BYF: MDNI! 18+ blog, i do, in fact, write smut so please exit. strictly here to write my silly little thoughts about the enhypen boys when i find the time. requests always open (well, for now lol) so please ask! most works will be about the hyung line but i'm open to suggestions. full disclosure: I SUCK AT BEING ON A SCHEDULE. im an adult, with an adult job and in a committed long term relationship (love my boyfi fr) so keep that in mind. this is all for fun though! please enjoy and feel free to reach out, i'd love having friends and mooties <3
MASTERLIST!
SIM JAEYUN!
- LOVE MAZE: ONGOING
fake dating, mutual friends, college au
an unfortunate encounter, drunken mistakes, and a sort of (definitely) stalker leads to sim jake 'dating' his best friend's childhood crush!
+ series: smut, fluff, humor
- SINCERELY YOURS: ONGOING (hiatus)
red string theory, idol!jake x fashion designer fem!reader
where they meet once on the subway where he never forgets her or the encounter no matter how much time has passed!
+ series: FLUFF!, slight angst, idol life
LEE HEESEUNG!
- HIDDEN LOVE: IN THE WORKS (slowly)
college/ya!enha, (slight) age gap, older!heeseung x younger fem!reader, older brothers best friend trope
at some point, heeseung didn't see you as that annoying little kid who followed jay around, he saw you for you which scared him so much more with how you've grown and nothing was worse than feeling something for his best friend's off-limits little sister!
+ one-shot, inspo by c-drama, angst, fluff, slice of life
PARK JONGSEONG!
- NIGHTS LIKE THIS: COMPLETED
college au, stoner/plug!jay x semi-stoner fem!reader
one night of self-indulgence led becoming friends with benefits with your plug!
+ one shot, smut!, slight angst, he fell first&harder trope
- NICE TO MEET YOU (AGAIN): IN THE WORKS
college/ya au, childhood ex-bf!jay x ex-gf!reader
mutual friends, shared spaces, and a sudden favor to pluck your ex-high school boyfriend's eyebrows. what should've been a simple task led to rekindled feelings, a spark reignited as you meet park jongseong for the second time as an adult!
+ fluff!, one-shot, exs to lovers, right person right time
PARK SUNGHOON!
- CROSS THE LINES: IN THE WORKS
college/ya au, hockey captain!sunghoon x fem!reader
not once in your life did you consider park sunghoon anything more than your dorky best friend since you were kids. so, the day that things shifted, you struggled to understand the concept of anything more while sunghoon continued to inch his way into your heart!
+ fluff, hot-loser sunghoon, best friends to lovers
MULTI!
- BETWEEN FRIENDS: IN THE WORKS
young adult au, bf!sunghoon x fem!reader x roommate!jake
having a crush on your best friend's long-term girlfriend was hell for jake, especially considering his wall shared yours and he could hear each night when sunghoon fucked your brains out. it was growing unbearable, his resolve slipping every day until you presented him a deal!
+ SMUT, threesome with jakehoon
est. svmjaeyvn 2024. pls do not copy my works… or else!! <3
When a friendship comes with too much history, rules become necessary. It’s easier to stay safe when you can name the lines you refuse to cross. That’s why Jaeyun has always been so strict about his secret little guide, or at least, he was, until the moment you asked him to sleep with you, and everything started to shatter in his hands like it was never real at all.
a friends to lovers oneshot｜27.7K
PAIRING: Jaeyun x fem!reader
WARNINGS: university au, Jaeyun is an electronic engineer student, kinda nerdy, and too down bad for the reader even though she is a bit of a brat, i am not sure if there’s a plot aside from the smut, nipple play, fingering and oral (f. receiving), handjob, virginity loss, protected and unprotected sex, there’s a fwb situation within, one fight between Jaeyun and reader’s ex, and Jayhoon being the most chaotic roommates ever
PINTEREST MOODBOARD
RULE ZERO: DO NOT RUIN THE FRIENDSHIP
When you were twelve, Jaeyun got you both grounded.
He had the brilliant idea of bringing a bottle of whiskey home — something one of his soccer teammates had stolen from his father’s cabinet and hadn’t known how to get away with now that it had been opened and already had a swig taken from it.
Jaeyun didn’t know why he decided to take charge of it, much less bring it home — he could have just let his teammate deal with it alone, for God’s sake. But perhaps because he liked the thrill of secretly carrying it and the astonishment in your eyes when he took it out of his backpack, he did bring it home.
But the fact was — neither of you drank any of it, yet his brother — the Mr. Perfect, as you used to whisper in each other’s ears — had caught you with your hands on it, and in the end it didn’t matter.
You were grounded for four weeks. No phones, video games, or allowances. You were only allowed to go to school and straight back to your homes — Jaeyun having only the small detour of dropping you off before going to his.
It made you miss the Seoul Annual International Book Fair. A major literary gathering with author events, book markets, and cultural programs that you had been looking forward to.
Nerdy, he had told you, which only made your tears flow even harder, and he felt so bad about it that he gave you a voucher the next morning, a handmade thing that got you laughing when he handed it to you.
Jaeyun had never been much of an artsy type. The voucher was irregular, and his handwriting was so bad you could barely decipher the words free wish — but it was his way of trying, and so, you took it, promising you would use it well.
That was probably when it started: the first page of a guide he would never mean to write, on how not to ruin a friendship that felt bigger than him because as he watched you folding the paper and tucking it into the front pocket of your sweater like a keepsake, he had a sudden clarity that he would do anything not to lose you.
You never really used the voucher.
Eleven years into your friendship, you never once brought it up.
Perhaps because Jaeyun always did everything for you, the voucher seemed useless.
When you got asked for a date for the first time in your life, Jaeyun agreed to go shopping with you without much fanfare, although he despised every second of it. And when you called him afterwards, telling him to come over so you could rant about it, he once again was there without the voucher having even passed through your minds. He simply came and stayed there, listening to you, your backs side to side on the hardwood floor of your bedroom until the walls had turned orange and pink with the sunrise.
When you crashed your father’s car and called him crying, he asked where it had happened with his jacket already on and searching for his keys.
And when you moved out of the university dorms somewhere around your second semester, Jaeyun was carrying your boxes and luggage without you even glancing at his side.
So it felt a bit weird now, seeing you pushing the little thing through the counter — its edges turned so yellow with the advance of the years that he could see it even in the bar’s reddish light — and especially with the words that followed:
“Sleep with me,” you said.
RULE #1: DO NOT ACCEPT RECKLESS REQUESTS
Don’t answer requests she makes when she’s drunk, mad, or sad — that’s when she turns reckless. I’m supposed to get her home, get her water, and let time take the sharp edges off whatever she thought she wanted. If I do my job right, she’ll wake up with a headache — maybe puffy eyes — but no regrets. At least not the kind that have my name on them.
Arcano wasn’t as fierce as the name made it seem.
If Jaeyun were being honest, it was, in fact, a terrible bar. Awful, actually.
The seats were constantly sticky, and the tables were permanently stained with something spilled too long ago. The restrooms always smelled like weed and sex, and there was writing on the walls telling you who to call for a good time — but, awful as it was, it was the only bar on the outskirts of the university, and the drinks were cheap, which made it a reasonable choice for anyone who wanted to get drunk in the middle of a weekday.
Which, apparently, was what you were doing.
You had called him, your voice softened and a little slurred at the edges, even as you tried to keep it brief — trusting him to hear the truth between your words, as he always did — and his body went tight, that low instinct already moving beneath his skin with the need to make it better.
Jaeyun came in without question, his eyes scanning through the dim room. Tables first, booths next, then the bar counter, because putting things in order always helped him keep control — but then he saw you, and his heart hitched hard enough to make his hands unreliable.
Arcano was nearly dark, red bulbs offering more irritation than light, and yet whatever sheen clung to its corners now seemed to gather around you; the glint of bottles, the thin neon humming above the bar. Even the noise shifted, bending your way subtly, as if the room itself couldn’t help but want to be near you.
Or perhaps it was only him — caught on you like gravity, a quiet flaw built into his body that only ever showed itself in your presence.
Across the bar, the music shifted, and someone laughed too loudly as a glass hit the counter with a wet little sound, but none of it reached him the right way, not while you were there, bent toward the counter with your hair falling forward and your shoulders loose with drink and something sharper underneath it.
Jaeyun swallowed and pushed his hair back off his forehead — the gesture automatic in the way habits were — as he closed the last steps in.
You shifted on your stool as he stopped behind you, small and unthinking, leaning back into him as if it was the most natural thing in the world to put your weight onto his chest merely because you trusted him to catch it without ever asking. And he did, his body reacting before his mind did, his arms raising and settling just enough to keep you upright.
He didn’t understand how you did it — how you could recognize him without looking. If your bones had memorized the shape of him and refused to forget even here, in a terrible bar, with alcohol in the air and the whole world pretending not to watch, or if you merely felt the same gravity as him, because you, too, had been built with some quiet flaw that only ever showed itself in his presence.
“Hello,” you said, tipping your head back to look at him.
“Hello, Princess,” he said, leaning in just to drop a kiss on your forehead. But you smelled like vanilla and white flowers — the kind of soft sweetness you always insisted on having threaded through every perfume you owned — and he allowed himself to breathe you for a second more before he let go, sliding onto the stool beside you.
His jeans brushed your bare thigh, and when you turned toward him, he had no other option than to spread his legs further apart, opening space so your knees fit between his; and for a second, Jaeyun’s brain focused on the image, slowly and cruelly, taking the stark line of your skin against denim, the heat of you seeping through a fabric barrier that suddenly felt too thin to be decent. Your knees fit perfectly between his, and the placement was so intimate it might’ve been accidental if he hadn’t felt how quickly his body registered it as right.
He went still.
Not because he didn’t want more contact, but because he did. Because he wanted it in a way that made him feel juvenile, and his restraint could turn into nothing but a costume you’d just tugged at the seam.
So he forced himself to look up, his gaze finding your face like it was the only safe thing left, but it only turned to be worse.
You were flushed from the alcohol, color blooming across your cheeks and the bridge of your nose as if you’d been kissed too many times already. And your eyes were bright in that unfocused way that made his whole body ache with protectiveness and something he refused to name.
Jaeyun swallowed, dropping his gaze before he could stop it — but that was when he saw the dress.
Low-cut, and reckless in the quietest way, exposing your skin in a soft curve that made his throat tighten, not because it wasn’t vulgar or blaring, but merely because it was you — warm, real, and too close.
And resting there, right in the center of it all, was the necklace he’d given you on your fifteenth birthday, the thin chain catching what little light Arcano offered and holding it like a secret. Jaeyun felt something in his chest twist — sharp and familiar. A gift, a promise, a piece of him you’d kept on your skin for years without making a thing of it.
He blinked, dragging his eyes back up, back to your face, as though that could undo what he’d seen. As though looking anywhere else could turn his thoughts into something normal again, but it didn’t.
“You called me,” he said in the end, voice light on purpose, aiming his gaze at the safe edge of your hairline instead of your eyes.
“Is there a question in this statement?” you asked, your head tipping to the side the way it always did when you were teasing him, letting a strand of hair slip loose and rest against your cheek.
Jaeyun huffed a quiet breath through his nose, something that almost counted as a laugh if anyone else had been listening. The bar noise swelled and dipped around you — ice clinking in glasses, a burst of laughter from a booth, the bass thudding like a distant heartbeat — and for a second it made the moment feel ordinary. Like this was just the two of you, playing the same game you’d played a hundred times.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the linguistics genius among us.”
His hand lifted without thinking and brushed the strand away — quick, familiar, and thoughtless — the kind of gesture that belonged to years of friendship, not whatever else was crouched under tonight. He didn’t linger. He didn’t let it become a thing. He just tucked it back like he’d done it before and would do it again. Still, you felt the contact anyway, blinking at him, and it took you a moment to speak again.
“I think there was,” you said, your voice more serious than he expected. “I need to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
You turned halfway on your stool to reach into your purse, and Jaeyun took the moment to breathe — really breathe, looking across the room as his hands found and pushed at his hair, steadying himself.
Overhead, a red bulb faltered, and the neon hissed in — thin, stubborn light clinging on.
“Yun,” you called.
He turned to you again, catching as you slipped the voucher toward him, the piece yellowed into something that didn’t belong to the present. His own handwriting stared up at him, crooked and absurd in the way only a teenage promise could be.
Jaeyun’s lips parted around a question, but the words slipped before they could reach his mouth.
“I’m using it,” you announced, slurring just enough for the words to snag on each other — but not enough to take the weight of the words that followed:
“Sleep with me.”
Jaeyun inhaled too fast and choked on the air, like the sentence had gone straight for his throat and his body refused to swallow it. He coughed once, twice, eyes watering, and hated himself for how obvious it was.
“Drink,” you said, lifting your glass toward him — offering it with the careless kindness of someone who had no understanding of the damage they were capable of causing.
Jaeyun pictured you rummaging through your drawers for the voucher, trying to guess when the decision had formed. Whether it had been planned. Whether it had been impulsive. Whether the dress had been chosen with him in mind—
He didn’t get to finish the thought.
He took the glass too fast, his thumb grazed your knuckle — more an echo of a touch than a touch itself — but his whole body registered it like a confession. And he forced himself to bring it to his mouth and swallow it. The liquor burned his throat, cheap and harsh and useless, and then — for one horrifying second — he tasted you there, sweet and faint beneath the sting.
He set it down.
“What—” he tried, and his voice came out wrong. He cleared his throat. “Where’s Baekhyeon?”
Because it felt reasonable to ask where your boyfriend was when you were asking him to sleep with you.
Your eyes gleamed at the name and then cleared just as quickly. Whatever that feeling was, it was banished with a blink before you reached for your glass again, considering the few drops he’d left.
“We broke up,” you said.
“When?”
“Today — or yesterday.” Your brow creased. “I’m not sure. What time is it?”
“But why?”
You shuddered, already turning toward the bartender for another drink, but Jaeyun reached for your wrist and drew you back in. His hands were cold against your warm skin, and a shiver danced across you, strong enough to make your shoulders tremble.
He let go.
“Princess, talk to me,” he said. “What happened?”
And so you told him, your words coming rushed and messed up, one long stream being pulled out of you because now that you’d started, you couldn’t afford to stop. You told him how Baekhyeon had gotten quieter ever since he started his internship. How he’d been thinking, whatever that meant. How he wasn’t so sure anymore, like your relationship was a class he could drop mid-semester. And when you’d asked where it put you, all you got were half-answers and that look people had when they were already gone but didn’t want to be the villain.
“And it is so humiliating, Yun,” you said, your hands dragging down your face, hiding it as you folded forward and rested on him again — forehead against his shoulder, your whole body fitting into the space between his thighs like it had always known where to go.
Jaeyun reached out without thinking, one hand settling at the small of your back as the other slid into your hair, fingers tangling gently there — holding you together in the only way he knew how.
“It’s not like I thought he was going to be my forever one,” you said. “But I thought that — God, I’m — I’m a virgin in university, Jaeyun. Do you know how insane that sounds? Especially after having a boyfriend? It’s like I’m — defective.”
The whole sentence hit and sank in with a dull ache, shifting a fault line in him so sharply his whole body twitched. His fingers flexed against you, tightening at your back before he could stop himself, because this was simply his first instinct: pull you in, hold you tighter, so perhaps he could keep you from breaking by sheer force of his will.
But then he hated himself for it — for the greedy relief that came with the feeling of you against him, for the way wanting and protecting acquired the same face in his body — and he loosened his grip immediately, forcing his touch back into something safer, something that could still pass as friendship.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
“I’m feeling terrible,” you muttered. “Like I might have done something wrong in my life.”
“Princess,” he said again, the nickname rolling softly through the air, and for a moment, it didn’t feel like a joke at all. “Look at me.”
You shook your head, stubborn even like this, forehead still pressed where you’d chosen to hide. And Jaeyun exhaled through his nose, trying to sand the edge off himself before it could cut you.
“You’re drunk,” he told you. “And you’re not thinking straight.”
You didn’t react this time — which somehow made it worse.
“Come on,” he said, his hands slipping away only so they could find you again, but this time, somewhere safer. His palms spread on the bare skin of your arms to guide you up. “I’m taking you home.”
“But—” you began, your gaze sliding to the voucher.
Jaeyun reached for it and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans, taking it out of your sight like he could make the exchange never happen — like merely hiding it could erase the fact that something had moved inside his chest with your ask, and now refused to calm down.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he said, and the promise tasted older than tonight.
He helped you off the stool with one hand at your waist as the other caught your purse, looping it around his wrist before he returned it to your elbow — steadying and guiding, making sure your feet landed where they were supposed to.
You swayed into him, coming so close that when you spoke, he not only heard you, but felt it through his skin.
“You always do.”
Jaeyun’s fingers flexed once again at your side.
“Yeah,” he said, looking ahead as he led you through the mess of bodies and sticky tables. “I know.”
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
Outside, it was already spring in theory, but in practice, Arcano’s door swung shut behind you, and the night folded over — winter still pressing into April nights, and making it chilly.
The sidewalk out in front was uneven in that neglected-university-outskirts way, broken slabs and hairline cracks waiting for someone careless, and tonight, that someone was you.
Jaeyun watched as you made it three steps before you stumbled. It had been nothing significant, just your ankle rolling in a way that could have passed unnoticed — but he was watching, and before you could pretend that it hadn’t happened, his hand had already closed around your forearm, firm and quickly, holding you.
He brought you closer to him on instinct, the lines of your bodies collapsing and melting under the same yellow wash of streetlight, and when you looked up at him, it gathered in your eyes in tiny gold flashes, softening you at the edges, and making you look heartbreakingly close; the tiny gasp you released warming his mouth.
“Easy,” he muttered.
“I am being easy,” you argued, but you made no effort to disengage yourself from him, and so, neither did he — letting you both stay in the dim hush of the night for a moment more before he finally eased back, shrugging out of his jacket and easing you into it, one sleeve first and then the other.
Jaeyun gave your purse back, and only when your fingers closed around it did he turn and drop into a crouch in front of you — shoulders broad and steady on purpose.
“What are you doing?” you asked.
“Taking you home,” he replied. “Get on.”
“I can walk.”
“You can barely negotiate a curb,” he argued. “Get on.”
Jaeyun waited then, bracing himself for another surge of protest, but instead, you leaned forward, your arms sliding around his shoulders, automatic, and with the kind of trust that never failed to set a quiet ache behind his ribs.
But if anything, he hooked his hands under your thighs and stood, letting your weight settle against him and your cheek to press into the side of his neck, warm and familiar.
“This is a bit embarrassing.”
“This is practical,” Jaeyun said. “Better than having to take you to the hospital over an ankle you refuse to admit you could break.”
You hummed, and he huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, tightening his hold as if you could slip out of his hands.
As if he would let you.
“Princess,” he muttered, more to himself than to you, “you’re going to be the death of me someday.”
You didn’t react this time — either because you didn’t hear it, or because your hazy mind had already filed it somewhere dangerous for tomorrow — but in any case, Jaeyun kept walking.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
Jaeyun’s apartment building greeted you in the same failing way it always did. The hallway light flickered with stubborn inconsistency, always seeming one second away from burning out, and the front door still refused to open unless someone met it with a shoulder and a certain amount of conviction.
He did it one-handed, you still on his back and refusing to let go even when he had to fumble for the key, his free hand going to his pockets once, twice, while the other kept you anchored against him, steadying you with the same absent care, as though you were simply part of the equation.
Inside, the living room looked exactly the way it always did — dim, cramped, familiar in the ugly way cheap rent always was. Sneakers lay abandoned near the entrance like they’d given up halfway through the day. A laundry basket sat in the corner with the quiet menace of something that had been ignored too long.
And a few steps in, Sunghoon was there — barefoot, hair damp, skin still carrying that clean, just-showered warmth, as if he’d stepped out of steam and decided the world could handle itself for a while.
His gaze flicked to you, draped over Jaeyun, then back to him, and his mouth twitched like he was trying not to smile.
“She really can do whatever she wants to you,” he said, flat as anything.
At the sound of his roommate’s voice, Jaeyun felt you shift against him, lifting your head just enough for the night’s air to slip into the space you’d made.
“Hello, Hoon,” you said.
“Hello, Princess.”
The hallway light blinked out, wiping your shadows clean for a quiet beat before Sunghoon shifted, and the sensor caught it, coaxing the bulb back to life. Jaeyun adjusted his grip like it meant nothing, like you weren’t warm against him in all the places he worked hardest not to think about. You shifted at his back once more, settling and slipping, and his shoulders tightened on reflex — prepared to steady you, prepared for anything — except your next words.
“If Yun doesn’t, would you do it with me, Hoon?”
“Do wh—”
“Nothing,” Jaeyun snapped. “She’s drunk, and I’m taking her to my room.”
Sunghoon’s brows rose at his roommate’s urgency, his mouth twitching deeper, but he didn’t push. If anything, he stepped back, clearing the way like Jaeyun needed permission at all.
“Tell me tomorrow, Princess,” Sunghoon called after you, loud enough to be heard down the hall. “Though I’m pretty sure Jaeyun will do it for you.”
Jaeyun didn’t give you the chance to answer.
He was already moving, turning down the hall. And when he reached his room, he shifted your weight higher with a small, efficient jerk of his arms, then shoved the door open with his shoulder.
The motion-sensor light in the hallway faltered again behind you, a brief blink of dark, and then the room swallowed you whole — quieter, warmer, smelling faintly of detergent, old cologne and whatever Jaeyun used to pretend he didn’t care about.
He stepped into his room and kicked the door shut with his heel, shutting the rest of the apartment out — Sunghoon’s smugness, the hallway’s flicker, all of it cut off as if it had never happened.
Yet still, he didn’t set you down. Jaeyun carried you the last few steps to his bed, and when he finally tried to set you down, you clung tighter — arms locking around his shoulders as your thighs pressed against his sides.
“No,” you said, and there was no explanation required. It didn’t matter that it had been six months since you last shared a bed. He knew your rules just as much as he knew his: you didn’t do beds before a shower — much less in outside clothes. You didn’t even sit on them in anything that had been out in public.
“Princess,” he sighed. “It’s my bed. I don’t have that rule.”
“Your bed is contaminated,” you decided.
Jaeyun went still for a second, like sheer willpower might make you reasonable. But it didn’t. You stayed latched onto him, stubborn as a vow, and he realized — again — how useless he’d always been at saying no to you.
He sighed again.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine — let’s take a shower first.”
He tried to lower you, shifting his hands to set you down properly, but the moment your heels brushed the floor, you stiffened in protest, clinging harder.
“No shoes inside,” you reminded him, as if he were the one being difficult.
Jaeyun’s eyes shut for a brief beat — his surrender arriving the way it always did with you, tender and doomed.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I know.”
He crouched carefully, still keeping one arm hooked around your legs so you wouldn’t tip, and reached for the thin strap of your heel. His fingers worked quickly and practiced, undoing what he could without looking like he was paying attention.
Only when both heels had slipped free did he straighten again — and only then did you finally loosen, sliding down from his back. Jaeyun kept his hands on you the whole time, steadying you through the transfer, guiding you down until your bare feet found the floor without a stumble.
“There,” he said. “Now cooperate.”
Jaeyun went to his drawer and pulled out a t-shirt so old it had softened past saving, turned into the kind of thing that should’ve been discarded a long time ago. But it was the one you always chose when you slept over, and so it stayed — stupidly and hopefully, waiting for you.
He pushed his hair back off his forehead, his hand lingering there for a beat before he reached for a towel and stood up.
“Come,” he said then, placing his hand behind his back to encourage you to catch up and grab it.
You held hands across the apartment and into the bathroom, letting go only when Jaeyun reached for the switch and snapped the light on — white and harsh in a way that suddenly made the night tangible.
“The lock is broken,” Jaeyun said.
“Wasn’t Jongseong going to fix it months ago?” you asked.
Jongseong had, but it broke again and again, and by the fourth time, the three of them had decided it was what it was and left it to its habits.
“I’ll wait outside,” he said. “Can you handle yourself?”
You leaned against the sink, head tipping to the side. Your necklace sparkled with the movement, catching the bathroom light in thin, bright flickers, and all at once, he regretted asking.
It all felt too real, too reckless. What if you asked him to stay and help you, as it had happened a dozen times before Baekhyeon?
He couldn’t trust himself to make good decisions — couldn’t trust himself to help you out of your dress without looking. Not with the voucher still in the pocket of his jeans and your words coiling through his mind, slowly displacing all his other thoughts.
He was suddenly wild under the fluorescent lights of the bathroom.
“I’ll be right outside,” he said, reaching past you to set the towel on the counter, then the shirt beside it — lining them up like order could keep the night under control. “Take your time.”
“Okay.”
Jaeyun didn’t say anything as he stepped out. He merely pulled the door shut and folded himself down in front of it — knees up, forearms crossed above them, and his fingers tightening against the sides of his jeans for a quiet moment before he let go.
From inside the bathroom came the soft shift of fabric. Then the small, telltale clink of something against porcelain — your necklace, surely your necklace — before the water finally started to run. And Jaeyun let out a slow breath he couldn’t quite believe in.
It wasn’t the first time he’d guarded a door for you, and he should’ve known how to breathe through it by now.
But tonight had reached in and rearranged all the defenses he’d built, and now he was back at the beginning with nothing solid to brace against. His fingers flexed once again, anchoring himself to the pressure and the bone, and making him almost miss the complaint of a floorboard down the hall.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jongseong’s voice carried from the hallway. “Why are you sitting on the floor?”
“The lock doesn’t work,” Jaeyun said.
“It never worked.”
“She’s inside.”
“Who?” Jongseong asked — more reflex than curiosity — because the moment his gaze landed on Jaeyun, the question dissolved on its own, understanding settling without needing a name.
“Oh, it’s been a while,” he said, and Jaeyun’s mouth tightened, the words pressing an old bruise.
It had been six months since you last slept there, to be exact — the same amount of time you’d been with Baekhyeon, and the same amount of time Jaeyun had been pretending the distance was natural. Reasonable. Maybe even healthy.
It wasn’t as if Baekhyeon had forbidden your friendship with him, or your sleepovers at this apartment. Baekhyeon was—
Jaeyun’s mind halted.
For a second, he tried to call him nice, the word rising up like it wanted to be fair, but then he recoiled from the generosity of it.
Nice didn’t matter. Nice didn’t change what it meant to watch you choose someone else. Nice didn’t stop the humiliating clarity of memory: the shape of you curled into his bed like you belonged there, the way you’d mutter his name half-asleep when you couldn’t find the edge of the blanket — then the way he’d learned, almost overnight, how to live without it. And so, he said nothing, merely breathing out, real slow, between barely parted lips, which ended up being louder than anything he could have said.
Jongseong leaned back against the opposite wall and crossed his arms, staking out the space without saying a word because that was how he always did. He didn’t press — never that. Jongseong just stayed, letting the world breathe between them until it started to feel like an invitation people never knew how to refuse.
Jaeyun looked away.
“She called,” he said. “She was at Arcano. Drunk — not falling-over drunk — but enough.”
“Baekhyeon?” Jongseong asked, not because he was looking for gossip, but because it was logistics. It was the obvious missing piece.
“They broke up — he broke up with her,” he said. “Something about not being sure anymore now that he met someone else.”
“Damn.”
Jaeyun hummed in agreement, and because he didn’t know how to bring up the topic, he merely said: “She asked me to sleep with her.”
Jongseong blinked — actually blinked, like his brain had dropped a piece on the floor.
“She asked you,” he repeated.
Jaeyun’s jaw flexed. “Yeah.”
“To sleep with her.”
The words hung there between them, obscene in how plainly they fit the shape of the night. Jaeyun breathed out slowly through his nose, like the air itself didn’t want to make room for them.
“And you said?” Jongseong asked, though his tone already suggested he knew the answer. Everyone knew Jaeyun’s reputation. Everyone knew he didn’t say no to much — especially not to you.
“I said no,” Jaeyun replied.
Jongseong stared at him, then let out a low whistle like he couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or concerned.
“Don’t make it weird,” Jaeyun muttered.
“I’m not making it weird,” Jongseong said. “I’m just—” He paused, pondering what his next words should be. “You’re kind of famous for not being the guy who says no. Not to her.”
Jaeyun’s lips parted, his tongue already rolling in to say something, but the words stuttered and stammered, refusing to leave immediately, and Jongseong shifted his weight, glancing down the hallway once as if checking whether Sunghoon would appear and make this worse. But when he didn’t, he looked back at Jaeyun and waited again.
Of course he did.
Behind the door, the shower shifted pitch — water on tile instead of skin, the soft scrape of movement as you’d turned under the stream — and Jaeyun’s shoulders tightened at the sound, reflexive and stupid, like his body wanted to go in there and steady you with his hands.
He forced himself to stay where he was.
“You know what the problem is?” Jaeyun asked.
“Tell me.”
“I know her,” he said, and he hated himself for how quickly it came out, like a confession that had been waiting all night. “I know she meant it.”
Jongseong’s expression softened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“But what if it changes something?” he asked. “I could say yes, and for one night I’d get—”
He cut himself off, shoving his hair back as if he could physically push the thought out of his head.
“Fuck — I’d get something I’ve wanted for a long time.”
“And then?”
“And then she’d wake up, and something could flick.” Jaeyun said. “Like she’d look at me and realize she made a mistake. Like she’d hate me for letting her.” His grip tightened once, then loosened. “Like I’d lose the only part of her I’m allowed to have.”
The hallway seemed to draw in around him, the air thickening as if it could listen. And Jaeyun lowered his voice in response.
“I’d rather have just a part of her forever than have her entirely for a night and lose her in the morning.”
“That’s — that’s more honest than I expected.”
Jaeyun let out a humorless breath. “Thank you.”
“I’m not done,” Jongseong said, because of course he wasn’t. “You’re treating having her like it’s one thing.”
Jaeyun frowned, irritation returning on instinct because it was safer than admitting Jongseong was right.
“It’s either you stay in the safe version of your friendship forever — half-measures, unsaid things — or you sleep with her and blow it up.”
“But it could happen.”
“But it also couldn’t — not if you do it in the right way.”
“In the right way,” Jaeyun scoffed. “That clears everything up.”
“When she’s sober,” Jongseong continued, ignoring the sarcasm like it was a symptom. “You tell her the truth she can use.”
“Like what?”
“You tell her you said no because she was drunk.”
“Obviously.”
“And you tell her you care about her too much to risk the friendship over a night.”
Jaeyun’s stomach tightened. The sentence was too clean — neat edges, no mess, nothing anyone could accuse him of — and it sounded like something he was allowed to say. But it wasn’t the real reason, though. The real reason lived lower in him, hot and humiliating because of the selfishness of it.
Jaeyun cared too much to let you choose him with alcohol blurring the corners, too much to wake up and find your eyes clear and horrified — he cared too much to have his name become the sharpest part of your regret.
He didn’t want a night he’d have to defend. He wanted a tomorrow that didn’t require forgiveness.
He couldn’t lose you.
“And if she guarantees nothing will change?” he asked, and his voice sounded small there, drowned out by the fantasy of it.
“You decide,” Jongseong said. “You do it, or you don’t. But don’t lie to yourself that you can keep something by freezing it.”
“I can keep it by not touching it.”
“And you can lose it that way too,” Jongseong said, immediately and all at once making Jaeyun halt. “You’re already changing. She’s already changing. Baekhyeon happened. Tonight happened.”
“So what?” Jaeyun asked. “You think I should accept?”
“I think you should accept the conversation,” Jongseong corrected. “Not the drunk proposal. Not the chaos. Not the one-night disaster you’re picturing.”
He paused, just long enough for Jaeyun to swallow.
“It’s the best way,” Jongseong added. “Because it’s the only way she gets to choose you with a clear head — and you get to be chosen without feeling like you stole it.”
“Fine,” he said. “I will talk to her tomorrow — when she’s sober.”
“Good.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke, but then Jongseong nodded toward the bathroom door with a faint grimace that tried to pass for humor. “Rap on my door when she’s done, yeah? I need to use the bathroom, and I don’t feel like getting murdered for walking in on — whatever this is.”
Jaeyun shot him a look, he wasn’t going to, but if anything, Jongseong’s mouth quirked, teasing and mean, as he turned and started back toward his room, leaving Jaeyun alone with the thin shaft of light coming from under the door, the broken lock, and the sound of you moving on the other side — alive, breathing, and close enough to ruin him if he let himself reach.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
The bathroom door opened with a tiny complaint from its hinges. Your figure momentarily silhouetted against the spill of light before he blinked and put you into focus, barefoot, hair slicked back and tucked behind your ears, cheeks still flushed from the shower, alcohol, and something that didn’t belong to soap or steam. His old shirt hung off you all wrong and yet perfectly: too big in the shoulders, too long in the hem, but familiar in a way that made Jaeyun’s chest tighten.
Perhaps he was dreaming this night.
“I thought I heard someone,” you whispered.
“It was Jongseong,” he replied, smoothing his tone into something casual, in the hope that you wouldn’t notice the way Jongseong’s appearance now sat warm and heavy beneath his ribs, pulsing each time he breathed, threatening to spill.
“Did we wake him up?”
Jaeyun shook his head and pushed himself up, his joints protesting with stiffness from the position and from the sheer act of not moving every time his instincts had told him to go in and make sure you were okay. “No. He just needed the bathroom.”
You nodded at him, and Jaeyun reached his hand to you, the gesture so unconscious, he didn’t notice he had done it until you reached back to him, fingers finding the slots between his, and intertwining your hands.
“Let’s go,” he murmured, already turning and guiding you down the short stretch of hall.
He wasn’t sure what time it was, but when he opened the door to his room, the world outside seemed vivid in comparison, a mist of light blue and purple coming through his open window, and spilling across the rumpled sheets and the scatter of things that made the space undeniably his: a jacket draped over the chair like it had been forgotten mid-thought, a half-open book, and a glass of water caught a thin slice of shine. The air was warmer in here, carrying the faint, familiar mix of laundry soap and skin and something clean underneath everything that had happened.
