soakedstar

[soakedstar]

✧･ﾟEverything That Stayed･ﾟ✧ (1/1)

✧ synopsis:

he was supposed to be temporary. just a test shot. just a muse.

✧ pairing:

ni-ki x f!photographer (obsessive artist au)

✧ warnings:

explicit content (18+), mental health (TDA), suicidal themes, manipulation, non-consensual dynamics, objectification, death, voyeurism themes, implied coercion, gay sex (m/m), not a love story.

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The first time she saw him, he was leaning against the wall outside the studio, one foot up, the other flat on the concrete, smoking like he didn’t care if the world ended that second. His hoodie was too big, sleeves chewed at the cuffs. Cargo pants with threads loose at the knees. A disposable camera hanging from his neck like he didn’t even know it was cool.

He didn’t look up when she stopped.

“Are you here for casting?” she asked.

He turned his head slowly, blew smoke away from her. “Dunno,” he said. “Maybe.”

“Did someone send you?”

“Nope.”

She tilted her head. “Then why are you here?”

He shrugged. “I saw the door open. And the sign. Thought it looked… expensive.”

That made her laugh. “It is.”

He smiled, barely. “Cool. I won’t touch anything.”

“I didn’t say you could come in.”

“I didn’t say I would.”

Silence settled between them. Not tense—just… elastic. Like a thread being pulled.

She looked at him again. Really looked.

The half-shaved hair under his cap. The lashes too long for his face. The kind of lips photographers have to light differently. He looked like someone who wouldn’t stay in one place too long. And that made her want to keep him.

“What’s your name?”

“Ni-ki.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s enough.”

⸻

She stepped aside. Held the door open with two fingers.

“Come in. Just for five minutes.”

He didn’t ask why. Just followed.

Inside, the studio was dim and warm, filled with leftover light from the last shoot. Fabric backdrops still half-pinned. A single chair in the center, surrounded by light stands like some holy shrine.

He looked around, blinking slowly. “This yours?”

“All of it.”

“Damn.”

She watched him walk, deliberate but loose, like he moved to a rhythm no one else could hear.

“You ever modeled before?”

“Nope.”

“Good.”

He turned to her. “Why’s that good?”

She was already setting up the camera. “Because you haven’t learned how to fake it yet.”

He sat down awkwardly, legs too long for the chair, hands stuffed into his sleeves.

She adjusted the lighting without looking at him. “Don’t sit like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re hiding.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“You’re literally in a hoodie two sizes too big, hands buried, head down. If you were trying to disappear, you’d be doing a great job.”

He laughed under his breath. “Sorry. I don’t know how to pose.”

“Good.” She lifted her camera. “We’ll fix that.”

Click.

The first shot was garbage. She didn’t care. He looked up too fast, squinted at the flash.

“Don’t look at the light. Look through it. Like you’re thinking about something else. Something that hurts a little.”

He frowned. “That’s kinda dramatic.”

She lowered the camera. “So is your face.”

He blinked. Smiled, small and crooked. “That’s the weirdest compliment I’ve ever gotten.”

“Get used to it,” she said.

She stepped closer.

“Straighten your back.”

He did.

“Drop your shoulders.”

He obeyed.

Then she reached out and tugged the hoodie down from his left shoulder, exposing his collarbone.

He flinched. Just a little.

“You okay?”

“I just—usually don’t… I don’t know. I thought we were doing, like, portraits.”

“We are.” Her voice didn’t change. “But the body is part of the face. And you have a good one. Why hide it?”

He looked away, jaw tense. “I didn’t think it mattered.”

“It does. Trust me.”

She took another photo. The light caught on the slope of his neck, the shadow where his throat dipped. He shifted again, this time slightly away from her.

She moved in closer.

“Relax,” she murmured, almost too softly. “Let me see you.”

His eyes flicked toward the door.

“Nobody else’s coming in, right?”

“No one,” she promised.

Then, gently—deliberately—she slid the hoodie a bit lower on the other side.

“There. That’s better.”

He swallowed hard.

“Ni-ki,” she said, camera raised, breath steady. “Stay like that. Don’t move. Just let me look at you.”After the shoot, he didn’t expect to hear from her.

He left the studio the same way he came in quiet, unsure, hands in his sleeves, a little lighter in the chest but unsure why.

She didn’t say, “Let’s do this again,” or “I’ll be in touch.”

She just watched him pull his hoodie back over his shoulders and said, “That’s it.”

He thought it was a one-time thing.

Something strange and kind of beautiful that didn’t need to happen again.

He didn’t expect the text three days later.

“You free tomorrow?”No greeting. No signature. But he knew who it was. He stared at it for ten minutes before replying:“yeah.”

⸻

The second time, she said she needed to test a new lens.

The third time, she didn’t offer a reason.

He just came. Sat where she told him. Moved when she said. Stayed when she didn’t.

She didn’t talk much during shoots. Sometimes, she didn’t shoot at all. She’d fiddle with lighting or load film or sip coffee while he sat on the edge of the frame, unsure if he was the subject or just… there.

Once, she said:

“You sit like you’re trying not to take up space.”He said nothing. She added, “I like that. Don’t fix it.”

He didn’t know what to call what they were doing. It wasn’t modeling. He didn’t pose like the guys in magazines. He didn’t know how to hold his jaw or arch his back or look interesting on command. But she kept calling him back. And he kept coming.

Sometimes she gave him directions: “Chin up.” “Eyes closed.” “Stop thinking.”

Other times, she barely looked at him. Just said, “Sit,” and returned to her computer, typing in silence while the light moved across the walls. He didn’t mind.

It was the only place where he didn’t feel like he had to catch up. Where forgetting something didn’t ruin the whole day. Where his brain could glitch and freeze and restart, and she’d just say:“It’s fine. We’re not in a rush.”

⸻

He never asked what she was doing with the photos. And she never offered. So he figured it didn’t matter. She was an artist. Maybe they were just sketches, tests, studies. Nothing big. Nothing real.

And maybe that’s why it felt safe. Because everything else in his life was loud, blurry, timed to a rhythm he could never follow.

But in her studio?

She told him where to sit.

She told him when to breathe.

And he never had to be on time—only there.

And for once, that was enough.

———

He found out by accident. A classmate sent him a flyer on Tuesday.

“Yo, isn’t this you?”

It was a digital poster. Black background. Clean serif font.

“N – new work by Y/N.”Below: a blurred image. His shoulder. His jaw. The curve of his neck. Cropped tight. Soft light. Cold tone. His photo. His body. His name reduced to a single letter.

He stared at it in silence.

Didn’t answer the message.

Didn’t text her.

Just lit a cigarette with hands that wouldn’t stay still.

His phone buzzed again—people saying “congrats,” or “you look insane in this,” or “you’re literally art, bro.”

He didn’t know what to do with any of that.

The gallery was small and high-ceilinged, tucked between two cafés in a clean part of the city he rarely visited.

He didn’t tell anyone he was going. Just put on a jacket with a broken zipper, tied his shoelace in a messy knot, and walked. Alone.

His hair had faded into that pale yellow-white that always looked slightly sick under fluorescents. His ear was full of silver rings, one still healing. He hadn’t slept well in three nights.

The inside of his mouth tasted like smoke and sugarless gum.

The room was full. People murmuring. People sipping wine they didn’t like. People looking at walls like they knew something he didn’t. The walls were him.

Not photos of him — versions of him. One in profile, cigarette halfway to his lips.

One seated cross-legged on the studio floor, hoodie sliding off his frame. One with his eyes closed, exhaling, hands pressed to his face like he couldn’t keep it all in.

None of them had names.

Just:

Untitled (N).

Untitled (N).

Untitled (N).

He saw her from across the room. Black dress. Hair up. One sleeve off her shoulder. Talking to two men in clean boots and round glasses.

She didn’t look surprised to see him.

Didn’t even smile.

Just tilted her chin in quiet acknowledgment.

Like this was his part. Like this was always meant to happen.

⸻

She came over eventually.

“You found it.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come if I did.”

He blinked at her. “You used everything.”

“I used what I saw.”

He walked along the wall slowly.

He didn’t remember some of these moments. He didn’t remember looking like that.

Didn’t remember feeling like that.

He wasn’t even sure if it was him.

A woman handed him a business card.

“You’re the new face,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for someone like you.”

He didn’t ask what that meant.

He just stared at the name on the card until the letters stopped making sense.

Outside, the air felt thinner. Colder. Real. He sat on the curb and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. He couldn’t explain the feeling. Not betrayal. Not quite.

But something like being opened up without anesthesia.

Everyone had seen him now.

Not just his image—

His stillness. His confusion. His unmade-ness.

Frozen. Curated. Framed.

His thoughts scattered before they could finish forming.

He tried to remember if he had anything to do tomorrow.

He tried to write it down.

Then forgot where he left his pen.

Then realized he hadn’t eaten since coffee that morning.

He got on the subway without checking the direction.

He sat there for forty minutes.

Then got off.

Back in his room, he opened the messages and closed them again. There were brands.

Agencies. Random strangers calling him beautiful. Raw. Fragile. Iconic.

He didn’t feel like any of those things.

He felt like a boy with nicotine-stained fingers and blurry thoughts. A boy who left wet towels on the floor.

A boy who didn’t answer calls because the idea of choosing words made his throat close.

And Y/N—

She never asked him to talk.

Never asked him to explain.

She told him where to sit.

How to breathe.

She never made him feel stupid for forgetting things, or slow for zoning out. She just said:

“Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what to do.”

So he messaged her.

[23:47]

can i come over

not for a shoot

just for a bit

[23:48]

door’s open

He came in late again.

Not on purpose—he just couldn’t keep track of time lately.

His phone had twenty unread messages. Two unread emails from strangers with email handles like creativesoul.kr and nextfaces.asia He hadn’t opened them. He didn’t know what to say.

She didn’t ask why he was late.

She never did. He walked in, kicked his shoes off, and dropped onto the studio floor like he was made of sand. Y/N was already sitting cross-legged against the heater, sleeves pushed up, camera still on the tripod from earlier.

“You want food?” she asked.

He shook his head. She didn’t insist.

“I think I’m messing everything up,” he said after a while.

She looked at him, not surprised.

“How?”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“I don’t know how to answer people. Like… agencies? Journalists? Stylists? They send messages and I just… freeze.”

He let out a dry laugh.

“They think I’m being mysterious. But I just… can’t keep up. I read stuff and forget what it said ten seconds later. I try to reply and get overwhelmed. Then I leave it. And now they think I’m arrogant or ungrateful or—”

“They don’t matter,” she said quietly.

“They do if I ever want to work.”

“You haven’t even started.”

“I know,” he muttered. “And it’s already too much.”

She got up and walked past him, grabbed a bottle of water, handed it to him without asking. He took it.

“You want help?” she asked.

He looked up. Slowly.

“What kind?”

“I’ll manage the noise. The logistics. Sort through the bullshit.”He stared at her.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you need someone to hold the world still.”

There was a pause. Then she sat back down. Closer this time.

“But there’s a condition.” He raised an eyebrow. “Of course.”

“You keep giving me what I need. As an artist.”

“You already have pictures of me.”

“I want more. With intention this time. Full access.”

She didn’t mean physical, not only. She meant the version of him that only she’d seen so far—the one who sat silent and unraveling in her studio. The one who let her frame his mess without cleaning it up.

“No refusals?” he asked.

“No pretending.”

He didn’t answer right away.

His fingers picked at a loose thread on his hoodie. The hum of the radiator filled the room.

Then:

“Okay.”

She looked at him like she already knew he’d say yes.

He leaned his head back.

“I don’t trust anyone right now.”

She replied, calmly:

“You don’t have to trust me. Just show up.”

And he did. Because showing up was all he had left.

——-

He arrived before her this time.

That felt important, even if he wasn’t sure why.

She found him sitting on the stairs outside the studio, legs stretched out, earphones in but no music playing. His hair was still damp from a rushed shower. A fresh cut on his knuckle from who-knows-what. She didn’t greet him with a smile.

Just:

“You ate?”

He nodded.

“Liar,” she said, and tossed him a protein bar.

Inside, her desk was covered in printed schedules, a camera bag half-zipped, a pair of black trousers laid out next to a shirt with no logo. He stared at it.

“What’s this?”

“Today’s wardrobe. Urban Room test shoot, then a fitting. Nothing big.”

He hesitated. “Is that what I say? That it’s nothing big?”She glanced up.

“You don’t have to say anything today. Just exist. I’ll speak if someone needs answers.”

They took the subway.

He sat beside her, shoulders brushing lightly when the car shifted. She held a folded paper in her lap—his schedule—scribbled with underlines and quiet notes like bring own boots, avoid direct eye contact with H.

Little things that made everything seem manageable.

“Do I need to remember all that?” he asked.

“No,” she said, not even looking up. “That’s my job.”

⸻

The studio was smaller than he expected. White walls. Cold floor. Three people. One soft light overhead. They gave him a bottle of water and asked if he wanted to change first.

He looked at Y/N.

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

He did.

⸻

The test shoot didn’t last long—just a few poses, close-ups.

The photographer barely spoke, only adjusted angles with clipped words. But Ni-ki wasn’t nervous. Not really.

Because every time he felt the familiar heat rising in his chest, he glanced past the light, and she was there—

arms crossed, expression blank, but present. Watching. Measuring.

Not waiting for him to mess up.

Just making sure he didn’t.

After, while he changed back into his own clothes, he asked:

“Did I do okay?”

She was checking something on her phone.

“You did fine.”

“That’s not the same as good.”

She looked at him, finally.

“You moved when they asked. You didn’t freeze. You didn’t perform.”

He frowned. “Is that a compliment?”

“It’s a start.”

On the walk to the next place, he was quiet. His hands were in his pockets. His shoelaces were loose.

She was on the phone, coordinating the next time slot. Her voice was calm, efficient, low.

He liked that.

She didn’t make anything sound urgent.

Even when it probably was.

“You’re good at this,” he said when she hung up.

“At what?”

“Everything I’m not.”

She gave him a sidelong glance.

“That’s why this works.”

⸻

They arrived at the fitting place with ten minutes to spare. He didn’t feel ready. But he felt like she was, and that was enough for now.

He was in three campaigns that month. Maybe four. He lost count after the second.

One morning, he saw his own face stretched across a billboard in Gangnam. They had written across his forehead in white serif letters:

“Delicate. Dangerous. Divine.”

He didn’t know who approved it.

Didn’t remember taking that photo.

⸻

Video shoots were worse than stills. He hated being told how to move. Sometimes he forgot what they asked for halfway through a take. “Look more detached.“Like you’re about to cry, but won’t.”“Show teeth—but just a little.”“Don’t blink so much.”“Can we get him to breathe less?”

He wasn’t sure if that one was a joke. No one laughed.

They started editing his eyes in post. Brighter, redder, shinier.

Sometimes they erased the veins on his eyelids. Once, he saw a photo where the person didn’t even look like him.

Y/N didn’t comment.

Just slid the magazine aside. Opened a new file. Started working on something else.

⸻

The messages never stopped.

Agencies. Brands. Creative directors. All of it went through Y/N. She read most. Summarized a few. Deleted the rest. He signed what she gave him.

⸻

He stopped keeping track of the days. Every studio looked the same. Lights. Chairs. Screens.

Different colors. Same shapes.

He started hearing his name in the mouths of strangers like it wasn’t his.

“Ni-ki.”

Like a product. Like something passed around, owned by no one.

When he wasn’t working, he slept. In taxis. Studio lobbies. Fitting rooms.

Sometimes, when he woke up,

he had to touch his own face just to remember who he was.

And through it all,

Y/N watched him the same way.

Still. Precise. As if she knew exactly how much longer he had left.

He didn’t remember how he got there. Maybe a shoot had just ended. Maybe a fitting. Maybe nothing at all.

He just knew he was on the couch in Y/N’s studio again.

Still in full makeup. Jacket open.

He had two missed calls and didn’t know who they were from.

There was a sharpie mark on his wrist that said “10AM – PLEATS.”

He didn’t know what that meant.

Y/N was at her desk, adjusting a lens with quiet precision.

She hadn’t said hello when he walked in. Just looked at him for a second, then went back to work. There was tea on the table.

He didn’t remember if it was for him. He drank it anyway.

The light was low.

Just one lamp by the mirror, casting a soft arc on the wooden floor. He found himself tracing it with his foot. Over and over. A loop. The repetition helped.

It made the world quieter.

She stood up, finally.

Lifted the old black camera with both hands.

Didn’t say anything yet.

Then: “Take your shirt off.” She didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t wait for a nod. Just stood still. Watching.

He didn’t want to say no.

Not because he wanted to do it.

But because saying no required energy he didn’t have.

He took off the shirt.

Fingers slow.

Breath shallow.

She started shooting.

Not speaking. Not correcting.

Just: Click. Pause. Click.

He didn’t know where to look.

So he looked at her. Not because he felt anything. But because he couldn’t remember what else to do.

A breeze came through the cracked window. His skin tightened.

He couldn’t tell if he was cold, or just aware he had a body.

“Sit on the edge,” she said quietly. “Back straight.”He did. There was a point where the lens lingered. His clavicle, maybe. Or his mouth.

Her breath slowed down. The silence thickened.

He felt it then the moment something shifted.

Not in her tone, not in her touch.

In the air. The way she looked at him was different.

Not the artist watching her subject. Not the photographer chasing light.

Something else.

And he didn’t know how to name it.

He could’ve stopped it.

But that would’ve required a version of himself he no longer had access to.

He saw the way she looked at him, not casual, not curious. Her gaze lingered like a question she already knew the answer to. It rested on his lips, her head tilted slightly forward. She was waiting. He could feel it.

She leaned in, close enough for him to catch the warmth of her breath. Then her lips touched his—soft, searching. He didn’t move away. He didn’t move at all, except to part his lips and let her in. It wasn’t desire that made him respond. It was gravity.

There was nothing electric about it. Just the slow ache of bodies moving toward something inevitable.

She kissed him deeper, more insistently. Her hands were on his chest now, sliding down to his waist, fingers pressing through fabric like she needed to confirm he was real. He placed his hands on her hips, loosely, like a man half-asleep following familiar steps in a dream he couldn’t control.

She pressed her body against his, her thigh brushing his crotch. His cock began to swell, not because he wanted her, but because his body had stopped listening to him a long time ago. She shifted again, deliberately this time, and the friction sent a sharp jolt through him. It pulled a breath from his throat—low and broken.

He reached for her shirt, lifting it over her head. She raised her arms without hesitation, revealing bare skin, flushed and warm. He stared at her chest for a long moment, not with hunger, but with a strange kind of detachment. Her nipples were already hard. His fingers brushed one, just to feel the contrast—soft curve, hard tip. She moaned lightly, leaning into his touch.

She dropped to her knees. No words. No asking. Just purpose. She unbuttoned his pants, tugging them down along with his boxers. His cock sprang free already stiff, already leaking. He didn’t expect the rush of sensation that followed. Her tongue flicked the head, slow and deliberate, collecting the pre-cum like it mattered.

Then she took him in. Inch by inch. Hot, wet, and smooth.

He moaned, louder than he meant to. One hand gripped her shoulder; the other slid into her hair, fingers tightening without thought. The rhythm of her mouth was steady, relentless. Her lips stretched around him, cheeks hollowing with every pull. He looked down and saw himself disappearing into her—again and again—and something about that image hit him deep.

There was nothing but her mouth. Her heat. The sound of her breathing through her nose. The wet suction of each stroke. His hips jerked forward and she didn’t resist. She took him deeper, let him fuck her throat. And when he came, it wasn’t gentle.

His body buckled, and he groaned a raw, guttural sound that filled the room as he spilled into her mouth. She swallowed it all. Every drop.

“Fuck,” he whispered, barely audible. His head tilted back, eyes closed, heart pounding.

He waited for praise.

For a look. A word. Anything that said—you did good.

She didn’t say anything.

Just wiped her mouth and looked at the floor.

That silence stung more than anything else.

She stood again, and this time he pulled her close—hands moving with more urgency. Not from want, but from the aching need to disappear again. He undressed her completely now, savoring the glide of skin under his palms. Her panties, stripped away like layers he didn’t want to think about.

He kissed her breast, sucked her nipple until she gasped. Then he pushed her back onto the bed, climbed over her, and let his fingers slide between her thighs. She was slick, open, eager. He parted her folds, let his fingers dip into her heat—two, deep, curling slightly. Her back arched. Her moan was breathy and real. She writhed beneath him, hips lifting into his hand.

He watched her face. Her mouth open. Eyelids fluttering. The flush of her cheeks. The tremble in her thighs.

When she came, she clenched around his fingers, grinding against his hand. He didn’t stop. He kept going, slow and steady, until she was gasping, shivering, limp.

Then he positioned himself at her entrance. No words. No pause.

He pushed in with one long, hard thrust. She cried out—not in pain, not in surprise—but in sheer intensity.

He was thick inside her, stretching her open, and the heat of her made his vision blur. He gripped her hips and started to move—deep, rhythmic thrusts that filled the air with the sound of skin slapping against skin. Her breasts bounced with each motion, soft and uncontrolled. He watched them, hypnotized.

Her moans were louder now. Higher. Pleading. She wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him in deeper. He shifted his angle, and she gasped—head thrown back, hands clutching the sheets.

He fucked her harder. Not faster, just deeper. He wanted to feel everything. Every squeeze. Every twitch. Every tremor as her body broke open beneath him.

He leaned in, burying his face in her neck, her scent filling him—sweat, perfume, something wild and raw.

When he came again, it hit him like a hammer. He groaned against her skin, hips jerking, cock pulsing deep inside her. He spilled into her, thick and hot, and didn’t move until the aftershocks stopped shaking him.

She came again just after, clutching him, thighs trembling around his waist.

Then stillness.

He collapsed beside her, chest heaving. She touched his arm, light and aimless. He stared at the ceiling, still inside his body, but not really in the room.

And in that silence, he felt it again. That hollow place inside him.

Pleasure could cover it. But it never filled it.

He was the one who leaned in.

The one who kissed her first, who pulled her shirt up and reached for her skin like he knew what he was doing. He was the one who unzipped his own jeans.

Who asked her, silently, to let him feel wanted.

He was the one who moved.

So why did he feel like she was the one who took something?

She didn’t say anything after.

Just stood near the dresser, slipping her arms into a loose sweater, her camera already dangling from her fingers.

“Don’t move,” she said. He didn’t.

His legs were still parted.

His chest rising too fast, too shallow. He looked down at himself, still half-hard, still red and raw, and wondered if she saw him like this in her head before any of it ever happened.

She raised the camera.

Click. Click.

“Look here.”He looked. Not into the lens. Through it.As if there was someone else on the other side. Someone who might understand what this all meant.

He shifted slightly, letting the blanket fall from his lap.

The air was cold on his skin.

She didn’t offer to cover him.

Didn’t meet his eyes.

Click.

He stood up, slowly.

His thighs ached.

He didn’t know if it was from the sex, or just from how still he’d been. He felt lightheaded, like he’d lost something in her sheets and forgot to ask for it back.

She lowered the camera.

“You can go now.”That was all.

He found his clothes folded on a chair. Not warm.Not soft.Just folded. Like he was expected to leave.

As he buttoned his shirt, he looked back once.

She had already turned away. Adjusting the settings on the camera. Moving on.

He walked out with a strange feeling in his chest.Not regret.

Not shame.

Just that quiet, awful sense that he had done something right

and it still didn’t help.

He stepped into the night and didn’t feel the cold.

The city looked fake. Like someone had peeled the color off and left everything dim and humming.

The sidewalks were wet from a brief rain he hadn’t noticed.

His shoes made no sound. He walked.Not home. Not anywhere.

Just forward.

His phone buzzed twice.

A message from his agent about a photoshoot reschedule.

Another from someone new, someone famous, asking if he was free tonight.

He didn’t answer either.

Instead, he took the subway to a place he didn’t recognize until he was inside.

It was a penthouse.

Lit with too many LEDs and fake candles. Loud but not unbearable. There were models everywhere. Stylists. Producers. People who knew his name but not his voice. He drifted. Someone handed him a drink.

He didn’t sip it. Someone laughed behind him.

He didn’t turn.

Then—

“Ni-ki?”He looked up. Sunghoon.

A little taller than he remembered. Hair slicked back. Eyes too clear. Black button-down shirt tucked into trousers that probably cost more than Ni-ki’s rent.

“You came.”

Ni-ki blinked.

“Didn’t know I was invited.”

Sunghoon smiled—half amusement, half something else.

“You’re always invited now.”Ni-ki didn’t answer. Just held his gaze. Then, a half-smile. The same one he’d used in shoots. Just enough teeth to seem confident. Just enough tilt to seem available. He felt fake. But Sunghoon looked interested.“Wanna smoke?”Ni-ki nodded. They stepped out onto the balcony, into the cold. The lighter clicked between them. Ni-ki leaned in too close when he lit his cigarette, just to see if Sunghoon would notice. He did. His fingers brushed Ni-ki’s jaw. Not gently.

Ten minutes later they were in the bathroom. Lights off.

Ni-ki pushed first.

“You like control, huh?” Sunghoon murmured, lips ghosting over his ear. Ni-ki didn’t reply. He just turned around, pressed his palms against the wall, and arched his back slightly. Offering himself. Like muscle memory.

