#julia wolf

《 pairing: jaafar jackson x blackfem!reader

《 warnings: Anxiety and panic symptoms, Depression and depressive thoughts, Emotional isolation, Low self-esteem and self-doubt, Obsessive overthinking, Miscommunication, Feelings of abandonment or rejection, Loneliness, Crying and emotional distress, Mental health struggles

《 a/n: I was a bit iffy abt posting this but I forgot idgaf how people feel 😩 (I’m also almost done with some of my request)

The first time you met Jaafar Jackson, he spilled his coffee on your call sheet.

It was one of those chaotic music video sets where everything was running forty-five minutes behind and nobody knew whose fault it was.

You were the production coordinator, which meant you were the one everyone blamed anyway.

"What the—"

"Oh god. Oh no. I'm so sorry." The voice behind you was genuinely panicked.

"That was so dumb. That was so incredibly dumb. I didn't see you—actually that's not true, I saw you, I was walking and my brain wasn't connected to my feet and—"

You turned around and found yourself face-to-face with Jaafar Jackson.

He was wearing a silk robe over his costume, something with ruffles and sequins, this was a Jackson production after all, and his eyes were wide with horror.

He was holding the empty coffee cup as if it had personally betrayed him.

"I just ruined your clipboard," he said. "And probably your whole morning. And possibly your opinion of me forever."

"My opinion of you was neutral before this."

"And now?"

You looked down at your coffee-soaked call sheet, then back up at him. His expression was so genuinely distressed, like he'd committed an actual crime, that something in you softened.

"Now I think you're a man who should really invest in a travel mug with a better lid."

He laughed. It was a surprised laugh, a little breathless, like he hadn't expected you to be funny. "That's fair. That's completely fair. I'll write it down. 'Buy better lid.'"

You ended up reprinting the call sheet and he ended up helping you, standing next to the production trailer's printer while you waited, making increasingly ridiculous excuses for why he'd been so distracted.

By the time the printer finally spat out your pages, you'd learned that he was playing a role of his uncle,  he was nervous about all the choreography, and that he talked with his hands when he was anxious.

By the time filming wrapped at 2 AM, you'd given him your number.

"For professional reasons," you'd said.

"Obviously," he'd agreed. "Strictly professional."

Within a week, you were texting every day.

Then within a month, you were FaceTiming each other talking about music you loved, childhood stories, literally everything and anything.

Within six months, he'd become your closest friend, the person you reached for when something funny happened, when something terrible happened, when you just needed to hear another voice in the quiet.

Everyone assumed you were dating. Your coworkers, his brothers, random people on the internet who caught photos of you grabbing coffee together.

You always laughed it off. But the truth was more complicated.

The truth was that you loved him. You'd known it for a while.

You'd never told him because you were too scared of losing what you had. The friendship was too good and too precious to risk on something like that.

So you stayed friends. Best friends. Inseparable, codependent, constantly-together friends.

And for two years, that was enough.

————

"My face hurts," you said, sprawled across your couch with your phone propped against a throw pillow.

On the screen, Jaafar's face was equally exhausted, equally delighted, his curls smushed against what looked like a hotel pillow.

"Your face hurts?"

"From laughing. We've been on this call for four hours."

"Four hours and twelve minutes." He grinned. "I'm keeping track. It's a record."

"You're such a nerd."

"You're the one who's spent four hours talking to a nerd. What does that make you?"

"Extremely patient."

"Extremely lucky," he corrected. "I'm a delight. Everyone says so."

"Name one person."

"Jermajesty."

"Jermajesty called you a 'semi-functional disaster' literally yesterday."

"That's his love language." Jaafar shifted on his pillow, his face softening. "Hey. Can I play you something?"

"Always."

He reached off-screen and there was a rustle, a thump, the sound of him fumbling with something.

Then a guitar chord, soft and tentative. He'd been learning for a few months, said he wanted to understand music better, not just perform it and he'd started writing little melodies. Nothing serious. Just sketches.

"This one's new," he said, his voice suddenly shy. "It's not finished. It's probably not good."

"Play it anyway."

He played. The melody was simple but lovely, a slow wandering thing that felt like twilight, like the last golden hour of summer.

You closed your eyes and let it wash over you through the phone speaker. When he finished, there was a long pause.

"That's beautiful," you said.

"You think?"

"I know."

"I wrote it thinking about you." He said it casually, like it wasn't a bomb dropped directly onto your chest. "The way you laugh. The way you hum when you're making coffee. Stuff like that."

