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seresinhangmanjake · 1 year ago

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The One I Want: Part 7

Jake "Hangman" Seresin x plus size!reader

Summary: You’re new in town and some guy named Jake is about to be your roommate. Being skeptical of new people keeps you lonely and uninterested in any entanglements, but Jake is desperate to change that.

Notes/Warnings: traumatic past, trust issues, cursing, very likely typos

Words: 3262

The One I Want Masterlist

Jake Seresin is a puzzle whose pieces, as you have come to see, are already slotted together. You learned tonight that a few of those pieces are worn from being picked at, but they don’t impede his ability to be complete. Jake is beautiful and smart with a well-built confidence and a certain quality that, with enough time, makes you want to open yourself up to him. Everything about him goes together. It all works. Those pieces make Jake the man he is, in all of his perfection. So being in his presence, you want to be who he wants you to be. You want to be just as put together. But you’re not sure you’re strong enough for that.

“You can trust me,” he says, your hands still clasped together. You glance down at those hands, wondering when exactly he wove his fingers with yours. “I’ll share first if that’ll make it any easier.”

Eyes flicking up, you take in the intensity of the pair staring back at you—the depth within them, the swelling pupils that are pushing the green into a thin ring and drawing you in. They’re too honest, and it hits you like a ton of bricks.

Has anyone else ever looked at you this way? You think the closest instance you can recall involves the man you’d naively fallen in love with who lived in the first town you’d moved to on your own. But his look was a hidden lie discovered far too late.

You suppose there was a fraction of Jake’s honesty in Millie’s eyes when she expressed her thoughts and told her story so openly. She would probably be willing to attempt understanding you if you offered it.

You know you’re reaching, though. Trying to grasp at something that isn’t all there to prove that the way Jake is looking at you now is nothing unique. That it’s not special. That he doesn’t make your heart pound or your stomach flutter or cause a tingle to creep up your spine.

But when you consider telling him the truth of your history, you already sense the shame you’ve been living with for years preparing to double in force. And how can you allow that? You don’t need anything else weighing you down. You can’t possibly handle more. Certainly not from him.

You tear your eyes away from his and aren’t shocked to find that that’s exactly what it feels like—a tear. A tearing that holds so much resistance you can practically hear the slow rip that severs the connection.

“It’s not that easy,” you whisper.

“It can be,” he says, fingers tightening around yours. “You know how much I want to know you.”

The closing of your throat doesn’t allow you to swallow. An invisible hand is wrapped around your neck, blocking your oxygen, fogging your vision with unwanted tears. Your lip quivers all on its own.

Jake reaches out, lightly pressing his thumb to that lip as if he could stop its trembling.

Then you shake your head and his thumb disappears.

Standing, you try to step away, but his hand, still tangled with yours, stops you. You think he’s doing it on purpose, refusing to let you leave until he gets what he wants, but when you look at his face, it’s blank. His eyes stare ahead, the corners of his mouth are turned downward, and he doesn’t seem to feel you prying open his fingers to free your hand.

His arm drops and slides into his lap, and you take that as a sign to retreat to your bedroom.

You’re not quite through the door when you hear, “I wish you felt like you could trust me.” His voice is as defeated as his facial expression had shown. Low, dark, raspy. “Whatever it is, it's not going to change how I see you.”

You want to believe him so badly. So much so that, without any effort, you could let it consume you. But you can’t bet on his words. So you close your door the rest of the way.

—

You’ve thought about him for a week straight, and each of those thoughts has scribbled their way into the notebook you’d sort of kind of—would deny it if anyone asked—stolen from the shop.

But your little notes on Jake you don’t allow to blend with the chaotic notes of your past. He gets his own pages with words written in neater script. There’s not a single smudge of ink from your hand rubbing the paper in a rush to get your memories down before you forget some of their details. Not a single splotch of liquid black from a pen pressed too harshly onto the paper. No holes from that pen tracing the same words over and over in a fit of dampened anger. Like Jake, your notes on him are neat, and beautiful, and perfect in appearance.

What they contain, however, is something different: bunches of sentences warring with one another as you try to decide what you’re going to do next. You live with him. You see him every day. You’ll have to interact, which means you’ll have to get over this hump. The only problem is that it may not be a hump Jake wants to get over.

In the months you’ve known him, you’ve never seen him the way he was that night last week. So much was crammed into a couple of hours and it provided you with a fresh image of him—not an image that changed, exactly, but simply an image that developed a new layer. And you liked having that layer of his visible, until it became clear that the spotlight was turning to you so you may develop another layer as well.

Stepping out of that light meant plenty to you—you knew the message you were sending, even though you felt resistance from every part of you screaming to stay put—but it did more to Jake than you imagined, and that realization came in the form of Jake not speaking to over the past weeks worth of mornings, not smiling, not waiting for you so you could share breakfast. He’s gone before your alarm goes off.

