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karinasbaby · 5 months ago

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responding to this so embarrassingly late IM SO SORRY but thank u thank u thank u thank u so so so so much for the bottom of my heart for reading this !! i’m so honoured & glad that u liked this fic sm you’re so adorable i love you too 😭😭 so glad that u found it !! even if u think it’s late i think it found you 🫵 at the perfect timing <3

also i do i really do love it when hee overstimulates his partner and they both overstimulate themselves and it’s just so 😵‍💫 they just turn into two whiny little needy babies 🙂‍↕️ and again thank u so much for ur sweet sweet words praying u also get everything u wanted & wished for you’re so so sweet and kind 😞

𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐆 — SURPRISE 이희승

"surprise, slip my panties to the side."

PAIRING. lee heeseung x fem!reader (+17)

WARNINGS. mentions of alcohol, mentions of smoking, drunk hee (for a bit), cursing, bondage (ropes & handcuffs), hee is a bit angry n feral, his mood changes suddenly but it’s ok <3, bj + hj, oral (f & m), face sitting, lots of teasing, edging, overstimulation, fingering, pet names, praising !, multiple rounds (?), bath sex in a way, thigh riding, morning sex, pls tell me if i missed any !

WORD COUNT. 9.3k :0

SYNOPSIS. jaeyun pitched you one of his “genius” plans to celebrate heeseung’s birthday— but how will heeseung take it?

A, NOTE. happy new year my loves !! i would greatly appreciate it if we all ignored the fact that this was supposed to be published on hee’s birthday <3 it took me an unnecessarily long time to write, but i hope u enjoy ! + pls check a, note part 2 and the end <3 (this is also proofread at 4 am so 🙏🏼)

red and blue lights scattered messily across your vision, the smell of intoxicating alcohol, tobacco and sweat infiltrating your senses leaving you slightly light headed, your fingertips grasped at the hem of your dress, situated around your thighs to pull the mini dress lower, eyes roaming desperately for the towering figure of your boyfriend,

your boyfriend, lee heeseung— the birthday boy who god knows where he is right now.

you took cautious footsteps once you began to surround the approaching mass of people, sweaty bodies dancing restlessly in each and every corner of the house whilst your gaze roamed, hands clammy with sweat from the lack of air, your lungs constricting as it got harder to breathe the longer you stayed among the crowded room,

“there you are!” a familiar voiced boomed behind you, a feeling of relief washing down once you recognised the loud voice over the deafening music, jaeyun approached you with a large smile gracing his face, brown strands untidily cascading down his features as his arm wrapped around your exposed shoulder, the other hand bringing his drink closer to his mouth,

“enjoying the party?” you questioned next to his ear, taking in the sight of the slightly tipsy man who was busy winking at a random girl across the room, “of course!” he quickly replied, catching your amused gaze with his twinkling one.

“i’m here to tell you about a surprise for heeseung,” he spoke, hand lowering from your shoulder to wrap around your waist as he led you away, “a surprise? i already have a gift for him though.” jake’s flushed face turned towards yours after he signalled the random girl to a different room, “i have a better idea.” he giggled

and whilst you were being walked out of the room, your eyes caught the sight of heeseung’s wet form out of the window, standing besides the pool as his other friends encouraged him to drink more while other figures jumped into the pool, the view of him being covered by nothing more than his dripping white button up shirt that carved all his chiseled muscles out along with a black tie hanging loosely around his neck made your head reel, thoughts rushed to your head when your gaze dropped lower to his flexing thighs beneath his black pants,

his clothing material all soaked due to his previous jump into the water, as a result of a stupid dare. you could hear his drunken laughter over the music as his face kept getting warmer, a soft blush adorning his sharp features due to the alcohol, his black locks sticking to his forehead contrasting his reddened skin,

“trust me, heeseung’s going to love it.” jake chuckled besides you, ultimately stealing your attention away as he opened the door to the guest room, the image of a pair of handcuffs along with a large rope was the least expected one in your mind, and once your confusing gaze landed on jaeyun’s smiling face, you began to doubt whatever his idea was,

should you trust jake?

you shouldn’t have trusted jake.

as trusting jake lead you to this current predicament, wearing a purple coloured lingerie beneath your feathery robe, "his favourtie colour" jaeyun's voice rang in your ears, the pair of handcuffs situated in your hand while the rope was in the other as you stared at heeseung’s shirtless passed out form with his tie around his neck, in your shared bed,

the party had ended hours ago, leaving you with a drunk, sleeping heeseung that currently seemed to be in a deep dream, lips partially opened as quiet snores left his mouth, evidently exhausted from the events of tonight,

your footsteps light as you stepped deeper into the bedroom, the wood quietly creaking beneath you while your gaze was fixated on heeseung’s form between the satin sheets, chest heaving upwards softly to allow short pants of his breath to escape,

countless thoughts ran through your head as your eyes kept scanning his body in the dim lighting of the room, should you proceed? what if he wakes up in the middle of everything? what if he doesn’t enjoy it?

throughout the duration of your dilemma the only thought that circled your mind continuously was the possibility of heeseung enjoying this night, jaeyun— his best friend, would never set you up for failure would he? never.

and with the prominent thought of this night becoming a memorable one for heeseung, you decided to continue.

opting on inhaling in a deep breath, you inched closer towards the bed till you moved atop his body, legs carefully caging around his waist whilst your shaky hands wrapped around his wrists, thankfully heeseung had his arms behind his head, ultimately making the situation easier for you to mend,

with caution, you wrapped the iron material around his wrists, the soft click of the cuffs increasing the rapid beating pace of your heart, nervousness etched its way throughout your body as heeseung was always the one to guide you in any sort of intimate situation, but now here you were, taking that freedom away from him.

and as your hands grabbed the rope to wrap his cuffed hands against the headboard, the man beneath you slightly moved, your breath hitched as you were only one pull away from completing his knot yet you froze once his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes remained closed as you awaited his awake, breathing out a sigh of relief after taking notice of his continued slumber,

with the final knot in place, heeseung was successfully cuffed and tied up, landing him in a situation where he had absolutely no chances of touching you as he always does and loves to, your eyes remained on the rope decorating his veiny hands, the contrast between his soft, delicate skin and the harsh rope—

“baby?” heeseung raspily called, tone laced with sleep and exhaustion as his bleary eyes searched for yours, he could feel your figure atop his yet his gaze searched for yours in the dim lighting, heeseung attempted to move, confusion cascading his face once he realised the restriction around his hands,

“what’s all this?” he questioned, head looking upwards to the unexpected sight of the rope covered handcuffs surrounding his wrists, you stared at his face wide eyed, studying his every expression as your breathes quickened once his frown deepened,

“surprise?” you responded, heart thumping between your ribs, innumerable thoughts swirled in your mind dizzyingly, heeseung's second tug at the ropes rendering him futile made you become hyper aware of the situation that you had— of the power you had over him.