Sunghoon was rough, but not violent.His hand slid down Ni-ki’s spine, resting at his lower back.

Then gripping his hip.

Then—“Just breathe for me,” he whispered.

Ni-ki felt everything and nothing.

His body obeyed.His brain floated.

He winced at the stretch but didn’t stop him. Didn’t ask for slower.

Sunghoon leaned forward, chest pressed against his back. “Look at you,” he breathed.“Tight and quiet. You love this, don’t you?”Ni-ki bit his lip.Not from pleasure.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine Y/N behind him instead.

But it didn’t work. And then—

the door opened. Light flooded the room.Ni-ki’s head snapped toward the sound,

and there she was.

Y/N.

Framed in the doorway. Motionless. Watching. She didn’t look shocked. Not angry. Not jealous. Just… curious. Her eyes swept the room. Sunghoon’s bare chest. Ni-ki’s flushed back.

The way he was bent over, breathless, already bruising at the hips.

And then—

She pulled out her phone.

Lifted it. Angled it. Took the shot.

Click. Ni-ki flinched. Not from Sunghoon. From that sound.

It echoed through him louder than anything else.

She didn’t lower the phone right away.

Just looked at him through the screen.

He held her gaze. Not with shame. Not even with anger.

Just this quiet, wide-eyed question:

Why are you doing this to me?

Sunghoon still hadn’t noticed.“Fuck, I’m close,” he growled, fingers digging in harder. “Don’t stop—keep taking it just like that—”

Y/N turned. No words. No expression. Just walked away.

———

The door swung shut. And Ni-ki couldn’t breathe.

The apartment welcomed him with silence. Not the kind that waits for something. The kind that has already decided nothing will ever happen again.

He didn’t turn on the lights.

He didn’t need to see this place to know he didn’t belong in it.

His shoes fell off somewhere near the door. He didn’t remember kicking them off, but they were gone.

He walked straight to the kitchen.He was lightheaded.

His limbs weren’t entirely listening anymore.

The fridge hummed behind him like a faraway animal. He crouched by it slowly, knees cracking. And then—

He vomited.

Hard.

A full-bodied purge. Bile, water, nothingness. His throat seared open.

He coughed until his ribs hurt, eyes stinging. His hands slid on the tile, searching for something to hold onto.

When the nausea subsided, he stayed there.

Face against the cold floor.

Sweat sticking his hair to his forehead. Body shaking without command.

Then—he looked down.

His thighs were slick.

Something was dripping down from between them, thick and warm. Not vomit. Not his.

Semen.

And a faint streak of red mixed into it. It ran slowly down his inner legs.

Pooled on the tile beneath him.

He didn’t move.

He didn’t feel shame.

Didn’t feel pain, even.

Just something leaving him.

Bit by bit.

Like his body had decided to expel everything that wasn’t meant to stay.

He got up only because the floor was too cold.His knees barely held. His breath was thin and trembling.

The bathroom was a blur.

He didn’t turn on the light.

He didn’t want to see himself.

He opened the cabinet.

Hands shaking, he grabbed bottles. He didn’t care which ones. He wasn’t aiming for sleep, or numbness, or anything gentle.

He just wanted it done.

He slid down against the tub.

The floor felt more stable than standing.

He took the pills dry.

One. Three. Seven.

Too many.

Not enough.

He lost track fast.

His mind was slowing down, but the thoughts kept breaking through:

A camera flash. Y/N’s silence. Sunghoon’s hands. A mirror with no reflection. A voice—maybe his own—saying “I’m okay,” even when he wasn’t.

He opened his mouth.

Closed it again.

Tried to speak.

There was no sound.

What would he have said?

“Don’t look at me?”“I didn’t mean to?”“Tell me I was real?”

Nothing came.

His body curled slightly to the side. Muscles locking.

Vision flickering.

His fingers scraped the tile once, slow and unintentional.

He looked up at the ceiling.

White. Blank.

His eyes stayed there.

No letters. No prayers. No resistance. He didn’t cry.

He didn’t reach for anyone.

He didn’t ask.

He just left.

Not loudly. Not tragically.

Just— quietly.

Like he was never fully there to begin with.

——-

The gallery was pristine.

White walls. Soft lights. Wine glasses sweating in trembling fingers.

People whispered like they were in church.

The exhibit was called:

“Everything That Stayed.”

By Y/N.

At the entrance hung a massive print. Ni-ki. Shirtless.

A cigarette balanced between two fingers. His eyes not quite meeting the lens.

A bruise just barely visible under his collarbone.

Untitled (Rebirth No. 3)

2025 — Gelatin Silver Print

Further in, the intimacy deepened.

Ni-ki sitting in his own bathtub.

The tiles cracked. His knees pulled to his chest. One arm draped over the rim. His hair wet, clinging to his forehead.

He looked like he’d been crying, but nothing confirmed it.

And that made it worse.

Another wall showed Ni-ki in stages of stillness: lying on her sofa, curled up on the floor, naked in bed, sheets tangled around his legs, eyes half-closed. Then, the one everyone paused at.

Ni-ki on the floor, post-sex. His legs open. Back arched slightly.

Red pressure marks on his hips.

Most viewers didn’t notice the next photo at first. It was quieter.

Dimly lit. Unlabeled.

But then they got closer.

And saw Ni-ki bent forward over a sink.

His hands gripped the ceramic.

Behind him a figure. Out of focus.

Just a torso and hands, pushing into him. Sunghoon’s face was absent.

But Ni-ki’s wasn’t.

His eyes were glassy. His mouth was slightly open. His face looked dazed, distant. Not like pleasure. More like resignation.

The caption was handwritten in pencil, barely visible beneath the frame: “I didn’t stop him. Not even once.”

At the center of the room, a projection looped.

Flashes of Ni-ki: laughing faintly, blinking under sudden light,

resting his head on someone’s shoulder. Between clips, the words: “HE WAS MY MUSE. HE WAS MY MADNESS. HE WAS MY MIRROR.”Y/N stood nearby, a thin smile pressed between her cheeks. People circled her like bees to sugar.

“Did he agree to the nudes?”“Was it real?”“Are you okay?”She sipped her wine and nodded softly.

“He trusted me.”“This is a tribute.”“I’m telling his story the only way I know how.”

No one asked if he would’ve told it differently.

No one asked if silence meant yes.

Near the exit, behind a velvet curtain, was the final image.

Smaller. Matte. No flash. No editing.

Ni-ki on the bathroom floor.

His body limp. His skin pale.

Pills spilled beside his hand.

His eyes open, but gone.

There was no caption.

No artist statement.

Just a frame.

A space.

[soakedstar]

✦˚₊‧₊ HAMARTIA ₊‧₊˚✦

(1/1)

✧ synopsis:

he wasn’t supposed to feel anything.

but then he touched a cigarette.

a heartbeat.

a girl who looked him in the eye and didn’t flinch.

and suddenly, falling didn’t feel so wrong.

✧ pairing:

heeseung x f!reader (angel au)

✧ warnings:

explicit content (18+), virgin!heeseung, smoking, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected sex, aftercare, crying during sex, mention of pregnancy.

✧ note:

not me writing one angel au and suddenly thinking i deserve to be worshipped by heeseung.

maybe i don’t need love, maybe i just need oral and for an enhypen member to cry about it mid-sex.

He was not supposed to see her, not like this.

Not with her bare legs folded on concrete steps and smoke curling from her mouth like prayers gone sour.

But Heeseung had always been curious.

Long before he was assigned to this city, long before he was sent to observe the human world, he had already started asking the wrong questions. He’d lingered too long. Looked too closely. Felt too much.

Now he was here. Among them. Watching.

A pair of wings hidden under a coat. A halo broken into light that only children and dying people could still see. He no longer glowed. Not like before.

His mission was simple:

Observe.

Do not interfere.

Report.

Repeat.

But tonight she ruined that.

She wasn’t special, not in the way they told him humans could be. She wasn’t good. She wasn’t kind. She didn’t even smile when she saw him standing in the alley, watching her like a ghost.

She just stared, cigarette between her lips, eyes sharp and tired.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

She looked him over like she was deciding whether or not to laugh. “You a cop?”

“No.”

“Then I can be wherever the fuck I want.”

He said nothing. The wind stirred behind him. She didn’t notice.

“What’s your name?” she asked finally, squinting at him through the dark.

He hesitated.

“Heeseung.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Weird name.”

“It’s not mine,” he said.

She blinked.

“What?”

“It’s the name they gave me. To blend in.”

“Oh,” she said slowly, dragging the cigarette. “So you’re, what, some kind of spy?”

A pause.

He could lie. He always lied. That’s what watchers did, they became whatever humans needed them to be.

But something about her made him feel…

Exposed.

“No,” he said. “I’m just here to watch.”

“That’s creepy as fuck.”

“I don’t mean it like that.”

She blew smoke straight at him. “Sure.”

There was a silence. Not awkward, electric.

She looked at him again, really looked. Noticed the way his body held still like he was carved from something heavy. The way his coat didn’t move even though the wind tugged at her hair.

“You’re not real,” she said.

“I am.”

“You’re not human.”

“No.”

And then she smiled, slow and dangerous.

“Wanna be?”

Heeseung said nothing.

Because for the first time in hundreds of years,

he didn’t know the answer.

She offered the cigarette without a word.

Just held it out, pinched between two fingers.

Heeseung stared at it.

“I shouldn’t,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice low.

He looked at her, and for a moment, he seemed impossibly old.

“It’s… a sin.”

She tilted her head, amused.

“So is lying. And judging. And breathing, if you ask some people.”

Heeseung didn’t smile. He just kept staring at the cigarette like it held answers to questions he wasn’t supposed to ask.

“You don’t have to finish it,” she said. “Just try. One drag.”

He shook his head, but his feet didn’t move. His wings — hidden under that dark coat — twitched.

“No one gets addicted on the first try,” she added softly. “Just one doesn’t hurt.”

He hesitated.

That was the first crack.

“I suppose…” he said slowly, “just trying it wouldn’t do any harm.”

She didn’t say I told you so.

She didn’t tease.

She just passed it over, filter-first, like it was a sacred offering.

His fingers brushed hers.

Warm.

He took the cigarette, awkward in his grip, like he didn’t quite know how hands worked. Then, after watching her, he mirrored the motion. Brought it to his lips.

She cupped the lighter for him.

The flame flared.

Heeseung inhaled.

The burn hit instantly. His lungs seized. He coughed, violently, body folding in half.

She laughed not cruelly, but with genuine delight. Like something inside her cracked open, too.

“Oh my god,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You’re a mess.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were watering, his throat raw.

“I don’t see the appeal.”

“You will,” she said.

He looked at the cigarette again. The smoke still rising. The heat still dancing.

He took another drag.

This time, slower. Smoother. The pain was still there but beneath it, something else bloomed. Something warm and wrong and strangely comforting.

She watched him.

“See?”

He didn’t answer.

But he didn’t put it out either.

The cigarette between his fingers was almost gone.

She leaned back against the brick wall, arms crossed, watching him like she wasn’t quite sure if he was a trick of the light.

He looked…

different now.

Less divine.

More curious.

He turned to her.

“What’s your name?”

She blinked at him.

“Why?”

“I want to know.”

She studied him, lips twitching into something that wasn’t quite a smile.

“Y/N.”

He nodded, like he was saving the word somewhere secret.

“Y/N,” he repeated, slower, like he was tasting it. “What does it feel like?”

“What?”

“To be human.”

She tilted her head. “You want a real answer or a poetic one?”

He didn’t flinch. “The real one.”

She lit another cigarette. Didn’t offer it this time.

“Feels like being cold all the time,” she said. “Like your body wants things you can’t give it. Like you miss people you don’t even like. And everything good either ends or hurts you.”

Heeseung didn’t speak. He just watched her like her words were sacred scripture.

She exhaled smoke.

“Also, pizza is really fucking good.”

He almost smiled at that.

“Tell me a story,” he said suddenly.

“What kind of story?”

“Anything. Something from your life.”

She looked up at the sky like she was searching for something interesting. Then she looked back down and gave him the opposite.

“Okay. Here’s one you probably weren’t expecting.”

She looked straight at him.

“The night I lost my virginity.”

He didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Just waited.

She tilted her head and smiled, soft and crooked.

“It was at my house. My mom was out of town for the weekend. He was older, like… twenty-three? I was seventeen.”

She paused. Not to think just to let the moment hang.

“We met at a party. Not that night. A few weeks before. I liked how he looked at me, like he already knew what I’d taste like.”

Heeseung’s throat twitched.

“He wasn’t sweet. He wasn’t gentle. He didn’t ask me if I was sure. He just came over and said ‘so where’s your room?’ like it was already decided.”

She tapped ash, watching it fall.

“I told myself I wanted it. That I was ready. That it was better to get it over with.”

Heeseung’s jaw was tight now. His hands in his coat pockets, clenched.

“It hurt,” she said, almost conversationally. “Not just my body. The silence, too. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t kiss me much. Just… did it.”

She looked at Heeseung again.

“He wasn’t cruel. But he was cold. Like he was doing it for me. Or maybe just to me.”

She took another drag. Let the smoke escape slowly from her nose.

“But when it was over, he smiled and said something like, ‘I like knowing I was the first. You’re gonna think about me forever now.’”

Heeseung looked away.

She didn’t stop.

“And he wasn’t wrong. I did think about him. Not because I missed him. But because I hated that part of me thought he was right.”

She let the cigarette hang between her fingers.

“That’s the thing about being human,” she said. “It’s messy. It’s shame and pleasure mixed up in the same room. In the same bed. In the same breath.”

Heeseung looked back at her.

Eyes like glass.

Like something inside him had cracked open.

“I don’t think I was ready to hear that,” he whispered.

She grinned.

“But you wanted to know what it feels like. Didn’t you?”

Silence.

Then he said:

“I still do.”

She thought he might leave after her story.

Most people did.

But Heeseung just stood there, like her words were a storm he had chosen to walk into. Like he didn’t mind getting soaked.

Then, very quietly, he said:

“Can I touch it?”

She looked up. “What?”

“Your heart,” he said. “I want to feel it.”

She blinked, surprised for once.

“Like… metaphorically?”

He shook his head.

“No. Here.”

He stepped forward, hand hovering inches from her chest, just over the fabric of her thin t-shirt. He wasn’t leering. He wasn’t even looking at her body. His eyes were locked on her face, waiting.

“I want to know what it’s like,” he said softly. “To have something beating inside you. Something that keeps going even when you don’t want it to.”

She should have said no.

But she didn’t.

“Okay,” she said.

She took his hand — cold, steady — and pressed it flat against her chest, right over her heartbeat.

For a second, he said nothing.

Then:

“Oh.”

She didn’t ask what he meant.

But she could see it in his face wonder and grief and confusion all tangled together.

“It doesn’t stop,” he whispered. “Even when you’re quiet. Even when you’re hurting.”

“Nope,” she said. “It just keeps going. Until it doesn’t.”

They stood like that for a moment. Long enough to make it mean something.

Then she pulled back and broke the tension with a grin.

“You really want to feel human?”

“Yes,” he said instantly.

“Then come with me.”

⸻

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting in the corner booth of a 24/7 hamburger place that smelled like melted cheese. Grease coated the walls. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead like dying insects.

She slammed a tray down in front of him.

Burger. Fries. Milkshake the color of radioactive strawberry.

Heeseung stared.

“What… is this?”

“This,” she said, sitting across from him, “is your first test.”

He tilted his head. “This food is… alive?”

She snorted. “No, but it might kill you. Which is basically the same thing.”

He poked the burger like it might bite him.

She laughed.

“You said you wanted to be human. Well. This is it. You don’t become one by touching hearts and quoting poetry. You become one by eating this at two in the morning with ketchup on your fingers and regret in your stomach.”

He picked up the burger awkwardly. Looked at her.

“You’re serious.”

“Deadly.”

She raised her own burger. “Now say it with me: to humanity.”

Heeseung lifted his, slowly.

“To humanity,” he echoed.

Then he took a bite.

The grease hit him like a sin.

The salt, the crunch, the mess of it.

And for the first time since he arrived on Earth…

He laughed.

He wiped his mouth with a napkin, slow and clumsy.

There was ketchup on his fingers. A smear of mayo on his cheek. He didn’t notice. He was looking at her like the room was spinning and she was the only fixed point.

She leaned back in the booth, sipping from her milkshake.

“You okay?”

“I feel…” Heeseung blinked. “Heavy.”

She smiled. “That’s just the grease.”

“No,” he said. “Not just that.”

He stared at his hands like they didn’t belong to him.

“I feel… full. And loud. And messy.”

“Welcome,” she said.

He watched her for a long moment. Then:

“Is this it?”

“What?”

“Being human. Is this where it ends?”

She set the milkshake down.

“Almost,” she said. “You’re close.”

Heeseung leaned in slightly, voice quieter.

“What am I missing?”

She smiled, slow and dangerous.

“One last thing.”

He waited.

“To really be human,” she said, “you have to sin with your whole body. Not just your mouth. Not just your heart.”

She stood, picked up her coat.

“You coming?”

He stood too. “Where?”

“My place.”

He followed her out into the night. The air was colder now. Heeseung’s coat felt too small, like his body didn’t fit inside it anymore.

They didn’t talk on the walk back.

The apartment was small. Lived-in. Smelled faintly of vanilla, old books, and something sweet burning.

She dropped her keys on the counter and turned to him.

Heeseung stood just inside the doorway, rigid, coat still on, hands at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.

His eyes scanned everything. The stained mug on the table. The open window. The mess. The intimacy of it all. This wasn’t a place for angels.

She didn’t ask if he was okay.

She just walked toward him, slow, like she was testing gravity.

“You said you wanted to feel everything,” she said.

He nodded once.

She stopped in front of him, so close he could see the curve of her lip, the tiny fleck of gold in her left iris.

Heeseung blinked.

Her voice dropped, quiet and hot between them.

“I want you.”

His breath caught. “You mean—”

“Sex,” she said. “Yes.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“I… don’t know how.”

“I’ll teach you,” she said.

Not soft. Not coy.

Honest.

He looked at her like she was something dangerous and necessary.

“I want to kiss you,” he said. “But I don’t know how to want something.”

“Then stop thinking,” she said.

And kissed him.

It was nothing like he expected. It wasn’t gentle or slow. It was immediate. Fierce. Full.

Her lips were warm and a little rough. They tasted like smoke and salt and the milkshake they didn’t finish. Her hands gripped his coat like she was afraid he’d pull away.

But he didn’t.

He let her kiss him and then, after a beat, he kissed her back.

Messy. Clumsy. Uncoordinated.

But real.

Her mouth moved with hunger. Not cruel, but certain. Like she’d done this before and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

Heeseung made a sound in his throat, low, startled, like the breath had been punched out of him. His hands came up to her waist. Tentative. Reverent.

He touched her like he was learning to see with his palms.

Her body was heat and curve and breath. His fingers trembled on her skin. Her shirt rode up slightly as he explored, slow and unsure. The space between them vanished.

When she pulled back just enough to breathe, he whispered:

“Your lips…”

She looked at him, chest rising and falling fast.

“They don’t feel like I thought they would.”

“What do they feel like?”

“Like fire. And forgiveness.”

She kissed him again.

Harder this time.

He responded with all the awe and confusion of someone being born.

And when she took his hand and started walking backward toward her bedroom, he followed.

She closed the door behind her and turned, her eyes fixed on him. Heesung stood still, uncertain, his wings tense at his back. His breathing was uneven, like something inside him already knew what was about to happen, even if his mind hadn’t caught up.

Their lips met softly, then deepened into something hungry. Her hands slid beneath his shirt, exploring his chest, fingertips dancing over his skin like fire.

When she brushed along the base of his wings, they flared open suddenly white and trembling, catching the dim light of the room. He gasped into her mouth.

“You really are an angel,” she whispered against his lips.

His voice was barely a breath. “I’m not supposed to… do this.”

“But you want to,” she said, kissing down his neck. “Don’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His hands had already found her waist. His mouth parted as she reached down and undid his pants.

When she slid them down, her eyes widened. “God,” she breathed. “If you weren’t meant to use it, why would they make you like this?”

He covered his face in shame. “Please don’t…”

She knelt in front of him and kissed the skin just above where he pulsed, hard and aching. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “You’re beautiful.”

Her fingers curled around him, slowly stroking. The moment she touched him, his hips jolted forward instinctively. He moaned softly, sharp and involuntary. His knees trembled.

His eyes squeezed shut. “It feels— too much. I can’t—”

“Shh,” she whispered, drawing her hand up and down his shaft, slow and deliberate. “Let it happen.”

Every motion made his chest rise in short, shaky breaths. He tilted his head back, lips parted, trying to hold onto something—his control, maybe, or his purity. But it was slipping. Fast.

Tears blurred the corners of his vision. “It burns,” he whispered. “But it’s… good. It’s so good.”

She stroked him a little faster, watching his reactions. The way his mouth fell open with each pass of her hand. The way his wings twitched like nerves unraveling.

Then she stood and slowly removed her clothes in front of him. His eyes drank her in, devouring every inch of bare skin with a gaze that felt like worship.

When she took his hand and placed it on her waist, he touched her like she was breakable. She guided him higher, over her breasts, then lower, between her legs.

His breath caught.

She helped him slide two fingers inside her. He froze, wide-eyed, then let out a shaky groan.

“You’re—warm,” he said. “Wet.”

She moved his hand gently, teaching him how to curl his fingers, how to find her rhythm. He watched her, eyes locked on the way she moaned when he moved just right.

“I’ve never… it feels like you’re pulling me inside,” he whispered. “Like I’m already part of you.”

When she straddled his lap and reached for him again, his entire body tensed. She rubbed the head of his cock slowly against her entrance, coating him in her wetness. He whimpered, hands gripping her hips like he might fall apart if she moved.

“Please…” he whispered. He didn’t even know what he was asking for.

She sank down onto him inch by inch, and his head dropped forward with a strangled moan. His whole body shook.

“You’re tight,” he gasped, trembling. “It’s—hot. You’re wrapping around me.”

When she took him fully, he let out a cry that was almost broken. His wings flared behind him, wide and uncontrollable.

“It’s too much,” he said, eyes wide and wet. “I feel like—like I’m flying and drowning at the same time.”

She began to move—slow, deep, rolling her hips so he could feel every inch. He clutched her tightly, lost in her.

Every thrust made him gasp. His voice cracked with each moan. She could feel how close he was already, his body taut like a bowstring, every muscle straining.

“Don’t stop,” he begged, voice hoarse. “Please don’t stop.”

She kissed him as he came undone inside her, crying out as his climax overtook him—violent, overwhelming. He trembled beneath her, whimpering, eyes wet, chest heaving.

He held her like he was afraid she’d vanish, like she was the only thing anchoring him to earth.

“I didn’t know it could feel like this,” he said, his voice shaking. “I didn’t know I could feel this much.”

And she smiled, brushing back his hair, whispering in his ear, “Now you do.”

They stayed like that for a moment—his face pressed into her neck, his body still trembling slightly. His breath was shallow, as if what had just happened had drained every part of him. She held him gently, brushing his hair back from his damp forehead, letting him rest.

But after a few minutes, she shifted beneath him.

Heesung looked up. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, smiling softly. “No, baby. Not at all.”

His brows drew together. “Then… what is it?”

She hesitated for a moment, then cupped his face in her hands. “You finished,” she said gently, “but I didn’t.”

His eyes widened instantly. “I—I’m so sorry—should I—can we—?”

She placed a finger on his lips. “It’s okay. We’re not done yet.”

He swallowed. “What should I do?”

She took his hand and guided it down between her legs, letting him feel how slick and ready she still was.

“I want you to use your mouth,” she said softly. “I’ll show you how.”

He blinked, his lips parting. “My mouth?”

She nodded, lying back on the bed and opening her legs for him. “Come here, angel.”

He moved between her thighs, nervous but willing, eyes locked on her body with reverence. She ran her fingers through his hair, guiding him lower.

“Start with kisses,” she whispered. “Soft. Take your time.”

He leaned in and kissed her inner thigh first, slow and uncertain. Then the other. She sighed and spread her legs further for him.

“There,” she said, gently guiding him closer to her core. “Don’t be afraid.”

He kissed her folds tentatively, lips warm, breath shaky. She moaned softly, and the sound gave him confidence.

“Use your tongue,” she instructed, voice breathy. “Flat and slow. Just like that—yes…”

Heesung obeyed, licking slowly along her center. He felt her hips twitch, heard her breath hitch.

“You taste like… nothing I’ve ever known,” he said, almost reverently.

“Keep going. Stay soft—don’t rush.”

He licked her again, then circled his tongue around her clit, just as she told him.

“That’s it,” she whispered, arching gently against his mouth. “You’re doing so well.”

She guided his hand to her entrance and wrapped his fingers around two of hers. “Now inside. Slowly.”

He slid two fingers into her, feeling her warmth, the way her body gripped him tightly. The sensation made his breath hitch.

“You’re so—tight,” he murmured.

“Curl them,” she said, voice trembling. “Just a little… there. Right there.”

He did as she asked, and her reaction was immediate. Her hips bucked up, a loud moan tearing from her lips. Her fingers clenched in his hair.

“Don’t stop—don’t stop,” she begged.

He moved his fingers faster, curling them against that same spot again and again, while his tongue flicked over her clit, careful at first, then with growing rhythm.