It only took you ten hours to notice the void that formed in your chest from missing him around you. After ten hours—most of which you spent trying to sleep—you felt awful in more ways than one. Not only were you exhausted and absorbing your dislike of his absence that first morning, but Jake, despite his hurt state, continues to take care of you.

Those breakfasts he doesn’t wait around to share with you are still available, already made up on a plate with saran wrap keeping them safe in the fridge. The post-its he sticks to the coffee pot to inform you of said breakfasts never fail to have a small smiley face drawn in the corner. And to be fair, he does speak to you a little, but unless it seems to be a matter of life or death, which you haven’t been able to manage, his answers are clipped. Even then, it could be that those short answers are the best he can do for himself rather than anything he is doing for your benefit. With how much Jake talks in general, and with how lively you are used to seeing him, maybe he can’t be one-hundred percent silent no matter how much he wants to.

Regardless of what it really is, the tension has grown thicker by the day.

These days are not ones you want to morph into routine. You can’t watch them settle and solidify when you crave him and what he adds to your new life to this degree. Which means you have to figure yourself out. Not all of you—that will take some time—but enough of you that you can approach Jake and take the chance to be honest with him. His offer to exchange stories shows that it is not just you who needs it, but Jake as well.

That is what has prompted you to bring your notebook to work over the last seven days. And the more time you spend writing your notes, the more you release from your damaged soul, and the more good things about Jake start piling up. His faults are underwhelming and overshadowed, and all it confirms is that you want him back. So you decide that when he picks you up from work, something you never expected him to continue doing considering your current relationship, you’re going to break the silence by asking for another chance.

—

When Rooster’s truck pulls up to the store, Millie is leaning halfway out the passenger side window, one hand waving your way, the other arm bracing her precarious position. A moment later, her elbow slips on the sill and she lurches forward with a sharp yelp. Looking past her, you can see Rooster reach over the center console and wrap his arm around her waist to pull her back to safety.

“Babe, please,” he groans. “You’re stressing me out.”

She glances at him over her shoulder. “Oh, you hush. I’ve never fallen.”

“Yet,” he emphasizes. “I’d like it if my girlfriend stayed alive. I've got plans that involve you.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Darlin’. You know my hips will save me from making it all the way out the window.”

Rooster only rolls his eyes in response before unwrapping his arm and giving her ass a light smack.

Millie looks back at you, her grin wide and displaying a row of straight, white teeth. “Hey, honey. Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”

“You can only work so hard here,” you say with a weak chuckle. “Where’s Jake? Is he okay?”

You want that answer as much as you don’t. You pray he’s fine and safe, but then it means the tension that hasn’t dwindled the slightest has finally become too much for him. Though you’d rather he avoid you than be injured or ill, it hurts no less. Right as you devise a plan to bring the two of you back together, he pulls further away.

“Oh, he’s um…” Millie bites her lip.

“Staying on base tonight,” Rooster says, leaning back to meet your eyes over Millie’s shoulder. “He went in to get some extra work done and thought it would be easier.”

If the lie weren’t so terribly obvious, Rooster’s face would’ve betrayed him. The man is not a master of deception. He can’t pull it off. You suppose that bodes well for Millie, if he would ever dare tell her an untruth. Not that you can imagine a situation where he would.

Millie’s nerves wipe from her face at her boyfriend’s explanation, and you almost snort from how cute they are. They operate as their own little team, supporting and backing their partner up to keep the other from falling. Whether they succeed in their mission, like trying to convince you Jake is busy, is another thing.

Your little red-headed friend transforms back into her giddy self. “Right, so he asked us to come get ya,” she says with a wink.

Now that, you do believe. Jake may not want to see you, but he wouldn’t leave you stranded. And as disappointing as it is to see Rooster’s truck instead of the one you perfer, you know it’s not enough to convince you to give up on your end goal. With your plan thwarted, you only gain more time to figure out exactly how you’re going to bring up what you want to tell Jake.

—

You’ve decided Sundays are the best days. Sundays are easy days. They are days set aside for relaxing, where you can spend twenty-four hours in your home with only a robe wrapped around your body and not be judged. Many stores are closed on Sundays, the gift shop included, and most people don’t work, Jake included. And Jake Seresin, though not the type to sit around, does allow himself the mornings of Sundays to be what he would normally consider lazy.

When you first moved in, you didn’t love this habit of his. Knowing no one but him and knowing no place but the apartment meant you didn’t do anything or see anyone else. He had you locked in with him for at least three hours before he met his team at the gym, and he took those three hours very seriously. Most of their minutes he dedicated to being around ta you,lking to you, asking you questions—anything you did, he was there to do it with you. And while it once bugged you a bit, it eventually grew on you. He grew on you. You stopped caring about how he spent his Sunday mornings because your routine and his melded into a comfortable place, and you've had no intentions of disrupting that—until now.

