“Ta-DA!” Jongin sprang into the kitchen of Kyungsoo's restaurant sporting a single rose as his weapon of choice.

He had waited the whole night to do this. He didn't want to bother Kyungsoo while he was working, so he had anxiously waited until the restaurant closed. He had shown up at the official, advertised closing time, but there was still a couple finishing their dessert. Standing outside like a stalker, he had tried to will the last guests to leave with wishful thinking alone. Kyungsoo was way too soft. He never kicked anyone out, even when it was way past closing time, patiently waiting until the guests left of their own volition.

“What's this?” Kyungsoo asked, confused.

Jongin grinned. “It's obviously a rose!”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Why?! I just wanted to give it to you,” Jongin said, the corners of his mouth starting to droop, threatening to reach full pout-potential if Kyungsoo didn't hurry up and take the rose.

“But you didn't have to buy one, there's a rose at every table out in the hall, I've even got some left. I get them wholesale, it's way cheaper.”

Kyungsoo reached for a couple of leftover roses that lay on the edge of the counter.

“Here, one for you,” Kyungsoo said in a sweet voice, handing him one of the roses.

“That's not the same!” Jongin objected in frustration.

“How is it not the same, they're the same color and everything. You can't even see the difference.”

“I see the difference!”

Jongin threw the rose on the counter and stormed out. Kyungsoo could be such an idiot sometimes. He had just wanted to show him that he was thinking of him and how much he cared about him. As if that wasn't different from randomly picking up a leftover rose and giving it away as an afterthought.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. Kyungsoo only ever knocked when he knew Jongin was mad at him. The door creaked as it slowly opened. A rose came through the crack in the door.

“I'm sorry,” the rose said.

Jongin couldn't help but laugh. Ugh, Kyungsoo was so cute, he couldn't even stay mad at him for more than a moment. He jumped out of bed and pulled on the hand that was attached to the rose, dragging Kyungsoo through the door and into his arms. He gave him a tight hug. He loved how Kyungsoo fit perfectly into his arms, as if they had been made as a pair and not individually. And now, finally, they had been reunited.

“Surprise!” Jongin yelled excitedly when Kyungsoo entered the apartment.

He was sitting on a blanket in the middle of the living room, holding two glasses of red wine. It was an impromptu living room picnic. He had prepared a spread of chocolate-covered strawberries and cheese. It was the epitome of romance.

“Wow,” Kyungsoo said tiredly.

Kyungsoo had been working a lot lately, it was getting tough to get some quality time with him and Jongin's heart was at the end of its rope. It did not know the meaning of patience. It needed some loving and it needed it now.

“Come sit down! Come sit down!” Jongin waved him over, the wine swooshing around in the glass in his hand.

The moment Kyungsoo sat down, Jongin handed him the glass and stole a short kiss. Before Kyungsoo could react, he reached for a strawberry and popped it into Kyungsoo's mouth.

“Delicious, right?”

Jongin beamed at him. Kyungsoo just nodded with his mouth full. He looked like a cute, little hamster. Jongin had been expecting a bigger, more meaningful reaction. But he settled for the cute hamster, watching him munch on his strawberry.

“Do you know what chocolate-covered strawberries mean?” Jongin asked as he fed him another one.

Kyungsoo shook his head, his eyelids starting to droop.

Jongin knew he was exhausted, but he was always exhausted lately. There was never a good time. And there was a reason he had planned this whole thing.

He took a deep breath, blurting the words out before he had the chance to chicken out.

“I love you.”

Kyungsoo just nodded with a faint smile as if to say 'Aha, information received'. Had he not connected the dots? Jongin feeding him chocolate-covered strawberries was his love confession. How could he not react to that? Did he really not get it? It was the first time he said those words out loud to him, at least while Kyungsoo was awake to hear them. Did he not care at all?

Kyungsoo swallowed the remainder of Jongin's confession, gave him a short kiss on the forehead, and went to bed. He didn't even read to him. He passed out the moment his head hit the pillow, leaving Jongin frustrated with an unsatisfied heart.

“Movie night!”

Jongin lunged at Kyungsoo the moment he entered the apartment and gave him a really tight hug. Ah, he had been longing for this the whole day. He could feel that he was overstaying his welcome in this hug, but it was hard to contain his heart's desires. It was overflowing with love and he wasn't sure what to do with it. He wanted to be with Kyungsoo at all times and do everything with him and tell him every single thing that came to his mind, but Kyungsoo didn't seem to share his enthusiasm. As Jongin's feelings grew, Kyungsoo's seemed to be waning.

“I'm so tired. I have to be up in 4 hours and tomorrow I'm hosting a private party so it's going to be crazy. Can we do it some other night?” Kyungsoo patted Jongin softly on the back, wriggling out of his arms.

