slowly, scanning every corner. "I can feel it when you stop the bad things."

You don't respond. 

"Please," he says, and there's something desperate in his voice that makes your chest tight. "I just want to talk to you. That's all."

The dreamscape wavers. His emotions are destabilizing it, making it harder to maintain from a distance. You consider leaving entirely, letting it collapse naturally, but that would probably wake him, and he needs the sleep. So you stay, silent and still, and wait for him to give up.

The café dissolves, and the dreamscape reforms into the bookstore you've seen in his dreams before, the peaceful place he kept returning to in those early weeks. He's recreating it himself now, pulling it from memory, and the details are almost perfect. 

He's trying to lure you out with something familiar. 

It's clever. It almost works. Some part of you wants to step into that space, to see what he's built and acknowledge the effort.

 You stay where you are.

Jake sits down in the window seat and waits, like he thinks if he's quiet enough, you'll appear on your own.

Minutes pass. The dreamscape holds steady. He doesn't move.

"I'm not going to stop," he says finally. "I know you can hear me. I know you're there. And I'm not going to stop looking until you talk to me."

You watch him wait, and you tell yourself this will pass. He'll get tired of waiting. He'll move on.

The next night, he tries something different.

The dreamscape forms into a nightmare immediately, but it's wrong. You can tell within seconds that he's doing this on purpose, forcing his own subconscious into a fear response to make you intervene. 

You almost admire the strategy.

The nightmare isn't severe enough to warrant intervention. It's uncomfortable, probably unpleasant for him, but not dangerous. You leave it alone, let him suffer through it as a lesson about manipulation.

Then it starts intensifying. He's pushing it further, feeding it more fear, and it's starting to spiral beyond his control. What started as a calculated risk is turning into something real.

You reach in and dismantle it before it can fully form.

"There you are," Jake says immediately, and his dream-self is smiling, triumphant. "I knew that would work."

You pull back to your observation point and wait for him to realize you're not going to engage.

His smile fades. "Come on. I know you're there. Just show yourself. Please."

The dreamscape shifts, and you can feel his frustration building. He's trying to force another nightmare, trying to recreate the conditions that made you manifest last time, but he doesn't understand the mechanics well enough to do it right. He's just destabilizing his own sleep, making the dreamscape chaotic and hard to manage.

You spend the next twenty minutes cleaning up the mess he's making, smoothing out the disruptions, keeping everything stable while he essentially throws a tantrum trying to get your attention.

It would be annoying if it wasn't so concerning.

By the third night, you're expecting more of the same manufactured nightmares and attempts to force your hand.

What you're not expecting is for him to hurt himself.

The dreamscape forms normally at first. Jake is in his apartment, sitting on his bed, and everything seems calm. You're monitoring from a distance, alert for whatever strategy he's going to try tonight.

He stands up and walks toward the window.

It's a dream-window, looking out onto a dream-version of the street below. Jake opens it and looks down at the ground several stories below.

"I wonder what happens if I jump," he says conversationally, like he's musing about the weather.

Your attention sharpens into something close to panic. He wouldn't. He doesn't understand how dream-death works, how trauma in the dreamscape can bleed into waking consciousness, how dying in a nightmare can leave psychological scars that don't heal.

"I bet you'd stop me," he continues, still looking down. "If I actually did it. I bet you'd have to show yourself then. I'm going to count to ten, and if you don't show yourself by the time I reach one, I'm going to find out what happens."

He's bluffing. He has to be bluffing.

"Ten."

You don't move.

"Nine."

This is a test. He's trying to see if you'll break, if you care enough to intervene.

"Eight."

You should call his bluff. Manipulation won't work, you're not going to compromise your position just because he's threatening self-harm in a dream.

"Seven."

But if he's not bluffing—

"Six."

—if he actually jumps—

"Five."

—the psychological damage could be severe enough to set him back months, could trigger a cascade of actual night terrors worse than anything you've seen from him.

"Four."

You can't let that happen.

"Three."

But if you manifest now, you're rewarding this behavior, teaching him that threatening himself is an effective way to get what he wants.

"Two."

He puts one foot on the windowsill.

"One."

You manifest in front of the window, blocking his path, your form solidifying so fast it's almost violent. "Stop."

Jake's face breaks into a smile, relief and triumph mixed together. "I knew you'd—"

"Are you out of your mind?" The words come out sharper than you intended, anger bleeding through the careful neutrality you're supposed to maintain. "Do you have any idea what you almost did?"

"I wasn't actually going to jump," he says, but there's something uncertain in his voice now, like he's realizing he might have miscalculated.

"You don't know that." You step closer, and you're furious in a way you haven't been in years, maybe ever. "You don't understand how any of this works. Dream-death isn't real death, but the trauma is real. The fear is real. You could have damaged yourself in ways I can't fix."

"But I didn't," he says. "Because you stopped me."

"I shouldn't have had to stop you. You shouldn't have—" You cut yourself off, trying to regain control. This is exactly what he wanted. He wanted you to engage, and you fell for it. "This was manipulation."

"This was the only way you'd talk to me." His voice is rising now, frustration spilling over. "You've been avoiding me for days. I can feel it. You're still here, you're still protecting me, but you won't let me see you or talk to you. What was I supposed to do?"

"Let it go," you say. "Forget this happened."

"I can't forget you." He says it like it's obvious. "You're the only thing that's kept me sane for weeks. The only thing standing between me and everything terrible. How am I supposed to just forget that?"

"That's not how this works."

"Then explain to me how it works." He moves closer, and you don't step back even though you should. "Tell me the rules. Tell me what I'm not supposed to do. Tell me anything, just stop disappearing every time I get close."

You can see exactly what will happen if you leave. He'll spiral and get worse. The nightmares will come back with a vengeance, and the next guardian won't know how to handle him.

You're trapped, and you put yourself here.

"You can't do this again," you say finally. " No more threats.” 

His voice has gone soft, almost pleading. "You've been in my head for weeks. You know everything about me. Every fear, every weakness, every terrible thing I've ever dreamed. I don't even know your name."

The word sits between you like a trap. Your name. Such a small thing, such a basic piece of information.

"No," you say.

"Why not?"

"Because this is already too far. You're not supposed to know I exist, and I'm certainly not supposed to—" You cut yourself off before you can finish that sentence.

"Supposed to what?" he asks, and there's something searching in his expression. "Care? Is that what you were going to say?"

"You do care," he says, and he sounds almost amazed by it. "That's why you keep protecting me. You care what happens to me."

"I care about all my assignments," you say, but it sounds hollow even to you.

"I don't believe you."

"That's not my problem."

"Isn't it?" He's still looking at you with that unbearable intensity. "If I'm this attached to you, if I'm willing to stand in a window and threaten to jump just to see you again, doesn't that mean you've already broken whatever rules you're trying to protect?"

He's right, and you hate that he's right.

"This can't continue," you say. “I've seen inside your mind, Jake. I know how this works. You're not attached to me. You're attached to not being afraid."

"You're wrong," he says flatly.

"I'm not."

"Then prove it." He crosses his arms. "Stop protecting me. Let me have the nightmares, let me deal with it on my own, and we'll see if I forget about you."

It's a challenge, and you both know it. He knows you won't do it. 

"That's what I thought," he says when you don't respond. "You're just as trapped as I am."

The words hit harder than they should. You want to argue that you're just doing your job, his attachment is one-sided and problematic and not at all reciprocated.

You're not sure any of that is true anymore.

"I need to go," you say quietly.

"Don’t," He reaches for you, and you step back before he can make contact. The rejection flashes across his face. "Five more minutes. Please."

"No."

"Then tomorrow night. Just talk to me tomorrow night. You don't have to manifest if you don't want to. Just let me hear your voice."

"Maybe," you hear yourself say.

His face brightens immediately. "Really?"

"Maybe," you repeat, firmer this time. "And only if you sleep normally tonight.”

"I can do that."

You disconnect before he can ask anything else, returning to the archive room with your manifestation dissolving like mist. You sit down heavily, exhaustion washing over you in a wave.

────୨ৎ────

Jake only feels in extremities.

You've noticed this over the past week, watching him in his dreams and cataloging the way his consciousness operates. There's no middle ground for him. The night terrors were extreme, debilitating and relentless in a way most people never experience in their entire lives. And now his attachment to you is equally extreme, all-consuming in a way that should disturb you more than it does.

Tonight he's dreaming about a garden. You didn't construct this, he did, pulling it together from fragments of memories and imagination. It's peaceful, almost aggressively so, all soft sunlight and flowering plants and the distant sound of water. He's sitting on a bench, and the moment you manifest, his entire face lights up.

"You came," he says, and he sounds so genuinely delighted that something in your chest does an uncomfortable twist.

"I said maybe."

He pats the bench beside him. "Sit with me?"

You sit down.

"I've been sleeping better," he says, and he's angled toward you, knee almost touching yours. "Every night this week. Did you notice?"

"Yes." Of course you noticed. You've been monitoring his sleep cycles obsessively, tracking every change, every improvement. He's going to bed at reasonable hours now, sleeping through most of the night and waking up rested. It's the kind of progress that should let you rotate off his case.

"I think it's because I know you'll be here," he continues. "It makes it easier to sleep." There's something almost shy in his expression now. "Knowing you'll be waiting."

He shifts closer. Not much, just a few inches, but enough that his shoulder brushes yours. The contact is light, barely there, but he's testing to see if you'll pull away.

You don't.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"You're going to regardless of what I say."

He grins at that, quick and bright. "Probably. But I'm trying to be polite."

"Since when?"

"Since you threatened to leave permanently if I wasn't." His hand moves, fingers brushing against yours where they're resting on the bench between you. "I'm trying very hard to behave."

"I've noticed. What were you going to ask?" you say when he doesn't continue.

"Oh. Right." His fingers are still against yours, warm and solid in a way that shouldn't be possible in a dream. "Do you have a name?"

You've been expecting this question. "You know I can't tell you that."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Both."

"I could just make one up," he continues, thoughtful. "Give you a name myself. Would that bother you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I already have a name. You just don't get to know it."

His fingers curl slightly against yours. "That seems unfair. You know everything about me."

"It's my job to know things about you. It's not your job to know things about me."

"You've said that before. I still don't believe you." He's smiling now, soft and knowing. "I think I'm special."

The arrogance of it should annoy you. Instead it's almost charming in its directness, the way he's stating what he wants without pretense or game-playing.

"You're a difficult case," you say. "That's not the same as special."

"I'll take it." He shifts even closer, and now his shoulder is pressed fully against yours, his hand warm around yours, his presence taking up space in a way that should feel invasive but doesn't. "I've been thinking about you all day. Every day, actually. I go through my classes and eat lunch with Jay and Sunghoon and do my homework, and the whole time I'm just waiting for nighttime.”

"I know I'm not supposed to feel this way. I know this whole thing is probably breaking a dozen rules. But I can't help it." His fingers tighten around yours. "You're the best part of my day. The only part I actually look forward to. And I know that probably sounds pathetic, being this attached to someone I only see in my dreams. "

"It's not pathetic," you interrupt, and you mean it. 

He leans his head against your shoulder, a gesture so casual and affectionate it makes your breath catch. "Pathetic would be harder."

He shifts slightly, getting more comfortable against your shoulder. "What if I just talk then? You don't have to tell me anything. Just let me talk to you."

This is safer territory. Letting him talk means you can maintain some semblance of professional distance while still keeping him engaged.

"Fine," you say.

He talks about his classes, about a paper he's working on, about how Jay is dating someone new and won't shut up about it. About how Sunghoon keeps asking if he's okay because apparently he's been acting weird lately, distracted during the day and eager to go home at night.

