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Minhyun's final project is to write a poem on someone he loves. He thinks of his family, who are miles away and all uncontactable for more than five minutes. He thinks of Seongwoo and Daniel, the pesky roommates he has come to become fond of. He thinks of Dongho, Aaron and Minki who used sit with him on the bus to middle school, then he thinks of the person who holds his hand and walks him to class everyday.
"You want me to paint you?" Jonghyun asks, unsure. Minhyun smiles and nods, removing his white collared shirt and shoving a wooden stool under his ass so he can sit down.
"Do it," he coaxes, "for me, Jonghyun. It's for my final year project."
Jonghyun raises his eyebrows and lets out a long suffering sigh, ruffling through his paint box.
"Are you sure you don't want me to paint a portrait of you instead?" he asks, reaching for a paintbrush. He removes a wide, flat one and bites the holder between his teeth, hooking a tub of paint under the table with his foot and dragging it out. He reaches down to heft it into his lap, using a metal spoon to crack the lid open.
"No, you have to do it on me," Minhyun directs, and Jonghyun stands, holding the tub with one hand and removing the brush from his mouth. The lid clatters to the floor noisily and Minhyun's eye twitches, but for the sake of his final subject he keeps his mouth shut.
"We have to be quick," Jonghyun murmurs, depositing the tub at his feet. Minhyun gazes down at it curiously. It says 'titanium white' on the outside. "This is non-toxic, but no one in their right mind bathes in paint."
"Be quick, then," Minhyun grins. Jonghyun slaps away the hand that comes to scratch him under his chin, reaching down to dip the entire brush into the paint. Minhyun gasps when the brush paints white over his chest. It's cold.
"Stop moving, you asked for this," Jonghyun complains, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him still.
"Why white?" Minhyun inquires, and Jonghyun continues to slap paint onto him.
"To create a canvas," Jonghyun paints only his front, not his back, and the paint is already starting to dry on his skin. "Do I do your face?”
"Yeah," Minhyun nods. "Explain why you're choosing the colours too, please."
"Can you remember?" Jonghyun questions drily, using the pads of his clean fingers to smooth his eyes closed. Minhyun holds his breath as the brush coats his face. "You look weird."
"Just do your job," Minhyun shoots back. "Can I open my eyes?" Jonghyun hums in acknowledgement, and Minhyun looks at him turn back to his paint table. It's not really a table, more a little cart with three layers and wheels on the bottom. He turns on music, a soaring, piano-backed track.
“Yellow,” Jonghyun says above the music, turning to show him the bottle and dragging the cart to him with the other hand. “Cadmium yellow, to be specific.”
“Why?” he asks, and Jonghyun rolls his eyes, dipping the white tipped brush into water and rubbing the bristles together with his fingers. He takes out the brush and wipes it clean on his little dish towel—Minhyun recognises it. It’s the one he bought for their first month anniversary. It’s previously yellow and black bee pattern is indistinguishable; there are too many colours melded together on it to tell.
“Yellow for our first date,” he seems to be satisfied with the brush, setting it aside. Jonghyun squirts out a palm full of yellow paint onto a palette—which is even dirtier than the towel. Minhyun briefly remembers to buy him new supplies. Jonghyun studies the shade of yellow, then shakes his head. “This yellow is too pure—”
“I’m not pure?” he teases, but Jonghyun is clearly into his element. He adds a little bit of green paint to the palette, swirling it in.
“A bit of green for the leaves of the flowers we saw,” Jonghyun mumbles. He remembers that first date. It was a little bit too disastrous for his liking: first he woke up late, then he forgot to bring his Polaroid. But the flowers they saw were pretty, he has to say. He took plenty of pictures of Jonghyun. What was Jonghyun wearing on that day? He thinks a little further back and remembers the sleeves of a blue knitted sweater stretching over fingertips and him blurting out, “that’s cute.” They travelled far that day, to Jirisan Mountains to see the yellow cornelian cherry flowers that blanketed the area.
“There was a wishing tree,” he remembers, and Jonghyun grins, nodding. He brushes the yellow over his collarbone, spreading it down one shoulder.
“You know what I wished for?” Jonghyun asks, continuing when Minhyun shakes his head, “A nice boyfriend.”
