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Michael rarely ever wakes up before you. Not that you even necessarily consider yourself an early riser, he just prefers to sleep through the morning. He’ll give you a sleepy little grumble when you kiss his forehead, turn over to smile at you before slipping back into a dream. It’s not often you see him look as peaceful as he does in those first few moments of consciousness. You never pester him about sleeping in, not even teasingly; you’ll let him have this one thing. (He looks adorable when he’s asleep, but if anyone asks, they didn’t hear that from you.)
It’s routine at this point to reach your arms out for your boyfriend the moment your eyes flutter awake. Today’s Sunday, so you plan on sleeping in right along with him, plan on allowing yourself to get tangled up in his warmth and the scent of him while you drift in and out of consciousness. The room is freezing— probably typical for early February, especially with your apartment’s fucked up heating system— and you’re instinctively seeking out the warm body on Michael’s side of the bed. There is none. All you’re met with are cold sheets.
You allow your eyes to actually open now, startled at the empty space. Where Michael should be, there’s a vacant, neatly made side of the bed, so cold that it tells you he’s been up for quite some time now. The alarm clock on his nightstand reads 8am when you squint at it. Absurdly early for him to be awake. That boy doesn’t even fall asleep until around three in the morning most nights.
Marginally panicked, you stand up and throw a bathrobe on so you’re not just walking around in your underwear. It really is fucking freezing . Jesus, you wonder if you could sue the landlord or something for seemingly refusing to fix the central heating system. That’s gotta be some kind of human rights violation, right? Or at the very least a lease violation.
The cacophony of clanging pots and pans that follows once you open your bedroom door is strangely relieving. You follow the noise into the kitchen, and it’s there that you find Michael stood over the stove, a picture of ridiculous domesticity that makes heat subtly rise to your cheeks. The ancient radio he picked up from some shoddy thrift store in town is plugged in at the counter and gargling out music from the local rock station. You can’t see much from your angle, but you can see that he’s got about a million bowls and utensils stacked in the sink, armed with a spatula.
“Um, what’s all this?” You speak from the doorway. Michael’s head jerks back at the sound of your voice.
“Oh, hey. You’re up early,” he hums coolly.
“You’re up earlier,” you retort. “What are you doing?”
He flicks the stove off and turns around with a brazen grin. “Making breakfast for you, obviously. Sit down, I was just about to wake you up.” He motions to the barstools at the counter, where there are plates of bacon, eggs, french toast, pancakes— almost like he couldn’t decide on one breakfast, so he just made everything. You awkwardly take a seat at his instruction and stare blankly at all the food.
“What are you doing?” He asks when he notices you staring. “You can eat.”
“You’re not gonna eat with me?”
“I will in a minute. This is mine.” He motions to the skillet he was just holding, with what looks like french toast on it. You both lock eyes for another moment. “...Well? Eat.”
Something finally fucking clicks in your brain when you’re reaching for a stack of pancakes on the counter. Jesus Christ, you’re such an idiot. It’s Valentine’s Day. Something you’ve been planning for months but just lost track of when shit picked up at work and in school, and now it’s here already? And Michael is one-upping you in surprises right now? Oh, this isn’t good at all. If he woke up at 7am to cook you breakfast, you should’ve been up at 6am to be getting him flowers. You had them all picked out in your head and everything— lilac and white lilies, as sort of an homage to the purple corsage he’d gotten you on prom night. Actually, maybe white lilies weren’t the best choice, you’d read somewhere once that they were associated with death, or maybe virginity, actually, you couldn’t remember…
“Happy Valentine’s Day.” Michael interrupts your spiraling mind when he joins you at the counter.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” you reply, voice small. “You didn’t have to do all this.” You’re certainly glad he did, though, because the pancakes he made taste like the food of gods . Where the fuck did this boy learn to cook? You have no clue, but he’s proved to be a pretty useful roommate by now. Pretty great boyfriend material too, or whatever.
Michael just looks at you funny and scoffs. “Uh, yeah, I did.” He reaches for the syrup to drown his toast in; his eating habits are reminiscent of a ten year old that’s been given free reign of his parents’ pantry. “Good boyfriends do this kind of thing on Valentine’s Day.”
“You can be a good boyfriend without dragging your ass out of bed before dawn,” you point out, taking another bite of pancake. So fucking good. “Thank you, though. You’re, like… painfully sweet sometimes, you know that?”
