≡ᶻᶻ༄ synopsis: (based on the song Oceans & Engines by NIKI!) the last hours you have with jake make you realize that despite your excitement for him, saying goodbye is hard. when all you want to do is hang on to the last few rays of light, hoping, hoping, hoping you'll wake up and this'll all be a dream.
≡ᶻᶻ༄ genre: jake x gn!reader || established relationship || ANGST
≡ᶻᶻ༄ warnings: none :]
≡ᶻᶻ༄ word count: 903 words
≡ᶻᶻ༄ a/n: that feeling of longing for a pause button on life :(((( this song is so so good too pls listen to NIKI
≡ᶻᶻ༄ disclaimer: this does not in any way shape or form represent the real people whose names are mentioned, this is just a kpoppie trying something new :)
Saturday sunset, we’re lyin’ on my bed
With five hours to go
Fingers entwined and so were our minds
Cryin, I don’t want you to go
You were the happiest person on the planet when Jake told you he was leaving. At least, that’s what it looked like on the outside. Because only you knew how much he’d wanted to live in his mother-country after years of living abroad. You knew about the dreams he had of turning his passion into something that could change the lives of so many people—and not just yours.
The two of you had grown up away from your parents’ countries. Your families had been neighbors your entire lives. The two of you went through the same things as you stumbled and fell and scraped the skin off your knees and got up again. Falling on concrete sidewalks turned into falling for sophomores in middle school turned into falling for each other. And the scraped knees because of it were almost too much to bear on that Saturday sunset day.
“You can be sad, too, you know.” Jake said to you while playing with a piece of popcorn. He kept tossing it up again and again without eating it. “You don’t have to always be smiling.”
“Shush,” you said after finding no other answer to defend yourself with. You looked back at the movie you’d put on, pretending you were watching it the whole time. “Let me watch Ron Weasely get mauled by a dog in peace.”
“I’m serious,” he said gently. When you kept your eyes glued to the projector propped up in your bedroom, he sat forward and waved a hand in front of your face. “Hello?”
“Shh! This is the funny part.”
Jake turned around to check the scene and raised a quizzical brow back at you. “Harry and Hermione getting their asses kicked by a tree?”
You snorted in affirmation.
“I’m dating a psycho,” he murmured before starting to tickle you all over. Your shrieks and yelps of protest did nothing to stop him until you were both gasping for air from laughing so hard.
The two of you finally called a truce on your tickle war to slump against each other, gazing blankly at the movie playing before your eyes. One scene changed to the next, to the next. Too fast.
For a minute you wondered what it would be like to live in a world of magic, where traveling to different places was instantaneous and effortless. How you wished that were true for this world, too.
“I’m not always smiling.” You said quietly. Your breaths were alternating now. His exhales were your inhales.
“I know you. I know you’re hiding it from me. I know you probably cry yourself to sleep at night.” Jake answered softly. “Don’t do that alone. I don’t want you feeling sad all by yourself.”
The tears lining the sides of your eyes cast the dusk-layered room in a watery glow. You leaned back on him even more, wishing you could hit pause and never move on.
“Cry now. Here, with me. Later, too, if you want, in your brother’s room. Tomorrow, cry with your puppy.”
You laughed at the last addition, your giggles coming up through the sniffles. “They’ll be so sick of my crying.”
“They wouldn’t be,” the certainty in his voice only made the rock in your throat grow. “I wouldn’t be sick of you, either. So cry now, as much as you like, until it feels better.”
He was hugging you know, arms circled around you warmly as if he wasn’t crying just as hard as you were.
“I don’t want you to go,” your lips quivered. This was the first time you managed to say anything against his move since he told you about it all those months ago.
“I won’t ever leave you, you know that,” he whispered back, finding your fingers in the dark. You clung on to him like the hole in your stomach was going to grow bigger and bigger until the whole world was overflowing with emptiness and his hands were all you had left to keep you from disappearing. You knew he felt it, too, in the way his fingers gripped yours, mirroring your own desperation.
But you both knew there was no stopping it. You knew what you were getting into the moment you acknowledged the lingering gazes and fluttering tummies. You knew a first love was never meant to last. How foolish of the both of you to think that maybe this one would.
So you said goodbye on that empty Saturday evening, watching as his fingers untwined from yours like loose threads on a sweater. You sat on your bedroom floor, staring out at the stars that were just starting to appear on an ocean-blue sky. You listened to the sound of an engine start up and carry its vehicle down the lane, away from your house. As you sat, the memories you had of him poured through you like tears. You never wanted to forget. You knew you couldn’t, even if you tried. Even if he was real as life behind your closed eyes, from now on he would always just be your great, lost, love.