"surprise? baby.. what are you planning?" he repeated, his eyes narrowing down on you, gaze swiftly lowering to widen at the sight of his favourite colour wrapping around your body alluringly, his nervous gulp went unnoticed by you, yet you were able to feel his length twitching beneath all articles of clothing between both of you easily.

breathing in a sharp breath— "angel.. how about you untie me so we can both enjoy the night? hm?" he spoke out, desperately beginning his negotiation, and there was no way you were giving up your power.

to have lee heeseung tied up, helplessly beneath you was once in a lifetime occurrence, you might have adored all the nights of him taking full and complete control over you, sometimes deciding to be generous enough to allow you to have a small taste of what its like to take control by guiding you to please him,

"how does it feel?" you questioned ignoring his words, eyes avoiding his as it followed the path of your hand slowly brushing down from his shoulder towards his collarbone, the shaky rise of his chest beneath your fingertips heightened your senses as you felt a throbbing sensation from beneath you,

"angel.. what?" he puzzledly asked, attempting his best to control his breathes as your fingertips inched closer towards his nipple, attempting his best to distract himself from the warmth of your cunt seeping through the lingerie directly to his hardening dick, and yet again, all his attempts deemed inaffective.

"how does it feel to be under me?" you paid no mind to the sudden surge in confidence gushing through you, attention captured by the way heeseung's eyes immediately darkened, his mind was reeling from your teasing as he wasn't used to this at all, he was more accustomed to eat up the sight of your writhing, twitching body beneath him, not the sight of your hungry gaze staring down at him as he was tied up, he could see the numerous emotions spiraling in your vision.

a burning sensation expanded throughout his chest, his need and desire for you fueled by the remaining alcohol in his system, the absolute need to have you beneath him as he pleased you was almost blinding, and the constant throbbing around his wrists from the tight ropes was pushing his patience further,

"answer me hee, how does it feel? hm?" you copied his soft tone in persuading you once he remained silent, your hands gently caressing his smooth skin, heeseung began to shift beneath you, his body hot and bothered by your contiunous teasing and warmth surrounding him yet your lack of movement was driving him crazy, his breaths became shorter, eyelids became heavier as he stared at you,

he so desperately wanted to be angry with you, to somehow manage to stir the control to him— yet your twinkling, curious gaze made him almost play along with your silly game,

"infuriating." he seethed out from between gritted teeth, eyes closing entirely once he felt you press your hips against him, resulting in him tugging against the ropes feebly again, you cooed mockingly at his frown, going further to rile him up by bringing your hand to caress his cheek soothingly, and almost instantly he leaned towards your touch, heeseung's breath hitched as he felt you beginning to slowly roll your hips against his,

opening his eyes to the sight of you looking beneath you both after you quickly discarded your robe, taking notice of his abs flexing, his length's outline steadily becoming more prominent, "just what is going on inside that pretty little head of yours, angel?" he smiled in frustration at you, your needy gaze locked with his own before you shrugged tauntingly,

"i just want to make you feel good." you replied with honesty, slowly lowering yourself towards him, heeseung hissed as he felt your plump lips ghosting kisses against his burning hot skin, his breathes quickened the wetter your kisses got while you went lower, his own lips getting caught hostage between his teeth when he felt you sucking his skin needily,

"baby.. come on," he urged on, the hem of his pants felt like scorching iron rubbing against his skin, his resolve slipping further at the feeling of your hands caressing his abdomen, your tongue swiftly circling his belly button before finally reaching his pants once you were satisfied with his surprised gasp, he breathed out a sigh of relief as you quickly tugged the constricting fabric along with his boxers down,

he was unbelievably hard, heeseung’s head was thrown back at the feeling of you blowing air on him once his large length was freed from his boxers, teeth grinding against one another once your cold fingertips wrapped around his burning skin, “don’t tease me more, angel.” he rasped out, a clear warning in his words as he was close to losing his mind at this point, yet you only smiled at him.

“just enjoy what i’ll give you.” his nails scratched angrily at the ropes from your words, he could feel his frustration leading his body as he thrusted uncontrollably into your hands, in need for any kind of friction, he could taste his blinding climax on the tip of his tongue and yet at the same time it felt so far away, his body felt like it was on fire as for the first time— he couldn’t get what he wanted instantly.

heeseung was new to this situation, one where nothing was under his control and he was left with nothing but his desperate breathes for your mercy, a small portion of him was more accepting of the drastic change, yet that small voice was nothing in comparison to the warning alarms ringing in his head,

and he knew he was completely fucked the moment you decided to lick up a long stripe starting from his base then trailing upwards to circle his raging tip torturously, a shaky breath involuntarily escaped once you repeated the action once again, countless empty threats died in his throat at the feeling of your warm mouth engulfing him, hot tongue pressing flat against the underside of his cock,

the salty taste of his continuous precum took over your senses, he was leaking a ridiculous amount just from simple teasing, using his precum as a lube substitute you began to jerk your hand up and down his length, the sudden change in pace resulting in his legs spasming around you, then a satisfied hum vibrating around his tip making him close his eyes shut,

his breathes got heavier the longer you moved, suckling on his tip sloppily with the incessant motion of your hand bringing him closer to his release, heeseung’s muffled groans got louder as he attempted his best to silence himself, not used to being the vocal one that much.

