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kenjakusbraincum · 5 months

Note

can you pls write something about reader being sick and like not the cough and cold kind of sick- like really really sick, and sukuna realising how much he doesn't want to lose her to this sickness and how if she dies, he'll be alone again..🥺

You have NO idea how much I love this idea!!! I did go a bit overboard with it cause I love suffering though 👍 Still, this was SO much fun to write and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Vows

Sukuna x Reader

Word count: 4.5k

Tags/warnings: gn! reader, true form! sukuna, master/pet dynamic, fluff but most importantly ANGST, mentions of weight loss, mentions of violence, implied nsfw, reader dies in the end :( (sorry)

It's not the first time Sukuna has been made aware of your mortality. He recalls many instances when he's been reminded that you are human. Finite. The first time he wrapped his hand around your throat and squeezed with calculation while you were laying under him, and you looked up at him in fear for your life. Your little hand couldn't even wrap around his wrist, much less provide resistance. Or when he'd pull your hair a little too roughly, and hear a crack in your delicate spine. When you'd get sick, and humbly refuse his healing. So little as a tummy ache had you writhing on your bed.

You are so weak, so small, clinging to life like there was anything for you in it, beyond Sukuna. By all means he hates all of these things. So what witchery is this, and why does he care about you so much? Why does he keep you for years, and why does your company bring him comfort he hasn't ever known in his lifetime?

Still, as much as he cares, he doesn't notice when it starts. He's trained you to tolerate pain, after all. It's no wonder you hesitate to tell him. Little things like tummyaches and colds occur to you all the time anyways, and you never complain. Sure, you've grown closer to Sukuna, but he was still your master, and the rules he instilled in you from the start were always fresh in your mind, not to be crossed. Bothering him with everything that feels off always seemed inappropriate.

And Sukuna is just like that. If you're not screaming or crying, he won't know you're in pain. But he notices that you're acting off. And how he reacts really doesn't help your case, or encourage you to speak up about your condition. ''I don't have all day. What is wrong with you?'', he sneers when he catches you pacing too far behind him.

So you just sleep longer and preserve energy for when you are with him. You don't skip around as much anymore, or spend time doing your hobbies. Food doesn't taste so great anymore. You have a cough that gives you sleepless nights because it just won't calm down. And the time you owe Sukuna starts to feel like an obligation. You start to dread it. Dread slipping up, dread annoying him or failing to satisfy him. Dread being disposable.

When things start getting worse, it's hard to hide it even from him. He was taking you from behind one night, and you were grateful he couldn't see the look on your face. You thought you could do it. Sukuna was always demanding, but he would never force you to do anything. If only you told him before you felt yourself struggling for air, and your chest closing in on itself in tightness. You reached one hand back, frantically grabbing his wrist.

''Feathers, feathers!'', words came out as gasps, and you slumped forward when he let you go. You were panicked and crying by then, this kind of discomfort being foreign even to you, even after weeks of pain behind you. He hovered next to you with a puzzled look on his face. He wasn't even being that rough.

''What's wrong? Tell me.'', he said, and reached his hand to feel the warmth of your tears streaming down your face. He swiped your cheek gently. He didn't seem mad at all. Why didn't you say anything from the start?

''I just feel so sick.'', you muster up in between sobs, and shut your eyes. You were too embarrassed to even look at him.

''I see.''. His hand leaves your face, and he traces it from your neck down your spine. The pain subsided slowly, allowing you to relax and find comfort in his arms.

But the effects of his healing were short lived. Just a week later the feeling of fatigue creeps back into your life. Manageable, but lingering. And the cough persists. And it gets on Sukuna's nerves too. He's been quite patient with you, but his patience was reaching it's limit.

You're sitting by his throne as you often do, and as hard as you try to hold the cough in, you just can't help it. His hand finds the back of your neck and squeezes, turning you to him. And he looks at you with all four, terrifying eyes. ''Can you shut up?''

''I'm sorry, I'm trying -'', you stutter, but just end up coughing more. He doesn't wait for you to stop.

''Get out of here.'', and pushes you away. You stumble down the pile of bones and fall, landing on your hands and knees. You don't remember him being this cruel to you in a long time. You look back at him with teary eyes, and he looks back like the merciless monster he is. The villagers awaiting him moved to make space for your fall, taking note of the tense situation.

That day, Sukuna sends word that he doesn't want to see you until you get better. You're forbidden from going outside again, in fear that that is making your 'cold' worse. It's a lonely week in your room, until Sukuna starts to crave you again. It didn't take him a while, counting the couple days he spent convincing himself he doesn't miss you. He does. So when he sends word for you again, and the servants come back to him saying you're still not feeling well... he's worried. So worried he comes to see it for himself.

Sukuna rarely comes to your room. It's the only space you have for yourself, and he doesn't want to take that away from you. Your room is modest. You have a bed, a carpet, and a couple shelves to house the books he's gifted you. There's a desk where you can eat and read, and a doorway to the garden. There's an empty glass of water and a napkin next to your bed. You're still sleeping, but the door shutting behind him wakes you up, so he doesn't get to enjoy observing you in your natural habitat for long.

It's not the first time doors opening and closing woke you up. But you know this time is different. The servants are always quickly shuffling around the room, cleaning up and moving around. Uraume clanks with plates. There is no noise now, other than your strained breathing and a cough brewing in the back of your throat. Besides, the aura that Sukuna brings with him everywhere he goes is recognizable. Especially to you. Heavy.

You turn around, and meet the gaze of his four eyes. ''Master...'', you struggle to sit up, and even a little action like that has spots forming in your vision. Then a coughing fit hits you. You pick up the napkin and put it to your mouth.

Sukuna sees your whole body strain with the effort of coughing. And when you call him master, even your voice sounds different. He knows your morning voice. He missed hearing it, but this... this is not it. You sit with your head hung low, staring at the napkin between your hands. There's a fresh splatter of blood on it. But Sukuna scares you more than the progression of your illness.

''Are you mad at me?'', you ask timidly, meeting his gaze.

''I'm concerned.", he says and sits next to you. You curl up to make space for him. "Two weeks is a long time for a frail human like you to be sick.", he looks at you, scanning your form up and down.

"I rested and drank every tea Uraume told me to!", your defense mechanism kicks in, and you start babbling.

Sukuna dismisses you with a hand and a pained facial expression. "I know.", he says. His brows are furrowed now, and he's looking at the ground, lost in thought.

You feel guilty for annoying him again. You feel guilty for the whole thing, getting sick, draining the energy it takes him to heal you, robbing him of the time with you that he deserves. Owns. He is very generous with the way he treats you, having all that in mind.

You tug on his sleeve. "I'm sorry, Master... You deserve better.", and you're sobbing again. Sukuna gives you a pathetic look, but smiles as he pulls you into his embrace.

"Silly pet. I can survive a couple weeks without your assistance.", he says, rubbing your shoulder.

You run your fingers against the back of his hand mindlessly, not knowing how to respond. Caressing his knuckles, bones, veins... feeling his nails and their sharp tips against your sensitive skin. When you bring his palm up to your lips, your kiss stains it red with blood.

You still sleep with Sukuna sometimes. Less frequently, only on days when you feel well enough, and those are rare. You've lost weight by now, sickness making itself visible on your body. You're sitting on his lap and clinging to your robes, scared that he won't like you as much, that you won't live up to his standards. But Sukuna's demeanor about your illness has changed, as he seemed to sense something unusual about it. He flips you over so gently, like you're made of glass, and peppers kisses from your neck downwards, slowly undressing you as much as you allow him. When he takes you, he's so careful. Constantly checking you're comfortable and enjoying yourself. You feel so loved and relaxed, and pleasure comes so easy when you're in this state. It's not the first time Sukuna is this caring with you in bed, but this time is different. This time you can't help but feel like he's saying goodbye.

He holds you afterwards, tracing his fingers over the ridges of your spine and your shoulders. You were always little in his grasp, but now that he feels your protruding bones under his fingertips, you seem all the more vulnerable.

"Will you kill me?", you ask, breaking the silence.

Sukuna frowns. "Nonsense. Why would I do that?"

There's a gulp in your throat. "It won't be long before I can't even do this. I won't be of any use to you then...", you say.

"Stop.", he says sternly. "There's a lot more to you than what you provide me with in bed."

You smile to yourself, but there's still a hole in your chest. Your statement is still true, and you aren't comforted. But this is Sukuna, and you know that he's offered you quite a lot even with that little bit of reassurance. To your surprise, he speaks again.

"Don't upset yourself. It's been a long time since killing you crossed my mind.", he says. "Save the energy for something else."

You nod and thank him. Just moments later, you're asleep. Quicker than ever before, he notes. You usually love it when he lets you cuddle and talk to him. You would force your eyes open when you were sleepy, just to enjoy it longer.

He feels guilty. He's your master, he's responsible for your well being. Yet nothing he does seems to help you long term. Healing you is temporary and he knows that without accessing the source, it will never work. If he could, he would find what was making you sick and rip it out of you with his bare hands, crush it with the force of his palm. He would have to look deeper, open you, and for once, he thinks he can't open a human being. He thinks of you trashing, screaming, and worst of all, looking into his eyes. Just the thought of you like that makes his chest feel like a gaping cavity. Worst of all, he's sure you would let him. He's sure you would forgive him for spilling your blood, and find comfort in his arms again. If you survived, that is. What has he done to you? And to himself?

Now, your head rests on his chest, and you're snoring lightly. For once, a repetitive noise like that doesn't annoy him. For once, he wishes he could listen to it every night. One day, that noise will be the only thing audibly confirming you're still alive.

Months pass and you're only getting worse. You barely leave your room now, too weak to even do so. You eat little, and it's showing in your sunken cheeks and eyes. You feel yourself withering away, loosing color, drying like a dying flower. Sukuna is in grief. He struggles to look at you, and visiting you falls heavy on him every time. He always finds himself thinking afterwards. Regretting that he let himself get this attached, wishing that he could simply forget you. But it doesn't work that way.

He goes to see you, after avoiding you for a week. He's Sukuna, he doesn't have any shame. You're sleeping, like you usually are when he comes to visit you. Your snoring is laboured, and it sounds painful. This time, the doors and the silence don't wake you up. He watches you, curled up under a stack of blankets, rising and falling with your struggles to breathe. How foolish he was, to think forgetting you would be as easy as avoiding you for days. How evil he was, trying to forget you while you are still alive under his wing, still his responsibility. Still his.

He sits next to you and leans over you, fingertips ghosting over your face. The snoring stops and you flutter your eyes open, turning in bed and feeling his body next to yours. You smirk at him, eyes adjusting to the light, and smile when you recognize him. ''Master.'', your arms wrap around his neck as you welcome him, your voice dry, but lively as you beckon him closer. ''I missed you.''.

He comes down to plant a kiss to your forehead. ''I missed you too, darling.''. Oh, the things that escape his mouth when he's alone with you. He cups your face, enjoying how much healthier you look with a smile on your face. ''Feeling any better?'', he rubs your cheek, lingering closely above your face.

You nod, but both of you know you only feel better because you saw him. Still, the little surge of happiness that brings you gives you more energy than you've had the whole week. You wiggle to the edge of the bed, making space and inviting him to join you. Sukuna lies down, hooking one arm underneath your neck and pulling you flush against him.

You wrap your arm around him and lean your head against his shoulder. He's still as big as you remember him, unfaltering in the face of your illness. It's comforting. ''You didn't visit in a while. Were you busy?'', you ask, stroking his back. ''How were your days?''

''Monotone.'', he says. ''The villagers bring remedies for you every day, and wish for you to get well.'' It's no wonder. So many times, Sukuna found himself hesitating to kill just because you were sitting on his knee, dressed in something too pretty to be splattered with blood. In the local villages, word spread that you have ''domesticated'' Sukuna. As if such a thing was possible. Or was it?

''Oh?'', you smile. ''I didn't think they would notice my absence.''. You always were supposed to be Sukuna's accessory and nothing more. Remedies and good wishes make it sound like you're more important than just a pet. So it really is that obvious...

''They did.'', he says, and lowers his head, brushing his nose against your face. ''Some took that as an opportunity to gift me new pets.''

You blink at him, a bit taken aback by his honesty. You keep smiling anyways. ''Did you take any?'', you ask, and he sees nothing but genuine curiosity in your eyes. The truth is, you've had a lot of time to think about your place in Sukuna's mansion. You knew, especially in sickness, that you were never entitled to exclusivity with him. You knew that at some point you would have to be replaced, just by the virtue of being a mortal. A human, who would age and become ugly, wrinkled and useless. You were just unlucky enough to meet this fate sooner than you should've.

Sukuna sighs, the weight of the conversation shifting to him. ''Not to bed, no.'', he says.

You're quiet while you think of what to say. You still have a habit of picking words when you're with Sukuna, but the times when he would punish you for improper formulation are far behind you. "Why not?", you settle. You hope the implication is there, that you wouldn't be so mad even if he did.

Why not? Because he thinks it might break him. Because the image of someone else in your place, under him, feels unnatural and wrong. He thinks the guilt might eat him alive. For once in centuries, someone else's needs come before Sukuna's. He is gone, so far gone. You've raised his standards, and he's not sure anyone he takes now will be able to live up to them. Besides, training a new pet to fit your mold would take years, and even then... He couldn't train someone to love him. Not like you do.

''I wouldn't want you to hold back because of me.'', you say, and he realizes he's been quiet for too long. Years ago, if you dared to imply that Sukuna would do such a thing as hold back because of you, that he cared, you would've been minced meat ready for dinner. Now, he looks down at you tenderly when you say it. Well, a tender look from Sukuna is a docile one. You've gotten used to the way that Sukuna communicates love. Subtly, innocuously.

''Worry about getting well, pet.'', he shuts down the conversation, and moves away from you, sitting back on the bed. ''Any wishes? Food? Activities?'', he asks, and feels your forehead with the back of his hand.

Food? No, but... ''I'd like you to stay, please.'', you say, and take his hand with the two of yours, feeling it up with your thumbs.

Sukuna resists the urge to roll his eyes, knowing the thought of annoying him would upset you greatly. ''That's a given. Anything else?''

You pretend to think, then just babble your favorite food. Sukuna takes your order to Uraume. But when he comes back, you're already asleep again. He waits by your side, but you don't wake, so eventually he leaves. By the evening, the plate of your favorite food remains untouched.

You can't leave the bed on your own anymore. Sukuna carries you outside when you're feeling good enough. You barely have the strength to latch onto him securely. Still, it's hard to slip out of the grasp of his four arms. He says you've gotten pale. You lay in his lap and bask in the sun, while he tells you about his day or reads a book out loud for you to enjoy. You wish you could talk to him more, but your voice leaves you as days of endless coughing wreck your throat. No herbs and teas ease your condition anymore. You wait for your final day.

And Sukuna doesn't know when he's given up on the idea that you might get better. But he starts spending whole days with you, leaving your side only to sleep in his bed. He tends to almost all your needs personally. You think that if you asked him to get on his knees for you, he would. He is not familiar with this ache that brews in his chest when he looks to his side and doesn't see you there. It feels violating. To be as powerful as he is, and yet completely helpless in the face of the sickness that drains you in front of his very eyes.

He plays with your thinning hair one morning, and you look at him from his lap, as adoringly as always. ''Isn't it funny?.'', you say, and he snaps out of his thoughts to look at you. ''I always imagined dying by your hand.'', you kiss his hand again, planting your dry, blue lips against his knuckles. ''Who would have thought?''.

You, you little human. You made him feel like a fool, like a coward. You made him feel powerless. Who could ever get away unscathed with making Sukuna feel like this? The thought of killing you now, even out of mercy, fills him with horror. He thinks he couldn't live carrying the burden of your death on his back. It's already hard for him as is.

When he's not with you, he withers away in his room, waiting. And when the servants finally come, and tell him you're at your last strengths, he feels as tense as he feels relieved. The servants shake in fear of his reaction, and he simply dismisses them. In a thousand years of his existence, he doesn't remember having to prepare to enter a room. His hand trembles as he brings it up to push the door open. He dreads what awaits him inside.

He expected blood, hysteria, chaos, yet there's none of it when he walks in. Just the pained noises of your breathing. A servant, your favorite, sits by your side and wipes sweat off your forehead. She talks to you in a comforting tone and pats your head gently. When he walks in the room, she lowers her head and moves to leave. It's only a second, but he sees the sad look on your face. ''Stay.'', he orders, and the servant bows and thanks him.

You move your attention to him, raising your hand to greet him weakly. He picks it up and bends down to kiss it. There's tears in your eyes as he settles into a seat next to you, and you open your mouth in an attempt to say something.

''Easy now.'', he shushes you, and helps you into his lap. You lean back, looking at him through a blur. His features appear even more doubled through the tears, and you still find his beauty mesmerizing. Your master. Your own little god and protector. Although he regrets it, you've never claimed the title of his spouse. Yet, he still stuck by your side, until parted by death. In sickness and in health.

He wipes your tears, and the mouth he conjures onto his hand kisses your forehead. One set of his hands caresses your face, the other massages the tension out of your bony shoulders. Sukuna knows how important it is for you to pass in peace. He doesn't want to curse you, or have despair turn you into a curse. "Relax now.", his voice is so soothing, as if lulling you to sleep. "It won't be long". You weep. What did an ordinary human like you do to deserve this honor? To be comforted on their death bed by a god. To be guided to death by him.

"Master.", you sob. "I'm so scared..."

Delicate touch against your skin. Sharp nails grazing your cheek ever so slightly, just barely enough to make their presence known. "Have no fear.", Sukuna looms over you like a snowdrop. "Where you go now, pain won't follow.". You speak to him a little longer. Tell him all the things you always wanted to tell him, but were scared of the consequences. Dangerous words, ones that were rarely associated with Sukuna. Love. And Sukuna is attentive, so human. Your blinking slows and you find comfort in his voice, as he returns every loving word back to you. Your pained breathing follows, and your eyelids are so heavy. But the sight of him is so hypnotizing, you wish you never had to look away. "You are so brave, my little dove. Go now, be free.". You were too good for this wretched palace anyways. The sight of him is etched in your memory as you close your eyes. "It was a pleasure to have you by my side.", you listen, feeling control over your body slip through your fingers. When you can't move, or feel his touch, you still hear his calm voice. "When you're ready, come back to me. I'll be waiting for your return.". Then everything is quiet, for you and for him. The servants cries are muffled by the sheets, where she has her head pressed by your side.

The hallways, silent except for the busy tapping of feet. Outside, the wind blows petals off of blooming flowers, leaving them bare and stranded. Autumn is here to carry you away.

Servants hold their breath when Sukuna walks by. One wrong look at him and the walls would be painted red. Just like before. Before you. And it's not long before Sukuna looks like a monster again - red eyes and a permanent frown etched on his face. Villagers bring bouquets, and lay them to the right of his throne, where you used to sit. He stares them all down, and only for a moment thinks that maybe, humans are not the scum he thought they were. But then he remembers, they only mourn you because you held him back from his destructive tendencies. Scum.

And he kills again. The first is a villager from afar, where news of your passing hasn't reached. Ripped to shreds for mentioning you. The women who screamed, their blood soaks the carpets and seeps through the wooden floor, dripping down to the cellars. He feels like himself again, unhinged, unbeatable.

Until the day is over, and he goes back to his empty room. His cold, empty bed, and the old habit of reaching for you in his sleep, only to grab nothing instead. And the crocheted figures of the two of you on his nightstand, watching him as he struggles to sleep alone. He can't bear it. So he leaves, and doesn't come back for days, weeks, months.

Smoke clouds the skies on the horizon once again, after years and years of peace and clarity. As far as the eye stretches, the world will know of Sukuna's wrath. But as thrilling as it feels to conquer again, when the village is burned and ash covers the grass on the ground, the thought of you still lingers. Your devastated eyes the first time he's killed before you. The first time he's felt guilty about his monstrous nature. When he comes back, no one's warm embrace awaits him. No one's there to brighten up his day. No amount of blood shed and villages burned replace the emptiness you left behind in his heart.

The grief settles, and sits heavy in Sukuna's chest, as he assumes position in his lonely throne again, and gazes at the row of people waiting to beg, talk, offer... bore him. Another eternity of boredom. An eternity of picking through thousands of humans, in vain hopes of finding you again. In vain hopes of recognizing you, even if it's lifetimes from now, when the last memory of your face has already faded from his mind. When generations change, and the thought of a monster like Sukuna being capable of tenderness vanishes. When the fire in his chest, ignited by love, is already a memory so distant, that recalling it feels surreal.

Maybe he will forget you by then. Maybe times will harden him again, and the idea of a pet becoming his lover will make him laugh. But for now, the thought of finding you in a crowd, taking you in his arms and never letting go, is his comfort and safe place. For now, he will wait for you. As long as it takes, like a stone, unyielding against the passing of time.

#sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna x reader #ryomen sukuna #jjk #jjk x reader #jjk angst #jjk fluff #sukuna fluff #sukuna angst #sukuna #soft sukuna #i love bastardizing sukuna in my fics #also this is totally leading me into a part 2 w reincarnated reader #yes weve heard it a thousand times #idc it makes me happy

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luveline · 6 months

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hiiii jade!!!! could i please request something with peter with reader who’s maybe put on some weight recently and is insecure about it?? (totally not self indulgent at all) i totally get it if you’re not comfortable writing that stuff though so no pressure

hi lovely! ty for requesting. fem, 1k

cw for negative weight talk/ weight gain

Everybody gains weight during the holidays, you think, tracing your figure in the mirror. Though it's not strictly holiday season yet, it's edging toward the end of the year. Maybe my new year's resolution should be losing a few pounds.

There's a thunk of the bedroom window being yanked open and footsteps across the floor. You tense until your hear Peter panting for breath, likely having swung to you at high speed, or fresh from a fight with an usurped criminal.

You rush back into your t-shirt, knowing exactly what path he'll walk. He barrels into the bathroom, sees you at the mirror and smiles so wide his cheeks look fit to burst. "Hey," he says, peeling the suit off and exposing his boxers to you without shame, "hey hey hey. Can I persuade you in with me?" He nods toward the shower.

"Not this time, Pete."

"Too bad," he laments.

You look away as he strips out of his underwear. The shower turns on and he takes you by the hips to move you out of his way with a murmured apology, near lost to the drum of the spray. Peter has moments where he doesn't know his own strength, but the majority of the time he treats you like you're something precious.

"Stay in here!" he demands as he pulls the curtain shut.

"I'm not going anywhere." You close the toilet and sit on the lid. "Tough day protecting the people?"

"Apart from tripping into a deceptively large pothole, it was fine. Why won't you come in here with me? I wanna rub your shoulders."

"You want me to wash your hair."

"Exactly. So get naked and get in here. Don't make me beg."

You really don't want to, and you're not going to, but it's not a big problem. Peter doesn't truly mind, he just loves you. "What do you mean, deceptively big? Like, knee height? Higher?"

"Mid thigh, I'd say. The people of New York are never gonna let me live it down. One guy was recording me and said he was gonna put it on YouTube for the ad money."

"Anything else?"

He gives you the rundown, describing what perps he faced and an older man he helped use an ATM machine. You hum distractedly, pinching at the fat where it spreads on your thigh, sitting down as you are.

He sticks his face through the curtain gap, hair slicked to his cheeks. "What're you doing?"

"You told me to stay, so I'm staying."

He's nervous for a split second, glancing back into the shower as though there's an answer there waiting for him before angling himself toward you fully, his naked chest dripping and shining in the bathroom light. "Okay, fine, we need to talk about something. But I want you to know that you forced my hand here. Okay?"

"Okay." You nibble the inside of your lip, used to his theatrics. "What have I done?"

"It's not something you've done. It's something you are. I can't even say it. I," —he pulls the curtain in front of his face, moves it aside again– "just need to tell you. Lately it's like you don't even realise how beautiful you are and I'm tired of it. You're radiant. Like, glowing."

Your recent internal debate must show on your face, that doubt, because he gives you a steadying smile. "Really, really beautiful," he says more seriously.

It's easy to smile at him. "Thank you, Pete." You scoop his suit off of the floor. "I'll go scrub the tetanus out of this in the kitchen sink."

"Wait–"

He can't just get out with suds in his hair, giving you the perfect escape plan. You have ten minutes to yourself filling the sink with soapy water and steeping the fabric before he's out of the bedroom in pyjamas, trousers tucked into his socks and hair damp from ferocious towel scrubbing. "You're such a– such a– thing," he decides. "I'm telling you you're beautiful and you walk off so you don't have to hear it? What's wrong with you?" His voice slips into a kinder register. "You do know you're pretty, right? I'm not just saying it to say it."

