Jinki liked this room the best. Out of all of the rooms in their mansion, this one was his favorite. Not because it was the biggest, that achievement belonged to the vast and wide kitchen. The living room had a giant television that spanned from one wall to the other with a large wall mounted fireplace trimmed in white marble under it. There was a basketball court, a movie theater, two swimming pools and a garage full of cars. He’d poured a lot of money into this home but this room, their bedroom, was his favorite.

There was a mirror on almost every wall. Jinki had a thing with reflections. They were the most honest, from all angles. There was a smaller version of the fireplace in the room, bare of any logs and the floor was hardwood with a thick push carpet covering most of it. It had always been a beautiful room. At the moment, all of the books had been torn from the many shelves of the bookcase and now were strewn across the floor, some of the pages ripped, shreds of them scattered across the floor and fluttering in the air. The door to their curio with all of their keepsakes in it had been kicked off the hinges and the one picture they had together, both of them in grey, where in one moment of time, Jinki knew, he just knew that their love was everlasting, had been knocked skewed and was dangling by one corner. 

Still, it was his favorite room. Even with all the tears and the angry words, it was his favorite room.

Jinki stared across the room at Minho who was sitting on their bed with his face in the palms of his hands. The sobbing had quieted down to sniffles, intermittent and quiet, which to be honest, scared Jinki more than he wanted to admit. 

“Sweetheart…say something.”

There was a chuckle, completely devoid of humor, as a head of short cropped brown hair rose. Jinki caught two red eyes, puffy with exhaustion, staring back at him and he sighed. He doesn’t understand how they got here, but they were here and they are stuck. 

“You don’t get it. There is nothing to say,” Minho said quietly. He picked up a small black box and held it to his chest. Inside was a watch, a gift, an “I’m sorry,” for missing dinner again, but the stupid hunk of metal and gears had sparked the biggest fight either of them had ever been in. 

I don’t want this. 
What do you mean you don’t want it? You told me you wanted it. That watch cost two grand!
I don’t care. Take it back.
I can’t take it back! 
It seems you can’t do a lot of things these days, huh?
What the is that supposed to mean?
What does it sound like to you? But it’s not like you get anything, nothing clicks to you.
Perfect, Minho. Just perfect. You know you just love being difficult, it’s like you feed off of it.  
you, you . 
Jinki laughed derisively. I would, gladly but it’s not like you’ve been in the ing mood lately. 
You make me sick. 


Jinki didn’t get it, but he didn’t get a lot of things about Minho these days. He was always angry, always sad and he wouldn’t explain it to Jinki. He wouldn’t explain why he was cold to Jinki during the day and clung to him like he was warmth personified at night. Why he wouldn’t kiss him goodbye in the morning, but would stare at him lovingly from across a room. 

Jinki was tired. Tired of the arguments, tired of the confusion, tired of trying to figure out the puzzle. 

“No. Tell me. Tell me now because I swear to you Minho, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

Minho’s head shot up and a fire so hot burned in his eyes that Jinki wanted to take a step back. “You...you don’t know who I am anymore? You?” He laughed. “That’s hilarious. That’s…God, that’s absolutely hilarious.” Minho stood and the box fell from his hands. “I want a divorce.”

Now it was Jinki’s turn to laugh. “I ask you to explain and you tell me you want a divorce. Classic.”  He stuffed his hands in his pocket, leaned back against the broken curio and crossed his feet. “I’m not giving you anything.”

Minho’s face crumbled a bit before he inhaled and let it go in an agonizingly slow breathe. “We don’t belong together, Jinki.” Minho said, completely deflated. “Maybe we never have. Maybe I was forcing it because I loved you so much, but…this isn’t working. We’re broken. 

Jinki’s cool demeanor melted like the façade it was, slipped through his hands and onto the floor. He pulled a hand out of his pockets and held it out pleadingly. He was itching to run across the room and gather his husband in his arms but there was a line he couldn’t cross. Not yet. Not when Minho look like he could run at any moment.

“Minho…baby. Come here. I’m sorry I said what I said. I was out of line. We can talk about this.”

“I don’t want to talk. I want to leave.”

“You don’t mean that. You’re mad and I get it. I missed a couple of dinners but you can’t be that angry. Angry enough to leave.

