Everlasting #38: Of Keepsakes and Kisses
Title: Of Keepsakes and Kisses
Rating: R
Word Count: 5.7k
Summary: Some people keep their most treasured possessions in a vault. Jongin and Kyungsoo kept theirs in an ordinary shoebox. Stumbling across it for the first time in years, they make new discoveries among old mementos.
Author's Note: I’m a sucker for Kaisoo’s love being an everlasting one, and the nostalgia aspect of this prompt spoke to me. This fic is dedicated to true loves who are blessed to find each other early in life.
The last item in the closet sits just out of reach, mocking him. He stretches further, fingertips brushing but not quite gaining purchase on the box’s edge. Some dust from the top shelf gets stirred up instead.
“Just a… little… further.” Kyungsoo’s tongue pokes out the side of his mouth as he concentrates on extending as far as he can on his tiptoes until… “Oh, oh, shit-catch me!”
Kyungsoo flails about ungracefully as he topples backward off the rickety stool he’d been standing on. Luckily, Jongin’s quick reflexes save him before he hits the ground. He catches the elder in a low dip, one hand tightly circled around Kyungsoo’s slender waist while the other cradles his head.
“Thanks,” Kyungsoo wheezes, patting Jongin’s broad chest in appreciation.
“You’re welcome. Is that all I get for saving your life?” Jongin smirks and looks at him expectantly.
Kyungsoo blows a raspberry at him. “’Saving my life’ is a tad melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“Says the one spinning his arms like a whirling dervish and crying for someone to catch him.”
Kyungsoo tweaks the younger’s nipple through his shirt for his insolence, garnering a yelp and a pinch on his waist in retaliation. Tit for tat. The gleam in Jongin’s eye suggests he’s not afraid to let it devolve into a full-blown tickle fight, for which the taller has a clear advantage, given that he’s still got the elder mostly horizontal in his arms (and at his mercy).
“Okay, come here.” Kyungsoo grabs his husband by the back of the neck and pulls him down for a brief but intense lip lock, eliciting an appreciative moan from the younger. “Now stand me back up.”
Jongin pouts and remains unmoved. “More.”
“Later. We need to finish sorting through the closet while we’re still in cleaning mode or it’ll never get done and you know it.”
“One more.”
“Jongin.” Kyungsoo gives him an unamused look.
“Soo.” The younger imitates him right back, looking over-the-top stern with widened eyes and mouth drawn into a ridiculous, tight-lipped line.
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes but grants him another kiss, lingering a bit longer and letting their tongues brush a few times before pulling back. Jongin pulls him up out of the dip, giving him a little twirl at the end.
“There - was that so hard?” he asks with a grin.
“I swear, sometimes it’s like you’re still 17 instead of 37,” Kyungsoo says with a shake of his head, not-so-secretly loving that about the man. “Now make use of your glorious height and snag that box.” He pushes Jongin toward the stool by the closet and slaps his butt in encouragement.
The taller man grabs the large shoebox from the back of the highest shelf with ease and hands it down to his husband. The dust bunnies get clogged in his throat and Jongin sneezes. “Not sure what’s in there, but we obviously haven’t opened it in years.”
“You mean you haven’t opened it in years. The guest bedroom has always been your responsibility to clean out each spring, remember?”
Jongin gives a sheepish grin. “My bad. Everything always looked so orderly in here, the spare blankets rolled up so neat and snug.” He grabs two blanket rolls and shakes them by his ears, pitching his voice up an octave: “‘Please don’t bother us, Jongin - we’re so comfortable.’ See? Every year, just like that. It seemed a shame to disturb them. Or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, save your excuses. We’re going to do the cleaning together every year from here on ou-” Kyungsoo stops mid-sentence as he peeks under the box lid. Jongin watches a dozen pleasant emotions skitter across the elder’s face as his mouth drops open.
“What is it? What’s in it, Soo?”
“It’s our box,” he murmurs, eyes alight with joy.
“Our box??” Jongin feels his heart jump and a rush of excitement flood his veins. “So I didn’t- we didn’t lose it in the move?” Tears of joy threaten to fill his eyes, but he holds them back, biting his lip. Jongin circles around to peer into the nondescript shoebox that holds special treasures from long ago.
