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There is a floor length mirror in Soobin’s bathroom, next to the shower stall and right opposite the door. Yeonjun loves it.
Soobin has learned to never look ahead when entering the bathroom.
He’s never thought about it much. Chalks it up to lack of self esteem. Aren’t all insecure people reluctant to stare at themselves? Why would someone even want to do that? Soobin’s reflection has never provided him with something worth looking at.
*
Soobin thinks about the mirror, sometimes. And then another mirror, back in his family home. His mother was never big on makeup but they had this little dresser with a tall, narrow mirror in the middle. Soobin stared at it sometimes, poked at his own cheeks, quirked his lips until his dimples showed up and dug his fingernails in them. His memories don’t have an emotion attached to them but he likes to think he’d had fun.
Then he outgrew the mirror. It had seemed so big and cool and imposing when Soobin was five and suddenly he’d come back from high school, stand in front of the mirror and the highest point he could see was his neck. Then his collarbones.
He stopped looking at that mirror, too. He doesn’t know what he would see if he looked at it now.
*
Soobin is eighteen when he’s introduced to the concept of gender. It’s one of those things everyone thinks they know about and yet here Soobin is, on his fourth hour of jumping from one wiki page to another. It’s like a whole other world he’s just cracked the door to. Big and fascinating and a little overwhelming. Soobin tries to understand, and doesn’t think about how easy it comes to him.
*
He’s twenty when he meets Yeonjun, twenty-one when they move in together and twenty-one and three months when Kai accidentally calls him noona.
They laugh about it, Soobin brushes it off, and doesn’t tell anyone when the word still haunts him at two in the morning.
He thinks about the spike of something new and uncomfortable when noona registered as something Soobin is being referred to as. He thinks how it only got worse when Kai followed it up with sorry, hyung.
At two in the morning, Soobin slips out of Yeonjun’s arms, then out of his clothes one by one. T-shirt, shorts, boxers.
He walks into the bathroom naked, forces down the urge to look away from the person who stares back at him in the mirror.
For the first time, Soobin allows himself to really look.
The tears start soon after.
*
This is where Yeonjun finds him. Naked, on his knees in the bathroom, staring at the person in the mirror until their eyes are red and dry. His eyes. The eyes?
The tiles are no longer cold under Soobin’s knees. They don’t remember kneeling but it feels as good a time indicator as any.
It takes approximately two seconds for Yeonjun’s brain to register that something is very, very wrong.
Soobin can hear his sharp intake of breath, the squeaky sound of his slippers over the tiles.
“Baby,” Yeonjun says, voice frantic, urgent. He drops to his knees in front of Soobin, takes Soobin’s face in his hands. He’s blocking the view to the mirror and Soobin blinks, for what feels like the first time in a lot of hours.
“Baby,” Yeonjun repeats, cradling Soobin’s chin until their eyes meet. “What’s wrong? Can I help?”
Everything feels wrong.
“I hate it,” Soobin whispers. The tears start all over again. Who knew their eyes still had it in them. “That thing,” they point, somewhere beyond Yeonjun’s shoulder, at the goddamn mirror. Yeonjun is still blocking it. “I hate it.”
Yeonjun looks stricken for all of five seconds, before he kisses Soobin, long and deep until Soobin struggles to breathe, and then some.
“I love you so much,” Yeonjun murmurs when they break apart. “I love you, you’re the most beautiful man—”
Soobin whines, high in their throat, broken, desperate. Everything hurts—the thing in the mirror, Yeonjun’s words, the feeling of sticky skin where Soobin’s nails are digging into their own thighs.
“Oh,” Yeonjun breathes.
Soobin buries their face into Yeonjun’s shoulder, eyes closed. It feels like someone ripped a hole into their very existence, all the ugly, crawling secrets out for the world to see. For Yeonjun to see. Right now, there isn’t much of a difference.
Gently, Yeonjun lifts Soobin’s chin with one hand, slides the other over their eyes.
“I’m going to help you get up and we’re going to walk out of this bathroom. You’re going to keep your eyes closed. Does this sound good?”
Soobin nods.
