#thats his childhood friend in the back who went missing

[tobydoeswrite]

Introducing... The original version of my OC Ocha!!

yes he was a creepypasta oc. yes his only story was being tormented by eyeless jack. yes i will be reworking this au. Yes it will be cringe and heal some inner part of me that never shared ocxcanon content cause i was too scared.

[gamblersdoll]

cw: semi cheating trope, cucking, doggy style, masturbation (m) spitting, katsuki being really mean in this one, slapping.

this felt dirty and wrong, izuku thought. the way he felt about you was greater than his past crush for ochaco, yet here he was. the obsessive and adoration he had for you was no match, but here he was.

here he was pressing down on katsuki’s head as he went down on izuku, him slightly gagging on his length and pushing away. “fuck– you getting too rough, deku.” he spits, glaring up at him. “calm down this time.”

he nods, eyes filled with lust and his judgement clouded. he didnt notice the two missed calls you had given him, nor the four missed messages. his fingers trail through katsuki’s head, yet his balls lurched when katsuki licked his lips.

“zuku, what are you—“ you say, opening the door and looking at your phone. until your eyes meet the two, katsuki on his knees while izuku sits on his bed, manspreading.

both of their hearts thump, a cold nervous sweat on both of their faces and hands as you just stand there, bewildered. your heart clenches, feeling sadness, but more of disappointment and rage filling your veins.

“baby—“ izuku starts, but gets cut off by you.

“nah nah, fuck you!” you shout, turning around and slamming the door. it had to be about nine in the evening, so everyone was already downstairs chilling out.

it took you about a month or two to settle your nerves, feeling rage and betrayal from him just getting his dick sucked from his childhood friend.

a friend who also just so happen to be friends with you, surprisingly. thats what threw you off, katsuki just so suddenly became friends with you and wasn’t completely an ass to you. you at first thought nothing of it, but now it made sense.

your mind stops thinking, your ears and eyes being drawn to the message ping on your phone. izuku had texted, asking to meet in his dorm to talk.

should you even fucking bother? maybe. let hear what this bitch had to say.

“so— first i want to say im so sorry.” he starts, hands on his bouncing knees and eyes darting around. he picked at his nails, katsuki having to pull his hands apart. that only added salt to the wound, because what the fuck was he doing here?

“and why does bakugou have to be here for this?” you ask, growing impatient and tapping your foot. he looks up to your eyes, the glare you gave was mean, hurting his heart.

the “because he has involvement with this— its not what you think!” he quickly says, hands up in defense and looking to you and katsuki.

“so..”

“uhum–“ he tried, swallowing thickly and takes a deep breath. “so.. you remember when i told you i was bi, right? before we got together?” he starts, knee bouncing faster harder. you nod, eyes raised in a “yeah, no shit.” look. “well.. kacchan and i had been talking since we made up, and we started to like you as well.”

youre feet stop tapping, heart stopping and you start a glare. “hold on! and we started to like you and it kinda separated us for a couple weeks, thats when me and you were first dating and we had that big fight that you had to separate.” he rambles, katsuki flicking him to stay on topic.

“and uh, me and kacchan made up again after you both became friends and we wanted to ask you in person if you could give a threeway a shot!”

you just stare, looking at the both of them and watching katsuki just lean back. that made your blood boil, the way hes just acting all casual.

katsuki notices, manspreading himself and staring right back at you. “if you got something to say, say it.” he states, testing to see who and what you were.

you say nothing, biting your tongue and looking back to the green haired boy. “that’s absolutely bullshit and you know it.” you say, finding that shit unbelievable and quite frankly, offensive. “you mean to tell me that you both were fucking on the down low and then i just peaked both of your interest, you got together with me and all of a sudden you want a three way?”

“aint that what he just said?” katsuki finally speaks and chimes in, eyebrow raised.

you feel like a snapping point, like your ready to reach across and slap the fuck out of him for even speaking to you at all. “you can shut the fuck up, baku—“

at that point, he had heard enough between you and izuku. he reaches out, grabbing you by your throat and giving a slight choke. your thighs quiver, it being an instant trigger for you to become a mess.

“kacc—!”

“nah, you took too long with your fuckin’ delivery.” he says, hand groping a breast and leading you to the bed. “youre the one who told me this the shit she likes, so i’m fuckin’ her.”

and if those words werent a trigger for you, it was for izuku. his cock grows hard, his shorts becoming a restriction to his length and he groans.

katsuki’s lips crash onto yours, him effortlessly taking a hand and freeing himself from his boxers and tapping it against your skin. “you want it, dont you?” he teases, ripping the shorts off of your skin and rubbing circles into your clit.

his hand pries open your mouth, his eyes lowering. “open.” he says, curling his lips and spitting into your wet cavern. he looks over to izuku, izuku already freeing himself and spitting on his own length. “you see that there?” he points, whispering in your ear.

“thats what he does when he thinks about me fucking you like some common whore.” he reveals, chuckling in your ear. “he been waitin’ for this, to see me fuck you relentless and he watch.” he says again, slapping your clit and pinching it.

“zuku—“ your voice tries, sounding hoarse and katsuki focusing on your face now. he lands a somewhat hard slap to it, forcing you to look only at him.

“dont look at him, why are you looking at him? whos about to fuck you?” katsuki presses, fingers digging their way into your walls. “huh? whos about to fuck this pussy hm?”

you stutter, the intrusion being too much and you claw at his skin. “katsuki! shit—“

“yeah, thats right. im the one fucking you, not him. he assures, fingers finished from curling inside onto your gspot and forcing themselves into your mouth. “you dont get to cum, yet, either.”

you suckle on his fingers, eyes rolling back from the sheer force of his demands and tossing. he flips you over, face in the mattress and him grabbing you by your hips. shit, could you do this? doggy you cant even handle with izuku.

you try to look up, only catching a glimpse of izuku fisting his cock and his face flushed.

you squeal, feeling the heat from katsuki’s tip slip inside of your walls and hitting that spot already. the spot that hadnt been touched in however long you and izuku hadnt talked. “fuck, i can see what you mean by her being a tight space.” katsuki groans, hand gripping a hip and shoulder blade.

he starts immediately thrusting at such a violent place, but you knew he was going to be like that. “some fucking girlfriend you fuckin’ had!” katsuki laughs, his hips snapping into yours and balls slapping at your clit. “just some fucking whore that needed a good dick!”

you moan into the mattress, drooling against it and eyes rolling harder to your skull. you clawed at the sheets, hearing izuku lose himself in his fist as he watched his fuck buddy, his childhood best friend fuck his pretty girlfriend.

you choke, his cock angled at a different spot that had never been used or touched. “oh shit, you havent fucked her this way either, huh?” he grins, his hips angling themselves better and he spits onto the curve of your back. “yeah? he doesnt fuck you good like i do, huh?” he asks, a harsh slap to your ass.

“no— no no fuck!” you moan, going stupid from the intrusion, the sheer force of his hips alone making you go dumb. your tummy clenched, feeling your clit throb more than anything until it hurt.

“fuck, shes about to cum, deku.” he growls in a praise, his palms pressing down on your lower back as he slams his bodyweight into the thrusts.

you squeal, that coil tightening and hearing izuku lose himself in his own orgasm at the same time. you had missed hearing him cum, you both usually always have a simultaneous orgasm together at the same time.

“cum in her— breed her pussy please, kacchan.” he pleads, his hand shines with his seed and sweat that came from fucking his cock.

katsuki loses himself in a matter of time, approximately two minutes after you both had came and it was all because of how good you felt and that izuku just wanted to watch you get fucked by his childhood friend. his own rival.

[asahicore]

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!)

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[skelnexswriting]

Tall enough?

➪ | Pairing: | König x reader

➪ | Warnings: | Fluff, best friends to lovers, fem reader, Y/n used, reader is implied Austrian, 3rd person pov, “l/n” means last name.

➪ | Summary: | As kids Konig asked y/n to marry him. But she’d only let him if he became taller than her. Well skip a few years, the pair reunite and well..he’s definitely taller.

➪ | A/n: | Requested by the lovely @bythe-water-fountain , hope they and everyone enjoys!

—

Everyone had a child best friend. Even hardened soldiers.

König still wonders about his childhood bestfriend. A girl named y/n.

He and y/n grew up in Austria together. They both lived near each other and even went to the same school.

But at the ripe age of 19. They got separated..y/n moved to another city, going off to college and König went off to the army.

But that didn’t mean he just got up and forgot about her. No, he would never. She was the one who was always there for him. Y/n had a kind heart and soul, which only made him fall for her.

But Konig and Y/n were just young kids before. Young kids did silly things, made silly promises. But it wasn’t all that silly to König.

He loved y/n as his best friend. But he also would’ve loved for her to have been more.

Königs still remembers the day that his younger self proposed to her on one knee at the playground.

…

It was at the park near his house, the two always went to. But one day in winter, when the snow was falling, decorating everything white. König decided to try something. Young König was an impatient child, practically dragging the young girl to the play ground. Once they finally got there he dropped on one knee and proposed with sloppily made paper ring.

Excitedly konig asked, “Y/n! Will you marry me?”

Young Y/n giggled at the boy. She decided to have some fun and only agree if one thing were to happen.

“Under one condition.”

“Anything!” The young boy quickly agreed.

“If you grow taller than me, then ill let you marry me!”

Young y/n wore a proud smile while a young könig sulked. It seemed impossible to the young boy. What if he never grew taller.

“Hey thats not fair!”

“Rules are rules König! Now race you to the swings!”

…

That was his favorite memory of Y/n, he was surprised he had been so bold at a young age. He thought it was silly but still wonders if she remember that deal the two of them made.

He always wondered. He wondered where she was. Was she still in the city the two grew up in? Or had she moved away, exploring the world. He also tried to come up with ideas of what Y/n may be doing. Had she fulfilled her childhood dreams of starting her own cafe?

Maybe König could find out on this trip back home.

…

Y/n also wondered about König. The kind, anxious boy always haunted her thoughts.

She missed him. Things weren’t the same without him.

The city seeming colder, without the chatty boy who used to go with her everywhere.

Y/n constantly wondered about how he was. Was he safe? Would she ever see him again?

She hoped so. She hoped magically one day that she’d bump into him.

Y/n wished nothing more but to tell him about her day, how she opened up her own cafe like she wanted.

König was her best friend, but sometimes she wished she told him she wanted to be more than that.

That she wanted to come home everyday from work and lay in his arms. That she wanted to be the girl of his dreams.

Maybe he already had someone..maybe there was already a girl that welcomed him back from his deployment..

The thought hurt. But y/n still held onto the small bit of hope that the boy would come back to her.

…

Being back home was different from how König expected. Of course he was happy to see his parents, but he was sad to hear that his family had’t heard the l/n family since they left. That meant no news about Y/n.

König still had hope. He was determined to meet with her again.

König decided to see what was new in the city, he thought might as well since he was back home.

He saw on the map a new cafe opened. And by the reviews it seemed like a popular spot. König decided to enjoy the cloudy day and take a walk to the cafe. (Might as well work up a small appetite as well.)

On the walk König skimmed through the menu. There was many drink options like lattes, there was also many treats to choose from. What caught his eye was the Sachertorte (a Austrian chocolate cake).

The Austrian dessert brought back many memories for the soldier. Y/n would always bring a piece to school whenever her mom made it. She’d force König to eat it with her, claiming it tasted better when it was shared.

König finally reached the cafe, already settled on what he’d buy. (which was a sachertorte and a simple latte.)

When he opened the door, it chimed from the small bells.

The cafe was simple. it seemed like a cozy spot to just sit and enjoy some treats. He looked around seeing the various plants and a small bookshelf in the corner.

König thought it was going to be packed but it surprisingly wasn’t. But It wasn’t empty either though. Some people stayed and enjoyed their treats, while others took theirs for the road.

“Y/n would’ve loved this place” König thought to himself.

König walked to the counter, but didn’t see anyone. He looked around to see if there was anything to call someone, and he spotted a little bell.

He pressed it, and once he did a soft voice called out from the back.

“Be right with you!”

Shortly after, a girl appeared from the back. She was beautiful.

She wore a simple outfit, a plain t-shirt and some jeans, accompanied by an apron. Her hair was styled to be out her face, showcasing her soft features.

The girl did, however, have to look up quite a bit just to meet his eyes.

“Sorry about the wait. I’m Y/n! And i’ll be your barista today. What can I get you started?”

Y/n. König felt like he was about to die on spot. The more he looked at her, the more he realized that she did look like the young girl he once knew. Was this real? Was he dreaming maybe?

“Sir?”

König broke out from his trance, realizing he must’ve just been standing there, staring.

“Ah. Sorry just..just got distracted. But I’ll have a latte and um a slice of sachertorte”

“Sure thing! Would you like it for here or to go?”

She didn’t recognize him..He knew it was a long time since he’d last seen y/n but he didn’t think he changed that much.

“Here please.”

“Can I have a name for the order?”

“König.”

He noticed the way Y/n froze for a moment. Like something had clicked, Y/n slowly looking back up at Konig.

“Maus?” (Mouse)

The nostalgic nickname brought so many memories back. She’d given him that nickname because of how short he was back then. He gently smiled at her before replying,

“Ja”

“How did you? When did you get so- so tall?!“

König softly chuckled at her bewildered state.

“How about we talk over a slice of sachertorte, plus you always said it tasted better when shared.”

Y/n smiled recalling the memory.

“I’ll get you that latte and slice of sachertorte right away.”

…

Y/n never made a latte so fast in her life. She quickly put everything together and brought over the drink and treat to where König was sitting.

She took the seat across from him and spoke first,

“So when did you get back?”

“Just today actually. Saw that this new cafe opened and wanted to check it out. You?”