"I'm just feeling icky," you confide.

"About what?"

You want to tell him, you find. "You know how I've gained weight?"

He doesn't need any more explanation. Peter knows you've gained weight, you've mentioned it to him, and it's visual, and he can likely tell whenever he decides to flex his strength. "What, and you think that makes you less pretty?" He puts a damp hand behind your neck to bring you forward. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, a little."

He kisses you. His nose bumps your nose, his lips crushed to your as he holds you in place. Despite this, it isn't an overly rough connection. It's definitely not shy. "You're beautiful," he says in the space between your lips.

"It doesn't suit me–"

"It does. It really fucking suits you. Have you seen yourself? You couldn't look better."

"Even when I was thinner?"

"You look just as perfect then as you did now." His intensity fades and he encourages you back enough to see your face, his thumb rubbing a short line into your neck. His brows are furrowed, dark eyes darker for it. "Weight isn't a factor."

"No, but you have to say that."

"I don't. Not really. I'm sure there are a thousand shitty guys who'd tell you something different, but I'm not– I love you, the whole you. I like you like this." He grins. "Which should be obvious."

You tsk at him, to his delight, his laughter boyish as he buries his face in your neck with a hug, kissing a messy circle up and into the soft line of your jaw. You trap him there without thinking, chin hooked down, squirming as he blows hot air into your skin.

"I've been putting it on too," he says. "It's happy weight."

"It's not happy weight for you, Pete, it's just more muscle."

"It makes you happy, doesn't it?" he jokes, smiling and kissing and hugging you all at once. "Just like it does on you for me."

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reinainaric · 3 months

Text

HATE THAT I LOVE YOU || part 3

mean!ryomen sukuna x fem!reader

It's already a part of Sukuna's personality to be mean, always throwing insults at every person he finds annoying here and there. And you were no exception. You ran after him like a lovesick puppy, happily smiling at his rejections, confessing to him multiple times how much you like him, and Sukuna wanted so much to strangle you for your persistence.

But when you stopped showing interest, maybe... just maybe, Sukuna didn't like the sound of it.

contents: sukuna x reader, soft!reader, reader is oblivious to sukuna's insults, mean!sukuna, golden retriever x black cat trope, reader is a happy pill (not to sukuna tho, yet), hurt/slight angst, modern college AU, sukuna is in a band, bassist!sukuna, not proofread, jjk characters in a band, siblings yuji and sukuna

warning: cursing

links: < part 1 > < part 2 >

***

You don't remember anything that happened last night.

Waking up with a throbbing head and no memories of what occurred when you were drunk was not something you were happy about. You were still dressed in your last night's clothes, your heels discarded on the floor, a blanket being over your body the whole time you were sleeping. You didn't even know how you still got home or how you even ended up on the living room couch, assuming that maybe Nanami took care of you because of the text he sent last night.

2:17 PM

Nanami: I hope you slept comfortably. Drink some water when you wake up.

You smiled at his message. Nanami is surely the gentleman out of everyone in the band, he really never forgets to take care of everyone.

So when Monday comes by, you immediately look for Nanami to thank him personally. It was during lunch period when you caught sight of the person you've been wanting to see, and without further ado, you ran after him as you called out his name.

Unbeknownst to you, Sukuna was just a few steps behind when he found you talking to Nanami. And the words that escaped your mouth sent his blood levels high.

“Nanami! I wanted to say thank you for taking care of me last Friday night!”

“Friday night?”

“Yeah? I was really drunk, but I do remember someone taking me home. And you texted me that morning too, so I concluded it was you. Anyways, thank you so much–”

That's all Sukuna needed to hear as he walked right past the two of you, his eyes shooting daggers at everyone who walked in his way.

What he witnessed somehow left a bitter taste in his mouth. Like there's a poison corrupting his veins, eager to suffer him to death as he clenches his hand in a fist to restrain himself.

All Sukuna could do was walk away.

He couldn't accept how you dare to think that another man took care of you and drove you home. He couldn't believe how you're thanking another man right away, instead of clarifying who did what first, and he's just really going to hate you more for this.

“Wait, what do you mean?” Nanami asked you with an evident confused look on his face. After rambling about how you appreciated his act of concern towards you last Friday, you finally focused on him and saw how he looked clueless about the situation.

“You… took me home, didn't you? Because… I was really drunk…”

“Oh.” He nodded, now realising what you said. “It wasn't me, though.’

•

You were entirely confused by the situation now. Your feelings had tangled up in your mind and you don't know what to believe anymore when you saw Sukuna walking past you in the hallways.

The surroundings seem to quiet down as you focus your eyes on him. His figure, his stare, his inevitably handsome face. It's all coming back to you again. The beat of your heart, like a slow motion film everytime he walks by, and you feel like you're a teenager for these feelings.

You were about to open your mouth to talk to him, when he brushed you off so easily as he spared you no glance, walking right past your shoulder. Mouth agape, words left unspoken, mind wandering elsewhere, your cheeks blushed in embarrassment.

If he's the one who took you home after the party, then why is he not taking any credit for it?

Did he do it out of pity or something? Did he just feel bad to leave you alone in there?

You knew he didn't have any feelings for you, so maybe it is the latter. And after that, he doesn't care anymore where you thank him anymore, because that's just how he is.

Sighing, you clutched your bag in your hand and thought of another time to thank him still.

On the other side, Sukuna is mad mad. He doesn't even know why. He can't even explain it himself because he feels like it's nonsense.

It's like a feeling of wanting to throw a tantrum for all his bottled up feelings of anger at you, but if he did do such a thing, he'll come out whiny. Plus, only Yuji does that.

He just hates it. Everytime he looks at you, that anger starts becoming intense in some type of way. His hatred makes him want to lock you in his arms, and just… and just…

Why is he thinking about this anyway?

He hates you for your annoyance. For your persistence. For always smiling at everyone. For always making his day feel incomplete if you're not there.

He hates you even more for thanking Nanami for something he had done. And he wants to knock some senses in you at some point.

He hates how you've changed. How you're slowly fading away from him.

He hates how he's maybe starting to feel different about you now.

•

“You might pierce a hole in her head if you keep staring like that…” Yuji whispered close to Sukuna’s ear. Sukuna flinched, but immediately hit Yuji with his elbow, leaving the latter hissing in pain.

The football field was yet again full of people. Girls would walk over and say hi to Sukuna and Yuji to where they sat at the benches, and only Yuji would have the heart to flash them his cheeky smile. While Sukuna watches you who had been sitting a few seats far away, your back facing them, focused on whatever conversation you have with your friend.

“Tell me,” Yuji continues. “Are you starting to like her?”

Sukuna immediately turned his head to him with a glare. He scoffed, crossing his arms on his chest, “That's total nonsense, Yuji.”

Yuji shrugged as he stared at you as well. “Not to me… You look… troubled…”

“That… has nothing to do with that fool…”

Yuji laughs at his brother, shaking his head at his denial. “Whatever you say.”

•

This is it. This is the right time to finally talk to Sukuna.

You breathed heavily as you wiped your sweaty palms on your clothes. Your heart was thumping loudly on your chest as you stood right before the band's practice room door.

You've been looking for Sukuna the whole day and ended up asking Yuji where he was, and this is why you ended up here. The door seems to dread a dark presence before it, looming an ominous aura within, or maybe it was just you over exaggerating things.

You nervously twist the door, and there you see Sukuna on his usual seat, legs spread apart, his face resting on his palms as he had his eyes closed. You almost backed away after realising that he was sleeping, but stopped when he opened his eyes.

“O-oh I'm sorry, I didn't know you were asleep!” You panicked, bowing at him repeatedly for your mistake. “I'll leave–”

“Do you need anything?” His deep voice felt like thunder as it rang in your ears.

You purse your lips, feeling the heat rush to your face. You reluctantly nodded your head as you took a step inside the room, closing the door behind you.

“About last Friday…”

Sukuna raised an eyebrow as he stood up, taking a step forward as he placed his hands on his pocket. “What about it?”

“Y-yeah uhm… Thank you for… f-for…” You started stuttering, your hands shaking on your sides. Sukuna's eyes landed on them, which startled you to clasped your hands together instead to keep them still, but it didn't really help.

“Say it.” He demanded, and it made you even more nervous because he was staring at you too intently.

“L-last Friday night… I want to thank you for…” You take a breath to calm yourself down. “N-nanami said… you took me h-home?”

“Are you asking me if I did?”

You pinched your shaking hands, not expecting his question. “Y-yes? Did you…?”

“Tsk.” He took a step closer, reaching out to grab your shaky hands with one hand. “What's gotten into the sunshine brat I know, hmm?” He asks, staring at your shaky hands between his. “Nervous?”

“T-that’s not the question, Sukuna.”

“Alright then,” he let go of you, bringing his hands back to his pocket. “I did. Happy?”

You closed your eyes at his answer, your breathing becoming uneven as you opened them again. Sweat is starting to form on your neck, “Why?”

It was the question that had been running in your head for the whole time since Nanami told you that it was Sukuna. And you needed answers. At this instant.

“You were drunk,” Sukuna answered straightforwardly. “Did you want me to leave you alone?”

“N-no! B-but–”

“Don't put too much ideas in your head.”

Your heart skipped a beat.

The world seems to start crashing down, and that's all the answers you need.

What were you expecting anyway? That magically, Sukuna started to care for you just because he had the heart to act like a person towards you? That maybe, he started to realise that his feelings for you were never hatred but it turned into something deep?

No, that's impossible. Liking you the way you like him was never in Sukuna's vocabulary.

So what now?

“Right!” You nodded your head with a smile. “I wasn't thinking of anything! I really just wanted to thank you, that's all!”

Sukuna searched your eyes, trying to read you. But you quickly feigned your disappointment as you grinned at him.

“I just needed to confirm that. Thank you, Sukuna! I should get going now. I won't bother you anymore.” You waved him goodbye as you ran out of the room, and when he was finally out of sight, tears started rolling down your face.

Sukuna, on the other hand, just stared off into space from where you left.

He was… undoubtedly, regretting his words.

***

Is the update too short? lol, ill make it up to you guys once im done with schoolworks!! i promisee 😭 part 4 will be up in idk when ☺️

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fairyofshampgyu · 6 months

Text

Super shy !

genre: smut, baker au, college au, crack

Pairing: shy loser virgin bakery worker ! soobin x college customer ! reader

Warnings: sub soobin, dom reader, clubbing, loss of virginity, riding, hand job, titty groping (can’t be a Soobin smut without him being obsessed with boobies be fr), premature ejaculation,

word count: 2.9k

As soon as you stepped into the newly established campus bakery, walking up to the counter and observing all the pastries, contemplating for a rather long time before you end up deciding on what you’d usually order anyway, Soobin couldn’t help feeling like his world got totally turned upside down. The sight of you rendering him completely speechless and unable to even think.

Time seemingly going by so slow like in the kdramas as your shiny hair majestically blows in the non existent wind inside, smile brightening up the entire bakery. He could practically see the roses blooming around your face like in the mangas. Was this love at first sight?!

Realistically, no.

But were you incredibly attractive to him and a breath of fresh air to the moody, stressed out college students that purchase a single coffee and stay for hours completing assignments with their backs concerningly hunched over? Hell yes.

And unfortunately for Soobin, he does not do well with pretty people. At all. Not realising you had even ordered, too in awe and preoccupied with taking in all your features until he’s snapped back to reality with the clearing of your throat and he can already feel his cheeks burning up horribly fast. Oh god. He really, really hopes it’s not evident right now.

“S-sorry…What did you say?” He begins apologising profusely to you, too embarrassed to even look you in the eyes, staring off more to the side. This was definitely not his best customer service.

With a chuckle, you brush it off and state your order again, “I said could I have the strawberry swirl cheesecake please?” If Soobin could look at himself in third person, he would so be face palming right now. Or better yet, maybe he could just go up and like, punch himself straight up or something for acting like such a loser.

“Ah right... That’s ₩7500. Cash or card?”

You pay with cash and Soobin, very nervously, fumbles around to garner the right amount of change to hand you, though doing it in the most awkward way possible and his palm makes direct contact with yours as he hands the money, making him blush even more and let out a small obvious gasp at the feeling of your soft hand. Oh my god. Why did he do that?! He really hopes you didn’t find that weird.

You only let out another chuckle, thanking him before you’re leaving the bakery in an elegant manner and Soobin is left to sigh and watch your back disappear. Damn it. He’ll probably never see you again. You were so pretty and so cute, too cute even-

“You’re such a virgin.”

His thoughts about you are abruptly dissipated by his coworker and unfortunately best friend, Choi Beomgyu who gives him the stupidest, most annoying grin he would definitely like to slap off his face right now.

“Just shut up.” Soobin grimaces and rolls his eyes at beomgyu, bringing a batch of freshly baked cookies out of the oven behind him and placing them into the display glass one by one.

"You’re pinker than the strawberry macarons we sell. That's saying something." Beomgyu raises an eyebrow at him with sass.

So does that mean you could see how flustered he was getting then? Oh no! Soobin clears his throat and narrows his eyes at beomgyu anyway. “Am not.”

“Are too! Anyway, all I’m saying is that interaction was painful to watch. You’re really giving pathetic, loser, virgin right now. I cant lie.” Beomgyu attempts to stifle in one of his obnoxious laughs.

Soobin is quick to snap back, "You've only ever slept with one person!"

"S-so!! At least im not a virgin!" Beomgyu’s cheeks also become the equivalent to the strawberry macarons as he scrambles to try and defend himself, brows furrowed and cheeks puffed.

“Well, the concept of a virgin is purely societal anyway. It doesn’t actually matter. It doesn’t mean anything really.” Soobin bitterly replies, continuing to work whilst his counterpart does completely nothing like most of the time. It's usually soobin that does work, remind him not to agree to beomyu's silly ideas of getting a job together ever again.

Beomgyu scoffs and snickers at this, "Whatever. You’re just saying all that to make yourself feel better because you’re a loser. LMAO"

"I’ll punch you right now."

"Then we'll both be fired~”

A poor customer still awaits at the counter to be served, standing in bewilderment and tiredness. Waiting for the two bakers to finish bickering and sighing as they don’t seem like they’re going to stop anytime soon.

Soobin doesn’t expect to see you again, in complete honesty, he’s almost forgotten you even exist after you never come again. But he’s in luck and more than pleasantly surprised when he hears the bell to the door go ding!, indicating a customer had walked in. He looks up from the cake he was decorating and in comes you looking cuter than the first time he saw you. He tries not to mess up the cake and he stands up straight almost instantly when he sees you, waiting for you to order and trying to remain calm.

You laugh and point at his cute nose when you come up to the counter. “You have like, icing all on your nose.”

“O-oh. I do?” He points at himself and you nod in reply. He feels himself going redder by the minute. He must look so stupid right now! And he urgently brings his sleeve up and tries to wipe the icing off his nose to not make himself look an even more of a complete fool in front of you .

“Ah wait no. Let me do it!” You lean over the counter as you see him struggling and wipe it off the top of his cute bunny like nose instead for him.

And that was the end of soobin. The end.

You become a regular at the bakery and soobin becomes a regular of embarrassing the absolute shit out of himself each time he sees you. He really doesn’t think he can top the previous comedic disaster that occurs when you enter, yet he always proves himself wrong, the awkwardness reaching new heights each time. From dropping trays of pastries, spilling drinks, nearly slipping in front of you, giving you a ₩50000 note when it was only ₩5000 change, the list goes on and on. He’s actually surprised he hasn’t lost his job yet.

And there’s also always a disappointed beomgyu shaking his head afterwards ready to make fun of him when Soobin promises to make a move but freezes every time you’re in sight, too much of a pussy.

“I’m calling an intervention.” Beomgyu declares and sighs after the nth time of soobin making absolutely no moves on you whatsoever, “Soobin, my man, my bro, you desperately need to get banged. It’s painful seeing the way you act. Your little crush is not gonna like you with the way you act. That’s it. We’re going clubbing tonight after this shift. No buts.”

“But-”

“I said no buts!”

“You know I hate clubbing.”

“You’ve never even been with me despite my constant pleads.” Beomgyu shakes his head and makes a dramatic pained face at his way.

“So? I know I’ll hate it.”

“You’re such a hater bro.”

“Yes I am. And I take pride in it. I’m a hater of everything.”

Beomgyu just sighs. He was utterly hopeless.

Unfortunately, there was no way Soobin could get out of this because beomgyu was having absolutely none of his protests and excuses and that’s how he ends up finding himself at the club anyway after his shift, sitting off to the side as he watches beomgyu disappear somewhere into the crowd. Soobin sighs as he downs his jack and coke. This was going to be a long fucking night.

In the dimly lit club, soobin’s discomfort was palpable, like a fish out of water and you noticed instantly upon arrival. It’s that cute tall baker boy who always serves you! You excitedly make your way and sit next to him, he looked a little lonely. “Hey! You work at that bakery on campus. I go there!”

Soobin’s eyes nearly fall out of his sockets at the sight of you sitting next to him and he nearly chokes on his drink as he splutters on his straw and nods. Act calm, act calm, act calm, act calm. Act cool and mysterious.

It’s you! You’re speaking to him?!

“So…these things not really your scene, huh?”

“Gee. How did you ever notice?” Soobin attempts to smile and joke with dry humour but it executes a little more awkward and nervous than how he would have liked.

You also try to carry on the conversation since this is the first time you’ve got to ever actually talk to the cute boy before. “I’m very intuitive. I can just sense things like that.”

He laughs at that too, feeling a bit more comfortable around you now. “No but yeah, I’d much rather be at home right now sleeping. Can’t say I’m much of an advocate for getting stupidly drunk with sweaty people you don’t even know with terrible rave music and flashing lights that should have an epilepsy warning”

“I get it.” You chuckle at how passionate he gets talking about how much he hates clubbing, frown on his cute face. “So why are you here then?”

“Friend wanted me to. Said I needed to finally get laid or whatever.” Soobin rolls his eyes and sips on his drink again, motioning his head to the direction of beomgyu on the dance floor, clearly drunk off his ass now.

“Oh, you’re a Virgin?”

Soobin’s ears go red when he realises what he said to you. “O-oh um y-yeah I guess…”

“Are you waiting for like marriage or the right person or something?” You question, genuinely surprised. He was tall and very attractive and it was rare for college boys to not hook up every single night these days.

“God no. Just never happened. I don’t really care for things like that. It’s probably overhyped anyway and doesn’t even feel that good. Like porn is highly unrealistic anyway.”

“You think so?” You chuckle at him and he nods, continuing to cutely sip on his drink with his straw. “Well maybe you should to try it out first and see for yourself.” Your words start to become a little flirty as you grow more confident talking with him and also because of the alcohol making you slightly tipsy now. “Sorry, but do you want to get out of here?”

“Yes please.” Soobin’s eyes widen even more at your suggestion and he’s more than happy to get out of here with you especially.

“Umm your friend is a bit….out of it right now.” You watch beomgyu drunk from afar, whipping his long hair back and forth claiming to everyone around he’ll be able to do it fast enough to lift off his feet and fly like a helicopter.

“He’ll be…he’ll be fine I’m sure”

Soobin has no idea what good stuff he must have done in his past life to get to this moment right now, in your room, making out with you, in your bed. Did he mention making out? With you?! The customer he’s been crushing on for months?! Holy, he might hyperventilate right now. It all feels like a dream. Is this real right now?

You cup his cheek and move into his lap, continuing to move your lips against his and soobin’s ears and face are all flushed, breathing loud of enough for you to hear and he looks all nervous and a little shaky.

You stop kissing him but he chases after your lips still and you stroke his cheek, “Are you okay Soobin?”

He’s only able to nod, lips parted and eyes all glazed over. He’s so out of it just from making out with you it’s crazy. But so cute too.

“C-can you…can we…just want…”

“What do you want, baby?” You chuckle and stroke his cheek as he manages to utter some words. The petname only makes his head go even more haywire.

“W-want you…”

“What do you want me to do?” You giggle and coo at him.

He shyly shows you the boner he’s had this entire time. You can’t believe he got a boner just from some kissing. “Can you-will you touch me…please? Need it…” He pleads at you nervously, so red in the face.

“Are you sure?”

He nods his head exceptionally fast and you begin to unbuckle his jeans as he watches you take his flushed and hard dick out, breathing only becoming heavier. Damn, you didn’t think he’d be that big.

You take him into your hands and his mouth his already agape, gasping when you slowly start to stroke him.

You pump his big cock at a steady pace so as not to overwhelm him too much, though twisting and thumbing at the tip occasionally that has him drooling at the corner of his mouth and beads of precum dribbling out heavily from his cock. It’s endearing how far gone he is just at you stroking his dick slow, shy whimpers and other noises eliciting from his mouth.

You unbutton you shirt with your other hand as you continue to pump him and his eyes go crazed at the sight of your tits, you guiding his own big inexperienced hands to grope at them and he does, slumping his head into your neck and shoulder moaning into it and still groping and squeezing at your tits.

With a sudden yelp you feel Soobin’s cum spurt up and leak into your hands, his eyes rolling back as he whimpers continuously from his premature orgasm.

He doesn’t lift his head from your shoulder yet, too embarrassed to face you but he eventually does, eyes still half lidded, trying to catch his breath and he’s hard again. “W-will you fuck me? Please please please. Wanna feel it, wanna feel you, please?” He practically begs, still panting out.

“Are you really sure, Soobin? With me?”

“Yes please! Only want you.”

You study his face for any hesitancy but it’s clear he’s so set on wanting you to fuck him. So you wrap your hands around both his wrists and bring him to lay down on your pillows instead, you still straddling his lap.

When you’ve undressed your lower half, you bring his dick and slide it over your entrance a few times, he moans out loud, hands coming up shyly to cover his face and then you sink down incredibly slowly on his massive length . Soobin’s jaw drops and breath hitches at the feeling of his dick finally in your warm pussy, a strangled moan ripping out of him. He could seriously cum just from being in you right now, but he tries so hard not to or you’ll be disappointed and he doesn’t want to see you disappointed or embarrass himself even more.

“You good, baby?”

“M’ f-fine. Just-Just need a minute.” Soobin shakes out.

You take his hands away from his face and lean down to softly kiss him instead, trying to calm him down and he effuses into your mouth, kissing back passionately with his eyes closed.

“I’m ready now…” He pulls away after a while and looks you in the eyes.

So you start to slowly move, riding him, going up and down on his virgin dick. Soobin’s mouth hangs open in endless moans and gasps and whimpers, face buried into your pillow to the side and his hair all messy now. Whole body flushed and shaking underneath you.

“Better than you thought, baby?” You grunt out, bouncing on top of his cock.

“So much better. O-oh my god, f-fuck…ah!” So maybe sex wasn’t overhyped after all. Because goddamn, you feel so fucking good. Maybe it was just you. But Soobin truly feels like he’s gliding on fluffy clouds right now. All the times he’s touched himself not even coming close to how he feels right now stuffed in your pussy as you fuck him, watching mesmerised as your tits bounce with each movement. He could die here right now in full contentment. Oh how he was so wrong.

It’s not long at all before Soobin can’t hold it anymore. His hips bucking up and breath hitching as a loud strangled mewl tumbles out of his mouth and you feel hot cum fill you up suddenly that makes you still your movements on him. He lets out a long slurred groan and then goes limp beneath you, eyes closing shut and open as he fades from conscious to not every now and then. Is he really that fucked out?

After a while, he finally somewhat recovers and comes back to you from his high, still panting out and chest rising up and down. He looks up at you with a small shy smile on his lips, arm thrown over his forehead.

“You know I literally only go to the bakery because of how cute and silly you are and how you always make a mess of yourself whenever I walk in” You chuckle and admit, drawing shapes into his chest.

“W-wait you knew I liked you?” Soobin asks, shocked and feeling embarrassed again.

You laugh, “Come on, you made it rather obvious.”

