“Well since you're so full of surprises, where are we going next?” Minho said to Jinwoo as they finally stepped out of the studio after what felt like hours of endless questions for the young artist and his muse. Jinwoo merely smirked back at his boyfriend and placed his hands in his pockets before walking silently down the street without as much as a hint for the taller man. Then we Minho kept calling after him he pulled his book out of his bag and continued walking down the street, seemingly as if he were completely oblivious to anything going on around him. 

  Minho ran up beside Jinwoo meeting him at a busy crosswalk, the bright red hand and rushing traffic making it impossible for him to get any farther from him. But those weren’t the only things that stopped him in his tracks. He noticed the soft curves of Jinwoo’s face as his head was bent towards the book. His soft brown hair fell just in front of his eyebrows, and tickled the ends of his long black eyelashes as he blinked methodically at the words he was reading. Minho, as if by impulse, pulled out his phone and captured the image of his little artist just as he turned to look at him. When Jinwoo noticed he quickly covered his face with the book but Minho smiled triumphantly down at the screen. It may have been slightly grainy but the image in his hand was a perfect representation of the man he loved. Effortlessly flawless, even from the placement of his hands on the book and the way one of his eyes was always slightly more closed than the other. Everything was familiar to him, and yet it never ceased to make him feel amazed. Amazed that this was the man whom he got to go to bed with everything, and the first face he saw every morning. 

  Despite Jinwoo spending hours making Minho into art, Minho thought that Jinwoo was art without any help. Even in a casual grey sweatshirt and unkempt hair he somehow managed to radiate a kind of beauty that no one else would ever quite be able to reach. 

  “You know I don’t like having pictures taken of me.” He grumbled hitting Minho lightly on the shoulder with his book before returning it to his bag. Jinwoo was never used to be the subject of anything. He had always lived his life observing and making subjects of others to really ever stop and think about himself. To himself he wasn’t anything extraordinary, not ugly, but not attractive, falling somewhere in the middle. He found it was his job to create beautiful things, but neglected to believe that he was a beautiful thing himself. Sometimes he even found himself feeling slightly insecure in Minho’s presence because of how striking his boyfriends appearance was. Still often catching himself wondering why Minho had ever settled for someone who was so painfully ordinary. 

  “One day I hope I can make you realize that you are so much more than ordinary. You see when I was looking at your paintings I thought to myself, ‘this can’t really be me because I am not beautiful.’ But I realized that, that was exactly how you saw me and because of that I felt it too. Maybe when you look into the mirror you are unable to see all of the beautiful intricacies that make up who you are as a person. But next time just try to remember the way that I see you.” Jinwoo took the phone that Minho was holding outstretched towards him and tried to look at himself as if he was looking at a stranger. The lines of his face seemed softer than the person he saw in the mirror. But he found that he couldn’t look at it for long without still noticing the flaws that he only knew how to detest about himself. 

  Handing the phone back to his boyfriend he smiled a close-lipped smile in his direction and took his hand silently in his before leading them across the street. In New York they never had to worry about people looking at them strangely, but Minho still sometimes found himself feeling hesitant to hold his lovers hand on the street. His eyes often darting around nervously only to find that everyone was too absorbed in their own lives to care about what was going on around them, not that they would have cared even if they had noticed. Jinwoo noticed the tension as Minho’s grip tightened on his hand and he rubbed his thumb along the top of his hand to reassure him that nothing was wrong. 

  “Can you at least give me a hint?” Minho said exasperatingly blowing a breath that he had been holding out of his lungs. 

  “Well considering we are already here I feel like hints would be kind of pointless.” Jinwoo smiled coyly in Minho’s direction feeling for the first time how fortunate he was to now live in a world where they were the only people who could understand each other. He never had to worry about the scrutiny of the public eye because no one but the man he loved understood the language that was shared between them. It was almost like they really lived apart from the rest of the world. Minho turned to see a small corner cafe with a minimalist sign hanging overhead that read  ‘Botanist café’. Jinwoo held the door open for him and smiled shyly as if he was nervous about something. More so than he had been when Minho was about to see the artwork that he had spent months creating. 

  “Mr. Kim, as punctual as ever I see. And you must be Mr. Song, right this way please.” Minho was shocked to hear someone speaking in the language with which he was most familiar and looked over at Jinwoo with raised eyebrows, only to find him clenching his fists tightly as if to keep them from shaking. There were few times when he witnessed his boyfriend anxious to the point of trembling, and the other times were after Minho’s father had left the room followed by a long line of lawyers after him. Minho felt his chest tighten at the thought of his father who he tried to hard to purge from his mind altogether. Thoughts of his life in Korea only ever brought him pain and suffering, and Jinwoo’s trembling hands had never meant anything good before. 

  The waiter brought them to a backdoor which opened into another world. Despite the tightness in his chest Minho felt himself gasping at the sight that was set before him. The backroom of the restaurant was a greenhouse so fully growing with life that the city seemingly disappeared from view along with the noise of the bustling traffic. As if the city that never sleeps had been left behind and they were met with something that much more resembled an Eden like paradise. In the middle of the vibrant flowers and drooping leaves stood a plain white table that was already set, the meal all ready to be served. Jinwoo pulled out a chair for his boyfriend and he finally managed a smile in his direction that melted all of the previous anxieties he had, had about Jinwoo’s nervousness. 