“Got back couple years ago. Decided to start up the cafe I always wanted to.”

König didn’t know how he hadn’t realized that this was her cafe. The decorations practically had “y/n” written all over them

“Wow, i mean look at this, this place is great!”

…

The two chatted as if they’d seen each other every day, like they’d never been separated. Eventually y/n did have to get a back to work, but König stayed.

He enjoyed the rest of his drink and cake. Once he was done, he decided to grab a book and read it. All while casually stealing glances at y/n while she worked. He also stayed because he still had one thing to ask.

…

Timed seemed to fly by. Before the two knew it, it was time to close. Y/n cleaned off everything, ending the day.

König offered to help but y/n quickly declined.

Once she was done, she sat back where she previously was earlier. König was the first to speak this time.

“Y/n. I have something to ask you.”

Y/n slightly furrowed her brows, curious as what he may ask. She nodded, prompting him to ask.

“Well remember that day at the playground where i proposed as kids. Well im taller than you now, so when’s the wedding.”

Y/n couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face, recalling the memory. She covered he face with her hands, silently laughing at their silly antics.

“I can’t believe you still remember that. But i’ll settle for a nice date before our wedding.”

“Deal.”

…

König stuck to his part of the deal. When he came back from yet another deployment, he took y/n on a nice picnic date in the very same park his younger self proposed to the very same y/n.

That one date turned to two, two turned to three. Three turned to many. After those many dates, the title best friends turned to significant others.

König even moved into an apartment with Y/n after a few months of being together. And well that apartment turned into a home eventually.

Soon enough one and a half year later, König finally succeeded in fulfilling the deal he made with y/n as a young boy. Where if he grew taller than her, she’d let him marry her. Now he was taller and the girl he’s loved his whole life, let him have the honor of finally marrying her.

[siolixz]

~ Veils of Crimson ~

Chapter 1

Pairings: oz cobb x reader (Carmine Falcone's daughter)

Reader is the daughter of Carmine Falcone, she is young (19) when the beginning of the story happen, but nothing sexual between her and Oz at this age. She will grow and evolve as the story progresses, I wanted to explore the relationships between her and everyone else in the story in this chapter (besides Alberto). I was worried i made it too long now im worried its too short haha, next chapter are gonna be longer. Oz is still manipulative and scheming.

Story inspired by Driving Miss Falcone by (https://archiveofourown.org/users/genevievedarcygranger/pseuds/genevievedarcygranger)<- super good steamy story

It's a slow burn because THATS HOW I LIKE IT, yes there will be smut.

Enjoy, give feedback if u want xoxo

<chapter2>

<chapter3>

<chapter 4>

Warnings: mature language, smut (not in this chapter sorry), general teenage horniness.

Being the daughter of Carmine Falcone was, as many might say, easy. You went shopping every single day, you ate at the most expensive restaurants (and if you didn’t, you had chefs that would prepare everything your heart desired), you slept in the finest sheets. Compared to most young adults your age, you were born “full,” never having to worry about anything or anyone disturbing your peace or threatening your well-being.

Still, you were well aware of the things going on around you, even if your father or anyone else in the family, for that matter, usually just glossed over you. All of them opted to compliment how beautiful you were or how stylish your clothes were—blah, blah, blah. You understood that your father ran an organized crime syndicate, that he was respected, and that the clothes on your back and the food in your belly came from one thing only: blood money. But everyone seemed to be okay with it; I mean, who wouldn’t be, right?

You never saw anything weird or a crime being committed. Everyone—and I mean everyone—was well-mannered, spoke in a nice fashion, and you never had to ask for anything; everything was handed to you on a silver platter. You had a driver, for God's sake—someone at your beck and call who could drive you around wherever you wanted, whenever you wanted.

You didn’t have many friends. Those people you talked and socialized with? You couldn’t call them “friends.” They were all just bootlickers who thrived off having Carmine Falcone’s daughter near them; at least that’s what Alberto told you.

If you had to choose, you wouldn’t even go to those fancy-ass events that Sofia dragged you to every single time. She said that you two were women and that you were responsible for “keeping up appearances” and all that. To give her credit, she really made you guys quite the big deal. Ever since she took over her late mother’s organization, you’d grace the cover almost weekly, either because of something she did or some controversy a journalist would make up.

If you had to choose someone to spend time with, it was Oz. Sure, he was your driver, but he was the only person worth hanging around.

To start, he was funny. He always made you laugh, telling you the best stories from his childhood—either about his idol, Rex, or the sort of things he and his brothers got up to. It was a joy to be around him, at least for you. You always defended him when your uncle or your brother would make fun of his gait. Who the hell were they to talk? You never said that, though, because that was disrespectful, and you weren’t allowed to curse—well, you weren’t allowed to curse around family. Oz never minded; you were sure of that.

One year, when it was your birthday, Oz gave you the most gorgeous necklace. He knew exactly what sort of metal you adored, and in the middle was this very dainty diamond. Sure, it couldn’t have cost him a fortune, but it was the symbol that counted. The scandal that followed in the house afterwards was something to remember. You remembered telling one of the older girls there about the gift. That girl told Alberto, who then told your father. They didn’t know who it was from, but they knew it was a member of staff, and your father gave you an hour-long lecture about boundaries and how you shouldn’t have accepted the gift, ever. Sure enough, after two months, he forgot all about it; he had more important business to attend to. Oz apologized afterwards, when it was just the two of you, but you told him it was nonsense.

Your sister rudely interrupted your daydream when you arrived at, you guessed it, another press-infused dinner.

“Hey, you got your head in the clouds again, missy? We’re here.”

“Oh yes, I couldn’t figure it out by the cameras that are all pointing at us from outside, Sherlock. Thank you.” You knew your sister didn’t mind the bratty remark now and then; you were close—well, close enough. She was the first-born daughter, the second in command, really (Alberto was more like the “okay to the world choice” because he had a penis). You were the princess of the household; all you had to do was bat your pretty eyelashes and shine your big eyes, and all was forgiven, as long as you didn’t meddle in “grown-up business.” You were also a grown-up, but whatever. Oz had already made his way out of the car and toward the door.

“Remember, smile, be nice and courteous, and don’t talk to the press. Let’s go.”

As you exited the expensive vehicle, you thanked and smiled at Oz, who, in turn, smiled back. He went to the front, pushing anyone who got too close to you out of the way as everyone shouted things regarding your father or the organization. Your sister grabbed your hand and led you inside; your dad always told you to pay them no mind, so you never really listened to what crap they were yelling anyway.

As your sister was introduced as “the chairwoman of the Isabella Falcone organization” and stepped up to the stage, you felt a sense of pride looking at her. She looked very beautiful in her red dress, obviously picked by you. You knew she usually got quite uncomfortable during those public speaking moments, so you made sure to look her straight in the eyes, straighten your back (which made her straighten hers out), and smile at her. It was your way of telling her that she was a Falcone; she better make everyone in the room remember that. No stuttering on the stage or hesitation.

These dinners or lunches or whatever—they felt like they took an eternity, with the exact same thing being said at every single one: “We need to protect women; the Isabella Falcone organization made this and that. This is very important for women all around Gotham.” While yes, you were sure they helped some people—like the rich ladies who were all here—you were sure they all felt much better about their privilege after attending these sorts of things. When you passed around the East End, you noticed the women on the street: the ones with two kids following them, or the pregnant women who went to work to support their families and give their kids something to eat, the ones wearing high heels and patrolling the corners of Gotham. You often wondered if they benefited from the “help” your sister and the other gals here offered.

Well, at least the food was nice. Every once in a while, you would see Oz walking into your field of vision, and you made sure to get him a plate of the sweets he liked. Even if he rejected the plate most often, he never said no to you. Of course, no one did.

After your smart sister was done talking, everyone applauded. You were the first to get up, and everyone else followed suit.

Immediately after, you went to Oz, with the plate, of course. He rejected it, but you said you weren’t going to repeat yourself, and he took it. That was a sort of ritual you guys had. After Sofia dodged one pretty woman after another, she came over to you two, and Oz started to say thank you to everyone coming closer—a sort of “shut the hell up, go home.”

“This is the third luncheon this week. A lobotomy couldn’t take the edge off,” she said. You had no funny remark to that; you knew when to press buttons and when to keep quiet. After she was anxious, it was no time for funny remarks; let’s leave.

“Even when you’re helping people, you still gotta eat shit,” Oz said, trying to be funny. He should’ve said that to you, not her. They were both walking ahead of you now, completely ignoring your presence. Of course, he showered her with his attention, just like everyone else.

“Better than some jobs, though.” He handed your sister a cigarette—a very bad habit you hated. You always told her she looked like a man. Ugh.

“Like what—” she glanced over at you and shook her head in your direction. “—driving this princess around?” She had that all-knowing smirk on her lips; this was her payback for your smart mouth when arriving here.

Oz’s smile fell. “Oh, that’s not— you know what I mean.” Serves him right for kissing her ass.

“She’s messing with you,” you interrupted. “We know it’s a shitty job.” He better not think it is.

“You deserve better; I mean, we both do, but you have a dick, so at least you're eligible for a promotion.” He laughed at that. Your heart skipped a bit at the sound of his laughter. The few times you made him laugh were rare, and here she was, after not being around him for months, making him laugh. Why did she have to steal the show every time? He was yours; she had her own people to make laugh.

“I’ll get the car; you did good,” he said as he left.

“Thank you,” Sofia responded. After turning around, she let out a little laugh. “Wow, what’s gotten into you?” Okay, maybe you didn’t have the most pleasant expression on; maybe you were sulking a little. Maybe.

“This is the last time I give you a ride.” Now she really started laughing.

“Are you jealous? Well, your secret is safe with me, don’t worry.” She said this while still chuckling to herself. “I like men my age, who walk normally.” She whispered the last part as if it were some great shameful thing. “I see the way he looks at you; everyone does.” She winked.

What? Oz was your driver and your father's employee. Maybe sometimes you liked to pretend he was some rich older man, powerful like your dad—someone people respected when you walked together in any luxury store or when you ate together at any fancy restaurant in which he wasn’t supposed to eat, like, at all, when he was with you. But you weren’t going to walk in there and eat all by yourself, were you? That’s why you always had him by your side, and you didn’t call any of your “friends” to go with you.

You put your head down at that comment, cheeks red with embarrassment, and practically sprinted to the open door Oswald had waiting for you. You knew he was staring at you, expecting a smile and a “thank you.” You didn’t say anything.

You heard someone call after your sister, but you didn’t care; you just wanted to get home—like, now.

The road home was quiet, allowing you to think about what your sister said. Did you have a crush on Oz? You wanted to make him smile and laugh. Sometimes your eyes would linger on his big hands on the steering wheel, how he was an expert driver, how his hands would move as if caressing something—like a leg, maybe your leg. Maybe he would take his hands further up.

Okay, that’s enough. You could feel the tips of your ears flashing red and that familiar ache in your belly. Those thoughts were for later. With excitement coursing through your body, you swallowed a smile.

That night, at the family dinner, you let Sofia speak about the organization and how today was for her. Your eyes traveled up the walls to the big painting staring at you; they looked beautiful—the family, with Alberto’s and Sofia’s mom and Carmine. They really did. Carmine was engaged to your mom after Isabella’s death, but she passed away before they could marry, and you were only a few months old. Questions about the woman who gave birth to you were quickly dismissed and, to add insult to injury, redirected towards those living. You knew she was gorgeous, smart, and witty—that made you smile, just like you were.

After eating a bit of food, you asked to be excused, and your father swiftly granted it. He loved the fact that you didn’t linger for too long or ask any important questions.

The next day, you and Oz went to a jewelry store; after that, you bought some dresses. This time, however, he stayed in the car. You knew he was wondering if he had screwed up with something. I mean, yesterday he had two Falcones to deal with. You bought this gorgeous red satin dress; it was simple but elegant.

It embraced your curves so nicely, and even if you weren’t going to be allowed to wear it, the slit on the side might make your dad as red as the dress with fury. You still liked to envision it. Oh well.

The ride home was unusually quiet. Almost always it was filled with Oz’s voice or your laughter; now, only the occasional sound of the blinker was heard.

“I’m sorry if I did or said something to upset you, Miss Falcone. It wasn’t my intention.” That rough voice of his interrupted—usually, he called you by your name, but now it was replaced with the courteous nature of a regular staff member.

The truth is, you and Oz weren’t ever going to be together. It sounds crazy even thinking about it. This was a juvenile crush based on familiarity. He was just a driver; this was probably the highest-ranking position he would ever have. Now you could either be the laughing stock of the family, or you could get over it.

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just not feeling well, that’s all, Oswald. Nothing you can do about it.” You refused to meet his eyes, and you knew he wanted to say something like “hey, look at me,” like he usually did when you were upset. The mention of his full name stopped him.

“I wanted to tell you that tomorrow night I will be unavailable from 4 PM to 7 PM; your sister has requested me.”

[imthebadguyyy]

Something Just Like This

pairing - charles leclerc x reader

fandom - f1

synopsis - a reflection on your relationship.

part - i (part ii)

warnings - talk about death, leukemia, badly translated french and the events may not be in order.

a/n - felt guilty for being away for so long so here's a wee little bit of a fic to make up for it!! all my love, always ♥️

when you were five,your dad had taken you to a go kart track in monaco, to watch a race with his childhood best friend, herve. having previously lived elsewhere, your trip to monaco with your parents was tremendously exciting, and you had nearly tripped over in your excitement at visiting a new country, and possibly making new friends. your dad had told you, "my friend has 3 sons himself, I'm sure you'll all get along very well"

so, you went, clutching your raggedy anne doll in one hand, and your model ferrari in the other, excitedly chattering away to your mummy and papa, eventually falling asleep on their shoulders.

when you awoke, you found yourself on a strange bed, with neither your doll nor your car beside you, and your parents seemed to have vanished too. the easy tears that had always been ready to spring to your eyes did their job, and your bottom lip began to wobble.

just before you could burst into tears, a pretty lady with kind eyes looked in at the door, and upon seeing your trembling lip, walked in with a soft coo.

