Archive of Our Own

A blister is developing on his heel where the forever-widening hole in his sock first formed. All his socks have holes in them, but he keeps rubbing the back pocket of his jeans to make sure the five dollars he slid in before leaving hasn’t fallen out. And if five dollars means so much to him, no way is he going to be able to bring himself to buy an entire wardrobe’s worth of new socks. Not with this particular five dollar bill, anyway. This one is for coffee, but only if someone asks him why he doesn’t have any.

His mom texted the day before and asked if he needed anything, but he couldn’t ask for money when he had just earlier that day ordered a new camera lens. So he has holes in his socks and a mom who hopefully isn’t suspicious about how oddly financially stable her art-school-attending son is.

The shop is already full of people with plaid pants and angular bob haircuts when he arrives, and for the millionth time, he wishes he could try customizing a jacket. Just to have something to talk about when everyone else is showing off their own customized jackets. It’s hard to find a barstool or overstuffed chair to plant himself on. Might have to hover around and hope everyone is too busy discussing their thrift store finds and waxing poetic about the moon and Edison bulbs to notice him. Wishes he’d made Taeil stay behind at the apartment with him a little longer, or at least that he’d gotten here before he got up on stage.

“Hi, I’m Taeil. I’m gonna play just a couple songs I wrote, I hope you like them.” He’s always so relaxed, so sure that people will like him. And they do. Johnny sees it every day.

Taeil’s voice is perfect, just like always. Smooth and warm and full, matching the flickering candle yellow of the coffee shop lights. It makes him feel . Which is of course the whole reason Johnny knows him, the whole reason Taeil came to Chicago to begin with. And Taeil is the whole reason he’s here at this shop now, waiting on the guitar resting gently on Taeil’s thighs. To try his hand.

But probably not tonight.

He had planned on it, sure. Showed up with a song in mind, even thought of what he would say into the mic before performing, just the right amount of sarcastic without being negative ( “I’m gonna perform something I’m sure no one here’s heard before. Here’s ‘Holocene’.” ) Had practiced and pitched the song down to match his voice; he’d really meant to do it. But it’s something with the crowd, or the light, or maybe the idea of following up right after Taeil.

Johnny won’t be holding that guitar tonight.

“Hey.”

It’s a voice he’s never heard before. Sort of high, but not empty in the way that so many voices can be.

On instinct, he replies, “Hey.” But with the people pressing into the coffee shop and forcing the crowd around him, he can’t pick out exactly where the voice came from. He’s almost sure it wasn’t meant for him when someone taps on his wrist, the one not currently checking his back pocket for the five dollars.

Johnny notices his eyes first. They’re big and bright like a cartoon character’s, pointed prettily at the corners, rolled way up to meet Johnny’s eyes. His eyelids are softly shining with some sort of makeup, and Johnny hears Donghyuck in his ear ( “You wanna be a photographer and you don’t know the difference between highlighter and blush?” ).

“Oh, hi.”

“You come here often?”

Johnny can’t help but reciprocate his sly smile. “What a line.”

“I’m Ten.”

If Ten’s eyes weren’t so bright and the rest of the room so dim, Ten’s smile so wide and the shop so narrow, it might have taken longer for him to tear Johnny’s attention from the stage. But it was quick, painless. Imperceptible. “Johnny.”

“Are you here to perform?”

“Hmm, I was.”

“Was?”

“Not feeling it tonight.”

Ten doesn’t avert his eyes like most people. He doesn’t play coy. “Too bad, I’d like to hear your voice.”

“Yeah?”

“You look like someone who would have a good one.”

The room seems quieter. Maybe it’s only the music-less interim quiet of Taeil packing up his guitar and insane lungs and a girl with a harmonica and BDSM-esque choker taking his place. But maybe it’s just because his focus is elsewhere. He’s certainly not worried about his five anymore. “Thanks. You a performer?”

“No, just a supportive friend. Mine’s over there,” he explains, pointing off toward the other end of the café at a group of half a dozen people. “Somewhere,” he adds with a shrug.

“Have they gone yet?”

Ten smirks, but it’s not sharp like the smirks Johnny gets at clubs. It’s something softer, like how his friends look when they know they’ll win a hand of whatever card game they’ve all latched onto most recently. “No. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Johnny!” Taeil calls across the shop. Johnny winces a bit at the volume slicing through the coffee shop atmosphere, but it’s Taeil, and his embarrassment dissolves as soon as it hits, replaced with fondness. “It’s all yours,” he says, pointing down to the guitar case in his hand.

Johnny waits for him to join them before trying to explain. “Not tonight, man. I’m just not feeling it. But really, thank you.”

Taeil frowns. “Again?”

“I guess.” Johnny rubs at the back of his neck before beginning introductions. “Ten, this is my friend Taeil. Taeil, this is Ten.”

“Like the number?” Taeil asks.

“Exactly,” Ten answers. And then, to Johnny, he says, “Good to know you know another short person. Didn’t wanna have to represent our people all by myself.”

Taeil laughs and Ten smiles. He looks proud. And Johnny’s not entirely sure what’s happening, but he’s good with it. It feels right.

“How do you know each other?” Taeil asks.

“We don’t really,” Johnny answers. “It’s been, like, definitely less than five minutes.”

“I saw someone tall and pretty, and now here I am,” Ten says. “Going well so far.”

Taeil is hard to stun (likely due to the amount of time he spends with Donghyuck), but his eyebrows raise the tiniest bit. His cute signature a-little-bit-confused grin cracks across his face and he excuses himself to stash his guitar behind the counter with Taeyong and find Hyuck. The coffee shop’s din rises and falls in waves as people try to guess when harmonica girl will start playing. Johnny’s not holding his breath for her, though.

“So what do you do?” Ten asks.

And there it is: Johnny’s least favorite question in the realm of human curiosity.

Because what is he supposed to say? “I’m actually a fake who was given an opportunity some people can only dream of by accident and have just been rolling with it for years.” But that may be too honest.

“I’m a student.”

Ten’s eyebrows raise in an of-course-dummy look and he smiles, laughs quick and loose for a second, no sort of holding his reaction back. “Yeah, obviously. Like, what do you do as a student?”

He steels himself, because what is there to say now except the truth? “Photography.”

There are a few different reactions he’s come to expect from this admission. The first is the one he gets from old people: a string of admonishments about it being a useless degree, about art students being entitled brats. The second is from other college kids, usually the ones studying something like economics or computer science or mechanical engineering for rich people: rolled eyes, worried looks. And the third is from other art students: acceptance, maybe some excitement (depending on the type of artsy kid). With Ten, he can’t tell which of the last two he’ll get. He finds himself caring, needing to know.

“Oh, sick. What type of photography?”

It’s a relief. He smiles, and Ten smiles back. “I’d like to do fashion photography. But anything of people, really. I just like taking pictures of people.”

“So not like a Better Homes and Gardens photographer? Don’t wanna shoot this month’s hottest white person lawn?”

A laugh bubbles up from his chest. He can’t help it, and he wouldn’t even if he could. “No, I’m not really that into garden gnomes.”