“Lie down,” Jaeyun said, swinging your interlaced hands toward the bed even though he expected you to refuse, saying something about contamination or demanding clean sheets, and forcing him into the familiar rhythm of your rules because that was how it always went — he was already halfway bracing for it, already planning how to humor you through it without letting his hands linger where they shouldn’t — but you moved then, slipping from his touch and laying on the mattress without protest. And it was somehow worse than anything.
“Princess,” he called, not really sure what the rest of the phrase was supposed to be, and the nickname hung in the air longer than it was necessary.
“Aren’t you coming?” you asked, and he was caught by the simplicity of it.
“Close your eyes,” Jaeyun said. “I’m going to get changed first.”
You made a small sound that almost counted as a snort, like the idea of him needing you not to look was ridiculous. But you did it anyway — eyes shut, face turned into his pillow, going still with the kind of obedience you only ever gave him when you didn’t want to argue.
Jaeyun changed quickly, like speed could make him safer. Jeans off. Sweatpants on. Shirt pulled over his head and tossed it somewhere he refused to look at. He kept his movements efficient, controlled — all about angles and purpose — because he couldn’t afford softness. Couldn’t afford the way tenderness turned reckless when it had nowhere to go.
By the time he finished, you hadn’t moved, and for a moment, he thought you’d fallen asleep, your body finally ceasing. But when he stepped closer, you opened your eyes, the dim light catching in them like a held secret, glazing along your lashes, turning your gaze into something soft and deep, as if whatever remained of the light had found a way to live inside you.
And Jaeyun hovered at the edge, forgetting for a beat how to be anything but pulled in.
He sat on the bed, and you shifted closer, cheek pressing deeper into his pillow like it belonged there — like you belonged there.
And the fact that you were smelling like him didn’t help. His shampoo was tangled in your damp hair. His soap clinging to your skin. The boring smell of him with something sweet underneath — vanilla and white flowers — threaded through it all. Like the night had taken the parts of him that were supposed to be private and braided them through you.
He wouldn’t sleep tonight.
“Yun,” you called. “About what I said—”
“Just sleep,” he cut in. “We can talk tomorrow.”
Your mouth parted as if you wanted to argue on principle. But your body betrayed you in the softest way: your breathing deepened, your fingers loosened on the sheet, your forehead sank into his pillow as if it was the only safe thing left in the world.
Jaeyun lay down beside you before he could think too hard about it, keeping the space between your bodies like a rule — a boundary he could hold — but you drifted closer inch by inch, pulled by some instinct that had never learned to be afraid of him. Your knee brushed his leg. Your hand settled near his, warm and lax, fingers curved like they might reach if you dreamed the right dream.
Jaeyun didn’t move. He only stared at the ceiling and listened to you breathe — slow and even — trying not to count it.
Tomorrow, he told himself.
Tomorrow, he would be brave. Tomorrow he would say the right things — the usable truth, as Jongseong had called — the truth you could hold without cutting yourself on it.
Tomorrow, he would not ruin you, or the fragile shape of a friendship he’d carried for years like a glass of water.
But tonight—
He turned his head just enough to look at you, and stayed awake anyway — guarding the morning like it was the most dangerous thing he’d ever faced.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
Jaeyun woke up to the morning sunlight filtering through the still-open window of his bedroom, and you curled into him, cheek on his shoulder, as your hand rested on his chest.
He didn’t move — he couldn’t bring himself to move — he didn’t even let his breath deepen because his first thought was the same one it had always been, old as instinct and just as merciless: don’t wake you. Don’t jolt you out of whatever gentle, thoughtless trust had guided you here in the dark and kept you here in the light. He merely stared at your hand on his chest.
Your fingers were loose, resting over his heartbeat like they’d found it by memory. Like your body had reached for the most familiar thing in the room and settled before your mind could intervene.
He swallowed.
The sunlight was falling in slow stripes across the sheets and across the line of your shoulder beneath his shirt, turning the old cotton into something almost translucent, and catching on your necklace. Dust drifted through the brightness like the morning was innocent — like the world hadn’t heard what you’d asked for last night, hadn’t seen the way his restraint had shaken under the skin.
He’d stayed the whole night trying to remain as far as he could tell. And still, here you were — curled into him like this was allowed. Like this was fine. Like you belonged in the hollow of his shoulder with your palm over his heart, claiming the one part of him he’d never learned how to hide.
You made a small sound in your throat, barely more than a breath, and nudged closer, your knee tucking nearer, your fingers flexing once against his shirt, and the heat of you spread through him like something inevitable.
His gaze drifted to your face.
Sleep had unmade you cruel in its sweetness; your lashes cast a faint shadow under your eyes; your mouth was parted just slightly, softened by the quiet. There was no teasing there, no armor, no bright deflection — only you, unguarded, and breathing against his shoulder like you trusted him to hold.
Because he would — he always would.
Jaeyun swallowed and very carefully — so carefully it bordered on absurd — slid his arm out from beneath your head, immediately receiving a small sound of protest from you, brows drawing together, and for one panicked second, he thought you’d wake.
But if anything, you only turned your face further into his pillow, drifting your hand from his chest to the sheet between you.
Jaeyun sat up slowly, pushing his hair back off his forehead as if he could physically push the feeling out, and looked at you once more.
Then he reached for the blanket and pulled it higher, covering you with a tenderness that felt dangerously close to a confession — tucking the edge beneath your arm, smoothing it down over your ribs, restoring order because order was the only thing that kept him from doing something reckless — before he stood up, crossing the room barefoot.
Jaeyun left the room, pulling the door nearly shut behind him, careful not to let the latch click.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
The kitchen met him as it always did on weekdays.
The sink was crowded with his roommate’s morning small evasions — a cup abandoned to the drying rack, a plate left half-rinsed as if someone had set it down and decided they couldn’t be bothered to finish. Old coffee grounds sat in the filter, gone cold and sour, and the air held that faint, stubborn bitterness like it had seeped into the walls.
Jaeyun stood in the middle of it all for a moment, then two — trying to make his brain behave.
Tomorrow, he had said, and it was tomorrow.
He exhaled through his nose and opened the fridge, scanning the shelves as if the answer to what to do with his hands might be hiding behind the milk, but not even this they had. There were eggs, half a loaf of bread, butter, something green that had once been vegetables in a kinder timeline, and the strawberries he bought weekly and kept in the back, pretending it wasn’t for you.
He closed the door on impulse, pushing his hair back off his forehead before he reopened it and grabbed the eggs.
Jaeyun had never been a breakfast person, but he needed something to do with his hands that morning, and so, he warmed the pan, melting the butter as he had seen you do a dozen times.
He cracked the first egg too hard, and a piece of shell fell in, forcing him to fish it out with the edge of a fork with a curse under his breath. The second one cracked clean. And he caught himself staring at it for a second, mildly offended by success.
He scrambled the eggs like he was negotiating with them — low heat, constant movement, refusing to let them burn. The toast popped up too dark on one side, and he had scraped it with a knife.
He got strawberries in the back of the fridge, rinsed them, and set them on a plate.
And by the time it started to look like something someone might eat, he heard you, softly coming down the hall and making the air shift, the apartment itself holding its breath.
Jaeyun turned, and there you were in the doorway — his shirt hanging off you, hair a mess, eyes brighter than they had any right to be.
Your gaze landed on the plates — on the counter, catching the eggshells still on it, the crumbs of his burned toast, and the strawberry tops before it moved to him.
“You made breakfast,” you said, the corner of your lips shifting into a smile.
“I’m aware.”
You padded toward him, bare feet on the kitchen tile, and suddenly you were so close, he could smell you, his soap still clinging to your skin. Your eyes were puffy, your cheeks still a little flushed, but the embarrassment had already arrived; Jaeyun could see it in the way you held your shoulders, in the way your gaze didn’t stay on his for too long.
“I’m sorry,” you said suddenly.
Jaeyun leaned his hip against the counter, arms crossing because if he didn’t put his body in order, his face might betray him. “You were drunk. You called me. I picked you up. That’s not like it never happened.”
“I remember what I said.”
Jaeyun went still.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t,” you said. “Or that I said it only because I was drunk — I mean, I was drunk.”
You paused, heat creeping up to your cheeks and making it a tone warmer.
“Jaeyun, I’m—” You pressed your palm to your forehead briefly, as if you could push the shame back inside. “I’m in university. I’m still a virgin. And it’s not even because I’m some — saint. It’s because I kept waiting for the right moment.”
Your voice dropped. “But now it just feels like I’ve been standing still while everyone else moved.”
Something moved in Jaeyun’s chest then — sharp, protective, and making him push himself off the counter before he meant to, closing the space between you in a step he didn’t ask permission for.
“Princess,” he called, his voice as soft as the way his arms eased apart, but he didn’t touch you. Didn’t put his hands on your shoulders or tuck your hair back or do any of the things his body begged him to do on autopilot — because this was morning, and you were sober, and this mattered.
“You don’t owe anyone a timeline,” he said. “And you don’t have to make it some performance to prove something.”
“I know, Yun, it’s just that—” Your mouth tightened, lips pressing as you searched for the shape of the truth. “When I think about it, I keep coming to the conclusion that it would be safe if it were with you.”
“Do you remember that party at Seoyeon’s where they did that stupid bottle game, and we both had our first kisses in her parents’ closet?” you asked. Jaeyun blinked at the sudden turn of topic, but nodded anyway. “It was awful and so awkward. The guy made it so awkward. And the whole time I remember — the whole time I remember wishing it had been you on the other side of the bottle, because it would’ve been easier if it were you.” You swallowed. “If it were you, I’d be safe — and it’s still true, I know it would be okay with you,”
“You’re the person I trust the most in this world.”
The whole sentence went straight through his ribs and sank there, spreading through the parts of Jaeyun that had learned to stay careful until his restraint loosened another notch, and his chest went tender with it, so sudden it almost hurt.
In his mind, he was back at Seoyeon’s party, you laughing and brushing the situation off in front of him, cheeks flushed even in the low light with what he thought was shyness. And perhaps it had been. Perhaps he hadn’t been completely wrong: you’d been shy there, but not because you’d just had your first kiss, but because you’d wished he was the one there. He, your best friend — and the thought came so suddenly he couldn’t prevent it — he wanted it to be him, too. He wanted to be your first in every way that counted.
And that was exactly what you were offering to him.
Jaeyun swallowed, his fingers flexing on the counter.
“Do you truly want it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But nothing can change between us,” Jaeyun said. “We start as best friends. And even if this — if this thing doesn’t work and we turn out to be awkward, we end as that. Best friends. No matter what.”
You stared at him for a second.
“Are you afraid of losing me?” you asked, teasing like you could make this lighter if you tried hard enough.
Jaeyun could hear the invitation in it. The offer to laugh. To dissolve the moment back into something safe. But when he looked at you, his eyes were solemn. So solemn that whatever retort you’d been about to throw at him got stuck somewhere between your lips and your courage.
“Yes,” Jaeyun said, and the teasing fell away.
Your breath caught for a moment before you exhaled, your face softening into something older than jokes.
“Okay,” you whispered.
“Okay,” he echoed.
Your gaze flicked to the counter again, to the two plates resting there, and he felt like it was some type of evidence. Proof this wasn’t only shame and late-night chaos, but morning too. Domestic, ordinary, real.
“So,” you said, voice a little too bright, “we’re doing this?”
Jaeyun’s mouth twitched. “Eat.”
“That was not an answer.”
He reached past you, grabbing a fork, and placing it in your hand with exaggerated seriousness.
“Eat,” he repeated. “Then we talk.”
“Jaeyun.”
He held your gaze, and the air between you tightened with something that had nothing to do with breakfast.
“Yes,” he said, his voice coming out rougher than he wanted it to. “We’re doing it.”
“Good,” you said, and then, because you were you, because you couldn’t help yourself: “When are we doing it?”
Jaeyun stared at you.
“Are you—” he began. “Are you trying to schedule sex?”
“Seems reasonable.” You shuddered. “Or do you want us to do it now—”
“No,” he cut in, eyes narrowing, but the fondness in it betrayed him. “Tonight.”
“Don’t you have classes?”
“Are you having second thoughts?” he countered.
“Tonight,” you agreed. “My place?”
“That makes more sense,” he said, not only because he didn’t want his roommates hovering around, but because if he kept you here, if he kept you in his bed again, he didn’t trust the part of him that wanted to pretend you didn’t already belong.
“Okay,” you said.
“Okay,” he echoed.
Jaeyun straightened, grabbed his own plate, and turned away from the counter as if he hadn’t just scheduled the end of the life he’d been carefully maintaining like a lie. As if he’d invited you to the movies instead of into the most dangerous part of him.
“Eat,” he said again, voice rough. “Before I change my mind.”
You took a bite of eggs, crunching your nose. “These are terrible.”
“They’re edible,” he argued.
You smiled around your bite, and in the brilliance of it, Jaeyun noticed with sudden clarity that you might not be drunk, you might not be mad, but it had been a reckless request.
And he had just said yes.
He should’ve panicked.
He should’ve backed out and clung to his rules until they cut him open.
But he only watched you — standing in his kitchen with his shirt draped around you, alive and real and trusting him with clear eyes, and he couldn’t make himself care about the danger.
RULE #2: DO NOT TOUCH HER IMPROPERLY
Some touches are allowed because they keep her safe — elbow, shoulder, wrist, maybe her waist; small steadying things I can explain without it sounding like a lie. Improper is anything I do for myself. Improper is touching her like I’m owed something just because I’ve been here a long time.
Jaeyun liked electrical engineering — he really liked it — perhaps more than he’d ever admitted out loud.
There was something about how he could take a mess of a problem — wires crossing like arguments, values that looked meaningless until he stopped panicking and actually looked — and reduce it to rules that held. KCL. KVL. The calm mathematics of not lying to himself. Find the reference. Label the nodes. Define the direction. Solve.
If he couldn’t control other things — timing, people’s feelings, the way you could laugh like nothing was wrong while something in him quietly broke — then at least he could control this.
At least here, the world had edges. Here, the answer existed, and he found some calmness in it.
But not tonight.
Jaeyun sat in the last row with his book open and his pen in hand, trying to make his body obey.
But the professor’s voice moved through the room, muffled by the low hum of the projector and the whisper of AC that never quite cooled the lecture hall. Something about the transient response. Something about step inputs and settling time. Jaeyun stared at the diagram on the slide until it started to blur, because all he could see was you in his kitchen, barefoot on his tile. His shirt on your body. Your mouth around the word tonight like it was a dare and a promise and a joke all at once.
He wrote a line of notes, realizing a moment too late that it didn’t make sense; it was just a string of symbols that meant nothing. His jaw tightened. He scratched it out so hard the paper tore, then froze, breathing through his nose like he could sand himself back into something normal.
He tried to listen again, forcing his gaze to the board, and his brain into the shape of equations.
But the truth was: he wasn’t there anymore.
He was already walking to your studio apartment. He was already at your door, pressing the code of your keypad as he had done a thousand times.
He was already hearing your voice say his name the way you always did when you wanted something — and he hated that the wanting in him answered like a trained dog.
His leg bounced under the desk as his eyes moved to the clock.
The second hand dragged itself forward like it was doing it on purpose, like time had decided to become cruel just to prove it could. Jaeyun forced himself to look back down at the board. Forced his jaw to unclench. Forced his foot to stop bouncing.
It didn’t work.
He dragged a hand through his hair, knuckles scraping his scalp, and stared at the open page like he could threaten it into giving him peace.
Step response.
Damping ratio.
Overshoot — his chest felt like overshoot.
Jaeyun exhaled slowly, then made a decision, closing his book with a sound sharper than it should’ve been in the lecture hall, a final clap that made the person in front of him glance back, but Jaeyun didn’t care. If anything, he slid the book into his bag, capped his pen, and stood.
Outside, the late afternoon air hit him with a faint bite — winter pretending it hadn’t left yet. And the campus was loud in the way it always got near the end of the day: students spilling out of buildings, scooters whining by, laughter too bright, life too easy.
Jaeyun walked straight through it, taking the quickest route off campus, cutting between two buildings, and down the narrow street that always smelled like fried food and stale cigarette smoke.
He didn’t stop to think — didn’t even breathe; he only followed the line to your apartment complex, pushing the door open and taking the stairs, two at a time.
At your door, the keypad was there, small and impersonal, a little square of plastic and numbers that shouldn’t mean anything. But Jaeyun had always been stupidly good at remembering what mattered, and your passcode was one of those things he picked up without asking, without naming it as intimacy — the way he learned strawberry was your favorite fruit when you were both twelve, the way he memorized the sound of your laugh before he realized he was paying attention. Four digits. He knew it — he had used it a dozen times, but as his finger found the first digit, he froze because him knowing it all too well, suddenly felt like trespassing.
Jaeyun stared at the numbers. His hand still in the air, suspended, and ridiculously caught between two versions of himself. The one that had always been allowed inside your life, the one that had walked into your space carrying groceries and textbooks and your bad moods like they were part of his schedule, and the one standing here now, with the taste of tonight still sharp in his mouth, and the knowledge that tonight is not errands or emergencies.
He exhaled, slowly, trying to make his body act normal — trying to make his hand stop trembling with the sheer idiocy of wanting.
But couldn’t, and when he raised his hand again, he only knocked at the door and waited, hearing his own pulse in his ears, a stupid, loyal metronome that refused to slow down.
And then — movement.
The smallest sound from inside. Footsteps. A shift of air through the crack of the frame, like your apartment exhaled before the door even opened.
Jaeyun straightened without meaning to, shoulders going back like he’s bracing for impact. His hand dropped to his sides, finding his pockets because he refused to be caught halfway through panic.
Warm light spilled through the gap, and the scent of your place followed it — something clean and faintly floral, the trace of whatever you always used that made you smell like comfort when you hugged him goodbye. And there you were, framed in the doorway as if you’d been waiting in the exact spot where he would have to see you all at once.
For half a second, Jaeyun couldn’t breathe, his lungs catching, devastated by you.
“Hi,” you said. It was the same word you’d always used, yet it didn’t sound the same. “Did you forget the code?”
Jaeyun swallowed, forcing his face into something neutral.
“No,” he managed, his voice coming out rougher than he wanted it to. But if anything, you hummed at him, requiring no further explanation, as you opened the door a little wider so he could come in.
Jaeyun had molded the moment when he would step into your place in his mind enough times to believe he would be prepared when it finally came into reality.
Yet it didn’t.
He tried to don a neutral aspect, tried to speak — make some joke — but the words stayed in, hooked into years, and yanked, allowing nothing but air to pass through his lips.
Your apartment was small in the way studios always were — everything close enough to touch from the same spot, everything bearing the faint imprint of your routines. A blanket was folded too neatly on the end of the bed. A mug sat on the counter that looked like it had been rinsed and set down without being fully put away. A stack of books with their spines cracked in the middle like they’d been loved, not displayed.
And there was you — too close, too real.
You’d changed since he’d last been here, but at the same time, you were the same girl he had known his whole life, and the combination of both made something in him tighten until it felt sharp.
Jaeyun shut the door behind him with his foot, careful not to let it slam, yet the click of the latch sounded louder than it should’ve, and he stood there for a beat too long, backpack strap still across his shoulder, hands in his pockets.
“Shoes,” you remembered, because you couldn’t help yourself, and a laugh escaped through him, familiar enough to settle him.
Jaeyun bent, unlaced his sneakers, slipped them off with quick, efficient motions before he lined them near the door and dropped his backpack.
When he straightened, you were still watching him, draped in a dress that didn’t try to be subtle.
It hugged you way too prettily, clinging to your waist and hips like it had been made with the sole purpose of making him forget he’d ever learned how to breathe. The neckline dipped just enough to show skin, and right there — resting against it like a quiet, years-old claim — was the necklace he’d given you.
“Jaeyun,” you called. And he knew this tone — he knew it so damn well. It was your do something.
And so he did, striding in your direction, his hands already reaching for your face, cradling it on his palms before he looked down at you with a small question that he couldn’t come to pronounce because you were already replying by closing your eyes, tipping your head up so he didn’t need to do much to catch your top lip within his.
It was your first kiss. Jaeyun had known you for his whole life, but it was the first time he had come to know your mouth, and it felt almost like a travesty of the universe.
You tasted like strawberries, sugar, and something so familiar that his chest ached, threatening to break open and groan escaped him when you parted your lips, allowing him to dip his tongue inside, pressing against yours until he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t you.
You and the way your hands found the front of his t-shirt and curled on it.
You and the way you pulled him along with you as you stepped back — and back, until the back of your knees had hit the mattress, and you had no other option but to fall on it, his hands bracing around your face, one knee bent and pressed where the skirts of your dress had pooled in too high.
You didn’t say anything as you reached for him, rushing your hands beneath the blue shirt and pushing it over his shoulders.
“Wait, Princess, wait,” he asked. “Slow down.”
“Is this how you always do it?”
And he could have lied, could have merely said yes, that was how he took all the other girls, but he didn’t.
“No,” he said. “It’s because it’s you and me.”
You stared at him, and suddenly the room felt too small for your heartbeats, too quiet for how loud everything inside of him turned.
But then, you leaned in and kissed him again — slower this time — giving him space to meet you properly.
His hand slid from your jaw to the side of your neck, his thumb pressing and feeling your pulse through the tip of it as his other hand followed the line of your shoulders, moving further and further until his palm had found your waist, his fingers spreading on you the way he always did to anchor you — except that now it was less anchoring than keeping you.
You shifted beneath him, your leg sliding close enough to brush the inside of his thigh, and Jaeyun felt it like a jolt — small, accidental, and devastating — traveling straight through his length, and making his breath catch.
He forced himself to hinder — force himself to keep his head clear. But his body was already answering you, heat gathering with every centimeter of contact, the novelty of it turning molten and bright in his blood — wanting to move, to press in, to take what you were offering without thinking.
“Tell me if—” he started, then stopped, trying to rearrange his thoughts.
“If what?”
“If you want me to stop,” he managed. “Say it if you—”
“I won’t,” you said, and the certainty in it hit him like a punch.
Jaeyun exhaled, pressing his forehead to yours — not kissing, not moving — just breathing the sweet scent of you, vanilla and white flowers, the same he always had as he counted the seconds like he could make them behave through the sheer force of his want.
“You’re sure?” he asked — because he had to — because he knew that this was the line where everything became real, and everything before this was going to feel small in comparison.
“Yes, Sim Jaeyun,” you whispered. “I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he murmured, more to himself than you. “Okay.”
Jaeyun’s fingers found the strap of your dress, sliding it with a gentleness that didn’t match the way his pulse was climbing, easing it down through your shoulder slow enough that it felt like a question you could stop without words — yet you didn’t — and the dress shifted with a soft whisper through your body.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to the skin he’s uncovered — one brief kiss, then another — until the dress loosened and pooled lower, until he could guide it away and reveal your lingerie set, pinkish in a way that only made your skin warmer under the lights of your apartment.
His breath hitched.
You were beautiful in a way he’d always known, but also in a way he’d never allowed himself to study — never this close, never with permission. Never with the soft spill of your skin under his hands, much less with the heat of you turning every familiar detail into something obscene and new.
His hand splayed over your belly, the tips of his fingers skimming the lower edge of your bra before he slid down, finding the band of your panties and hooking it lightly.
“You’re—” he began.
“Don’t get too full of yourself, Jaeyun,” you murmured. “I dress like this because I just happen to have no bad sets.”
The laugh that left him was helpless, more air than sound, relief threading through it because you were still you, even here, even now, just in your lingerie set and with skin turning reddish because of his kisses, and it truly didn’t matter that you interpreted him wrongly this time.
“Right,” he managed. He couldn’t argue with anything you said — not right now — not never. “Of course.”
Your fingers curled in his shirt, pulling him closer — not frantic, not desperate — just needy, and Jaeyun went still for one beat to let himself feel it: the pull, the permission, the way your hands on him turned his years of restraint into something soft and breakable.
“Of course,” he whispered again, bending down and kissing you, your temples first, and then your cheeks — his lips pestering over your face with soft pecks before he moved lower, discovering that one sensitive spot underneath your jaw, and when you gasped, he took it as an incentive to move to the column of your neck, his mouth parting as his tongue slipped out in a tiny tease that got you gasping softly — almost silently, hands closing at the shoulders of his shirt as if you couldn’t help yourself.
“You’re sensitive,” he murmured, tucking his discovery carefully alongside all the other details he’d collected about you over the years.
You called for him, but if it had been a warning or a submission, you lost interest in the rest of your thought as he kissed you again, open mouth and tongue rolling against your skin, surely leaving a mark, and making a moan to rumble through your lips instead.
Jaeyun’s eyes flicked up to your face, and he didn’t let go — not even when his hands slipped to your back, the tips of his fingers finding and curling on the clasps of your bra. Not even as he opened it and slid further into you, kissing the tip of your breast and sending goosebumps through your skin.
He never let go.
And when his lips parted, tipping his tongue out, and making your hands move to the back of his head, fisting at his hair almost bitterly, he only smiled against you, the movement adding another coating to the sensation and making your arch against him.
He licked you softly, licked you hard, covered the areola with his lips and pulled the tip into his mouth, pulled more and harder, until your back arched even more and created a gap between the mattress that his hands took no time to fill, his fingers spraying through your skin and holding you still as his mouth moved, leaving your nipple just to create a path through your body, trailing down to your sternum, your stomach — taking in every piece of your skin in between his lips.
Jaeyun lifted his head then, just enough to look at your face properly, catching the flush on your cheeks, the way your lips had parted because your breath had turned pant, your chest moving too fast and allowing your necklace to sparkle.
The room was suddenly too small for how loud his blood had gotten.
For a moment, he didn’t kiss, didn’t lick, didn’t give either of you the mercy of motion; he only held still and watched, like he needed to see what he was doing to you before he let himself do more.
“Princess,” he breathed, the word slipping out before he could decide on anything else.
You looked at him, and your gazes locked as they had done a dozen times across the existence of you, yet the moment acquired that dream quality because you were here, bare in a way he’d only imagined in the abstract — late at night, in the quietness of his room, in the version of his imagination he kept locked away like contraband — and the distance between wanting and having had narrowed to a single breath.
Jaeyun swallowed, trying to steady himself, before let the moment break by degrees — his palm slid down the slope of your stomach, slow enough to feel like asking, fingertips grazing your skin as if he were relearning it; as if touching you like this rewired something in him that had always been too careful until his fingers finally found the band and paused there, hooked lightly under the elastic.
He looked back up at you then, thumb stroking once along your hip as his other hand held you steady at the small of your back, refusing to let you drift away from him — from this.
“You okay?” he murmured, and it sounded like he meant all of it.
You nodded at him, and he moved — quietly relentless — his knuckles brushed your thighs on the way, accidental touches that weren’t accidental at all, and the sound you made hit him physically.
He had never been so hard in his whole life.
He guided the panties lower, and lower, until they slipped free; and for a beat, he just held them, as though the simplest thing in his hand had become proof that the night had finally crossed into real.
Then he set them aside without looking, his attention snapping back to you immediately — hand returning to your inner thigh with a firmer hold than before.
“If I do anything you don’t like — you tell me, okay? We have to communicate.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he echoed.
His thumb drew one more slow line along your inner thigh, watching the way you answered it before he allowed himself to lower his head again, kissing the inside of your knee this time — soft — almost innocent, if the moment hadn’t been burning at the edges. Then another kiss, slower, lingering, his mouth warming you as his hands guided you open with a care that felt reverent.
“You are just — beautiful,” he heard himself say.
You let out a small sound that wasn’t quite a breath and wasn’t quite a laugh, startled by how earnest he was being. Your cheeks warmed, and you turned your face just slightly, like you could hide behind the angle.
“You’re ridiculous,” you murmured, aiming for teasing, but it came out too soft for anything but shyness.
And Jaeyun’s mouth twitched, a helpless curve that didn’t reach humor so much as relief. And his hand tightened once at your thigh, then gentled, thumb stroking a quiet line as if to soothe the flush he’d put in you.
“Yeah?” he said. “But is it okay?”
“Yeah,” you said, the word threaded through the quiet laugh that escaped you. You didn’t dress it up, didn’t offer an explanation, didn’t hand him the because — you just let the answer be simple. But it wasn’t simple at all, not to him because he heard the rest in the way your gaze found his and held: yeah, you said, because it’s you.
The first touch of his mouth against your folds was light enough that he didn’t even taste you, but your body still reacted: a sharp inhale, a pull through your spine, the instinctive arch that made his own breath break low in his throat.
And when you tipped your hips to him, he mouthed you again, his hands sliding further into you, thumbs finding the tender flesh of your hood and lifting it — leaving your clit in full exposure for him to lean in, the tip of his tongue kneading the sensitive flesh around, slightly rubbing before he pressed it, unable to prevent the sound that escaped his throat then — something between reverence and desperation.
It took your smile away — your lips parting in a gasp as your fingers met and wove through his hair, pulling him in a demand that he had no second thoughts before obeying, giving you another lick — a harder one.
His tongue twirled all around the edge, then he pressed a kiss over it — a long, tender wet kiss before he lowered his head and licked at the entrance of your body because you were clenching around nothing, and it suddenly felt too evil, and Jaeyun would never be evil to you.
He pushed his tongue against your hole, and then, he pushed again until his tip went inside it, and he had to control his will to roll his eyes back.
Even his boldest fantasy hadn’t come close to how sweet you actually were. And the thought landed too tender to survive, cracking him open into something darker because being careful had started to feel like another kind of denial, and he couldn’t come to continue to restrain himself when you had given him all the permission. Jaeyun lifted his head just long enough to look at you, eyes blown wide and honest, as if he was giving you one last chance to pull him back. To tell him to stop. To make him good again.
Yet you didn’t. And something within him shifted. His hands held you firmer, spreading you open as he went back to you no longer soft-edged, and decided to stop hovering at the threshold, giving you what you were asking for.
Jaeyun’s grip tightened as he worked on you, alternating between broad strokes and precise licks on that one spot that never failed to make you cry out his name.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “Let me hear you.”
Your response came almost immediately — a broken moan that seemed to come from somewhere so deeply inside of you, Jaeyun felt your own desperation reverberating through his entire body.
You were getting closer, he could tell by the way your thighs kept quivering under his hands, your breathing becoming more and more ragged with each pass of his tongue, but it wasn’t enough — he needed to see it: the moment pleasure turned undeniable, the moment he could stop wondering if he was reading you wrong.
Jaeyun retreated with a torturous care, pressing a final kiss to your folds as he pushed himself back onto his knees and earned a protest from you.
“Jaeyun—”
“Not yet,” he said. “For now, I need you to hold yourself open for me. Can you do that, Princess?”
You nodded despite yourself, spreading your legs further apart — pushing the soles of your feet against your sheets for some leverage and fuck.
The sight of you like this — glistening with your fluids and remnants of his saliva — the sight of you so ready for him.
He could hardly breathe.
He brought one hand down through your thigh, his thumb resuming the circular motions on your clit while his other hand moved to your seam, teasingly brushing the tips of his fingers through before he slid a single one inside.
You were so wet already, he slipped with no resistance, and it was so dizzying — everything about it was so dizzying — he hardly heard you panting as he began to move his finger in and out, your stomach tightening and giving a small convulsion, but you kept your legs apart as he had asked you to.
It was a false deed, honestly — as if Jaeyun could command anything when both of you knew — he was the one to always follow.
But he really didn’t care.
When Jaeyun felt you opening up to him, he added a second finger in, curling them slightly to discover that one spot that soon enough got you into a mess — squeezing him with your release as your hands grabbed at your sheets. Your lips parted around his name, and your hair turned wilder as your head pushed against your pillows, arching your back in that one beautiful bow before you melted again.
“Princess,” he called, and you clenched at the endearing name, a velvet heat that he felt in his very soul.
You hadn’t done anything to him, but Jaeyun felt utterly undone by you. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps just by watching you.
God — he could come just by watching you.
You were so wet. His hand was coated with you, white slick dribble coming out of your cunt, making each of his moves obscenely loud in the quiet night, yet — all he could think was how stunning you were like this, so lovely and so his.
He wanted to keep looking — to hold the moment still, to learn it by heart, and make it something real enough to survive the morning. But he wanted to look away, too, all at once — startled by the sheer size of his wanting.
You had so much power over him, it was terrifying even to examine the way you owned his soul. When your gazes caught, his heart seemed to burst in his chest.
Was he doing it for you, or doing it for him? He couldn’t tell anymore.
He curled his fingers deeper inside of you, making you mumble something unintelligible, a sob ripping through your chest and already threatening to turn into a release. Jaeyun couldn’t help but grin at the sound, reveling in the way your body trembled and arched underneath his touch.
You thrashed and thrashed as he still tended you the way you needed, stroking the spots inside that made you shudder and rubbing at your clit until he heard you panting, his own name falling from your lips in a breathless moan before it turned into whimpers, and when you came around him, he leaned in to kiss you.
Jaeyun stayed close through the last shiver, like he didn’t trust the world not to startle you out of it. He kissed you again — slower now, softer — catching your mouth as your breathing stuttered, and pretending that he could take the edge off the intensity just by holding you there. His hand eased from its grip into a gentler touch, smoothing along your thigh.
“Hey,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
His forehead brushed against yours as his hands smoothed over your body, taking you through until he could cup your face, and his thumb could reach for the corner of your mouth, wiping away the evidence of his kiss with a tenderness that didn’t match how wrecked he looked. He swallowed, chest rising and falling too fast, and forced himself to slow his breathing until yours started to follow.
“Still okay?” he asked again, softer, as if the question mattered more now than it had before.
You nodded at him, managing a flimsy sound that might’ve been yes, and Jaeyun pressed another kiss to your temple, then your cheek, unhurried, almost devotional, as if he needed to apologize for his own intensity.
“You did so well,” he whispered. “Tell me what you need. Water? A minute? Do you want me to hold you, or-?”
“Jaeyun,” you cut.
“Yes, Princess?”