"ma cherie, don't cry. are you looking for your maman and papa?" she asked, sitting down beside you.

"yes I am, do you know where they are?" you asked, rubbing your eyes with the back of your hand as you spoke. "yes cherie, they're here, in the living room. im pascale, your parents friend! my husband, herve, is your dad's friend. come, let me introduce you"

and so you followed her to the living room, clutching into her finger for dear life, and the moment you spotted your parents, you ran to your mama, clambering into her lap and hiding your face in her hair.

"hello! are you y/n?" a little boy asked, with messy dark hair a sweet smile. you nodded, looking at him curiously. "I'm Lorenzo, but you can call me enzo!" he said with a smile. "hello" you mumbles softly, taking in your surroundings.

you took in the pretty apartment, with the bright sunlight and the pretty paintings, before something on the floor caught your eye.

there was another boy on the carpet, with brown hair and green eyes, who had in his clutch your missing ferrari toy.

"hey thats my car!" you exclaimed, sliding off your mother's lap to sit on the floor"

"that can't be your car, girls don't play with cars!" the boy exclaimed, holding it close.

"now charles, of course they can! and that is y/n's car so why don't you ask her if you can play with it together?" pascale interrupted, sensing a fight about to break out

"ok, im sorry y/n, can we share this car please? i love ferrari!" he exclaimed, flashing you a bright smile, and it was at that moment that your little five year old heart fell hard for the boy.

the two of you spent the afternoon together, playing with your ferrari and all his other cars, and laughing and giggling with lorenzo, and also playing with baby arthur.

your parents watched with smiles, realizing their children were forming life long bonds.

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no one could have foreseen how you would be joined at the hip forever after that. your parents moved to monaco for a job your dad got, and you started living just down the block from the leclerc's. that meant Saturday night dinners at either of your houses, and lazy Sundays spent at the beach or at go kart races.

you even went to the same school as the boys, with either of your parents picking you up and dropping you off.

as the years passed, you and charles got closer and closer, and it was a rare occasion where you weren't stuck at the hip.

you found in him the best friend you always wanted, funny, kind and caring, and always ready to have your back, something he proved on the very first day of school, when he punched a kid who pulled on your pigtails.

his parents weren't happy but when a tearful charles explained that "i couldn't let him hurt y/n/n!! i love her!!" pascale softened and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"you love her, do you?" she asked with a chuckle, when the boy nodded furiously. "she's my best friend, nobody should make her upset" he said determinedly, making his dad chuckle too.

"ok, mon fils, tu n'as pas de problèmes"

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on your sixteenth birthday, the leclercs joined your family for a special dinner on the beach. your dad rented a yacht and you guys had spent the day sailing on it, and trying to catch fish and swimming in the blue water. you had all laughed and screamed and lorenzo had taught you how to do a proper cannonball into the water. your mother's had scolded him for teaching you such unladylike things, and he in turn said "but she's y/n! no one's expecting her to be ladylike!" at which point you had dunked him in the water.

you tuckered each other out by swimming around, and participating in a chicken fight with the leclercs. it was you in charles' shoulder, and arthur on lorenzo's. of course, you won.

it reminded you of when you were children, always together, always messing around in some way or the other. but with Charles spending more and more time racing, you got to see the leclercs much lesser than you'd have liked to.

so communication with Charles became through letters, written to him when he went out of the country to race, with his dad and brother. pascale was a regular visitor but meeting charles had become something to be cherished, what with you busy trying to get auditions to be a singer.

in the years that had passed, you and charles had become extremely close, meeting each other whenever possible and becoming each others support system whenever the other needed it. so of course it was fitting that he was your designated best friend, your confidante, your favourite leclerc (but we won't tell arthur that)

so that night after dinner, when charles suggested you take a walk together on the beach, you thought nothing of it. not until he pulled out a small bracelet he had made, out of seashells, that you gasped, leaping into his arms for a tight hug.

"i want you to have something to remember me by when I go racing, ma jolie, i know I'm not always around, but this way you'll always have a piece of me with you, even if I'm not there" he whispered, dropping a small kiss you your forehead.

gentle kisses and hugs and touch were not unusual for you, it was your love language and it always had been, ever since you were kids.

but there had always been a lingering crush you had on him (and him on you but we'll talk about that later) and you felt your belly burn red hot when his lips dropped to your cheek.

you pulled him in close for a hug, hand running through his hair, freshly cut by his mother.

"merci, ma vie" you whispered, pressing a kiss to his wrist, and as the both of you stayed there, your head on his shoulder, his head on yours, cozy on a rug he had stolen, watching the beautiful monaco sunset, you swore you had never loved anyone as much as you had in that moment.

and charles realized it too, looking over at you, and how the sunset cast a golden hue on your mesmerizing eyes, and the way your hair shimmered softly, and your skin glowed bright, and he swore he had never seen a sight prettier, and his little teenage heart fell a little harder for the five year old who worse pigtails and loved ferrari as much as he did.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

however, your story wasn't always just sunshine and rainbows. when you were seventeen, your dad was diagnosed with leukemia.

the news came as a shock to you, especially when the doctor told you, he did not have strong chances of recovery even with the proper surgery and treatment. you'd never forget your mother's wail, as she sobbed over your father's fate, and how pascale and herve were there for her through it all, but for you, you couldn't breathe.

you ran to the park, crawling under the slide set, your breathing harsh and shallow. your eyes were blurring and every breath sent a sharp pain shooting down your chest. around you, the world seemed to spin and you closed your eyes, drawing your knees in, and begging your brain to stop, and pressing a hand to your chest.

before you knew it you were gasping, every gasp making you more and more dizzy, and your heart seemed to be banging against your chest to get out.

"am i dying?" you thought to yourself, labouring gasps echoing in the darkness.

"and am i hearing things?" you also asked yourself, because you could have sworn you heard charles' voice.

and lo and behold, he appeared, panting and sweaty, sinking down next to you, grabbing your sweaty hands in his own and pushing his forehead down to yours.

"cherie? ma jolie? regarde-moi s'il te plaît, regarde-moi. maman told me what happened. please cherie, breathe for me, i need you to breathe. peux-tu respirer pour moi?" he begged, rubbing your back slowly and pressing kisses to your nose.

slowly, your breathing slowed down, but as it did, tears began to stream down your face, and ugly sobs wracked your body.

Charles felt his heart break, watching the strongest girl he knew break down in his arms, tears and sweat pooling on his shirt as you sobbed.

"i know, Cherie, i know" he whispered, his own eyes glazing over. he loved your dad as much as your dad loved him, and he couldn't believe it when his mother told him the news. he pulled you in even closer, so you were straddling his lap, and kept rubbing your back, whispering sweet nothings to you.

"papa, il va mourir et il va nous laisser maman et moi seules" you wailed into his shoulder and he shushed you gently.

"no no no, cherie, listen to me, please?" he asked, pulling your chin up, heart breaking when he saw your red eyes and runny nose.

you nodded slowly, still hiccupping, but letting him pull you into his chest.

"y/n, i cannot tell you what the future holds for your papa. but I can promise you that you and mama will never be alone, ever. even if the day comes when we have to say goodbye to your papa, you will never, ever be alone, not while I am there, not while maman is there, not while papa is there, and not while lorenzo and arthur are there. you are my family, y/n, and family sticks together. I'm here for you, always" he whispered.

you looked at him, your heartbroken eyes looking into his sincere green ones, seeing the same pain reflected in them. and in that moment, you knew it was right when you leaned in, and he did too.

your lips met that cold, dark, rainy evening, under the shade of the slide set in the park, but your souls had intertwined when you were five, and you could have sworn you had never felt more alive than you did at the moment.

and while your heart broke and sagged with the weight of losing your father so soon, it also ached with love at having charles with you. so when you drew back, still tasting, the salty tears you both had shed, he pulled you back in for a tighter hug.

"toujours là pour toi cherie, toujours."

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you lost your dad the following year, in 2016, and charles was by your side at the funeral, watching you cry as you placed a white rose on his casket.

you had never spoken about that kiss again, and neither of you had thought it was the right time to bring it up in the months that followed.

charles watched as your mother, the woman he so admired, crumbled before him, lost without her guiding light. is that how it would ever be if you ever lost him?

the fear that coursed through his heart shocked him. he couldn't imagine what it would be like, to loose someone he loved so dearly.

his father had taken over as a surrogate father for you, and constant support for your mother. but the leclercs knew something that you didn't, their father wasn't keeping very well either, but no one had the heart to tell the l/n's, not when you were already suffering through so much.

after the funeral, there was a small tea at your own house, but you couldn't bear to be there. so at the first opportunity, you slipped away, leaving your mother in pascales care.

you ran, not caring where, until you found yourself at the beach. you sat down, pulling off your shoes and throwing your hat away, before sinking down on your knees to the sand.

you sobbed, salty tears dripping down your face, holding the locket your dad gave you in your hands, and once again, a familiar smell filled your nose as a warm body settled in next to you. charles.

"hi cherie" he whispered, wrapping an arm around you.

"hello" you whispered, mustering up a small smile.

"ma courageuse fille" he whispered softly, making you giggle and sob at the same time.

"i have to be strong for maman" you admitted. "she has no one but me in this world anymore" you whispered, eyes blurring again.

"she has us, always" charles said determinedly. "and we aren't going anywhere" he said, taking your hand in his.

and as the sun set once again, you reminicsed about a simpler, sweeter time, when you and charles where carefree and innocent, not scarred by life and it's harsh realities.

there was something special in that sunset, you noted, resting your head on charles shoulder again. perhaps your papa was trying to indicate that charles was the one for you.

but at the moment, sitting by the beach, in a moment of joined sorrow, you had never felt more human.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

with charles growing success in f2, and you finally getting a record deal, life was going well.

until you were told that herve was not doing well. denial flooded your brain. no. how was this possible? how could god take both the father's in your life to disease and illness?

you screamed and wailed and cursed, too stung, too bitter, about life.

and then the day came, in 2017. when pascale called you sobbing and lorenzo came to your door knocking wildly.

"c'est papa,il ne se réveille pas !! tante laura, qu'est-ce qu'on fait?!'

your mom was out the door in an instant and you followed, following a heartbroken lorenzo to the door of the house you knew so well.

you could hear pascales wails before you even reached, and the easy tears rose again but you forced them down.

you had to be strong for your second family, and with a deep breath, you pushed the door in.

what you saw broke you.

charles, sobbing on the sofa, head in his hands, while arthur sat next to his mother, in tears.

your mother dealt with all the formalities but you stuck to charles, letting him cry into your shoulder, holding him the hold day, whispering how much you loved him and how sorry you were to him, and promising him that he wasn't alone.

you comforted arthur too, holding the boy in your arms, wrapping him in the tightest hug.

you had never felt more respect for Lorenzo, ever the big brother, tears streaming down him face, even though he stayed so strong for his family.

later that evening, you held charles in their balcony, wrapped in a blanket that you had knitted for him.

"i feel so hollow, so empty" he admitted, burying his face deeper into your neck, trying his best to stay grounded by inhaling the scent of your perfume.

"i feel as if a piece of my heart has been snatched away and I'll never be okay again" he admitted, tears filling his eyes for the hundredth time that day.

"i know, charles, believe me I know" you whispered softly to him, running your hands through his hair, "but a wise boy I know once told me, that I was never ever going to be alone. he told me 'even if the day comes when we have to say goodbye to your papa, you will never, ever be alone, not while I am there' and today charles, I am saying the same to you. i know that it hurts like anything right now and that pain will never go away"

"feel that pain charles. it's what makes you human, ma vie,and i know it hurts. but I am here for you. take out all your pain and I will be there to catch you when you fall. i will be there to put you back together when you fall apart. i am here for you ma vie, always" you whispered to him, and he choked out a sob, curling himself into you, never more sure of his love for you.

"i lied and told him I got the ferrari seat" he finally choked out, and with a soft whisper of "oh charles" you pulled him in close.

there it was.

the reason why he felt like his soul was being eaten up inside.

"charles, mon coeur, i promise, you will get that ferrari seat. it will be soon, and you will have kept that promise to your papa, i have a feeling mon coeur, that your future in formula 1 will be as bright and shiny as you, and you are going to get everything you deserve, i know you will"

and he chose to take solace in your words.

just like he took solace in your soul.

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you made your formula 2 debut alongside charles at Baku that year. everyday you were left more in awe of the powerful force that he was, ready to race in less than a week, because he felt he owed it to the man who made him who he was.

so you told him you'd go with him, be his support and be there for him when he needed you to most.

and you were left spellbound yet again, at his talent, his resilience, his drive, his passion.

p fucking 1. at a race that meant the world to him.

and as he ran towards you after, body colliding with yours so hard you swear some of your bones snapped, you told him everything you had to in your embrace.

rough racing gloves on delicate skin, frenzied pulling closer and harsh breathing. thats all you remembered from the moment, looking deep into his emerald ,knowing the media was having a field day.

"I'm so so so so proud of you so fucking proud" you whispered. "and i know your dad is too" you continued, pressing a small kiss to his helmet.

when he stood on the podium, tears streamed down your cheeks. you were so so so proud of him.

and as he looked down at you, he smiled, knowing you were always going to be his brightest star.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Charles' journey is formula 1 started with Sauber but you knew for a fact that he wouldn't stay there.

when kimi announced he was leaving ferrari, you called charles and screamed into his ears "YOURE GOING TO GET THAT FUCKING SEAT MARK MY WORDS" and he had simply chuckled saying he was hoping for the best.

so when in the middle of recording a song, your phone rang with charles' name, you dropped everything you were doing and picked up the phone.