"Jaafar—"

"Anyway." He set the guitar aside too quickly, his cheeks darkening even through the grainy FaceTime quality. "It's stupid. Forget it."

"It's not stupid."

"Change of subject. Tell me about your day. Tell me about the thing with your boss. Did she apologize for the email?"

You wanted to push. You wanted to say, "What do you mean you wrote it thinking about me? What does that mean? What do you mean?"

But he was already steering the conversation away, and you were too much of a coward to steer it back. You let the moment pass.

You'd let a lot of moments pass, over the years.

————

The change happened so gradually you didn't notice it at first.

Jaafar's acting career had been building for a while, but after the Michael biopic was announced, everything accelerated.

Suddenly he was everywhere, talk shows, magazine covers, red carpets with his family members.

Suddenly he was traveling constantly,

At first, nothing changed. He still texted from every location, sent you blurry photos of interesting ceilings, called you at strange hours just to hear your voice. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the rhythm shifted.

His replies got shorter, just... abbreviated. The FaceTime calls went from every night to every other night to once a week to "sorry I missed you, let's try again tomorrow."

Objectively, none of this was malicious. He was busy. He was exhausted. He was doing exactly what anyone in his position would do. You knew this intellectually.

You told yourself this constantly. He's not ignoring you. He's just tired. He's just busy. He still cares. Nothing has changed.

But your brain was not an intellectual organ. Your brain was a traitor that whispered to you at 3 AM while you stared at the ceiling, replaying every conversation, searching for the moment you'd messed everything up.

He doesn't want to talk to you anymore. Why would he? He's famous now. He's meeting famous people. More than the ones he's related to.

You're boring. You're clingy. You're the friend he keeps around out of habit, not because he actually wants you there.

You knew these thoughts weren't rational.

You knew they were anxiety, plain and simple, the same anxiety that had been gnawing at your edges since middle school.

But knowing something and believing something were two different things.

So you did what you always did when the fear got too loud: you started pulling away.

————

He'd texted you three times today.

"hey! how's your day going?"

"just finished a really long shoot, my face hurts from fake smiling lol"

"you around? missing you"

You'd read all three. You hadn't responded to any of them.

It wasn't that you didn't want to. God, you wanted to.

You wanted to call him. You wanted to hear his voice, wanted to listen to him complain about craft services or tell you about some weird dream he'd had.

But every time your thumb hovered over the keyboard, the whisper got louder.

He doesn't actually miss you. He's just being polite. He's probably relieved you're not answering. He's probably hoping you'll take the hint and stop bothering him.

You put your phone face-down on the coffee table. You turned the TV on so you wouldn't have to hear your own thoughts.

Fifteen minutes later, he texted again: did I do something wrong?

You stared at the notification until your screen went dark.

No, you typed. Then deleted it. Everything is fine. Delete. I've just been busy. Delete. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just— Delete delete delete.

Three dots. Then nothing.

You left him on read.

————

Your ceiling had twenty-seven cracks.

You knew this because you'd been counting them for the past two hours, lying in bed with your phone clutched to your chest like a talisman.

The room was dark except for the faint blue glow of your screen, which you'd been refreshing obsessively for no reason.

There were no new messages. There were no missed calls. The last thing he'd sent was a simple goodnight three days ago, and you hadn't responded to that either.

You'd stopped responding to everything.

The silence felt enormous. It pressed against your eardrums. It filled the apartment like water, rising slowly, drowning you inch by inch.

You couldn't remember the last time you'd gone three days without talking to him.

You couldn't remember who you were without the constant hum of his presence in your pocket.

You did this, the whisper reminded you. You pushed him away first. You stopped answering. You're the one who ruined it.

But that wasn't fair, was it? He'd pulled away first. He'd gotten busy. He'd stopped calling.

Or had he? Did he actually stop, or did you just start noticing the gaps more? Did he actually change, or did your fear just get louder?

You didn't know. You couldn't tell anymore. The line between what was real and what your anxiety was inventing had blurred so completely that you couldn't find it.

You opened his contact. Scrolled through the message history. Two years of friendship, compressed into a few gigabytes of text.

You stopped at a message from six months ago, before the biopic, before everything got weird: just wanted to say thanks for being my best friend. Don't know what I'd do without you.

Your throat tightened.

You scrolled further. A voice note from eight months ago, three minutes long. You pressed play and held the phone to your ear.

His voice filled the darkness, sleepy and warm, rambling about a dream he'd had where you were both running a bakery and his uncle Marlon kept trying to pay with Monopoly money.

You'd listened to this voicemail fourteen times. You weren't proud of it.