Kyungsoo had confirmed Jongin's worst fears. He was losing interest in him. The more he smothered him, the further away Kyungsoo fled. An arrow of panic pierced his heart. If this continued, he was going to lose Kyungsoo altogether. He couldn't have that. He would never survive losing him. No, he was going to back off. He was going to give Kyungsoo space if it was the last thing he did. It was going to be impossibly hard, but if it meant being able to hold on to Kyungsoo, there was nothing he couldn't do.

Jongin kept true to his word. He stopped calling him every time he had a break at school, he stopped begging him to come home sooner, and he stopped surprising him with special events. There were so many times when he had to bite his tongue so it wouldn't blurt out how cute Kyungsoo was and how much he loved him.

But no matter how much he held back, things weren't getting better. Kyungsoo got even more distant and he was acting even weirder than usual. Jongin was out of ideas and his heart had reached its limits, he couldn't take much more of this. He was in agony every single day. Yet he continued, because he didn't know what else to do.

One day Kyungsoo came home uncharacteristically early and slammed the door. It was unlike him to make a scene. Jongin ran to the living room to see what was up. Kyungsoo looked especially serious, even for him. His eyes were dark and focused, as if they had an unsavory mission to complete but were determined to see it through, no matter how unsettling its execution would be.

Oh no.

He was breaking up with him.

Jongin had been expecting this, but still it felt like a punch in the gut. He felt queasy to the point that he was worried he would actually throw up.

He tried breathing through the nose, as slow as he could manage. He had to see this through.

“I can't do this anymore,” Kyungsoo started.

There it was.

Jongin's hunch was confirmed. Kyungsoo was bailing, and there was nothing he could do about it. Thankfully, he had barely eaten anything all day, so there was nothing in his stomach to throw up.

Jongin had tried to picture how he would react when Kyungsoo finally pulled the trigger, but it was nothing like he had imagined. It was infinitely worse. There were no words for the dread that filled every single cell in his body. He already missed him so desperately that he couldn't breathe. Even though Kyungsoo was standing right in front of him, it felt like he was already a thousand miles away. He wasn't ready. But in all fairness, he doubted he ever would be.

The tears started running, he couldn't hold them back any longer.

“Why are you crying?” Kyungsoo asked, as if crying was a weird reaction to being dumped. How callous could one get? It only made Jongin cry harder.

“Seriously, you have got to stop this. I can't stand these games any longer. Either you're mine or you're not. So which is it?” Kyungsoo asked, his eyebrows forming a pointed V. He was staring him down so intensely that it was scary.

“Huh?” Jongin was so confused, that even the tears stopped in their tracks. “What games?”

“This extreme hot-and-cold you are playing at, I don't like it one bit. It only confuses me and makes me nervous. I never know how to react and it makes me really insecure. I don't know what they mean, I don't know what you want. I've never gotten the point of these games, do people think they are fun? I am definitely not having fun,” Kyungsoo growled, biting his lip.

The tears that had built up behind the dam of confusion came rushing out, hurling themselves down Jongin's cheeks.

“I love you so much that it's hard to control it. Sometimes I feel like I'm going to burst if I don't fawn all over you. I thought I was suffocating you, you were so unresponsive that I thought you had gone off me because I was being so overbearing. I've been trying to chill and play it cool, but it's been so hard, you don't even know.”

Jongin paused as his voice kept cracking, sobbing relentlessly.

“You just... a lot of the time when I'm being affectionate, you look like you don't care at all. And then I lose all confidence and start thinking that maybe you don't love me at all. You know you haven't told me you love me, not once. And then I worry that I'm being annoying, and overwhelming you, and that you'll finally give up on me and leave me.”

Kyungsoo looked like he had been run over by a truck, his eyes those of a deer caught in the headlights. He watched Jongin bawl his eyes out, frozen. But then, all of a sudden, he rushed forward and put his arms around Jongin, squeezing him tight like he really meant it.

“It's just... it's just so hard... not to fawn over you. I like you so much,” Jongin cried into his ear.

“So fawn,” he said, like it was the most obvious solution in the world.

“Really?”

Kyungsoo nodded into Jongin's shoulder.

“But you have to understand, that I'm fawning all over you too, I just fawn quietly on the inside.”

“How am I supposed to know how you feel then, can't you just say it out loud?” Jongin complained, a huge pout taking up residence on his face.

Kyungsoo sighed.

“It's hard sometimes... to put my feelings into words.”

Jongin was going to object, but then he got a brilliant idea. He reluctantly left Kyungsoo's warm embrace and disappeared into Kyungsoo's room, reappearing with a tiny, little teddy bear from his stuffed animal collection. It was a pocket-sized brown bear wearing overalls and a small backpack.

“When you're feeling particularly fond of me, you can give me this bear. You don't have to say anything, you just hand me the bear and I'll know.”

The following night, Kyungsoo gave him the bear. As Jongin swooned, he could feel that there was something in the bear's backpack. It was a note that had been folded about ten times. It took Jongin quite some time to open it, but it was more than worth it.

In tiny, barely visible letters, it said:

'I love you'

Every night after that, the second Kyungsoo came home, he gave Jongin the bear.

Every single night, without fail.