"I told him I met someone," Jake says, and you feel yourself tense. "He asked if it was the same person from before. The one I tried to tell them about."

"What did you say?"

"I said yes." His hand tightens around yours. "I didn't tell him the details. Just that I'm still... that we're still..." He trails off. "I don't know what we are, actually. What should I tell him?"

"Nothing. Tell him nothing."

"That's not helpful."

"It's the truth. We're not anything. This is temporary."

"You keep saying that." He tilts his head to look up at you, and he's close enough that you can see the details of his face. The exhaustion’s finally fading from around his eyes. "But you keep coming back."

Your silence is apparently answer enough. He settles back against your shoulder, satisfied.

"Jay thinks I'm in love," he says conversationally.

Your heart does something complicated. "You're not."

"How do you know?"

"Because love requires knowing someone. You don't know me."

"I know some things." His fingers lace through yours properly now, holding instead of just touching. "I know you're patient. I know you're careful. I know you care more than you want to admit. I know you're scared of this, whatever this is, but you keep showing up anyway."

"Those are observations, not knowledge. You can't love someone you don’t know anything about.”

"I'm not saying I'm in love with you. Not yet, anyway." He says it so casually, like it's not a devastating thing to admit. "But I could be, if you let me.” 

The words hang between you, heavy and unavoidable. He's not wrong. You do feel something, something you don't have a name for and don't want to examine. Something that's going to end badly for both of you.

"We should talk about something else," you say finally. “This conversation is going nowhere productive."

"I disagree. I think it's very productive." But he doesn't push, just settles more comfortably against you. "Fine. Different subject. Did you make this garden?"

"No. You did. You've been getting better at constructing stable dreamscapes.” 

"Is that because of you?"

"Partially. Your subconscious is learning what stable feels like. It's starting to default to peace instead of panic."

He's quiet for a moment, and you can feel him thinking. Then: "Does that mean you'll leave soon? If I'm getting better?"

There it is. The question you've been avoiding.

"Eventually," you say carefully. "When you're stable enough to maintain on your own."

"And when will that be?"

"I don't know."

"Just tell me." His hand tightens around yours, and there's something almost pleading in his voice now. "How much time do we have?"

"A few more weeks, maybe. If your progress continues. You need to prepare yourself for me to leave."

He stops, laughs slightly. "I don't even know what I want. Just more time with you. More of this. Whatever this is."

"This is me helping you sleep."

"This is more than that and you know it." But he's smiling now, soft and knowing. "But fine. We'll call it helping me sleep. If that makes you feel better."

It doesn't make you feel better. It makes you feel like a coward.

But you nod anyway, and he settles back against your shoulder, hand still in yours, and you sit together in the garden he created while the dream continues around you, peaceful and stable and completely unsustainable.

He falls into deeper sleep eventually, his consciousness dimming as his body gets what it actually needs. You stay until the dream naturally dissolves, until his sleep cycle shifts and your presence is no longer necessary.

────୨ৎ────

Jake is sleeping fourteen hours a day.

You noticed the shift a week ago, right after you told him your time together was limited. At first it seemed like a normal adjustment, his body finally able to catch up on months of sleep debt without fear. Then he kept sleeping and sleeping. 

He's missing classes. You know this because his dreams have started incorporating anxiety about assignments he's forgetting, emails he's not answering, texts from Jay and Sunghoon that he's ignoring. Somehow, the anxiety isn't enough to wake him up. Nothing is enough to wake him up, because waking up means leaving you.

Tonight he fell asleep at six in the evening.

The dreamscape forms into something familiar now, a room that's become your default space, comfortable and neutral with soft lighting and a bed that he insists on even though dream-logic doesn't require furniture. He's there the moment you manifest, already reaching for you with that desperate eagerness that's become standard.

"You're here," he says, like there was any doubt.

"I'm always here." You let him pull you down onto the bed, let him arrange you the way he wants: on your back with him curled against your side, head on your chest, arm around your waist. He's gotten bolder about touching you over the past two weeks, and you've let it happen because it keeps him sleeping peacefully.

Except he's sleeping too much now, and you're running out of ways to justify it.

"Jake," you say carefully. "What time did you go to sleep?"

"I don't know. Six? Seven?"

"It's six-thirty."

"Then six." He presses closer, fingers curling in the fabric of whatever your manifestation is wearing tonight. "Why?"

"You slept twelve hours last night, and ten the night before that."

"So?"

"So that's too much. You're oversleeping."

"There's no such thing as too much sleep." His voice is muffled against your chest. "I'm just making up for lost time."

"You've made up for lost time. Now you're actively avoiding being awake."

"Can you blame me?" He tilts his head to look up at you. "Being awake means being away from you. Why would I choose that?"

This is exactly what you were afraid of. The attachment going too far, tipping from therapeutic to pathological. He's preferring sleep to waking life, choosing dreams over reality because you're in the dreams.

"You have a life outside of sleep," you say, and you start running your hand down his back in slow, soothing strokes. It's something you've learned calms him, grounds him when he's getting agitated. 

"I have you here." He catches your other hand, brings it to his chest and holds it there. "That's better than anything out there. I'm not wasting a single hour of being awake when I could be here with you."

"You're going to make yourself sick," you try. "Sleeping this much isn't good for you."

"I feel fine."

"It’s not sustainable.”

"My body needs rest. That's what you kept telling me for weeks, remember? How I needed to sleep more, how I was destroying myself by staying awake?" There's something almost sharp in his voice now. "Well, I'm sleeping. Isn't this what you wanted?"

"Not like this."

"Then how?" He shifts, propping himself up on one elbow so he can look at you properly. "How am I supposed to sleep a normal amount when I know every hour I'm awake is an hour I'm not with you?"

Your hand is still on his back, still moving in those slow, calming strokes. You can feel the tension in his muscles, the way he's holding himself too tight. "You need to find balance. Sleep at night, be awake during the day. Live your life."

"I don't want to live my life. I want to be here."

"That's not an option."

"Why not?" And now there's real frustration in his voice, breaking through the usual gentleness. 

"Because I'm not going to be here forever." You make your voice firm, trying to cut through the attachment that's wrapped around him like a strangling vine. "Jake, listen to me. You need to start pulling back. Start spending more time awake.” 

"No. I'm not preparing for you to leave." He's sitting up fully now, and your hand falls away from his back. "I don't care what the rules are. I'm not just going to wean myself off of you like you're some kind of addiction I need to quit."

"That's exactly what this is becoming."

"Good." His jaw sets in that stubborn way you've seen before, the one that means he's not going to be reasoned with. "Let it be an addiction. I don't care."

This is getting out of hand. You need to regain control of the situation, need to make him understand the severity of what's happening. "Jake, I'm serious. If you keep this up, if you keep sleeping this much, the elders are going to notice. They're going to see the pattern and they're going to pull me off your case immediately."

"Then let them pull you off. I'll just keep sleeping until they assign you back."

"That's not how it works. They'll assign you to someone else."

"I don't want someone else."

"You won't have a choice." Your hands move to his shoulders now, trying to ground him, trying to make him focus. "Listen to me. If I get pulled off your case early, you won't see me again. They'll reassign me and you'll have a new guardian and that will be it."

"Then don't let them pull you off."

"I can't control that if you keep sleeping fourteen hours a day. They monitor these things. They'll see that something is wrong and they'll intervene."

"So what am I supposed to do?" His voice cracks slightly. "Just go back to my regular life and pretend you don't exist?"

"Yes. That's exactly what you're supposed to do."

"I can't." His hands come up to cover yours where they rest on his shoulders. "I can't do that."

"You have to." You gesture between the two of you, frustration bleeding into your voice. "This isn't real, Jake. None of this is real. I'm not real. I'm just something your mind has personified because that's easier than accepting that you've just been healing on your own."

"That's bullshit and you know it." His grip tightens. "You're real. What I feel is real."

"Jake, please." Your hands slide from his shoulders to his face, cupping it gently, trying to make him hear you. "Please, you need to listen to me. I need you to start sleeping at normal hours. Eight, maybe nine at most. I need you to go to your classes and see your friends. Because if you don't, I'm going to get pulled from your case, and then you really will lose me. Do you understand?"

He's quiet for a long moment. His hands come up to cover yours where they're holding his face. "And if I do this, if I sleep normal hours and go to class and act like everything is fine, will you stay for the full few weeks you promised?"

"I'll stay as long as I'm allowed to."

"That's not a yes."

"It's the best I can offer."

He closes his eyes, and you can feel the war happening inside him. You keep your hands on his face, thumbs brushing his cheekbones in a soothing gesture, and wait for him to make the choice.

"Fine," he says finally. "I'll sleep less. I'll go to class. But you have to promise me something too."

"What?"

He struggles for the words. "You'll be present with me, like this."

It's a terrible idea. It's the opposite of pulling back. Feeding the attachment makes everything worse. "Okay, but you have to keep your end of the bargain.” 

"Do you just move on to the next person after all this is over?” 

"Yes. That's how this works."

He hesitates. "Will you think about me? After?"

"Yes," you say quietly. "I'll think about you."

"Good." His grip tightens on your hands. "Because I'm going to think about you. I'm going to dream about you and know it's just my mind recreating what we had. I'm going to miss you," he says, and his voice cracks on the last word. "Is that allowed? Am I allowed to miss you when you're gone?"

Your throat feels tight. "You can do whatever you want."

When he speaks again his voice is rough. "I'm going to miss feeling safe."

The words hit harder than they should. Because that's what this has always been about, isn't it? Not you specifically, but what you represent. He's not in love with you, he's in love with not being afraid.

"You'll learn to feel safe on your own. That's the whole point of what we've been doing."

"What if I don't want to feel safe on my own?” His hands are trembling slightly where they hold yours, and you can feel his emotions destabilizing the dreamscape, making the walls waver. "Admit that you want this.” 

"I've already told you I feel something," you say quietly.

"Then why are you fighting this so hard?"

"This isn't real, Jake.” 

"Stop saying that." There's real frustration in his voice now. "Stop trying to protect me from this." His hand slides to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair. "I don't want protection. I just want you. Is that really so impossible?"

His mouth presses against yours with enough force that you gasp. His hand tightens in your hair, holding you in place, and his other hand comes up to cup your face like he's afraid you'll disappear if he doesn't hold on.

You kiss him back.

It's instinct more than decision, your body responding before your mind can catch up. Your hands come up to his chest, to push him away, you tell yourself, but they just flatten against him instead, feeling the dream-echo of his heartbeat. His mouth softens against yours slightly, the desperation giving way to something that feels almost like relief.

He pulls back after a moment, breathing hard, forehead resting against yours. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—I just needed you to stop talking. Are you going to leave?” 

"No." The word comes out rougher than you intended. "I'm not leaving."

"You're not?"

"No."

He lets out a shaky breath. "Okay. Okay, good. I’m still sorry. I shouldn't have done that without asking."

"It's fine."

"It's fine?" He sounds almost dazed. He pulls you closer again, and you let him, because apparently you've lost all ability to maintain boundaries. "Can we just have tonight? Without talking about endings or protocols or what we're supposed to do?"

His hands are warm on your wrists, and the dreamscape is stable around you, and you're so tired of fighting this.

"Okay," you say quietly. "Just tonight."

────୨ৎ────

Jake can't stop smiling.

He knows it's a problem because Jay keeps looking at him like he's grown a second head, and Sunghoon has asked him twice if he's okay. 

He can't help it. She kissed him back. She didn't pull away, didn't disappear, didn't tell him he'd crossed a line he couldn't uncross. He felt alive in a way he hasn't felt in years.

"Dude, you're doing it again," Jay says, waving a hand in front of his face.

Jake blinks, realizes he's been staring into the middle distance with what is probably a ridiculous expression on his face. "Doing what?"