“I’m mad, yeah, but I’m just…I’m tired. I just want to go. I can’t look at you anymore.”

Jinki’s face hardened and an anger he couldn’t even understand took over. His hand dropped. “You walk out that door, don’t come back.”

Minho stood, reached into his pocket and withdrew his key. He placed it on the night stand with a quiet sounding noise that shattered in Jinki’s ears, like the sound of a thousand mirrors breaking all at once, all around him.

“I’m not.”


10 years ago…

“Is this a fun house?”

Jinki laughed and didn’t answer. He tugged Minho’s wrist and led them through the entrance. The place was absolutely ridiculous and as an upwardly mobile doctor, if any of his overstuffed, traditionalist colleagues saw him here, he would never hear the end of it. But it was fun, like the kind of fun you have when you forget your worries, when laughter is the only currency you’ll ever need.  It was something he hadn’t experienced since before medical school and it was all because of Minho. 

They whisked through the rooms, each one with its own miniature main attraction. There was one room with a tall muscular man holding two heavy looking dumbbells. In another was a clown who spewed fire from his lips and up on a rostrum was a woman with a very long knife, poised to swallow it. None of this was new to Jinki. This fun house had been in Incheon for years, and Jinki had seen it as a child with his parents, as a teenager with his first girlfriend and again when he graduated from high school. It was a memory, a sacred place in the folds of his mind that he wanted to share with Minho.  He slipped his hand into Minho’s and pulled him away from the man juggling chainsaws.

“Where are we going now?”

Jinki grinned as they made their way down a long dark hallway. “My favorite part.”

The walked into a House of Mirrors, all positioned in a way to create reflected, optical illusions. Minho gasped as they entered and immediately struck out through the hall playing with his reflection, making faces and doing silly movements. Jinki watched him for a moment before deciding to play too. 

He moved through the halls, eventually finding Minho in front of another mirror, gazing at his reflection. Jinki walked around the mirror to the opposite side of it and just stared at it for a moment. Minho’s hand appeared around the side of the mirror and waved at him. Jinki laughed and could hear the melody of Minho’s answering chuckle. He laced their fingers together. The lights shifted in the House of Mirrors and suddenly Jinki could see Minho’s image from the other side. Minho’s face lit up and he began waving frantically with his other hand. 

Minho was always a kid, always had this big goofy smile on his face, always an opposite of Jinki. He was carefree, charismatic, sensual. Jinki, on the other hand was serious, sarcastic, and held enough knowledge of manipulation to know when to use his smile and humor to his advantage. He had a soft heart but a hard head.  

Minho was his image in the mirror, an exact opposite but the same.

Slowly, Jinki  raised his right hand and placed it against the surface. Minho looked at it for a moment, his eyes crinkling before he did the same. Jinki smiled a little before placing his forehead against the glass. Minho did the same and it was in that exact moment Jinki knew he was totally enamored with Minho. He loved him so ing much that he thought his chest would explode trying to contain all of it. He wondered, as Minho’s thumb caressed his, why he was so lucky to have been in the right place, right time to have met him.



They’d met at a bar. Jinki was in town to watch the attending cardiologist, some boring, tenured windbag doctor speak on the complexities of open heart surgery as if that wasn’t a given. The whole day had been dry, so boring that Jinki was sure he’d drowned his body in caffeine trying to stay awake. Afterwards, they’d dragged him for drink but thirty minutes into it Jinki realized he was young and fresh that they were old and established and that they didn’t have much in common if the subject wasn’t medicine. Marriage. Children. Mortgage. Finance rate and retirement plans. Eventually, he found himself at the long cherry wood bar, alone, while they laughed loudly in a booth behind him. 

A hand reached across him and deposited a drink, dark and amber, in front of him.  The first thing Jinki noticed, besides the drink in front of him,  was the way the bartender smelled… like clean sheets and cedar. It was refreshing in a sea of overpowered expensive colognes and fragrances the other doctors wore as if it were direct symbolism to how powerful they were. He smelt like simplicity.

The second thing Jinki noticed was his hands as they slid back off the bar; slim, long fingers, neat trimmed nails. His crisp white shirt was pushed up to his elbows and Jinki followed the smooth tan skin over firm muscles like it was a map to God knows where. 

“It’s not too strong if that’s what you’re thinking. Unless you’re a mixed drink kind of guy?” 

