“Babe, I’m going to the grocery store. I didn’t know if you wanted to get up and come with..?” Kyungsoo asked gently, sitting on his side of the bed, looking at Yifan’s half asleep face. He was wearing only a towel and his hair still dripped down his neck. Yifan’s eyes opened a glowered at him.

“Maybe if you would have left me some god damned hot water. You couldn’t have maybe woken me up before showering? You do this every time. You’re so ing selfish at times.” Yifan barked crankily, making Kyungsoo shrink back.

“I’m sorry… I shower at the same time every day…”

“Yeah, well if you want me to get up and go places with you, you should at least make sure I have enough time to shower and shave. You did this yesterday too. The water was ing ice cold half way through the shower. And you wondered why I was cranky. You take a god damned cold shower once in a while and see how it makes you feel!”

Kyungsoo gingerly got off the bed, his heart pounding in his ears. For years, he has put up with this attitude. This man, Wu Yifan, was not the same man he fell in love with years ago. He wasn’t the same man who embraced his dreams and promised him a life of love and happiness. No, this Yifan was older, angrier, jaded. They had their good days, which reminded Kyungsoo why he married this man in the first place, but they seemed far and few and in between.

Kyungsoo quietly gathered up his clothing and slipped out of the bedroom and back into the bathroom to get dressed. As he pulled on his clothes, his friend’s words echoed in his head. “You could do better. You don’t deserve to be treated like this,” Junmyeon had said to him over the phone a few days ago. The older man had a point, but he was scared. How do you restart your life at 25? “Minseok and I have been together just as long as you two and we never fight like you do. He has never called me a name directly and he certainly has never made me cry like Yifan does to you. Yifan is our friend too, but he’s way out of line, Soo. You don’t deserve this, and he doesn’t deserve you.” Luhan had comforted him a couple weeks ago over lunch. The subject of Yifan had come up and Kyungsoo had found himself sobbing into his club sandwich while Luhan looked at him with surprise.

Now he was standing in front of the mirror, watching as the tears filled his reflection’s eyes. Were they right? Was he worth something better? Was there something they were seeing that he didn’t? Kyungsoo wasn’t really sure any more, after all these years, if he was capable of being loved. Because deep down, he wasn’t sure if he knew how to love himself.

With a deep breath, he bit back the tears and walked from the bathroom. He put on his coat on and grabbed his shopping list before heading out the door, pretending nothing was wrong.