After forgoing sleep to spend the entire night thinking about Jake, you’re sure you look like hell when you step out of your room and into the living room where he sits. You didn’t think to check yourself in the mirror, and Jake doesn’t acknowledge you in favor of reading his book to confirm or deny your likely-ragged state.

You don’t care how you look, though.

You care about pushing yourself forward.

“Jake?”

His hum is dismissive, but you don’t hold it against him. You understand his feelings too well, and you accept them. When he was so vulnerable and raw—when he told you something he’d not told even his closest friends—you denied him the same courtesy, and that decision hurt him. He aches. You still see it on his face and in his movements. The way his fingers gripped the book and his shoulders tensed the moment you entered the room. How he pulled his bottom lip inward and trapped it between his teeth and has yet to let it go.

He’s trying to hide the discomfort your presence causes, and he is doing so well that, as someone with plenty of experience, you’re almost proud. But the act unravels completely when you say, “I trust you.”

His head slowly rises. Then, closing the book and setting it aside, Jake stands from his spot on the couch, brow pinched as if he had not heard you correctly. “What did you say?”

“I trust you,” you repeat.

One hand settles on his hip as the other goes through his hair. He squeezes his eyes shut in a two-second long blink as if trying to snap himself awake. Lips part, perhaps to say something, anything, but then they seal again.

Before you lose your nerve, you inhale, exhale, and with a single nod, mutter to yourself a final, “I trust him.”

Then you spew out everything you’ve kept inside—everything you’ve kept away from him.

“My parents left me,” you say aloud for the very first time. You try to hold them back, but tears accompany that statement, gathering in the corners of your eyes. “Dad first, when I was nine. Mom when I was fourteen. They left and I don’t know where they are, and I don’t really care, but they disappeared and it…it messed me up. It left me lost, and I learned to let people hurt me because no one showed me anything else. I let people treat me however they want, which most often means attacking the insecure parts of me. I let them call me names and look at me in ways that strip me of my dignity, and I can’t stop it. I don’t stop them.

“When I can’t take it anymore, I leave wherever I am,” you say before pausing to catch your breath.

Jake doesn’t take the opportunity to speak. He stands there, staring, listening, waiting for you to offer him more.

“You weren’t that far off at the diner when you said I was trying to live in every beach town for two months before moving on to the next. They haven’t all been beach towns, but there have been many of them and I never stay for long,” you admit. “The minute I have the means, I go. I graduated high school by myself and left my hometown, fell in love with an asshole in the second town and left, got a job at a bar whose drunks found me an easy target, so I left again, and it’s been the same everywhere I’ve landed, again and again and again. People break me down so I find someplace new. You are—” You cut yourself off to reconsider your words, “This is my eleventh new place.” One of those tears breaks free to slide down your cheek. “And I don’t know how long I’m going to last here, but I already hate the thought of leaving.”

Done with your speech, you release a heavy breath.

When Jake looks away from you, it’s a bucket of ice water dumped over your head. Your heart crushes with the realization that you were right. Jake was wrong. Seeing you differently is not as difficult as you had hoped and he had promised. In fact, he doesn’t see you at all anymore because he won’t even give you a glance. You presented the reality that you are unloved and unwanted and explained exactly why that is, and now he has in his hand all of the reasons why others mistreat you, the ability to evaluate those reasons, and decide for himself if those reasons are valid.

And in that moment, you know you are fucked. You’re about to be lost again. On your own, in the dark, with nothing to hold on to. Not that you didn’t anticipate this coming along eventually, but you would have liked to stick around a little longer.

Through the blur of tears, you see Jake nod. That’s all. No words, no shift in facial expression; he nods to the floor rather than give you the respect of nodding to your face. He nods again, and then he looks up to meet your gaze.

Jake’s hands fall from his hips, and in four strides he closes the space keeping you apart, cups your jaw in the heat of his palms, and plants his lips on yours.

His kiss lands somewhere between hard and soft, between eager and restrained, between needy and downright desperate. And after adjusting to the shock he plunged you into, your mouth begins to move against his.

Jake is warm, and cozy; he tastes like the one Splenda packet he puts in the oatmeal he occasionally has for breakfast, and it all makes your brain hum in a comfortable delight. You take from him all that he takes from you, and give to him all that he gives you, and in the process, accept that you truly want this and he wants this and that’s all that matters. You’re not working harder to please him than he is working to please you. You’re not thinking about what he will think when your lips separate. You’re not afraid of being a disappointment because were that the case, surely he would have released you by now. But he hasn’t released you. He holds on and pulls closer and doesn’t let go, not even when the kiss breaks.

Thumbs stroke your cheeks as your eyes slowly drag from his swollen lips to his nose to that mossy-green shade you’ve become attached to. There’s a hint of concern in his stare. But then you smile, so he smiles, and the concern fades.

“Your turn,” you whisper.

---

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