“It must have been shoved behind the extra blankets when the movers unpacked and we never noticed.” Kyungsoo smiles and plops down on the carpet to start pulling out some of the contents, but Jongin touches his hand before he can get more than one photo out. As much as Jongin would love to stop everything and enjoy the trip down memory lane, he knows diving into the box now would inevitably lead to an incomplete spring cleaning which will weigh on the elder’s mind for the next 12 months. So he swallows down the flutter making its way up his throat, keeping it at bay for the moment.
“Nu-uh. Not now. We’ve done the whole house except for this room and the laundry room. In your own words, if we stop now, we’ll never finish. Let’s save it. For tonight, as a reward for our hard work.” Jongin puts a hand on his husband’s back and gives a few reassuring rubs. Kyungsoo is already looking wistful, but it’s not the right time. And gosh, Jongin wants to take his time with this treasure box, for them to give it the full attention it deserves.
Kyungsoo sighs. “You’re right. Wait, since when are you the responsible one?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve always been the responsible one,” Jongin pretends to be affronted. He taps the side of the box. “Leave it - we know we’re not getting rid of anything in there. We’ll enjoy it after dinner, when we can really take our time. Come on, hand me the dust rag, and I’ll wipe the shelf.”
Kyungsoo tosses the rag to his husband who makes quick work of the dusty shelf. Jongin puts the blankets, still neatly rolled, back into their proper place in the closet and shuts the door.
“Let’s tackle the laundry room and then we’ll be able to come back for all of our yesteryears,” the younger suggests, brushing the hair back from his husband’s forehead and getting a nod in return. Jongin gathers the trash bag and cleaning supplies and heads out first.
Before he stands to leave, Kyungsoo takes a good look at the photo still in his hands. It’s a couple selfie of the two of them, pressed cheek to check. He gently traces his finger over teenage Jongin’s crooked smile before sliding it carefully back into the box. “See you soon, Nini,” he whispers.
~~~
They knock out the laundry room in just shy of an hour. It probably would have taken only half that time, but Jongin tipped over the liquid detergent and turned the whole floor into essentially a skating rink, with both men slipping and shrieking before managing to sit down hard, but without injury. Soap soaked jeans were thrown into the machine, and Kyungsoo got them replacement sweats while Jongin remedied the mess he made.
“I’ll take care of dinner,” the younger offers like an olive branch.
Kyungsoo arches a skeptical eyebrow.
“Don’t give me that look! I’ll lay out fruit and slice up the meats and cheeses, okay? No actual ‘cooking’ involved.”
The elder chuckles. “Okay, that sounds safe enough. Want me to set the table then?”
“No, I got it. Play for me, Soo.” Jongin accompanies his request with a soft kiss to Kyungsoo’s temple and gets a light hum of agreement.
Kyungsoo settles in at the baby grand piano in the parlor. Reaching back in his mind, he summons a favorite piece from decades before. His fingers skate across the keys as he plays Gymnopedie No.1, letting himself wade through the past to the slow tempo of the song. He closes his eyes and loses himself in the lazy melody as the memories wash over him, ripple around him, and fill up the room. A soft smile graces his lips as visions of his beloved bronze boy dance behind his eyelids.
When he finishes the tune, he sees Jongin has snuck quietly back in the room. The younger leans against the piano, staring at him fondly; Jongin’s always been considerate not to disturb him while he’s in the flow of a song. Now that Kyungsoo’s stopped playing, Jongin closes the piano lid.
“Hmmm, that’s still my favorite, you know,” the younger explains while he slides his lithe body onto the top of the sleek black baby grand. They exchange fond smiles before Jongin rolls onto his back, laying with his feet stretched down to the rear of the piano and his head toward the keys, centered near Kyungsoo’s face. He arches his back prettily off the smooth surface of the piano, tipping his head back so he’s looking at Kyungsoo upside down. “Play it again, like we used to,” Jongin susurrates, stretching his arms out beckon him forward, fingers tangling in the base of the elder’s ebony hair.
