Archive of Our Own

“Hello?” he repeats drowsily, frustration already heavy in his tone.

“Jake,” you finally respond and you swear you can hear the breath catch in his throat.

“Hey.” The word is only three innocuous letters but it hurts as if it’s a breakup speech and you regret being so hasty to call. There’s a brief silence broken by the muffled sound of him grunting, and you know from memory he’s stretching across his bed to glance at the clock.

You swallow deeply, trying to block out the mental images of those taut abs tensing and contracting. Rippling as he fucks you long and hard in missionary—

“Y’know it’s 2am, right?” His voice interrupts your thoughts.

You know what time it is without needing to look at a clock. Like when your body is so in tune to waking up at the same time every morning, yours is programmed to reach out to Jake at 2am.

“Mhm.”

He sighs softly. “What’s happened?”

You don’t expect the question even though he always asks. Oh how you wish he’d get angry and hang up. It would certainly make these exchanges easier to deal with, but he never does.

I felt a moment of you in him.

You can’t tell Jake you missed his voice. Missed him. You’re too afraid to tell him anything.

“It’s not important,” you brush off, quickly changing the subject, “so, how you been?”

Jake coughs, clearing his throat. “Are you drunk again?”

“No,” you say, but the wine on your breath tells a different story. In reality, you’ve been drinking since you got home an hour ago, cutting short your date with Ben by feigning a stomachache. You did— do— feel sick, your gut twisting and turning as you try your best to wash down the memory of Jake on your skin, but it has done nothing except exacerbate your thoughts.

“You always were a bad liar,” he chuckles softly and the sound splits you down the middle before his tone changes. “Look, you should get some sleep. I’ll call when you’ve sobered up.”

“I can’t talk to you when I’m sober.”

“Why not?”

Because I’ll say all the things I should’ve said a year ago.

“This was a bad idea,” you backtrack hurriedly.

“D’you need me to come over?”

You shake your head vigorously, momentarily forgetting he can’t see you before you manage to choke out a solitary, “No.”

You can’t have him in your apartment. The last time it happened, all of the hard work you did to move on unraveled like a spool of thread in a matter of heated seconds.

As soon as he stepped inside, Jake was on you. Lips covering yours, hands in your hair— on the fastenings of your clothes as he rushed to free you from them. You mirrored his actions, tearing into his jeans as you kissed away the taste of bourbon from his tongue. He moaned into your mouth, a blissed out version of your name that you swear in the moment you’d have memorised for life. You stepped out of your yoga pants and jumped into Jake’s arms, wrapping your legs around his waist.

His cock was hot and wet as it notched at your entrance, teasing your pussy lips apart before he slid his way home—

“Hey, you still there?” Jake sounds panicked.

Your voice is thick as you reply, “‘m here.”

“Just say the word.”

No. No. No.

But that’s not the word that ends up slipping out.

-

I know I shouldn’t have offered. Yet I find myself bolting out of bed the second she whispers, “yes,” despite the reluctance in her tone that doesn’t fool me for a second. The entire ride over to her apartment, I can feel the deep tremble in my bones, the anticipation of seeing her again setting me on edge. And when I pull up in the parking lot, it takes all of my strength to drag myself from the car.

From the outside, I look like I have my shit together. A line of women queue up around the block to spend the night with me, and while I might indulge a couple when I’ve stumbled home from a bar, nobody can come close to her.

It’s simple. I didn’t do enough. I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve fought for what we had. But I had my chance and I lost it. She’s moved on, yet there’s a still part of me that can’t help but grasp at these lifelines— these little glimmers of the good times, and hope that maybe we can figure out a way to make it work.

It never goes any further than a quick hook up in the dead of night. And while I still want— need— her in every capacity, those moments hold me together like loose stitches, just waiting until they break apart and dissolve.

Apprehension takes hold as I step up to the door, lifting my fist high in preparation to knock. I hesitate for a moment, heart thudding against my rib cage. I could turn and walk away now, let us both move on like we should do, instead of suffocating beneath feelings I can’t verbalise. But as I fly blind into a cloud of denial, I always accept the lifeline she throws me, and I hold onto it like it’s saving me from plummeting to the ground from 30,000ft.

I knock and wait for her footsteps. When I finally hear them, my breath stalls in my throat.

-

You pause at the door, hand grasped loosely around the handle as you try to summon up the courage to open it. After all the time you’ve spent trying to create a void between you, it seems equally pointless as it is gut wrenching that he’s merely only a door’s width away from you now.

Eventually you suck in a deep breath and pull it open, feeling like your heart is on pause inside your chest as you wait for your eyes to land on Jake, like you expect the time and distance spent apart to have altered his appearance into something ghastly and hideous.

He hasn’t changed from the memory your mind has preserved, and that notion alone has enough weight behind it to make your whole body ache. Your gaze finally meets his and you stand there frozen, still remembering the way his touch felt against your skin the last time you stood in this very spot.

I never should’ve said yes.

Jake hovers in the doorway as if he’s waiting for your permission, and you hesitate in giving it to him before slowly moving out of his way to let him pass. He crosses the threshold in silence, sliding past you as his hypnotizing aftershave follows behind. Just the slightest inhale of it is enough to send you spiraling.

He turns to face you, brows furrowed in concern. “I can go.”

You shrug your shoulders in an attempt to act aloof. “If that’s what you want?”

“I wouldn’t have come if it was.”

Please don’t say that. Instead what comes out is, “I shouldn’t have called you.”

