Pen Pals AU. Jake and Amy have been exchanging letters for about a year when he gets tired of it, needing more.
Jake has taken a lot of on impulse moves in his life, but this – this is a whole new level of 'just do it already and don't think about the consequences'.
Everything started about a year ago, when Gina pranked him into getting him into a pen pals program, where he got matched with a certain Amy Santiago from London, and she sent him a letter introducing herself and telling him about how excited she was about this program and learning to know each other better thanks to it.
Nerd, was the first word that came across his mind when he went through the no more than 5 pages of neat and stylish handwriting.
Why he answered her back then is still a mystery to him. But the fact is he did, and what was at first just a game for him quickly turned into a weekly exchanges with that stranger on the other side of the ocean. He thought the excitation procured by such an uncommon way of communicating would quickly fade away, but it didn't.
Quite the opposite, actually – the more he learned about Amy and exchanged with her, the harder it became to have to wait until her next letter arrived.
She'd grown on him, from a simple acquaintance to a friend and… even more than that – falling hard for the woman in the course of the past months.
Which lead him to right now, having travelled miles to end up at her door without a warning first.
Well, that's not entirely true. He did tell her in his last letter that he'd 'like to meet her for realz'. But he didn't wait for an answer, since only an hour later he was booking a flight for London departing the next day from JFK's airport in New York. And here he is now, waiting in front of her apartment to find the guts to eventually knock.
He's on the verge of chickening out, though, thinking about how bad an idea this spontaneous decision he made is, after all.
Because maybe she doesn't want to see him. Maybe she likes what they have, communicating by mail only. Maybe she has other plans for the day – for the week he's staying here – and she won't have time for him. Maybe she doesn't even feel the same way as he does for her.
Maybe he's just a distraction to her with writing him letters, like he's been to so many people in his life before.
He quickly chases all those depressing thoughts away. Now's not the time – he can't back off and simply turn around. Not when he's gone so far.
Not when his best friend is waiting for him in the hotel room they rented for the week after insisting on joining him on his trip ('Jake, you're about to meet your soulmate, of course I need to be here!') and there's no way he'll let him go back to New York before having met her first anyway.
So, eventually, after some more reflecting time, he manages to bring himself to knock.
One. Two. Three times.
He locks his hands together in an unconscious move, rubbing them in nervousness as he not so patiently waits for someone – for her – to open to him.
But nothing happens. There's not a sound coming from the other side of the door, and it quickly becomes obvious the apartment is empty, and Amy isn't home. A strange mix of relief and disappointment takes over Jake's heart as he moves away and towards the elevator, ready to leave and come back later for better luck hopefully.
But, as he calls it, he hears footstep coming up the stairs, and soon enough he's met with a woman, raven hair cascading on her shoulders and brown eyes fixing on him in surprise. He's seen only one picture of Amy on that website that paired them together, but he looked at it enough over the past year to be able to recognise her immediately.
(She's a lot more stunning now than on the photography, though, he thinks – and he already found her beautiful.)
He freezes, as if paralyzed, unable to draw his gaze away from her as realisation hits him: this is it. The moment he's been dreaming of for weeks now.
"May I… help you?" the woman asks first, then takes a step closer to him, and something in her eyes flicks instantly. "Jake?!" she lets out in shock, finally recognising him too.
He offers her a nervous smile in response.
"What are you doing here?!" she asks again – the confusion is clearly audible in her voice.
"I– huh–…" He's at a loss of word.
I travelled miles to come and see you because I'm in love with you – you're so beautiful, by the way, he wants to spill it out – but maybe that's not the best way of starting a conversation when seeing each other for the first time, even after exchanging tons and tons of letters throughout the whole year.
He swallows, closing his eyes for a split second to regain some composure, before putting them back on her. "I just… wanted to say hi. Y'know… for realz, this time," he tries to play it cool, as if this is no big deal at all when it clearly is, but then she remains speechless, and his starts rethinking every decision he's ever made in his life.
"But I realise now it was a bad idea," he goes on then, lowering his gaze, unable to support hers anymore. "I'm sorry for intruding in your life this way, I should have asked first."
That's only when Amy takes another step towards him, a small smile he can't see lifting up her features, heart warming at his confession. Once at his level, she puts a hand on his wrist in a reassuring move, and he starts, a rush of electricity taking over his whole body as an answer to this simple gesture.