  “Enjoy your meal gentleman.” He bowed towards them after pouring their champagne and walked out of the room leaving the couple alone amongst the abundance of flowers as if they themselves existed to be apart of them. The life that existed amongst the flowers seemed to breathe life back into Jinwoo’s previously trembling figure, and he smiled warmly towards Minho and raised his glass towards his. 

  “Happy 23rd Birthday.” Minho clinked his glass against Jinwoo’s and brought the glass to his lips.

  “Oh please, we are American’s now are we not? I am only 22. And really after the gallery I would have been content receiving nothing else.” He said this with a smirk in his voice, but couldn’t help to feel a foreign heaviness weighing him down as he remembered all of the birthdays he had celebrated in Korea as a closeted man, only ever existing as the perfect puppet, doing nothing other than what he was told. He knew that was why Jinwoo had done all of this, because he wanted to give him a birthday that was so memorable it would wipe away all of the birthdays that would only ever exist to haunt him. 

  “I would have taken you here whether it was your birthday or not. Although I guess I had been keeping it a secret from you up until this point for that very reason. Sometimes during the day I would sneak out of my gallery and wander the streets looking for inspiration, and I stumbled upon this place. I had stopped it for a cup of iced coffee, but the backdoor was open exposing the hidden world that existed behind it. I was entranced with the garden, looking as though it had come from a dream, because surely nothing so natural, so full of life could exist on its own in this city whose life force comes from the battle of the buildings. It pained me deeply to have to keep such beauty from you, but we all do ridiculous things I guess just to make the people we love happy.” Jinwoo almost seemed shy while saying this, color flooded his cheeks and he almost found it difficult to look his long-time boyfriend in the eye. But when he finally made contact he felt his own chest tighten but without any sense of sadness. But instead in awe that seemingly every time he looked at Minho the love in his eyes somehow only succeeded to deepen.  

         They ate their food in a comfortable silence, the atmosphere around them somehow enhancing the flavor of the dishes in a way that couldn’t be matched amongst such bustling urban life. Like in this small bubble of life time slowed down, allowing them to be able to catch up on all of the years they had missed just trying to merely live one year to the next. Although they had eaten Minho found that Jinwoo’s nervousness had grown steadily throughout the course of the meal, but somehow it wasn’t an anxiety that startled him. Instead he almost felt his heart beating quickly, like it had when he had seen Jinwoo for the first time. He never in his life thought it was possible to be as in love with anyone as he was with Jinwoo. But he had never really allowed himself to believe in such a thing as love in the first place. He existed as an appendage to his father, a person to be used as another pawn in a much larger game. He felt the corners of his mouth turning down slightly but tried to recover with a smile so Jinwoo wouldn’t notice his shift in emotion. But Jinwoo’s eyes shown with understanding, the kind that only someone who had lived through the experience with you would have been able to show. 

  “I see the way the light in your eyes flickers as the memories of your painful past, that wasn’t really so far into the past at all. The moments where you have to force a smile on your face, because the weight of the only life you had ever known isn’t a weight that is alleviated with distance, but only ever is alleviated with time. But as many times as the memories seem to be drowning you underneath a bottomless ocean, I will be here to pick you up, and hold you above the waves to keep you from sinking. To remind you that you don’t have to run away from the past, but instead keep rebuilding your future. Here with me, which is where I hope that you want to stay. Maybe what we have isn’t accepted as love from everyone, but I feel like our own acceptance is enough to make that irrelevant. So.. uh I know this isn’t traditional but..” Jinwoo’s cheeks flushed deeply as he got up from his chair and took something out of his sweatshirt pocket, bending down on one knee. Minho felt new tears dampening his cheeks before Jinwoo had ever even uttered the words.

  “Maybe the first time around for you was something you would like to forget, along with most all of your past that I wasn’t there to live through you with. But, if you’ll allow me to make this time your last time. I promise I will love you as much as I can, for as long as you’ll let me. And, if you want, to have the name of Song removed from your life forever. Will you marry me?” The speech he had practiced countless times in the mirror had probably been much longer, and far more poetic, but he was choking back tears when he noticed Minho’s had long since been falling down his cheeks. Minho pulled his little artist to his feet and kissed him deeply and passionately which was far more of a response than any yes would have been. They had never needed words to express all of the things they were feeling, but instead chose to show each other through their actions instead. 

   They pulled apart and Jinwoo pushed the simple silver ring onto Minho’s hand, and intertwined fingers with him, looking up towards his now future husband allowing the tears he had been holding back to slide down his face freely. A smile spreading across his lips that was actually wide enough to show teeth. 

  “I’ve always thought Kim Minho had a nice ring to it.” Minho said through his tears his laugh somehow managing to brighten up the room further. 

  The two stood in the middle of the garden, and yet it dimmed so greatly in comparison to the life that was breathing from the young newly engaged couple. They cried not only out of happiness for each other, but also because of all of the pain they had overcome, everything they had been forced to fight through to get to where they are now. Maybe they didn’t have anyone besides each other, and maybe their wedding would be as unceremonious as a pastor in the art gallery, but none of that would ever matter to them. In a way their lives were only just now beginning, as Jinwoo’s art received the recognition it deserved, and Minho was able to live a life free from the name that would only ever have continued to haunt him. 

 Author note: Well here marks the official end of the story! I just wanted to thank all of you for your support throughout these chapters and all of you who have left such nice comments. If it hadn't been for all of you I never would have found it inside of me to be able to finish this story. Thank you again I am so grateful.

        <3 Cai. 

 ps. I might do a sort of epilogue someday :P