“Ugh, uncultured. Never once have I seen a gnome in Better Homes . Give them at least a little credit.”

Johnny hasn’t felt so relaxed talking about his photography aspirations in a while. The last time he was able to tell someone ‘fashion photography’ without averting his eyes must have been when he told his parents he was applying. Years ago. “So, what about you? What do you do?”

Ten cocks his head way back so he’s looking at Johnny with his eyes cast down, so casual. His jawline is incredible, a perfect line against the rest of his features. “I draw.”

“Draw? Like art?”

“No, I engage in Old West duels. Yes, of course like art.”

“Okay, so what do you draw?”

Ten presses his palms together and puts all his weight on one hip, and Johnny’s given the perfect excuse to look at his legs. Elegant, perfect for modeling. “Lots of things. I do a lot of different stuff for projects, but for fun I mostly doodle. I think it’s more my style.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s not much, but give me a pen and paper and I can really go to town. Draw you a nice tattoo or something.”

“That’s cool.”

“Thanks. I dance, too, which is usually what people are a little more excited about. People I meet in clubs, at least.”

And Johnny sees it in his mind’s eye. Ten’s model legs leaping across a stage, his arms flying out in precise angles and curling like wings. Ten’s body melting into heavy club music, dripping the same charisma he’s seeing here, but sharper. He imagines Ten would make a perfect dancer.

“Your eyes are nice.” He doesn’t know where it came from. Never been the sort of person to pick someone up at an open mic night, or ‘pick someone up’ at all. But it’s true. Ten’s eyes are worth noticing, worth complimenting him on.

“And as a photographer, you would know nice eyes when you see them?”

It always stirs up an odd cocktail of bubbling pride and oil-thick embarrassment, being referred to as a photographer. But when Ten says it, he wants to nod. He wants to play along, compliment him again. To tell him that there’s art in his body that’s worth capturing.

“Yeah. As a photographer, I know what’s worth looking at again.” He feels the imposter syndrome clinging to his back like an ugly monster, but Ten’s smile is as close to the cure as he could get in this moment. Here, right now, he is a photographer. Because what does a photographer want to do but take photos? And his hands are itching for a camera.

Ten opens his mouth to reply, but then he catches sight of the stage, and harmonica girl has left. A guy in a white button-up who looks like the encyclopedia picture for ‘business major’ takes a seat on the vacant stool and clears his throat into the mic. Ten clutches at Johnny’s wrist and explains that this is the friend. “His name is Kun, he has a gift. Listen.”

And they do. It’s nice. The light is just right, and Ten must have forgotten to move his hand, because it rests on Johnny’s wrist the whole time.

The walk back home with Taeil is good, even if he ends up caving to Taeil’s begging for him to carry his guitar. He checks his back pocket obsessively. Not for the five dollar bill; it either fell out or was stolen at some point. He checks for a small slip of paper with ten digits and a gorgeous curling doodle decorating the ragged edge where Johnny tore it off a poster advertising a garage band in need of a bassist.

When he gets home, he creates a new contact in his nearly-dead phone and sleeps easy.

~

“Hey, do you want any eggs? I’m scrambling,” Taeil calls over his shoulder.

Johnny’s installed himself on the couch, glued to his phone. The moment he woke up, he wanted to text Ten. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Gonna be ready soon.”

“Okay, love you, honey.”

He hears Taeil laugh from the tiny kitchen, one of his favorite sounds. Turns his attention back to the screen and debates the pros and cons of adding an emoji to Ten’s name. Pros: it’s cute and will look nice as a notification. Cons: he’ll have to spend forever picking the perfect one and if Ten sees, he’ll be obligated to die.

Taeil calls him to the counter they use as a dining table and he ends up adding a yellow heart at the last minute, promising himself he’ll change it later.

“So, you got any plans today?” Taeil asks.

Johnny has to pause a moment to swallow his eggs, and Taeil laughs at him. “No, not really. What’s up?”

“Damn, hoped you would,” Taeil answers around a joking smile. “Hyuck is coming over later.”

“Oh, really,” Johnny says, doing his very best to raise his eyebrows in a suggestive way instead of a cartoon character way. “So you need me out of the house.”

“We’re not gonna do anything, but I was gonna cook for him. So-”

  “Consider it done. You woo your boy, I’ll go see the Bean or something.”

Taeil takes their plates to the sink. “Do you see this? I’m gonna be such a good house husband one day.”

“For sure. You better watch out. If Donghyuck ever lets you go, I’m making my move.” He winks and then walks back over to the couch to continue agonizing over the many emojis that were practically made to go next to the name Ten. “Hey, when do you need me out?”

“You have all day, like six thirty probably.”

“Cool,” he calls over his shoulder, tossing a thumbs up in the direction of Taeil’s room, where he holes himself up all day pretty much every Saturday.

Ten’s contact has new significance now that Johnny can’t be in the house this evening. He stops scrolling through emojis and looks at the yellow heart again. Decides he’ll keep it for now.

hey, it’s Johnny

are you free today?

He’s never been the nervous type when it comes to things like this, hanging out with people. He remembers when Taeyong told him about how long it had taken him to go in for help from his computer science TA for the first time. Johnny had known it was wrong to laugh, and he didn’t, but it had been shocking in sort of a ‘wow, this is how some people live’ way. But he can still feel anticipation growing in his chest. Waiting on the reply. Not frightened, but not calm.

Yeah why

would you wanna hang out?

Ten starts typing, and stops, and starts again. Johnny watches the heart as if it’s going to reveal Ten’s answer to him.

Yeah

What would we be doing

evening coffee?

at like 6

you know where Hero is?

I do, some of my favorite coffee

See you then ;)

He knows to assume nothing. He knows there is a very real chance that Ten is taken, or that he’s not up for dating, or that he doesn’t see Johnny like that. He knows some people are just magnetic.

But it’s hard to busy himself with homework. It’s been a while since he planned a date outfit, and no matter how many times he tells himself it isn’t a date, his heart longs to pore over his closet. So he does.

Saturdays weren’t meant for work, anyway.

~

Ten’s waiting on a bench outside Hero’s entrance when Johnny sees him.

“It’s been so long,” Johnny jokes. “Have you been waiting?”

Ten smiles when Johnny joins him. “No, not long. I actually waited out here instead of inside cause I was wondering if you wanted to get the coffee to go? Wander around a bit and talk?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Ten’s smile fits in even better in the sunshine. “Cool. I’m paying.”

“Wha- no you’re not! I invited you, I’m paying.” Johnny has to come dangerously close to running in order to catch Ten’s wrist before he crosses the threshold of the store, and when he yanks him back, Ten is laughing like Johnny hasn’t gotten to see yet. A giggle that shakes his shoulders. Cute.

Even better than Ten’s laugh is that Johnny’s able to pay for their drinks without any further protest. It’s what he wanted, but he wishes he hadn’t lost that five at the open mic. It could have financed new socks. Or Ten’s coffee.