He puffs his chest out slightly at the praise and you just barely suppress the urge to kiss the cheeky grin off his face. “You don’t need to flatter me, princess, I’ll love you just the same.”
“Lucky me, then.” The rest of breakfast has you shooting flirtatious one-liners back and forth at one another (which honestly doesn’t differ that much from an average morning). Despite the fact that the two of you tear through almost every bit of food spread out on the counter, Michael acts offended that you didn’t finish the bowl of strawberries , of all things.
“They aren’t in season, you know,” he nags. “And I went through all that effort of cutting them up for you…”
“Michael, I don’t think either of us could possibly eat any more,” you complain. The smug look on his face tells you he doesn’t plan on dropping it, God forbid he make it ten minutes without teasing you just for the sake of teasing you. You sense it might be some karmic revenge for all the times you’ve purposefully gotten on his nerves, but how is that relevant?
“Just one? For me?” He plucks up a strawberry between his thumb and forefinger. “I gotta keep the princess healthy.”
“If you wanted to do that, then you shouldn’t have made, like, sixteen stacks of pancakes.” Your voice pitches higher when he scoots his stool closer to yours. Whatever personal space you had has been completely invaded by him— not that you’re complaining , no. A pleasant thrumming picks up within your chest at the feeling of his calloused fingers reaching up to cup your jaw. Oh, fuck. Your stomach flips so violently it nearly gives you vertigo.
“Open,” he commands softly. There goes your stomach again, doing gymnastics. Almost instinctively, and completely against your better judgment, your lips part, and his other hand gently brings the strawberry to your mouth. His eyes are intensely locked onto you. Your face is burning, but you refuse to shrink under his gaze while you chew; whatever weird method of flirting this is for him, you can match him tenfold. The taste of the fruit explodes across your tongue. “That’s it. Now swallow.”
You struggle not to choke at his word choice. Asshole. He’s got a familiar glint in his eye, the one that spells out danger.
“One more?” You nod, not daring to speak and potentially embarrass yourself. Michael isn’t the type to not tease you for the way your voice cracks when you’re under his scrutiny like this. Which is rude, truly, because it’s not like you make fun of him for how whiny he gets when you—
You decide to end that train of thought there.
Michael carefully pulls your lips open with his thumb this time, oh, he must be trying to get under your skin. It’s nothing you can’t throw back in his face. When he leans back in to feed you, you purposefully take part of his thumb in your mouth along with the strawberry. Your lips close around it, obscenely forming an “o” shape— his eyes visibly darken.
“Oh, that’s how it is,” he breathes airily. It’s like he can’t decide whether to stare in your eyes or at the sight of your lips wrapped around him. His body visibly tremors when the pad of his thumb brushes against the soft heat of your tongue; you’ve definitely turned the tables. Not like it’s all that hard. A soft gasp pushes itself from his chest when you pull your lips up and off of his thumb.
You don’t allow the moment to last for long, not when you have things on your agenda for today that don’t involve seducing your boyfriend in the kitchen before you’ve even gotten dressed. You’re on a mission, you remind yourself. Even if you woke up and sort of forgot what day it was. Before you can take things too far, you’re giggling helplessly and he joins you in a breathless chuckle. “Good strawberries,” you laugh. “Thanks again for breakfast.”
“Uh, yeah, of course,” he sputters, watching you stand up from the barstool. “Wait, wait, I have, um, plans for today. If that’s okay with you.”
You blink. “Of course it’s okay. I have a surprise for you, anyways.”
“A surprise? For me? Aw, princess,” He drawls. You’re a little put out by how quickly he regained his self-assured demeanor, but it’s no matter; you have plans for today, too .
“Yes, for you. What time should I be ready?”
Michael thinks for a moment. “Give me about an hour, yeah?” Fine by you.
The hour passes by quickly, the majority of which you spend prettying yourself up for whatever secret date he has planned. The bedroom is so small that the both of you have to dance around each other while getting ready— it’s a struggle to get yourself alone so you can put what you need before Michael sees, but you manage to quickly pack your bag while he’s taking a brief shower. You’ve hidden it from him this long, it would suck to have the surprise ruined now.
You open the bottom drawer of your nightstand and pull out two hidden, small, black boxes. One for you, one for Michael.
