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15 years.
15 years you’ve had to deal with the mess that is jung wooyoung.
and you’re not complaining, not in the slightest. you’ve had the most fun ever when he’s by your side.
but right now, as you watch him trot around your shared kitchen, bowls and flour everywhere as he attempts to make cookies for the both of you, you lean back and began to wonder just how you’ve dealt with this for little over a decade.
he insisted on doing this on his own too and judging by the looks he’s given you when you move ever so slightly in your seat, you know that if a sigh were to leave your lips and he’ll be yelling at you to calm down, that he’s got it all under control.
what made him think he could even do this…? let alone without a recipe….
and as your eyes follow his hurried figure around the small room, your face turns into the epitome of horror as you watch him plop a whole stick of butter into the odd looking mix.
“woo… are you sure you don’t need any help?” you asked in a hush tone, afraid of ticking off the baking beast that was your best friend.
leaving the bowl to the side he turns to look at you with what you can easily describe as the face of a man who thinks he’s got it figured it out and also the face of a man who’s got flour in places where flour shouldn’t be.
“y/n, i know you’re heavily doubting my abilities, but i think watching hours of the great british bakeoff really paid off!” he said with a tiny bounce, his face glowing with excitement at the thought of the best freshly baked cookies by jung wooyoung, or however he called it earlier when he brought the idea up to you.
with a soft sigh and a tiny smile you nodded, knowing you couldn’t fight him, specially when he was so eager to make these.
“alright well, i’ll still be here… if you need help of any sort…” you added, peaking behind him and watching how, unbeknownst to him, the dough had somehow began to bubble on its own before he turned back around and quickly continued mixing it, laughing sheepishly before muttering. “i’ve got it under control”
it was safe to say he did not have it under control, specially after he sat and waited for the cookies to bake but ended up with a tray of burnt goo.
and that’s why you’re both now curled up on the couch, some random disney movie playing on the tv and a sulky sad wooyoung in your arms.
you knew this whole cookie thing was going to be a disaster when he decided to stop using a measuring cup, but you didn’t think it was going to affect him this much, to the point where you had to throw your weighted blanket on top of both of you so he could feel a bit better.
“i’m sorry woo, i know how excited you were to bake cookies.. maybe we can try doing it some other time, together? what do you think?” you ask softly, your head on top of his as you rubbed tiny hearts onto his skin, not that he would notice anyway.
a soft hum left the sad man, the arms wrapped around your waist getting a little tighter, his desperate attempt to find more comfort, but the tiny i love you was the thing that sent your heart into a frenzy, praying that he wouldn’t notice how fast it was beating against your chest before you replied back leaving a lingering kiss on the top of his head.
——
a few days later and a whole cookie fiasco forgotten, you sat in your room, head filled with the countless things you needed to get done for the day, and a certain guy who seems to always linger in the back of your mind whenever you tried to focus.
you’ve known for a while that you had feelings for him, honestly, maybe even a few years, but you can’t really pinpoint the exact moment you knew… the feelings have just always been there.
maybe it was how he always seemed to care about you more than anyone ever has, or the fact that he can fix a horrible day with a smile and a i’m proud of you.
or maybe it was just him, all of him, every nook and cranny of the guy you’ve basically grown up with, the one who at some point was shorter than you and then suddenly had a ‘growth spurt’ according to him (took him two years to get there but you’ll never say that out loud). the guy who was probably sound asleep in the room next to yours, the one who tried to make cookies after you told him about the miserable week you had.
you love him and you know that he loves you too, but you can’t really help the tiny voice telling you that he loves you as a friend… or worse as a little sister.
with a defeated sigh you tried to push the thoughts of him away, something you’ve been trying to do for months now, clearly to no avail, because you knew that no matter how hard you tried, wooyoung will always occupy the biggest spot in your heart, and him being your best friend and roommate didn’t help much either because you saw him literally every day without fail and if for some reason you guys hadn’t cross paths during the day, you’d have him bursting into your room with some sort of take out for both of you and a ‘missed you today’ that had you losing your shit, internally of course.
keeping your eyes glued to your laptop screen you tried to work for a few more hours, eventually managing to get into it enough to focus, before a soft knock on your door made you look away and onto the person who just walked in and plopped himself onto your bed.
he was wearing one of your favorite hoodies, one that you guys just shared and wore whenever it made its way onto your respective laundry baskets. moving your eyes away from his body you stared onto his face, his eyes tired and him on the verge of falling asleep.