Please actually reblog !!!!!! and leave comments !!!! guys 😭 if you like the fic. It’s really appreciated and so nice tysm !<3🙏💕🌷🌷! It’s incredibly discouraging and irriating when fics have such little reblogs ☹️. At least send an anon in the inbox if you don’t want to rb, don’t just like. Feedback is always appreciated it make writers want to actually write :)

A/n: having serious writers block rn but forced myself to write this in practically one sitting (it was so painful) and has not been proof read at all so if it makes no sense I apologise 😭

#soobin smut #Soobin x reader #txt smut #sub!idol #txt headcanons #txt scenarios #sub soobin #dom reader #dom! reader #txt x reader #sub txt #soobin hard thoughts #choi soobin smut #choi Soobin x reader #soobin scenarios #sub! txt #sub idol

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lovverletters · 20 days

Text

ILLUSION˚₊·—̳͟͞͞♡

❝IN WHICH ㅡ Your husband seems to have change for the better. Although is it really him? Or somebody else masquerading as your husband ❞

A/N : Unofficial comeback hihi !! I made this in 3 hours please don't judge my word vomit

T/W : bad relationship, mentioned of murder, not edited, yandere theme, twist at the end

«────── « ⋅ʚ💌ɞ⋅ » ──────»

[name] sighed for ninth time of the day, everything is going horribly for them.

Early this morning, they had accidentally burnt the breakfast they were cooking for you and their husband, Mauve. He did not take kindly to it and yelled at them before leaving for his work.

It only worsen as they had forgotten their lunch and had to work on an empty stomach while their less than pleasant boss chewed them up for their failing performances.

Then, their car broke down and had to be towed away while they went home on a cab with the world most unpleasant driver ever.

It felt as if the world was against them. Pinning them against the corner like a bully demanding for their lunch money.

Now, they sat at the dinner table staring at the food that's slowly growing colder as they waited for Mauve to come home. As the clock struck 10 and their husband was still not home, [name] sighed once more before cleaning up the table.

Despite their very best effort to avoid addressing the glaring issue of their crumbling marriage, [name] couldn't ignore it anymore.

Mauve and them hardly resembled a married couple, they don't spend time with each other due to clashing schedule and even if they were free, they'd much rather be alone than with each other. The two of them would bicker and argue over unnecessary stuff, don't even mention being physically intimate with each other. They're practically practicing abstinence.

[name] has been the only party making effort to keep the relationship going but Mauve was not doing the same.

It is clear as day that the spark and love they have had simply dried up.

" I should just divorce him at this point .. " [name] muttered before falling into a deep slumber.

«────── « ⋅ʚ💌ɞ⋅ » ──────»

The next morning, they awoke to a delicious aroma coming from the kitchen. [name] sat up in surprise at the smell and walking to the source of the wonderful aroma.

To their surprise for the second time, they sees Mauve flipping pancakes in his suit and ties. Upon hearing their approaching footsteps, Mauve turned over and greetes them with a smile.

" Good morning honeybun, I made pancakes for breakfast. Come take a seat " He plated the freshly made pancakes and placing it on the table.

Huh? Honeybun? Where did that come from?

[name] were puzzled at Mauve's odd behaviour. He glanced at them worriedly when he realised they had not yet taken a seat and had been standing at the doorway with a gaping mouth.

" What's wrong honeybun? Why are you standing there like you've seen a ghost " Mauve placed a gentle hand on their shoulder.

" Whㅡ what's the special occasion, Mauve? " they dumbly said.

" Hm? Don't I always makes us breakfast everyday? " He said, albeit a bit confused.

[name] blinked. Once. Twice.

" No? I'd always do the cooking " They replied with an equally confused face.

Mauve went silent before rubbing the back of his neck nervously with a sheepish smile.

" Ah, I don't? I was just messing with you honeybun~ "

They squinted their eyes at their ' husband ', feeling suspicious of his change of behaviour. Just yesterday he was yelling at them for burning his toast and today he's done a complete 180.

" You don't usually call me petnames either. What is up with you today? " They sat down on the chair and begun cutting up the pancakes.

Mauve closed his mouth once again and stayed silent, [name] could almost hear the cogwheels in his brain turning to form a response. After a while, he finally spoke with a deep sigh.

" Look. [name], baby. I've realised all these years I've been a dick to you and not treating your right " His voice quivered.

" Yesterday, I had an epiphany of sort and I don't want to lose someone as amazing as you, [name]. Will you give me a second chance in loving you? " He held their hand in a gentle grasp, his eyes reflecting his sincerity.

[name] was at a loss for word. They genuinely didn't expect to hear that from their husband. They were ashamed of the tiny flame that sparked within them at his words.

They were conflicted, however after contemplating for some time in their head. They finally made up their mind. [name] placed their own hand atop of Mauve's and gave him a gentle smile.

" I honestly don't know what happened to you yesterday but .. I'm willing to give us a second try to make it work " They said softly.

A grin broke out on Mauve's faceㅡ something they had not seen in years. He then pull them into an embrace and littered kisses all over their faces.

" Thank you, baby. Thank you so much " He happiky hummed onto their skin.

[name] couldn't help but grew flustered at his onslaught of affection. They were not used to it but it wasn't unwelcomed. They slowly reciprocated Mauve's hug and buried their face onto his shoulder.

Finally, something's going right for them.

«────── « ⋅ʚ💌ɞ⋅ » ──────»

He almost felt bad for fooling [name] on thinking that their pathetic excuse of a husband could ever change.

For someone as successful as Mauve was, he is incredibly stupid for neglecting the most amazing spouse a person could ever wish for. Honestly, he felt his blood boils seeing [name]'s astonished reaction to him performing simple husbandry dutiesㅡ it shows that the bastard never treats his spouse right.

It disgust him greatly to be Mauve's döppleganger, to share the same likeness as him. But without it, he wouldn't be able to intervene and replaces him.

Nonetheless, he'd already removed Mauve's out of the picture. If there's one thing he doesn't regret is watching the light slowly dimmed from Mauve's eyes as he kills him.

Now, he shall fulfill his position as [name]'s husband, 'Mauve'.

THE END˚₊·—̳͟͞͞♡

#tw: yandere #yandere #yandere oc #yandere x darling #yandere x reader #yandere x y/n #yandere x you #gender neutral reader #yandere male #yandere headcanons

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miguelsslvt · 8 months

Text

ex nerd! scientist! miguel o'hara x slutty! reader

part two here!

word count: 745

TW: smut, nsfw, d/s themes, mentions of pet play.

A/N: THIS IS INSPIRED BY @nymphomatique SO PLS CHECK THEIR ONE OUT!! their drabble rlly inspired me so i thought maybe i could add a little twist;) welcome to the club!

back in your college days, you were.. promiscuous, some would say. well, you were the biggest slut on campus. if your body count didn't say it all, then the rumours sure did.

you took chemistry, maths, physics and biology. you wanted to be a physics scientist, partially because of the thought of there being lots and lots of different universes, but mostly because the pay was brilliant.

miguel o'hara was your 'pet' back in your college days, per-say.

you used him for your homework, and in exchange you would fuck him, give him head, handjobs, you name it. you took miguel's virginity, and every bit of innocence he had left. he was totally smitten by you. i mean, a pretty, popular girl giving him attention no one ever did? sign him up.

miguel was the biggest loser you knew back then. he wasn't the most muscly, and he had those ridiculous black square glasses, and his outfits were shocking. he had a slight lisp due to his late braces, and his hair was far too long and he clearly struggled to maintain it. to keep it blunt, he wasn't cool at all. he was a loser, a simp, and a goody two-shoes. perfect as your little pet.

it wasn't until after graduation did you stop your little encounters. after leaving college, you blocked his number and left campus on the same day. you thought you'd never have to see that nerdy freak again. well, that's what they all say, right?

that was until you finally got a job at ALCHEMAX. you were a 'technological support scientist', which sounded smart but really all you got to do was watch all the better scientists do tests. you didn't mind, it did more then just pay your bills. hell, with the checks you're bringing in you could probably buy a new car in a few months!

you thought things were all sunshine and rainbows, until the thunder walked in. it's funny though, you didn't realise thunder looked like 6'9 tall and 310 pound of pure muscle and attractiveness. his braces were gone, his hair more clean and cut a little shorter, and his glasses just resting on top of his head, but you knew exactly who he was.

'm-miguel o'hara?!' you said, shocked. he turned around swiftly, looking down at you, before his eyes widened. 'y/n l/n?' he said, surprised. you both had become blushing messes. well, his glow up sure came after only 3 years.

'you.. work here?' you asked, absolutely awe-struck. 'i.. do. i am a technological scientist here. you work here too? why haven't i ever seen you around before?' he asked, intriuged. 'i-it's my first day here. you.. matured.' you said, clearly checking him out.

the man smirked. he actually smirked. the man who would whimper, begging to just get off on your shoe, smirked at you like he was in control. 'and you look as gorgeous as 3 years ago.'

your heart stopped. who was this man? this muscular, defined, confident, completely self aware man.. this wasn't miguel. there was no way.

'you..you're very different, miguel.' you said, a blushing mess. he chuckled, putting some latex gloves on. fuck, even his hands were attractive. 'well alot happens to a guy.' he says smoothly, his voice deeper. god this was going to be hard.

♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎

that very night, you were spread out on the bed, and you didn't recognise the man above you.

3 years ago, a scrawny desperate nerdy little boy was on his knees, as if you were a goddess. and now, that very man was on top of you, kissing your neck so skilfully, as if he's done this for years. his thrusts had rhythm, as he grinded along your g spot with ease, you let out a gasp and a breathy moan, as he shushed you.

'sh, bonita.. you've changed. where's that dominatrix you were back in college days? why are you so.. obedient?~' he whispered in your ear, as you moaned again.

'i-i think i-it's y-you that changed, m-miguel..' you breathily said in response, as he chuckled. 'oh no, sweetheart, i'm still the same loser that was begging on his knees for you. just now, i've learnt how to please you as well as me.' he said in response, his hands moving down from your breasts to your hips, his cock deep inside you as he grinded his hips as you felt every inch.

god, is this heaven?

♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎

#atsv miguel #miguel o'hara #miguel o’hara smut #miguel x reader #miguel spiderman #miguel smut #miguel spiderverse #smut #across the spiderverse #fem reader #miguel o’hara x reader #spiderman 2099 #spiderman atsv #2099 #miguel x you #miguel o'hara x fem!reader

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thefallofruins · 2 months

Text

Bookish Bliss [Ryomen Sukuna]

Part of the bully! Sukuna series, established relationship

Your former bully has been a mess ever since you both got into a relationship. He loves your attention but will never admit it. He'll tease you to no ends just to gain your attention. But at the same time, he loves it when you cuddle him on the couch, a fluffy blanket hugging you both.

But you see...there was a problem. That is, you were a bookworm. Your attention was sometimes stolen by those pesky books of yours. And he hated it, the fact that something else stole you away from him. That his competitor for your attention were just a few pages of bound paper.

There was a visible scowl on his face as he glared at you. He's right there. Right beside you, and you? you're not even looking at him. How can you be so engrossed in that nonsense when he's right next to you? He's growing grumpier with each second, and all it takes is a flip of another page for him to lose his patience.

“What a nerd.” he huffs in pure, unadulterated annoyance.

So engrossed in the book you were, that all you did was hummed a “hmm?” not bothering to look at him. God, he's mad now.

“Stupid brat.” he says in a gruff voice. That makes you look up, a questioning expression on your face. “Huh?”

“Huh?” Sukuna says in a mocking tone, glaring at you. You were his girlfriend, not the damn book's. “You've been reading since the morning, nerd.”

A small smile curves along your lips as you stretch, “Yeah...this is such a good book!” Good book? Good book? You had no knowledge of the agony you were putting him through?

“Good book?” he scoffs. You look at him worriedly. “Yeah...why are you so mad, ’Kuna?”

He scoffs again. “Why don't you go back to your book? Surely you'd prefer that since it's so ‘Good’.”

It takes you a moment to realise your mistake. Guilty, you scoot closer to him, an apologetic look on your face as you cup his face in your hands. “I'm so sorry, Suku...” you coo, kissing his cheek. “should've kept it down...I'm so sorry.”

“Hmph.” he slowly wraps his arms around your waist, looking away from you like a grumpy cat. “Sukuna...”you whine softly, nudging him to look at you again. “…said I'm sorry. Forgive me, please?”

He suppresses a smirk, looking at you. “Sorry, huh?” he shakes his head. “Won't do.”

You pout, “What'll do, then?” fully linking your arms with his, you give him your best doe eyed look.

You continue to give Sukuna the most convincing puppy-dog eyes, hoping to melt his grumpy facade. He sighs, pretending to be unaffected by your charm, but deep down, he enjoys the attention.

“Maybe a little extra something will make up for it,”he suggests, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

You playfully gasp, “What do you have in mind?”

He smirks, “Well, for starters, put that damn book away and focus on me.”

You comply with a grin, closing the book and placing it on the coffee table. Sukuna pulls you into his arms, the scowl replaced with a sly smile. You lean into him, relishing the warmth of his embrace.

“Now, that's more like it,” he murmurs, nuzzling your neck.

You giggle, “You're such a big baby, Sukuna.”

He chuckles, “Only for you, nerd.”

divider by: @/benkeibear

#sukuna x reader #sukuna x y/n #sukuna x you #jujustsu kaisen x reader #jjk x reader #sukuna fluff #jjk fluff #ruins posts #bully! Sukuna

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m-ayo-o · 3 months

Text

Curiosity got kitty laid 🐱

satoru is rly sweet to his inexperienced kitty girl who doesn't really understand anatomy or sex :s nsfw! "kitten" + so many pet names, virgin reader (hybrid girl), hands + oral + sex (tummy bulge)

Thinking of the most inexperienced and sweet darling kitty girl who's just pawing at Satoru's lap for some attention.

He sits there with his legs spread so wide, you can't help but kneel between them and touch him where you're not allowed. He tried to resist you for so long but now you're doing this he's starting to get distracted from the TV and his crystal gaze keeps dipping down to your fingers... your hands.

"Baby- wait, you know what will happen if you touch your owner there?"

You shake your head, still massaging his crotch gently.

You know what yours feels like. You have a little tiny button you can press that makes you feel nice and a cute hole that gets all wet and gooey.

But that's not what his is like.

You sometimes see him bulging there, between his legs, especially if he wears tight pants or you catch him in his boxers. You want to know what it is. So what better way than to find out through touch?

"It's gonna get bigger, baby..." he strokes your ears gently with a concerned look in his eyes, "you better be careful, you might see a side of your owner you don't like, sweetheart."

He warns you but you are just too curious.

The soft and squishy swell in his shorts is... changing. You press your face closer to feel it on your cheek, nuzzling up and down. Your owner is letting out little soft hums now. He sounds nice, so you keep going. And the thing between his legs is growing, just like he said. And your hands start stroking him more because he seems to really like that, following the cues of his body until your hands are almost wrapped around him through his shorts.

You pull on it.

"Ngh-"

He makes such a sexy noise.

"Baby, I'm gonna get too hard in a minute, are you just messing around or do you really want this?"

He looks down at his body, where you're holding him.

"..wan' it..."

You murmur and tug on the waistband, pulling it down to see what it looks like. If he feels good when you touch him here, why wouldn't you continue?

It's pretty and pale like the rest of his skin, but it has a round head at the top that's quite red and blushed. There are big blue veins swelling along it and when your tiny hand circles around him you can feel a pulse. It throbs in your hand. You can barely cover him with one hand, so you use two. And he gives you a pleased smile, like you're doing the right thing.

You stare for a moment. You're not sure what you're supposed to do with it. It's so big and long. Where is it supposed to go?

"Owner- what is it?"

You understand it's him. It's part of his body. But like he said, it's making him act different. He has a blush on his cheeks and his breathing has got a bit shaky.

"It's my cock, sweetheart. It's for..." he searches for a word you might understand, "mating."

Now that word, you have heard before. Mating. It feels more like an instinct than a word. You're not sure what it entails but now you know it involves this big thing between his legs. Curious to find out more, you start moving your hands, up and down, up and down. His hips move in tandem and he lets out some noises you've never heard before.

He's gasping, then sighing with little moans caught in his throat. He bites his lip and you watch his expression shift. He kind of looks in pain so you stop your movements abruptly.

"No- no, don't stop."

His voice is deep and breathy.

He shakes his head and bucks his hips. You regain your grip on him and guide your hands over him again, following the beating pulse of his cock.

More noises spill from his puffy pink lips and you realise now that all the sights and sounds of him are waking a certain feeling in you. Your thighs press together and you can feel the slick there, as if you'd been touching yourself for hours. Which you have done, to the thought of him. But now he's here like this, would it be ok to touch yourself? To feel pleasure with him?

You slide one hand off his cock and down between your legs to find the little bud there. Slipping down your skirt, under your cute panties.

The lack of attention on his base causes his eyelashes to flutter in your direction.

"Oh kitten, you wanna feel good with me?"

He has a smile on his lips and in his eyes. You know it's ok.

You nod shyly and keep circling yourself and pulling at his cock. Through your hazy lust you notice a little bead of liquid on top of the red round tip. When you look closer you see it leaks out of a tiny hole and you watch it drip down the silky smooth skin. He gets so wet until the entire flushed tip is shiny.

And you wonder what you're supposed to do with all that wet stuff? Can you... lick it? Would he mind if you tasted it?

Curious thoughts draw your lips closer. It's intimidating. You look up at him and he doesn't stop you from sticking your tongue out and connecting it to the wet tip. You smooth your tongue around him while keeping up the rhythm with your hand and he moans. It's deep and loud and brings a new pool between your legs.

"Yeah-"

He gulps for air again. He looks so hot, like he's running a marathon.

"Yeah, kitten, use your mouth-"

He's not asking you. He's barely even telling you.

His voice is so filled with need and want that you obey, engulfing the entire swollen head with your lips. The tip of your tongue presses at that little leaky hole and a higher pitched sound comes from him. You circle your wet muscle around him and your saliva drips down this long and hard part of his body.

"Wow- y-you're a fucking angel, baby, can't believe you're doing this to me-"

He lets you suckle on his tip and use your hands to pleasure him and yourself for a little while longer then he wants to show you something else.

"Look, come here," his arms wrap around your body and he pulls you up on his lap.

"Wanna know what this thing is really for?"

You nod and look at his pretty face in a daze.

"Yes owner!"

Your eagerness makes him laugh. He's afraid you won't be so perky when he shows you what it's like.

"This," he tugs at his cock and lines your hips up with his body, "is going in here."

He rubs the soaked entrance of your hole with his fingers, dipping them in a little. He strokes up your tummy and imagines how full his little kitty will be.

You shake your head slowly in disbelief.

But he returns a mischievous smile and nods, slowly smearing his wetness all over yours.

Is that what it was for? To make sure he can go inside?

He pulls your body down and your hole resists momentarily before he coos in your ear-

"Relax, baby, open up for me."

His cock stands upright and sinks into you as you come down, slowly, your lips finally meeting the white hairs of his base.

You feel different.

Your head feels confused and your body feels like it's been rearranged. To fit him. He's pushed everything out of the way and made room for his cock. You look down and see the fat swell in your belly. You're too struck and shaken to do anything but stare.

He giggles, enjoying your expression, and starts lifting you up again.

"Wait wait wait-!!! We, we move--?? Like this??"

It felt wild enough just sitting on him, taking all that inside you?

"That's enough, that's enough!!!!"

But no.

"No, oh no, honey~"

He hums and slides you up and down. Your mouth hangs open and you've never felt so wet before. He feels so achy and hard in there like he's going to split you open. But he's giving you the highest form of pleasure you've ever received, all while fulfilling some kind of deep rooted instinct. A hot desire in the core of your body that you weren't really aware of until now. It's inside you and he's touching you in all the right places to ignite this feeling and make it spread from your centre right to the tips of your fingers and toes.

You feel like you've left reality behind, but you can grasp that you're being lifted up and down. He's doing it gently and looking at you with affection in his eyes. His face looks soft and needy and you just have to grab onto his shoulders and smother him in kisses, which he seems to love.

He smiles and laughs into you.

"Baby, you like it now, hm?"

He coos and strokes you softly, guiding you over his body.

"Yeah~"

You manage to find enough breath to reply and you sink into his body. He holds you and pulls you up and down, his hips starting to move under you. They bounce you to start with, slowly, smoothly, then they start bucking with more force until you're grappling onto his shoulders and nearly being thrown in the air.

Your breath is knocked out of you on each thrust. You're panting over his mouth and he only lets you rest for a second so he can rip your shirt off to see your tits bounce. You have no idea what to do with the rest of your body but keep your legs open to take everything he needs to give you. The rest falls slack- your tail and ears twitch intermittently and you can feel the muscles in your hole spasming around him.

"Baby, well done," he keeps telling you. He knows he's huge. He knows you weren't necessarily ready. But he warned you... and if you're going to touch him like that you've got to be prepared for this.

You can only whimper and hiccup in reply and he starts kissing you and sucking on your lips madly, plunging his tongue inside you while his dazzling eyes meet yours.

He's ravenous.

He looks more handsome than he ever has. But his expression is making you nervous. You don't know what he's going to do.

He starts grabbing your ass and slamming your body down on his dick harder and he suddenly throws his head back over the sofa.

"Uuhhg --- fuuck fuck me-!!!"

Now it sounds like he's begging you. He's moaning. You understand he feels good, but he looks so needy. What does he need?

"W-what is it... Toru, owner??"

"Fuck me, please, ride my dick, I swear I'm gunna cum soon, do you wanna make me feel good? Wanna make your owner feel good? Kitten, kitten baby I'm not gunna last just pl--"

His plea is cut short by a silky smooth movement of your hips that makes his body shake and convulse under you.

You wanna see more.

You lift his shirt up and he rips it off, impatience making him aggressive.

His abs are tensing up and his jaw is shut tight.

You roll your hips over him with a little guidance. It feels natural. You know what to do.

So you move up and down, taking him in your depths with him grabbing every inch of your plush skin- your ass, your thighs, then up your stomach and landing on your tits. He pinches your little nipples and sucks on them, making you whimper and whine until the intense, swelling pleasure in your stomach feels full like it's about to-

"O-owner what-what's happening- oh, oh, wait- this, this is---"

"Mating, baby, you're cumming, I can feel you."

He explains through the tightly clenched muscles of his jaw. He's gotta focus.

"You're squeezing me-"

You nod and moan, feeling the pleasure spread and beat through your body.

"-to get my cum out. Made for me- made to take me-"

He pants and bruises your hips with his big hands until you can't ride him anymore and he fucks his hips up into your with force until his cum spills. He moans out his affections and praise, pulling you up and down slowly to ensure you get every drop.

He lets you sit on him like that for a moment, bringing you closer. Your head nuzzles under his chin and you feel a little embarrassed with the way you acted, but he soothes all of that by stroking your back and telling you what a beautiful kitty you are.

"Was that fun, sweetie?"

His hands snake up your back and find your pointy ears to fiddle with.

You lick at his throat endearingly and peer up at your owner. He looks so satisfied.

"Mhm~" you hum affectionately and purr into him, enjoying the warmth of your naked bodies.

satoru

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dreamescapeswriting · 4 months

Text

My Little Muse ~ HHJ [M]

WORD COUNT: 4.9K (you broke my 2k streak hehe thank you)

GENRE: mafia!AU, continution of THIS piece, hyunjin simping for reader,building of relationship, fast paced, insta love, SMUT MINORS DNI (You WILL be blocked) cunnilingus (female recieving) protected sex

PAIRING: Hyunjin x Fem!Reader

⤜Copyright: © DreamEscapesWriting - January 2024

⤜MASTERLIST

"Do you even know who that was?" The lady behind the counter of your pain shop questioned, her eyes scanning over your body as she looked at your appearance trying to see what it was that Hyunjin liked about you so much. You weren't even that special - to her at least. It was obvious by her tone of voice that she was annoyed by you because of a random man asking you out on a date, but it wasn't as though you asked him to pay you any attention.

"N-No." You stuttered a little, your eyes never straying from the man as he straightened out the black suit he was wearing and climbed into the back of a black SUV. Part of you was intrigued by him, he seemed so charming and confident when he'd told you to go on a date with him.

"That's Hwang Hyunjin." She stated as if it was meant to mean something to you, but you were new to the City and you had no idea who anybody was. You weren't much of a gossip so you didn't read town magazines, you mostly kept to yourself spending time at work or painting at home.

"Is he a celebrity?" You frowned, turning to look at the lady who was biting back a smirk. You could tell she wanted to say but she didn't, she just smiled and shrugged her shoulders at you.

"Good luck, he's relentless when he sees something he wants." Before you could ask what she meant she was going toward the back of the store while you looked around nervously wondering if everyone working inside of the store knew of the man.