you looked up to the sight of his head thrown back, chest and face flushing a pretty pink along with a sheen, thin layer of sweat glistening along his rapidly rising chest, he looked breathtaking under the dim lighting, abs and legs flexing as he felt his abdomen tightening even more,

“d-don’t stop angel… i’m close,” he whimpered out, the sound of his voice breaking and stuttering out made your brain short circuit, a sound so sweet and addictive that you’ve been deprived of for months, you decided to tease him more,

the moment the tip of your tongue licked along his prominent vein beneath the head of his cock was enough to have his eyes roll back into his skull, plump lips agape to let out a quiet shocked gasp, you continued applying pressure, his thighs shaking next to you whilst his biceps flexed around his head, the rope slowly damaging his skin yet all his mind could focus on was your tongue and the unexpected quickened build up of his climax,

his head fell to the side, pleasure overtaking his body as the coil in his abdomen only tightened further, your hands lowered to fondle with his balls whilst your tongue remained teasing his vein, heeseung could swear he began to see stars the longer you continued, chest rising speedily to inhale deep breathes that felt nonexistent for him,

“right there baby.. so c-close i’m cu-“ yet he couldn’t finish his sentence, the intense build up of pure delight running in his veins abruptly ended, his eyes snapped open in shock when you just pulled away,

“baby what the fuck are you doing?” he spat out angrily, his head lifted swiftly, irritated gaze landing on the sight of your swollen lips and glistening eyes staring back at him, his breathes quickened in frustration as his cock twitched desperately at the view of you, “i can’t have you finish so quickly, where’s the fun in that?”

and with ease, your words affected him efficiently, his brown pools instantly darkening, pupils reducing in size the longer he felt his release slipping away from his body, “i’m gonna fuck that attitude out of you the moment i break these shits,” he tugged on the ropes again, heeseung has never felt so sexually frustrated before, his throbbing length was aching almost painfully when your hold slightly tightened around him,

“you talk too much,” was your only response, heeseung couldn’t bring himself to respond back in time before you lowered yourself yet again, he was suffering whiplash after whiplash from the ‘surprise’ and your frustrating teasing, his head fell back against the pillow once he felt your warm mouth engulfing his tip again,

“you’re going to r-regret this so much, pretty.” he choked out, face burning hot once he felt his impending release returning in an embarrassingly quick manner, you started with licking gently at his sensitive, leaking slit while your hands jerked off his cock below slowly, one hand moved to milk his length while the other stayed lower to cradle his balls,

the familiar stars returned to his vision when you only hummed around him at his words, his frustration mixed with the intense pleasure were feelings his body couldn’t keep up with, and he was under your control with his twitching body directly beneath your hands.

“please angel… don’t stop, i’m so close,” he begged you, voice scratchy and hoarse as he felt his lower half slightly go numb with the continuous build up, his creeping climax approaching in a way his mind couldn’t keep up with, one second he was holding back moans while the other he felt mere moments away from his orgasm,

his abdomen tightened, as he could yet again taste his release on the tip of his tongue, so close, so dizzyingly close he was, his mouth fell open at the feeling of his climax moments away from washing over him, hips jerking into your hold once you quickened only for all of it to come crashing down once you pulled back again,

“what the fuck-“ heeseung growled out, his body searing in anger and pain when all he could feel around his raging length was the cold air, not your wet mouth and warm hands, his mind was reeling with curses as he lifted his head up again, “did i ruin it?” you questioned as you smiled at him.

“did i ruin it, again?” and there you sat, dolled up in his favourite colour, lingerie barely covering any part of you while you looked at him, eyes twinkling with mischief as you smirked at him, and his painfully red length right infront of you, he didn’t respond,

“come on hee, is this not fun for you?” you spoke, hands reaching upwards to caress his twitching thighs, finger tips going as high as his hips, torturously close to his length before going down to his knee, heeseung didn’t respond, his eyes remained close whilst he breathed heavily from his nose,

you failed to notice the way his veins were bulging at this point all around his arms, specifically his hands, you failed to notice his fingers and wrists turning red around the cuffs as he tugged, busy pushing your teasing further with running your index finger from the base of his length to his tip,

all you could feel was authority and power, your first taste as you wished to prolong the view of a whimpering heeseung under you, “you could tell me-“ you completely failed to notice the small crack! around the headboard that the rope was fastened to,

you were too late, your heart dropped to your stomach at the sudden loud sound of wood breaking, followed by clank of metal, the large scattered piece of wood landed on the floor followed by the ripped ropes and the handcuffs, you sat frozen in your place in shock and attempting to process the fact that— heeseung just broke completely free?

he sat there, dark strands falling all over his eyes that were staring at you half lidded, you could see the pent up frustration and anger in them, most importantly the relief now that he was free, the feral glint intensified when he gently moved his hands around his wrists, his hand caressing the slightly damaged skin all while maintaining eye contact with your shocked face,

you really shouldn’t have trusted jake.

because jake never brought up the high possibility of the result of his plan to be a feral heeseung staring at you in a predatory gaze with a broken headboard behind him, “you had your fun didn’t you, baby?” he smiled at you, chest remaining to pant heavy breaths,

you only nodded your head, still stuck on attempts to process the fact that jake’s plan entirely backfired, what now?

“now it’s my time to have fun, it’s only fair that way isn’t it?” he finished your thought for you, he cooed at the sight of your confused gaze, yet you werent completely sure. judging by his sudden attitude change, there was no way he was going to be this nice with you, not after everything you did?

“come here” he pushed himself upwards on the bed before he patted on his lap, his length still standing proud and hard, yet the expectant look in heeseung’s eyes made you obey him completely,

you hastily crawled towards him, his needy hands instantly caressing and fondling every inch of skin he could reach, “look at you.. all dolled up for me, you look stunning, angel.” he trailed kisses down your shoulder once your back pressed against his chest, his length throbbed by your lower back whilst his hands gripped around the frail fabric around your body, his hands were rough,

god if you only knew what you were in for.