The evening begins to settle around them as they walk. The sky darkens in degrees, crawling from bright blue to something less sharp, something much better suited to night. Johnny can feel that soon enough he’ll regret not bringing a jacket, but he worked hard on making sure his outfit came off as effortlessly perfect, and a jacket would have put too much fabric around his arms. Hopes Ten appreciates it enough to be worth the chill.

“So,” Ten starts in between sips. “We don’t know much about each other.”

“No, not really.”

“Tell me something interesting.”

It takes a moment. Johnny’s always been himself, so things have lost their novelty. He knows everything about Johnny Suh, and from where he’s sitting, the show is rather dull. But Ten is new, and he’s new to Ten, and he wants to be worth watching. “I’ve never been in a real fight in my life, but I’ve gotten close.”

“ That’s what you’re leading with?”

“You said interesting.”

Ten’s smiling around his straw as he asks, “Okay, so what was it about?”

“Honestly, I can’t even remember.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really.” He almost spills his drink when he holds his hands up. “But it would be cool if I could because it would make it even more interesting. Which would, in turn, fulfill your request even more effectively.”

“Wow, business words.”

Johnny knows he’s been looking at Ten too long. Has almost lost track of where exactly they are, despite living here his whole life. “You?”

“Hmm, well, you’ve heard the accent. I’m not from here.”

“So, you’re from…?”

“Guess.”

He presses his hands to his face (as best he can while still holding onto his cup) in mock agony. “No, please. No matter how it turns out, it’s gonna be at least minorly offensive. Don’t make me.”

Ten pushes at his shoulder. “Fine, but only cause you’re so cute when you’re begging.” Before any of that can register with Johnny, Ten says, “Bangkok. I came for school.”

“Oh, wow. So that’s like, kind of far away.”

“Pretty much the other side of the world, yeah.”

“You miss it?”

He assumed Ten would need some time to formulate his answer, but it’s immediate. “Of course. But this is where I need to be right now.”

It hits him harder than he thought it would. Almost stops walking, but even with his long legs, he has to work to keep up with Ten. He can only stop if he wants to get left behind. “That’s crazy. To just know that you’re in the right place.”

Ten looks up at him with narrow eyes and bites his lip in thought. “I mean, you never know one hundred percent. But it feels right. Knowing the people and places here. Just feels like how I’m supposed to be spending this time.”

“Yeah.”

They keep walking along the street, occasionally pointing things out. Ten mostly looks at shops and pretty buildings. Johnny mostly looks at street food vendors and pigeons. The evening darkens around them and blankets the city.

Ten steers them toward a bench, citing a dire need to ‘not fucking walk anymore’. Johnny lets himself be steered.

“I wanna know more, Johnny Suh. Right now I have only a highly spotty collection of information. How am I supposed to gush to my roommate about a love of IKEA and a frankly indefensible decision to make prolonged eye contact with strangers on the L ‘for fun’?”

“You’re planning on gushing to your roommate about me?”

“Only if you give me more to work with.”

He smiles for the millionth time tonight, and he hopes it’s one of his attractive smiles instead of the ones he takes pictures of to send to his friends. “Okay. Give me a prompt. Something you know will pass the test.”

“Tell me about your art. Everything about it.” Johnny mock sighs and rolls his eyes, but before he can respond, Ten continues, “I genuinely care, I promise. Start from the beginning.”

“The beginning?”

“Whenever you decided it was photography you wanted to do. Whenever it registered as something to pay attention to.”

He throws his head back and breathes, trying to trace his life back to the point Ten wants. Nearly drops his empty coffee cup. “I guess… I guess I’ve always been interested in it. Like, as soon as I had the capability to take pictures, I loved it.”

“So when did you decide you were gonna do it, as like your main thing? Pursue it?” Ten’s head is resting on the back of the bench on his folded arm. He won’t stop looking at Johnny as if he hasn’t had to sit through hundreds of stories exactly like this one. As if what Johnny’s saying is new and exciting.

“Like, maybe junior year of high school? A few months before I started applying. I didn’t have some great artistic vision I wanted to fulfill. I just wanted to be a photographer, and I didn’t wanna have to take calculus. So, art school. Photography, my main thing.”

Ten’s silent for a moment before saying, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“ What? ”

He laughs and bats at Johnny’s arm. “Your pictures. I’ll show you my doodles if you show me your artsy art student photos.”

“I don’t- I mean, I don’t really have my best on my phone right now. The good ones are on my laptop.”

“Then we’ll have to get together sometime with your laptop. Because I think, as you’ll come to find, I’m persistent. And I can sincerely say I’ve never wanted to see another photographer’s laptop more.”

Sometimes Johnny sees it, his whole life in the scheme of the world. Lined up with everyone else’s lives. The time he got high in Jaehyun’s basement in high school, occasionally while he’s passing strangers on the street with nothing to think about except himself, and now. And seeing everything laid out, he wonders how he was able to find a Ten. Draw him in so quick and have someone earnestly asking to see what makes Johnny everything he is.

Ten’s face cast in the deep blue of the sky, it’s an artistic concept. Having Ten is an artistic concept.

He remembers what his mom told him one night as he was overwhelmed out of his mind with the idea of pursuing photography without a safety net, giving himself over completely to his goals.

“How am I gonna be an artist, really?”

“The same way as anyone else. You have to try, Johnny. You love what you love for a reason. The universe is an artist.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you free again tomorrow? Or is that too-”

“I am. Where?”

“My place?” he answers on impulse. After a moment, he adds, “Actually, let me see the damage my roommate and his boyfriend did tonight and then I’ll text you.”

Ten laughs and stands up, extends a hand to hoist Johnny off the bench where he’s let himself stretch out. They go back to window-shopping and talking about nothing. Ten compliments Johnny on his shirt, and he inwardly declares the evening a success.

The best part is he’s only minorly afraid to see what Taeil and Donghyuck have done back home.

~

“Honey, love of my life?”

“What do you want?” Taeil asks from deep within his flannel sheets.

Johnny pulls back the covers and tunes out Taeil’s whining about the cold. “Don’t forget you have to film your nerd thing today.”

“Shit, thank you,” he mutters through his hands, pressed to his face either to rub the sleep from his eyes or block out the light, Johnny can’t be sure.

“Do you need the apartment for that or are you shooting somewhere else?”

“No, most of it’s gonna be in the city. Maybe a little in the studio.”

Johnny busies himself with collecting the dirty dishes Taeil lets pile up in his room when he’s working on a project for a while. Like now. “So I take it you guys didn’t fuck last night since your room is such a pigsty.”

“Nah, wasn’t the plan anyway. Last night was just about romancing.”

“Aww,” Johnny mocks from where he’s standing at Taeil’s dresser. He narrowly dodges the pillow that flies at him, and luckily Taeil’s aim is bad enough that it also misses the leaning tower of mugs on the dresser. “So, if you’re gonna be out today, could I have someone over?”

“Oh? Who?” Taeil asks, still lying in bed, having pulled the covers back over himself.

“Ten. The one you met at the open mic.”

“Are you guys gonna-”

“ No , he wants to see some of my work. And I think he’s gonna bring some of his own over too.”