It had been weeks of non-stop gifts coming to your apartment and your workplace and it was safe to say it was getting a little out of hand. It had started small at first, the occasional box of chocolates - which you never ate in case they'd been tampered with - then there were some notes that were left at your desk - all cute and sweet notes from HHJ but then when he realised you weren't responding the gifts got bigger.

One morning you'd walked into work to find a huge bouquet of your favourite flowers on your desk with a note attached, "I asked your boss what kind you liked, go out with me tonight? HHJ" Rumours were spreading quickly around the office that you were dating him which wasn't true. He'd given you his number a few weeks ago - along with one of the notes - and you'd saved it into your phone but never called him. You weren't sure you were comfortable going out with someone as the likes of him.

You weren't stupid, the moment you'd left the paint shop and headed home - empty-handed by the way, you weren't going to take such expensive gifts from a stranger - you'd researched him and found out everything there was to know about Hyunjin.

A ruthless leader, the tabloids painted him as a "kind-hearted" man who helped a lot of businesses grow and kept them protected from others who threatened to cause harm to the business or who stole. But if you dove deep enough there were articles that painted a not-so-pretty picture of him, a killer who took what he wanted whenever he wanted it and you didn't know which side to see.

Everyone you'd asked at work about Hyunjin had said nothing but kind things, everyone seemed to like him but you were never sure because of his title. "Mafia leader" didn't really scream "green flag" mostly, red flags all over with a hint of green if you squinted really hard enough.

"Yn, you've worked enough tonight. Head home," Your boss grumbled as he looked at you and over at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine pm and you'd already been there since 7 am, it was safe to say you were overworking yourself but you didn't care. You'd been hoping to wait out the black SUV you could see from your office window but it was still there and had been since 5 pm.

"But-"

"He's still going to wait there no matter how long you hold out," Brady told you, shaking his head.

"Give him what he wants. If he gets his date maybe he'll leave you alone." You sighed a little as you packed up your laptop and slid it into your bag, maybe Brady was right but you weren't sure you liked your boss telling you to go on a date with someone.

"I'll think about it," You mumbled, making your way toward the stairwell, counting down the steps until you'd be outside and in front of the black SUV that was waiting for you.

As soon as you stepped onto the pavement Hyunjin - along with two huge men - were waiting for you,

"You won't give up, will you?" You quizzed, wrapping a scarf around your neck as you tried to beat the cold air that was whipping around.

"Not while I'm alive," Hyunjin said with a cocky smile plastered across his cheek. He was standing there in a simple suit and yet it was like the freezing temperature didn't bother him one bit. You sighed a little looking at him and then at the two men who appeared to look cold.

"Fine. ONE date. That's it!" You told yourself that you were agreeing to this so that the two men beside Hyunjin could finally go and get warm again.

"Okay, one date." He nodded stepping to the side and offering you to get into the car. It was either a car ride home with him or the subway so you began to walk toward the car,

"You're not going to fight for more than one?" Not that you were complaining but you had expected a little fight from him after all the effort he'd done to get you to accept. As you stepped into the car Hyunjin pulled you back so that your back was against his chest and he whispered in your ear,

"Trust me, I know you'll be begging for more." His breath caught against your skin and that's what you blamed the butterflies that were fluttering inside of your stomach on. There was no way you were attracted to him, not when he was a walking red flag, so you brushed the feeling away and sat in the back of the car.

"I'll pick you up on Saturday. Wear something fancy," Hyunjin told you with a smile, lifting your hand to his lips and kissing your skin softly. He wasn't going to drive home with you tonight, he trusted his driver to take good care of you which was why he'd been sending him every morning before work as well as after. He couldn't stand the thought of you riding the subway every day, not when there were dangerous people about.

Not to mention, now that you'd been associated with him you were a walking target already and he wasn't going to let anything happen to you.

"I don't have anything fancy." You contended but he smirked at you, he'd already taken care of something he'd wanted you to wear for him.

"I'm sure you'll find something." With that he shut the door and tapped the side of it, watching as the car drove off into the night.

Hyunjin hadn't lied when he told you that you'd find something, when you'd walked into your apartment the other night there had been a box waiting for you with your name on it.

Inside was one of the most stunning dresses you'd ever laid your eyes on and you dreaded to think how much money it would have cost him. But there were more pressing questions you had. How did he get into your apartment? and How did he know your dress size? All things you were planning on asking him as you waited for him inside the lobby of your apartment building. It was far too cold to be waiting outside in your gown - which was what it was, a ball gown. Something you'd never thought you'd wear.

A long silky green ball gown that slit up your left leg and stopped just below the top of your thigh, revealing your leg in a sexy - yet classy way. You had no idea what Hyunjin had in store for you but you were a little worried,

"Miss Yln, Mr Hwang is here," You nodded at your doorman - Ted - said as you slowly got up from the chair and let out a deep breath. You were nervous about all of this, but you were more nervous about meeting up with Hyunjin, what if he didn't like the dress on you? What if he changed his mind and left without saying anything?

You had no time to question anymore as a hand slowly took yours and a kiss was placed upon your skin, you hadn't even noticed you were outside until you felt him touch you.

"You look beautiful, as always," He whispered to you, looking at you and taking in your appearance. His personal shopper had been right the dress was perfect for you, he had half the mind to stay in all night instead of taking you out with him.

"T-Thanks, you look good too." "Good" was an understatement, you don't think you'd ever seen a man look so hot in your entire life. He was once again in a suit but this one was different, he was in a tailored suit with a bow tie and looked just as fancy as you did tonight.

"We should get going, don't want to be late." He nodded over to the limo and your eyes bulged out of your head,

"Where are we going?" You quizzed as he took your hand in his and helped you into the back of the black Limo. It was dark inside except for some LED lights that lined the underside of the seats and some fake stars on the ceiling.

"An event I was invited to," Hyunjin answered, not giving you the answers you clearly wanted from him but he was enjoying getting to toy with you a little.

You'd come into his life so unexpectedly and he loved it, he found himself thinking about you when he knew he should have been working or when he was painting. Sitting in his art studio at home were countless paintings of you, all in different scenarios but you'd become his muse.

"What event?" He chuckled a little as he shut the door to the limo, glancing at you with a smirk on his face. He already loved that you asked him so many questions, you had a backbone and it was nice to have someone around him like that. Everyone else was so quick to bend to him and he hated how dull and boring that was. With you, he had to fight for what he wanted and you fought back just as hard.

"Do you always ask this many questions?" He arched a brow, holding out a glass of champagne for you to take and you studied it for a second wondering if you could take it or not.

"Yes, and you won't get out of them by avoiding them. I have many, starting with how you knew my dress size and how you got into my apartment?" You took the glass from him, watching as he took a drink from his own and you downed the glass that you were holding.

"I trust you did research on me?" He wasn't stupid, he knew someone would have told you his full name and you would have googled him sooner or later. Besides, he wanted you to know some things before going forward with a date with him,

"Well...Y-Yeah but that doesn't answer-"

"I'm a very powerful man, Miss Yln, I can get into any place I want and once I was in your place I found your dress size." He said it as if it was the most casual thing in the world for someone to do and you didn't know if it scared you or excited you.

"Do I need to sweep for hidden cameras?" Something you hadn't thought of before, what if he had it set up so he could see you changing?

"Spying isn't my style."

"No, but stalking seems to be." You grumbled at him, making him laugh with you, but you weren't joking.

"I wouldn't call it stalking. I was giving you gifts."

"And sending a car all of the time, finding out where I lived." You reminded him and he rolled his eyes playfully at you. It wasn't as though he'd paid for someone to give him your address, it was public information if you looked hard enough.

"Where you live is employer information, wasn't my fault you worked for me." Hyunjin shrugged you but frowned at him, you didn't work for him as far as you knew.

"I work for Brady."

"Who works for me. It's a big world out there, my little muse." The nickname sent a tingle up and down your spine and you hated yourself for it. You were supposed to be turned off by him but the more time you spent around him the more drawn to him you were.

"Muse?" You raised your eyebrow and he smirked at you a little,

"A source of inspiration."

"No, I know what a muse is, why are you calling me it?"

"It's a cute nickname," He shrugged not letting you know just yet that you were the one thing keeping his art alive and he would do anything to make sure he didn't lose his inspiration now he'd found it.

"This place is huge." You whispered to Hyunjin as you walked around the huge art gallery he'd bought you along to. All of the walls were painted a brilliant white colour so that the canvases and other art pieces stood out among the masses.

"It's lovely to see you Mr Hwang, and with a date? It's already rare to see you out but even more rare with someone with you." You stared at the journalist who seemed to be buzzing with excitement as Hyunjin dropped his arm to be around your waist, and your stomach flipped.

Those damn butterflies inside of you needed to stop, you wanted to crush each and every one of them for feeling for Hyunjin,

"I trust you'll keep everything off the books that you see here tonight. I wouldn't want Yn scared off."

"Of course, it's lovely to meet you Yn." The man bowed to you before leaving you both alone and you were a little speechless.

"Does everyone bend to your every command?"

"Everyone except you." He stated as he took two glasses from a passing waiter, handing one of them to you before drinking all of the contents from his own. He was nervous and he hadn't been this nervous for something in his whole life, at least not for a long time but being here, with you, made him nervous.

"You hate that, don't you?" You giggled drinking slowly from the glass and watching your date as he turned to look at you and smiled,

"No, I actually kind of love it."

"Why?" You didn't understand how a man who could get everything he could ever want by the snap of his fingers would ever want you. He could have anybody else and yet he wanted you,

"You don't make life boring. You're excited," He told you while looking into your eyes,

"So, you like me fighting you back?"

"My little muse, I love everything you do." Before you had time to process anything else he began to walk with you toward some paintings that were hanging up.

"Tonight's function is about raising money for schools." You frowned as he told you this.

"Art schools, if we raise enough money we can add more scholarship programmes for kids who can't afford to come to schools we provide." If your heart wasn't already singing for him before it was practically making an album devoted to him by now. If you were listening to him right he was building art schools for people,

"We?" You stuttered a little, there was no way it was true. Everything you'd been reading about him and it had never once mentioned this.

"Hmm, me and a board of chairmen. My name isn't on anything, I don't want people to know about it and use it against me. Or destroy it," He stared down at you, your eyes hadn't moved from his face the whole time it was like you were seeing him in a whole new light right now,

"What made you decide that was what you wanted to do with your time and money?" Hyunjin opened his mouth to speak but his eyes glanced behind you and he smiled warmly,

"Geum Ji Eun," He greeted, you spun around to see a teenage boy who bowed to you both and you did the same.

"It's beautiful, no?" Someone with a thick British accent asked causing you to turn your head to see someone standing beside you. You'd spotted him around as you'd been walking but you smiled a little at him, trying to be as polite as possible,

"Ah, now I see the real reason for your stare, you're the woman in the painting," You'd been staring at the painting for almost ten minutes now trying to figure out why Hyunjin would have painted you and displayed you here. The piece was labelled "Little Muse" and it wasn't the only painting that displayed you as the main focus but it was the one you were most drawn to.

It depicted you inside of an art studio in a white button-up shirt and shorts while painting on your own canvas, it was clearly something Hyunjin had created on a whim since you'd never done anything like that but it was beautiful.

"I don't think I am, I think it's just a coincidence," You laughed nervously looking around for Hyunjin but you could no longer see him from where you were standing.

"I don't think so, I think Hyunjin painted you for a reason." The man stepped closer to you and all of the hairs stood up on the back of your neck letting you know that something wasn't right.

"That reason being?" You backed off a little but he continued to step forward until you hit something hard behind you, panicking you looked up to see a bald man who could have been 6''5 looking down at you with an angry scowl on his face.

"He wants people to know you're his," The first man growled out, stepping toward you so that he was almost touching you,

"I suggest you move away from my future wife or I'll make sure you die a slow and torturous death," You said nothing about the future wife comment but watched as the two men scattered away from you clearly terrified of Hyunjin.

"Future wife?" You questioned him as he stepped closer to you, looking down at you and scanning your features trying to see if you were hurt or scared in any way but you didn't appear to be.

"How is it, that two men can scare you and you completely forget about them and ask me about something I said?" He laughed a little and shook his head at you, you were braver than he thought.

"I knew you'd never let them hurt me." You spoke without thinking about it first causing you and Hyunjin to freeze in place. He didn't think earning your trust would be as easy as it was.

"You trust me that much?"

"I-" You did and you didn't even know why, but you did and you weren't going to lie about it to him.

"I'm not sure why, but I do." A giant smile took over Hyunjin's face and he took you by your arm and began to walk around the gallery with you once again.

Throughout the rest of the evening whenever you were introduced to someone Hyunjin made sure to introduce you as his "future wife" which would have been something that put you off but for some reason it didn't. It only made you giggle and shake your head at him.

"Thank you for an amazing night," Hyunjin said as he slowly leaned forward a kissed your cheek, sparks flew from the contact and your stomach felt as though it was going to explode.

"Do you want to come up for a hot drink?" You found yourself asking, you didn't want the night to end and you needed more of him.

"Are you sure?" You nodded at him and Hyunjin paid his driver to wait for him but you smirked a little.

"Spend the night," As soon as the words left your lips Hyunjin's cheeks blushed bright red and you turned to walk into the building, swaying your hips a little as you knew he'd be watching you walk away from him.

"You're so hot," He groaned as you got into the elevator of your apartment, your body was pushed up against the mirror as you looked back at him a giggled.

"Do you know how hard it's been keeping my hands and lips to myself all night?"

"No one told you to," You whined out at him before he kissed your neck softly.

"You enjoy challenging me, don't you? Fuck, it turns me on so much whenever you fight back at me." He groaned a little before kissing up to your lips and kissing you deeply, grabbing your neck and pushing you into him.

He wanted to take his time with you and be gentle but he couldn't, not when he was craving you as much as he did right now. His lips moved to your neck and he began sucking on your skin, smirking as he heard a moan escape your lips that was almost as beautiful as you.

"I need to taste you," He groaned sinking to his knees in front of you making your eyes fly open,

"Hyunjin, we're in public,"

"I want to taste you, so I'm going to," Besides it was almost two in the morning it wasn't as though someone was going to get into the elevator with you.

He pushed the dress up and found you naked below the silk,

"No underwear?" He smirked before he gently began rubbing your clit making you gasp out, you were soaking wet for him and he wasn't going to waste a single second waiting to get to your apartment. His tongue dragged against your slit and you whined at him,

"Please...Hyunjin," You begged no longer caring that you were in an elevator with him right now.

"Spread your legs, I want full access to what's mine." He ordered and this time you didn't fight him, you moved your legs further apart and he placed one of them over his shoulder. He was ravenous for the taste of you, he wanted nothing more than to make you cum for him as he sucked on your clit slowly pushed two fingers into you and stole your moans away from you,

"That's it, little muse, let it go." He moaned out as you began to work your hips on him, grinding yourself into his face as he thrust his tongue into you. Your hands slowly moved to his hair and you gripped onto him tightly as you rode his face, moaning his name louder each time you rocked your hips.

"F-Fuck," You swore out, your eyes screwed shut as your orgasm hit you knocking you over the edge as you screamed his name out.

Hyunjin slowly raised and smirked as the elevator arrived at your floor and you stormed out dragging him but his blazer as you tried your best to hurriedly open your apartment door.

As soon as the two of you were in your apartment you threw your arms around the back of his neck and kissed him desperately, kicking off your shoes and biting down on his lip.

"I need you," You moaned out, the orgasm you'd gotten in the elevator wasn't enough, you needed more of him, all of him and you weren't going to stop until you had him.

"You sure? I don't want you to regret it," You knew he was teasing you and you hated him for it as you unbuckled his belt and pulled him free from the confines of his pants.

"Does it seem like I will?" You moaned out, pumping his cock in your hand slowly as he let out a low groan,

"I want you," You begged, pushing the head of his cock to your clit and rubbing yourself against him, the friction simply wasn't enough for you,

"Don't I deserve it?" You put on a pleading voice and Hyunjin growled, if he wasn't careful he was going to lose control of you and he wanted to savour every second he had.

"Tell me you want this," He ground out, looking down at you as you giggled a little.

"I want you to fuck me Hwang Hyunjin." Without a second to lose he followed you to your bed and smirked as you stripped out of your dress hurriedly making him strip too.

"You sure?" He smirked as he watched you glare at him,

"Shut the fuck up and fuck me," You mumbled as he laid you down on the bed, his head dipping down as he licked your breast biting down on your nipple and tugging it with his teeth, you whimpered out and your legs spread further apart. You pointed to the nightstand and Hyunjin ragged it open, finding a condom and rolling it onto himself with not a second to spare.

It was slow at first as he thrust into you, looking down at you as he gave you some time to adjust, his lips kissing you hungrily as you tightened around him. God, he was bigger than you thought he was and your eyes squeezed tightly as you tried to ignore the slight pain you were feeling, you knew it would pass soon.

“You’re so tight, little muse.” He groaned, slowly pulling out of you and thrusting into you once more, your walls stretching around him each time as you whimpered his name out.

"You're just too big," You hissed, pulling his hair a little as he groaned,

"But you can take me, can't you, little muse?" He teased pushing into you deeper and you could have sworn you could feel him in your gut,

“H-Hyunjin,” You moaned out, looking at him as he smirked a little.

“Faster…Please,” You begged before he nodded at you, thrusting in and out of you a little faster this time, your whole body shaking as you moaned his name out so loud you were sure your neighbours were going to complain but you didn’t care.

Sex with Hyunjin felt like nothing could ever harm you again, like nothing else in the world mattered as long as he was fucking you.

“I want you like this every night,” He groaned out, thrusting harder as he looked down at you with lust in his eyes.

“I want you everywhere, over my desk, in my office, fuck,” He grunted out as his cocked pumped in you again, the sound of your skin colliding growing louder inside of the quiet room.

“I need you all the damn time.” He grunted as he kissed you deeply, your legs wrapping around his waist as you pulled him closer. God, you felt so good he never wanted this to end but he could feel his orgasm rushing closer each time you clenched around him and you weren’t far off either. He could tell by the way your mouth formed an O and your moans turned into quieter whimpers.

“Hyunjin,” You warned out as you squeezed around his cock, his hips moving at a faster speed as he grunted your name out. The new pace of his cock made your orgasm hit you like a truck and you cried out, squeezing him as you cried his name out loudly. Watching you lose it for him sent him over the edge as you milked his cock of everything he’d been holding back,

“You’re mine, little muse. My future wife, mine.” You slumped against the bed as you nodded at him, whimpering as he pulled free from you and discarded the used condom into the bin inside of your room.

“Yours.” You mumbled to him as he let out a breathy chuckle and made his way to your bathroom, running you a hot bath for you to relax inside of before he took you for a second time that night.

Throughout the years your relationship with Hyunjin only grew stronger the longer that you were together and you were always his “little muse” no matter who came into his life, including your daughter whom he called “mini muse”. The two of you were the light of his life and he was so thankful to run into you all those years ago in the paint store - which he bought and renamed “little muse” after you got married. It was safe to say Hyunjin was more than obsessed with you.

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asahicore · 4 months

Text

bad news first - sjy (m)

this work contains smut - minors please do not interact pairing. jake x fem!reader synopsis. From the moment you'd met at eight to the day he moved to South Korea at fourteen, you and Jake were inseparable. But after years of being apart, you've come to terms with the fact that at twenty, you and Jake just aren't what you used to be. That is until you get a text from him, and all of a sudden, he's back by your side, doing his year abroad at the university you study at, and all your feelings for him float back up to the surface. genre. college au, childhood friends to ???? to lovers, painful mutual pining, one bed trope..... a sprinkle of angst (my hand slipped) but mostly fluff i promise and smut (mdni!!!), also i made sunghoon really weird in this and idkw, this is set in scotland.. edinburgh uni rep!! word count. 23k author's note. everybody say happy belated birthday to @zreamy.. happy belated birthday zo!!! being 22 years and 6 days old is cooler than just 22 years old anyway.. hope you like it bestie... if you dont... well theres a building on campus thats 17 stories high sooo.. enjoy! i hope everyone else enjoys too, since this is a bday fic for zo she couldnt beta read so i had to raw dog this so if its terrible.. not my fault! lmk what u think!! i also made a playlist for this, do listen along!!

“Alright kids, good news or bad news first?”

You looked at your teacher, then at the boy next to you, then back at your teacher. “Bad news first,” you said in unison.

You were only eight, but you were both wise enough to know that hearing good news second would assuage the blow of whatever these bad news were. Miss Dawson sighed as she crouched in front of you. “The bad news is your bus driver is on strike and won’t be coming. The good news is that your parents have been informed and are coming to pick you up soon.”

Following her instructions, you headed to the gymnasium and sat there silently among the other kids. Not many kids in your class rode the bus home, and the ones who did seemed to have drivers not on strike, so it was just the two of you. You were used to that, though - over January and February, you had made a sort of silent pact to stand and wait for the bus together. You sometimes shared snacks, but you never spoke. For some reason, you felt at ease with this boy, even though you didn’t know much about him. You had heard he had moved to Brisbane just at the start of this year, all the way from South Korea. You were pretty sure his name was Jake.

You handed him one of your Twix bars. Then he spoke. “I thought a strike was when you did really well in bowling.”

“Same,” you replied, mouth full of chocolate and caramel. “I’m not sure why that would keep the bus driver from picking us up.”

Jake looked at you with wide eyes, distress clear in them. “Do you think he went bowling instead of picking us up?”

This made you frown. “That’d be really rude.”

“It would. I always make sure to go bowling on the weekends, ‘cause if I missed school that’d be rude to Miss Dawson.”

You nodded your head in fervent agreement. “For sure.”

That weekend, his mum called your mum to ask if you wanted to go to the bowling alley with them. From then on, for the next six years, you were stuck together by glue.

Twelve years later, Jake’s name appearing on your phone screen has become such a rare sight, you don’t believe it right away. It takes you a few seconds of intense squinting at the letters to actually realise your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

jake.sim15 hey y/n!! you go to edinburgh uni right?

You type and delete three different responses before settling for a simple yeah, I am! what’s up?, hoping you sounded nonchalant even though you very much felt chalant. You thought that whatever you sent wouldn’t be as weird as taking forever to answer such a straightforward question.

As you wait for Jake’s reply, you scroll through your previous shared messages, noting with sadness that for three years in a row, the only instances you’d texted were to wish each other a happy birthday or when he reacted with a fire emoji to Stories of your dog, Milo. Before that, your last conversation was to congratulate each other about getting into your top choice universities and to discuss plans for your respective futures.

Futures that used to include each other, you think. His reply appears at the bottom of your screen before melancholy can fill your heart.

jake.sim15 i applied to go there for my year abroad next year annnnd i got in !! heh

You shoot up straight from your seat on the lounge chaise you’d been sunbathing on, a loud “Oh my God!” involuntarily escaping your mouth.

“What? What happened? Is everything okay?” Chaewon asks frantically, rushing over to your side. “Oh,” she says when she sees your phone. “It’s a text… from a boy?”

This makes Yunjin, previously unbothered by your panic, rise from her seat and take off her sunglasses. “A boy? Show me,” she demands, snatching your phone from your hands before you can protest. Upon seeing the texts on your screen, she lets out a loud gasp. “It’s not just any boy! It’s the one and only Jake Sim himself.”

“Give that back!” you plead, hand reaching for your phone, but Yunjin is already walking away.

“And he’s coming to Edi this September, apparently. He says he’s sorry for not saying anything earlier, but he was waiting for an answer up until now.” She scoffs. “Leave it to our uni to tell someone they’re in less than two months before term starts. Oh, you’re the first person he’s told, Y/N! After his parents. How cute,” she coos, protesting when you snatch your phone back from her. “Hey! I was reading that.”

“Those are my texts, Yunjin. I’m the one who’s meant to read them.”

She shrugs. “You would’ve told us anyway.”

“What are you going to reply?” Chaewon asks. With the both of them hovering over your shoulders and watching as you type a response, a sort of stage fright comes over you, making you send what might be the most unoriginal reply known to man.

“Awesome? Seriously, Y/N?” Yunjin reads, disproportionately disgusted with you.

“That’s a lot of exclamation marks. It almost makes it look like you don’t mean it,” Chaewon says.

“I do mean it!”

“Well, he seems to like it. A smiling-with-teeth emoji is a good sign, right?” she asks in an attempt to make you feel better.

“He has automatic caps off. That man is run-through,” Yunjin says, shaking her head as she walks back to her sunbed.

“You were excited about him texting me just a second ago,” you reproach.

“Yeah, before I found out he was a whore.”