“just for you, hee.” you whispered to him, turning your head to face his lovesick eyes, the sudden changes in his gaze made your head spin as the heeseung that was glowering at you a mere minute ago, was currently drowning in your eyes with nothing but pure adoration and need for you,

“yeah? all for me, right?” he breathed out against your lips, large hands now finding comfort on your waist, stroking your soft skin gently as he nuzzled his nose in the crook of your neck, you felt his lips curving upwards into a smile when you nodded in confirmation to his words,

“open your legs for me, darling.” his hands lowered to grip your thighs apart, fingertips brushing soothingly against your supple skin before they inched towards your center, your soiled panties coming in contact with his fingertips made him chuckle, “already this excited, baby?” he questioned, his smile widening when you turned your blushing face away from him,

his fingers quickly pushed the soaked fabric away, immediately moving towards your sopping hole, your wetness gushed around his finger once he teased the tip of his finger in, his other arm came up to wrap around your waist once your breathes began to get heavier, face flushed whilst he carefully pressed you more against him as he leaned back against the remaining part of the headboard,

“look at you taking me in so well, angel.” he praised, eyes locked and fascinated on the way his fingers disappeared between your swollen folds only to come out glistening, you looked below you, the sight of your dripping cunt covered by his long fingers never failed to make your heart skip a beat, only increasing the warmth spreading around your body once he dipped back in,

his rough skin caressed along your gummy walls, easily reaching your weakest and sweetest spots to please you in the best ways possible, his priorities seemed to remain unchanged even in his state of pure rage, he still had to make you cum at least once on his fingers or tongue before proceeding with anything else,

it was when he swiftly added his other ring finger to please you along with his middle one, then proceeding to use his other hand to rub slow circles on your puffy clit, steadily dragging your climax closer, you began to see stars,

colourful indecipherable shapes clouded your vision as heeseung fingered your first release out of you with ease, your glazed eyes rolled to the back of your head when he continued, aiding you in riding out your climax with his movements between your twitching legs whilst he whispered unintelligible praises to your ear, ending each word with a gentle kiss that echoed in your mind,

he was so gentle with you as you moaned quietly for him, your noises heard as melodies for him and only him, he studied your every expression while you were coming undone under his touch, though he’s seen you in this state countless times your short gasps, furrowed eyes and closed eyelids that were complimented by your flushed cheeks never failed to leave him mesmerised,

your hand quickly reached out to slow his movements, heeseung was close to beginning overstimulating you, his fingers resumed to thrust into your gushing cunt, knocking your breath out, yet before you could ask him to stop he beat you to it, “you took all this away from me tonight,” he whispered, tone undergoing an astonishing change as he spoke in anger,

the pleasure and sensitivity was beginning to numb your mind once you felt another impending orgasm building up, your abdomen twisting in tension at your imminent release, “hee please-“ you whimpered out before he cut you off, “take all of it, didn’t you want to make me feel good?” he asked, breathes getting harsher against your ear while your heart raced, your legs ached once heeseung moved his own beneath them to keep yours open,

“make me feel good, angel. cum for me,” he ordered, his hands increasing in pace as he quickly added a third finger making your eyes almost cross, your wetness by now was gliding down his hand and inevitably ruining the sheets beneath you, the force of his fingers pushed back against your convulsing hips, whilst he busied himself with trailing bites down your neck,

“i’m c-close, hee” you warned, voice cracking with each syllable as your oncoming climax felt more intense, the coil in your stomach twisting and turning once your release was moments away from overtaking your body, “come on, angel. i’ve got you,” his words were the last ones you registered before your ears began to ring as you squirted all over his hands, body trembling in his hold while heeseung continued to fuck you with his fingers, riding out the entirety of your orgasm whilst he basked in your moans and whimpers of his name,

“did so well for me angel,” he breathed out, his fingers pulled out from your dripping folds, reaching upwards to teasingly press on your puffy clit, eliciting a needy whimper from you, “doesn’t feel that nice when you tease, does it?” he asked with his voice heavy, eyes glued on your face twisted in pleasure and slight overstimulation, “no, i’m sorry, it doesn’t feel nice.” you quickly responded, wishing in your head for this to be over as the exhaustion from your mind blowing releases was slowly shutting down your brain,

yet heeseung noticed the prolonged period of your closed eyes, there was no way you thought that the night could possibly end any time soon, right? absolutely not. he hasn’t even started yet,

with a particularly unexpected slap to your dripping cunt your eyes shot wide open, a shocked gasp escaped your throat before all the noises in the room were replaced with your mewls that rung out once he began to toy with your overstimulated clit, “wanna go to sleep, baby?” he questioned while his fingers teased around your entrance again,

your body shivered beneath his arms as he pushed the tip of his two fingers in, “can we sleep, please?” you cried out, a thin veil beginning to form around your eyes once all the nerves in your body sparked, pleasure shooting all throughout your veins when heeseung pushed his fingers knuckles deep again, “our night hasn’t even started yet, pretty.” he replied with a chuckle,

your moans broke apart further the more his fingers began to fuck out orgasm after orgasm from you whilst he savoured every pretty noise you made, each sound making him fall deeper into the haze of the lust that was intoxicating the room, the longer you squirmed in his hold, the longer you made the prettiest sounds, the worse he ached beneath you, he relished in all the unintentional movements to his throbbing length behind you, swallowing back every moan of his in every few seconds that you moved just right,

“you can give me another one, can’t you?” his hot breath landed against your ear, by now both of your bodies felt sticky and hot, drenched in sweat atop the steadily soaking sheets, your breath mixed with his whilst his fingers never left your drenched pussy, heeseung’s mind was reeling with pain and pleasure at this point, his body had probably gotten more sensitive than yours yet he knew it was all going to be worth it in the end,

you shook your head in denial, however your body was contradicting all your thoughts once you gushed around his fingers again, heeseung smiled in satisfaction at your spent state, your sweaty chest rising up rapidly in despair for air, he had to fight the urge to bury his face between your legs once his fingers pulled away to reveal multiple, clear spider web like strings that connected his fingers to your cunt, their rightful place.

