Chapter Text
There’s a picture of the two of you on the fridge, faded and worn from years of folding and unfolding. It’s one of your favourites, the two of you bright eyed, grinning, innocent. You’ve got your arms around each other, dirt smeared cheeks pressed together. Two children still enamoured with the world, still painting genuine happiness across their faces.
You smile fondly, gently running your fingers over the printed image. You remember endless summer days of laughter, of hide and seek and playground visits and popsicles melting on your tongue. Windblown hair, scraped elbows, childhood innocence and wonder splashed across every inch of your golden world.
Sometimes you wonder if those children knew just how important they’d become to each other. If they knew their sandbox playmate would stop just being the one who held their hand walking home, and become the one who held their heart, the one who would mean home.
“Morning,” His voice is raspy, thick with lingering sleep. You hum in reply, still staring at the picture as you hear him shuffle over to the coffee pot. Your own cup is growing cold on the counter, forgotten as you are lost in the forest of your thoughts.
“Whatcha lookin’ at?” His coffee poured, he sidles up beside you, free arm wrapping around your waist as his chin comes to rest on your shoulder.
“Us,” you say softly, reaching up to brush the back of your hand across his temple. He hums, and nestles closer. “We look so happy, so innocent. Two best friends without a care in the world.”
He spots the picture, and a laugh rumbles through his body.
“We may look innocent, but we both know we were little shits,” he presses his face into your neck, and you can feel his grin. “A couple of troublesome peas in a pod.”
His words are light, but the meaning is ocean deep. You’re still those two peas, growing together, loving together, learning together. No matter what life has thrown at you, what weeds have threatened to choke you out, you’re still here. Reaching. Thriving. Entwining.
It hasn’t been all sunny days, but every garden needs rain to grow.
“Do you think we had any idea?” You ask, your eyes still on the two angelic little faces. “Do you think, somewhere deep down, we knew what we’d end up being?”
A soft kiss lands where your neck meets your shoulder, feather light. “I think I always knew I wanted my best friend in my life,” His voice is thick with warm affection, and his arm tightens around you. “I thank my damn lucky stars every day it gets to be like this.”
You reach for his hand that’s splayed on your stomach, fingers tangling with practised ease. “Me too.”
The two of you stand there for a moment, fondly meandering down memory lane. Every significant moment flashes like lightening through your mind. The first time you saw his true beauty, when you realized touching his bronze skin made your knees wobble like a newborn calf. The first time he kissed you, messy and inexperienced but somehow spine tingling all the same. The first time those three little words were exchanged like precious gifts, the first time you surrendered yourself wholly and completely to his arms.
He was and is the North star in your heavens, the one you look to when the sky grows dark. The guiding light you cherish; ever present, ever shining, ever yours.
Suddenly he pulls back from you, a tiny gasp leaving his lips.
“I forgot!” He exclaims, and you turn to see him reaching for his leather jacket he’d left sprawled across the counter last night. He sets down his mug beside it and rummages in one of the pockets, before producing a Polaroid with a flourish.
“Andy gave this to me before we left,” he grins, holding it out for you to examine. “A little souvenir of last night’s festivities.”
You look at the new picture, a captured snapshot of a contented moment. Arms around each other, eyes locked as if nothing else exists in the room. Both your lips are molded into incandescent smiles, as genuine as the ones in your childhood photo. It’s two kids grown up, two little souls turned into big brilliant ones.
It’s two best friends, just with a little more love to give.
He tacks it up on the fridge next to the old photo. “Happy then, happy now,” he says quietly, and the smile on his face as he turns to you tells your entire love story. You smile back at him, reaching up to gently push his soft black hair out of his eyes. He catches your hand as it slides down his face, pressing a kiss to the inside of your wrist.
“Happy then, happier now,” you correct him, moving to step into the circle of his embrace. He is warm, solid, familiar. The same little boy who hugged you on the playground has kept his arms around you all these years, and you pray for many years to come.
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. The look in his eyes as he leans in to kiss you says it all.
Happy then, happier now.