Jinki swallowed. The bartender’s voice sounded velvet. Jinki wasn’t drunk, he knew he wasn’t so he didn’t understand why he felt so…hot? Off balanced?

The bartender was still bent over the bar, invading Jinki’s space with his wonderful scent. Jinki could tell he was younger, something in the way he smirked like he had a secret he was dying to spill. Or maybe it was how his long soft curls framed his face like fresh down on a goose. His face was small and his lips were plush. He had a straight nose and cheekbones that drew attention to his jawline. He was gorgeous. Jinki tugged at his tie, loosening it from around his neck. 

The young bartender made Jinki feel like he needed something…wanted something. He straightened, and crossed his arms across his chest and Jinki watched as the fabric stretched across his obviously athletic frame. He felt the panic before he actually acted on it, but it was too late to veer off the course of utter embarrassment as his arm shot out and he knocked over his drink.

“Oh, god, I’m so sorry.” He reached for a wad of napkins. “I’ll pay for that.”

The bartender smiled. “That’s usually how bars and drinks work.” He rushed to help clean up the mess, swatting Jinki’s hands away. “Are you with the other doctors that keep coming in and out of this place? You seem nervous,” the bartender paused and threw the bar rag over his shoulder,” and a bit young.”

Jinki swallowed harshly. “Uh…yeah. I’m a senior resident at Konkuk University Medical Center.”

“Ah, senior resident. That means you’re pretty much in charge, huh? You’ve got a soft face, cute, but soft. How does that work for you? The whole baby face of authority thing?”

Jinki cleared his throat again. “I’m good at giving orders,” he said, his voice low and deep.

“You do have a nice voice,” The bartender said as he rested his chin in the palm of his hand. ”Are you speaking? At the conference?”

Jinki waved his hand “Oh, god, no.”

“Ah, that explains everything.”

“It does?”

“I can tell when someone has been dragged to one of these things.  Gyeongju has all these conferences, all the time. Amazingly, the bored ones all end up here, talking to me. My ex-boyfriend hated it. Said cute doctors gravitated towards me. ” He took a long look at Jinki. “He was right.”

“Well aren’t you popular.”

The bartender held up his hand and wiggled his finger. “I’m single, so I can’t be that popular.”

“Relationships are overrated, trust me, “Jinki replied as he casually reached for the new drink the bartender placed down. He took a sip and hissed at the burn. “I thought you said this wasn’t too strong,” he said, squinting.

The bartender smirked. “I lied. Looked like you were about to fall asleep and I can’t have that. You seem interesting.”

The bartender continued to supply him drink after drink throughout the night and they continued to talk in low voices about any and everything. Jinki tried not to equate his soft smile and eager laughter to flirting because this is what bartenders did. They pry the human experience from cold lifeless fingers, one sip at a time. But Jinki couldn’t say he wasn’t enjoying himself and the heat at the pit of his belly that flared every time the bartender winked at him. Before Jinki knew it, his colleagues were carrying each other out of the bar and into the street, singing at the top of their lungs. Jinki took one look at them over his shoulder and shrugged, opting to continue to sip slowly on the drink in his hands.

“You staying here, cowboy?”

“What, do you want me to go?”

“Quite the opposite, actually.”  Jinki didn’t say anything as the bartender leaned forward.  “My shift ends in 10 minutes. Do you want to go get some coffee?”

Jinki thought about it. Jinki thought about a lot of things, too many thing to make sense in the current moment, but all of them were compelling him forward, pushing him in the small of his back, telling him this moment would change everything.

“Yeah…that would be nice.”

They ended up in the back of the bartender’s beat up Hyandai after he’d pulled over on a deserted road.  The bartender’s shirt was thrown over the driver’s seat along with Jinki’s pants and his head was between Jinki’s legs. Jinki was learning his name–Minho–through broken syllables and moans as he carded his hands through his hair.

Minho had these hands, smooth as silk and large enough to grip all of the soft places Jinki had forgotten existed. His mouth was hot on his once Jinki pulled him up for air and Jinki wanted to absorb every good thing about Minho and watch as the light refracted off the bad. It was a terrible place to get sentimental, to get attached to a stranger, especially with his hands down Minho’s pants and Minho’s breath ghosting over his lips but Jinki couldn’t help it. 