The pianist doesn’t hesitate. Kyungsoo dips forward to connect their lips, closing his eyes as he starts to play the familiar tune again. They’re a little uncoordinated at first, not having kissed in this upside-down position in awhile, but just like old times, they find their rhythm. The kiss is languid, like the song, with long laps against each other’s tongues, slow suckles on lower lips, and gentle hums in time with the music. Kyungsoo’s small movements to reach the lower keys and back up create a natural sway to the way their lips glide over one another, and if this isn’t bliss, Jongin’s not sure what is.
The kiss ends with the completion of the song. As Kyungsoo releases his lips, Jongin drops his back down onto the piano. The pair had always loved to intertwine their practices back in the day, Soo playing with his eyes closed to memorize his pieces without sheet music and Jongin working on his stretches for dance simultaneously. This reenactment 20 years later might be a little sloppier (some fumbled notes and a little less arch in the dancer’s spine), but no less sweet.
Jongin climbs off the piano, landing lightly on the pads of his feet, and circles around behind the elder. “I’ll never forget you playing that for your senior recital, all dapper in your tux.” His hands press onto Kyungsoo’s shoulders while he leans down to nuzzle the top of his head. His warm breath sends a pleasant shiver down the pianist’s spine, and Kyungsoo reaches up to caress the fingers curled around his shoulders. Jongin gives a reverential peck to his crown and then murmurs, “Dinner’s ready.”
They forgo the dining room and spread out on the couch instead. Jongin set up the coffee table with the sliced meats, cheeses, and fruits, and a bottle of wine sits uncorked next to the food. Light dances from two flickering taper candles, and in between them sits Their Box.
There used to be two boxes, one kept by each of their teenage selves, filled with items that had little significance to others but were fond trinkets from their courtship. Such memory boxes were secrets from each other for a long time because after all, what 15 year old boy wants to admit saving the first napkin that their crush handed them. (That had been in Jongin’s box, from when he’d spilled his milk at lunch and Kyungsoo handed him napkin after napkin to help him sop it up. He’d slyly tucked the first beige square into his pocket and might have slept with it under his pillow for a week.) Once they moved in together and realized they both were sentimental fools, they had combined their keepsakes into this one box and vowed to keep adding to it over the years. A time capsule of their relationship, so to speak.
As the years marched on, the couple married and moved several times for jobs, and the box had been misplaced. Jongin cried the first time they looked for it but couldn’t find it. He blamed himself, since he was always the scattered one of the pair, and it took half an hour of Kyungsoo rocking him in his arms and whispering consoling words in his ear before he calmed down. “We’ll make more memories, Nini, so many more over the next 50 years. So many that we’d need a hundred boxes to hold them all.” Since times had changed and cloud storage was now a thing, the couple had opted to start over with a ‘digital box,’ a private blog that cataloged their special times together with extensive tags to help them pull up photos and compare recent vacation stories with those from years past.
Still… there’s nothing quite like the physical quality of being able to touch the past, to actually cradle it in your hands, breathe in its scent. “Shall we?” Jongin asks, and Kyungsoo nods as they carefully pry open the original box and peek back to decades ago.
They gently paw through miscellaneous odds and ends while nibbling on dinner and indulging in wine. Near the top is an old movie ticket stub that Kyungsoo had saved from their first official date during his junior year.
(The ticket was for Goldeneye, because both boys had wanted to appear 007 suave. Walking out of the theater, they discovered they’d each actually wanted to see Toy Story, and that’s when the relationship really took off.)
They find Jongin’s wilted rose boutonniere next, from a homecoming dance they had attended. Its pale pink petals are puckered and tinged with a light brown around the edges, but Jongin had kept it because ‘no one had ever given me flowers before, hyung.’
Then, Kyungsoo pulls out a random shoelace neither of them can remember the exact significance of, but just the sight of the ragged black string makes both of them laugh instantly. The concrete details of the string may have faded, but the emotions left a permanent mark and were still woven into their unique story. ‘What a beautiful feeling,’ Kyungsoo reflects, twirling the shoelace between his fingers while enjoying his husband’s crooked smile, as warm as it was in the teenage selfie he’d admired earlier, even if the smile lines around the edges are tell-tale signs they’ve aged.
But aging is not so bad. Not when you’re doing it alongside your true love.