Your hands slid to the back of his neck, fingers curling and weaving through his hair, holding him still.
“I need you.”
It might have been the words, the small plea that took Jaeyun anew because he would never refuse anything you asked him, or perhaps it was the way you said them, a bit flimsy because you couldn’t control it still, but either way, he gave in, slipping from your hold only so he could take his t-shirt off.
He almost choked when you stood with him, your hands reaching for his lower abdomen, nails scraping his skin slightly before you took his belt and unbuckled it.
“Princess,” he called, the questions already on his tongue, shaped by habit, and the need to do this right.
But you didn’t give him time.
Your hands moved for his jeans, unzipping them as if you’d decided you were done waiting, easing them down in one smooth, impatient motion. The room seemed to go hushed around the sound of it — denim shifting, breath catching — until the only thing left was the sudden, helpless awareness of his length slapping against his abdomen.
Your hand found him, fingers curling around him almost beautifully, closing and molding with a care that didn’t match, and making his whole body go taut, breath pulling tight in his chest like it had nowhere to go. Not because he didn’t want it — God, he wanted it — but because he did, too much, too fast, the kind of wanting that threatened to ruin the rest of the night by sheer impatience.
He caught your wrist gently, holding you as his forehead dipped toward yours again, his eyes shutting.
“If you do that,” he began. “I’m not going to last.”
The honesty of it landed between you, sharp with embarrassment. And when he opened his eyes again, there was something almost pleading in the way he looked at you — like he was asking you not to laugh, not to make him feel small for how quickly you could undo him.
“Another time,” he promised, realizing the implications of his words a fraction too late. Not just later tonight. Not just when you feel like it. But again. As if he’d already decided that there was going to be a future where he got to learn you — and be learned — without rushing.
But you didn’t tease him. When you looked at him, your gaze holding his until the heat in his face had nowhere to hide, you merely nodded.
“Okay,” you said.
You were no warmer than Jaeyun was, but when he touched your waist, your skin shivered, a fine tremor running under his fingertips.
“Okay,” he echoed.
You let him ease you down onto the sheets, smoothing you into place as he followed you down, bracing himself over you without crushing you, and kissed you — slow, mouth soft, reverent in a way that made the moment feel almost holy.
“Tell me if anything hurts,” he whispered. “Tell me if—”
“I know,” you breathed, and the words sounded so much like trust — Jaeyun’s throat worked, and he kissed you again and again and again, only letting go to reach down beside the bed for his jeans, fingers finding the pocket by feel — clumsy in a way he never remembered being. His breath caught when you made the smallest sound behind him, and he hurried to get his wallet free, forcing it out with a practical shuffle before the faint and quick tear of foil came in the hush.
He slid it on with shaky hands that he hoped you wouldn’t notice.
But you did — of course you did.
When he climbed back over you, you reached for his arms, your fingers brushing down until you found his hands.
“You’re shaking,” you whispered, your brows knitted, and searching his face like you were afraid you’d pushed him somewhere he didn’t want to go.
Jaeyun went still.
“Because it’s you,” he replied, not giving himself time to consider how much he had exposed with this mere phrase.
Of course he was shaking. He’d wanted you for so long it had grown into something foundational, something he’d learned to live around and never touch. And now you were here beneath him, looking at him like he was allowed — like he was chosen — and his wanting hadn’t been foolish after all.
His throat worked. He tightened his fingers around yours, trying to make the shaking stop by force.
“If I mess this up, you won’t ever let me hear the end of this,” he smoothed.
You laughed at him — familiar in a way that loosened something in his chest, easing everything inside him as if the sound of you had always known where to press to make him breathe again.
“Don’t worry,” you said. “I’ll keep it all as another of our secrets.”
“What other secrets do we have?”
“What you had under your bed when we were teenagers,” you began. “That you couldn’t sleep without a lampshade until you were twelve. Where we were on your eighteenth birthday. That you cried watching The Notebook—”
“Everyone cried watching The Notebook at least once.”
“Baekhyeon didn’t—”
“Did you watch it with him?”
“It’s my favorite movie, of course I did,” you said. “But don’t worry, it was just once — it’s funnier with you anyway.”
“Obviously,” he said. “Everything is funnier with me — and we are about to have a lot of fun.”
You laughed again, softer and only because he was allowed to — he kissed you again, his hands smoothing your thighs, your calves, his fingers moving and curling around your ankles and pulling you to him, lifting your legs to his hips.
You stiffened as his tip made contact, your body going taut beneath him and he stopped like he’d been trained for it, like every instinct he had rewired itself around not hurting you. His grip shifted back from your ankles to your thighs — his thumbs stroking small, steady circles as if he could coax your muscles out of panic.
“Princess, look at me,” he murmured. “Do you want me to stop?”
You shook your head, a little bit too frantically as if you were afraid he would really stop it, and Jaeyun exhaled through his nose, a sound that stood somewhere between a laugh and a prayer. He kissed you once, slow and grounding, then another at the corner of your mouth.
“Okay,” he said. “Then we go slow. I’m right here.”
He shifted — barely enough to change the angle, but you seemed to feel it and his thumb reached for you seam, wetting the tip of it with your fluids, and finding your clitoris, rubbing it in slow and deliberate circles that got you closing your eyes, moving your hips, and welcoming whatever he was giving.
Jaeyun made himself still enough to read you, his eyes tracking your face with the kind of focus that might’ve felt clinical, if it hadn’t been so tender. He watched your breathing first, then your mouth, then the tiny shifts in your shoulders before he slowed and it eased again.
He moved in careful increments, pausing whenever your breath changed. Waiting whenever your brows pinched. His hands steadied you — firm at your thighs, gentle at your waist, and holding you through the newness of it.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Is it okay?”
You nodded and he lowered his forehead toward yours.
It was slow at first, all about him discovering the new shape of you, but soon enough, it was confident and knowing. When he drew back, he knew exactly how to move back in, how to make you tighten around him, and his name to escape from your lips a little bit more frantically as his rhythm increased.
Your fingers spread through the back of his neck, fingers twisting at the hair at his nape and bringing him closer and closer, as if you couldn’t help it. And when your breath turned ragged and your fingers tightened, Jaeyun pressed his mouth to your temple, whispering your name like a promise he could finally keep.
Even if only temporarily.
“Yun, I’m going—”
“It’s okay, Princess,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
And this time he meant it in every way.
“Come for me, babe.”
You twisted under his body, even as he kept you pinned in place with his hands on your hips, squirming and whimpering your way through it, finishing with an almighty shudder as you came a second time, and it was so beautiful, and overwhelming — he tried to stay careful. He tried to keep his breathing even. But you said his name like you needed him, and something in him cracked clean through.
He buried his face against your neck, a shaky sound trapped in his throat. “Princess—”
He didn’t have room for anything except you.
No thought. No control. Just the force of feeling, cresting too high and too fast, until it dragged a groan from him with your name inside it — like that was the only thing he could say when he finally lost himself — and with a final, deep thrust, his body tensed and spilled inside of you — groaning your name. The echo of it carved into your skin as he buried himself, his fingers molding into your skin with an intensity that left behind indentations as the waves of his pleasure washed over.
Jaeyun hadn’t realized how noisy you both had been, but the room felt suddenly too quiet after.
And for a beat, he only stayed still — his forehead tucked against the curve of your neck, breathing you in like he was trying to memorize the exact shape of the air between you, the feeling of your pulse under his mouth, your fingers still lost in his hair, and your bodies so tangled, he couldn’t quite tell where he ended and you began — his whole soul afraid that the moment would slip away the second he admitted it had happened.
But then, you made a small sound, and it made him force his head up — just enough to look at you.
He brushed his knuckles along your cheek, then paused, thumb hovering at your lips because he didn’t know if he was allowed to touch you like this now that the moment was gone.
“You okay?” he asked, the question already worn thin by the number of times he had used it through the night, but it felt heavier somehow, meaning more than any of the earlier ones ever had.
But if anything, you only nodded — leaning into his touch as your lashes fluttered shut.
“Just stay,” you whispered.
And so, he stayed — rolling you both through your bed, his back sinking into the mattress as he drew you to his chest, giving you a place to rest as if it was any other night and you were merely best friends falling asleep together. He stayed until your heartbeat evened out against him and the room turned orange and pink with sunrise, dust motes catching in the full light like glittering hush, and the night had inevitably bent itself into morning.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
Jaeyun lay on your bed, holding a breath in his chest as if it could keep the morning from happening. The sun slipped through your parted curtains and spilled across the room — patient and indisputable — turning everything into proof.
Your dress was still pooled on the hardwood, your panties right above it, and his jeans were so close it could’ve been one thing. Your bra was still at the edge of the bed, pink, half-tucked into the sheets he couldn’t remember tangling.
He let the breath go, and the mattress answered, making you stir — just a little — your head rolling off his chest until your chin found him again.
When your eyes opened, the light caught and held — as if it had nowhere else to be.
Jaeyun felt the instinct to speak. Something practical. Something safe. Something that could be filed under morning conversation and good friend behavior.
Are you okay? he thought. Do you need water?
Do you want me to make breakfast again and pretend I don’t care when you mock me for it?
But you didn’t give him time.
You lifted your head — sleepy as it was certain — brushing your nose against his before you caught his lower lip between yours and kissed him in a way that made teasing feel like a promise.
Jaeyun went utterly still, his hands hovering, useless with hesitation. He had spent years learning which parts of you he was allowed to hold — elbow, shoulder, wrist; the small, steadying touches that could be explained without telling on himself.
But this was your room.
Your bed.
Your morning.
And you were kissing him like you’d never once needed an explanation, catching his lower lip — so gentle it hardly counted as a bite — holding it for one heartbeat longer before you let him go and eased back.
Jaeyun blinked, and the muted morning light dazed him — your room pressing in with a kind of hush that made it feel like a dream: sun-warm sheets, the sound of breath, the closeness of you like something he hadn’t earned but had been given anyway. He let it hold him for a suspended moment before he leaned in and kissed you again, this time with more feeling than thought — one hand found your waist, as the other slid behind your neck, tilting you up to him.
Your breath caught at that, and for a moment, Jaeyun feared he had gone too far — too fast. He’d finally slipped enough to not be able to lie and pretend he hadn’t broken his second rule, but then you shifted, sliding a leg over his hips, straddling him like it was the most natural place in the world to be, and something in him went quiet with the rightness of it.
He didn’t move first. He didn’t take. He only held where you’d placed him.
And when you parted — pulling back just enough for you to breathe — it carried the kind of practicality that had always been your shared language.
“I need a shower,” you said.
For a beat, Jaeyun blinked at you, incapable of understanding the words. But then, his brain latched onto it, and he felt thankful. A shower meant tiles. Water. Soap. Clean lines. A task that could be completed. A thing he could do without interpreting your mouth, your eyes, the way your kiss had said stay.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. “Okay, yeah.”
Jaeyun shifted carefully, guiding you off him with hands that tried to remember what permitted felt like — waist, ribs, shoulder — anywhere that could still pass as gentle logistics instead of want. His gaze skated away from your face on instinct, as if looking at it too directly might pull him back under, and slipped out of the bed.
You followed, swinging your legs over the side of the bed, slightly swaying — more due to sleepiness than weakness, but Jaeyun’s body reacted anyway. He reached for you, his hands steady on your arms.
He helped you up. Guided you through your studio: past the small table with the stack of books, past the mug you never fully put away, and into the narrow bathroom where the tiles were warm and the mirror caught the gold of morning and gave it back to him as evidence.
Your skin carried so many marks from the night before that his breath caught.
He looked away so fast it felt like a flinch.
Jaeyun moved like he was trying to fix the world.
He turned on the light first. Then the fan. Then the tap — hot first, then cold, adjusting in small increments until the water felt right because putting things in order always helped him keep control.
He watched the water steam faintly as it ran, watched it like it was a system he could calibrate.
He set a towel within your reach. Folded it once, then unfolded it because the fold looked too neat and he didn’t want you to notice how nervous he was. Then he reached for your shampoo and put it back where it already was, because he suddenly ran out of things to do, but his hands still sought for something.
You leaned your hip against the sink and watched him with that quiet softness that made his chest feel too full. The bathroom was suddenly too bright for how careful he was trying to be.
“Yun,” you called, and he turned to you like a man answering a question in class — focused, braced, trying to keep his face neutral.
“Yeah?”
You tilted your head, gaze flicking once before you merely stepped past him, your hands brushing and taking his, pulling him to the shower with you.
The steam gathered immediately, beading on his skin, blurring the sharp edges of the morning until the world became smaller and quieter.
“Sometimes, I can hear you thinking,” you said. “Did you know that?”
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
You laughed at that, but didn’t say anything. You merely turned around, reaching for the shampoo bottle he had previously rummaged and gave it to him.
“Wash my hair,” you said.
And so, he did.
Jaeyun took the bottle, pouring shampoo into his palm — more than he needed, because his hands were unsteady — and rubbed it between them until it warmed and foamed. Then his fingers slid into your hair, working the suds in small circles at the crown of your head, careful and thorough, moving outward as the steam gathered and the water ran down your spine. His knuckles grazed your ear once. An accident, maybe. But you let out a sound — more a sigh than anything, and something in Jaeyun tightened anyway, a flare that made his chest feel too warm. His jaw flexed at it, and he forced his hands to stay where they belonged — his attention to stay on the sequence, because sequence meant control: lather, rinse, repeat.
He rinsed you with his palm shielding your forehead, water sluicing through your hair in clear sheets. The gesture was intimate in the most domestic way — protective, practiced — as if he’d been doing it for years.
And maybe that was why it did him in.
You must have felt the pause in him, the way his body went too still behind you, because when he finally finished, you turned to him, reaching for the bottle, and pouring shampoo into your own palm as you stepped closer — the warm line of you almost meeting the warm line of him, and slid your fingers into his hair.
Jaeyun didn’t know what to do with himself.
He merely bent a little so you could reach, letting your hands take over with a quiet competence that made his throat work. Water ran down his temples, traced the line of his jaw, caught at his lashes. He kept his eyes on the tile like a prayer — like if he looked at you, he’d lose the last clean edge of himself.
You rinsed him, and only when you tapped his hands — did he straighten again.
Then you smoothed soap over his bare skin, starting at his shoulders, your palms unhurried and warm. Down his collarbones. Over his chest.
Jaeyun’s breath broke when you reached his lower abdomen, your fingertips hovering dangerously close to the ache he’d been holding back, and making a sound slip from him — low, involuntary — rushing before he could trap it.
“Princess,” he said, but the word carried no warning at all, and you merely allowed your fingers to rest there, steady as the way your gaze met his.
“You said another time,” you remembered.
Jaeyun froze.
Not because he didn’t understand. Because he did. Because the memory arrived with humiliating clarity: your hand curled on him in a way that made his honesty slip out raw and breathless last night.
He dragged in a slow breath through his nose. Steam beaded along his lashes; water traced the line of his jaw. He still didn’t look at you — not fully — like eye contact might knock the last brace out from under him while he was still negotiating with himself. Like he was trying to find the border between permitted and improper and realizing you’d moved it with one sentence.
“Are you asking me?” he began. “Or—”
“I’m asking,” you said.
His gaze found yours.
“Okay,” he said, and this time the word didn’t sound like procedure, but like agreement. Like trust.
He took your wrist and guided your hand, not down, not yet, but to his jaw, to his throat, to a place he could handle without losing himself.
“Slow,” he said, and you nodded at him, letting your fingers linger.
Your thumb brushed the hinge of his jaw first — testing, almost absent — before your hand slid lower and lower, following the line of his throat, his collar bones. Water ran between your knuckles and his skin, warm and constant, making every touch feel softened at the edges, as if the steam had filed down the danger until it could pass for tenderness, but Jaeyun’s pulse changed immediately, his heart racing as though it too wanted to reach for you through his skin, meeting where your fingers brushed against his chest.
Jaeyun’s lips parted in a soft gasp as you reached for him, tentatively brushing through his extension. Starting from the already flushed tip and moving to the prominent veins all over him and then, all the way back, receiving an almost imperceptible buck of his hips in response.
“Okay?” you asked, and he nodded, but it wasn’t an answer so much as a reflex — his body trying to behave when his mind had gone helpless and searched for something to say — something small enough to fit inside a bathroom, inside steam, inside the ordinary noise of water hitting tile.
But there was no small word that fit because how could he say that anything you did with him would be okay?
How could he say that if you asked for his heart, he would open his ribs for you? If you reached in and took it, he would hold still and even tender you if you faltered.
Jaeyun swallowed, throat tight, breath catching on the way out as he reached for you, his fingers splaying over your cheek as his thumb reached for where a drop had taken place on your skin.
“I’m okay,” he said then, the closest answer he could give for what he meant. If you could feel the shape of the unspoken right alongside the spoken, you didn’t show it.
Your hand merely closed around his length, fingertips tracing the same places his mind had traced a thousand times in private, and every pass of your hand felt like it rewrote him — like your touch didn’t just touch, but claimed a truth he’d been denying for years.
Jaeyun’s breath hitched as you guided him closer, his eyes shutting as his forehead tipped to the curve of your neck.
“Princess,” he whispered, not really sure if he intended to say something, but the sudden call made you pause, your hand motionless enough to make his breath hitch again, his hips bucking and chasing for the friction still.
“Don’t stop,” he said, and perhaps it had been the words, perhaps it had been the way he said it, more like a plea than a request. But you didn’t — even when his grip tightened on you, his finger shaping bruises on your hips, and his lips parted, leaving a matching one at your neck.
You didn’t stop, even when he came into your hand. You merely gentled him, moving to his stomach, his chest, smoothing him down until his breath wasn’t so ragged and his heart had come into peace beneath your touch.
“Yun,” you called, and he hummed at you, still pressed close, eyes half-lidded, mouth parted like he’d forgotten what to do with the air. Water clung to his lashes. Steam softened the hard lines of him into something boyish, something undone. For once, he wasn’t braced for impact — he was simply there, breathing, and letting you see him, and it was strange how it made your kiss just even better.
How he could simply melt into you.
You smiled at that — small, warm — kissing the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, then a place beneath his jaw that made Jaeyun’s eyes flutter shut, his head tipping just slightly to give you access, like his body wanted to cooperate even when his mind still tried to keep score.
“Princess,” he breathed again, and this time it sounded less like a plea and more like disbelief.
Your hands found him at your hips, guiding it down through your body, the swell of your ass, giving him enough time to grow on it, and take the lead, brushing over warm skin, following curves with a care that made it feel devotional rather than desperate.
“Okay?” he murmured, because he couldn’t help — he couldn’t ease — not until you had nodded, brushing your noses and making something within settle with the gentleness of it.
Jaeyun exhaled and stepped closer. One hand halted at your waist while the other slid down and around, his fingers tightening briefly against your skin before he shifted, and lifted one of your legs — guiding it up to rest against his hip.
His tip brushed against your seam with the new position, barely anything, but you drew in a breath that didn’t quite make it back out to you, and a faint, trembling noise escaped through your lips instead, and he couldn’t help the soft, almost-gentle smugness that warmed his smile.
He rolled his hips against yours, and your head tipped back, eyes closing and lips still parted on that same faltered breath, allowing sunlight to catch on your skin in the shift, warm and liquid-gold along the lines of you.
“Bed,” you whined, and you didn’t need to tell him twice.
Jaeyun turned the taps off, not really checking if he had done it properly, before he took you in his arms again, folding your legs around his waist as he walked you back down the short stretch of your place. Water tumbled from you both — tiny drops trembling loose with each step, catching the light before they fell in a thin, gleaming trail on your floorboards.
But you didn’t complain, you didn’t even say anything. When he placed you on the mattress; you merely spread your legs further — wordlessly making room for him like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Condom,” you reminded him. “Do you have more?”
For a moment, the question didn’t make sense, but then, he nodded at you, slipping from your touch — just enough to reach for the wallet still tossed on your floor.
“How many did you bring?” you asked, and although Jaeyun had listened to it and understood, he didn’t reply, he allowed the question to hang in the air, a flush of warmth spreading up to his cheeks because the memory of him piling it at the chaser before he went to his classes last evening was too fresh still.
Just enough, he had thought like he wasn’t, in fact, hoping.
Hoping that it wouldn’t be a one-time thing.
Jaeyun’s fingers fumbled once at the wallet before he forced them steady. He didn’t let himself look at you while he did it; if he looked, he’d lose the last clean thread of control he had left, and so, he merely tore the foil, the sound too loud in the quiet room, and the practical motions that followed felt like an anchor — something procedural to keep him from drowning in the fact that you were watching.
He climbed back onto the mattress, moving slowly, knees sinking into the sheets between your thighs. The bed dipped under his weight, and you shifted automatically to make space for him, your body already well known in the shape of him.
Jaeyun paused above you.
Water still clung to your hair, darkening the strands where they stuck to your neck. Your skin gleamed in the soft light — warm, flushed, kissed by steam and morning and the evidence of him. You looked up at him with your mouth slightly parted, breath uneven, eyes steady and it hit him so hard it almost made him gentle to the point of breaking.
“Princess,” he said, but if anything, you reached up, fingers catching at the back of his neck — not pulling him down, only holding him there — close enough to feel your breath on his mouth. Close enough that he couldn’t lie to himself about how much he wanted it.
Jaeyun lowered his forehead to yours and breathed once, then twice, as if he was counting himself into calm.
“Tell me if—”
“I know,” you cut, and he snorted at that, his hands finding your thighs, and spreading there with care — measuring you, reading you, bracing you the way he always did when something mattered and he couldn’t afford to do it wrong.
He pulled in slowly, pausing each time your breath changed. Waiting when your fingers tightened in his hair. Listening like your body was the only language he trusted.
“Okay?” he murmured against your mouth.
“Okay.”
Jaeyun exhaled, giving himself a moment before he shifted his weight and settled in deeper.
You made a small sound at that, and Jaeyun halted — caught mid-motion as his eyes stayed on your face, searching for the smallest crack of discomfort, for anything he might have missed and could never forgive himself for.
“Talk to me, Princess,” he said. “Is it too much?”
“No,” you whispered. “It’s — good.”
That answer landed somewhere under his ribs and stayed.
Jaeyun’s eyes shut for a beat. And when he opened them again, he looked wrecked in the quietest way.
He kissed you once more, slower, lingering at the corner of your mouth, your cheek, beneath your jaw — mapping comfort into you the way he mapped calm into circuits, the way he tried to fix the world when it was too big.
And then he moved again, careful and deliberate, letting the moment become real one breath at a time.
The sheets gathered under your fingers. The room narrowed to heat and the sound of his name caught in your throat. Jaeyun held you like he could keep you safe simply by refusing to rush, like tenderness was the only rule he needed now.
“Look at me,” he whispered, and you did, blinking under the morning light and making him swallow, his chest swelling then, big enough to break open with love for you. And perhaps, you had felt it too — heard it in his voice, this sickening desperation, because your hands found his face, cupping it with a tenderness that didn’t match the way he was burying deep inside of you, his tip forming an eminence on the lower part of your belly as he worked on you with slow, long thrusts, and making you come in the morning haze.
Jaeyun collapsed beside you, his back sinking into the mattress as you followed rolling so you rested over his chest.
“Always,” you whispered, the word coming so suddenly, Jaeyun blinked down at you, his head rolling so he could search your face, confused if he had asked you something in his own haze. But sunlight picked strands of your hair, reflected through your damp skin. And he couldn’t make sense of anything.
“What?”
“I’m always okay when I’m with you,” you said.
He knew that he shouldn’t — but Jaeyun felt so right about it.
He felt so right when you called him Sunday afternoon, a tiny can you help me with something? rolling from your tongue and making him sprint to your place, being greeted with you already in your lingerie and you didn’t lie — you had no bad pairs.
When he brought you down onto the bed, he didn’t even care about taking it out of you; his fingers merely reached in between your thighs, holding the piece as he slid inside of you.
He didn’t know then, if his hands were still doing their job or if they’d defected. If he was still keeping you safe — or if he’d finally started touching you like he’d wanted to for years, and breaking one more rule.
But as he held you, listening to you breathe quickening and setting against the curve of his neck, he couldn’t make himself care.
Again.
RULE #3: DO NOT BE POSSESSIVE
I’m her best friend. I always have been. That doesn’t give me the right to be possessive. If I can’t be calm about her, I at least have to be kind. If I touch her, it has to feel like a question she can stop — not a claim. And if someday she chooses someone else, I have to accept it. I have to accept it like it won’t split me in half.
Jaeyun woke to movement.
Not the slow, sleep-warm kind he’d grown used to in the past weeks, but something quicker — restless. Drawers scraped open and knocked shut again in the same nervous motion; fabric whispered against fabric, and hangers clacked as they were shoved aside.
He didn’t open his eyes — not yet. He listened to you instead: your bare feet skimming the floor, the breath you kept trying to hush, the tiny hitch of frustration when something wasn’t unfolding the way you needed it to.
And that — that was what pulled his eyes open at last. You sounded wound tight with it, and Jaeyun couldn’t stand the idea of you being anything but fine.
You were half-dressed — shorts on, bra, hair still messy in the way only the mornings after managed, the frizz denoting the number of times he had made you come the night before, arching and pushing your head against the sheets — one of his t-shirts clutched in your hands like it belonged to you more than it belonged to him.
“What—”
You looked over your shoulder at him, guilty only for the fraction of a second it took before your face rearranged into something else.
“Sorry,” you whispered. “I’m late.”
Jaeyun pushed himself up on his elbows, the sheets slipping down his waist. He blinked slowly, trying to coax his mind into one piece through the morning haze.
“Late for what?” he asked — voice rough with sleep and something worse.
“My exam,” you said, already turning and moving another hanger. This time you pulled a blue plaid shirt free — the kind you’d been loving to borrow and make him come to collect it himself, your scent worked into the fabric like a quiet claim disguised as comfort.
“You’re stealing that,” he said.
You didn’t even bother to look guilty. “Borrowing.”
“My wardrobe is becoming empty.”
“And yet,” you said, turning to him with that familiar tilt of your mouth, “you really don’t hate it.”
Jaeyun didn’t answer. He merely watched as you stepped in close again, stealing the air from between you, as you pressed a kiss to his mouth — soft, swift, like a blessing you left behind on purpose.
And the second you pulled away, he moved. Jeans in his fists, he dragged them on as he went, stumbling through the doorway — desperate to be the first thing at your heels.
He caught you at the exact moment his roommates did — both of them lingering in the living room, their backpacks slung over one shoulder, caught in their coffee-stained routines — until the second they saw you and stopped like they’d walked into an invisible wall.
Sunghoon’s gaze went straight to the shirt.
Then to Jaeyun.
Then back to you, his mouth twitching like he was trying not to smile.
Jongseong’s eyebrows lifted, slow and serene — the kind of calm that only existed because he liked chaos best when it belonged to someone else.
“Morning,” Jongseong said.
“Morning,” you replied — too bright. “I’m late.”
“Exam?” Jongseong offered, easing into conversation the way he always did: polite, steady, giving everyone an out.
Jaeyun cleared his throat. “She’s late.”
“I am late,” you echoed, pointing at him like it was somehow his fault you’d woken up tangled in his sheets instead of your own — in a room with no alarm clock at all, because Jaeyun despised morning obligations. “But yes.”
You crouched by the door, fingers quick on your laces, and slipping your shoes on.
Sunghoon’s eyes tracked you the whole time, amusement sharpening at the edges of his expression as Jongseong, bless him, kept the conversation where it belonged — safe, ordinary.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Thank you,” you chirped, already halfway upright again. “Do you have exams too?”
“We’re finishing our exams too,” Sunghoon said. “We should go out after. Celebrate.”
Jaeyun’s jaw worked, like he was chewing down whatever sound wanted to come out of him.
“Arcano?” you asked, and Jongseong’s expression tightened into immediate refusal. He despised the bar, convinced it was what got him hospitalized during his first semester. “I know it’s terrible, but Yun has classes until late tonight — it’s the most reasonable for him.”
For a moment, the room went strangely quiet.
Jaeyun’s gaze found yours and held, warmth rising in him — quiet, disarming — and he went still with it, not knowing where to put the feeling. His mouth parted on a reflex, then he swallowed it back.
Jongseong’s eyes flicked to Jaeyun, then back to you.
“Fine,” he said at last. “But if anyone ends up in the ER again, I’m haunting all of you.”
“That’s fair,” Sunghoon said.
“You don’t have to—” Jaeyun began.
“I — we want to,” you cut in, the words coming as gentle as it was final before you stood and took the knob. “Text me the time!”
You slipped out with a bright, hurried smile, the borrowed shirt hanging off you like a secret, and making Jaeyun step forward, holding the door open so he could stand in the doorway, lingering in the shape of you leaving, and the way you’d arranged the world so he could follow.
When Jaeyun finally clicked the door shut, silence filled the hallway for exactly two seconds before Sunghoon whistled.
“So,” he began, but Jaeyun didn’t look at him; his gaze stayed on the closed door. “Friends-with-benefits?”
Jaeyun’s jaw flexed. “Don’t.”
“Oh, it is that.”
“It’s not—” Jaeyun started, pushing his hair back off his forehead before he turned to his roommates. “I mean, I don’t know! We haven’t talked about it.”
“But you should,” Jongseong said, his voice neutral enough for Jaeyun not to hear the warning it carried until the air in the room shifted.
“Baekhyeon talked to me yesterday,” Sunghoon said.
“What?” Jaeyun asked, more as a reflex than in fact, understanding what it meant. “Why?”
Sunghoon’s gaze flicked to the door before it moved to Jongseong. And Jaeyun didn’t need anyone to spell it out — his roommates had already talked about this when he wasn’t there.
“He wanted to ask about her,” Sunghoon said. “He didn’t come in aggressive — just pathetic.”
Jongseong’s mouth flattened. “Careful.”
“I’m not being cruel,” Sunghoon replied. “I’m telling the vibe. He was clearly bothered, like he knew what he’s doing was humiliating.”
“What did he say?” Jaeyun asked, his voice warped to his own ears. “Exactly.”
“That was it,” Sunghoon said. “He just asked if I’d been seeing her around.”
He paused.
“And if she was with someone else.”
Jongseong’s eyes cut to Jaeyun, concern flashing there before he forced his expression back into stillness.
“And?” Jaeyun asked.
Sunghoon’s mouth twitched. “I am not stupid, I didn’t say you both have been acting like bunnies over the past few weeks.”
“Do you think she told him something?”
“No,” Sunghoon cut. “That’s the thing — I think he has been trying to contact her, but she has been ignoring him.”
And suddenly, it made sense — all those times he’d watched you skim your phone, thumb hovering over the screen, before you set it aside and you looked back at him, a smile forced into place.
God — he’d been so silly for overlooking it.
“He broke up with her,” Jaeyun said.
“We are not telling you this to make you stressed,” Jongseong cut in. “We are just telling you so you can decide — this thing of yours is working for now, and I am glad for you — she apparently doesn’t want Baekhyeon back, which is great, but it might be someone else someday, and you will have to decide if you are okay with having only a part of her again.”
The apartment fell silent at this, and only then did Jaeyun notice how fast his heart was beating. It hummed against his ears, so loud he couldn’t even think.
When you were both younger — ten, maybe eleven — you had camped in your parents’ garden, your backs side by side on a too-thin blanket and a tent that never stopped letting the wind in. The world had been so silent, you’d whispered that it felt like there were only the two of you in the world, wouldn’t it be nice? You had asked. Back then, he’d rolled his eyes and said something dumb to make you grin, too young to consider anything.
Now, in his hallway with your perfume still on his skin and your borrowed shirt still bright in his mind, he understood what you’d meant. It would be so nice — so nice — if the world really could narrow down to just the two of you, and choosing you didn’t mean risking everything else. And he didn’t know whether that thought made him in love or made him dangerous.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
By the time Jaeyun arrived at Arcano, you were already on the dance floor with Jongseong and Sunghoon.
And it was stupid, honestly, how whenever he thought he was getting used to your existence, you managed to surprise him — newly lit, newly impossible — you stood between his roommates, eyes sparkling, arms half around Sunghoon’s shoulders as you both shouted the lyrics of a song that was too loud and too familiar, and Sunghoon was singing like he meant it, even if he was off-key on purpose. Jongseong yelled the chorus at your back, his face turned upwards as if the ceiling had personally offended him.
Arcano was the same as it had always been — red bulbs that made everyone look like a rumor, sticky floors that clung to the soles of your shoes like the place didn’t want anyone leaving sober, and bass so loud it turned thought into vibration. The air smelled like cheap liquor and perfume and sweat and the faint bite of citrus from a just-spilled drink.
And it’s too much — everything was too much.
But the moment he stepped further, you turned to him — not searching, but sure — as though you knew he was going to be standing there.
Gravity, he thought.
He moved through the bodies like he’d done it a hundred times — shoulders angled, hands careful, a quiet apology here and there, never shoving, never rushing. The bass beat against his ribs and still he stayed steady, eyes on you the whole time as if the rest of the room was just static.
You didn’t meet him halfway — you never did — you stayed where you were, your body turned subtly toward him, and only when he got close enough, your hand lifted, fingers finding his. And the moment you held him, the noise of Arcano seemed to dull around the edges, like the room had agreed to give you a fraction of quiet.
His hand was cold while yours was warm, and a shiver danced across you, strong enough to make your shoulders tremble.
And God — he wanted to kiss it.
You had changed since the morning, trading the shorts and t-shirt for a white dress, but his shirt remained, draped around your shoulders, and making his breath catch — he tightened his grip only enough to be sure you felt him back.
“Hi,” you said, loud enough to be heard over the music, but soft in the way you always became with him.
“Hi,” he replied.
“Look who finally decided to show up,” Sunghoon shouted. “We were about to file a missing person report.”
Jaeyun huffed a breath that almost counted as a laugh. He had gone to the apartment after his classes to drop off his backpack, but he didn’t feel like explaining, not when you were squeezing his hand — small, and private.
“Did you eat?” you asked, and Jaeyun felt the absurd tenderness of it. The fact that you could be in a bar, sweating and laughing and alive, and still your first instinct with him was care.
