The cup sat perfectly within the center of the table as slowly Tino leaned forward to hesitantly taste it before realizing something.
"People will think we're dating!" Tino gasped as he stared across at his best friend that he'd only met fairly recently though with limited speech always proved to Tino why he loved him so in his own way.
"OK." Berwald spoke easily enough, leaning forward only enough to take a sip from the supposedly chocolately and yummy drink before him.
"Wait … Are we dating?" The question hit Tino like a wall of bricks, and he found himself staring at the other man before him, worried for a moment about what others will say.
"You're my wife." It fell easily like an old joke retold for the millionth time yet had suddenly found more meaning to it, a ring of truth in a sense.
"I thought you were joking..?" Tino gaped as he stared at his best friend, boyfriend(?), as he tried to piece together what all of this was.
"I wasn't joking." The words fell fairly easily of their own accord and all Tino could think about was the fact that his best friend was really his boyfriend all along; the sweetest man that he'd ever met, the man that he got along best with, and the man that had taken his time, let this go perfectly slow, was dating him.
"I didn't realize that you felt that way. It isn't bad. It's great in fact! I do like you too." Tino wasn't sure if his love was fully romantic yet, but he had always felt the stirrings of chemistry in his heart and had had more than a few crushes on his best friend.
"I love you." It was as if those words once spoken in the sincerity of friendship and the beauty of joking around with a touch of affection and genuine feelings became so much more; they'd changed, became something so much greater than Tino had ever known.
He curled up against Berwald and whispered, "I'm falling in love with you."
It was enough for now; it conveyed the feelings of a man that had not spent too long questioning his own feelings that now addressed a man who had spent enough time really thinking about his feelings.
Tino wondered if truly no one would mind when he leaned forward and tried the best chocolately coffee mix ever from the same straw that Berwald had drunk it from.
He needed time after all to truly accept his new relationship and remind himself that the beauty of love always revealed itself from behind hidden corners.
