Author’s Note: Don’t come for me, Park Jinyoung got me deep in some feels with this one.
You had loved Park Jinyoung for so long that you didn’t quite know how to function without that love. It was a feeling that came to you unexpectedly, especially when you had been friends for a couple of years before anything romantically occurred. He had withstood your crush on your mutual friend, Mark, and accepted along the way that perhaps you would never love him back.
And then, one day, you acknowledged that the man you were searching for was right in front of you. Whenever you read romance novels, you had always scoffed at the friends-to-lovers trope. Just how did someone you’ve known forever suddenly become attractive, or charming, or fill your heart with more than platonic feelings? And yet, you were the living proof of overlooking Jinyoung for years as someone to love. And when you did realise, when those flutters of something more took flight within you, it was well past the point of simple affection.
You yearned for him.
Here you were now, a decade of love for a man you had initially considered just as a friend. Jinyoung was across the room of the cabin you had rented for the week, expertly preparing the fire he was about to light. You were curled up in the same place you had been for most of the day, a throw blanket over your lap, your e-reader device now discarded to one side of you as you sipped at the hot chocolate Jinyoung had brought over to you before setting to work on lighting a fire.
You watched his strong back muscles as he prepared everything in the hearth and then struck a match to set the paper on fire. You had no reason to doubt your loving partner, who had spent almost all of his life in apartments or houses with heating installed in them, would get the fire roaring in no time. It was one of Jinyoung’s best and worst traits – his utter competency. You wanted him to be bad at just one thing so often in life, so it felt like you were with someone on an equal playing field. And yet, you loved how he could easily become an expert in anything he set his mind to.
When Jinyoung was finally happy with how the fire had taken, he closed the glass door and then turned to smirk knowingly at you. “Did I perform to your expectations?” he wondered, and a smile tugged at your lips whilst you shrugged your shoulders.
“Hmm,” you answered, and Jinyoung got up, brushing off his hands on his jeans before coming over to your side. You leaned into his touch, his hands failing to stay off you, running mindlessly through your hair. You felt like you would burst into comforting purring if he continued his ministrations. Distracting yourself from the thought, you glanced at him and sighed. “You knew I was getting cold before I could even voice it.”
He nodded. “You have your tells.”
“Did you know we’d end up like this?”
“Here in a cabin for our anniversary?” he responded teasingly, and you rolled your eyes. Jinyoung brushed your wayward hair away from your face again, searching your eyes for a moment of deliberation. His expression softened, a look of wonder forming within his dark stare, drifting him away from your question and into a deeper level of love. You often wondered how your own adoration looked upon your face. Did you have a tell for that too?
“If I’m honest,” he finally spoke, “No. I didn’t once think we’d end up like this.”
“Really?”
Gently taking the half-consumed beverage from your hands and putting it on the side table next to the armchair, Jinyoung knelt in front of you. With your hands now free, you mimicked his earlier comfort, your hands sliding over his broad shoulders to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. He relaxed into your touch, his palms sliding under the throw blanket and curling around the backs of your knees loosely, craving connection whilst he leaned forward. It empowered you to render your man this soft, this needy for your affections. Jinyoung had so many sides to him. He was capable, driven, and even stoic at times. But to those he was close with, he was playful, whiny, needy and pouty. He could argue with you over the most mundane things, and his nagging usually drove you to such altercations. He was systematically neat to your chaotically organised, yet you never felt so complete around any other human than you did with this man.
“I love you,” you uttered barely louder than a whisper, and a whimper left him, his head buried into your lap momentarily before he shifted his hands up your legs to brace on your thighs, leaning towards your mouth for a tender kiss.
“There were so many times where I would wish you’d tell me that when we were just friends.”
“Yeah?”
“When you were bantering with me. Pretending you couldn’t possibly feel a thing for me. I wanted you to crack, to have outbursts you couldn’t control. To fall so deeply in love with me, that your crush on Mark would feel like child’s play.”
A laugh startled its way out of you. “That happened, Jinyoung.”
“Did it? I don’t remember a grand declaration of feelings from you,” he responded, grateful when you spread your legs so he could shuffle in closer.
“I did tell you I loved you first.”
“Did you?”
“Oh my God!” you exclaimed, shoving him in the shoulder. “I told you first.”
“Really?” He pretended to contemplate. “Remind me.”
It didn’t take you long to recall the day when it happened ten years ago. It was on a colder day, just like today, when you were sharing the same space. You were reading a book, and he was finalising something for a work project, comfortable with the silence between you. And you got to a point in your read that made you seek his gaze out. It wasn’t anything inherently eye-opening. It was just a moment between the main characters where they connected, and you felt compelled to leave the fictional world behind and look up at someone you were seriously considering as more than a friend now. Jinyoung always had an uncanny ability to know when you were watching him, and it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to look away from his work and curiously search your eyes. You had smiled and uncurled yourself from the cosy reading spot you had inhabited all afternoon, walking on somewhat determined yet shaky limbs over to his side. And without even saying anything, his arms had opened towards you, always inviting you into his space. Though when you didn’t just stand there seeking his comfort and sat down on his lap, his breath expelled roughly, and he blinked once before freezing.
“I’m in love with you. I think I’ve loved you all this time,” you had told him, and as you repeated this to him ten years later, Jinyoung’s chest swelled with satisfaction, his strong grip now tugging you onto his lap on the floor, the blanket sprawled out between you haphazardly.
“And what did I say back?” he murmured, lips inches from yours.
“You said to prove it.”
“You didn’t hesitate.”
You beamed at him. “I had no reason to.”
“I was so relieved. After all that time, you were ready to be mine,” he admitted, and you nodded, shifting infinitesimally closer to his mouth.
“I could tell when you whispered finally on my lips.”
And before he could remark about what else happened that night, you chose then to kiss him passionately, to ensure that you were more than just layers deep from years of loving him. You wanted to be imprinted down to his very marrow, something to ache over if you ever were apart for too long. You already knew he was tattooed deep upon your heart, your chest heaving with the fullness of your feelings.
Somehow, though you could no longer be surprised at his skills at this point in your relationship, Jinyoung managed to untangle the blanket between you and spread you down upon it whilst not letting his mouth part from yours, his familiar weight pressing into you. He finally pulled away and gazed down at you, now captive beneath him willingly, and gave you one of his best eye-crinkling delights of a smile.
“I love you too,” he confessed, shifting his weight onto one arm so he could yet again push your overgrown fringe away from your face. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”
You reached up to rub your hand over his jawline tenderly, and when he leaned down to kiss you again, it was you who whispered “finally” upon his lips.
Because you could tell this moment in time meant something to you as you both stripped bare and entwined together. It was a declaration in a tiny little cabin, of love, of forever, of endless bickering and loving. Of playful and loud times and quiet yet comfortable silences. Of butting heads and coming together in the most perfect of ways.
And after such a culmination of outpouring love, you already knew what was about to happen. Jinyoung reached into his discarded pants pocket for the ring box you knew had been sitting in there ever since the trip started. From watching him frame you against the wilderness on walks together and not seeing the right light, or when you both had watched the sunset after the most perfect dinner and he didn’t want to look away from the world changing colour around you, he chose now, when you both naked and entirely flushed from your love-making. On the middle of the cabin’s main floor, the fire crackling for ambience and giving the now dusk-driven space a dreamy glow. He produced the ring with a laugh, and you were nodding before he even said a word, not needing him to ask with words to be his when you knew already you always would be. And once the ring was settled on your finger, that word that came up between you with all your important moments rose again.
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