Okay, wait. You understand how this looks. You are not proposing today, at least not in the marriage sense. More in the, “I want you forever but we’re two broke teenagers so this will have to do for now” sense. Unfortunately for you, that doesn’t make you any less jittery with nerves. Why are you nervous? There’s no reason to be nervous. You hope there’s no reason to be nervous.
There aren’t rings in the boxes. Instead, you’d bought two silver lockets— Michael works with his hands a lot at work, so you figured the concept of a promise ring was sweet, but probably wouldn’t do him too much good in reality. So your idea of a compromise was promise necklaces. He could tuck it underneath the collar of his shirt so it wouldn’t be in the way, but it would still be there.
You slip the boxes into your clutch bag. There. Now you just need to follow through and give it to him like you’ve been working up the guts to for a month now.
The bathroom door swinging open behind you chases your internal dialogue away, and you whip around to see Michael, towel wrapped around his waist, hair disheveled and falling in ringlets around his ears like it’s just been carelessly dried. It’s not easy to lie and say your heart doesn’t skip over itself.
“Hey, give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready, alright?” He says, shuffling through his half of the dresser drawers, and turns to look at you when you don’t reply. An honest-to-God smirk slowly spreads across his features when he notices whatever entranced emotion must be displayed on your face. “Oh, come on, you’ve seen me with less than this on more times than I could count.”
“Yeah, but…” you struggle to conjure up a clever comeback. Michael simply snorts.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” he remarks casually, pulling a shirt over his head. You glance away to give him some privacy— something about distractions, something about not wanting your agenda for the day ruined?
“So do you.”
—
You didn’t think to ask where the two of you were headed when you got in the car, but it turns out you don’t have to wait long to figure it out. Michael pulls the car to the side of the road next to a sprawling garden. Oddly enough, you’ve never seen it, despite the fact that it was just a ten minute drive from your apartment complex.
“How’d you find this place?” You let out a low whistle.
“I have my methods.” He waggles his eyebrows obnoxiously, and walks around the side of the car to offer you his hand. Ever the gentleman.
“It’s called a friendship garden,” he explains as he leads you through the archway over the path. “It’s supposed to mirror the garden in the town’s sister city. You know, in a display of friendship.”
“Interesting,” you hum. The entrance expands into a network of individual pathways once you step through the arch, winding around a lake, a gated off farm plot, a sprawling field of flowerbeds— pretty much standard garden landscapes, if those landscapes were magnified about a hundred times across several acres. You spot a few paired off couples roaming the grounds of the “friendship garden”. Michael must not have been the only one with this idea.
“I wanted to show you this one spot,” he continues. “It’ll give us a chance to get some privacy, too.”
Incredulously, you laugh. “Can I ask again how you found this place? I feel like I would’ve noticed you hunting around town for cute date spots.”
Michael’s face contorts into an uncomfortable frown, and he laces your fingers together. “I had to, uh, cave and ask the guys at the shop for some good location ideas. They’re older and they know the area better, I figured my safest bet was with them.” You snicker in spite of yourself at the picture this paints in your mind. Poor Michael. He doesn’t like having his hardass persona shattered, and now his coworkers know that this seemingly tough, moody boy really spends his time worrying about where to take his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day.
“Well, it paid off, didn’t it? Otherwise we’d be on a waitlist behind five hundred other couples to get a table at Olive Garden or some bullshit right now.”
Michael chuckles. “So you like it, then? I was worried you wouldn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t I like it?” You notice you’re nearing the edge of the property now, getting increasingly farther away from the rest of the couples. That suits you just fine. Privacy is essential to your plans.
“Well, it’s cold, and you’re not exactly, hm… acclimated to harsh weather,” Michael teases. Mockingly affronted, you nudge him in the side.
“It’s not that harsh today, I’ll live. Besides, aren’t you here to keep me warm?”
“Of course, of course, what else would I even be here for?”
He leads you off of the path and underneath the bowing branches of a massive willow tree. On the other side sits a small alcove, a pond offshooting from the lake surrounded by hedges that almost give it the feel of being in a private booth at a restaurant. The two of you sit together at a wooden bench overlooking the pond, air quiet, atmosphere calm.
Michael wraps his arm around you and tucks you into his side when he notices you shivering, following through on the promise of keeping you warm. “Shit, do you need my jacket?”