“You got your wish,” he says fondly. Jonghyun shrugs.
“I don’t know about the ‘nice’ part….” he dodges Minhyun’s punch and swipes yellow over his nose bridge as punishment. “Yellow also for our second date: the carnival.”
“Sparklers,” the image bursts to mind suddenly, Jonghyun shyly writing the words ‘I like you’ in air and the two of them watching it disappear. Minhyun waited until the sparklers had burnt to the end before leaning in for their first kiss under the stars.
“And lastly,” Jonghyun paints yellow down his front, “for the sunflowers I got you after your finals.”
“That was nice of you,” Minhyun beams. He had had such a bad day, but Jonghyun appearing after class, one foot scuffed behind the other, with a bouquet of sunflowers in his hand had brightened it up.
“And yellow for the colour of the paper we used to send each other notes on during our combined Math class,” Jonghyun finishes up with a final stroke across his forehead, perpendicular to the one on his nose. “Oh God, math.”
“Don’t remind me,” Minhyun mutters. “We have a test next Wednesday.”
“Why am I not studying for that right now?” Jonghyun complains, flinging the brush into the water again. Minhyun nudges his white shirt out of the way; he always forgets to not wear white to the paint studio—it always gets coloured with this shade of sky blue or the barest of a baby pink.
“You’re helping me with my final project,” he reminds, kicking the cart lightly with the toe of his pointed sneakers. “And being a good boyfriend.”
“Fine,” Jonghyun sighs, holding out another bottle for him to inspect the label. “Alizarin crimson. For the first horror movie you brought me to.”
“Crimson Peak,” Minhyun says in realization, then bursts into laughter. “The movie was good!” Jonghyun scowls and paints over his heart.
“It was scary,” he growls, “I had nightmares for a week.”
“But it was good,” Minhyun persists, and Jonghyun reaches up to smear red over one cheek. “Right?”
“It is also the reason why I broke up with you,” Jonghyun reminds, and Minhyun scowls.
“You are so petty,” he accuses, and Jonghyun slaps his forehead. He watches as Jonghyun puts a little bit of black onto his palette, making his red a bit darker into a maroon.
“This is for the days spent without you,” Jonghyun swipes the paint across his stomach. Minhyun tries not to squirm or laugh—it’s too ticklish. He ends up with a pained, forced grin. Jonghyun looks up and frowns.
“You’re not supposed to laugh,” he rebukes. ‘It was a sad time for the both of us. You started writing poetry for days.”
“It’s ticklish,” he defends himself, and Jonghyun makes a soft ‘oh,’ before reaching up to swipe the maroon over his shoulder. “I’ll do a pink now.”
“Why pink?” he asks, and Jonghyun huffs out a laugh, dumping white onto his palette and swirling his brush in it. Minhyun watches as the deep maroon turns to a more acceptable pink.
“Pink for roses you got for me,” Jonghyun motions for him to close his eyes, then swipes the pink over his eyebrow to his cheek. “Pink for the falling cherry blossoms we were standing under.”
“I didn't even plan that,” Minhyun says in pride, opening his eyes. Jonghyun is focused, painting pink over his chest and onto his stomach again. “We were meant to be together, Jonghyun-ah.”
“Sure, sure,” Jonghyun mumbles distractedly, dropping the brush into the water and swirling it around. “Next, blue for the first trip we went on together.”
“Hokkaido, in winter,” he says, and Jonghyun nods, unearthing a bottle of blue and mixing in a bit of green. “Sea green for the lakes we saw.”
Minhyun falls into silence. The trip was a wild ride from start to finish—first the airport lost their luggage, then he got a cough somewhere in the middle of their week long journey. The sights they saw were worth it, though it was freezing cold. They even saw a little fox family during one of the bus journeys back to Sapporo. Jonghyun had laughed then and shoved at his shoulder, saying, “They must miss you, Minhyun-ah.”
“Dark blue for when you got a fever,” Jonghyun’s voice is lowered to a whisper. “When you were in the hospital and I went outside to see Odori Park across the street.”
“I made it home,” he comforts, and Jonghyun rolls his eyes again.
‘Obviously,” he deadpans. “Okay, time for black.”