“Yunjin, you know we don't slut-shame here!” Chaewon exclaims. Before Yunjin can say anything even worse in response, your phone starts ringing, and Jake’s name appears on your screen. “He’s calling you?” Chaewon gasps, making Yunjin sit up with a start for the second time in less than five minutes.

“This man is insane,” she remarks with all the seriousness in the world.

You run away from your friends, finding refuge in the outside kitchen area out of earshot. They don’t need to hear your conversation with Jake. You love them, but they can be weirdly unsupportive in moments like these.

“Hey, Jake,” you greet, hoping he doesn’t notice the breathlessness in your voice. It was because you had just ran, of course - you didn’t want him to think you were so nervous about talking to him after such a long time, you could barely breathe. Because you weren’t. At all.

“Hey, Y/N!” he replies, and the excitement in his voice makes your heart melt. “I hope it’s not weird that I called, I just thought it’d be nicer than texting, is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, it’s nice to hear your voice,” you say before you can really think about it, and cringe at your own words. Years without talking and the world’s worst line is the first thing you say to Jake. Thankfully, before you start excruciating yourself, a chuckle pours out of Jake’s throat and blesses your ears.

“It’s nice to hear your voice, too. What are you up to?”

“Oh, I’m on vacation with my friends. One of them has a rich aunt who owns a villa in southern Italy, so we’re just chilling by the pool right now.”

“You always wanted to go to Italy! That sounds so nice,” he says. Your breath catches gently in your throat - he remembers, you note.

“Yeah, it really is. What about you, how are you spending the summer?”

Jake tells you about the local bookstore owned by a grandpa that’s always had a soft spot for him and that gave him a part-time job for the summer. “I’m trying to save up as much money as I can before I leave. If I treat you to a meal, will you show me around the city?” he asks, and you can hear the grin in his voice. It makes you realise how much you’ve actually missed him.

“You don’t need to treat me to a meal, I’ll show you around anyway.”

Still, he insists, and you find yourself giving in quickly - because it’s Jake or because free food is on the table, you’re not sure. Probably both.

You and Jake get to talking, but fitting years and years of catching up into one conversation is an impossible task, and before you know it, when you check your phone, you’ve been talking for over an hour. Yunjin is angrily waving at you, pointing at her stomach to indicate hunger like a caveman who’s just learned how to communicate. You apologise to Jake, telling him you have to go, and plan to meet during fresher’s week before you hang up.

A few hours later, you get a text from him saying it was nice talking to you and jokingly asking whether Yunjin was satisfied with lunch. It’s innocuous, but it opens a gate for more texting, which leads to long, rambling voice messages, which leads to late-night phone calls that remind you of when you were fifteen and still kept in touch. When August fades into September, you feel like you’ve got your best friend back.

You remember why you were so in love with him at fourteen.

You see Jake before he sees you.

Among the throngs of people, you manage to spot the dark, messy flop of hair on his head weighed down by a nice pair of wireless headphones. After a thirteen-hour flight from Seoul, a four-hour layover in Frankfurt and a final, two-hour flight to Edinburgh, he looks rightfully exhausted, using what looks like the last of his energy to spot the exit and the airport bus stop. Even wearing a simple denim jacket, white tee and grey sweatpants, he’s so gorgeous you forget what you came here for, until he almost walks right past you without seeing you. You put yourself in his path and hold your hand-written banner up, making yourself as obvious as you can as you call out his name.

When he sees you, he stops dead in his tracks for a second, someone almost running into him before he remembers the crowd behind him. His tired features break out into a bright smile that has your heartbeat speeding up so much, you think it might run out of your chest.

He had told you not to come, that it would be late for you and he didn’t want to bother you, but you had managed to get the information of his arrival before he forbade you from picking him up so you did it anyway, wanting to surprise him. After years of being apart, rather than waiting another day, you wanted to see him as soon as possible.

Jake briskly makes his way to you, dropping his bags next to him on the floor as he engulfs you in a hug, warm and tight as if he’s trying to make up for all those years. You hug him back as if someone would appear out of thin air and take him away from you again.

“This was the longest day of my life, I’m so happy to see you,” he says when he pulls away, and you’re so happy you can’t even say anything back, resorting to giggling and lightly swatting non-existent dust off of his shoulders.

As you wait for the bus, he tells you about every trivial thing that happened to him on his trip, from how expensive a sandwich is at the airport to the German kid sitting in front of him that kept turning around to stare at him on his second flight.

“How did you know he was German?” you ask, amused.

Jake pauses. “Just vibes.”

Conversation on the bus is slightly disjointed as you jump from topic to topic with random pauses here and there before one of you finds something to talk about - but it’s okay, you hadn’t expected for the two of you to be as easy as before. It’s more awe at seeing each other after such a long time than awkwardness. Even though you’d caught up over summer, there was a world of difference between speaking on the phone and actually sitting next to him. You notice things like the shine of his hair, the creases that form on the sides of his lips when he smiles, or, unfortunately for you, the veins that run along his forearms and hands - things you hadn’t noticed previously thanks to the sometimes questionable quality of the front camera of his phone. Once in a while, your thigh brushes against his, and it reminds you that he’s really here. Even that he’s real, at all.

In a tragic turn of events, Jake lives in the student accommodation you used to live in in first year, and coming back to it two years later is slightly traumatising. His three-person flat is in a different building as your old one, and you marvel at how it somehow still smells the same - like dusty, decade-old carpeting and the permanent stench of students’ dubitable cooking. He’s the first one to move in, which makes the place slightly eerie, but it means that you’re not bothering anyone by unpacking Jake’s stuff and cooking Shin Ramyun the previous tenants had left behind at 11pm.

Your late dinner was meant for you to take a small break, watch a couple episodes of Friends which Jake had been shocked to learn you’d never watched, and you had been shocked to learn he was a die-hard fan of (since one year ago), then get back to unpacking. But the ramen sends an already exhausted Jake into a food coma so intense, he falls asleep on your shoulder five minutes into the second episode.

You let him sleep as long as he needs, turning the volume down on his laptop and stifling your chuckles as much as you can. You feel like a cat has fallen asleep in your lap - you are now obliged by law to stay still until Jake wakes up. It’s not until an hour later that Jake’s uncomfortable sleeping position forces him awake, lifting his head off of your shoulder with a grunt. He looks around himself, at his room that’s not quite familiar to him yet, then at you, eyes still scrunched with sleepiness as a grin blooms onto his lips.

“Sorry,” clearing his throat of its grogginess. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost one a.m,” you reply, and his eyes go wide.

“You should’ve woken me up! Does your shoulder hurt?” he asks, much more alarmed than he should be, and it makes you laugh.

“It’s all good. But now that you’re awake, I should probably head home.”

“I’ll get you an Uber,” he says, already pulling out his phone.

“It’s fine, Jake, my place is a ten-minute walk from here. I live just up the road.”

Jake’s fingers on his phone pause as he looks up at you. “Then I’ll walk you home.” He lifts a finger in warning when he sees you start to protest. “And don’t fight me on this. You did so much today, it’s the least I can do.”

As much as you love the idea of spending more time with Jake, even if it’s just ten minutes, you still don’t want to bother him when you know how tired he is. “It’s really safe around here. I can just text you when I’m home, if you’re worried about me getting kidnapped or something,” you say, taking his jacket from his hands and placing it back on his desk chair.

He grabs it back, putting it on before you can take it from him again, and rummages through one of his suitcases for a black, woolly scarf. Neither of you speaks as he wraps it tight around your neck, even though the early September weather isn’t cold enough to warrant it. His hands stop briefly on the scarf and a small smile spreads on his lips. You hope he doesn’t hear your sharp intake of breath when your eyes meet. “It’s not about that,” he says simply, voice low and unlike you’ve ever heard it before. You don’t think his voice had quite finished cracking when he’d moved away back then.

Suddenly, he steps away, grabs his keys, and heads for the door. “Let’s go!” he says, voice back to its usual cheery tone. You don’t find it in you to question him, so you just follow him out, welcoming the night breeze that cools down your burning cheeks with open arms.

The walk to your place is mostly done in comfortable silence, but it still goes by too quickly for your liking. You keep your hands in your pockets to prevent yourself from doing something stupid, like reaching out for Jake’s hand that swishes back-and-forth as he walks. Instead, you bury your nose in his scarf and relish in the unfamiliar but comforting smell that his cologne has left behind on the fabric. You hug goodbye when you reach your flat, and you have to remind yourself to let go. He insists on you keeping the scarf. “My mum packed me, like, three, so you can have that one.”

“Your mum still pack your things for you, does she?” you ask, tone playful.

“No-” he says, voice slightly whiny, before he realises you’re just teasing him. “Whatever,” he chuckles, ruffling your hair. You hope the streetlights aren’t bright enough for him to notice the flustered look on your face. The both of you stand there awkwardly for a second, before he lets out another chuckle. “Right. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” you beam.

“Okay,” he says, but still doesn’t make a move to leave. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll be off then.” He gives you one last smile then turns around, burying his hands in his pockets, and you watch as he walks away.

“Get home safe,” you call out after a few seconds.

He pivots on his heels, and, with a wave of his hand, says, “I will! Go inside.”

“Good night!”

“Night, Y/N!”

When you walk into your living room, Yunjin is sitting on the couch, arms crossed over her chest, gaze trained on the wall opposite her, one lamp lighting the otherwise completely dark room. She looks like a detective in one of those bad cop shows.

“Gosh, what’s all this for?”

“You’re back awfully late,” she says, neither looking at you nor answering your question.

“Yeah, I was with Jake,” you shrug, heading into the kitchen for a glass of water. She abruptly gets up from her seat, following you into the other room and staying close behind you.

“And?” she demands, mouth way too close to your ear and making you start.

“And what?” you ask.

“What do you mean and what?!” she says, clearly agitated. “I want to know everything!”

“There’s nothing to say, really. He seemed happy I picked him up from the airport, then I helped him unpack. He lives in Riego, by the way.”

“Ew.”

“I know, it was awful going back there.”

The two of you stare at each other as you drink your water. “Well?” she asks.

“What?”

“Is that it?”

You fill your glass again to take it into your bedroom. “I don’t know, we just ate and watched Friends.”

“You hate shows with laughing tracks,” she states like it’s an accusation.

“It wasn’t actually that bad,” you reply, shrugging.

She tuts. “Love will do ugly, ugly things to a person.”

“You’ve been in a loving relationship for the past two years.”

“This isn’t about me. Can we talk about how you’re still in love with the same loser from when you were ten?”

“I was fourteen, and don’t call Jake a loser when you haven’t even met him.” You ignore the roll of her eyes. “And I’m not. Not anymore. I’m just happy to have my friend back.” Yunjin gives you a look. “Okay, maybe I’m still a little bit in love with him. But it’s so little, it’s barely there.” Her expression is unchangingly unimpressed and you can’t help but throw in the towel. “Alright, fine. I still love him, what about it?”

“You’re pathetic.”

“I know that, no need to remind me.”

“Are you gonna do something about it?”

“My patheticness? I’ve tried, didn’t really work.”

“No, idiot, about Jake. You should go and get him! It’d be so sexy if you got together as 20-somethings after knowing each other since you were babies.”

“We were eight when we met. And I don’t know if sexy is the word I’d use here.”

“Anything is sexy if you try hard enough,” she says, and you have to laugh. “Anyways, you should confess your undying love and tell him you’ve felt that way since you met.”

“I wasn’t-”

“Guys might not show it, but they probably get all hot for stuff like that. Boosts their ego and shit.”

“Yunjin, I just got my friend back, I’m not gonna risk it. Plus, who knows, I might not actually be in love with him. It might just be my emotions acting up, like, seeing someone I used to like after a while. We’ve both changed so much, once I get to know him more now, I might not even feel the way I used to.”

“Notice how you’ve used the word might twice in ten seconds? You’re just trying to find excuses.”

You groan. “This is why I hate English Lit people.”

“You do English Lit.”

“I know, and I’m the only nice person that does it.” In your head, you add and Jake, but saying it out loud would only make this conversation worse for you.

“What’s that scarf, by the way? Did he give you that?”

You look down at the scarf like it’s a piece of incriminating evidence. “Can you stop grilling me, please? It’s late.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

You sighed deeply. “Fine. Yes, he gave me-”

“It’s not even that cold outside!” she exclaimed in an outrage. “Don’t tell me he also walked you home?”

You pause. “He did.”

She gasped. “He walked you home because he’s in love with you.”

“He walked me home because he’s a good friend that looks after me.”

“He walked you home because he realised how hot you’ve gotten and he wants some of that.”

All you can do is sigh. “Whatever. I’m going to bed.”

“If you weren’t such a coward, you wouldn’t be going to bed alone.”

“Whatever!” you say, shutting the door behind you, shaking that preposterous conversation out of your head. When you get into bed, it takes you at least half-an-hour before you can settle down, but you know your constant tossing and turning isn’t due to your inability to find a comfortable enough position to sleep in. Between your evening with Jake and Yunjin’s pestering, thoughts run wild and incoherent through your head.

You want to tell her every little thing that happened with Jake tonight, but you’re afraid it might do you more harm than good. She is most definitely the type of friend who will take the smallest action a guy did for you or the most meaningless thing he might have said and turn it into a sign that he has the hots for you, which usually does wonders for your confidence, but right now, you don’t need that kind of delusion. Did seeing your childhood best friend you used to secretly harbour feelings for make you feel some type of way? Of course, but that doesn’t mean you still love him after all this time, after six years of being apart, the majority of those years spent with no contact. It wasn’t like you parted ways with resentment, or anything of that sort, far from it; rather, you drifted apart naturally, as two teenagers with over 7000 kilometres between them would. At first, you’d call frequently and even write each other letters - but as you became more preoccupied with school, friends, and extracurriculars, your phones gradually rang less and your mailboxes became gradually emptier. You don’t even remember who sent the last, unanswered letter.

Tonight isn’t the first time you replay the moment Jake announced that he would go away, but it’s the first time it’s a bittersweet memory. It used to only be bitter - but now that you’ve reconnected, you can look back at it with fondness, wishing you could tell fourteen-year-old you the hurt would only last so long.

It hadn’t started unusually.

“So, bad news first, right?”

In your six years of friendship with Jake, this had been the first time you’d really been wary of what he would say next. The look on his face told you that this bad news wouldn’t be as easy to shake off as usual. Your definition of bad news was things like I got grounded so I can’t hang out, I forgot we had a test tomorrow so I can’t hang out, my allergies are acting up again so I can’t hang out.

“I’m moving to Korea next month.”

I’m on another continent, so I can’t hang out.

You remember the words not quite making sense at the time. “Oh? How long are you staying there?” you said, taking a bite of your strawberry ice cream which Jake had insisted on paying for, even though you knew he didn’t get much allowance.

“Forever.”

You stopped chewing, and the ice cream melted uncomfortably in your mouth. You don’t know how long you stayed there, frozen as you stared at your best friend in disbelief. It wasn’t until he lightly shoved your shoulder, only meeting your eyes for a split second, that you remembered to swallow and to say something.

“Forever as in… You won’t live here anymore? At all?”

Jake shook his head. He kept his eyes trained on the vanilla-chocolate ice cream sandwich he’d left in its wrapper. In the blazing hot Brisbane summer, it had probably fully melted two minutes ago. “At all.”

“Oh,” was all you found yourself able to say. For some reason, you hoped that continuing to eat your ice cream would stop you from crying, but to no avail. Hot, salty tears quickly started raining down your cheeks, mixing with the sweetness of your ice cream when they reached your lips.

“It’s my dad’s work. Same reason why I moved here when we were kids in the first place. They wanted him here then, they want him back there now. We just have to follow,” Jake explained, sounding just as upset as you felt.

“Right.”

“Are you mad at me?” Jake asked, worry clear in his voice, and finally turned to face you. At the sight of you crying, he let out a small oh, tears of his own pooling in his eyes.

You frowned. “Of course not. I’m never mad at you, you know that. I just… You’re my best friend, Jakey. It’s gonna be so lame around here without you.”

“It’ll be lame there without you, too.”

You attempted a smile. “Well, of course. But at least you’ll get to make new friends, see new places. You’ll be in a whole other country, I’m sure you’ll have fun there. I’m gonna be stuck in boring old Brisbane for the foreseeable future.”

“Do you know how offended our friends would be if they heard you speaking right now?” he asked, nudging your shoulder with his.

You sniffled and let out a chuckle. “They’re all great, but… I don’t like them nearly as much as I like you,” you said, staring down at your hands, hoping he wouldn’t realise exactly what you meant by that statement.

A weight was lifted off of your shoulders when Jake answered. “I like you the most too, Y/N.” You tried not to think too much about whether he’d meant it platonically or romantically - none of that mattered anymore. All that mattered was the feeling of his arms around you, his warmth enveloping your whole body, his familiar scent that you already missed.

You felt him take a deep breath against you before he pulled away. He sniffled and did his best to put on a smile. “Right, enough of that. I’m not leaving until next month, so don’t think you’re rid of me just yet,” he joked, and it helped alleviate the weight on your heart, even if just a little. “You said you had something to tell me? Good news after bad news, and all that.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot about that.”

You thought for a second. Today was the day you had planned to confess your feelings to Jake - you’d only told him you had good news to share. But what was the point now that he was leaving? If he felt the same way, it would only make his departure that much harder, and if he didn’t, it would ruin your last moments together. It just wasn’t worth it.

Jake tilted his head, waiting for you to speak. In a split second, you made yourself forget your disappointment over having built the courage to tell him how you felt only for it all to fall through, and resolved to make the most of Jake’s last month here. You wiped your tears and mirrored his small smile as best you could. “Um, it wasn’t anything much. My mum made those cowboy cookies you like.”

Jake’s head fell back as he groaned in anticipation. “If she wasn’t happily married with three kids, I’d marry your mum. Let’s go right now.”

You laughed. “There’d be a bit of an age gap there.”

“We’d make it work,” Jake joked, throwing his arm around your shoulders as you walked towards your house. He beamed down at you, his bright, boyish smile that you loved to bits, and you beamed up at him as you grabbed the hand that hung off your shoulder in your own.

You walked as happily as you could. “Do you even speak Korean?” you suddenly asked.

Jake halted abruptly in his steps, a gravely offended look on his face. When you looked back at him in confusion, he rolled his eyes and started walking again, pulling you with him. “It’s literally my mother tongue, Y/N. I speak it every day at home.”

“Oh, right.”

At the time, you thought nothing could come between you and Jake. Not anyone, not anything, neither distance nor time. But they did. A week after he’d left, a boy from your class you’d talked to maybe once or twice asked you out on a date. You weren’t sure why, but you said yes. Then you said yes to being his girlfriend, even though you didn’t like him all that much, and you even said yes to reducing your texting with Jake because it made him jealous. When you’d broken up with him and wanted to catch up with Jake and apologise for your absence, you’d found that his new school in Seoul was a lot more demanding than yours in Brisbane, and he had to spend most of his evenings in academies if he wanted to get into a nice university. It’s when you learned that he’d be staying in South Korea for college that you decided to leave Australia too. Brisbane was a lot less fun without him there - why bother staying? You couldn’t go to him because of the language barrier and the cost of university there. If you were to essentially uproot your life, might as well go somewhere you could get a scholarship and understand the people around you.

It seemed insane that someone you had thought would be by your side for the rest of your life, someone that was part of your most cherished memories, had been reduced to someone you casually texted once in a while. It seems even more insane that now that you’re finally done essentially grieving your friendship with Jake, he stands in front of you again, six inches taller but still donning those puppy-like eyes and smile of his.

For your sake, you just hoped you wouldn’t be as in love with him at twenty as you were at fourteen.

The next day, you show Jake around campus, which wouldn’t normally take more than ten minutes, but takes double that time because of the sheer amount of people there. Between the Societies Fair taking up most of the square, the tour guides leading freshers, walking slowly and taking in their new campus, and the pizza and drinks stands, freshers’ week always turns campus into what feels like the busiest place on Earth. You try not to let it hit a nerve for Jake’s sake, who’s clearly ecstatic at all the activity, but you like this place a lot more when it’s quieter. You walk through the Fair, laughing as Jake marvels at all the different clubs and societies at the Uni.

“Gardening Society? Dungeons & Dragons Society? Wine society?” he exclaims, astonishment growing with every passing stand.

“And this is only the first day. They also have a Taylor Swift Society.” He grabs a flyer from about every society, even though you know he’ll join between two to zero of them.

When you walk out, there’s a girl handing out samples of shampoo and conditioner, and you let her give you one, more out of politeness than anything.

“These are so useless,” you start, and Jake chuckles, unaware of the incoming rant. “I had that job of distributing them last year, and we would get a tip if we gave them all out. So naturally I put a bunch in my bag, but then I had to use them for like two weeks.” You sigh. “First of all, my hair did not like it. And second, the ratio is so off. There’s way more conditioner than shampoo when it should be the other way around, so you have to condition your hair even though it’s not properly clean. So stupid.”

“Sounds terrible,” Jake says, laughing. “Is that why you’re not doing it this year?”

“Oh… Not really. I dated the guy that takes care of this promo stuff, so it would’ve been kinda awkward…” you trail, immediately wishing you could backtrack on conversation. Talking about your ex with Jake wasn’t on your to-do list for today. Or ever.

“You dated your boss?”

“The manager, yeah, I guess. He was only 24, though, don’t worry.”

“I’m more worried about the power imbalance than the age gap there.”

You shrug, looking down at your shoes. “It’s not like he was that high up.”

“So, what happened? Why did you break up?”

“Well, he acted like our four-year age difference meant he could treat me like a little kid. It was nice being taken care of at first but then I realised how condescending he was and dumped him.”

“How long were you together?”

You pause. “Two weeks,” you admit abashedly, making Jake chuckle. “At least he didn’t waste my time and showed his red flags early on.”

“Any boyfriends since?” he asks, and you wonder whether you’re making up the unsure tone of his voice. As if he’s curious, but doesn’t want to show it too much. You hope you’re not making it up.

“A few, but they never last very long with me,” you say, a meek smile on your lips. “Furthest I got was three months.”

“And why didn’t it work out with three-months-guy?”

“He started comparing me to his mum a bit too often.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, I ran out of there without looking back.”

“Well, it’s nice to see you’ve got high standards. I would hate to see you date just any loser.”

You want to say, High standards or issues?, but you don’t want to make it weird, so you play it cool instead. “I would never. I have a mental checklist with everything a guy needs to have for me to date him.”

“A checklist? I have to hear about this.”

You sigh, debating whether you should tell him about it. Would he notice it’s based on him? Would he notice the only person that could tick practically every box was none other than him? Jake gently elbows your side, goading you on. When you look at him, he’s got a shit-eating grin playing on his lips, and you give in. You look off into the distance as you start listing your requirements. “Well, there’s all your basics like funny, taller than me but not too much, ‘cause I don’t want neck cramps, smart, takes uni seriously, has plans for his future, easy to talk to, not emotionally stunted and can actually have a vulnerable conversation. It’s also a bonus if he has a nice face.”

“How much of a bonus?”

You think for a second. “It’s more a dealbreaker than a bonus, actually. Nice smile is a must, definitely.”

“Okay. Got any more specifics?”

“I do have some particular ones. It’s nice if he’s a reader, but it’s terrible if it makes him think he’s better than everyone or if he tries to sound smarter than me. I like it if he has experience, I don’t want to have to teach him everything. But obviously I don’t want him to still be in love with his ex. Guys and their first loves, I swear… I also don’t really like picky eaters.” You look over at Jake and take a double-take. He’s typing away on his phone, but because of his privacy screen protector, you can’t see anything. You huff. “I also don’t like it if he has those protective screens on his phone. What’s on there that’s so important that I can’t take a peek? What are you even doing?”

The sweet sound of Jake’s giggles erases any trace of annoyance that you felt seconds ago. He turns his screen towards you, showing the list of mostly ticked boxes that he’s written up. “See? I check most of these,” he says with a proud smile. “Guess your standards aren’t that high.” You don’t tell him that your standards are high, he’s just that amazing.

You do your best to look only amused at this even though inside, you’re all but freaking out. “Which are you missing?”

“Well, I clearly own a privacy screen. And I don’t have much experience. Not nearly as much as you, by the sounds of it,” he admits, somewhat sheepish. “But other than that, I’m practically the perfect man for you.” He looks down at you with a smile so bright, it makes you wish you had brought sunglasses. It takes everything in you not to scream right then and there. Yes, Jake, you are the perfect man for me, but I wish you wouldn’t say it like it was a joke.

