Spring

There was a knock at my office door and JiMin came in, a laugh on his lips. "The boys are acting up. They've been goofing and making us laugh all day."
"I heard. I was thinking about taking my laptop into the practice room to work, but DongWon said it's been chaotic in there all day," I said and motioned to my computer screen. "I'm almost done here if you can just give me five minutes."
"No problem. I know I'm a little early. I was wondering if we can go to The EunHaeng before we go to dinner. I could use a little peace and quiet."
"Yeah, whatever you want," I said, watching him take a seat on the couch and then turning to finish typing an email. "I just cleaned it up over the weekend and planted some new flowers."
"That sounds so nice. We've been working so hard to get the new album out. I feel like I haven't even seen the sky in months."

We walked to The Eunhaeng, mostly talking about the release of Third Crush's third album and its first MV. Things had been hectic at work. The boys were in hot demand, their increasing popularity putting more pressure on everyone.
On the way we stopped at Princess Cup, but I got a green tea and lemonade instead of a coffee. I was trying to cut back my coffee consumption to a more reasonable amount. I'd been spending a lot of time with Jeon JungKook working on his first album with Whizhaven and he was always talking about working out and eating healthier. I was letting him influence me in a positive direction.
When I unlocked the gate and let JiMin into The Eunhaeng, he hurried over the paths exclaiming about the flowers. "I love these big pink ones the most...and look at the tree," he said, reaching his hand up into the branches. "What are these green things?"
"Ginkgos don't have blossoms. This is a female tree, so it has these ovules," I explained. "I don't know where, but there must be a male tree somewhere around here. It seems like the tree gets pollinated every year. There's always fruit."
"You always know so much," he said, walking over to sit next to me on the bench. "It makes things more interesting."
"I want to take good care of the tree. It's special."
"You've been doing good," he said. It was more of a statement than a question. We'd gotten into the habit of talking about our day on the phone most evenings. Conversations that always ended up being longer than we'd decided was allowable, but never got too deep.
He'd called me a lot in the beginning, after a few nightmares, but mostly because bad memories tended to surface when he lay down to sleep. I'd talked him through some difficult episodes and learned a lot about the things he'd held back before, some of the worst of the things that WonSeok had done to him, said to him, made him feel. In the end we'd discovered that it worked better if he called me before he began ruminating on the past, if we talked until he was comfortable and content and ready to fall asleep.
We'd shared so much. Through words and pauses, tears, laughter and sighs. I felt more comfortable and connected to him than I ever had before. That pull of gravity was there, everything in me drawn straight to him, but there was a sense of peace, too, a perfect, warm rightness to being with him.
"I have been good. I've been great," I said. "Work is...more than work. I'm having more fun, letting myself relax a little and just enjoy being creative. I joined Whizhaven because I love music, but I let that love get buried under everything else. It turned into just a fact instead of a driving force. But I'm getting it back and it's changing everything."
"Everyone is talking about how you've been lately. They're saying things like 'animated' and 'on fire'. Some of them are saying it's because of Third Crush and some of them are saying it's because of Jeon JungKook," he said.
Both of his hands were wrapped around a vanilla latte, holding it close to his lips so that he could take lots of little sips. It was distracting me, frustrating me. I wanted to hold his hand so badly that my fingers were itching.
"But it's all you," I said, taking a drink of my tea, not letting myself wish it was a coffee.
"Not all me. It's all you. You're the one doing so many things, making so many changes. I was always in awe of you before and now it's like you're so much more."
"You weren't in awe of the real me, before. You were in awe of my reputation. The fact that I'm a good producer. Other than that I was nothing but a mess." My mouth twisted into a frown at the memories that popped up into my mind. Now I really wanted a coffee. "Can I have a sip?"
He passed me his cup but he was shaking his head. "You can't see yourself. The way you're so confident, the way you talk to people. You have so much charisma and it's like you're not even trying. You know, like HoSeok? He's this big personality with all of this energy and smiles and talk and you have just as much of an impact as he does just being quiet and saying the bare minimum."
He reached for his coffee and I reluctantly gave it back. It was too sweet anyway. "It's a mystery to me. How you have so much presence. And it draws me in like a magnet. When I see HoSeok, I want to talk to him and laugh, but when I see you, I just want to get as close as possible. I want to feel your aura."
The hand nearest me left the coffee cup and I snatched it out of the air, saying, "What does it feel like?" half joking, half curious.
He sat the coffee cup down on the other side of the bench and turned to me, his eyes serious. "It feels like home. It feels safe. It feels like everything I've ever dreamt about love."
He raised his free hand and rubbed the backs of his fingers over my cheek. "I've been asking myself, 'What is it that I lack? What is it that I don't have?' And the only real answer is you. I'm not perfect and I'll keep working on myself, but right now it feels like things can't go forward unless we're together. I'm standing at the end of my path, waiting for it to intersect with yours."
I dropped my tea, just let it fall to the ground, and raised my hand to catch his as it left my face, pressing his fingers against my lips, closing my eyes against the rush of feelings in my heart. Joy, fear, anticipation and the pain of missing him, so much more, all filling me at once.
"I don't need you, I can survive and succeed without you, but I love you. I do need you because I love you. I need to share my life with you and touch you every day. I just...please...I think I'm ready. Are you ready?"
"Yeah. I'm ready," I said, my lips dragging against the skin of his fingers.
He was sighing happily, slipping his fingers from mine and catching my face between his hands,pulling me so that he could press his full lips to mine. A quick kiss, a peck, then two then three and then his lips caught and held, opened over mine, tugged and tasted. He drug in a shaky breath and then sighed and his tongue slipped out to trace over my lips.
I sent my tongue out to meet his, to taste him, sweet coffee and the deeper taste of JiMin, but he pulled back, moving to press butterfly kisses over my forehead while his fingers combed through my hair. "Slow down. I want to take things slow. I want to take you on a date. Let me take you to dinner tonight and a movie and then for coffee and dessert. Will you?"
"Yes, that sounds lovely, but are we really taking things slow?" He'd pushed me down on the bench and was straddling me, still raining kisses over my face. "I usually don't make out with someone before the first date."
"This is a one time thing because you promised you'd make love to me on this bench when the weather got warmer and that was way more than a year ago. You owe me." His eyes were holding back laughter, his lips pouting.
"Ah. I'm a man who always pays his debts," I said and his mouth was back on mine, tongue pushing in, stealing my breath and making the rest of the world fade away.
I slid my hands under his light jacket, tugged his shirt from his pants and spread my fingers over his skin, hot and soft and intimate. The barrier that had separated us had disappeared. There was nothing standing in the way now. He was mine and I was his and we were right where we belonged.
We would take it slow, we'd already talked about it. He wasn't going to rush to pack his bags and move in with me. We were going to take our time, but he was truly mine again, no holding back, no waiting. I could let myself go, disappear into him and never fully pull back, entwine myself in him, fully trusting that he would take care of my heart.
I would hold tightly when he needed it, loosen my grip when he needed space. I would anticipate his needs and entrust him with mine. We would share our happiness and love, our minutes and our moments. It left me breathless, finally touching the future that I'd been waiting for, working towards. He was in my hands, cradled in my arms, melting against my chest. He was everything that I would ever need or want and I was never going to let him go.

Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading Ginkgo Leaf. I'd appreciate any feedback you have, so please leave a review. I'm thinking of writing a bonus chapter for Ginkgo Leaf, so that might happen. More of my fics are on Archive of Our Own if you'd like to take a look at what's there. And you can follow on Twitter - cassakane1 - for updates about when I will start releasing my next fic.