Taemin absolutely detested being labelled as ‘pretty’ or ‘cute’ or anything that resounded with ‘feminine’. Girls were pretty, girls were cute, and he was not a girl –

Was he now? He thought bitterly.

His habit of ascertaining his reflection in the mirror did quite resemble the daily rituals of purse-lipped girls, but his reasons were the emphatic divergence between his actual gender and identified one.

He would grimace before his image, his face suffusing with a concentrated loathing and fingers tracing the outline of his lineaments. He hated the definition of his sculpted jawline; the cherry-pink of his lips; the wide wonder of his eyes. Masculinity was all he desired, but it was an ambition his effeminate condemnation had batted its eyelashes at.

“Well, ,” he whispered. If he was a lady, he’d be exquisite, curvaceous, and irresistibly voluptuous, that he could care to admit: But he was not a lady, he was a man! Men have thick eyebrows, rakish grins, and a smug air of virility, but he was deigned to girlishness, it seemed, ever since he slipped out of his mother’s womb. The doctor could have congratulated his mother on the pale rosiness of her child’s cheeks, the little marshmallow sweetness of its nose, and gone, “Why, it’s a beautiful girl, Mrs Lee –”

And everybody seemed to relentlessly about it. Everyone seemed to mindlessly shower their apparent tirades, their ceaseless mockery – well, except Minho, he supposed. Minho never quite said anything about it.

Minho seemed to know, despite the battle Taemin had raging within him to combat the scowls and abstain from the frowns whenever a comment of ‘pretty’ was remarked. Minho’s eyes seemed to pierce Taemin’s with a gaze of comprehension, of a calm understanding.

Or was Minho just oblivious – Taemin pressed his lips together, his fingers playing with Minho’s absently, in sudden fascination of the slimness of the digits. Taemin bent the fingers, feeling their movements beneath his palms. Minho was everything he wanted to be; everything he could ever ask for and more in charisma and in dashing jauntiness. Did Minho fully know about his enviable features? Did he soak them in with a gaze before the mirror; did he partake in their felicity? Did he?

He felt Minho entwine their hands together. The bed felt a little warmer.

A/N - I wonder when I'll conclude this collection. It seems to be coming along pretty okay for now.