“woo… what’s wrong?” you asked softly as he wasn’t usually this quiet. you watched as he slowly closed his eyes and patted the space beside him, silently asking you to join him in bed.
standing up from your desk and stretching a bit you before you crawled into bed and laying your head on his chest, his arm instinctively wrapping around your frame and squishing you into him.
he broke the silence by humming a song you failed to recognize, always having a repertoire of songs to sing to you, and his hand tracing patterns onto your skin, something you couldn’t quite recognize.
“y/n, have you ever been in love before?”
the question took you off guard, your eyes shooting open and your heart racing at the speed of light, he’d have to be deaf to not hear how it’s stammering against your ribcage.
nodding softly you sighed before answering “um, yes i think so, only once though..” your cheeks growing hotter just with the mere thought of him knowing who you loved.
he hummed, the arm around you gently slipping to fall by your side.
“why the sudden question?” you asked, fearing the answer.
laughing softly he shut his eyes and leaned his head back, taking a deep breath before replying.
“i think i’m in love”
——
you couldn’t stop thinking about that night, how he told you he was in love and then proceeded to simply fall asleep on your bed.
a part of you felt sad, very sad, for obvious reasons, but the other side of you felt somewhat happy for him. wooyoung wasn’t the type to catch feelings for anyone or everyone, as loud and outgoing as he is, he just never seemed to find the right person, at least that’s what he’s been saying for a while now.
and a smaller side of you felt somewhat pushed aside, he never told you about anyone catching his eye so you’ve been racking your brain with possible people who could’ve stolen the boy’s heart.
coming to the astounding number of: 2
the guy that lived next door who wooyoung once described as a ‘nice looking young man’
and
the lady at the university cafeteria who always gave him extra french fries with his burgers.
that’s as far as your brain could go, knowing woo had many friends but barely any love interests.
you peeled your eyes off of the book you had been trying to read for the past hour, your eyes now locked onto your phone as you remembered the last text he sent you.
‘i’ll be home late, gotta stay back to finish an essay, i love u <33333’
his signature excess of 3’s in his hearts made your heart race, but it had been over 3 hours and yet you couldn’t bring yourself to reply, a strange feeling of guilt washing over you, it felt strange to have feelings for the guy who quite literally told you loves someone, someone who’s not you.
grabbing your phone you quickly typed out a reply and sent it, not dueling much on it for your own sake.
the question still lingered behind though…
who did he fall in love with…?
——
why did he tell you he was in love
he’s made a mistake, a big one.
eyes scanning the text he had received from you two hours ago.
‘good luck! :)’
that was it. that was all she sent..?
she didn’t say it back…
he had noticed things were a bit weird after he had tiredly told you he was in love and then fell asleep right on your bed. you’ve been going to sleep a lot earlier, and slipping out of the apartment right as he walked out of his room in the mornings, barely giving him the chance to even catch a glimpse of you.
he missed you, he missed you like crazy.
he was too scared to just walk into your room like he usually did, he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable but man… he missed you.
and it killed him to know that you sat just a door away, probably hunched over your desk working the hours away like you usually do before you got him knocking on your door holding a bag of your favorite take out place, made sure you were fed before you passed out on top of him and slept for the rest of the night.
he wanted to go in there and grab your face and tell you that the person he’s in love with is you.
it has always been you, for as long as he can remember his heart has been full of you.
because, in all honesty, he doesn’t just go around attempting to bake cookies for just anyone.
he doesn’t know what prompted him to burst out his somewhat half-assed confession in the middle of the night, after he had spent all day pondering on how he could bring it up, how he could tell you his heart beats for you and you only, all without making it incredibly awkward.
except he did make it awkward, and now you won’t even look at him in the eye.
great.