“That sounds like a cover-up for impure activities.”

“Mhmm, okay.”

“If you do fuck, do it in your room. The living room is a holy place not to be desecrated.” Johnny rolls his eyes and turns to leave, but he still manages to catch a final, “Same goes for the kitchen!”

~

He’s scrubbing at an odd smudge on the bathroom floor in front of the sink when he hears the buzz of someone at the door. The person he’s on all fours scrubbing his bathroom floor for in the first place, actually. He takes the time to check himself in the mirror before going to let Ten in. Not because he’s worried, of course; just as a standard having-guests-over practice. He must uphold tradition.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” Ten’s dressed so differently from the other times Johnny’s seen him. Where in the past he’s looked almost professionally done-up, now he’s comfortable. A sweatshirt and jeans a little loose in the legs. Hair just slightly messy. Johnny melts.

“Come in.” He sweeps his arm out toward the living room and kitchen, both tiny (and barely distinct places, separated only by their table counter) and only sparsely decorated, considering who lives here. He had never been the type to put up his own photos, and they didn’t want to spend too much on anything that couldn’t be eaten, just by principle.

Ten doesn’t seem to mind, though.

“This is a nice place.”

Johnny snorts and answers, “I mean, no it’s not. But for students in Chicago, it’s definitely better than expected.”

“Well that’s always the metric, isn’t it? Who do you live with?”

“Taeil, the one you met at the open mic. He’s a grad student, so… well I actually don’t know if that means he has more money than I do.”

“We’re all equals at the end,” Ten jokes, running his hand over the back of the couch. It’s old, but definitely not as old as couches in other college kid apartments.

“Want anything to drink?”

“Water would be nice. My roommate keeps telling me I’m gonna die if I don’t drink more.”

“No shit?” Johnny says from the kitchen. “You can sit anywhere. I’ll be in soon.”

When he comes back, two glasses of hopefully not too contaminated tap water in hand, Ten has made himself comfortable. He has papers spread across the coffee table and has set an ipad in the center of it all. He taps at it a couple times and an intricate, curling sketch of what looks like wings fills the screen.

“I brought some of mine. Because that was the deal.”

“This is insane, Ten. Can I?” he asks, pointing at the papers on the table. Ten nods and he picks one up, an abstract curtain of fluttering clocks. It almost moves on the page, and the ink is a deep color that draws everything in, every ounce of attention, until the only thing he’s seeing is the drawing. “These are crazy.”

Ten dips his head and taps once on his glass of water. “Thanks.”

“Wow, I love this one,” Johnny says, pointing to one of an open building, a bookstore maybe. There’s barely any room between lines, barely any white space to breathe in. He could sink in and stay there for a while if he let himself. He brings the paper closer to his face to see if he can read any of the words written between the different shapes and lines of the building’s walls and mutters, “You’re so talented.”

Once he finally turns back to Ten, he sees him smiling into his glass and thumbing another page. “Thank you. These are just the doodly ones, though. A lot of my larger pieces are a slightly different style and medium and such. Like, part of my major is painting, so I do some of that, too. I like acrylics when I paint usually. But these ones I just do in pen, except for the ones I do digitally on the ipad. They’re not-”

“I like them. These doodly ones.”

Ten leans back into the couch and looks at him for a moment. Just looks at him, and smiles. “Show me your pictures.”

He pulls his laptop onto his lap from where it’s charging and opens the folder with all his school pieces. “These are the ones I’ve done for assignments.”

The moments just after passing Ten his laptop are tense, much more so than he expected. He tries to recall a time he awaited feedback with this much nervous energy, and nothing comes up. No submission, no gallery, nothing has made him feel quite like this yet.

“This one is gorgeous,” Ten says, pulling Johnny from the sea.

The one of the girl from his graphic design class, Momo, from a year ago. One of his favorites. He feels the smile coming, one of those that can’t be killed or covered up. Usually they come when he’s working out, something about endorphins, but here it’s just the pride. Pride in his work, something growing rarer and rarer.

“That one was so hard to get. It was basically the work of god or the universe or something, just coming together. The dress was huge and it had all these layers, and I thought ‘we have to show that’. So I wanted to get one with a lot of movement, and I had this idea of having her on the edge of a fountain and stepping off the edge. So the skirt would be moving, but the rest of her would look really solid and stiff? And it took so many tries, Ten. Good thing she was a dancer, I love working with dancers. She had so much control.” He runs out of breath, and it’s incredible. Can’t remember the last time he got out of breath telling someone about his work.

“Your whole face lights up when you talk about photography.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m just… it’s exciting for me.”

“You’re beautiful.”

Ten goes back to sipping at his water and Johnny basks in his glow. This is the tipping point. “ You’re beautiful. I’ve wanted to shoot you since we met, seriously.”

“If you weren’t a master photographer, I would be very afraid right now.” Ten’s smile is so bright, the type of smile that looks easy.

Johnny doesn’t want to change the subject, has wanted to talk to Ten like this since the coffee shop, to tell him all the artwork he sees in him. But that pinprick feeling, that subtle wrongness must show on his face.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just, I’m not a photographer quite yet. Like, I still want to work with you. You would be an insane model. But don’t expect too much.”

Ten’s eyebrows knit down and he sets the glass on the coffee table, carefully avoiding his pages decorating the surface. “What? Of course you’re a photographer.”

“I mean, it’s not like my job.” This has always been difficult to explain. Was difficult with his parents, with his advisor, even with Taeil. “I don’t get to do it as my whole thing. I still have work to do to get there.”

“Okay, but you take pictures. Beautiful pictures, I think. And if some twelve year old on instagram can call themselves a photographer after having an iphone photoshoot with their little gremlin friends in a Walmart parking lot, then you are definitely a photographer.”

He smiles, and makes sure Ten sees it. Tries to bring the focus back to where it was when he could call Ten beautiful and it wasn’t two strangers in a coffee shop or two acquaintances meeting for a walk. It was them. It was them, and he could call Ten beautiful.

“I know it’s irrational or whatever. You don’t have to fix it,” he jokes.

“Babe-”

Babe.

“-if I could cure imposter syndrome, I’d be hailed as the greatest artistic hero of our generation. But I can’t. So you’ll just have to suffer like the rest of us.”

“You feel like this?”

“ God yes . My art is essentially just doodles-”

“Your art is not just doodles, that shit is beautiful -”

“And somehow I’m halfway across the world from home at art school. Of course I feel weird about it sometimes.”

Johnny was drawn to Ten’s eyes that first night. Their shape, their shine. He’s looked into eyes and seen nothing behind them before; he knows what it looks like to truly have nothing to say. When he looks at Ten, he knows he’ll never see someone with more to say ever again.

“How is it being so far away? Chicago is different from Bangkok, I would bet.”

Ten lies back into the couch and looks up to the ceiling. “It was super hard the first year. But the people here make it easier.”

“Are we like the people at home?”

“No. I mean, you’re the same in the way that all people are the same, but beyond that, different.” He pauses, maybe mulls it over before saying, “I miss them. But like I said, this is where I have to be right now. And I’m happy here.”