heeseung was absolutely hypnotised by your weak body above him, twitching legs behind his for when he attempted his best to keep yours open, captivated by the way your hands gripped around his for support as you tried to regulate your breathing,

he gently moved your body towards the bed, laying you down carefully whilst you opened your unfocused, watery eyes to gaze at his love and concern filled ones, “you alright, baby?” he whispered against your lips, lowering body as close to possible to yours, curious eyes searching your tired ones when you wrapped your arms around his shoulders to lower him for a gentle peck, you nodded your head in reassurance to him, oh how you wish you didn’t.

as the moment that you did, his eyes flashed with the same anger they had minutes ago, “you still have energy, i know you do.” he replied, assuring himself more than you before he flipped your body over in the blink of an eye, the last expression on his face that you saw was of him smiling at you,

his hands brushed against your sides from the bottom to the top, like a predator checking their prey. his hold tightening the more he inched lower before he reached your hips, “so perfect for me,” he whispered his praise more to himself while his eyes took in every inch of your exhausted body,

you whimpered in his hold in surprise when he spread your cheeks apart, revealing your dripping gaping hole to his eyes, the sight alone made an incredibly painful throb to resonate from between his aching legs,

he wasted no time in propping himself on his knees, hips angled towards yours with his raging red tip positioned at your entrance, without a warning he pushed in,

the satisfying burn and tightening made you moan in unison, heeseung by now was completely acting on his own desires, body overtaken in pleasure and absolute need to have himself buried to the deepest point in you, your figure pressed against his while he fucked you till the sunrise, till both of your bodies were so sensitive and unable to handle a single touch,

his thrusts were merciless as he pounded into you, pushing your body further against the bed before pulling you back by your hips, you moaned into the pillow as heeseung took complete control of the situation, ridiculous how you thought tonight he would be under your control.

and as the thought was formed in your head, he pushed harsher against you before he rasped out, “you tried to…” cut off by his harsh breaths, his hips suddenly slowed down to become more powerful, “tried. to. control. me?” he asked through gritted teeth in an incredulous manner, accentuating and bringing more strength to every word by following it with a harsh thrust, his tip pressing against your cervix with each word making your eyes roll back whilst your jaw went slack,

his cock brushed against all your sweet spots, length perfectly stretching your walls with the tiniest tinge of burn due his large size, you could feel each and every vein bulging along your guts as he pounded into you,

“tried to guide me?” he followed with a laugh, and there he was. the heeseung you were expecting to appear since the moment you tied him up, the wild and vicious side of him that you’ve rarely gotten to see as he much preferred showing you his gentler side, however those were in situations that were under his control.

humiliation took over you at his words in the best form possible, his words of mock only resulted in you tightening around him making him groan, he leaned forward, hovering his chest above your back as he completely caged you beneath him, before he brought himself closer to your ear, “you looked so cute trying to tell me what to do, baby” he whispered, hips pressing flush against your ass with every syllable,

your throat had gone hoarse by now, as all you could hear were your mewls followed by heeseung’s words, the tears that aligned by your waterline had slid down a long time ago, staining your face in the prettiest way possible, heeseung’s favourite way.

“looked so cute acting all tough like you don’t need me to help you with anything, hm?” he continued, chuckling into your ear as more tears aligned by your jaw before dropping onto the pillow,

“looked so cute trying to suck me off like you don’t need me to push your head down my dick everytime,” his arm came upwards, you had buried your head in your pillow soaked tears as his cock continued moulding you into his size while he spoke to you, unbeknownst to you he expertly pulled off the tie hanging loosely by his neck,

and in a split second, heeseung had wrapped the narrow fabric around your neck, you gasped as heeseung lifted your head upwards, the tie applied perfect pressure to your jugular veins instantly resulting in you becoming lightheaded whilst heeseung’s animalistic eyes bored into yours,

“what made you think that’ll work?” he smiled at you, revealing his pearly whites as if he wasn’t pounding into you, whines escaped your mouth before you could process any of them, heeseung stared at your every expression with admiration and conceitedness,

“have i not made you take control enough when you wanted to?” he pressed on, smile widening as he had an unrecognisable expression on his face, you couldn’t tell if it was his reddened dark eyes, or his flushed face with his black locks that stuck on his forehead contrasting the light blush, but you could barely recognise him, the unfamiliar expression on his face sent pulses of warmth throughout your body,

“you could have asked me if you were that interested, instead of putting those pathetic shits around my wrists.” he finished off, tilting his head to the side once you closed your eyes, his thursts never faltered as he brought you closer to your release, abdomen twisting and churning in preparation for your oncoming climax, you felt your ears ringing again when heeseung slightly pulled on the fabric around your neck,

“eyes on me, pretty.” he groaned, his own voice laced with exhaustion and need, the desire to release his climax from hours ago now blinding his senses, you opened your unfocused eyes to land upon his, and while his hips were grinding against yours, every inch of his cock caressing every inch of your walls that swallowed him up entirely, he spoke out,

“open your mouth, baby.” his grip shakily tightening further around the tie, you breaths getting heavier and more difficult as you opened your mouth, heeseung spat onto your lolled out tongue, eyeing the way the string of saliva landed on your tongue before he pulled the tie more, “swallow.” and you did whilst he studied your every move,

once you showed him your clean tongue to satisfy him, he began to lower himself towards your neck, your head ultimately fell against the pillow again as heeseung began to trail soft bites along your shoulder while his hips moved against yours, both of you ridiculously sensitive from the prolonged edging and overstimulation, holding back desperately to lengthen the period of him inside of you, you moaned his name in need as his tip kept kissing your cervix,

“taking me in so well, milking my cock so good angel.” he praised, the pleasure finally overtaking his body as your walls only sucked him in further while more slick poured around your legs and onto the sheets, your moans mixed with his needy ones, sweaty bodies rubbing against one another messily as both of you chased your highs in desperation,

“s-seung, i’m so close.” you stuttered out, eyes closing when heeseung softly tugged at the tie, his own eyes shut once he felt his climax mere seconds away from washing down on him, the dizzying feeling of euphoria already running through his veins and intensifying with the build up, he could see stars clouding his vision similar to the ones clouding yours, “i’ve got you baby, cum for me.” he sweetly whispered,

and he followed his words with one, two and three delicious thrusts right against your cervix that had you coming undone for him, release washing over you mind numbingly, body weak as your legs shook beneath heeseung’s while his hand caressed your hips in attempts of comforting you, lips never stopping from kissing sweet words into your ear as you shook beneath him, the torturous tightening of your walls easily pushed heeseung over the edge as a few moments later you could feel his warm ropes of cum filling you up completely,

you struggled to return to your senses, body overtaken with exhaustion while heeseung kept peppering open mouthed kisses along your shoulder, his arms moved to wrap around your waist, gently fondling with your breasts as he was still cumming, he filled you up so well,

quiet and loving praises fell against your ear once heeseung was finished, still buried deep inside of you with his tie around your neck, your breathes were nearly shaky as he pressed his body closer to yours, “did amazing for me, baby.”

