#the law of unintended consequences | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chogiwow · 2 months ago

Text

the law of unintended consequences. | jake sim (part one)

→ posits that actions often have unforeseen and unanticipated effects, which may be positive, negative, or neutral, that are not part of the actor's original intent. MASTERLIST | PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4

pairing: astrophysicist jake x assistant reader

genre: co-workers to lovers

wc: part 1 – 20k

warnings: slowburn, topics of abandonment issues, jake has his first kiss, makeouts, some touching (that's as far as it goes), cheesy ass astronomy rizz :'D

a/n: dividing this into 2-3 parts bc tumblr fuck you and your 1000 blocks limit

one.

you are not supposed to be here.

you have zero qualifications in astrophysics, no background in quantum mechanics, and absolutely no business being inside one of the country’s top space research facilities.

but you’re just a desperate graduate looking for a job.

when you applied for an assistant role at a science institute – thinking it would involve scheduling meetings, filing paperwork, maybe even making coffee – you did not expect to end up working under a literal genius.

seriously, you thought you’d be running small errands. and here’s the thing. you’re good at what you do, you’re good at the whole administerial part of the job. you’re needed to print copies of the meeting notes? done. you need to coordinate with the finance department because sunghoon somehow submitted last year’s budget instead of the current one? you already emailed them. jay forgot about an important board meeting? no, he didn’t. because you added three reminders to his calendar and physically dragged him out of the lab when he tried to pretend he had “urgent research” to finish.

you keep this place functioning, to whatever extent you can. you are efficient. you are essential. you are the one making sure the right documents reach the right people in the chaos that is everyday and the coffee machine’s up and functioning.

but the moment anyone in the lab starts talking about science stuff? you might as well be a hamster in a quantum mechanics lecture.

seriously. it’s like your brain just taps out.

you’ve been working here for months, and you still don’t know what these people actually do. you know it involves space and big words and a lot of coffee-fueled all-nighters. but the second someone starts explaining their research, it’s like you’re staring into the abyss.

you’re basically surrounded by insufferable nerds who talk about wormholes and black hole singularities like they’re discussing the weather. it’s like walking into a foreign country where the language is pure equations.

the worst part?

not all of them are entirely insufferable. some are just too passionate for their own good, their conversations looping endlessly in circles you can’t follow. if anything, you’re the fish out of water here.

take jay, for example. he’s not that bad. in fact, he’s one of those hot nerds who knows he’s hot – but doesn’t flaunt it. sure, he runs a hand through his hair a little too often when you’re around, throws you that lopsided smile when you hand out research papers you don’t understand, and occasionally offers you free coffee when you pass by his workstation.

but he’s also the guy with an endless arsenal of space puns and the world’s worst pick-up lines.

so yeah, not entirely insufferable.

sunghoon is more moody, more reserved, always hyper-focused on his work. he doesn’t bother with small talk, barely acknowledges your presence unless necessary, and when he does, it’s usually with a furrowed brow and a clipped “can you move?” when you accidentally block the whiteboard. he’s a bit of a jerk in your opinion, but jay seems to swear by him, assuring you that his friends have been literal losers since university, never even having dated anyone at all and that he just needs time to warm up to someone. you believe him because it's believable.

but leading this entire team of genius lunatics?

dr. jake sim.

jake sim is brilliant. annoyingly brilliant. the youngest astrophysicist to be leading major research on gravitational waves and exoplanets. the golden boy of the lab. the guy who talks about space-time distortions the way normal people talk about the weather.

jake sim is also hot – surprise (not really). he completes the trio of jay and sunghoon – the hot trio of the lab. everyone knows it. every assistant and secretary in the building has fun batting their eyes and twirling their hair at them. but while jay flirts back and sunghoon ignores it, jake… doesn’t even notice.

jake has a quiet, brooding edge to him. he always wears his glasses – except when he slides them off to rub a tired hand over his stupidly handsome face, his black hair somehow fluffy yet perfectly in place. you’ve often found yourself staring, wondering what kind of haircare routine produces that level of effortless perfection. (“papaya extract shampoo,” jay tells you later.)

even when he’s frowning, he looks like a lost puppy. he’s not intimidating per se, he’s just … not a very socially apt person you’ve met. and that’s saying something because the first month you joined, sunghoon avoided you like the plague. you thought you had done something to offend him but turns out, as jay informed you later, sunghoon’s just very awkward around new people.

jake sim is a genius. a literal, world-altering, lab-coated prodigy whose brain works at speeds the average person can’t even comprehend.

he is also, unfortunately, a menace to basic workplace efficiency. you’ve learned this the hard way.

because for all his brilliance, jake has zero awareness of his surroundings. he’ll abandon pens in entirely different departments, walk off mid-sentence because he’s already three equations ahead in his mind, and somehow exist in a state of constant near-calamity – like a human science experiment teetering on the edge of disaster.

which is where you come in.

you, the assistant who keeps his world running. the one who reminds him to eat. the one who nudges a coffee into his hands before he even realizes he needs it. the one who subtly rearranges his misplaced files, retrieves his lost stationery, and – on more than one occasion – has saved his life by yanking him out of the way of an incoming cart of hazardous materials.

you do all of this seamlessly. efficiently. and completely unnoticed.

because jake sim doesn’t know your name. not really.

you’re just the person who hands him reports and dodges his absentminded shoulder bumps in the hallway. the one he thanks without looking up, too engrossed in his work to register you as anything more than background noise.

which brings you to now.

standing outside his office, gripping a file filled with research you don’t understand, mentally preparing yourself to not make a fool of yourself this time.

you take a breath. knock. no answer.

you knock again. still nothing.

maybe he’s not here? maybe you can just leave the file on his desk and escape unnoticed—

the door suddenly swings open. and you immediately take a step back, startled.

jake blinks down at you, clearly pulled out of deep thought, his glasses slightly askew, lab coat unbuttoned.

he doesn’t say anything. just stares.

and for the first time, you’re really seeing him up close.

his sharp features. the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw from too many sleepless nights. the way his hair falls slightly over his forehead.

yeah, this man has no business being this attractive.

you open your mouth, but words fail you.

jake glances at the file in your hands. then back at you.

“are you lost?”

what.

“no,” you say, straightening. “i—i work here.”

jake frowns, clearly trying to recall if he’s ever seen you before. he has not.

“…right.” his gaze flicks down to your name tag. “y/n.”

holy shit, it’s at this moment that you realise, this man has no idea who you are. he doesn’t know who his assistant is.

regardless, you nod, offering the file like it’s a peace offering. “dr. lee said to give this to you.”

jake takes the file from you, barely glancing at it before flipping through the pages. silence. you shift awkwardly, waiting for him to acknowledge your existence beyond just your name tag.

“this is wrong.”

…excuse me?

you blink. “what?”

jake flips the file around, showing you a page filled with numbers and diagrams that might as well be ancient hieroglyphics to you. “these calculations. they don’t match the expected parameters.”

your brain short-circuits. “uh… okay.”

jake sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “did dr. lee give this to you?”

“yes.”

“did you change anything?”

you gape at him. “do i look like i know how to change a single digit in that mess?”

jake finally looks at you properly, as if realizing you are, in fact, the last person who would alter high-level astrophysics data. then, to your absolute horror, he scoffs. somehow, that’s more insulting to you, the fact that he’s just now realising that you’re an assistant and not a fellow colleague or intern or junior. really, it was just a sign of realisation, but why did it piss you off?

“fair point.”

he steps back, gesturing for you to come in. “i need to cross-check this. you might as well wait.”

before you can protest, he’s already walked back to his desk, completely expecting you to follow.

here’s another thing about you. you’re efficient, yes. you keep the schedules running like a well-oiled machine. you manage people, deadlines, and occasional office chaos with ease. you have your occasional run-ins with the high tech coffee machine, but you compensate with the packets of instant mixes. you clock in and out of work on time, you don’t butt your nose where you’re not required. you sit quietly in those boring meetings, stifling your yawns but its not like many people notice you anyway. you are definitely efficient at what you do.

but you’re also... clumsy.

not in a way that actively disrupts work (you swear). just in a way that has you constantly bumping into desks, tripping over air, and somehow finding new, creative ways to spill coffee on yourself. you blame it on your flat feet – probably. but the truth is, you’ve simply made peace with your gravitational challenges.

it’s something that has plagued you since an early age where you’d be slipping off swing sets or bumping into tables or accidentally rubbing the eraser too hard across your notebook page, causing it to rip right through the middle. but it's alright, it’s not a life threatening… disorder, you’d suppose.

and for the most part, no one notices.

except that one time jay did when you tripped over a computer wire. he snickered so loud, half the office turned to stare at him. you ran away in a blushing mess before he could turn it into a full roast session.

you're standing in jake sim’s office with the hesitation of someone who just walked into an active minefield. but it’s always this way when you need to go into his office.

his office is… exactly the way you had seen it in your initial days of work.

not in the normal executive kind of way – no sleek, intimidating decor, no minimalist furniture that screams i’m too rich to function. no, jake’s office is chaos disguised as a workspace.

the walls are lined with whiteboards covered in scribbled equations – formulas, diagrams, and the kind of notes that make your brain hurt just looking at them. books are stacked in precarious towers, some open, some closed, all of them filled with words and symbols that might as well be hieroglyphics. a crumpled hoodie is draped over the back of his chair, and an abandoned coffee cup sits dangerously close to the edge of his desk, a faint ring staining the surface underneath.

there’s a rhythm to the disorder, though – like his mind works too fast for his space to keep up. you’ve known jake to be someone who knows exactly what he is doing and you have no doubt this is all just an organised mess to him. he’d probably be able to tell you in alphabetical order where all his things were. you knew the moment you saw him maneuvering himself through this trash pile of a room with the ease of a cat, that he knew exactly where everything was.

but you did your part as a good assistant and helped clean up his desk once in a while. nothing much, just stacking the reports in different piles, labelled ‘to be read’ or ‘needs review’ with coloured sticky notes for his sake, making sure his pen stand has a decent amount of working pens and sharpened pencils, bookmarking pages of books he left open on his table and stacking them in another corner of the desk, making sure the dust is cleaned off and no stains of coffee cups remain on his workspace.

it smells faintly of coffee, whiteboard markers, and something else – something subtly clean, like fresh laundry, though you doubt he even has time for things like that.

and in the middle of it all is jake sim himself, hunched over his desk, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose as he scans a file with sharp, calculating eyes. he absently pushes his glasses back up, muttering something under his breath.

you catch the words “data inconsistencies.”

you have no idea what’s wrong with the numbers on the page, but based on his frown, they seem to have personally offended him.

you shift your weight from one foot to the other, trying not to focus on the dim office lighting casting soft shadows over his face.

which, objectively speaking, is unfairly attractive.

in that disheveled genius way – like he hasn’t slept in days but could still win a magazine cover shoot by accident.

not that you care. obviously. you’re just here to do your job. your very normal, very non-physics-related job.

and then, in true you fashion – disaster strikes.

it happens fast. one second, you’re standing still, being the picture of professionalism. the next, your foot catches on something – probably your own dignity – and suddenly, the ground is rushing up to meet you at an alarming speed.

you don’t even have time to process your impending doom before a firm hand catches your wrist, steadying you just before you faceplant into the floor.

for a brief, shocking moment, you’re pressed against jake sim’s side, gripping his arm as if your life depends on it.

because it does.

you look up – eyes wide, breath caught – and find him staring down at you, completely unfazed, those damn glasses of his slightly crooked over his nose bridge. his grip is steady, warm, but impersonal – like he just reacted on instinct before immediately moving on.

and then — "dark matter interactions shouldn’t be this inconsistent," he mutters, releasing you as if the whole thing was a minor inconvenience.

you just nearly wiped out in his office, and he’s already back to contemplating the mysteries of the universe?!

you gape at him as he casually flips a page, frowning at the numbers again, like he hadn’t just saved you from a mild concussion.

"uh��thanks?" you manage, still trying to steady your heartbeat.

jake hums in response, not even looking up. "watch your step next time."

unbelievable. it’s official.

this man has zero self-awareness.

two.

jake swears on his life he had kept the papers on the ‘dark energy survey’ report on his desk last night before he left.

yet, as he stands in his office now, staring at the very-much-empty surface where they should be, his jaw tightens.

he exhales through his nose. okay. no need to panic. maybe they got buried under the mess.

he starts shifting through the stacks of books and scattered notes, moving one pile to another area of controlled chaos. but the more he looks, the more it becomes evident – those papers are gone.

and he needs them. now.

biting his cheeks, he squats on the floor, peering under his desk but nothing. not the report he was looking for. maybe he kept it somewhere else, somewhere away from the mess on his desk just to be sure that they were in a more accessible place. but where? there’s not a single nook and cranny in his room that could possibly meet that standard, it’s all just piles of papers and charts and books.

his desk drawer?

a quick survey of that yields nothing but two dried up pens, some loose sheets he had scribbled rough calculations on and an empty paper cup.

fuck, where the hell did he put that report?

with a frustrated sigh, he runs a hand through his already-messy hair, striding across to the middle of his room and casting a wary glance all around. a muscle in his jaw twitches as he stares at the scattered disaster zone that is his office.

he has checked everywhere – under the desk, between stacks of papers, in his desk drawer (twice), even inside an old laptop case for some godforsaken reason.

nothing.

this doesn’t make sense. he left it right here – unless he didn’t.

he presses his palms against the desk, eyes squeezing shut for a second. he’s tired. maybe he just—

"are you okay, or are you plotting an intergalactic war?"

jake's head snaps up.

you stand at the doorway, arms crossed, eyebrows quirked in amusement. you’re holding a different set of documents, clearly in the middle of your usual rounds, but now you’re just watching him suffer.

"i’m fine," he says flatly.

"uh-huh. that’s why you look like you want to launch yourself into a black hole."

jake pinches the bridge of his nose. "i lost something." he’s seen you before, weren’t you the person from yesterday? the one who tripped over air?

you hum, stepping inside. "what?"

“the dark energy survey report.”

at that, you pause. a flicker of something crosses your face, like you’re remembering something.

jake notices. “what?”

“nothing,” you say automatically. then, a second later, “wait. you’re sure you left it on your desk?”

“yes.”

“you’re sure sure?”

jake glares. “i don’t say things i’m not sure about.”

you give him a look, like you find that highly debatable, but instead of arguing, you shift the documents in your hands and tilt your head in thought.

"because," you start, "i came in yesterday to drop off a memo from dr. lee, and i remember seeing your desk. it was already a disaster zone, but i don’t think that report was there."

jake frowns. "that’s impossible. i was working on it last night—"

and then it clicks.

his expression shifts, frustration turning into something more like realization.

“oh,” he says.

“oh?” you echo.

jake straightens, rubbing his jaw. he had been talking to jay and sunghoon about data discrepancies in the report yesterday. they had moved to the adjacent lab to compare notes on a new simulation model—

shit.

