Work Text:
When Junhui was fifteen, he taught himself to sleep with his eyes open out of a whim. This is the skill he uses most often in college, ticking off every box next to his name on the attendance sheet. He passes under everyone's radar for years until one Jeon Wonwoo, who feels someone's unblinking stare on the back of his neck throughout the entirety of his math tutorial every week for half a semester, and finally corners a half-asleep Junhui one day the moment they're out of the room.
"I don't know why you keep staring at me like that, but I can feel it and it's immensely distracting, so I'd like you to stop," Wonwoo finishes.
Junhui only blinks, confused. "I was staring at you?"
In the end they figure it out after a litany of frustrated yeses from Wonwoo, a shared meal in the courtyard, and a three-minute walk to the dorms. Wonwoo says he's inhuman, Junhui just laughs and offers to teach him.
In their next class together, Junhui plops down easily next to Wonwoo, saying "If I'm sitting next to you, I can't stare at you," and that's ultimately why Wonwoo ends up in his room a week later, grudgingly allowing Junhui's eyes on him as he reads "To Kill a Mockingbird" on a stool in front of him.
"I don't know why you're taking math if you're doing art," he grumbles, resisting the urge to look up and flipping to the next page instead, "what kind of artist chooses math as an elective?"
Junhui just makes a noncommittal noise and slaps more paint onto the canvas in front of him.
Three hours later, Wonwoo flexes his back, groaning when his neck cracks. Satisfied, Junhui sticks his brushes and things in the sink, humming. Wonwoo's finished painting (and Junhui's art homework) sits on the floor next to the balcony, drying in the breeze.
Wonwoo stares thoughtfully at the lines of paint that make up the approximate outline of his existence. A little bit of negative space here, a bit of white there, and it's rather discernibly him. He recognises the curve of his back from a million pictures of him reading in the background, the line of his jaw from school photographs and student ID cards.
Wonwoo thinks it's a beautiful thing, to be able to colour a human just with a few dashes of paint.
He says none of this to Junhui, who treats him to lunch as thanks and patiently bears with Wonwoo milking those three hours for as many favours as possible. Wonwoo makes him help with maths, carry his groceries, read books, and some coffee on Sunday mornings before Junhui realises he's been duped into being Wonwoo's friend (and occasional writing sounding board).
"Why are you becoming an accountant if you're writing a book?" Junhui asks him back one day, as they sit on the rooftop of one of the buildings. He's painting different kinds of sky in different places and different times for his project, so naturally he dragged Wonwoo all the way across half the campus, through a locked door (that Wonwoo picked with a sigh), and up here to "get closer to the sky".
Wonwoo shrugs. "Having money is nice. Plus, if I don't have money to live I can't write anyway," he says, shifting the rock he's using as a paperweight on the textbook so he can read it.
"You write well. Why don't you publish a book and sell it?"
"I mean, I want to one day. But I don't know if people will want to read it."
"If you put it out there, there will always be people who want to read it. Like how there will be people who buy my paintings." Wonwoo watches the smooth, easy movements of Junhui's painting arm and thinks him very brave. He goes back to his homework, with its numbers and letters that don't form words or sentences or show different kinds of sky in different places and different times.
Junhui doesn't think himself very brave. He thinks himself pretty stupid, actually, for pursuing what he is.
Junhui has a secret: he loves both art and numbers.
It's not something that's supposed to happen; people usually pick a side very early on and stick to it. Numbers aren't supposed to be art and art isn't supposed to be made of numbers but whenever Junhui looks at anything he sees both.
Also, he's really just a rebellious teen. Junhui isn't someone who'd die if he didn't paint every day, isn't one of those people that can only see things through oil or water or other such mediums, doesn't constantly think about his next arty project.
He just kind of likes painting and didn't want to fold in a argument he had with his mother the week before college applications.
Jeon Wonwoo is the brave one. Junhui tracks his eyes in a bookstore, watches the way his fingers caress the spines and covers of books, is almost envious of the little smile that touches his lips whenever he reads. Yet Wonwoo always sits beside him, smoothly and easily tracing out numbers numbers numbers like he has even a fraction of love for them as he does the words that sit inside his head.
One day, he'd like to paint that, somehow. Properly.
Not the half-assed pictures of him he does for homework sometimes, but a real study. One that sufficiently captures all of Wonwoo's adoration for every world he steps in.
Junhui doesn't not love what he does, he just doesn't live and breathe it every moment of his existence.
And maybe that's the thing; maybe it should've been Wonwoo who does humanities, Wonwoo who climbs buildings to take inspiration from the sky, Wonwoo who got pulled aside by his mother after getting accepted and told that he'd be supported no matter what he wanted to do in the future.
Maybe it should be Junhui doing numbers, because he'd make money out of it, and probably like doing it.
He doesn't voice this until one chilly evening on the bank of a river, throwing rocks into the water with Wonwoo after getting sick of continuously studying for finals. Junhui can't stop thinking about the dollar signs on his school invoice, can't help but think about the numbers after trying to cram his head full of colours.
"I mean, what if I don't even end up liking it anymore after having to do it for years? What if all this is a waste of time, a waste of money, a waste of-- everything? How am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to decide?"
Wonwoo doesn't have answers, but lets Junhui say everything he's been holding back anyway. Junhui never says anything until what he's thinking about becomes too big and too heavy and too much to sit quietly at the bottom of his ribcage.
"You just go with whatever you think might work," Wonwoo tells him when Junhui's done and finished and hiding his face in the arm of Wonwoo's jacket, "you can't know for sure so it's alright to mess up."
"But what if I'd done what you did? What if I'd done accounting or maths or whatever? I'd be like you, I'd have the money and skills and-- I'd have the stability to go and paint whenever I wanted. I should've done that, I shouldn't have gone with this without thinking it through." Junhui peels his face off Wonwoo's shoulder and tosses another rock hard towards the opposite bank.
"You can't know," Wonwoo tells him, pretending to follow the arc of Junhui's arm and watch the rock splash even though he can't make out anything in the blackness, "I don't know, either. I'm just trying this out. I don't care about doing accounting in the slightest, so what if one day I hate it so much all this is for nothing, anyway? I'm not even doing something I like."
Junhui sticks his head up from its nook to look at him. "But you're trying, you thought about it fully and decided for sure that this is what you wanted to try. I'm still just… I haven't really decided and I'm still taking math classes even though my degree is supposed to be art. You committed. That's really brave."
Wonwoo snorts and bumps their hips. "Just picking one doesn't take bravery, it's trying to make it as an artist that's braver. The confidence you have in your pieces is amazing, I don't know how you do it."
"If I don't believe something'll come out of this, I'll die," says Junhui, rolling onto his back to stare at the sky, "I have to at-- at least pretend that it'll all work out or I'll go mad and I'll stop trying."
Wonwoo leans back to lie beside him. "We're the same, then. It has to work out. I don't know what I'll do if it doesn't." He stares up, at the distant black sky.
Sighing, Junhui wriggles across the few centimetres of distance to put his head on Wonwoo's shoulder. Wonwoo shifts a little to make the position more comfy for them.
It's a little cold. The future is vague and nebulous.
But it's comfortable here, so maybe that's okay.