You let out a stiff chuckle, and, rather than saying something stupid and possibly damaging, shift the conversation to him. “What do you mean by not much experience? Have you not dated anyone?”

Jake sighs. “Nope, not anyone. I went on a few dates, you know, went through a few talking stages and all that, but it never went much further. There was always something…” He glances at you then. “Missing.”

“I know that feeling,” you say with a chuckle, and he laughs too, a breathy sound.

“I don’t have a checklist to pinpoint what it is, though.”

You smile. “You should try, it might help.”

“I just… I guess I’m like you in that I also have high standards. But it made me not even want to give anyone a chance, especially since I knew it wouldn’t end up anywhere.”

“Don’t tell me no one has ever managed to reach the great Jake Sim’s standards?” you ask, trying to keep your tone light.

Jake smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course someone has. She’s the whole reason I have standards in the first place. It’s not my standards I compare people to, it’s her.”

Jealousy has never made you feel as sad as it is right now. “And… it didn’t work out between you?”

Jake looks at you, eyes searching for something in yours but seemingly not finding it, and so he turns his gaze away. You don’t know why you feel so disappointed. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’. “She didn’t feel the same way.”

Whoever this girl is, you can’t believe how stupid she is for passing up the opportunity to have Jake Sim. “That’s… It sucks, I’m sorry,” you say. You don’t think spitting on this girl would make him feel any better, so you keep those thoughts to yourself.

“It’s okay,” he says with a small smile. “It was a while ago already.”

“Doesn’t sound like you’re quite over it, though,” you say, and you’re surprised but glad to see his smile widen.

“That’s true.” His eyes meet yours again. “I don’t think I’ll be over her anytime soon, either.” You have to look away to shield the pain that flashes through your eyes from him.

Pretending you don’t have feelings for your best friend and that you’re okay with him being in love with someone else is like riding a bike: even after years of not doing it, it only takes a few minutes for you to be able to do it perfectly again. Muscle memory, if you will. So you sigh dramatically and throw your arm around Jake’s shoulder, slightly pulling him down to your level. “Don’t worry. We’re going to have so much fun this year, you’ll completely forget about her. Promise. She doesn’t know what she’s missing. Yeah?”

He smiles down at you. You want nothing more but that glint of melancholy in his eyes to be gone. “Yeah.”

Jake is only half-glad to see you haven’t changed much from your childhood and early teenage years. You’re still just as pretty, just as warm; it’s still as comfortable to be around you. You’re also still as dense.

Then and now, he did everything he could to make his feelings for you very, very obvious. Either you’re completely oblivious, or the idea of dating him is so horrifying to you, you understand but pretend you don’t. He really hopes it’s the former.

He arrived in Edinburgh just a bit over a week ago, and you’ve seen each other almost every day. Out of those times, there isn’t a single one where he hasn’t tried to send something your way - something that says, hey, what if we stopped being friends and dated instead? Wouldn’t that be cool? Can’t you see how desperately I love you?, but you never latch on. The ball’s in your court, and he wants you to throw it back, but it’s been feeling more like a boomerang that always hits him right in the face when it circles back than a game of catch.

But he’s reminding himself not to be too greedy. Even if it’s just as friends, at least he has you back, so he’s satisfied with that. For now.

His first class of the year is on the following Tuesday morning, a ninety-minute seminar specifically made for exchange students called Discover Scotland. (He has Mondays free, resulting in a three-day weekend, which you and your 9am Monday tutorial are very envious of.) As interesting as the English Lit courses he’s taking seem, it’s this one he’s most looking forward to - except for the one class he shares with you, of course. Not even because of the seminars themselves, which will be about all sorts of topics on Scottish culture and history, but because of the coursework, as crazy as that sounds. It consists of a singular project, not due until the very last day of the semester, in which he has to travel to at least three different places in the country, research its background and provide a detailed account of his experience there. It can take any form: a written report, an in-class presentation, a podcast, anything. He could even film a TikTok if he wanted. Jake knew that being part of the Arts & Crafts club for two years in a row back in Seoul wasn’t for nothing - his scrapbooking skills would finally have their time to shine.

That afternoon, he practically snatches you as you come out of your lecture, giving you little time to say bye to your friends, and makes you take him to the biggest stationary store you know in the city. If he wants to ace this project, he will need supplies. Many, many supplies. And it’s more fun shopping if you’re with him. You seem happy following him around the store, and when he asks you if you want to come on his trips with him, he can pretend it’s because you seem so excited about his project and not because he had thought of you accompanying him as soon as he heard about it.

As you stand in line at the till, you tell him that if he wants to start his project now, you could go to the beach together. You raise your eyebrows at him when he snaps your head towards you. “There’s a beach here?!”

“Did you not look at a map before coming here?” you ask, amused.

“I guess I didn’t…” he says, distraught at the new information. It only lasts a second, though. “Okay, let’s go now.”

“Now?” you echo, and he nods. “But-” you start, but are interrupted by your thoughts. “I guess there’s no reason not to. The weather’s nice and it’s not like I have any uni work yet. Let’s go,” you agree, looking up at him with a smile. You’re so pretty he almost forgets to look away, until the employee calls Next in a bored drawl.

An hour later, you’re at the beach, barefoot on the sand and ice cream in hand. Strawberry for you and vanilla for him, he notes with a smile. Really not much has changed, he thinks. From the sand, to the water, to the promenade along the beach, Portobello is worlds away from the beaches back home in Australia, or those of Jeju Island. But it’s still nice, and because you’re with him, it’s even better. You’ve been walking around for an hour, splashing each other with water and mercilessly ruining sandcastles left behind before he realises you technically came here for his project. He writes down things he doesn’t want to forget on his phone and snaps a few pictures, sneaking a few of you when you’re not looking. He wants to tell you how beautiful you are with your hair blowing in the wind and the way the chill bites at your cheeks, but he keeps it a secret between him and his Notes app.

Even though he lives two stops further down, he gets off from the bus with you, containing his excitement as best he can when you invite him up for a cup of tea. “Depends. What tea do you have?” he asks, trying and failing to play it cool. He’s just grateful he doesn’t have to come up with an excuse to spend more time with you.

You roll your eyes playfully as you unlock the front door to your building. “I can make you hot chocolate, Mister Tea-Is-For-Old-People.”

He chuckles. “Actually, I’ll have you know I started drinking tea at uni.” When you turn around to look at him, a surprised look on your face, he nods proudly. “Mh-hm. I got addicted to caffeine very quickly into first year so I started drinking black tea for the sake of my heart,” he explains.

“God,” you say breathily, sounding mildly horrified. “A caffeine addiction sounds intense.”

“It was, yeah,” he says, laughing as he follows you into your flat.

Yunjin and Chaewon are sitting at the living room table, watching an episode of what he thinks is Gossip Girl, and they greet him as normally as these two can, but he wonders what the knowing look they exchange is all about. He’d met them the previous weekend when you had all gone for drinks together, along with Jay, Yunjin’s boyfriend, and they had all but grilled him on his relationship with you. He hadn’t thought much of it, chalking it up to your friends feeling protective of you, and truthfully, he was just happy to get to talk about you. But now, he was wondering if you had told them anything about him that made them so curious about him. If you did, he hoped it was something positive.

He stands awkwardly in the kitchen, chatting with you as you boil the water and get cups out, but he can feel their gazes burning the back of his head. Clearly, whatever conversation he’s having with you, he’s also having it with them. “How do you take your tea?” you ask.

“Um, three sugars and lots of milk, please,” he says, smiling innocently when you slowly turn to look at him, a mix of disapproval, disgust, and offence on your face.

You sigh deeply. “I mean, I’ll do it, but I’m not sure that’s even tea anymore.”

“You’re one to talk, Miss Caramel Frappuccino,” he says, recycling your bad joke from earlier.

“At least I don’t claim to be drinking coffee when I order a frap,” you argue. “And this is how you battled your coffee addiction? You’ll be getting another kind of heart problem, Jakey.” He doesn’t know if you even notice your use of his old nickname - the first time you’ve used it since he’s been here - but you don’t make a big deal of it, so he doesn’t either. Not outwardly, at least. Mentally, he’s running laps around your small kitchen.

Jake laughs it off. “I thought I came here for tea, not a health check-up,” he says, smile growing wider at the sight of yours.

“Right, sorry,” you say, giggling. “I’ll make your tea just how you like it,” you add in a sweet voice. Jake knows you’re just doing it as a joke, but it still manages to make butterflies erupt in his stomach.

His tea tastes even sweeter that day.

A few days after your impromptu trip to the beach, you’re waiting for Jake outside of his class. He heard of this donut shop he “absolutely needs to visit” and is dragging you along with him - well, “dragging” is a big word considering you’d follow him anywhere. You got here a few minutes early, not needing much of a reason to leave the library, so you scroll through your feed until Jake calls out your name. You’re only mildly surprised to see Jay leaving the classroom behind him.

“Y/N! Can you believe that Jay and I are in the same class?” he says excitedly as the two boys walk toward you. You feel like a dog owner being greeted by their over-enthusiastic dog after a long day (about three hours) of being apart.

“I can believe it, actually. You two do the same degree.”

You exchange quick greetings with Jay before the three of you start heading out. As you walk, Jake throws his arm around your shoulders so casually, it almost throws you off balance. Physical contact always came easy to him, but there’s something about him doing it next to someone else that catches you off guard. It reminds you of walking somewhere with Jay and Yunjin as they discretely held hands. It makes you feel like it’s not the three of you, but Jay with the two of you. Like you and Jake come as a pair rather than as two individuals.

All of that from a simple arm around your shoulders.

Jake asking you in a very unsubtle whisper whether Jay can come with brings you out of your head and back into the conversation. “Yeah, of course,” you say, smiling. It’s not a bad idea to have Jay along: hanging out with someone else might snap you out of your delusion.

Most of the walk to the shop is done in laughter as Jake and Jay realise how much random stuff they have in common, from their peanut allergies to the embarrassing Harry Potter phase they had as fifteen-year-olds. Grassmarket is really busy on Friday afternoons, and there’s a bit of a queue of other donut-enjoyers in front of the boutique, but you don’t mind. The sun is shining down gently on the square and it gives you time to choose your donut out of the ten or so flavours available. In the end, you go for white chocolate and raspberry, while Jake chooses Biscoff and Jay, tiramisu.

“My friend Sunghoon would love this,” he says after taking a hearty bite. “He goes crazy over tiramisu. Like a cat with catnip.”

Jake chuckles, mouth full of Biscoff. “That’s funny, I also have a friend named Sunghoon who loves tiramisu back in Seoul.”

Jay punches Jake’s shoulder, eyes wide in amusement and shock. “Bro, that’s crazy. You have to be lying at this point,” he says, but Jake shakes his head fervently.

“I promise I’m not. I’ve even saved his number with the tiramisu emoji.”

“There’s a tiramisu emoji?” Jay asks, already over questioning the existence of Jake’s Sunghoon.

The conversation circles back to the courses you’re all taking this semester, and Jake tells Jay about Discover Scotland and the trips he’s planned so far. “Well, if you really want to discover Scotland as a student, you need to go on a night out in Glasgow,” Jay says. Going by the look on Jake’s face, Jay’s idea seems to have struck a chord in him.

“Y/N?”

You nod, finishing your mouthful of donut before speaking. “Yeah, Glasgow’s really fun. We should go,” you say, laughing when the two boys high-five in victory. Between the train, the drinks and the club entry, going out isn’t a cheap ordeal, and getting to and fro also takes a while - even so, the smile on Jake’s face makes it worth it.

He wipes some raspberry jam from the corner of your mouth, shooting you a wink, and you want to disintegrate right then and there, become one with the bench you’re sitting on and never have to face him again. The conversation resumes as Jay tells Jake about all the best places to go out in Glasgow, but you don’t hear a word - the feeling of Jake’s thumb so close to your lips takes away your ability for coherent thought.

“It’s decided, then. We’re going out tomorrow night,” Jay loudly announces. “Let me gather the troops.”

That’s how you find yourself in line for the club the next day, already tipsy from pre-drinking on the train and at the pub. It’s still warm enough for you and the girls to wear as little clothing as you want, but Jake insisted on giving you his flannel jacket anyway. If not for the warmth it brings, you’re glad to have his scent enveloping you.

The five of you work exceptionally well together. You, Chaewon and Yunjin have been a given since you met in first year, and Jay and Yunjin went so well together that he was but a natural addition to your little group. Jake’s only been here for over a week, but it’s like he’s always been around, and you couldn’t be happier about it. Him and Jay hit it off immediately, and although the girls needed some time to warm up to him (it’s not everyday that you meet your friend’s ex-best-friend she’s practically always been in love with; you understand why they might’ve been wary at first), they now tease him just as relentlessly as they do Jay. He takes it like a champ.

For a little while, you watch your friends speaking over each other, bickering over nothing, a smile on your face. Two pints of cider and some of Jay’s fancy vodka have made you more grateful than ever for them - if you drink too much in the club, you’ll be hugging them and crying about how much you love them. You’re not sure what that might look like around Jake, so you decide to keep yourself in check for the night.

It takes about thirty minutes before you manage to get into the club. It’s not coat check season yet, so you head straight to the bar. “Sunghoon said he’d meet us here,” Jay says, lifting his head to spot his friend in the sea of drunk students. “Oh yeah, there he is! Hoon, hey!”

You hear a loud “Jongseong!” being shouted from somewhere in the crowd, but you’re not sure who Jay is waving at until a boy whose face is mostly eyebrows is standing - well, standing as best as he can, with the copious amount of alcohol he’s obviously already consumed - in front of you. He gives Jay a hug and the three of you a nod of his head, a lopsided smile on his face. When he turns to Jake, his eyebrows lift first, then his face breaks into a wide grin.

“Jake, my man!” he shouts, taking a stunned Jake’s hand and bringing him into a hug.

“Sunghoon? What the hell are you doing here?” he asks, chuckling and frowning in confusion.

“I’m just partying, man! Same as you!”

“No, I mean here in Scotland, you dumbass!”

“You two know each other?” Jay asks, looking back and forth between his two friends.

“Jake’s my man!” Sunghoon exclaims, unhelpful and stumbling as he throws an arm around his man’s shoulders. Jake shoots you a distressed look but you just laugh at him.

“This is Tiramisu Sunghoon I told you about,” Jake says, helping Sunghoon stand up straight.

“God, what I would do for a tiramisu right now,” Sunghoon says, looking at Yunjin like she might relate. She chuckles awkwardly.

“I have no idea what he’s doing in Scotland, though. Hoon, I thought you were going to NYU for your exchange?”

Sunghoon pauses to think for a second, looking like he’s never heard of NYU in his life. “Oh, that! Yeah, I did an online orientation thing and… it did not go well. Let’s just say there’s someone in New York City who wants me dead,” he says conspiratorially. You all stare at him but he gives no further explanation. On your right, you hear Yunjin whisper what the fuck under her breath. “So I transferred here instead!”

“I didn’t know you were an exchange student,” Jay says, still looking just as confused.

“Yeah, man! But anyways, let’s not talk about uni right now. I’m on a bender, day three, baby! Do not talk to me tomorrow,” he says, chuckling until the smile suddenly drops from his face. “I mean that.” You look around yourself, glad to find everyone is just as baffled as you. “Let’s party!” Sunghoon cheers, intoxicated grin back on his lips. Jake and Jay follow, but you and the girls stay back for a second, taking in everything that has just happened.

“That. Is the most beautiful man I have ever seen,” Chaewon blurts, staring blankly at the spot Sunghoon stood in a second ago.

“Yeah, he also seems to be a raging alcoholic. And he’s what, twenty-one?” Yunjin says, a scowl on her face.

“I could fix him.”

“Okay, let’s go,” you say, grabbing your friends by their wrists before either of them can say something worse.

Feeling generous, Sunghoon buys shots for all six of you, and you quickly down them before heading to the dancefloor. On your way there, a group of sober-looking girls hand Chaewon a giant, still almost full jug of red liquid, something that costs at least twelve pounds here. They say they’re leaving and don’t need it anymore, smiling as you profusely and astonishedly thank them. You look at your friends, mentally weighing the risk and drugging possibility this might present, but shrug and pass the jug around after taking hearty sips anyway. It tastes so much like fizzy cherries that you wonder if it even contains any alcohol, but sure enough, twenty minutes later, the three of you are spinning around on the dancefloor, screaming the lyrics to your favourite pop songs at the top of your lungs. Jake at a club is a completely foreign sight to you, and you can’t stop laughing at all the silly moves he pulls.

You’re shaking your whole body to a Nicki song from the early 2010s when you suddenly feel a hand on your hip. Before you can turn around and slap whoever this random man is that thinks he can touch you, a familiar voice whispers it’s just me in your ear, and you simultaneously relax and tense up knowing that Jake is standing right behind you. “There’s a creep staring at you,” he explains, lips and breath gently tickling your ear as he speaks. You look around the room and quickly notice a man standing in a corner, drink in one hand and the other in his pocket, unmoving as he eyes you with a smirk so slimy it makes your stomach turn. To avoid his gaze, you turn around, but you’re not sure the sight you’re met with is much better for you.

Jake peers down at you, eyes slightly glossed over and cheeks flushed from the alcohol, jaw locked in annoyance. He glances at the guy in the corner, who you assume is still staring when you feel Jake’s hands brush along your sides until they reach your waist. His gaze returns to your face as he brings you a step closer to him. Reflexively, you wrap your arms around his neck.

“Is this okay?” he mouths. All you can do is meekly nod. You watch as his eyes deliberately scan your face, going down and down. Time stills when they reach your lips and stay there. It’s like someone has put the booming music of the club on mute, and the only thing you can hear is your heart loudly beating in your ears. You suddenly feel very sober.

You swear Jake’s face is slowly inching its way towards yours when you’re abruptly taken away. Yunjin has grabbed you by the forearm, leading you and Chaewon to the bathroom as she chants “Bathroom break! Bathroom break!”, clearly unaware of the moment she’s just interrupted.

Because of the queue for the girls’ bathroom and Chaewon’s decision to console this random girl who was in the middle of a breakdown, it’s not until half-an-hour later that you emerge back into the crowd. You spot the boys at a table, two empty shots each in front of them and all three with a beer in hand. They will not be happy checking their bank accounts tomorrow morning.

“Y/N! You’re back!” Jake calls out happily when he spots you, and you can tell right away that he’s much drunker than when you left him. His whole face is flush, his eyes don’t open quite all the way, and a lopsided smile won’t leave his lips - even like this, he’s so pretty that you want to grab his hand and take him somewhere it’s just the two of you.

Chaewon gets drinks for the three of you and then you’re dancing again. It’s already one am at this point, and the remaining two hours until the club closes, fueled with alcohol and good music, go by in a flash. Before you know it, the DJ is playing All of Me by John Legend and the lights have been turned on, clear signs that you’re overstaying your welcome. The few people that have made it to closing time stumble out of the club and into the street, heading for either the nearest subway stop or the next party of the night. Since there are no trains at this time, your group walks to the close-by bus station, listening to Jake and Sunghoon grumble about how the clubs in Seoul don’t close until at least five or six and how trains run all night there.

The bus is already at the station when you get there, and the driver doesn’t seem too pleased about having six mildly drunk kids get on his bus, but he’s probably used to questionable people taking public transport at this time of the day anyway. Physically, Sunghoon is sitting across from you, but mentally, he’s off somewhere far, far from this bus. With his head against the window and mouth wide open, saliva pooling at the corner of his lips, he looks like he’s any second away from obnoxiously snoring. Jay and Yunjin are sitting somewhere you can’t see them, probably eating each other’s faces; she once told you they had their “most mind-blowing sex” when both a little drunk, and much to your dismay, you haven’t been able to get that piece of information out of your head since. Chaewon is on the phone to her long-distance bestie Sakura, for whom it’s a nice eleven in the morning right now.

This means that you and Jake are left alone, both of you still tipsy and not tired enough to fall asleep. You drop your head on Jake’s shoulder, and not only does he let you, he also takes your hand in his, interlacing your fingers and placing them atop his thigh. Clumsily, because he now has to use his left hand, Jake slips his phone out of his back pocket and shows you the photos he took all evening. As the night progresses, they get blurrier and blurrier, so much so that towards the end, you can’t tell what he was even trying to capture, and you laugh at how inappropriate some of these would be to submit in a university project.

When he softly says your name, you don’t raise your head, simply humming to let him know you’re listening. You close your eyes, cherishing the way your name sounds on his lips. It’s his tone, tentative and vulnerable as he tells you there’s something he’s been wanting to ask you, that makes you look up at him. He, however, won’t meet your eyes, and settles his gaze on the window, even though it’s so dark outside you can’t make out a thing.

“How come you never replied to my letter? I know it’s been ages, but… I still find myself wondering about it.” The question is softly asked and you know he by no means wants to hurt you, but it still feels like a punch to the throat. You hadn’t remembered who it was that had sent the last letter, while he’d been wondering all these years why his words had been left unanswered.

He seems set on not looking at you, so you rest your head back on his shoulder. Your hand is still in his. “I’m not sure, Jakey. I’m sorry,” you say, aware it’s not a satisfying answer. You’ve thought about why you and Jake had stopped talking for hours on end; you’ve discussed it with your friends and your mum, looked at it from all sorts of angles, tried to come up with real reasons other than time pulling you apart. But now that Jake himself is asking you about it, the words don’t come easy. You’ve theorised that you were afraid putting effort into sustaining your friendship would only hurt you in the end, because it was just that - a friendship. You could fool yourself into thinking you were okay only being friends with him when he was with you, that putting your feelings aside was worth it since you could at least spend time with him. But now that he was away, you didn’t have that anymore - it just hurt. So what was the point? And how could you phrase all this without betraying your feelings for him?

“Our letters were so sparse anyway back then, even our texts and calls were getting less and less frequent… And whenever I had a new boyfriend, I’d get into the same argument about being too close to you over and over again, even though you were literally on another continent.”

“You know, I always felt sorry about that.”

“About what?”

“Those boyfriends of yours. I felt like you waited for me to leave before you started dating-”

��It wasn’t like that!” you exclaim, lifting your head again. Finally, he meets your eyes, gaze softening upon seeing your affronted expression. “It wasn’t like that,” you repeat, relaxing your tone. “If anything, they were the ones that waited for you to be gone. I'm sorry I let their jealousy get to me.”

Jake smiles, the tenderness in his gaze making your whole body turn to jelly. He squeezes your hands. “It’s okay. I just… I felt like I was always in the way of your relationships, even after I left.”

“You don’t have to feel sorry about that. They should’ve had more trust in me.”

He pauses, gaze dropping down to your intertwined hands. “I would’ve been jealous.” When his eyes find yours again, there’s something in them that you quite can’t place. It creates a ball of nerves that pull at your stomach. “If I were dating you, and you had a guy friend you were as close with as we were back then, I’d be jealous. You know, I’d assume he had feelings for you. And that you might have feelings for him, too.”

Because I did, you think. I did, and I still do. You try to communicate that thought to Jake, but telepathy works especially bad when one has as much alcohol coursing through their veins as you do right now. So instead, you say the opposite of what you’re thinking, turning away from Jake to avoid his gaze. You watch the dribble of saliva trickle from Sunghoon’s lips. “That’s not a great view of male-female friendship.”

Jake’s retort comes immediately. “But we were different, right?”

His words echo through your head until they make even less sense than they did initially. Different from what? From who? You’re not sure - but you like the idea of you and Jake being different, special. You especially like the idea of Jake thinking so. So you look at him and smile. “Right.”

Slowly, his grin fades and turns into a worried expression. “Y/N?”

“Mm?”

“We’re still different now, aren’t we?”

You want to wrap him in your arms so tightly neither of you can breathe. You settle for running a hand through his hair and pinching his cheek. “Course we are.” Your whole being relaxes when his face breaks into a smile again.

The next morning, you wake up to Yunjin plopping down on your bed unceremoniously, shaking you awake, and asking you if you want anything from Snax Café. On one hand, you’re grateful that she thought of you and that in thirty minutes’ time, you’ll have the greasiest sausage wrap and hash browns known to man in your hand; on the other, you’d like to think that she knows you well enough to know to order your regular from there without asking. But that’s probably the hangover talking.