"je l'ai fait. j'ai eu le siège"

"quoi?"

"le siège ferrari. j'ai compris. c'est à moi. je vais être pilote de ferrari pour 2019"

the scream you let out was so loud your producer jumped out of his skin.

"I'm so proud of you!! J'ai toujours su que tu l'aurais, tu mérites le monde et plus encore!!" you screamed, tears streaming down your face and you heard charles laugh.

"merci, mon cherie. i will celebrate with you soon" he chuckled.

"obviously you will!! I'll be home soon, let me just finish this album first and then I am all yours" you laughed.

oh how you longed to be all his. it's all you'd ever wanted since you were a teenager.

charles' heart ached.

oh how he longed for you to be all his. it was all he'd ever wanted since he was a teenager.

later that day, you wrote the song feels like.

social media had a breakdown.

charles had a breakdown.

but that's mainly because he'd rather you wrote a love song about him.

unbeknownst to him, you had atleast a 100 lovesongs written about him.

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clicking your pen for the hundredth time, you let out a sigh.

this songwriting thing was so frustrating.

it seemed like you had a billion ideas but nothing compact came out of it.

with a deep sigh, you let your hand crash against the piano, letting the discordant notes ring in your apartment.

but the ending caught your attention.

humming, you grabbed your pen again, jotting down, scribbling down all the things you wanted to say but never would.

being a singer had always been, and just as charles was flourishing in his career, you were flourishing in yours. you had already won a grammy for your album 'nostalgia' and had won amas, Brit awards, and 2 vma awards.

'the rising star of pop' was what they affectionately called you.

you had stunned the world with your versatility and range and the depth of your songs. ballads like gravity and last kiss had shown your emotional depth. songs like when I get there and make you feel my love had showing your delicate, romantic, vulnerable side. songs like happier reflected your pain.

your song fat funny friend had shot you into the global scene when you released it as a single. millions of fans wrote to you, thanking you for being vulnerable so others could feel seen.

and of course, no one picked up on the secret ballads for charles, pinning it down to young love and romance that was usual for all people your age.

so as you finally finished the song and smiled, you knew they wouldn't guess for this one either.

but you would know.

and so you sent it to be your next single.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

summer break rolled around, and you had a new mission - confessing your feelings for charles.

you were sure the timing was right.

you had to tell your best friend in the whole world that you were madly in love with him.

you told pascale, who squealed and told you "welcome to the family officially!!' earning a laugh from you.

"let me tell the boy first maman, then I'll tell you what he says"

"of course he'll say he loves you too! i know my son cherie, he's been in love with you since you were children, he's just too stupid to do anything about it" she joked affectionately and you laughed.

"j'espere que tu as raison maman. i love him very much" you admitted, blushing a little.

"of course darling. come to dinner tonight, everyone will be there, you can tell him then" she smiled, and you got up to go get dressed, pressing two kisses to her cheek.

back home, you nervously scouted your cupboard to see what you could wear. you showered and washed your hair, and put on a red dress that charles had gifted you when he got his seat.

smiling at the memory, you put on your makeup, did your hair and took a deep breath.

you were really going to do it. you were going to tell the man you had loved your whole life that you loved him.

the drive to the leclercs house was nerve wracking, and ringing the doorbell to their home was even more nerve wracking. you saw lorenzo there already, and he rose to greet you, pressing a kiss to your cheek.

"how are you y/n? i haven't spoken to you in a long time no?" he asked, sitting down next to you.

"I'm good enzo, very busy with recording. howve you been? I'm sorry i haven't been keeping in touch, I've just been very busy" you apologised, feeling guilty for not spending a lot of time with the oldest Leclerc.

"don't be silly, soeur, i understand you are busy. and your music, it's been a joy to listen to. you're truly a talent, ma belle" he said, and you could feel yourself getting emotional.

"aw, enzo, meri beaucoup, votre avis est très important pour moi" you said, giving him another hug.

he poured you a glass of wine, a small smile playing on his lips.

"so, is tonight finally the night?" he asked with a smirk, remembering how smitten you were for his brother.

you blushed, taking a sip of your wine to cover for it.

"yes, I'm going to tell him tonight" you admitted and he flashed you a warm smile of encouragement.

"Tell who what?" a voice interrupted, and the youngest leclerc plopped himself down next to you.

"y/n/n's going to tell charlie she loves him" lorenzo stated matter of factly, making you Tut and whack his arm.

"quoi? are we not telling arthur?" he asked, feigning hurt.

"i was going to tell him" you whined and then you turned to arthur.

"you must swear to not bring this up until it's over okay?" you told arthur, trying and failing to be stern.

arthur pretended to be hurt.

"of course I won't? what do you take me for, a gossip box?"

"yes" you and lorenzo chimed in unison.

arthur gasped dramatically, making you roll your eyes.

"do you really think that low of me?" he asked, pretending to cover his eyes in agony.

"yes, now shush, i think i heard the bell ring" Lorenzo said, getting up to open the door.

you bit your lip nervously, preparing for charles to walk in the day.

and he did. he looked gorgeous as ever, in a shirt the cover of deep red wine, hair tousled by the wind on his drive, but his eyes and smile were as bright as ever.

your heart started beating so fast you swore you almost had a heart attack.

but nothing could have prepared you for what he said next.

"everyone, i want you to meet charlotte"

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a/n - aaaand drum roll please 🥁 cliffhanger!!

i promise i won't leave you hanging but this was getting too long and it needed some ✨spice✨ i know this wasn't the best and the timeline wasnt cohesive but I needed to get this out of my system so pls go easy on your girl.

feedback, comments,opinions, reblogs and likes are always appreciated 🩷

hope you had a good read!! much love always xoxo

taglist -

everything - @hopefulinlove @bluesongbird @roslastyles420

f1 - @theonly1outof-a-billion

to be added to the taglist send me an ask, dm or comment 🩷

masterlist

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[spacesapphi]

MOREEEE HES TRIO HEADCANONS

There's some. There's some sad ones in here, sorry. Warnings for mentions of death, neglect, and bullying

HCs below the cut

Elliott

- LOVES cats sm, has a little tabby named Mr. Darcy who he adores more than anything. Sometimes it'll knock over his inkwells or bat at his quills but he doesn't seem to mind

- He's the youngest of five kids and kind of the black sheep of the family. Rarely got attention besides teasing over his interests growing up, and used books to cope with it

- Doesn't really make eye contact, it makes him really nervous

- he actually briefly knew Harvey as a child and they were each other's only friend. Harvey moved away about 3 years after they met and they finally reunited in Pelican Town

- He can draw, but writing is much preferred

- Wrote letters to Harvey after he moved. When he was in highschool his dad got to the mail before him, read a new letter, and forbid him from communicating with Harvey again with no explanation. Elliott was devastated

- Went to college for writing and literature! He was able to publish his first book because he got a very good letter of recommendation from his professors for his work. The money he earned from it helped him get out of his town and away from his family

- Pelican Town has made him feel the most peaceful he's ever felt in his life. The cabin gets lonely, but he's happy and he cant imagine himself anywhere else

Harvey

- His dad was a military medic and unfortunately died while stationed when Harvey was a baby. His grandpa moved in to help raise him, and as mentioned in the previous HCs, was responsible for his interest in being a pilot

- He likes wearing headphones in public to block out loud noises, but gets too shy to do so often because he thinks it'll draw attention to him

- had a secret clubhouse he and Elliott used as a kid (literally just an abandoned garage where they kept a bunch of their stuff) but it meant a lot to them. It was a place to get away from the bullying they faced

- was incredibly short all his life until he got a crazy growth spurt in highschool and wound up being 6'2

- says shit like "good golly!" And "cheese and crackers!"

- he's a nerd, this man does not take his whiskey neat and bed at 3

- HES THE ONE THATS TOO SWEET

- Wrote letters to Elliott a lot after he moved. They stopped when the two of them were in highschool. Harvey sent a letter confessing he had a crush and never got one back, so he thought he did something wrong until he met Elliott again

- his mother is a huge ally and comforted him a lot after that incident. She loves her son so much :(

- He has really bad asthma

Shane

- much of what Jas has is a hand-me-down she got from Shane. All the toys, clothes, and stuff like that are from his childhood before he came out. They're a bit outdated, but Shane and Marnie can't always afford brand new things for her

- He went to college on a gridball scholarship, but studied in Visual Arts. The camera he has in his 7.5 heart event is one he used to make short films for classes.

- Came out to Marnie as trans at 12 and was terrified to do so. She was really accepting and sweet though! He let her be a big part of the new name process too :)

- Jas's parents were also in those classes and the three of them often worked on projects together. It's how they became best friends! He still has all the reels of little films they made, and watches some of them with Jas when they're really missing her parents

- Clint has a one-sided beef with him since Shane is Emily's best friend and ex. He views him as competition for some reason and acts weird about it. Shane has absolutely no clue why and just thinks he's weird

- He got really good at styling hair after he took in Jas. She likes just having her hair in two pigtails mostly but he can do some fun styles!

- Has a lot of health issues post recovery because of how heavy his drinking was. He's sick fairly often and it's frustrating for him

- Driving and being in a car makes him anxious, he prefers to either walk or bike if he can help it

- Let's his hair start growing out after he starts recovery. He gets it to a nice medium length. Tried to go for a mullet but Emily begged him to cut it 😭

- He does NOT like Lewis at all because of how he treats Marnie and he has to restrain himself to act civil, for his his aunts sake

[thefirstlioveyou]

the one thing that reassures me that mike is actually gay is because fans were right about will being gay.

before season 4 (specifcally part 2), even suggesting Will could be gay struck fans’ nerves so deeply. It was so weird.

The ‘Will being Gay’ theory during S3 era and its reaction was horrid.

im gonna be completely honest with you, i was not a byler back then. i was a melvin because if everyone else is rooting for it, then it had to make sense, right? i was younger and lacked lots of media literacy, then on top of that internalized homophobia.

however despite me being a melvin shipper, i never really cared for byler or byler shippers. but i did notice how people would react to it

this is exactly how it went during S3 era:

“i think will is secretly gay and likes mike.”

“umm.. what? 🤣 the lgbtq community is getting out of hand now. will is NOT gay. he is traumatized from being in the upside down, he lost his childhood. he misses his best friend and feels left out that they all have girlfriends and are growing up. why do you people see two boy characters and immediately assume they are gay? boys can’t even be friends now because of you people. not everything has to be gay. youre erasing will’s trauma. also, hes 13 YEARS OLD! thats disgusting calling him gay.”

people who believed the theory were called delusional because god forbid there just be even a little chance of a character being… [shutters] gay…

and guess what? this theory ended up being right in the end. the clues and subtext they found that pointed to will’s sexuality that were deemed delusional and ‘manipulating the narrative’ were RIGHT.

the ‘Mike is Gay’ theory is supported with evidence found by the SAME people who guessed Will’s sexuality right. fucking hell, theres even triple the amount of evidence for mike than there was for will. (will was more explicitly implied… yet still so ignored… wonder why… homophobia)

the similar theory is recieving the same reaction as the Will one.

THATS why i don’t doubt mike is gay. the cycle is just repeating.

[daftmooncretin]

rip to rian johnson but star wars sequels would be way better if ben solo was just kinda cowardly and han solo coded so he defected from the jedi and went to be a fun swashbuckling anarchist space cowboy instead

and finn and poe have to find him and try to convince him to come back to the rebellion but hes afraid who he is and what he could become

also instead of luke trying to kill his nephew for NO REASON (so insanely out of character it boils my blood) he just realises after ben dips thats hes not cut out for teaching. and is living on a mandalorian colony as rebellion liason/ambassador with chewie and sometimes lando i guess (din djarin is there) he aids the rebellion (because of course he would fuck that plotline) but he wont stay on the rebel base because he doesnt like all the chosen one clout and mandalorians are very chill and mind their own business

han and leia are still together and play active parts in the rebellion because fuck that plotline too although they do disagree about the ben situation (leia is annoyed and han is understanding) poe and ben childhood friends and for what.

in this au, rey is raised in the empire and is a sith lord but she has doubts and isnt as abjectly disgusting as kylo ren because of course not. (appears slightly too interested in the rebellion when poe is captured and maybe??? possibly lets finn and poe escape but thats up for debate.) rey gets more evil over course of movies before turning to light for plot drama and a satisfying zuko arc.

force awakens timeline

prophecy that a new jedi will rise and take down the dark side. rey and sith lord (dk who but fuck snoke im writing him out) assume it is the missing ben solo (its finn and rey tho fr) and are intent on finding him. movie opens on rey being evil probably and capturing poe. also finn as a character actully needs no real changes hes great. and then next scene space pirate ben solo doing his thing (but without identity revealed so we dont know who he is yet he may go by kylo because funny)

instead of luke poe has a lead on missing almost-jedi before he dipped ben solo and is searching for him on leias orders.(rebellion also believe the prophecy is about him. but nuh uh) torture scene and escape scene doesnt need to change but show reys nuances and how lost she is.