“I’m glad you’re happy. It makes me happy.”

Ten turns and trains those eyes on Johnny, bores holes through him. “Well, I’m glad.” There’s a glint there like movement in the background of a movie frame. Something drawing him in, guiding him to the corner. Pushing him to make the turn. Ten wants him to make the turn.

“I really like you, Ten.”

He cocks his head to the side and giggles. “Good.”

Ten’s happiness, the specific way he laughs and the infectious smile, is a good goal. Here, on his old couch in his tiny apartment, Johnny decides he wants to chase it. He wants to take a coffee shop stranger and make him a fixture in his life. He wants to keep the yellow heart by Ten’s name.

“Can I take you on a date?”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty busy.”

Reaching over to flick Ten’s shoulder, he says, “Annoying. You’re so annoying.”

“Your arms are so long, what the fuck.” Ten grabs at them and pulls Johnny over so he’s leaning over Ten, who’s still splayed out against the back of the couch. “I thought your ears were pierced.”

It’s fitting, that that’s what Ten would choose to comment on instead of the millions of things that are running through Johnny’s own mind. “No, but some of my friends think I should get them done.”

“I can do them.”

“No,” he laughs, trying to keep himself propped up. “It’s okay, I’m good.”

“They would look so good, Johnny. And imagine the aesthetic of the scene. You, gorgeous beanstalk, and me, stunning god among men, bathed in whatever light I can get to come through my shitty apartment windows. And then I put a needle in your ear.”

“I’ll pretend to consider it.”

Ten bats at his (apparently very long) arm, and he almost goes down. “Johnny.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

No more waiting after that.

Ten is right, they do make quite the scene. As much as it hurts sometimes to call himself ‘artist’, there’s no other word but ‘art’ for what Ten creates with him. There’s no other word for people who kiss slow like this, surrounded by doodles and divine intervention.

They’re the entire universe in brush strokes, or the stroke of Ten’s hand of his cheek. They’re one and the same, really.

~

“Do you think I would look good in earrings?”

Taeil’s scrolling through his phone. He doesn’t look away from it, but he does widen his eyes, which Johnny assumes he’s supposed to interpret as having earned his undivided attention. “What?”

“Should I get my ears pierced?”

He sets his phone down now, interested. Johnny can already see him running through possible ways to make fun of him. “Why? Is this related to your final project? Please tell me you’re working on that.”

The bane of his existence. The thing he asked Taeil not to talk about so he could more effectively ignore it. How annoying.

“No, I was just thinking about it. Piercings, I mean.”

“Well, you know Hyuck would lose his mind.”

The first time Donghyuck came to meet Johnny, he wasn’t normal , but he didn’t mention anything about his boyfriend’s roommate’s ears either, which would have been irredeemably abnormal . There had been no signs to warn Johnny of his impending fate.

The second time he came around, he was armed with two sheets of Claire’s stick-on earrings.

“I just thought you would look nice with earrings. You should try these out. I tried to get the most understated ones I could find, but there are still a couple unicorns and butterflies, just in case you’re ever in the mood.”

Hyuck had winked at him, Taeil’s shoulders shaking wildly with laughter behind him. Taeil still hasn’t let him forget it, obviously.

It should be terribly painful to ask, but recently he’s decided to allocate so much shame to his artistic status that he doesn’t have much to spare for anything else. “Do we still have those stickers around?”

“Are you kidding?” Taeil asks, eyes alight with excitement.

“No. Maybe it’ll help me decide.”

He’s equal parts relieved and afraid when Taeil comes back to the kitchen waving the sheets in his hands.

Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror with tiny red stars stuck to his earlobes, he feels the scales tip. Finally, a bit of shame. “Taeil, this is ridiculous.”

“Only cause they’re red. Real earrings would actually look nice, I think,” Taeil assures him. “I think you should do it. Donghyuck’s never been wrong about something like this. He was a big advocate of Yongie’s green hair, remember.”

Johnny nods and peels the stars off his ears. Taeil slips the sheets into one of the drawers of the sink, “Just in case you need them later.” Then he disappears laughing, leaving Johnny alone for the hardest part: admitting he was wrong.

is your offer still on the table

the ear piercing one

YES

You can come over later today

Like 3ish

really?

Yeah it doesn’t take long

We can uhhhhh do other things after ;)

good plan

“I’m gonna go to Ten’s later!” he calls.

“Use protection!”

He can’t stop himself from laughing. Doesn’t take himself seriously enough for it.

~

Ten’s apartment isn’t too far away, just a couple stops on the L. He’s calm, excited to see Ten’s space, whether it feels like him or not. Every once in a while, he’ll feel a bolt of something sharp in his heart (worry, if he was the sort to ruminate on it long enough to find a name). But mostly he saves his worry for money and art, so there’s little left for impromptu amateur piercings.

Soon enough he’s standing in the doorway as Ten shuffles around the little apartment. Ten shows him where to set his keys and his shoes and disappears to the corner of the main room to turn on some dreamy pop that reminds Johnny of his first real Polaroid, found at a swap meet Jaehyun made him go to in high school. Reminds him of the way he had always thought prom would be, or the feeling of finally being free to live his own life. His high school musing of the future. All soft at the edges, this music is made for memories.

" Here,” Ten says, pulling out a big black case. “My roommate Yuta is training to do tattoos and piercings, and he’s been teaching me a little here and there. I did his triples last week.” He beams with pride.

A voice calls from what Johnny assumes is a bedroom. “Ten, that you?”

“Yeah,” he calls back. “Gonna pierce some ears.”

“Wait!” Johnny hears feet hitting the floor and the door down the hall bursts open. “Let me supervise.”

“No, it’s not gonna be sexy with you watching,” Ten whines.

Upon seeing Yuta, though, Johnny thinks it will still be at least a little sexy.

In his time as an art student in a big city, he’s seen a host of guys wearing crop tops. Maybe the only places he would be able to find more are an LA boardwalk or a New York City gay bar. But no one has worn it like Yuta.

“Hey,” Ten warns. “Don’t fall in love with him.”

So Johnny stops looking. Yuta laughs and Ten glares (but quickly melts into a soft smile).

“Your parents must be really excited about your all-Asian cast of friends over here,” Johnny jokes.

“Actually, not necessarily. They don’t care about the friends, they’d just like for me to find a nice Thai girl ‘if it’s not too much to ask’.” Ten’s smiling at the memory.

“Okay, well I’m gonna warn you, I’m a Korean-American guy. So you’re a little off target.”

“And off topic,” Yuta says. “Ten, what’s the first step?”

And Ten is off in his own world cleaning and checking things, only occasionally breaking his routine to ask Johnny something. He’s in his element. It’s beautiful to see.

After a few minutes of sanitizing needles and earlobes and waiting for Yuta to nod and smile, Ten reaches his arms out for Johnny to move even closer. Once he’s within a more comfortable reach (an almost non-existent reach), Ten traces his arm with his slender fingers, brings his hand up to play with the hair at the back of his neck. It’s everything Johnny can do to keep from shuddering from the look in Ten’s eyes. “You have nice arms,” he whispers.

