#jake.fic

with no clear way to go back to sleep, you start to stretch. at least, stretch as best you can when you’re laying directly on top of your boyfriend and his body brackets yours on all sides. he’s got one leg draped over yours, a hand resting on the small of your back, the other arm wrapped tight around your shoulders. his heartbeat is steady under your cheek, a nice reminder that he’s here with you right now, despite busy schedules and comeback season. most days, you find yourself wishing that this could be a constant thing, waking up in jake’s embrace, but that yearning is tenfold today for some reason.

maybe it’s because all of this feels so domestic. he’d come over last night to help you make dinner, giggling as he purposely bumped hips with you in the small kitchen. he’d done the same thing when you were washing dishes, your sides pressed tight together as he washed and you dried, slotting dishes into their correct places. and then you’d settled down on the small couch for a movie, except you’d laid down halfway through and promptly fallen asleep. clearly neither of you had woken up in the night to convince the other to go sleep in your actual bed. but 

isn’t that kind of nice? getting to share all parts of your home with jake, feeling comfortable enough to pass out on the loveseat? there’s some level of domesticity that comes with all of this, a very unfamiliar territory to you but one you’re growing comfortable in nonetheless. you’ve never felt more at home than you do right now with him; you really could just lay here forever.

he draws a sudden deep breath, arms tightening around you as he stirs. like instinct, a habit he’s had all his life, his breath is hot against your hairline as he seeks you out, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead. “g’morning.”

his voice is thick with sleep, accent heavy, and it makes you smile to yourself. he’s so adorable like this. you wish you got to see this side of him more often, make it yours and yours alone. you’re sure he shares the same sentiment about you, especially when you can hear the smile as he lets out a short breathy laugh when you reply with your own “morning.”

he rubs his hands against your shoulder and back, the heels of his palms soothing soft lines into your skin, his cheek against the top of your head. “guess we’ll have to rewatch the movie, huh?”

you shrug, snuggling impossibly closer. “i guess so. just gives you an excuse to come over again.”

he laughs for real this time, a short, quiet little giggle that has his chest rumbling underneath you. it makes you smile into his sweater, something bright and soft, ethereal.

“i’ll always find an excuse to come over,” he says in between the tiny pinpricks of light that come in the form of laughter. “you know that.”

you can’t help but join him in his giggling. he’s right; he’s used every excuse in the book to sneak over to your apartment at least twice a week for the last seven months. he forgot his phone charger, you’re sick and need him to run an errand for you, you have a delivery coming but you’re not home and need someone to sign for it, he left his favorite sweater on accident (this one is true, except he did it on purpose, but the other guys don’t need to know how much he loves the way you look in his clothes). he’s never had to do much to get himself out of the dorms and into your apartment during his free time. you’re just happy to offer him yet another reason to come over.

eventually, you both fall silent again, just basking in one another and the warm light as it creeps farther and brighter into your apartment, casting everything it touches in gold. jake has moved one arm to rest behind his head, the other drawing his fingers up and down your back in loose, uneven lines.

“what time is it?” you ask quietly, unwilling to move so you can see the clock on your wall or reach for your phone. jake is just too comfortable, too warm and you’re not ready to let him go just yet.

thankfully, jake is in the perfect position to reach for his phone on the coffee table and he picks it up with ease. “almost six-thirty.”

you let out a sigh and finally release one of your arms to drag the blanket that lays on the back of the couch over you. there’s the soft clatter of jake’s phone being set back on the coffee table and then he’s adjusted the blanket over the both of you, a smile evident in the small breath he lets out through his nose.

“too early,” you say once you’re settled again, voice muffled against his sweater clad chest.

“then go back to sleep, cutie,” he replies softly, nuzzling his cheek against the top of your head. his arms are back around you, nice and tight, his go to cuddle position that you’ve come to love more than anything.

you shake your head as best you can. “want to, but ‘s too bright.”

jake hums in response, a sound that has his chest rumbling under your cheek just a bit. his fingers wind their way back and forth across your shoulders as he thinks. birds are starting to chirp outside your window now, the world waking up with the sun when all you want is a little bit more time in bed with your boyfriend.

he shatters that desire almost immediately as it materializes, though he does so with a suggestion that is just as pleasant. “well, i’m not getting back to sleep any time soon either, especially since i have practice this afternoon… y’wanna go get breakfast at that coffee shop down the street?”

you pull your head up from his chest to look at him. you almost wish you hadn’t because he looks so pretty like this, hair messy from sleep and brown eyes caught by sunbeams that turn them molten bronze, and you nearly fall in love all over again. he smiles up at you, all soft and warm, a small grin that is reserved just for you.

“you payin’?” you ask, even though you know you don’t have to. jake always refuses to let you pay for anything, even things he won’t get any use out of like the pair of shoes you were planning to buy a couple weeks ago when you went out shopping together; he’d slipped his card into the machine while you had your head turned to pull out your own like the menace he was.

his eyes practically glitter in the morning sunlight as he nods, dropping his arms to your waist. “course i am. it was my idea.”

you smile and press a kiss to his jawline, the one place you can reach comfortably in this position. he leans into the touch, cheek pressed hot against your temple, always the sucker for physical affection.

“you’d pay even if it wasn’t your idea,” you counter, pulling away to look at him again.

he shrugs his shoulders and starts to sit up, so you adjust yourself too, kneeling on the couch between his legs. you reach to run your fingers through soft, golden locks of hair and he smiles, his own fingers playing with the hem of your shirt. 