The heat radiating off his body is more than enough. “I’m okay. Thank you.” A beat passes between the two of you— not at all uncomfortably, you’re both just preoccupied with taking in the soft coos of the morning doves, the floral scent of the magnolia bushes surrounding you. It’s pleasant. It’s peaceful. Peaceful in a sense that neither of you experience all too often these days, between both of your jobs and your schooling. “Why did you want to show me this spot?”
“I mean, it’s pretty, for one.” You nod in agreement, and Michael lightly clears his throat. “And, uh, it’s got history. Look at the engravement on the bench.”
You turn around to look at the backrest and see the plaque you somehow missed before: Bench erected in memorial of the engagement of Mr. and Mrs. Phil Goode. So it’s that kind of history.
“I think he was the town’s first mayor, or something,” Michael continues. “I don’t know, I don’t really care. But this spot is kind of known as a hotspot for that sort of thing now, according to the guys at the shop. Um, not that I was… yeah. Not that. Just seemed romantic.” Oh, he’s backtracking real hard; it would be amusing if the weight of the boxes in your clutch bag wasn’t resting so heavily against your leg. Not proposing, you remind yourself. Still, you sense your quickly closing window of opportunity. If you’re gonna do it today, like you planned , it has to be now. You exhale deeply.
“Speaking of,” you begin, trepidatious. “I brought your surprise with me.” You turn to open the clip of your bag while Michael makes a small noise of curiosity. Your fingers close around one of the small boxes and gently, carefully, you pull it from the bag.
When you turn to look back at Michael, his face is red. Redder than you’ve possibly ever seen it, like he must have the mother of all head rushes. His eyes are widening frantically and trained down at the box in your hand. “________,” he breathes, mouth opening and closing like he can’t find the words he wants to say, much less form them. Flustered, you quickly wave your hands in protest.
“It’s not what you think!” you blurt. “It’s not… it’s not that. I swear.” You pry the box open, revealing a small, heart-shaped locket. The sunlight glints off the silver surface when you hold it up to show him. “I just— I need to tell you— Okay. Michael. I’ve been with you for two years and I can say now, honestly, that you’ve changed my life in every way. Ways I didn’t even think were possible. My world brightened so much when you came into it, I’d give anything to make yours even half as brilliant. You… you’re the sun. You’re this constant source of light , and happiness, and I couldn’t bear to imagine losing that. Losing you. I know what I want, and it’s you. ”
Michael’s face is still flushed, obviously not given any relief by your half-rehearsed speech. “I know you just said that you’re not doing what I think you’re doing, but it sounds an awful lot like you are doing what I think you’re doing,” he interrupts, voice strained.
You don’t respond immediately. Instead, you carefully open the locket, revealing an old polaroid of the two of you from the first month or so of your relationship. It’s cut sort of awkwardly— the proximity of your faces to the camera means they’re kind of smushed into the frame of the heart, but you tried your best. Despite the picture having only been taken two years ago, you both look so young. Michael was always so unsure back then. Treading so lightly in a relationship he was terrified of destroying. You couldn’t quite get the full picture then, couldn’t quite understand why he was so afraid of letting you love him, couldn’t appreciate just how difficult it was for him to see your smile and not immediately imagine all the ways he could possibly ruin it. But you do now, you understand. And the grin on Michael’s face in the photo is a genuine one, one of the first you’d ever seen from him.
“I’m not proposing, dummy,” you speak in a hushed tone. “Except, maybe I am, in a way? But not really. I just love you, and I want you to keep that reminder with you.” While he gapes at you, you pull the second box out of your bag, displaying your own matching locket. “I know how cheesy it is, but I wanted you to always carry us with you, and for me to always carry us with me. It’s not a proposal. But it is a promise.”
“A promise,” Michael echoes gently. You hum.
“A promise.”
Michael is silent for a long moment. He takes the locket from you, staring down at it in his hands, and it doesn’t occur to you to be concerned until he releases a crackling exhale that sends a tremor through his entire body. “Michael?”
“I’m okay,” he whispers. He’s not crying, but he’s breathless in the way you only ever see him right before he breaks . Your heart thuds. “I’m okay, really.”
“Michael…”
“Why are you so nice to me?” His voice is hardly audible, even in the hush of the garden. “I’ll never understand why.”
You ponder that for a moment, careful of how you respond. “I don’t understand why you act like you’re not nice to me. Really, Michael, you woke up at the crack of dawn today just to make me, like, a ten course breakfast. You deserve some kindness in return.”
“That’s bare fucking minimum,” he insists.
