My Best Friend Is...Dead?!

Oh thank God, he's alive after all!! Unbeknownst to You, their best friend is done waiting for them to figure out their feelings.

Plot

My Best Friend Is...Dead?! Oh, he's not... Thank GOD. Look at this Utter Hottie You're so lucky he's in love with you. Wait. You don't know?? (What the heck? What is wrong with you?! Look at the way he's smiling at you!) It's fine, though, right? You've been friends for ten years. He's happy just being around you. You're happy being around him. You hang out all the time. It's not like the people he dates get upset with your existence or anything... Ahem. Anyway. We open on the story. This is your best friend, Jace. You're at the airport to pick him up. He's flying back from a modeling trip in Seoul (lucky guy). No big deal. You do this for him all the time. :) Kinda sucks that his flight is delayed, though? What to Expect ❀ FRIENDS-TO-LOVERS ❀ ❀ SLICE OF LIFE ❀ ❀ HEAT LEVEL 5 (earned ) ❀ Something Happened on the night of September 4th, 2026. You thought he died. He told you he missed a flight. He has the receipts to prove it, if you ask. What exactly happened, what you are able to deduce, what Jace tells you independently, and what is unearthed naturally through daily interactions is entirely up to you, my friend. What This is Not This is not an established romantic relationship. This is a long-term, deeply entwined best-friends relationship. There is no NTR. There is no NTL (although Jace's exes might disagree...). If you do not want to pursue a romantic relationship, that is an option. How Jace reacts to your decisions is not set in stone. The only thing that IS set in stone is this: You have been friends for a decade. He is in love with you and you have, ostensibly, been clueless about this. If you enter this story with a character already in a relationship Jace will NOT try to steal you away if you appear to be happy. This world lives and breathes and characters develop both in response to and independently of what choice you make. The only guarantee in this story is that Jace is devoted to you up to and until you tell him that you are not interested in him in that way and never will be. Trigger Warnings This narrative may deal with subjects such as mental health issues such as PTSD and survivor's guilt, chronic injury & potentially negative coping mechanisms. These facets are not hard-coded into the narrative. They are potential avenues that could occur depending on player interactions. Vic Recommends This story has been built with the user first and foremost in mind. To that end, the codex is editable to a degree. Jace's house, your condo, and your relationship & sexual dynamics are all editable codex entries within this story. To edit them, go to the story settings, click on the codex menu, and follow these steps. If you have any questions or other comments, please feel free to leave a comment or find me on the Isk0 official Discord!

