Work Text:
Anil started with a corkboard, then upgraded to a whiteboard, and now Pin wakes up to more and more photos and menus and brochures speckling the wall like an invasive species. After she completes her morning routine in the bathroom, Pin follows the sound of Anil’s singing down the hallway, through the living room, and to the open door of the balcony where Anil is at risk of consumption by a jungle of flower arrangements.
Pin folds her arms, keeping a cautious distance from the verdant bedlam. “Isn’t this getting a little ridiculous?”
Her fiancée, resplendent in yellow Butterbear pajamas and wooden balcony slippers, spins around with a comically large grin. “Good morning, transcendent song of my heart!” she says. “Have you come to help me rate the flowers?”
An especially long sprig of purple orchid blossoms threatens to tangle in Anil’s hair, so Pin stretches her arm out and moves the offending stem aside. Anil, ever the opportunist, uses the movement to dart a kiss against the inside of Pin’s elbow.
Pin musses her fiancée’s hair, smiling. “Please tell me these aren’t our new roommates,” she says. “We have enough plants. And Prik.”
“Do they count as roommates if they’re on the balcony?” Anil asks sweetly.
“Anil.”
The pout she’s leveled with is full-powered despite the early hour, and even though Pin would consider them both morning people, Anil always seems supercharged from the moment she opens her eyes each day. She’s practically radiating excitement as she points to each burst of color one at a time, delivering thoroughly researched arguments for them all.
Pin is listening, but her attention drifts once she makes up her mind. The orchids are the same shade as the dress Anil wore the day they met as children, and it’s hanging over her head like a protective omen while her eyes gleam and her hands move with evocative passion.
They were engaged back in August when they saw the news of royal approval, and they’ve already attended two weddings since the law was enacted in January. Sandee, Anil’s friend from university, married her fiancée Kitty, and Lian, Pin’s cousin, married his fiancé Kuea. Meanwhile, their own wedding—planned for September in Khao Lak—will likely see over three hundred guests and has taken an entire team to organize.
“Choose!” Anil says, beaming. She tucks her hands behind her back and sways from her heels to her toes, all of six years old and brimming with glee.
Nonplussed, Pin points to the orchids.
“Excellent choice!” Anil says. “What else would I expect from my brilliant Pin? Be right back.” She peppers Pin’s right cheek with kisses and then dashes inside.
Pin waits, her smile softening. She needs to leave for the office in forty minutes, but that’s plenty of time to indulge the woman she loves in her favorite hobby.
Pin has worked as a translator in a publishing house for the past six years, but Anil has yet to decide on a career path. Every six months or so, she begins a new business until she bores of it and passes on leadership to someone else. She’s managed to kickstart five successful businesses this way, and if nothing’s changed since the last time Pin checked in with her, she has four passive income streams in addition to unlimited access to her family’s wealth.
Last month, Anil was doing hand-written wedding invitations for their queer friends and friends-of-friends, but this month is all about wedding planning. Her wedding, to be exact. And not the wedding already being planned by professionals—alternative weddings. Seven, so far.
The one time Pin pointed out that they can only marry once, Anil laughed and said, “You picked the wrong girl if you think we’re not renewing our vows every year, my sweet Pin. Now, Swiss chalet in winter or Japanese garden in autumn?”
Anil returns to the balcony with her polaroid camera and photographs the orchids while humming a French pop song she’s had stuck in her head for a few days. Once she has the photograph in hand, she passes it to Pin and says, “Tape this up with wedding number four?”
Pin raises her eyebrows, but she has no objection to the loss of a wall. They weren’t doing anything meaningful with it anyway. She passes Anil with a kiss to the forehead and dutifully returns to their bedroom. Prik watches her from atop her six-tiered cat tower, resplendent in her blanket made of Canada goose cashmere and licking between her neatly trimmed claws. While Pin searches for an empty patch of wall for the photograph, Prik rolls onto her back and yowls as if she’s been starved and tortured for months.
Pin ignores her, but Anil appears shortly, cooing sweetly at their loud roommate. “You know I’d never forget your breakfast, Prik,” she says, brandishing a porcelain bowl filled with minced duck, chicken heart, pumpkin, and quail egg. “You’ll get your fancy meal at lunch.”
“You shouldn’t feed her up there,” Pin says, shaking her head. “You’ve let her think she’s entitled to eat wherever she wants.”
Prik devours her meal in loud, scarfing bites, and Anil pouts at Pin. “But she is,” she says. “She has every right we do as a member of this family. Isn’t that right, Prik?”
Prik yowls her agreement in between bites with her mouth full.
This, too, Pin decides to tolerate. (For now.)
Anil knows what the f-word does to Pin.
It’s taken Anil years to emotionally wrestle her family into giving their approval of her relationship with Pin, let alone their upcoming marriage. Pin recognizes that at least some part of all of this is connected to a pinch of trauma. Anil isn’t accustomed to not getting her way, and the very real threat of losing her family has been weighing on her in spite of her best show of bravado all the while.
This wall is a mosaic of self-assurances.
Pin checks her phone for the time and crosses the room to where Anil is pretending to be fascinated by watching the cat eat. Pin tucks her chin over Anil’s shoulder and politely endures the noises of Prik cheerfully gnawing on the chicken heart.
“I think you should make a video of all the vow renewal ideas and let the people vote on which one we’ll do first,” she says.
Anil’s calculated nonchalance twists up into a victorious smirk. “What makes you think I haven’t been editing one since five o’clock, my love?”
In moments like this, Pin is never prouder of the one she’s chosen.