He doesn’t understand how they got there, but they were there. 

And now, as the lights flashed again in the House of Mirror again and Minho’s eyes reflected back everything Jinki ever wanted, he was starting to think he didn’t care. 


Present 

It had been six weeks. Six miserable ing weeks and his house had never felt bigger. It was cold and empty and okay it had always been cold and empty but they made it warm. The two of them made it warm.   And, yes, yes, he was angry. Jinki was so angry that the only room he hadn’t trashed was the kitchen. The kitchen was special, it was sacred and it lied outside of Jinki’s tantrums. It’s where he had proposed. 

The liquor helped. It helped him keep his pride, helped him from picking up the phone and begging Minho to come home, helped him from dragging himself out of his house and walking up and down every ing street in Seoul until he found him. He’d cancelled all of his surgeries and his personal assistant had been notified to send all of his calls back to the hospital so the only thing he had on his hands was time. 

On six weeks and two days, Jinki snapped. All the pride he’d built up like it was a castle he could stand tall on crumbled and washed away as he took his last shot. He couldn’t take it anymore. He needed Minho. He needed him immediately. 

The first person he called was Taemin, because Taemin couldn’t hold water. But Taemin sent him straight to voicemail so the next person he immediately called was Kibum because Taemin wouldn’t be so bold as to send his mentor to voicemail unless Kibum had something to do with it. 

The phone line clicked over and Jinki inhaled to begin yelling when he heard a quiet chuckle. 

“I had a bet with Kibum on how long it would take you to get your head out of your . Kibum thought you were too stubborn but I had faith in you, told him you’d crack in under two months, so thank you. Thank you for being somewhat of a reasonable . Now, I’m 50 bucks richer. ”

“I’m really glad you bastards think this is funny. Where is my husband?” Jinki wasn’t asking Jonghyun, he was demanding but his demands didn’t mean much with Jonghyun, or Kibum for that matter. They’d known each other too long and they were immune to the commanding voice that normally captured Taemin’s attention.

“Are you drunk?”

“Where,” Jinki growled, “is Minho?” 

There was a noise over the line that sound like someone had dropped the phone before another voice came on the line, nasal and upset. “I’m not telling you, none of us are. Not until you get your together.”

“Sure, Kibum. What , exactly, do I need to get together?” 

“I shouldn’t have to tell you. Why haven’t you figured this out by now?”

Jinki gripped his cellphone so hard in his hand he thought the screen would crack. “What is with you people? Why is it so hard to just tell me? I can’t even get my own husband to tell me what the is wrong with him and the people I consider my friends present it to me like it’s a ing game of soduko. We are talking about my life! I’m going crazy, Kibum, I’m ing losing it and I don’t know how to fix it.” 

Jinki though about Minho’s face, his resilience, how he’d helped Jinki rise to the top, how he was always in his corner with this strong silent irrefutable support. How he’d held Jinki together. How, if he’d done something, anything to hurt Minho he would…

“Just, please?” Jinki pleaded, his voice cracking. “Tell me where he is?”

There was a long stretch of silence before Kibum spoke back up. “He left because he misses you.”

Jinki made an unintelligible noise in the back of his throat. “Who leaves when they miss someone? I wouldn’t leave him, not for the world. ”

“You do it every day, Jinki. You just don’t realize it.”

Jinki frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mea–“

“Do you remember why you wanted to marry Minho in the first place?”

That made Jinki pause. 

There were a lot of things he could say about Minho, surface level things that everyone says about their spouse. He makes me happy. He makes me smile. We complete each other, that kind of bull. But a chilled glass of pinot grigio made him happy. Jazz on Sundays made him smile and leaning over a heart he was trying to prepare and being successful at it made him feel complete. 

Minho was…more than that. He’d always been.


Six Years Ago

“You’re not supposed to be in here!”

Jinki huffed as he closed the door behind him. “What, are you a blushing bride now? You know you shouldn’t be wearing white, then,” Jinki leered. 

Minho rolled his eyes as Jinki shuffled across the room. He slipped his hands around Minho’s tiny waist and stood on his tip toes so he could look over the taller man’s shoulders. He took a moment to look at him in the floor length mirror he was standing in front of. 

“You look amazing, Minho.” 

