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mygnolia · 2 years

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sense of familiarity. | pjs

synopsis -› you could’ve sworn to remember someone like him- but the issue is, he seems to keep denying it. it takes a completely new start for the both of you to become closer, and for him to tell you what the hell’s going on with everything that happened six years ago.

pair -› childhood classmate!jay x gn !reader (pls message me if i it's not gender neutral)

genre -› angst....lil but of fluff..drama! superpower au

wc -› 4.9k

cw -› cursing, lowkey!! gaslighting, theyre both adults. do ik what adults do?? no, they drink a lil…yelling, arguments, food, meals, jay manipulates the readers sense of knowing if that makes sense like everything they’ve known about him is erased, INJURES

this is for cici’s POWER OF LOVE event!! happy late birthday @iyeonjuni !!

I. FIRES BURN FAST, BUT SO DID THE NEXT FIVE YEARS OF YOUR LIFE

The only thing you recognize is fire.

it’s licking up the sides of everything, engulfing the entire bus and if you don’t hurry, you’ll be a part of it too. the metal of the seat feels eerily cool in comparison to the smoke and heat around it, and in wiggling around, you’re able to free your legs from a chair that was knocked over. The longer you spend in there, you can feel the sweat beading on your forehead and the smoke is no good for your lungs in any way. A cough tumbles from your lips, and another, until suddenly your throat closes up from the dryness, and everything seems to get shifted. You can only lie still and cough, rapidly closing eyes following the silhouette that seems to escape the wrath of the flames and pick you up with ease. But with that force, your body shuts off in its last attempt to save itself, and you forget everything from there.

The hospital makes you feel sick in an uncanny way. With the pristine beds and impeccable walls, it’s so picture perfect that it gives you an even worse headache than you already have now. The lights are blinding, the sounds are flat and monotone. It’s only until someone walks in that you move from the lying position you were in to sit up. The doctors check your stats and report that you’re eerily fine despite your physical attributes signaling that your internal systems should’ve suffered much more damage than they should. Your senior class had a lot of injuries, and all of their recoveries would take months in the worst scenario. But for you, they recommended two to three weeks at best, and it made you confused as to how it all came to be. When you asked, all that the nurse responded with was a puzzled expression and “your body is a lot stronger than you think. Our best conclusion was that it cycled as much pollution and harm out of your system by the time medics arrived on the scene. Other than that, all we can say is that it’s a miracle.” It didn’t answer any of your problems, and if anything, it left you with more.

By the time you returned to school, your principal called you in for a scheduled meeting to talk about the incident. In your time away, you did as much research on the crash as you could. It was both a collision and rocky terrain that caused your bus to react the way it did. The information your principal gave you, however, was slightly altered from the media. It was odd, almost as if he wanted to cover something up from the news (or maybe it was the other way around?) and by the time you were done finding information on what happened, the news that the man across from you left you made you confused and your head hurting from all of that thinking.

It just didn’t make sense.

June came in a hurry, and although everyone knew about what happened to a portion of your graduating class, it still didn’t stop anyone who attended from having fun. You recovered fully, except for minor headaches in the spot your hit your head from the crash- but it wasn’t so bad that medicine was prescribed. One thing you wished didn’t come from the aftermath was some of the people you wished to befriend leaving. You didn’t know them well, but they seemed like nice people whom you wanted to connect with in case you’d see them again.

That day never arrived. While it was not the end of the world, it left you with a hollow feeling in your stomach at times. From what you gathered, his parents didn’t want him in that environment, which would be the same case for multiple other students, one of them being a close friend of yours. Everyone and their families handled their doubts in different ways. Some tried to sue the school and companies involved, and some took their child out immediately. Hera’s parents were the latter. It was at some point a few months ago that she transferred to the private school around twenty minutes from here, and with the distance came your thinning relationship. She was recovering, trying to process everything happening at once, and with your exams and personal life, it would be eventual that you two would stop being friends after high school. Summer came with spiking temperatures and the bright sun until 8pm, and while you two still tried to talk often, Hera’s natural social ability landed her a spot with a friend group she had become relatively close with.

There was basically no one left that you knew, and it caused you to feel almost betrayed. It was hard to feel at home in your town, and soon after school ended, you left for college to start anew. The distance wasn’t far, and it was only a few hours from driving from your house to the college campus. In hopes that you’d make different friends and eventually find your way around the mess, you kept an optimistic outlook for the next four years of university. For the longest time, you knew what you wanted to do to some extent, and if it wasn’t that occupation, it was something in the field.