Her legs began to shake.

“Oh my god—Heesung—don’t stop, I’m gonna—”

He felt it before he saw it her whole body tensing, her breath locking in her chest. Then suddenly—

She cried out, loud and raw, as a rush of fluid burst from her, soaking his hand, his mouth, the sheets beneath them. Her back arched off the bed, and her thighs clamped around his head. She was shaking, gasping, her body overwhelmed by the release.

He froze, stunned, his fingers still inside her, his mouth wet from her.

“I—did I hurt you?” he asked, panicked.

She laughed breathlessly, pulling him up by the shoulders and kissing him hard.

“No,” she whispered against his lips. “You made me squirt.”

“I… I didn’t know that could happen,” he said, eyes wide.

“You just did something most men can’t,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You made me come so hard, I lost control. That’s not hurting me, Heesung. That’s heaven.”

His face turned red, his body still trembling, but his eyes were full of awe.

“I didn’t know I could make someone feel that. I want to feel it again.”he whispered.

They didn’t say much after.

The room was dark. The window cracked open. The air smelled like rain and skin.

Heeseung lay on his back, eyes half closed. His breathing had slowed. His chest rose and fell beneath her cheek.

She rested against him, one leg draped over his.

Their bodies were still warm, still tangled.

She didn’t want to move.

His fingers traced her arm lightly, like he wasn’t sure if she was still real.

“I don’t want to fall asleep,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want this to end.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just curled closer, pressing her lips to his collarbone.

“It won’t,” she whispered. “Even if you go. I’ll still remember this.”

He looked at her. Quiet. Like he wanted to say something important.

But instead, he just nodded. Then pulled her tighter against him.

They lay like that for a long time.

No fear. No rush. Just the two of them, in a room that felt outside of everything else.

Eventually, she drifted off.

She felt his hand in her hair.

And then, sleep.

⸻

She woke up alone.

At first, she didn’t realize it. She reached for him automatically.

But there was only the sheet. Cold.

She sat up slowly. The room was quiet. Still dark.

His coat was gone.

His boots.

Everything.

Except for one thing.

A single white feather. On the floor beside the bed.

She picked it up. It was soft. Still warm.

She waited for hours. Checked the door. The window.

He never came back.

⸻

Five years later

Her son liked to sit in the sunlight. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, he always looked her straight in the eye. Like he knew she’d been waiting for the answer.

He never asked about his father.

Once, when he was playing by the window, she asked him if he remembered any dreams.

He said no.

Then pulled a feather from his pocket.

It was white.

She didn’t ask where he got it.

She just took it from him, quietly. And kept it.

With the others.

[soakedstar]

｡･ﾟﾟ･ 𓆩★𓆪 𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣 𝙙𝙤𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙤𝙧𝙮 𓆩★𓆪･ﾟﾟ･｡

(2/2)

Part 1

✦ synopsis:

a rooftop encounter.

she sketches herself like a creature.

he sees aliens in everything,

especially her.

✦ pairing:

jake x f!reader (college au)

✦ warnings:

explicit content (18+), oral sex (f receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, mention of squirting, discussion of disordered eating, body image issues

Jake:

hey

I was thinking maybe tomorrow

if you’re not busy

I could show you something kind of weird

not like weird-weird

just like space weird

it’s this machine I built to track electromagnetic pulses

like possible alien activity lol

I swear it’s cooler than it sounds

or maybe it’s not but I still think it’s cool

and I thought of you cause you know

you draw them

and also I like talking to you

and maybe we could hang?

no pressure if you don’t want to

anyway yeah

okay shutting up now

He read it back. Flinched.

“God. No.”

He deleted it.

Typed again. Shorter this time.

Jake:

hey

would you maybe wanna come over tomorrow?

I have this weird little alien thing I wanna show you

and also I just wanna see you again

totally casual

unless you want it to be not casual

up to you lol

He hesitated. Then pressed send.

Immediately covered his face with his hands.

“Why do I always sound like a malfunctioning chatbot?”

The reply came faster than he expected.

Y/N:

alien thing?

I’m in.

send the address

Jake stared at the screen.

Then smiled. Wide.

Then walked the rest of the way home grinning like an idiot.

Jake stood by the door, bouncing on his heels. When the doorbell rang, he practically jumped.

He opened it fast, wide-eyed, holding the frame like it was keeping him upright.

“Hey,” he said. “You found it okay?”

Y/N nodded. “Your directions were… aggressively detailed.”

“Well, I didn’t want you to get lost near that creepy 24/7 laundromat. It eats people.”

She stepped inside. The house was small but cozy. Shoes by the door, a stack of mail on a side table, and faint music coming from an old speaker in the living room. The kitchen light was on.

“No one home?” she asked.

“My mom’s out,” Jake said quickly, shutting the door. “She’s at some faculty thing. Probably arguing with physicists who hate aliens. She thinks I’m ridiculous. She’s sweet about it, though.”

“You live with your mom?”

“Yeah,” he said, not embarrassed. “It’s temporary. And she makes really good spaghetti.”

Y/N smiled. The place felt real. Lived-in. A little messy in a human way.

Jake led her toward the hallway and opened the door to his room.

Inside: posters of the solar system, messy bookshelves, a string of fairy lights shaped like stars, and a desk overtaken by gadgets and wires. A stack of journals and diagrams covered the nightstand. The bed was half-made, like he’d tried and then gave up.

“Wow,” she said. “You’re even nerdier than I thought.”

“Thanks,” Jake said proudly, walking straight to his desk. “Okay, so—this is what I wanted to show you.”

He pointed to a strange-looking machine with blinking red and green lights, something hooked up to an old laptop and a half-melted circuit board.

“It’s a modified electromagnetic pulse scanner. Detects low-frequency anomalies. Some people think aliens communicate that way or that they interfere with natural frequencies. I’ve been testing it for like six months.”

She walked closer, looking at the lights.

“Does it work?”

“Sometimes it picks up your neighbor’s microwave, but there was this one night during the Perseids when I got a pulse so clean I thought I was gonna faint. Look, I wrote it down—”

He grabbed a notebook, flipping through pages with frantic energy.

“Jake,” she said gently.

He stopped. Looked at her.

She was standing still, hands in the pockets of her jacket, eyes soft. There was something in her face like she was trying to keep herself from sinking.

“I didn’t come to see the alien thing.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

“I came because I wanted to be near you.”

He froze.

“Like… in general? Or just today? Or—”

She stepped closer. “Don’t make me regret saying it.”

He smiled, nervous.

“I won’t. I swear. I just… didn’t think you felt that way.”

“I didn’t either,” she admitted. “Until I did. And now I can’t stop.”

She looked around the room again.

“This place is so you. It smells like wires and… cereal.”

“I had Lucky Charms for lunch,” he said.

She bit back a smile. Then she sat on his bed.

He sat beside her, not too close.

“Jake,” she said slowly. “Can I ask you something kind of heavy?”

“Yeah. Always.”

She looked at her hands.

“Do you think someone can love you so much it makes you forget how much you hate yourself?”

Jake’s throat tightened. He didn’t know the right answer. So he said the truth.

“I don’t know if it works like that. But I think… I think love can make the pain quieter. And if you let me—I want to be part of that quiet.”

She looked up at him.

“Do you want me, Jake?”

“I’ve been trying not to say it because I didn’t want to scare you. But yes. So much it’s stupid.”

She exhaled, shaking.

“Then show me.”

He kissed her slowly, tenderly, his lips warm and sure. Not rushed. Not desperate. Just full. Full of everything he couldn’t put into words.

When they broke apart, he whispered, “Take this off for me.” His hands ghosted over the hem of her shirt.

She nodded and undressed, shyly, piece by piece. He didn’t rush her. He just watched. And smiled. Not a cocky smile—something softer. Something reverent.

“You’re so beautiful it makes my chest hurt,” he said, breath catching when her bra hit the floor. “Every inch of you. I don’t care what you see in the mirror. This?” He cupped her cheek. “This is perfect to me.”

He undressed too, slowly, making sure she saw him. Nothing hidden. Nothing forced.

When they were both bare, he guided her gently to the bed and laid her down, crawling over her with his hands braced on either side of her head.

“I want to take my time,” he said. “You’re not a quick fuck. You’re not something I’m just trying to get off on. I want you to feel how much I love you with every second of this.”

He kissed her neck, then her collarbones, then lower his mouth trailing down her chest, licking and kissing each breast like he was savoring her. She arched into him, and he groaned, his fingers tracing lazy lines over her sides.

“You don’t know what you do to me,” he murmured against her skin. “I think about you constantly. Not just sex. You. Your laugh. The way you bite your lip when you’re nervous.”

His hand slid between her legs and found her already wet. He smiled against her stomach. “God. Look at you. You want me this bad, huh?”

She nodded, face flushed, heart racing.

Jake kissed her inner thigh, then looked up at her.

“I’m gonna make you cum on my tongue first. You’re not allowed to talk shit about yourself after that, got it?”

He lowered his mouth and licked her gently at first, savoring her. When she gasped, he gripped her hips and went harder, more focused, his tongue moving in slow, perfect circles on her clit, then dipping down to taste her deeper.

“Jake—” she moaned. “I—fuck—”

“Cum for me,” he said against her. “Let go. Let me take care of you.”

Her orgasm came in waves, thighs trembling around his head. He didn’t stop until she pulled his hair, overwhelmed.

When he crawled back up, he kissed her softly. “You okay?”

She nodded, breathless. “That was…”

“Only the beginning,” he whispered, brushing hair out of her face.

He lined himself up with her and paused, eyes on hers. “I’m gonna go slow. You feel too good to rush.”

He pushed in slowly, watching her face the entire time. Her eyes fluttered closed, her mouth falling open.

“Eyes on me, baby,” he said, soft but firm. “I want you to see how I look at you when I’m inside you.”

She looked. And what she saw broke something in her how much he wanted her, yes, but more than that: how much he cherished her.

He started to move long, deep thrusts, his hips rolling into hers with care and control. Every time she gasped, he kissed her. Every time she moaned, he whispered, “That’s it. Just like that. You’re doing so good for me.”

Their bodies moved together perfectly. No rush. No pressure. Just the sound of skin, breath, love.

When she clenched around him, close again, he cupped her face and said, “You’re gonna cum again, and I’m gonna watch you. I want to see how you look when you’re falling apart for me.”

And she did. With a cry, with tears in her eyes, with her body shaking under his.

Jake held her through it, slowed down just enough for her to breathe.

Then he groaned, low and shaky. “I’m close. Where do you want it?”

“Inside,” she whispered. “Please.”

That made him lose it. He thrust deeper, harder, still full of care, but desperate now. “I love you,” he said, again and again. “I love you. I love you.”

When he came, it was with his whole body. He gasped her name like a prayer and buried himself deep as he spilled inside her, shaking from the intensity.

They lay tangled together, his chest against hers, his face buried in her neck.

And then, after a long, quiet pause:

“You don’t ever have to be perfect for me,” he said. “You just have to be you. That’s enough. That’s always been enough.”

Her fingers gripped his arm. “I don’t believe it yet.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m gonna remind you. As many times as it takes.”

Jake was still inside her, bodies pressed close, both of them breathing hard. The air was thick with sweat, skin, and everything unspoken. He kissed her shoulder, then her cheek, then her jaw soft little kisses, like he couldn’t stop.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered. “I wish you could feel what I feel when I look at you.”

She didn’t answer, just pulled him closer. Her body was buzzing, but something in her wanted more. Wanted to see how far she could go with him. How far he could take her.

“Jake,” she murmured, “don’t stop.”

His head lifted. “You want more?”

She nodded, eyes glassy. “I—I want to feel everything.”

Jake’s gaze changed. From tender to focused in a second. “Yeah?” he said, voice low. “You want to let go completely, baby?”

“Yes. Please.”

He pulled out slowly, groaning at the loss of her warmth, then moved down her body again kissing her belly, her thighs, until he was face-to-face with her pussy.

He looked up at her. “Don’t hold back. Not for me. Not for anyone.”

He started licking her again but this time it was different. More intense. More pressure. His mouth was everywhere, messy, open, worshipping her with every movement. His fingers slid back inside her, pumping hard, deep, curling up just right.

He kept his mouth on her clit, sucking hard while his fingers moved fast.

“Jake—” she gasped. “Fuck, Jake—wait—something—something’s happening—”

He didn’t stop. He knew. He felt it. Her thighs were shaking uncontrollably, her whole body tensing.

“I got you,” he said, voice full of pride. “Come on, baby. Let it happen. Don’t fight it.”

Then her body snapped. She cried out, loud and broken, as liquid sprayed out of her, soaking his hand, his face, the sheets. She came harder than she ever had, back arching completely off the bed.

Jake froze for a second. Stared.

“What the—” he whispered. “Did you just—?”

He blinked, eyes wide in shock and awe, and then grinned like a kid who just saw an alien land in his backyard.

“Oh my God,” he said, breathless. “You just squirted.”

Y/N was dazed, blushing, trying to catch her breath. “I—I didn’t know I could—”

Jake looked amazed. Still holding her thighs open, still drenched, and absolutely fascinated.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my fucking life,” he said, half-laughing in disbelief. “Like—are you okay? Do you feel okay? Because I’m about to pass out from how perfect that was.”

She covered her face, overwhelmed. “I’m sorry—”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” he said instantly, crawling up over her. His face was glowing with pure admiration. “That was a fucking miracle. You just baptized me, baby.”

She laughed, cheeks burning. “You’re ridiculous.”

He kissed her, deep and warm, still grinning. “No, I’m yours. And I want you to do that again. Someday. As many times as you want.”

He pulled her into his chest, both of them still naked, bodies sticky and wet and exhausted. He held her tight, whispered in her ear:

“You don’t have to love yourself right now. I’ve got enough love for both of us.”

They lay tangled under a messy blanket, still warm and sticky with each other. Jake was on his back, staring up at the ceiling like it had all the answers, one arm tucked behind his head, the other around Y/N’s bare waist. She was curled against him, skin on skin, tracing invisible constellations on his chest with the tip of her finger.

The room buzzed with silence and the occasional click from one of Jake’s alien-detecting gadgets still plugged in on his desk. The only light came from a small moon lamp by the bed, casting a soft glow across their bodies.

Jake finally broke the silence, voice dreamy.

“You know, there’s this theory like, legit, not even fringe that certain stars blink in patterns too consistent to be random. Like they’re sending messages. Civilizations could be signaling across galaxies, and we just don’t know how to read them yet.”

Y/N blinked at him. Then blinked again.

“Did you seriously just go from ‘you taste like heaven’ to ’intergalactic Morse code’ in under ten minutes?”

Jake glanced at her, sheepish. “I mean, technically it’s been fifteen…”

She laughed. “Fifteen minutes ago you were whispering filthy things into my thighs. Now you’re talking about cosmic blinking patterns like I didn’t just take you into another dimension.”

Jake flushed. His ears turned pink. “Okay, fair, but—multitasking, okay? I contain multitudes.”

“Multitudes of what, exactly?” she teased. “Horny golden retriever and conspiracy theorist rolled into one?”

“Precisely.” He grinned, proud. “That’s my brand.”

She lifted herself up on one elbow, letting the blanket fall just slightly down her chest. Jake’s gaze flicked there involuntarily, then guiltily back to her face.

She caught him.

“Don’t act shy now,” she murmured. “You weren’t exactly polite earlier.”

He groaned and hid his face with his hand. “Please don’t quote me.”

“‘God, look at you. You want me this bad, huh?’” she mimicked in a low voice, grinning.

“Y/N.”

“‘I’m gonna make you cum on my tongue first.’”

“I blacked out, okay?”

She laughed and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “You’re cute when you’re overwhelmed.”

“You’re evil.”

“You love it.”

He peeked at her from between his fingers, eyes soft. “I really do.”

A beat of silence.

Then she pulled back slightly, reaching for her sketchbook by the bed.

“I’m gonna draw you again.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “Me? Right now?”

“Mm-hmm. You, in your natural habitat: post-orgasmic alien nerd.”

“Iconic.” He sat up a little straighter. “Do I need to pose? Should I hold a probe or something?”

“Nope. Just exist. I want to capture how ridiculous and sexy you are at the same time.”

“That is… alarmingly flattering.”

She flipped open her sketchpad, pencil already dancing. Her eyes scanned him like she was decoding him, taking in his messy hair, the curve of his shoulder, the rise and fall of his chest.

Jake tried to sit still, but he kept glancing at her.

“So uh… you’re really different after sex,” he said cautiously.

She smirked without looking up. “Different how?”

“More… confident. Bossy. Teasing.”

“You like it.”

“Yeah. A lot.”

She looked at him then, serious for a moment.

“It’s the only time I don’t hate myself.” Her voice was quiet. “When I’m with you. When I feel wanted. It makes everything… quieter up here.” She tapped her temple.

Jake’s throat tightened.

“Then I’ll keep making it quiet for you,” he said softly. “As often as you want.”

She stared at him. Then back to her sketchbook.

“God, you’re so sincere. It’s infuriating.”

He grinned. “I’m trying to balance out your chaos.”

“You’re doing a terrible job.”

“Thanks. I’ll be the disaster you deserve.”

Y/N laughed again, head shaking.

“Okay,” she said. “Hold still. I’m about to make you immortal.”

Y/N closed her sketchbook slowly, the final scratch of her pencil still hanging in the air.

Jake had been quiet for a while shockingly so. He’d tried to be still while she drew him, but his heart had been pounding the whole time. Something about her gaze steady, curious, knowing made it hard to breathe.

She didn’t say anything when she handed it over.

Jake took the sketchpad, exhaling like he was opening a sacred text. His fingers trembled slightly.

He looked.

And everything in him went still.

There he was again. But this time, not sitting in a restaurant, not under neon lights, not flanked by a bird or caught mid-ramble.

This was him, bare. Not just naked, exposed.

His body was lean, a little awkward in how he sat, one leg bent, a hand half-curled by his side. His face was flushed, the slope of his collarbones detailed with soft lines, the faint scars on his shoulder drawn like delicate constellations.

But the most striking thing, again, was the look in his eyes.

Soft.

Open.

Loved.

Jake’s voice cracked a little when he finally spoke.

“You see me like this?”

Y/N leaned against the headboard, watching him carefully.

“I see all of you. And yeah… this is my favorite version.”

He looked at her, eyes shining. “You’ve drawn me twice now. And both times, I didn’t know I looked like that.”

“That’s the point,” she said. “You’re too busy seeing everyone else. The sky. The stars. Me.” She paused. “You never look at yourself long enough to notice.”

Jake stared down at the drawing again.

“I think… this is the first time I’ve ever felt beautiful.”

Y/N blinked. Her voice came out softer. “You are.”

He looked up, overwhelmed. “I wanna hang it up.”

“You’re not hanging a naked sketch of yourself in your bedroom.”

“Why not?” he grinned. “It’s art. It’s emotional. It’s vulnerable. It’s me in my alien nerd glory.”

“Jake.”

“Okay, okay.” He smiled, setting the sketchpad down beside the bed like it was something fragile. “I’ll just keep it where I can look at it. Privately. Like an emotional support nude.”

She laughed, that real kind of laugh, the one he always tried to coax out of her.

He pulled her into his chest again, kissed the top of her head.

And for a long time, neither of them said a word.

Until Jake whispered, “So… are you saying I’m your muse?”

“Shut up.”

“I am.”

“You’re lucky I like drawing freaks.”

He beamed.

[soakedstar]

｡･ﾟﾟ･ 𓆩★𓆪 𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣 𝙙𝙤𝙜 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙤𝙧𝙮 𓆩★𓆪･ﾟﾟ･｡

(1/2)

✦ synopsis:

a rooftop encounter.

she sketches herself like a creature.

he sees aliens in everything,

especially her.

✦ pairing:

jake x f!reader (college au)

✦ warnings:

explicit content (18+), oral sex (f receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, mention of squirting, discussion of disordered eating, body image issues

✦ note:

probably my most explicit fic to date.

yes, I edited it on the subway. no, I have no shame.

Jake liked rooftops.

He liked the way the air felt thinner up here, like the atmosphere had been stretched just a little too tight and might tear open any second. He liked the quiet, the wind, the electromagnetic buzz in his ears. But most of all, he liked the sky.

Tonight, the Lyrids were peaking. He’d been tracking their trajectory for weeks. He had charts. He had heat maps. He had a custom spreadsheet with possible sighting hotspots cross-referenced with recent magnetic anomalies.

He wasn’t just hopeful. He was ready.

Telescope? Check.

Thermal scope? Check.

Notebook full of poorly drawn saucers and timestamped dream logs? Double check.

Red flashlight, mango gummies, lucky rock shaped like a peanut? Triple check.

He reached the rooftop of the science building just past 11:03pm, heart thumping in his chest like it always did before these things. Just in case.

What he didn’t expect—what he really didn’t calculate—was that someone else would already be there.

She was sitting near the far edge, one boot resting flat on the gravel, sketchbook braced against her raised knee. Her hair was long and dark, falling over her face in waves that caught the rooftop lights. She had a cigarette between her fingers and piercings along her left ear that gleamed like little satellites.

She drew fast. Precise. Her pencil moved like a knife, not a brush. From a distance, Jake caught the shape: limbs too long, torso narrow, eyes exaggerated.

“You believe in them too?”

She looked up. No surprise, no warmth. Just a look. Cool, measured, unreadable.

“It’s not them.”

“Oh. Right. I mean…it just looked like—”

He gestured vaguely at the page.

“You nailed the proportions. Like, Zeta Reticulan levels of accuracy. High cranial volume, elongated bone structure, symmetrical orbital placement. Textbook stuff.”

Her voice came flat.

“It’s me.”

Jake stared.

“What?”

“The drawing. It’s me.”

He blinked rapidly, his mouth doing that thing it did when it couldn’t decide what to say.

“Oh. Wow. Okay. That’s… That’s actually kind of brilliant. Like, in a terrifying but emotionally honest kind of way.”

He nodded, talking faster to catch up with himself.

“Self-perception as metaphor. Alienation through anatomy. That’s really… intense. Cool. Smart. I mean—not cool that you feel like that. But, well, you get it.”

She didn’t answer. Just looked at him for a second longer, then turned back to her sketchbook.

He tried again.

“I’m Jake.”

She didn’t respond.

“Astrophysics major. Not officially into UFOs. Well. Not exclusively. There’s actual physics, obviously, but also… you know. The other stuff.”

Still no reply. Just the sound of her pencil moving again.

“Anyway. I’m here because tonight’s the peak of the Lyrids. Meteor shower. Also, potentially correlated UFO activity if you go by atmospheric ionization rates during previous spikes—plus, there’s this pattern that suggests—”

She looked up again.

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Jake paused.

“Not really. Sorry. I ramble. It’s a thing. My mom says it’s endearing but she’s legally required to say that.”

She huffed a soft sound that might have been a laugh, or just her exhaling smoke.

Jake set up his tripod. Sat down. Left a good meter between them like a respectful dog. Silence fell, not awkward, but fragile.

Then—

“Wait—hold on,” he said suddenly, peering through his telescope.

“Right there. North-northeast. Just above that chimney. Something’s moving.”

She didn’t look up.

“It’s a satellite.”

Jake leaned back, squinting.

“No, but the speed…it’s kind of—”

“It’s a satellite.”

His shoulders dropped a little.

“Oh.”

He sat back in the gravel, chewing the inside of his cheek. His notebook flopped open in his lap, a messy page full of scribbled dates and underlined “potential sightings???”

She flicked ash off the edge of the building.

“Nice telescope.”

Jake perked up immediately.

“Thanks! It’s a Newtonian reflector, eight-inch aperture. I saved up for it for, like, two years. Birthday money, tutoring kids who hated math some of them cried, but it was worth it.”

She nodded, barely.

The rooftop quieted again. Her pencil kept moving.

He watched the sky, pretending he hadn’t just embarrassed himself.

Again.

Jake didn’t say much after the satellite thing.

He adjusted the telescope even though nothing had changed, scribbled in his notebook like he was logging crucial data, but really he just needed to move his hands so they wouldn’t feel so awkward. His face still burned. He hated getting things wrong. Especially when he was so sure.

But she kept sketching. Pencil moving like a whisper, sharp and steady. She didn’t look at him, but she hadn’t told him to leave either.

So he inched a little closer.

Not right next to her, that would be weird. Just… a little to the left. Close enough to hear her pencil scratch the page. Close enough to smell the cigarette on her sleeve.

He sat in silence, watching her draw.

Her hand was fast, confident. Her hoodie sleeve was pushed up on one side, revealing a tattoo he couldn’t quite make out. Her cigarette had burned halfway down, forgotten between her fingers. There was something mesmerizing about her focus, like she was trying to extract something out of herself before it drowned her.

And then she said it.

“Wanna be drawn like an alien?”

Jake blinked.

“What?”

She didn’t look up.

“You talk about them so much, figured maybe you’d want to see yourself like one.”

She glanced at him sideways, just enough to catch his reaction.

“Could be your intergalactic ID photo.”

His eyes lit up like a dashboard.

“Seriously? You would do that?”

“Why not.”

She flipped to a clean page.

“Just know it won’t be pretty. None of mine are.”

He nodded so fast he almost gave himself whiplash.

“That’s fine. That’s better, actually. I mean, it’d be weird if I was hot and extraterrestrial, right?”