“how about i run both of us a bath then we can go to sleep?” he once again kissed your shoulder, smiling against your skin once you nodded,

you nodded in hopes of returning to clean satin sheets to drift off to slumber in the arms of your only love.

the smell of his favourite lavender bath bomb overwhelmed your nose when heeseung carried you into the warm bathroom after discarding you of your lingerie, gently lowering you into the warmth of the water before quickly taking his place behind you, your back laid against his chest, his hands ran up and down your arms in comfort, heeseung’s chest warmed as he noticed goosebumps aligning all over your skin at his touch the longer you leaned into him, his fingertips ghosted over your skin in a pleasant way.

your head was placed on his shoulder as your face was turned towards his neck, eyes closed in exhaustion from the restless night, heeseung cooed when he noticed all the narrow tear streaks on your cheeks, his hands massaged all your aching muscles whilst his lips kissed away your dried tears,

“you okay, pretty?” he softly called out, voice quiet and gentle next to your ear, his soft side returning quickly, your gentle and caring heeseung gazed at you with concern and love shimmering in his eyes that filled with relief once you nodded, “i’m sorry if i was a bit rough, angel.” he continued, lips now moving along your neck with each word while his hands lowered to your thighs,

“it’s okay, i liked it.” you replied honestly once your eyes opened to look into his own expectant ones, voice quiet and hoarse as your throat felt sore, “yeah i bet you did, you looked pretty pleased you know.” he smiled before attempting to mimick your expressions that resulted in a pinch to his hand from you,

“though i’m… not that satisfied yet.” heeseung voiced out quietly, his smile widened when your eyebrows furrowed in confusion, not that satisfied?

“what do you mean?” you questioned in bewilderment, you could still feel how sore all your muscles were there was no way he still had the energy for another round,

“i mean… it is my birthday isn’t it?” he began, you nodded along his words which was his cue to continue, his eyes trailed all along your shoulders and neck that were littered with his bites, “and you do want to make me happy on my birthday, right?” of course he was going to use his birthday card to get what he wants, you should have seen it coming from heeseung. “and i can get whatever i want on my birthday.”

“yes you can— heeseung, what do you want?” you asked, by now you had half your body turned to face him as you were genuinely curious to what he wanted, especially now when heeseung had a soft blush dusting his gorgeous features,

“i want you to ride my thigh, pretty.” he spoke out almost shyly, your heeseung who always surrounded you with his teasing and flirty nature, now was looking at you with twinkling eyes and blushed cheeks as he asked you to ride his thigh.

he cleared his throat before his natural, intimidating expression returned, “you don’t have to, if you’re too tired.” he added, but how could you deny such a request when he was staring at you with his plump lips swollen and red, his lids heavy on his eyes that were begging you to comply to his request, his hands that were ghosting around your waist lovingly only pushed you further,

and instead of answering him, you quickly moved your sore body to face him making the water ripple around you, your leg lifting over his to position yourself where he requested you too, heeseung instantly began to guide you, flexing his muscles beneath you once your overstimulated, puffy clit came in contact with his skin, he relished in your quiet whimper as he rocked your hips against his thigh,

your hands gripped onto his shoulders for support, nails digging sharply into his skin as you felt pleasure shooting from every nerve in your body, heeseung settled his head into the crook of your neck, lips returning to their rightful place of kissing your skin and every inch of it they could reach while his hands never stopped from aiding you in riding him,

your soft moans landed directly on his ear easily sending him into a trance as he felt overstimulated by feeling you everywhere around him, all over him and this was undoubtedly his favourite place to be, you could feel your release steadily building up as heeseung kept altering between relaxing and tensing his thigh, each movement sending jolts of pleasure throughout your whole body,

you could by now feel his length standing proud and poking at your other leg that was placed between his, his own breaths getting heavier against your neck while his nails dug into your hips, “i’m so close, hee.” you mewled out next to his ear, eyes closing once you felt the coil in your abdomen mere seconds from snapping, the water splashed around the tub, some droplets landing against the floor while you continued,

he nodded along to your words, “i know, baby.” he whispered against your skin, your movements quickened the more you felt your release approaching, your climax right around the corner while heeseung’s lips never left your skin, praises falling into your ear as his body practically moulded with yours, he held you closer once he felt your legs twitching besides his, “i’m cumming, hee— oh my god!” you cried out as your release washed over you headily, your wetness spurting all over his skin once intense waves of pleasure filled your body,

whispers of i got yous were the only thing keeping you grounded when you saw dots littering all across your vision, body spasming in pleasure as heeseung helped you in riding out your orgasm with his praises remaining continuous, if you thought you weren’t spent then, you totally are now.

“did so fucking well for me, baby.” he spoke quietly to you as you nuzzled further into his chest, “but you didn’t finish—“ you started off, hand lowering to his abdomen to help him before he gripped your hand, bringing it upwards to place a soft kiss to your knuckles, he held your it close to his lips as he cut you off, “no baby, you already did so well for me, this is something i’ll take care, okay?” he replied tenderly, pressing a soft kiss into your cheek after you nodded to his words,

“now let’s get you out and go to sleep, how does that sound, love?” he asked, smiling adoringly at your tired state, “amazing.”

soft groans reached your ears as the sunlight steadily peeked through into your shared bedroom, the arms that wrapped around you as you fell asleep a few hours prior suddenly had a tighter grip on you, heeseung’s hands moved on your body, caressing and fondling every inch of skin beneath his fingers while his hot breaths landed on your shoulder as your back was turned towards him,

“hee?” you called, voice laced with sleep while your eyes remained closed, heeseung’s movements paused for a second, you could tell he was trying to regulate his breathing behind you before his hands resumed, “i need you angel, i want to please you so bad.” his needy and whiny voice shocked you, knocking away any remaining thought of sleeping out of your head the moment you heard him, inevitably causing a familiar wetness to pool in your panties, did he see a dream or something?

