Chapter Text
Hello my love,
It's been about three years since all of this started, but I'm finding myself in another bout of insomnia. I spent my day well, waiting for a special event for six hours, and then coming home. I suppose I'm up because I haven't used my energy, haven't stayed up, haven't been stressed out by a conversation. It's my first time writing to you in awhile, and I'm doing it while you're away for a business project. You're in LA and I'm in New York; though it feels like we couldn't be farther apart.
It's kind of strange, holding the pen and paper I used almost ritualistically to write you letters regarding my feelings. Makes me feel like I should be sad, and I almost am, because I miss you in our bed and I can't talk to you much cause of your meetings every day and dinners late into the night. However, I am also aware that you're out there bettering yourself for the benefit of your own and mine, and I'll always support you with a force you couldn't try to measure. It's just usually on these nights that I miss you most, and think of where we used to be and where we came from.
I think about the hours I spent awake and crying, the hours I spent thinking about you, and the hours I spent hating myself because I couldn't get over something so simple as love. While we were in the midst of a fight once, you told me that while you usually have to find reasons to break up with me, that night you were looking for reasons not to. You told me that you didn't know if you still even liked me or not. It might've been a slight of words on your part but ever since I've wondered how a single day (or possibly events before) had lead you to not knowing if you liked me. I cried the next day while I was alone and wondered for so long afterwards how it was possible that I can cry because of you so often and write to you and actually hate myself because of you, but remain still within how I love you; but that you could change your mind so quickly, or forget why it is that you loved me. Every time you asked me afterwards if I really loved you I wasn't sure what to say, because I was always afraid that after I'd given you my answer, you'd tell me you forgot why you loved me again. I never asked why that happened the way it did, but after the fight you changed significantly from how you'd been before, and I was satisfied to let it go and continue. I just wanted to know how it was possible that you'd questioned yourself so quickly when I'd spent the better half of stolen nights thinking of ways to stop loving you, and not finding any, despite crying on multiple occasions because of you otherwise. Of course, you know close to none of this, but only because it's in these letters that I feel confident enough to bring up insignificancies. (I realize that's not a word, but you understand the meaning, don't you?)
This is not a night of that kind though. I can lie on our bed in our shared apartment and think all I want, but I trust you to come home to me, even if you forget a goodnight text.
I suppose I should update the parchment on how the last three years had been spent. We graduated, found jobs, mine an assistant position, and yours just the same. We didn't make much but our salaries combined left us with a small apartment close to downtown. We chose to live together, figuring that it made most sense, and that we'd be okay with affording everything. We went on grocery runs together, you not forgetting that I love to grocery shop with people I like, and we had every Friday night to ourselves. We built a routine that set us into a steady rhythm, and I always knew I'd get to see you. We had breakfast together in the morning, but took different buses. We would meet at a coffee shop after work and debreif eachother on our days when we could, and if we couldn't we'd let eachother know that we'd see them later that night. It was a beautiful Melody we had created, and I got lost in it.
Slowly, harmonies were added, and I found myself singing the birthday song to you almost a week after you'd been told you'd been promoted to a manager, and we'd had two ice cream cakes in the freezer to snack on for the month. A minor track breifly took the bridge when I was let go from my company, but as someone who's always loved minor keys, I took the opportunity to seek for better, and found a higher position in a company I'd always appreciated and wanted to work for. When things steadied, we bought a new and larger apartment a bit further from the city and the noise, but still on the subway line.
A bubbly and bright Labrador later, and a year or so, I came home exhausted to a vase filled with roses and my favorite flowers, to find you in your casual clothes, with a ring box next to your hand. You told me later that you hadn't heard me come home, but in the moment didn't care as I'd run towards you and hugged you like I hadn't seen you 11 hours before. You kissed me, told me I was the love of your life, and slipped a band on my finger as the lights flickered in your beautiful brown eyes. It was then that I felt safer than I had ever before, so sure, so in love, and you held me like nothing could touch us. I knew we were going to build a life together, and we've done so.
We both wanted a smaller affair, our immediate families and some friends we both enjoy the company of. It would cost less out of our Wallets, and give us more time to enjoy the company of people we enjoy being around (rather than inviting all of our weird uncles that can't sit down for longer than 15 minutes at a time).
As I'm writing this, I can't help but wonder if you'll find this letter. We live together now, and I don't have places to hide these from you really, but if you found my letters before, you're almost sure to be able to find them now, aren't you?