And he did. They both had on matching grey tuxes and although they were both impeccably tailored, Minho’s tall frame did something to the look of it that made Jinki’s heart melt. Or it could be that he was so ready for this man to be his partner that he could have come down the aisle in a burlap sack and Jinki would be amazed.

Minho turned around in Jinki’s arms and cupped his face in his hands. “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

“Does a bear take a in the woods?” Jinki jested. 

Minho frowned and tilted him head. “Jinki, I’m being serious.”

The smiled waned from Jinki’s face and he shelved his affinity for sarcasm. He wondered, silently, how Minho could even think such a thing. But Jinki knew Minho, knew that he had insecurities that only the truth could set aside, that Minho’s biggest competitor was himself and how he always strived to be number one, and for that Jinki was always prepared. Always prepared the reaffirm Minho importance to him, the tangible place in his heart where Minho belonged. 

He unhooked his hands from Minho’s waist and dug into his pocket. “I was going to save this for the ceremony, but I can always say anything in front of those people. But they don’t matter, only you do. You…here, I can tell you why.”

“What’s that?” Minho asked as Jinki pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. 

“My vows,” Jinki said softly. 

Minho didn’t say anything, just looked down at Jinki with a soft anticipation shining in his eyes.

Jinki cleared his voice and took a step back and looked down at the paper.

“When I first saw you it was on a Tuesday. You were young and full of life and wisdom that was so far ahead of your years that it blew my mind. You told me about The Prophet and Khadija and you made me want a love like theirs. I first kissed you on a Thursday, up under a sycamore tree in the park. I wanted to carve our names in the tree but you said it would hurt it so I didn’t but I never forgot. I went back and painted our initials instead. The first time I said I loved you was on Monday. You were standing in the bathroom with only a towel on, talking about the complexities of sports journalism and I’d never felt more content, just watching you in my bathroom. The vacancy that sat in my heart was a space that you took up with every inch of you. I knew…I just knew that you belonged there, in my space, with me. Forever. So on this Saturday, before God, before everyone, I want to carve that space out, for eternity, to infinity, so everyone knows that you belong with me, to me, beside me, behind and in front of me, and no one else will do. Not even close.” 

“Jinki…” Minho kissed him softly and Jinki pulled him into a hug, crushing his body into him. 

“You are the love of my life, Minho,” Jinki whispered in his ear. 


Present…

Jinki looked at the blinking green dot on his GPS with mild annoyance. He should have thought of it earlier: their summer beach house in Incheon. Maybe it slipped his mind because it was December and snow looked nothing like sand. But he should have known.

He parked outside of the garage and took his key out, following the stone path up to the side door. The inside was dark, Jinki realized, once he got inside, and most of the furniture was still covered in white sheets. He walked through the hallway and into the living room. One couch had been uncovered and an empty carton of marble fudge ice cream sat on a tray next to it. Jinki chuckled. Minho had sworn off the ice cream, saying it was responsible for his love handles. Jinki never saw what Minho saw, the imperfections, just Minho pinching skin between his fingers and frowning at the mirror. 

He picked up the tray and took it into the kitchen. As he placed the carton into the trash compactor, he heard soft music coming from upstairs. A faint glow painted the stairwell in an orange glow and Jinki realized he’d found his husband.

Taking the steps in slow measures, he crept up from one floor to the next. Their bedroom was at the end of the hall and the door was open. Inside Jinki could see that the light was coming from the candles Minho had lit in the room, over the mantle and dozens of them sitting in the fireplace. The old record player in the corner was on. Jinki crept closer the door and looked inside. 

Minho was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed and a glass of wine next to his feet. In front of him was an old red journal, a gift Jinki had given him on the way to a fun house years ago, and Jinki felt the bottom of his stomach crash to his feet. 

He still has that? 

Minho hummed a few notes of the song playing, an old trot song but it wasn’t until Minho began singing softly to himself that Jinki realized it was the song from their first dance. His chest swelled. Crashed. Swelled again like waves at the ocean. 

Minho sniffled, barely audible over the record playing and Jinki was getting tired of it. Not because he was tired of Minho’s tears, but tired of not knowing what was causing them. The truth was Jinki was an oblivious fool these days. Everything was a mystery, his actions, Minho’s…but that’s why he was here. He was here to figure it out.