He stares at her fingers curled around his arm for a beat – Amy Santiago is touching him, he can't help but be amazed.
All of a sudden, this meeting is becoming all too real. Eventually, he looks up at her.
"You travelled all the way from New York to here just to 'say hi'?" she asks him then, when his eyes are back on her. She can't seem to believe it, watching him with puzzlement and wonder in her shining orbs. No one has ever done such a sweet thing for her in her whole life – it's overwhelming.
Jake simply nods in return, and for a moment they remain like this – in kind of an awkward silence in front of Amy's apartment.
"D'you wanna come in?" she ends up offering, and of course he agrees.
Her place is everything the man imagined, after months of exchanging about their lives and learning to know her: it's neat, and perfectly organised, full of knick-knacks carefully put away in different shelves. One of them particularly catches his attention, with its colourful binders, and he gets closer to it to read what's written on them.
Amy lets him do, watching him wander about the room all along without a word, still not quite realising he is here, in her home, in London. It feels so unreal.
So much like a dream, like some of the ones she had in the past, that started the same way…
But this isn't one of those.
"You kept all of our conversations gathered in those binders by dates of dispatch?!"
Jake's voice suddenly takes her out of her reverie, and she blushes at his question. Of course she kept them, and carefully ordered them.
They're a reminder of a wonderful relationship, after all.
True the first time she received a letter from him, she was skeptical about the possibility of making a friend out of that man the website she registered in matched her with. His handwriting was messy, to the point that it was hard understanding him sometimes, and he made some horrid spelling and grammar mistakes.
But she still decided to give him a chance, and, through his letters, she ended up discovering a funny, kind person and did make a friend out of him in the end.
And even maybe more than just that, if she has to be honest with herself…
"I forgot, this is for you," he brings her back to reality once again with his words, and she's startled by how close to her he's come to be during her reminiscing time, now just a few inches away and handing her a bouquet of daisies she already spotted he was carrying earlier. She accepts his present with a warm, thankful smile.
"I know that's a bit lame but I didn't know what to bring and for some reason Charles made me buy you a bottle of lavender shampoo and I realised how stupid his idea was only when I arrived in front of your building so my only choice was to get rid of it and go to the little florist across the street instead," he starts rambling nervously, and it makes her laugh.
He relaxes immediately then, the sound of it being actual music to his ears. He loves her laugh, he decides as he watches her in awe.
He was already aware of his feelings for her before coming, but now that he gets to actually see her and spend some real time with her, even if it's just been a few minutes, his suspicions are already confirmed.
He's definitely head over heels for the lady across the ocean.
"It's perfect," Amy reassures him, back to being all serious again. He doesn't say any word in return, simply stares at her in silence with the urge of kissing her right there, right now taking over his whole body with each new passing second she looks back at him in the same quietness and deep expression in her brown orbs.
He can't really tell who makes the first move. Probably them both at the same time. The only thing he knows is one second they're facing each other, a few steps away from one another still, and the next their forehead are touching, and his hands are at her waist, skimming over her skin, timidly discovering it and inviting her to come even closer.
He can feel her quickening breath on him, so close that he just has to lean over a bit to capture her lips with his if he wants to.
Which she eventually does, eyes shuts as she gently, ever so slightly presses her mouth against his in a soft, hesitant peck, brushing their noses together before pulling in and then away. She's still holding the flowers he just offered her with one hand, but the other one, the free one, is now on his chest, palm spread wide over his heart.
She can sense its beats fasten against her fingers, and it brings up a smile on her face, that she's the one making him feel this way.
Her own heart is pounding in her chest too, reacting to that first contact after months of building up. They don't open their eyes just yet, relieving in the moment they're having, printing the memory in their minds to hold dear, still in pleasant shock that they're not imagining this alone in their beds far away from each other, but actually living it.
Amy lets her hand fall from his chest, in search of his own, and when she finds it, she links their fingers together, squeezing gently. Eventually, reluctantly, she draws herself a few inches away from him, so that she can meet his gaze again. "Hi," Jake greets her when her eyes land on his already open ones, a grin lighting up his face at the sight.
"Hi," she repeats his words in a whisper. "It's nice to finally meet you," she confesses.
He's the one initiating their second kiss then, with more passion this time, clinging onto her as if his life depends on it, and she answers with the same fierce, not wanting to let go.
Never wanting to let him go.