Friends Who Seem Like Lovers • Day6 • Jae x Reader

4. I'm Serious

  "Love and lies shine so brightly."-C 

You don't even realize you're crying until a single tear drops on your hand as you punch in the pass code to your dorm. Throwing yourself down on your bed, you curl into a ball and lay silently, facing the wall.

The first thing you see is a picture of you and Jae, arms thrown across one another's shoulders, laughing animatedly. Staring at the picture, you examine yourself carefully. The girl in the picture has no idea that the blonde-haired boy standing next to her will later become the reason she's holding back tears. Smiling ironically, you think that this should have been one of the happiest days of your life, as the picture becomes blurry.

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You wake up with a fever. Stumbling to the bathroom, you sleepily swallow some medicine before burrowing back into your bed. When you wake up again, it's much later, and you're startled by the sound of your phone signaling that you have a new message.

Glancing at it wearily, you see a couple of messages from Sungjin asking if you're okay and thanking you for the date. Feeling guilty, you type out a generic response, despondently. You're just about to go back to sleep, when a knock on your door makes you jump. Before you've even had enough time to sit up, Jae comes bounding into your room, having memorized your door code a long time ago.

Barely looking around, he flops himself down on your desk chair and launches into a full-blown, love-struck tirade about all of the details of his date with Grace. Feeling too weak to move, you just lie there and grimace quietly as he bombards you with a play-by-play description. It's only when he gets to the key point of his story that he finally seems to notice that something is amiss. Eyes growing wider, he takes in your pale, clammy skin, flushed cheeks, and the dark circles under your eyes. Sitting up, abruptly, he presses the back of his hand against your forehead.

"Are you okay? Your forehead's burning up!" he exclaims.

"That's probably because I have a fever," you reply feebly, voice too weak to be laced with your usual amount of sarcasm.

"Oh no, crap! Should I call a doctor or something? Do you need to go to the ER?" he says, his face looking panicked as you begin to shiver, teeth chattering.

Chuckling, as you wrap your blanket around yourself tighter, you try to speak clearly, "I'm pretty sure the common cold isn't deadly, but I appreciate the thought."

Forgetting all about his date, Jae spends the rest of the afternoon taking care of you, even going so far as to make what you assume is chicken porridge. Grey and lumpy, you really don't want to eat it, but he looks at you so earnestly you can't help but swallow it with a grimace, and you're glad you can't taste anything.

For the first time in a while it feels like a while, things are back to how they used to be. Before Jae announced he was in an official relationship with Grace. Before you left Sungjin on the sidewalk that evening, heart pounding as you ran to tell Jae everything. Before that fateful kiss on New Year's Eve, that lit a spark in your chest and left the lingering taste of pink champagne. Before your heart broke in two as you realized you were too late.

Staring at Jae, sitting at your desk hunched over his phone caught up in a game, you feel a pang in your heart that is equally bitter and sweet. You wish you could pretend you were delusional, that you didn't really like him. That it was nothing more than confused feelings and a hint of jealousy. But deep down you know it's not.

You're in deep.

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How in the world did I end up like this?