You stumble out of bed, thanking last night’s you for having remembered to take headache medicine before crashing. Even if your stomach is very upset with the copious amount of alcohol it needs to rid your body of, and your throat is begging for water, at least your head doesn’t feel like it’s been split into two. As Yunjin barges into Chaewon’s room just as she had done yours, you head for the kitchen to get yourself a tall glass of revitalising tap water. You’re only mildly surprised to find Sunghoon passed out on your living room couch - it takes you a few seconds to remember that the three of you took pity on him when you learned he lived over an hour’s walk from the station, so you let him spend the night on your uncomfortable, cold leather sofa. While you down your glass in three gulps, you hear Yunjin shaking Sunghoon awake and asking him loudly if he wanted something from Snax.

“Fuck, I’d kill for a Snax right now,” he groggily says before he’s even opened his eyes. When he does, they dart around the room until they land on Yunjin, who's crouching in front of him. He looks like he thought her question was asked in a dream and not in real life. He also looks like he's not quite sure where he is, or who Yunjin is. It isn’t until Jay comes wobbling out of Yunjin’s bed to the couch opposite Sunghoon that the memories seem to piece back together in his head. The three of you watch him like he’s an unstable mental patient and you’re his doctors.

“No need for that, I’m ordering it on Deliveroo.” He nods his head and goes back to sleep for the time being.

Just as you’re about to text Jake, your phone rings with a call from him. His raspy morning voice as he asks you whether you slept well makes you want to put your head in an oven heated at 200 degrees Celsius. However, you resist the urge, and answer him with a smile, then ask him the same question.

“I slept pretty well too. I’d have slept in longer but one of my flatmates decided to have a Sunday fucking brunch and his friends are so loud. Can I come over?”

You’re very aware of the other people in the room, especially of Chaewon who has just walked in and is eyeing you suspiciously as if to say, Why are you smiling so hard at ten in the morning? You know the girls would jump at any opportunity to tease you about Jake, and with the added presence of Sunghoon in the room, you can’t have that. So you stifle the giggles bubbling in your throat and answer as nonchalantly as you can. It also gives you the chance to reflect on why Jake Sim asking you whether he can come over makes you want to giggle like a giddy schoolgirl so much.

(Maybe it’s because when it comes to him, you’re still the giddy schoolgirl you used to be.)

“Yeah, of course. I was going to ask you if you wanted anything from Snax, actually.”

“Snax? What’s that?”

“Oh my God, Jake, am I about to introduce you to Snax right now?”

Twenty minutes later, the six of you are sitting around your small living room table, all varying amounts of tired, dehydrated and famished as you dig into your breakfast. Given your current levels of energy, it’s fairly quiet; plus, the food hits such a spot that it’s hard to talk and eat at the same time. Jake eats like he’s never had a breakfast wrap and hash brown in his life. It’s an endearing sight if you’ve ever seen one.

You spend the afternoon together, watching movies curled up in your bed, and you try desperately not to think about the implications of that - except that’s hard to do when Jake is right next to you, legs and arms ever-so-slightly brushing against yours, his warmth so close yet so out of reach. You purposefully let him pick movies you’ve already seen so that you don’t have to focus on anything but your own thoughts and the faint but dizzying scent of his body wash. The both of you had an innumerable amount of sleepovers as kids, so this shouldn’t feel weird, but it decidedly does, probably because you’re much more aware of him now in a way you weren’t before.

As hard as you try to figure out what exactly he meant by “different,” you draw a blank. The only way you’ll understand is if you ask him, and you’re far too scared to do that. You don’t want to seem so hung upon a singular word he used when he was tipsy. It might be slightly dramatic, but you felt like some sort of balance had been restored since Jake was back in your life - the problem was it made you scared to do anything that might threaten this newfound equilibrium. It at least seems like different means a good thing to him, and that’s enough for you.

You look over to him when the second movie comes to an end. He’s sleeping peacefully, lashes caressing the skin under his eyes and cheeks looking rounder than usual. It’d be so easy to reach a finger out and trace the line descending from the top of his forehead to his chin, gliding along the bump of his nose and feeling the plumpness of his rosy lips, but you settle for drawing that line with your eyes instead.

You don’t think you’ll be able to fall asleep with him next to you and your heart beating so loudly in your ears, but you find yourself waking up a few hours later, the sun already starting to set. Jake is already awake, scrolling on his phone, one arm casually behind his head as if being in your bed is as comfortable to him as being in his own. When he sees you’ve woken up, his honey-coated smile washes warmly over you, and he makes a joke about how he keeps on falling asleep when he’s with you. “I feel that at ease, I guess,” he says, and you hope you’re not making up the small blush that spreads over his cheeks.

Semesters are always a short and intense affair, but this one passes by even quicker with Jake by your side. Before you know it, it’s midterms already, and you and Jake have travelled enough for him to complete his project and make another one just for the hell of it. He had scoured the internet for the cheapest train tickets and most noteworthy sites, planning trips that lasted anywhere between three hours and a day for the two of you. All you needed to do was follow and trust him, which was the easiest thing anyone could’ve asked of you.

You’ve gone back to Glasgow, during the day, this time, as well as St. Andrews and Aberdeen. You’ve practically visited every loch and castle in a one-hour train ride radius of Edinburgh, and Jake has more lined up for the second part of the semester. He’s even said that your trips should continue being a thing next term, and you couldn’t have agreed faster. With every new destination, every train ride spent looking out a window or laughing about everything and anything, any odd Scottish food you try for the first time, you somehow fall for him a bit deeper. You didn’t know your love for him could bloom any more than it already had - but Jake is the gift that keeps on giving, and, unwillingly or not, he always finds new ways to make your heart speed that much faster.

Attentionate, affectionate, sweet Jake who always makes sure you’re comfortable wherever you go, always gives you his jacket or tucks your hair behind your ear to prevent it from falling in your face. Who, as time passed, grew more touchy, would hold your hand, ruffle your hair, pinch your cheek, which was simultaneously devastating and elating. Who, you could tell, started to linger more, both in his touch and in his gaze. Questions of does he love me back or am I seeing what I want to see? nearly drove you mad.

“I feel like at this point the only way she’ll understand that I like her is if I kill myself and write in my suicide note that it’s her fault for not loving me back.”

Jake has been pacing back and forth in Jay’s living room for approximately twenty minutes, with no end in sight. At least he’ll have gotten most of his ten thousand steps of the day in.

Jay sighs heavily. “Okay, I really don’t think you need to go that far.”

“Sounds romantic to me,” Sunghoon says, mouth full of salted caramel popcorn.

“I hope you never get a girlfriend,” Jay retorts, looking at his deranged friend with a scowl. He turns back to his (slightly more) normal friend and gives him a sympathetic smile.

“I mean, I told her we were different. Different. That we weren’t like regular friends. I tell her she’s pretty every chance I get. I give her my jacket all the time, even though this country is fucking cold. I’ve even given her a t-shirt of mine, sprayed with my perfume and everything. And don’t get me wrong, I do it ‘cause I love doing that for her-”

“Simp,” Sunghoon snickers.

“But what the hell else can I do? Like, she has to be ignoring it on purpose at this point.”

“You could always, you know… tell her?”

Jake scoffs, fixing his friend with a derisive look. “Wow. What a great idea, Jay, I never thought of that one before!”

A popcorn lands right on Jay’s cheek. “You’re so clueless, man,” Sunghoon says, a shit-eating smirk on his lips. As if he knows any better.

Jay looks back-and-forth between his friends, an expression on his face like he’s been disparaged. “Sorry, I didn’t know being straightforward and honest was such a bad thing. It would just make things a lot clearer for the both of you.”

“But… I’m scared,” Jake says.

“Man up!” Sunghoon suddenly yells, punching the sofa next to him, making his friends jump. “How can she ever figure it out if you don’t tell her?”

“You were on my side just a second ago, man, what are you doing?” Jake asks, confusion written all over his face. Sunghoon’s eyes dart back and forth between the two boys, retreating into silence as he stuffs his mouth with another handful of popcorn.

“Just ignore him,” Jay says. “But for once, he did say something that makes a modicum of sense. You think you’re being really obvious, but you might not actually be. Which could be a good sign, you know. I heard girls were super aware of a guy liking them if they weren’t into him, but being totally oblivious if they did like him.”

“Where did you hear that?” Jake asks, an eyebrow raised in suspicion.

“...Instagram Reels,” Jay reluctantly admits, frowning at Sunghoon who bursts into laughter.

Jake holds the bridge of his nose between two fingers like his head aches. “You’re both so useless, I’m never coming to you with my problems ever again.”

“I’ll pretend I’m not offended by that.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, anyway,” Sunghoon says. He’s smiling but Jake genuinely can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“But seriously, if you think you’ve done everything, then just do one last thing that’s so obvious she can’t misinterpret it,” Jay says.

“Like what?”

“Like kissing her, or some-”

“Kissing her?!” Jake echoes.

“That’s wild, man,” Sunghoon uselessly butts in.

“It’s just an example, calm yourselves,” Jay says. “Or, again, just straight up tell her how you feel. It’s what I did with Yunjin, and it worked.”

“You and Yunjin are dating?” Sunghoon asks, bewildered.

Jay shakes his head at him. “Where the hell have you been, bro? We were literally cuddling on the couch the other day.”

“I just thought you were really good friends, or something.”

Jake groans, holding his head in his hands. Sunghoon was of no help whatsoever, and Jay was so on point that it annoyed him. Confessing was the only solution - but Jake was so afraid of being rejected and losing your friendship that he had barely entertained the thought. But he had found the courage to do it once, and even though his planned confession had fallen through back then, he could get himself together and do it again.

It was the day he had told you he was moving to Korea, which he himself had learned that morning. Originally, he’d texted you because he had news to share - good news. Or at least, he hoped they were good. He hoped the soft, lingering looks you gave him weren’t a figment of his imagination but rather the confirmation he needed that you liked him back. He hoped that like him, you cared too much about your friendship to make the first move into something else; that by confessing first, you’d be relieved of that responsibility; that his wish to hold your hand and kiss your forehead wasn’t one-sided.

He decided not to prepare anything - just a couple sentences that he’d rehearsed over and over in his head. Declarations of love, bouquets of flowers, chocolate and couple keychains, all that could wait until after you’d said yes to being his girlfriend. He didn’t want to win you over just once, he wanted to show you every day how much he loved you. Fourteen-year-old Jake was absolutely head over heels for you; so imagine his disappointment when, as he was getting ready to meet with you, his parents called him downstairs, a tone to their voice Jake wasn’t familiar with, but that couldn’t mean anything good.

“Your dad’s job is sending us back to Seoul next month,” his mom announced, not beating around the bush. He felt everything quite literally crumbling down around him. His friends in Brisbane, his school, his hobbies, but above all, you. He’d lose it all. And what was the point now in telling you how he felt? If you felt the same way, it would only make his departure that much harder, and if you didn’t, it would ruin your last moments together. It just wasn’t worth it.

What he had planned to be good news turned into the most awful ones. The thought of it happening all over again makes twenty-year-old Jake shudder. But he wouldn’t let himself be trapped by time again - sure, in seven months, the academic year would be over, and he would go back to Korea. But that didn’t mean that those seven months should be spent in agony, or the following ones either, for that matter. You would make it work. What was long-distance to someone who loved someone else as much as Jake loved you?

But he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He has to start by really resolving to do this, and in the off-chance that it actually goes in his favour, he’d start worrying about long distance then.

First, he has a trip to plan.

You should’ve known that a trip to the Scottish Highlands in the middle of November was a risky choice in terms of weather. The day started off nicely enough - no sign of rain when you woke up or as you watched the sunrise through the train window. Clouds turned the sky a bright white at first, then increasingly greyer and greyer. You feel the first drops of rain after lunch as you walk around a small village. By four pm, it’s pitch black and storming like you’ve rarely seen before. You head into a pub to grab a drink as you wait for the rain to subside, but subside it does not. You end up ordering fish and chips, one each, although one serving is enough to feed three. Even after taking your time eating, the bad weather does not let up. The last train, which is meant to be at eight pm, has been cancelled. Luckily, there’s an inn right across the road from the pub; you have no choice but to spend the night.

The inn receptionist is sitting so low on her chair, you can barely see her over the desk until you’re standing right over it. Her face is hidden by a book and it’s only when you say hiya that she seems to realise you’re there. You had never heard of the book or of its author, but you recognized the cover design as that of those romance novels with repetitive plots and weirdly misogynistic love interests your mum and every other middle-aged woman was obsessed with.

Her smile widens as she looks between you and Jake. “Hi there. One room for the lovely couple?”

“Oh, we’re not-”

“Yes, please,” Jake interrupts, smiling down at her, then at you. “It’ll be cheaper if we share a room.”

“Our only room with two single beds is already taken, I’m afraid. One double bed okay for you two?”

You feel like you’re about to faint, so you’re glad Jake is there to answer. “Yeah, of course.” How the idea of sharing one bed with you is so okay to him, you’re not sure - granted, you’ve done it before, but this feels different. For all intents and purposes, this is a hotel room you’re staying in. And you’re staying in it with Jake.

You try to calm your breathing as the receptionist guides you to your room, chatting casually with Jake on the way there. As she unlocks the door for you, she informs you that check-out must be done before eleven in the morning tomorrow, then bids you good night and leaves you to it, still wearing that smile you swear has mischievousness to it. The door clicks shut behind you, and it’s just Jake and you again, together in this small room until tomorrow morning. Your chances of survival are very, very low.

Your room is a humble one, consisting of a desk, a cupboard, two armchairs, a small, separate bathroom and the infamous bed. Every surface seems to be covered with wood, from the ceiling, to the walls, to the old-fashioned furniture. Only the floor is a soft, beige carpet. Especially with the darkness outside, it makes for a gloomy room until you turn on the lamp by the entrance; it casts a warm, golden light in the room, one that would make you feel at ease if it wasn’t for Jake’s presence next to you. The implications of being essentially trapped in a barely-lit room with him are heavy on your mind, especially when he looks this gorgeous with his hair still damp from the rain and the soft lights playing on his face.

His voice brings you out of your thoughts. “Right. Do you, um, do you wanna shower first?” he asks, setting his bag on one of the armchairs.

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” There has never been such an awkward tension between the two of you, but you know you’re not doing anything to ease it. You hope a shower will help you get out of your head and make you relax.

You feel the tension leave your muscles under the hot water, but your stomach is still in knots. You’ve never been this nervous around Jake before; back when you were fourteen and again in these past few months, you’d gotten so used to dealing with your unspoken feelings for him that you could almost forget about them when you were with him. They’d come back to you when you were alone and dwelling on the moments you’d spent together, on his words and actions you desperately tried not to read too much into but always ended up doing anyway. But right now, they’ve floated to the surface, becoming as obvious to you as a stain on your skin you can’t rub away. You’re scared Jake will notice it, and, in the worst case scenario you often thought about, would run away and never speak to you again.

At least the raging storm outside would make that a bit harder.

When you step out of the shower, you curse yourself for not having worn more comfortable clothes on this trip. You definitely can’t wear these jeans and button-up sweater to lounge around. Thankfully, the inn provides two long bathrobes that you could wear over underwear and your tank top, but you wonder where on the scale of inappropriate this would be to wear with Jake in the room. He’s seen you in short pyjama shorts before, but this, like everything else that would usually be normal between the two of you, feels weird today.

You wrap the bathrobe around yourself, tying it in place around your waist, and decide that it’d only be weird if you made it weird. And if Jake found the sight of your bare legs weird, then he was the weird one.

The scene you’re met with as you walk into the room makes you want to retreat into the bathroom immediately. Jake is lying on the bed with his upper half against the headboard, one leg extended and the other one bent, resting his head against one palm, using his free hand to scroll through his phone. His t-shirt has ridden up slightly, putting the waistband of his Calvin Kleins into view. Worst of all, when he sees you, his face breaks into a grin.

Your stomach twists when he gives you a once-over, letting his gaze linger on your legs. “Did you bring a bathrobe with you or was it included?” he asks with an annoyingly handsome smirk.

You roll your eyes. “Yes, I bring a bathrobe with me wherever I go,” you say sarcastically. “Now shut up and go shower, you stink.” Reverting to insults is always the solution when you’re internally freaking out.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He takes so long in the shower that by the time he comes out, you’ve dozed off in bed. As if you were a child, he wakes you up with a boop to the nose, crouching next to the bed and smiling at you. His wet hair falls on his head like that of a movie star in a shower scene, which you find extremely unfair, and his cheeks are red from the warmth of the water.

“It’s still early. Do you wanna go grab another drink?”

“In our bathrobes?” you say, laughing. “Nah, I don’t really feel like drinking anyway.” Read: I’m not sure what I’ll do with alcohol in me.

“Okay, no worries. Um, I think I saw they had board games in the lobby?”

Your ears perk up at this. “Ooh, what kind of board games?”

Putting jeans on underneath his bathrobe, Jake slips away for a minute and comes back with Monopoly, Uno, and a deck of cards. “They didn’t have much for two players,” he says, dumping everything on the bed.

You already knew that anything would become fun if you did it with Jake, but you definitely didn’t expect to spend almost five hours just playing Monopoly and card games with him. Neither of you stays put for very long, always switching from sitting criss-cross to laying on your stomach, making fun of the other’s bathrobe even though you’re wearing the exact same thing. You make each other laugh as you make up your own nonsense rules and disregard the laws of your games, attacking the other ruthlessly for a couple extra points or coins. Jake even makes you go get snacks from a corner store that’s miraculously still open because you lose the first round of Uno.

After some time, Jake lets out a loud yawn, which in turn makes you yawn too. He checks his phone to find that it’s close to midnight already. “Time for bed?” he asks, and your nervousness that had finally dissipated as you played came rushing back.

You nod. “Yeah, sounds good.”

The two of you clean up before brushing your teeth. Even that, with Jake by your side, becomes a silly affair as he pulls faces in the mirror and nudges your hip with his. You stay behind to use the toilet, and when you come back out, Jake’s already in bed, bathrobe tossed on one of the armchairs. This means that Jake is just casually in a t-shirt and boxers, waiting for you to join him in bed. Luckily, his back is turned to you, so you quickly take off your own bathrobe and slide under the sheets, careful to keep your distance from him. The sheets are cold underneath you, and you know it’ll take a while before your body heat warms them up - although you feel very hot and bothered because of the man lying next to you.

“Gosh, I’m really sleepy all of a sudden,” he says, words distorted by a yawn. You only hum in response, and he reaches for the lamp to turn it off. Just like that, you’re in complete darkness, and Jake’s body is mere inches from your own.

It’s eerily quiet for a while, and when you’ve managed to slow your heartbeat and regularise your breathing, you start trying to fall asleep. You toss and turn, unable to find a comfortable position until Jake’s low, sleepy voice breaks the silence. “Can’t sleep?” he asks, and you freeze.

You sigh. “No. I’m sorry for keeping you up,” you say guiltily.

“It’s okay. I can’t really sleep either. It’s a bit cold in here.”

You pause. “Right. Yeah, it is,” you say, even though you feel like you’re sweating buckets.

The room plunges into silence again, long enough for you to think Jake has fallen asleep. You feel something cold against your foot, only realising as it slides up your calf that it’s his foot. “Jake!” you whisper-yell, withdrawing your leg as he bursts into giggles that warm your heart. “Your feet are so cold,” you say in-between chuckles.

“I’m cold all over,” he whines. “Have they not turned the heating on yet? It’s already mid-November.”

“People are used to the cold here.”

“Well I’m not. Can we cuddle?” he suddenly asks, and he must somehow feel the way you freeze in place because he stammers out a justification straight away. “For, I mean, just for warmth, you know. I don’t think I’ll sleep otherwise.”

His foot finds yours again and you can’t help but laugh. “Sure, fine,” you say with a sigh as if you were doing only half-heartedly for his sake. As if this was some big sacrifice you were making, and not something you’d daydreamed about one too many times before.

Your heart is beating a thousand miles a second when you scooch closer to Jake, his hands finding your waist as easily as if they’d been there a hundred times before. He pulls you in much closer than you had expected, holding you tightly against his chest, one arm for you to use as a pillow and one hand resting on your lower back. You try to calm your respiration so that he can’t hear how short of breath you are, but based on his own breathing, he seems to be out in five minutes. It takes you longer to fall asleep, every shift of his body sending shivers down your spine, but you manage to relax after some time, letting his warmth envelop you as you drift off to sleep.

The feeling of waking up with you in his arms is so unreal, Jake thinks he might still be dreaming.

He looks down at your peaceful sleeping face and can’t stop the smile that spreads on his lips. Jake always thinks you’re pretty, but this is a sight he particularly wants to commit to memory. He watches fondly as the bright sun rays of the early morning hit your face, making you scrunch your eyebrows and bury your face deeper against him. You grunt softly, and when he feels you shifting and stretching your legs, he pretends to fall asleep so you don’t catch him staring. It seems like you’ve raised your head, chin tilted towards him - if he’s lucky, you’re watching him “sleep” just like he did seconds ago.

He contains a smile at the joke that forms itself in his brain before shooting his eyes open, catching you off guard during what you thought was a private, secret moment.

“Shit!” you yelp, practically jumping off of him and rolling onto the other side of the bed. He bursts into laughter, proud that his little prank was effective. Before you can scold him, he makes his way to you, wrapping an arm around your waist and bringing your back against his chest. He thinks he feels your body tense; but then you bring your hand over his, swiping your thumb back and forth against his skin, and you relax in his hold. “You’re so annoying,” you complain, but your voice is tender, almost weak.

He buries his face in your hair, trying not to be too loud when he inhales there. “Sorry,” he says, the smile evident in his voice. “The opportunity was right there. Caught you staring, huh?”

“You’re such an idiot.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” It’s quiet for a few minutes, and Jake is more than happy to enjoy this moment in silence, but there’s something burning the tip of his tongue. It’s been there for a while now, but he thinks he’s finally found the right moment. “Y/N?”

“Mm?”

“There’s something I couldn’t tell you last night, but I feel oddly okay saying it right now. Are you listening?”

“I am, yeah,” you say gently, voice so soft it caresses his skin and draws goosebumps from it.

His chest expands and falls with a deep, shaky breath. With your back right against it, he’s scared you’ll hear that his heart is beating faster than it should. “Bad news first?” he says with a nervous chuckle.

“Uh-oh.”

“There’s no roundabout way to say this, so here goes, I guess.” He takes another breath. “I’m in love with you, Y/N.” You tense in his embrace, and he waits for you to say something, anything before he continues.

“Oh,” is all you say. He hopes it’s a good oh - even if it isn’t, he doesn’t let it deter him.

“Yeah. I really debated telling you this… I know you might not feel the same way. But I also know that if I don’t say anything and make the same mistake twice, I’ll beat myself up over it for the rest of my life.”

“The same mistake?” you ask, looking at him over your shoulder.

He gazes down at you tenderly, pushing hair away from your face with a gentle hand. “I already felt that way back when we lived in Australia. I was about to tell you but when I learned that I was moving, I didn’t wanna risk ruining the little time we had left together.”

The look on your face both breaks his heart and patches it up again. “Jakey…” you say, voice just a whisper. You turn around to face him and bury your face in the crook of his neck. The fact that you’re not saying much is making his stomach twist in agonising stress, but he takes it as a good sign that you’re still holding him tight and not running away.

“I think I’d be the luckiest guy on Earth if you felt the same way,” he says, hopefulness clear in his voice.

And then he finally hears the words he’s been dying to hear all these years. “Of course, I feel the same way, Jake,” you say, eyes meeting his. “This isn’t bad news at all, it’s like, the best possible news ever.”

It takes him a few seconds, but when your words sink in, a bright smile graces his features. He feels tears coming up - tears of relief that you feel the same way, of sadness that it took the both of you so long to get here, of happiness that something new might start - he’s not sure. Perhaps everything at once.

“Of course?” he echoes, smiling wildly. “It wasn’t obvious to me.”

“Oh, gosh,” you murmur, burying yourself into him once more. “I can’t believe this is actually happening.”

He tightened his hold around you, bringing you to him as close as physically possible. “Me neither.”

The feeling of you tangling your bare legs with his and bunching up the fabric of his t-shirt in your fist awakens something in him - he had been in his head, thanking the heavens that you loved him back, reeling from his belated confession, but he was now very aware of his body. And of yours. He was reminded of Jay telling him to kiss you - although he hadn’t needed to go there to reveal his feelings to you, it was still a possibility. It was even more so now that he knew you felt the same way.