She snorted — barely — and motioned with her pencil.

“Sit still.”

Jake straightened his back like he was being knighted.

“Like… statue-still? Or like passport-photo still?”

“Alien passport. Be serious.”

He locked his posture like a kid in a school photo and kept his eyes forward. But his heart was doing weird things. Not in a romantic way, well, okay, maybe a little but more in the holy shit, she’s drawing me kind of way. No one had ever drawn him before. Not even in middle school when the art kids doodled everyone on notebook paper with weirdly round heads and stick arms.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

She was frowning slightly, lips pressed together, eyes flitting between him and the page. Her hair had fallen across her face again, hiding most of her expression, but he caught the edge of it, concentration. Focus. Like he was something she wanted to figure out.

“Are you gonna give me antennae?”

She didn’t look up.

“Maybe.”

“Or like, gills? I’ve always thought I had strong amphibian energy.”

Still nothing.

“Or maybe no mouth, so I stop talking for once.”

That one made her smile. Barely. But it was there.

The pencil kept moving. The rooftop was quiet except for the wind and the scratch of graphite and Jake’s occasional attempts not to vibrate out of his own skin from pure excitement.

He tried to sit still. He really did. But it was hard when someone like her was watching him so closely. Not like the others did not like professors or girls at parties who liked his face but not his brain. She looked like she was seeing something through him, and for the first time, he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

He swallowed.

“Do I get to see it after?”

She paused, pencil hovering.

“If you want.”

He nodded, eyes still forward.

“I do.”

Then, after a second, quietly:

“Even if it’s weird.”

She looked at him for real this time. Her gaze didn’t soften, not exactly. But it lingered.

“It’s already weird, Jake.”

And he smiled. Like maybe that was the best thing anyone had ever said to him.

Y/N didn’t say a word when she finished. She just flipped her pencil one last time, blew gently across the page to clear the smudges, and sat back against the wall like it had taken something out of her.

Jake was still statue-still. Or trying to be. His foot twitched a little, but only because he’d been holding his breath the whole time.

“Is it done?” he whispered.

She raised one eyebrow.

“Yeah, golden boy. You’re free.”

He immediately leaned over, eyes wide, trying to get a look.

“Can I—can I see it? Like, now?”

She hesitated. Then turned the sketchbook toward him, one hand still covering the top edge like it was too personal to give away all at once.

Jake blinked.

He stared at the page for a full ten seconds before reacting.

There he was. Or… something like him. His big round eyes were exaggerated, almost glowing. His face was stretched in a weirdly adorable way—elongated skull, floppy ears, slight underbite. His limbs were too thin, almost stick-like, but there was a softness to the body posture. A tilt of the head. His tail—yes, there was a tail—was curled in a loop, mid-wag.

“I’m a…” He squinted. “Is that-am I a dog?”

“Alien dog,” she said casually, lighting another cigarette.

“Intergalactic golden retriever, obviously.”

Jake tilted his head like the creature she’d just drawn.

“I thought you said you didn’t do cute.”

“I don’t.”

She blew smoke sideways.

“That’s just what you look like.”

He looked back at the drawing. Then back at her. Then at the drawing again.

“But why a dog?” he asked, still trying to compute it.

“Do you think, like, is there a reason? Do you think aliens have dogs? Do dogs come from aliens? Because now that I think about it, dogs do have that whole loyalty-above-all, unconditional love thing, and maybe that’s not a naturally occurring Earth trait.”

Y/N looked at him, unimpressed.

“Jake.”

“No, seriously,” he kept going, waving vaguely in the air as if forming a theory on the spot.

“What if dogs are like, emotional probes? Sent here by another species to study how humans bond? They’re too good. It’s suspicious. And they always know when you’re sad. That’s definitely advanced empathy sensors. Like, what if the government—”

“Jake.”

“Hmm?”

She pointed at the sketchbook still in his lap.

“Did you like it or not?”

That shut him up.

He looked down again. Really looked. The wobbly tail. The open face. The hands mid-gesture like they were about to launch into a three-hour tangent about crop circles.

And then his whole face lit up. He actually made a tiny noise. Somewhere between a gasp and a giggle.

“I love it.”

He looked up at her, glowing. “It’s so cool. I look like I belong in a weird Pixar movie where all the aliens are super smart but still need to be walked twice a day. That’s exactly the vibe I want.”

She watched him like someone watching a dog chase its own tail, slightly amused, slightly unsure how he still had energy.

“You know you wag your tail all the time, right?”

Jake blinked.

“I—what?”

“You do that thing. With your foot. Or your knee. It bounces. Constantly.”

He looked down. His leg was bouncing.

“Shit. I do, don’t I?”

She smirked and took another drag.

“There’s your answer. You liked it.”

He grinned, then leaned toward her like he was about to confess a government secret.

“Okay but now I’m picturing a whole planet of alien dogs and I want to write a paper about it. Like a serious one. What if they evolved empathy before language? What if—wait—what if that’s the reason they communicate mostly through tail movement and eyebrows? Because telepathy developed through emotion, not sound—”

She rolled her eyes, but there was no heat in it.

“Jesus Christ. Are you like this with everyone?”

He paused. Actually paused.

“Um… I don’t think so?”

Then, sheepishly,

“No one usually talks to me this long.”

She didn’t say anything. But she didn’t laugh at him either. That mattered.

He handed the sketchbook back with both hands, carefully, like it was made of glass.

“Thanks for drawing me. Even if I look like I should be barking at comets.”

“You would, though.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

Then, after a second, almost shy:

“Do you think I could—maybe—draw you sometime?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You draw?”

“Badly. But enthusiastically.”

She thought about it, then shrugged.

“Only if you promise to make me look terrifying.”

“Deal,” he said immediately.

They sat in silence again, the good kind. Above them, the sky stretched wide and unknowable. Stars blinked like distant heartbeats. Somewhere out there, Jake was sure, something was listening.

——————-

The classroom smelled like old markers and dust and something vaguely chemical, like someone had scrubbed a plastic skeleton with nail polish remover.

Jake was already there. Second row, middle seat close enough to the front to look like he cared, far enough back to avoid eye contact with the professor. His notebook was open. Three pens lined up with military precision. One blue. One black. One red, just in case something needed to be emphasized aggressively.

He was doodling a cartoon alien holding a scalpel when the door opened.

She walked in like she owned the floor.

Same hoodie. Same scuffed boots. Hair tied up in a loose, falling-apart bun. Silver piercings glinting along the edge of one ear. No smile. Just that same unreadable, vaguely unimpressed expression like the world had already disappointed her twice before breakfast.

Jake’s heart flipped.

He sat up so fast he knocked over his chair.

“Hey! Rooftop Girl!”

He waved like he was stranded on an island. “Over here!”

She paused mid-step and blinked at him.

A long, exhausted blink.

Then sighed — full-body sigh — and started walking toward him anyway.

Jake scrambled to fix the chair and clear the seat next to his.

“I didn’t know you were in this class! This is wild! What are the odds? Do you also think studying bones helps you spot body-snatching aliens faster, or is that just me?”

She dropped into the seat next to him with the grace of someone deeply tired of the world and the people in it.

“It’s an elective,” she said.

“I needed the credit.”

He grinned like that was the best answer possible.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here. This is way better than sitting next to that guy who kept drawing dicks on everything last semester.”

She snorted quietly and opened her sketchbook.

Jake stared for a second. Then blinked.

“Wait… I still don’t know your name.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. You never told me. I’ve just been calling you ‘Rooftop Girl’ in my head. Or like… ‘The Artist.’ Or ’The Girl Who Drew Me As an Alien Dog.’”

She shook her head, trying not to laugh.

“Y/N.”

He lit up like someone had flipped a switch in his chest.

“Y/N.”

He tested it. Repeated it, softly, like he was adding it to a list of stars.

“Nice. That fits you. Kinda mysterious, kinda sharp. Like a comet that could kill us all but is also, like… beautiful.”

She blinked at him.

“That was a lot.”

“Sorry.”

He grinned, unrepentant.

“I get excited.”

Around them, the classroom had started filling up. Girls glanced over, whispering in corners. One girl in the row behind them leaned to her friend and muttered something that included the word “Jake” and the words “fucking unfair.”

Y/N noticed. Of course she did.

She leaned slightly closer to him and said under her breath:

“You know everyone’s wondering how I ended up sitting next to the hottest guy on campus, right?”

Jake’s face did something between a twitch and a panic.

“Wait, what?”

“You’re Jake. Everyone knows who you are.”

He looked around, confused.

“I—I don’t think that’s true. I’m just, like, the telescope guy. People mostly avoid me at parties.”

She gave him a long, slow once-over.

“Right. Just the telescope guy with perfect cheekbones and visible triceps under his stupid astronomy T-shirt.”

He went red. Like cartoon-level red. His ears were practically glowing.

“That’s not—okay, but I work out for practical reasons. I don’t do it to… look like anything.”

“Practical?”

“Yeah! You never know when you’ll need to sprint uphill with a backpack full of alien tech. Or lift a fallen beam off someone during an interdimensional collapse. Plus, cardio increases stamina for running from shapeshifters, so—”

She interrupted, deadpan.

“You are genuinely unhinged.”

“Thanks!”

He smiled, then hesitated.

“That was a compliment, right?”

She shrugged, sketchbook open in her lap now.

“Depends. You want me to draw your alien dog self again, this time shirtless?”

Jake nearly choked on air.

“I—I mean… if it helps the accuracy of the illustration…”

Y/N just smirked and started sketching.

“God, you’re lucky you’re cute.”

“You think I’m cute?”

She looked over at him, eyebrows raised.

“Jake.”

“Right. Shutting up now.”

She kept drawing. He kept bouncing his leg. The professor walked in.

Class had ended ten minutes ago, but Jake was still packing up like he had all the time in the world. He was stalling, obviously.

Y/N had already closed her sketchbook, shoved her pencils into her bag, and stood up in that effortlessly dramatic way she did everything like gravity applied differently to her body. She had one earbud in already. The universal sign for don’t talk to me.

Jake talked to her anyway.

“Hey—uh, Y/N?”

She didn’t answer at first. He tried again, a little closer.

“Hey. You busy now?”

That got her to glance back at him, eyes narrowed slightly like she was weighing how much patience she had left today.

“Why?”

He adjusted his backpack, nervous energy vibrating through every limb.

“Wanna get lunch? I mean—not like a date, unless you want it to be, but mostly I just thought it’d be nice to eat something and keep talking about… you know. Alien dogs. Or rib cages. Or both.”

She blinked at him.

“Lunch?”

“Yeah.” He nodded, too eagerly.

“I know this weird place near campus that does kimchi pancakes in the shape of stars. It’s kind of gimmicky but surprisingly good. And the ahjumma who runs it has a pet crow that sits on the counter. Like, just sits there. Doesn’t blink. I think she might be a witch.”

Y/N stared.

“You want to get lunch with me. To eat pancakes. With a witch.”

“Basically, yeah.” He beamed.

“Unless you have somewhere else to be?”

She hesitated.

Not because of the pancakes. Or the witch. Or the crow.

She wasn’t hungry. She never really was. And something about the word lunch made her stomach tighten. But Jake was looking at her with those wide, bright eyes like he truly believed lunch with her might be the highlight of his week.

She sighed.

“Fine.”

His whole face lit up like she’d just handed him a Nobel Prize.

⸻

They ended up sitting at a small table under a flickering lightbulb that hummed faintly, like the ceiling was quietly judging them. The witch-like ahjumma had, in fact, given them star-shaped pancakes, and the crow on the counter was very real and definitely staring at Jake.

Y/N had ordered the smallest thing on the menu. A miso soup. No rice. No sides. No explanation.

Jake, on the other hand, had three plates in front of him: the pancakes, some bulgogi, and what looked like pickled radish he wasn’t even sure he liked.

He dug in enthusiastically.

“Okay, okay,” he said between bites, “hear me out what if the crow isn’t a crow, but like, a shapeshifter from another planet doing recon?”

Y/N stirred her soup slowly.

“What would a shapeshifter want from a greasy pancake shop?”

“Everything,” he said seriously.

“Food is a window into culture. Plus, nobody suspects the bird.”

She rolled her eyes, but her lips curved slightly.

Jake kept eating. Talking. Rambling. His usual chaotic mix of facts and nonsense and theories so wild they looped back around to almost making sense.

But eventually, he noticed.

Y/N’s spoon hadn’t touched the soup.

It was still full. Still steaming slightly. Her fingers toyed with the edge of the bowl like she was trying to find a reason to touch it.

Jake slowed down. Chewed more quietly. Then asked too casually:

“You’re not hungry?”

She looked up, startled.

“I’m fine.”

He nodded.

Then ruined it by continuing.

“You didn’t eat anything in class either. And at the rooftop you only smoked. Do you not like soup? Or maybe you don’t eat hot foods during the day? Is that like an artist thing? Or a texture thing? Some people have sensory stuff. I used to think pickles were the devil.”

She stared at him.

“Jake.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re doing the thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The question spiral.”

He blinked.

“Sorry. I just… noticed. And I care. I mean not like in a weird way. I just… you know, people usually eat. And you’re not. And you’re kind of pale today. Not in a bad way. Just in a pale way. Not that pale is bad. You look great. I just mean—”

“Jake.”

He shut up.

Y/N exhaled slowly and leaned back in her chair. Her spoon was still untouched.

“You don’t get it.”

He looked genuinely lost.

“Get what?”

She didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the soup like it had said something offensive.

“Sometimes,” she said finally, voice quieter now, “food feels like swallowing glass. You don’t know why. You just know you can’t.”

Jake blinked.

His face softened immediately.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

He looked down at his plate, then back at her.

“I didn’t mean to push or anything. I just…”

He shrugged helplessly.

“I noticed. And I talk too much.”

She smirked, just barely.

“No kidding.”

“You don’t have to explain anything. I just- if there’s ever a version of lunch that works for you, I’d still like to do that.”

Y/N tilted her head.

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Drawing lunch? Talking about lunch? Sitting in silence for thirty minutes while you drink overpriced coffee and I eat a terrifying amount of fried dumplings?”

She huffed a laugh.

“You really are a dog.”

He looked pleased.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s not.”

She finally took a sip of the soup. Just one.

“But you’ve got those eyes, you know? The kind that don’t shut up. Even when your mouth does.”

Jake looked at her for a second. Then said softly:

“And yours look tired. But I like them anyway.”

She blinked. Looked down.

Didn’t answer.

Jake didn’t notice she’d started drawing.

He was too busy defending his theory that most documented “crop circles” were actually unsuccessful attempts at communication, and not pranks, like most people thought. He spoke with his hands, fork halfway to his mouth, gesturing like an over-caffeinated podcast host who’d lost his mic but not his audience.

Y/N had opened her sketchbook halfway through a rant about spiral formations and electromagnetic resonance. She didn’t tell him. She just lowered her head and let her pencil move.

She liked drawing people when they didn’t know they were being seen.

Jake was a mess of motion and light. His curls flopped into his eyes every time he laughed, which was often. His collar was uneven. There was sauce on his sleeve. He had that look — the one she’d only seen on kids who hadn’t yet learned to hide their joy. And he had no idea what he looked like. None.

She drew the way his eyebrows danced when he talked. The wrinkle between them when he tried to remember something specific. The way he pointed the fork like it was a conductor’s baton, as if his food was just another part of the argument.

He kept going.

“I mean, think about it if you were an alien species trying to get a message across, but you didn’t have sound, or maybe you did, but you knew we didn’t, wouldn’t you use shapes? Symbols? That’s universal, right? Circles. Spirals. Repetition. It’s practically math.”

He took another bite without even pausing.

“And sure, okay, some people say it’s all hoaxes, but who gains from that? Some farmer getting a laugh? Or is that what they want us to think?”

She sketched the shape of his mouth mid-word. It was always slightly open, even between sentences, like the next one was already charging up behind it.

Behind him, perched on the counter, the crow stared. Its head tilted just slightly, eyes dark and unreadable. She included it too: the glossy feathers, the hunched patience of a bird that seemed like it knew how to wait centuries if necessary.

She didn’t romanticize anything. She drew the clutter on the table. The half-eaten pancake. The chopsticks askew. The crumpled napkin Jake had used but forgot to throw away. She drew the loose thread on his sleeve, the shadows under his eyes, the way his shoulders slouched slightly when he leaned too far forward, too excited.

And she liked the way it looked.

Real. Strange. Alive.

Jake was still talking.

“Also, fun fact: crows can recognize human faces. Like, actually remember them. There was this study where they trained crows to identify people who annoyed them, and years later, they still attacked the same researchers. So if that bird’s staring at me, it probably thinks I’m either a threat… or a friend.”

He turned toward her suddenly, mid-bite.

“What do you think? Friend or threat?”

Y/N blinked. Looked up from her sketchbook.

Then smirked.

“Both.”

He laughed. “Fair.”

She closed the sketchbook without showing him. Not yet. It didn’t feel like the right moment.

Instead, she picked up her spoon again, finally dipping it into the soup.

Jake didn’t say anything about it this time.

Just smiled a little, and kept talking.

Jake got home later than usual.

The house was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the soft clink of glass coming from the kitchen. His mom always stayed up late. She said her best thoughts happened after midnight, when the rest of the world shut up for a second.

He found her where he expected: sitting at the table in a faded NASA hoodie, sipping tea, and scrolling through something on her tablet with a bored expression that only astrophysicists could maintain while reading about collapsing stars.

The light above her buzzed faintly. The air smelled like peppermint and dust.

“Hey,” Jake said, hovering in the doorway.

She didn’t look up.

“Hey, kid.”

He hesitated.

“You busy?”

She closed the tablet immediately.

“What’s going on?”

Jake walked in, dropped his backpack, and sank into the chair across from her. He rubbed his eyes, then pressed his palms against the table like he needed to ground himself.

“There’s this girl.”

That got her attention.

She tilted her head slightly, lips twitching.

“Of course there is.”

“No, not like that. I mean—maybe. I don’t know. We’ve only talked a couple times.”

She waited. Jake’s mom had a gift for silence. The kind that made you keep talking just to fill it.

“She’s in my elective. We met on the rooftop, actually. I was looking for meteors. She was drawing. She’s… strange. Kind of amazing. You’d like her, maybe. Or at least be confused by her in a good way.”

She smiled softly.

“You’re rambling.”

“Sorry.” He exhaled.

“Today we got food after class. Well, I got food. She ordered something. Just soup. But she didn’t touch it.”

His mom didn’t interrupt. She leaned forward slightly.

“At first I thought she wasn’t hungry. But it’s not that. She doesn’t eat. Or she barely does. And it’s not like I know her that well, but it just… I noticed. And I keep noticing.”

He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated.

“She smokes a lot. Draws a lot. Jokes sometimes, but it’s like she’s constantly somewhere else. She looks at her food like it’s… like it’s a threat. Like it’s going to do something to her.”

His mom’s eyes sharpened, but her voice stayed calm.

“And what do you think is happening?”

“I don’t know.”

Jake’s voice cracked slightly.

“I mean—it’s only been two days. I shouldn’t be thinking this hard about it. But I can’t help it. She said something weird too. Yesterday. When I asked if she was drawing aliens, she said, ‘It’s me.’ And it kind of was. Like a distorted version of her. And it stuck with me.”

Silence again. He fidgeted with a coaster.

“I don’t want to make assumptions. I don’t want to be wrong. But… something feels off.”

His mom nodded slowly.

“She might be going through something. Or she might just be someone who doesn’t talk about what she’s going through.”

Jake looked up.

“But how do I… like… I don’t want to be that guy who pushes. Or makes it about me. But I also don’t want to ignore it.”

She gave him a long look, the kind that made him feel younger than he was.

“Jake, you don’t need to understand everything to be kind.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“You’re not supposed to fix her. You barely know her. But you can be someone who sees her. Who makes space for her. That matters more than saying the right thing.”

He nodded. Quietly.

She softened.

“You always want to know the why. That’s the part of you that’s like me. You ask questions, you analyze. You want it to fit a theory. But some things don’t. Some things are just messy and human and hard.”

Jake swallowed.

“Dad would’ve probably said she was an alien.”

That made her smile.

“Your dad thought most people were aliens. That’s why he loved them.”

Jake looked down at his hands.

“She makes me feel like I’ve seen something. Like when I spot something in the sky I know shouldn’t be there. Not scary. Just… unexplained.”

His mom stood, poured him a cup of tea without asking, and placed it in front of him. Then she sat back down.

“That’s the beginning of love, you know. Or something close to it.”

“Seeing aliens in people?”

“No. Seeing the strange, and wanting to stay anyway.”

Jake held the mug in both hands. It was warm, grounding.

He didn’t say anything else.

But he didn’t leave the table for a long time.

Jake was on the rooftop first this time.

It was later than usual. The city below buzzed like a restless machine, but up here it was quiet, still, the wind brushing at his collar like a curious ghost. He had come with his telescope, like always, but tonight he hadn’t even set it up.

He’d found something else.

It was lying near the far ledge — left behind, maybe on purpose, maybe not. Worn sketchbook. Familiar cover. A few bent pages. His name wasn’t on it, but he knew it was hers. He recognized the mess of charcoal smudges on the corners, the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to the paper.

He shouldn’t have opened it.

But he did.

He flipped past a few pages abstract stuff, bodies warped into shapes, eyes too big, limbs too long. Until he landed on a drawing that stopped everything.

It was him.

Sitting at the table from the other day. Three plates in front of him, chopsticks in hand, talking with his whole body like he always did. The crow was perched behind him on the counter, beady eyes fixed on the back of his head like it was judging him. The restaurant lightbulb hung low, casting that yellow wash over his hair.

But what made Jake freeze, what made his throat tighten was how she had drawn him.

Not handsome. Not romanticized. Just real. His shoulders slightly hunched, his left foot bouncing mid-air, one arm gesturing too wide, his face alive with too many thoughts at once. His eyes were open. Honest. A little tired. Full of light.

No one had ever drawn him like that.

No one had ever seen him like that.

He didn’t hear her until it was too late.

“You weren’t supposed to see that yet.”

Jake turned.

Y/N stood near the rooftop door, arms crossed over her chest, not angry exactly — more like she’d been caught naked. The kind of stillness that happens right before a person decides whether to bolt or burn.

Jake blinked quickly and wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I just saw it there and I—”

He looked back down at the page.

“Y/N, this is… it’s the most human I’ve ever looked.”

She said nothing. Just walked over, slow, and sat down beside him.

For a minute, they didn’t speak.

Then she let out a sigh that sounded like it had been waiting days to escape.

“You make me insane.”

Jake turned to her, startled.

She stared ahead, not looking at him.

“You talk like the world’s about to end but you’re excited about it. You bounce when you sit. You laugh with your whole body. And you never shut up. And I should hate it, because I hate everything lately. But you… I don’t know. You make me want to scream and melt and stay all at the same time.”

Jake blinked.

“That’s… a lot.”

“Yeah.”

She gave a bitter little laugh.

“It is. And it’s not fair. Because I don’t know how to do this. Any of this.”

“Do what?”

She finally looked at him.

Her eyes weren’t cold like they were when they first met. They were tired. Scared. Soft.

“Care. Let someone sit this close. Let someone see me, or draw them without turning them into a monster. But when I draw you…”

She looked down.

“You don’t need to be turned into anything. You’re already light. I don’t even know how to explain that.”

Jake said nothing for a second. His throat felt full.

Then:

“Why didn’t you show me?”

She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.

“Because it felt private. Not the drawing. You. How I see you. It’s like I caught something I wasn’t supposed to see — and it scared me. Because I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the rooftop, and it’s annoying. I hate being this person. Soft. Needy. Hungry for something that isn’t even food.”

Jake swallowed.

“You don’t have to apologize for any of that.”

She looked at him.

“Don’t do that. Don’t make it okay too fast. I’m not easy, Jake. I’m full of static. I disappear sometimes. I ruin my own appetite and then wonder why I feel empty. I might push you away. I will push you away.”

He stared at her — at the girl who saw aliens in herself and light in him — and smiled so gently it broke something in her chest.

“I don’t need easy. I just need you to let me sit here with you.”

She bit her lip. Looked down.

“I feel comfort around you.”

She said it like a secret.

“Like the kind that makes my chest hurt in a good way. I don’t know why. But when you’re there, the noise goes quiet. It’s like I can breathe again, even if I don’t want to eat. Even if I still feel wrong in my body. You’re just… good.”

Jake turned fully toward her now.

“Y/N.”

He said her name like a prayer.

“I think about you too. A lot. More than I’ve thought about anyone in a long time.”

He reached for her hand, but didn’t touch it. Just let it hover near hers.

“And that drawing? That’s the first time I’ve ever felt like someone got me. Not because I said something. But because they looked.”

—————

It was past 1 a.m. when Jake’s phone buzzed.

He almost didn’t hear it. He was lying on his bed in the dark, scrolling half-heartedly through a forum thread about possible audio anomalies picked up off the coast of Chile. Nothing credible. Just more static, more hopeful noise. He rubbed his eyes and rolled over, reaching for his phone.

Y/N.

His breath caught.

He answered immediately.

“Hello?”

There was no sound at first. Just a breath. Then a shaky, barely-there voice.

“Can you come?”

No context. No explanation.

But Jake didn’t need one.

They stayed like that. Side by side. Not touching. Not rushing.

