#take lumberjohn

you will never ever agree to go on a trip with your friends again. especially not if said friends have just entered their hippie phase and want to be close to nature and know no better way to do that than to go to a cabin in the middle of the woods, with no electricity and no air conditioning and absolutely no protection against the ruthless insects that call the forest their home and seem to love blood more than a vampire ever could. this was a horrible idea and you regret ever letting yourself be convinced to join, because you know you’re not the one-with-nature type, you’ve known this since you were a child and your father was convinced the perfect bonding activity would be to go fishing. needless to say, you found it boring, kept on complaining and the two of you ended up not catching a single fish.

when you arrive at the cabin your friends rented you have to admit, though, that maybe you were a little dramatic, because your housing does have electricity and you don’t have to shit in the forest either, contrary to what you were fearing until now. and then something happens that makes you take back every single less-than-nice thought you’ve been thinking about this trip while in the car on the way to bumfuck nowhere, and that something is a man in a half-unbuttoned flannel and a pair of denim shorts. and that man, it appears, is the one to rent out this place to whoever desires to abandon civilisation for a while.

and his name is jongho, as he lets you know while unlocking the door to let you in.

jongho shows you around and seems especially proud of the fireplace, telling your group that if you run out of firewood you should give him a call, he’ll take care of it, flexing his biceps jokingly but the way you can’t take your eyes off him afterwards sadly isn’t a joke at all. and now you almost hope that your electricity will die and some mystic happening will cut you off from all civilisation, so it’s just your friends (you choose to ignore them in your little fantasy), you and jongho.

you know not to provoke fate, though, so you quickly push those thoughts away; but not without engaging in a little fantasy of him wrapping you in a blanket and carrying you toward the warm fireplace, letting you know that in order to stay warm you’ll have to cuddle. that much you allow yourself before you return to reality.

however reality isn’t too bad either, because during the next few days jongho comes around regularly, either with some more chopped wood or with a fish he caught himself or one time he visits just to make sure everything is still okay, and the heart eyes you get whenever you are in his general vicinity are obvious to everyone but the man himself. or maybe he just chooses to ignore them. you wouldn’t be able to blame him, really, because you’ve barely exchanged more than two words - partly owed to the fact that any and all coherent thoughts leave you when he’s around and all your brain manages to come up with is tarzan and jane-type scenarios featuring him and you. that is not exactly what you want to tell him about, so you remain silent for the most part and let your friends do the talking.

you don’t even really listen when they talk, too busy admiring jongho’s voice and then getting embarrassed over how easily this man affects you, and this comes to be your demise because with your friends’ hippie phase also comes a newfound interest in “free love” and since your interest in the host is incredibly obvious they decide to set you up, telling the object of your desire that out of all of you you’re the one with the most fishing experience when he asks if any of you like to go fishing. it’s not a lie, technically, because their only contact with fish has been in pre-cooked form, but that is a detail no one finds relevant enough to mention.

and when jongho asks if you’d like to join him on a fishing tour somewhen you really can’t find it in yourself to say that no, you’d rather not.

so once more you curse your friends for your situation, except this time the presence of the perpetually flannel-clad jock - he’s a lumberjack, you’ve gathered by now - is more a reason to wail than a source of joy. because, let’s face it, you are going to embarrass yourself horribly, and you’d rather embarrass yourself in front of your friends than in front of a total snack like this. you just hope you’re not going to fall into any waters.

at least in that regard fate is on your side, because the fishing trip goes without you getting soaked, and generally goes better than you’d expected - turn out that fishing for the most part is just sitting and not being loud, and you’ve become quite good at not saying a word around jongho these past days.

maybe the success of this fishing tour made you a little too confident, though, your demise lurking just around the corner. the next embarrassment is never far; in this case it comes when you offer to help him collect all the fishing utensils but then step too close to the water and almost fall right in. you would have fallen right in if he hadn’t had good reflexes and pulled you back, towards him, and of course you land on his chest, staring at him wide-eyed and completely shocked until he gently pushes you off, your body weight seemingly no issue to someone with biceps like these.

you apologise profusely and can’t even look him in the eyes, convinced he thinks you’re just some weirdo from the city, and you’re ready to go take a swim in the lake voluntarily when you hear him laugh - anything to escape this embarrassment, anything to escape his mockery.

except he isn’t mocking you, he’s laughing off the awkward situation before he asks: “are you okay?”

“yeah, i’m, i mean, you’re the one that almost got crushed by me, so i should be asking you, uh-”

here he interrupts you.