The moment your school was over, you moved to the town in pursuit of your goals. While moving in was not the easiest process, you had a few weeks before your job and the bliss of roaming around a new city was something you never felt, growing up in the same town from when you could remember. It was such a new, almost desperate feeling to get away from the place that haunted your memories, even if it paled in comparison to your achievements and happy moments. Being an adult and being able to somehow sustain yourself was exhilarating- and on your way down to your nearby coffee shop, you don’t expect to see someone who leaves you so unsettled.

You might look weird staring at someone so intensely for sipping from their cup, but you can’t help it. The eerie feeling that lies in your gaze is more than a guess; it’s intuition. When the seemingly not-so stranger glanced in your direction, something clicked. You still couldn’t put your finger on the man and who he was, but you felt yourself walking to him with a blunt question on the tip of your tongue.

“Who are you?”

The man coughs and glances away, fiddling with one of the rings on his finger before responding. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.” You know it’s not true, and he does too, with the way he immediately shifts to reserved and uptight rather than the somewhat relaxed posture from over.

“That’s not the issue here. I do know you.”

“I’m afraid I can’t recognize you.” He speaks slowly, his eyes constantly darting from one customer to another.

“Bullshit!” You exclaim, loud enough to garner the attention of those with their headphones. He ushers you outside of the building, running a hand through his hair and dragging you somewhere.

“Look, whatever your name is, I don’t know you/ I’ve never seen you in my life and if you could please just stop bothering me I’d appreciate it.” He tells you calmly. It occurs to you then how out of character you’ve been acting recently, and you would buy his act if you weren’t so adamant on your connection to him.

“You can keep playing this game, but I can tell that somewhere, we’ve met. I know you. I have known you.” Your declaration leaves the stranger still, before he sighs and walks back into the cafe. He slings his bag over his shoulder and grabs his drink, taking a sip before discarding it. Soon enough, he blends into a crown of people, and it’s almost like he was never there.

—

You enter the same cafe over and over until you see him again. Despite him not occupying your everyday thoughts, it struck a nerve that he didn’t supposedly know you. And you’d back off and apologize because- to a genuine stranger, you’d be psychotic, someone who didn’t get enough sleep the night before or stress overtook them. But there was something telling you that you weren’t. That the man in the establishment was far more than someone whom you met today, and that somehow, you’d find out what the hell was going on.

When he enters, he scans the room, and when he catches your gaze, he thinks it over before briskly walking out. With no choice, you take the handful of your belongings and run after him, finding his orange sweatshirt far easier than he anticipated. To be fair, though, the man didn’t expect to be hunted down when putting the hoodie on.

“If you don’t know me, why are you walking away? You’re avoiding me!”

“I’m avoiding you because I’m scared of you.” He answers, still walking quickly.

You almost shout. “I’m scared of who you could be!” And with it, he pauses in his tracks.

For these past few days, you’ve been worried that your paranoia wasn’t accounted for, that you were making things up and losing sleep over some fantasy that your mind created. The nights that kept you up consisted of constantly getting water, researching your feelings, and screaming into your pillow.

Without another word, the dark haired man takes your hand, and in the relief of him finally offering you something in return, you follow him. You don’t seem to walk far before he’s ushering you into an apartment complex and leading you up the stairs with a jingle of his keys. The stranger opens the door, leading you inside without a mere interaction between you two during the whole ordeal.

“Why would you care so much about me if you didn’t know me?” You blurt.

“You’re looking too much into things.” The poor man sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t keep letting you make me look bad in public.” The comment makes you roll your eyes at his pretentiousness, and you sit on one of his kitchen counter chairs.

“Unless you explain what’s going on, I’m not going to leave. I have a week until my job starts. I’ve got all the time in the world.” You deadpan, a victorious smile slowly painting your expression. He sighs, and you know that his compliance has something to do with you being right about all of this.

“If you’re going to stay, then be my guest. I can’t kick you out of my home unless I want to get the cops involved.” You narrow your eyes at his weak reasoning, but don’t say anything, and instead spin yourself on his chair. “Would…you like anything? To drink?”

Shaking your head, you instead tell him, “I’d like to know why you’re so familiar.” He takes a moment to respond, filling up his glass with water from his fridge before answering.