"That." Jay gestures at him vaguely. "The whole... whatever that is. You look like someone just told you you won the lottery."

"Maybe I did," Jake says, and he can hear how stupid he sounds but he doesn't care.

Sunghoon sets down his coffee and studies Jake with that quiet, assessing look. "You seem different."

"Different how?"

"Awake," Sunghoon says simply. "We've only ever seen you exhausted. This is new."

"Oh." Jake hadn't thought about that. They've known him through years of sleep deprivation and night terrors, through the worst of it. They've never seen him well-rested and happy. "Is it weird?"

"It's not weird," Jay says quickly. "It's good. Really good. You look like a person again."

"I feel like myself." It's true. For the first time in years, he feels like he's operating at full capacity instead of running on fumes and desperation. His mind is clear. His body doesn't ache. 

"So what changed?" Jay asks, leaning forward with interest. "Did you finally start taking those sleep meds?” 

"I kissed her," Jake says, and the words are out before he can think better of them.

Both of them go still. 

"You kissed her," Jay repeats slowly.

"Yeah."

"The girl from your dreams."

"She's not—" Jake stops, tries again. "Yes. Her."

"In your dream," Sunghoon says. 

"Yes."

The silence that follows is heavy, loaded with concern that neither of them is trying very hard to hide anymore.

"Okay," Jay says carefully. "That's... that's good, man. I'm glad you're happy."

There's something in his tone that makes Jake's smile falter. "You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that.” 

"You don't have to say it. I can hear it." Jake looks between them, at the worry written across both their faces. "You think I'm losing it."

"We think you're going through something," Sunghoon says quietly. "And we're trying to understand."

"I told you. I met someone. She's been helping me sleep. Last night I kissed her and she kissed me back,” He can hear how it sounds, but he keeps going anyway because they need to understand. "She's real. What I feel is real. Why is that so hard to believe?"

"You're sleeping fourteen hours a day—"

"Eight. I'm sleeping eight hours a day now.”

"—and talking about kissing someone who only exists in your dreams—"

"She exists," Jake says, and his voice is rising now. "Just because you can't see her doesn't mean she's not real."

"Jake—" Sunghoon starts, but Jake cuts him off.

"No. You don't get it. You've never had to deal with what I deal with. You don't know what it's like to be afraid of your own mind every single night.” His hands are clenched into fists under the table. "She saved me from that. She's the only thing that's ever made it stop. And if that means she only exists when I'm asleep, then fine. I'll take it. At least I have something."

"You have us," Jay says quietly.

"It's not the same."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't do what she does!" The words come out louder than he intended, and the people at the next table glance over. Jake lowers his voice, but the intensity doesn't fade. "You can't go into my dreams and make the nightmares stop. You can't make me feel safe the way she does. You try, and I love you for trying, but you can't fix this. She can."

"Jake, listen to yourself," Jay says. "You're talking about her like she's the only thing keeping you alive."

"Maybe she is."

The admission hangs in the air between them. Jay looks stricken. Sunghoon's expression has gone very careful.

"That's not healthy," Sunghoon says finally.

Jake stands abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. "You know what? Forget it. I shouldn't have told you."

Jay reaches for him, but Jake steps back.

"I'm fine. I'm better than fine. For the first time in years, I'm actually sleeping, actually living, and you can't just be happy for me. You have to make it into something wrong."

"We're worried about you," Sunghoon told placates. "That's all this is."

"Well, don't be. I'm handling it." Jake grabs his backpack from the floor. "I have to go."

"Where?"

"I have errands to run."

He leaves before they can stop him, pushing through the café door and out into the afternoon sun. 

They don't understand. She's not just some fantasy he's projecting onto his dreams. She's real, and she cares about him. 

He's walking without a destination, just moving, trying to burn off the anxious energy thrumming under his skin. His feet carry him down familiar streets, past familiar buildings, until he finds himself standing in front of a pharmacy.

He stares at the storefront for a long moment, something clicking into place in his mind.

The inside of the pharmacy is bright and clinical, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Jake wanders down the aisles, past pain relievers and cold medicine, until he finds what he's looking for.

The sleep aids section is bigger than he expected. Melatonin in various doses. Diphenhydramine. Herbal supplements promising restful sleep. Prescription-strength options behind the counter.

Jake picks up a bottle of melatonin. 10mg. The label says to take one tablet thirty minutes before bed and to not to exceed recommended dose.

He picks up a second bottle. Diphenhydramine, 25mg. Sleep aid and antihistamine. The labels say not to combine them, but people do it all the time, don't they? 

────୨ৎ────

Something is wrong.

You can tell the moment Jake enters the dreamscape. Usually his consciousness arrives with a certain clarity, a presence that's become familiar over these weeks. Tonight he's sluggish, his form manifesting slowly like he's moving through something thick and resistant.

The dreamscape forms around him, but it's hazy at the edges, unfocused in a way that suggests his subconscious isn't operating at full capacity.

"Hey," he says when he sees you, and even his voice sounds off. 

You manifest fully and cross to him immediately. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong." He sways slightly when he moves toward you, and you have to catch his arm to steady him.

"Jake." You guide him to sit on the bed, studying his face. He looks tired, which shouldn't be possible. Exhaustion doesn't exist in the dreamscape the way it does in waking life. Dreams are supposed to be restorative. "What happened?"

"I'm fine. Just tired." He reaches for you, pulling you down beside him, but the movement is clumsy and uncoordinated.

"You're in a dream. You shouldn't be tired here."

"Well, I am." He leans his head on your shoulder, the weight of it heavier than usual. "Can we not talk about it?"

Alarm bells are going off in your mind. This isn't normal. This isn't how dreamscapes work. If he's this compromised here, something is very wrong in his waking life.

"Jake, I need you to tell me what's going on."

"Nothing's going on. I'm sleeping like you wanted." There's something defensive in his tone, even through the sluggishness.

"This isn't normal sleep. You can barely hold yourself upright." You pull back to look at him properly, and the unfocused quality of his eyes makes your chest tight with worry. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. I'm just really tired from today. I had a long day." But his words are coming out too slow, too deliberate, like he's concentrating hard on making them sound natural.

You take his face in your hands, making him look at you. "Tell me the truth. What did you do before you went to sleep?"

"Nothing." The word comes out too fast this time, overcompensating. 

"I can tell when you're lying. The dreamscape responds to dishonesty." You can feel the panic starting to rise in your chest, cold and sharp. "What did you take?"

"Can we please just drop this?" He tries to pull away from you, but the movement is sluggish and you hold on easily. 

"That's not how this works!" Your hands are shaking where they hold his face. "Dreamers don't experience physical exhaustion in the dreamscape, not unless something is interfering with their natural sleep chemistry."

Recognition flashes across his face, he understands what you're implying, but he schools his expression back to neutral. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine, and we both know it." You can feel the dread solidifying in your chest, heavy and cold. "If you won't tell me what you did, I'm going to have to find out myself."

His eyes widen slightly. "What does that mean?"

You don't want to do this. You've avoided this with him because it's invasive and a violation of the small amount of privacy dreamers have. 

"I'm sorry," you say quietly. You reach for his consciousness, bypassing his awareness and diving straight for his recent memories.

The reaction is immediate. Jake gasps, his whole body going rigid, and you feel the dreamscape shudder violently around you. Accessing memories without permission hurts. It's meant to hurt, a built-in defense mechanism to prevent guardians from abusing their access.

His hands come up to his head, and his face contorts with pain. You hate this. You hate hurting him. You push deeper anyway, searching for the memory of what he did before he went to sleep.

There. You find it and pull it forward.

Jake is in his bathroom opening the medicine cabinet. He takes out bottles, plural, and reading the labels before shaking pills into his palm. 

You pull out of his memories and back into the present moment. Jake is curled in on himself, hands still pressed to his head, breathing hard.

"Don't," he says, and his voice is raw. "Don't do that." He looks up at you, and there's betrayal written across his face, sharp and clear even through the drug haze. "You hurt me."

The words cut deeper than they should. "I needed to know what you did."

"So you just forced your way into my head?" He's moving away from you now, putting distance between you on the bed. "You were supposed to be safe.” His voice cracks. "Why would you do that?"

"You're taking medication you don't need to artificially extend your sleep," you interrupt, and you can hear the fear bleeding into your voice as anger. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"I'm not hurting myself.”

"You are!” You stop, trying to find words that will make him understand. "Your brain needs natural sleep cycles. When you artificially induce sleep with medication, you disrupt that balance.” 

"I know what I'm doing."

"You clearly don't." You're standing now, pacing, the horror of what you saw in his memories crashing over you. "You're damaging yourself. For what? For a few extra hours in a dream?"

"For a few extra hours with you," he says, and even through the hurt and the drugs, his voice is certain. "And I'd do it again. "

"No. No, you won't." The words come out louder than you intended, sharp with fear. "You're hurting yourself because you're so desperate to hold onto something that was never meant to last. I can't watch you destroy yourself for this."

"For you," he corrects. "I'm doing this for you."

"If you care about me at all, stop."

He stares at you, and something in his expression shifts. The hurt is still there, but underneath it is a realization. "You're scared. You can't dismiss it anymore as just attachment or trauma bonding or whatever else you've been telling yourself."

"It doesn't matter if this is real," your voice sounds broken even to your own ears. "It still has to end."

"Then let me have as much of it as I can."

"Not if it means you're going to hurt yourself." You close the distance between you, taking his face in your hands, making him look at you. "Please, Jake. Please stop. I need you to be safe. Even after I'm gone, I need to know you're going to be okay."

His eyes search yours, and you can see the moment the fight drains out of him.

"Okay," he says quietly, giving into your fear.

The dreamscape is already starting to stabilize around you, responding to the easing of tension. Jake's consciousness is still sluggish from the medication, but he's present, holding onto you like you're the only stable thing in his world.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," you say quietly. "When I accessed your memories. I'm sorry."

"I know." His voice is soft against your ear. "I understand why you did it, but it still scared me. The one person who's supposed to be safe doing something that hurt."

You stay with him for the rest of the night, monitoring the way the medication affects his sleep cycle, making sure he's safe even though he shouldn't have needed you to. When he finally slips into deeper, dreamless slee, you disconnect and return to the archive room with your heart heavy.

Jungwon is there. He takes one look at your face and says, "What happened?"

"He's trying to extend his sleep artificially.” 

Jungwon's expression goes carefully neutral. "And you stopped him?"

"I tried." You sink into a chair, exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the work. “I don't know if I can trust him to keep that promise when he's this desperate."

"You need to file a report. Let the elders handle this."

"If I file a report, they'll pull me off his case immediately. He'll get worse.”

"Or he'll adjust and find other support systems." Jungwon sits down across from you, and his expression is serious. "You need to request reassignment. Tonight."

"I can't do that."

He leans forward slightly. "Listen to me. I work with children, the elderly, and the terminally ill. Do you know how easy it would be to get attached to those cases?” 

"That's different.” 

"It's exactly the same." His voice is calm but firm. "I had a case two months ago with a six-year-old girl, dying of leukemia. Her dreams were beautiful, full of hope and wonder despite everything she was going through. Every night I had to watch her build these elaborate fantasies about growing up and living a full life. I had to maintain those dreams knowing she had weeks left at most.”

"I rotated off after three months. It hurt to leave her and know that someone else would be there for her final dreams instead of me, but I left anyway, because that's the job. Jake has had months of your time. Instead of getting better, he's now medicating himself to spend more time with you." Jungwon's expression doesn't change, but there's something almost pitying in his eyes. "You're enabling him."

The word lands like a slap. "I'm not.” 

"You're feeding his attachment." He pauses. "You're both bad for each other at this point. You need to leave."