in the interest of narrative poe and finn still crash on tatooine but finn manages to pull poe out of the crash. (finn still gets the jacket at some point because i say so) poe is too injured to fly so they seek out help and and meet ben solo who saves them from pirates or something idk. (but neither know who the other is)

finn and poe convince ben solo to be their pilot still thinking hes a random smuggler named kylo. they get along very well, especially finn and ben. rey by this point is tracking their whereabouts

they end up on that lightsaber planet and ben gets the weird darth vader nightmare and freaks out, (hes afraid of being evil or something idk) poe is getting suspicious now also finn feels the force and takes up the lightsaber. rey comes and finn trys to hold her off. finn get hurt and drops lightsaber. ben is forced to take it up and his identity is revealed as rebel reeforcements led by han and leia arrive and they see him fighting. rey and ben have a weird charged moment (yes i guess i am still making reylo a thing but its reyben now and its woke so shh) and in a dramatic desperate effort he manages to knock her lightsaber away with the force. poe crawls into a plane at somepoint and blows up reys ship. the rebels destroy the stormtroopers but rey captures finn and escapes in a stolen ship.

ben has a oh-shit-i-said-id-never-use-the-force-again related existential crisis which makes him freak out and leaves. a distraught finn-less poe calls him a coward. poe picks up the discarded lightsaber and the jackettm and sadly packs them up. leia tells him about the starkiller and poe volunteers to go on the starkiller and save finn. han and leia have a sweet moment and han decides to go with poe on the suicide mission, chewie goes too.(chewie arrived at somepoint i guess)

mid hostage situation finn blocks reys force attempt and shes shook up. he sees something in her (finn is a beautiful sweetheart) and he trys to appeal to her. she force chokes him and books it out of there. but it is clear she fears him a little. he escapes with mind tricks and runs into han poe and chewie on the deck. finnpoe moment fr. poe gives him his jacket back in order to get the keep it it looks good on you line.

meanwhile ben is back on his ship(i guess its the falcon?) and he thinks about finn and his mom and luke or something.. a dream maybe?? idk something emotional and motivational for his arc. and he goes to a box under the floor in his ship and pulls out a green lightsaber. he turns the ship around.

on the ship poe finn han and chewie are planting the bombs and escaping when they get stopped by stormtroopers ordered by rey. poe is about to be shot by a big droid thing when it is cut in half by ben wow big reveal hes here oooo ah. rey is shot in the shoulder by chewie and angrily orders more stormtroopers. they cant take them all. han sacrifices himself by blowing up the bridge. he tells finn and poe to find luke in the mandolorian colony ben is distraught him and han have an emotional goodbye he tells him to tell leia he’s sorry and that he loves him and he proud of him then he makes chewy get ben out of there and he blows himself up. leia senses it v sad rip man but he had to die to intensify plot drama

rey chases them onto the ice planet and another weird charged moment. mind link established??? this time ben is too angry and grieving though so its not a good match and she wounds him real bad all over hes v scarred now. poe shoots at rey and throws lightsaber at finn. he gets ben onto the ship and finn and rey have the big force awakens show down. finn uses the force v powerful all that jazz the good guys get away. on the ship finn mentions how he felt a connection with rey to poe and claims he sees good in her

movie ends with meeting luke on mandolore. ben is very traumatised wont really speak to finn or poe and avoiding luke. finn returns lukes lightsaber and rey has doubts movie over. movies ends with ominous rey ben mind link

final notes (on first movie and overarching rewrite plans)

finn

finn is the protagonist of this movie so it would be much more character heavy on him them the original. more in depth on his stormtrooper trauma, how he always chooses the people he loves over the cause and his reluctance to join the rebellion. his friendship with poe and the han/leia parallel’s especially. relationships with han and ben important for his character exposition and he plays a key role in supporting both rey and bens character progression. possesses the strong sense of mercy and kindness at the heart of the star wars franchise.

rey

rey is raised in the first empire and does not know anything different. when she meets finn who was able to rebel and escape from the same system she is trapped in she becomes plagued by doubts and projects all of her hatred and resentment onto finn to compensate, but it is clear she fears him. to escape from her doubts she fixates on finding and capturing ben solo imagining him to be a frightening and terrible adversary. however when she meets him they see eachothers minds, and she sees how plagued by doubt and fear he is, how he runs from everything and he sees her too. they connect and develop a strange mutual fascination/understanding. this is put askew by finns appearance at the end of the movie in defence of ben. reys fear of finn increases when she sees the true extent of his power. she fears and hates equally finns strength of character and easy goodness and by extension hates ben for his alliance with finn. she blames finn for “taking” ben from her.

ben solo

kylo ren is a disgusting blight on the star wars names so ben solo is being completely reclaimed by me into a different character because i fucking hate that stupid pretentious eboy. instead ben solo is an incredibly han solo coded character with a heart of gold and deep love and loyalty to his friends and family. his main weakness as a character in this rewrite is his fear and lack of self belief. ben is terrified of being a jedi and of his own power. he fears his own nature and was so afraid he would become his grandfather that he ran from the jedi altogether. ben solo is a runner that wont face his problems, he runs from the jedi and from his parents to avoid failing or becoming something terrible. finn and ben recognise the need to run in eachother (although important distinction finn runs because he doesn’t want to fight for a cause. and ben runs because hes afraid he will be the reason the cause fails) and ultimately encourage eachother to break the cycle and stand their ground (well finn motivated ben in this movie, finns not fixed yet.) Bens arc in these movies is about learning to live with his own nature and fighting for what he believes in despite his fear. also dealing with mommy issues (ben is kind of jealous of poe and leias relationship the son she wanted or something blah blah blah etc) and being a malewife to his murder girlfriend. his job is kind of to support and fight with finn and later rey and help them save the world

finnpoe (will be a gay couple)

their friendship will be front and centre in these movies because they represent duty vs personal loyalty. poe puts the cause above all else and values his own life and personal relationships little. finn on the other hand is disillusioned with establishment cause of stormtrooper trauma and wants to protect himself and others from it. poe is the first person that finn truly bonds with and loves. he puts poe above everything, including being a jedi and the rebellion. this leads to a lot of fighting and discord between finn and poe as finn doesn’t understand how important the rebellion is to poe and poe doesnt get why finn is trying to protect him from it. ultimately though poe teaches finn faith and belief and finn teaches poe to accept love and value himself. (also many hanleia parallels) the two of them are the harbingers of a new age. poe as future leader of the new republic and finn as the jedi messiah or whatever. in terms of romance, im thinking slowburn. baity first movie, kiss at the end of the second and established relationship by the halfway mark of the third.

also when rey eventually joins the light in the beginning she refuses to talk to ben (cause of romantic drama i havent thought of yet but centres around some sort or betrayal in the second movie) or finn (because hes her narrative foil and slow burn best friend forever) so her first friend is poe and she kind of follows him around in her first few months before she eventually bonds with finn 4eva. her poe shadowing has lots of cute friend moments where they fly together and he tries to talk her down about finn and the ben drama but also more importantly it foreshadows her leadership ability and tactical mind as she gives him advice and aids him with the rebellion behind the scenes (also leads to leia taking rey under her wing probably because poe is her surrogate son and mirror) which will eventually lead to her and poe leading the republic together because in my mind rey is a jedi but actively a member of republic government because ben can’t do politics and finn won’t but shes great at it so she’d be a perfect jedi liason and vice president to poe. meanwhile finn and ben lead the jedi. finn as a knight travelling across the galaxy and ben as a teacher. (luke is happy in retirement rn on mandalore but leia is still probably an advisor in the republic because retirement is definitely not for her) and everyone is happy the end. force ghost han solo is clapping.

[northlt03]

Rosekiller one shot

Tw: death

Barty goes to war, he doesn't have the money nor the influence like Evan does to avoid it forever. He has to.

He goes kicking and screaming and fighting the whole way but he has to go.

When they were younger, not yet directly touched by the conflicts between countries , Barty told Evan about his fear, his only fear . Death.

He never understood his father's points about fighting for honror or dying for their country. He was a child and like a child, he was scared of dying. What would come after it? How would hsi loved ones react? What would he leave behind? Why would any higher power take young lives anyway?

Questions plagued him and Evan didnt have the answers to any.

And now hes in an active war zone, death at his doorstep.

Honestly, Barty doesn't give a shit about either country, doesnt give a shit about his fellow soldiers or his fathers orders to make him porud.

He'd much rather be next to Evan, with the boy's hand in his hair. Evan would drag his fingers across Barty's skin in a manner he deemed utterly sinful.

Even now if he closed his eyes he could pretend the taller boy was in front of him.

Evan was older, although just by a few months. He was all wide shoulders, lazy grins and shy smiles. And his hands, arguably Bartys favourite part of him. They could caress and hold, they could mend and take care but they could also wield an axe and a gun, they could make Bartys mind forget everything and anything, dragging low groans from his throat. They could make him whine and beg, they could steady him or bruise him.

Its these things he thought of late at night under the cover of darkness. Evan.

Just the man, just the name.

Somehow it was always Evan he thought of when things got difficult.

Barty writes to him, for his own sanity. The longer he stays there, the more he loses it.

War is no place for him. Its too bloody, too noisy, too scary. He wants Evan.

He wants to be held, strong arms pulling him close. He wants to be safe. He wants to laugh at Evan's stupid jokes. He wants to kiss Evan, to touch him, to hear his voice.

His body and heart aches with longing.

He doesn't care for the other soldiers who laugh too loud and never sound like Evan. They're terrified of him, of the way he takes life after life in the warzone.

But violence was never his first choice, it was love.

So he writes and he writes and he writes. He never had a liking for literature like his friend Regulus, but he manages fine.

"My only solace is that you're untocuhed by Bellona, by the bloodshed of Mars" He writes. "Although, darling, you'd look divine covered in crimson"

Fuck he loves Evan. And he misses him so much his bones echo with desire.

"I think of you everyday, sunrise to sunset and take a break for dusk, only for you to be in my dreams"

He addresses them to E, his E. Thats all his fellow soldiers know Evan as. "That crazy one's darling E"

Barty hears them wondering about E's name, about how someone could have won Barty's cold heart.

Eloise, perhaps? or Elizabeth? Eleanor, Edith, Ella, Emilia, Emma, Eliza, Elliana, Ellie, Emily, Evelyn, Eden, Esther.

Evan.

Evan Rosier.

They wouldn't suggest a man's name.

Its a cruel, cruel world they live in, and Barty has never liked it. But Evan always managed to drag out the optimist in him, the mischief and sarcasm he thought he left in his childhood.

"Most of all, its boring, my darling" he writes, "So fucking boring. We barely fight and when we do, we win. Mostly. You'd call me a narcissist and egotistical, but I know my worth. The rest of these soldiers don't know their left from their right"

He tells Evan everything, even if he doesn't always get letters back. Mail gets lost on the way a lot. Sometimes Barty gets upset when Evan doesnt respond only to descover the ship went down. Sometimes Evan writes strong words about scaring him because Barty never replied to his letter, and Barty sends back a response about how he never got it in the first place.

"Really hope the ship doesnt go down again. Such a nuisance, catching you up on everything again" He scribbles down, imagining the expression on his lover's face when he reads it.

War is brutal and unyielding. It stretches on forever. Barty doesn't see himself getting out of it, not now, not ever. But he doesn't tell Evan that.

"We'll go watch a movie when I'm back" he makes false promises, "and kiss in the rain, your lip between my teeth. Just the way you like it. I'll kiss you in front of my father, I dont care"

War is brutal. it takes and it takes and it takes. Are there really winners and losers when the only ones losing seem to be the soldiers that lose their lives?

"My dearest E, I miss you like the sea misses the earth. The water shaking with anticipation in clouds, desperate to return to the ground as rain"

Barty is going to die, he knows it.

There's only way out of this war and its by taking Thanatos' hand.

"Regulus sent me a summary of his reading again" Barty writes, "Some old man a hundred years ago wrote about a man and a woman in love and somehow Regulus made it my problem. Try to punch some sense into him. But don't tell him I might be hooked onto what happens next. Its a guilty pleasure"

Barty doesn't have many guilty pleasures.

You could argue Evan was one of them, but he's not. Barty has never once been guilty about loving Evan, never.

"Regulus wrote to me, telling me Melpomene is the muse of tragedy" Barty could have been jealous of his friends, the ones who didn't have to come to war, didn't have everything stripped from them. But he's glad he's the one suffering because that means Evan doesn't have to and Regulus can keep reading his little stories. He'd die in war a thousand times over if his friends stayed safe. "Melpomene must have gotten quite the story from us"

Evan fills him in on gossip, Dorcas in love with someone, Pandora and her new inventions, Barty wishes he could be there for it all.

Evan can't draw for shit, but his stick figures could rival Michaelangelo for all Barty cares.

Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan. Its all he thinks about, like a broken record spinning and repeating the name. Evan.

He's so much more than a lover. He's a part of Barty. He's seen the good bad and the ugly. He's stuck around for it all.

"Im angry most of the time" He scribbles one night, shaking from barely contained fury after a mission gone wrong. "Angry because my father is the biggest piece of shit to ever grace the earth. Angry because I want you I need you in my hand, in my arms, in my bed bext to me. I'm angry because the world was never kind to us. I'm angry because I wish I could kiss you now. I would. I'd kiss you in front of the world, grab you by the jaw and not let go. I want to taste you, I want you to linger on my tongue, to ruin my life. I'm angry because..." because I'm scared.

Barty never lets anyone see the letters Evan sends, scowling at anyone who ever tries to peek. He's got quite the reputation now. He'd cut off a finger or two before he let anyone have a taste of Evan's words. They're for him. Just for him.

"Come back" Evan writes, "Come back or I'll publish your writing for the world. Let everyone see how embarrassingly in love you are. Regulus alone would have a field day with the poem you once attempted"

Barty laughs because he can't help it. Its so on brand for Evan to threaten him with that.

"My writing is scacred, how dare you?" He writes back. "Maybe that would help the world understand us, though. Maybe one day there would be a world free of war and hate. And just us, together, kissing in front of my father as I flip him off"

"You'd look sharp in a suit on our wedding day" Evan writes back. "I'd love to see you in it. I'd love to take it off"

Fuck.