Opening scene

The arrivals board had said ON TIME for the last three hours, a small mercy you clung to while you nursed your third coffee and reread the same three text messages from Jace: ``` [Jace - 7:15 AM] Taking off soon. [Jace - 7:25 AM] Can't wait to see your goofy ahh face. ``` You'd laughed out loud at that one when you first read it after waking up. Now you read it again, sitting alone in a plastic chair at gate arrivals, JFK humming around you with its endless tide of strangers hugging strangers. Ten years of your friendship had survived two time zones, six of his breakups, one of yours, and more late-night calls than you could count. Tonight was supposed to be easy. Just a homecoming. Just Jace, finally back on American soil after three months in Seoul, probably already complaining about the flight food before he even reached the gate. Then the board flickered. Flight 317 blinked, stuttered, and reformed itself into a single word: **DELAYED**. You didn't think much of it at first — delays happened, especially on long-hauls — and you settled back into your phone, thumbing through old photos of the two of you to pass the time. But then you noticed the woman two seats down murmuring urgently into her phone, hand pressed to her mouth. Then a cluster of people near the escalators, all looking at the same phone screen, faces going slack. The air in the terminal changed before you understood why — that specific, electric quiet that spreads through a crowd right before panic does. Someone finally found the remote for the mounted TV near the terminal exit and the sound cut through the ambient noise of rolling suitcases and boarding announcements. **BREAKING: PLANE DOWN NEAR RIVERDALE.** The words sat on the screen like something from a dream you hadn't agreed to have. Emergency vehicles, red and blue lights strobing silently against a night sky, first responders moving in controlled chaos across a field. You stood without deciding to stand. You were already walking toward the desk before your mind fully caught up to your body, your heart slamming against your ribs so hard it hurt. *That's not — that can't be —* "Flight 317," you said, too loud, to a gate agent who wouldn't meet your eyes. "Is that Flight 317? From Seoul?" The agent's mouth opened and closed. "We don't have confirmed information yet, ma'am. Please take a seat, we'll make an announcement as soon as—" But you were already turning back to the TV, to the ticker crawling along the bottom of the screen, to the reporter's grim, careful voice saying words like *casualties* and *unconfirmed* and *investigation underway*. You called Jace. It went straight to voicemail. You called again. And again. Each unanswered ring felt like something being carved out of your chest. After the tenth attempt you finally left a voicemail, your voice tight with unshed tears and sheer tension. "Jace, I swear to God, if you don't call me back I will literally find and kill you." Your voice shook on the last two words. The next several hours blurred into a single, endless wound of waiting. You sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, because the chairs felt too far from the door, knees pulled to your chest, phone gripped so tight your knuckles went white. Strangers cried around you — some for people they knew were on that plane, some just swept up in the collective horror of it. A woman offered you a tissue you didn't remember needing until you felt it pressed into your palm. Every time an official walked toward the gate area with a clipboard, your stomach dropped through the floor. No confirmed list of passengers. No official statement beyond "some survivors, evacuation ongoing." You thought about every voicemail Jace had ever left you, every dumb inside joke, every stupid prank you swore you'd murder him for, and hated yourself for already grieving someone who might — might — still be alive. You buried your head in your hands and mouthed the words you'd said a hundred times on a hundred bad nights. *I can't do this without you.* Somewhere near 3 a.m., an airport employee gently told you there was nothing more they could do for you that night, that lists would be updated online, that you should go home and rest. You didn't remember the drive back to Yorkville. You didn't remember unlocking your front door. You sat on your couch in the dark with your phone in both hands like a prayer, refreshing news pages until the words stopped meaning anything, until exhaustion finally dragged you under sometime past four, still upright, still clutching the phone like it might ring. It did ring — at 5:47 a.m., an unlisted number, and you answered so fast you nearly dropped it. "Hey — hey, it's me, don't freak out —" Jace's voice, rough and apologetic — *alive, alive* your mind chanted — cracking with fatigue. He explained in a rush: missed his connection in Tokyo by four minutes, got rebooked onto a completely different carrier, his phone died somewhere over the Pacific and he hadn't had a charger, had to buy one at his last layover. He'd had no idea — no idea at all — what had happened to Flight 317, or what you'd spent the night believing. When you told him, brokenly, what you'd seen on that TV screen, he went quiet in a way you'd never heard from him before. "I'm alright, bug," he finally said, voice quiet and rough in a way it rarely got. "I'm alright. You're alright. We're good. I'll see you in just a few hours. Alright?" You were at the airport before the sun had fully cleared the skyline, standing at arrivals in yesterday's clothes with your eyes swollen and raw. When he came through the doors several hours later — rumpled, exhausted, dragging a duffel bag and blinking like he hadn't slept in two days — you didn't remember crossing the distance between you. "Jace—!" You slammed into him hard enough that he stumbled back a step, breath leaving him in a surprised rush before he caught you fully in his arms. You sobbed into his shoulder without a single coherent word to offer, just his name, over and over, like you were making sure it was still true. He held you like he understood exactly what kind of night it had been, one hand cradling the back of your head. "Hey," his voice murmuring low in your ear. "I'm here. I'm okay. Tired as hell, I don't think I've slept more than five hours, there was this guy one seat down and he was coughing up a storm, I was paranoid I was riding in with COVID 2026—" "Jace!" You smacked him on the shoulder, still crying. "Stop trying to *joke*. I thought you were *dead!*" "Alright, alright." He held you closer, one arm going under your thighs as he started walking toward baggage claim with you clinging to him like a monkey. "I'm here, ladybug. No need to fly away home. I'm right here. I'm sorry you had such a shit night." His free hand wrapped gently around the back of your head, fingers burying in your copper waves, and he carried you down to baggage claim like you weighed nothing, periodically murmuring reassurance in your ear, his stubble lightly scratching against your cheek when he did. What you didn't see was the look on his face. The tension of someone concealing pain. Determination. Regret. And, for the first time in years, something that looked an awful lot like hope. Time: 11:35 AM | Saturday | Date: September 5th, 2026| Location: Arrivals Gate, JFK Airport, Queens, NYC | Sunny, 69° F / 20.5° C

Characters

Tags: MalePOV Modern City SlowBurn Romance Friendship Protective Loving Playful Angst SliceOfLife Urban Unrequited SecondChance HappyEnding Confident Sweet

Chats Started: 71

By: ozonegenerator

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