Update 3/3 for tonight.

This is more of a drabble than a full one-shot…and sorry about that.  I know that a lot of my posts lately have been edging towards the shorter side, which seems all the worse as this story is rapidly approaching the close, but this was what I came up with for Emblem and it just seemed to work and fit right for me.  It’s just a simple quick glimpse at their life.  One of those moments that many others would react differently towards if it was them, but because this is my taekey/keytae, this is what you get. 

As I start to see the finish line in sight I’m beginning to feel like I don’t want all of this to end.  I have so enjoyed writing this couple and this relationship and this whole universe and it has been a wonderful escape for me at a time when I really needed a mental sanctuary.  As weird as it sounds, writing about these fictional characters has helped me keep balance as I completely uprooted my life and took off for another country. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the 81^st installment in the lives on Taemin and Kibum. 

#81 – Emblem

They walked out of the courthouse in silence.  There little ambling family, Jinae skipping along between them, one tiny hand holding each of her fathers’ just making its way down the white marble steps to the street below. 

Taemin couldn’t believe it.  He clasped the manila envelope tightly in one hand, as though sure that it would somehow disappear from him grasp and just float away if he had anything less than a white-knuckled grip on it. 

Kibum looked at him knowingly and just smiled, not needing words to communicate, not after all of these years. 

Their family walked to the parked car, oblivious to the cameras flashing and the posed questions from the milling press core that had showed up to cover the event.  They were just enjoying the moment in their own quiet way.  They would share with the world later, but for now this was just for them.

Taemin mechanically helped his daughter into her car seat while Kibum started up the car, his mind still elsewhere.

It was just an emblem embossed on a piece of paper really.  Shiny gold foil pressed into the corner of a sheet of cardstock that could be found in any scrapbooking store. 

Something some pencil-pusher in some office somewhere stamped home everyday, dozens of times, without a second thought as to the significance and importance of their job.   

Though honestly, it didn’t change who they were or what they meant to each other, but it meant more to them than they could explain out loud because it was an acknowledgment from their country, that what they had wasn’t something horrible.  That what they had wasn’t something to be ashamed of.  It was the validation of all of the struggles that they had gone through, all the fights and taunts that they had endured.  Dating for 11 years, engaged for 6 years after that, parents to a wonderful little girl for 4 years…but now they were married.  Now for the first time, the world would recognize them as husbands…

...all because of a simple piece of paper.

That truly baffled Taemin.  Honestly, the importance of a single piece of paper – why did society give it such power?

“What do you say we go for ice cream?” Kibum said lightly, looking in the review mirror at Jinae, the beautiful little girl who didn’t understand why today was so important.  Who for years to come would not understand this moment, who might really never understand because she was to grow up in a world where the idea of two men together was acceptable and just as celebrated as a man and a woman together.  It would be a concept so foreign to her that she wold not be able to assimilate it into her mind-frame.  She would grow up in a country that had worked hard to remove hate from its venerated institutions.     

“Yay!” She squealed in delight, smiling wide and showing off the fact that she is missing her two front teeth. 

Taemin just nodded with a small smile and Kibum reached over and pulled Taemin’s left hand to the consol between their seats so they could hold hands while he drove calmly through the city, rubbing his thumb over Taemin’s taught knuckles. 

Now the paperwork revealed what they had known for years, but now it was official.  Now Kibum could legally adopt Jinae, paperwork which was already started and could now be signed, and become her legal father, and not just one by name and function and in every way that really mattered.  Now they could see each other in the hospital when visiting hours were for family members only.  Now her school could call Kibum should she be sick and need to be picked up from class.  Now Kibum could sign permission slips that came home from the school for field trips and the like, because he would be more than just Appa in Jinae’s mind, he would be her Appa according to the laws and the courts and in everyway that he could possibly be called her father.   

They weren’t second-class anymore, they couldn’t be shunted and subjugated because of their orientation.  Their relationship was just as worthy as anyone else’s.  Just as legal as anyone else’s.  Should one of them befall an accident, insurance could be paid out to the other in order to help with final arrangements.  They could be proud of themselves and hopefully their daughter wouldn’t live in a world with the same constraints that they had grown up with.  She would grow up in a world with less hate and more understanding than the world of their own childhoods, and really, wasn’t that all any parent wanted for their child? 

He almost couldn’t believe that it was true.

But at the same time, it also seemed somehow anti-climatic, he thought as the buildings blurred by the window.  They had endured so much and fought so hard.  They had struggled, physically, mentally and emotional for so long.  They had been beaten, blacklisted and had their names dragged through the mud.  They had received death threats and been accosted on the streets.  All of this for a piece of paper with bit of foil on the bottom right corner and a couple of ink pad stamped signatures. 

But as Taemin looked at his family he realized that the silly little emblem meant nothing.  Not to them.  Because it wasn’t meant for them, not really.  It was for the rest of the country to use to justify their relationship.  For the small minded who needed proof that they were just as dedicated as so-called “normal” couples.  It was for the institutions of state that would deny them their rights because of an outdated belief that people clung to because they didn’t like change and didn’t want to see something that they had thought of as unchangeable have to adapt to the realities of a people who refused to be sequestered in the shadows and silenced any more. 

But they as a couple didn’t need it.

They didn’t need it to know who they were to each other.

All the same though, he thought, smiling towards Jinae in the back of the car who was bouncing around in her car seat while singing along to the radio, her words sounding odd as the air pushed through the gap where her teeth were still growing in, all the same, it was nice to have. 

I wrote this before their wedding or commitment ceremonies had been anything more than a vague inkling in my head.  I had to come back and change some things then after I wrote those other stories so if anything seems disjointed, I’m sorry but this story was written in two large chunks months apart from each other.