“What happened to us, Jinki?” Minho asked quietly to himself, not realizing he wasn’t alone anymore. “You remember,” he laughed, “that one time you talked me into sky diving? I was scared I was so scared and you kept saying ‘keep your eyes on me, baby keep your eyes on me’. And I didn’t, I never looked away and–”

“We jumped.”

Minho jumped so hard that he knocked over the glass of wine at his feet. “, Jinki. You scared the out of me.”

Jinki grinned in the darkness of the hallway because Minho recognized his voice instantly. There was no fear, only familiarity. Jinki moved into the room, walked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel, wetting it with water before he rejoined Minho in the beach house master bedroom. He began blotting the spot, the white wine nearly invisible in the threads of the beige carpet but the action brought him closer to Minho. The towel dropped from his hands and he looked over to Minho, who wasn’t looking at him, but hadn’t moved.

“What are you doing here?”

“One of us has to fight for us. I decided it was going to be me.”

Minho scoffed and he rubbed his eyes like he was tired. Jinki knew it wasn’t a physical weariness.  “You think showing up one night out of many is called fighting for us, Jinki?”

“I’m sorry I missed dinner, okay. Is this what this is about? It wasn’t like I missed our anniversary.” Jinki mumbled.

“At least you remembered that,” Minho said, sourly. 

Jinki squeezed his eyes shut. “Minho, please. Help me. I don’t know what to do. I don’t…I don’t know how I’ve hurt you but I’m sorry. I’m so sorry and I don’t know how to fix it unless you tell me. I want to fix it.” 

“You try to buy your absence,” Minho said simply.

“Buy.”

“Yes, buy. Don’t you think I understand you? Don’t you know how proud of you I am? That you stand on a stage and you inspire people to be better at what they do? That your words mean something to people?  I’m so proud but I miss you. I miss you so much and I hardly ever get to see you because these people are more important to you right now”

“Minho, that’s not–“

“No, let me finish. I know it’s a process and you’ve worked hard but you can’t buy your absence with gifts. With missed messages and wilted flowers. I needed you home, and you weren’t. There wasn’t that space for me anymore.”

Jinki looked back over the last two years and couldn’t do anything but agree with Minho, in certain aspects. His book was doing awesomely and he was being called to speak everywhere and on top of his schedule at the hospital he’d been…busy.  Constantly and consistently busy. It was the nature of the beast.

“I just wanted to give you a good life.” Jinki stared down at his hands and his voice went quiet. “I wanted to give you the life you never had and maybe one day, give that same life to our child. I was obsessed with that.”

Minho didn’t say anything for a long moment and Jinki began wracking his brain because this couldn’t be the end, this couldn’t be it. He would do anything. “I’ll quit the book tour. I’ll cancel my appearances. I’ll…scale down at the hospital. I’ll be home. I’ll quit it all, if you’ll stay. I don’t want to lose you now. I can’t, Minho. I can’t.”

Minho was silent again as he the spine of the book over and over again. “Why do you give me gifts? Why do you think that works?”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Trust me,” Minho said defiantly. I missed you but…I would have survived. It was when the gifts started to replace you at the dinner table, that you thought I would rather have that, than you, that they would make up for you… that’s when I got angry.”

Minho stood, the journal still in his hands. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Jinki rushed across the floor and dropped to his knees. He wrapped his arms around Minho’s waist and laid his forehead against his stomach. “Come home. Please.” 

“It took so much strength to leave, Jinki. Am I strong enough to forget?”

Jinki squeezed Minho tighter. “You’re the strongest person I know.”


Seven Years Ago...

“What’s this?”

“Some call it a ring.”

“Okay, I can see that. What’s it for.”

“It’s a key.”

“To what?”

“Forever?”   

Minho frowned and Jinki wanted to punch himself. Minho was the romantic, Jinki was the dreamer. “It’s…it’s an engagement ring. I wanted this to be light and quirky, no pressure, you know but…”Jinki deflated. “It’s not a scalpel. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Minho walked over the fridge and pulled out two beers.  He popped the top and watched it bounce over the slate gray countertop in the kitchen and onto the floor. The kitchen was big and vast, so the sound tinkled and echoed off the walls. “Are you saying you want to get married?”

Jinki rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah?” 

“Why?”