"Darling, I'd wear a wedding dress if you wanted. I'd do anything for you (and if it pissed my father off)" Barty scrawls with a rare smile on his face.

The last letter Evan Rosier ever got from Barty Crouch Jr was about wearing a dress to their hypothetical wedding.

Decades in the future, when they're all well and gone, buried so they're only dust and bones, their letters are found again.

Love letters from wars always fill people with a sad and romantic feeling. They always remind people that love is eternal, the only constant in the world of destruction and tragedy. No matter how it ended, at least the love was there.

Historians scratch their heads over who the "Darling E" was. Some say Eloise or Elizabeth? Eleanor, Edith, Ella, Emilia, Emma, Eliza, Elliana, Ellie, Emily, Evelyn, Eden, Esther.

Evan, says one.

Evan Rosier. Barty Crouch Jr. Decades after theyre gone, their love makes headlines. Flirty and sweet, cute and filthy, rebellious and devoted, they call the pair.

Barty Crouch Jr died at war, bleeding out in pain, supposedly with his eyes wide in fear and fingers digging into the earth, desperate to live.

Evan Rosier died not long after, peacefully in his bed. Heartbreak, the doctors said.

Their letters were found in a house that used to belong to their mutual friend, Regulus Black.

[officialgleamstar]

okay, here's a long post talking about my thoughts on dungeons and daddies, s2ep45, hell or high father. obvious spoiler warning, im gonna be talking about the events of the episode, but this is going to be more outside the fourth wall focused/thinking about what the pacing says about the narrative, rather than actually talking about what happened in this episode!! also ive only listened to the episode once so if i missed anything, feel free to say so

to start immediately: i loved this episode, but i was also disappointed that ron, terry, and scary didn't get a full episode. but i was thinking about why that would be the case, and that lead me to the two reasons im speculating:

Beth felt that Scary's arc didn't necessitate a big ending and that it came to a clean closing with that scene

This episode shows the narrative divide between the Stampler family and the Close family

the first reason is mostly a timing thing. they included taylor in this episode as well because scary's conclusion didn't need the full run time, or maybe even lincoln's episode was longer than they wanted it to be and scary was supposed to be in that arc as well. the pacing was just a result of the past few episodes: scary has already confronted that she regrets how she treated terry, we've seen that a million times. ever since his death, she's confronted that fact again and again, and i think it makes sense that this episode would resolve that in a much quieter way than it could've. the stamplers have always been the family to resolve things 'the right way' - they show up for each other, they love each other unconditionally, they finish their arcs by holding one another in forgiveness. even if i wouldve loved a longer memory (though holy shit, WE SAW THE BETRAYAL ON SCREEN-- sorry not the point of this post), and i really hope we get some more with them in upcoming episodes, i did like how it was so sweetly resolved!!

and that sweetness leads into the bulk of my thoughts here: scary and taylor shared an episode because of how differently their memories went.

as soon as nicky went "i have a memory you weren't around for", i knew we were in for a fucking ROLLERCOASTER, and holy shit. the entire played out montage of glenn failing to be there for nicky, failing to be there for taylor, and in turn, taylor finally tells nicky to his face that he wasn't there for taylor either. taylor's fixation on the idea of redoing it all with time travel, because there is no other way, in his mind, to solve the rift in their relationship. "there's no fixing this." there's too much baggage, there's too much thats already been fucked up, and theres no way for them to come back from that. nicky is a grown adult. taylor is already in his teen years. they can form a relationship with their dad now, but no matter how well that goes, its never going to fix the childhood behind them that was already ruined. they do love each other, they're friends, but being friends doesnt equal a true good relationship. being friends doesnt mean you succeeded in parenting.

and now we contrast that with the stamplers. both terry junior and scary go into their relationship with their stepdads seeing him as an inferior replacement, as someone who could never truly be their dad. terry junior loved his biological dad, is literally named after him. scary's dad was so absent in her life that she doesnt know how to handle someone actually being there. they both refuse to take the replacement, until eventually, they learn that their stepdad's strength is that hes a new man. not a replacement, but his own full person, a person who loves them. ron put his life on the line for terry, time and time again, because he didnt want to be his own dad. terry showed up to all of scarys soccer matches, even when she refused to even acknowledge him, because he didnt want to be her bio dad. "you showed up." even though terry's memory is literally him using ron, it ends with ron forgiving him without a second thought. when scary apologizes to terry, terry takes her into his arms with a moment's hesitation.

the stamplers have a happy ending because even with how badly they've fucked up, they always showed up for their kids. the closes don't have a happy ending because they weren't in their kids' lives and they think being friends now fixes that. and that's why scary and taylor shared their episode, really. because it drives home the crucial difference between the two families

[yanderes-galore]

hello I was wondering if I could request yandere Michael Afton (before the scoop if thats ok) with prompts 12 and 43 if that's OK?

Sure! This was the plot picked by that Michael Afton poll I did awhile back. Sorry the plot was a bit rushed... I got really stuck with writing this.

Here's Michael giving into his Afton roots.

Yandere! Michael Afton Prompts 12 + 43

"You were never meant to see that! Oh, what have I done...."

"Won't you be a good pet for me?"

Pairing: Romantic/Platonic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Childhood trauma, Poor mental health, Obsession, Murder/Mass murder, Jealousy implied, Forced relationship, Blood, Grostesque descriptions, Michael becomes another William.

After his life went downhill, Michael didn't have many friends. His childhood still haunts him... part of him feels lilke it's his fault... part of him blames his father.

You never knew his pain. You never knew his family's sins. However... you act like you understand him.

You saw Michael as a kid with a troubled past, one you've been friends with since childhood. You've heard tales of what his father's done. Terrible stories of murders and losses....

There was the time Michael's brother was thrown into an animatronic's mouth, there was the time his sister was violently mauled by another. Then there were the countless murders caused by Michael's father himself.

You'd think stories like this would make you scared of Michael. No... it didn't. Naive child that you were you stuck with him.

You'd never bring up his father. His family was always a touchy subject. You always kept chats away from his personal home life.

If he was feeling down, scared about more misfortune coming to him, you'd comfort him. You always told him things would be different. You weren't scared of him, he's different than his dad!

That's what you thought... surely he could overcome such trauma...

Yet his dad had more of an effect on him than you thought when you were younger.

You were probably the one thing keeping Michael from breaking down when he was younger. Perhaps Michael was always meant to be some sort of murderer. Ever since Fredbear's his path was set, wasn't it?

But that was a mistake, he could move on, couldn't he?

What a hopeful thought.

He's the son of a murderer... he was always meant to be a killer.

It had been years since you saw Michael again. He had his own problems to deal with, you had yours. You just hoped he eventually got help... although last you heard his father had gone missing.

When you eventually see him again it's by accident. You wanted to revisit your old town with a friend. Hell, you wanted to be a kid again and see that old Freddy Fazbear pizzeria if it was still around.

That's when you met with Michael, your old friend now an adult and quite surprised to see you. He appeared even more surprised at your new friend.

Was he replaced once you left?

Old friends meet new friends and you chat for hours. Michael soon realizes how much he's missed your voice... your face... you. He could never seem to forget you despite what he's gone through. Soon the unspoken question between you eventually comes up...

How long will you be staying?

The moment you say a week to visit your parents with your... friend, Michael's giddy. A week is all he needs. After all... you've tormented his mind for years since you left.

It's about time he did something about it.

You wondered if Michael deteriorated when you left the town for a fresh start. Perhaps you really were what was holding him together. Was the damage caused by his family even fixable?

Michael should've expected this to happen. He's killed before, while that was an accident, was it really a surprise that he's killed again? His father would've praised him...

He's a bloody animal... someone who truly caved and gave into his roots.

"You were never meant to see that! Oh, what have I done...."

He isn't even sure why he said that. What else was he supposed to say with you standing right there? He's sloppy... he isn't skilled.

How was he supposed to hide the blood quickly staining your old childhood home? What about the bodies? He wasn't thinking things through...

Yet it's over. Now... you're just like him, aren't you?

Broken... with no one else to care for you... except him, of course.

He isn't sure why... but when he sees you scream and cry, he smiles. Did he like your suffering? Maybe he was just happy he got what he wanted?

You... by doing what he did he now has you.

You don't move. You can only stand like prey in front of a predator. Blood reaches your feet... the smell of a slaughterhouse floods your nose. This couldn't be Michael....

Deep down... maybe you should've seen it coming.

You're the one who befriended a monster.

When Michael stands up, to comfort or taunt you who knows, you shuffle away. Part of him... one rooted deep in his mind... finds it cute. Blood covers you both, a blade still coated in meat firmly in his grasp.

The meat of your loved ones.

"You look so pretty when you cry...." Michael whispers softly, quickly cornering you. You flinch when he holds up a knife, admiring the bloody reflection caused by the metal. His eyes then snap to you, devoid of anything human. "For the record, love, you knew nothing about me back then.... That's okay, now you truly understand how I felt...."

A bloody hand touches your cheek in an uncharacteristically loving matter. He grins with a hum but you can only cry.

"Now that you're mine... Won't you be a good pet for me?"

[stxrmylxve]

Hello! Can I ask for Bonten!Mikey being reunited after years from being apart from his childhood friend/sweetheart who just have moved back to Japan after leaving with her parents to the US when they were eight?

Sure! i dont really know if this fits the description perfectly since i like a good fight scene, but here ya go! A/N: bonten!mikey x fem!model!reader (no established relationship)

eight years old. that’s when you left him.

Mikey was just a child, yet he knew all too well about people leaving. That if they ever left without a proper goodbye, they were never coming back.

”Mikey.. I’m leaving Japan. Pa got a job in the states and well… I have to go.” you explained as you kicked rocks below the swing, slowly swaying as mikey came to a stop on his swing.

“You’re..leaving? When will you be back?” he asks, knowing all too well the look in your eyes as you looked up, your glassy eyes meeting his.

“I… don’t know.” you mutter quietly as you look away, your bottom lip trembling as the air around you went silent and cold.

Mikey didn’t say anything, he just got up and left, a small scoff slipping past his lips as he turned away.

“Thanks for… nothing, y/n.”

So he grew up. He grew up for 13 more years with thinking you would never be back again. And it hit him harder and harder each morning he woke up.

He changed after you left for good. He became more violent, attacking sanzu all of the time. He formed his own gang, and even though shinichiro had told him to use his family line gang history for good, his gang became the worst on the block.

And when puberty hit, all he did was he moved to a bigger gang and won over the leader with a bullet to his head and became one of the city’s worst criminals there had ever been.

Though, it was nice in a way. No one ever dared to bother him. Women with death wishes flocked around him like gnats. He could have all of the money he wanted with the blink of an eye.

“And arriving today is Miss Y/n, a young and beautiful model from the US, coming back to her home country. How was it, leaving at only eight years old and now being 21 and all grown up?” The reporter asks as he turns to bring you into view.

You let out a small laugh as you brushed your hair with your fingers, a habit you had when you were nervous that only mikey knew about.

“Yeah, it was hard. I left one of my best friends here in Japan, but there was nothing I could do. He probably forgot about me though, which I wouldn’t blame him either.” you replied as a small fake smile tugged at your lips.

“Well we are honored to have you back here in Japan with us.” the reporter finished as it flicked to the news, the only evidence of you being back falling right past Mikey’s fingertips.

”She’s… here?” mikey mutters to himself as he looked at the clock and shot up, pushing aside one of the maids as be grabbed his keys and wallet and ran out the door.

He had no idea where you were, but he was going to find you. He will find you.

Y/N POV:

You sighed to yourself as you stared at the clock, a small frown on your face as a lady patted make-up on your face.

“Would you like something to drink, dear? Or a small snack?”

“No no, I’m find Maranda. Just a bit tired, that’s all.” you say as you smiled at her through the mirror.

“Ahhh I bet. It was a bit of a crazy day for you, I’m sure. Say… thats friend of yours that you mentioned on tv.. why don’t you visit him? Maybe he hasn’t forgotten and-“

“I would love to, but I really can’t. He is a changed man, and I’m sure he is in a relationship. Nothing would come of us meeting anyways.” you brushed it off with a scowl as she looked at you, stunned.

“My apologies. We left on a bad note, that’s all.” you excused yourself as her face softened.

“People learn to forgive, y/n. Perhaps you should give it a chance.” she says as she pats your shoulders, the smile fading from her lips as she turned to the cameraman.

“She’s ready, send her out.”

Mikey bursted into the studio, startling the front desk lady. Her eyes went wide as she left out an audible gasp, reaching down for the panic button as mikey places a finger to his lips.

“Calm down, I won’t hurt you. Is y/n here by any chance?” he asks as the lady hesitantly shakes her head yes.

“Where?” he asks, his tone dipping ever so slightly as she shakes her head no.

“S-she’s in a photo shoot right now, no visitors are a-aloud back-“

“I bet I can get back there, can’t I?” he asks, gritting his teeth ever so slightly as he pushes through the grand doors, revealing a large room with different stations and stages all around.

Though most were empty, one in particular had people gathered all around it. He pushed his way through the small crowd, coming face to face with your figure as you went through different poses.

Yet… when your eyes locked onto his, nothing changed in them. They didn’t light up as they did when you were little. His eyebrows furrowed as you finished up, a small sigh falling past your lips.

Mikey glanced out of the side of his eye, catching a glimpse of a long barrel on a gun. His eyes widened as the gun moved towards your figured, lining up and going in for the kill

“Y/N MOVE!” mikey yelled as he pushed you out of the way, the bullet missing and exploding the building.