“are you trying to say you don’t want me to pay for things anymore?” he questions. he tries to add an edge of a threat in there, but it doesn’t quite work when he’s leaning into your touch and looking more and more like the puppy his friends and fans (and you) equate him to.

“just stating facts,” you answer, a little bit of laughter in your voice.

he giggles with you, wrapping his arms fully around your waist again and pulling you into his body. somehow, in the struggle, he manages to stand up and starts carrying you towards your bedroom amid shrieks and your desperate attempts to latch your legs around his hips.

“gotta get a move on, baby, or else your favorite table’s gonna get taken before we can even get out the door.”

since then, it’s been a slow march forward in your relationship with him. for a long few months, it was one-sided yearning glances and little keurig meetings in the break room, chatting about your weekends and the office birthday parties coming up, mundane things that really don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

but then he’d started peeking his head into your cubicle, asking if you wanted the rest of his lunch because he was full, passing you his half-empty bento box and a clean pair of chopsticks. on days you were sick, you’d come back to work with vitamin c packets on your desk; other days, a mug of coffee would be waiting on a coaster in your cubicle, made just the way you like it. sometimes, heeseung even waits for you on late nights, slowing down his own pace so you can leave together.

what neither of you know is that the office has a betting pool on when you’re going to realize you’re in love with each other and make it official; beomgyu, resident office gambler, has a hundred won placed on another year of suffering through your “disgusting” beating around the bush (turns out, he’s a few days short and wins close to four hundred won).

PARK JONGSEONG changes your ideology on love at first sight. he’s a regular at your favorite study place: the cafe just down the block from your apartment building. you’re five semesters deep into your bachelors in psychology, so you’re in the coffee shop often (give or take every single day of the week). there’s a table you love that’s close to the front, but not so close that you’ll be blinded by the sun when it cuts into the gaps between buildings as it sets.

he waltzes in on a random stormy saturday morning, dripping wet and protected only by the leather jacket he wears. your eyes trail him from the entrance to the register, meeting his gaze once as he passes by you. he even grants you a tiny shimmer of a smile, one side of his mouth quirking up as he ghosts by your table. it’s enough to have you bristling under your sweater and you have to drag your attention from his black leather-clad figure to your laptop, word document cursor blinking at you from an unfinished sentence in a paper for your criminal psychology class. 

no matter how much you try to refocus and make progress on this paper, you just can’t (thank god it’s not due for another three weeks). your mind is just far too preoccupied with the pretty boy you made eye contact with, mind whirling with questions about him: what’s his name? is he a student like you? what are his hobbies? lost in your thoughts, you almost jump out of your fucking skin when the chair across from you screeches against the tile floor and the very boy sits down at your table, an iced americano cradled in his hands. when you finally meet his eyes again, your granted a deeper smile and a name: jongseong, or jay, if you’re lucky (which you seem to be because you sit and talk for so long that your laptop dies… and you don’t care).

SIM JAEYUN is the brother of your best friend, so he’s always been distinctly off limits. she’d sworn you to that one night in the darkness of her bedroom after getting buzzed off of some wine she’d skimmed from her mom’s collection; or rather, she’d sworn you to be off limits from him. “i met you first, which means you’re my person, not his. you’re off limits, ‘kay? don’t let him get to you.” and you’d giggled and told her that you wouldn’t even look in his direction if it was that important to her.

but that was a couple years ago and you’re not high schoolers anymore. in fact, while she moved cities for university, you stayed home and ended up going to the same school as her brother, living in the same dorm and sharing a couple of gen ed classes with him during that first semester. with so much distance between you and your best friend, jake was the next best thing and you were spending an increasing amount of time with him. so how important was that promise you’d made when you were half-gone on dry wine?

you go on study dates at the library, he shows up at your dorm room with your favorite coffee order in hand when you’re having a rough day, he saves you a spot next to him in every class you share together. there are other little things he does that having you falling for him in a way that your friend forbid all those years ago, but you can’t stop yourself, not when you’re watching him run across the quad, an umbrella in hand, because it started pouring down rain during class and you’d forgotten to bring yours. if this is how he loves, then surely it’ll be worth it to break that promise.

PARK SUNGHOON was the one who got away. you were the star figure skating duo at your hometown rink, perfectly in sync and a beautiful couple on the ice. out of everyone you’d ever trained with, sunghoon was always the one you felt most comfortable with; your chemistry was undeniable, but it was the way he supported you on and off the ice that made him your favorite partner by far.

so of course you’d gone and fallen in love with him, just a naive teenager who was itching to have your first taste of romance. how fitting would it be to have sunghoon as your first love, seeing as so many of your performances were romantic in nature anyways? but then he’d told you one night after practice, sitting on the bleachers and taking your skates off, that he was quitting and moving away to chase a new dream and you’d sat there, staring at him, waiting for him to say that he was just kidding. when he leveled that icily serious stare of his at you, the gravity of it settled in deep and fast, and you’d stood up abruptly without a word and walked away stiffly, willing away tears, even as he called after you.

it was the last time you’d seen him.

you’re older now, more mature than you were a handful of years ago. you’re not a figure skater anymore, at least not professionally, but you coach young skaters five nights a week at a rink in the city, your new home, while you shoot for your bachelors in sports medicine.

it’s tuesday evening and you just waved goodbye to the last of your students a few minutes ago. as you’re cleaning up a few things from practice, you hear the door open and slam closed, echoing loudly. you start to make a joke about one of your students who always forgets something of theirs on the bleachers, but when you turn to face them, a much taller, much older park sunghoon stands before you, a pair of skates in hand. his shoulders are broad, waist just as slim as you remember, but he’s so much more handsome.