"i think i left it in lab c," jake sighs, already making a beeline for the door. "i took it with me while discussing—"

"—dark matter inconsistencies, right?" you finish dryly, following him out.

jake doesn’t acknowledge that. but you’re right.

as jake strides toward lab c with you trailing behind him, you take a moment to process the absurdity of this situation.

you are an administrative assistant. your job is to schedule meetings, file reports, and occasionally wrestle the coffee machine into submission.

yet, here you are, following the lab's star astrophysicist on a quest for lost paperwork like you’re in some sort of intergalactic treasure hunt.

lab c is as chaotic as you expect it to be. desks cluttered with scattered notes, half-drunk coffee cups balancing precariously on top of stacks of journals, whiteboards filled with scribbles that look more like encrypted messages from an alien race than anything remotely comprehensible.

jake wastes no time. he scans the room, eyes sharp, movements precise. you, on the other hand, stand uselessly by the door, because let’s be honest – you wouldn’t even know what the report looks like if it smacked you in the face.

he mutters under his breath as he sifts through a pile of books, pushing aside a crumpled hoodie and a few loose sheets. “it should be here…”

“you know, for a genius, you’re pretty bad at keeping track of your own stuff.”

jake shoots you a look. “i have a system.”

you snort. “a system of losing things?”

he doesn’t dignify that with a response. instead, he bends down, checking under a table. you take this as an opportunity to glance around the lab, pretending like you’re helping even though you don’t know what you’re looking for.

then you spot it. a thick, spiral-bound stack of papers shoved to the very edge of a side desk, partially covered by a takeout container.

“uh… dr. sim?”

“what?” he asks, voice distracted as he pulls open a drawer.

you point. “is that it?”

jake follows your gaze, and for a second, he just stares.

then, with a slow exhale, he walks over, picks up the report, and flips through the pages.

“…yeah.” he sighs, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “this is it.”

you cross your arms, grinning. “you’re welcome.”

he glances at you, eyes narrowing slightly. “you didn’t actually do anything.”

“excuse me? i found it.”

jake shakes his head, turning his attention back to the report. “if you weren’t distracting me, i would’ve found it faster.”

your mouth falls open. “oh, i’m sorry – who was about to tear his entire office apart thinking it had magically disappeared?”

jake ignores you, already skimming through the contents like the numbers and graphs hold the secrets of the universe.

you roll your eyes. this man is impossible.

and it's a fact you make known very clearly when you’re in the break room, muttering under your breath about how a simple thanks would have sufficed, but no, jake sim is a dumbass with his head up his–

“woah, woah y/n, you know you don’t really mean that,” jay interrupts your rant with a smile that shows that he’s clearly enjoying this, “what did the man ever do to you?”

what did he do to you?

“well for one, he didn’t even know i existed until yesterday–”

“give him a break, he’d probably forget his own name with all the things that go around in that brain of his.”

“–and then he scoffed at me when he realised i’m just an assistant–”

“i don’t think he meant any offense.”

“and then today, he didn’t remember me of course and when i helped him find that damn report he didn’t even thank me!”

jay lets out a small laugh. “he was probably just too relieved that he found it. he’s been stressing over that for a while.”

you squint at him. “what are you, his boyfriend?”

your pout is completely involuntary, but jay, the traitor, just smirks knowingly.

he raises an eyebrow, clearly holding back laughter. “not yet. but hey, if he keeps ignoring you like this, i might have a chance.”

you groan, dramatically flopping onto one of the break room chairs. “i swear i’m going to lose my mind!”

jay snickers, settling into the chair across from you. “you’re being a little dramatic.”

“oh, am i?” you lean forward, eyes narrowing. “because i don’t think i am. i think this is a completely rational response to being treated like a piece of office furniture.”

jay bites back a smile. “so you’re saying jake treats you like… a chair?”

“no! worse! at least a chair gets sat on – it has a purpose!” you throw your hands up. “i’m like… i’m like an extra paperclip. you know? just there, completely overlooked, until one day he might need me for something and then immediately forgets i exist again.”

jay blinks. “that is… oddly specific.”

“because it’s true!” you shoot up from your seat, now fully committed to the metaphor.

jay opens his mouth, but you’re already spiraling.

“three months – that’s how long i’ve been working here as his assistant, but he didn’t even know my name!” you don’t why it bothers you, you didn’t expect everyone to know your name here, but that damn jake sim just… got on your nerves for some reason.

“last week, when he bumped into me in the hallway. i swear, jay, i could have been a ghost. no ‘excuse me,’ no ‘oh, my bad,’ nothing! i could’ve been a gust of wind for all he cared.” you throw up air quotes. “just a mild inconvenience in his trajectory.”

jay hums. “maybe he just didn’t see you—”

“i was wearing a bright red sweater, jay.”

jay coughs to hide a laugh. “okay, fair.”

“oh, and this morning? i held the elevator door open for him. you know what he did? he walked in, pulled out his phone, and scrolled on it the entire time like i was the automatic door button.” you gasp. “oh my god, i’m not even a paperclip. i’m a goddamn elevator button – just pressed when needed and ignored otherwise.”

at this, jay actually doubles over laughing, wiping at his eyes. “y/n, i’m begging you, please breathe.”

you exhale sharply, arms crossed, foot tapping against the floor. “i refuse.”

jay grins. “so you’re telling me you’re this upset because he, what, didn’t grovel at your feet for holding a door open?”

you scoff. “i’m not asking for groveling! i’m asking for basic human decency! a thank you! a nod! a brief moment of eye contact! something to prove that i’m not just an inanimate object in his world! to at least memorize his own goddamn assistant’s name!”

jay leans back in his chair, arms crossed. “so basically… you want him to notice you.”

you freeze.

jay’s smirk deepens. “ohhh.”

“no.” you point a warning finger at him. “don’t even go there.”

“but we’re already here.” he has a shit eating grin on his face which you want to slap off, “why is this bothering you so much? i swear i can’t remember you being this antsy when sunghoon avoided you in your first month.”

you scoff at that, a dry laugh following.

why? because you’re his goddamn assistant, not sunghoon’s.

“okay, what about last month? he walked into the office looking like a lost child because he forgot his laptop charger. guess who lent him one?”

jay winces. “you?”

“yes! and do you know what he said to me? ‘oh, you have one? cool, thanks, man.’ ” you pause, scowling. “man, jay. man.”

jay laughs. “okay, that’s a little rough.”

“i’m not done.” you hold up a finger, eyes ablaze. “lunch break. he was on the phone, right? kept checking his watch like he was late for something, totally zoned out. he dropped his damn wallet right in front of my salad.”

jay whistles. “and let me guess…?”

“i picked it up, ran down four flights of stairs because the elevator was taking too long, found him outside, and handed it to him before he even realized it was gone.” you cross your arms. “do you think he looked at me? do you think he was even the slightest bit aware that he nearly walked into financial ruin?”

jay grins. “what did he say?”

you deepen your voice in the best jake impression you can manage. “‘oh, sick, thanks, dude.’ ” you slap your hands on the table. “dude.”

jay is fully laughing now, shaking his head. “wow. okay. that is… a lot.”

“right?” you throw yourself back into the chair, hands dramatically covering your face. “i’m literally the human equivalent of an undo button. always there, fixing things, never noticed. just a—”

“a paperclip?”

“exactly!”

jay smirks, taking a sip of his coffee. “you could just stop helping him, you know.”

you scoff. “and let him walk around with a dead laptop, no lunch money, and a general lack of survival skills? please. he’d die within the week.”

jay snickers. “so you want to help him?”

“no, i just…” you hesitate, glaring at the table. “it’s not fair that he gets to be so careless and people like me have to pick up after him.”

jay tilts his head. “people like you?”

“people who actually pay attention,” you mutter, running a frustrated hand through your hair. “it’s so easy for him, you know? he gets to waltz through life, forgetting names, misplacing things, just… assuming everything will work out for him. and the worst part? he’s right. because someone like me is always there to make sure it does.”

jay watches you quietly for a second. “y/n…”

you shake your head, standing up and grabbing your coffee. “whatever. it’s fine. it’s not like he’s doing it on purpose.” you glance at jay. “and no, before you say it, it’s not because i want him to notice me. it’s just…” you sigh. “it’d be nice to feel like i exist.”

jay gives you a knowing look but doesn’t push further. “well. if it makes you feel better, i notice you.”

you snort. “wow. how reassuring.”

but even as you joke, there’s a tiny, sinking feeling in your chest.

because deep down, you know – jake sim will never notice you the way you want him to.

okay, now that shouldn't be a problem. because the way you put it, anyone would conclude you have a thing for him, but that’s not it. because you don’t mention to jay how when you were just a week into the new job, you had spilled coffee all over yourself, and jake sim had been the one to hand you the spare hoodie in his arm.

it had smelled like laundry detergent and something vaguely citrusy. clean. warm.

you don’t tell jay how, back then, you had hesitated before taking it, surprised that the lab’s most brilliant astrophysicist had even noticed your minor catastrophe.

“here,” he had said, casual, like it was nothing. like it was just a reflex.

and maybe it had been.

because when you had stammered out a “thank you,” jake had already turned away, scrolling through his phone.

like you weren’t even there.

like handing a coffee-stained assistant his hoodie was just another thing on his long list of unconscious habits – like losing reports, misplacing wallets, or forgetting names.

just another thing he would never think about again.

and you? you had worn that hoodie for the rest of the day. then, after work, you had folded it neatly, walked up to him in the break room, and said, “hey, thanks again for this.”

and he had blinked at you. blinked like he had no idea what you were talking about.

“oh,” he had said after a beat, glancing at the hoodie in your hands. “right. cool.”

that was the first time you had felt it – the quiet, sinking realization that in jake sim’s world, you were just… background noise.

that was three months ago.

now, you’re still here, still stuck in the same loop, orbiting his chaotic existence like some unnoticed planetary body, pulled in by the sheer force of his gravitational field but never quite seen.

and it’s exhausting.

you sigh, dragging a hand down your face. jay is still watching you, amused but not unkind. “are you done spiraling?”

you groan. “i hate you.”

“no, you don’t.”

you glare. “no, but i might start.”

jay snickers, pushing his coffee toward you like some sort of peace offering. “here. take a sip before you actually implode.”

you roll your eyes but take it anyway, muttering under your breath.

jay grins. “so, what’s the plan?”

you blink. “plan?”

“yeah.” he leans back, crossing his arms. “clearly, you’re at your limit. are you going to keep playing office paperclip, or are you finally going to make jake sim realize you exist?”

you scoff, your eyes narrowing. “and why would i need to do that?”

jay hums, tilting his head like he’s studying you under a microscope. “y’know… i think this might be deeper than just wanting to be ‘noticed.’”

you narrow your eyes. “the hell does that mean?”

he taps his chin. “i mean, it’s kinda funny, isn’t it? how personally you take this?”

you scoff. “i do not take it personally.”

jay gives you a look. “right. which is why you’re two seconds away from stabbing a straw through that coffee cup.”

you immediately release your grip, only to cross your arms instead. “i just think it’s rude, that’s all. i do so much for him, and he doesn’t even know my name? it’s basic decency.”

jay nods, way too agreeable. “mhm. basic decency. has nothing to do with, say… i don’t know… a deep-seated need for validation?”

your jaw drops. “excuse me?”

“or,” he continues, as if he didn’t just hit you with psychological warfare over morning coffee, “maybe even something more?”

you blink. “more?”

jay grins like he’s just won the lottery. “yeah. like romantic feelings.”

you almost choke. “i—what—no—”

jay shrugs. “i mean, it would explain a lot.”

“oh, shut up.”

“i’m serious! if this were just about office politics, you’d be annoyed for, like, a day. maybe a week. but this?” he gestures vaguely at your entire existence. “this is an obsession.”

you point a finger at him. “i hate you.”

he smirks. “no, you don’t.”

you take a deep breath, trying not to lose your mind. “for the last time, jay, i do not like jake sim.”

jay leans forward, smirking. “then prove it.”

you blink. “what?”

“prove it,” he repeats. “if this really isn’t about your feelings, then let’s run an experiment. let’s make jake see you.”

of course the scientist proposes an experiment; you roll your eyes. “that doesn’t prove anything.”

“it proves everything,” he counters. “because if you really don’t care, then it shouldn’t matter how he reacts.” he tilts his head, eyes gleaming. “right?”

you hesitate.

jay takes that as his victory. “great! i’ll draft a game plan.”

“wait—”

too late. jay is already pulling out his phone, typing something with way too much enthusiasm.

you exhale sharply, rubbing your temples. this is a terrible idea.

but the thing is… you do want jake to see you. even if it’s just to prove – to yourself – that you don’t care.

right?

three.

you know, you don’t think you entirely mind that jake doesn’t know your name yet. you don’t think you would have cared so much. but then, once in a while, you’d catch him having lunch with jay and sunghoon and actually laughing – an act that makes him look younger than he is – a charming smile settling on his lips or chatting with a fellow colleague who he calls by their last name and it makes you realise that you’re probably not as important to him as these people are.

like, come on, he brushes shoulders with the top scientists of your country while you’re here, sitting behind a reception desk, manning phone calls and printing reports. of course he doesn’t care about you or your existence as a whole. but then it’s small things he does like thanking you absentmindedly when you hand him a report, not even sparing you a glance as he flips through the pages.

or humming under his breath when he passes by your desk, like he’s so comfortable in the space that he doesn’t even realize you’re there, like you’re just part of the background noise.

it’s never outright cruel. never intentional.

it’s just that jake sim, in all his effortless brilliance, has never had to make space for people like you.

and why would he? you’re not on his level. you never have been. you bet if you disappeared tomorrow, he wouldn’t even notice.

the world would keep spinning, jake sim would keep working, and someone else would take over the dull, insignificant tasks you do every day. your existence in his orbit is incidental – a means to an end, a faceless cog in the well-oiled machine of his career.

and yet, you notice him. even when you don’t mean to. even when you don’t want to.

you notice the way his sleeves are always rolled up to his elbows, his watch gleaming against his skin. the way his brows pinch together when he’s deep in thought, or how his hair falls into his eyes when he’s exhausted, too overworked to care.

you notice the way he speaks – smooth, confident, magnetic – and how everyone around him seems to hang onto every word like it’s gospel.

you notice the way he never fumbles. never hesitates. never second-guesses himself.

because that’s just the kind of person jake sim is.

and you – you are just the kind of person who will never be enough to matter to someone like him. but then he does things that make you doubt your reservations about him.

like, there was the elevator incident.

you were balancing a precarious stack of documents when you rushed to catch the closing doors, only to wince when they slid shut right before you got there. you sighed, shifting your grip on the papers, when you suddenly heard a soft ding – the doors sliding back open.

jake was inside, one hand on the door button, barely sparing you a glance as he scrolled through something on his phone.

you stepped in, mumbling a quiet, “thanks.”

he hummed in response. nothing more. no conversation. no recognition. just the soft whirring of the elevator and the occasional sound of him scrolling.

it was so small. so insignificant.

but you still felt yourself standing just a little straighter, just a little warmer, for the rest of the day.

and then, there was the pen.

you weren’t even sure when it started, but at some point, you began keeping track.

jake had this habit – whenever he borrowed a pen, he never returned it to the original spot. he didn’t even seem to notice he was doing it, always too focused on whatever was in front of him to realize he’d left the pen somewhere completely different.

so, naturally, you started leaving extras.

just subtle little things – placing an extra pen near his usual meeting spots, sliding one closer to him during group discussions when you were pretending to sort paperwork nearby. you never expected him to notice. you weren’t even sure why you did it.

until one afternoon, when you sat at your desk, rummaging through your drawers, only to realize you’d somehow misplaced your pen. you sighed, about to get up for a new one, when something was set down beside your elbow.

a pen.

you looked up, startled.

jake was already walking away. didn’t even spare you a glance, his attention on the tablet in his hands.

you stared after him, the pen warm from his hold, the weight of it heavier than it should have been.

it was probably nothing. probably just a reflex.

but you still use that pen for the next two weeks straight.

then there was the tripping incident.

now, it’s established that you can be clumsy, not dramatically so – no full-on disaster movie falls – but you do have a tendency to bump into things. desks, chairs, open cabinet doors that definitely weren’t open when you last checked.