This was going downhill so fast and it was taking everything in Jinki not to reach across the countertop, snatch his ring back and try to pretend this ever happened. Jinki panicked, because there was no way in hell he was he going to sit here while Minho cunningly outmaneuvered his proposal. He shot up from his seat and took a step back, and just his luck, the heel of his shoe landed on the bottle cap and he slipped backwards, crashing into the floor. 

He winched and stared up at the ceiling, internally lamenting on his great getaway. Minho placed the beer down, walked over to Jinki and hovered over him. After a long beat of silence, he brought one leg over, bracing Jinki between his socked feet. Slowly he lowered himself until he was straddling Jinki, his knees kissing the cold marbled floor. 

“You’re supposed to get on one knee to propose, Lee Jinki, not lie down,” Minho said softly as she brought his hands up to card through Jinki’s hair. On instinct, Jinki’s hand found the back of Minho’s thigh, his thumb caressing in gentle . 

“What can I say? You knock me off my feet?”

Minho threw his head back and laughed loudly. It ended with a sober sigh and Jinki inhaled sharply as Minho’s bottom lid began to collect tears. Jinki’s thumb wiped the tear carving a path down his cheek away. 

“I don’t know if you’re crying because you’re sad or happy, but either way I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m looking right at the other half of me, aren’t I?” Minho whispered. 

“Yes. You are.”


Present...

Before he’d left, he’d gently and slowly put every out of place book back on its self, every torn piece of paper into the trash and fixed every piece of broken furniture. The curio was revived and he’d had their wedding picture reframed. He thought if he could fix this, this giant mess that he’d created, then he could fix anything.

Then Minho walked back into their bedroom and suddenly it felt like all he’d done was slap a band-aid on it. He wanted to do more, would do more to keep the mirror intact. 
So that night he made love to Minho, as slow and as reverently as he could. He worshipped Minho’s body because it was an altar of love that held every secret and ounce of affection had ever known. He did it so he could hear his name fall from Minho lips and although it was selfish, he wanted to hear it, and treasure it. Locked the sound in his memory. To reign over his possession of this man, this wonder in his life, and share that possession with him, to try and reciprocate what he took greedily. 

Because Minho was his reflection. All he saw was him, in everything he did. 

And Minho was home. 


Many Years Later…

They were old men now, sitting by the lake, fishing poles in their hands and an empty cooler between them. Jinki was talking non-stop about the Children’s Hospital the two of them were gathering sponsors for. Hopefully, with this last donor, they would be able to complete the radiology wing and open the hospital up to kids who couldn’t afford healthcare. Their son, Yoogeun, would be the Hospital Director, while Jinki’s former mentor, Taemin, would be the Chief of Medicine. Jinki was excited, beyond excited.

“And would have been so proud of Yoogeun at his first board meeting, Minho. God, he looks so much like you in a suit, it’s amazing. But that authoritative voice? Right from his old man. Taemin was gushing over him from his chair. I’m sure we looked like fools but…Minho?”

Jinki glanced to his side and saw that Minho was head was slumped to the side and his mouth was perched open in a silent snore. Jinki rolled his eyes. Minho didn’t like fishing, but it had been his idea to come up here for it. The old fool couldn’t even pretend to enjoy himself. 

He looked over to the hand barely gripping the pole and a silver ring looked back at him. For their 25^th anniversary last month, they’d gotten their names engraved into matching rings, because it couldn’t get any cornier than that, but Minho, being the sap that he was, loved it so much that he’d taken picture after picture of it, even going so far as to get a picture of it framed in his study. 

Jinki thought back nineteen years when Minho had stormed out of the house, demanding a divorce. It wasn’t the last fight they had by far. It took Jinki months to honor his promise, but one day, he’d come home and tripped over a suitcase and it was the biggest wakeup call he’d ever gotten. He got his act together. Turned his speaking engagements into a podcast, compacted his book tour into one annual convention and began to share the workload at the hospital. His dreams of giving Minho everything he thought Minho wanted had almost ruined them. 

But they made it. His promises began to stick, his house became a home again. They adopted, they grew and they made it, they actually made it. 

Jinki reached over and the ring, watching his reflecting shine in silver tones. He glanced at his ring, and could see Minho in it. 

Now it’s clear as this promise…that we’re making, two reflecting into one…

“I love you, old man.”

Minho smiled in his sleep.