SYNOPSIS.after spending months suffering from amnesia in the hospital due to an “accident,” you return back to your normal school life where your close friends who you remember stick by your side 24/7. Unexpectedly, you cross paths with ex-student council president yang jungwon, who you failed to remember but feel oddly drawn to. however, after the meeting things start to get odd and you slowly begin piecing together the mystery behind your accident.
a/n: please lmk how your thoughts my ask box is literally in drought season. 7 more chapters!
summary. “jake knew he could be the most horrible being on earth and your too-big, too-empathetic eyes could still look at him adoringly. like he still held the moons and stars in his palms and you would cherish him for it.”
pairing.y/n x enhypen’s jake
genre. broken relationship!au
word count.2k.
warnings. gender neutral!reader, swearing, weed, mention of drugs and drinking, they don’t know how to communicate… lol
inspo.savior complex by phoebe bridgers.
|—————|
FROM THE OPEN bathroom door and its faint amber light, the fuzzy silhouette clears sharper as he approaches it adjacent to the bed you lie in, palms touching and tucked under your cheek.
Your eyes should burn from the long workday you’ve had, from the amount of TV you watched, lukewarm microwave dinner leaving marks of steam on the thrifted coffee table. But your eyelids stress to stay creased as you hear the clack of those heavy black boots exit the bathroom to finally reach the bed frame.
Jake knows that you’re awake so he doesn’t try to avoid making sounds or hide the fact he brought a blunt in. Knows that you stay awake for him to come home and that he barely made it before four A.M. today. Almost made you tug the thin sheets back off your body to call to Jay, see whether he had gotten wasted and crashed at his house or had finally gotten hauled to the county jail cell.
It’s exactly 3:58 and you know because you’ve been counting in your head. You’ve gotten good at it after all these months.
Sensing the ruffle of tough fabric as him shrugging his jacket off, it lands with a loud clunk against the metal stand of the lamp in the corner. You can smell the weed and tequila as he sits on his side of the bed, a few feet away from you.
The desire to nag, to get Jake to shower, brush his teeth, and tell him to come home earlier next time has died on your tongue recently. You wish you could wrangle the strength to fight again but it’s too tiring. More tiring than staying up and waiting for the familiar struggle of his dented keys scratching marks on the apartment lock.
His upper body flies back to hit the stiff mattress, head hitting the soles of your feet crammed under the blankets in a fetal position. He wiggles his head so that it tucks between your heels and your ass, a makeshift pillow for the blasting headache you know Jake always gets when he crossfades.
A calloused hand blindly pats up to your space, fingertips finally landing on your hair and tangling in the mess for the sensation. A rush of smoke enters your peripheral from a puff he takes deeply and you finally twist your head.
“Jake. Finish it outside and come to bed.”
A sigh is the answer you get.
He waits for you to shift, to start repeating yourself and slowly build to that anger you’ve got buried within this crumbling foundation you two have been nestling for a year but… it doesn’t come. It hasn’t come all week for some reason.
But he can still hear it now.
“Jake, go. Go, I hate the smell. Go. Shower and come back to me. Come back to us.”
He’s exaggerating with the last sentence. Maybe it’s what he hopes he would hear. To know that you don’t just tolerate his broken self, that you want to go back to the ways things were before everything went wrong.
Jake’s ears catch the pillow sink and for your hair to pull away from his loose grasp as you turn from him again. His heart pumps louder, threatening to spill out of his chest. He can hear it pound on his eardrums, the thrumming from the ceiling fan in the center of the one-room apartment reaching his consciousness somehow and making the nerves along his forearms itch.
With a heave getting up, he snuffs out the short blunt and tosses it on the ashtray by his bedside table. Dusting off the ashes from his fingers, blunt nails scrape on his hairline and then he hops in his seat to pull the blankets from under his weight and the coldly patted space.
Jake runs a hand down your curled side as another attempt. Somewhere within the haze of his mind, his sober self is very much panicked at the sight he’s been dreading for a while. It looks like the time has finally come where you’ve pulled away from him.
He could wake up tomorrow, find your side empty for the last time. Not because you left for work early, or to get aspirin and a Gatorade for his hangover soon, or get him breakfast before you headed to your 9 to 5.
No… you’d be gone from his life forever.
And usually, you’d sink into his frame. Try to treasure the small amount of intimacy he used to so freely provide, no matter whether or not your boyfriend was inebriated. But you don’t move back at all.
He puts so much effort to silence the noises of the yells on the street level outside, the howling of the sharp winds this starry night, that creaking faucet in the bathroom, and that stupid fucking fan.
Just to hear your breathing and see if it’s evened out. It is.
And Jake can’t force himself to sink back into your hold either.
|—————|
The whimpers behind your back wake you.