and, of course, corners. corners were your worst enemy.

one day, you were hurrying through the hallway, files stacked high in your arms, when – bam. your hip slammed into the sharp edge of a desk, hard enough to make you wince. the papers wobbled dangerously in your grip, and you cursed under your breath, already anticipating the bruise that was definitely going to form.

you didn’t think anyone noticed.

but the next morning, when you walked into the office, there was a strip of foam padding stuck neatly along the desk corner.

your brows furrowed.

it was subtle – so subtle that if you weren’t you, if you weren’t someone with a running list of all the places in this office that had betrayed you, you probably wouldn’t have noticed.

but you did.

and later that day, when you caught jake in the break room, he was patting the foam as if ensuring it was stuck on there properly, absentmindedly nodding to himself as if he had confirmed what he was inspecting, then promptly left without sparing you a second glance.

you didn’t say anything.

didn’t bring it up.

but as you passed by the desk, running your fingers over the softened edge, something in your chest ached. just a little.

so jake sim did notice you – but not as an individual, just someone he thought might be having a hard time and because he is kind, he did what he could. it didn’t matter who the recipient of his good intentions was.

hence, you do what a good assistant does. because at the end of the day, you’ve seen jake work – you’ve seen the passion he pours into it.

so if he forgets to eat, you quietly step away from your desk, heat up the extra sandwich you packed for him from the cafeteria, and place it on his cluttered desk, clearing a small space first. a gentle knock on the wood to get his attention, a silent reminder to eat.

if he’s scribbling on the backs of old reports, running low on notebooks and clean sheets, you take a trip down to inventory, restocking his supplies, stacking them neatly within reach.

if his desk is drowning in coffee cups and crumpled post-its, you quietly dispose of the trash, leaving only the essentials behind – his laptop, his research papers, the single pen he never seems to lose (because you always make sure it’s there).

if he forgets where he placed his whiteboard markers, you don’t say anything – you just pull a fresh set from your drawer and slide them onto his desk before he even notices they were missing.

you’ve just been there, silently observing and noting things – like the way his brows knit together in deep concentration, or how he absently chews on the cap of his pen when he’s stuck on a problem. how he spaces out sometimes, staring at the whiteboard like it holds the answers to the universe itself, only to snap back to reality when you clear your throat to get his attention.

you know that he prefers black coffee in the morning but switches to tea in the late afternoon. that he always loses his glasses, only to find them perched on top of his head. that he hums under his breath when he’s deep in thought, a quiet melody that never quite forms into a song.

you notice everything, because that’s just what a good assistant does.

and that, apparently, is a problem. or so jay states. hence, the first step in jay’s ‘game plan’? make jake feel your absence.

“you’re too available,” jay had said, stirring his coffee with a smug little smirk. “jake doesn’t notice you because you make his life too easy. you’re like air – essential but invisible. so what happens when air gets sucked out of a room?”

“…people die?”

jay gave you a flat look. “no, they panic.”

and so, the plan began.

it’s such a tiny step, but it bothers you nonetheless because not only would this be disrupting jake’s routine, it’d be disrupting your perfect track record of a ‘good’ assistant.

but jay somehow manages to convince you. and you like the utter fool you are, give in, because hey… maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to disprove jay’s theory of your alleged feelings for jake. the need for validation? yeah, we’ll talk about that later.

today is the day you start, and you start small. it’s the little changes that usually go unnoticed.

you don’t remind jake about his 10 am meeting.

it’s a minor detail, barely even a test, because technically speaking, it’s not your job to remind him – it’s just something you’ve always done, anticipating his tendencies to get lost in his work. normally, you’d give him a heads-up around 9:50 am, watching as he’d nod absentmindedly, only to scramble up five minutes later when he finally processed your words.

today? radio silence.

at 10:07 am, sunghoon enters the meeting and frowns.

“where’s jake?” he turns to jay. his friend shrugs but hides the smile behind his cup of coffee.

meanwhile you’re glancing sneakily at jake’s door, slightly ajar and you can see him engrossed in something. your eyes glance at the time; 10:07 am. fuck, what if actually forgets he has a meeting? should you do something? is this going too far?

but you don’t have to worry because a few minutes later, there’s a thud, followed by a rushed shit, and then, a disheveled jake sim barrels past your desk, tablet clutched to his chest, hair a little messy from how he clearly just ran a hand through it in frustration.

his eyes flicker to you – just for a second. you’ve already gone back to pretending to be very busy typing nonsense into an email draft.

it works. he huffs under his breath and rushes to the meeting.

okay you should feel awful, but then you catch the tail end of jake’s coat disappearing behind the lift door and you can’t help the snicker that leaves your lips. surely, nothing could go wrong, right?

there’s one person who seems to be enjoying this more than you though: jay is having the time of his life.

like, actually. he hasn't had this much fun since the last office christmas party, when someone spiked the punch and sunghoon tried to fight the vending machine.

because watching jake sim fall apart over the smallest inconveniences? absolutely hilarious.

the moment you agreed to his plan, jay knew it would be gold. but even he underestimated just how much of jake’s daily functioning depended on you. it’s like watching a toddler suddenly realize their velcro shoes don’t tie themselves.

jake doesn’t realize something is wrong at first.

he barely makes it to his chair before the department head gives him a pointed look.

“you’re late.”

“i—uh—” jake swallows, trying to catch his breath. his tablet is still locked, his notes are disorganized, and when he flips open the file he brought, it’s yesterday’s report.

shit.

“right. sorry.” he forces a sheepish smile, scrambling to pull up the right document. across the table, jay lazily spins a pen between his fingers, watching with barely concealed amusement.

jake barely registers it – he’s too busy trying to recover. it’s fine. he’s got this.

except… something about this morning feels off.

and not in the way most of his chaotic mornings do. he just doesn’t know why. he just assumes his morning is…off. which, fine, it happens. he’s had late nights before, maybe he’s just tired.

jay had told you this would work.

in fact, he was so confident in his plan that he even grabbed a front-row seat to witness the destruction firsthand (he was already attending this meeting, but the man likes to gloat sometimes.)

and man – jake does not disappoint.

from the moment the meeting starts, jay knows this is going to be good.

jake looks off. nothing too obvious – just little things, things that someone like jay (who has spent years around him) can pick up on. the slight furrow of his brow. the way he keeps adjusting his notes, like something feels wrong but he can’t quite place why.

and then – the moment of realization.

jay almost chokes on his coffee when jake subtly pats his pockets, confusion flickering across his face.

oh, here we go.

he watches, barely holding in his laughter, as jake double checks – where, usually, there would be a pen. his pen. the one that miraculously appears every time he loses it, as if the universe itself conspires to keep him functional.

except today?

the universe (or rather, you) has left him to suffer.

jake blinks. blinks again. then, with the air of a man experiencing an existential crisis, slowly reaches for sunghoon’s pen instead.

sunghoon, understandably, looks at him like he’s lost his damn mind.

jay snickers and grabs his phone.

jay park [10:14 am]: what did u doooo jay park [10:14 am]: he looks like a lost puppy rn lmfao jay park [10:15 am]: deadass just patted his pockets like he was expecting something to magically appear there??

he glances up again, and – oh god, jake’s still buffering. he’s not even listening anymore, just staring at the table like it personally offended him.

all this over a pen? damn, maybe you were underestimating yourself, jay thinks, because there is no way you were just a paperclip, not if jake’s been this dependent on you.

jay is loving this.

four.

jake doesn’t notice things. not in the way people expect him to.

he notices equations. the subtle patterns in star systems. the way gravitational forces interact in ways most people don’t care to understand. his mind is built for that – patterns, logic, science.

but people? not so much.

back in university, he was dubbed a genius. a prodigy in astrophysics. someone who could map out entire celestial mechanics in his head but would somehow still forget his own birthday if no one reminded him.

the way jake relies on logic, structure, and predictability – because it’s safe. because he understands it. because people? people don’t make sense. they’re inconsistent. they leave. they change their minds. they say one thing and mean another.

but science? science is constant. a star will always burn out the same way under the same conditions. a planet will always follow its orbit. gravity will always exist.

as a kid, he preferred numbers over words, equations over feelings. when the other kids ran around the playground, playing tag or arguing over who was “it,” jake was perfectly content with his space books, tracing the orbits of planets with his fingers, memorizing the speed of light just because he could.

he learned early on that he wasn’t good at reading between the lines. that when someone said ‘i’m fine’, they didn’t always mean it. that people expected you to just know when they needed something, when they wanted comfort, when they wanted you.

jake never knew. so he stopped trying.

science was easier. there was no guesswork, no hidden meanings. an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. simple. predictable. the universe followed rules, and if jake studied hard enough, he could understand them. he could map them out, make sense of them, never be caught off guard.

but people? people made no sense at all.

and maybe that’s why, when he gets to work and sees that his desk is missing something so stupidly small – a cup of coffee, nothing more – he feels a flicker of something he doesn’t like.

a glitch in the system.

it doesn’t matter, he tells himself. it’s coffee. he can make it himself. he’s a grown adult with multiple degrees. a missing cup of caffeine should not throw him off.

and yet. jake stares at the empty space on his desk.

a week ago, he wouldn’t have noticed. wouldn’t have even thought about it. he never questioned why it was there in the first place, never thought twice about the sticky notes, the extra set of markers that magically appeared when he misplaced his own, the last-minute reminders that kept his schedule from turning into chaos.

he never questioned it. and that, apparently, was the problem.

because for the first time, he has to ask. and he really, really doesn’t want to.

jake debates it, which is insane. why is he overthinking this? it’s a simple request. a normal interaction. but something about it feels… weird. off-balance.

because asking means acknowledging. and acknowledging means admitting that he noticed.

his eye twitches. and after five full minutes of warring with himself, of sneaking glances at you like some kind of cornered animal, he finally forces himself to get up. jake clears his throat as he approaches your desk, hands shoved deep into his pockets. he doesn’t understand why this feels so monumental – why his stomach is twisting over something as simple as coffee.

you’re typing away, entirely focused, but the moment he gets close, you pause, sensing his presence.

your head tilts up, meeting his gaze with that same neutral, professional expression. “need something?”

jake opens his mouth. closes it. shifts on his feet.

this should not be hard. he’s faced oral examinations with award-winning physicists grilling him on quantum mechanics. he’s derived entire theorems on celestial dynamics with nothing but a whiteboard and a bad marker.

"hey," he starts, voice coming out a little too stiff, a little too rehearsed.

you hum, still typing. "what’s up?"

jake exhales. this is ridiculous. just say it.

"i was wondering," he begins, slow and deliberate, "if you could maybe—"

he pauses. rethinks. he doesn’t need coffee. he’s perfectly capable of getting it himself. this is a completely unnecessary conversation. maybe he should just—

you finally glance up, raising a brow. "if i could maybe…?"

jake swallows. why is your stare so expectant? god, this is awful.

he squares his shoulders. "if you could maybe—uh—get me a coffee?"

and you? you don’t even react. no smirk. no teasing. no indication that you know this is sending his pride into a tailspin.

“oh,” you say simply. “sure.”

and then – you go right back to typing.

jake waits. waits.

…that’s it? no acknowledgment?

he stares, baffled, as you finish whatever you’re working on before standing, grabbing your phone like this is just another task.

“i’ll be back in a few minutes.”

jake watches you walk away, his brain short-circuiting. he stares.

something in his brain glitches. for a moment, he just stands there, stuck in some kind of existential paradox.

this isn’t how he thought this would go.

not that he’d planned it out – he’s not that irrational – but he was at least expecting… something. a pointed look. a smug remark. some kind of acknowledgement that this was a thing.

because it was, right?

but you just – left. like it was normal. like it was nothing.

jake blinks, still rooted to the spot. his fingers twitch at his sides, his mind racing through a series of half-formed thoughts, none of which are useful.

this should be a relief. no teasing. no drawn-out conversation. no questioning. just a simple "sure" and the problem is solved.

so why does he feel weirdly unsatisfied?

he exhales sharply, running a hand through his hair before dragging himself back to his desk.

fine. whatever. he got what he wanted. he’ll just sit down, work, and forget this happened.

simple. logical – except it’s not.

because now – now he’s waiting.

not actively, of course. he’s working. or at least, he’s trying to work. but for some godforsaken reason, his mind keeps drifting to the sound of approaching footsteps, to the faintest movements in his periphery.

it’s ridiculous. he knows that. he’s not that dependent on routine. it’s just coffee.

when you finally return, setting the cup down on his desk with a quiet thud, he doesn’t mean to react.

but his head snaps up immediately, eyes locking onto the cup before flickering to you, his brain processing entirely too fast for his own good.

same lid. same brand. same order.

how the hell—

"you got the right one," he blurts before he can stop himself.

you blink at him, expression unreadable. "yeah. that’s the one you always drink."

jake stares.

you say it so easily, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

like it’s just fact. like he’s the one being weird.

and maybe he is, because something about that – about the casual certainty in your voice – makes his chest feel tight in a way he doesn’t understand.

"right," he mutters, looking away. "of course."

you don’t say anything. just nod, turning back toward your desk.

jake watches you go, fingers wrapping around the cup, the warmth grounding him.

he doesn’t know why this feels significant. but somehow, it does.

you, on the other hand, mask your smile behind your hand, making sure you don’t spare him a glance as you take your seat again, eyes focusing on your screen, but you’re secretly enjoying your little victory.

and maybe your little win seemingly makes your happiness evident because jay seems to have caught on to your little smile and quiet humming as you load more paper into the printer later on.

“what’s got you humming?”

you blink at jay, feigning innocence. "huh?"

jay narrows his eyes like a detective who knows exactly when the suspect is lying. "you’re humming. and smiling. while printing documents. no one’s ever been this happy about office supplies."

you shrug, deliberately casual. "maybe i just like my job."

"oh, sure. and i’m the next ceo of nasa," jay scoffs, crossing his arms. "no, you’re definitely smiling about something else. spill."

you roll your eyes but can’t stop the small grin from creeping back onto your lips. "it’s nothing. just… a small win."

jay’s gaze sharpens with intrigue. "a small win? against who?"

you pause, realizing that if you say it out loud, it becomes real. but you can’t help it – you’re feeling a little smug. "jake."

jay’s eyebrows shoot up so fast you half expect them to launch into orbit. "oh? oh? do tell."

you bite your lip, pretending to be focused on aligning the printer paper. "i think he finally noticed."

jay leans in, practically vibrating with excitement. "noticed what? that you exist? that you’re cute? that you’re literally the only reason he functions? because if so, then this is big news—"

you wave a hand, shushing him. "not that dramatic. just… the coffee. he asked me for it today. like, actually asked."

jay goes still, then blinks. "no."

"yes."

"no." jay looks personally offended that he wasn’t there to witness it. "you’re telling me jake sim – the human calculator who forgets basic human needs – actually acknowledged the loss of his coffee?"

"and that i was the one providing it," you add, feeling very pleased with yourself.

jay lets out a low whistle. "damn. that’s practically a confession in jake language."

you chuckle. "i know, right? and the best part? he was so awkward about it. like, visibly struggling to form a coherent request. it was beautiful."

jay looks like a proud parent. "i knew my plan would work."

you snort. "you had a plan?"