Time has only strengthened the effect of that smile on Kyungsoo, stirring his very soul now as he watches Jongin talk brightly about the seashell he’s pulling out of the box. The elder had kept it from their school’s field trip to the beach, to remember their late night walk along the shore where Jongin spoke a mile a minute about everything and anything. ‘Sorry, sometimes I have a thousand scattered thoughts in my mind, and I’m not always great at keeping them to myself,’ the younger had said. ‘Then don’t. Share them with me. I want to know you, Jongin.’ So Jongin talked, and Kyungsoo listened. By the time they left the beach, the elder had committed to memory as many details about his crush as there had been shells on the shoreline.
“I’d still rank that night in my top five of all time,” Kyungsoo hums, plucking the last of the grapes off their stem and popping one in his mouth.
“Me too,” Jongin says warmly, leaning forward for a loving smooch. Feeling playful, the elder lets him get close before shoving a grape into his husband’s mouth in lieu of an actual kiss. Jongin whines but then enjoys the sweetened-to-perfection grape enough to actively beg for another. What a puppy.
They polish off the rest of the fruit and turn their attention to the abundance of loose photos in the box. They devise a challenge: try to guess the month and year it was taken, using the photolab date printed on the back to verify who is right.
They start with a faded picture that shows Kyungsoo obliviously fishing a book out of his top locker while Jongin makes an exaggerated glare at the camera as he tries to enter the combination into his bottom locker, right under the elder’s.
“Haha, look how surly you are about getting ‘stuck on the bottom.’” Kyungsoo giggles, remembering the immature underclassmen routinely making locker position a point of pride and teasing over such nonsense.
“You can put me on the bottom any time now, babe,” Jongin whispers with a salacious smirk.
The elder snorts and pokes him in the ribs. “Don’t change the subject! We’re reliving your sweet first day of high school: Look at that face, you’re so disappointed.” Kyungsoo points back to the photo and cackles.
Jongin groans. “Cut me some slack. All my other freshman friends had managed to get top ones. I thought I was the unluckiest guy… until right after this pic and I looked up and saw you.”
“Psshh, lies. You never even spoke to me for the first month.”
“Because you were a cool upperclassman. And hot. And your crotch was constantly at my eye level. I was worried if I opened my mouth to speak, I might magnet onto your-“
Kyungsoo interrupts putting a hand over his husband’s mouth with a mock gasp. “Lewd! I thought this was an innocent memory of a child’s first day of school!”
Jongin licks his husband’s palm to get him to yank it back with a snicker. “Hey, I was 14 and horny, don’t judge freshman Nini. I was overwhelmed, okay?”
The elder raises a playful eyebrow. “Sure, blame it on youth. What’s your excuse for this morning then, when I awoke to you sucking me off?”
“Well you’re still hot. I’m still overwhelmed.”
Jongin’s words are straightforward but have a hushed quality to them as he affectionately strokes the slope of Kyungsoo’s nose, spinning romance out of the simple phrase. Kyungsoo koalas onto the younger’s arm, giving it a squeeze of appreciation. Long ago they might have tried brushing off each other’s compliments with a self-effacing, ‘No I’m not,’ but they’ve grown comfortable over the years in accepting those sincere endearments. The beauty of a love fully bloomed, where fear of seeming immodest or worrying the other is only pandering has long since faded away.
Returning to the photo, they both agree this must have been in August 1994 since it’d be the start of the school year. Flipping the picture over, they confirm the date and agree to call it a draw.
The next photo is a group pic. Kyungsoo is on the far left, wearing a tight smile. To the right is their buddy Jongdae making a goofy face, and then there’s Jongin with a blinding grin. Wrapped in the arms of a tall, lanky boy with a crinkly eye-smile.
“Holy shit, is that Sehun?” Jongin laughs as he slides the picture closer for a better look.
“Mmm,” Kyungsoo hums, sitting back into the couch and crossing his arms as he bites his tongue.
“Don’t act jealous. You had what’s-his-face during this same time,” the younger recalls with a scrunch of his nose.
“Kris,” Kyungsoo supplies.
“Yeah, Kris. Whatever happened to that guy?”
“He moved overseas, remember?”
“No, but you obviously do. Please, tell me about him. Did you keep in touch? Is he ‘the one that got away?’” Jongin sing-songs with a pout.