“Then why did you?”

“I don’t know, okay?” you rush out a little sharply, using the sudden burst of ire to slam the door shut. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” he says, “how about the truth?”

You stare each other down for a moment before you storm past him, only making it as far as the kitchen until Jake is reaching for you. With his hand around your bicep, he spins you around to face him.

You pull your arm free of his grip and hiss, “Don’t touch me.”

He looks hurt. “Why?”

“If you start, I won’t want you to stop,” you break down, virgin tears threatening to spill down your cheeks.

Jake regards you like you’re the most fragile thing on earth with clear hurt in his eyes and you feel your heart crumpling at the sight. Quickly, he closes the gap between you and you put your hand up to his chest to stop him, but it falters the minute your fingers skim over the material of his t-shirt, and the hard steel of his chest beneath. You begin to pull away, but Jake grabs your hand before you have a chance.

His skin is hot on yours despite the cold outside and it sets your entire body alight.

“What if I don’t want you to stop me?” he whispers, his spare hand sliding around the nape of your neck to pull you against him.

“Then we’re on the same page,” you breath out before pressing your lips roughly to Jake’s.

The kiss is hasty and messy. All tongue and heated moans between frenetic scrambling to free yourself of enough clothes to get to what you want. Jake tugs at your skirt, lifting it higher and higher until it sits bunched around your waist, just as you reach into his jeans to pull out his cock.

With a husky grunt, he turns you around, forcing you over the edge of the counter. You both frantically tug down your underwear, allowing him enough access to your cunt to slide himself inside you.

There’s a sudden bout of silence between you— like a second to reflect that you shouldn’t be doing this and stop, but neither of you do. Jake tenderly kisses your shoulder, and you turn your head to capture his lips within yours once more. Slowly, he starts to rock back and forth, pulling out with sloppy wet sucks as he retreats and brings back with him deep, thick moans when he fills you back up.

You lift your arm, wrapping it around the back of Jake’s head to keep him close, not wanting to be given the chance to speak for fear of coming to your senses. It’s better this way— losing yourselves in the moment rather than blaming each other for how your relationship failed. Yet stray words still manage to slip free— hushed expletives and blasphemous grunts, amidst praising moans telling one another how good it feels.

Jake knows your body as if it were his own. Fucking you like he never left. And when you come, you wish he never had.

-

The early morning sun prickles against your naked back, warming your skin until it wakes you. Sleepily, you stretch out, fingertips meeting cold sheets. For a minute it feels like any other morning, until you remember…

Jake.

You sit up fast, grabbing the t-shirt you normally sleep in and roughly pull it over your head before rushing out of bed. The pile of his clothes you had both thrown onto the floor in a fervoured frenzy are long gone. The sheets where he slept are smooth. There’s no trace that he was ever even here.

Except between your legs.

Your heart drops as your body sags, the ache in your chest like a gaping wound, ripped open and raw. You feel so stupid, so gullible. How could you be so blind? And even though you were the one to call— knowing it would end up like this, you’re still somehow surprised that things haven’t changed.

Ben crosses your mind for the first time since last night and remorse hits you like a ten tonne truck. It doesn’t matter that you’ve only been seeing him for the past two months or so— you aren’t even necessarily exclusive— it’s still a betrayal of trust. One you won’t be able to earn back.

Tears ravage your body, huge sobs that echo around the room like a haunting symphony. You fall back onto your bed, curling up into a ball as you hold a hand to your chest in an attempt to keep your heart from bleeding through it. It takes everything in you to remember how to breathe through your cries, the anguish stealing away all cohesive thought as misery consumes you.

You don’t hear the footsteps outside your room, or the creak of the door opening. You don’t realise Jake is standing next to you until he appears in your tear-streaked periphery, looking terrified.

He places something on your nightstand before rushing to his knees beside you, reaching out to stroke your forehead. “What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“Thought… you… left,” you manage to choke out through a fresh wave of tears.

“I just went to get us breakfast.” He glances at your nightstand and you follow his gaze— two coffee cups along with a brown paper bag sit there innocently.

You want to cry all over again, but for an entirely new set of reasons. Embarrassment blooms beneath your skin— white hot shame at allowing Jake to see you. The real you. The one buried beneath your grief.

Pushing yourself up, you keep your head down, not wanting to make eye contact. You chide and vilify yourself internally, wishing you could take back the last twelve hours.

“Did you really think I’d leave without saying goodbye?”

With a sniff, you mutter, “You’ve done it before.”

Jake scoffs. “Only because you force me too.”

Now you look up, staring him down through wet eyelashes and the elysium— the brief period of jubilation in his company all but melts away. He’s right and it stings. You create this shield— this barrier so he can’t do it to you first.

You clam up like every other time before— the words on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t seem to vocalise them and the constant lie you tell yourself finally becomes apparent.

It doesn’t matter if you’re sober or not, you’ll never be able to tell Jake just how broken you truly are without him. Just how much you still love him. And the constant cycle of pushing him away before begging for his touch at 2am will never end until you can.

“I never want to leave,” Jake confesses, “but you push and push until I believe that leaving is what you really want. If it’s not,” he takes the deepest of breaths, eyes pleading, but his jaw is set tight as if he’s expecting a blow to the face, “if you want me to stay, if you want me, I need to hear it.”

You feel the solitary word in your throat. Can sense it teasing along the seam of your lips until it spills over like blood seeping from a wound. “Stay.”