You fell back into his chest, gasping for air as smoke filled the air around you. Mikey coughed as he got up, tugging you to your feet and running through the ruins. He pushed you into his car and hopped into the driver’s seat, slamming the accelerator to the floor as he sped off.

“See? I didn’t forget about ya’” mikey says awkwardly as he wipes dirt off of the side of his pale face, his white hair evolving into a light gray.

“Sure as hell not. I almost just got killed.” you shot back as you looked at him with a frown.

“But I saved you, didn’t I? It’s not like I caused that.” he deadpanned as he turned onto a road.

“Fine. Whatever.” you reply with a small smile.

“Glad to have you back.”

@shelly-ya

[idcpxseur]

MORE random hcs that will potentially appear in my rewrite

not all of them are headcanons, some of them are lore drops that i decided to throw in for funsies

ive had this sitting in my drafts for so long

[ link to my last hcs post in case ya missed it ]

aphmau is obsessed with dating sims (this was inspired by me discovering blooming panic)

aphmau is a compulsive doodler. to the point where she keeps a little notepad in her bag so she doesnt draw on her hands

laurence is visually impaired/going blind

travis, garroth, and katelyn have all gotten their tongues stuck to frozen lightpoles in their lifetime

dante & travis are childhood friends and travis had a crush on dante in highschool

katelyn and lucinda met in middle school and have had a weird love/hate relationship since

cadenza, kiki, and zoey live in a neighborhood close to the main cast

nana goes by [kandi/honey/sugar] not kawaii chan (there was no way i was keeping that stupid nickname. havent picked which nickname shed go by)

aphmau loves dating sims and got katelyn and nana hooked on them too

nana is actually a magicks user just like in mcd

she uses her little maids to do her chores around the house (katelyn and aphmau hate her for it)

aphmau had a fnaf hyperfixation and infected the entire group with it

aside from nana, who hates anything even remotely spooky

during halloween on mystreet, aaron has dressed up as ghostface

everyone lost their minds

aside from aphmau and katelyn, who laughed at everyone losing their minds

nana actually has an intense fear of relationships which is why she obsesses over other people's relationships because she romanticizes them in her head

garroth, despite also being of the fruity variety, is the friend who buys anything rainbow and gives it to his gay friends

laurence has been and will continuously be the main victim of this

garroth also has no idea what a lot of the flags mean despite everyone reminding him

katelyn has bpd

and he frequently wears crop tops to show it off too

travis is a lil sleepy guy. if hes not doing something important, you can and often will find him curled up snzzing

and we love him for it

aaron is the friend that carries around shit for his friends

specific stim toys for specific people (chewables and clicky keyboards for aphmau, a puzzle ball for zane, soft weighted plushies for nana)

hes got a man purse /hj

aphmau has two long, jagged, faded lines on her back that she was born with. they look like were once deep scars

but theyve never went away and only seemed to have gotten bigger??

while not a big practicer of the craft, travis seems to be really good with witchcraft and magicks

no one knows what his magicks is though because both lucinda and nana have said it feels off

aphmau used to scare zane in a weird way. which is why (aside from just hating everyone and everything) he avoided her for so long before they got close

that fear is gone though

...mostly

travis has dressed up as spiderman for several halloweens in a row

aphmau and zane have gotten hyperfixated on beetlejuice together and dressed up as bj and lydia for halloween and cons

not at all inspired by myself and my best friend wdym

okay this hc list is even longer. i was supposed to be writing but i ended up... not doing that.

anyway thats enough for today!! sorry for my absence im focused on actually pushing out the fucking rewrite instead of just yapping about it

[romancefranaticstay]

F⋆i⋆r⋆s⋆t⋆ ⋆s⋆i⋆g⋆h⋆t

This is comedy, drama, romantic serie

All members are included but its technically...

Hyunjin x reader

A new day, at a new school... In Korea. At the moment your life was upside down after the sudden decisions your parents made.

Your parents wanted to move to Korea, because it is a safe country, but they never thought about you. You knew how to speak the Korean language, okay, you know how to write it... but you had to leave everything you loved behind.

Your friends, your childhood...

It wasn't very easy to step in that airplane, it really wasn't. Your parents had to force you to go in that plane.

The worst thing first, you heard the Korean school system was pretty strict and there was a high percentage for bullying at those schools. You tried to mentally prepare yourself during the summer vacation, but there was only a week left.

Your uniform was at least decent....

To be honest, the schooluniform was pretty awesome. Because your old uniform was pretty... how an you say it... horrible... a crime towards fashion you might say.

You were actually the most scared of the students, because you were scared what they would think about you.. would they judge you because you weren't actually born in Korea? Would they judge you because you have (choose a country) roots?

Maybe they would be fascinated... yeah lets hope for the best you know!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During the last week you tried to change yourself up a bit. And you also tried to think about other stuff in the mean time. It didn't really help the stress, but you could atleast try...

You had a lot of fun actually decorating your room. It was very cozy actually your new room, and you actually hope to get your 'k-drama' school life...(ofcourse that isn't going to happen... really not).

The last two days were actually pretty calm, your moods changed from time to time and you weren't really focusing on it. You were missing your friends back home, ofcourse you always could call them or chat with them, but its never going to be the same...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You were laying in bed, staring towards your ceiling, and you were stressed out. Today was official your last day and tommorow was your first day. Actually you were stressed but also kind of exciting. A new school is always a bit exciting.

You went early to bed, you alreaddy packed your school supplies, you went to the hairsalon alreaddy, you did set a alarm for tommorow at 6 a.m. just to be sure,... you have done everything to be prepared for your big day...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*beep beep beep beep*

'Dammit.' you gasped, reaching out for your heart. You slammed on your clock to put it off. Ofcourse not slamming to hard, so it wouldn't break.

You weakly stood up and went towards the bathroom.

'I am a fricking mess.' you thought by yourself. You started to brush you teeth, to style your hair, to put some 'natural-girl' make-up on and ofcourse some earrings.

You went downstairs, greeting your parents and getting your lunchbox.

'I am going to head out.' you waved. 'Bye bye.'

You took your bike and started to drive off. Looking around, just fascinated about the surroundings. It felt off, to be here. You saw some other students on your way to your school. You also saw someone who immediatly caught your eye while passing by.

A boy with big plump lips, dark eyes, and black hair. His face was just, how could you describe it, lets just call it 'chefs-kiss'. His uniform was the same as yours. So that meant you went both to the same school. You hoped that you will see him at school frequently.

You walked inside and everyone stared at you. Nobody ever saw you at this school so it was pretty normal. You also weren't from Korea, maybe thats why.

You explored the school a bit, looking around, wandering behind people. There was a big library at the school, it was well organized and actually very quiet. I know you might say: your supossed to be silent in a library, but still. Not even a single word. You couldn't hear any whispers. It was a bit weird you thought.

The bell ringed and you first went to a secretary. Because how was you supossed to know were to go?

'Goodmorning miss, mine name is I/N Y/N. I am new at this school and i never got the information where classes are or where to go.'

'Oh sweetty, i will get you all the papers and someone to show you around. No worry's!'

'Thank you.' it was a very nice old lady behind the desk. She didn't seem very old but still.

You waited for maybe 2/3 minutes when she arrived with some papers.

'Here are your classes, the number of the classroom you can find next to your lectures. I will lead you towards your classroom, okay darling?'

you nodded. You followed her into a big hallway, with everywhere classes with learning students. They were very focused. You two walked a bit further until she stopped infront of a classroom. Classroom number 705.

She knocked two time's.

'Goodmorning, i've got a new student for you.'

'Ahh, welcome miss..' he looked towards a piece of paper 'I/N Y/N.'

'I will take care of her further.' the man said to the old lady.

'Could you introduce yourself to the classroom?'

'Mine name is I/N Y/N, like you all heard. I am sixteen, i just moved to Korea maybe two months ago.'

'You can take a seat at the back next to... Han Jisung.' he pointed towards a young student.

You seated yourself next to him. He was quite silent, even tho his face shined some kind of cozy, warm type of feeling out. He wasn't very talkactive at first, but when the teacher assigned you both to do some groupwork it was laughing, pointing and angry teacher.

It all started like this...

'Hey, mine name is Y/N, by the way.'

'Nice to meet you, mine name is Han.'

'Okay lets start with it! So what do we have to do?'

'Why are you looking at me? How am i supossed to know?'

'Look i am the new student here, i shouldn't be alreaddy in the end-zone.'

'I shouldn't either.'

'Lets just look what the others are doing will you?'

'Why are they mixing something together.'

'Because maybe this is science?'

'Oh yeah, thats right. How hard can it be?'

'Yeah actually, its just mixing some stuff together.'

'Okay lets just take this.' he had a cup of purple stuff in his hand.

'Why that?'

'Because the colors of the rest are like magnenta kind of color, so we will just mix purple and blue together.'

'Thats actually smart.'

(by the way, it wasn't right.)

'Okay so... uhmmm why is it boiling?' you asked.

'Uhmmm, this wasn't supossed to happen actually...'

'O my god, its rising.'

'Oh no no no no.'

'Lucky that we are in the back of the class.'

'O no noo noo, it doesn't stop rising.'

'Oh no no no no, what are we going to do?'

'I don't know, how am i supossed to know?!'

'Why don't you know anything?'

'Wait i have a idea, just pour it out in the sink next to use.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah, yeah just do it.'

you poured it out in the sink and... nothing happend. Strange...

'You smart-pants, nothing happend.'

'See, mister smart to your service.'

you both laughed.

'You know, because you are new, we are officially now friends.'

'Thats cool.'

'So i will introduce you to mine friendgroup if you don't might.'

'Why would i?'

'They are kinda hyper-active, you know?'

'Thats okay.'

'You sure?'

'Yeah yeah.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You both were walking out of the class, talking and gossiping about your class-students. You two really had a connection. You both also were very loud so those students alreaddy knew you talked about them.

You saw a bench full of boys. They alreaddy turned their heads when they heard you both laughing and shouting loud. Han waved towards them from a distance. You saw a familiar face...

'Hey whatsupp guys, this is Y/N.'

'Hey.'

'Whatsupp.'

'Hello.'

'Hi-i.'

'Hey Y/N.'

'Hi.'

'Mhm.'

You felt someone staring at your body. Suddenly you locked eyes with that boy, that boy you saw on your bike.

'This are Seugmin, Bangchan, Changbin, Lee Know, Felix, Jeongin and Hyunjin.'

... His name was Hyunjin.

'Nice to meet you all.'

'So you are the new student?' Changbin asked.

'Yeah, i am.'

'So are you single?'

'I am a single pringle, indeed.'

'Your funny.' Felix smirked.

'I know.'

'Aahaaa, i know, you know, Lee Know!' Han shouted.

They all laughed but suddenly Lee Know stood up and he ran after Han.

'Oh no, here we go again.'

'What are they doing?'

'Yeah something with tissue's.'

You saw Han running away from Lee Know but Han tripped and fall into the grass. He pinned him down into the grass and putted tissue's in his mouth.

'Very interesting.'

'Its his habit.' Hyunjin said to you.

'Are they a couple?' you whispered towards him.

'They never admit it, but i think they are.'

you both giggled.

Lee Know helped Han to get up from the grass. Their hands interwining with eachother. They are very suspicious to be honest.

'Sorry for that.' Han came running towards you.

'It was funny.'

'Finally someone who finds it funny.' Lee Know commented.

Everyone started to talk about different thema's. Some were talking about their teachers and some about random stuff they saw online. You were just sitting there, next to Hyunjin. The bench was very comfortable. And the sky looked very bright today. You were observing other students when Hyunjin tapped on your shoulder.

'I forgot to ask, could i show you around maybe?'

'Oww, yeah sure, why not.' you smiled.

You both got up and started to walk around, you two, alone, without the others...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'These are the girlsbathroom they are very neat. Don't try to hide in here when you try to skip class. They get checked frequently.'

'Good to know.'

you two walked further.

'And here is a 'secret' room.'

'If its that secret, how come you know it?'

'All the students know about this room.'

'Really how come?'

Hyunjin cheeks turned bright red.

'Its... its just a place were.' he went silent 'were, couples like... you know.'

'No i don't know.' you smirked.

'Were couples can be alone.'

'Never heard of such place's in schools.'

'Really?'

'Yeah in mine school, you just had the bathrooms.'

'The bathrooms?! Ewww.'

'I know, its disgusting.'

'Are you familliar with that concept?'

'You mean.... umm even tho its normal for teenagers... i never really had interest in that stuff... you know?'

'Yeah yeah, i understand, but why?'

'I just want to save myself for that one person.'

'I understand, you have an idea who that one person might be?'

'I don't know, but i don't want to waste myself before i met him or maybe her, you never know.'

'Yeah, you never know.'

You both smiled weakly at eachother.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HIS POV

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I totally embarassed myself, why dammit why would i start a conversation about that kind of concept? What is wrong with me? You know just be calm, be calm, okay its just a girl.

Just a girl...

'So you like the school alreaddy?'

'Yeah its cool.'

'Cool.'

Do not ask it Hyunjin, don't you dare... don't do it, don't do it.

'So are you single?'

Dammit dammit dammit.

'What?'

'I mean, you like jingle? Like christmas jingle?'

Smooth dumbass.

'Yeah, i love christmas.'

'Me to! I love the winter.'

'Me to! Wow, you know what i love the most about Christmas?'

'What?'

'The decoration, its just so warm and cozy. Just make's me feel warm.'

'The films are also great don't you think?'

'Yeah ofcourse also the films and also the food.'

'You can't forget about the food, can't you.'

'Everything about Christmas is beautifull you know?'

'What is that noise?' she asked.

O dammit, i swear if Changbin followed use...

'I really don't know.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YOUR POV AGAIN

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You saw the boy named Changbin running towards you both.

'What are you two up to?'