Kyungsoo tsks his tongue and squeezes the younger’s lower lip. “Who’s calling who jealous? No, the only ‘one’ was you, and you never got away from me. I locked you down tight - til death do we part, you big baby.” He presses a quick kiss to Jongin’s pout, causing it to dissipate as Jongin’s lips accommodate his own and then pull him in for a deeper kiss. They break apart with smiles on their faces and return to the photo.
“Okay, okay. We both were stupid in the beginning. But wait, why did you save this?” Jongin giggles and shakes the photo. “Because I know I didn’t. Were you planning to put a hex on poor Sehun?”
Kyungsoo squirms and takes a long sip from his wine glass in lieu of answering. Jongin detects a hint of a blush, but maybe it’s just the alcohol dusting his cheeks.
“Well this has to still be from my freshman year. Maybe… January 1995?” The younger looks at his husband, expectant for his guess.
“Uh, I’ll guess November ‘94.”
Jongin flips the photo over. “Aha, I was closer. It was Febru-what is this?” On the back of the photo, in Kyungsoo’s neat handwriting, are the words:
How to be like Sehun.
Step 1: Learn to dance.
Step 2: Get taller.
Step 3:
Kyungsoo wriggles a little in his seat and shrugs. “You really liked him, so I thought… you know why not try to emulate him so you’d notice me. That was right before I signed up for the dance team if you remember? But then, uh, I never made it through Step 2,” he admits with a chuckle. The warm glow of the candlelight highlights the beautiful curve of the elder’s cheeks as he gives an ‘oh well’ shrug.
“I always noticed you, hyung,” Jongin whispers, bumping their foreheads together gently. They soak in each other’s presence for a minute, nuzzling eskimo kisses with their noses, and then Kyungsoo pushes him off playfully.
“Okay you’re up by one point. I can’t believe I’m behind, but I feel a streak coming on.” He pops his neck comically like he’s psyching himself up and refills their glasses with more of the red wine. Jongin giggles - his Soo is still competitive as always. “I’ll draw one this time,” the elder says, fishing around in the box for another photo.
The one he retrieves shows the two of them in sweatpants and t-shirts, relaxed attire that starkly contrasts with their styled hair, gelled up stiffly in hideous ‘90s perfection. The elder recognizes the occasion at once, making an excited noise mid-gulp of his wine.
“Oh oh, April 1997. After my senior prom.” Kyungsoo blurts out, tapping his finger at the end of the photo. “Look - you can see the drugstore bag in the background,” he exclaims with a laugh and realization dawns on Jongin. The younger lets out a mortified shriek, half covering his face with his hand.
“Oh let’s not relive this again.”
“Oh LET’S,” Kyungsoo exclaims with glee, shifting up onto his knees. “Who was the one that complained I was, and I quote, ‘nagging’ about packing everything for the road trip afterward? Huh?”
“That would be me,” Jongin admits with a sigh.
“And who forgot to steal the condoms and lube from their parents’ bedroom?”
“Again, me.”
“And yet, who had to go face Mrs. Choi at the convenience store to get the supplies? She gave me that judgmental look every time I saw her for the next four years, Nini.”
“Okay, you know what? You’ve had too much wine. You’re getting a little aggressive over here,” Jongin teases. He tries to take the wine glass out of his husband’s hand, but Kyungsoo snatches it back rather quickly, sloshing a little on his own shirt.
“Shit! Paper towel, quick, quick,” Kyungsoo gestures frantically at Jongin.
“I’m on it. Hakuna your tatas.” He snickers, wandering back to the kitchen to find one.
“Before it stains!” calls Kyungsoo.
He returns with a paper towel and a patient smile. “Honey, your shirt is black. How’s it going to stain?”
His husband hurriedly blots at his shirt. “Well, it’ll be like a deeper black in that one area.”
“No one’s going to know.”
“I’ll know.”
Jongin just laughs and lets the elder fuss with his shirt until he’s satisfied. He picks up the photo and turns it over, just confirming that Kyungsoo’s guess was correct. “As humiliating as the lead up to this pic was, I’m really glad we still have it. Our last picture as virgins… check out how innocent we look.”