The wind picked up a little, and above them, the stars blinked through the clouds like they were listening.

And for the first time since they met, neither of them needed to say anything else.

Y/N’s head rested against Jake’s shoulder, her breathing shaky but slowing down. She wasn’t crying anymore, not really, but her body still felt tight. Like it hadn’t realized it could stop bracing.

Jake stayed quiet. He didn’t know what to say. He just kept his arms around her and focused on keeping his voice low and steady when he finally did speak.

“I’m glad you called me.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just leaned in a little more, like she was trying to believe she was allowed to.

Then she sat up. Slowly. Her face was blotchy and tired, but she didn’t look away from him.

“Jake?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you really capable of loving me so much I forget I hate myself?”

The words hit him harder than he expected. She wasn’t being dramatic , she was just honest. Raw. She meant it.

Jake looked at her. Not rushed. Not overwhelmed. Just… trying to understand.

“I don’t know if I can make you forget,” he said, quiet. “But I want to try. I want to be around. Even if you can’t see what I see yet.”

She looked down at her hands, breathing in through her nose. Then back up.

Her eyes were wet again, but not like before.

She leaned in first. Slow, careful. Her lips barely touched his, testing.

Jake didn’t move. Not at first.

Then he kissed her back.

Soft. Nervous. Real.

It wasn’t a perfect kiss. It was a little clumsy, a little too still, like neither of them had kissed someone like this before, like it actually mattered.

Her fingers touched his neck, uncertain, and he moved just enough to show her it was okay. That he was here.

They pulled apart quietly. Not far. Just enough to breathe.

She looked at him.

He looked back, and said:

“I’ve never kissed anyone who cried on me first.”

She let out a short laugh through her nose. Wiped her face again.

“I’ve never kissed someone who talks about aliens this much.”

Jake grinned.

“You know, in some cultures, crying before a kiss is a sign of good luck.”

“You made that up.”

“Totally. But it felt like the right thing to say.”

She laughed again. Less tired this time.

Then Jake added, a little too fast:

“Also… if aliens ever land and ask me who to talk to, I’m pointing to you.”

She rolled her eyes. Smiled without meaning to.

“Shut up.”

“Too late. You’re their leader now.”

She shook her head and leaned back against his shoulder.

Jake didn’t say anything else.

————

Jake walked down the hill from campus, hands stuffed in his pockets, then pulled out again, then back in. He kept touching his lips with his fingers, gently. Like he was trying to confirm it really happened.

“She kissed me,” he muttered.

Then louder:

“She kissed me back.”

He smiled to himself. Then frowned.

“Wait. Did I talk too much after? Did I ruin it?”

He stopped under a streetlight, tilted his head up like the stars could give him answers.

“Why did I say the thing about aliens? ‘You’re their leader now’? Jesus Christ.”

He groaned, took a few more steps, then pulled out his phone. Opened her chat. Just looked at her name on the screen.

“Don’t text her yet. It’s too soon. Be normal.”

He locked the phone. Unlocked it.

Locked it again.

“…Maybe just something casual.”

He started typing.

Part 2

[soakedstar]

⋆｡°✩ 𓂃𓈒 𝑴𝑶𝑶𝑵 𝑾𝑰𝑵𝑫𝑶𝑾 𓈒𓂃 ✩°｡⋆ (2/2)

✦ now playing: Pale Blue Eyes – The Velvet Underground

Part 1

﹕✧ synopsis:

a kiss at a party turns into something slower.

something warmer.

something that stays long after the drugs wear off

﹕✧ pairing:

jake x f!reader (1970s au)

﹕✧ warnings:

explicit content (18+), drug use (weed + acid), oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, tears during sex, mention of pregnancy

don’t do drugs kids

Y/N’s hands slid up his back, nails leaving faint trails he wouldn’t notice until morning. She kissed the curve of his shoulder, slow, dazed. He sighed, content, melting into her.

The ceiling above them shifted. The lightbulb flickered, stretching and bending softly like a jellyfish pulsing in warm water. Shadows danced across the walls lazy, dreamlike.

“I still feel like I’m dreaming,” she murmured.

“You are,” Jake whispered. “But I’m in it too.”

They didn’t move. Not for a long time. Just lay there, skin to skin, feeling each other breathe. At some point, he slid out of her gently, and she whimpered at the sudden emptiness.

He pulled the blanket over both of them.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, just above a whisper.

She nodded, eyes half-closed. “I’ve never felt more… alive.”

Jake looked at her like she was sunlight and ruin and salvation.

“I wish I could take a picture of this,” he murmured.

Y/N smiled faintly, curling into his chest. “You just did.”

But he didn’t laugh.

Because he’d already reached behind him, blindly, for the camera he kept by the bed. His old Nikon. No flash, just the whisper of the shutter as he lifted it with one hand, framing her without even looking through the viewfinder.

She was half-asleep, cheeks still wet, mouth parted, one leg peeking from under the covers like a secret. The lamp light poured over her collarbone, soft and golden.

He clicked the shutter.

Not for art. Not for memory.

Just to prove to himself later that this had really happened.

That she’d really looked at him like that.

That they’d really held each other like that.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t open her eyes.

She just let him keep her.

Then he set the camera down gently on the nightstand and kissed her forehead.

They drifted into silence again. Into sleep. Into each other.

Sunlight hit her eyelids like a slap.

Y/N groaned and rolled onto her back, the sheet tangled around her thighs, her skin bare and warm and sticky. The air in the room was still thick with the scent of sex, sweat, and the faint spice of whatever incense Jake had forgotten to put out.

For a moment, she didn’t know where she was.

Then she saw the photos on the wall. The record sleeves. The mess of crumpled clothes on the floor. And Jake sprawled beside her, mouth slightly open, a red scratch down his shoulder like a souvenir.

She blinked again. Slowly.

“Oh god,” she whispered, voice hoarse.

Jake groaned beside her. “Please tell me we didn’t do anything embarrassing.”

She snorted. “Define embarrassing.”

He rubbed his face, then opened one eye. “We’re naked.”

“You noticed.”

They looked at each other. And then, just like the morning after Moon Window,

They died laughing.

It started as a giggle, then full-on laughter. Breathless. Wheezing. Stupid. She buried her face in the pillow. He clutched his stomach. Neither of them could stop.

“Why does this keep happening?” she gasped.

Jake coughed through a laugh. “I blame Jay.”

“Wait—wasn’t it his party?”

Jake sat up slightly, squinting. “Yeah. Which means—shit.”

“What?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I was supposed to help him clean up.”

Y/N stretched, wincing. “I don’t think you’re physically capable of cleaning anything today.”

Jake groaned dramatically, flopping back beside her. “I’m not physically capable of existing.”

Then, after a beat:

“I can’t believe we did that.”

Y/N turned her head. “Which part?”

He met her gaze. “All of it.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

Not awkward, just full.

Y/N tucked the sheet under her arms. “I remember the saxophone. And… I think a coat rack proposed to you?”

Jake nodded solemnly. “I said I wasn’t emotionally available.”

Y/N giggled again. “You would say that.”

Jake reached out and brushed hair from her cheek.

“Hey.”

She looked at him.

“I don’t regret it.”

Her chest tightened in the best way.

“Me neither.”

They stared at each other in the pale morning light, tired and raw and still buzzing faintly from whatever remained in their systems.

Jake sniffed the air, then groaned.

“It does smell like regret.”

Y/N hit him with a pillow. “Shut up.”

But she was smiling.

And neither of them moved to get dressed.

Because for once, the world could wait.

It had been twenty-two days since the night the world blurred and cracked open between them.

They never really talked about it afterward. Not directly. Not about the acid or the sex or the way she cried when he held her. But in the quiet gestures, the stolen glances, the way his fingers always found hers when they walked something had stayed.

That morning, Y/N stood in Jake’s studio, barefoot on the cool floor, arms crossed over her chest.

It smelled like developer fluid and dust, like heat and metal and a little bit of coffee. He was printing photos, half-distracted, humming under his breath.

“Jake,” she said.

He didn’t look up right away. “Hmm?”

She hesitated. Then: “I’m late.”

He froze.

Turned to her slowly. “Late for…?”

“My period.”

Silence.

She watched the knowledge sink into him, quiet and slow like ink in water. He didn’t speak. Just let it settle in his bones.

“I took a test,” she said. “Two, actually.”

Jake nodded once, then lowered himself onto the bed without a word. His hands rested on his knees. He looked like he was somewhere far away and painfully present at the same time.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet,” Y/N added softly. “I don’t even know how I feel.”

Jake didn’t look at her.

He reached for something on the nightstand. A curled photo print.

He handed it to her.

She took it slowly.

It was her.

From that night.

Her body loose and glowing, wrapped in his sheets, one leg bare, her head tilted toward the window like she was listening to a dream. Her mouth was parted. Her eyes closed. Her whole body looked like a poem caught in the middle of being written.

Y/N stared at it for a long time.

“I forgot I took it,” Jake said. “I developed the roll last night. Found this at the very end.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed.

“It’s…”

“I know,” he whispered. “It doesn’t even look real.”

She held the photo carefully between her fingers.

“I don’t know what we are,” she said, not looking at him. “But I know that night was real.”

Jake exhaled. “Me too.”

The quiet between them wasn’t heavy. It was full.

Full of what they didn’t know. Full of the pulse of something growing—inside her, maybe. Or between them.

He reached out and rested his hand gently on her thigh. She didn’t flinch.

“I’m scared,” she admitted.

“So am I.”

They looked at each other then. Not with answers. Not with promises.

Just with the strange, aching honesty of two people who had seen each other completely and were still here.

Jake took the photo from her hand and pinned it to the wall above his desk.

They sat side by side, not speaking. Outside, the sky turned gold. The studio filled with soft light.

No decisions were made.

But nothing was denied.

And maybe that was enough.

[soakedstar]

⋆｡°✩ 𓂃𓈒 𝑴𝑶𝑶𝑵 𝑾𝑰𝑵𝑫𝑶𝑾 𓈒𓂃 ✩°｡⋆ (1/2)

✦ now playing: Pale Blue Eyes – The Velvet Underground

﹕✧ synopsis:

a kiss at a party turns into something slower.

something warmer.

something that stays long after the drugs wear off

﹕✧ pairing:

jake x f!reader (1970s au)

﹕✧ warnings:

explicit content (18+), drug use (weed + acid), oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, tears during sex, mention of pregnancy

don’t do drugs kids

The party was already thick with smoke by the time Jake and Y/N stepped inside. Everything smelled like something burnt—weed, incense, cheap cologne—and the carpet felt sticky under her boots. Someone was playing The Velvet Underground on a turntable in the corner, but the sound was muffled, as if the music were happening inside someone else’s chest.

The room was dim. Amber light bulbs and string lights sagged between bookshelves and exposed beams, flickering like lazy stars. There were half-empty bottles of wine on every surface, cigarette butts floating in beer cans, and a boy with a mustache talking to a lava lamp like it had asked him something personal.

They weren’t even drunk yet, but everything already felt absurd.

Jake leaned close to Y/N’s ear, his breath warm.

“Ten bucks says this whole room smells like regret in the morning.”

She laughed—quiet, sharp—and shook her head.

“You’re the one who said it’d be fun.”

“I lied. But we’re here now.”

Someone called his name from the living room—a tall guy in bell-bottoms and an open shirt, holding a joint between his fingers like it was a cigarette in a movie.

“Jake, man, you gotta join us. Come on—circle time.”

Jake turned to Y/N and raised his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“We doing this?”

She narrowed her eyes at the guy, then at Jake.

“I don’t know. I’ve never—”

“Just sit with me,” he said, soft. “We don’t have to do anything. I just wanna laugh at people.”

She hesitated. But when Jake offered his hand, she took it.

They stepped into the living room. Seven or eight people already sat in a loose circle on the floor, laughing too loudly, cheeks flushed, eyelids half-lowered like velvet curtains. Someone had drawn flowers on the wood paneling with a black marker, and one of them looked like it was melting.

They sat down together, cross-legged on the shag rug, knees touching.

Jake still held her hand.

The joint made its way around the circle. When it got to Jake, he took a long drag and closed his eyes.

Y/N watched him.

When he opened them again, he turned to her, grinning.

“Just one hit,” he whispered. “I’ll hold your hand the whole time.”

She looked down at their joined fingers, at the way his thumb had started to stroke hers without thinking.

He passed it to her.

“Don’t overthink it,” he added. “That’s my job.”

She took it, brought it to her lips like it was a dare, and inhaled—too fast. She coughed immediately, face scrunching, and Jake burst out laughing.

“Oh my God,” he said, laughing so hard he fell back against the couch behind him.

His laugh was real. Unfiltered. The kind that made her start laughing too, even though her throat burned and her eyes watered.

Someone else laughed with them, but they didn’t notice. Not really.

Everything started to blur at the edges. The light turned warmer, the music slower, as if each note took its time to reach her. She looked around and noticed the crack on the ceiling above them looked exactly like Italy. Or maybe a seahorse. Or maybe it was nothing, and that was the funny part.

Jake touched her shoulder and whispered, “I swear the guy across from us has been blinking in Morse code for five minutes.”

She choked on a laugh.

“I can’t feel my teeth,” she said.

“That’s how you know it’s working.”

They started to giggle at nothing and everything. The way someone’s curls bounced when they nodded. The ridiculous angle of the lava lamp in the corner. The man on the couch who had fallen asleep mid-sentence with a potato chip stuck to his neck.

Jake leaned over and whispered something else, but she couldn’t hear it because her own laughter had swallowed the room whole.

Their faces were close.

He was still holding her hand.

Someone suggested ordering pizza and it was like they had announced the second coming of Christ. Everyone groaned in agreement.

Jake looked at her.

“You want?”

She nodded like a kid. “Yes. God, yes.”

He squeezed her hand.

Ten minutes later, when the pizza arrived and they ate it on the floor like it was a religious experience, everything tasted like heaven and salt and sin.

Greasy, cheesy sin.

Y/N was licking sauce from her finger when Jake looked at her again. Not the way he usually looked. Something slower. Deeper.

She blinked.

“What?”

Jake didn’t answer.

He leaned in.

It wasn’t sudden. It wasn’t loud. It was the kind of kiss that hummed through her skin before it even happened.

Their mouths brushed—tentative. Then again, firmer. Then fully.

Warm, deep, tasting of weed and cheese and everything they weren’t supposed to be.

The kind of kiss that made the carpet disappear. The party dissolve. The crack on the ceiling turn into nothing but white.

Her fingers curled into his shirt.

His hand rested against her jaw.

They didn’t stop.

But in the back of her mind—high and hazy and floating—Y/N still knew.

They weren’t supposed to be kissing.

They were just friends.

Just Jake.

Just a night.

Just a kiss that felt like falling off the edge of something they hadn’t even climbed yet.

Their lips parted slowly, like neither of them really wanted it to end.

Y/N’s eyes were still closed when the kiss stopped, and when she opened them, Jake was already looking at her. He didn’t smile—not fully—but his eyes had that dazed softness people only got when they’d just done something irreversible.

“That was…” he started, voice quiet, like the air around them might crack if he said it too loud.

“…crazy?” she offered, not even sure what word belonged there.

He shook his head slowly. “No. That was—” he took a breath, then chuckled. “That was amazing.”

Her cheeks flushed again, this time not from the weed or the laughter. “Yeah,” she said, breathless. “It really was.”

For a few seconds, they just stared at each other, forgetting about the rest of the circle, the half-eaten slices, the soft vinyl still humming in the background.

Then, without saying anything else, they turned back to their pizza. Still on the floor, still cross-legged, still leaning into each other like the world outside the shag rug had ceased to exist.

Jake took a greasy bite and moaned, overdramatic. “Okay. This pizza is also amazing.”

Y/N smiled, chewing on her crust. “Greasy. Salty. Perfect.”

But as the minutes passed and the high mellowed, a new sensation crept in—an urgent, dry thirst. Like their mouths had been replaced with desert sand.

Jake blinked hard and wiped his lips. “Is your mouth—”

“Dry as fuck,” she finished.

They looked at each other and laughed.

“Kitchen?” he said.

“God, yes.”

They got up, a little clumsy on their feet, legs stiff from sitting too long, and made their way to the kitchen. The lights in there were fluorescent and too honest. It was a shock to their eyes after the golden haze of the living room.

The counter was cluttered with mismatched mugs and someone’s half-eaten cereal from that morning. A bottle of cheap tequila sat uncapped next to a nearly empty Brita filter.

Jake opened the fridge. “You think this milk’s real?”

“Don’t even try it,” Y/N said, reaching for the sink.

They drank from glasses they hoped were clean, gulping tap water like it was liquid gold. Y/N leaned against the counter when she finished hers, exhaling loud.

And then Jake looked at her again.

Same look. Same slowness. Same quiet tension crawling back under his skin.

He set his glass down carefully. Walked toward her.

Y/N didn’t move.

When he kissed her this time, it was less hesitant. Still soft—but not unsure.

Their mouths found each other like a language they both remembered from a past life. Like they had done this before, even if they hadn’t. Like this was a secret that had just been waiting to be told.

Jake’s hands slid to her waist.

Y/N’s arms looped around his neck.

There was no couch behind them now, no circle of half-strangers to giggle with. Just the cold counter at her back and the hum of the refrigerator and their breathing, uneven and real.

They kissed like the party didn’t exist anymore. Like their names didn’t matter. Like everything they had ever been to each other was being rewritten in that moment.

And when they finally broke apart, neither said anything.

They didn’t have to.

They just looked at each other—flushed, quiet, trembling with something they didn’t know how to name—and went back to the living room. The circle had dispersed, most people either passed out on the couch or tangled on the floor like abstract art.

Jake and Y/N found a corner of the room where a bean bag and a blanket had been abandoned. They collapsed together, limbs still a little tangled, a little unsure.

Eventually, they slept.

The high wore off in the night.

The room cooled.

And when morning came, soft and gray through the cracked blinds, the world smelled like stale smoke, cold pizza, and a headache waiting to happen.

Y/N stirred first. Her mouth tasted awful. Her head ached in a distant, dull way.

She blinked and realized Jake was still there, lying on his back beside her, one arm slung over his eyes.

When he felt her move, he shifted. Opened one eye.

Then both.

They stared at each other, not saying anything for a beat too long.

Then Jake grinned—soft, tired, a little sheepish.

“Told you,” he mumbled.

She raised an eyebrow. “Told me what?”

He stretched, groaning. “The room,” he said, waving a hand vaguely in the air. “Smells like regret.”

Y/N laughed despite herself. It wasn’t bitter. It wasn’t sad. Just the laugh of someone who knew a line had been crossed but didn’t know yet what it meant.

Jake rubbed his eyes and looked at her again, more serious now.

“I don’t regret it,” he said quietly.

Y/N didn’t either. But she didn’t say it. Not yet.

She just nodded and looked up at the ceiling. The crack still looked like a seahorse.

But maybe, now, it looked a little like something else too.

The walk back to their dorms was mostly silent. Not in a bad way—just the kind of silence that hangs when everything has already been said, even if no one said it out loud. Y/N clutched her coat tighter around her body, the morning wind biting through the last traces of sleep in her bones.

Jake walked beside her, hands in his pockets, shirt unbuttoned at the top like he hadn’t really tried that hard to dress, like he didn’t need to.

“You look like you fought the night and lost,” Y/N teased, glancing at the dark curls falling over his forehead.

“I did lose,” he replied, voice gravelly. “To your lips. Tragic ending.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled.

When they parted to shower and change, there was a strange pause at her dorm room door.

“See you in class?” he asked, lingering.

“Unless you flake.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

⸻

By the time they made it into their Visual Composition and Design lecture, the room was already half-full. Wooden chairs creaked beneath bell-bottoms and corduroy. Sunlight filtered in through dusty windows, catching in someone’s afro like a halo. The professor, an aging man with a voice like gravel and a turtleneck the color of mustard, stood beside a slide projector and a giant canvas smudged with charcoal thumbnails.

Y/N slid into a seat by the window. Jake plopped down beside her, smelling faintly of peppermint soap and clove cigarettes. His damp curls stuck to his forehead, and he looked freshly awake but entirely disinterested in academia.

She leaned in. “You smell like a forest fire at a candy store.”

He grinned. “You trying to kiss me again, or insult me?”

“Can’t I do both?”

Before he could answer, the professor smacked the projector to life.

“All right, all right—shut your beautiful mouths. Today we’re talking about framing desire,” he said, clicking to the next slide, which showed a grainy photo of a woman with bare shoulders leaning out a window. “And if that doesn’t interest you, you’re probably dead.”

Jake scribbled nothing on his notebook. Y/N actually tried to take notes, underlining “desire” and “composition of longing” twice before her eyes started to drift again. The room was dim, and dust floated like ghosts in the shafts of light.

She was just getting lost in a study of the professor’s horrible sideburns when she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye.

A guy behind them—Freddie, maybe?—tapped Jake’s shoulder. Jake turned, and Freddie slid something into his hand with practiced ease. A small, flat packet wrapped in brown waxed paper. Discreet. Quick. Like something they’d practiced a dozen times.

Jake didn’t flinch.

He just tucked it under his sketchpad and turned back toward Y/N, a slow grin blooming across his lips.

She raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”

He didn’t answer. Just leaned over so close she could smell ink on his skin.

“Meet me after dinner,” he whispered.

She frowned, suspicious. “Why?”

Jake’s grin widened. “Because we’re gonna try something tonight.”

“Oh no. That tone means drugs or danger.”

He shrugged. “Why not both?”

Y/N tilted her head, studying him. “What is it?”

Jake looked down at the packet briefly, then up at her, eyes glinting. “A surprise. For your soul. Or your brain. I don’t really know which it hits harder.”

The professor clicked to another slide. A photo of a woman’s hands around a candle, light spilling through her fingers.

“Desire,” the professor drawled, “is about what you almost touch.”

Jake’s hand brushed against Y/N’s under the desk.

She looked at him.

“Almost,” he repeated softly.

She turned her face away, hiding a smile, pretending to care about the lecture.

But her mind was already racing. What had Jake just been given? What was he planning? And why did the idea of trying anything—anything at all—with him sound better than staying safe?

Outside, someone honked a horn. A record shop across the street flipped its sign to Open. A girl in the front row started sketching a nude figure with a charcoal pencil that left fingerprints on everything she touched.

And Y/N just sat there, her pen forgotten in her hand, heart ticking too loud in her ears, knowing that tonight wasn’t going to be ordinary.

It never was with Jake.

The sky outside was already bruising into purple when Jake knocked on Y/N’s dorm window instead of the door.

She opened it with a frown and a smile. “What is this? Romeo and Juliet?”

Jake was crouched on the fire escape, grinning like a criminal. “You said no more knocking like a normal person. You said, and I quote, ‘Live with flair or don’t live at all.’”

“I said that about eyeliner.”

“Same logic applies.”

She rolled her eyes and let him in. He climbed through the window, clumsy and amused, nearly knocking over a record player in the process.

Y/N closed the window behind him and crossed her arms. “So. You gonna tell me what this is, or are we just playing hide and seek with death?”

Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out the small waxed paper package. It looked innocent. Almost stupidly so.

“It’s called Moon Window,” he said.

“That sounds fake.”

“It probably is. Freddie got it from some girl at an art show in Brooklyn. She was painting with her eyes closed and said it ‘opened time sideways.’”

Y/N snorted. “So we’re trusting the blind prophetess of Bushwick now?”

Jake just smiled and unwrapped the packet. Inside were two translucent tabs, pale blue with tiny gold flecks.

“They say it’s like acid, but softer. Slower. Less chaos, more…questions.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You ever done this before?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

They stared at the tabs for a second. Then Jake held one out to her.

“Wanna fall sideways with me?”

Y/N stared at it. Then at him.

And then she took it.

The room was quiet when they took the tab—quiet in that dense, humming way that hinted at change. Jake placed the small square of waxy blue paper on his tongue like a communion wafer. Y/N followed, skeptical but curious, letting it dissolve slowly, tasting metal and mint and something like static.

“Do we… just wait now?” she asked.

Jake flopped back onto the floor and laced his fingers behind his head. “We wait and let the universe undress.”

Y/N gave him a look. “You sound like a stoned poet.”

“Give me ten minutes. I’ll sound like God.”

They both laughed, soft and nervous.

And then they waited.

⸻

The first thing that changed was the silence. It thickened. Deepened. Y/N became acutely aware of the edges of things—the border where her skin met the air, where her sweater touched her wrist, where Jake’s arm brushed hers.

The ceiling moved, not with motion, but with intention. It felt aware. The lightbulb above them began to shimmer, bending into soft prisms like it had learned how to sigh.

“Do you hear that?” she whispered.

Jake turned his head slowly toward her. “The silence? Yeah. It’s very loud.”

Her fingers tingled. The carpet beneath her started to feel like a living thing. Every thread hummed against her back. She blinked, and the room pulsed with color. Not new colors. Just…more.

“I can taste green,” she muttered.

Jake looked delighted. “That’s so specific. What does it taste like?”

“Like pine and metal. And the inside of my mouth is a cathedral.”

Jake burst out laughing, and it echoed—actually echoed, bouncing off the walls like they were in a canyon.

Y/N grinned wide. “Oh my God. This is not weed.”

“Definitely not.”

A beat passed. And then:

“Do you think aliens exist?” Jake asked, eyes wide and shining.