“It’s really not.” Finally, he meets your eyes again.
You thank your secluded location for allowing him to be vulnerable, because his expression is so fragile. As if you could shatter his heart and he wouldn’t so much as put up a fight. Not against you, not ever against you.
You need him to understand that you’d never do that. Not to him, not ever to him.
“I love you,” you declare finally, because even though you try to tell him as best as you can with your actions, you need to make sure that he knows.
“I love you, too.” Slowly, you pull yourself out of his hold.
“Can I…?” You motion towards the locket still in his hand, and for a brief moment, it almost looks as if he doesn’t want to give it up. Doesn’t want to part with it. Just for a moment, though, before he’s handing it to you.
“Yeah, of course,” he murmurs. He shifts so his back is facing you, and you unclasp the chain to drape it around him. Pretty pink half-faded marks dot the skin of his neck; you press a kiss to one just to remind him that they’re there. His ensuing sigh is more than enough to satiate you.
“You don’t have to wear it all the time,” you clarify once you close the clasp. “I just needed to make my intentions known.”
“I want to wear it all the time,” he counters, truthfully. “I’m… fuck, I’m in love with you. I could tell you a million times over and it still wouldn’t be enough. I don’t think I could stand to be without you for a minute for the rest of my life, I’m serious.”
You snort at his theatrics and allow him to turn back and face you again. “Good thing you won’t have to, now.”
“Great thing.” This time, Michael motions for you to turn around, extracting your own necklace from its box. You obediently face your back to him.
“What are your intentions? You said you wanted to make your intentions known.” He makes a real effort to sound nonchalant about the question, but you don’t miss the curious inflection in his voice. Might as well give him the truth.
“To spend the rest of my life with you. Thought that much was obvious.” You struggle, unsuccessfully, to suppress a shudder when his fingers brush against the nape of your neck, and hear the soft click of the clasp fastening. Fuck it. “To marry you.”
Michael’s hands still against your skin. “Ah,” he replies, voice dry. “So assuming you were proposing before wasn’t entirely an embarrassing lapse of judgment on my part?”
You giggle. “No, not really. But, God, I wouldn't do that to you right now. We’re both so busy and broke that I wouldn’t really expect that to be a priority, you know?”
Michael makes a semi-committal sort of noise in response. You’re just about to turn around, but his fingers gently tangle in your hair, raking against your scalp, and it’s much too pleasant to just interrupt.
“I would’ve said yes,” he confesses softly. Oh. Oh.
“I…” You trail off, overwhelmed by the sensation of his hands soothingly stroking in your hair. Your head is spinning— he would have said yes? To an honest-to-god marriage proposal? You knew that was a possibility, of course you knew, but it’s one thing to believe it and another to have him explicitly tell you. “I’ll… keep that in mind?”
“I do agree, though,” Michael amends. “Now isn’t the time. I’d like to get more settled, you know? Get more money before we put down roots. I wanna spoil my family.”
His tone is lighthearted, as if he’s trying to pass it off as a joke, but you don’t miss the connotations behind his words. Family. You haven’t had an official “kid talk” yet— it felt mildly insensitive to assume he even wanted any, given the nature of his upbringing— but whenever it does get brought up in casual conversation, his eyes possess a dreamy sort of quality that tells you everything you need to know.
“Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” you hum. The cold silver of the locket sears against your collarbone, its presence weighing heavily against your chest. It’s gonna be hard to miss from now on.
“We will.” Michael presses his lips to the top of your head. “It’s a promise, right?”
“Right. A promise.”
You find yourself leaning backwards so you can sprawl across his lap, his fingers continuing to massage your head. It feels so good, and your eyes flutter. Michael chuckles lowly.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, _______.” The bass of his voice reverberates through your body. Always a gentleman, he shrugs his jacket off and drapes it around your shoulders.
“I told you not to do that,” you protest, but you surrender when you see the way Michael’s eyes soften. He looks at you like you alone hung the stars in the sky, like you’re something to be treasured, and you find yourself squirming under the intensity of his gaze. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Michael.”
The hidden alcove you’re in falls back into a gentle silence. Michael’s staring straight ahead now, almost in a daze, but you have half a mind to guess what he’s thinking about. After all, you watch his hand subconsciously float up and hold the locket pressed to his sternum. He tenderly rubs it between his thumb and forefinger. Cherishing it.
You did good.