“Well, we did go to the same high school, ______.” And it makes sense.

“Jay?”

“Hello to you, too.” He grins before taking a sip from his cup.

After the initial wave of shock, you feel at unease with that being the answer. It shouldn’t have just been just spending the majority of the four years that made you actively pursue a stranger for days. It feels like it hasn’t been quelled, that there’s so much more to the story that just isn’t adding up. You can’t tell Jay any of it- you know that he wouldn’t understand what you meant, and that it would only make him question your motives. If it really was just you reconciling with an old classmate, then so be it.

You exchange phone numbers, and over the course of the next few hours, you two have a lengthy conversation about your high school experiences.

“You were a loner? Hard to believe.” You smile, taking a small bite out of the croissants he toasted.

“I was!” Jay stirs the pasta and reaches for more seasoning. “No friends, no love life.”

“Any romantic interests?” You tease, chuckling as he turns around to look at you weirdly.

“Freshman year I had this crush on the girl from AP bio.” He admits, scratching the back of his neck. “Turns out she got a boyfriend the next semester so that was honestly it.” Jay smiles thinking of the memory, and scoops the food into two bowls.

“What about you?” He sets down the food and reaches for a refreshment of your choice, sitting across from you as he reaches for his utensil.

It takes you a moment to reply, and you find yourself telling him about your love life- or lack thereof, and how you focused on school instead of finding someone to be with. As you saw your friends endure countless heartbreaks, in a way, it made you feel like love wasn’t worth it.

“Love is..love is boring.”

He laughs, leaning his head on the palm of his hand and reaching for the parmesan. “I think it’s kind of the opposite.”

You raise an eyebrow, curiosity peaked by his words. “Like, sure, you find happiness in things like hobbies and activities you like. You find happiness in your friends and you find joy in the people you’re surrounded with. But when you love someone romantically, it’s this other fulfilling kind of feeling. It’s like, when you eat…say, some really good pasta.” He pauses to chuckle, twirling some on his fork. “It makes you full, and happy, and it’s not like you have to eat the pasta to feel full, because there are so many other things that make you happy, but love is kind of like a specific dish that’s like no other.”

“Okay, Shakespeare. Didn’t expect a whole monologue coming from you.” He laughs, taking another bite, and you leave it at that.

“Why did you let me stay, anyway?” You query, drying off the dishes when you’re done with the meal.

“I just felt like catching up. Plus, you said you thought you recognized me somewhere, right?” Seeing your nod of confirmation, he continues. “Figured it wouldn’t hurt to reconcile. High school’s been a while.”

You pause, before answering him honestly. “I honestly thought it was more than that. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but I thought it couldn’t just stop at high-school acquaintances.”

And he doesn’t say anything else. Your spoken thoughts linger in the air before all of the dishes are washed, and he bids you an almost rushed farewell.

When you reach your apartment, you run into a few boxes on the way to your bedroom. Jay’s whole message about love resurfaces in your head, and you think about how love can be fulfilling. Maybe less about that pasta analogy, but it wouldn’t hurt to try now that you had more time. You mull it over just a bit more before going to sleep.

Your head is pounding for no reason when you wake up. You didn’t consume alcohol the night before, and the only contact on your phone is Jay’s. You frantically call him in hopes that he would be awake, and if he could come over. You’re barely conscious, clutching onto your head in your kitchen when Jay knocks and you inform him of the already unlocked door. He rushes to get you water, without looking for any medicine. He asks you to look up at him and when he soothes your temples, you find yourself much more sleepier than before. After you finish the glass of water in small sips, you feel the simple touch of him leading to your couch, and after that, you sleep better than you have in the past year. When you wake up, the sun streaming through the windows indicates that it’s past noon, and your head throbs, but from oversleeping. The feeling ebbs away, and through-out the day, you answer emails, call certain people, and ponder why your head hurts so badly. Jay coming over finally registers in your hazy thoughts, and in a rush, you run to get him something from the store nearby and show up to his house with your location history on your phone. When you show up holding your appreciation, he laughs and turns it away before inviting you inside.

“Do you feel better?” He asks, worry glossing over his eyes as he checks on your well-being. You offer him a smile and nod, before it dissolves into small talk. It always goes back to the high school memories you shared together, and how his parents would shield him from any form of danger and move him out as quickly as possible. His response leaves a sinking feeling in your chest, and you can’t help but ask him how he deals with all of it.

