Chapter 1: Mirror, Mirror, Cursed Reflection
The bathroom was a sauna of his own making. Steam coiled against the ceiling in lazy spirals, condensing on the mirror until the glass wept. Ender stood before it anyway, barefoot on the cold tile, his reflection a watercolor smear of pale skin and purplish-white curls.
He hated this part. The looking.
His fingers found the hem of the oversized shirt—a faded gray thing that hung past his thighs—and he yanked it down, down, down, until the cotton stretched taut across his shoulders. It didn't matter. He could still see them. The scars. The freckles. The topography of everything wrong with him, mapped across skin that had never felt like his own.
"Stupid," he whispered. His voice bounced off the walls, hollow and accusing. "You look like something that crawled out of a fire."
The mirror offered no argument. Just the blur of him, distorted by steam, a ghost who couldn't quite materialize.
He turned away. Grabbed another shirt from the pile on the floor—this one navy, even bigger—and pulled it over his head. The fabric swallowed him whole. Good. That was the point. If he couldn't see himself, maybe no one else would have to either.
Behind him, the door clicked open.
Ender didn't hear it. Not over the rush of water still streaming from the showerhead he'd forgotten to turn off, not over the static of his own thoughts. He was too busy cataloging every flaw, every mark, every reason he should just—
Hands. Two sets of them. Warm and sure, sliding beneath the hem of his shirt.
"What are you doing?" Zenix murmured against his ear. His breath was hot, a stark contrast to the cooling sweat on Ender's neck.
Ender flinched. "Nothing. I was just—"
"Lying," Gene finished. He'd circled around to face him, his dark eyes soft with something Ender couldn't name. Wouldn't name. "You were lying to yourself again."
The shirt lifted. Ender's hands shot down to stop it, but Zenix caught his wrists, gentle as always, and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck.
"Let us see you," Zenix said.
"I don't want to be seen."
"I know." Another kiss, lower this time. The knob of his spine. "That's why we have to."
Gene stepped closer, his fingers finding the constellation of freckles scattered across Ender's collarbone. He traced them like he was reading braille, like they meant something.
"You're so beautiful," Gene said.
Ender's throat tightened. "Don't."
"Don't what? Tell the truth?"
"Don't lie to me."
Gene's hand stilled. Then he leaned in, pressing his lips to the largest scar—the one that curved from Ender's shoulder to his sternum like a question mark. He kissed it slowly, deliberately, as if he could rewrite the history of it with his mouth.
"I don't lie," he said against Ender's skin. "Not about this."
Zenix had worked the shirt up to his ribs now, his lips charting a path across the small of Ender's back. Every kiss was a rebuttal. Every whispered word—gorgeous, perfect, ours—a counterargument to the litany of hate Ender had been reciting since he was old enough to understand what a mirror was for.
"You don't have to hide," Zenix said. "Not from us. Never from us."
Ender's eyes burned. He stared at the fogged mirror, at the three shapes blurred together, and tried to see what they saw. He couldn't. The reflection was still wrong, still distorted, still him.
But their hands were on his skin, and their mouths were on his scars, and for a moment—just a moment—he let himself feel it.
"I hate this," he said. His voice cracked. "I hate my body. I hate my face. I hate—"
"We know," Gene said. He cupped Ender's jaw, tilting his face up. "We know, baby. And we're going to keep telling you until you believe us."
"Until you see what we see," Zenix added. He'd moved to Ender's side now, his arm wrapping around his waist, pulling him close. "However long it takes."
Ender laughed, but it came out broken. "That could be forever."
"Good thing we're not going anywhere."
The words hit harder than they should have. Ender's knees buckled, just slightly, and both men caught him. Held him. Kept him upright when gravity—and everything else—threatened to pull him under.
The shower still ran. The mirrors still wept. But here, in the steam and the heat and the press of bodies, Ender let himself be held.
It wasn't enough. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But it was something.
And for now, something would have to do.