“Not very professional,” Yuta notes from the loveseat across the room. “ But I will let it slide because I’m turned on.”

“ God , you’re so annoying,” Ten complains, back turned to Yuta. He rolls his eyes and grimaces before turning to warn, “Once you’ve approved the placement, you must disappear , or I’ll send someone to hunt you down. I’ll be collecting your life insurance, not the other way around.”

Yuta smiles at them, wide and mocking. Johnny has to stop himself from laughing for fear of Ten killing them both.

Ten’s voice is soft again as he says, “I’m gonna mark your ears so I know where to pierce. Just a marker for now, not a needle.” He holds Johnny’s head gently, and he can’t remember the last time someone handled him so delicately. Held his face and whispered to him, smiled at him and showed him the stars in their eyes. “Breathe, it’s okay.” And Johnny does.

His voice changes significantly when he says, “Goblin, I need your approval.”

Yuta saunters over and leans down to see. Johnny’s unsure of where to look, so his eyes settle on Ten. Of course. “They look good to me. I have a hand mirror, you wanna see where the marker is and make sure you like it?”

It’s odd, seeing something on his earlobes, even just dots. Unfamiliar. “Yeah, it’s good.”

“Alright, take it away, Ten.” Yuta hovers around the loveseat while Ten grabs his needle.

“Go have facetime sex with your boyfriend or something. You’re no longer needed here,” he dismisses, and this time Johnny can’t control his laughter.

“For free? No way. I could for sure get some lonely middle-aged man to pay for that,” Yuta quips back, already on the retreat to his room. Before closing his door, he shouts, “Johnny, if he fucks up your ears, know it’s not my fault!” over his shoulder. Which is very reassuring.

“I’m not gonna fuck up your ears.”

“I know.”

“Okay, good. Ready?”

Johnny breathes, in, out. The way he did before submitting his portfolio years ago. “Nice gloves.”

“They’re sexy, aren’t they? I’m gonna count down from three.”

He can feel Ten’s breath on his neck. “Three.” Remembers the way he had looked in the soft yellow light of the coffee shop. “Two.” The feel of his lips and the weight of his body. “One.”

It feels like nothing at all.

Because it is nothing at all.

“You faked me out!”

Ten folds into himself laughing. “I’m sorry! I just feel like I haven’t antagonized you enough. You don’t know what you’re getting into with me yet!”

“Three, tw-”

The pain is brief, not quite what he expected. He always thought punching a hole though his body would be more of a trauma type of ordeal.

“That was one. One is already done. Here, let me take a picture. It always looks so cool, the needle just sticking out of the ear like this.”

“Ew.”

“You wanna do the other one? And then we can put in earrings?”

“Yeah, get it over with.”

He focuses on what lured him over in the first place: Ten at his side, breathing shared air, paying every ounce of his attention to Johnny . He lets himself sink into the idea of being priority, the center of the universe.

And the universe is an artist.

“I think these ones would look nice,” Ten muses, holding up a pair of little studs. Simple. Easy to get used to. “But really, everything Yuta has here would look good on you. You know, because you’re hot.”

“Those are good,” he agrees. And he doesn’t even notice the change. The switch from needle to earring. From a city street bench in the sunset to an apartment floor. But it happens, the switch, and Johnny is left looking at it from the outside for a moment. Hovering over himself and Ten, looking at a pair of strangers pulled together like magnets. Looking at a canvas that was once blank but now has color creeping in at the edges. He wants them to keep painting.

“There, now you’re so pretty.”

“You never answered me yesterday. Can I take you out on a date, Ten?”

Ten’s busy packing up Yuta’s case of supplies; it’s why Johnny’s asking now. Give him an excuse to think for a moment, give him an out if he wants it.

When he turns back to Johnny again, his eyes (perfect galaxies, universes on their own) are turned up in pretty crescent moons. “Yeah, if you must.” His hands float to Johnny’s arms again, touching feather-light, tickling just the slightest bit. Pushing Johnny back gently until he’s resting against the twin to the chair Yuta had perched on, he asks, “Where are we going?”

Johnny’s heart flutters its wings, beats against the bars of its cage. Begs Ten to push closer and closer until his ribs open up and set it free. “Wherever you want.”

Ten nudges Johnny’s arm up so he can fit himself underneath and they lounge on the floor, reclined against the secondhand upholstered chair (who knows if it was originally Ten’s or Yuta’s). They talk about jewelry and coffee and muse about what life must be like in the real world.

“I hope I never have to know, Johnny.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Johnny knows his hands don’t look like an artist’s hands; they’re not covered in paint or callused from carving. But he lets them wander for inspiration nonetheless. He presses his fingertips into Ten’s side and feels the muscle and small softness there. Traces Ten’s fingers with his own and leans back to cup his cheeks.

Johnny’s not sure if he has artists’ lips, not even sure what they might look like, but he’s already found his inspiration in the curve of Ten’s figure. He knows what he wants. So nothing holds him back.

Time falls away.

Doubt falls away.

Johnny collapses into his muse. Together they create a masterpiece, a tableau of bodies, a symphony of shaking breath.

~

Johnny checks the stove’s display clock: eight o’clock. “Yuta’s been in his room for like four and a half hours. Sure he’s not dead?”

Ten doesn’t even glance up from his phone. “Well, there’s one way to find out. I need his order anyway.” He disappears down the hall and Johnny hears impatient knocking, a call of “We’re ordering Chinese! What d’you want?” He can’t divine what Yuta might have responded, but he does hear Ten laugh and answer, “Okay, jackass. Love you.”

“He’s fine with me staying to eat with you guys?”

“Yeah, not like he has anyone better to eat with right now. And I think you two would be good friends.”

“Oh, cause I’m also a jackass?” Johnny teases.

Ten takes a swing at his arm, but Johnny turns in time to escape. “ God , you know what you have in common? You’re both good at pushing my buttons. Annoying .”

“I mean, yeah, it seems like I’m pretty good at ‘pushing your buttons’. Made you forget your own name earli-”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Who are we killing?” Yuta asks from the hall.

“Johnny,” Ten answers.

“Damn. If it’s worth anything, I really liked you for that little bit before I was banished to my room.” Yuta jokes, pawing through the fridge. Ten pulls him away and shuts the door, muttering something about spoiling dinner.

“Everybody stop acting like yourselves and try to act like functional human beings.”

“What were you doing while Ten punched holes in my ears? If I can ask.”

Yuta smiles wide and bright. His smile completes him, balances out and glues together everything Johnny’s seen from him so far. It’s like the glint of sunlight off glass, pretty. “A lot of nothing, mostly.”

“Try to woo your sugar baby?”

“ No -”

“ What? ” Johnny asks, incredulous. Trying his best not to laugh.

“Yuta’s a cougar,” Ten explains smugly.

“I seriously am not, but even if I was, it would be very sexy of me, so you can’t use it as an insult.”