“Doesn’t living like this get lonely?”

“It does, but I’m honestly used to it.” He shrugs, as if the matter doesn’t affect him. “It’s not horrible being alone. You kind of get to think more for yourself. Get used to one serving. Things like that. And you don’t have to share. It feels like being selfish, but no one can judge you for it.” His reasoning isn’t flawed, but you’ve lived your life being around people to help you be you. And even if Jay is used to finding himself on his own, you’re going to be damned if you don��t let him at least try to experience what it’s like to have someone be there for you.

“I’ll be your friend. Then you’ll start learning how to cook bigger portions.” Maybe this is the worst idea you’ve ever had! Maybe meeting Jay in the corner coffee shop was a blessing in disguise.

If only you would’ve known which one it was earlier.

—

Acclimating to the city you lived in wasn’t hard. It was mainly Jay helping you cut out supermarket deals and adding random snacks to fuel the devil on your shoulder as you grocery shopped together. And by the time you reached the fruits and vegetables, he snuck in a bottle of wine so you could both enjoy it. You’re grateful that Jay stuck beside you, pointing out how your decisions were horrible and sat through your lectures on how to stop being so stuck-up on the fact that not everyone did things the way you did. Sure, moving in and living with the man could be horrendous at times, but it was filled with more good than bad. It was filled with him asking if you wanted to watch a movie and him cooking signature pasta to last you until the next week.

One thing about him was that he never got his portions right. he’d always make too much, but you never complained. Snacking on leftovers was a pleasure only some could experience, and sometimes, reheated pasta at 3am was blessed by the gods.

“We should open the wine. I’m feeling stressed from a meeting at work.” You suggested, grinning when he agrees. Conversation flows easily between two people who have something in their system. The laughs come easier. The confessions come easiest.

“Sometimes I wish things didn’t change. I had a lot going for me.”

You nod. “If only that bus didn’t crash.”

“If only I got you sooner.” He mumbles, and you suddenly shoot up, mind racing.

“Jay. What do you mean by that?” You hold his gaze as his eyes widen.

“Nothing.” He quickly denies, pouring another drink without consuming any of it and nudges the bottle in your direction. You deny it. If you drink anymore, you’d feel sick to your stomach.

“What the hell? You can’t say that and pretend it didn’t happen! What did you mean by that?” Your head is spinning with the possibilities of his implications, and with those thoughts comes unabashed anger.

He shakes his head, walking to get water for both of you. The sound of you smacking his hand away echoes in the dim apartment. “Answer my question.”

“There’s nothing you need to know.”

There’s everything you need to know. It can’t be the full story and you're almost positive that there’s more than you know. The gears clash violently in your head. The sun sets, and with it the light in your shared abode becomes more scarce. “Tell me everything. That’s the least you can do.”

You wish you never asked. You wish you never paid attention to that one line uttered by the person who you trusted with your life.

“It was me. I’m the reason why all of our lives changed in an instant.”

II. IT HITS YOU LIKE A HURRICANE, ONE THAT LEAVES DISASTER IN ITS WAKE

Jay is someone who, it seems like, you barely know.

It doesn’t make any sense, and yet, you still feel like you’re just pushing away the truth.

The calamity that ensues after he tells you what’s been going on leaves you quiet and seething for a few minutes. Everything about your last year of high school, potentially ripped away from you all because he didn’t want people to know who he was, seemed so positively selfish that you weren’t even sure how you were supposed to feel. The confusion and sheer betrayal that he left with his confession makes you grip and twist at your shirt as if to relieve the tight feeling in your chest- the same one that could’ve been wholly avoided if he would've changed anything. Would you still have your friends? Would the last half of senior year still feel like a show gone wrong if things were any different?

Would it have been better?

There’s no real answer to those problems. The way this wouldn’t have happened is if the bus never tipped over was the only resolution to the problem like this, but a part of you continuously blamed Jay for everything that happened after. If he hadn’t meddled in your lives, you might’ve been with Hera still. You might have had a satisfying graduation.

His place feels suffocating. The white walls and minimalistic painting and the Prada shoes he can somehow afford are all taunting you, and the worst part?

Jay doesn’t say a single thing.

It’s a few seconds later, though, when he emerges, frantically running down the stairs and yelling your name. “Just let me take you home. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“So what, Jay? So You can change the fucking fate of all of this and send me down another path and pull me away from everything I’ve built for myself?”