"of course! i told you, jake needs to experience loss to appreciate things. he’s like a tragic space hero who doesn’t realize what he has until it’s gone. but now? now he’s thinking about it. which means he’s thinking about you."

you roll your eyes. "don’t be ridiculous. it was just coffee."

jay gives you a look. "uh-huh. and yet, you’re humming like a disney princess who just got her magical moment."

you huff, turning back to the printer, but the warmth in your chest remains. you won’t admit it to jay, but it does feel like a small win. because for once, jake noticed something about you. and even if it was just coffee, it was your coffee. your absence. your presence. you.

the thought makes your stomach flutter a little, but before you can dwell on it, the door swings open.

and, of course, in perfect comedic timing, jake himself walks in.

you and jay freeze.

jake pauses mid-step, eyes flicking between the two of you, and immediately, you feel caught. not that you were doing anything wrong, but the way jay is grinning like a devil on your shoulder and the way you definitely look suspicious does not help your case.

jake frowns slightly. "am i interrupting something?"

"no," you and jay say in unison – too quickly, too forcefully.

jake’s frown deepens. "…right."

jay, ever the agent of chaos, suddenly smirks. "hey, jake, buddy, pal. how was the coffee this morning?"

your soul leaves your body.

jake blinks, caught off guard. "what?"

jay nods toward you. "the coffee. did it taste better? sweeter, maybe? like the hard-earned fruits of personal growth?"

you shoot jay a look that could incinerate a small planet, but he just grins wider.

jake, meanwhile, looks completely baffled. "it… tasted the same?"

jay sighs dramatically. "ugh, you’re hopeless."

jake looks at you now, confusion clear in his expression. "what’s going on?"

you scramble for an escape. "nothing. jay’s just being weird. as usual."

jake’s eyes narrow slightly, but he doesn’t push further. instead, he just shakes his head, muttering something about how he "doesn’t have time for whatever this is." then, to your surprise, his gaze lingers on you for half a second longer before he turns and leaves.

as soon as the door clicks shut, jay explodes.

"did you see that? he lingered! that was a lingering glance!"

you groan, dragging a hand down your face. "jay. stop."

"oh, no, no, no. this is happening. i can feel it. the great jake sim has been rattled."

you shake your head, but you’re smiling. "don’t you have that meeting with kang soon? are you sure you should be dawdling?"

jay waves a dismissive hand. “pfft. kang can wait. this is much more important.”

you roll your eyes, shoving a stack of papers into his hands. “go. before he chews you out again.”

jay huffs but takes the papers anyway. “fine. but mark my words – this is just the beginning.”

you snort. “of what?”

jay grins, backing toward the door. “of jake sim’s inevitable downfall.”

before you can throw something at him, he slips out of the room with a dramatic twirl, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

you exhale. jay is ridiculous. insufferable. an agent of chaos in the worst way.

but still… your fingers drum against your desk.

jake had lingered. just for a second. just long enough to make you wonder.

you shake your head, clearing the thought. it’s nothing. probably just your imagination.

probably.

five.

jake never really thought about his assistant.

sure, he knew you existed in the same way he knew his office had walls or that gravity kept him tethered to earth. a presence. a constant. background noise.

his research came first. always. anything outside of equations and astrophysics was just static.

which is why, when his inbox suddenly becomes a nightmare of unread emails, cluttered with everything from seminar invites to missed project deadlines, he stares at the screen in horror.

since when did his inbox look like this?

he scrolls. and scrolls. and scrolls.

the last time he checked, his emails were organized. neat little folders, color-coded labels – everything in its place. now, it’s chaos. absolute chaos.

his brows furrow in mild horror and yet again, he gets this feeling, like the earth’s off its axis, like his curated life is suddenly off kilter.

he looks up, and across the room, eyes peeking through his door that is kept ajar. you sit there today, in a navy blue sweater, your hair pushed back neatly, your glasses reflecting the glare off your screen you’re currently frowning at.

was this also something you used to do for him? or did his inbox suddenly decide to get a mind of its own and go batshit crazy on him? no, that doesn’t make sense, unless he was hacked which would definitely be a cause of national concern to a certain extent—

he jolts in his seat, a gasp leaving his lips as you suddenly move away from your desk, standing up with a stack of papers. he positively feels his heart skipping a beat as he realises you’re walking to his door.

sure enough, there’s a knock a second later and if you notice the way his voice cracks when he tells you to come in, you don’t comment on it. instead, you look at him like you meant business.

oh god, you didn’t notice him looking at you, right? technically he wasn’t really staring more so than contemplating—

“dr. sim, the finance department dropped a reminder to submit your financial budget, here’s the budget form,” you hand him the stack of papers you had been carrying, “i’ve filled out the general stuff, you just need to put in the project details and all the technical stuff.”

he flips through the pages and sure enough, you’ve filled in the general details like you mentioned in your neat handwriting. the letters sit right on top of the blank lines and he recognises your penmanship right away. he’s never noticed before, but you do have a nice handwriting.

“oh and about your emails, there seems to be some sort of technical error. i noticed that some of your filters were disabled and the auto-sorting wasn’t functioning properly. it must’ve reset or something when the system updated last week.”

jake blinks at you. “wait. filters?”

you tilt your head. “yeah? you know, the ones that sort your emails automatically? important updates, admin notices, junk mail, things like that?”

jake stares. “i… had those?”

you pause, narrowing your eyes slightly. “yes. you did. i set them up for you.”

“oh.” a beat of silence. jake shifts uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his neck. you, on the other hand, exhale sharply, planting your hands on your hips. here he was, a grown ass man, unaware of his own email settings. but what’s more infuriating to you right now is the way he’s clearly looking at the mess of his inbox with the expression of a child faced with university level physics.

and it's really unfair because your brain actually has the audacity to chant a small ‘cute’ inside your head.

no. no. absolutely not.

you refuse to acknowledge whatever strange, fleeting thought just ran through your brain.

because jake sim is not cute. he’s frustrating. he’s a genius, sure, but in a hopelessly oblivious kind of way. the somehow-can-manage-quantum-equations-but-not-his-own-inbox kind of way. the so deep in his own head that he barely notices when you’re cleaning up the mess he leaves behind, kind of way.

except… he’s noticing now.

you clear your throat, shoving away any ridiculous thoughts. “right. anyway, i can help reset everything, but you’ll need to go through some of these emails yourself. some require your direct response.”

jake tears his eyes away from his screen, blinking at you. “wait, so my emails weren’t always like this?”

you give him a look. the kind that says, oh, you poor, oblivious man.

“no, dr. sim,” you say, tone patient but mildly exasperated. “i used to sort them out for you.”

jake stares. “you did?”

you nod. “yeah. you know, filtering out spam, organizing your schedule, responding to minor inquiries.” all the things that apparently, no one else on this team can do without suffering a minor breakdown.

jake opens his mouth, then closes it. then it opens again. his head tilts slightly. “wait. you did all of that?”

you resist the urge to pinch the bridge of your nose. “dr. sim,” you say, very slowly, “what did you think i was doing all this time?”

jake, to his credit, looks vaguely sheepish. “i don’t know. admin stuff?”

you exhale, looking up at the ceiling like you’re asking the universe for patience.

“your inbox has over five hundred unread emails.”

he visibly recoils. “five hundred?”

“yes. and you have three missed deadlines.”

jake stares, running a hand down his face. “oh my god. i’m going to get fired.”

you shrug. “probably not, but kang will definitely strangle you.”

you take one look at the mild look of panic settling on his face, the ways his lips part open and his eyes fixate upon you like he’s constipated all of a sudden, and you realise that you’re going to have to save him again. so much for making yourself scarce.

“well,” you sigh, dropping your hands, “i can go through it and fix the filters again, but you should probably clear things out manually first. you have a lot of backlog.”

jake slumps back in his chair, groaning. “i don’t have time for this.”

“tough luck. you’re the one who ignored your emails for a week.”

jake groans again, scrubbing a hand over his face. his hair is slightly disheveled now, strands falling over his forehead. you refuse to acknowledge the way your fingers twitch with the urge to push them back. nope. absolutely not.

instead, you cross your arms and tilt your head. "look, dr. sim, i can reset everything, but you need to at least check the important ones. you know, like the ones from kang before he marches in here and reconsiders your employment."

jake peeks at you through his fingers, mumbling something that sounds suspiciously like i should’ve never updated the system.

you sigh. "i'll go through them with you."

his hands drop, eyes snapping to yours. "you will?"

damn it. the hope in his voice makes something in your stomach twist. this isn’t supposed to happen. you’re supposed to be pulling away, making yourself scarce, not signing yourself up to hold his hand through his self-inflicted disaster.

but you sigh again, already regretting it. "yes, but only for today."

jake beams. actually beams. like you've just told him you're personally funding his next research project.

and oh, that is dangerous.

because the realization sneaks up on you, quiet but insidious: he looks really good when he smiles like that.

your brain promptly malfunctions.

jake, oblivious as always, is already turning his chair to face his computer. "okay, okay. what do we start with?"

you stare for a second too long before shaking yourself out of it.

get it together.

right. his emails. that's what you should be focusing on. not the fact that your stupid heart is doing something stupid again.

so you square your shoulders, push away the ridiculous heat rising to your cheeks, and step closer to his desk – because unfortunately, you are nothing if not professional.

even when your chest feels like it’s betraying you.

by the time the sun starts dipping below the horizon, casting a warm orange glow into the office, you realize with a dull sense of horror that you are still here.

still here. still working.

because, of course, jake spent the entire day buried in his research, completely unaware of the absolute mess waiting for him in his inbox. and now, after work hours, you’re forced to stay behind, sorting through the wreckage.

you shoot a glare at the oblivious man, who is hunched over his desk, frowning at his screen as if he’s personally uncovering the secrets of the universe. his sleeves are rolled up, glasses slightly askew, completely absorbed in his work.

annoying. but also, kind of impressive.

you clear your throat, rapping your knuckles on his door. “dr. sim, did you know that your inbox is starting to resemble a warzone?”

jake barely looks up. “mhm.”

“there are emails in here from last year.”

he finally blinks, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “wait. what?”

you deadpan. “last. year.”

jake stares. “that’s not possible.”

“would you like to see the one from july 2024? it’s an invitation to a seminar. that already happened. that you missed.”

a horrified silence settles between you. jake leans forward, mouth slightly open, and for a second, you think he might actually pass out. “holy shit.”

you snort, shaking your head. then, sighing, you gesture toward his screen. “okay, come on, let’s start deleting the ones that don’t matter. at this rate, your inbox might actually implode.”

jake groans again but does as you say, clicking through emails with the enthusiasm of someone undergoing dental surgery.

an hour later, the two of you are still sitting in his office. you’re perched on the chair across from him, legs crossed as you scroll through his inbox, muttering complaints every now and then (why do you have thirty unread emails from the astronomy board? what is so ‘urgent’ about a faculty brunch?).

jake, on the other hand, is desperately trying to keep up, deleting and archiving whatever you tell him to. he’s drowning in emails and vaguely wondering if he should just… never check his inbox again.

the sky outside has darkened, streaks of orange and pink melting into deep blue. the office feels different at this hour – quieter, softer. there’s a warmth from the sunset filtering through the blinds, casting long shadows across the floor.

you’ve never been alone with jake like this before.

not that it matters. because all you’re doing is working. but still.

you steal a quick glance at him.

he’s different when he’s not hyper-focused on research. a little less untouchable, a little more human. his brows are furrowed as he reads through an email, one hand resting on his chin. his glasses have slipped down again, and without thinking, he pushes them back up with his knuckle.

you look away.

get a grip.

meanwhile, jake is having a bit of a crisis.

because, apparently, you’ve always been this efficient.

like, okay, he knew you were capable. obviously. you’ve been his assistant for months. but watching you now, the way you go through emails like a machine, fingers flying across the keyboard, perfectly organized with your neat little color-coded tabs—

he’s a little bit in awe. and maybe a tiny bit alarmed.

because how the hell did he not realize before that you basically ran his life for him?

the sun is starting to dip, casting a golden hue through the blinds, stretching long shadows over his desk. jake leans back, rubbing his eyes, only to glance at you and—

he sees you. for the first time in three months, he’s actually looking at you.

your sweater hangs slightly off one shoulder, the shirt underneath only slightly wrinkled, your hair a little messier than it was earlier, strands falling out of place.

and you look… exhausted.

not in the dramatic, world-weary way that some of his colleagues do after pulling all-nighters, but in a quieter, more subtle way – like you’ve been running on autopilot for so long that you don’t even notice it anymore.

jake frowns. has it always been like this? have you always been like this?

his gaze flickers back to your screen, where you’re still typing away, making quick work of the disaster that is his inbox. there’s a slight crease between your brows, your lips pressed together in quiet concentration. you’re meticulous, efficient – almost too efficient, and that thought unsettles him in a way he can’t quite explain.

“you should go home,” he says before he even thinks about it.

you glance up, startled. “what?”

“you’ve been here all day,” he says, shifting in his seat. “it’s late.”

you blink at him, then glance at the clock on the corner of your screen. the numbers glow back at you – 7:47 pm.

“oh,” you murmur, tilting your head. “i guess it is.”

jake waits for you to start packing up, but instead, you just roll your shoulders back, crack your knuckles, and go right back to typing.

he stares. “did you – did you not hear me?”

you don’t even look up. “i heard you.”

“then why are you still working?”

you pause at that, finally looking at him. there’s something almost amused in your expression, like really? you’re questioning my work habits?

“i still have emails to sort through,” you say, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

jake presses his lips together. right. of course. because of course you wouldn’t just drop everything and leave, because if you did, then who would make sure his inbox didn’t look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland?

and that thought sits a little too heavily in his chest. it's just that, he doesn’t get it.

he clears his throat, looking away. “still. you don’t have to do it all tonight.”

you shrug. “it’s fine. i don’t mind.”

for some reason, that irritates him more than it should.

jake doesn’t understand why. it’s not like you’re doing anything out of the ordinary. from what he can deduce from your conversation earlier this morning, you’ve always been the one keeping things together, making sure nothing slips through the cracks. that’s your job.

you could probably come back tomorrow and sort through the remaining emails. it’s not like they’re going anywhere.

but for the first time, he wonders – do you ever get tired of it?

his fingers drum against his desk. the golden light from the window glows softer now, settling into deep orange hues. the air between you is quiet, save for the occasional click of your keyboard and the distant hum of the office beyond his door.

and then, without thinking, he says, “i didn’t realize you did all this.”

you pause mid-keystroke, glancing at him. “did all what?”

“this.” he gestures vaguely to his laptop, to the neatly categorized folders, to the once-chaotic inbox now halfway tamed under your careful hands. “you keep everything running. i didn’t realize how much you—” he stops himself, brows furrowing slightly. “—how much you do.”

you blink at him. and for the first time all day, you seem caught off guard.

then, a slow, knowing smile tugs at the corner of your lips. “oh, dr. sim,” you say lightly, tilting your head, “have you been taking me for granted all this time?”

jake bristles, straightening. “that’s not what i meant.”

you laugh, shaking your head. “relax, i’m kidding.”

but something about the way you say it makes his stomach twist.

because maybe you are joking. maybe you don’t actually care that he’s never paid much attention before.

but he cares. and that realization unsettles him more than he’d like to admit.

you turn your attention towards the screen again, biting your lip as you skim through his emails, occasionally frowning like you’re personally offended by his disorganization.

jake watches you for another moment before looking away, tapping his fingers against the desk.

his chest feels… weird. like the earth’s still off its axis. like something’s shifted in a way he doesn’t quite understand.

and for the first time, jake wonders if maybe – just maybe – it has something to do with you.

six.

the only times jake has thanked you have been in passing. like when you hand him a report, his fingers brushing against yours but his gaze still focused on his screen. a clipped "thanks" thrown out as he scrolls through equations and research notes. thoughtless, automatic, routine.

so you don’t expect it this time around.

you don’t think much of it at first.

jake walks in, looking as harried as ever, his hair slightly tousled from the wind outside, one hand holding his laptop, the other gripping his usual coffee. business as usual.

except — there’s a cup of coffee in his hand. no scratch that, there’s two cups of coffee in his hands.

he stops in front of your desk, looking mildly uncomfortable, like he’s second-guessing his own existence. and then, without a word, he sets the second cup in front of you.

you blink. “uh. what’s this?”

jake clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “coffee.”