“seung what-“ “please, just let me eat you out.” he cut you off, and if you weren’t shocked before you for sure were now, he quickly turned you around to face him to see just how desperate he was at this sudden moment, “i couldn’t stop thinking about it yesterday, you were too tired but now that you slept i have to do this,” he rambled out, his body felt ten times hotter than yours as his arms pulled you towards his chest, “sit on my face.”

and you really didn’t have to be told twice,

so here you were now, gripping on the headboard— well what remained of the headboard with your legs placed around heeseung’s shoulders, back arching as he fucked his tongue in and out of your sopping hole,

your body shook with intense pleasure, still weak and aching from a few hours earlier yet still so responsive to every move made by heeseung, the same arms that broke free of the iron cuffs and ripped the ropes from yesterday now had a vice grip on your thighs and hips to keep you in your place, guaranteeing that you have no choice but to take what he’s been dying to give you since the moment your tongue ran along his dick yesterday,

quiet moans left your mouth when heeseung began to switch between fucking his tongue into your cunt only to suck on your sensitive bundle of nerves a second later, and he made sure that when he thrusted his tongue in your gummy walls, his nose pressed against your clit perfectly, his hips were yearningly thrusting into the blanket in hopes of slightest bit of friction, yet his main focus still remained on pleasuring you.

your groans and whimpers increased in volume as you felt the tightening of the coil in your abdomen increase, the pleasure already running through your veins intensely from the mere build up, heeseung mirrored every noise you were making on your cunt, each hum sending a dizzying vibration that pushed you further to the edge,

“hee, baby— i’m so close.” you moaned out, heeseung could already tell you were moments away from your climax from the way you were gushing on his mouth and he was glad to lick every drop, the pace of his movements surged in speed at your words, “cum for me, angel.” he hummed against your clit and that was enough to have the familiar stars dazzle your sight,

your legs shook uncontrollably around his head whilst heeseung licked and sucked everywhere, he continued eating you out sloppily as your wetness decorated all over the lower half of his face and he couldn’t be happier.

heeseung was humming along to your moans of pleasure, feeling just as high on ecstasy as you were, jaw slack while he licked up all what you had to offer before opting to just place soft kisses,

your body was holding on for dear life— the only form of stability was the headboard that you could no longer depend on as your grip got weaker the longer heeseung kept kissing you in a mind numbing manner, your body melted in his hold while your brain felt like it turned into mush, the grip he had on your legs tightening when your convulsing legs attempted to move away once he slowly began to overstimulate you,

your whimpers turned shaky when he pressed one long kiss before he finally allowed you to pull away, his hands instantly moved to hold your body close to his, proudly displaying his smiling face that was glistening with your wetness to you,

“heeseung you’re rock hard,” you stated as your eyes unintentionally lowered to the obvious tent in the middle of the blanket, “baby, the way you moaned my name was so hot. i would literally cum if you touch me once right now.” he replied, nuzzling his face closer to you while being mindful of keeping you clean,

“then let me help you,” and before heeseung could protest again, your hand briskly went under the blanket, dipping below his boxers to finally give attention to his throbbing cock,

in an instant, a low moan was drawn out from his chest whilst his eyes immediately closed in pleasure, your fingers ran along his length, his leaking precum aiding in the smooth movement of your hand, jerking your wrist to move up and down before pausing to press your thumb atop his gushing slit,

heeseung hissed in sensitivity, the hold he had on your waist tightening when he inched his mouth closer to your ear, “don’t tease me if you don’t want me to repeat yesterday.” he warned quietly, and you had no intentions to do so whatsoever,

“i really just want to please you,” you replied honestly making heeseung smile, “you’re already doing so well.” he moaned out once your hand picked up the pace, his red tip was covered with his precum as his cock throbbed in your hand, you quickly went closer towards his legs once his thighs began to twitch, leaving heeseung to throw his head back on the pillow while his hands gripped the sheets beneath him,

“so close.. i’m so close,” he babbled out, eyes shut in pleasure with his hips jerking forward uncontrollably, you studied his every twitch and shake as you continued the movement of your hands, studied the flexing of his abs as the coil in his stomach tightened unbearably, studied the way his jaw went slack while moans reverberated from his chest, studied the way his veins were popping from the tight grip he had on the sheets,

you could tell he was moments away from his climax, and with the sudden thought of heightening his pleasure you quickly acted upon it— the motion of your hands continued with heeseung’s eyes shut and head thrown back and the moment you lowered your head so lick at his tip had him shaking beneath you,

you swiftly began to suck on his pulsing tip, tongue licking along his slit as you hollowed your cheeks before pushing your head lower to his length, the sudden change made heeseung’s head bolt upwards, wide eyes that lined with a thin veil of tears gazed at you, his breaths getting shakier the longer you kept moving your head up and down his cock,

“fuck— right there baby, just like that. just like that, angel,” he rambled on, head falling back against the pillow as he could feel sweat rolling down his temples, the pleasure in his body flared when you once again began to tease that one pronounced vein that had his eyes rolling back to his skull

“baby— oh my god” he moaned loudly, not having the chance to warn you before his climax flushed over his body, hot spurts of his cum ran down your throat while you continued to suckle on his tip, pressing your tongue against the underside of his cock as your hand continued to jerk off his length, heeseung felt light headed, absolutely delirious when he started to feel himself being pushed into overstimulation, his deep moans echoed through the walls of your room as you kept pleasuring him,

he could feel the continuous sensation of ecstasy and euphoria running through his veins and numbing his head, sparks of pleasure shooting along his spine once you forced yourself lower and deepthroated him, and god he was cumming so fucking much.

you were struggling to keep up with him, tears aligning in your waterline while some escaped from the intense burning in your throat as you struggled to accommodate his length so deep in you, yet you remained with your nose pressed against his pelvis while his body shook, you finally gave him what he’s been waiting for since yesterday and god heeseung has never felt this good.

once his body calmed down to slight twitches you pulled away, the sight of your swollen and glistening lips covered in his cum made heeseung’s sensitive cock twitch, his eyes remained glued on you as you lolled your clean tongue out to show him, and he had to fight the urge to pound into you like yesterday.

he smiled at you in exhaustion before easily pulling your body upwards, he kissed along your face and jaw, relishing in all of your giggles as he held you close to him, tight in between his arms, right where you belong.