Y/N looked at him like he’d just whispered a secret code.

“Yes. Obviously. There’s no way we’re the only idiots in the galaxy.”

Jake nodded, serious. “What do you think they look like?”

“Not like us,” she said. “That’s narcissism. I think they look like feelings. Like smoke or colors or… I don’t know. Ideas.”

He blinked slowly. “Like if heartbreak had a face?”

“Exactly.”

Jake was quiet for a long moment, then said, “Sometimes I think we’re the aliens.”

“How?”

“I mean… We make art. We dream. We ruin everything. That doesn’t feel very native to Earth.”

Y/N sat up, eyes shining. “Maybe we were something else once. And then we forgot. Maybe that’s why we’re all sad.”

Jake looked at her, and for a moment, the drug quieted in his veins.

“You say the most beautiful things when you’re high,” he said.

She looked down at her hands. “Maybe it’s just the drug.”

He leaned closer. “Or maybe it’s just you, finally quiet enough to hear yourself.”

The air between them crackled. Not just metaphorically. There was a feeling to it—like the particles around them had started to vibrate with whatever they weren’t saying.

Y/N exhaled. “When did you first notice me?”

Jake smiled. “The grass. First day. Combat boots. Notebook. Angriest poetry I’ve ever seen.”

She grinned. “You still remember that?”

“Yup. I thought, ‘If she stabs me with that pen, I’ll die happy.’”

They both laughed. Y/N tilted her head back, hair spilling onto the rug.

“What about you?” he asked. “When’d I start haunting you?”

She hesitated. “The day I saw your photo board in the studio. All portraits. Strangers. Lovers. Freaks. It felt like… you were chasing ghosts, but gently.”

Jake swallowed hard. “I was chasing you.”

She looked at him then. Really looked. His eyes were galaxies. Not as a metaphor. That was exactly what they were—galaxies.

He touched her hand.

“I’m scared of how much I want you,” he said softly.

“I’m scared of what happens if we stop pretending we don’t.”

Another silence. Heavy, but full.

They kissed. Not once. Not out of curiosity.

They kissed like the world was about to collapse and they’d made peace with it. Lips open, breath shared. Her hand slid to the back of his neck, his fingers gripping her waist like he might float away.

It was warm and electric. Dizzying. Not hungry—urgent. Like their bodies knew something their minds weren’t ready to admit.

She pulled away first.

“Wait,” she whispered, breath catching. “If we go too far, we can’t come back.”

Jake pressed his forehead to hers. “I know.”

But his hands didn’t leave her body. They just held her there. Anchored.

⸻

Later, they lay tangled in the middle of her room, hearts still wild, but clothes still on. No regrets—just restraint.

Jake stared up at the ceiling. “Y/N?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think people are born knowing they’ll die?”

She turned to face him. “I think we’re born knowing we’ll leave. But not knowing when. Or what it’ll mean.”

“That’s worse.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe that’s why we kiss each other like it matters.”

He turned his head. “You make everything sound like poetry.”

“Maybe everything is poetry.”

Outside, the city yawned. A car honked distantly. Someone dropped a bottle somewhere down the hall.

Inside, the floor glowed faintly. The rug still felt alive. The walls pulsed like breath.

Jake traced lazy circles on her arm with his fingers.

“What if we wake up tomorrow and regret everything?”

Y/N yawned. “Then we write it down. And pretend it was a story we made up.”

He laughed sleepily. “That’s my girl.”

She smiled, eyes closing.

⸻

When Y/N woke up, it took her brain a full minute to register where she was. Her limbs felt too long, her mouth too dry, and her skin too aware of itself. The sunlight slanted through the blinds in soft gold stripes, warm against the side of her face.

She turned her head.

Jake was lying half-off the beanbag, arms sprawled, hair wild, mouth slightly open. There was a sticker of a duck stuck to his cheek, probably from her notebook. His shirt had risen halfway up his stomach, exposing a pale sliver of skin.

Y/N blinked.

And then—

She started laughing.

Not just a chuckle—a full, uncontrollable, belly-deep laugh that folded her in half and made her clutch her ribs.

Jake stirred, groaned, and opened one eye. “What—what’s so funny?”

“You,” she gasped, pointing. “You look like you just lost a fight with a tornado and a kindergarten art project.”

He rubbed his face and found the duck sticker. “Oh no. Not again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

Jake sat up slowly, groaning like a grandpa, holding the duck sticker up like evidence. “This has happened before. I don’t know why stickers always find me when I’m vulnerable.”

Y/N collapsed into another fit of giggles.

Jake watched her laugh, dazed, a grin spreading over his face like light catching fire.

“You’re beautiful when you’re delirious,” he murmured.

She rolled her eyes but blushed.

Then he stood, stretching dramatically. “Okay. We have to rejoin society before someone assumes we died and buried ourselves in shag carpet.”

Y/N yawned and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. “Do we have to?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning against the wall. “Because today—” he paused for dramatic effect, “—is Jay’s party.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s tonight?”

Jake smirked. “Oh, it’s happening. And we, my dear hallucinating poet, must attend.”

“I have class at four—”

“Jay doesn’t care about your education. He only cares that we show up and pretend to be interesting while he plays his demo tape on repeat.”

Y/N groaned. “Ugh. Do I have to dress up?”

Jake crossed the room and crouched in front of her. “No. You just have to exist near me and look like you might kiss me again.”

She smiled, pulling the blanket tighter. “Fine. I’ll kiss you if you promise not to leave me alone with that philosophy major who smells like moldy oranges.”

“Deal,” he said, offering his pinky.

She took it.

They stood there, grinning, pinkies locked, and for a second it was like the whole morning had been dipped in something golden and unspoken.

Then Jake grabbed his coat. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Try not to look like a couch again.”

“Try not to be perfect,” he shot back.

She threw a sock at him as he climbed back out the window.

Jake leaned against the hood of someone else’s car, lighting a cigarette and humming to himself. His leather jacket was wrinkled in the best way, and he smelled like soap, cologne, and faint rebellion.

When Y/N stepped outside, he straightened instinctively.

She wore a wine-red blouse tucked into dark flared jeans, and her hair was pinned half-up with something sparkly. She didn’t try too hard—she never did—but the sight of her still knocked the air out of his chest.

“You look…” he paused. “Expensive.”

She raised a brow. “Like jewelry?”

“Like a sin.”

Y/N smirked. “Are you flirting with me or recruiting me to a cult?”

Jake opened the car door for her. “Bit of both.”

They drove with the windows cracked. The late spring air was soft and smelled like lilac and street food. Someone was playing Bowie on the radio. They passed kids sitting on stoops, girls in platforms, boys with glitter on their cheekbones.

The world felt possible.

Y/N leaned her head out the window for a moment, breathing it in.

Jake glanced at her. “So… do you have any surprises for me tonight?”

She turned her head slowly, grinning. “Me? Never.”

He narrowed his eyes playfully. “Liar.”

“I’m the picture of innocence.”

“You kissed me like a hurricane last night.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I was possessed.”

Jake laughed. “Then I hope the demon comes back tonight.”

There was a pause.

Then, softer:

“Will you stay close tonight?” she asked.

He looked at her. “Always.”

Their eyes locked for a second too long, and the inside of the car suddenly felt smaller. Quieter.

He reached over and gently took her hand.

“You’re different lately,” she said.

Jake smiled without looking away. “So are you.”

And in the mirror of the windshield, just before they pulled up to Jay’s house—glowing with fairy lights and the sound of bad disco—they saw it.

The way they looked at each other now.

Like they were walking into something they weren’t ready for, but wanted anyway.

Like maybe the night wasn’t about the party.

Maybe it was about them.

The house was pulsing like a living creature.

Jay had transformed his old Victorian rental into something that felt halfway between a disco inferno and a religious hallucination. Tinfoil covered half the walls. Disco balls hung from ceiling fans and spun like time machines. There were mannequins in every corner—one of them wearing sunglasses and a feather boa, another painted entirely gold and posed mid-scream.

Jake and Y/N walked in holding hands, immediately hit with the scent of burnt cinnamon, vodka, and oil paints. The bass from the speakers was so deep it rattled in their chests like an extra heartbeat.

Someone in the hallway was giving tarot readings with playing cards. Someone else was dancing alone in a kiddie pool full of marbles. A girl with glitter dripping down her face whispered, “You’re glowing,” as Y/N passed by.

“I think she meant you,” Jake murmured.

Y/N looked down at herself. “Nope. I’m pretty sure my molecules are all over the place. I don’t think I have a face right now.”

“You have at least three.”

They dissolved into giggles just as Jay found them near the kitchen. He was shirtless, covered in body paint, and holding a rubber chicken.

“My prophets!” he declared. “You came!”

“Are we prophets or sacrifices?” Jake asked.

Jay kissed him on the forehead. “Both.”

Then he pulled out two tiny vials from his pocket, glass swirling like there were tiny galaxies trapped inside.

“Berlin acid,” he whispered. “Liquid heaven. You’ll taste sound and marry a doorknob. You in?”

Jake turned to Y/N, raising an eyebrow.

She held his gaze. “Let’s see god.”

Jay grinned and dropped the acid on their tongues. It tasted like citrus and ozone. Like licking a thunderstorm.

⸻

It hit in stages. First, the music started to feel three-dimensional. Not just sound—but pressure. Like it was crawling across their skin, sliding behind their eyes, vibrating in their teeth.

Y/N grabbed Jake’s arm. “The bass is inside me.”

“I know,” he gasped. “I think I’m made of bass now.”

They stood in the living room, where a group of strangers danced in slow motion. Everything was saturated—colors melting into each other, walls dripping in pinks and blues. A lava lamp on a pedestal seemed to be breathing.

A man with a sequined turban leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t trust the chairs. They know.”

Jake turned to Y/N. “The chairs know.”

“I never trusted them anyway.”

They moved through the crowd like explorers in a foreign galaxy. A guy in a clown mask tried to sell them a poem for a cigarette. A girl with angel wings tried to convince Y/N that she could see time folding in on itself “like laundry.”

In the bathroom line, a coat rack introduced itself as “The Fourth Son of Saturn” and asked Jake to marry him.

“Sorry, I’m emotionally unavailable,” Jake replied.

The coat rack wept silently.

Everything was alive. Every object whispered. Every color bled into a thought. Y/N looked at her hand and gasped.

“There are universes in my palm.”

Jake took it in his and kissed her knuckles. “I want to live in your palm.”

She blinked up at him. “You already do.”

⸻

Eventually, they stumbled into a small side room—the music muffled, the lighting low. Lava lamps glowed orange and green, casting shadows that moved like spirits. A string of blue fairy lights flickered along the ceiling. The carpet was shaggy and deep purple, soft like moss beneath their feet.

Y/N touched the wall. “It’s breathing.”

Jake pressed his forehead to hers. “So are we.”

Then he kissed her.

Not like before.

This kiss wasn’t about teasing or waiting—it was a crash. A collapse. Like every molecule in their bodies remembered something they hadn’t admitted sober.

She laughed against his mouth. “Are we kissing or becoming new organisms?”

“Both.”

They sank into each other, limbs tangled, hands sliding under clothes, skin buzzing. Her blouse came off. His jacket hit the floor. Their bodies moved like water, like smoke, like galaxies colliding.

Someone opened the door behind them—an older woman in a wedding dress holding a plunger. She stared at them, completely unfazed, then simply said, “Carry on,” and closed it again.

Jake pulled back, breathless. “We should leave.”

Y/N’s cheeks were flushed, eyes glassy. “Take me somewhere real.”

He kissed her one more time, wild and sweet. “I know just the place.”

The night outside hit them like a wave of fresh velvet.

The air was cool and thick with spring—jasmine, exhaust, street food. Everything shimmered. Even the sidewalk looked like it had something to say.

Jake held Y/N’s hand tight as they walked, half-sprinting, half-floating down the quiet street.

“Why does the moon look like it’s following us?” she asked, breathless.

“Because it’s obsessed with you.”

She laughed, tilting her head back. “I would be too.”

Their shadows stretched long and playful beneath the streetlights. Trees waved at them. A traffic cone told Jake he was brave. Y/N gave a high-five to a mailbox.

They passed a man playing saxophone on a stoop and stopped in their tracks.

The music wasn’t just sound—it was shape. It curled through the air like smoke and wrapped around them like silk. Y/N gasped.

“It’s purple,” she whispered. “The music is purple.”

Jake nodded, eyes wide. “And slow. Like it’s trying to seduce us.”

They stood there, holding each other like they’d been dropped into a movie with no script. The saxophonist winked at them and never missed a note.

When the music faded behind them, Jake led her through side streets and alleys until they reached the crooked brick building he called home. It looked taller than usual. Like a tower in a fairy tale.

They climbed the stairs laughing and breathless. Every step echoed like a drum. Every creak was part of a symphony.

“Are we in your building,” Y/N asked, “or climbing to another dimension?”

“Same thing,” Jake muttered, fumbling with the key.

It was warm. Safe. Dim.

A single floor lamp cast golden light across the room. His photos lined the walls—portraits of strangers, lovers, ghostly faces caught in time. A stack of vinyls sat in the corner. There was a faint smell of coffee and cedar.

Y/N stepped in, barefoot now, toes sinking into a woven rug. She turned in place, arms open, spinning slowly.

“It’s beautiful in here,” she whispered.

Jake watched her from the door, smiling like she was the last miracle left on earth.

“I tried to make it feel like a dream,” he said.

Y/N turned to face him.

Her eyes glowed.

“You did.”

Jake’s room felt like a shelter from the noise they hadn’t realized was crushing them. The light was warm and low, and there was something sacred in the quiet. You could hear the creak of the floor when they moved. The soft hum of the heater. Their breathing.

Y/N stood by the window, tracing her fingers along the edge of a photo print tacked to the wall—two anonymous lovers caught in a kiss, blurred and raw.

Jake stepped behind her. Close, but not touching.

“I took that one before I met you,” he said softly.

She turned. “Would you still take it now?”

Jake tilted his head. “No. I’d keep it for myself.”

She smiled, and it was slow—like the tide pulling back before it crashes forward.

He stepped closer. She didn’t move.

His fingers brushed hers.

Then her wrist.

Then her jaw.

It was so quiet, the sound of his fingertips against her skin was loud.

Y/N leaned in first.

The kiss was different now. Deeper. Not high and reckless like before. This one was aware. Gentle, but full of need. Their hands moved slowly—like they were trying to memorize each other, piece by piece.

He kissed her neck. She exhaled against his collarbone.

He whispered her name.

She nodded.

Jake took her hand and guided her gently toward the bed, like it was something holy.

They sat down together.

He looked at her for a long time.

“Are you sure?” he asked, voice low.

Y/N nodded, pulling him closer. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

The bed was soft beneath them, like it had turned into moss, or clouds, or maybe the inside of a thought. Everything felt like it was breathing—Jake’s room, the light, her skin under his hands.

Y/N laid back slowly, watching how the ceiling spun in slow spirals above her. The shadows on the wall pulsed like a heartbeat. Her own body didn’t feel entirely hers—it felt borrowed, stretched out, made of stars and heat.

Jake hovered over her, his eyes darker than usual, but softer too. Like he was afraid if he blinked, she might disappear into light.

“I can’t tell where I end and you start,” he whispered, his voice trembling with the trip, with emotion, with hunger.

She reached up, tracing his jaw with her thumb.

“That’s the point,” she said.

He kissed her again—deeper this time. Slow. Like sinking. Like drowning in color.

Every touch left a trail. Not metaphorically—visibly. When he ran his hand along her ribs, she saw pink streaks blooming across her skin like light trails on film. Her breath caught.

“Do you see that?” she whispered.

Jake nodded, dazed. “You’re glowing.”

“So are you.”

They both laughed—high, breathless, a little overwhelmed. But it wasn’t scary. It felt sacred.

He pressed his forehead to hers. Their bodies were warm and close, tangled in sheets and kisses and half-finished sentences.

The more clothes disappeared, the more they weren’t just touching—they were colliding.

Every sound was louder. Every sigh felt like thunder. Her skin buzzed where his hands moved, like he was waking up pieces of her that had been asleep for years.

And somewhere between his mouth on her neck and her fingers gripping his shoulder, the rest of the world—Jay’s party, the streetlights, the saxophone, the rubber chicken—slipped away.

There was only this.

Only now.

Only them.

High as stars.

And falling into each other like gravity had chosen them on purpose.

The air was heavy with heat and music neither of them remembered turning on. It throbbed low in the background—just bass and static—but it filled the space between them like a heartbeat.

Jake looked at her like she was glowing. And maybe she was. Maybe it was the acid, or the way her skin flushed under the dim light, or the way she smiled—slow, open, like she trusted him completely.

His hand moved to her hip, warm and firm, grounding her in a body that suddenly felt too sensitive, too electric. Every inch of skin was awake. Her breath hitched as he leaned in, not to rush, just to feel. His lips brushed her collarbone, and she felt it everywhere—like it sank into her chest, her stomach, down between her legs.

He kissed her mouth, then her neck, then lower—slowly, almost reverently. Her breasts. Her belly. His mouth lingered, not just to tease, but because every inch of her mattered to him in that moment. He was taking her in like a landscape, like a place he’d waited years to finally touch.

She reached for him without thinking, fingers curling in his hair, her chest rising and falling too fast. It felt like falling and flying at the same time.

Then he hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties and looked up at her, asking without speaking. She nodded, breathless.

When he slid them down, she shivered—not from cold, but from the way the air felt different against her bare skin. Everything was so heightened it was almost overwhelming. Her thighs trembled as he moved between them.

And then his mouth was on her.

She gasped, loud, the sound surprising even herself. His tongue moved with slow confidence, as if he wanted to learn her by taste. It wasn’t rushed or rough—it was attentive. Focused. His hands gripped her thighs gently, keeping her open, present.

Every flick, every suck, every breath against her skin built pressure until it was unbearable. Her moans came out raw, unfiltered. His name slipped from her lips again and again, like she was clinging to it for sanity.

When she was just about to break, he stopped.

She opened her eyes, dazed, confused—but before she could speak, he was kissing her. Deep. Hungry. She tasted herself on him, and somehow that turned her on even more. She pulled him closer, needing him everywhere.

And then, he was inside her.

She gasped again, this time softer. The stretch, the fullness—it felt too good. Her body adjusted around him slowly, and he didn’t rush. His forehead pressed to hers, both of them breathing hard, skin slick, muscles trembling.

He moved like he didn’t want to hurt her. Like she was delicate, and he needed to memorize how she felt.

Every thrust was deep, slow, meaningful. Her nails dug into his back. His hand cupped her cheek. They kissed between breaths. The tension rose again, but this time it built slowly, like a storm behind glass.

Tears slipped down her cheeks not from sadness, not even just from pleasure, but from everything. The intensity. The way he held her. The way her body felt like it wasn’t just hers anymore, but theirs.

He noticed. He kissed them away.

“You okay?” he whispered against her jaw.

She nodded. “Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. And when she came, it wasn’t quiet, it was messy, gasping, everything inside her clenching hard around him as she broke apart beneath him.

He followed not long after, with a low, shaking groan as he pushed in deep and stayed there, still, lost in the way she felt. His body trembled against hers.

They stayed like that, skin pressed together, breath syncing slowly, eyes half-closed.

There was no rush. No pressure.

Only warmth.

Only them.

The silence after felt holy.

Jake was still inside her, forehead resting against hers, both of them trembling, breath slowly finding rhythm again. Her skin was flushed and damp, her lashes clumped with tears, and his fingers still held her like he might vanish if he let go.

Outside, the city continued—cars in the distance, wind in the trees—but it all sounded muffled. Like underwater. Like they were sealed in amber.

Here part 2

[soakedstar]

✧･ﾟ: * MASTERLIST * :･ﾟ✧

↳ Enhypen oneshots

(last updated: June 2025)

──────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────────

1. Where the Hyacinths Grow

in a village south of Sparta, y/n lives between old superstitions. she never expected to fall in love with a boy who seemed carved from sunlight—gentle, wild, and not quite human.

↳ “you don’t get to love someone and then destroy them.”

2. Something Worth Filming — part 1

film majors meet in a back alley. cigarettes, film reels, and slow glances follow.

↳ “do you ever wonder if we’re all just trying to look deep so someone will fall in love with us?”

3. Something Worth Filming — part 2

the film is rolling. and they aren’t acting.

↳ “you’re mine, okay?” — “that supposed to scare me?”

4. MOON WINDOW — part 1

the party blurs. the joint passes. the kiss happens.

and suddenly, they’re not just friends anymore.

↳ “i can’t feel my teeth.” — “that’s how you know it’s working.”

5. MOON WINDOW — part 2

the acid hits. the photo’s taken.

↳ “you’re glowing.” — “so are you.”

6. ALIEN DOG THEORY — part 1

the rooftop’s quiet. the telescope’s ready.

she draws herself like a stranger.

he talks like he’s running out of time.

and something clicks.

↳ “it’s me.” — “that’s actually kind of brilliant.”

7. ALIEN DOG THEORY — part 2

the soup stays full. the crow watches.

she sketches him without asking.

he says all the wrong things, and means them.

↳ “you don’t have to love yourself right now.” — “i’ve got enough love for both of us.”

8. HAMARTIA

he wasn’t supposed to fall for her.

but then she let him touch her chest and said, “feel that? that’s what keeps us going.”

he never stopped falling after that.

↳ “i didn’t know i could feel this much.”

9. EVERYTHING THAT STAYED

she said it was art.

he never said anything again.

his silence filled the frame.

her gallery never asked for consent.

↳ “i didn’t stop him. not even once.”

──────────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────────────

more coming soon…

[soakedstar]

✹・ﾟ✧ “SOMETHING WORTH FILMING” ✧・ﾟ✹ (2/2)

(film student au — jake x f!reader)

please read part 1 first, this won’t make sense otherwise!

Jake shifted the camera up to her eyes.

That’s when she finally turned her head and looked at him.

She didn’t blink.

“You good?” she asked, voice low, amused.

“I’m not sure.”

He lowered the camera slightly.

“I don’t want to mess this up.”

She tilted her head. Her hair slipped off her shoulder.

“You think this is something you can mess up?”

Jake looked at her, then at the footage still recording.

“I think I’m not supposed to want to keep filming.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think I’d stop.”

She said nothing.

The silence sat heavy, but not uncomfortable.

Then she spoke.

“Are you trying to get me to say it?”

“Say what?”

“That this isn’t just for class.”

Jake exhaled slowly.

“No. I think you already know.”

She put out the cigarette on the metal edge of the window frame. Let the ember hiss out.

“You think people are more honest when they’re being watched?”

“I think people want to be seen.”

She stepped forward, slow and even, until she was close enough to touch the lens. Her reflection blurred in the glass.

“And if I let you see me?”

He didn’t answer right away.

Then he clicked the camera off. Set it down on the windowsill.

“I’d want to film more than this.”

“Define ‘more’.”

Jake looked at her. Not smiling.

“I think you already know that too.”

They didn’t walk back with the others.

Jake picked up the camera again but didn’t press record. Y/N walked ahead of him, hands in her pockets, silent like she was keeping something from leaking out.

The sun had dipped by the time they left the building. The shadows were longer, the sky lower. Everything felt slower now. Like whatever they’d done in that hallway had stretched the day open.

He followed her halfway across campus without asking where she was going. She didn’t say anything. He didn’t push.

When she stopped, it was at the edge of a small courtyard near the back of the dorms. The kind of place that only filled up on weekends. Now it was empty. Just pavement, a bench, and the rustling of a cheap flag tangled in the fence.

She turned around.

“You doing anything tonight?”

Jake shook his head.

“Why?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Her hands were still buried deep in the pockets of her jacket.

Then she looked at him, steady.

“Come over.”

He blinked.

She held the gaze.

“Bring your camera.”

Jake didn’t move. Didn’t smirk. Didn’t joke.

Just nodded.

“Okay.”

She turned away, already walking.

“Text me when you’re close. I’ll buzz you in.”

Jake stood there for a second, letting the air settle.

She didn’t look back.

But she didn’t have to.

The hallway was quiet when Jake pressed the buzzer.

He held the camera case in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He didn’t smoke it. He just liked how it grounded him when his heart wouldn’t slow down.

The speaker clicked. Her voice came through, slightly distorted.

“It’s open.”

He stepped inside. Climbed the stairs. Two at a time, slow but deliberate.

She was waiting by the door in socks and a grey tank top, her hair pulled up, no makeup. No performance. Just Y/N. Realer than anything he’d seen all week.

She opened the door wider, stepped back.

“You brought it?”

Jake lifted the camera case.

She nodded once and turned away.

The room was small. One bed. A desk covered in notebooks and wires. A half-empty ashtray on the windowsill. No posters. No mirrors.

Only light from a desk lamp, and the city buzzing softly outside the glass.

Jake stepped in and closed the door behind him.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Crossed one leg over the other. Watched him.

He didn’t say anything.

He put the camera down on the desk, then leaned against it, facing her.

“So,” he said.

Y/N blinked.

“So,” she echoed.

Jake looked at her. Really looked.

“I don’t want to film you like for class.”

“I figured.”

“I don’t mean just… pictures.”

“I know.”

Silence stretched again, but this time it was electric.

“I want to film something real,” he said. “Something raw. Something that shouldn’t be filmed.”

Y/N tilted her head.