“if that would’ve been enough to almost crush me maybe i should consider another profession.”

and again he flexes his biceps, winking when he sees you staring. okay, so maybe you have a thing for muscles. and maybe you’re not as sneaky about it as you thought.

you don’t really say another word as he walks you back to the cabin - which, you convince yourself, is only because otherwise you’d get so horribly lost -, but once there he lightly touches your elbow as if to stop you without actually stopping you. it’s enough to make you freeze in your spot.

“if you’re not too scared of ending up actually taking a bath, maybe you could join me next time i go fishing as well?”

the words don’t register immediately, and when they do you’re not sure you didn’t hallucinate them, and first when jongho says “i get if today was too scary though” with a smile that’s either teasing or masking disappointment do you realise that he did, in fact, ask you for real.

“no yeah that’s fine! i’m not scared, it’s fine!”

maybe you sound overeager. you don’t care. it’s not like today can get any more embarrassing, anyway.

his reply of “i’ll see you then!” goes nearly unnoticed, because you’re too busy staring at his smile and imagining what your wedding would be like. but he does come to see you again, two days later (now you’re glad your friends found three weeks to be the minimum time for the vacation you cursed a week ago but that you never want to end now that you have a crush), skillfully hits the last piece of wood of this chopping batch with the axe you’ve grown used to seeing him with - and makes you swoon with that - and asks you if you want to go on another fishing tour.

of course you do.

so you go to the lake again, except this time it seems like jongho wants to talk to you, albeit quietly, and you try to not sound too boring, try to not sound too much like a spoiled city kid.

you fail miserably, but he just laughs, doesn’t seem to mind, and you actually find out some things about him as well. you’d probably have found out even more if you hadn’t been so busy staring at his arms and legs and chest whenever you got the chance.

soon you get better at coordinating the staring and the conversations, because he invites you out to join him after that, too, until two days before you’re set to leave he doesn’t take you to your usual spot at the lake but instead to a small clearing, and turns out the basket he’s been carrying wasn’t food for fish but rather food for humans.

you’re surprised and don’t fully get what’s going on, but jongho is quick to explain.

“okay so uh… you like me and you’re leaving in two days so i figured i might as well take you on a date.”

he sounds confident, as if he was stating facts rather than assumptions, and that’s what leaves you dumbfounded enough to not even question it but just stutter out: “oh, uh, okay. sure.”

you’re glad it’s nothing too fancy, though, because that would have embarrassed you more than it would have made you happy, but he seems to have understood that much about you from the conversations you had while fishing. it’s just some sandwiches, some fruit, and a whole lot of water. the summer heat is cruel even in the cooling shade of the forest.

jongho tells you that he’s noticed the way you’d look at him, and since he didn’t want to be too hopeful he admits to asking your friends about his suspicions - his wishful thinking, he claims -, and those traitors ratted you out like it was nothing. you’re not sure whether to be angry or grateful right now.

he then goes on to say that he’s been trying to use the fishing tours as dates, but that’s not very romantic and also he never actually said it straight out, and he didn’t want you to go back without even trying so that’s how you got here.

“so we’re on a date?”, you ask, just to be fully sure, and he nods, though he adds: “unless you’d rather not, i mean.”

“no!”, surprised by how loud your voice is, “no, it’s… i’m glad it’s a date.”

again he smiles at you, a smile that still makes you kind of wobbly in the knees, and then you’re on a date. you wouldn’t ever have expected this kind of date, but you don’t complain, find yourself thoroughly impressed when he splits an apple in two with his bare hands and offers you one half to eat, and even more so when he picks you up with one arm while carrying the picnic bag with the other.

he puts you back down before you reach the cabin, because being caught like that would have been embarrassing and also a reason for endless teasing, though your friends find such a reason anyway when you peck his cheek on the doorstep and tell him you hope you’ll see him again the next day.

that maybe would have been forgotten after a week or so, but jongho wraps you in a bear hug that he uses as an opportunity to ask you if he can kiss you without anyone hearing, and when you confirm that he can he doesn’t hesitate at all.

you’re on cloud nine for exactly three seconds before you hear one person hollering and another three people ‘shh!’ing that person, and with a heavy sigh you pull away from him.

“i’ll see you tomorrow”, you tell him, voice laced with regret because this was so nice and you very much didn’t want to stop yet, but it appears you have no choice.

“yeah”, he says, presses a kiss to your forehead and leaves you to your fate, though he makes up for it the next day by asking if you’d like to date him for real, and when it turns out that this is just his summer job that he uses to live his lumberjack dreams and that he doesn’t actually live too far away from you you agree, grinning like an idiot from that point onwards and it’s fairly obvious what happened.

and it’s even more obvious when he, dressed in a flannel as always, takes you out on a city date, a date which ends with him bench pressing you because you were convinced he couldn’t and he was unable to accept this slight to his honour.

“so i have a hunk of a boyfriend now and you have another set of weights, i guess.”