“Yes,” he lied automatically.
Your eyes narrowed. “Yun.”
“I ate.”
“You ate what?” you asked, and Jaeyun opened his mouth, but his words stalled, and so he closed it again.
“He didn’t eat,” Jongseong said.
“He did that thing where he decides worrying is a food group,” Sunghoon agreed.
Jaeyun’s jaw flexed, but his hand stayed linked with yours like the connection mattered more than winning. “I’m fine.”
You didn’t argue, or at least, not right away. You just watched him for a second, your expression shifting into something softer and knowing, like you could see through him even in red light and bass.
“I am getting you something,” you said. “Stay here — don’t wander.”
Sunghoon leaned in. “He literally can’t. He’s on a leash.”
Jongseong barked a laugh. “Be nice.”
Jaeyun opened his mouth to protest, but you were already gone — your smile tossed back at him before you turned toward the bar and leaving him to stand there, eyes following, and tracking the small obstacles: the drunk guy who swayed too wide, the table edge that could catch your hip, the slick patch of floor near the booths. All the little risks the world liked to place in your path, as if daring him not to rush up and fix it before it could hurt you.
You barely had reached the counter when he approached you.
For a moment, Jaeyun thought it was a guy merely trying his luck with you, but then he shifted, red light catching on his features and Jaeyun recognized him immediately.
Baekhyeon.
Your body stiffened as he leaned in, his mouth close to your ear for a moment before you shifted sideways, trying to create space. Jaeyun couldn’t hear the words leaving your mouth, but your body was speaking loudly enough: no.
Yet Baekhyeon didn’t step back; when you seemed to be about to leave, he reached out, his hand closing around your wrist, and forcing you to stay.
Jaeyun didn’t even think, Sunghoon shouted something behind him, but he was already moving, shoving through people, and cutting a direct line toward you.
“Just listen.” Jaeyun heard Baekhyeon say, his grip still on you. “Just for a second.”
“I said no,” you said. “Let go—”
“Let her go.”
Baekhyeon turned at the sound of his voice, eyes unfocused and caught in that ugly space between sober and drunk. For a second he only stared, his brain having to wade through the noise to understand what he was seeing. But then, something in his face tightened, reading the truth between the lines and understanding, all at once, that you weren’t alone here. That you weren’t waiting to be won back. That whatever space he thought he still had in your life had been filled.
Or worse — that it never existed at all.
Jaeyun inhaled, his chest filling with a silly compassion toward Baekhyeon because he, too, wouldn’t know what to do if he ever found himself being dismissed from your life like this, but then Baekhyeon’s hand tightened on your wrist, making your fingers contract in pain, and Jaeyun exhaled, letting it all go.
He would crawl through hell, cut himself open until his body had become numb to pain, but Jaeyun surely would never hurt you — never.
“Let her go,” Jaeyun repeated.
Baekhyeon’s laugh echoed oddly loud in Arcano’s air.
“Here he is,” he said. “Always showing up like a good little — what is it? Lap dog?”
Jaeyun’s jaw flexed once. He’d been called worse — he could take worse — but then Baekhyeon’s gaze slid over you again, slow and mean, taking in your dress, your flushed cheeks, the smile you’d been wearing five minutes ago like it was a crime, and Jaeyun couldn’t stand it.
He stepped forward.
“Baekhyeon,” Jaeyun warned, and the other released your wrist, flicking his hand in a dismissive gesture as he looked around the bar.
For a moment, Jaeyun believed Baekhyeon had given up, putting an end to it, but then he turned back at you again, eyes brighter than ever.
“Tell me,” he said, loud enough that people nearby started to glance. “Did you ever actually care about me? Or was I just—”
He looked at Jaeyun.
“—filling time until your lap dog finally got his reward?”
Jaeyun didn’t decide to shove him — he didn’t plan it — his body merely moved like it had been waiting for permission from something older than thought.
His hands drove into Baekhyeon’s chest, making him stumble back, hard, and knocking into someone behind him.
Drink spilled onto the floor, and the scent of it rose almost immediately — sharp citrus and cheap sugar, muddled by the stale sweetness already living in the boards. It cut through the sweat and perfume for half a second, bright as a peel torn open, before the warmth of the room swallowed it again and left only the sour bite of liquor drying in the air.
“What the fuck—?” Baekhyeon barked.
“Yun,” you called, but it was already too late.
Baekhyeon launched himself at Jaeyun, his knuckles across Jaeyun’s cheekbone with a hot, skidding sting.
For a beat, the impact didn’t hurt the way it should’ve — it was just information — pressure, heat, the metallic taste of adrenaline flooding his mouth.
But then, something in him snapped.
The image of Baekhyeon’s hand around your wrist flashed behind his eyes like a match struck in dry tinder, and Jaeyun moved before his mind could catch up.
His fist drove forward on instinct, a short, brutal arc — no finesse, no warning — just the need to hit back, to end it, to make Baekhyeon understand with his body what his brain refused to learn.
The punch connected.
Jaeyun felt it in his knuckles, in the jolt up his arm, in the startled give of flesh beneath bone — and the sound that left Baekhyeon was small, shocked, as if he hadn’t expected consequences to be real. Jaeyun didn’t wait to see what it did to his face. He only stepped in closer and did it again.
Baekhyeon fell on the dirty floor, Jaeyun above him, fist in the middle of another throw, when someone hooked an arm around Jaeyun’s chest from behind and hauled him up.
“Stop it,” Jongseong snapped. “You’re going to ruin your damn face.”
But Jaeyun barely heard him. He was still leaning forward, still straining toward the floor like if he just landed one more hit, the feeling in his chest would finally loosen, and make sense.
Jongseong tightened his hold, bracing his weight behind Jaeyun’s back like an anchor.
“Yun,” you called.
Your voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
Jaeyun froze like you’d put a hand straight on his spine. His fist hovered, trembling with leftover momentum, and then your hands were on his face — warm palms cupping his jaw, thumbs brushing his cheekbones as if you could physically pull him back into himself.
“Yun,” you said again, closer now, eyes searching his like you were trying to find the part of him that still knew you.
And just like that, the fight drained out of him in a shuddering rush. His shoulders sagged. His breath broke. He let Jongseong hold him up for a second longer than he should’ve needed before he leaned on your touch.
“Princess, I—”
“Come with me,” you said. “Can you?”
For a second, Jaeyun couldn’t find the shape of an answer. Not because he didn’t have one — but because he had too many, a lifetime of yeses he’d never said out loud. His body was still buzzing with violence, his knuckles still singing, but your hands on his face made the world narrow into something he could survive. You were asking like it was a choice, like he was a person with options, when the truth was simpler than that: he had been following you since he was old enough to recognize your voice in a crowd. Since gardens and tents and school hallways. Since the first time you turned and expected him to be there — and he was.
“Yes,” he breathed, and the word came out rough, almost broken with how easy it was. Because you could’ve asked him to walk through fire and he would’ve stepped forward without thinking, just because you were the place his instinct went when the world got sharp. His hand rose, uncertain at first, then settled at your wrist like a question he’d spend his whole life answering the same way.
Always.
You looked past him to Jongseong and nodded, a quiet reassurance, and Jongseong finally released Jaeyun.
“Come,” you said, your fingers slipping into his.
˖ ⟡ ݁˖
Arcano’s neon shrank behind you with every step, its red glow thinning into something distant and irrelevant, but Jaeyun’s body hadn’t gotten the memo yet. The adrenaline still sat high in his chest, making his breath feel too big for his lungs, his heart beating like it was trying to outrun what had happened. He kept swallowing like he could force it down.
You didn’t talk much at first. You didn’t need to. You just walked — your fingers laced through his.
And every time his grip tightened without meaning to, you squeezed back once, small and reassuring. It’s okay. I’m here.
The street was cooler than it had any right to be, so closer to the summer, late-night air cutting cleanly through the smell of booze still clinging to him. The city sounded normal — cars passing, a laugh from someone’s balcony, a distant siren that didn’t belong to you. It was strange, how quickly the world returned to ordinary after a fight. As if nothing could be important for more than a few minutes.
Jaeyun glanced at you once, then again.
You looked furious in a contained way, like your anger had somewhere to go now that you’d gotten him out. Your mouth was set, your brow faintly pinched. Your thumb brushed the side of his hand, absent and grounding, like you couldn’t help checking he was still there.
Jaeyun’s chest tightened.
He wanted to say something useful. He wanted to apologize in a way that would actually fix it. But every sentence he tried to build collapsed into the same thing: I saw him touch you and I lost my mind.
Instead, he stayed quiet and let you lead.
You pushed the code into the keypad of your door with muscle memory, the little beep sounding too loud in the stairwell before it buzzed open and revealed your apartment.
Quiet in the specific way your place always was — soft, contained, familiar, smelling like clean laundry, faint florals, the lived-in warmth of your routines. The small lamp near your bed cast a gentle yellow glow that made everything look calmer than it felt. Books stacked neatly where they always were. A mug by the sink. A blanket folded too precisely at the end of the bed like you’d been trying to keep your life in order by force.
“Shoes,” you remembered. “Then sit by the counter.”
Jaeyun did as you said, slipping out of his shoes before he went to your counter and sat down on a chair, his hands on his thighs, and palms down, like he was trying to behave as you rummaged around — drawers, cabinet, a small basket you moved too roughly — the soft clack of objects knocking together filling the silence between you.
“First aid,” you muttered. “I know I have it.”
“Princess,” he said quietly.
“Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t going—” he began, but stopped, suddenly understanding. You weren’t being dramatic, but practical, anchoring the night into tasks: disinfectant, gauze, bandage. The same way he always did when his emotions got too big to hold comfortably.
You found the kit with a little gasp before you crossed back to him and set it on the table with a soft thud, kneeling slightly so you could see him properly.
“Give me your hand,” you said.
Jaeyun hesitated for a fraction of a second — then extended it.
Your hand closed around his, gently turning it over in the light, and beneath this sudden clarity, you frowned, eyebrows knitted, lips pressing into a thin line. The wounds were worse than it seemed. There was a cut over his fingers, bleeding as a darker bruise spread over. You reached for them, the tips of your fingers wandering through his skin as if you could erase them with your bare touch.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered.
Jaeyun went still, your words reaching past the cuts and hitting something deeper.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t say you’re sorry for that.”
“It’s my fault—” you started.
“No,” Jaeyun cut in. “No. He did that. Not you.”
You turned to the aid kit on the kitchen counter, dropping your gaze like you could hide behind the small, practical motions of it — like if you focused hard enough on gauze and antiseptic, he wouldn’t see the way your eyes had gone wet. But Jaeyun did. He always did, in the quiet, unfair way he noticed everything about you.
“I hate that you got hurt because of me,” you said.
Something in Jaeyun’s chest tightened — sharp and aching.
He leaned forward in the chair before he fully knew he was doing it, his uninjured hand sliding to your wrist, fingers curling gently around your skin as he pulled you onto his lap.
The motion was clumsy with the chair and the counter and the first aid kit half-open, but the moment you settled, your thighs bracketing his hips, the world narrowed into something that made painful sense.
His hands came up to your face, palms cupping your cheeks as his thumbs brushed along your cheekbones, cleaning your tears like he had done when he got you both grounded at twelve, and like he’d done again years later, on the night you crashed your father’s car — your hands shaking on his wrists, as he told you to breathe.
He made you look at him.
Your eyes were wet and bright, with tears, the shine gathering at the lower lid until it spilled and traced down your cheek, and his chest ached at that low instinct already moving with the need to make it better.
“Don’t take the blame,” he said. “I can’t stand it when you do that.”
Your breath hitched.
“It wasn’t your fault — he grabbed you and said those things. He—” Jaeyun’s throat worked, and for a second his voice broke. “I heard the way he talked to you, and I didn’t know how to be calm about it. If there’s someone to blame here, it isn’t you. It’s me.”
You stared at him for a second before your hands lifted, your fingers finding and resting at his wrists as they always had.
“Yun,” you whispered.
Jaeyun’s breath shuddered out, and he leaned forward without thinking.
You met him halfway.
Your kiss was soft at first — careful, like checking whether he was still Jaeyun, whether you were still you. Like asking permission in the only language that didn’t require words.
But Jaeyun answered too eagerly.
His grip tightened at your cheeks, desperately — like he needed the proof of you. His mouth moved against yours with a yearning that felt out of proportion to the moment, and he hated himself for it even as he did it.
He kissed you like he was still at Arcano.
Like he was still shaking.
Like the only way to stop the night from replaying was to overwrite it with you.
This wasn’t protection anymore. It was possession.
He wanted proof that you were still here.
Your hands slid into his t-shirt, fingers curling at the thin material the way they always did when you wanted him close, and it was enough to steal a sound from him — quiet, and yet completely wrecked — his arms slipped, and tightened around your waist, pulling you nearer until there was no space left to misunderstand.
“I’ve been trying to be good. I keep failing when it’s you,” he heard himself say. “I don’t know how to be only your friend anymore.”
There was a lost moment — a second where none of you moved, and Jaeyun thought that he finally did it — he had finally ruined the friendship, but then, you leaned in again, lips on his as your knees tightening around his hips, your weight settling into him like you’d chosen the place on purpose.
And it made him exhale like relief.
His uninjured hand slid along your side, finding you. The curve of your waist. The line of your ribs. The warmth of you under your dress like a living proof he couldn’t talk himself out of. He paused every time your breath changed, as if he was listening for the smallest no, for any flicker of doubt.
But you didn’t give him one. Instead, you tipped your forehead to his, noses brushing, and whispered his name in that soft, wrecked way that always pulled something honest out of him.
“Tell me what you want,” he murmured, the words rough around the edges. “Tell me and I—”
You kissed him before he could finish, fingers threading into his hair, holding him so close, he not only heard the next word, but felt them. “You.”
Jaeyun’s throat worked.
He lifted you — not smoothly, not perfectly, because the chair was in the way and the table was too close and the first aid kit lay open like a dirty evidence — but he did it anyway, with a gentleness that didn’t match the violence still humming under his skin. He carried you those few steps like it mattered, like the distance between your kitchen and your bed was a threshold he needed to cross carefully.
When he set you down, you caught the back of his t-shirt and pulled him after you. His restraint cracked in the smallest way — enough to let a kiss turn deeper, enough to let want show itself without becoming rough.
He braced his weight so he wouldn’t crush you, forearms on either side of your shoulders, head dipping until his mouth you again, again and again, pressing kisses along your cheek, your throat, the place beneath your ear that always made your breath hitch and he made a question of always finding it. His hand slid down your arm to your fingers, lacing them together above your head for a moment like a question, like an offering, and when you squeezed back, he let himself believe you.
His shirt went first, easing off your shoulders like a last, familiar layer — then your dress, and then your bra, quietly as the breath you released when he leaned in again and kissed the tip of your breasts, one at a time before he moved to your sternum, your stomach — taking in every piece of your skin in between his lips.
When he reached your panties, he didn’t care about taking them off; he merely kissed you over them, the thin lace not doing much to dull the feel of his mouth over your cunt and making you shiver, hands coming to his hair and threading almost bitterly, but if anything, he hummed, giving you another kiss and then, another. Open mouthed and tongue sneaking out every now and then to bump against your covered clit, and making you squirm in his hands, head thrown back, and sliding away a bit.
He pulled you into him, hands grabbing at your thighs so he could push his face back between them, licking a flat, slow stripe over your cunt. The lace did nothing to hold your fluid this time, and he tasted you through, his eyes closing almost instinctively to savor it better.
“You taste so good,” he couldn’t help but say. “So fucking good.”
A grin broke across your face — bright, and disarming — and Jaeyun forced his arms to push him up, kissing it like he could keep it there, among your already flushed cheeks, and your hair messy against the sheets because God — he was so in love with you.
“Princess,” he called, not really sure if he had something to say. But you hummed at him anyway, hands reaching for the hem of his t-shirt, and slipping your fingers underneath it.
His abdomen tensed and contracted as you wandered through, your trembling fingertips grazing through the lines long memorized, and pushing the piece up and up, until he had no other option but to lift his arms and help you take it off.
Jaeyun groaned as you moved to his belt, unbuckling it with the same ease you unzipped his jeans.
“Shit,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Condoms,” he whispered. “I — we used the last one yesterday. I was going to buy after Arcano.”
“That’s okay.”
It was his turn to halt, your words catching somewhere between sound and meaning. “What?”
“That’s okay,” you repeated, and when he didn’t move, you arched up beneath him, lips finding his ear. “I am saying that you can hit it raw, Yun.”
He made a sound — small and involuntary — the kind of honest noise his body made when his mind was still trying to pretend it had control.
You blinked up at him for half a second — then a laugh slipped out of you, warm and bright, the exact laugh you’d always used to turn moments into something survivable. Not mocking. Just delighted, but Jaeyun’s face heated immediately, color climbing up his neck.
“Don’t,” he managed, as if the word could stop you from seeing him like this — undone by you, made soft by a sentence and the brush of your mouth near his ear.
But you only smiled wider, eyes shining with the kind of fondness that hurt.
And Jaeyun — God, Jaeyun — looked at you like he didn’t know what to do with how much he felt. Like love had taken up residence in him years ago and never once paid rent, and now it was everywhere: in his breath, in the way his hand hovered and then settled, careful, as if touching you was a question he wanted to keep asking for the rest of his life.
He exhaled, a little shaky. Then, because he couldn’t help it — because you were laughing and alive beneath him, and he was hopeless — his mouth twitched.
“You’re going to be the death of me, Princess,” he whispered, the words rough with tenderness.
You shook your head, not quite dismissively, but more like you couldn’t believe how silly he was — how silly he was for you.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Hips up, babe,” he instructed, and you met him there, your body moving on a quiet arch, as you pushed at your feet, and allowed him to curl his fingers at the band of your panties, sliding them away.
His attention snapped back to you immediately — hands returning to your inner thigh, your calves, taking over your ankles, and pulling you toward him.
You shivered as he pushed himself inside of you, your fingers digging into his back as your lips parted on a quiet moan that he made up for you — Jaeyun simply not being able to be quiet at the feeling of you around him with no limitation and groaning loudly.
Jaeyun never thought he would be the type of guy to be emotional over taking a girl without a condom, but it was you with him, and when he started moving again, it was slow and deep, each thrust deliberate as if he wanted to memorize every sound you made, every way your body responded to his. The friction was different, he could feel every ridge, every pulse of you around. And it was almost too much, the intimacy of it making his chest tight with emotion he couldn’t name.
Jaeyun hissed, looking down between your bodies, eyes all warm and glazed as he watched how you fit together for a quiet moment before his forehead dipped and rested against your shoulder, his breathing uneven, as if he was trying to keep the night from turning reckless again.
He was so careful with you it felt like devotion.
But then, you drew him closer — insistent — and he finally let his body answer with the same honesty his voice had tried to avoid. Jaeyun kissed you until you tasted like him. Until your hands clung. Until the space between your bodies stopped feeling like a rule and started feeling like a lie. Each thrust of his hips pronounced with a wet clash, and the sound of your headboard hitting the wall.
And it was too much, honestly — you were too much.
When you came, he followed — quietly, inevitably, his breath breaking as if your body had taken his and led it somewhere he’d never learned to survive. Yet still, he didn’t punish you; he stayed close, slowly towing your climaxes for as long as he could. And when he finally stilled, he pulled back with a tenderness that looked almost like it broke him to let you go.
Jaeyun eased down and let his head rest against your lower stomach, breathing there for a second — then another — almost as if his lungs needed to relearn how to work. Your hand found him, threading into his hair, fingers combing gently until his face softened and his eyes fell shut. And, for the first time all night, his body stopped bracing.
RULE #4: DO NOT LET HER KNOW YOUR TRUE FEELINGS
If I say it out loud, I make it her problem. I put something heavy in her hands when she never asked to carry me. And I’m afraid — plain and simple — that if she knows, everything changes. And if everything changes, she might step back. She might leave. I can survive wanting her. I can survive swallowing it. I can’t survive losing her. So I’ll keep it useful: jokes, rides home, answers at 2 a.m., the kind of loyalty that looks harmless from the outside. I won’t say I love her. I won’t say I’ve always loved her. I won’t turn our friendship into a question she has to solve.
Jaeyun stayed where he was a little longer than he ought to have, his palms splayed at your sides, lips parted against the skin of your stomach as he pressed a kiss there, and then, at your hips, your thighs, covering all the way to your knees and back up again.
You shivered as he nipped at the tender skin just inside your hip, your fingers tightening in his hair for a moment before you eased again — slow, and unconsciously, keeping time with your breath.
“Jaeyun,” you whispered, and perhaps it had been the way your breath changed then, caught on something that he couldn’t quite hear, but his heart wavered in his chest.
He knew you enough to know it was the beginning of a confession. He just didn’t know what kind. And that was what scared him: not the truth itself, but the possibility of it. That you might be about to ask for distance. That you might be about to reach for a word that would make him either the safest thing in your life — or the mistake.
“Could you turn the lights off?” you asked.
It could have sounded silly then. But it was something old between you — something you’d done as kids when you needed to confess something embarrassing, something heavy. As if darkness could make secrets smaller. As if not seeing each other’s faces could make bravery easier.
Jaeyun propped himself up, knees pressed against your mattress as he reached for your lampshade and turned it off.
The room darkened instantly, but not completely — not with your curtains still open and the city’s light streaming in, painting the walls in soft silver and distant neon, scattering stripes on your sheets.
Jaeyun hadn’t noticed how still you both had become until a car passed outside, its tires whispering over the asphalt before it was gone, and the room held onto the quiet that followed, too complete, too attentive.
The sheets rustled softly as Jaeyun lay back down beside you, not touching you — not yet. He just stayed close enough that when you turned to him, he could feel you through the dark, but then you reached for his hand, interlacing your fingers as you had done when you were nine and whispering that you’d heard your parents arguing and didn’t know where to put the feeling, you were thirteen and admitting you were terrified that one day you’d grow up and he wouldn’t be yours to keep.
“Talk to me, Princess,” he whispered.
“Baekhyeon wasn’t wrong,” you said, the words scattering through the space of your bodies so quickly, Jaeyun took a moment to catch it all, and when he did, he went very still, eyes sharpening on your face.
“Not about you,” you added. “But about me — he wasn’t wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember my first date?” you asked.
Jaeyun let out a breath that was almost a laugh, except it didn’t contain humor. Of course he remembered. He remembered the outfit. He remembered your perfume. He remembered how a strand of hair didn’t quite stay on your pins and he kept fixing it while you paced through your room. He remembered how his fingers lingered there for one last time before you slipped through the door.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “I remember.”
You stared at your hands for a beat, thumb brushing against his knuckles.
“I thought you would tell me not to go,” you admitted. “But you didn’t, and so I went, and through the whole day I kept thinking oh, it would have been so much better if Yun was here,”
“The same thing happened with Baekhyeon — I kept wishing you were there with me instead, and I thought it was just because you’re my best friend and everything is funnier when it’s just us. I thought it was just because I feel safer when I’m with you, but—” you paused. “But through these last weeks, I just realized that I truly wished you had asked me to stay.”
Nothing in the room moved, but something in him did, his internal footing slipping, the world turning unstable while his body stayed perfectly still beside you.
You weren’t saying I wanted you to forbid me. But I wanted you to want me enough to risk it.
Jaeyun’s mouth parted, but his body acted like it was still losing its footing. His breath snagging, throat tightening, the words jamming as if speech required solid ground he no longer had. And in the middle of his silence, you created your own answer.
“Never mind, I just—” you began, slipping from his touch and slipping away, but he caught you then, fingers closing around yours again and keeping you there.
“I’ve wanted to tell you to stay a thousand times.”
Your breath caught at his words, your gaze lifting to his and holding, steady and unblinking, the kind of eye contact that made everything feel suddenly too honest to survive. His grip tightened on your fingers, then gentled again, careful not to turn it into a claim — only a question he was asking with his whole body.
“I wanted to,” he said. “When you had that first date. When you called me after and tried to laugh about it, like it didn’t get under your skin. When you—” His breath caught. “When you started seeing Baekhyeon, when he called when we were together. Every time — every time damn time — I wanted to ask you to stay.”
Jaeyun lifted your joined hands to his face, turning them slightly so the backs of your fingers brushed his cheek.
“But I didn’t,” he whispered. “Because I thought if I told you to stay, that was when I was going to lose you entirely — and you know, Princess, I can handle being your best friend forever. I can handle being the one you call when you’re sad or drunk or mad — even if it’s just for you to leave once the moment passes. I can handle having only parts of you.”
His voice lowered. “But I can’t handle losing you.”
You turned toward him properly then, shifting until your faces were close enough that when you spoke, he didn’t just hear the words that followed, but he felt them.
“I would have stayed,” you said. “Every damn time — I would have stayed.”
Jaeyun made a sound that didn’t belong to him — small and raw — the sentence going straight through his ribs and lodging there.
His grip on your hand tightened — and his forehead dipped toward yours, hovering there as if he didn’t trust the space between you not to change its mind.
“Stay, Princess,” he asked.
“I’m going nowhere.”
FINAL RULE: NO MORE RULES
I wrote rules that were supposed to keep me from ruining us. I thought that if I could define every boundary, I could pretend I could control the outcome. Don’t accept reckless requests. Don’t touch her like I’m owed. Don’t be possessive. Don’t say the words that might make her leave.
A small guide for surviving her without losing her.
But I’m not losing her.
She’s here. She’s not a maybe, not a mistake, not something I have to handle with gloves on. She’s with me — clear-eyed, chosen, real. And for the first time, the future doesn’t feel like a threat I need to solve. It feels like something we’re walking into together.
So this is the last rule: no more rules.
Not because I’ve stopped being careful with her — fuck, I’ll always be careful with her. But because I don’t need rules to keep her close when she’s already choosing to stay. Because I don’t have to hide love inside procedure anymore. Because I can finally stop bracing, and start living in the simplest truth I’ve ever had:
anyways out of spite i will be writing again and heeseung is gonna be apart of it no matter what 🤣🤣 you can’t take heeseung out of enhypen in my world bye
wdym heeseung is gone. wdym they went through iland which was known he was gonna debut. wdym he literally talked about the group and asked us to continue to support. wdym hes going solo and having to leave for it. WHAT DO YOU MEAN??
main fucking vocalist of a group who’s been thriving as 7 leaving on a random ass tuesday? fuck EVERYONE cause wdym this was a long contemplated decision belift?? they had ONE year left on their 7yr contract so what the fuck
synopsis: in which jake sim finally stops letting you run the show—only to prove he’s always known how to handle you.
genre: childhood best friends au
pairing: childhood best friend!jake x bratty!reader
warnings: softdom!jake, bratty!reader, reader is so annoying but jake loves it, cornering, bantering, jake scolds reader often, jake is in loveeee, manhandling, spanking ass + pussy, oral (f.rec), spit play, tit play, unprotected p in v, clit play, biting..i think that’s it??
wc: 16.5k+
a/n: ayeee guess who’s back! this fic won on the poll so here i am delivering. this is also my 3k followers thank you post hehe!! thanks to each and every one of you guys that have been reading and supporting my work 😘 keep an eye out i’ll be putting out another pole soon. as always comments, notes and reblogs are always appreciated! enjoy reading :3
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you and jake sim grew up three houses apart on a street where everybody's moms knew everything and everybody's dads pretended they didn't. you were the loud one—the kid who rang doorbells like you were collecting taxes, who demanded attention with the confidence of someone who'd never been told no.
which you hadn't.
meanwhile jake... poor jake. he was the sweet, soft-spoken boy who trailed after you like a golden retriever with a bowl cut and velcro spiderman sneakers. he always had crumbs on his face, always carried your backpack without being asked, and always—always—laughed at your jokes, even when they weren't funny.
they were rarely funny.
you'd yell his name across the street, and he'd come running. you'd shove the glittery lip gloss you stole from your cousin into his hand and say "hold this," and he would. you'd call him "my assistant" during your bossy childhood games, and he accepted the demotion.
once, you made him cry because he didn't run fast enough during tag. you didn't apologize—instead you loudly declared, "omg, relax, you got tagged ONCE. big deal."
jake sniffled, you stomped away. and five minutes later he followed you again, because that's just how he was.
but somewhere around the end of high school, the world started pulling you in different directions. you were busy being dramatic, discovering tinted lip oils, complaining about your parents rules, and posting instagram stories from the passenger seat of other people's cars.
jake was busy doing things like... assignments. group projects. extracurriculars. things you mockingly called "nerd behavior."
he didn't go out much. he didn't chase chaos. he didn't orbit your life the way he did when you were younger. and you—in a classic act of emotional immaturity—pretended not to care.
at eighteen, you chose a college far away purely because the campus looked "aesthetic in fall," packed up your entire personality into two suitcases, and left without saying a proper goodbye. you waved at jake from the car window as your mom pulled out of the driveway and yelled something ridiculous like:
"don't let anyone bully you except me!"
he laughed. that soft, warm, dimpled laugh that used to follow you everywhere.
and then you were gone.
𓂃
college turned you into an even worse version of yourself—aggressively iced-coffee-dependent, chronically late, allergic to responsibility, and thriving in an environment where chaos was practically currency.
your life became a rotation of parties, spontaneous shopping, soft-launching people you weren't even dating, and pretending every bad decision was "character development."
you went through roommates like seasonal flavors. every semester someone new moved in, and every semester someone new moved out with a complaint that you were "a lot" or "messy" or "kind of terrifying when woken up."
you didn't disagree.
jake became a distant memory, the boy who sometimes liked your posts from an account with a profile picture you swear was five years old. you'd smile for half a second when his username popped up, then go right back to ignoring three overdue essays and online shopping for shoes you absolutely didn't need.
your worlds didn't touch anymore.
until life, rude as always, decided to intervene
it started with your roommate announcing she was "basically moving in" her new boyfriend. you thought she meant he'd be around more. no, he was actually moving in. toothbrush, clothes, gaming chair, ugly LED lights—the whole infestation.
he hogged the bathroom. he cooked shirtless at inappropriate hours. he once ate your leftover pasta and shrugged, "it was mid anyway."
you saw red. you didn't commit a crime, but it was close.
you decided to move out.
your landlord, a man whose personality could best be described as "human expired raisin," decided this was the perfect time to raise your rent by five hundred dollars.
you stared at the email. then you screamed. not a cute scream—a guttural, operatic wail that made the downstairs neighbor bang on their ceiling.
you called your mom, pacing through the disaster zone that was your half-packed room.
"i'm going to die," you said dramatically. "i'm literally going to die. you're going to have to identify my body by my lash extensions."
your mom sighed the sigh of someone who'd raised you for twenty-three years. "sweetheart, calm down—"
"don't tell me to calm down, my life is in ruins. ruins, mother."
"you're not in ruins."
"i'm going to be homeless."
"you're not going to be homeless."
"i'm going to have to live in my car—"
"oh honey," she cut in, "why don't you stay with jake?"
you froze mid-rant. "...jake?" his name unfamiliar on your tongue.
"yes! jake sim! he's back from finishing his degree. he bought a nice apartment downtown. he told his mother he has a spare room."
you stared into space, horrified. "jake sim? bowl-cut jake? used-to-cry-when-i-yelled jake?"
"he didn't cry," she corrected. "he teared up. once."
"mom. be serious."
"i am. you two were inseparable."
"when we were twelve!"
"well, he's always liked you."
"as a person?" you asked skeptically. you seriously doubted that anyone who was sane liked you as a person. yes, you're a lot of things but one thing you definitely are is self aware.
she made a vague noise, you didn't like the noise.
"i'll text his mother," she decided, and you instantly regretted calling her.
two minutes later, your phone buzzed.
mom: jake says you're welcome to stay anytime.
you stared at the text. it felt unreal. absurd. borderline comedic.
but you were desperate. and dramatic. and the universe clearly hated you.
so you said yes. because of course you did.
you packed your things with the confidence of someone who absolutely believed jake sim was still the same soft, shy, easily-managed boy who used to trail after you in elementary school.
you were so, so sure.
and you were so, so wrong.
𓂃
you hype yourself up in the elevator.
it's just jake.you think to yourself, the image of 12-year old him fresh in your mind.
you've known him your whole life. he once cried because you told him clouds were solid and he fell off the playground trying to "sit on one."
you are not nervous. you are annoyed.
annoyed that your lease fell apart. annoyed that your mother thinks you're still friends. annoyed that jake, sweet, soft, bowl-cut jake, is your only housing option unless you want to sleep in your car.
the elevator dings.
you're ready to see scented-candle bachelor hell. dirty laundry. possibly raccoons.
you knock and the door swings open. and your soul leaves your body.
because the man standing there is definitely jake—but upgraded. taller, broader, stupidly handsome, and sporting a smile that used to be pure golden retriever sunshine. except now it's... toned down. slower. like he knows exactly what it does to people.
"hey," he says, his eyes dropping down to take in your form and your hot pink suitcases. "come in."
come in? come in? no shocked gasp? no "wow you're back"? no nervous babbling?
you narrow your eyes suspiciously. "wow. no bowl cut." you admit, not the best choice of first words to say to your childhood best friend who you hadn't seen in years. but it was fitting.
he laughs—actually laughs—and steps aside. and you walk into the biggest personal betrayal of your adult life.
his apartment is spotless.
not "i cleaned because company is coming" clean.
"i am a fully functioning adult who alphabetizes spices" clean.
the air smells like sandalwood and laundry detergent. plants sit by the window like they've never known suffering. there are no pizza boxes, no dirty plates, no gamer chair.
this is not jake's apartment.
"is this staged?" you demand. "did someone professionally sanitize this because you knew i was coming?"