——
he sat in the living room, his eyes bored onto the tv but he wasn’t paying attention, he’s felt like a walking corpse for the past two weeks since the incident, the apartment had been painfully quiet, no laughs or snarky comments filling the air.
he still had to come up with a way to fix things, at this point he was almost the only way to fix this was to say he has a twin and he was the one who said those things that night, putting the blame on a nonexistent sibling.
but right now what worried him most is that it was almost midnight and you still hadn't arrived home.
yeah things were awkward, but he couldn’t help the growing pit in his stomach, he wouldn’t mind if you walked in, waved at him and went right into your room, he wanted to make sure you got home safe.
he hadn’t seen you at all lately besides sometimes catching your figure slipping into the bathroom or your shadow as you walked past his door, so just looking at you for a few seconds would suffice, knowing that you’re okay would be more than enough.
—————
you would be lying if you said you haven’t been avoiding wooyoung lately, despite how hard and how badly it hurt, but you just couldn’t bare to look at him without feeling like your heart was about to burst right out of your chest while his belonged to someone else.
you thought maybe you were doing something good for the both of you, giving him some space and attempting to calm your overwhelming feelings for him, and you thought you were smart by arriving home past what his usual bedtime but as you walked through the door of your apartment and caught his figure slumping on the couch in a rather uncomfortable position, the tv lights hitting his face and making you realize how tired he looks, his eyebrows furrowed, your heart sunk.
god, you missed him.
against your better judgement you approached his sleeping figure, crouching beside him and slowly reaching to smooth his frown, your hand threading through his hair softly.
a tiny gasp left your lips as he stirred, his eyes slowly opening, staring back at you with the softest most sleepy look ever.
“you’re back” he said, almost questioning if you were really in front of him. you nodded, your hand on his hair still running through it.
“yes… i’m sorry i woke you up” you replied, a guilty look settling onto your face.
he quickly sits up, shaking his head and smiling at you.
“it’s okay, i was waiting for you to get back, it was getting late so i worried a bit but… i’m glad you’re back” he said in a whisper, afraid of being too loud so late at night.
you felt as if his voice was tugging at your heart strings, you missed him so badly but this wasn’t really part of the plan.
clearing your throat you stood up, looking around the room and nodding briefly before speaking in a rush“i should go sleep, i had a long day, night woo” but as you attempted to make your swift escape you felt as his hand wrapped around your wrist, your eyes staying put on the ground bellow you but his voice drawing you to look back at him.
“it’s you” he whispered, the grip he had on your wrist slowly loosening.
your eyebrows shot up in confusion, not quite understanding what he meant with his words, but he continued speaking before you could even ask him what he was talking about.
“when i said i was in love the other night, i just… panicked, i wanted to tell you somehow but i just couldn’t find the right words or the right time, it’s you, i’m in love with you, y/n” he said, his eyes trained on yours, the words almost feeling rehearsed and it made you think that maybe he had been planning to tell you these things at some point.
you couldn’t pry your stare away from his, even after you felt tears quickly dripping down your face.
this only made him panic, but you just had this feeling of overwhelming happiness and relief.
it was you.
it was you all along.
you felt him tugging you to sit on his lap, a worried look on his face, his thumb wiping the tears away from your face as he kept asking you what was wrong.
he feared he’d hurt your feelings somehow, or he had just ruined the most precious friendship he has managed to keep, he was very afraid.
but all of those fears washed away as you stared back at him, the brightest smile on your face before you spoke for the first time in what felt like hours.
“i love you too, woo”