“Define ‘shouldn’t.’”

Jake licked his lips. Ran a hand through his hair.

“Not staged. Not aesthetic. Something that people wouldn’t admit to watching, but they wouldn’t look away from either.”

Her eyes didn’t leave his.

“You mean sex.”

Jake nodded once.

“Yeah. But not porn. Not for anyone else.”

“For what, then?”

“For us.”

She didn’t respond right away.

He kept going.

“I’m not saying we have to. I’m not even saying you should say yes. But if I’m being honest… I think about it. Filming you. The way you breathe when you’re not thinking. The way you look when you’re just existing.”

She leaned back slightly. Exhaled.

“And you think a camera can hold that?”

“I think it’s the only thing that can.”

They stayed like that. A foot apart. No contact. No begging. Just two people sitting in the same silence, asking the same question in different languages.

Then Y/N said:

“If we do this…”

Jake held still.

“…there’s no cutting.”

He blinked. “What?”

“No edits. No reshoots. No pretending. You film. I move. That’s it.”

He nodded slowly.

“And if we stop?”

“Then we stop. You keep the tape. Or you burn it. I don’t care.”

Jake stepped closer. Just one pace.

“And if it changes everything?”

She looked up at him. Calm.

“Then it changes everything.”

Jake didn’t smile.

He just opened the case. Pulled the camera out.

She watched him with the same expression she always had: unreadable, curious, slightly dangerous.

“You want me to start?” he asked.

She stood.

“Yeah,” she said, “Start now.”

Jake adjusted the camera so he could see all of the bed. Y/n in the middle, smirking.

She pulled her shirt off—not sensually, but with a kind of urgency. Desperation, maybe.

Then she unbuttoned her jeans and slowly dragged them down her legs.

Jake swallowed hard, struggling to contain himself. His breathing was already heavier, chest rising and falling as he watched her fingers reach behind her back to unclasp her bra.

It slipped to the floor without ceremony. She laid back, her body stretching across the bed, and slowly opened her legs.

Her fingers rose to her mouth. She licked them—slow, deliberate—before slipping them beneath the waistband of her panties.

By now, Jake was painfully hard.

There was no going back. Not with her lying there, moaning his name, her fingers deep inside herself.

Then, she slid off her panties, letting them fall to the floor, exposing everything to the camera.

That was it. The last string holding his restraint snapped.

Without warning, Jake moved. He pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the tattoos sprawled across his arms and the sharp definition of his abs.

He reached for her hand and, without a word, guided it to the bulge straining against his pants.

He let out a quiet gasp as she touched him, and didn’t stop her when she began undoing his belt, his jeans, and finally pulled off his boxers.

She sank to her knees, looking up at him with wide, wanting eyes, and then took him into her mouth.

Jake groaned, threading his fingers through her hair and pushing her deeper, making her gag just enough to satisfy the ache building in him.

Before he could finish, he pulled her up by the arms and threw her onto the bed.

“I’m going in without a condom,” he growled. He wasn’t asking. She didn’t say yes. But she didn’t stop him either. Her legs pulled him closer, and that was all the permission he needed.

When he finally entered her, both of them moaned.

He could feel every twitch, every movement, every drop of her arousal.

His pace was brutal. Unforgiving. He thrust like he was starving for her.

Y/N saw stars—back arched, moans spilling from her lips as he attacked her collarbones with kisses and bites, leaving behind red, possessive marks.

“You’re mine, okay?”

She whispered his name like a mantra, over and over—until she screamed, feeling his release, hot and deep inside her.

Jake didn’t stop.

He grabbed her legs, spread them wide, and looked straight into the camera—showing off the beautiful mess he’d made.

They didn’t move right away.

The air in the room was thick with warmth, sweat, and the ghost of everything they hadn’t said. The camera was still recording. The red light blinked in the corner like it was holding its breath for them.

Jake lay on his side, propped on one elbow, eyes tracing the edge of her face like he didn’t trust it to stay the same if he blinked.

Y/N stared at the ceiling, chest rising and falling, her lips slightly parted. She didn’t look wrecked. She looked awake.

It wasn’t the kind of silence that asked for noise. It was full. Heavy. Like they were still inside it, like it hadn’t ended yet.

She turned to him.

“Your arms,” she said softly.

He blinked.

“What about them?”

“You never show them. Not really.”

Jake looked down at himself, at the fading outlines of black ink stretching across his skin. Most of it had been hidden under sleeves, camera straps, shadows. Only pieces had ever shown.

“You’re always hiding them,” she added. “Why?”

Jake didn’t answer immediately. He sat up slowly, letting the sheet fall around his waist. His hands flexed in his lap, unsure.

“I got them during a time I don’t talk about,” he said finally.

She looked at him.

He didn’t look away.

“Some of them are from pain,” he said. “Some from memory. Some from nothing. They all say things I didn’t know how to say out loud.”

Y/N reached out, her fingers brushing the inside of his forearm. He didn’t flinch. She traced the edge of a line that disappeared behind his elbow, then another that wrapped near his wrist like a wave or a crack.

“Can I see them?”

Jake nodded.

He shifted closer, let her pull his arm into the light. Slowly, without rushing, she examined the marks. Her touch was light, reverent, like she was reading them in Braille.

He watched her. Her focus. The crease between her brows. The way she didn’t ask what they meant. She didn’t need to.

“You carry a lot,” she said.

“So do you.”

She looked up at him.

Their eyes met, and stayed.

The air between them narrowed. Thinned. Like the only way out was forward.

Jake leaned in first.

She met him halfway.

The kiss wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t desperate. It was full.

He kissed her like he had waited all night. Like he didn’t know if he was allowed, but did it anyway.

She kissed him back like she had been waiting to be asked.

His hand found the side of her face, fingers slipping into her hair. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him closer, anchoring herself to something she hadn’t realized she’d needed.

They didn’t pull away quickly.

When they finally did, it was only to breathe.

Jake rested his forehead against hers.

“I didn’t think it would feel like this,” he whispered.

“Like what?”

“Like I want to stay.”

Y/N pulled back just enough to look at him.

“Then don’t go.”

He froze.

But only for a second.

Then he nodded, barely, and let himself fall back down beside her.

They didn’t speak again.

He pulled her in. Her head found the space between his shoulder and his throat like it had always belonged there. Her arm slid across his chest. Their legs tangled slowly, naturally.

The camera still blinked in the corner.

But they had already stopped performing.

Two days later, they watched it.

Jake had exported the footage in black and white, cropped nothing, muted nothing. The camera had stayed still the whole time, like it knew better than to interrupt.

They sat side by side on her bed, the laptop open between them, legs brushing occasionally. The room was dark except for the screen glow.

Y/N watched herself in silence. Watched him. Watched the way her hands moved, the way her body responded, the way she looked at him without even realizing.

Jake didn’t say anything. Not during the moment where he touched her face, not during the kiss, not even when the sound of her voice saying his name broke the quiet.

Then came the part where he grabbed her thighs, pressed his forehead to hers, and whispered, “You’re mine.”

He hadn’t looked at the camera. He had looked at her.

Y/N’s eyes didn’t leave the screen.

She spoke softly, almost curious.

“So… I’m yours?”

Jake looked at her. Not smiling.

“Yeah.”

She turned to face him.

“That supposed to scare me?”

He shrugged.

“It’s not a threat.”

She leaned in, kissed him slowly, without urgency.

“Good,” she said. “Because I think you’re mine too.”

He didn’t argue.

When the video ended, there was a pause.

Jake closed the laptop softly, as if not to startle whatever this was between them.

“You gonna say something?” he asked.

Y/N blinked, then smirked.

“My hair looks awful.”

Jake laughed.

“You’re insane.”

“I’m honest.”

He leaned back against the headboard. She leaned against him, head resting just under his collarbone.

They stayed like that for a while, quiet.

Then Y/N pulled out her phone, opened her messages, and typed without hesitation.

Jake glanced over her shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

She smiled.

“Texting Mira.”

His eyes widened.

“No. You’re not—”

“You think she won’t want to see it?”

“Y/N.”

She looked at him, calm and sure.

“It’s art.”

He stared at her. Half horrified, half amazed.

And she started laughing.

Not a small laugh. A full one. Bright, real, breaking through everything.

Jake shook his head, but he was smiling too.

“You’re gonna get me expelled.”

“Then film it.”

He groaned and pulled a pillow over his face.

She curled into him, still laughing.

And the camera, for once, wasn’t rolling.

[soakedstar]

✹・ﾟ✧ “SOMETHING WORTH FILMING” ✧・ﾟ✹ (1/2)

(film student au — jake x f!reader)

✧ ﾟ・synopsis:

he wants to film her.

not because she’s beautiful, but because she moves like no one’s watching,

and he can’t stop watching.

when she says bring your camera,

they both know it’s not just for the assignment.

✿ a slow, smoky one-shot about art, intimacy, and the thrill of being seen

✧ ﾟ・pairing:

jake x f!reader

✧ ﾟ・warnings

explicit content (18+), porn with plot, cigarettes/smoking, voyeuristic tension, filmed sex, strong language, unprotected sex, possessiveness

✧ ﾟ・word count (total): +7.5k

The party was too loud for how early it still was. Someone had already knocked over a bottle of soju, and the seniors were pressuring everyone to play drinking games even though no one really knew each other yet.

Y/N slipped out without saying anything. The restaurant’s back alley was narrow and ugly, the kind of space only smokers appreciated. A line of flickering fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and there was a cracked mirror on the wall, stained with old gum and heat damage.

She lit a cigarette she didn’t even want and leaned against the wall. Her jacket smelled like cheap fabric softener and garlic marinade.

Behind her, the restaurant door opened again. Heavy footstep. Then another.

A boy stepped out. Black slacks, oversized denim jacket, piercings climbing his left ear like constellations. He had a lighter already in his hand. When he turned his head, his profile caught the glow of the buzzing light.

He didn’t say anything at first. Just leaned on the opposite wall and lit his cigarette with a small silver lighter that looked too pretty to be his.

“You’re not a first-timer,” Y/N said after a while.

He looked at her. Smirked.

“I came last year. Dropped out. Came back.”

“What changed?”

“Nothing. I just got bored of leaving.”

She took a drag. Coughing a little.

“First time?” he asked.

“Second,” she said. “First one was a dare.”

He laughed softly, the kind of laugh people try to hold in but can’t.

“What do you study?” he asked.

“Film.”

“Me too.”

He stepped closer now, but not in a weird way. Just enough to share the glow of the lighter as he held it out again. She noticed the tattoo on his hand — a tiny line drawing of a reel of film, broken in half and stitched back together with thread. The ink was soft and slightly faded, like he hadn’t gotten it to be seen.

“You have more?” she asked, nodding to the tattoo.

“Yeah,” he said, blowing smoke. “But I don’t show them all on the first date.”

“This is a date?”

“Depends. You gonna kiss me after this?”

She laughed.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

They smoked in silence again. The music from inside spilled through the thin walls. bass-heavy, laughter, clinking glasses. Neither of them moved to go back in.

He tapped his ash on the concrete.

“I hate how fake these things are,” he said. “Everyone talking about which directors they like just to seem cool. Half of them haven’t even finished a full script.”

“And you have?”

“No,” he said. “But at least I’m honest about it.”

Y/N nodded.

“Do you ever wonder if we’re all just trying to look deep so someone will fall in love with us?”

He blinked. Then smiled.

“Constantly.”

He flicked ash off the edge of his cigarette and looked at her again.

Not for long. Just enough.

His eyes weren’t sharp or soft, just still. Like he was trying to see what she wasn’t saying. The music behind them pulsed through the walls, but it didn’t touch the alley.

He passed a hand through his hair, slow and absent, like it was something his body did without asking. The strands shifted out of place, stayed up a little, and he didn’t fix them.

He didn’t look like he wanted to talk.

He looked like he wanted to stay quiet next to someone who didn’t fill the silence.

He smiled at her, small and crooked, not because something was funny but because something was settling. He didn’t force it. It was barely there. But it was real.

She didn’t smile back. Not because she didn’t want to. Just… not yet.

He looked away first.

They smoked without speaking for a while. The night wasn’t cold, but she felt like it should be. She wasn’t sure if she liked the cigarette or just the space it gave her.

Then he said, casually, “I didn’t think anyone else would sneak out.”

“I’m not sneaking,” she said. “I’m escaping.”

He laughed, low and short, like he wasn’t used to doing it out loud.

He offered her the lighter again, even though she already had one. She took it anyway.

Neither of them asked for names.

She didn’t remember when she got home.

But when she closed her eyes that night, she could still see the way he looked at her. Still feel the way he smiled not wide, not practiced. Just real.

The cigarette had left a bitter taste in her throat, but for some reason, she already wanted another one.

He hadn’t touched her.

Had barely spoken.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about his hands.

—————-

The room smelled like metal and cold plastic. Not in a dramatic way, ust in that university-basement, too-many-cords kind of way. The walls were white but marked, as if never cleaned up properly.

Y/N sat near the window. She liked the corner. No one looked at you there unless they meant to.

Students filtered in slowly. Some talked in bursts of energy: new majors, new crushes, new nerves. Others sat down in silence, headphones still in, notebooks unopened.

She didn’t care about any of them.

Until he walked in.

Not loudly. Not late.

Just enough to shift the room without trying.

She saw him out of the corner of her eye. That same boy. Same earrings. Same posture, like he was leaning into the moment, but only halfway.

He noticed her before she could look away.

Their eyes met for a second too long. Not awkward, not intense, just aware.

He smiled.

And it wasn’t wide or flirty or performative. It was barely there. But it landed somewhere soft in her.

He didn’t come to her table. Just sat two seats over, turned slightly sideways, tapping something on his phone without looking at the screen.

The professor began.

First-day speech. Class expectations. Group projects. Gear they’d never touched before. No one really listened.

Y/N’s pen scratched across the margin of her notebook without purpose.

Then the professor said, “You’ll start today by partnering up. Talk to someone new. Ask them what they love about film. And if they don’t have an answer even better.”

The room stirred. People moved.

She didn’t.

He did.

She felt him shift before he spoke.

“You staying in that corner forever?,” he asked, low. Not teasing. Not shy.

She turned, finally looking at him. Close now. Too close for detachment.

“You planning to ask,” she said, “or just sit there throwing lines at me?”

He passed a hand through his hair. Not slick. Not dramatic. Just a nervous habit, the kind she would come to recognize later.

Then he smiled again, a little fuller this time. Not because she said something funny. But because she hadn’t looked away.

“Wanna work together?” he asked.

She thought for half a second.

“I don’t do well with people who quote Kubrick.”

“I hate Kubrick.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You’re lying.”

“I might be,” he said. “But I think we’d film something better.”

She closed her notebook.

“Fine.”

They were paired up before they even exchanged names.

They sat near the window while the rest of the class fumbled through small talk. The professor gave them twenty minutes to “find alignment” — whatever that meant — and a checklist of questions to ask.

Jake didn’t look at the sheet.

He leaned back in his chair, balancing it just enough to make her nervous.

“What kind of films do you actually like?” he asked.

Y/N took her time before answering.

“I don’t like genre stuff,” she said. “No action. No fantasy. No quirky coming-of-age montages.”

Jake smirked.

“So… you hate everything?”

“No,” she said. “I just like things that feel like they weren’t made to entertain.”

He looked at her. Not sarcastic. Not mocking.

“Give me one.”

She hesitated, then said, “La Ciénaga.”

Jake blinked. “You’re into Martel?”

“I’m into silence. And discomfort. And things that don’t explain themselves.”

He tilted his head.

“Okay,” he said slowly, “but are you watching that on a Wednesday night, or are you just saying that for clout?”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled, just barely.

Jake smiled too.

“Fair,” he added. “I like stuff that’s raw, but still… unhinged.”

“Unhinged how?”

“I don’t know. Like, I don’t care if it’s beautiful. I just want it to feel dangerous. Like the camera wasn’t supposed to be there.”

She nodded once. That, she could understand.

“Have you made anything yet?” he asked.

“Just one short. It was terrible. All shadows and no story.”

“That sounds better than story and no shadows.”

She turned to face him a little more.

He was playing with the cap of his pen. Back and forth. Over and over. Another habit.

“What about you?” she asked. “What would you make if you didn’t care what anyone thought?”

Jake stopped moving for a second.

Then: “Something no one would admit to watching. But everyone would.”

————

Later that afternoon, she had another class, something called “Visual Approaches to Sculpture.” She wasn’t even sure why she was in it. One of those electives you get assigned when registration crashes and you’re too tired to fight it.

The classroom smelled like clay. Real clay. Not store-bought pastel shit, the kind you dig up and beat into submission.

She sat near the back.

The girl who sat beside her didn’t speak at first. Just pulled out a sketchbook and opened it to a page filled with mess. Lines, scratches, figures half-formed.

Her hands were covered in pencil dust. She wore a loose shirt with a stain on the collar and three earrings in one ear, none in the other.

After ten minutes, she turned to Y/N and said,

“You look like you overthink everything you say. That’s probably why I like your face.”

Y/N blinked.

“I—what?”

The girl smiled, wide and sun-warmed.

“I’m Mira,” she said. “I make angry women out of stone. What do you do?”

“I… I study film.”

Mira grinned.

“Of course you do.”

Y/N didn’t ask what that meant.

She didn’t need to.

After class, most people left quickly. The kind of students who already had somewhere better to be. Y/N stayed behind to gather her things, her hands still cold from holding a pencil she hadn’t used.

Mira didn’t leave either.

She was sitting on the floor now, legs crossed, flipping through her sketchbook like she’d forgotten other people existed.

Y/N walked past her, almost.

“You ever film something ugly on purpose?” Mira asked suddenly.

Y/N stopped. “What?”

Mira didn’t look up.

“Not dramatic-ugly. Just… raw. Like sweat and silence and people chewing too loudly.”

Y/N slowly sat on the edge of a low stool nearby.

“I tried,” she said. “But I always end up cutting it out.”

Mira nodded, still flipping.

“That’s the problem with most filmmakers. They want to make people feel something but only the pretty parts.”

Y/N watched her. Mira’s hands were strong. Her fingers stained with charcoal. There was a cut on one knuckle that looked recent, like her art fought back sometimes.

“You don’t like film?” Y/N asked.

“I do,” Mira said. “But I like when it feels like sculpture. Messy. Physical. Like it was made with skin instead of lenses.”

Y/N felt her chest tighten — not in fear, but in recognition. Like someone had said something she had been trying to name for years.

“I hate how clean everything is,” Y/N said. “I want to make things that feel like bruises.”

That made Mira look up.

Her eyes were dark but soft. Her smile didn’t come fast, but it came fully.

“You’re not what you look like,” she said.

Y/N tilted her head. “What do I look like?”

Mira shrugged.

“Like you’re afraid to be loud.”

Y/N said nothing.

Mira stood, stretched, and slung her bag over one shoulder.

“I like that you didn’t ask to be friends. That makes me trust you more.”

And with that, she left.

Y/N sat still for a long time.

Then she smiled and left too.

————

After sculpture class, Y/N didn’t go back to the dorms.

She left campus through the back gate, past the orange recycling bins and the patch of gravel where students sometimes smoked between lectures. The sky was still pale, the air humid enough to cling to her skin.

She walked ten minutes downhill. Past the fried chicken place, past the stationery shop, past the tiny park with the one crooked bench. Her legs already knew the way.

The café was tucked between a nail salon and a laundromat. No sign, just a faded sticker on the glass door that said Hot Americano, ₩2,000.

She stepped inside and exhaled for the first time in hours.

There were three tables, none occupied. A kid was asleep in the corner with his head on a textbook. Someone had left a half-finished matcha latte next to the register.

Y/N tied on her apron.

The owner, Mrs. Jang, didn’t speak much. She nodded from behind the counter and pointed at the milk delivery by the fridge.

Y/N got to work. No music, no rush. She liked it that way.

Around five, when the sun started slipping behind the buildings, she sat at the bar by the window and opened her laptop.

No Wi-Fi, no distractions.

She didn’t write screenplays. Not exactly. Not with structure or act breaks or character arcs.

She wrote pieces. Moments.

Things she saw and couldn’t forget.

Things she felt and didn’t know how to name.

A woman holding her breath at the ATM.

A boy tearing open a spam can with his teeth.

A phone call that ended before anyone spoke.

They weren’t dramatic. Just honest.

Sometimes she wrote them in Korean. Sometimes in Spanish. Most of the time, they came out in English; not because it felt more natural, but because it felt less exposed.

She didn’t show them to anyone. She wasn’t sure they were meant to be seen.

At seven, two customers came in. She took their orders, wiped down the tables, restocked the straws. One of them asked where she was from. She said “I’m studying here,” and left it at that.

No one really wanted to know the full answer anyway.

By the time her shift ended, the laptop was still open. Her fingers stained with coffee grounds, her back sore from standing. But one more line had been written.

She closed the screen, tucked the pages into her bag, and headed out into the dark.

————

The second week of classes, the sculpture studio started to smell different less like clay, more like sweat and steel tools. They’d moved from sketching to shaping, and the room had shifted with it. More noise. More weight.

Y/N arrived early.

She didn’t talk to anyone but Mira, and even eso wasn’t planned. Mira just always sat beside her. Tossed her bag under the same table. Took up space like she was born to claim it.

That day, Mira wore a tank top stained with something dark and crusted. Her hair was in a low, frizzy bun. She dropped her tools hard onto the workbench and sighed dramatically.

“I’m either making a goddess or a tumor,” she said.

Y/N let out a breath that almost counted as a laugh.

She placed her own block of clay in front of her. Unshaped. Cold. She hadn’t touched it since last class.

Mira glanced sideways.

“Are you afraid of it?”

“No,” Y/N said.

“Then why does it look like it’s winning?”

Y/N rolled her eyes and dug her fingers into the surface, not hard, just enough to mark it. It pushed back, slow and dense.

Class moved. The professor went around, murmuring feedback. Mira sculpted fast, rough, like she was angry at the shape for not revealing itself sooner.

At some point, Y/N pulled out her notebook from her bag — not to write, just to feel something familiar.

She placed it on her lap, half-open, while Mira worked.

And then she got up to wash her hands.

She didn’t notice Mira’s eyes shift the moment she stood.

Didn’t see her fingers reach out.

Didn’t see her turn the page.

When she came back, Mira was still working. Still chipping away at the curve of a shoulder she’d been shaping since the beginning.

But something had shifted.

Y/N sat down. Glanced at her lap.

The notebook was turned to a different page.

Her stomach tightened.

She looked at Mira, whose hands were moving faster now.

“You read it,” Y/N said flatly.

Mira didn’t stop carving.

“Just one,” she said. “The one with the woman and the receipt and the ice cream melting.”

Y/N didn’t speak.

“It made my throat hurt,” Mira added.

Y/N swallowed.

“You weren’t supposed to—”

“I know.”

There was silence for a moment. The kind that could go either way.

Mira looked at her finally, her eyes direct but soft.

“You write like you’re watching people through a window. But you care if they’re warm.”

Y/N didn’t know what to say to that. It wasn’t praise. It wasn’t critique. It just… was.

Mira wiped her hands on her apron and leaned against the table.

“Is that what you want to do?” she asked. “Film people who aren’t pretending?”

“I don’t know,” Y/N said. “I haven’t told anyone I want to do anything yet.”

Mira nodded.

“I think your writing already decided for you.”

————-

The shift was slow.

Y/N was cleaning the espresso machine for the third time when the doorbell chimed. A boy stepped in with his hood low and his hands in his pockets. Dark pants, metal glinting along his ears, hair falling just low enough to hide most of his face.

Jake.

She recognized him instantly, but he didn’t see her. Not right away.

He walked up to the counter, pulled down his hood, and stared at the drinks board like he was reading it for the first time. Then he looked up.

His eyes landed on her.

He smiled, lazy and crooked, like finding her there had knocked something loose in his chest in a way he didn’t mind.

“Oh,” he said. “So you exist outside of classrooms.”

Y/N didn’t raise an eyebrow, but her face held still.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he added.

“Clearly,” she said. “You’ve been staring at the menu for two full minutes.”

Jake laughed under his breath. He ran a hand through his hair. Same nervous tic.

“Give me whatever’s cold and not sweet.”

She picked up a cup and turned to prep the drink.

“Strange request,” she said, “coming from someone who smokes strawberry-flavored cigarettes.”

He laughed, louder this time.

“You noticed?”

“You smell like a candy store in denial.”

“Rude.”

“Truthful.”

He leaned forward on his elbows.

“What do you smoke, then?”

“Marlboro Reds.”

He blinked. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Didn’t take you for someone who wanted to die on purpose.”

She cracked a smile.

“They’re honest. They taste like shit and they burn your throat, but at least they don’t lie about it.”

He clicked his tongue and smiled again. She didn’t return it fully, but something flickered behind her eyes.

When she handed him the drink, he didn’t take it right away.

“Didn’t peg you as a barista.”

“I’m not. I just wear the apron.”

“Fair.”

He took a sip. Blinked. “Good. Tastes like regret. Just how I like it.”

She leaned against the counter now, arms crossed.

He spun the cup slowly between his fingers.

“You ever think about how everything’s supposed to look good now?” he asked.

“Everything?”

“Yeah. Drinks. People. Movies. Even porn.”

She looked at him. “That’s a jump.”