"nope," he says, grabbing one of your suitcases. "i live like this."
you blink owlishly. "on purpose?"
he snorts, looking at you with an unidentifiable expression on his face. "on purpose."
you want to throw something, no, you want to throw up.
but instead, you drop your bag on the couch like an entitled raccoon and flop dramatically across it. "i'm making myself at home."
he glances at your shoes on the carpet. "i can see that."
he takes a seat in the armchair across from you— calm, collected, not even a little frazzled— which is insane, because you're very clearly being a handful on purpose. you call that, asserting dominance. like the old days.
you clear your throat. "so. rules. house agreements. i assume you're gonna ask me to clean something? or, like... wash a dish? or close a cabinet? if so, i'll need written notice."
jake smiles. not the "aww she's being annoying again" smile you expect. no, this one is deeper. amused. knowing.
"sure," he says easily. "we can talk rules."
that throws you off. he's supposed to be flustered, scrambling to keep up. not leading the conversation like he owns the apartment—which, annoying fact, he does.
he leans back, forearms resting casually on his knees. your eyes almost pop out of their sockets when you notice how veiny his hands and arms were.
"okay," he starts, "rent is six-fifty a month. i already talked to your mom about it—she said she'd help out until you get settled again."
you cough on pure embarrassment. "she did what?"
he suppresses a grin. "it was cute, actually. she kept saying, 'jake honey, please don't let her be homeless, she can be... a lot.'"
you sit up. "i will literally burn my house down before i let you repeat anything my mother said about me."
"her words, not mine," he says, holding up his hands. his beautiful, god crafted, veiny hands. "anyway—utilities included. chores are pretty simple. i cook, so you can take trash and recycling. laundry we do separately. shared spaces stay clean."
"define clean."
"not a biohazard."
"rude."
"accurate."
you throw a pillow at his head. he catches it one-handed without breaking eye contact.
you actually stop breathing for a second.
since when can jake do that? since when is he coordinated? since when does he have forearms like that?
you scowl to cover the fact that your brain just short-circuited. "fine. anything else?"
he tilts his head. "yeah. don't steal my hoodies." you blink innocently. "why would i steal your hoodies?"
his gaze drops to your suitcase—where three of his old ones that you had 'borrowed' back in highschool are hanging out the side. proof that you struggled to pack all your belongings in two measly suitcases.
traitors.
"uh-huh," he says. "point is, don't steal them."
"i don't steal," you lie.
"you do."
"i borrow."
"indefinitely." you cross your arms. "well, maybe if you didn't buy hoodies that look good on me—"
"they look good on me," he corrects smoothly. "you're just annoying enough to steal them."
you're going to scream.
you stand, stalking toward the kitchen just to regain power. "i'm eating your snacks as payment for emotional damages."
he follows at a leisurely pace, because apparently he's immune to your chaos now. you yank open the fridge. it's organized. color-coded. there are vegetables.
"who are you?" you whisper, horrified. "where is the boy who ate a fruit roll-up off the sidewalk?"
"buried him," jake answers, grabbing a bottle of water and handing it to you. "grew up. got a job. graduated. learned to mop."
you squint at him. "did you join a cult?"
he laughs again—warm and low. "no. i just stopped being twelve."
"you were twelve for like ten years."
"and you're still twelve," he shoots back calmly. "so at least one of us stayed consistent."
you gape. "you're so— so—"
"accurate?"
"i was gonna say insufferable."
he leans on the counter across from you, arms folded, gaze steady.
"you were expecting me to be exactly the same, weren't you?"
you freeze. he's right. he knows he's right and you hate that he knows he's right.
before you can respond, he adds—lightly, but with something underneath, "don't worry. i still remember everything."
your heartbeat trips.
"everything?" you repeat.
he smiles. slow. devastating. "everything."
you look away first. you hate that too.
you grab chips from the pantry—loudly, aggressively—and announce, "i'm gonna walk around in tiny shorts and leave my stuff everywhere."
"go for it," jake says, opening a cabinet above your head to grab a mug. "i don't scare that easily."
"i wasn't trying to scare you!"
"sure."
"i wasn't—!"
he takes a sip of water like he didn't just psychologically annihilate you.
you feel your face heat. you hate him. you hate that he's changed. you hate that he hasn't changed in the ways that matter. you hate that he's taller and calm and unbothered and smells like pine and laundry and maybe a little bit like heartbreak.
and you really hate the traitorous thought sneaking into your brain: you might be in trouble.
after the unexpected back forth between you and jake, jake kindly showed you to your room which was much nicer than the one at your old apartment.
"i'll let you settle in, i'll be back in a few. gym." and with that he slips through the door and out of your sight.
since when did he go to the gym? since those veiny arms blessed your sight.
you huff while unpacking, taking in the clean space as a foreign feeling takes place in your chest.
what the fuck are you going to do?
𓂃
you hear the door before you see him.
a heavy, warm thud of sneakers hitting the entry rug. the quiet clink of keys. then the low, tired exhale of a man who just returned from the gym and doesn't realize he's about to emotionally ruin someone.
you peek over the couch. and yeah, he's sweaty.
like—sweat running down his neck, shirt stuck to his chest, hair pushed back with a damp curl kind of sweaty.
your brain forgets basic motor functions. he looks up and catches you staring, a unrecognizable glint in his soft eyes.
"hey," he says, voice rougher than usual. "you're still awake?" awake? you're clinically deceased, but sure.
you sit up, flipping your hair like you didn't just get jump-scared by his forearms. "yeah. couldn't sleep. your... stomping woke me up."
"i didn't stomp," he says, amused. "i walked in."
"well it was loud."
"you were watching tiktoks on full volume."
you glare, chucking your phone on the other couch. "stop knowing things."
he smirks and heads to the kitchen for water, pulling his shirt up to wipe his face.
you get a full view of toned stomach. abs. v-line. you stop breathing somewhere around ab #3.
okay. enough. you're not going to let him win tonight. this morning he made you flustered. tonight? you're fighting back.
you hop off the couch and follow him to the kitchen, wearing the tiniest sleep shorts you own and his hoodie—you know, for psychological warfare.
"so," you announce, hopping onto the counter, crossing your legs slowly. "long workout? you look... tired."
he opens the fridge. "yeah. leg day."
you hum. "maybe you should let me massage them. you know. as a housewarming gift."
he doesn't choke. he doesn't blush. he just closes the fridge, sets down the water bottle, and looks at you with that infuriating, slow-lingering gaze that makes your stomach flip like a dying fish.
"you wanna massage my legs?" he asks softly, his brow quirking up before his gaze drops down to your bare legs and your small frame which was swallowed by his hoodie.
your throat closes. "i— i mean— maybe— if you—"
he takes a step closer. then another. until he's right in front of you, standing between your knees, but not touching you. not even a brush of skin. just close enough that you swear you can feel the heat rolling off him.
your brain: DEAD. ABSOLUTELY GONE.
he places his hands on the counter on either side of your hips, caging you in—without touching you once.
your breath catches. everything in you goes still.
"you offering charity massages now?" he murmurs, eyes dropping briefly to your mouth. "that doesn't sound like you."
your voice cracks. "why not?"
"you don't do things out of kindness." his tone is teasing, warm. "you do things because you want attention."
your entire nervous system sets on fire.
"i— excuse— i don't—"
"it's okay," he continues, leaning just an inch closer, his nose almost brushing yours. "i don't mind giving you the attention."
you swallow hard. "move."
"you sure?" he asks quietly. "you seem pretty comfortable."
you are not comfortable. you are a molecule vibrating out of your own skin.
you shove a hand at his chest—bad idea, he's solid—and babble stupidly, "i'm fine. you're weird. stop being tall at me."
jake laughs under his breath. it's warm. dangerous. affectionate in a way that makes your stomach curl.
he leans in like he might actually touch your cheek, lips, something and you freeze. but he doesn't. at the last second, he dips his head past yours and reaches behind you to grab a mug from the cabinet above.
you nearly scream. he pulls back slowly, the corner of his mouth tilted in a knowing smirk.
"relax," he says softly. "if i actually cornered you, you'd combust."
you glare at him, cheeks on fire. "i hate you."
"no you don't." he taps your knee with a finger, the only touch, light, teasing, devastating. "but you can keep pretending."
you nearly fall off the counter trying to escape.
he watches, amused, taking a sip of water like he didn't just send you through all five stages of grief.
"goodnight," he says casually, heading to his room.
you stare after him, emotionally damaged.
"i'm not massaging your stupid legs!" you call out.
his voice drifts back, "you offered."
you bury your face in your hands. you are so, so screwed.
𓂃
you wake up to the smell of something heavenly.
warm. buttery. slightly sweet.
you blink at the ceiling.
no way. no way jake is up early being...competent.
you stomp down the hall dramatically, ready to insult him for being a functional adult at 8:12 a.m.
and you freeze. because jake is shirtless. shirtless. in his kitchen. your now shared kitchen.
his back muscles shift as he flips pancakes. his sweatpants hang low. his hair is messy in the exact way that suggests he just rolled out of bed and looked inhumanly good by accident.
you forget why you entered the kitchen. or how to inhale.
he glances over his shoulder. "morning."
the audacity. “you—" your voice cracks. "you're— you're not wearing clothes."
he looks down, confused. "i'm wearing pants."
"that's not the point!"
"sounds like it is."
you hate him. you hate him so much your eye twitches. he plates a pancake and nods toward the stove. "there's extra batter if you want to make your own."
you puff up, offended. "i CAN cook."
jake raises an eyebrow. "do you want to say that again? slowly?"
you march to the fridge, grab random ingredients you probably won't need, and announce, "watch and learn."
"i'm watching." his voice is annoyingly amused.
"not sure i'll be learning."
you ignore him, crank the stove on too high, and pour way too much batter in the pan. it spreads like a sad, beige puddle.
jake strolls over, sipping coffee, watching like he's observing wildlife.
"that's... thick," he comments.
"it's called fluffy," you snap back, your eyes finding his before dropping down to his chest and stomach. oh god why did you do that? jake catches your vision, a smirk playing on his lips.
fuck you.
"oh. okay. it's very... fluffy."
"shut up."
the pancake starts smoking aggressively. you start panicking aggressively.
"um— is it supposed to—"
WHOOSH.
flame kisses the edge of the pan. you shriek. "OH MY GOD—" jake moves instantly, reaching past you to turn down the burner.
and suddenly—he's right behind you. his chest against your back. his arms braced around you as he grabs the pan. his voice low, right by your ear,
"hey. relax. i got it."
your brain vacates the premises.
his hands move with confidence, fixing your disaster pancake. his breath brushes your neck. he's close—too close—and yet he's acting like this is normal.
"you're gonna start a fire," he says softly, almost teasing.
"i— i didn't— the burner— your stove is— i— shut up," you whisper, mortified.
he laughs quietly, the sound warm against your skin.
"you're cute when you panic," he murmurs, not moving away. you seize up when you feel his warm breath brush against the shell of your ear, suddenly finding it hard to breathe.
you clutch the counter for emotional support. "can you—can you back up?"
"why?" his tone is innocent. way too innocent.
"you seemed fine last night when i was close."
you almost combust like the pancake.
"that was different!"
"how?" he asks, dipping his head just enough that you feel the brush of his hair against your cheek.
you have no good answer. because the truth is humiliating, last night you were flustered. now you're flustered and underprepared and wearing pajama shorts shaped like licorice strings.
you grab a spatula and use it like a weapon to push him away.
"move," you hiss, your face burning red.
he steps back, hands up, grinning like a menace. "yes, chef."
"don't call me chef."
"okay. fire hazard."
"JAKE."
he laughs a full, bright laugh that makes your stomach twist and heads back to his own plate.
you plate your uneven, charred pancake with defeated silence.
and jake, the infuriating man, sets another golden, perfectly round pancake onto your plate.
you blink. "what's this?"
"a real breakfast," he says, pouring syrup for you like you're a child. "because you nearly burned the apartment down trying to prove a point."
you glare at him. "i was doing FINE."
"sure," he hums. "and i'm a ballerina."
you stab your pancake.
he watches you with that soft, amused smile again—the one with something deeper behind it.
then he adds, "you know... it's kind of nice having you here."
your fork slips out of your hand. "...what?" like you had said earlier, you're a lot of things but one thing you definitely are is self aware. you are not nice to have around, and you know it.
he shrugs, easy. "just saying."
you stare at him, face warming in a way you refuse to acknowledge. you mumble into your syrup, "i hate you."
he smiles, slow and knowing. "no you don't."
and the worst part? he's right.
the first week in jake's apartment goes... fine.
dangerously fine.
it should've been easy to fall back into the old dynamic: you, the bossy menace; him, the soft puppy trailing after you with a shy smile and an unlimited tolerance for your nonsense.
except—he doesn't trail. he doesn't melt. he doesn't fold. and that pisses you off more than you'd ever admit.
the chaos starts small.
your makeup begins multiplying across the bathroom counter like it's staging a coup. lip glosses in a neat little line beside his toothbrush; your setting spray sitting directly in front of his razor; your glitter eyeshadow palette open—because closing it would've taken effort, obviously.
jake doesn't complain. he doesn't even sigh.
he just walks in one morning, towels slung over his shoulder, hair damp from the gym, and pauses at the counter.
"is this all yours?" he asks.
you don't look up from your phone. "hm? oh. yeah. i need space. don't be selfish."
jake nods slowly, like he's taking notes on you for a research study. "right. selfish. of course."
you ignore the way that makes your stomach twist.
you up the ante. you start asking—no, demanding—rides.
"jake," you call from your bedroom one morning, "can you take me to get coffee?"
"there's a café two blocks away," he says, leaning on your doorframe, wet hair dripping onto his hoodie.
you gasp like he's suggested you walk barefoot through snow. "that's uphill."
"slightly."
"jake. it's morning. i'm fragile."
he snorts and tosses you his car keys. "fine. you drive."
you blink at him like he had grown a second head. "i was... i was asking you to take me."
"yeah," he says, already walking away, "and i'm telling you to take yourself."
you stare at the keys like they've personally insulted you.
then there's the pizza incident. you take the last slice. obviously. you don't even feel bad. you're sitting on the couch when he walks in, box in hand, looking for the missing piece.
he lifts an eyebrow—that stupid, infuriatingly calm eyebrow—and glances at the empty plate on your lap.
"you didn't eat the last slice, did you?"
"no," you say immediately, even though the evidence is literally smeared on your mouth.
he looks at you. really looks. slowly. knowingly. lips tugging upward. "right," he says softly. "of course you didn't."
then he reaches forward, thumb hovering near the corner of your mouth—not touching, but close enough that the heat of him brushes your skin.
your body locks up.
his voice drops, warm and amused, "you've got sauce right here."
you nearly stop breathing. and then he pulls back, smiling like nothing happened.
you want to strangle him. or kiss him. or both.
but it's the blanket situation that finally pushes you over the edge.
his blankets are better. obviously they are. he's responsible and orderly and uses fabric softener. you're a tired disaster with a credit card.
so you drag his nicest throw blanket into your room one night without asking.
in the morning, he finds you on the couch wrapped in it like a human burrito, scrolling through your phone.
he laughs—this low, warm sound that makes something traitorous flutter in your chest.
"you know," he says, "you have blankets."
"yeah but yours are... softer."
he tilts his head, walking behind the couch. "so your solution was theft?"
"i don't see you complaining."
"i'm not complaining." he leans down behind you, close enough that you feel the warmth of his breath by your ear. "i'm just observing."
you freeze. again. you're starting to hate how often that happens.
"why're you so jumpy?" he murmurs, voice like honey.
"shut up," you whisper.
he only chuckles, watching your face turn a pretty shade of pink.
and then comes the night you push too far.
you're irritated for no real reason—maybe because he didn't react the way you wanted, maybe because he's not the boy you expected, maybe because his quiet confidence does something to you you can't explain.
you snap at him. something stupid. something about the air conditioner and his "stupid, organized, obsessive thermostat rules."
he's standing in the kitchen drying dishes when you say it. you expect him to fold, apologize, let you roll over him like you always have.
instead—he sets the plate down. slowly. carefully.
like he's placing a piece in a chess game he's already winning.
then he turns and walks toward you. the air changes, it thickens, until you swear you can feel it press against your skin.
you retreat one step, he follows. you bump lightly into the counter. he doesn't touch you. he doesn't need to.
he braces one hand on the counter beside your hip, leaning in just enough that your heart slams painfully against your ribs.
his voice is warm, but the firmness beneath it is unmistakable. "don't talk to me like that."
heat crawls up your neck, "i wasn't— i didn't—"
"no," he says, soft and steady, "you did."
his eyes flick down to your lips for half a second—half a heartbeat—before meeting your eyes again.
"i let you get away with that stuff when we were kids," he continues. "but i'm not that guy anymore."
your pulse stutters. his face is close enough that you see the gold flecks in his eyes. "you don't get to talk to me like that," he says.
a beat.
"not anymore."
you swallow so hard it hurts. you open your mouth—to apologize, to argue, you're not sure—but nothing comes out.
jake watches you, a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth. not cruel. not mocking. just... knowing. then, gently, he pushes off the counter and steps back.
"good," he murmurs, turning away to finish the dishes. "i'm glad we understand each other."
you stand there, dizzy, cheeks burning, knees genuinely weak. you've never shut up so fast in your entire life.
and you hate—absolutely hate—how much you liked it.
𓂃
you don't realize when it starts.
or maybe you do, and you're just pretending you don't, because acknowledging it would mean admitting something absolutely unacceptable: that jake sim—golden retriever, former bowl-cut disaster, childhood doormat—is becoming the gravitational pull of your entire stupid life.
and you hate that.
you REALLY hate that.
it happens on a friday night.
you're out with a few friends—the fun, chaotic ones who think your bratty personality is "endearing" and "so girlboss of you." you're half-done a drink, leaning over the bar to talk to some tall, kind-of-cute guy who'd been eyeing you for the last ten minutes.
he's laughing at your jokes. you're flipping your hair and pretending you're not checking your reflection in the chrome beer tap.
it's going great.
until you hear the voice that's been in your dreams for the last few months, "hey."
you don't even have to turn around. your stomach recognizes his voice before your brain does.
jake.
you freeze, hand still hovering mid-gesture, and the guy in front of you lifts a curious eyebrow.
the asshole actually smiles at jake when he approaches, like they're suddenly in a friendly competition he's about to lose without knowing why.
jake leans against the bar beside you like he's been invited, like he belongs there—tall, warm, annoyingly good-smelling. his hand is on the small of your back, not touching, but close enough that you feel heat radiating through your shirt.
you hate that your heart triple-flips.
"hey," you say, pretending not to care, though your voice is a little too high. "what are you doing here?"
jake shrugs lightly. his eyes flick once—just once —to the guy you were flirting with. "came to pick you up."
"i didn't ask you to."
"your phone's dead."
you blink. you check your phone...your phone is, in fact, dead.
god, that's so annoying.
the cute guy clears his throat. "you two... know each other?"
before you can answer, jake does, with the most harmless, friendly voice you've ever heard, "yeah. she lives with me."
the guy's smile collapses.
your jaw drops. "jake—that's not—"
"roommates," he adds, finally throwing you a look that says better? but it's too late. the guy is already pulling back, suddenly very uninterested in continuing the conversation with a girl who apparently has a six-foot wall of muscle as a roommate.
"he's just—he's exaggerating," you say desperately, but the guy is already lifting his drink in a goodbye gesture. "nice meeting you," he says—to jake. not you.
he leaves. just like that.
you whirl on jake. "what the hell was that?"
jake looks genuinely confused. "what was what?"
"you—you scared him off!"
"i didn't do anything." his voice is maddeningly calm.
you shove his arm. it does nothing except hurt your hand a little. "you know what you did."
jake tilts his head, pretending to think, then steps closer, way closer, bending slightly so his face is level with yours. "if he got scared because i exist, maybe he wasn't that interested."
"you're insufferable."
"you're welcome for the ride home," he says, smiling like the world's sweetest problem.
you want to push him again.
you also want to grab him by the stupid lapel of his stupid jacket and kiss him until he can't talk like that anymore.
it's infuriating.
and it keeps happening.
you're out for brunch with friends and jake drops by to hand you the cardigan you "accidentally" stole again and suddenly the guy who'd been trying to get your number excuses himself.
you're buying ice cream at a street vendor, jake appears behind you because he was "in the neighborhood," and the guy working the cart instantly stops flirting with you mid-sentence.
you're at the bookstore, a cute grad student is recommending a title, and the moment jake walks up beside you to say, "hey, thought you wanted that coffee?" the grad student's smile just... dies.
every time, jake acts like he has no idea why.
every time, you want to scream.
one evening, you're sitting on the couch scrolling, pretending not to watch the clock, wondering when he's going to get home.
you hate that you miss him. you hate that his absence feels like silence filling the apartment too heavily.
the door unlocks. your heart jumps. you immediately scowl at yourself.
he steps in—hair messy from the wind, gym bag slung over his shoulder, wearing a fitted hoodie that absolutely shouldn't fit him that well.
"you're late," you snap, even though he isn't.
jake lifts a brow. "didn't know i had a curfew."
you huff. "whatever."
but he's already walking past you, and your eyes, traitors, follow him. the way his shoulders move. the way he reaches up to put his keys on the hook. the way his shirt lifts just slightly as he stretches.
you look away too fast and nearly drop your phone.
he notices. of course he notices. jake always notices.
he walks back toward the couch, slow, amused, hands in his pockets. you're about to make up some snarky comment when he stands directly in front of you, blocking the TV, blocking everything, and says gently:
"hey."
you blink up at him. you didn't even realize you'd been frowning.
"rough night?" he asks, voice warm, soft, impossibly soothing.
"none of your business," you mutter, crossing your arms.
but you don't move away when he leans down a little, bracing one hand on the back of the couch beside your head—not touching you, just close enough that you feel caged in.
"you know..." he says slowly, eyes dropping to your lips for one devastating second, "you don't have to act tough with me."
your throat closes. your brain refuses to function.
then—as if that wasn't enough torture—he adds, quieter, "you know i'm not the kid you used to boss around. you see that now, right?"
you hate how hot your face gets. you hate how your pulse spikes. you hate that your breath catches in your chest like you've been punched.
and you really hate how much you want him to say it again.
before you can fire back, before you can regain control, jake pushes off the couch and steps away, giving you space again.
like he didn't just ruin your entire week.
"i'm gonna shower," he says simply, like he didn't just mentally dismantle you. "order dinner if you're hungry."
you stare at him. you stare through him. then you finally breathe.
your voice comes out small. "jake?"
he pauses, glancing over his shoulder. his eyes soften in that way that makes your stomach flip inside out.
you swallow. "why do people keep assuming we're... y'know... together?"
he smiles—slow, deep, knowing.
"maybe," he says, "they're seeing something you're not ready to see yet."
your heart stops. you want to scream. you want to hit him. you want to kiss him until your knees give out. but you can't say any of that. so instead you throw a pillow at him. "shut up."
he laughs—warm, gentle, absolutely insane-making and disappears into the hallway. leaving you on the couch, heart sprinting, stomach twisted, entire world tilted sideways...
and realizing, for the first time, that you might be in very, very dangerous territory.
𓂃
you don't plan on getting jealous. you really don't. it just kind of... ambushes you, like a flying brick to the head.
the whole thing starts because your friend group decides to have a little saturday picnic in the park—very "we're adults now," very "bring something homemade," very "let's pretend our lives aren't falling apart."
you drag jake along because obviously. he has a car and you don't feel like ubering. plus, he always carries things for you without complaining, and you plan to bring at least four bags despite it being a two-hour outing.
he agrees without hesitation, because of course he does.
the morning of, he comes out of his room wearing a white t-shirt, grey sweats, a backward baseball cap, and that infuriating golden retriever smile that makes your stomach do embarrassing gymnastics.
you pretend not to notice. you absolutely notice.
"you ready?" he asks, grabbing the cooler like it weighs nothing.
you squint at him. "you're wearing that?"
he glances down at himself. "...yes?"
"to a picnic?"
"is this not... picnic attire?"
"you look like a catalogue model for 'athletic boyfriend who loves you.'"
he grins. "so i look good? i fit the part?" you blush furiously at his words, choosing to roll your eyes so dramatically it should win an award. "i didn't say that."
"but you didn't deny it."
"jake."
"yes?"
"shut up."
he just laughs and ushers you out the door with a hand on your lower back—casual, familiar, too natural.
you hate how your heart stutters. you want to be annoying on purpose, just to punish him. you succeed by making him carry every single one of your bags.
he still keeps that stupid gentle smile.
you hate it. you love it. you hate that you love it.
the picnic starts fine. your friends adore him—which annoys you for reasons you refuse to examine.
"jake's so sweet," one of them says while he helps set up the blanket.
"jake's so tall," another sighs dreamily.
"jake's so—"
"okay!" you cut in, a little too loudly. "we get it. he's perfect. shut up." everyone stares. you pretend you didn't say anything weird.
jake just throws you an amused little look like he knows exactly what's happening in your brain and is choosing to spare you.
which somehow makes it worse. then she arrives.
the problem. the villain. the enemy.
your friend's coworker—invited last minute—named mia, with perfect hair and a perfect smile and an offensively cute sundress. she spots jake instantly, like a moth to a glow-in-the-dark lantern.
"oh my god, hi," she chirps, stepping right into his space. "we haven't met yet. i'm mia."
you watch from your corner of the blanket, chewing a strawberry like you're trying to murder it with your teeth.
mia laughs at everything he says. she touches his arm at least twice. she calls him funny—funny, jake, the man who laughs at his own dad jokes and says "oopsies" when he drops things.
your eye twitches. and jake... doesn't pull away.
worse, he's being his usual self—easygoing, kind, listening fully, that soft focused attention he gives people when he genuinely likes them.
you have never hated being conscious more. your friends keep giving you meaningful looks.
you keep ignoring them. except then mia leans in closer, tiny sundress fluttering, and says, "so, are you seeing anyone?"
you nearly choke on air. jake doesn't seem fazed. "uh... i—"
"jake!" you snap, way too quickly, way too loud.
everyone stops. jake turns toward you with slow amusement raising his eyebrows. "yeah?"
"you— uh..." your brain abandons you. it packs its bags and literally leaves the continent. "you forgot to... um... help me with something."
he looks at the fully assembled picnic. "help you with what?"
"something," you repeat, sweating. "very important."
mia blinks. "oh, we can finish our conversa—"
"NOPE," you say, grabbing jake's wrist and yanking him off the blanket so fast he practically trips. "no need. bye. go touch grass or something."
you drag him behind a tree like a deranged cartoon burglar. he follows, mostly because he's trying not to laugh.
"you good?" he asks softly.
"i'm fine," you snap, glaring at him.
"you sure? because you look—" "if you say 'jealous' i'm going to drown you in the lake."
he smirks. "i was going to say 'cute,' but okay."
your brain fries like an egg on asphalt. "shut up," you whisper, but it comes out breathless.
he steps closer—not touching, but close enough that the tree is behind you and he's in front of you, warm and solid and taller than you remember.
"you dragged me away from someone mid-flirt," he murmurs, voice dropping into that low warm register that goes straight to your knees. "so i'm gonna need you to explain."
you glare up at him. "i did not. she wasn't flirting."
"she asked if i was seeing anyone."
"she was just being friendly."
"she touched my arm."
"maybe she's friendly with arms." god, you want to be friendly with his arms. "you pulled me across the park."
"i felt like walking."
"you growled." your face burns. "i did not!"
he grins—slow, devastating. "you definitely did." you shove his shoulder, which does absolutely nothing because he's built like a wall now. "you're imagining things."
"am i?"
"yes."
he leans in, inches from your face, eyes ridiculously soft and warm and knowing. "then tell me why you're mad."
you open your mouth. nothing comes out. your throat works around a sound that isn't a word.
jake watches all of it with that maddening patience—like he's been waiting years for this exact moment and can give you all the time in the world.
then, barely above a whisper, "you know i'd drop anyone the second you wanted me to... right?"
your heart stops. actually stops. you physically forget what breathing is.
and he smiles—that deeper, slower version he only gives you now—before stepping back, giving you space like he didn't just vaporize your entire soul.
"come on," he says, gentle. "before your friends think you murdered me." he starts walking back. you stare after him, stunned, furious, flustered, painfully alive.
you hate him. you really, really like him. you hate that you really, really like him.
and when mia tries to talk to him again later, he doesn't even notice—because he's too busy watching you out of the corner of his eye, like you're the only person in the park.
and that's when you know, you're doomed.
𓂃
the day starts stupidly normal, which should've been your first warning.
it's saturday. the sun is too bright. jake's already up—as always—making breakfast like some domestic prince charming he has no right to be. you stumble into the kitchen in one of his hoodies, hair a mess, mascara from last night smudged like war paint.
he glances over his shoulder, amused. "morning, trouble."
you roll your eyes because your heart does a weird little tap-dance. "you're loud."
"i haven't even said anything."
"you existing is loud."
he laughs—soft, warm, like he thinks you're hilarious even when you're being awful and goes back to cooking.
you sit at the counter, chin in your palm, watching him move around like he owns every inch of this kitchen. he does, technically, but you hate how good he looks doing it. the rolled sleeves that expose his delicious looking forearms. the concentration. the way he pushes his hair back when it falls over his forehead.
you look away before he catches you staring. he sets a plate in front of you a moment later, eggs, toast, fruit. stupidly wholesome.
you poke at it. "jake..."
"mm?"
"i need your car today." your car had been in the shop for the last few days, leaving you stranded at home majority of the day.
he pauses. not dramatically. not in a way meant to provoke you. just... pauses. "for what?"
"i need to run errands," you shrug. "grocery store, nail appointment, whatever."
he leans his hip against the counter, arms crossing. "you can take the bus. i need the car."
you blink. blink again. "...the bus?"you say it like he suggested you swim across the pacific ocean.
"yeah," he says simply. "the 14 stops right outside the building. it's not hard."
you stare at him and he stares back. somewhere deep inside your spoiled, bratty, slightly feral soul, a fuse lights.
"you're being dramatic," you declare.
"i'm being practical."
"you're supposed to help me."
"i do help you."
"not right now!" he exhales, patient but firm. "my car isn't your personal uber."
your pride twists sharply. you feel it—that hot, impulsive, immature spark that always gets you in trouble.
"wow," you snap, standing from the stool. "you get a couple muscles, a salary, and suddenly you're too good for me?" his brows lift, surprised—not offended, not angry—just surprised that you'd go for that. "i didn't say that."
"you're acting like it!"
you don't mean the words. not really. they spill out because you're flustered and embarrassed and you hate how stable he is when you're wobbling all over the emotional place. you fold your arms, chin lifted in that signature i'm-right-even-when-i'm-wrong posture.
"i'm asking for one tiny thing, jake. one. and you're giving me attitude? seriously?"
he doesn't flinch. "you're not asking," he says quietly. "you're demanding."
your pulse kicks up—defensive, stubborn. "because you're supposed to say yes!"
"why?" you hate that he says it without raising his voice. hate how calm he is while you're practically vibrating.
"because you always have!" you blurt. "you always listened to me! you always—"
"i was a kid," he says, tone low but steady. "you treated me like i didn't know how to have my own life. and back then? maybe i didn't."
you freeze. his expression softens—not pitying, not mocking —soft in the way someone looks when they finally decide to stop letting you run from something. "but i'm not that kid anymore," he says. "and you can't talk to me like i am."
your throat tightens—sharp, sudden. it's stupid how much it hits you, how fast your anger collapses into something hot and guilty.
he steps closer. not threatening. just... present.
closer than you expected. closer than your heart can handle without short-circuiting.
your voice shrinks. "i wasn't— i didn't mean—"
"yeah," he murmurs, eyes steady on yours. "i know. but you said it anyway."
you swallow. hard. jake looks down at you like he's seeing every version of you at once, bossy eight-year-old you, dramatic teenager you, chaotic adult you, and none of them scare him. none of them push him away.
"i'm not the one who needs to grow up," he says, softer now. "and i'm not trying to fight you. but i'm not here to be ordered around." the room feels too quiet suddenly. the only sound is the faint sizzle of the pan cooling on the stove and your own uneven breathing.
"i... didn't know i was doing that," you whisper.
"yeah," he says again, but gently. "that's the problem."
you look away, frustrated with yourself more than with him. and then he reaches out—slow, careful—and hooks a finger under your chin to tilt your face back up. not forceful but impossible to ignore. his voice drops just a little. warm. real. a little too intimate.
"i'm not going anywhere," he says. "i never have. but you can't keep pretending i belong to you just because i used to follow you around."
the words hit you dead center. because the truth—the horrible, humiliating, painfully raw truth—is that you didn't treat him like he was below you.
you treated him like he was yours. and somewhere along the way, he learned to walk without trailing behind you. you blink fast, trying not to let your eyes shine too much. "i... i just thought..."
"i know," he murmurs. "but that's why we're having this conversation."
you nod, small. awkward. vulnerable in a way you hate being. jake steps back slowly, giving you space without breaking eye contact.
"you can still take the bus," he says lightly. "i'll even google the schedule for you." you glare. but it's weak. he smiles, that stupid warm smile that ruins you every time. and for the first time, your bratty instinct doesn't flare up. instead, something quieter settles in your chest.
you're not sure you like it. you're very sure it has everything to do with him.
𓂃
it starts on a lazy sunday afternoon—the fake kind of lazy where you're doing nothing but somehow jake is doing everything.
he's folding laundry, humming, looking offensively good in a plain white tee, while you lie on the couch upside down, legs over the backrest, scrolling on your phone like a disgruntled cat.
you're bored. dangerous.
"jake," you call, voice dramatic, "i'm craving entertainment. entertain me." he doesn't even glance over. "i'm folding your shirts. that's entertaining."
"no, that's domestic," you correct. "you're like a husband in a detergent commercial."
"at least i smell nice?" he shrugs. you pause. he does. annoyingly so. you ignore the flutter in your stomach and point your toes at him from the upside-down position.
"tell me a story," you demand. "like bedtime story vibes. something juicy. something chaotic. something where i'm the main character—" "—which you always are," he finishes for you, snorting. "okay. fine. let's do memory lane."
you lift your head just enough to squint at him. "that sounds suspiciously sentimental."
"you're the one who asked." you flop your head back. "proceed, peasant."
he finally looks at you—that slow, amused, golden-retriever-who-knows-your-game look. "alright. remember grade four?"