"So what am I supposed to do? Just abandon him when he's like this?"

Jungwon's expression softens slightly. "I know it feels cruel. You care about him, maybe more than you're willing to admit. That care is making you blind to the fact that you being there is the problem, not the solution."

The words settle over you like a weight. You want to argue, to explain why leaving now would be worse than staying.

But a small, honest part of you knows he's right.

────୨ৎ────

The connection forms, and the dreamscape resolves back into the soft bedroom. You’ve barely fully manifested when he’s on you. One second you’re standing in the abyss, and the next his body is pressed against yours, arms locking around your waist with a desperate strength that steals your breath. He buries his face in the curve of your neck with a broken sound.

“You’re here, you’re here, fuck, you’re really here,” he mumbles, the words hot and damp against your skin. His hands are everywhere, skating up your back and clutching at your shoulders, as if trying to confirm you’re real through frantic touch.

“Please,” his voice is a shaky whine. He pulls back just enough to look at you. He looks exhausted, hollowed out. “Please, I need to touch you. I need you to let me touch you.” 

He’s trembling. You place your hand on his shoulder, trying to inject soothing energy inside him. It does little to help.

“I kept my promise,” he whispers, nuzzling back into your neck, his lips brushing your jaw. “No pills. I just laid there and waited. It took forever and I was so scared you wouldn’t come back after… after what I did.”

His hands fist in the fabric of your shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I was stupid. I was scared. Please.” He grinds his hips against yours, and you can feel him already hard. The need radiates from him like heat. “I need you to take care of me. Please, just take care of me tonight. I’ll be good. I’ll be so good.”

It feels like the most intimate thing he’s ever done. You bring your hands up, one palm cupping the back of his head, fingers tangling in his dark hair. The other strokes down the tense line of his spine.

He melts at the touch, a full-body shudder of relief going through him. “Yes,” he whines. “Yes, like that. Just like that.”

His mouth finds yours with a consuming, clumsy desperation. The kiss is deep, and starving. His tongue sweeps into your mouth and you meet him in the middle. A groan tears from his throat.

“I can’t think straight when I’m awake,” he pants against your lips, his hands dragging your tunic up, fingers scrambling for purchase on your skin. “All I do is count the hours until I can sleep. It’s pathetic. I know it’s pathetic.”

“It’s not,” you murmur, and you’re not sure if that’s a lie or not.

He gets the tunic over your head, discarding it into the fog. His mouth drops to your breast, sucking a hardened nipple deep, his tongue flicking wildly. He kneads the other with a rough, possessive hand. 

“Need to be inside you,” he mumbles, his words slurred against your flesh.

He fumbles with the fastening of your pants, his fingers shaking too hard to work properly. A frustrated, almost childish sob escapes him. You help him, pushing the material down your hips, and he sinks to his knees, mouth trailing down your stomach.

His tongue laps a broad, wet stripe through your folds, and you gasp, fingers tightening in his hair. He moans like he’s the one receiving pleasure, the vibration against your clit making your knees buckle.

“You taste so fucking good,” he groans, his voice ragged. He devours you with a single-minded focus, his tongue plunging inside you, then circling your clit. His hands grip your thighs, holding you open. “Let me make you feel good. Please. I need to.”

The submission has twisted, turned into a different kind of control. His need to please, to serve, is just as dominant as any aggression. You look down at the crown of his head between your legs, the sheer abject devotion in the curve of his spine, and something cracks open inside your chest. You come with a choked cry, your hips stuttering against his mouth. He drinks you down, whining with satisfaction, not stopping until the last tremor subsides.

Then he’s rising, pushing you back until you’re laying on your back. He sheds his own clothes, cock jutting out. Pre-cum beads at the tip. He aligns himself and pushes forward, burying himself inside you.

“Fuck,” he breathes, his whole body trembling. “Fuck, you’re so tight. You feel like home.”

He starts to move, full of pure, pounding need. Each thrust is a deep, claiming slide, his hips slapping against yours. The sounds are obscene, wet skin on skin. He stares into your eyes, his gaze unfocused and drowning.

“Tell me,” he whimpers, his pace increasing and becoming frantic. “Tell me you feel me. Tell me I’m real.”

“You’re real,” you gasp, the words torn from you. He is a solid, desperate weight inside you. It is the most real thing you have ever known.

“I’m gonna come,” he warns, his voice high and broken.“I’m gonna come inside you. Is that okay? Please, can I?”

“Jake, slow down,” you manage to say, your hands sliding to his hips.

It’s a reflex, a guardian’s instinct to moderate, to control the environment. But the plea is weak. The drag of him inside you is perfect, a friction that ignites every nerve. Your own body arches, betraying you to seek more. 

“I can’t,” he whines, the words punctuated by another sharp, deep thrust. “Oh god, I can’t, it feels too fucking good.You feel too good.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers between thrusts, his voice high and tight with impending release. His hands scramble for purchase on your skin, leaving fleeting bruises. “I’m sorry, I know, I’m sorry.” 

The apologies are meaningless, ritualistic, lost in the animal need. He’s not sorry.

His rhythm becomes erratic, desperate. He’s chasing that feeling of home he mentioned, trying to obliterate himself inside you. One of his hands leaves your hip, slips between your bodies, his thumb finding your clit and rubbing rough, frantic circles. The dual sensation is too much. A sharp, keening cry is torn from you. Your internal muscles clench around him, a vice grip of pleasure.

He follows you down, fingers digging into the flesh of your hips. He fucks into you, deep and final, his body bowing, every muscle locking.

“Take it,” he sobs, his voice shattered. “Take it all, I’m gonna—fuck, I’m gonna knock you up so you can never fucking leave me.”

The words are deranged.They should horrify you. Instead, a dark current of something terrifyingly close to pride thrills through your veins. He’s spilling inside you, his whimpers muffled against your shoulder blade. He collapses onto you, his breath hot on your skin, his softening cock still nestled within you, twitching with the last of his climax.

This is a dreamscape. He cannot impregnate you. Your body in this space is a projection, a confluence of his subconscious desire and your manifested form. The threat is empty, a fantasy of possession. But the emotion behind it, the raw, desperate wanting, is terrifyingly real.

He nuzzles the sweat-damp skin of your back. “Stay,” he murmurs, the word barely audible.

It’s the last plea of a drowning man. You wait, feeling his heartbeat slow against your spine, feeling the dream itself begin to soften at the edges as his mind descends into truer, emptier sleep. When his breathing evens out into the deep, rhythmic pattern of the dreamless, you gently disentangle yourself.

────୨ৎ────

You're standing at the edge of Jake's dreamscape, ready to enter, when Jungwon's voice stops you.

"Don't." Jungwon holds up the file. "He's been reassigned."

The words don't make sense at first. You stare at him, at the file in his hands, trying to process what he's saying.

"What?"

"The elders reassigned his case this morning. He's under my care now." Jungwon's voice is gentle, but there's no room for negotiation in it. "You're off the case. Effective immediately."

"His mental state has deteriorated to the point where he qualifies as a vulnerable case. Severe psychological distress, reality dissociation, compromised decision-making." Jungwon sets the file down on the table between you. "He needs a guardian who specializes in fragile cases. Someone who can work without getting their feelings involved."

The implication hangs in the air. 

"I can handle him," you say, but your voice sounds weak even to your own ears.

"You can't. That's why you're being removed." Jungwon's expression is sympathetic but firm. "The elders have been monitoring the situation. They made the call."

"When do I have to leave?" you ask quietly.

"You already have left. As of this morning, I'm his guardian. You're not to enter his dreamscape again."

"Not even to say goodbye?"

"A clean break is better."

"Better for who? The elders?" You can hear the bitterness bleeding into your voice. "Because it's certainly not better for him. He's going to wake up and I'll just be gone. He'll think I abandoned him."

"I know exactly what he'll do. He'll be upset. He'll be angry. He'll probably try to force himself to sleep more to find you, and I'll have to manage that." Jungwon's expression is steady, professional. "I've handled cases like this before. Dreamers who become attached to their guardians. It's not common, but it happens. There are protocols for managing it."

"He's going to hate you." The thought of him falling asleep tonight and finding you gone, finding Jungwon there instead, makes you feel like you're being torn apart. "Please, just let me see him."

"I can't. I'm sorry.” Jungwon moves toward the exit, then pauses. "For what it's worth, I don't think you did anything wrong."

He leaves, taking Jake's file with him, and you're left standing alone in the archive room.

You can feel Jake's dreamscape forming in the distance. He's falling asleep right now, his consciousness reaching for the familiar space where you've always been waiting.

But he’s not yours anymore.

────୨ৎ────

Jake knows something is wrong the moment he enters the dreamscape. The air doesn't feel right. The temperature is off by a degree or two. Everything looks correct on the surface, but something fundamental has shifted.

"Hello?" he calls out, turning slowly in the center of the room. His voice sounds too loud in the silence. "Are you here?"

Nothing, just the quiet hum of the dreamscape maintaining itself, a sound he's never consciously noticed before because she was always there to fill the space.

She's usually already manifested by the time he arrives, always there with that particular expression she gets when she first sees him, something between exasperation and something softer she never quite admits to. Jake can feel his heart starting to beat faster, that old familiar panic creeping in at the edges.

"I know you're here," he says, moving toward the center of the room, scanning the empty corners as if she might be hiding in them. "That's fine. I can wait."

He sits on the bed and waits, hands clasped between his knees, trying to keep his breathing steady. She's never been late before, but there's a first time for everything. He can handle it. He can.

Minutes pass. The dreamscape remains empty, unchanging, and the panic in Jake's chest is growing from a flutter to a roar.

"Okay," Jake says, and he can hear the edge of desperation creeping into his voice now, can't quite keep it out anymore. "Okay, this isn't funny. I know you're mad about last time. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I was desperate.”

The silence presses down on him like a physical weight. He stands up, paces to the window, back to the bed, unable to sit still. This doesn't make sense. She wouldn't just not show up. Even when she was angry with him, even when he'd done something wrong, she was always here.

"Please," he says, and his hands are gripping the edge of the bed hard enough that his knuckles are white. "Please, I'm sorry. Whatever I did, whatever I said, I'm sorry. Just come out. Please."

The air shifts.

Jake's head snaps up, relief flooding through him so intensely it makes him dizzy. "There you are.” 

A figure manifests in front of him, the space rippling and solidifying into a human shape. As the form becomes clear, Jake's relief curdles into confusion and then something darker.

It's not her.

It's someone else. A man, with a calm expression and dark eyes that take in the dreamscape with the kind of professional assessment that makes Jake's stomach drop.

Jake stands abruptly, the bed scraping against the floor of the dreamscape even though there is no floor, not really. "Who are you?"

"My name is Jungwon," the man’s voice is gentle, the kind of voice you'd use with a spooked animal or a confused child. "I'm your new guardian."

The words hit Jake like a punch to the chest. He stares at this intruder in a space that's supposed to be his and hers alone, trying to process what he just said. "My what?"

"Your guardian. I've been assigned to your case as of this morning." Jungwon takes a step closer, slow and deliberate, and Jake takes a step back on pure instinct. "I know this is unexpected. I'm here to help you adjust to the transition."

"Transition." Jake repeats the word like it's in a foreign language, like if he says it enough times it might start to make sense. "No. No, you're just part of the dream. She made you." 

He stops, looking around wildly as if she might appear at any moment to tell him this was all a lesson, something other than what it appears to be.

"I'm not part of a dream she made. I'm a guardian, the same as she was." Jungwon's voice remains infuriatingly calm, like he's explaining something simple and obvious. "I'm here because she's been rotated off your case. This is a standard protocol change. It happens with all guardian assignments eventually."