Kyungsoo hooks his chin over his husband’s shoulder to stare at their faces in the photograph. Shy smiles from the 17 and 18 year olds beam up at him. “So young,” he murmurs fondly before pressing a soft kiss to Jongin’s cheek.
They go through a few more photos, Kyungsoo extending his lead by guessing the month and year closer on three more in row. Jongin claims victory over one where he guesses February and Kyungsoo guesses April on a picture dated in March of that year; the younger argues he was closest ‘without going over’ and his patient husband rolls his eyes and gives him the point.
The next one out of the box has Jongin grinning from ear to ear. He cradles it carefully in his hands, delicately holding only the edges of the photo. In the picture, he’s lying on a floor mat on his stomach, his head turned slightly toward the camera with a secretive smile on his lips, and Kyungsoo is draped over his back. They’re in their high school’s dance studio, alone in the practice room.
“You’re sunk, Soo. I know this one by heart.”
“Pretty confident words there, Mr. ‘I’m already flushed after just one-and-a-half glasses of wine’.”
“I know I’m behind, but I’m going all in on this one. If I can name not just the month and year but the exact date, I win the game. If I’m off by even a day, you win. Deal?”
Kyungsoo narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Did you already look?”
“Nope. Honest.” Jongin meets his gaze and doesn’t blink.
“Okay, you’re on. What’s the date?”
“September 28, 1996.”
Kyungsoo purses his lips thoughtfully before taking the photo carefully from Jongin’s hands and flipping it around in a rapid, dramatic fashion to reveal the date on the back.
96-09-28
“Holy shit, how’d you do that?” the elder asks, clearly impressed.
“Easy. That was the day I knew you were the one. That you were it for me.”
Kyungsoo opens his mouth to respond, but no words come out. Just a flabbergasted gape, with eyes wide in wonder.
Jongin takes the beat of silence as a sign to delve into the details, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes to help him rewind to that afternoon. “We’d been together for almost a year and had already exchanged I love yous a few months prior. And I’m sure we both meant them, as far as we could really know what the hell we were talking about at that age… but that day… We had gone up so we could practice together for our dance team. Well at least I was there for the dance team,” he says, unable to resist taunting his husband over the new information revealed earlier. Kyungsoo lets out a long-suffering sigh, muttering “knew I shouldn’t have told you” while looking up at the ceiling. They bump shoulders back and forth like the bickering old couple they are, before Kyungsoo motions for Jongin to continue.
“No really though, that puts a slightly new spin on this story… See, we had met up to work on the team’s choreography for the fall show… yet you ended up asking me to dance my solo stuff, since I had a separate competition coming up. Do you remember? It was a really complicated ballet piece. Anyway, even though you weren’t into ballet, you were so attentive, so encouraging. The boombox in the room ran out of batteries on the third or fourth run through, but you didn’t let that stop us. You had started picking up the music by ear, so you just plopped down and played it for me on that old, beat up piano in the corner.
“When I screwed up and thought about stopping, you told me it’s okay. To just keep dancing, because even my mistakes were beautiful to you.”
Jongin pauses, fiddling with the hem of his sweater as he feels the warmth of those words reaching through the decades and affecting him as deeply today as they had back then. He looks his husband in the eye as he continues.
“I remember feeling the same way - that to me, a glitched note in your concerto was just unique flair, a Kyungsoo twist, that meant it was your piece, and that made it special to me, more special than a completely faithful rendition.
“And I thought, wow, this is what it would be like, life with Soo. To walk together, through the perfect moments and the mistakes, and know that when I stumbled or you erred, that we could love through it. Not just love despite our failings, but that we’d somehow appreciate each other more because of them. Because they’d be part of our story, one that we’d build together. And damn, what a beautiful life that would be. So by the end of the day when we took that selfie, my mind was made up: You were the one I wanted, for life.”
As Jongin finishes his story, he tugs off the white gold wedding band on Kyungsoo’s ring finger, spinning it around to show him those words, engraved in fancy script, on the inside: For Life.
Kyungsoo takes the ring back in the palm of his hand, clenching his fingers tightly into a fist and hugging it to his chest, right over his heart. “I always just took those words at face value. Why haven’t you ever told me the story behind them before?”
