#(thank you alyssa and niko for validating me T_T)

[kodzukyan]

11:59 (let’s start the new year right)

notes: merry (belated) christmas, and happy new year, miss yeon! thank you for being such a joy and sharing many smiles and mems with me this past year, and i hope we’ll be able to share more laughter in the upcoming year! @tunamiya

wc: 961

summary: sakusa’s never the one for romantic gestures, but his love is loud all the same.

Sakusa Kiyoomi is a private person, but for someone who is so reserved, you think he makes many exceptions for you. He’s never the one for cliches or romantic gestures, but his love is quite loud.

His love is in the way he indulges you by taking you for an evening walk to see Christmas lights, despite his hesitance for the crowd.

(Since it’s Christmas, he nods, because he usually says no, and you can respect that. But he thinks you outshine all the lights when you excitedly tug on his hand and point out your favorites.)

His love is in the way he’s memorized your favorite coffee order and how you like tuna spread on your toasts.

(You just order the same things despite perusing the menu every time, he bluntly teases you, but you make out the fond smile under his mask.)

His love is in the way that he always crinkles his nose when you mischievously place your freezing hands on his face, but he always ends up interlacing your fingers together and warming your smaller hand in his afterward.

You hum as you hold your coffee in one hand and his heart in the other as you walk home from the coffee shop. You think you can take on the world just a little more with him by your side.

You stop in your tracks as something cold touches your nose. Glancing up, you find the skies filled with millions of snowdrops, and you stare in awe as the first snow of the season gently and slowly blankets the town.

Sakusa stops when he observes your stop from his peripheral vision, and he tilts his head in confusion. He silently tugs your hand, and it pulls you out of your trance.

The snowfall is light, and though it has merely been minutes at most, it contrasts vividly against Sakusa’s black curls.

“Do you believe in the first snow saying?” you giggle as you dust off the accumulating snow in his hair.

Sakusa knows he's a peculiar person, and he knows he can be trying to love. He’s a realist, he claims, and he likes knowing the answer to every question before he dives right in. Love, though, is something he doesn’t anticipate he can ever fathom. You are a puzzle he doesn’t ever think he can answer every question to; he doesn’t ever think he wants to stop discovering and reliving the enigma that is you.

But when he looks at you as you focus on his hair, he thinks maybe love undoubtedly is this. Love is the sun in your eyes against navy blue skies, shining brighter than the sparkling snow. Love is a quiet, rainy city and a home full of books, plants, and sets of two picked out together.

“No,” he conclusively answers when you nod in approval of your handiwork with a gentle smile on your face. He knows he tends to overthink things, but you are the one thing he never thinks twice about, never hesitates about.

He cracks a smile when he sees a small pout forming on your face. He cradles your hands in his gloved ones. Theoretically, he’s the one warming you up, but your warmth radiates all the way to his heart. He squeezes your hand three times in succession to declare the three words he saves only for you.

“But I believe in us.”

He watches as you blink once, twice, before a smile breaks onto your face. As you squeeze his hand three times in succession to reciprocate his affections, he thinks love definitely is just this.

--

After his quick shower from your walk home, he sees you already curled up in his hoodie over your pajamas. As you sip on some hot cocoa, he recognizes the steaming cup of hot cocoa in his favorite mug, and he smiles.

“I made you some hot cocoa,” you mention as you tear your eyes from the new year program on TV that always airs before the countdown begins.

“Thank you, love.” He places a tender kiss on your temple before he takes a seat next to you. He used to be hesitant to call you as such, but he decides love is suiting because you are love as he knows it.

As if it’s the most natural thing in the world, you lean in and rest your head on his shoulders and his hands find a home in yours. He never watches the show before you because he considers it too loud and pointless, but he watches it now because he likes seeing the light in your eyes and the corners of your lips upturn in soft smiles. He likes hearing you laugh at their antics.

This, he realizes, as the two of you sit in comfortable silence with only the TV playing in the background, as your matching phone cases — his, plain black and yours, clear with the polaroid with the two of you in it — lay on the coffee table in front, as the world around drowns out when the new year countdown begins on TV, is the kind of love he constantly hears about in songs. In love songs that you like, love songs that inevitably end up in his playlists somehow because it reminds him of you.

This, he realizes, is something he always wants to cherish - you, here, with him, sharing this space called home and this time called love.

The red velvet box he bought the other day sits heavy inside his pocket as the thought of you continues to reverberate in his mind.

He wonders if it will be overmuch if he drops down on his knee with the box open as the ball drops and rings in the new year.