You would’ve figured that Jake had moved to the living room if he was going to have his nightmares but he’s laid beside you by dawn when your eyes crack open. The weight of his arm warms your side and you wonder when he slinked over to you, finally tempted to breach the unspoken boundary between you two since last Sunday.
Sitting up, you note the beads of sweat on Jake’s forehead, the strands of hair darkened and matted to his wet face.
You shake him lightly, a tone of worry laced in your groggy voice. “Jake? Jake?”
Getting more panicked at his mumbles, lips downturned and nose slope scrunched in the agony of his usual night terrors, you tug the blankets off his body. Cupping his face and slapping lightly does nothing to snap him out. His legs start kicking and you climb over his chest.
“Baby, wake up. Baby. Baby, wake up, please.”
Swearing under your breath when you tug the sheets off him, the neck of his white tee is drenched clear. Your hand places a palm to his forehead and it feels like nearing a hot stove. Looking around quickly, you handle a three-day-old water bottle, twist the cap open, and pour it over his face.
Jake gasps, eyes wide open in shock and nearly uplifting your entire body off his figure as he bolts into an upright position. Grasping onto his shoulders and desperately trying to peer into his eyes, your trials to calm him down don’t connect in his mind.
Jumping off the bed and struggling to tug your heavy boyfriend out, you expend massive amounts of energy to drag him to the bathroom, fumbling with knobs until the shower runs on and you push Jake off the edge of the tub into cooling water.
Time moves in slow motion for him, eyelids clenched shut as he plunges backward into the icy droplets. They drench him, sucking the air out of his tight lungs and forcing a puff of alcoholic breath and fog in his mind to burst like a bubble.
The blurriness in his irises fades and when Jake looks up at you, a shot of anxiety snaps in your throat, seizing it for no air to come sucking into your chest. Those wide eyes, so familiar from the beginning of your relationship, stare back at you. Crouching on the floor, your own irises and tough swallow are taken in by Jake’s overbearing gaze.
“Are you alright?”
It takes several seconds before Jake reaches over to push the knob off, slouching in the tub, legs hanging out and heavy lashes blinking sluggishly once more.
“What did you take tonight?”
Irrational fury flashes in the brown eyes you had seen soften earlier at the sight of you. Watching it die out for him to lash out makes your heart sink.
He’s defensive. “Nothing. Nothing different.”
“Then why…?” Your confused and mellow voice further infuriates him.
He had fallen asleep with the thoughts of waking up without you in his life anymore, pushing the pain away with slumber but here you were.
So loyal and loving and caring like you always were with him. Jake knew he could be the most horrible being on Earth and your too-big, too-empathetic eyes could still look at him adoringly. Like he still held the moons and stars in his palms and you would cherish him for it.
“Go to bed.” Jake’s hands slip as he clutches the edge of the tub, yanking himself up with a stumble.
You stand with him, nimble hands out to clutch the hem of his soaked tee, “Wait until your temperature goes down, I’ll get a change of clothes—”
“No,” He interrupts, cold glare serious and closed off, “Go to bed.”
Swallowing the rejection, you can only be still like a statue as Jake uses the sink counter to steady before his wet feet slap to the bed and then the drawers scrape against wood.
As you slowly approach the mattress again, you eye the pillowed space you two share. A lighter sits on Jake’s case. It forces your throat to tighten, then you look at the pile on the ashtray.
The sick smell sticks to your clothes, even if you do everything to get rid of it. Do everything to stop it from infiltrating this apartment and infiltrating Jake’s head. Infiltrate and replace you as a way to release his stress.
Whatever had messed with him so bad in the first place has torn what used to be your home apart.
You’re so tired.
Jake stills at the sound of a sniffle. And when he looks over to your corner, you’re turned around and wiping at your cheeks. Guilt and exasperation mix to bring forth his exasperated voice.
“Y/N,whatare you crying about?”
Your voice warbles and you despise it for doing so.
“Nothing.” Climbing back under the sheets, you face away from him again. Jake can’t stand it.
Placing a knee on the bed, he bends over you to clutch your shoulder.
“Y/N, don’t lie to me, come on. Why are you crying? I didn’t fucking take anything other than weed tonight. I promised you that before—”
Your shrug to get him off causes his fingers to limp on your figure. “Jake, change. Just change.”
He wants to fight. Wants to see you react with something other than dismalness so Jake continues.
“I did. I did, I changed my shirt—”
“No,everything,” You turn, now fully pushing his hand away from your body, “I can’t stand the smell—”
“It’sweed, Y/N! Surely you’ve fucking gotten used to it by now—”
“I don’t care, Jake, pleasejust listen to me and change—”
“I’vechanged!I’ve fucking changed—!”
You stand, unable to lay and take it anymore. Unplugging your phone from its charger, you pocket it and grab your bag as well. Jake follows, lips twisted at your sudden movement.
“Where are you going?”