'We litterly saw you 5 minutes ago.' Hyunjin said.

His arms were around yours and his shoulders. Hyunjin gave him a side-eye.

'Stop leaning on me-eeee.'

'StOp LeAnInG oN mE-eEeEe.'

'I don't find it funny.'

'You never searched for it.'

'Clever.'

'As always.'

The bell finally ringed. The bell almost gave you a heartattack but it was worth it.

'Yeah, i am going to mine class. Bye!'

'Do i need to bring you there?' Hyunjin asked.

'No worry's, i will find mine way.'

'Oh okay.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HIS POV

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah i messed up. I am not sure, but problably. She thinks i am weird, i feel it. I feel the spirit.

'So you like her don't you?'

'What?'

'I see the way you looking at her.'

'Is that all your basing on?'

'Thats all i need to base on.'

'Okay small-bean.'

'STOPPPP calling me short.'

'Awww, StOpPpp cAlLiNg mE sHoRt.'

i started to pinch him.

'Awaaaa, stop pinching me.'

'AwAaAa sToP PiNcHiNg mE.'

'Not funny.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I cannot stop thinking about her. Girls around me try to get mine attention by asking for stuff. Asking for help during art class. Trying to play with mine hair.

I don't understand, why i cannot get her out of mine head. I just met her. Her face is adorable and her little hands compared to mine. I want to hold them forever. I want to hold her face between mine thumbs. I want to feel her waist, i want... i want... i want her. With me, here.

'Hyunjinnniee, can you please help me with this painting.'

'You are so tall Hyunjinniee.'

'Please help me.'

It annoys me, i do not want all those girls, i just want her. Here with me. Is that to much to ask?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your POV

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Y/N?'

'Y/N?'

'Y/N?!'

'Huh what?'

'Whats the answer to question number four?'

'Shouldn't you try it yourself?'

'I tried like 20 times, but math just isn't mathing.'

'I came out 20.34'

'How did you- how?! I came out 18839.93.'

'How is that even possible?!'

'I don't know ask mine calculator?!'

'Just write off mine paper, here.'

You gave him your paper with all the answers alreaddy.

'Thank youuuuu.'

'Your welcomeeee.'

You couldn't stop thinking about Hyunjin, it was very strange. You just cannot imagine a life without him right now. Maybe thats a bit over dramatic. You only knew him shortly, so how is that even possible.

'Psst.'

You turned around and came eye to eye, to a very cute boy.

'Yes?'

'Could i borrow a pencil?'

'Sure, here.'

you gave him a pencil from your pencilcase.

'What is your name by the way.' you asked.

'Mine name is Min Yoongi and yours is...'

'Y/N, Y/N I/N.'

'Cool name.'

'Thanks, mine parents picked it for me.'

you both laughed.

You two started to have a deep conversation, about all sorts of things. He was very interesting. He never seem to be understood by the students around the campus. His story's made your heart sink and fall over again. He told about his passion about writing music, also about his friends, and funny enough, he could passiontly talk about sleeping.

After hours of talking you could tell he really liked sleeping. He liked sleeping so much, he could just stay in bed for hours. Even tho it isn't that healthy.

'You are a very interesting person Yoongi.'

'Thank you.' he blushed.

'We really should hang-out sometime's.' he proposed.

'That sounds wonderfull.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AUTHORS POV

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hyunjin saw both of you smiling and talking together. His heart sank towards the ground. He never felt such a pain which wasn't physically. It was another sort of pain.

He went home with a broken-heart, even tho he didn't know you felt the same for him.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 2 coming soon

xoxo

Rachel

[goose-reads]

I was thinking about some of my favorite warrior cats, and i remembered this kittypet i got really attached to: Snowdrop. She was one of the kittypets encountered by the patrol sent to investigate what was blocking the river. I remember shipping her and Lionblaze together hardcore as a young child, and today i toyed with the idea in my mind again just to see where it went.

Far. It went far. It and other headcanons/tweaks completely changed the focus of Omen of the stars.

Things go as normal on the patrol itself, but when they got home, Lionblaze feels different. Dovepaw would assume he misses the patrol cats which leads to her trying to get them all to meet up again. Shes taught the same lesson she did, but this time she doesnt learn it. She keeps pushing until eventually shes forcing Lionblaze back to twoleg place. Him and Snowdrop talk again and have a good time, much to Dovepaws delight. This leads to Snowdrops interest in clan life, and Lionblaze. He did fight a beaver after all, thats impressive! After Lionblaze and Dovepaw went home, she’d follow. This leads to a confrontation between Snowdrop and Lionblaze where he cant say no and make her trek all the way back to twoleg place, so he begins sneaking off to teach her about the clans. Sometimes Dovepaw joins in to help, which leads to her so easily becoming friends and sneaking off to meet Tigerheart. Lionblaze has done nothing to really teach her its wrong.

To back track and shift focus ever so slightly, lets go back to when Lionblaze and Dovepaw left to visit Snowdrop. Cinderheart, now without Lionblaze or Hollyleaf, begins hanging out with Jayfeather more. As he uncovers her past life as Cinderpelt and she begins feeling pressured to conform to Starclans wishes and become a medicine cat like Cinderpelt. Jayfeather, all too familiar with the sentiment, fights tooth and nail to help Cinderheart forge her own destiny and identity. Shes not Cinderpelt after all, shes Cinderheart, and that means something. This reignites his will to fight against Starclans will himself, just as he had tried as an apprentice. Poppyfrost could do it, Briarlight could do it, Cinderheart could do it, why cant he?

Eventully, Snowdrop decides she wants to join Thunderclan. Lionblaze is nervous but he actually likes the idea of not having to sneak around to see her. Not like he did with Heathertail. Something thats been on his mind since he first started this little routine with Snowdrop. It had done nothing but remind him of his lost friend, and fallen sister, Hollyleaf. But if Snowdrop does become a Thunderclan warrior he wouldnt have to feel so guilty, and its this thought that convinces him to bring Snowdrop to Firestar. Firestar, being an ex-kittypet himself and Lionblazes grandfather, gives in and allows her in so long as Lionblaze teaches her the ropes. The rest of the clan isnt so happy. However Dovepaw, now Dovewing, is ecstatic. She is confused by Snowdrops negative reception and speaks up about it, earning the ire of many. This leads Ivypool to distance from her significantly more than she had been (seeing as shes had the same plot for the most part), but also to begin stalking Dovewing when she went out alone. Of course, this leads to her learning about Tigerheart.

Cinderheart had been slightly jealous of Snowdrop, and all the attention Lionblaze dedicated to her now, but had decided to move past it by now. There were better things to worry about than a fading crush on a childhood friend. Things such as her old apprentice, and how weird she had been acting. She begins prodding Ivypool for answers which leads to her gathering bits and pieces about the dark forest and Tigerheart and Dovewings relationship. She shares these with Jayfeather, who then looks deeper into the dark forest cats and trainees. When Spottedleaf steps in tosave him, he refuses, and actually ends up meeting Snowtuft. That mixed with meeting Ashfur in Starclan leads him to turning his back on Starclan altogether, and starts him on a path to forgiving Squirrelflight and Leafpool. He also begins working with Ivypool to plan against the dark forests invasion.

By bringing Snowdrop to the clan, Lionblaze has been outcasted by the majority of his clanmates. Cats like Squirrelflight and Leafpool support him though, and even help defend Snowdrops place in the clan. This leads to Lionblaze forgiving and accepting them. Berrynose was uncertain about her at first, but accepted Snowdrop, causing a feeling a mutual respect to foster between him and Lionblaze. And the same with Berrynose’s family. After all, Daisy, Mousewhisker, and Hazeltail are all outsiders too. Poppyfrost took some time but warmed up aswell, Snowdrop did help entertain the kits. Thornclaw, Spiderleg, and Mousefur were not so pleased, going out of their way to insult and scrutinize the two. They claimed Lionblaze only let her join so he wasnt breaking the code if they became mates, which made him feel oddly guilty. They werent mates, they were friends, thats all. He still liked Cinderheart right?

He took Cinderheart on a stroll to try and convince himself it was true, which led to his own discovery about the dark forest and Dovewings half-clan relationship. By the end, Cinderheart had fully accepted Lionblaze moving on, and Lionblaze was left dreading his lack of butterflies around the molly. This led to him acting weird around Snowdrop, who had began struggling to feel at home in a clan that seemed to not want her.

Ivypool, by now, had begun spying for Jayfeather. Jayfeather had begun refusing to go to half clan meetings and gatherings (which is how we skip over the kinda dumb Flametail plot) leading to Leafpool getting her job back. She encouraged Jayfeather to still help take care of his clan mates using his knowledge on herbs, but also suggested he trained under a warrior in his newly acquired free time if he really wanted to. If Jayfeather wanted to turn his back on Starclan who was she to try and convince him otherwise? She owed Starclan no favors. Jayfeather. Began training under Poppyfrost when the queen got restless, then eventually Brightheart again when Berrynose shooed Jayfeather off.

Upon Hollyleafs return things start getting serious. War with the dark forest is fast approaching. She reconnects with her brothers and old friends, especially rekindling a bond with Cinderheart. She is forgiven by and forgives Squirrelflight and Leafpool, going to them for updates on the clan frequently, an helping Leafpool out with herbs when Jayfeather is out training. She even helps Jayfeather train, and Snowdrop. This leads to her and Lionblaze having a conversation about Heathertail, during which Hollyleaf comforts him. The warrior code is important, yes, but she does not have to judge with the same scrutiny that Starclan does. This eases his nerves enough for him to tell Snowdrop about his feelings, which she reciprocates. He had introduced her to a new life, and stuck through the hardships to help, he was loyal.

When Jayfeather finds out Hollyleaf is alive, he abandons Starclan altogether. They cant know much of anything if they cant even know if a cats dead or not. Who are they to guide his paws for him.

Hollyleaf learned of Ivypools spying through Jayfeather and Cinderheart both, and offered to help hide it from their clanmates and even join her in the dark forest itself. This aided Ivypool greatly, which eased Dovewings nerves enoughto let her focus on her and Tigerheart. She hated how they had to hide while Lionblaze didnt, and while she wanted to come out with it, Tigerheart did not. When Dovewing said that if he truly loved her, he’d announce it himself, he choked up, unable to dedicate himself fully. He had a reputation, and what would his clan mates think? His father? His sister? Dovewing was heart broken, returning to Thunderclan to be comforted by her sister. She hated the borders. She hated the borders and what they did to cats. How much hurt came from them. Lionblaze and Snowdrop suffered because of them, Leafpool and Crowfeather, Her and Tigerheart. She couldnt even have friends from across the border like Sedgewhisker or Petalnose.

When the three get together to discuss the prophecy and plans against the dark forest, they come to a discovery. They each resent a part of clanlife. Jayfeather resents the blind faith in Starclan. Lionblaze resents the hatred surrounding outsiders and the clans xenophobic mindset. And Dovewing resents the clans separation and hatred of eachother. Each has strayed from Starclan, and each has grown more powerful because of it. Jayfeather can go into peoples minds, Lionblaze can fight against impossible odds and come out unscathed, and Dovewing can hear anything coming from miles away. They hold the power of the stars in their paws, because they are not bound by them, because they are not blinded by their light like so many cats are.

Leafpool is the one who tells them theres a forth cat, which leads to theorizing on all ends. Jayfeather thinks its Cinderheart, as not only is she a reincarnation, but directly strayed from Starclans path. Lionblaze thinks its Hollyleaf, she was no longer blinded by the code and had appear right in time to help prepare against the dark forest. Dovewing thinks its Ivypool, whos been helping spy against the dark forest almost since the beginning, and has looked past the code to comfort her sister. Squirrelflight and Leafpool also get thrown around, until Firestar approaches them. Hes listened in on a few of the meetings theyve had, and takes the responsibility of being the fourth cat. Hes a cat from outside the clans, hes seen what the borders can do to the clans, and hes gone against Starclans will before. Starclan owed him too much to smite him.

The final battle goes almost the same, except rather than Starclan cats, Tribe cats help the clans. Thunderclan specifically had helped them when they needed it most, and neither group would exist without the other. Also rather than Spottedleaf saving Sandstorm from Mapleshade, its Jayfeather, who is then saved by Firestar. He earns his grandfathers praise shortly before his death. Snowdrop fights as fiercely as any warrior to protect her clan, ending up saving Mousefur from Brokenstar. Finally, she earns her clanmates respect, and is particularly praised by Mousefur. Mousefur still dies later on from infected injuries, joining Longtail in Starclan. After killing Tigerstar for the final time, Firestar is killed by a falling tree, too weakened to escape. Hes greeted by a plethora of Starclan cats floating down into Thunderclan camp, coming down to apologize and praise the clan cats.

Dovewing and Tigerheart eventually get back together in Avos, Snowdrop and Lionblaze eventually have kittens to replace the CinderLion kits, Jayfeather decides to stay as a medicine cat but participates in warrior duties regularly, mostly with Conderheart as they mourn the loss of Hollyleaf together. Ivypool also mourns Hollyleaf especially, having begun to idolize the she-cat. I don’t actually see Ivypool having kits in this au because shed help take care of Dovewings but you can do whatever you want. Same with Cinderheart, she helped Poppyfrost raise her kits. Alderheart is trained by Leafpool but is greatly influenced by and idolizes Jayfeather, who cusses Starclan out for him. Also i think Dovewing and Tigerheart step in to help Twigkit and Violetkit separately, which leads to them getting back together.

Thunderclan begins down the path of major change, led by Bramblestar and his brief crush on Jessie.

If events are out of order i apologize! This is an au, obviously, and its been awhile since i read the books. I stopped reading at avos. Also sorry for typos i wrote this bery quickly