“Black?” Minhyun asks in astonishment. Jonghyun smiles then.
“Black for my life before you,” he says simply, uncorking the bottle. “Black for the moments without you, the dark nights spent by myself.”
Minhyun is silenced, and Jonghyun shrugs before starting to paint.
Before Jonghyun, he remembers being content. Never really happy, but enough to survive well. He had friends, but he had always felt a little out of the loop—not funny enough, not laughing enough, not feeling enough. Jonghyun is the first one who made him feel alive. He had always been able to bring out emotion in his writing, but when it came to real life situations, he was awkward and stilted in his movements.
Jonghyun taught him that his awkwardness was charming, that everyone had weak moments when no one saw. Jonghyun taught him to live a little more dangerously, recklessly. Being with Jonghyun is an adventure he doesn’t see himself stopping.
“Jonghyun,” he murmurs, and his boyfriend gazes up with trust in his eyes. The trust means so much to him, the fact that this person had started out as a complete stranger, before they were friends, then they were best friends, and then they were lovers. They went from nothing into something.
The both are them are crafters, adept at forming art out of nothingness. But Minhyun reflects, and he thinks that his relationship with Jonghyun is the best collaboration he’s ever had. Sure, he’s written lyrics to music prodigy Dongho’s songs, and he’s written articles for Minki’s fashion pieces, but nothing beats this. Trust, knowing that Jonghyun has his back, just like how he has his.
“I love you,” he murmurs, and Jonghyun looks surprised.
“I love you too,” he says, leaning forward, only to swipe black across his cheek. “I’m going to add something.”
“What?” he inquiries.
“Stars,” Jonghyun is turned away from him, and he takes out a small brush, dipping it into the white paint. “Close your eyes, Minhyun-ah.”
“Why stars?” he asks, with his eyes firmly closed. Jonghyun is dotting on his eyelids, down his cheek to his cupid’s bow, and further down his Adam’s apple to his collarbone.
“For the first time we went stargazing, after the carnival,” Jonghyun rattles off, “for the time where I came to your place for the first time and laughed about how you still have glow-in-the-dark stars. For our first Christmas, when you got me glow-in-the-dark stars to match. Am I talking too much?”
“No,” he mumbles, “go on.”
“Stars for the way you make me feel,” Jonghyun continues, “a little bit like I’m in space and floating. Weightless. Without burden, without trouble, just existing in a little bubble only the two of us can see. You are a star in my life, Hwang Minhyun.”
“So are you in mine, Kim Jonghyun,” he breathes, opening his eyes. Jonghyun has stopped painting, brush frozen in his hand. Minhyun reaches forward to take his hand, looking down at Jonghyun’s work. There are swirls of pure colour down his forearm, reaching down to his fingers. When he tightens his grip around Jonghyun’s hand, the colours seem to meld together to form one single limb. Jonghyun grins shakily.
“I’m done,” he says, reaching into his cart to get his phone and turn the music off. He holds up the back of the phone in alignment with his eyes, and snaps a picture.
“I want to see,” Minhyun whispers, and Jonghyun goes to fetch a full length mirror from the side of the room. Minhyun looks into the mirror as Jonghyun rolls it to a stop in front of him.
Jonghyun has outdone himself, painting all the bright, individual colours first then painting shades of grey and black on top. He’s dotted with stars, each done with precise detail so they are not just white dots, but diamonds. Turning slightly, the entire image changes, shifting. He gasps—in fact, it looks remarkably like—
“A galaxy,” Jonghyun muses, walking to stand in front of the mirror and reach a hand out to cup his cheek. “You are my galaxy, Minhyun-ah.”
Minhyun rinses himself with soap and water in the adjacent bathroom, ruffling the towel Jonghyun tosses at him through his hair. This towel, blessedly, is clean and without traces of paint. He puts on his shirt and goes to find Jonghyun when he’s done, snaking his arms around him.
“Did you get enough information for your project?” Jonghyun asks, letting him embrace him from behind while he empties the dirty water from the tin can into the sink. The tool cart is in a mess again, but Minhyun remains where he is.
“I’ve…” he tells his reflection in the mirror, noticing how happy he looks, “got all I need.”