“no, i know it’s coffee, dr. sim.” you stare at the cup suspiciously. “why is it on my desk?”

he looks at you like you just asked him to solve a quantum mechanics equation without a calculator. “because… i got it for you?”

you squint. “why?”

jake pauses. his jaw tightens. then, with the energy of a man barely holding onto his dignity, he mutters, “because you – helped. with the emails.”

you swear to god, it physically pains him to say it. but holy shit, because not only did the jake sim get his own coffee today, he got one for you – his assistant, for the first time in three months.

you decide to let him off the hook. for now. “well. thanks,” you say, taking a sip, trying not to let the heat rising to your cheeks show.

jake mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like no worries, before retreating to his office.

you watch him go, mildly amused.

“oh-ho-ho, what do we have here?”

you don’t even flinch as jay suddenly appears beside you, arms crossed, sunglasses perched on his head like he’s about to make an investigation.

you sip your coffee. “don’t start.”

jay ignores you. “jake sim. buying coffee. for someone else. this is history in the making.”

you sigh. “jay.”

he leans in dramatically. “do you know how many years i’ve known that man? years, y/n. and not once has he ever walked into a room and thought, ‘huh. let me get someone coffee.’”

you roll your eyes. “it’s not that deep.”

jay gasps. “oh, but it is.” he lowers his voice, like he’s about to tell you a government secret. “listen. the man barely remembers to eat unless someone reminds him. and suddenly he’s bringing you coffee?”

you pause. jay grins, catching the flicker of hesitation on your face. “see? see? something’s happening in that stiff little brain of his.”

you shake your head. “he’s just… acknowledging that i exist. that’s all.”

jay snorts. “oh, my sweet summer child.” he takes a slow sip of his own coffee, eyes twinkling. “first, it’s coffee. next thing you know, he’s showing up at your desk randomly with some dumb excuse just to talk to you.”

you raise a brow. “that’s oddly specific.”

jay grins. “call it experience.”

you roll your eyes, but as you glance toward jake’s office, where he’s staring at his screen, brow furrowed in concentration…and you wonder.

just a little. because hope would be something too dangerous in this situation. you’re still just his assistant, and this is a one time thing because you helped him last night. so you don’t hope. not yet.

and maybe it's a good thing too.

it starts with a joke.

well, technically, it starts with jay’s complete inability to keep his workspace from looking like an archaeological dig site.

you’re standing by his desk, watching as he fumbles through the mess that is his workspace. papers are stacked in precarious towers, there’s a half-eaten granola bar that has somehow been buried under a pile of sticky notes. a coffee cup with a lipstick stain, even though jay does not wear lipstick.

“you live like this?” you ask, eyebrows raised as you survey the mess.

jay, utterly unbothered, leans back in his chair. “organized chaos.” why does everybody around here insist on working in conditions not far from that of a pigsty?

you shake your head, crossing your arms. “you know nasa once had to recalibrate an entire spacecraft because someone forgot to convert metric to imperial?”

jay snorts. “imagine being that guy.”

“i’d simply launch myself into the sun,” you deadpan.

jay cackles. “real talk, though, you think the sun would just vaporize you instantly, or would you have, like, a second of awareness?”

you hum, dramatically thoughtful. “i dunno, but if i ever get fired, i might test it out.”

“technically—”

you blink as a third voice enters the conversation.

jake stands a few feet away, arms crossed, brow furrowed like you just presented an incorrect equation.

you were not expecting him to be here.

“uh—” you freeze, awkwardly shifting. jay’s eyes gleam with amusement.

jake clears his throat. “technically, you wouldn’t be able to launch yourself into the sun.”

silence.

“…what?” you blink, trying to process what is happening.

jake continues, oblivious to your slowly dawning horror. “you’d just end up orbiting around it. earth is already moving at about 30 kilometers per second, so unless you counteract that velocity exactly, you’d just—” he gestures vaguely. “miss.”

you stare. jay lets out a low, entertained whistle.

your face burns. “i—” you struggle to find words, feeling an overwhelming mix of why is he like this and oh my god he really just did that.

your fingers twitch against your arms. you open your mouth. then close it. then open it again—

nope. nothing. no words. just the slow, creeping realization that this guy has actually just fact-checked your joke.

it wasn’t even a good joke.

your face heats. “wow,” you mutter, focusing very hard on the floor. “thanks for the physics lesson.”

jake nods, completely oblivious to the fact that you are currently plotting your own orbital escape.

jay presses his lips together, struggling.

you let out a breath, shaking your head. “anyway. i have work to do.”

and then you walk out. not in a dramatic, stormy way – but in a stiff, awkward, nope, i’m out kind of way.

jake watches you go, confused. “what’s with her?”

jay grins, leaning back in his chair. “dunno, man. maybe she just needs some space.”

jake doesn’t get the joke. nor does his oblivious ass understand why his assistant is suddenly treating him like an afterthought?

of course this buffoon doesn’t understand. all he’s thinking of is last night and the way you had tiredly bid him goodnight before parting ways in front of the building, your figure growing smaller by the second. his offer to drop you to the nearest bus stand dying on his lips the further you walked away.

and this was a pivotal moment for him because jake? he doesn’t offer rides to people.

in fact, he doesn’t even think to do things like that – until last night, when he’d spent an extra two seconds debating whether he should insist, before realizing that no, that would be weird.

so instead, he had done something else.

this morning, after getting his usual coffee, he’d bought yours too. granted, he didn’t know your order, but he’s sure he’s seen you around with a cup of your own around the office, still he doesn’t really know your order. so he gets you a sweeter variation, a stark contrast to his bitter drink, because in his mind, he’s thinking about this in a logical way.

and you had accepted it, for that matter, sipping on the drink like you actually enjoyed it. so he had been right, you did like sweet drinks. noted. noted?

regardless you had reacted, albeit subtly. a blink. a pause. a slightly surprised but polite, “thanks.”

jake had left it at that, feeling oddly accomplished.

and now? now you’re walking away from him like he’s some malfunctioning algorithm, and it’s annoying.

he frowns, turning to jay, who’s still grinning like an idiot. “seriously. did i do something?”

jay hums, dramatically thoughtful. “i dunno, man. maybe she just needs some space.”

jake stares. “you already said that.”

jay just snickers. “yeah. and i’ll keep saying it until you get the joke.”

jake does not, in fact, get the joke.

but for some reason, he wants to. and this realisation is soon going to turn into something that’s going to keep bothering him till he’s forced to actually take note of it.

it happens at precisely 12:48 pm.

jake glances up from his screen when you hover by his desk, clipboard in hand.

“i’m taking an extended lunch today.”

his fingers pause over his keyboard. “…extended?”

you nod. “yeah, probably won’t be back for another hour and a half.”

jake blinks. “that’s… longer than usual.”

“yeah,” you say easily. “something came up. but don’t worry, you don’t have anything scheduled and i’ve completed the reports on my end, so it’s not going to affect work.”

jake doesn’t know why that information bothers him, but it does. his brows furrow slightly. “okay.”

you nod once, then turn to leave.

jake stares at the empty space you just occupied, something tugging at his brain.

why did that exchange feel weird? no, not weird, just… different. off.

his fingers hover over his keyboard, but he doesn’t start typing.

jake doesn’t even realize something is wrong until his stomach twists uncomfortably.

he frowns, checking the time. 2:13 pm. lunch had passed. and he hadn’t eaten.

he blinks at his screen, but the numbers on it blur. his focus has shifted, derailed by something he never thought would be an issue. food.

it’s not like he forgot to eat. okay – maybe he technically did, but that’s beside the point. the real issue here is that he never needed to remember, because you always reminded him.

or, if you noticed he was too caught up in work, you’d just… bring something back for him. something simple, easy to eat at his desk – half the time, he didn’t even ask, and yet there it was. a sandwich. a salad. once, a soup that he never even mentioned liking, but somehow you had known he was in the mood for something warm.

it had become routine.

no, actually, it had become a given. and today? today, you walked in, set your bag down, checked your emails – like normal – but you didn’t say anything.

didn’t ask if he ate. didn’t bring anything back. didn’t even look at him properly before sitting down to do your own thing.

nothing.

jake’s fingers twitch over his desk. his jaw tightens slightly. something about this whole situation sits wrong.

because this isn’t normal.

this morning, he even bought you coffee. he didn’t know your exact order, but he had put in effort. that meant something, right? even if you didn’t react much when he placed it on your desk, he thought – hoped – it at least counted for something.

so why does it feel like it didn’t? and why does that bother him?

he does something drastic. he actually walks up to your desk – the second time already this week – and clears his throat.

“hey um…” a small glance at your id card dangling around your neck, and he feels insanely embarrassed because wow, how the hell does he not remember your name, “y/n?”

you’re not going to lie, you totally saw him stumble right now, and it doesn’t help that he’s looking at you with those big brown eyes again, his hand shoved inside his coat pocket, the other rubbing the back of his head. no! you should be upset at him right now, not fawn over his boyish charms!

you glance up, fingers pausing over your keyboard. “yeah?”

jake hesitates.

he doesn’t actually know what he wants to say. he just knows he wants you to look at him a little less indifferently.

“i…” his voice catches slightly. he clears his throat. “can you, um. get me something to eat?”

your expression flickers – just for a second. not enough for jake to read properly, but enough that it feels like you’re choosing your words before speaking.

then, finally, you ask, “what do you want?”

jake pauses.

because – what do you mean, what does he want?

you always just know. you’ve been working together long enough that you order for him without asking. that’s part of why he never bothers remembering himself – he doesn’t have to.

this is new. this is wrong.

“uh…” jake stalls, grip tightening slightly on his pen. “the usual?”

you blink at him, unimpressed. “what’s the usual?”

jake freezes.

oh. oh, no. what is the usual?

his mind scrambles for an answer, rifling through vague memories of you setting food on his desk, but the details blur together. sometimes it was a sandwich. sometimes something with rice. one time, there was pasta. but were those his actual usuals, or just random things you decided to get him?

did he even have a usual?

jake, for the first time today, has to confront a horrifying fact: he has never actually learned what he eats for lunch.

because you always handled it.

and now you’re sitting there, staring at him, waiting for an answer – an answer he doesn’t have – and suddenly, jake feels something unfamiliar coil in his chest: panic.

he’s never been in this situation before. he’s used to having control, to knowing exactly what he wants and when he wants it. yet, somehow, in this one specific instance – a completely mundane scenario involving food, of all things – he’s at a total loss.

how had he not noticed this before? how had he gone this long without realizing he didn’t actually know what he ate every day? how had he become so reliant on—

jake blinks. his own thoughts slam into him like a freight train. because that’s exactly what’s wrong, isn’t it?

he’s used to you. your reminders. your routines. the way you anticipated things before he even noticed them himself.

and for the first time, it feels like you’re deliberately withholding that from him.

why?

jake swallows, forcing himself to think logically. there has to be a reasonable explanation for this. maybe you were too busy to stop and get him something. maybe you had your own things to deal with today. maybe you just forgot.

but then again – you never forgot.

so what changed?

seven.

it was jay’s idea really.

the whole pulling away subtly but not-so-subtly thing. the make-him-notice-you’re-missing plan. and it was working.

you knew it was working because the moment you walked out of jake’s office after that awkward exchange, you felt his stare linger. the hesitation in his voice, the way his fingers twitched slightly when you asked what he wanted – like the concept of having to ask you for something was completely foreign to him.

that was a win, right? so why did it feel so…

you press your lips together, stirring your drink absently. across from you, jay chews on a fry, watching you with far too much amusement for someone who wasn’t the one actively carrying out this ridiculous scheme.

“you look like you’re thinking too hard,” he comments, popping another fry into his mouth. “which is kinda concerning, considering all you’re doing is eating a sandwich.”

you glare at him. “shut up.”

jay snorts, leaning back against the booth. “what’s got you so conflicted? it’s working, isn’t it?”

you don’t answer right away. because, yes – it is working. you can tell by the way jake hesitated before asking you to get him something to eat, by the way he actually looked at you instead of just expecting you to handle things like always. you made him notice the absence.

“…it feels kinda dumb,” you admit finally, picking at your sandwich. “i mean—think about it. it’s lunch. it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, right?”

jay raises a brow. “you say that, but let me remind you of something. he didn’t know what his usual order was.”

you groan, rubbing a hand over your face. “don’t remind me.”

“no, no, let’s actually sit with that for a second,” jay continues, clearly enjoying himself far too much. “the guy has had you getting his meals for months and never thought to ask what he was eating. that’s not normal, dude.”

“i know,” you mutter.

“so what’s the problem?”

you sigh, rolling your cup between your palms.

“the problem is that it shouldn’t take something like this for him to notice me.” the words feel heavy in your mouth. “it’s stupid, isn’t it? i shouldn’t have to pull away for him to realize how much i do for him. like, why does it have to be some big, strategic thing? shouldn’t he just… care?”

jay quiets at that. for all his jokes and teasing, he’s not oblivious – not like jake.

after a moment, he leans forward, propping his arms on the table. “you’re right,” he says, voice softer than before. “he should care. he should’ve noticed a long time ago.”

your stomach twists.

“but,” jay continues, tapping a finger against his drink, “that doesn’t mean this isn’t necessary. i know it sucks, but think about it – would jake have ever thought about this on his own? would he have ever realized how much he relies on you if you hadn’t started stepping back?”

you hate that the answer is obvious.

“…no,” you mutter.

jay nods. “exactly. he’s used to things just… happening. you’ve made his life so easy that he doesn’t even have to think about it.” he smirks slightly. “and now? now he has to think about it. because it’s not just about lunch. it’s about you.”

you stare at him, fingers tightening around your drink.

you sigh, pressing the rim of your cup to your lips but not drinking. the ice clinks softly inside, melting into the coffee, much like your resolve seems to be melting into uncertainty.

“has he always been like this?” you ask quietly.

jay raises a brow. “like what?”

“with his assistants,” you clarify, glancing at him. “has he always been like… this?” you don’t say oblivious or careless, but jay understands anyway.

he studies you for a moment, his usually amused gaze flickering with something more serious. “i don’t know all the details, if i’m being honest. i never really paid attention to his working relationships.”

you press your lips together, turning your cup in your hands. “but you knew there were others before me.”

jay exhales, dragging a hand through his hair. “yeah,” he admits. “there were others. none of them stuck around for too long, though.”

that makes your stomach twist.

“why not?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper.

jay hesitates. not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because the answer isn’t his to give.

“jake’s not an easy person to work for,” he finally says, choosing his words carefully. “he’s particular about things, but not in a way that makes sense to most people. he’s not demanding in the usual way – he doesn’t expect people to read his mind, but at the same time… he does. he assumes things will get done. not because he asks, but because that’s how it’s always been for him. he doesn’t really think about the ‘who’ behind it all.”

you swallow hard.

“and the others?”

jay shakes his head. “they got frustrated. some quit because they felt unappreciated, others just decided it wasn’t worth it. no hard feelings, no big fights. just… people coming and going. but you?” he tilts his head at you. “you stuck around.”

you let out a small, humorless laugh. “it’s only been three months, maybe i’ll quit too.”

you won’t. for reasons more than one, the first being that you have student loans to pay. the second…maybe that’s a thought better left for later.