Jake's breathing is coming faster now, shallow and insufficient. His hands are shaking and he shoves them in his pockets to hide it. "That's not possible. She wouldn't just leave. She promised she'd stay. She promised."

"I understand this is difficult," There's something practiced about the way Jungwon says it, like he's said it before to other dreamers in other dreamscapes. "But guardian rotations are standard protocol. She was with you longer than usual, actually, much longer. But all assignments eventually end. That's how the system works."

"No, you’re lying. Where is she?” Jake backs up until his legs hit the bed again. The room is starting to feel smaller, the walls pressing in, responding to his rising panic.

"I want to see her." Jake's hands come out of his pockets, reaching toward Jungwon like he might be able to physically pull the answer he wants out of him. His throat is so tight it hurts to speak. "After everything, she owes me a goodbye."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"Why not?" The word comes out almost as a shout. "Why the hell not? You people can apparently do whatever you want. show up in my dreams and manipulate everything, but I can't have five minutes to say goodbye to someone who's been the most important person in my life for months?"

"Seeing her again would only make the transition more difficult. It would give you false hope that she might come back. This way is kinder."

"I don't care how it works!" Jake is shouting now, and the dreamscape responds violently to his emotion, the walls darkening from soft gray to charcoal, the light flickering like a dying bulb. "This is my mind. You can't just show up here and tell me she's gone and expect me to accept it. I didn't ask for you. I don't want you. I want her back."

Jungwon's expression doesn't change, but he takes a small step back, giving Jake space. His hands are loose at his sides, non-threatening, the posture of someone who's dealt with angry dreamers before and knows how to de-escalate. "I understand you're angry. That's a normal response to this kind of change. Loss of a familiar guardian, especially one you'd developed a strong working relationship with, is disorienting and painful. I need you to understand that I'm here to help you. That's my only goal. I'm not your enemy."

"You're not her." Jake's voice breaks on the words, and he hates the vulnerability, hates that this stranger is seeing him like this. The dreamscape shudders around them, the walls rippling. His voice drops to something quieter, more desperate. "I want to know why she left. I must have done something wrong, right?" He stops, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. "What did I do?"

"You didn't do anything wrong." Jungwon's voice is firmer now. "This wasn't about you failing or doing something that drove her away. The elders made a decision based on what they believed was best for your care and her wellbeing. You became attached to her in a way that was making it harder for you to heal, and her continued presence was reinforcing that attachment rather than helping you develop independence."

"I don't want your help." 

"You don't have to want it right now. You just have to not fight it." Jungwon gestures around the dreamscape. "This space is yours. I'm just here to keep it stable, to keep the nightmares away and help you rest. That's all. I'm not trying to replace her. I'm just trying to do my job."

Jake sinks down onto the bed, all the fight draining out of him at once. He feels hollowed out, like something vital has been carved out of his chest and all that's left is the aching space where it used to be.

"I miss her," he says, and the words come out broken. "I miss her so much and she's only been gone for a few hours. How am I supposed to do this?” 

"One night at a time." Jungwon says it simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You don't have to move on right now. You just have to get through tonight. And then tomorrow night. And the night after that. Eventually it will hurt less."

The dreamscape around him softens in response to Jungwon's presence, the walls lightening back to gray as the light stabilizes. It's professional, exactly what a guardian is supposed to be. 

[honeymoonave777]

such a creative refreshing idea

[jaehyp]

𝖲𝖶𝖤𝖤𝖳 𝖭𝖮𝖳𝖧𝖨𝖭𝖦 ─ 𝗌𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗌𝗃𝗒.

! pairing: jake sim x fem. reader

!! synopsis: almost everyone sees you as the innocent campus sweetheart, especially jake, your best friend of three years. he'd never believe you've done anything with anyone. but when your sexual past becomes a topic, jake defends you without hesitation. because you're just an innocent girl right?

!! warnings: smut (mdni), piv, unprotected sex, tit obsessed jake, switch jake & reader, dirty talk, spanking, creampie, oral fixations, recording (w/ consent), reader lowkey manipulative, very messy & nasty, multiple orgasms

!! wc: 8k

!! a/n: this was supposed to be for jungwon oopsiess also first time releasing something in a bit gulp

To Jake, you were the campus sweetheart. The girl who brought homemade cookies, who helped freshmen find their classes. A teachers pet who always had the right answer and a soft smile to go with it.

And you let him believe it.

Because it was easier that way. Because if Jake Sim really saw you he'd either run away or never look at anyone else again.

You weren't sure which option scared you more.

You met in the library every Tuesday afternoon. Same table, same corner, same routine. You were already there when he walked in, and you felt that familiar flutter in your chest.

He dropped his bag on the floor, and you watched him settle into the chair across from you. His hair was messy, like he'd been running his hands through it. He looked tired but happy, that easy smile already on his face.

"Professor let us out early," he said, grinning.

"Lucky you."

"Lucky us." He leaned forward. "Now I get to spend extra time with my favorite person."

You rolled your eyes, but your cheeks warmed. The usual performance.

"Your favorite person? What about Heeseung?"

"Heeseung doesn't bring me cookies."

"You only like me for my baking."

"And your cute personality." He grinned.

You laughed softly, the soft, sweet laugh you'd perfected. It made people think you were shy and made them want to protect you.

Jake fell for it every single time.

"You're studying already?" He peered at your notes. "Midterms aren't for another week."

"I like to be prepared."

"You're going to get a perfect score. You always do."

"It's not about perfect scores." You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "It's about understanding the material."

He chuckled then his eyes lingered on you for a moment too long. "Hey, are you free this weekend? The boys are having a party, nothing crazy. Just people."

You tilted your head. "People?"

"Okay, lots of people. But it's at Jay's place, so it'll be chill. Well, as chill as Jay's place gets."

You considered it. You'd been to a handful of parties with Jake before, and you'd spent the night in the corner, sipping water and smiling politely while his friends tried to talk to you.

"Maybe," you said. "I'll think about it."

"Don't think too hard." He grinned. "You might hurt yourself."

You swatted his arm. He laughed.

And you watched the way his eyes crinkled, the way his whole face lit up and you thought about how easy it would be to tell him the truth.

But you didn't. Because whatever this was, was too much fun.

The party at Jay's house was on a Saturday night.

You wore something soft and innocent. A pale pink loose top that fell off one shoulder, jean skirts that were just tight enough to be cute but not too tight. Your hair was down, and you'd put on just enough makeup to look like you weren't wearing any.

You fitted the image of the innocent sweetheart so perfectly but deep down you were a girl who was anything but innocent.

The house was packed when you arrived. Music vibrated through the walls, and the smell of cheap beer and drunk students filled the place. You pushed through the crowd, smiling politely at people who recognized you, nodding at the ones who called out your name.

Y/N! Hey! You made it!

The sweetheart is here!

Where's your boyfriend?

You laughed at that one. Soft and shy. "Jake's not my boyfriend. We're just friends."

"Sure," the guy said, winking. "Whatever you say pretty."

You found Jake in the kitchen, surrounded by his friends. His head was thrown back laughing at something, his whole body relaxed in a way it never was around you. Around you he was careful and gentle. Like you might break.

It used to make you feel special. Now it just made you want to scream.

"Y/N!" He spotted you and crossed the room in quick strides. "You came."

"Told you I would." You smiled up at him. "You look nice."

He always did but tonight he'd made an effort dark baggy jeans, a fitted white shirt, his hair pushed back from his forehead. He also looked like he'd been drinking.

"You look nice too," he said. "You always look nice. But like. Tonight. You look really-" He stopped himself, clearing his throat. "Do you want a drink?"

"Water's fine."

"Of course it is." He grinned, reaching into the fridge. "Water for the sweetheart."

You watched him, your expression soft and eyes wide. The perfect picture of innocence. Jake's hand found the small of your back, a warm, possessive weight as he introduced you to yet another friend whose name you'd forget in seconds. You smiled, demure, your fingers curled around a glass of water that had long gone warm. You were the perfect picture of sweetness, his sweetheart, the girl who sipped water at a party full of cheap beer and bad decisions.

"I'm gonna grab another round with the guys," Jake leaned in, his breath warm against your ear. "You okay here?"

You nodded, your lashes fluttering. "I'm fine. I think I'm going to find the bathroom."

He kissed your temple, a soft gesture that made something in your chest tighten, though you weren't sure if it was guilt or amusement. "Don't wander off too far."

You gave him a delicate smile, the kind that made him melt and slipped through the crowd. The hallway to the bathroom was darker, the music muffled by the walls. You pushed the door open, but before you could step inside, a hand shot out, caging you against the wall.

"Fancy seeing you here, sweetheart."

Your heart didn't jump. You knew that voice, the voice that had haunted a handful of late nights a couple weeks ago.

Jeno. A knowing smirk curling his lips as he looked down at you. He was taller than you remembered, or maybe you just forgot how he towered.

"Jeno." You let his name roll off your tongue. "What are you doing here?"

"Same as you, probably." His eyes dipped down, tracing the short of your skirt and the way your chest rose and fell. "Looking for trouble."

You laughed, a soft breathy sound that wasn't quite innocent. "I'm not looking for anything."

"No?" He stepped closer, his chest nearly brushing yours. He tilted his head, his gaze sharp. "Does he know what you look like when you're not playing the part?"

A shiver ran down your spine and he saw it. The way your breath hitched and he laughed. His hand slid to your waist, fingers digging into the soft curve of your hip.

"Been thinkin about you," he murmured, his mouth trailing down the column of your neck. "Thinking about that night. You remember?"

"Which one?" you whispered, your voice dipping into something husky, something that wasn't the sweet, water drinking girl Jake thought he knew. "You'll have to be more specific."

"Fucking brat." He nipped at your collarbone and you arched into him, a soft, approving hum escaping your lips.

You let him push you a little farther into the shadows, let his hands wander, let his mouth find yours. It was all heat and teeth and a quiet desperation. His tongue swept against your lower lip, and you bit down, just hard enough to make him groan.

"Still a menace," he breathed, pulling back just enough to look at you. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide.

You licked your lips, tasting him, tasting the lie you were about to tell. "Maybe," you said, tilting your head, all innocence and invitation. "Catch me later."

He grinned, a flash of white in the dim light. "Count on it."

And then he was gone back into the party, leaving you pressed against the wall, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. You took a moment to compose yourself. You smoothed your skirt, ran your fingers through your hair, and checked your reflection in the tiny, cracked mirror by the bathroom door. Your eyes were bright, your lips a little swollen, your cheeks flushed.

You walked back to the living room, weaving through the crowd until you found Jake. When he saw you, his whole face softened.

"Hey, you okay?" He asked, stepping closer, his hand reaching for yours.

You leaned into him, letting your body sag against his like you were exhausted and overwhelmed. You pressed your face into his shoulder, and you could feel the steady thud of his heartbeat, so steady so trusting.

"Just a lot," you murmured, your voice muffled. "Can we go? I think I need some air this party is a lot for me."

His hand came up to stroke your hair, gentle, so fucking gentle. "Of course. Let's get you out of here."

He said his goodbyes, slapping backs and shaking hands, his arm never leaving your waist. You walked out into the cool night air, and he opened the car door for you, his eyes soft with concern.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked, buckling his seatbelt.

You looked at him, the streetlights casting shadows across his earnest face. You smiled, slow and sweet, and reached across to squeeze his hand.

"I am now," you said. "Let's go."

And as he pulled away from the curb, you let your head fall back against the headrest, your lips curling into a secret, satisfied smile.

The warm morning air hit you as you walked across campus, your bag slung over one shoulder, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Jake walked beside you, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, rambling about something his professor said that made no sense. You nodded along, making the right sounds of interest, your mind still half asleep.

Then you saw him.