“satisfied now?” you questioned out as you nuzzled closer into his chest, “so satisfied i could marry you tomorrow.”

“he WHAT?!” jake’s voice pierced throughout your room, it was currently the evening, the day after heeseung’s birthday where his closest friends came to visit your apartment, and while heeseung was busy gaming with sunghoon in the living room, jaeyun pulled you into your bedroom to question you about how his “genius” plan went.

“he broke the handcuffs, jake.” you sighed in exasperation, you’ve already explained the story three times yet jake’s mind refused to process the fact that his plan completely backfired,

his widened eyes stared at yours in shock and bewilderment, having difficulty understanding just how heeseung broke free— “what about the ropes? how did they not-“ “he ripped them in a second, jake.” you cut him off before he started another endless rant,

now jake knew that heeseung and sunghoon (along with jongseong sometimes) went to the gym, building up a consistent routine that took place mainly in the mornings, and yes he was aware that the routine was established a few months ago— yet he was sure that heeseung would stand no chance against iron handcuffs, and to ease his doubts he added the ropes,

“you underestimated him terribly, jae.” you spoke out, exhaustion evident in your tone as you hadn’t been able to have the best sleep of the night, your mind attempting to process all the events that took place yesterday yet the one that disturbed you the most was how unaffected heeseung was now, as he was helping jongseong in the kitchen a few minutes ago before agreeing on playing a few rounds with sunghoon,

“well.. i’ll have to invest in better handcuffs next time, how are you by the way?” he replied, curious eyes studying your movements, “hm?” you questioned in confusion, uncertain of what he was implying, “are you like… sore or anything?” he replied, his gaze now avoidant as he used his hands to aid him in expressing himself, oh.

“what do you think?” you looked at him, eyes very clearly indicating that you’ve reached your limit, “well.. he does have a pretty bad temper, i hope it wasn’t anything too harsh.” he smiled innocently, nodding his head along to his own words to convince himself

“who has bad temper?” oh gosh, speak of the devil.

heeseung stood at the doorway of the room, his gaze switching between your figure on the bed and jake’s standing one, “clearly you.. what even made you break the headboard last night?” jake asked cluelessly attempting his best to switch the topic of conversation,

“why are you interested about last night?” heeseung questioned, eyebrows knitting together before his gaze found the bag next to jake’s leg, it was jake’s bag, and it had the broken handcuffs and ropes from yesterday, and suddenly a light bulb went off atop heeseung’s head as his eyes widened

“so it was you?!” heeseung practically yelled at jake, an accusatory finger pointing at him when all the dots connected, “me?!” jaeyun pushed his innocent act further, mirroring heeseung’s shocked expression and pointing in confusion at himself while you just stared in anticipation at the two grown men,

“it was your idea, sim jaeyun!” and with that final yell from heeseung, jake ran out of the room.

A, NOTE. pt2: the first part of the whole tying up & handcuff breaking was inspired by a jungkook fic i read on wattpad years ago so credit goes to that author for the inspiration ! i unfortunately can’t remember the fic nor the title :(

i’m so sorry for the delay that happened with this fic, it’s crazy to think about how this was supposed to be posted 2.5 months ago yet i just finished it, i’ve come to the realisation that i prefer longer fics that have more scenes in them which obviously require a lot of writing so i’ve decided to not set release dates for my future fics,

the foreshadow soulmate!jake is one that i’m still working on ! and it’s 100% going to be longer than this one considering that now this “surprise” fic is my longest one :0 a bit shocking for me honestly, anywho next up i’ll try my hardest to put out my jake fic but if not & i put out smth different just know that im still working on it bcs i really like soulmate tropes :] anywho happy new year ! wishing everyone happiness & health for this year <3

#i love you too baby 😞#so happy & honoured that u took ur time to read my fic and u liked it and everything and ur feedback is just so 😞♡♡♡♡♡#you’re so sweet forever cherishing these words thank u sm #😞😞😞#♡♡♡♡ :(#reblogs <3

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asahicore · 1 year ago

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.

permanent taglist: @zreamy @sunghoonmybeloved @lalalalawon @sd211 @w3bqrl @raikea10 @wntrnghts @moonlighthoon @4imhry @rikisly @loves0ft @iamliacamila @theboingsuckerasseater9000 @chaechae-23 @baekhyuns-lipchain @hyuckslvr @vernonburger @amorbonbon @fluerz (ask to be removed/added!)

#this reblog made me so unbelievably happy omg thank u SO much #the excitement i get when i see a reblog with that many tags is truly unmatched😭#im always so scared of like .. background dumping if that makes sense.. esp in a childhood friends to lovers fic #so im relieved u thought the exposition bit was done well!!!#and also that u found it funny cz im always giggling to myself when i write but idk which bits will fall flat and which bits will actually #make other people laugh😭#also YEAH sunghoon being slightly unhinged irl is so real #wnvr i write something w him and jay as the side characters sunghoon HAS to be crazy and jay has to be the reasonable actually useful frien #one of my pet peeves in any media is when the progression in relationships btwn ppl doesnt feel natural so im glad it didnt come across tha #way here !!!!#thank u so so much for reading and for ur reblog it means sm <333 #and gosh im sorry about the asahi thing 😭 i hope ur final went well!#if its any consolation my url refers to a different asahi <3 #work: bad news first #stolenslumber

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