"i choose not to."
"too bad," he says, sitting on the floor in front of the couch, folding the last shirt. "you announced to the whole class that we were getting married."
your phone drops onto your face. "i what—?"
he laughs, warm and full, like it's a memory he's kept safe. "yeah. you stood on a chair during recess and yelled, 'jake is gonna be my husband because he listens!'" you bury your face in your hands. "oh my god."
"you even made me a ring out of twist ties."
"stop talking."
"and then you made me swear an oath—"
"NO YOU DID NOT JUST SAY OATH—"
"—that i'd carry your backpack forever because i was 'stronger' and 'built for it'." you groan so loudly that he laughs again.
"you loved bossing me around," he says, softer now. "i still do," you shoot back, kicking his shoulder lightly with your foot. he catches your ankle. not tight, but just enough for your breath to hitch.
"i know." his voice is lower. "you were kind of terrifying."
"i was adorable," you argue, rolling his eyes.
"you were a tiny tyrant with pigtails."
"and you followed me everywhere," you retort, letting your foot rest in his hold because pulling away feels too much like losing.
"yeah," he says quietly, thumb brushing just once over your ankle before he realizes and lets go. "i did." you freeze. he doesn't look flustered, but the way he moves—slow, controlled, pretending nothing happened—tells you he definitely felt something too.
so you clear your throat and switch the subject recklessly. "well, remember when you glued your hand to a desk?" the corner of his mouth twitches. "you told me it would make me smarter."
"and you believed me!" you cackle.
"you said the glue had 'knowledge properties,'" he defends, pointing an accusing finger at you. "you said einstein invented it!"
you're laughing so hard you almost fall off the couch. he tries to stay serious, but your laugh is contagious and he ends up leaning back against the couch, head tipped against your knee as he laughs too.
you go still. his head. on your leg. like it's natural. like it's always been that way. your laugh fades into a stubborn little silence you can't name.
he notices. he always notices. "hey," he murmurs, chin tilting up just a little so he can see your upside-down face. "what's with that look?"
"what look?" you whisper, too fast.
"the one where you pretend you're annoyed but you're actually... i don't know." he searches your expression. "thinking."
you scoff. "i don't think."
"yes you do."
"nope."
"you definitely do."
"stop accusing me of intelligence!" he laughs again, but this time something softer lingers under it — something warm, something knowing. the air shifts. you hate it. or maybe you don't, maybe that's the problem.
"okay, next memory," you say quickly, tapping his forehead with your foot to break the moment. "tell me something where i look cool."
he smirks. "that never happened."
"JAKE—"
"kidding, kidding." he nudges your leg. "there was that time you punched a boy in the nose because he called me 'jakey-wakey.'"
you blink. "oh yeah. classic me."
"classic you," he echoes, smiling to himself in a way that makes your chest feel tight. and then, quietly, "you always had my back." the room goes still. your heart stutters—because he means it. because he remembers it. because he says it like it mattered.
"don't get sentimental on me, golden boy," you mumble.
"too late," he says, voice warm, teasing, but edged with something real. "you brought up memory lane. i'm just walking it."
you swallow. the dynamic tilts again—just slightly, just enough to make you feel like you're standing on the edge of something big.
so you do what you do best. you kick him lightly in the shoulder. "get up. i'm bored again." he stands, brushing imaginary dust off his shirt.
"fine," he says. "let's go get ice cream."
"you're paying, right?" he sighs. "i always do."
you grin. and he does too, like he wouldn't have it any other way.
𓂃
it starts stupidly. you're not even fighting.
you're tipsy—not blackout, not sloppy, just warm and giggly after a night out with friends. you called jake because your uber bailed and your phone was dying, and he showed up in ten minutes flat, hair messy from sleep, hoodie half-zipped, looking unfairly good for someone dragged out of bed at 1 a.m.
you slid into the passenger seat, all smug. "aww, jakey. did i wake you?"
he didn't even look at you. "put your seatbelt on."
ugh. infuriating. for the entire drive, you tried to poke at him— literally and figuratively—but he kept dodging with that maddening calm.
by the time you walk into the apartment, and by walk you mean jake carrying your flailing body—you're buzzing with irritation that isn't... really irritation.
not exactly. you kick your shoes off dramatically. "you didn't have to come get me, y'know."
he locks the door behind you. "you called," he says simply, shrugging off his hoodie. "i wasn't gonna leave you outside alone."
"i can take care of myself." he gives you a slow, deliberate once-over—the skirt, the smudged makeup, the slightly-wobbly stance.
"sure you can." you make an offended noise, fully ready to start something stupid—but he walks past you toward the kitchen.
which pisses you off more. so you follow him. obviously. he's pulling a water bottle out of the fridge when you step right into his space, eyebrows raised, chin tilted up like a challenge.
"you're ignoring me," you accuse.
"no," he says calmly. "i'm choosing not to indulge you." your stomach actually drops. oh, that tone. that new tone you still haven't learned how to handle.
you scoff. "wow. someone got confident."
"someone had to," he says. and then—god help you—he steps closer. not touching you, just closer.
your back meets the counter, cold through your shirt. he sets the water bottle beside you but doesn't move away. he's right there—warm, solid, taller, broader than he ever was as a kid—and he's looking at you like he can see every thought you're trying to hide.
"you good?" he asks softly. that should be a normal question. but it isn't.your throat goes tight. "i'm fine." he inhales once, slow, like he's counting to five because of you. "you're doing that thing again."
"what thing," you snap too quickly.
"pretending you don't want something," he murmurs, "just because you don't wanna admit i'm the one you want it from."
your breath actually stops. you hate how your hands grip the counter; you hate how your pulse stutters; you hate that he can hear it, probably feel it, with how close he is.
"you think i want something from you?" you manage, trying to sound bored. he leans in, not touching. but close enough that his breath brushes your cheek.
"i think," he says quietly, "you wouldn't have called me tonight if you didn't." your voice comes out small. "i called because my uber bailed."
he smiles. slow. knowing. devastating. "sure," he says. "if that's the lie you wanna stick to."
you actually shove him. well—you try. your hands hit his chest, but he doesn't budge an inch. he just looks down at you with that infuriating calm, like you're cute for even attempting it.
"don't—" your voice breaks, and you hate that too. "don't talk like you know everything."
he corners you fully now, one hand resting on the counter beside your hip, the other lifting—slowly, giving you time—until his fingers hover under your jaw. not touching. just waiting.
"i'm not the one pretending here," he says softly. "i'm not pretending anything."
"yeah?" he whispers. "then look at me." you do. you shouldn't have.
his eyes are warm and dark and unbearably sure of you—like he's known this moment was coming since you were both twelve and you bossed him into giving you the last popsicle on the block. like he's been waiting for you to catch up.
"you can be a brat to everyone else," he says, barely above a murmur. "but you don't get to lie to me." your chest pulls tight, breath shaking, and you don't realize you've gone still until he tilts his head, studying you.
"there it is," he whispers. "finally." finally what? finally you stop running? finally you stop pretending you don't want him? finally you admit you're not the one with the power anymore?
you don't know. you just know your voice is barely a whisper, "...jake." something changes in his face. not anger. not triumph. just... relief. warm and deep and terrifying.
he leans closer, his forehead almost touching yours and his voice drops, low and steady, "i'm not gonna kiss you tonight," he says. "you're drunk."
you swallow hard, embarrassed and grateful and furious all at once. "but tomorrow?" he adds, eyes flicking to your mouth for half a second.
your knees actually go weak, tomorrow? "tomorrow," he says, "you don't get to run." and he steps back. leaving you breathless, cornered by nothing but your own heartbeat.
you wake up with your skull splitting in two, your mouth dry, and the horrifying, slow–motion realization that you remember every single thing that happened last night.
the way jake lifted you off that sidewalk like you weighed nothing. the way he held you steady while you tried to unlock the door and failed miserably.
the way he said it—low, warm, devastating, "you can be a brat to everyone else. but you don't get to lie to me." and worst of all, the way he looked at you afterward. like he was two seconds away from kissing you senseless against your own doorway.
you roll onto your back, throw an arm over your face, and groan.
"oh my god i hate it here," you mutter into your pillow. "i should move out. i should join a monastery. i should fake my death."
a soft knock hits your door. your entire soul leaves your body. "hey," jake's voice calls, maddeningly gentle. "i made breakfast." you consider leaping out the window. instead you croak, "i'm... busy."
"you're hungover."
"busy being hungover." he laughs—that warm, breathy laugh that you hear way too clearly through the door.
"come eat. i won't bite." liar, you think, dragging yourself out of bed. you almost did. you trudge down the hall in an oversized hoodie and socks, praying he looks terrible so you can at least feel morally superior.
he does not look terrible. he's standing at the stove in grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt, hair damp, shoulders broad, forearms flexing as he plates food. the apartment is stupidly bright, the sun hits him like it's personally in love.
you want to die. you try to sneak to the fridge for water and pretend he doesn't exist. he turns just in time to catch you.
"morning," he says. you nearly drop the bottle. "...hi."
he raises an eyebrow. "that's it? no yelling? no demands?" you glare at him weakly. "i'm on sick leave."
"mhm." he sets a plate in front of you. "how's the headache?"
"big."
"water's on the table."
"i know."
"you didn't drink it."
"...i was getting emotionally prepared," you mumble. he smiles—soft, amused, slightly pitying—and sits across from you.mthe silence is unbearable. you poke at your eggs like they personally offended you. "so. about last night."
"yeah," he says calmly, sipping his coffee. "about last night." you brace yourself. you don't know what you're expecting—a lecture? a joke? him pretending it didn't happen?
what you don't expect is him leaning back in his chair, eyes flicking over your face like he can see every thought you're trying to drown.
"you were pretty honest," he says softly. you choke on air. "i— what— honest how?" he tilts his head. "you kept grabbing me."
"NO I DID NOT—"
"you did," he says, annoyingly unbothered. "kept saying i 'smelled stupidly good' and that i 'ruined guys' for you." you want the earth to open up and swallow you. "i was drunk," you whisper.
"i know." he nods. "that's why you didn't lie." your heart stutters. his voice drops, the same tone he used last night—warm, steady, too real.
"you don't have to freak out," he murmurs. "i'm not asking for anything." you stare at him. "you're being... weirdly nice."
"i'm always nice to you."
"you're being extra nice." his lips twitch. "you're hungover."
"i don't trust it."
"that says more about you than me," he says, and you actually consider throwing your fork at him. but then... he pushes his chair back. stands. walks around the table. you freeze as he stops right beside you. not touching you, he never touches first, but close enough that your entire body tenses.
"look at me," he says quietly. you do, because what other choice do you have. his eyes hold yours, steady and dark and impossibly sure.
"what i said last night wasn't because you were drunk." a beat. "i meant it." your breath catches. your fingers curl around the edge of your chair. "jake..."
he leans down just a little—not enough to cross the line, but enough that you feel him, warm and solid at your side. "you can avoid me all you want today," he murmurs. "hide in your room. glare at me. pretend you don't remember."
your heart is hammering so loudly you're scared he can hear it. "but we're not going back," he finishes. "not after last night." you can't speak. you can't move. you can't breathe. he straightens slowly, like he knows exactly what he just did to you, and steps back.
"eat your breakfast," he says lightly, already turning toward the sink. "you need your strength." you stare at his back, absolutely feral with confusion and panic and want.
because he's right. everything has changed and you're the one who feels ruined.
the rest of the day is... hell. you hide in your room because you're a coward with a hangover and a heart that won't stop doing gymnastics. you scroll on your phone. you pretend to nap. you dramatically throw yourself on your bed like a victorian widow.
unfortunately, your bedroom shares a wall with the living room.
which means you hear everything. you hear jake laughing softly at his phone. you hear him moving around, cleaning, humming, doing dishes. you hear him existing like the universe didn't tilt on its axis last night.
and every time he shifts, every time the floor creaks, your stomach flips like it's auditioning for a reality show.
around 5 p.m., you crack. you storm out of your room under the noble excuse of "checking if he replaced the Brita filter," which is a lie, but you're committed to the bit.
jake is on the couch. hair damp again from the gym. black t-shirt stretched over his shoulders. sweatpants hanging too low for god's favorites, let alone you, god's forgotten middle child.
he looks up the second you appear.
"hey." so casual. so normal. so illegal.
you fold your arms. "why are you acting weird?"
he blinks. "...i'm literally sitting."
"you're sitting weird." he bites back a smile. "okay. how does one sit weird?"
"like that!" you snap, gesturing vaguely at his whole body. "all... confident."
"i'm sorry?" he laughs, leaning back. "you want me to slouch more?"
"i want you to stop—" you choke on your own words. "—being like... this."he tilts his head. "like what?" you should walk away. run. escape. join witness protection. instead you stomp closer. "stop being smug about last night." his eyebrows lift. "i'm not smug."
"you are," you fire back. "you're doing the eyes."
"...the eyes?"
"yes! the—" you wildly point at his face "—'i know something you're not admitting' eyes." his lips twitch. "maybe because you are avoiding something."
you freeze. he didn't say it sharply. or cruelly. just... plainly. softly. like he's stating the weather.
"i'm not avoiding anything," you lie.
"okay." he pats the couch. "come sit, then." you scoff. "no."
"why not?"
"because." because you don't know what will happen. because you don't trust your own body around him. because his voice last night is still echoing in your bones. "because?" he repeats gently.
you glare. you hate him. you hate that he's winning. you hate that he's not even trying to win. "fine," you snap, and drop onto the couch beside him.
the space between you is legal... but barely. jake doesn't move. doesn't lean in. doesn't touch. he simply turns his head and looks at you.
slowly. openly. like he's reading a book he's already memorized. your pulse stutters. "what?" you demand.
his voice is quiet. "you still look upset."
"i'm not upset."
"you're doing the eyebrows."
you gasp. "I DO NOT—"
"you do," he murmurs, and the tone—god, that tone—almost makes you shake. "you always do when you're overwhelmed." you hate how he knows that. you hate how he knows anything. you hate how safe he makes it feel to be known.
"jake," you say, trying to sound sharp. "stop... looking at me like that."
"like what?"
"like you're—" you swallow "—waiting for me to break." he's quiet for a beat. then, "i'm not waiting," he says softly. "you already are."
your breath catches. he doesn't smirk. he doesn't tease. he just watches you—steady, patient, unbearably gentle. and something in you snaps. "you think you know everything," you whisper.
"no." he shakes his head once. "i just know you."
your throat tightens. you push up from the couch —too fast, too dramatic, too you—but before you can escape, his hand closes around your wrist.
not hard. not forceful. just enough, enough to stop you. enough to pull a tiny gasp from your mouth. enough to make your knees weaken embarrassingly fast.
you stare at him and he stares right back.
"don't run," he murmurs.
"i'm not—"
"you are." his hand slides down, fingers brushing yours. "why are you scared of me?"
"i'm not scared of you," you whisper.
"then look at me." you do and that's your mistake. because he stands and steps into your space. not touching, but close enough that your breath stumbles. your legs buckle beneath you and you find yourself sitting on the sofa again.
your back presses into the sofa without you thinking, his body following, not pinning you, but caging you all the same—one arm braced above your head, the other still holding your wrist like he's reminding you he could've touched more, but chose restraint instead.
his breath ghosts your cheek. "this is what you wanted last night," he says quietly.
your stomach flips so violently you almost fold.
"i— you— i was drunk," you manage.
"you're sober now."
you hate him. you want him. you hate that you want him. his forehead drops to yours—barely touching, barely there, but it feels like a strike of lightning.
"say it," he murmurs, voice dropping to that devastating low. "just once. stop lying to me." you swallow so hard it hurts. "jake..."
his thumb skims the back of your hand—the first real touch—slow and devastating and enough to make heat coiling in your stomach spike.
"say it," he repeats, even softer now. "and i won't make you wait anymore." you gasp. you could feel your chest press in and your thigh clench together, an action that doenst go unnoticed by jake's sharp eyes.
your whole body trembles under his breath, his closeness, his voice and he feels it, oh he absolutely feels it. he smirks, barely. and then, in a tone that is not patient anymore, not gentle anymore—a tone that is pure control, "don't make me ask again."
your mouth parts. your pulse jumps. the line is right there—the moment before the moment—and you know if you speak, if you admit one more thing, everything you've been holding back is going to break wide open.
and he's waiting. breathing with you. holding you still. letting you fall on your own.
your mouth opens, but the only sound is a shaky, pathetic little gasp. your brain is screaming at you to shove him, to run, to do something—anything—but your body is a traitor. it's melting. sinking into the wall of the couch, arching just the tiniest bit toward him, like a flower leaning into the sun.
his thumb presses into the soft skin of your inner wrist, a slow, deliberate circle that feels like a brand. "i'm waiting," he murmurs, and his voice isn't gentle anymore. it's low. rough. it's the voice of someone who's done waiting.
"i—" you try, but the word dissolves. your pride is a flimsy shield against the sheer force of him. he's not just jake anymore. he's the boy who memorized your every whim, who learned your tells, who grew up and sharpened all that quiet observation into a weapon aimed directly at your defenses.
"look at me," he says again, and you do. you have to. his eyes are dark, pinned on yours, and there's no escape in them. there's only the truth. "say it."
"i hate you," you whisper, and it's the most honest thing you've ever said. a slow, vicious smile spreads across his face. it's not triumphant. it's relieved. "no you don't," he breathes, and then he closes the last inch of space.
the first kiss is a collision. it's not soft. it's not hesitant. it's a punishment. his mouth is firm on yours, bruising, and before you can even process it, his teeth are sinking into your bottom lip, a sharp, stinging bite that makes you cry out.
he licks over the hurt immediately, a hot, possessive swipe, and then he's kissing you again, all teeth and tongue, a messy, hungry claim. he's devouring you, and you're letting him. you're arching into him, your free hand fisting the soft cotton of his t-shirt, pulling him closer.
he breaks the kiss, leaving you panting, your lip tingling. his forehead rests on yours, his breathing just as ragged. "see?" he murmurs, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through your entire body. "not so hard, was it?"
you want to snap back, but all you can manage is a weak, breathless glare.
he chuckles, a dark, warm sound. "still got that look in your eye," he says, his thumb stroking the side of your neck. "like you're planning my murder."
"maybe i am," you whisper, dazed out of your mind.
"good luck with that," he says, and then he's manhandling you. his hands grip your waist, and he's spinning you, pushing you forward until your knees hit the edge of the couch. he bends you over the arm, one hand flat between your shoulder blades, holding you down. the position is obscene, your ass in the air, face pressed into the couch cushions.
"these," he says, his voice low and rough as he hooks his fingers in the waistband of your sleep shorts, "have been driving me crazy for a week."
he tugs them down, slowly, deliberately, and you lift your hips to help him, a silent surrender that feels more powerful than any argument you've ever won. he tosses them aside, his gaze dropping to the thin lace of your panties.
"so much for being subtle," he murmurs, and you flush, because he knows. he knows you wore them for him. you always do.
then his hand is gone from your back for a second, and you hear the sharp sound of it cutting through the air before it connects with your ass. a sharp, stinging slap that makes you yelp into the cushions.
"that's for being a fucking tease," he growls, his hand rubbing the sting into your skin. another slap, this one on the other cheek. "and that's for making me wait."
he yanks your panties down, and the cool air hits your dripping pussy. you're so wet it's embarrassing. "look at this," he breathes, and then you feel it—a sharp, stinging slap right against your folds. you jolt, a choked moan tearing from your throat. it's a different kind of pain, sharper, more intimate.
"so fucking wet for me. you wanted this just as bad as i did, didn't you?"
he doesn't wait for an answer. he's on his knees behind you, his hands gripping your ass cheeks and spreading you open. you feel his hot breath a second before his mouth is on you. he doesn't start slow. he licks a broad, flat stripe from your clit to your entrance, a messy, hungry taste before his lips close around your clit and he sucks. hard.
your knees buckle, but his grip on you is iron. he's a man possessed. he eats you out like he's starving, his tongue fucking into you, his nose pressing against your ass, his teeth scraping your inner thighs. he bites down on the sensitive skin there, hard enough to leave a mark, and you sob, pushing back against his face. he's obsessed. he's consuming you.
he groans at the taste of you, his tongue messy yet precise as he slide down your folds making your squirm. "jake, please," you gasp, your hands fisting the couch cushions.
he pulls back just enough to speak, his voice muffled by your cunt. "please what? beg for it."
"please, i need—"
"need what?" he demands, landing another sharp slap to your pussy. the sting mixes with the pleasure, a dizzying cocktail. you feel his fingers tease your clenching hole, not quite pushing in but instead dip in slightly before running over to rub at your swollen clit.
"your cock," you sob, completely broken. "please, jake, i need your cock."
he groans, a deep, guttural sound of victory. he stands up, and you hear the rustle of his jeans. then he's grabbing you, flipping you over onto your back on the couch like you weigh nothing. he looms over you, his shirt gone, his chest heaving. his eyes are wild, feral.
"open your mouth," he commands, his hand reaching between your legs to rub tight circles around your clit while you struggle to keep your legs open.
you do, without thinking. he leans down, spits directly onto your tongue. it's filthy, degrading, and it sends a bolt of pure lust straight through you. "swallow it," he orders, and you do, your eyes locked on his.
his expression morphs into one of pure bliss, his hand wrapped around his thick aching cock as he jerks himself slightly. he watches your needy mouth pull into a whine when his fingers press harder on your clit, pleading for him to fuck you.
originally, he was going to tease you. have you begging and crying for his cock, but he overestimated his ability to hold back when he realized how good you looked fucked out.
"good girl," he murmurs, and then he's lining himself up, the thick head of his cock pressing against your entrance. he doesn't wait. he pushes into you in one hard, deep stroke, and you both groan. he's big, stretching you, filling you completely, and it's overwhelming in the best possible way.
he starts to move, his hips slamming into yours, a brutal, punishing rhythm. each thrust is deep, deliberate, designed to break you apart. he leans down, sinking his teeth into the soft skin where your neck meets your shoulder, a hard, possessive bite that you know will leave a dark bruise.
"mine," he growls against your skin, his pace quickening. "you've always been mine." his hands fumble to pull up your shirt, eyes bright when he realizes that you weren't wearing a bra. his greedy hands grab at you tits, pinching and squeezing as he watched your face scrunch in pleasure.
"so fucking pretty." he mummers, his cock pounding into you strong before his mouth reach's down to take in one of your nipples—sucking hard.
you whine in response, hands clawing at his shoulders as you arch unnaturally against the couch.
"been waiting for this day for years." he confesses, between kisses that he's leaving on your chest. your heart beats faster at his sudden confession, moaning louder when his cock brushes against that all get area that many of your ex's had trouble finding.
the coil in your stomach tightens, impossibly fast. he can feel it too, can feel the way you're clenching around him, and he reaches down, his thumb finding your clit, rubbing tight, merciless circles.
"cum for me," he commands, his voice a low growl. "now."
you shatter. a blinding, all-consuming orgasm rips through you. you scream his name, your body arching off the couch as wave after wave of pleasure crashes over you. he follows you over the edge a moment later, his hips stuttering as he buries himself deep inside you with a guttural groan, spilling himself into you.
you shudder at the feeling of his warm cum in you, feeling him twitch inside you as he helped you ride out your high.
he collapses on top of you, his body heavy and warm, his face buried in the crook of your neck. you're both panting, your bodies slick with sweat, the room filled with the sound of your ragged breathing.
for a long moment, neither of you speaks. you just lie there, tangled together, the aftermath of the storm settling around you.
finally, he pushes himself up, his arms braced on either side of your head. he looks down at you, his expression soft, his eyes filled with a terrifying amount of adoration. he leans down and presses a soft, gentle kiss to the bite mark on your neck.
"still hate me?" he murmurs, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
you look up at him, at the boy you've spent a lifetime fighting, and feel something inside you crack open. "no," you whisper, and it's the truest thing you've ever said.
the room is still warm.not from the heater, not from the blankets—from him. from the way he touched you. from the way you touched him back.
you're lying on your back, hair messy, chest still rising too fast, your skin flushed in a way you hope isn't obvious... but you know it is. jake's spread out beside you, one arm tucked behind his head, the other lazily resting across your stomach like he claimed the space there without even thinking about it.
you don't speak at first. neither does he.
your breathing gradually falls back into something human, and eventually something soft and unbearably embarrassing curls into your voice.
"so," you mumble, staring at the ceiling because looking at him might actually kill you. "um. that happened."
jake turns his head toward you slowly—so slowly your pulse skips like it's trying to escape your body.
he doesn't tease. he doesn't joke. he doesn't even smirk. he just looks at you, eyes dark and soft and deeply certain in a way that makes your stomach twist.
"yeah," he says quietly. "it did."
you swallow. his fingers move—not leaving your stomach, just tracing lazy, slow circles like he's memorizing the shape of you now that he's allowed to.
"are you..." his voice dips, warm and low, "okay?"
you shut your eyes for one humiliating second before answering.
"i'm fine."
"you sure?"
"yes."
"positive?"
"jake, please," you groan, dragging your hands over your face. "i'm fine, you're fine, everything's—whatever."
he laughs, soft and breathy, and his hand slides higher on your torso—warm palm resting just beneath your ribs without pushing, without restraining, just there.
and the worst part? you lean into it without thinking.
he notices—of course he notices—because his thumb presses lightly, intentionally, like he's acknowledging the way you reacted.
your voice comes out embarrassingly small. "stop acting like you know everything."
"i don't," he murmurs. "i just know you."
you turn your head sharply, finally meeting his eyes—which was a mistake, because he's already looking at you like he's been waiting for you to do it.
and he holds your gaze. fully. openly. no hesitation left whatsoever.
god, he's bold now. not arrogant. not smug. just... sure.
sure of you. sure of himself. sure of what he wants.
"i meant what i said," he says, the slightest rasp in his voice. "you don't get to lie to me anymore."
you swallow, throat tight. "i wasn't—"
he cuts you off with nothing but a look. a look that tells you exactly what he heard in your voice earlier, in your breathing, in the way you clung to him.
"you don't have to pretend," he adds quietly. "not here. not with me."
your chest squeezes.
no one has ever said that to you before—not like that, not with that kind of certainty, not with that kind of gentleness that feels like he's handing you permission you didn't even know you craved.
so you whisper—barely audible, "i'm not pretending."
his breath catches. barely, but you hear it. then he shifts—not climbing over you, not pulling you in —just rolling onto his side, facing you fully, his leg brushing yours under the blanket that he has pulled over you two.
his voice drops to something dangerously soft.
"good," he murmurs. "because I'm not pretending anymore either."
you blink. "pretending what?"
he leans in, just enough that you feel his breath against your cheek, his nose brushing the corner of yours.
"that I don't want you," he says simply.
your stomach drops straight through the mattress. he keeps going, voice steady, tone low but honest in a way that shakes you more than anything else tonight.
"i'm done acting like I don't think about you all the time," he whispers. "i'm done holding back because I thought it was what you wanted."
your lips part, but nothing comes out.
his thumb grazes your hip under the blanket— slow, barely there, but intentional. grounding. claiming. reassuring.
"i'm done pretending you're just my friend."
your pulse jumps so hard you swear it echoes.
you stare at him—dazed, breathless, overwhelmed.
"jake..."
he just watches you, eyes soft, voice steady.
"you don't have to say anything tonight," he murmurs. "you don't owe me anything. i just need you to know."
you whisper, "know what?"
he holds your gaze like he's anchoring you in place.
"that I want you."
your breath stops.
"that I'm not scared of it."
his fingers tighten just slightly on your hip. "that I'm not scared of you."
you tremble.
"and that I'm not going anywhere."
the room feels too small. too warm. too full of everything you've been running from.
you look at him, really look, and something cracks open in your chest. you don't know what to do with it. you don't know how to breathe around it.
but he does. he reaches up, cups the back of your neck with a gentleness that ruins you more than anything else tonight, and he tugs you in just a little—not kissing you, just touching foreheads, sharing breath.
"we'll talk tomorrow," he murmurs. "when you're less in your head."
you want to argue. you want to push him away.
you want to pull him closer.
you end up doing none of those things—instead you melt, slowly, helplessly, into the space he holds open for you.
he pulls the blanket up. shifts closer. lets your head rest on his chest when you finally, silently, give in.
his hand stays on your back.
steady. warm. sure.
and for the first time, it hits you—painfully, beautifully, terrifyingly, you're not the only one who fell.
𓂃
you wake up before him.
which is unfair, honestly, because you absolutely deserve to sleep in after what he did to you.
your legs ache in that humiliating, delicious way. your throat is dry. your body is warm, too warm, because jake's arm is still around your waist, lazy and heavy and possessive even in sleep.
his breath ghosts the back of your neck. your, his, hoodie that he had helped you slip on last night was now halfway off your shoulder because of him. your pulse is still not normal.
you lie there, staring at the ceiling of the divining room, trying not to combust.
you should be embarrassed. you're not. you should be panicking. you are.
but underneath all of that—buried under the adrenaline and the dizzy aftershocks—there's this new, terrifyingly soft awareness sitting in your chest.
you want him.
in a way that isn't just physical. in a way that isn't just bratty competition. in a way that makes your stomach twist because you know it didn't start last night.
it started way, way before that.
your brain drifts—uninvited, unstoppable—right back to the beginning.
flashback — age 9, the playground
you're wearing a sparkly t-shirt and a crooked ponytail because you cut your own hair with safety scissors. jake is sitting in the sandbox, building something horrifyingly ugly but he swears it's a castle.
you stomp up to him, hands on hips, full attitude, even back then.
"you're doing it wrong," you announce.
he doesn't even look up. "hi to you too."
"jake. that's not a castle. that's a blob."
"it's abstract."
"it's ugly."
he sighs—that tiny, patient sigh that would become his trademark. "okay. what do you want me to do?"
"move over."
you don't wait. you physically shove him two scoots to the left and plop down beside him like you own the sandbox.
he moves. he always moves.
you grab his bucket. "we need more water."
he blinks at you, confused. "um... then go get some?"
you fix him with the most dramatic stare your nine-year-old face can manage.
"...i don't want to."
he laughs—that same soft little huff he still does —and stands up, brushing sand off his shorts.
"fine. i'll go."
"thank you," you say, like you're the queen of england.
when he comes back carrying a wobbly, half-filled bucket, you beam. you don't say thank you again, but he sees it in your face.
he hands you the bucket. but you don't take it.
you tilt your head and say, completely serious, "you pour it."
he should argue. he should tell you to do it yourself. he should tell you you're bossy. instead, without hesitation, he kneels and does exactly what you want.
and you lean closer—too close—watching him work, feeling weirdly fluttery and warm because jake listens to you in a way no one else does.
you don't know what it means at that age.
you just know it feels special.
later, when a group of older kids tries to take over your half-finished castle, you puff up, ready to argue—but jake steps in first.
"this is ours," he says firmly.
the kids back off and you stare at him like he's a superhero.
you don't understand your feelings, not then. but years later, lying in his bed with his arm around you, remembering the way nine-year-old jake defended your ugly sandcastle like it mattered?
you finally get it. it started there. it always started there.
back to present
you wake fully with a heavy breath and a heavier realization, you want to tell him. you want to admit it. you want to say something terrifyingly real like i think i've liked you since we were kids or i don't want last night to be a one-time thing or i want you.
and that's the problem.
because wanting is easy. saying it out loud is not.
so when jake shifts behind you, murmuring softly into your hair, "morning..." in that gravelly, post-sleep voice.
you panic. full feral panic.
you slip out of his arms, ignore his sleepy protest and practically flee the room.
you don't make eye contact during breakfast.
you don't sit near him. you don't let him touch you, even though he tries—a hand on your waist, a brush of his fingers, small things that make your breath hitch.
he notices. of course he notices. he doesn't push, though. he just watches you with that calm, frustrating, evolved-from-childhood patience.
"everything okay?" he asks at one point.
you say, "yep!" like an idiot and then walk away before you faint.
cowardice: 1
you: 0
you're on the couch later, pretending to scroll your phone, doing a terrible job of acting normal. jake is in the kitchen, on speakerphone, fixing something near the sink.
you're not listening. until you are.
because a girl's voice floats through the speaker—bright, flirty, familiar.
"so you're free this weekend?"
you freeze. jake hums. "yeah, probably."
the girl laughs. "good. i was hoping we could go out again."
again? AGAIN??
your vision goes sharp. hot. you sit up so fast your neck cracks.
jake notices the sound and glances over his shoulder—but you're already looking at him with an expression that could kill crops.
he mouths, 'what?' you don't answer.
the girl keeps talking. "my friends keep asking about you," she giggles. "they think you're cute."
you go still. silent. dangerously silent.
jake's eyes flick to your face and something about your expression makes him stand up straighter, makes his brow pull slightly together.
"uh—" he clears his throat. "can i call you back?"
"sure! text me later."
he hangs up and the kitchen goes too quiet. he wipes his hands on a towel and steps toward you slowly, cautiously, the way someone approaches a wild animal that might bite.
"hey," he says softly.
you don't respond. you just stare at him, jaw tight, heat ticking under your skin in a way that feels feral.
"that was... a friend," he offers.
you blink once. just once. but your eyes are sharp and possessive and nothing like the bratty irritation he's used to handling.
he stops walking. "what's going on?" he asks gently.
and that's when it hits him—the realization flickers across his face.
your posture. your eyes. the way you're holding your phone like you want to throw it at the wall.
you're jealous. not playful jealous. not the type of jealousy you showed at the park when mina, mona, mia whatever the fuck her name is was hitting on him. not petty jealous. real, territorial, chest-tightening jealous.
and jake has never seen you like that. his breath changes. his shoulders straighten. his whole energy shifts—calm, sure, controlled, like something in him clicks perfectly into place.
"come here," he says quietly.
you don't move. your throat is tight. your stomach is hot. everything in you is wound too tight to speak.