When the message ended, the silence rushed back in. You let it. You lay there in the dark, counting ceiling cracks, listening to the echo of his laugh in your head, and you didn't sleep. You hadn't slept properly in weeks.

At 4:12 AM, you opened Instagram. His story was at the top of your feed, a photo of a recording studio, some producer you didn't recognize, a caption that said late night creating with a music note emoji. You stared at it for thirty seconds, memorizing the details.

The color of the soundproofing foam. The way his reflection was barely visible in the studio glass. The fact that there were other people's shoes visible in the corner of the frame.

He's having fun without you, the whispers said. He doesn't need you anymore. He's probably already forgotten you exist.

You closed the app. You turned your phone off. You stared at the ceiling until the sun came up.

————

Jaafar was confused. A deeper confusion, the kind that sat in the pit of your stomach and refused to move.

He'd been on set for three hours and he couldn't remember a single line of dialogue he'd delivered. His mind was somewhere else entirely.

It was in Los Angeles. In a small apartment in Silver Lake. With someone who hadn't answered his calls in over a week.

He didn't understand what had happened. One minute, everything was fine, texting every day, FaceTiming when y'all could, the same thing yall had for two years. The next minute, you were a ghost. One-word responses.

Then emoji-only responses. Then nothing. His calls went to voicemail. His messages sat on delivered.

He sent more text: "Are you okay? and please just tell me what I did and I miss you" hadn't even been opened.

He'd played the last few weeks over and over in his head, trying to find the moment he'd messed up. He'd been busier than usual, sure.

The biopic was consuming everything, eighteen-hour shoots and press junkets and flying back and forth between cities.

But was that enough to explain this? Had he really been that terrible? Had he said something wrong, done something wrong, broken something he hadn't even known was fragile?

"You're doing it again," Jermajesty said, appearing at his elbow with two cups of coffee. The lounge chair creaked as he dropped into it.

"Doing what?"

"Spiraling." Jermajesty handed him a cup. "You've been staring at that wall for fifteen minutes. The wall's not that interesting."

"I'm not spiraling."

"You're definitely spiraling." He took a long sip of his coffee. "Is it the girl?"

"It's not—" Jaafar stopped. Sighed. "Yeah. It's the girl."

"Still not answering?"

"Still not answering."

Jermajesty was quiet for a moment. Then he said, gently: "You could just show up."

"What?"

"At her place. When you get back to LA. Just show up and ask her what's going on. Face to face. Just you and her."

"And if she doesn't want to see me?"

"Then at least you'll know." Jermajesty shrugged. "Right now you're just guessing. And your guesses are making you miserable. At least if you go there, you'll have an answer."

Jaafar stared at his coffee. It was getting cold. He'd been holding it for so long that the warmth had leached away without him noticing.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe."

————

You were in bed when the knock came.

Not asleep, you were never asleep anymore, your body had apparently forgotten how.

The curtains were drawn. The TV was off. Your phone was on the nightstand, face-down, dead because you hadn't charged it in two days. You hadn't seen the point.

The knock came again. Three firm raps. Then a voice, muffled through the door: "I know you're in there. Your car's in the parking lot."

Your heart stopped.

Jaafar.

You didn't move. Your body had turned to stone, your lungs refusing to expand.

Panic and hope collided in your chest like two freight trains, and the resulting wreckage left you frozen in place.

"I can hear you not moving," he called. "Which means you're awake. Which means you're ignoring me. Which—" A pause. A softer voice. "Which is kind of the problem, actually."

Silence. You could picture him out there, probably leaning against the doorframe, probably running his hand through his curls the way he did when he was nervous.

You knew him so well. You'd spent two years learning every inch of his mannerisms, his rhythms, his habits. And now the thought of opening the door and actually facing him felt impossible.

"I'm not leaving," he said. "I just flew in. I've been on a plane for five hours. I haven't eaten. I'm tired. And I'm gonna sit right here in this hallway until you open the door, even if it takes all night."

Your neighbor's door creaked open. Mrs. Tucker's voice, sharp with suspicion: "Who are you? Why are you yelling in the hallway, boy?"

"I'm so sorry, ma'am. I'm Jaafar. I'm her— I'm a friend. I'm trying to get her to open the door."

"Are you the one who's been making her cry?"

A pause. When Jaafar spoke again, his voice was quieter. "She's been crying?"

"Thin walls," Mrs. Tucker said, not unkindly. "Young lady. I know you're in there. This boy looks very pathetic. Maybe you should talk to him."