“Yes!” He angrily exclaims. “No- but yeah! You have never seen any of this from my point of view. You were so god damn persistent in figuring me out and you did it! You uncovered the one thing I promised not to tell anyone! If you weren’t so adamant on being my friend and you stayed out of my business this wouldn’t have happened!”

You soak up his words much more than you wish you did. “So you’re saying we should have never met?”

“Yes! God damn it, ______, my life would’ve been so much easier without you in it.” Jay’s voice drips with a venomous sting that you’ve never heard from him. One that holds all of his pent up emotions, and one that he inflicts onto you. “Get in the car. We both know right now you’re in no position to drive.”

He takes you home. Quietly, without any of the small talk he would initiate if you two were going to the store. And he’s right. Your current state was in shambles, with tears rolling down your cheeks and ragged breaths consuming your lungs. You can’t stand him, you can’t stand how the car even smells like the musky cologne he uses. You can’t stand how he still gets out to open the door for you and how he glances at you before driving away again.

You can’t stand Park Jay.

Later that night, he texts you and tells you when you two should talk. You scoff at the illuminated screen, shutting it off before almost throwing it in the corner of your room. Instead, you place it on your nightstand, and continue to think.

‘My life would’ve been so much easier without you in it’ echoes in your head like some sort of broken radio. The same line over and over. Maybe you shouldn’t have meddled with someone like him. Maybe you would’ve been better off telling yourself you were crazy, or moving only 10 miles away. If you wouldn’t have tried so hard to stay in touch, to befriend him, you wouldn’t be left with all of this knowledge.

The only reasonable thing to do is run away.

Or maybe, Jay’s already doing that. Maybe he wants you to run away so he can stay with everything he has and you can start over from scratch. He’s right. It must be nice to be selfish.

Your apartment stands to be a stranger to you. Despite legally owning the place, you barely recognize any of the furniture that stands in the dark. All you remember is the path to your bed. All you know is that you head’s pounding in the way that it does after you’ve spun in too many circles and hit your head on something right after. You have no destination in mind, but you know that you have to get away before it consumes you. When you plan to call a cab outside, you see your car parked in it’s usual spot. How it got there, you don’t know, but you could care less about it as you get inside.

In the glove compartment, you see a neatly written envelope, one that’s never been there before. Maybe you forgot it. When you open up the paper inside, you see Jay’s neat handwriting across the page, and with the date on top, you know when he did all of this.

_____, I’m terribly sorry for letting you know in such an unorganized way. I never planned for something like that to get out or for you to know.

I call it “Alter.” It’s my ability to rewrite certain events that involve me, and in the case of the bus, I was afraid that in getting to you too late, I would have to change everything to have you recover safely. I can’t control the extent of that kind of stuff. I couldn’t control our meeting. I couldn’t control you wanting to know more. And in wanting to erase it, I hurt you in so many ways, ways I can never imagine you forgiving me for, but I still want to apologize.

____, I’m going to leave. Pack my things, move across the country, change my contact. It’s for everyone’s sake. Moving a city over won’t change things.

You were the last person on that bus, if I didn’t intervene the smoke would’ve made your condition so much worse. I won’t apologize for doing what I had to do. All I can do is apologize for having you find out.

By the time your eyes scan over the last of the page, they’re blurred with angry tears. Hot tears that you can’t prevent from soaking your cheeks and tears full of betrayal. He’s a liar. He’s selfish. He’s horrible for doing what he did. If you didn’t chase after a boy who occupied your thoughts all of the time, if you ignored the hunch, you wouldn’t be in this situation. There’s nothing to do with the letter. You can’t tear it up, you don’t want to.

Your head slowly starts spinning. At first you think it’s a headache from the water loss, but it gets so much worse that you throw the letter somewhere and clutch your head in hopes it stops. The tears come back, but not from your emotions, but rather the pressure inside that just won’t seem to stop. It hurts, everything hurts, you’re gasping for air and tasting the salt before the spots in the corner of your vision grow larger and larger and all you notice is black.

—

“Are you okay, ma’am? Ma’am?” Someone’s knocking on your window frantically by the time you open your eyes and unlock the door. He’s a man with sharp eyes and an expression full of worry, and someone who you learn happens to go by the name of Jay Park. You don’t know him from anywhere, and nothing clicks from the time he drives you to the hospital, but he leaves without another word.

When you come back, the letter is long gone.

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