"come here," he repeats, firmer this time but still soft.
you finally stand. slow. tight. bristling with emotion you don't know how to name yet.
you walk toward him until you're only a foot away, eyes burning into his. he looks down at you—and there's something in his gaze you've never seen before.
and then—you can feel him watching you. that stupid half-smirk, that stupid relaxed posture like he didn't just back you against the counter a few days ago, hands on your waist, voice warm enough to melt your spine. like he didn't murmur things that have been replaying in your head nonstop.
and what makes it worse? he looks so unbothered. like he knows something you don't. he always does.
"you're awfully quiet," he says from the couch, leaning his head back like he's bored. "you only shut up when something's bothering you."
you glare at him. "nothing's bothering me."
"mm." his eyes drag lazily up your legs, slow enough to make you want to throw something at him. "so it's just your attitude that's loud today."
"jake."
"what?" he grins. "you get weird whenever someone gets too close to the truth. you always have."
you cross your arms, heat rushing to your cheeks. "don't start."
he sits up like he's been waiting for that.
"start what? pushing you?" a shrug. "you like when i do that."
you hate how your pulse jumps. you hate how he hears it. "you're so full of yourself."
"no," he says softly, "i just know you."
and the way he says it—warm, sure, familiar—makes your stomach twist in that embarrassing way you can never hide from him.
you turn away, but he laughs under his breath.
"see? there it is." he shuffles and steps in front of you, tilting his head. "that little flinch. the one you get when you're about to run your mouth but you don't know how to without admitting something."
"i don't have anything to admit," you snap—too fast, too sharp, too obvious. he raises a brow.
"okay," he murmurs, stepping closer, "then tell me why you've been avoiding looking at me since i had you pinned against that sofa with my cock deep inside of you."
you almost choke at his vulgarity.
"i— that— that was—"
"yeah," he says, eyes dropping to your mouth, "exactly."
you push his shoulder, out of pure panic. "shut up."
he laughs, catching your wrist midway, gentle but firm. "that's what i mean."
your breath stutters. "you've always been like this," he says, voice low. "bratty, loud, impossible. acting like you're the one in charge. you'd push me around, yell at me, boss me around—" his thumb brushes your pulse. "—and i loved every second of it."
your heart stops. you meet his eyes, stunned, and he smiles like he's been waiting years for that reaction.
"you liked that?" your voice cracks.
"of course i did." his tone warms, softens. "i loved that you treated me like i was yours without even realizing it."
your face burns and you whisper, "then why won't you let me do it anymore?" he steps in—close enough to feel his breath on your lips.
"because," he murmurs, "i finally realized something." your throat tightens. "what?" his eyes drop to your mouth, slow... deliberate.
"it's fun being pushed around by you," he says, "but it's even more fun watching you fall apart when i push back."
your knees go weak. he notices—of course he does—and his hand slides to steady your hip, fingers pressing just enough to make your breath catch.
"see?" he whispers. "this is why i don't mind waiting for you to confess." you swallow hard. "i'm not confessing."
"you already are."
"no i'm—"
"you are." he smirks. "and you'll say it any minute now." your eyes narrow. "you're impossible."
"mm. and you like me."
your face flames. "shut up." he leans in, lips brushing your cheek—not a kiss, but close enough to ruin you.
"say it," he murmurs. "c'mon. you've been holding it in for years." you shove him again—weakly this time. "god, jake, you're so—"
"annoying?" he offers.
"cocky."
"you like that too."
you groan in frustration. "fine! okay? i like you. i've liked you for a long time. happy now?"
his breath hitches—barely—but you feel it. then he smiles—slow, victorious, soft around the edges.
"very."
you try to look away but he catches your chin with two fingers. "hey," he whispers, "look at me."
you do and his voice drops—deeper, rougher. "you think i didn't know?" a slow shake of his head. "i've always known."
your pulse pounds. "and i didn't say anything," he admits, "because you... being like this? all flustered and mouthy and stubborn? it's the cutest thing in the world."
your knees actually wobble and his grip tightens.
"and now that i know you want me too..." he leans in, lips barely brushing yours—never quite touching. "...i'm gonna enjoy every second of this."
and then he kisses you. not careful. not patient. like he's been holding himself back for years and finally lets the dam break.
your back hits the counter, his hand sliding into your hair, tilting your head exactly the way he wants. he drinks in the little gasp you make, smirking against your mouth like he knew it'd happen.
you try to kiss him harder, try to take control, but he catches your wrists—pinning them lightly above your head, just enough pressure to make your stomach flip.
"see?" he murmurs against your lips. "told you. it's fun pushing you around." you whimper—quiet, involuntary. his lips curve. "there she is."
he kisses you again, slower this time, deeper, his mouth warm and sure and maddeningly steady. like he wants you to feel every second of it.
when he finally pulls back, your wrists are still caught in his hand, your chest rising and falling too fast.
he brushes his nose against yours, smiling softly—smug, but affectionate. "you can push me around later," he says, "but right now... let me have this."
you bite your lip, trying not to melt.
"jake?"
"yeah?"
"don't stop."
his smile is lethal. "wasn't planning to."
— enjoy this fic? check out my other ones right here!
can i request jake licking his own cum out of reader’s c00ch after he creampied her teehee
I wrote... but I made a little surprise, I hope you like it 🫢
𝐼'𝑚 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 , 𝐽𝑎𝑘𝑒
⤷ at the beginning of the relationship he was a totally romantic guy, but now he’s totally dirty
⋆. 𐙚 ̊ husband! jake × fem!reader
₊ ⊹ explicit sexual content, consensual breeding kink, unprotected sex, creampie, dirty talk, possessive language, mild cum play, intense emotional intimacy, mentions of pregnancy and trying to conceive
Part 2 here
You lie there on the messed-up sheets, thighs still trembling from the way Jake just wrecked you. Your pussy is throbbing, swollen, absolutely dripping with his thick load, the warmth of it leaking out slow and filthy down your ass crack onto the bed. He’s hovering over you, chest heaving, cock still half-hard and glistening with your cream and his cum smeared all over it. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, that cocky little smirk on his lips like he knows exactly what he’s about to do to you next.
He drops down between your legs without a word, spreads your sticky thighs wider with rough hands, and just stares at your ruined cunt for a second. “Fuck, look at that,” he mutters, voice low and raspy. “Look at my cum pouring out of this pretty little hole. You’re fucking wrecked, baby.”
You feel the air hit your sensitive clit and you whimper, hips jerking. He chuckles darkly, leans in, and drags his tongue in one slow, nasty stripe from your leaking entrance all the way up to your clit. The taste of himself mixed with you hits his tongue and he groans like a starving man, eyes rolling back a little. “Taste so fucking good together,” he growls against your folds, lips already shiny with the mess.
Then he really goes for it. He shoves his tongue deep inside you, curling it, scooping his own hot load out of your pulsing walls like he’s desperate for it. You can feel every flick, every greedy lick as he eats his own creampie straight out of your cunt. Wet, sloppy sounds fill the room, his mouth sucking loudly on your over-fucked hole, swallowing down every drop he can get. Cum and your juices smear across his lips, his chin, dripping down his neck, but he doesn’t care. He’s moaning into you, hips grinding against the mattress because he’s already getting hard again just from the taste.
“Push it out for me, sweetheart,” he rasps, pulling back just long enough to watch another fat glob of his cum ooze out of you. “Push my fucking load into my mouth.”
You bear down, shaking, and you feel it drip heavy and warm right onto his waiting tongue. He catches it, groans deep in his chest, then dives back in like an animal, tongue-fucking you, nose buried in your clit, licking and swallowing until your pussy is fluttering around nothing and you’re sobbing from how sensitive you are.
He keeps going until he’s licked you completely clean, until the only thing left dripping out of you is fresh slick from how turned on you are again. When he finally pulls back, his face is a fucking mess: lips swollen, chin dripping, cum streaked across his cheek. He grins up at you, wicked and satisfied, licks his lips slow and deliberate.
“Love eating my cum out of this perfect little cunt,” he says, voice hoarse. “Could do it all fucking night.”
He crawls up your body slow, still licking the taste of both of you off his lips, eyes locked on yours like he can’t believe you’re real. His fingers slide up your thigh, smearing the last traces of wetness, and he collapses beside you, pulling you into his chest. The room is quiet except for your breathing, heavy and synced, hearts hammering against each other.
You feel his lips brush your temple, soft now, nothing like the animal that just devoured you. “You okay?” he whispers, voice rough from moaning into your pussy. His hand cups your face, thumb stroking your cheek. “Wasn’t too much?”
You shake your head, turning to bury your face in his neck, tasting salt and sex on his skin. “No. It was perfect. You’re perfect.” Your voice cracks a little, because suddenly it’s not just about the filthy thing he just did. It’s about how he looked at you while he did it, like you were everything.
He exhales shakily, like your words hit him somewhere deep. “Fuck, I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to yours. “The way you let me… the way you trust me with every dirty, fucked-up thing I wanna do to you… I’m so fucking in love with you it hurts.”
Your breath catches. He’s never said it like that before, raw and trembling, no smirk, no joke to hide behind.
You kiss him slow, tasting the both of you on his tongue, and whisper it back against his lips. “I love you too. So much it scares me sometimes.”
His arms tighten around you like he’s afraid you’ll vanish. You stay like that, tangled, whispering things you’ve never said out loud before: how he makes you feel safe even when he’s ruining you, how you’ve never wanted anyone the way you want him, how you’re terrified of ever losing this.
And then, without warning, the lights flicker once, twice, and die.
Everything goes black.
For a second you both freeze, then he laughs softly against your mouth. “Of course. Of fucking course the power goes out right now.”
But outside, thunder rumbles low and heavy, and suddenly rain starts slamming against the windows like the sky’s been holding it in for months. It’s loud, violent, beautiful. The room flashes white with lightning, and in that split second you see his face, eyes wide, rain-blue, staring at you like you’re the only thing left in the world.
He pulls the blanket up over both of you as the temperature drops, cocooning you in warmth and the smell of sex and him. The rain hammers harder, drowning out everything but your breathing and the low growl of thunder.
He kisses you again, slower this time, deeper, like he’s trying to crawl inside your soul. His hand slides down to rest over your heart, feeling it race. “Listen to that,” he whispers against your lips as another crack of thunder shakes the walls. “Sounds like the world’s ending. And I’m here with you. Nothing else matters.”
You thread your fingers through his damp hair, pull him closer. The rain is a roar now, sheets of it blasting the windows, wind howling like it wants in. But inside, under the blanket, it’s just you and him, skin to skin, hearts pounding in sync.
“I want this forever,” you breathe, voice shaking with how much you mean it. “You and me. Like this. Even when the lights go out. Even when everything falls apart.”
He makes this broken sound, half laugh, half sob, and kisses you like he’s sealing a vow. “Then it’s yours. I’m yours. Storm or no storm. Lights or no lights. Every filthy, desperate, soft, insane second of it.”
Lightning flashes again, lighting up the room, and you see tears in his eyes that have nothing to do with the rain outside.
The thunder rolls, the rain never stops, and you fall asleep like that: wrapped around each other, cum-dried and love-drunk, while the world outside tries to tear itself apart and fails.
Because nothing, not even the end of the world, could touch what you have right now.
The rain is still pounding when you hear it: small, hiccuping sobs and the soft patter of bare feet on the stairs.
Jake freezes mid-kiss, lips still against yours, and you feel his whole body go rigid. Another sob, louder this time, followed by a tiny, broken voice.
“Daddy…?”
He’s up in half a second, yanking the blanket around his waist as he scrambles for the bedroom door. You grab his t-shirt from the floor and pull it over your head; it falls to your thighs, still warm from his body and smelling like him. The hallway is pitch black, lightning flashing hard enough to strobe the walls white.
You both reach the top of the stairs at the same time.
There she is: his little girl, four years old, curls wild from sleep, clutching her stuffed bunny so tight the ears are bent. Tears are streaming down her round cheeks, lit up every time the sky cracks open. She’s shaking.
“Daddy, the thunder’s so loud,” she whimpers, bottom lip trembling. “It’s scary. I had a bad dream and the lights went away and I’m cold.”
Jake drops to his knees right there on the landing, blanket forgotten, and scoops her up like she weighs nothing. She buries her face in his neck instantly, legs wrapping around his waist, little fists clutching his shoulders.
“Shh, baby, I’ve got you,” he murmurs into her hair, voice soft in a way that makes your chest ache. “Daddy’s here. You’re safe, I promise.”
You step closer, heart in your throat, and she peeks out from his neck when she hears your footsteps. Her eyes are huge and red-rimmed.
You open your arms without thinking. “Come here, sweet girl. It’s okay.”
She reaches for you immediately, and Jake passes her over. She clings to you just as tight, face pressed to your collarbone, bunny squished between you. She’s freezing; her little toes are ice against your thigh.
Jake stands up, grabs the blanket from the floor, and wraps it around all three of you as he presses in close behind you, arms circling both of you like a shield. The thunder booms again and she flinches hard, crying harder into your neck.
“It’s just the sky being loud, baby,” he whispers against her curls, kissing the top of her head over and over. “It can’t get inside. It can’t touch you. We won’t let it.”
You sway with her gently, rocking side to side the way you’ve seen him do a hundred times. “Want to come sleep with us tonight?” you ask softly. “Big bed, all warm, Daddy and me on both sides so the thunder can’t find you.”
She nods against your chest, sniffling. “Can Mr. Flopsy come too?”
“Of course,” Jake says, voice thick. He kisses her damp cheek, then your shoulder, lingering there like he’s thanking you without words.
You carry her back to the bedroom, Jake’s hand on the small of your back guiding you through the dark. The rain is a steady roar now, softer, almost like a lullaby. Lightning still flashes, but it feels far away under the blanket cocoon you make in the middle of the bed.
She ends up between you, tiny body curled into Jake’s chest, one of her hands reaching back to hold two of your fingers like she needs both of you to feel safe. Mr. Flopsy gets tucked under her chin.
Jake meets your eyes over her head in the dim blue light of another flash. His are glassy, overwhelmed, so full of love it steals your breath. He mouths thank you, slow and deliberate.
You mouth back always.
The storm rages on outside, but inside the three of you are a warm, breathing island. Her crying turns to little hiccups, then to soft even breaths. Jake’s hand finds yours across her back, fingers lacing tight.
In the dark, with the rain drumming and thunder fading into the distance, he whispers so quietly only you can hear, “This is it. This is my whole world right here. You, her, us. I’d burn the fucking sky down before I let anything hurt either of you.”
You squeeze his hand, press a kiss to the top of his daughter’s curls, and feel the last piece of your heart click permanently into place.
The lights never come back on that night.
You don’t need them to.
The power finally flickers back on sometime around dawn, pale gray light leaking through the curtains. You wake up tangled in Jake’s arms, his daughter still curled between you like a tiny furnace, Mr. Flopsy half-buried under her cheek. The rain has slowed to a soft patter, the storm long gone.
Jake’s already awake, tracing lazy circles on your hip with his thumb, watching both of you like he’s memorizing the moment. When she stirs and blinks up at him with those big hazel eyes that are one-hundred-percent his, he smiles so soft it hurts.
“Morning, little monster,” he whispers, kissing her forehead. “Storm’s all gone.”
She yawns, stretches like a kitten, then scrambles up to sit cross-legged between you, hair sticking out in every direction. You sit up too, tugging his t-shirt down over your thighs.
“I’m hungry,” she announces, very serious.
Jake laughs under his breath. “Pancakes?”
“With the smiley faces and whipped cream,” she nods solemnly, then turns to you. “You help, please?”
You’re already sliding out of bed. “Absolutely. Let’s go make the best pancakes in the world.”
Twenty minutes later the kitchen smells like butter and vanilla. Jake’s flipping pancakes at the stove in nothing but gray sweatpants riding low on his hips, flour smeared across one shoulder blade where she “helped” him measure. You’re pouring orange juice while she sits on the counter swinging her legs, bunny tucked under one arm.
She watches Jake slide a perfect smiley-face pancake onto her plate, whipped-cream mouth and blueberry eyes, and suddenly she goes very quiet.
“Daddy,” she says, small voice cutting through the sizzle of the griddle.
He turns, spatula still in hand. “Yeah, baby?”
She twists the bunny’s ear, cheeks pink. “When am I gonna get a little sister?”
The spatula freezes mid-air. You choke on air. Jake’s eyes snap to yours over her head, wide and panicked and a little bit wrecked in the best way.
She keeps going, completely unaware of the bomb she just dropped. “Because Emma at preschool has a baby sister now and she says it’s the best. And I want one too. A tiny one. That I can teach things. And share my toys. And you said when people love each other very very much they can make a baby, and you love her,” she points at you with a sticky finger, “so much it’s gross sometimes.”
Jake’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He looks like he’s been hit by a truck made of feelings.
You feel your face go up in flames, heart trying to climb out of your throat.
She tilts her head. “So… can we? Please? I’ll be so good. I already picked a name. If it’s a girl it’s gonna be Luna, like the moon, because the moon watched over us last night when the thunder was mean.”
Jake drops the spatula with a clatter, walks over, and lifts her off the counter into his arms like she’s made of glass. His eyes are glassy again, voice rough.
“Baby,” he says, pressing his forehead to hers, “you don’t even know how much I want that. How much we,” he looks at you, eyes shining, “want that. One day. Soon. I promise.”
She beams, wraps her arms around his neck. “Really?”
He nods, throat working. “Really. Luna’s a perfect name.”
Then she wriggles down, runs to you, hugs your legs so hard you almost fall over. “That means you’re gonna be her mommy too,” she says into your stomach, matter-of-fact, like it’s already decided. “And you’ll be the best mommy because you let me have whipped cream for breakfast and you weren’t even scared of the thunder.”
Your knees nearly give out. Jake steps up behind you, arms sliding around your waist, chin resting on your shoulder. You feel him trembling just slightly.
He kisses the side of your neck, whispers so only you can hear, “You okay with that, sweetheart? With her calling you mommy one day? With giving her that little sister she just ordered like it’s the easiest thing in the world?”
You turn in his arms, cup his face, thumbs brushing the wetness at the corners of his eyes.
“I’ve never wanted anything more,” you whisper back.
His smile breaks wide open, raw and beautiful, and he kisses you right there in the kitchen, soft and slow and full of every promise you just made.
His daughter cheers, clapping sticky hands. “That’s a yes! Luna’s coming!”
Jake laughs through the tears he’s not even hiding anymore, scoops her up again, and the three of you end up in a pile of hugs and whipped-cream kisses while the rain finally stops outside and the sun breaks through the clouds like it heard everything and decided to celebrate too.
Pancakes get cold.
Nobody cares.
You’ve got a family to grow.
The house is quiet for once. She’s at her grandma’s for the weekend, first sleepover since the storm, and the silence feels almost loud. You’re both tiptoeing around it all day: the loaded glances across the kitchen, the way Jake’s hand keeps finding the small of your back, the way you catch him staring at your stomach like he’s already picturing it rounded with his baby.
By nightfall the air between you is electric.
He finds you in the bedroom doorway, barefoot in one of his old tour shirts, nothing underneath. The hallway light catches the hunger in his eyes when he realizes.
“Lock the door,” he says, voice low, rough, already wrecked.
You do.
He’s on you before the click finishes, backing you into the wall, mouth hot and desperate on yours. His hands slide under the shirt, palms spreading over your bare skin like he’s claiming every inch.
“Been thinking about this all fucking day,” he growls against your throat, teeth scraping. “Putting another baby in you. Giving her that little sister she asked for.”
You moan into his mouth, legs already shaking. “Do it then. Fuck me full of it.”
He groans like you just punched him, lifts you clean off the floor, and carries you to the bed. The shirt is gone before you hit the mattress. He spreads your thighs wide, stares down at your pussy already slick and swollen for him.
“Look at you,” he breathes, dragging two fingers through your folds, spreading you open. “This cunt was made to take my cum. Made to grow my babies.”
You arch up, desperate. “Jake, please—”
He doesn’t make you wait. He shoves his sweatpants down just enough to free his cock, thick and leaking at the tip, and lines up. One slow, deliberate push and he sinks into you bare, balls deep, stretching you open exactly the way you both need.
“Fuck,” he hisses, forehead pressed to yours. “Feel that? That’s me breeding you. Every inch.”
He starts moving, deep and filthy, hips rolling slow at first so you feel every drag of his cock inside you. Your legs wrap around his waist, heels digging into his ass, urging him deeper.
“Harder,” you beg, nails raking down his back. “Want to feel you for days. Want it dripping out of me until it takes.”
That snaps something in him. He slams into you, bed creaking, headboard knocking the wall. The room fills with the wet slap of skin on skin, your soaked pussy taking him over and over.
“Gonna fill this pussy up,” he snarls, voice breaking with how close he already is. “Gonna pump you so full you’ll be leaking me for a week. You want that? Want me to fuck a baby into you right now?”
“Yes, yes, fuck, Jake—”
He shifts, hooks your knees over his elbows and folds you nearly in half, pounding so deep you see stars. His hand slides between you, thumb finding your clit, rubbing tight circles.
“Come on my cock while I breed you,” he demands, sweat dripping from his jaw onto your tits. “Milk me, sweetheart. Take every fucking drop.”
You shatter, screaming his name, walls clamping down so hard he groans like he’s dying. He slams in once, twice, then buries himself to the root and comes with a broken sound, cock pulsing hot and thick inside you. You feel it, every spurt flooding you, painting your walls, filling you up exactly like he promised.
He doesn’t pull out. Just stays buried deep, chest heaving, lips brushing your ear.
“Stay just like this,” he whispers, voice raw. “Don’t move. Wanna keep every drop inside you.”
You nod, breathless, clinging to him. He rolls you gently so you’re on your sides, still locked together, his cock plugging you full. One big hand splays over your lower belly, possessive and reverent.
“Right here,” he murmurs, pressing down lightly, feeling where he’s still twitching inside you. “This is where she’s gonna grow. Our Luna.”
You turn your head, kiss him slow and deep, tasting salt and sex and forever.
Minutes pass, hours maybe. He gets hard again without ever leaving you, and the second time is slower, filthier, whispered dirty promises against your mouth while he grinds deep, making sure nothing leaks out.
By the time you finally fall asleep, he’s still inside you, arms locked around your waist, palm resting over the place that might already be holding the beginning of everything you both want.
Outside, the moon hangs low and full, silver light spilling across the bed like it’s keeping watch.
in which jake swears he’s not a jealous boyfriend yet still fights like he is when someone approaches his girl.
boxer!jake x gf!reader
this fic follows another boxer!jake fic i wrote a while ago! i lowkey love this concept and have so many ideas i cant wait to write them 🤭
the late afternoon light cut through the high warehouse-style windows of the boxing gym, turning the air golden. dust floated in the beams like glitter shaken from the sun. every corner buzzed with that raw, gritty energy only boxing gyms had - the kind built from discipline, adrenaline and people trying too hard to impress eachother.
leather gloves smacked against pads. jump ropes snapped against the floor. water bottles clattered as someone kicked one over. a group of beginners stumbled through footwork drills, pretending they weren’t dying.
everything smelled like sweat, disinfectant, rubber mats and that faint metallic scent that always hung around the ring.
jake stood right in the middle of it all - breathing steady, gloves up, body sharp and precise despite the exhaustion tugging at his muscles. he was practicing with coach min, the same way they always did when coach wasn’t busy with new trainees or phone calls about upcoming matches.
coach min held the pads in his hands, his usual unimpressed look sitting firm on his face, “straight. hook. roll. again.”
jake reset his stance, took a quick breath in, ready to fire another punch with more intensity. but then coach min said it - casual. offhanded. like it wasn’t the single, most fastest way to fry jake’s brain mid-combination.
“your girl’s here.”
jake froze mid-jab. his glove hovered just under his cheek, breath caught in his throat.
he didn’t turn - he didn’t need to. his pulse kicked instantly, thumping warm and eager under his skin. a smile threatened to break his focus, tugging at the corner of his lips despite his best effort to stay disciplined.
he loved when she came by to pick him up. loved that she always stood just inside the entrance, as if too shy to walk further into the gym. loved that soft, tired smile she’d give him after her own long day - like seeing him was the one thing that settled her whole world.
“cool down.” coach min ordered, “two more minutes. don’t get sloppy now.”
jake swallowed, nodded, “yes, sir.”
he pushed through another set, body moving on autopilot - jab, cross, hook, slip - even though all he wanted was to turn around and look at her properly. but just then, halfway through his last. combination, a laugh cut through the gym noise.
it wasn’t her. no, this one was too loud, too deep.
some guy.
jake’s eyes quickly flicked toward the entrance, barely a fraction of a second, and suddenly his stomach dropped. y/n was still standing where she always did, but this time she wasn’t alone.
one of the new trainees - the tall one who had an objectively stupid haircut jake already hated - was leaning way too close to her. he seemed to be laughing at his own joke, talking with his whole chest like he was performing a comedy routine no one asked for.
y/n gave a polite smile in return, small and tight, and jake recognised it instantly. it was her i-want-to-leave-but-i’m-too-nice smile.
jake’s jaw clenched. hard. tight. his punch slammed into the pad harder than he should’ve and coach min instantly grunted at the sudden impact.
“yah. control your strength.”
jake didn’t say anything, he physically couldn’t with how much he was seething through his breath. he forced himself through the last minute even though every instinct screamed to get out of the ring and peel that trainee off her like some annoying sticker.
across the room, y/n’s eyes were entirely focused on her boy.
the way his muscles flexed in his sleeveless top, the way his jaw clenched with each jab and deep breath, the way he pushed through even after knowing she’d finally come to get him - watching him like that always did things to her she didn’t want to admit.
and she swore she could see the smile tug at his lips from afar, warming her chest even further. she was just stood there, still in her work clothes and heels, with that pretty, fond smile playing on her lips, completely minding her own business when she heard someone speak up beside her.
“hey.. uh, you’re jake’s friend, right?”
y/n turned her head to see a boy - probably a year or two younger than her - tall, bad haircut, overconfident smile. she recognised him instantly - he was new, loud, tried too hard. the type who probably thought the gym was a social club instead of a place where people actually worked.
“yeah.” she answered, politely, “i’m y/n.”
he grinned like she’d just given him permission to keep going.
“you come here a lot?” he asked and stepped forward until she could smell the intensely artificial body spray he’d drowned himself in.
she instinctively shifted back, just an inch, but he followed the movement like he didn’t notice - or perhaps chose not to.
“i’ve seen you around a few times.” he went on, running a hand through his hair like he was posing for a mirror. and then he laughed - loud, awkward and forced - “oh, don’t worry. not in a creepy way.”
yeah. sure.
y/n’s polite smile tightened just a bit and she let out a chuckle but it ended up just sounding like a breath, “right..”
“jake didn’t tell us he had someone.” the trainee tilted his head and y/n watched the way his eyes dragged down her figure in a way that made her stomach twist with instant discomfort. like he was sizing her up, trying to memorise her.
“he usually keeps to himself. guess i know why now.”
she wanted this conversation to end. preferably before jake finished training and saw this guy inhaling her personal space like it was oxygen.
“well, jake’s almost done. so-”
“oh, cool, cool.” he cut in. he shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged a shoulder like she was discussing weekend plans instead of trying to walk away. y/n tried to drag her eyes away but he only moved his face in her direction, as if forcing her to look at him.
he leaned in again, too casual, “does he train you too?”
she blinked, “train me?”
“yeah.” he said, eyes flickering over her again - this time more scrutinising than flirty - “you look like you could use a few lessons. strength, stamina… maybe posture too.”
her jaw tightened. a slow burn of irritation crawled up her spine.
because not only was he pestering her - he was doing it two feet from her boyfriend’s ring. in the same gym he’d practically grew up in, the same gym he’d made famous.
and while jake was literally watching from across the room.
still, the trainee wasn’t finished.
“i’m just saying, if you ever want tips, i’m around after evening sessions. i could show you a few things… one-on-one.”
y/n’s stomach twisted. she wasn’t helpless, and she damn well didn’t need some rookie talking to her like she was.
the second coach min dismissed jake, he was ripping off his gloves, dropping them on the mat as if relieved of the timing. he hopped down from the ring - still sweaty, chest heaving, hair damp and messy.
he didn’t bother with a towel. didn’t bother catching his breath. he just walked straight to her.
the trainee’s teasing grin faltered the second y/n’s eyes flicked past him and jake approached the scene - not that jake was looking at him, anyway. he didn’t spare him a single glance.
“hey.” he said softly, voice lower than usual. his arm slid naturally, possessively, around her waist.
y/n immediately leaned into him like she’d been waiting all day for his touch, “hi, baby.”
something in jake’s shoulders loosened. his chest warmed painfully, protectively, as he took in her familiar, sweet perfume. she looked relieved yet happy at the same time as she played a grin and that same glint in her eyes that always sparkled when she looked at him.
infront of them, the trainee mumbled something that died on his tongue. he bit the inside of his cheek and forced himself to keep his expression neutral even though he was irritated.
jake didn’t care.
he dipped his head closer to her and let his hand slide lower on her back - slowly, intentionally and very obviously for an audience.
“you ready to go?” he asked, eyes locked on hers.
y/n lifted her brows in amusement at his touch, hand splayed dangerously low on her waist. she could instantly feel it.
his new clinginess. his claim.
“yeah.” she smiled up at him nonetheless and jake intertwined his fingers with hers. he grabbed his bag from the side before guiding her towards the exit, not looking back once.
he didn’t have to.
he could feel the trainee’s glare burning between his shoulder blades - and it only made the corner of his mouth lift in a quiet, satisfied smirk.
-
as soon as they got into her car, jake didn’t wait for the engine to start. the second his seatbelt clicked, he reached across the console, found her hand, and linked their fingers together so tightly it was like he feared she’d disappear if he let go for even a second.
y/n blinked at their hands, amused, “well… hello to you too.”
jake didn’t react. his jaw was locked, shoulders tight, eyes fixed stubbornly over the passenger window.
“you okay?” she asked softly, smiling even though she already knew the answer.
“i’m fine.” he replied quickly, almost too quickly. his tone was low and clipped, trying to hide the embarrassment curling under the surface of his sweaty skin.
y/n only hummed, “yeah, definitely sounds like you’re fine.”
he didn’t take the bait.
instead, without looking at his girlfriend, jake lifted their joint hands and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the back of hers. it wasn’t casual. it wasn’t distracted. it was the kind of kiss that said he’d been thinking about touching her since the moment he saw that boy standing too close.
then, he lowered their hands into his lap and kept them there - like it was non-negotiable.
y/n laughed under her breath and started the car with her free hand, nonetheless. she tried to pull her hand away to shift the gear into reverse, but jake tugged it right back. she tried to shift her seat, and he tugged again.
finally, she chuckled through her breath and turned to her boyfriend a little bewildered, “jake, i need that hand to drive.”
“still using it.” he mumbled, tightening his grip and sliding his thumb rhythmically against her knuckles, “drive with one.”
“baby.” she grinned, “you’re being clingy.”
“i’m allowed.” he muttered and his eyes lifted from her knuckles to stare straight ahead - stubborn expression, ears slightly pink, like a sulky puppy who refused to admit he was pouting.
the more she glanced at him, the cuter he became. he wasn’t angry, just… bothered. quiet. protective. a little insecure in a way that made her chest soften - he was this big, strong man out in the ring but with her, he practically melted into a puddle.
“did something happen?” she asked with a gentle tone that dipped into something a little more serious. with how quiet he was, she thought maybe he was bothered by more than that small interaction in the gym.
“nothing happened.” he spoke immediately - too fast again.
his fingers squeezed hers. his knee bounced heavily. his gaze stayed glued to the road in front of them, razor sharp as if he was the one driving.
y/n raised a brow, “you sure?”
he swallowed once, then lifted her hand again to brush his lips over her knuckles - slower this time, more tender.
“just wanna be close to you.” he murmured.
her heart melted on the spot. jake always got like this - after fights, after long training sessions, and especially after something, or someone, irritated him.
but y/n didn’t push him further, or tease him.
she just squeezed his hand back, let her thumb stroke over the back of his much rougher knuckles in a delicate caress.
“okay, stay as close as you want.” she whispered.
jake exhaled like he’d been holding his breath the entire drive.
he didn’t let go of her hand. not even once. not when she was parking, not when she turned off the engine and not even when she tried, and failed, to reach for her bag in the backseat. he stubbornly held onto her like she was something he’d won and absolutely had no intention of losing.
-
the next day, jake returned to the gym with every intention of being mature. he really did.
he told himself on the walk over that yesterday didn’t matter. he told himself she’s all his, she chose him, and that he had no reason to waste energy on some rookie with a bad haircut and no understanding of boundaries.
he was practically repeating it to himself like a mantra.
be mature. be calm. you’re above this.
that lasted about four minutes.
he’d just tossed his bag to the side of the changing room after searching around for his wraps, and was now making his way to the main area of the gym when voices drifted down the hallways. loud ones. laughing ones.
familiar ones.
jake slowed on instinct, suddenly intrigued, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up slightly.
“bro, she is so pretty.” that same deep voice of the trainee from yesterday bragged, letting out a chuckle with his two other friends, “i’m telling you, i didn’t even care that she wasn’t into it. i could still try-”
jake fully froze in his spot, his hand paused against the wrap on his palm. his blood didn’t burn, his pulse didn’t spike. no, everything just went completely still, eerily silent inside him.
one of the other trainees groaned, “doyeon-ah, stop. you said enough yesterday.”
but the kid kept going, louder, bolder, more disgusting.
“i’m serious! if she wasn’t so loyal to him, i swear i’d try again.. i mean-” he snickered like some psycho planning something, “did you see the way she looked? those legs? bro, she’s-”
“doyeon.” the second hissed, glancing around nervously. none of them had seen jake standing just further down the hallway, “shut up. that’s his girlfriend, and he’s our senior. we shouldn’t be disrespectful.”
“so what? not my fault jake pulled someone way above his league.” he laughed again, “anyway, even if she acted all shy, i bet she-”
that’s when one of the other trainees noticed jake stood down the hallway, silently fixing his wraps while quite clearly listening into their conversation. the kid’s heart dropped, eyes widening in shock and he instantly smacked doyeon against his sleeve.