Jongin shrugs. “I meant to tell you the morning we got married but… this might sound stupid but I just chickened out. I was actually really, really nervous,” he recounts with a blush. “Like if I said something dumb, you might snap out of it and realize you could do much better than me.”
The elder takes Jongin’s hand and kisses the long fingers, down to the base where his matching wedding band sits. Kyungsoo carefully twists the ring off, murmuring, “Was true then, is true now, will be true forever.” One and Only shimmers as he spins the inscribed words in Jongin’s direction.
Kyungsoo places the ring on top of his own in his palm, and the two of them stare at the engravings and how well they flow together. “A pretty pair we have here, don’t you think?”
Jongin admires how the candlelight flickers in his husband’s chocolate eyes and nods, feeling the softest smile spread across his face. He watches Kyungsoo take the rings, tie them together with a stem from the grapes, and place them in their box. He gives the elder a quizzical look.
“We just made a memory.”
Time slows to a halt, as if to honor the moment.
“I want keepsakes to cherish it properly,” Kyungsoo explains quietly. “Plus I think we deserve new ones, with both inscriptions in them.”
One and only, For life
It’s perfect.
Jongin feels his eyes well with happy tears over just how much he loves this man, and how incredibly thankful he is that he’s been to be able to call him his own for the past 21 years. The air is thick with all the emotions of the past spilling out from their box. There’s more love here than most people are lucky to find in a lifetime: The table is positively covered with the amazing memories they’ve created together.
Yet they keep making more.
Jongin can feel his heart threatening to beat out of his chest as their lips meet, the intimate kiss full of such tenderness that his senses are flooded. In the soft sighs that escape as their mouths meet again and again, Jongin hears thousands of their past love declarations, one after another as they fall deeper into each other. The numerous ‘I love yous’ and ‘You’re perfects’ continue to swirl around him even when his husband breaks the kiss, until Kyungsoo silences them all as he murmurs directly in his ear, “Take me to bed.”
Jongin tangles their fingers together and tugs him up, longing to fill the elder’s every desire. He leads them toward their room, their bodies swaying in the most natural slow dance down the hall. Jongin’s strong hands roam across the shorter’s back, while Kyungsoo loops his arms around his neck, allowing the younger to waltz him backwards all the way to the bed. Jongin lifts him ever so carefully, placing him atop the plush comforter. Each item of clothing is reverently removed, fond touches always trailing behind on the milky skin. Their lips never lose contact with each other’s skin as Kyungsoo undresses Jongin as well, taking their time to savor every feature of each other. Broad shoulders, delicate hands, defined chests, smooth thighs, elegant ankles, narrow waists: no space is left unloved. Surrounded by satin sheets, they meld together, bodies united perfectly in their all-consuming love.
~~~
In the sated afterglow, they lay side by side facing each other, legs still intermingled and arms wound around their middles, reflecting on the evening.
“Hmm, what great mysteries of Kim Jongin will I still be uncovering in another 20 years?” Kyungsoo muses, placing a peck on his chin.
“I could say the same about you. I know you so well, yet there are these little facets I only get glimpses of every once in a while.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No - I love it,” Jongin sighs happily, tugging him closer. “My own personal diamond, to admire and know better each passing year.”
They snuggle in the quiet for a few minutes before Kyungsoo murmurs, “still can’t believe I lost because you could name the-” He cuts himself off suddenly and leans back to meet Jongin’s eyes to inquire earnestly, “Wait, but even if you knew the exact day we took the photo, the date printed on the back is just when the film gets developed. How’d you-“
“Because I ran to the store right after we left the studio. I wanted that picture, right away. It was a Saturday night and they weren’t going to be open on Sunday, I remember. Paid the premium for one-hour development. Worth every penny.”
Kyungsoo gives a shy smile, his ears turning red at the intensity of teenage Jongin’s dedication to preserving the moment, and how that passion still burns between them now. “Okay,” he concedes. “You won.” He rolls onto his husband, giving him a chaste kiss before settling in with his head on Jongin’s chest.
“I sure did, Soo.” Jongin nuzzles into his ebony hair, gently caressing his cheek as they drift off. “I sure did.”