Jeno was leaning against the brick wall near the exit, his arms crossed, that lazy smirk already in place. His eyes found you instantly, dark and knowing, and your step faltered for just a fraction of a second.

"Hey, sweetheart," he called out, pushing off the wall and walking toward you. "Been looking for you, as always."

Jake's brow furrowed. He glanced between you and Jeno, his posture straightening. "You know him?"

Before you could answer, Jeno was there, too close, his voice dropping low. "Where were you last night? I waited."

You felt your stomach flip. "I left early," you said, keeping your voice even and your eyes innocent. "I wasn't feeling well."

"Bullshit." Jeno laughed. "You weren't feeling well, or you were feeling too good? Because I remember you feeling pretty damn good when we were-"

"Back up," Jake cut in, stepping between you and Jeno. His voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, almost like a warning. "She said she wasn't feeling well. Take the hint."

Jeno's eyes flicked to Jake, assessing him. A slow grin spread across his face. "Oh, this is him? The best friend?" He looked past Jake, straight at you. "You didn't tell him, did you? About us?"

Your heart hammered, but you kept your face soft, confused. "There's nothing to tell. We talked a few times. That's all."

"Talked?" Jeno's laugh was louder this time. "Is that what we call it now? Because I remember your mouth being pretty busy for just talking."

Jake tensed, his jaw clenching. "What are you talking about?"

"Jake, ignore him," you said quickly, reaching for his arm. "He's just trying to cause trouble. He's always been like this."

Jeno's eyes narrowed. "Always been like this? Baby, you used to love the way I am." He stepped closer, ignoring Jake entirely. "You gonna pretend last night didn't happen too? Or the other nights when-"

"I don't know what you're talking about," you said, your voice trembling just enough. You pressed closer to Jake, letting your fingers curl into his sleeve. "You're scaring me."

Jeno's smirk faltered. For a split second, something flickered in his eyes confusion, maybe even hurt. But then it was gone, replaced by cold amusement. "Right. Of course. You're so good at that, aren't you? Playing the victim."

"Get lost," Jake said, his voice hard. He stepped forward, putting himself fully between you and Jeno. "She said she doesn't know you. That's enough."

Jeno held up his hands, backing away slowly. His eyes never left yours. "Fine. But you can't run forever, sweetheart." He winked, a cruel, knowing gesture. "We both know you'll come back eventually."

He turned and walked away, hands in his pockets, whistling some tune.

Jake stood there for a moment, breathing hard. Then he turned to you, his expression softening, concern replacing the anger. "You okay? Did he hurt you?"

You shook your head, letting your eyes well up just a little. "I don't know why he's like that. We barely even talked. He just... he won't leave me alone."

"Hey, hey." Jake pulled you into a hug, his arms warm and solid around you. "It's okay. He's gone. I'm not gonna let him bother you."

You buried your face in his chest, letting out a shaky breath. "Thank you. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Always," he murmured into your hair. "Come on, let's get you to class."

You walked together, your hand in his, your steps slow and careful. Jake kept glancing at you, checking, making sure you were okay.

"Oh, by the way," he said, breaking the silence. "I'm going out with the boys for dinner tonight. But I was thinking after, I could come over? Watch the new Toy Story with you?"

You looked up at him, your smile soft and grateful. "I'd like that."

"Cool." He grinned, squeezing your hand. "I'll bring snacks. The good popcorn."

"My favorite," you said, your voice sweet as honey.

You walked into the building together, and Jake held the door for you, his gaze warm and trusting. You stepped past him, and for just a second, over your shoulder, you caught a glimpse of Jeno across the quad. He was watching you still, arms crossed, that smirk firmly back in place.

You turned away, your smile never wavering. You let him watch. You knew exactly what you were doing.

The restaurant was buzzing, warm light spilling over the table where Jake sat with his friends. The whole crew, all of them crammed into a corner booth, drinks half empty.

Ni-ki was scrolling through his phone, barely paying attention to the conversation, when he suddenly burst out laughing. Like, full on wheezing, slapping the table, tears forming in his eyes kind of laughing.

"Bro, what the hell?" Jay asked, reaching over to smack his arm. "You good?"

Ni-ki couldn't even speak. He just shoved his phone across the table, pointing at the screen. "Look. Look at this idiot."

Sunghoon grabbed it first, his eyebrows shooting up. Then he started laughing too, shaking his head. "Oh my god. Oh my GOD."

"What? What is it?" Sunoo leaned over, and within seconds, he was cackling, covering his mouth.

Heeseung took the phone, read whatever was on it, and let out a low whistle. "Damn. Jeno's down bad."

Jake frowned, setting down his beer. "What about Jeno?"

"Your girl's got that man whipped," Ni-ki said, still giggling. "Look."

He passed the phone to Jake. It was Jeno's Instagram story a photo of him looking all love sick, texting someone, with the caption: "She left me on read again. Should I double text? Asking for a friend (it's me, I'm the friend)."

Jake stared at it for a second, then let out a weird laugh. "Wait, you think he's talking about-"

"Bro, who else would it be?" Jay laughed, grabbing the phone back. "Your girl's got him wrapped around her finger. It's actually kinda sad. Look at him bro he's a mess."

"Okay, but that's crazy," Sunghoon said, scrolling through more of Jeno's story. "Like, look. He's posting thirst traps now, because she didn't reply."

Ni-ki was wheezing again. "Bro is on his hands and knees for her. Literally posted a black screen with 'come back' in the lyrics of some sad song."

"He's got it baaaad," Sunoo added, wiping his eyes.

Jake was quiet, but he was smiling, a little confused. "I mean... she's sweet, but she's not like... she's not that type of person to entertain him. He's such a fuck boy and well she's innocent, she's never even-"

"Wait, wait, wait." Jay held up a hand, choking on his drink. "Did you just say innocent?"

"Yeah?" Jake blinked. "She's shy. She's not into all that stuff. She told me-"

"Bro." Heeseung leaned forward, a grin spreading across his face. "Are you serious right now?"

"What do you mean?"

Ni-ki was still scrolling on his phone while laughing. "Okay, okay. Let me tell you something. Do you know Yeonjun? Basketball guy?"

"The star player? Yeah, I know him. What about him?"

"You know the championship game last semester? The one where he went crazy and dropped like 40 points?"

Jake nodded slowly.

Ni-ki was barely containing himself. "Apparently, your sweet, innocent girl gave him a little pre game 'motivation' in the locker room. If you know what I mean."

Jake stared at him. "What?"

"Like," Sunghoon made a gesture with his hand near his mouth, "you know. The good luck kind."

"Bullshit," Jake said immediately. "She would never."

"Oh, she would." Heeseung was laughing now too. "And she did. The whole team was talking about it. Walked out with her lipgloss smeared and everything. He played like a god that night."

"There's no way-" Jake started, but Jungwon cut him off.

"Okay, okay, but that's just the start. You guys heard about the threesome rumor, right?"

"The WHAT?" Jake's voice cracked.

Sunghoon was wheezing now. "Oh my god, yes I have. Bro, there was a rumor going around last year that she-"

"Okay, I don't think it was confirmed," Jay interrupted, still grinning. "But people were saying she had a thing with two guys from the soccer team. At the same time. In the equipment room."

"THAT'S NOT REAL." Jake's face was red now, his eyes wide. "That's literally not real. She wouldn't- she's not like that."

"She literally gave good luck head to a basketball player," Ni-ki said flatly. "In a locker room. Before a game. With other guys in there."

"I could've sworn she told me she was studying that night!" Jake yelled, throwing his hands up.

His friends all looked at each other for a second. Then they burst out laughing again.

"Bro..." Sunghoon shook his head, wiping tears from his eyes. "I hate to break it to you, but your girl is far from innocent."

"She's literally got Jeno begging and Jeno never begs," Heeseung added. "And you're over here thinking she's never been touched? She's been touched, man. By a lot of people probably."

"And you think she's shy," Sunghoon added, snickering. "She's got three different guys on the line and you think she's shy."

"That is crazy," Ni-ki laughed even more seeing Jeno post a picture of you and him cuddled up with a corny caption in attempts to get you back. "Bro is literally the backup option and he doesn't even know."

"I am not the backup option," Jake snapped. But even as he said it, his voice wavered.

They all stared at him for a second.

Then Heeseung lost it. "Oh my god. You are the backup option!"

"NAH, HE'S THE SAFETY NET," Jay shouted, cackling.

"The nice guy," Jungwon added. "The one who takes her to dinner and walks her to class while Jeno gets the late night texts."

"This is the funniest thing I've ever heard," Ni-ki wheezed, slamming his hand on the table. "Bro thought she was saving herself for him!"

"Guys, she literally has Jeno posting love songs for her at 1 AM," Sunghoon snorted. "And she's probably still responding to him. While you're over here playing Toy Story with her."

Jake's face was burning. His jaw was tight, his hands clenched under the table. "Okay. That's enough."

But they couldn't stop laughing.

"This is insane," Heeseung said, shaking his head. "You were out here thinking she's this innocent little angel while she's got damn near the whole campus on speed dial."

"I'm leaving," Jake muttered, pushing back from the table.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Ni-ki called after him. "Bro, don't be mad. It's just funny! She's got you both wrapped around her finger and you don't even know."

Jake grabbed his jacket, his face of embarrassment. "I'm not wrapped around anyone's finger."

"Sure you're not," Jay called after him, still laughing. "That's why you lend her your sweaters and she wears them while making out with Jeno!"

"SHUT UP!" Jake yelled back, but his friends just howled with laughter as he stormed out of the restaurant.

The cool night air hit his face. He stood there on the sidewalk, breathing hard, his phone feeling heavy in his pocket.

He pulled it out. Your message was still there, sitting pretty: "Can't wait to watch Toy Story with you tonight. You're the best <3"

He stared at it for a long moment.

And then, despite everything, despite all of it, he laughed. A dry, humorless, disbelieving laugh.

He was literally the backup option. The nice guy. The one you watched Disney movies with while you're out there doing all that.

He shoved his phone and started walking to your place despite his head and heart racing.

The door clicked shut behind Jake, and you were already there, all soft smiles and warm eyes, your hair falling in gentle waves around your shoulders. You were wearing one of his hoodies and you looked so sweet, so perfectly innocent, that something twisted painfully in his chest.

"Hey, you're early!" you said, reaching up to wrap your arms around his neck. "I was just getting the popcorn ready. Toy Story's all queued up."

He didn't hug you back. His hands stayed at his sides, stiff and unmoving.

You pulled back, your brow furrowing. "Jake? What's wrong? You seem off."

He walked past you into the living room, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He stood there for a moment, staring at nothing.

"Jake, you're scaring me," you said softly, coming up behind him. "Talk to me."

He turned around slowly, his eyes searching your face. "My friends told me some things tonight."

"Okay?" You tilted your head, that perfect confused expression on your face. "What kind of things?"

"About you." His voice was tight. "About Jeno. About... a lot of stuff."

Your face didn't change. Not even a flicker. "Jake, I already told you. Jeno's obsessed with me. He's been spreading lies-"

"They weren't lies." His voice cracked. "They showed me his story. The picture of you. On top of him. Wearing my hoodie."

You went very still.

"They told me about Yeonjun too," he continued, his voice getting stronger, harder. "The basketball player. The locker room. Before the championship game." He laughed bitterly. "And I was sitting there telling them you were innocent. That you'd never been with anyone. That you were shy and sweet and-"

"Jake-"

"And then Sunghoon mentioned the soccer players," he cut in, his eyes burning. "The threesome rumor. And I didn't want to believe it. I thought they were messing with me.

You opened your mouth, but he kept going.