“doyeon-ah, shut the fuck up.” he hissed but jake was already moving off.
he was walking into the main area when all the trainees went pale, straightening up instantly mid-breath as if they’d been caught stealing - actually, this was probably worse than being caught stealing.
jake didn’t say a word. he didn’t need to.
his expression was blank, calm, almost bored as he looked ahead, fixing his wraps and rolling his shoulders back. his stare was razor sharp, and his jaw clenched like he was calculating just how much force it would take to drop each one of those kids right now.
he looked more serious than he did before he went into the ring - and that was not a good sign.
all three of them stared at him like he had two heads. the silence thickened and seemed to tense even more when coach min walked out of his office. he gave them all a stern nod in greeting and then his eyes landed on his star fighter, a slow smile curling his lips.
“jake! good timing.” he said cheerfully, completely oblivious to the bloodbath brewing in the air. he clapped his hands once, loud enough to make the trainees jump, “i want one of the newbies to get some sparring experience with you today.”
jake nodded, “who?”
coach min looked around the group of boys and raised a brow, as if thinking which one needed the most improvement.
“you.” he pointed, “kim doyeon. get your wraps.”
kim doyeon.
jake’s lips curved ever so slightly. it wasn’t big or noticeable to coach min, but it was a smile - a calm, terrifying one that never reached his eyes.
“perfect.” jake said to his coach, voice smooth as silk and twice as dangerous.
doyeon’s face practically drained of colour. his friends winced at the situation and he swallowed hard, scrambling to grab his wraps as if being shaken out of a nightmare. except this might’ve been the nightmare - he was about to go against jake. the best fighter in their gym, the most known boxer out there right now for how good and sharp he was.
jake, who’s girlfriend he was just bad-mouthing and laughing about.
his hands shook as he grabbed his wraps and his friend had to practically help him whilst jake jumped up into the ring to warm up quickly. he joined him soon enough and jake patted him on the shoulder, friendly, almost gentle, but with a grip that made doyeon flinch.
“this’ll be good practice.” he murmured with a polite tone, “for both of us.”
doyeon didn’t respond. he couldn’t. he was too busy trying not to pass out.
the second the bell rang, doyeon charged, fists high, chin up, overconfident in the way only rookies could be - all speed, no precision, all ego, no discipline.
jake didn’t budge.
he slipped to the side as if he’d been waiting for this attack since yesterday.
“too slow.” he murmured, tilting his head.
doyeon skidded on the canvas before whipping around with an irritated grunt. he raised his fists and instantly went to throw another punch, sloppy and rushed, more emotion than technique.
jake pivoted away with a single step, barely shifting his weight, “still too slow.”
a few trainees snorted under their breath. they tried to hide it, but the sound carried and echoed in doyeon’s ears, flushing his neck red. it was humiliating how much he was getting thrown about - but what did he expect? this was jake he pissed off.
he tightened his fists and launched a full combination - jab, cross, hook - the kind young fighters practiced in mirrors thinking it made them look intimidating. jake saw every motion before it even formed - of couse he knew, he’d fought actual fighters with worse form than this kid right now.
without effort, jake landed a small jab to doyeon’s ribs. it was light enough not to bruise but sharp enough to humiliate.
doyeon stumbled and caught his breath, “stop running and fight-”
“then hit me.”
that only made doyeon angrier. he swung again recklessly, as if just punching for the sake of it, and it was hard enough that it could’ve actually knocked someone out if it landed.
but jake didn’t even need to step back. he leaned just far enough for the glove to whisper past his cheek. the crowd murmured, impressed, and jake’s lips curved into a small smirk.
doyeon saw it. it made him snap.
shots became wild. footwork completely disappeared. he wasn’t boxing anymore, he was just chasing jake’s shadow.
from outside the ring, someone muttered to another, “you can’t just let him play you like that-”
doyeon, stood right infront of them, snapped his head with irritation and humiliation chasing up his neck, “shut up!”
that’s when jake called the distance and muttered with a voice low enough only he could hear, “you should listen to them.”
doyeon threw the last punch he had in him - a desperate, ugly right hook that only made coach min shake his head in disappointment. something in jake’s expression shifted - he became more sharper suddenly, shoulders squared and the air in the gym shifted like everyone expected something was about to break.
jake didn’t dodge. he stepped forward and connected his fist with doyeon’s jaw in perfect form, full rotation, literally a textbook execution. it was hard, precise. the sound cracked through the gym and everyone watched as doyeon’s body flew back.
he was caught by the ropes, his head whiplashed, mouthguard half-slipping out, feet scrambling for balance. the gym went dead silent.
someone whispered, “holy shit-” barely audible over the ringing tension. the kid stared up at the dull ceiling lights with ringing ears, unfocused eyes and a brain that suddenly forgot exactly where he was.
jake approached him slow and terrifyingly calm, “that was for talking about her.”
doyeon, his heart in his mouth and jaw aching, swallowed hard as the fear and shame finally took over his arrogance. this was the jake everyone feared out in the ring, the quiet boxer who barely snapped but when he did, it was brutal.
jake leaned down without blinking, his gaze sharp enough to cut, “and next time you even think about her again,” he tapped his glove against the boy’s cheek mockingly, “you’ll get worse.”
the warning hit harder than the punch.
coach min blew the whistle so loud half the gym flinched, “okay, enough. jake, out! now.”
jake didn’t argue, didn’t even look at doyeon again. he simply stepped out of the ring, going straight towards his bag for his towel and water bottle with smooth confidence as if he hadn’t just scared an entire room into silence. as if this was light work for him, something casual.
the jealousy that had been boiling under his ribs since yesterday, seeped out of him at last, leaving him much lighter, clearer, almost relieved.
+ BONUS
jake swore to himself he wouldn’t do it again - he wouldn’t let jealousy fuel him, he wouldn’t let it take over especially during a fight. but he couldn’t help the way it angrily seeped in when he heard a laugh. her laugh.
her loud, confident, pretty laugh.
the sponsor’s son, the same guy who’d been hovering around y/n all night, even as she kissed jake outside the ring before his match like usual, even as she exchanged small words with coach min while jake was warming up, even as she asked some staff for a bottle of water.
he was there… hovering, smiling, laughing just to impress her.
either way, it hit jake’s ears like a slap.
his first round started evenly - almost too evenly for jake’s taste. he’d kept his guard high, his footwork proper, his rhythm and the way his weight shifted before every punch. jake wasn’t aggressive yet; he was studying his opponent, calculating.
the crowd was murmuring with each exchange, filtering in with the continuous narration of the commentators. the air was thick, heavy with anticipation and jake had only looked toward ringside for barely a second.
only a second when he heard her laugh.
but that split second cost him.
it was all it took for his opponent to land a clean jab against his cheek.
his head turned sharply with a grunt and the crowd gasped in unison. y/n’s eyes widened as she snapped her head from the gradually irritating man next to her. her heart dropped with the gasps of the audience and she instantly stood up.
coach min slammed the ropes, “eyes on the fight, jake!”
jake blinked once. twice. slowly. he snapped back to the opponent without another thought and instantly everything inside him shifted. his whole demeanour changed. annoyance, jealousy, possessiveness - it all shot straight through his chest like he’d been plugged into an electric outlet.
he let out a long, deep exhale and suddenly he wasn’t just fighting. he was proving a point.
with his coach’s groans in the background and the shouts of the commentators, jake moved forward and his punches snapped through the air with terrifying accuracy. his dodges weren’t just evasions but statements - every hit made the ropes tremble, every counter made the crowd cheer louder.
by the middle of round two, his opponents breaths were ragged, hands dropping an inch lower with every failed attempt to touch jake again.
but he didn’t let him recover.
he slammed a brutal body shot right under the ribs - the kind that stole air and dignity. the crowd instantly exploded and then came the combination with smooth, practiced ease that made the crowd scream even louder.
right hook, left jab, cross.
the other fighter staggered back with wobbly legs. coach min’s voice cut through the noise, “finish it!”
jake didnt hesitate. he stepped in and delivered a clean, merciless uppercut, the perfect hit that made the guy drop to the canvas like a felled tree.
the ref didn’t even bother counting. it was clear jake had won as the arena erupted with gleeful cheers and waves and the match concluded itself. jake didn’t hear any of it as he waved back at everyone with heaving breaths and weak shoulders.
he instantly climbed out of the ring, pulling his mouthguard out, sweat sliding down his jaw and his hair clinging to his skin. his chest rose and fell quickly and his heart was banging in his ears but it wasn’t exhaustion tightening his breath - it was jealousy.
hot. sharp. still humming beneath his skin like a live wire.
and that - more than the win - was what pushed him down the steps and toward the hallway where he knew he’d see his girlfriend soon enough.
-
y/n caught him the moment he stepped out of the locker room with flushed cheeks and hair damp from the shower he rushed through. jake was rolling his shoulders out, still buzzing with leftover adrenaline and still littered with slow, growing bruises on his jaw and abdomen.
she didn’t even wait for him to notice her. she practically threw herself into his space, hands going straight to his shoulders with hurried excitement.
“there you are.” she breathed, eyes shining with pride and jake felt himself soften, “babe, you were amazing!”
before he could respond, she lifted her sleeve and gently wiped a few drops of water from his jawline, fingers trailing a second longer than necessary. it was a quick, mindless action but it had jake freezing in his spot, his hand on her waist stilling.
she was soft. warm. too close.
he hadn’t even cooled down from the fight and she was starting an entirely new one inside him.
jake caught her wrist lightly before she could pull away, “who was that guy?”
his voice was low, slightly rough, still carrying the edge he fought with. his dark eyes bore down into hers as he leaned down ever so slightly. his breath mingled with hers and despite it all, y/n only blinked up at him.
“what guy?”
“the one sitting next to you.” his jaw tensed, “the one laughing at everything you said.”
“oh.” she realised slowly. she let out a soft, airy laugh that fell straight into jake’s heart, “him? he was just being polite. i don’t even know his name, i barely talked.”
but jake wasn’t buying it. he leaned in closer, just enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. close enough that she could feel his breath skim her cheek.
“he kept leaning toward you.”
his voice wasn’t raised, or angry, or mean. just possessive in a way that hit straight through her ribs.
y/n’s lips twitched in amusement. she knew what was happening, of course she did when he was making it so obvious. just to rile him up further, she slowly, deliberately let her hands glide from his shoulders to his hard chest. she trailed her fingers over the fabric of his dark hoodie, brushing the hem before drifting back up and letting her touch linger.
just enough to make him melt.
“jake.” she murmured, warm and teasing, “were you jealous, baby?”
he didn’t even try to hide his reaction - it was instant. the flush of his cheeks, the flicker of his eyes.
“no.”
y/n raised her brows. his jaw clenched and he looked away, almost shyly, “…okay, yes.”
her smile spread, slow and irresistible, like she was savoring the moment her sweet, quiet boyfriend finally cracked. like she was seeing an entirely different side to his usual touch exterior.
she stepped fully into him, chest pressed against his and slid both hands up to loop behind his neck.
“you fought better because of it.” she brushed her thumbs against his skin lightly.
he made a small, low sound - somewhere between a scoff and a groan - and looked off to the side, almost embarrassed.
“didn’t like him looking at you like that.”
y/n tugged gently on the chain around his neck and innocently pulled him closer until their noses nearly touched. the tension sparked between them, sharp and warm as she let her breath linger between them.
“well, i only look at you.”
jake cursed under his breath - a soft, low sound with her name tangled somewhere inside it. his hands slid to her waist with a certain firmness it made her heart race when he dragged her flush against him like the idea of even a millimetre of space was unbearable.
she laughed against his lips, “baby, you’re so easy to tease.”
jake rested his forehead against hers, breath ghosting over her mouth, “keep teasing. see what happens.”
a shiver rippled down her spine, one she couldn’t even hide.
and she didn’t.
y/n rose slowly onto her toes, fingertips delicately brushing the back of his neck as she leaned in. her lips ghosted along the sharp line of his tense jaw, against his warm, gentle bruises and she planted a kiss that wasn’t meant to be sweet at all.
it was deliberate. purposeful. a bit dangerous since they were stood in an empty hallway that anyone could walk into any second.
but she didn’t care. she savoured the way his breath hitched and her chest tightened and she only continued - her lips pressed another kiss right beneath his ear, the spot she knew he could never stay calm through. his inhale came sharp and uneven and his rough hands clamped down on her waist automatically, like a reflex he couldn’t control.
jake didn’t bother pretending he wasn’t affected. didn’t bother hiding the way his fingers dug in. didn’t bother keeping a moan out of his voice when he whispered her name.
and then he kissed her. not hesitantly or carefully.
he kissed her like he’d been holding everything in - the jealousy, the adrenaline, the way she always knew exactly how to undo him - all packed into one moment.
it was deep and hungry and the kind of kiss that made her back arch slightly and the hallways feel too small to hold them. his hands slid up her back, all warm and strong, dragging her closer until she could feel every breath he took, every beat of his heart against her chest. he held her like he’d been waiting all night, all week, maybe forever, just for her to touch him like that.
the jealousy that had sparked everything melted away and was replaced by something hotter. something steadier. something that wrapped around her like heat and gravity.
devotion. want.
and something that felt dangerously close to worship.
she was his - not because he said it, but because of the way he touched her and breathed her in like she grounded him.
and jake? he was absolutely, undeniably hers. every heartbeat, every sharp inhale, every look that said she was the only one he ever saw.
3rd time seeing enha, BY FAR THE BEST CONCERT SO FAR FOR ME. my section was SOOO good such good energy and i gave freebies and it made me so happy ugh I HAD A TIMEEEE
anyway sorry for being MIA i promise im writing slowly but surely yall ill post an update soon for love maze and ive been feral over jake so expect a one shot
pairing: bff!jake x fem!reader || wc: 3.9k || cw: smut! sexting, mutual masturbation, tons of dirty talk, body worshipping, use of petnames, swearing || warnings: +18 content! mdni || a/n: i love this concept and of course bestie jake was gonna be my victim 😮💨
you stare at your phone in horror as the little “delivered” appears under the image. you’d meant to send it to jaehyun — your new hookup, the guy you barely know but who’s been begging for a taste of you all week.
instead, you sent it to jaeyun. jake. jake, your best friend since middle school, the guy who thinks of you as his little sister, the guy who’s been with you through every birthday, breakup, and milestone in your life.
you use both thumbs to hammer out a message:
you: omg omg omg sorry sorry sorry delete that i meant to send it to someone else please ignore
no response. your stomach twists. you consider calling him, but you’re too mortified to speak.
ten seconds later, your phone buzzes.
jake: delete what?
you almost hurl.
you: ?????
you: you didn’t delete it?
jake: i mean, it’s still here. it’s… impressive
your cheeks flame. you reach to wipe at your sweaty palms.
you: please tell me you didn’t open it
jake: nope
jake: i peeked, just a quick thumbnail
you swallow.
you: jake.
jake: hey, don’t choke on your pride
you consider blocking him. but you shouldn’t have sent that picture in the first place. and his reaction — it wasn’t angry. it was… curious. hungry, even.
you swallow and type slowly:
you: i’m so sorry
then you stare. why are you apologizing? more than that: your body is buzzing with a weird heat. you scold yourself. but the heat only grows.
jake: so you look like that without clothes on?
you freeze.
you: sim jaeyun shut the fuck up
jake: cmon!!! you were ready to send it to someone
jake: don’t act so shy with me baby
you shift on the couch, thighs pressing together inevitably at the petname.
you: i can’t believe you
jake: can’t believe i what? i saw what you sent
jake: i’m not judging
you stare at the phone.
you: well, i feel judged
jake: good. payback for thinking i’d delete it
your pulse spikes. you tap another message, heart pounding:
you: you’re an asshole
jake: yeah? what am i going to do about it?
you type instantly.
you: nothing
you: because you’re my best friend
you: you’d never
you: yeah.
jake: i’d never what?
you pause.
you: nothing.
jake: c’mon, hand it over
your breath catches.
you: hand what over?
jake: your body
you gape at the screen, heat rushing through you.
you: jake.
jake: have you seen that picture?
jake: how do you want me to act nonchalant when you look like that?
you glance at the picture again. it’s a mirror shot: you kneeling on your bed, one hand tugging at your hip, the other holding your phone. your breasts are full and heavy, shadows accentuating the curve of your nipples, lips slightly parted.
you wanted to send it to jaehyun because you were proud of your body — the way your skin glistened in the lamplight.
and now jake is tapping into that pride, pushing you further.
your fingers tremble as you reply:
you: i didn’t mean to send it to you.
jake: but you did
you: yeah i did
you: but it wasn’t meant to you
you: don’t tease me.
jake: i wouldn’t tease you if you weren’t so hot
your pulse races. you breathe slowly before typing.
you: jake, this is… messed up
jake: maybe
jake: but it’s also the most fun i’ve had all week
you battle between mortification and a primal stirring in your core.
you: i probably shouldn’t even reply
jake: but here you are
you swallow.
jake: and you’re doing it because you want to
jake: admit it
you gulp, he’s right. and deep down you know it, too.
your fingers hover. you type:
you: i don’t want you to laugh
jake: i’m not laughing
jake: i even guarantee a serious look on your face if you let me
you tremble.
you: serious look?
jake: yeah
jake: like i want to fuck you
you reread the message about five times. what the actual fuck has jake just said?
and why are you feeling so hot?
your heart pounds so hard you’re afraid jake can hear it through the screen.
you: jake.
jake: wait
then he sends an image: a close-up of his cock through his boxers — thick, tenting the fabric, the tip pressing against the cotton like he can’t hold himself.
you stare, mouth dry as you feel your panties getting wetter.
jake: told you i wasn’t laughing
your thighs press together instinctively, trying to soothe the ache building between your legs. you don't even realize you're holding your breath until you let it out in a shaky exhale.
you: jake what the fuck
jake: your turn
you bite your lip and something twists inside you. you never thought of jake in that way. but here you are, imagining him under you, the heat of his mouth exploring your folds, tongue dragging through your slick until your breath hitches. you picture his lips pressing against your thigh, those strong fingers spreading you open while he teases your clit.
suddenly, you’re aware of how wet you are, how desperate. how utterly turned on by the thought of your best friend worshiping your body. a thrill of guilt and excitement courses through you, making your hips shift on the mattress, panties growing impossibly damp.
you swallow hard, tugging your shirt up. you’re quick to snap a new picture: a close-up of your cleavage, your lips parted, fingers barely brushing your breast.
you send it.
then you hide the phone under the pillow, heart in your throat.
jake replies almost immediately:
jake: holy shit
you go hot and cold.
you: delete that
jake: nope
jake: you’re so fucking perfect
jake: i can’t stop staring. fuck.
a rush of warmth spreads through your chest. you clutch the pillow tighter, breath coming out in small gasps, thighs unconsciously squeezing together as your body reacts to his words.
the phone vibrates again.
he sends another picture: a selfie, his face a portrait of lust — cheeks flushed, lips parted, pupils so blown they almost eclipse the color of his eyes. his tongue peeks out at the corner of his mouth, glistening with spit. there’s a drop of drool caught at the edge of his chin, and you don’t know why, but it makes your stomach twist, heat surging straight to your core.
jake: keep them coming
your breath stutters. you close your eyes, trying to pull yourself back to reality, but it’s no use. your body’s already gone there.
you: we can’t
jake: tell me why
you don’t answer right away. your fingers hover over the screen, your head swimming.
jake: because we’re friends? too late
you sigh, letting your head fall back against the headboard. it’s all too much — the want, the guilt, the anticipation curling low in your belly. this wasn’t supposed to happen. not with him. not like this.
you: i’ve never done anything like this with a friend
jake: me neither. but hell, you’ve never looked like this before
his words hit like lightning — sharp, crackling, impossible to ignore. your pulse hammers against your ribs as you stare at the screen.
the air in the room feels heavier, as if the line between the two of you has already snapped. you don’t even know if you want to fix it.
you: you’re going to regret this
jake: maybe
jake: but not tonight
you can almost hear his voice. you curl your fingers into the sheets and let out a breath.
you: so what happens now?
the typing bubble appears.
then disappears.
then comes back.
he sends a voice note. you tap play.
his voice is low, husky, rough around the edges like he’s barely holding it together: "i want to taste you. i want to watch you come on my fingers."
you shiver. it’s not just the words — it’s the way he says them, like a promise. like a threat. like he’s starving.
you: don’t say stuff like that
you: please
jake: why? turn you on?
you bite your lip, trying to fight the heat rising up your neck.
you: you’re disgusting
jake: i’m the kind of disgusting you like
and fuck, he’s right. because your body reacts before your brain can argue. your thighs press together tightly, searching for friction. wetness seeps through your panties, hot and insistent, and you can feel your pulse between your legs — needy, aching.
you: stop making me so wet
jake: not going to happen
there’s a long pause. ten seconds. twenty. enough time for you to start overthinking, to wonder if you’ve crossed a line, if he’s done this before, if he regrets pushing this far.
you almost put your phone down.
then:
jake: show me how wet
you take your panties off with ease, spreading your legs slightly as you lay against your pillow.
your breath catches. your hand trembles as it trails lower. your fingers slide through the slick mess he’s made of you — and the moment you touch yourself, it’s game over.
you point the camera between your legs, slick coating your fingers. you record a short video, your thumb tapping teasing circles over your clit, your hips lifting slightly to chase the touch.
you stop the recording at just under ten seconds and hit send without thinking, fingers shaking.
the response is instant.
jake: fuck baby
jake: you’re so fucking gorgeous
jake: c’mon, i gotta eat this
your breath catches in your throat. your whole body goes still, like your system is trying to process the rush of arousal and nerves at once.
you: stop.
you don’t even know if you mean it. maybe part of you does. maybe part of you is scared of what this means, of how far it’s gone, of how badly you want it to go further.
jake: can’t
jake: i’m going to eat all of you
you squeeze your thighs together as heat blooms low in your stomach. his words echo in your mind, raw and hungry and full of intent. you picture him — between your legs, his mouth on you, those same words whispered against your skin.
your body pulses at the thought.
you: you’re driving me insane
jake: good, you’re too
jake: be a good girl and spread those legs for me?
you hesitate, nerves prickling under your skin, chest rising and falling like you’ve just run a mile. the room feels too warm, your body heavy with anticipation. but your hand moves on its own — camera flipped, thighs spread wide, your fingers slipping back between your folds. you start recording again.
this time, it’s slower. more deliberate. your fingers glide through your slick, glistening in the light, and you can’t help the soft whimper that escapes you. your clit is already swollen, aching, begging for more. you dip your fingers inside, just a little, teasing yourself for the camera, for him. you can’t see his face, but you feel his gaze, hot and greedy even through the screen.
you send the video.
not even ten seconds later, your phone buzzes.
a video. from him.
you press play.
jake’s face fills the screen — flushed, lips parted, eyes locked onto the camera like he’s looking through it, through you. his mouth is slack with pleasure, cheeks tinged with pink, jaw tense. he turns the camera down, and you see it — his cock in his fist, thick and dripping, his hand moving in slow, lazy strokes, like he’s savoring it.
the tip is shiny with pre-cum, leaking more with every pass of his palm.
then you hear it.
his moans. low, rough, desperate — your name tangled somewhere in the back of his throat, like he’s trying to hold it in and failing.
you feel dizzy.
your legs tremble, breath shallow. your hand’s already sliding back down, helpless against the wave of heat that crashes through you. it’s too much and not enough all at once.
you: i want your mouth on me
you: fuck i want it so bad
almost instantly, your phone buzzes with a new video from jake. you tap play, heart racing faster than ever.
the screen lights up with him — shirt off, chest flushed, hair messy like he’s been running his hands through it in frustration. his eyes are heavy-lidded, dark with need, pupils blown wide as if he’s on the edge of losing control. his voice comes low and rough, dripping with lust.
“you have no idea how badly i want you right now,” he breathes, swallowing hard, voice breaking slightly. “i want to taste every inch of you, feel you shiver under my tongue… god, i want to hear you beg.”
he shifts the camera down, his hand sliding slow and deliberate over his cock, slick with precum, fingers teasing the tip. his breathing gets ragged, a deep moan ripping from his chest as he strokes himself with more urgency.
“fuck, you make me so crazy. i’m dying to be inside you, to make you scream my name while i fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked.” he licks his lips, eyes never leaving the camera. “tell me you want me. tell me how bad you need it. tell me you’re already dripping for me.”
the video ends, but you can still feel his heat burning through the screen. your breath hitches, fingers trembling as your body aches with want, craving every filthy promise he’s making without even touching you.
you bite your lip, heart pounding as you type back, fingers shaking:
you: i’m dripping for you
you: i want you so bad it hurts
you flip the camera on yourself and start recording.
the video is slow and deliberate — your fingers sliding over your slick folds, tracing lazy circles around your swollen clit. your breath catches, lips parted, eyes half-lidded with need. you bite your bottom lip, whispering against the mic, “i’m so wet for you, jake. i want you to make me scream.”
you stop the recording and send it, heart pounding like a drum. but you’re not done.
seconds later, you flip the camera back on and record again, this time capturing your fingers slipping inside you, slow and teasing, curling just right to hit the spot that makes your body shiver uncontrollably. your hips lift off the bed, chasing the pleasure you’re building. your voice is breathy, almost a moan, “i’m dripping for you, god, i need you so bad.”
send.
you glance at your phone, already buzzing.
jake: fuck, you’re driving me crazy
jake: keep going. i wanna see you lose control
you bite your lip harder, heat spreading through your chest as you hit record once more. this time your voice is barely above a whisper, trembling with desperation, “please, jake… i want you so fucking bad. make me yours.” your fingers move faster, slick and wet, your body arching toward the camera like you’re reaching for him.
you send it, fingers shaking. the screen lights up again.
jake: you’re perfect
jake: fuck, i need to taste you
then another video from him appears.
jake’s face fills the frame again, flushed and heavy-lidded, his breath ragged as he strokes himself with slow, hungry movements. the camera dips down to his hand, slick and glistening, sliding over the swollen head of his cock. his moans are deep and desperate, trembling with need.
“god, i’m dying to be inside you,” he murmurs, voice thick with want. “to watch you beg while i make you mine. i want to hear you scream my name, baby.”
his fingers quicken, slick sounds filling the silence between his words.
your pulse races, fingers twitching as your own body aches for release. you curl your hand tighter, sliding your thumb over your clit in urgent, circular motions, biting down hard on your lip to keep from crying out.
but it’s no use.
the sound that rips from your throat is soft and broken, a whimper that fills the quiet of your room and makes you shake. your back arches off the bed as your hips grind into your palm, desperate for more, for him, for the impossible idea of jake’s hands and mouth where your fingers are now.
your phone buzzes again. another message from him. you barely glance at it — you look so fucking good like that — before flipping the camera, hitting record with your free hand.
you don’t speak this time. you let the video speak for you: your thighs spread wide, your fingers slick and fast, the way your body trembles with every touch. your lips part in a moan you can’t contain, raw and real, your chest heaving with every ragged breath.
you send the video and collapse back into the mattress, panting, legs still shaking. your heart is pounding so loud it’s all you can hear.
another buzz. this time, a voice note.
you don’t even hesitate. you press play.
his voice is low, completely wrecked.
“jesus christ, baby… you’re gonna make me come just listening to you. fuck, i can hear how wet you are. can picture it so clear — your thighs trembling, your fingers fucking that tight little pussy, wishing it was me instead.”
you moan, helpless.
“you have no idea how bad i want to ruin you,” he breathes. “want to have your legs shaking around my head. want your nails down my back while i fuck you through the goddamn mattress.”
his breath catches, and you can hear him fisting himself, the slick, obscene sounds of it, the rhythm picking up like he’s close.
“you’d take me so good, wouldn’t you?” he murmurs, voice shaking. “let me stretch you open, fill you up. make you come until you’re crying.”
you press your hand between your legs again before the note’s even over, still soaked, still throbbing. you circle your clit slow this time, letting his voice guide you back into the haze.
you start recording without thinking. flip the camera. this time, you show your face.
your cheeks are flushed, lips red from biting, eyes wide and glassy with lust. you stare into the camera, breathing heavy.
“you have no idea what you do to me,” you whisper, voice trembling. “i can still feel it, jake. my legs won’t stop shaking.”
you slide your fingers down again, gathering the mess between your thighs, and lift them into frame. your hand glistens in the light.
“look what you did,” you breathe, holding your fingers up to the camera. “i’m soaked for you. dripping.”
you send it immediately.
the pause between messages feels like an eternity, but then your phone buzzes again.
a video.
you open it with a shaky breath.
this time, jake’s not trying to tease. he’s desperate. his hair’s a mess, his chest rising and falling like he’s been running. his fist is tight around his cock, moving fast, and his expression — eyes shut tight, brows furrowed, mouth parted in a moan — is pure, raw need.
“fuck, baby, fuck,” he groans. “you’re driving me insane. i’m so fucking close.”
you watch, completely hypnotized, as he moans your name, over and over, each one more strained than the last.
he opens his eyes, barely able to focus. “tell me when you’re close,” he gasps. “i want us to come together. i need to hear it.”
you gasp, body pulsing with the urge to give in again. you’re already on edge, so sensitive it’s almost painful. your fingers slide back to your clit, moving faster now, desperate and unrelenting.
you hit record, camera on your face again. you look wrecked, voice hoarse.
“jake… i’m close. so fucking close,” you whisper, and there’s a crack in your voice, a desperation you don’t bother hiding. “i need you. need to come with you.”
you flip the camera back down, showing your fingers rubbing fast, your hips lifting off the bed, your body twitching.
you send the video.
he replies instantly.
jake: come for me
jake: please baby
jake: be my good girl and come all over those pretty fingers
and that’s it.
the coil inside you snaps.
your whole body arches off the bed, a strangled moan tearing from your throat as waves of pleasure crash through you. your fingers don’t stop, rubbing through it, drawing it out until your thighs are trembling and your breath comes in broken gasps.
you collapse back into the pillows, dazed and spent, your hand still pressed between your legs.
your phone buzzes again.
a final video. you open it.
jake’s face is the first thing you see — his lips parted in a silent gasp, head thrown back, chest rising and falling fast. his hand’s still wrapped around himself, movements stuttering as he jerks through his orgasm.
his moan is loud, unfiltered, your name on his lips like a prayer as he comes hard, his release spilling over his hand, dripping down in thick, messy ropes.
he looks back at the camera, dazed, wrecked, flushed. strands of hair cling to his forehead, sweat shining along his jaw, and when he finally blinks, it’s like he’s coming back from somewhere deep.
his voice is ragged when he speaks, barely more than a breath: “fuck… you ruined me.”
you press the phone against your chest, heart pounding beneath it, your body still humming from the high he pulled out of you without even being here. the ache in your thighs has faded into a slow throb, your skin still oversensitive, still buzzing with the weight of everything you just did.
your legs are sprawled, the sheets underneath you wrinkled and damp, your fingers still coated in your own slick. you close your eyes for a moment, trying to catch your breath, but jake’s voice, his face, his moans — they play on repeat in your head like a song you can’t turn off.
the screen lights up again. another message.
jake: still breathing?
you let out a soft, breathless laugh, the corners of your mouth twitching into a smile even as your body’s still shaking.
you: barely
jake: god
jake: you’re unreal
jake: i’ve never come that hard in my life
you press your lips together, cheeks burning at the confession. there's something about the way he says it — not just horny, but honest. like you’ve touched something deeper, pushed him past just lust.
you flip the camera on again, lifting it shakily to frame your face. you look wrecked — hair a mess, skin flushed, lips swollen, pupils still wide. but your smile is real, slow and lazy, drunk on release and the sound of his voice still echoing in your chest.
“you made me feel so good,” you whisper, voice soft and cracked around the edges. “i’ve never done this with anyone. never like this.”
you pause. then, in a tone barely above a breath: “you make me feel wanted.”
you hit send before you can second-guess it.
a minute passes. then two. your stomach twists — not from embarrassment, but from the weight of everything you didn’t say out loud. how long you’ve felt the pull toward him. how many nights you’ve imagined something like this and then scolded yourself for it, because he’s your best friend.
your phone finally buzzes.
jake: fuck
jake: you are wanted
jake: you have no idea how long i’ve wanted to see you like this, falling apart for me
your lips part, breath catching. your chest swells with something new — not just lust, but longing.
jake: we can pretend it’s just tonight if that’s easier for you
jake: but i don’t want it to be
you stare at the screen, those words hanging in the quiet. the ache low in your stomach is different now. you breathe slowly before typing.
you: i don’t want it to be just tonight
you see the typing bubble appear. then vanish. then reappear again.
jake: you’re mine, then
jake: not just for this
three seconds.
jake: god, you’re gonna kill me
jake: i’m still hard
you laugh, breathless. your head tilts back into the pillow, but heat curls in your belly again almost instantly.
WE FOUND LOVE ON... HINGE? ⋆˚࿔ ♡ 🤳 ˎˊ˗ [s. jaeyun]
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pairings ⟢ down bad! jake x fem! reader
contains ⟢ profanity, crack/humour, fluff, kind of suggestive, use of dating apps, one shot!
୭ ˚. ᵎᵎ this is a behind of like a tattoo! jake (my ongoing heeseung smau) and also part of my lat! behind series, you can read sunghoon's here! <3
⟢ IN WHICH you come across a cute guy's odd hinge prompt, who seemingly has no clue what it actually means.
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author's note: so before working on tattoodaddyhoon69 and frankoceanfan123’s love story again, i wanted to put this out first LOL! if u wanna see more of this jake, click here! to read my ongoing smau series that he’s featured in! (i just can’t seem to let these characters go) 😇
hi hiii I just found love maze and im super hyped to read it 🤭!!! just curious though how many more parts are you planning for it
hi!! i’m aiming for max 20 howeverrrr i truly don’t know how to stfu sometimes so it’s kind of a toss up. the stories already at 35k which is insane so yeah, i’m gonna try to wrap it up relatively soon cause all i do is yap but realistically prob 44-50k in total😭😭