Your body decided to move before your brain caught up. Suddenly you were on your feet, crossing the living room, your hand on the deadbolt. The door swung open.

Jaafar was standing in the hallway, his hand raised mid-knock, his face a cascade of emotions, relief and worry and something that looked a lot like fear.

Behind him, Mrs. Tucker was watching with undisguised interest.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," you whispered.

Mrs. Tucker made a satisfied sound and retreated into her apartment. The door clicked shut behind her, and then it was just the two of you in the dim hallway, staring at each other like strangers who'd once known each other intimately.

"You look—" He stopped. Swallowed. "You look like you haven't slept in a month."

"That's... not inaccurate."

"Can I come in?"

You stepped aside. He walked past you into your apartment, and the familiar scent of him hit you like a physical blow.

He was here. He was actually here. After weeks of silence and avoidance and panic spirals, he was standing in your living room, looking at the drawn curtains and the pile of unwashed dishes and the general evidence of your unraveling.

"What happened?" He turned to face you, and his eyes were so sad. "What did I do?"

"Nothing." The word came out too fast. "You didn't do anything."

"Then why did you stop talking to me?" The question was soft, not accusatory. "Why did you disappear? Did I— was I too much? Was I not enough? I've been going crazy trying to figure out what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything wrong." Your voice cracked. You pressed your palm against your mouth, trying to hold back the tears that were already threatening. "You were just— you were busy. You were traveling. You were tired. And I— I thought—"

"Thought what?"

"I thought you didn't want me anymore."

The words hung in the air between you. Ugly and honest and finally, finally spoken aloud.

Jaafar's face crumpled. "Why would you think that?"

"Because you stopped calling." The tears were falling now; you couldn't stop them. "Because your replies got shorter. Because you were always too busy to hang out. And I know— I know it wasn't your fault, I know you were just working, I know you couldn't help it. But my brain doesn't— it doesn't do logic. It just tells me that I'm annoying, that I'm too much, that everybody's going to leave eventually and you were just the first one to figure it out—"

"Hey. Hey." He crossed the room and caught your face in his hands, his thumbs wiping at your tears. "Breathe. Please. Just breathe."

You tried. The breath came out shuddering and uneven, but it came.

"I'm sorry," you whispered. "I know it's stupid. I know I should have just talked to you instead of— instead of ghosting you like a coward—"

"It's not stupid." His voice was steady, but his eyes were wet too. "It's not stupid. But you keep deciding what I'm thinking before I get the chance to tell you."

The words landed like a knife between your ribs. Because that's exactly what you'd been doing. You'd written the whole story in your head, the rejection, the abandonment, the gradual loss of his affection without ever checking if any of it was true.

"I was tired," he said. "I was busy. I was bad at texting because I was running on three hours of sleep and could barely form sentences. But I never—" He exhaled, his forehead dropping to rest against yours.

"I never stopped wanting to talk to you. Not once. Not ever. You're my favorite person. You've been my favorite person since the day I spilled coffee on your stupid call sheet."

"I thought you were meeting other people. Famous people. People more interesting than me."

"Nobody is more interesting than you." He pulled back just enough to look you in the eyes. "You're the one I called when I had a panic attack before my first big interview. You're the one I texted from the hospital when my uncle Jackie got sick. You're the one I want to tell everything to—the good stuff and the bad stuff and the stupid stuff about what I ate for lunch. There is nobody else. There's never been anybody else."

"But we're not—" Your voice faltered. "We're not anything. We're just friends."

He was quiet for a long moment. His hands were still cupping your face, his thumbs still brushing your cheekbones. When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

"We were never just friends. You know that, right? We were never just friends. I was just too scared to say it."

"Jaafar—"

"I love you." The words fell out of him like a confession. "I've loved you for two years. I was just too terrified of losing you to ever tell you."

A sob tore out of your throat—half-laugh, half-cry. "I've loved you for a while now."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I was scared."

"Me too." He smiled. "We're idiots."

"The biggest idiots."

"We wasted two years being idiots."

"We can make up for it." You reached up and covered his hands with yours. "If you want to. If you still—"

"I still." He kissed your forehead. "I'll always still."

You stood there in your dark apartment, his hands on your face, your tears drying on his thumbs, and for the first time in weeks, the silence didn't feel like drowning.

ex!nettspend x yearning!singer!fem!reader

b.g. : after a messy breakup gunner swore was 'for the better', y/n finds herself stuck in a hard place - constantly checking his social media and reminiscing on what was and what could've been.

wc : 1.2k

based on this req & in my room by julia wolf!

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