*
There are no mirrors in the bedroom but Soobin sees skin where their arms are wrapped around Yeonjun’s waist. They want to keep looking at Yeonjun, desperately, but their eyes keep flicking down instead, to Soobin’s still naked body, to all the things they never realized fit wrong.
“This won’t do,” Yeonjun says, then stands up and leaves Soobin’s sight.
Soobin does their best to follow him around the room, to the wardrobe and as he crawls into the very recesses of it. Their eyes are still flicking down. To their arms, to the softness of their stomach. Yeonjun slides back into their lap before they can spiral further.
A moment later, soft fabric covers Soobin’s eyes and there is no way for their eyes to stray anymore.
“It’s one of my scarves,” Yeonjun explains. His voice sounds amplified, now that Soobin can’t see him. “Does the dark scare you?”
“Yes,” Soobin says. They grab Yeonjun’s wrists when they feel him reach for the scarf. “I’m more scared when it’s not there.”
“Okay,” Yeonjun says. There’s shuffling, the soft thump of something hitting the floor. Yeonjun guides Soobin’s hands to his bare ribs. “Does this feel better?”
“Yes,” Soobin repeats. Their fingers travel up, along Yeonjun’s back. They count each knob of Yeonjun’s spine, waist to neck and then back. Yeonjun doesn’t move, doesn’t speak until Soobin’s fingers settle just over the seam of his sweatpants.
“I love you,” Yeonjun says, voice softer than Soobin has ever heard it. “I’m not really sure how to have this conversation but that seems like a good starting point. I love you, and nothing you ever say, do or are will make me stop loving you as long as you still want me to.”
“I’m going to get your scarf all wet,” Soobin mumbles. It is already getting wet.
Yeonjun cards his fingers through the strands of hair poking over the fabric. “I have a whole pile of scarves to replace this one. You can get all of them wet.”
“I don’t think I can talk about it now,” Soobin says after what feels like eternity. They feel horrible, having this whole meltdown, Yeonjun being so sweet and then—
“That’s okay,” Yeonjun says. He pulls Soobin closer, lets them bury their nose in his neck. “Would you like me to address you differently until you can?”
Yes. No. Please.
All the possibilities Soobin has seen swirl in their mind, fast and jumbled and nauseating. There’s an overwhelming sense of otherness, and Soobin wants to run from it, far away, hide in the warmth of Yeonjun’s skin and behind the safety of his scarf. But they can’t. It’s there, and there’s only so far Soobin can run from something that’s tied to their very being.
“Can you just use my name?” Soobin says in the end. It feels safe. Weird, but less so than all the things that sound wrong.
“I can do that,” Yeonjun agrees. “How about pet names? Is baby okay? Love, sweetheart?”
He sounds so serious. The urge to laugh everything off is so strong, Soobin feels stuck in a thunderstorm out in the sea, with only a child’s float to keep them safe. It feels horrible and petty and—Yeonjun cups Soobin’s cheeks.
“Baby is okay,” they say, barely above a whisper. It feels like a secret. “Love too. Not so much sweetheart. Nothing… very gendered?”
Yeonjun kisses them, soft and lingering. It feels like a reward. “I’ll try my best.”
Soobin cries again. The scarf is ruined but Yeonjun just replaces it, then kisses Soobin’s eyelids when they untie it themselves.
*
It gets a little easier. That same night, and in the days that follow. Staring at Yeonjun has always been one of Soobin’s favorite pastimes but now it’s turning into an Olympic sport.
By the third day, Soobin can look down without crying. Two days after that, Soobin’s mom calls and says he’s a great son, and Soobin has enough time to thank her and finish the conversation before they crumble into Yeonjun’s arms.
Yeonjun does try his best. Soobin never realized how present pronouns are in human speech until they watch Yeonjun stumble over his words, long pauses in between stilted sentences. He messes up, apologizes, messes up again. They cry about it together.
Soobin loves him to bits.
Yeonjun buys sleep masks, too, so many of them. Black and rainbow and green with little hand-stitched ladybugs. Soobin’s favorite is a lacy one, with violets and soft mesh in between the flowers. It’s objectively a bad sleep mask because light filters through it with barely any resistance. To Soobin, though, it allows just enough sight to make out Yeonjun’s shape and plenty of coverage to stop them from looking anywhere else.
For now, it’s enough.