"They were laughing at me, you know. All of them. Because I was sitting there defending you like an idiot. Ni-ki was literally crying he was laughing so hard. Saying I was the backup option. The safety net. A nice guy who takes you to dinner and watches Disney movies while everyone else gets-" He stopped, his voice breaking.

Your face had gone pale, but you recovered quickly. You stepped closer, reaching for him.

"Jake, listen to me-"

"Why did you lie to me?" His voice was quiet now, raw. "Why did you make me believe you were someone you're not?"

"Because I was scared." you said, your voice trembling. "Jake, I was so scared. I knew what you thought of me. You looked at me like I was this... this pure, good person. And I wanted to be that for you. I wanted to be the girl you thought I was."

"But you weren't."

"I know, and I hated myself for it. Every time you looked at me with those eyes, like I was something special, I felt so guilty. Because I knew I didn't deserve it.

He stared at you, his expression unreadable.

"But I wasn't pretending about you," you continued, your voice breaking. "I wasn't pretending about how I feel. You're the only one who's ever made me feel like I mattered. Like I was worth something. All those other guys? They were nothing. They were distractions. But you-" You reached up and cupped his face. "You're everything, Jake. You're the only thing that's ever felt real."

He didn't pull away. He stood there, frozen, his heart warring with his head.

"I don't care about Jeno," you whispered, your thumb stroking his cheek. "I never cared about him. He was just someone to pass the time. But you? You're the one I think about when I can't sleep, the one I want to come home to. You're the one who actually sees me."

"I don't even know who you are anymore," he said, but his voice was weaker now.

"Yes, you do." You pressed closer, your bodies almost touching. "You know me better than anyone. You know I make bad choices because I don't think I deserve good things. But when I'm with you, I feel like maybe I could deserve them. Like maybe I could be better."

His hands came up, hesitantly, to rest on your waist.

"I was so scared you'd leave if you found out," you continued, your voice barely above a whisper. "And I couldn't handle that. I can't lose you, Jake. You're all I have."

He swallowed hard. "I don't know if I can trust you."

"Then let me prove it." You rose on your tiptoes and pressed your lips to his.

He didn't respond at first. He just stood there, stiff and uncertain. But you didn't give up. You kissed him softly, gently, your fingers threading into his hair, your body pressing against his.

"Please," you murmured against his lips. "Please don't leave me. I can't- I can't do this without you."

"Baby..." His voice cracked.

"Let me make it better," you whispered, pulling back just enough to look into his eyes. "Let me make you forget all of it. Everything they told you. Everything you saw. Just let me show you how much you mean to me."

"I don't know-"

"Shh." You pressed a finger to his lips. "Don't think just feel."

You kissed him again, deeper this time, your tongue tracing his lower lip. His hands tightened on your waist, and you felt the tension in his body start to ease.

"Jake," you breathed against his mouth. "I only want you. I've always only wanted you."

He let out a shaky breath. "You mean that?"

"I mean it with my whole heart." You pulled back, looking up at him with those big, wide eyes. "I know I messed up. I know I lied. But I'll spend as long as it takes making it up to you. Just please don't leave."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then slowly, his hands slid up your back pulling you closer.

"I'm so stupid," he muttered.

"No." You shook your head, pressing another kiss to his jaw. "You're not stupid. You're kind, and sweet. You're everything I don't deserve."

"Stop saying that."

"It's true." You kissed the corner of his mouth. "But I want to try. I want to be the girl you think I am."

He cupped your face in his hands, tilting your head up. His eyes searched yours, looking for something. Whatever he found, it must have been enough, because he let out a long shaky breath.

"God, I'm so whipped," he muttered.

You let out a soft laugh, pressing your forehead to his. "Good. Because I'm whipped for you too."

And then his mouth was on yours, hungry and desperate, all his doubts and fears melting away. You walked him backward until his knees hit the couch, and he fell back, pulling you down with him.

You straddled his lap, settling comfortably against him, your hands resting on his chest. His hands gripped your thighs, his breathing uneven.

"Let me make you forget," you whispered, leaning down to kiss his neck. "Let me be the only thing you think about."

"You already are," he breathed. "You always have been."

You smiled against his skin, your fingers working at the buttons of his top.

"Good," you murmured. "Then let me show you what you've been missing."

Jake's hands were already pressing into the warm skin of your waist. You could feel him hard beneath you, his breath coming faster as you grind down against him.

"You gonna take care of me?" he asked, voice rough, hands sliding up your back.

"Mmhm," you hummed against his neck, kissing a slow path up to his ear. "But you gotta tell me what you want. I don't know anything, Jake. You gotta show me."

He let out a breathy laugh, his fingers tangling in your hair. "You're so full of shit."

"Am I?" You pulled back, looking at him with those wide, innocent eyes. "I'm just a sweet innocent girl who never did anything with anyone. Remember? Never slept with Jeno, never gave Yeonjun good luck head, and never ever did I have a threesome. You told your friends that. You told everyone that."

His jaw tightened. He flipped you over so fast you gasped, your back hitting the couch, his body caging you in.

"You wanna play that game?" His voice dropped low, dangerous. "Fine. Let's play."

He yanked the hoodie up over your head, tossing it aside. Your chest was bare underneath, and his eyes darkened immediately.

"Look at you," he muttered, his thumb brushing over your nipple. "You been hiding these under my hoodie this whole time?"

You arched into his touch, a soft moan escaping your lips. "Jake..."

"Shh." He leaned down, his mouth hovering over your nipple. "I'm showing you, remember? Since you don't know anything."

His tongue circled your nipple slowly, teasingly, before he took it into his mouth and sucked hard. You cried out, your fingers gripping and tugging his hair.

"Fuck," he breathed, pulling back to look at the wet mess he made all over your chest. "So perfect. I've been thinking about these for months. Dreaming about them. And you just let me walk around like an idiot while you were letting everyone else-"

"Jake, please-"

"Please what?" He pinched your other nipple, rolling it between his fingers. "Please stop? Please keep going? Use your words, baby. Since you're so innocent."

You whimpered, squirming beneath him. "Please don't stop. Please touch me."

"That's more like it." He lowered his head again, switching sides, his mouth hot. His hand traveled down your stomach, slipping past the waistband of your shorts.

"So wet," he murmured against your skin. "For someone who doesn't know anything, you're pretty good at soaking through your panties."

His fingers found your clit, circling slowly, and you bucked against his hand.

"That's it," he coaxed. "Show me what you like."

You rolled your hips, chasing his fingers, your head thrown back. "More, Jake. Please. I need-"

"You need what?"

"You. I need you inside me. Please."

He pulled his hand away, and you whined at the loss. But then he was standing, pulling you up with him, his eyes dark and hungry.

"Bedroom. Now."

You stumbled down the hall, his hand on your ass, pushing you forward. The second you reached the bed, he had you face down on the mattress, your shorts and panties ripped down your legs.

"Look at that," he breathed, his palm smoothing over your ass. "All mine. You know how long I've wanted this? How many nights I've laid awake thinking about bending you over."

He smacked your ass hard, and you cried out, a mix of pain and pleasure jolting through you.

"Count," he commanded.

"One," you gasped.

He spanked you again, the sound echoing in the room.

"Two!"

Another. Harder.

"Three!"

"Good girl." His hand soothed over the reddened skin. "See? You can follow instructions when you want to."

You heard the rustle of his jeans, the sound of his belt unbuckling. Then the mattress dipped, and his body was behind you, his chest pressing against your back.

"You want this?" he asked, his lips at your ear, his cock pressing against your wet folds. "You want me to fuck you?"

"Yes," you breathed. "Please, Jake. I need it."

"Need what? Say it."

"I need your cock. Please. I need you to fill me up."

He pushed inside you in one smooth stroke, and you both moaned. He was thick, stretching you, and you gripped the sheets as he bottomed out.

"Fuck," he groaned, his forehead dropping to your shoulder. "So tight. Fuck, baby. You feel so good."

He pulled out slowly, then slammed back in, and the sound you made was almost inhuman.

"That's it," he grunted, setting a brutal pace. "That's my good girl. Taking it so well."

His hand snaked around your front, finding your clit, circling in time with his thrusts. You were already close, the pressure building.

"Please don't stop," you begged. "Please, I'm gonna-"

"Cum for me," he commanded. "Cum on my cock."

And you did, with a cry of his name, your walls clenching around him. He didn't slow down, fucking you through it, chasing his own release.

"Jake," you whimpered as he kept going, overstimulated but not wanting him to stop. "Jake, it's too much-"

"One more," he moaned. "You can give me one more."

He pulled out suddenly, flipping you onto your back. Before you could protest, his head was between your thighs, his mouth on you.

"ohh-" You jolted, your hands fisting in his hair. "Jake!"

He was relentless, his tongue lapping at your folds, his lips sucking your clit. He groaned against you, the vibration sending sparks through your body.

"Taste so sweet," he murmured. "Could eat you all fucking night."

And he did. He worked you with his mouth until you were an absolute wreck, until your thighs were shaking, until you came again with a broken sob, your hips bucking against his face.

He pulled back, his chin glistening, and kissed his way up your body.

"One more," he said, his voice hoarse. "I need one more, baby. Can you do that for me?"

"I don't- I can't-"

"Yes you can." He kissed you, and you tasted yourself on his lips. "You're gonna take it. All of it."

He reached for his phone on the nightstand, but before he could even unlock it, it started buzzing in his hand. He glanced at the screen, his jaw tightening slightly.

"It's Heeseung," he muttered, looking at you with an unreadable expression. "They're probably checking on me. Making sure I didn't do something stupid."

He answered the call, bringing the phone to his ear, his eyes never leaving yours. "Yeah?"

You could hear the muffled sound of voices on the other end, laughter in the background.

"Bro, you good?" Heeseung's voice crackled through. "You stormed out so fast. We were getting worried."

"I'm fine," Jake said, his voice steady, calm. "I'm at her place."

"Oh shit, really?" Jay said, yelling in the background. "Did you confront her? What happened? Is she crying? Did you-"

"I'm handling it," Jake cut in smoothly. "We talked, it's fine."

You watched him, a slow smile curling on your lips. He was so composed, so in control. It was almost cute.

You shifted on the bed, crawling toward him on your hands and knees. His eyes flickered to you, a warning in them, but you just tilted your head innocently.

"Jake? You still there?" Sunghoon's voice came through.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm here."

You reached out, your fingers trailing up his thigh. His breath hitched almost imperceptibly.

"Okay, well, we just wanted to make sure you were okay," Heeseung said. "You seemed pretty wrecked earlier."

"I'm fine," Jake repeated, his voice tighter now. "Really. Everything's good."

You leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to his neck. His hand came up, trying to push you away gently, but you just smiled against his skin.

"Bro, you sound weird," Ni-ki's voice chimed in. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, just tired." Jake's voice was strained now, his jaw clenched. "Listen, I gotta go. We'll catch up tomorrow."

"Wait, wait, wait-"

But you were already sliding down his body, your fingers wrapping around his cock. Jake's hand shot out, grabbing your shoulder, trying to push you back.

"Behave," he hissed under his breath, his eyes wide.

You just grinned up at him, all innocence, and lowered your mouth to him.

Jake sucked in a sharp breath, his hand flying to his mouth to muffle the sound.

"Jake? Hello?" Sunoo's voice piped through. "You still there?"

"Y-yeah," he managed, his voice cracking. "I'm here."

You took him deeper, your tongue swirling, and his hips bucked involuntarily. He gripped the sheets, his knuckles white.

"You sure you're okay, man?" Heeseung asked, sounding suspicious now. "You're breathing kinda heavy."

"Just... just tired," Jake choked out. "Long night."

You hummed around him, a soft, satisfied sound, and he nearly dropped the phone.