Shrugging on your jacket from the coat rack and dipping to slip on your sneakers, he swallows roughly in your space, crowding with panic and confusion in his tone while he calls your name repeatedly.
“I can’t. I can’t tonight, I can’t do it.”
It’s all you can say to excuse yourself, the wet trails on your cheeks continuing to flow as Jake gets louder and louder. He attempts to close the front door and stop you but you wait patiently and don’t fight him, only able to shut your eyelids tight and pray for him to get the clue.
You couldn’t muster the energy to scream or protest or anything else you would usually do.
Was this the last straw?
The flurry of noise in your ears fades when Jake digs his nails into your forearms, firmly grasping them and uprooting your feet to bring you close to his big frame. At the tenseness and uneasiness in your expression, he cracks.
He lets go after several seconds of scrutinizing the tears he’s caused to leak from your eyes. Watching your tight swallow and attempt to seem collected, his heart clenches.
“I’ll crash at Eunha’s.”
“Don’t. Stay. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Ican’tbe in the same room right now, Jake!” Your sudden desperation makes him jerk back.
He takes several seconds to pull a meek, “Okay,” from his cracked lips.
You’re too exhausted to feel bad about the harshness of your words. Sighing, Jake pushes his back against the wall to get out the way of the front door and you twist the knob, leaving.
Jake feels his headache return tenfold. The fan keeps going and at the registering of the fucking annoying noise in his head, he stumbles to the middle of your shared one-room apartment, yanking on the thin metal chain for the fan to stop whirling.
All things came to a halt. The apartment sits frozen except for the frustrated breath that escapes Jake’s lips as he hears your feet walk farther and farther away from him.
a regular monday morning, a regular start to the week.
student government starts an hour earlier than the actual school day, so here you are. 6:56 AM exactly, arriving at school with enough time to slip your weekly love letter into his locker on the way to the student government office.
until it wasn’t a regular start.
“good morning vice prez.” his voice rings in your ear as you freeze in your spot, the letter just leaving your fingertips and you hear it hit the bottom of his locker.
maybe you’re hallucinating.
but it’s always good to check.
you turn around and you see jungwon’s figure standing in front of you.
yep, definitely delirious. as student gov’s president, he’s always first in the room, and always last to leave. it’s definitely rare for him to be out right now.
so you mentally shake yourself awake, and walk towards the office. it wasn’t good to daydream.
“hey!” the jungwon hallucination is suddenly running to catch up to you. “it’s rude to ignore your boss!”
you whip your head around.
“my delusions are getting more and more realistic, jungwon sounds exactly as he should in real life.” you say to yourself, slapping your cheeks to wake yourself even more.
“delusions?” jungwon hallucination exclaims. “vice president y/n, i am most definitely not a delusion.”
“jungwon would probably be in the office already, and it’s highly unlikely he would be outside right now, so kindly please go away.” you shooed him as he laughed.
“you’re not wrong, but i was getting my water bottle i forgot in my locker.” your mouth hangs open as you realize.
jungwon giggles and flicks your forehead before he starts walking again.
“are you not surprised that i was the one slipping letters into your locker?” you catch up to him and you question him, playing the whole situation off, attempting to hide your embarrassment.
“i mean, your letters weren’t discrete at all.” he elbows you, smirking. scoffing and crossing your arms. “the handwriting, the stickers, the content. do you not think that i wouldn’t know my vp’s writing?”
“well, what do you think?” you ask, trying to keep your cool.
“hmm, i don’t know, what do i think?” jungwon smiles smugly and winks. “okay, this week’s student government meeting starts now. we’re taking attendance, who’s not here?”
you’re looking down and scowling, but jungwon knows that you understood what he meant.
he knows there’s a blush swarming your cheeks you’re trying to keep a secret, and he smiles to himself.
you and jays worlds should’ve never collided. hes the most popular kid in school, and you, for lack of better terms, weren’t. so what happens when you’re thrown into a spiral after he reveals hes your favorite manga artist? and what could be more shocking? the fact that hes been using you for inspiration.
oh my goodness :( this was such a fun ride !! thank you to everyone who enjoyed my first smau :)) this story was so cute to make and i hope you all enjoyed it as much as i did ! sorry if the end seemed off, im not great at these :// but until next time !
you and jays worlds should’ve never collided. hes the most popular kid in school, and you, for lack of better terms, weren’t. so what happens when you’re thrown into a spiral after he reveals hes your favorite manga artist? and what could be more shocking? the fact that hes been using you for inspiration.
Some people are meant to be in your life until the end, most just stay a few chapters, and much to you dismay or your fortune, Sunghoon was one of those.
This is a work of fiction, people mentioned or involved are actual human beings and none of this work is based on actual facts over the celebrities mentioned nor is intented to portray them in a realistic way.
Some themes are not factually acurate, any problem detected on the information given may be comunicated to me via DM.