“No, really,” Jake said. “Everything is filtered. Even the stuff that’s supposed to be messy. It’s not real anymore.”

“You’re complaining about the lack of authentic porn?”

He shrugged, still smiling.

“I’m complaining about the lack of honesty. But porn’s a good example.”

“You watch porn for honesty?”

“I watch it for anthropology.”

She laughed. Quiet, but real.

Jake sipped again.

“Think about it. It’s the one genre no one even pretends is art. So no one tries. But it says more about us than half the films we analyze.”

“That sounds exactly like something a guy with strawberry cigarettes would say.”

“Don’t judge me by the flavor. Judge me by the burn.”

She shook her head, smirking.

“You’re so full of shit.”

“And you like that about me.”

She didn’t reply. She just stayed leaning on the counter while he drank slowly, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

The next time she saw him was two days later.

He walked into the classroom late, holding an iced coffee like he hadn’t just spent the morning asleep. His hoodie was half-zipped, his hair messier than usual. He smelled faintly like strawberry smoke.

Y/N was already sitting in the back row. He spotted her immediately, smiled like they had some private joke, and sat down beside her without asking.

“Still alive,” he said.

“Barely.”

She didn’t look at him at first. Just kept flipping through the course packet.

“You come straight from bed?” she asked.

He sipped his coffee and said nothing.

She turned her head slightly.

“You know you can’t smell like that and sit next to me.”

“Like what?”

“Artificial fruit and bad decisions.”

He laughed.

“You sound jealous.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You think I’m jealous of flavored cigarettes?”

Jake leaned back in his seat.

“No,” he said. “Of my relaxed relationship with shame.”

She smiled, just a little.

“Speaking of shame,” she said, “how’s your anthropological research going?”

Jake blinked. Then laughed, head tipping back slightly.

“You mean porn?”

“I mean your endless quest for emotional authenticity through naked strangers.”

He shook his head, smiling.

“You’re relentless.”

“I’m observant.”

“You think I’m just watching it for fun?”

“I think you’re trying to make porn sound deep enough to put on your résumé.”

Jake grinned and nodded once, like he respected the shot even if it hit.

“You wanna borrow some notes?”

“Please,” she said. “If I wanted to rot my brain, I’d go on TikTok like everyone else.”

He didn’t reply. Just looked at her for a second longer than usual.

She turned away first.

The professor walked in and connected her laptop to the projector. A slide appeared:

Light, Shadow, and Exposure: Building Emotion Through Visual Contrast.

Jake pulled out a pen. It didn’t work.

Y/N handed him hers without looking.

He took it gently, fingers brushing hers.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

She could feel him glancing sideways at her every few minutes, like he wanted to say something else. Maybe to make her laugh again. Maybe just to watch her listen.

She didn’t give him that satisfaction. But she didn’t move away either.

The class ended in a slow unraveling. No dramatic conclusion. Just a flick of the lights and a reminder to bring their cameras next week. Everyone stood at once like a choreographed yawn.

Y/N packed her things without rush. Jake, seated beside her, hadn’t touched his notebook since she gave him her pen.

She slid the pen back into her bag.

“You owe me a new one. You killed it,” she said.

Jake grinned. “It died in service of art.”

“You drew cubes the whole class.”

He stood and stretched, hands briefly tugging at the hem of his hoodie. The sleeves rode up, and for the first time, she saw the edge of a tattoo on his forearm — black ink, soft lines, something that looked like a cracked mirror or a map torn in half. He pulled the sleeve down again without noticing her glance.

“You working tonight?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He nodded once. “Right. Just trying to figure out how to run into you again without looking desperate.”

“You could just come in and order something. Like a normal person.”

Jake tilted his head. “That’s boring.”

She walked past him into the hallway. He followed, slow and easy.

There was a pause. She could hear him breathing just behind her, not close enough to bother her, but not far enough to ignore.

Then, on the stairs, he said it.

“You ever think about it?”

She stopped at the landing and turned.

“Think about what?”

He hesitated. For once, the words didn’t come instantly.

Then:

“Being a porn model.”

She blinked.

Jake looked serious. Not intense, not sleazy — just… curious. Like he was asking her what she thought about death or déjà vu or time travel.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Not for money,” he said quickly. “Not because you’re desperate. Just… for the rush. The exposure. The way it breaks the rules.”

She stared at him. Silent.

“Some people go bungee jumping. Some people film their bodies,” he added. “I think both are about feeling like you’re alive.”

She kept looking at him.

Then:

“It’s not something I’ve considered,” she said. “But I wouldn’t dismiss it either. Not without thinking about it.”

Jake’s eyebrows rose slightly. He hadn’t expected that.

“I don’t mean, like, actually—”

“I know what you meant.”

She started walking down the stairs again.

Jake followed, more cautious now.

“It’s not a proposition. I was just curious.”

“Relax,” she said. “I’m not going to report you to the ethics committee.”

They stepped out onto the street. The air was warmer than before. The city was loud but familiar.

Jake walked beside her. His hands were in his pockets again.

“I think people get scared of honesty,” he said. “Especially the kind that shows skin.”

She nodded.

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re tired of being watched all the time.”

He looked at her.

“You’re not.”

She glanced sideways.

“You don’t know that.”

Jake smiled, but didn’t answer.

She pulled a Marlboro Red from her bag, lit it, and offered him the box. He took one without looking.

They stood in silence for a moment, smoke curling up between them.

“You’re weird,” she said.

Jake exhaled slowly.

“You too.”

She flicked ash into the gutter.

“But I don’t mind it.”

“Neither do I.”

————-

Y/N didn’t usually smoke behind the film building.

It was too exposed. A narrow concrete ledge, no cover from the breeze, and always someone else already leaning against the wall like they owned the mood. But that morning, she needed to breathe, and not the kind that was good for her lungs.

She lit her Marlboro and squinted at the sky. It was dull, clouded over, the kind of gray that made everything feel like it hadn’t finished loading.

She didn’t expect company.

So when the heavy door opened behind her, she didn’t look.

Until she heard the flick.

Strawberry.

“You stalking me now?” she asked, exhaling without turning around.

Jake stepped into view with that half-smile, half-shrug expression that made it impossible to tell if he was amused or just tired.

“Didn’t realize this was your spot.”

“It’s not.”

“Good. I’d hate to ruin your privacy with the sweet scent of childhood addiction.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled into her cigarette.

They stood there for a minute in silence. Comfortable. Familiar, in a way that felt older than it was.

Then he pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Can I show you something?”

She glanced at him. Suspicious.

“If it’s porn again, I swear to God—”

“Calm down,” he said, already laughing. “It’s not porn. You’re in public.”

He tapped around for a few seconds, then held the phone out to her.

She didn’t take it at first.

“You’re not sending me a virus, are you?”

“Just look.”

She took the phone.

Photos.

Of her.

One was from behind. In class, elbow on the table, chin in hand. Another from the café, grainy and low-light, her half-hidden behind the register. One more outside the sculpture building, her hoodie up, face turned away, cigarette in hand.

“You’ve been photographing me.”

He nodded, still smoking. “Yeah.”

“You don’t ask first?”

“No. That would change it.”

“Change what?”

“The way you exist when you don’t know you’re being seen.”

She stared at the photos again. They weren’t pretty. They weren’t even well-lit. But there was something about them that made her chest pull tight.

“You want to be a stalker when you grow up?”

Jake smirked. “Director of photography.”

She gave the phone back slowly.

“You think that’s romantic?”

“No,” he said. “I think it’s honest.”

She flicked ash onto the concrete.

“I don’t look good in them.”

“Good wasn’t the point.”

He dropped his cigarette to the ground, crushed it out with the side of his shoe, and looked up at her like he was thinking something heavier than he knew how to say.

“I think I want to film you.”

Y/N blinked once.

“That’s a weird way to confess something.”

Jake smiled softly, more serious now.

“Not because I like you.”

“You don’t?”

“I do. But that’s not why.”

“Okay.”

He stepped away from the wall, hands deep in his pockets.

“I want to film you because there’s something about the way you move, t’s like you’re always bracing for something.”

She exhaled slowly.

“And you think pointing a camera at that’s gonna fix it?”

“I think it might make it real.”

She looked at him.

He looked back.

Then she stepped off the wall and started walking.

He followed.

They moved quietly through the back entrance of the building. The hallway was mostly empty. Someone was laughing in a distant classroom.

“You’ve filmed other people before?” she asked, eyes forward.

“Not like this.”

“How is this different?”

Jake hesitated.

“I think I’d care more if I got it wrong.”

She said nothing at first. Just kept walking.

Then: “So don’t.”

They reached the door of the classroom. She stopped with her hand on the knob.

He leaned beside her, a little closer than usual.

“Can I keep taking pictures of you?”

She looked up at him.

“As long as you don’t pretend they’re about anyone else.”

Jake smiled again, that same rare one. Not lazy, not ironic. Real.

“I won’t.”

She opened the door and stepped in first.

The assignment was supposed to be simple.

“Find the light,” the professor had said. “Film someone in it. No dialogue. One shot. One mood. It should feel like a moment you stumbled on by accident.”

Y/N hated vague instructions. They always led to pretentious work.

She and Jake didn’t say anything when the pairings were announced. At this point, people expected them to work together. The others barely looked at them anymore.

He grabbed a handheld camera without asking. She followed.

They didn’t go far, just down the hall, past the stairwell, into the side corridor where no one ever walked unless they were sneaking out early. It smelled like dust and old heating vents. The windows were narrow but the light hit sharp, slicing across the walls like a line drawn by hand.

Jake adjusted the focus. His fingers moved fast, familiar with the body of the camera like it was an extension of him.

She leaned back against the wall, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it.

“Are you filming already?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But I’m watching.”

She didn’t smile, but there was something behind her eyes. Something that said she didn’t mind.

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I don’t want anything.”

He looked up from the viewfinder.

“I just want you to stay still.”

“That’s not easy for me.”

“Try.”

She took a long drag, exhaled upward. The smoke curled toward the light, broke apart slowly. He lifted the camera and hit record.

He started on her hands. The way her fingers moved with the cigarette. The twitch in her thumb when she was overthinking. The way her leg bent slightly at the knee, not because she was posing, just because she always stood that way when she was holding back.

He didn’t move fast. He let the frame settle, let it breathe. Tracked up along her arm, past her shoulder, the edge of her collarbone. The way her shirt slid slightly open at the neck without looking intentional.

She didn’t look at him.

She looked through the window, like the world outside was more interesting than him — and maybe it was.

He panned slowly toward her mouth. Her lips parted slightly with the exhale. Not seductive. Just… unfiltered.

More in part 2!

[soakedstar]

for those who don’t know the original myth behind the hyacinthus fanfic:

hyacinthus was a mortal boy loved by both apollo and zephyrus (the west wind).

he was beautiful, radiant, and tragic — as all mortals loved by gods tend to be.

one day, apollo and hyacinthus were playing with a discus.

zephyrus, jealous and furious that hyacinthus loved apollo more, blew the discus off course.

it struck hyacinthus in the head and killed him.

heartbroken, apollo refused to let hades take his soul.

instead, he turned hyacinthus’s blood into a flower: the first hyacinth.

These are the flowers!! ★彡

[soakedstar]

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: 𓆩𓆪 WHERE THE HYACINTHS GROW 𓆩𓆪 :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

✧ ˚ ｡⋆ synopsis:

in a village south of Sparta, y/n lives between old superstitions. she never expected to fall in love with a boy who seemed carved from sunlight—gentle, wild, and not quite human.

✿ retelling of hyacinthus & apollo.

✧ ˚ pairing:

jake x f!reader ✦ (apollo!jay)

✧ ˚ warnings:

explicit content (18+), oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, crying during sex, possessiveness, character death, grief, heartbreak, god/mortal dynamics, jealousy, toxic love, angst, mentions of blood, emotional manipulation

✧ ˚ word count:

+7k

✧ ˚ genre:

myth retelling, angst, slow burn, soft smut

✧ ˚ status:

complete one-shot

✧ ˚ notes:

this one broke me a little. I wrote it like I was mourning someone I never met. please read gently.

• do not repost anywhere. reblogs + comments = love.

They called her y/n, not for her beauty, but because her mother believed that naming something lovely would make it so. “Name a girl after the moon,” her mother once said, “and the gods will teach her how to shine, or how to break.”

She had lived all her life in a hillside village south of Sparta, where fig trees grew out of stone walls and old women spat on the ground when someone spoke too loud about fate. The sea was two days away, the mountains one but y/n had never seen either. Her world was olive groves, and the heavy scent of smoke in the evening.

Her mother, once a healer, now mostly slept. Y/n tended to her, worked in the fields, and dyed wool at the village spring. She didn’t believe in much. Not the saints in the cracked icons. Not the old gods the shepherds still cursed when the wind blew wrong. She believed in stories and in herself.

She had friends, but not the kind you told secrets to. She kissed a girl once when she was sixteen, Nikoleta, the baker’s daughter. Nikoleta cried after. No one ever said anything, but they stopped inviting y/n to dance at festivals.

By twenty-one, she had learned to be useful, invisible, and quiet. Until she met the boy beneath the fig tree.

It was the start of spring. She had gone to the riverbank to collect saffron blossoms when she saw him: golden and fragile.

He was asleep, stretched out beneath a massive fig tree near the cliff’s edge. Barefoot, with his shirt open and a gash across one shoulder that looked freshly healed. His skin was too clean, too golden, and his face too calm for someone sleeping on rocks.

For a moment, she thought he was dead.

Then he opened his eyes, not startled, but slow, as if he had already seen her in a dream.

“You’re trespassing,” she said, more out of reflex than anything else.

“So are you,” he answered, smiling. His voice was soft, deep, the kind that settled under the skin.

She didn’t ask his name. He didn’t offer it.

He returned the next day. Sitting in the same place, watching the trees like they were about to speak.

“You live nearby?” she asked.

“I don’t live anywhere,” he said. “But I’ve been here before.”

She thought he was a little mad. But he didn’t seem dangerous.

He started helping her carry baskets back to the house. He never asked for anything in return. Her mother, barely conscious, whispered, “Is that the one who follows you?” and then fell asleep before y/n could answer.

When the neighbors asked, she said he was a cousin from Thessaly. It was a lie, but one that felt oddly close to the truth.

He told her his name was Jaehyun.

She called him Jake.

He was different. Not in the ways you’ll think, not because he never got sunburnt, never limped and never seemed tired. He was different in the way he noticed things. The exact sound the olives made when they dropped. The words she didn’t say. The way her hand twitched when she was holding something back.

He didn’t ask the questions most boys did. Not about her dowry, or when she’d marry, or if she was afraid of growing old alone.

Instead, he asked:

“What does your silence feel like?”

“Do you believe things that can’t be seen?”

“What would you do if you woke up tomorrow and the world was ending, but you had time to say one thing?”

And she answered him.

Because no one had ever cared to ask.

They didn’t fall in love suddenly. It happened in the quiet between words, in the familiar weight of his shadow beside hers at the spring. It happened when she showed him the scar on her thigh from a childhood fall, and he traced it slowly with his finger. It happened the night he sat beside her mother’s bed, lit a candle, and told stories about the sky. Not the constellations everyone knew, but the ones he said had been forgotten.

She told him she used to dream of becoming a doctor, before her father died and the money disappeared. That she used to write poems in a notebook she burned out of shame. That she thought maybe she wasn’t meant to live a small life, but didn’t know what to do with the bigness she felt.

Jake looked at her, eyes burning soft, and said, “You remind me of the beginning of things. Like the part of the sea no one maps.”

He didn’t talk about himself much, but when he did, it came like riverwater. Slow and winding. He said he had lived in places with endless sand and places where it snowed ash instead of rain. He said he had seen wars start from jealousy and songs born from grief.

“Are you a liar?” she asked once.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But I might be remembering someone else’s life.”

She should’ve found that strange. But she didn’t.

There was something in him that made her feel understood in a way she didn’t know she needed. He looked at her like she was already whole. Not someone to be fixed, married off, or explained. And she saw in him what she’d always feared wasn’t real: a soul that had also been waiting for something unnamed.

She wasn’t afraid when he reached for her hand. She was afraid of everything else that came after.

“Jake,” she said one night, sitting on the edge of the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, “can I offer you all that I have?”

She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It slipped out, as if her heart had spoken without consulting her mouth.

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at her like she was a question he didn’t know how to answer.

Then he stood, crossed the small room, and knelt in front of her.

“You already have,” he said, brushing his fingers along the inside of her ankle, then slowly up to her knee. “But if you’re offering again… I won’t say no.”

She let the robe slide off her shoulders, not dramatically, just honestly. Like she was tired of hiding from herself.

He didn’t look away. Not once. Not when the fabric slipped down her back. Not when she opened her legs to let him closer. Not when he pressed his face between her thighs, softly at first, like he was learning a new language.

He kissed her slowly, like he thought the world might end if he went too fast.

When he entered her, he didn’t speak at first. Just held her: her face, her hips, her breath. Like everything could fall apart if he let go.

And when her eyes welled up, without warning, without reason, he whispered to her, gently:

“Don’t cry. Don’t cry. I love you.”

He kissed the tears from her cheeks, even as he moved inside her. Slow, tender, aching like a promise made too late. His hands never stopped touching her. His mouth never left her skin.

She couldn’t speak. Could only breathe his name over and over, in half-murmurs and sighs, until she was nothing but pulse and heat and the space between them.

And when it was over, they stayed like that for a long time.

Bodies pressed close. His forehead against hers. No words. No fear.

Just the quiet knowing that they had left a piece of themselves inside the other, something that would stay, no matter how much was taken later.

They fell asleep with a smile.

⸻

Jake never told her what he was. But she knew.

Not in words. But in the way he looked at the thunderclouds like they were family. The way he didn’t step into the church. The way he sometimes woke in the middle of the night, whispering in a language she didn’t know.

One day, he touched her collarbone and said, “You don’t know what you’ve done to me.”

“I haven’t done anything,” she whispered back.

“You made me want to stay.”

She thought it was poetry. But later, when she watched him breathe with his eyes closed as if he was trying to remain human one second longer. She understood it was a warning.

———-

The wind changed before Jay arrived. It always did when the gods drew near.

Y/n noticed it in the air how the village dogs wouldn’t bark, how the sky turned still but never silent. The olive trees stopped moving, as if waiting for something.

He came at the end of market day. Dressed in white, with skin that looked carved rather than born, and eyes like metal that cooled too fast. He didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t need to.

He walked through the village square without looking at anyone, except Jake.

Jake, who was leaning against the edge of the fountain, who straightened the moment he saw him.

They didn’t speak.

Not out loud.

Y/n saw it. The way Jake’s face shifted, from surprise, to guilt, to something almost like grief.

She stood beside him, one hand brushing his. He didn’t take it.

Jay’s gaze flicked to her. Not hostile, not curious. Just… nothing.

Later, when they were alone, she asked, “Who is he?”

Jake’s voice was low. “Someone from before.”

“Before what?”

He didn’t answer.

⸻

Jay didn’t stay in the village, but he didn’t leave either. He rented a room above the taverna, said he was a traveler from Delos, researching local myths. The women loved him: the way he spoke, the way he moved. The way he always knew the exact thing to say to make people feel important.

But Jake stayed away from the center of town.

Y/n saw less of him now. He came late. Left early. His hands shook sometimes. He never said Jay’s name.

One night, unable to sleep, she found Jake sitting at the edge of her roof, barefoot, looking up at the stars.

“You said you wanted to stay,” she whispered.

“I still do.”

“Then why does it feel like you’re leaving?”

He turned to her. “Because you’re not the only one who wants me to stay.”

She sat beside him.

“I don’t care who he is.”

“You should,” Jake said. “He’s not used to losing.”

⸻

Jay found her alone two days later. She was tying up bundles of sage behind the chapel when his voice came from the shadow of the wall.

“He doesn’t belong here.”

She didn’t look at him. “Neither do you.”

Jay stepped closer. “He used to say my name like it meant something. Now he says yours.”

“Then maybe you should leave.”

He laughed softly. “You think this ends with a choice?”

Y/n turned. Her fingers were dirty from the herbs. Her braid half-undone. “Everything ends with a choice.”

Jay studied her, like she was a puzzle that should’ve solved itself by now.

“He can’t stay,” he said. “And you… you were never supposed to happen.”

“He’s not a thing to be owned.”

“No,” Jay agreed. “He’s a thing to be worshipped.”

⸻

That night, Jake came to her door.

He looked exhausted. There was dirt on his knees. His knuckles bruised.

“I thought I could leave that part of me behind,” he said. “But he brought it back.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I do.”

He told her then. Not everything, not the name Apollo, not the centuries. But enough. That they had loved once, long ago, when Jake was barely more than light and laughter. That he had run from it: from the temples, the prayers, the weight of being adored. That he had wanted something quieter.

Something human.

“I thought I could stop being what I was,” he said. “But Jay… he doesn’t understand that love isn’t a shrine.”

She touched his face, gently. “And what is it to you?”

He didn’t answer.

He just kissed her, hard, desperate. Like he was trying to memorize her mouth with his own, to leave something of himself pressed into her lips forever.

Jake kissed, bit, licked. There was nothing gentle about it, not that night. Only hunger. Only need.

He pulled her robe up in one motion and slipped his fingers between her legs, groaning softly against her throat when he felt how ready she already was. She gasped, and he kissed that sound too.

Then he dropped to his knees.

He lifted her legs onto his shoulders and kissed his way from her ankle to her cunt, slow and reverent at first. Then faster, more raw. His breath was hot against her skin. He moaned in between licks like he was tasting something sacred, something he was never meant to touch but couldn’t stop worshiping.

Her hands found his hair and tightened there, grounding herself in the rhythm of his mouth.

When he finally stood, he didn’t say anything. Didn’t have to.

He kissed her neck. Her collarbone. The curve of her hip. He touched every part of her like he was afraid he’d forget it. And when he was inside her, it was like the world stopped turning. Or maybe it spun too fast, she couldn’t tell anymore.

He moved with purpose. With grief. With love. Each thrust was a mark, a goodbye, a plea, a memory made of flesh.

He didn’t stop until the sky turned pale and the first light crept through the window.

And even then, he stayed wrapped around her, his skin against hers, breath slow and shallow, as if the morning might steal them apart if he dared to fall asleep.

————

The festival arrived like it always did, with too many lanterns, too much wine, and the smell of burnt honey on the wind.

It was the Festival of Returning Light, when the villagers walked to the olive grove before dawn and waited for the sun to rise over Mount Taygetus. They lit candles for things they’d lost and things they feared losing.

Y/n didn’t want to go.

Her mother, lucid that morning, took her hand and said, “You don’t get to hide from joy just because it’s fragile.”

So she dressed in white, like the others, and painted her lips with rose ash. Jake waited by the well, hair still damp, eyes darker than usual. He didn’t say he was afraid.

Jay stood near the altar, as if nothing had happened.

Y/n wanted to scream. She didn’t.

⸻

The games began after the offering fires. The children raced barefoot down the path. The young men carried clay jars balanced on their shoulders. And finally, the discus.

It was tradition. A relic of old stories and old gods. Y/n had never paid much attention to it before.

But that day, Jay stepped forward with a gold-edged discus in his hand. Not one of the village’s worn stones. This one shimmered unnaturally. A gift from somewhere else.

He looked at Jake, and for a moment, y/n saw something in his face. Not anger. Not jealousy.

Loss.

Jake took the field with bare feet and a quiet mouth. She could see the way his hands trembled, the way his eyes flicked not at the crowd but at her, like he already knew.

Jay stepped forward with the discus.

Not the worn stone one everyone else had used. Y/n had never seen metal like that in the village. She would later remember the smell of it: like iron and lightning.

Jay looked at Jake and smiled.

Jake didn’t flinch. He walked to the center of the field. The world was so quiet it felt underwater.

Jay’s arm moved fast, faster than anyone could track, and the discus flew high.

Jake stepped forward.

He didn’t even reach for it.

The discus changed direction mid-air. No wind. No accident. It curved, curved hard, and slammed straight into the side of his head.

Y/n screamed before she hit the ground running.

He was already falling.

The sound his body made, heavy, final would echo in her ribs for years.

⸻

She cradled him in her lap. There was blood on her thighs, on her chest, on her mouth. She couldn’t breathe.

“Jake,” she whispered. “Jake, please—”

His eyes found hers. And for a split second, they were soft. Human.

He tried to speak. Just once.

She bent down to hear.

But he was already gone.

Jay stood a few meters away. Still. Breathless. A god holding the ruin of his own love.

He didn’t run.

He just said, “He chose you.”

Y/n rose, barefoot, bloody. “And you killed him for it.”

“He was mine,” Jay said. “Before you. Before this place. Before he started believing he could live a life that didn’t belong to him.”

She walked toward him.

“You don’t get to love someone and then destroy them.”

Jay looked at her, his face blank, but his hands shaking.

“I’d rather burn the whole world,” he said quietly, “than watch him love someone who couldn’t keep him.”

She slapped him. Hard.

And then he disappeared.

Not in a flash of light. Not with thunder.

He just vanished.

⸻

They buried Jake beneath the fig tree where she’d first found him, soft-skinned, barefoot, humming to himself in a language she never learned.

No priest came. No one from the village dared.

Three days later, flowers bloomed across the grave. Tall, wild, fragrant. Purple as bruises.

Hyacinths.