"Okayyyy," Jay said. "Well, we'll let you go. But seriously, if you need to talk about what happened-"

"Don't need to talk," Jake cut in, his voice strained. "I'm good. Everything's good. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Alright, bro. Take care."

"Bye."

He hung up and threw the phone onto the bed, his head falling back as a groan escaped his lips.

"What the fuck," he breathed, his hand coming down to grip your hair. "You're insane you know that?"

You pulled off just long enough to look up at him, your lips swollen, your eyes wide. "I just wanted to help you relax. You seemed so tense."

"Tense," he repeated, a disbelieving laugh escaping him. "You're going to be the death of me."

You smiled and took him back into your mouth, deeper this time, your hand working what your mouth couldn't reach. His hips bucked again, his fingers tightening in your hair.

"That's it," he groaned, his voice dropping lower. "You want everyone to know what a slut you are? Huh? You want them to hear?"

You moaned around him, loud and deliberate, your eyes fluttering closed.

"Fuck," he hissed. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? You want them to know. You want everyone to know exactly what you are."

You pulled off again, a string of saliva connecting you to him. "Maybe," you whispered, your voice husky. "Maybe I want them to know who I really belong to."

He grabbed his phone unlocking it, his thumb swiping to the camera. He held it up, angling it so it captured you perfectly on your knees. Flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and your hair tangled in his fist.

"Open your mouth," he commanded.

You obeyed instantly, your tongue darting out.

"Good girl." He smirked, pressing the record button. "Now show me what you do best."

You took him into your mouth, your eyes locked on the camera, a practiced, hungry look on your face. He let out a low groan, his free hand tightening in your hair.

"That's it," he breathed. "Look at you. So desperate for it. So hungry."

You moaned around him, your throat working as you took him deeper.

"Fuck," he gasped, his hips starting to thrust. "You love this, don't you? Love being on your knees for me."

You hummed in agreement, your hands gripping his thighs, pulling him closer.

"God, you're so good at this," he panted, the phone shaking slightly in his hand. "Look at you. Look at how well you take it."

You hollowed your cheeks, sucking hard, and his head fell back with a broken moan.

The room was thick with heat, sounds of your ragged breathing and the slick, wet noises that filled the space between you. Jake had you positioned just how he wanted. On your knees, your lips stretched around him as he fucked your mouth with slow, deliberate thrusts.

"Look at me," he commanded, his voice strained. "Eyes on me."

You obeyed, looking up at him through your lashes, tears streaking your cheeks, saliva dripping down your chin. The sight of you like this, all wrecked, desperate, utterly his made his head spin.

"I'm close," he warned, his voice tight. "You want it? Want me to-"

You nodded frantically, your eyes begging, and he let out a strangled cry as he spilled into your mouth. You swallowed everything, your eyes never leaving his, and when you pulled off, you licked your lips clean.

He pulled you up onto the bed, pushing you onto your back. "Open up," he said, and you obeyed immediately, your mouth falling open. He stroked himself a few times, then painted your lips, your cheeks, your chin with thick ropes of white. He moved lower, aiming for your chest, letting it drip down onto your tits, watching it pool in the hollow of your collarbone.

"Fuck," he breathed, his chest heaving. "Look at you. Look at what you let me do to you."

You were a mess with his cum splattered across you, dripping down your neck, pooling on your skin. And you loved every second of it.

He reached for his phone. "Don't move," he said. "I need to remember this."

He snapped a few photos of your ruined face, messy chest, the way you looked up at him like he was the only person in the world. His thumb swiped through the gallery, admiring his work.

You watched him, your heart racing. "Who are you gonna send those to?"

Jake glanced at you, his brow furrowing. "Huh? No one. They're for me. I was just gonna keep them."

You sat up slowly, letting the sheets fall away from your body. You reached out, trailing a finger down his chest. "Really? Just for you?"

"Yeah." He shrugged, setting the phone down. "Why? You want me to-"

"Maybe." You bit your lip, looking up at him through those innocent eyes that he knew by now were anything but innocent. "I want everyone to know who I belong to. Wouldn't want them to think I still belong to Jeno."

Something dark flickered in Jake's eyes. "Such a whore. You want everyone to see you like this? Want the attention?"

"Maybe," you repeated, your voice dropping to something low and sultry. "I want everyone to know I'm yours. Not his. Not anyone else's."

He swallowed hard, his cock twitching at your words.

"You want me to send it to the group chat?" he asked, his voice rough. "The boys? Want them all to see what you look like when you're being Jake's good girl?"

You leaned closer, your lips brushing against his ear. "Send it," you whispered. "Show them. I don't care. I just want them to know. I want everyone to know that I'm yours and only yours."

He pulled back, searching your face. "You're serious?"

"I've never been more serious about anything." You reached for his phone, pressing it into his hand.

He opened the group chat, the one with his six friends from the dinner. His thumb hovered over the screen.

"This is crazy," he muttered. "They are hornballs they're probably gonna-"

"Send it," you urged, your voice a low purr. "Don't you want them to see what you do to me? Don't you want them to know I'm yours?"

He selected the photos, your ruined face, messy chest, and desperate eyes. His thumb hit send.

"There," he said, tossing the phone aside. "Now they know exactly who you belong to."

You pulled him down into another kiss, your arms wrapping around him. "Good," you whispered against his lips. "Because I was always yours."

His phone started blowing up on the nightstand notifications piling up one after another. Jake reached for it, but you grabbed his hand, threading your fingers through his.

"Leave it," you murmured. "Focus on me."

He looked at you messy, ruined, beautiful and something possessive flared in his chest. He forgot about the phone, forgot about the boys, forgot about everything except the girl in front of him.

"Yeah," he breathed, leaning down to kiss your neck. "Yeah, okay. Just you."

The phone kept buzzing, but neither of you cared.

You positioned yourself on top of him, your hands resting gently on his chest. The weight of you settled against his thighs, and you could feel him beneath you, still hard and ready. But you didn't rush. You took your time, letting the moment stretch, letting him watch you.

"Hey," you whispered, leaning down to press a soft kiss to his lips. "Look at me."

His eyes found yours, hazy and warm, full of something that made your chest ache. You kissed him again, slow and deep, your tongue sweeping against his in a lazy rhythm.

"I've got you," you murmured against his mouth. "Just relax."

You reached down between your bodies, guiding him to your entrance. The tip pressed against you, and you let out a soft breath, your forehead falling against his.

"Ready?" you asked, your voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah," he breathed. "Yeah, princess. I'm ready."

You sank down onto him, inch by inch. Your mouth fell open, a quiet moan escaping your lips as he filled you. His hands came up to grip your hips, but he didn't push or pull. He just held on, his thumbs stroking gentle circles against your skin.

"Fuck," he breathed, his eyes fluttering shut. "You feel..."

"Good?" you finished, a soft smile playing on your lips.

"Incredible," he corrected.

You stayed still for a moment, letting yourself adjust to the feeling of him inside you. Your hands cupped his face, tilting his head up so you could look into his eyes.

"You're so beautiful," you whispered, and you meant it. In this moment, with his lips parted and his hair sticking to him, he was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen.

He let out a shaky laugh. "You're the one who's beautiful."

You shook your head, leaning down to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "No, it's you. It's always been you."

And then you started to move.

Slow at first, your hips rolling in a gentle, circular motion. You rose up and sank back down, letting him feel every inch of you. His hands slid to your waist supporting you.

"Jake," you breathed, and his name on your lips made his eyes flutter shut.

"I'm right here," he murmured. "I'm not going anywhere."

You kept your pace slow, unhurried, savoring every moment. Your bodies moved together in a perfect rhythm, like you'd done this a thousand times before.

You leaned down, pressing your lips to his neck, trailing soft kisses along his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. He turned his head, catching your lips in a sweet soft kiss.

"This is..." he started, but he couldn't finish.

"I know," you whispered against his lips. "I know."

You could feel the tension building in his body, the way his breath caught with every movement.

"Don't stop," he breathed. "Please love don't stop."

"I won't," you promised. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

You could feel yourself getting close, the warmth building low in your belly. Your movements became a little more urgent, a little more desperate, but still slow.

"Jake," you gasped. "I'm close."

"Me too," he managed. "Together. I want to feel you cum with me."

You nodded, your forehead pressed to his. "Okay. Together."

And then it hit you, wave after wave of pleasure washing over you. You cried out, his name a broken whisper on your lips. You felt him follow, felt his hips buck up into you as he came, a groan escaping his throat.

You collapsed against him, your bodies tangled together, both of you trembling and breathless. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you close, and he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

"Stay with me," he murmured into your hair. "Just stay here. Please."

You smiled against his chest, your fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin. "I'm not going anywhere."

He tilted your chin up, catching your lips in a soft, tender kiss. Then another. And another. Each one softer than the last, each one saying everything words couldn't.

Then he laughed, a disbelieving, breathless sound.

"What?" you asked, propping yourself to look at him.

"I was so mad at you," he said, shaking his head. "And then you-" He gestured vaguely. "And now I barely even remember what I was mad about."

You smiled, innocent as ever. "That was the point."

He pulled you down, kissing you softly.

"I love you," he murmured against your lips. "I know I shouldn't. I know you're probably gonna destroy me. But I love you."

You kissed him back, your fingers carding through his hair.

"I love you too," you whispered. "And I'm never going to hurt you, Jake. You're mine. And I take care of what's mine."

He believed you. Of course he believed you.

And that was exactly how you wanted it.

[honeymoonave777]

𝗖𝗥𝗔𝗭𝗬 4 𝗬𝗢𝗨

𝓐𝗠𝗢𝗥 ❤︎⁠ 𝒻𝓉. 𝖻𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝖿𝗋𝗂𝖾𝗇𝖽! 𝗃𝖺𝗄𝖾 𝗑 𝖿! 𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋 𓂋 𝗌𝗎𝗀𝗀𝖾𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾 𝗌𝗂𝗓𝖾 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗄 𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗏𝗒 𝗃𝖺𝗄𝖾 𝗁𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗄

───JAKE always notices whenever you look at his hands, under the impression that he's unaware.

like that time at that pottery class, which was supposed to be a wholesome outing. but he knows. he knows exactly what you're thinking about when his long, thick fingers dip into the wet clay, his thumbs smoothing over the small cracks ever so gently.

your eyes follow the circular motions, mouth going dry at imagining how it would feel to have those hands on your wet pussy, his thumb stroking your clit just as gently, molding you into his touch like he did the clay.

you shook your head, trying to clear your mind, but jake had already caught on. in fact, he reveled in how your eyes greedily drank up the way his knuckles clenched around the tools, how the light caught on his pale skin, illuminating the long veins running across his forearms.

he knows what he's doing to you.

he fucking loves it.

later that night, he totally (secretly) enjoys seeing how small your hand is in his whenever he seemingly so innocently wraps his hand around yours, holding you close while a movie plays in the background, all cozy and fluffy and "platonic." but neither of you are paying it any attention, because he's too busy thinking about the size difference and how good it would feel to push you flat against the couch and take you right there and then, your small hole fluttering around his thick cock. but he doesn't. yet. he wants you to completely lose it. beg for it. go crazy for him.

because he's already crazy for you.

REBLOG&&LIKE FOR KISSES💋 𓏵 comment below or send an ask to be added to the taglist !

[enhypendata]

JAKE’s DM

[honeymoonave777]

HE'S SO FUCKING INSANE FOR THIS DOES HE KNOW I'M GOING CRAZYY that eyebrow raise that pouty smirk. this is the type of video he would send you while on tour just to make SURE you miss him more

[herslhs]

HELPP SOMEONE SAID YANG HUNGWON

[honeymoonave777]

oh trust i caught that print and it's a B+ or D (D would be more flat or very slightly curved) but ik he got that BDE