You actually told me how you found my letters before, and I swear it was like a movie sequence. One of my letters had fallen out of my bag from using my school notebook the night before, and you discovered both my insomnia and my feelings, understanding quickly that I was talking about you. You enlisted my sister to go into my room and Snoop around, and read the rest from pictures over the phone. I honestly don't know if I've forgiven her yet, but if you didn't find out, there's no way I would've known you felt differently than my interpretation, so I'm quite thankful, now that I've gotten over the initial embarrassment. I can't believe that this went on under my nose though, it does explain why I'd sworn I wrote a few more letters than I'd retained.
Ah yes, and you've also, in the past few years, further explained your situation with Nayeon, and how it went from an initial attraction to nothing, when you discovered you didn't truly have feelings for her. She understood, and actually ended up helping us get together, according to your word Fictional Brian. I still am not sure how I feel about her, but I haven't seen her since we graduated, so I'm not too worried about it.
As for the sky, I still look to it at night. When I'm walking home, sometimes I look up and everything else becomes insignificant. The cold I've had for more than a month disappears, and any insecurity I feel slips through my fingers as I watch the red sky like it used to be when I watched out the window. Light pollution still floods the sky, and I think of the time we walked to the top of a hill close to campus and stared across it as the lights of our University were shut off and left us with only stars, our souls, and our bodies. My head hurts each time I look up, as I'm suddenly transported back through my life, all the way to elementary school, when I first laid out on a terrace and watched the night sky, thinking of nothing besides how much my issues didn't matter. I thought of my insignificance as a good friend, reminding me that I can screw up sometimes and the universe won't end. A friendship might split and someone else might leave me, but the stars will still shine and night with still come, and ill be able to stare at them until I fall asleep. I miss it, I need the stars with me now.
Almost two and I can feel my legs getting restless. River Flows in You is playing through my headphones and my cold tells me to sleep but my eyes are wide open, and I'm consumed with you.
In the grand scheme of things, three years isn't long. Developmentally, perhaps, but we're both adults who know what they want, and have been given three years to learn new things about eachother.
I've learned about your food preferences to where I can order for you easily in a restaurant, which is something I've always wanted to do, and I know more about you and where you came from. I know more about your personal philosophy, and I've asked you as many questions as I come up with, your answers often following suit. You still don't quite know how often I stay up late into the night, but you know that the littlest things are how I feel that you love me and care for me, rather than grand gestures.
You know that I find love in each touch that's initiated, each goodnight, each time you tell me you love me, each time you offer to get me something, each time you kiss my forehead after I've said or done something you might find cute, each time I put my hand on you and you lean into my touch, and each time you treat me like I have more meaning than any idiom in the world. I like attention and I like physical contact, and I like you, so, so much.
You're due to come home tomorrow, and I'm excited to be able to wake up with your arms around me come Monday morning. I'm so excited to see your face as I fall asleep, and watch you as I've woken up (I always wake up before you and I think it's the funniest thing. I remember there were one or two times that you woke up first and kissed my head to wake me up, or simply watched as I slept, having never seen me in a state of peace as similar. I'm usually the last to fall asleep and the first to wake, but when this changes you pride yourself in it. It's the cutest thing.)
I love sitting here and writing this, thinking of getting to dance with you to a slow song of our choice. We've accumulated so many songs that we both enjoy over the years, both from friendship and from our relationship, and I can verify that choosing a song for our first dance will be a difficult task, but I know we will get through it, and if we can't choose, the dance is going to be in the living room of the house were set to buy after the wedding, so with boxes of furniture and our things surrounding us, we can play whatever we'd like.
Our wedding is to be on Thursday of next week, keeping Friday as the day for ourselves, according to tradition. We move Saturday and begin our life together on a stronger set, as act two comes to a close, and you leave these letters like you would a show, having them on your mind but excited more than ever for the next. I'll write you letters while we're married too, but to warn you, the first one after our wedding might be tear stained.
I cry when I'm overwhelmingly happy, what can I say?
To close out this part of my life and this letter to you, for you to find and read if you'd like, I want to say that I love you, and though by this point it seems I don't stop saying it, i say it each time I am compelled, and hell, I am even compelled when you're just standing next to me at a crosswalk. I can't help myself Fictional Brian, I love you, and I can't help that.
My best, forever and always,
Park Jaehyung,
Your fiancé