“maybe,” jay says, but his tone isn’t teasing. it’s contemplative. “or maybe you’re different.”

you look up at him then, brows furrowed. “different how?”

jay leans back in his seat, arms crossing over his chest. “you actually care about him.”

the words sit heavy between you.

of course you care. that was never the question. the question was whether or not he cared. whether he even saw you as a person rather than just another name in a long list of people who handled things for him.

you exhale slowly, staring down at the condensation forming on your cup. “that’s stupid, isn’t it?”

jay tilts his head. “what is?”

“that i care about someone who barely notices me.”

there’s no pity in jay’s gaze. no smugness, either. just quiet understanding.

“it’s not stupid,” he says. “but it is a little sad.”

you swallow around the lump in your throat. “why do you think he’s like that?”

jay exhales through his nose. “i think jake has spent so long expecting people to leave that he doesn’t think much about why they stay. or if they do, it’s just a matter of when they’ll go. he doesn’t attach himself to people easily. i don’t know why, exactly, but i have my guesses.”

you nod, understanding that there’s a past here that isn’t yours to pry into. it doesn’t quench your curiosity though, because what really made jake into this oblivious, unintentionally selfish person? you haven’t known him long, but you’ve seen enough.

how he declines invitations to after work hangouts, how he’s never lurking at other people’s desks, cooping himself up in the confines of his own room, doing his own work. how he barely ever leaves that room unless absolutely necessary. it’s just work, work, work for him.

jay watches you for a moment, then leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “let me ask you something now.”

you blink. “okay?”

he gestures toward you. “why do you look up to him so much?”

you open your mouth, but no words come out.

because the truth is, you do look up to jake. or at least, you used to. maybe, in some ways, you still do.

he’s brilliant, that much is undeniable. he makes decisions with sharp precision, moves through life with a confidence that is enviable. he commands a room without even realizing it, and people naturally gravitate toward him.

and maybe that was part of the reason why you held on for so long. because you wanted to believe that he was someone worth believing in. worth staying for.

but what happens when the person you admire the most doesn’t even see you?

you lower your gaze. “i don’t know.”

jay hums, as if he expected that answer.

“well, maybe it’s time he starts looking up to you,” he says.

the thought sends a strange feeling through your chest.

because what if, after all this time, it wasn’t about you chasing after jake’s attention? what if it was about him realizing that you were someone worth keeping up with?

you exhale, setting your cup down with a quiet clink. “so, what now?”

jay grins, the mischief returning to his eyes. “phase two, obviously.”

you shake your head, laughing under your breath. “you’re ridiculous.”

“trust me, jake’s already starting to notice you y/n,” jay says, taking a sip of his drink. “so? you in?”

you glance down at your phone, at the list of unread emails waiting for you. and you think about jake – his hesitation earlier, the way he had to actually ask you about lunch. how for the first time, he seemed to realize that you weren’t just an extension of his routine.

deep down, you hope he’s right.

and it’s already started – jake is thinking about it. about you.

you just don’t know it yet.

jake had been off all day, and he knew it.

it had started with lunch. or rather, the strange lack of it – the missing familiarity, the offhanded nature of it, the unsettling realization that it hadn’t been waiting for him like usual. and then when you did get him something, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right either. not that he could even say what ‘right’ was anymore. that part gnawed at him the most.

he had spent the better half of the afternoon distracted, shuffling between meetings and emails while the thought sat at the back of his head, growing heavier by the hour. it wasn’t about the food. it was never just about the food.

he leaned back in his office chair, pinching the bridge of his nose.

why was this bothering him so much?

his usual? what even was his usual? how long had he stopped deciding that for himself? at what point had he gotten so used to you taking care of it that he didn’t even remember?

the realization was suffocating.

jake had never considered himself someone who relied on others – not in any way that mattered. he was independent, capable, and self-sufficient. at least, that’s what he had always told himself. but today proved otherwise.

somewhere along the way, he had gotten used to your quiet presence. the way you smoothed things over without him having to ask. the way you knew things before he did, handled them before they became problems, and – somewhere in the middle of all that – became something constant.

and now, the moment that balance wavered, he felt like he was losing his footing.

the evening dragged on, the weight of the day pressing against his temples as he sat at his desk, staring blankly at his computer screen. he should go home. but even the idea of leaving felt exhausting.

then his phone rang.

jake glanced at the caller id. mom.

he hesitated for a second before answering. “hey.”

“jakey,” his mother’s voice was warm but laced with something tired. “i was just checking in. it’s been a while.”

he sighed, rubbing his temple. “yeah, sorry. work’s been crazy.”

there was a pause. a small one, but enough for jake to feel the unspoken words on the other end. he knew that pause.

“you’ve been eating, right?” she asked. “you sound off.”

jake nearly laughed, though there was nothing funny about it. his grip on the phone tightened.

“i’m fine.”

“jake.”

he clenched his jaw. the weight in his chest grew heavier.

how was it that this one conversation, this one question, managed to make everything worse? it wasn’t like he had told her anything. it wasn’t like she knew that something as stupid as lunch had been haunting him all day, or that he was suddenly questioning things he had never thought twice about before.

he exhaled sharply. “mom, i said i’m fine.”

another silence. then, softer, “you always say that.”

jake shut his eyes.

for a second, he was six years old again, sitting at the kitchen table, picking at his food while his mother sat across from him, pretending like everything was fine. like they weren’t waiting for someone who wasn’t coming back.

he barely remembered his father’s face, but he remembered the absence. the lingering silence. the way his mother never cried in front of him, but he knew she wanted to.

“people leave sometimes, jakey,” she had told him once. “even when they don’t mean to.”

jake had spent his whole life pretending that it didn't affect him. that it didn’t shape the way he saw the world, the way he kept people at arm’s length. that it didn’t make him hyper-aware of who stayed and who didn’t.

but now, sitting in his empty office, with the remnants of an unremarkable lunch sitting in the trash, he was starting to think it had affected him more than he ever wanted to admit.

“jake?” his mother’s voice pulled him back.

he swallowed. “yeah, i’m here.”

“i won’t push,” she said gently. “but you know you can talk to me, right?”

he let out a breath. “i know.”

a few more words were exchanged, mostly her telling him to take care of himself before she hung up. jake set his phone down on his desk and stared at it for a long moment.

he didn’t know what was worse – the fact that he felt like he was spiraling over something so insignificant, or the fact that it didn’t feel insignificant at all.

with a heavy sigh, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against his hands.

what the hell is wrong with me?

eight.

jake is not in a good mood this morning.

it’s evident in the way his jaw is clenched, the way his morning greeting to you sounds even more clipped and indifferent than usual and it’s apparent in the way he slams his door shut behind him.

you’ve seen him like this before – just once – in an intense mood all day, brooding over a particularly complicated issue at work. so you ignore the slight pang in your chest when he barely looks at you before shutting himself off in his room.

you give him space.

you go about your work, responding to emails, organizing the files on his desk, and making sure everything is in order for the meetings he has later. but throughout the day, you can’t help but glance toward his closed office door. there’s a stiffness in your posture whenever you walk past it, an awareness that you’re treading around a storm, waiting for it to pass.

it doesn’t.

by lunchtime, you hesitate before grabbing your own food. jake still hasn’t come out of his office, and you know him well enough to know he probably hasn’t eaten. the memory of the previous day – his offhanded question about lunch, the way he seemed oddly thrown off by you not bringing it – lingers in your mind. maybe that’s all it is, you reason. he just needs to eat.

so you order his usual, the one you’ve memorized without thinking. but when you place it on his desk, he barely glances at it.

“not hungry,” he mutters.

that’s it. no thank you, no acknowledgement. just a dismissal.

it stings more than it should. you don’t push him, simply nodding before stepping back. but something about the way his shoulders are tense, his fingers gripping a pen too tightly, makes you hesitate.

“are you okay?”

it’s a simple question, but it’s a mistake.

jake looks up at you then, and for the first time all day, he really looks at you. his expression is unreadable, his gaze sharp in a way that feels like a blade pressing into something delicate.

and then he scoffs.

“you don’t have to do that.”

your fingers curl around the tray you had got his food in. they clutch at the edges of the plastic, digging into your skin, imprinting a mark physically much like the way jake’s next words do in your chest.

you blink. “do what?”

“act like you care.”

the words hit like a slap. you open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

jake doesn’t stop there. “i don’t need you to hover. i don’t need your pity. i don’t need—” he exhales sharply, dragging a hand through his hair before shaking his head. “just stop.”

you freeze. there’s something deeply frustrating about this moment – because you don’t understand, because you don’t know what’s going on in his head, because you’re just trying to help. but jake is looking at you like your presence alone is suffocating him, like you’re an inconvenience, like he wants to push you as far away as possible.

pity? he thinks you’re pitying him? is your gaze so misconstrued that he’s actually letting himself believe that someone like you could pity him?

but whatever it is that jake wants, it works.

you don’t say anything. you don’t argue, don’t snap back, don’t ask why he’s being an asshole for no reason. because really, what would be the point? you can’t help him, not with whatever impossible problem he’s been staring at all day. you’re not a genius like him, not someone who understands physics or engineering or whatever the hell he’s stressing over.

you’re just his assistant.

you nod once and leave the room, ignoring the way your stomach twists uncomfortably.

the afternoon drags on. you’re quieter than usual, working diligently and keeping to yourself. jake doesn’t seem to notice. or if he does, he doesn’t care.

jay drops by at some point, leaning against your desk with a knowing look. “he’s in a mood today.”

you exhale through your nose. “i noticed.”

jay tilts his head. “you good?”

“i’m fine.” it’s the easy answer, the one that doesn’t require unpacking anything. you don’t want to talk about how frustrating it is, how useless you feel, how much it actually bothers you when you know it shouldn’t.

jay doesn’t press, but he gives you a small nod of understanding before heading to jake’s office. you hear them talking – jay’s voice lighthearted, trying to ease whatever storm jake is caught in. but jake’s replies are short, clipped, his irritation barely restrained. eventually, jay gives up.

by the time evening rolls around, the tension hasn’t lifted.

you’re finishing up paperwork when you hear jake’s office chair scrape against the floor. a moment later, he steps out, his phone pressed to his ear. you don’t look up, but you can hear the strain in his voice, the way it’s unusually tense.

“no, mom, i told you—” a pause. “i don’t know. i haven’t thought about it.”

your pen stills against the paper.

jake exhales sharply. “because i don’t have time for this.” his voice drops lower, something more raw seeping into the cracks. “it doesn’t matter. he made his choice.”

silence.

and then, a barely audible, “i don’t care.”

your chest tightens.

you glance up, just for a second, but the look on jake’s face is unreadable. he’s standing rigid, shoulders tense, his grip on his phone almost painful. whatever his mother is saying, it’s digging under his skin, unearthing something you can’t begin to understand.

you don’t look away fast enough.

jake notices. his eyes flick to yours, and for a split second, something flickers there – something vulnerable, something tired. but then, just as quickly, it’s gone.

he turns on his heel and walks out.

you don’t follow.

jake is still in a bad mood when jay finds him.

he doesn’t know why he agreed to go out for drinks. maybe it was the way jay had looked at him after stopping by the office earlier, or maybe it was the unbearable silence of his apartment that he didn’t want to sit in alone. either way, now he’s here, sitting across from jay and sunghoon at some bar downtown, nursing a whiskey he’s barely taken a sip from.

he’s been fidgeting with his glass for the past fifteen minutes, watching the condensation trail down the sides, listening to jay and sunghoon talk about something he’s barely paying attention to. their voices sound distant, like they’re underwater, and everything around him feels just slightly off-kilter, like he’s caught in a strange in-between where he can’t fully ground himself. he feels like an outsider looking in on his own life, watching himself sit here, going through the motions.

jay nudges him. “you good?”

jake blinks. “yeah.”

sunghoon snorts. “you look like you’re about to throw yourself off a bridge.”

he rolls his eyes, but it’s weak. he takes a sip of his drink, wincing at the burn. “just tired.”

jay doesn’t buy it. “it’s work, isn’t it?”

jake exhales sharply through his nose. that’s the thing—it’s not just work.

it’s the way his day has felt completely off-kilter since this morning. no scratch that, it's been this way this entire week.

it’s the way he couldn’t focus, no matter how hard he tried, the way his own office felt too cold, too empty. it’s the way his lunch tasted like cardboard, even though you had gotten it for him like you always did. the way you had placed it on his desk so carefully, so deliberately, and yet it had felt… wrong. bland. like something was missing, and he couldn’t figure out what.

it’s the way he had snapped at you.

his grip tightens around his glass. he hadn’t meant to. he had been frustrated, overwhelmed, his thoughts eating him alive, and you had just – been there. and he had let his irritation get the best of him. he doesn’t even remember what he said exactly, just the way your face had shifted, the way something in your expression had dimmed before you had looked away and left him alone.

had he hurt you? the thought unsettles him more than he’d like to admit.

“i don’t know, man.” he leans back, staring at the amber liquid in his glass. “people are so fucking unpredictable.”

jay raises an eyebrow. “where’s this coming from?”

jake shakes his head. “just—” he exhales. “you think you know someone, you think they’re a certain way, and then suddenly… they’re not. and you don’t know when it happened, or why, or if it was always going to happen and you were just too blind to see it coming.”

there’s a brief pause. then sunghoon says, “sounds like someone’s got abandonment issues.”

jake scoffs. “that’s not what i—” he stops himself. clenches his jaw. takes another sip of his drink. it burns down his throat, but it doesn’t drown out the thoughts spiraling in his head.

jay is watching him carefully. “you want to talk about it?”

jake doesn’t answer immediately. he should say no. he should shut it down, brush it off, make some joke and move on. but something about tonight, about the weight pressing down on his chest, makes him want to keep talking. so he does.

“my dad left when i was six.”

it’s abrupt. unprompted. but neither jay nor sunghoon say anything, just let him speak.

“one day he was there, the next he wasn’t. no warning. no explanation.” he exhales, shaking his head. “i remember my mom sat me down and told me he wasn’t coming back, and i didn’t get it at first. i thought—maybe he was just on a long trip. maybe he’d call. maybe—”

he swallows hard. “but he never did.”

the words hang heavy in the air. he doesn’t know why he’s saying this. he doesn’t talk about his dad, ever. but something about tonight makes it easier. maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s the exhaustion, maybe it’s the lingering feeling of wrongness from earlier today. maybe it’s the way your face had fallen when he snapped at you. maybe it’s the way his chest has felt empty since then.

jay sighs. “that’s rough, man.”

and jay means it. because in all the years that he’s known jake, he’s never told them up front of his issues. sure, they’ve picked up some hints of it, how he barely talks about his family, how there used to be a picture frame in their old dorm room with only him and his mom, how he sparingly mentioned his family and even then, not a word about his father.

they had wondered, but never pried. some things are better left alone unless ready to be tackled.

sunghoon, uncharacteristically serious, says, “that’s why you’re like this, huh?”

jake frowns. “like what?”

sunghoon shrugs. “like you don’t trust people to stay.”

jake doesn’t respond. because what is there to say? he’s not wrong.

he glances down at his phone, at the unopened messages from his mom. she had called earlier, left a voicemail. he knows what she wants. it’s the anniversary of the day his dad left. she always calls on this day. but he hasn’t called back yet. he doesn’t know if he wants to.

his mind flickers back to you. the way you had looked at him after he snapped. the way you hadn’t said anything, hadn’t fought back, just accepted it and left.

had you expected it from him? had you seen it coming? had he proved you right?

jay’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “you ever think that maybe you push people away before they can leave?”

jake stills. something inside him twists. because – he doesn’t. does he?

he thinks about the way you had stayed, despite everything. how you had shown up, day after day, putting up with his moods, his silence, his sharp edges. how you had gotten his lunch, even when he had barely acknowledged you all morning. how you had tried, always tried.

and how he had snapped at you anyway.

he rubs a hand down his face. he suddenly feels exhausted. the weight on his chest has only gotten heavier.