Johnny waits for them to elaborate, and his interest must show on his face, because Ten breaks into a sly smile. “It’s such a story, really. There’s this kid-”

“He’s not a kid, he’s a freshman. At Northwestern nonetheless, so he’s really like a wise old man. I’m the sugar baby.”

“Yuta loves bragging about Mark’s pedigree.”

“If I love bragging so much, then let me tell it!”

“Mark is a white name,” Johnny observes. Mostly just to get a word in.

“So is Johnny,” Ten dismisses. Point taken. Ten looks to Yuta and Johnny takes the opportunity to look at Ten without him noticing and bullying him over it.

“So,” Johnny prompts. “Not-white, not-a-kid Mark?”

Yuta leans back from the counter he was propped against and crosses his arms. “We met a little bit ago. But there’s really not that much to tell. We’re not together or anything.”

Ten’s face contorts with story and a need to tell. He turns to Johnny and adds, “But Mark is into him, one hundred percent. It’s so painful to hear them on their stupid video calls because it’s just right there .”

Yuta’s face falls for just a fraction of a second, but Johnny catches it. He’s smiling again when he says, “But there are reasons.”

Johnny senses the conversation has turned somewhere different, where the ground is a little less sure, packed more loosely. He has to be careful to keep from falling. “Like?”

Yuta huffs, but it isn’t angry. He still wears that smile, maybe a little sharper now. More exasperated (whether at himself or Johnny is unclear). “Like he’s this happy-go-lucky church boy who’s never been with a guy before, and I’m four years older and I didn’t go to college. I don’t wanna scare him off or like, ruin guys for him if we don’t work out.”

“Some of that sounds familiar,” Johnny says.

“Huh?” Yuta asks, absentmindedly rooting through a box of fruit snack packets.

Ten takes the box from Yuta and excuses himself to get the takeout. “Don’t ruin the apartment while I’m gone. I’ll beat you both, no hesitation.”

Once Ten’s gone, Johnny explains. “My roommate kinda did this whole thing you’re doing earlier this year. His boyfriend’s a freshman and he’s a grad student.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Taeil, that’s my roommate, was actually his TA last semester. He did the whole ‘is it wrong for me to have a crush on him’ thing for like a month. Decided he would wait until Donghyuck wasn’t a student of his anymore and then he would tell him. I actually kinda pushed him in that direction,” he says proudly. “And they’ve been dating for something like three months now.” Yuta’s eyes are trained on Johnny’s face, but he’s up in his own head, Johnny can tell. “So, it can be done. They’re six years apart, but they’re disgustingly happy.”

Yuta nods. Johnny can see the wheels turning in his head, and he admires the way Yuta doesn’t let himself stay down when he’s against something. How he looks for a way to make things better. It’s something Johnny wants for himself.

Eating in Ten and Yuta’s apartment is nice. Darkness slinks around heavy and warm, a feeling of calm. A good place to be. Here, he’s not a fraud. Here, he has friends like a safety net. Here, he has a boy with universes hiding in his eyes and paradise in the curves of his body.

~

“I need to talk through it again.”

Luckily, he and Taeil are at the point where they can disrupt each other’s work at all hours of the day and no one will die. His barging into Taeil’s room after a single knock and asking him to sit and play sounding board for the millionth time is not only permissible, but expected.

“Step into my office,” Taeil answers, pointing to his bed from the wooden dining room chair he uses as a desk chair even though it destroys his back.

He situates himself on Taeil’s bed, cross-legged and with his favorite of Taeil’s blankets spread across his lap. “I’ve been thinking about it, I promise. And I think this one will work, I really do-”

“So tell me.”

The final project that’s been breathing down his neck for the past several months has become a topic the two of them know intimately. They both know the storm of ideas Johnny scribbled down as soon as he first heard about the assignment. They know the bloodbath that was Johnny making his way through that list and crossing off everything he hated less than a week later. And they know the due date, far too close for comfort when Johnny’s still got nothing to show for all his brainstorming.

  A collection that demonstrates personal style as a photographer and showcases all the artist has learned in the past four years. A prompt so open-ended it’s practically a prison cell. Aggravatingly ironic.

“You know how I loved working with Momo so much?”

“Yeah, cause of your dancer kink.”

“Sure, whatever,” Johnny dismisses. “This idea actually has a lot to do with that.”

“Oh? I’m intrigued.”

“Ten’s a dancer, right? But he does all these other incredible things too, and the dancing is this crazy passion of his, but he had to put it on the backburner for his other things. And that’s something that everyone has to do at some point, but probably a lot of dancers especially. Cause it’s so hard to make that your whole thing, so it goes to the background usually.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

“I want to work with those people.”

Taeil is the perfect one for this for too many reasons to count. Johnny’s comfortable with him, he knows how Johnny’s brain works on photography, he’s not judgmental. And his face never betrays him. The only way Johnny ever knows he’s confused by an idea is when he takes a deep breath before responding. Like now.

“What would the project be, though? I think it would be good for you to work with models you like, but I don’t-”

“It would be focused on their dancing. Draw parallels between their ‘dance life’ and their ‘real life’. Each piece would actually be two photos of the same model, and the visual would tie them together.” Now that he’s finally getting the idea out of his head and into the world, his mind is moving too fast. Taeil waits for him. “It’s so hard to explain. But do you like the idea?”

Taeil looks down at the blanket on Johnny’s lap and absentmindedly strokes the handle of a mug that’s been in his room for far too long. “I do. I think it’s a really ‘you’ idea to play with. Artistic identity, very Johnny.”

“But there’s something else. I can see it.” He braces himself for Taeil to point out the one thing he never realized that will make the whole thing unviable. Prepares to be sent back to the drawing board with his head hanging low.

“Is it enough fashion photography? Like, is it going to showcase what you can do for what you actually want to do?”

Relief. Something he’s considered. “Yeah, I think so. Cause it’ll be a lot about the body, like the person in the shot. And I was thinking I could reach out to someone in the fashion department. I don’t know if anyone would wanna partner with me on this, but it’s worth a shot, right?”

Taeil doesn’t respond, and for a moment Johnny thinks he’s going to shoot it down. But when he glances at him, he’s beaming right back. “I’m proud of you.”

And it’s like the heavens have opened up and bathed Johnny in light, because he’s finally got an idea.

~

The next morning is incredible. Classes are relaxing, the city is beautiful, and Johnny’s head is full of art. Everything is as he had always hoped it would be. Younger Johnny’s dream.

He heads back to the apartment for lunch (a sandwich of varying shades of beige with slightly stale bread) and begins to formulate his facebook post for the school’s fashion design page.

 " Calling all designers! I’m Johnny Suh, a photography senior working on my final project. I’m focused in fashion photography, so I’d love to collaborate with a fashion student. The final product will be displayed at a gallery on campus. Attached are some examples of my previous work. Message me for details if you’re interested.”

Not necessarily the most enticing offer since he can’t afford to offer money, but there’s always a chance a student who still believes in exposure as payment will take him up on it.

He’s just finished his sandwich and started a grocery list of colorful foods when his phone displays a notification. A reply already. He wills his heart to slow and hopes the respondent isn’t just calling him out for being cheap.