He tries to be subtle as he brushes a hand up your back to the nape of your neck, gently grazing his fingernails against the skin there. He has to suppress a self-satisfied smirk when he feels you squirm under his touch, lifting your head to fix him with a scolding look. Your stern expression fades as soon as his eyes fall on your lips, however, and you quickly mirror his gaze. His lips part, and he feels his whole body shake as he takes a deep breath in. Who knew that you’d share your first kiss on a random Sunday morning in the fuckass middle of nowhere in Scotland?

Maybe you take pity on him, or you recognise the effort put into being the one to make the first move, or, as he’d like to think, you just really want to kiss him - either way, you’re the one who closes the gap and presses your lips to his.

Your lips. So soft, so delicate against his, absolutely perfect. It’s a simple, tentative touch, but he’s craved it for so long that it makes his head spin. He frowns, despite himself instantly needing more than this feather-like feeling of your lips brushing against each other. His mind tells him to calm down and take it slow, but his body takes over, urging him to grab the nape of your neck a little harder, to hold you a little closer to him, to kiss you a little stronger. Thankfully, you let him do all of this and more, hands finding purchase in his hair and returning his intensity tenfold.

He doesn’t know what’s better - the fact that you’re kissing him or the kiss itself. The way your lips move against his is intoxicating; it wraps itself around its mind and leaves no room for thoughts that aren’t of you. You seem to want him as desperately as he wants you, to have waited for him as long as he did for you, and this is what drives him crazy. You press your body against his and he sees stars; you let out a moan against his lips and he kisses you deeper, ready to do anything to hear that melody again.

Unfortunately, the only melody he gets to hear is that of his phone alarm, informing you that it’s quarter to eleven and that you have fifteen minutes to leave. Check-out at eleven am had sounded nice yesterday; now, he would stay in this dingy inn his whole life if it meant he got to keep kissing you.

The both of you reluctantly break apart, bursting into giddy laughter when your eyes meet. As said before, Jake always thinks you’re pretty, but with your pupils blown and your lips plump from kissing, this might just be the prettiest he’s ever seen you.

“You know, I like you a lot, but I’d like you even more if you could stop time,” you say.

He looks down at you with a smile, pushing away the strands of hair that had fallen on your face. “Sure, I’ll learn how to control time for you.”

“Thanks, Jakey.” You peck his lips, lingering, and he closes his eyes to savour your sweetness.

“Anything for you, baby.” His eyes widen at the nickname slip, but you erupt into giggles.

“Baby?”

“Would you look at the time, we really got to go,” he says, detangling his limbs from yours. He pauses for a second. “Baby,” he repeats, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead before bouncing from the bed.

You get ready together, and the mundane tasks of stripping sheets from a bed and packing bags become the funnest things he’s ever done. You’re all over each other, attacking the other with kisses and hugs; Jake doesn’t think he’s ever felt quite this happy.

And this is only the beginning.

There’s a glint in the receptionist’s eyes when you check out of your room, as if she knew something you and Jake had been oblivious to all along. It’s the only one in town, so you go back to the little pub for a full breakfast with eggs, hash browns, haggis, and sausages. You get coffee so strong you think you might not sleep for the next four days, while Jake drinks tea that is equal parts sugar, milk, and actual tea.

From the moment you leave the pub to the moment you arrive at your doorstep, Jake’s hands barely leave yours. When they have to, like when you’re searching for the perfect seat on the train or when the controller checks your tickets, they’re back together within a minute, like two magnets that can’t stay apart for too long. The rain has long subsided, leaving place to a bright blue sky and wet blades of grass that shine in the sun.

Now that your mutual feelings don’t need to be kept secret, you tell each other about everything you had to go through, like you pretending your good news was your mum having baked the cookies Jake liked and him seeing your new boyfriends every two months on your close friends story. He tells you about all the hints he’s dropped, causing you to facepalm over and over again. It feels like two friends catching each other to speed on all the latest gossip, except the topic of that gossip is you.

The juxtaposition of your familiarity with Jake with the novelty of behaving like a couple, of not having to hold back with your touches or gazes or words, is nothing if not jarring. But you have a feeling you’ll get used to it in no time.

As you unlock the front door to your building, you don’t ask him if he’s coming up - to you, it’s a given that you’ll be spending the rest of today and every day after that together. So when he doesn’t follow you, staying still on the threshold, you turn around with a questioning look on your face.

“There’s something I need to do this afternoon,” he says, taking both of your hands in his.

“Can’t I come with?” you say. Jake wavers for a second, but sadly, he stays firm in his decision.

“Sorry, baby, it’s a surprise. I’ll be back at seven with takeout?”

You can’t possibly be mad at him when he calls you baby and offers food in the same breath. “Only if you bring takeout.”

“You only love me because I feed you, don’t you?” he asks, a smile on his face.

“Yup,” you reply. You’re standing on a step, so you bend down to kiss him - you intend for it to be a peck, but when your lips touch, you’re unable to pull away. You let yourself get lost in the feeling of his lips on yours, in the warmth that takes over your body and makes your brain all fuzzy.

A loud, affronted gasp from behind you makes you jump from Jake, and when you turn around, Chaewon and Yunjin are standing in the stairwell, staring at you with wide eyes and gaping mouths.

“So this was a sexcapade?” is, much to your horror, the first thing Yunjin says.

Thanks to Chaewon, neither you nor Jake have the time to dwell on this sentence as she comes running down the stairs and pounces on you. You don’t know how a woman so small can have such force, but her hug is so tight you can barely breathe, let alone hug her back properly. “I knew you could do it!” she exclaims. When she pulls away, she seems so moved, it looks like she’s about to cry. “You finally popped your Jake cherry,” she whispers, but it’s loud enough for Jake to hear. A bark of laughter escapes his throat.

“Okay, thanks, guys,” you say, escaping this awkward situation and going up the stairs. “I’ll see you later, Jake!” you yell over your shoulder. The girls seem to be on their way out, and you’re more than happy leaving him to deal with them on his own. God knows you’ll get the worst of it when they come back.

As soon as you get to your flat, you make a beeline for your bedroom, plopping on the bed. You’re the same person, and this is the same room. But something within you feels entirely different, like a scar that you had been carrying around had, without you even noticing, healed so well you could barely see it anymore. You lifted your hands in the air, looked at the back of them, then at your palms. They were the same old hands that had been with you your whole life, and you were almost shocked that there wasn’t something utterly different about them after having held Jake’s hand for so long. Just to be sure, you sniffed your right hand, but it didn’t smell any different, either. But you still felt Jake’s hand on yours, like headphones you’d been wearing for hours and still felt on your ears after taking them off.

Yunjin and Chaewon are back from their shopping half-an-hour later; they got you a chocolate fudge cake from Tesco to congratulate you. “You guys are acting like this is my birthday…” you say, eyeing the cake greedily as Chaewon cuts it into three equal parts (even though it says serves eight on the packaging).

“This is more important than your birthday, Y/N,” Yunjin states as she pours oat milk into three cups of Earl Grey tea. “This is, like, the moment of a lifetime.”

“Are you saying a girl’s importance depends on her having a boyfriend?”

“Yes, Y/N, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Especially when said boyfriend is the guy she’s been pining after for all of her teenage and adult life.”

You sigh. “Well, he hasn’t exactly popped the boyfriend and girlfriend question yet.” They both turn to look at you, an annoyed look on their faces. You stand up straight, uncomfortable under their gazes. “What?”

“Usually, I’m all for clarity on this issue,” Chaewon starts. “But isn’t it pretty obvious here?”

“You’re still gonna have to tell us everything in minute detail, but Jake’s already told us what happened. He had no qualms referring to you as his girlfriend, so I really don’t think this is something you need to worry about. What you should worry about is when and where you’re going to hop on that dick.”

Chaewon bursts into laughter, and you can’t help but follow suit. “Gosh, Yunjin, you really do have a way with words.”

“I know. This is what having a Jane Austen hyperfixation at fifteen will do to you.”

Following Yunjin’s orders, you tell them about the events of the previous day and this morning over tea and cake. They ooh and ah and gasp in all the right places, ask you very specific questions and even make you draw a picture of the room you stayed in. You’ve talked to them about Jake so many times that there’s only so much to say now - but still, you talk for hours on end, deviating off-topic so often you end up talking about something else entirely.

You’re in bed reading for your Middle English Literature class when the doorbell rings. It’s seven on the dot, so it can be no one else other than Jake. It’s been mere hours, but you’ve missed him enough to last you for weeks.

He brought takeaway from the Indian place you’d raved about a hundred times but hadn’t brought him to yet. Somehow, your heart grows even fonder as you watch his reaction to the food, the raise of his eyebrows, the widening of his eyes, the excited shimmy of his shoulders. When you ask him about his afternoon, a wide smile breaks out onto his face, like a lightbulb illuminating a room. Without a word, he scurries to your room, bringing back some sort of book with him. He hands it to you with a shy smile and curious eyes, eagerly anticipating your reaction. The cover reads Y/N and Jake in his clumsy but endearing handwriting, with the date of his arrival in Edinburgh and an em-dash scribbled underneath. “I haven’t booked my flight home yet, so I’ll add the second date later,” he explains.

When you flick through it, you’re met with photographs of you and Jake on all of the trips you’ve done so far, as well as the various adventures you got up to in the city. There’s even one of you sleeping in the library at two am during midterms when you had forgotten about one of your essays, due at midday. Jake had come with coffee and words of encouragement, and now he could brag that the high mark you got was thanks to him. It’s not only photos - it’s also ticket stubs, receipts, stickers, and even a dried flower you had found pretty on your trip to St. Andrews. He’s also written quite a lot, from diary-like entries about what you got up to that day or songs that reminded him of you.

“You misspelt right here,” you say, pointing to a sentence that reads This is the café write next to the hotel where the last Harry Potter book is said to have been written!!! under a photo of you drinking a massive cup of hot chocolate. The more you look at the typo, the more it makes you laugh, until you have tears brimming in your eyes.

Thanks to Yunjin’s messiness, pens and pencils are strewn over your coffee table. Jake, flushed red in embarrassment at the small mistake, snatches a pencil and aggressively erases write, spelling it correctly the second time around. “This is the level of today’s English Lit undergrads,” he murmurs under his breath. His frown disappears when he looks at you and he laughs along.

You continue looking through the album until you land on a page titled Why I love Y/N. From top to bottom, left to right, it’s filled with Jake’s tiny handwriting. You can tell he put effort into making it neat. There’s a singular photograph of you, one that dates from the first days after Jake’s arrival when you were walking around in the Meadows, the park right next to campus. The sun shone down on you and you smiled brightly at Jake behind the camera.

You’re not a quarter through reading when tears swell in your eyes, rendering your vision blurry. You wipe them away before they can fall and stain the page. Jake has detailed every last thing he loves about you. It can hardly get cornier than this, but the fact that he wrote this about you makes your heart so full, you’re afraid it might explode in your chest. It ranges from basic things like the way she makes me laugh or her pretty face when she falls asleep in the train (or anywhere, for that matter) to more you-specific things like the strict pastel colour-coding she uses for her notes and her perseverance when eating spicy food even though she can’t take it. He mentions things about you that you didn’t even know, and that feeling of being known in-and-out, of being really seen by someone else only brings more tears to your eyes. Your favourite line comes at the end - the way she makes any place feel like home. A proper sob pushes past your lips at this, and Jake, who had been watching you with an anxious smile, rests a palm on your knee and inches closer to you.

“Why are you crying, is- Did I write something bad?”

You shake your head fervently. “No, no, Jakey, this is… It’s perfect. I’m just…” you trail, letting out a half-sob, half-chuckle. You look at him with a smile before pulling him into a tight hug. “I love it so much. I love you so much.”

You can feel Jake relax against you. “I love you too, baby. I’m glad you like it.”

You pull away after a small while, and turn the next page over. It’s a picture of you over breakfast this morning, with words WE’RE DATING!!!! written underneath it, and those simple words make you so happy, your cheeks ache from smiling. But every page after that is empty. Jake scratches the back of his neck. “I, um, I thought we could fill the rest out together. I debated just doing it myself and giving it to you at the end of the year, but I thought it’d be more fun doing it together.”

“It would. This is such an amazing idea,” you say, flicking back through the pages.

“I thought of it because of that project I had. When I started working on it, all the photos I wanted to include were of you, but I wasn’t sure how much my professor would appreciate that… So I decided to make one more personal. One for us,” he says shyly, shrugging like it’s no big deal.

“Thank you so much, Jakey.”

He smiles. “It’s no worries.”

“Did you do it all this afternoon?”

“I had started it before, but I added it most of today, yeah. Which, by the way, awful timing. I wanted nothing more than to spend today with you.”

Your heart leaps. You’re not sure you’ll ever get used to hearing such words from Jake’s mouth.

Sometime later, you’re laying in bed with Jake between your legs, watching the most recent animated Spiderman movie. With the tips of your fingers, you draw random patterns on his forearm, and if it wasn’t for his occasional chuckles, you’d think he had fallen asleep. You chat for a bit after the movie, but you find that after such an emotionally-packed day, you’re ready to call it a night fairly early. But when the lights are off and it’s just you lying against Jake’s chest, his fingernails grazing your scalp and his familiar, comforting scent clouding your judgement, all thoughts of an early night are thrown out of the window.

You shouldn’t feel so nervous - you had fallen asleep in his arms last night, and it had gone well. Really well.

“This is different from yesterday, isn’t it?” Jake suddenly says, breaking the heavy silence with a low voice. It’s like he read your mind.

“Yeah,” you whisper against his skin.

No other words are needed. You brush the tip of your nose along his neck until you reach his jawline, pressing soft kisses there and delighting in the increasing shakiness of his breath. The feeling of your lips meeting is so intense, so all-encompassing, that you don’t know if you’ll be able to handle anything more.

This is still new territory, but you’re both so eager to discover it that it makes for a messy kiss, lips moving against each other ravenously, tongues beckoning moans from the other. It’s a kiss that somehow leaves you breathless and breathes oxygen back into your lungs at once.

In a matter of seconds, Jake has flipped you on your back and is hovering over you, one hand holding him up and one hand free to roam your body. He slips it underneath your t-shirt, brushes it along the side of your waist, his touch leaving behind a trail of fire blazing on your skin. It’s so distracting, you can’t even kiss him back properly anymore. Jake doesn’t seem to mind. At first, when he starts pressing hot kisses to your jawline and your neck, you think he’s giving you a respite - but when he gently sinks his teeth into the skin there, leaving marks that will later remind you tonight wasn’t a dream, chuckling as you squirm and whine under him, you understand that this is anything but a respite.

You curse your earlier decision of not wearing a bra, because it gives you no preparation whatsoever to the sensation of Jake brushing his thumb against one of your nipples. With a loud gasp, your back arches off of the bed, which only aids Jake in raising your t-shirt up over your breasts.

He takes a minute to admire the sight of you panting and half-naked underneath him. It makes you feel shy, and you want to do something so that he stops looking and starts doing, but his gaze holds you in place. His pupils are blown with lust, eyes raking over your body and taking everything in. You have a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that it’s you he’s looking at with those eyes.

His soft lips attach themselves to your nipple while his fingers continue their work on the other one. You’ve never felt this sensitive, never felt this on edge, like you might fall apart at any second even with so little simulation. Your core throbs, impatiently waiting to be tended to, but you’re already trembling so hard from Jake’s attention to your breasts that you don’t know what will happen to you once he actually touches you down there.

“You doing okay, baby?” he asks, the rasp in his voice making you want him impossibly more. You grip his hair and he looks up at you, a tender smile on his lips. You nod your head yes and he laughs. “Yeah? You want more?” You pause at his question. You do want more, but is it worth your sanity?

It takes you a second to decide that it’s worth that and more. You nod again.

Jake seems to have sensed your hesitation. He tucks a strand of hair behind your ear. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I am. It’s just a lot.”

His expression of worry softens into a smile. “I’ll take it slow for you, love. It’s a lot for me, too.” He leans in to press soft kisses to your cheek, and some of the tension in your body diffuses. Whatever happens, Jake will be there to take care of you. “But it feels good, right?” he asks, lips moving against your ear, sending shivers down your spine.

“So good, Jakey,” you reply shakily.

“Good.”

You can tell that Jake really does want to take it slow - his movements are more deliberate, gentler. But eagerness, both yours and his, soon takes over, and a minute later, he’s trailing kisses down your body until he reaches your lower stomach. Your breath quickens as he hooks fingers underneath your leggings and underwear, sliding both garments down your legs and leaving you bare to him. You think the feeling of his lips on the fleshy parts of your inner thighs is what might actually do you in, make you lose your sense of reality forever - but then his tongue darts out against your clit, a barely-there touch, and your whole body flatlines.

Your reaction eggs Jake on, who, more confident now, takes the sensitive bud in his lips and alternates between sucking and licking motions. A knot ties itself embarrassingly quickly in your stomach, a knot that tightens and tightens as Jake flattens his tongue against you, licking up your juices from your entrance to your clit; a knot that threatens to come loose when he slides a long finger inside of you. You can’t take more than thirty seconds of this.

“Jakey,” you say, voice practically a moan. Your brain is fuzzy and it takes a distressing amount of time to form a simple sentence. “Can you come here?”

“Is something wrong, baby?” he asks breathily, sliding his finger out of you and coming back up so that his face is right above yours.

“No, just… I want you.”

Any trace of worry on Jake’s features dissipates as he cocks an eyebrow, one corner of his lips tugging up into a smirk. “Is that so?”

This kind of boldness would usually have you rolling your eyes, but here, it only makes your core throb more violently. It’s almost humiliating how much you want this man. It’s definitely humiliating, how easy it is to swallow your pride and play into his game. “Yes, please,” you say, eyes pleading with him.

He smiles almost giddily before burying his face against the side of yours. “My baby’s so polite,” he says, pressing a kiss to your cheek. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“Take this off, then,” you say, grabbing the bottom hem of his t-shirt.

“So she says please and gives orders,” he jokes, quickly obliging anyway.

Not once in your time apart had Jake posted any sort of beach trip or pool photos, so this was the first time you saw his bare chest. God, was it one for the history books. You trace the defined lines of his muscles with a finger and wonder how he had managed to get even more perfect. He lets you marvel at him for it, clearly proud that you’re gawking so shamelessly, but your mind drifts back to more urgent matters when he presses himself into you, his clothed cock, hard and hot, brushing against your folds. “Fuck,” you sigh, bucking your hips into his to feel him over and over again.

It’s so much, but it’s not enough; Jake instantly gets your message when you hook your fingers under the waistband of his boxers, pulling him to you and kissing him feverishly. Your lips don’t part as he slides his boxers off, and you drink up the nectar that are his moans as you take him in your hand, pumping him a few times.

“Condom?” he asks, but you shake your head.

“I’m on the pill. And even so… I usually always use a condom, but I don’t want to now. Not with you.”

Jake closes his eyes as he takes a deep, stabilising breath. “I feel totally normal about that. Not crazy at all.”

You giggle, and he opens his eyes, a wide smile gracing his lips before he bends down to kiss you. “You ready for the night of your life?” he asks against your lips. “It’s gonna last five minutes, tops,” he says, making you laugh again. “I’m sorry, baby, I can’t do anything about it. I think I could’ve cum just from eating you out.”

“That would’ve been hot.”

“Really? We’ll make it a challenge for next time, then.”

When Jake plunges into you, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt before. He fills you up, slow inch by slow inch, until he’s buried to the hilt inside you. You both need some time getting used to the feeling - Jake drops his head in the crook of your neck and lets out a sound between a grunt and a moan, something you’ve never heard from him before. You grab onto his shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin as you try to tether yourself to him. You hold him so tight that he has no choice but to let his body rest on top of yours, his arms coming to circle your waist and bring you even closer.

His movements start out halting, the pleasure so overwhelming that it makes it hard for him to move steadily. In time, he falls into a torturously slow rhythm, but it’s the perfect kind of torture, the kind that has tears brimming in your eyes. It’s so hard to take, and yet you want more. You’re brought closer to the edge with every thrust of his dick into you, especially as he picks up the pace and lifts your hips to meet his. The new angle has his tip brushing against that spot deep inside you that makes it hard to breathe.

You can tell he’s just as close as you when he loses that steady rhythm he had found, his motions growing more desperate, harsher, quicker. Conscious of your roommates, you slap a hand over your mouth to muffle your moans as your orgasm washes over you, your whole body on fire, so sensitive that the few more seconds Jake needs to come undone himself drive both your body and your mind into overstimulation. Even the feeling of him pulling out, drops of hot liquid dripping out of your entrance, is too much and makes you let out a small, tired whine.

Jake peppers your face with kisses as he holds your waist tightly, brushing his thumb back-and-forth on your warm skin, sticky with sweat. “You did so well, baby. So good for me.” You think you might be ready for a second round if he keeps talking to you like that. “I love you so much.”

You sigh deeply, as if you were just told disconcerting news. “Okay.”

“Okay?!” he echoes, looking up at you with an outraged expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, I love you too, I just- I’m not used to this yet! You can’t just tell me you love and expect me to be normal. You have to warn me first.”

“Can I just warn you now that I’m going to tell you I love you every time I get the chance?”

You sigh. “I guess.”

“Can I tell you now?” he asks, and you hum. “I love you.”

“I love you more.”

Jake tuts. “I highly doubt it, but whatever makes you happy.”

You hold Jake close to you, one arm around his shoulders and the other hand playing with his hair as you come down from your high. You think he might’ve fallen asleep, and you’re close to drifting off yourself when he speaks. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this. Not just the sex, although that has been on my mind for a while now,” he says, making you laugh, “but all of this. Being together, getting to be in your arms like this, kissing you whenever I want. Calling you my girlfriend.”

“Me too, Jakey. I waited so long I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

Jake chuckles. “How stupid were we not to have noticed we felt the same way?”

“Very stupid. I think we felt so sorry for ourselves that we were stuck in one-sided love, that we didn’t even realise the other was going through the exact same thing. But at least we’re now.”

“At least we’re here now.” You and Jake yawn at the exact same time, making you burst into giggles, giddy with sleep and love.

“Let’s sleep, baby,” you say.

Jake hums, burying himself deeper against your body. “Sleep well, my love. I’ll be here.”

After years of pining after each other, you and Jake find it a bit hard to keep your relationship to yourselves, or your hands off of each other.

At the beginning, all of your friends had been happy for you, but that quickly went away when your and Jake’s honeymoon phase never died down and the PDA just kept on going. If the glue you were stuck with previously was metaphorical, this one was pretty close to being real. Superglue kept you together, your moments together rarely spent without some sort of physical touch. Yunjin fake-gagged so often, you were afraid she might actually vomit one of these days. It took Sunghoon two weeks longer than everyone else to clock you and Jake had started dating.

This meant that in private, there was truly no holding back. Jake back-hugged you any chance he got, to the point you started to think he was more koala than human - although that’d imply he saw you as a tree. Make-out sessions were a particular favourite of yours - how could they not be when your boyfriend’s lips seemed to have been carved by God himself, soft and plump to the heavens, like they were made to be kissed. Really, you were just honouring God’s will when you kissed Jake.

The goodbye that comes at the end of the year is not an easy one, and the month spent at home before you fly to Korea seems to never end. But you get there eventually, and as nice as it is to catch up with Jake’s parents after so long, you feign sleepiness after lunch as an excuse to get some time alone with your boyfriend. Ironically, this “time alone” is spent so intensely that you do end up falling asleep afterwards.

You have to admit, you really did a number on your boyfriend this time - what can a girl do when she missed her boyfriend this much? Jake is still passed out when you wake up from your nap, so you slip out as discreetly as you can from his embrace and get out of bed. You head for the closet first and swipe the comfiest looking sweater of his that you find there so you can stay warm as you look around his room. A pang of melancholia hits your chest - most of the pictures and objects on his walls and shelves are parts of his life you weren’t around to witness. Friends you don’t recognize, places you’ve never heard of, phases you’d never known he’d gone through. But then you see the frame on his desk, a faded photo of the two of you at ten years of age, eating ice cream on the bench outside of your house. Milo is sitting at your feet. Jake’s family hadn’t adopted Layla yet. You realise that even if there’s whole parts of your life you didn’t get to share with each other, nothing could touch your memories, or your future.

You want to go back in time and tell fourteen-year-old you that no matter how painful it might seem at the moment, it will all be worth it for the sight of Jake Sim slowly drifting into wakefulness, patting the bed next to him, and noticing you’re missing with furrowed eyebrows. When he opens his eyes and they settle on you, a sleepy smile will grace his dazzling features, and he’ll say, “Come back to bed.”

You’ll be even more in love at twenty than at fourteen.

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