“maybe,” he murmurs, barely audible. “maybe i do.”

neither jay nor sunghoon push further. they just let him sit with it, let him stew in his own thoughts.

jake exhales slowly, the realization sinking in like a stone in his stomach.

he doesn’t know why he feels like he’s already losing something he didn’t even know he wanted to keep.

#enhypen imagines #enhypen jake imagines #enhypen angst #jake sim imagines #jake enhypen imagines #enhypen x you #enhypen x reader #my works #my writings

1K notes · View notes

meta-sequoia · 2 months ago

Text

Rose genetics and the law of unintended consequences (or, ten rose bushes, reviewed)

I have a number of longposts in the backlog, including updates on a number of garden improvement projects I undertook over the winter, but I kept putting off posting them because there kept being Horrors. However, spring is here - in California anyway - and plants wait for no one.

Over the winter of 2025, as a coping mechanism for the aforementioned Horrors, I got really into roses. Because of who I am as a person, deciding what roses I wanted to buy also made me feel obliged to reconstruct the history of rose breeding, just to make sense of the teeming confusion of the tens of thousands of named rose varieties. Humans have been raising roses for food, medicine, and beauty for untold centuries, and so they've really grown up with us. The history of the development of roses, it turns out, is the history of the development of humanity in miniature.

This post has it all: history, some light phylogeny discussion, material analysis of English folk ballads, a conceptual framework for understanding how different kinds of roses vary and why, a #haul breakdown of what bare-root roses I got and what I thought of them, and some philosophical musings on what it means for an organism to be subjected to a long-term selective breeding process, to be remade wholly in the image of human desire. All that, and pictures of roses, under the cut.

My general region of California is considered to have a good climate for roses, much good may it do us. It never gets too hot or too cold, so they essentially never go out of season, and even though our winters are wet, the rest of the year is fairly dry. This is absolutely critical, because the main problem that makes garden roses hard to grow is fungal disease. Modern roses are incredibly susceptible to fungal diseases, which are caused, roughly, by Damp. This has typically been combated with toxic sprays (though there are now less-toxic options) and aggressive pruning regimens.

Needless to say, this is a ridiculous fucking problem for a plant to have. California natives, by comparison, hate irrigation - they have a natural life cycle involving being dry in summer and wet in winter, like California itself, so if you grow them in a climate resembling their natural range, without too much added water, they will be mostly OK. Roses, as far as I can tell, actually hate all water, including rain and humidity, which is much worse because gardeners do not control the weather. If it rains too often after, say, noon, the rose's leaves might get wet, fail to dry off, get a fungal disease, and die. If there is too much fog, or it is humid, as it is in most of the country in the summer, the rose's leaves might get wet &c. If you have a sprinkler system - you get the idea.

Fungal disease can also weaken roses and make them more prone to insect infestations. This is bad because modern garden roses are, without any help from The Weather, already incredibly prone to infestations from aphids, mites, beetles, and a mite-borne disease undescriptively called "rose rosette disease", which produces a habitus that I can only describe as "rose bush eldritch horror".

Now, this may all have you asking one question. Probably, that question is "why are you so obsessed with a plant that wants so badly to die?" I will not be answering this question today. Instead, I will be answering a different question, which is "Why do modern garden roses suck so bad?"

Now, if roses are subject to some manner of curse, then it isn't a family curse, phylogenically speaking. Roses - genus Rosa species extremely miscellaneous - are a member of the family Rosaceae, which contains a massive number of useful and delightful plants. It is possibly the most economically important family of plants next to the brassicas. The rose family brings us not just roses, but apples, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, plums, peaches, apricots, and almonds. And the wild rose, untouched by human efforts, is a lot like a raspberry, actually.

Its flowers have only five petals, in pink or white. It’s got thorny stems that form thickets, and oval (or, technically, lanceolate) leaves with lightly serrated edges. Its flowers are fragrant, which is an adaptation to their long and necessary coexistence with pollinators and other insects - fragrance serves as a chemical signal for insects to "come here" or "go away", depending. The wild rose is hardy, like all wild plants, tolerant of various environmental problems that would kill a garden rose: shade, salt, normal levels of ambient insect and fungal disease pressure, drought, being consistently rained on in the afternoon or evening. It may reproduce asexually from suckers - strong shoots from near the base of the plant - and this makes it able to withstand browsing pressure from e.g. deer. (Put a pin in that.) It also can reproduce in the normal way, by having its flowers pollinated and forming seeds, which are borne in prominent reddish-orange fruits called "hips".

This is not a rose I bought, but here’s Rosa gymnocarpa, a California native rose. It’s a wood rose, so it’s shade-tolerant, and it’s often found in redwood forests specifically, so it tolerates relatively dry soil and very acidic soil.

Honorable mention: Rosa gymnocarpa (wood rose)

Source: Calscape

A raspberry plant in flower, for comparison. Source

The wild rose has another trait, which may be surprising to those who have only ever seen garden roses: it blooms once, usually in the summer. This is typical of flowers, which almost always have a season, for the exact same reason fresh fruit has a season. Flowering plants are on a tight schedule: they need to finish up their blooming, so they can set fruit, so they can get their seeds out before winter, in case the frost kills them off. And mostly we’re used to that: tulips are for spring, so you don't expect a tulip to make a second showing in fall, or to flower continuously throughout the summer. But roses have been bred to do this, and have done it for centuries, for so long we barely remember what it was like when "roses blooming" was a time of year, an event.

It's possible that for most of human history, roses were all the more treasured for being fleeting, which simply isn't an aspect of how we moderns understand roses. I am constantly subjected to traditional ballads at home, both in English and German, so I am very aware that multiple Child ballads mention roses as a way of placing the events of the ballad at a particular time of year. In 'Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight', a song traditionally associated with May Day, one version of the chorus references the events as occurring 'as the rose is blown'. And at the start of 'Tam Lin', the protagonist meets her fairy lover while plucking a double rose, is "laid down among... the roses red" by him, and finishes the ballad on Halloween night heavily pregnant with his child. The course of the ballad is inextricably intertwined with the course of the seasons, and the bloom of roses is synonymous with early summer. (There's so much symbolism in 'Tam Lin', but especially around roses. Can I interest you in tam-lin.org at this time?)

European religious literature even uses "a rose e'er blooming" as a purely figurative phrase, something impossible and magical enough to be a metonym for the Virgin Mary - but in the modern era, most garden roses are ever-blooming. The perpetual-blooming rose is not the natural state of the rose plant, but a kind of technology that had to be developed. And I don't know, I just think that's neat.

So what have we learned? The wild rose is: once-blooming, tough, possibly shade-tolerant depending on species, very thorny, bearing simple pink or white five-petaled flowers, that are fragrant, pollinator-friendly, and produce fruit readily enough. In short, a practical, normal sort of plant.

The garden rose is…not that. There’s no other way to put this: the modern garden rose is the wild rose, but bimboified.

Now, in case today is your first day on the Internet - well, first of all, welcome, it’s bad here - but secondly, bimboification is a niche fetish where someone is transformed into a hypersexualized version of themselves that is also very stupid. Plant domestication is obviously analogous. I didn’t originate this joke; in fact, I reblogged a joke like this just last week.

Roses are like this but even more so. Like, wheat is clearly bimboified. Its sexual parts (seeds) have been remade, swollen to ludicrous proportions, and wheat is probably worse at being a plant than wild grasses. But we created modern wheat from wild grass because it was more useful that way, and wheat could in theory survive and spread without human cultivation. Roses are Like That purely because we wanted to make them a more perfect decorative object. Centuries of intensive selection pressure for appearance have rendered roses useless as an independent plant: they are so disease-prone they need extensive intervention to even survive, and they are often physically incapable of propagating themselves - one of the basic features of plants! - without human aid. That’s plant bimboification.

Source: Heirloom Roses. This one is called 'Oranges 'n' Lemons. Hardly seems like the same plant!

Here are just a few examples, of what we've done to roses. Humans love rose petals - eating them, distilling them into perfume, smelling them, just looking at them - so the garden rose has massive flowers that are so stuffed with petals that pollinators cannot get at their centers, rendering the rose incapable of reproducing except possibly with the help of a human equipped with a paintbrush. Humans love bright colors, so modern roses come in every color their natural pigments allow. Garden roses are often - though not always - less thorny than their wild cousins, because thorns are inconvenient to humans, and so have been somewhat bred out.

And what’s just as important is what was bred out of wild roses in the process of becoming modern roses - by accident. As mentioned above, modern roses are often useless to pollinators, and, not unrelatedly, can’t reproduce without human help. They often lose their fragrance, if not specifically bred for it. They are very susceptible to disease, because gardeners can keep alive, through sheer stubbornness, plants that natural selection would have culled. Likewise, they need full sun where many wild roses can get by even in the shade of big evergreens, and they can't tolerate nearly as much cold, heat, or salt exposure as their wild relatives.

This 'use it or lose it' thing, by the way, is a general principle of selective processes like plant breeding, or like evolution. If you have two independent traits, A and B, and you select hard for A, then B is likely to gradually drop out of the population, simply because the subset of A carriers that also have B is likely to be small. It's pure statistics. (It essentially is a human-created population bottleneck.) The more intense and ruthless the selection pressure, the stronger the effect. Evolution cares a lot about seed production and hardly at all about color, so wild roses are plain but make enormous rose hips; humans like beautiful roses the color of sunsets, and are indifferent to seed production, so modern roses don’t make hips at all. The failure to select for eventually becomes an implicit selection pressure against.

(Highly-bred organisms are thus less, I guess, well-rounded genetically even before you get to issues of inbreeding, and if you assume there is no biological link between your selected-for traits and other ridealong traits, e.g. domestication syndrome. Genetics is complicated!)

One adapted wild-type trait that - I speculate - was not bred out, due to its direct usefulness to humans, was the ability of roses to grow back vigorously from having leaves or branches removed. This is, it seems to me, an adaptation to herbivore browsing - if you are a rose with minimal regrowth ability, and a deer chews on half your canes, it’s curtains for you. But humans also fully remove half of the canes of their garden roses every winter - it’s critical to controlling the fungal disease that so plagues them. Specifically, pruning improves airflow through the plant, which evaporates the water that keeps falling on the leaves from the sky. (You know. The rain, that roses both hate and need to live.) In some sense, we are acting as caretakers here, shaping the plant in inscrutable ways for its own good. But to the plant, we are basically deer: just another in a long line of animals that want to steal its leaves. Unbelievable! It needs those! Fuck you too, buddy: here’s a faceful of thorns.

Truly, a tale as old as time.

This brings me to my first actual rose review, a kind of bridge between wild roses and the world of cultivated roses.

#1: Rosa rugosa, probably "Hansa"

Source: the author's yard.

This is a sucker - a vigorous young ground-level shoot - from an unnamed rosebush from my mother's house. I say "probably 'Hansa'" because we have no idea what this actually is, only that it is a rugosa hybrid, purchased from an unknown nursery in the Midwest sometime during the Bush administration.

'Hybrid rugosas' are crosses between garden-type roses and a wild rose species called Rosa rugosa, which is native to much of Asia. This particular rose bush has many traits carried over from its wild parent: it's violently fragrant, a glorious sweet-spicy combo that smells to me like childhood and home; it has wrinkly leaves (characteristic of Rosa rugosa in particular); its stems are practically coated in prickles; and it's quite tolerant of shade, drought, and salt (Rosa rugosa is a beach rose).

The main virtue evinced by this rose, derived from its wild parent, is the same reason that it is still here in my garden: it is extremely difficult to kill. My mother, after hearing me say I wanted this specific rose bush at my house the same way it had been at my childhood home, dug up a sucker from her instance, put it in a bag with some wet dirt, carried it by hand on a multi-hour cross-country plane flight, and handed it off to me. Once I received it, I stuck it in a pot, because I was ripping up my lawn and had nowhere to plant it, and mostly forgot about it, because I was busy ripping up my entire lawn. It lost its leaves suspiciously early in the fall. ("That's not good," my mother said, over FaceTime, brow furrowed. "Are the rest of your roses doing that?")

But as the saying doesn't go, "where there's green cambium, there's hope", and I continued to take care of it throughout the winter. I eventually even remembered to put it in the ground. It is now March, and in defiance of the mockery of certain judgemental housemates, who said things like "why do you have a stick in a pot?" and "it's giving 'dead', my guy", this "stick" has now decided to become a rosebush, and has a grand total of (approximately) twenty-five leaves.

Like I said: extremely difficult to kill. It is currently planted 10-ish feet from the base of a redwood tree, a tough environment where some hardy garden-style roses have nonetheless been known to thrive. Given that its resurrection has occurred entirely while it was planted under the redwood, it doesn't seem too mad about its environment.

Review: holy shit, it’s alive???

#2: Zéphirine Drouhin, the "old garden rose"

Source: Heirloom Roses

Rosarians have conceived of many groupings of garden roses, based on known ancestry, phenotype, genetic studies, and Vibes, but one major breakpoint is those bred before 1867, the "old garden roses", and after 1867, the "modern garden roses".

The old garden roses were derived mostly from ancient European and Middle Eastern stock, which had themselves been created from wild roses centuries prior. For example, this is Rosa x alba, an ancient European rose strain; it was used as the heraldic badge of the medieval House of York during the English conflict known as the War of the Roses.

Source: not mine

Some of these roses are perpetual-blooming, a trait introduced as late as the eighteenth century, and which is entirely due to trade contact with China: as far as I can tell, the genes for strong reblooming only come from the Chinese rose-breeding tradition, which was itself centuries old by that point. So the modern Western concept of perpetual-blooming roses as the default kind of rose - like so many other aspects of modernity - is a direct result of Europeans cribbing from everybody else.

Interestingly, France was a major center for rose development during the early modern period. You can see it in the way old garden roses are named: overwhelmingly after some eminent madame or monsieur. This is probably connected to the fact that Josephine, Napoleon Bonaparte’s empress, was a rose fiend: she had two hundred and fifty new varieties of rose to be brought to her gardens at Château de Malmaison, which was probably pretty much all the named varieties of rose that existed then, and many of which were new to European cultivation at that time. Again, this represented a massive inflow of rose genes that were previously restricted to other countries or continents entirely. Inextricably, these gardens also represent the proceeds of early modern global trade, and of empire: Napoleon, on campaign abroad, himself sent her hundreds of specimens of flowering plants, and the French navy confiscated plants and seeds from ships captured and sea and sent them to her.

Anyway, Zéphirine Drouhin, created at the end of the "old garden rose" period and named for some now-forgotten madame or mademoiselle, is highly fragrant - one of the few roses said to really perfume the air - with a vibrant but old-fashioned color palette. (Apricot and yellow roses were also characteristic of the Chinese rose gene pool, and so were significantly less common in old garden roses.) Zéphirine Drouhin is also thornless, a rare trait that we nonetheless see in some old-fashioned garden roses, and a few modern garden roses as well.

Old garden roses have a variable but generally good level of disease resistance. Zéphirine Drouhin in particular, gets something of a bad rap for poor disease resistance; English rose breeder David Austin Roses says, tactfully, that it "prefers warmer climates" (versus, one must assume, rainy England) and that "controlling disease can be a problem". By this you should understand them to mean that it is a whiny little pissbaby that constantly gets blackspot, a diva that will defoliate at the drop of a hat (or the drop of, uh, water).

However, unlike certain other newer roses I will mention later, I have found Zéphirine Drouhin to be pretty healthy so far. I received this rose, like many in this post, "bare root", basically a stick, dormant in a bag of wood shavings. Upon being planted in a part-sun area, it has leafed out with only a scattering of aphids to show in terms of disease.

Review: So far, so good. Looking forward to the fragrance.

#3 and 4: 'Mister Lincoln' and 'Fragrant Cloud', the hybrid tea brothers

Remember how I mentioned that 1868 is the breakpoint between "old garden roses" and "modern garden roses"? That year marked the invention of a new type of rose, the 'hybrid tea', that is in some sense THE rose, the ARCHETYPE of a rose. If you ask someone who knows nothing about roses to draw 'a rose' - if you look up clipart of a rose - a hybrid tea rose is what you'll get.

Source: Star Nursery

This is Mister Lincoln, and although it was developed as late as the 1960s, it has the classic hybrid tea rose form. Hybrid teas have a very distinctive shape, described as "high-pointed", with a spiral of unfurling petals that curl at the edges, and they're borne singly on long stems, making them great for cutting and putting into vases and bouquets. They are not always strongly fragrant, and they are not generally very disease-resistant. They come in a very wide variety of colors, intense and subtle. They are reblooming.

Hybrid teas were developed by another East-meets-West cross, when the Chinese tea roses, freshly imported from Guangzhou in the early 19th century, were bred with the old garden roses. Tea roses have the same iconic form as the hybrid teas; they have those unique, pastel shades that were previously quite absent from European rose stocks; they smell like a fresh cup of tea. All these traits they impart to hybrid teas. Hybrid teas have been very popular ever since, and have been subject to a great deal of selective breeding for color and form.

Hybrid teas don't generally spark joy, to me. I find the 'cartoon rose' shape kind of twee, honestly. And the reputation for lack of disease tolerance puts me off. But I heard Mister Lincoln was incredibly fragrant, and that drew me in. Likewise Fragrant Cloud (1967), which also has the charming feature of being a violent neon coral that is allegedly very difficult to photograph.

Source: Heirloom Roses

“It'll be fine," I thought. "How much fungal disease can it get? It's not like it's humid here."

Never again. My trust is destroyed; fuck hybrid teas.

please, my son, he is very sick

This is my poor Mister Lincoln, planted from bare-root in mid-December. It has three different fungal diseases, and also an aphid infestation I can't seem to get it to shake. It looks like one of those diagrams of a liver in a medical textbook that has fatty liver and cirrhosis and liver cancer all at once, just so you can see what all the diseases look like. This is a rose that has every problem! No other rose in this flower bed comes close to having every problem! 'Munstead Wood' is also a modern garden rose (though from a very different lineage - see my review below) and it has no fungal diseases and not a single aphid!

Well, maybe the other hybrid tea I bought is doing better... well, nope, it rained last week and Fragrant Cloud has powdery mildew.

Review: Come on, man.

#5 Unidentified ‘sunset’ rose

I didn’t buy these roses; they came with my house. As a consequence, I have no idea what they are, but I am now intimately familiar with their traits, and I think they are very indicative of both the high and low points of modern garden roses.

On the surface level, the fact that these rose bushes are still with us is an impressive proof of their persistence under adversity. When I bought the house, these roses were being choked to death. Lily-of-the-nile had been planted way too close to them, and then permitted to grow unchecked and undivided for many years; their roots were completely infiltrated and surrounded with lily roots. The lily roots had also damaged the irrigation lines, which were dribbling uncontrolled amounts of water into the shared root zone. So when I excavated these roses, the whole area smelled strongly of rot, with visible mold throughout; the roots were fully wet even in the heat of August. The roses were also infested with blackspot, not surprisingly. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was too little, too late.

But when they finally got some drainage, some direct sunlight, and some relief from the brutal root competition, they did start growing back, and even blooming. Come winter, I pruned hard, defoliated, and applied neem oil consistently. And they’ve made a comeback!

Source: these blooms are actually my roses.

They bloom, and they’re beautiful. They do this ombre thing, where the buds are bright yellow and as they open they go from yellow, to orange, and finally to red.

The growth is fairly vigorous, with no powdery mildew no matter how rainy it gets. But their foliage definitely suffers from blackspot, and occasional rose rust; the spores are probably ambiently present in the soil now, and they can’t quite seem to defend themselves, even with ample help from organic fungicides like neem oil.

They also have no fragrance. They smell like nothing. And that’s the standard modern garden rose in a nutshell, I think: beautiful color and form, shaky disease resistance, little fragrance. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Review: Okay, this one is really pretty, actually.

Interlude: Pesticides and the law of unintended consequences

So, yeah, you can sort of see how roses got a reputation for being picky divas. I can only imagine how bad this sort of thing must get in places that get (gasp!) rain or humidity in the summer.

Now, having created plants that are too disease-ridden to live, rose-lovers came up with practical and effective solutions to the disease problem they created. For the past century or so, the go-to fix for our increasingly disease-prone rose population has been chemicals: regular applications of synthetic insecticide and fungicide sprays, as well as plenty of fertilizer and herbicide to feed the roses and kill any competing weeds.

However, recall the theme of this post: the law of unintended consequences. In agriculture, the development of modern pesticides and fertilizers has been genuinely miraculous; the Green Revolution is estimated to have saved a billion people from starvation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Saving a billion people! Can you even begin to conceive of what it would be like to save a billion people, even grapple with the moral weight of that act? I know I can't; the number is simply too large for our moral intuitions to handle, I think. So I'm hesitant to bad-mouth pesticides and fertilizers too much.

But they do have massive downsides. Chemical fertilizers leach into the groundwater and cause algal blooms that make entire bodies of water go anoxic, rendering them uninhabitable to fish and the rest of the aquatic food chain. Insecticides are probably responsible for colony collapse, which endangers the pollinators that we rely on for our food supply.

And, well, even if you don't give a shit about the natural world - you are a part of the natural world. You are an animal, with all the frailty that implies. Our bodies use many of the same ancient metabolic pathways as insects and plants; the majority of your DNA is shared with a banana. And because you are an animal, it is very difficult indeed to create an insecticide that will poison other animals without poisoning you too, at least a little. Herbicides are somehow still worse, despite the more distant biological relationship between humans and dandelions: Roundup, for instance, is linked to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which has led to Monsanto paying out massive legal settlements to cancer patients who used their products.

So if we can't grow roses without coating them in poison, maybe we should just… not do that? Go back to growing super-hardy nearly-wild roses like rugosas, forgoing forever the elegance and sublime color of a modern rose?

Give up this? ‘Glowing Peace’, Heirloom Roses

Not so fast! Maybe this technological problem has a technological solution. If we bred roses so that they sucked, maybe we should just not do that! Make different roses! Make roses that don't suck!

#6-#8, ‘Ebb Tide', 'Eden', and 'Lavender Crush': roses that don't suck

Over the last fifty years, people have become increasingly aware of the impacts of modern lifestyles upon our health and the health of the planet and its ecosystems. So maybe this has made the public less willing to buy roses that need to be treated constantly with toxic sprays. Or maybe it's just that growing disease-prone roses is an enormous pain in the ass. Spray, prune, spray, defoliate, fertilize, spray, fertilize, spray, water - but not too much! Oops, powdery mildew. Defoliate and spray some more.

So the genetic health of the newer varieties of garden roses is greatly improved. The two hybrid teas I struggled with above were bred in the 1960s. All the named rose varieties in this section were bred since the 1990s or later: Eden in 1997, Ebb Tide in 2004, and Lavender Crush, the baby of the group, was introduced in 2016. All of them are vibrantly healthy and quite vigorous; Ebb Tide and Eden are shade-tolerant too, and Lavender Crush is allegedly very winter-hardy. After a scant two months in the ground, they've started to put out flower buds. And they keep some of the glorious color and form of older roses. Look at them!

Source: Heirloom Roses.

I don't mean to say all 20th century roses are bad and disease-ridden. I also have purchased 'New Dawn' (introduced 1930), due to it being the fifteen-dollarest rose at the Home Depot. (My toxic trait is that I am an absolute sucker for a good deal. I don't go into TJ Maxx anymore; it's too dangerous.) 'New Dawn' has all the ancestral, throwback traits I laud here: shade-tolerance, fragrance, disease resistance. It even brings in the pollinators! But it seems to me there's been a noticeable uptick in the quality of newer rose introductions, particularly when it comes to disease resistance. I'm not wired into the professional rose world to know what that is; I'm Literally Just Some Guy. But it's a good trend.

Review: I am so excited for the buds to open, you have no idea.

#9: 'Double Knockout': the 'landscape' rose

Wait, no, I take that back. These roses have too much ease of care. Put some back.

The Knockout rose has one virtue: you cannot kill it with an axe. Literally.

This rose was planted right at the foot of a redwood tree in my garden, because the previous owner of my house was an idiot. This is a terrifically bad setup for roses and redwoods: redwoods acidify the soil, and suck up water and nutrients aggressively, leaving little for surrounding plants, and of course they provide dense shade. Roses hate the acid, the dry and low-nutrient soil, and the shade; this plant never bloomed all last summer. For their part, the redwoods hate having anything planted in their inner root zone - their roots are relatively shallow for such a large tree. This is not a good situation for anyone, so I hacked this rose back to the ground, dug out as much of the root ball as I dared, and in my naivete thought that would be the end of it. Well, it has grown back. Now I am faced with the dilemma of whether to risk root injury to my redwood tree, or just let the rose be, bloomless as it is. Probably the latter is better for the redwood tree, on the whole. Maybe it’ll get choked out if I don’t water it? Anyone’s guess, really.

The category of landscape roses is a 2000s invention. The first Knockout rose was introduced in 2000 after years of intensive selective breeding for being easy-care, free-flowering, and disease-resistant; the similar Drift line was the product of an amateur rose breeder in 2006 to much the same ends. Landscape roses are so named because instead of being demanding prima donnas suited only to those who love roses enough to take on the Rose Tasks, they’re just another pretty shrub in the landscape.

And I will say this for them: in that bad, fungal spore–inundated flower bed I mentioned, my landscape roses (plus Munstead Wood, see below) are notably free of fungal disease.

Also, I think that's leaf tissue proliferating at the center of the bottom left bloom?? A rare but harmless growth disorder of flowering plants.

This comes at a cost, of course, at least if you’re a snob like me. I don’t think landscape roses are very interesting-looking - though of course they come in a wide variety of colors, the better to coordinate with the color scheme of your house! - and they are generally, tragically, without fragrance. While I can’t complain about anything that gets US gardeners to use less pesticides, they are barely roses to me. They are, in fact, the closest roses come to being an inanimate object, a decorative thing you can just plonk down in your garden wherever, like a tacky concrete statue. They’re a commodity; the enchantment is gone. I wouldn’t rip them out where they’re well-sited, but I sure wouldn’t plant more.

Now, this is incredibly mean to people who love landscape roses, but here goes. I’m reminded of a thread from r/Ceanothus, the California native gardening subreddit, that is now burned into my brain. OP asks for a native shrub recommendation, but not just any native shrub. OP wants a native shrub that will grow very tall, but also stay very narrow - 1’ wide in places. OP needs a native shrub that will grow thick and vigorous, to block out their view of the neighbors. OP needs this thing to be evergreen; OP presumably wants low water inputs. And OP needs all this, in a shrub that will grow in full shade.

In fairness, OP was polite about it, and this is a common problem for urban gardeners. The dark, untended canyon between buildings is a very common phenomenon in Californian cities. I too have a narrow, shaded side yard containing a tiny strip of crappy, gravelly dirt, that I’d love to grow something in: how do you think I found this post? Dear reader, I am very much at that devil's sacrament.

And the ceanothusheads of r/Ceanothus tried gamely. But one commenter replied with something that fully changed how I think about gardening:

Source: Reddit

Sometimes, what you need is not a living organism, with its own needs, that will change over time in ways you may not endorse, that interacts with the world around it. Sometimes what you really want is a man-made object. Sometimes what you want to grow in your tall, narrow, lightless, bone-dry side yard, for your privacy requirements, is a fence. And that’s what I think about landscape roses. In Mediterranean and desert climates, as long as there's enough sun, you can always fall back on planting a succulent. But not every location can grow succulents outdoors year-round. In temperate climates, landscape roses could probably be successfully replaced with a particularly attractive boulder. Or, if what you want is a smart-looking, easy-care hedge: consider a fence.

Review: I’d maybe rather plant a fence a succulent.

#10: 'Munstead Wood': the old English rose, reloaded

‘Munstead Wood’, my final acquisition, is a credit to another major modern rose breeding program, this time out of England: David Austin Roses. The main idea of the David Austin rose-breeding project seems to be combining the particular charms of traditional English old garden roses - their fragrance, their romantic, sophisticated forms - with the virtues of modern roses - continuous blooming, a wide range of highly Instagrammable colors - plus disease-tolerance that twenty-first century gardeners now expect. And judging by their singular impact on the contemporary rose market, they seem to have been very successful at that goal. The Reddit reviews are glowing, the forums are abuzz for their hottest new releases (Dannahue restock wen?), their most popular roses are often sold out, and other rose sellers have catalog filters for 'English shrub roses' that allegedly share the looks and fragrance of David Austin's best.

From the author's camera roll. 'I can't believe it's not Dave [sic] Austin!'

Their marketing is also very slick. Their website is very informative, with separate filters for various kinds of roses you might want to buy ('Best for fragrance', 'For a shady spot', 'Thornless or nearly so'), all the rose varieties have literary or historical names or else are named after charming British locations, and are all beautifully photographed in their idyllic show garden, and the prose is carefully engineered to incite lust in the winter-weary gardener. They even do periodic drops of new roses, like a sneaker company.

So last November, I allowed myself to buy one David Austin rose, 'Munstead Wood'.

Source: David Austin Roses

'Munstead Wood' is really gorgeous, I think, blooming in a deep burgundy color. The website claims the fragrance is "Old Rose, with fruity notes of blackberry, blueberry and damson".

An interesting fact about 'Munstead Wood' is that it is actually region-locked. David Austin Roses sells roses in both the US and UK (and maybe other places; sorry I am so American), but the climate of the UK has been changing, with more extreme weather events and even more rain. And you know how it is with roses and the rain. 'Munstead Wood' was no longer able to thrive, and has packed up its little rucksack and gone out to explore the world as a lone vagabond - specifically, America.

So how is it doing here? Great, actually. It may have been rained on every day for the past week, but at least it's not in England, I guess.

'Munstead Wood' has no fungal disease. It looks like it's never even heard of fungal disease. I'm pretty impressed! I can't actually tell you whether the roses are good, but this is a pretty good plant, which is a good start.

Review: I'm holding myself back from buying more David Austin roses right now. God help me, I have two more open full- to part-sun spots in my garden right now.

David Austin, "Lady of Shalott". Call me the Lady of Shalott the way I'm languishing in my tower, gazing only at the mere reflections of the real world (stuck inside, looking at my phone, because of the rain) and am about to throw myself in the river with longing (to be out in the garden)

#this was mostly written like a week and a half ago #delighted to report it has now stopped raining :)#gardening #plantblr #roses #botany #...kind of. not a botanist i just like reading about it #longpost #original content #(i hesitate to call this an 'effortpost': aside from spending an hour on wikipedia trying to graph out the various old garden roses #and their relationships with the species roses that spawned them - it just kind of happened.)

159 notes · View notes