Donghyuck Lee

Super offended you didn’t ask me immediately

I hate you

Can we work together

I’m your biggest fan

He can’t fight the smile off his face (until he realizes how mortifying it is that he forgot about Hyuck in the first place). But he’s seen his designs before and, more importantly, he’s seen him at work. Fashion design is Donghyuck’s life, and he’s made some beautiful things. Things Johnny has seen and immediately ached to shoot. It’s an easy decision.

He begins typing, and the universe decides that it was letting him off too easy.

Lucas Wong

Hi!!

I saw ur post about needing a design student

I really liked ur pictures

Here are some pieces I’ve designed in the past

[img]

[img]

Let me know if ur interested :D

Johnny’s life is unbearably difficult.

Even in just the two pictures, Johnny can see Lucas’ range. His talent for different shapes and feelings, his work’s duality. It’s exactly what Johnny needs. Which sucks. Because how is he going to tell Donghyuck?

“Taeil!” he calls.

Taeil crawls out of his room, hair messy, but only enough to be cute, not yet depressed-looking. “What?”

“I have a dilemma.” He shoves his phone at Taeil so he can see the replies to his post and waits.

“Well, I’m biased, of course.”

“I know.”

“If you’re trying to get me to pick, I say Donghyuck. Obviously.”

“No,” Johnny whines. “I’ll pick myself, I just want to know how to break it to the other one. You’re nice, how would you do it?”

“Just be professional,” he answers, rooting through cabinets for a snack. “That’s all this is, a professional project. It’s not even a job or anything. Just tell whoever you don’t pick that you’re gonna work with someone else.”

“I really like Lucas’ pieces, though.”

“Okay,” Taeil shrugs while pouring himself a bowl of popcorn. “Then go with him.”

“But I can’t reject Hyuck. And I like his stuff too, you know that.”

“Johnny, this is your project. Go with what your gut says.”

Taeil tries to head back to his room, but Johnny catches him in his fishing pole arms and drags him back into a hug.

“Ah, watch the popcorn!”

“I really appreciate you.”

Taeil relaxes against him and sets the bowl down to hug back. Johnny closes his eyes, reminds himself he’s always been able to handle things like this in the past. Eventually Taeil breaks free to disappear to his cave and Johnny’s left alone with his phone.

Deep breath.

Professionals make decisions like this all the time.

He types out one message, copies and pastes, and sends it out two ways.

would you be able to work with another designer

~

“I have a crazy idea.”

“Is it actually crazy, or are you just being yourself?”

He can’t see Ten’s face over the phone, but he knows the exact expression he’s wearing right now. The ‘teasing Johnny’ face, always the same.

“You got me, it’s not crazy. It’s a very milquetoast proposition.”

“Hmm, gross. What is it?”

“I have this final project I have to do. A collection that shows my style, or whatever. And I’m really behind because I’ve had this assignment for a very long time, and I just came up with my concept last night.”

“What is it?” Ten’s voice picks up at the end like it always does when he gets excited. Johnny lets himself imagine Ten lounging around his apartment in comfy clothes, eyes lit up from talking to him.

“I was actually inspired by you.”

“ Really ?”

“Yeah, don’t act so surprised.”

“Hope the concept isn’t ‘ugly people of Chicago’ or something.”

“It’s dancers, actually.” The line is quiet, and Johnny takes that as a go-ahead. “Like, dancers who have had to put it on the backburner to pursue other things.” And still, silence. “Ten?”

“Sorry, I was just beating the shit out of Yuta.”

“Why?”

“He was manhandling me in excitement. I was gonna develop shaken baby syndrome.”

“About this?”

“Yeah. He bet me ten bucks that I would become your ‘muse’ or whatever. He thinks this means I have to pay up.”

Johnny grins, hopes Ten can hear it in his voice, and responds, “Let him know that’s exactly what it means. Sorry, you’ve filled me with artistic inspiration. That’s a muse, Ten.”

And he thinks Ten’s probably okay with being out the ten dollars, because he can hear his smile as he says, “Tell me all about it.”

“I was actually wondering if you would be able to help.”

“With what?”

“Do you know any dancers like that? Like, ones who love to dance and still find time for it, even though their main thing is something else?”

“Tons, basically every dancer I know.”

“I need models. Could you ask around and see if any of them would be interested? I can send them the details if they want, I just wouldn’t know where to start looking-”

“Yeah, I can do that.” Ten sighs, and it’s all Johnny can do to imagine him lying down fully clothed in his living room with Yuta present. His first and second thoughts were no-gos, not while he’s still on the phone anyway.

“I have one more request.”

“Demanding,” Ten jokes.

“Would you model for me?”

He hears Yuta yelling.

“Am I on speaker right now?”

“No, Yuta’s just too fucking close. Parasite.”

“Will you?”

“Of course.” It takes Ten a moment, but then he continues, “When I was at your place and you told me that you had wanted to take pictures of me since we met, that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. Or maybe not, but it felt like it because it was you.”

Johnny can feel himself falling.

“Your photography matters to me because it matters to you, and I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I would love to be a part of it.”

“I know I’ve already told you, but I really like you, Ten.”

“I know.”

“Oh, wow, cool guy.”

Laughter breaks through Ten’s end and fills the living room. Johnny wishes he were really here.

“I really like you too. I’m gonna go, but send me the details of this little project-”

“It’s actually a very professional and sophisticated project-”

“Yeah, okay,” Ten giggles. “Send me the details of this thing so I can get you your models.”

“I owe you one.”

“I have a couple ideas for how you could make it up to me.”

Johnny hears Yuta groaning in the background and remembers the cliché line Ten used on him at the open mic. Like he learned to speak from the movies. Perfect.

So many things about Ten are perfect.

~

The studios the fashion students use are gorgeous. Each one he’s walked past has had an entire wall of glass, letting in streams of sunlight. They’re stocked with dress forms, fabric, and things for which Johnny could only begin to guess the use. Save the unique half-made pieces adorning forms and laid across tables, each studio is the same. But only one matters to Johnny, because only one has his designers waiting for him.

He might have missed it (the room number plates are so hard to read) had Donghyuck not yelled his name as he passed by.

“Oh, Hyuck.”

Donghyuck springs up from a chair at one of the long tables with sewing machines and runs over to swat at Johnny with a rolled-up magazine. “You didn’t tell me the other designer was Lucas !”

For a moment, Johnny’s afraid he’s made a grave mistake. Does Hyuck hate Lucas? Has the idea fallen through already? But when he glances down, Donghyuck is visibly shaking with excitement. And a few feet from the foot of the table, Lucas waves at him.

Johnny had checked out his profile after he responded to the message to try and find more pictures of his designs. That had ended up being the only thing Lucas posted. Never any photos of himself. So Johnny hadn’t had any idea of what to expect before meeting him.

He’s gorgeous.

The sort of gorgeous that takes a moment to get used to.

“Hi, Lucas?” Johnny greets. Lucas takes his hand and beams. Johnny wonders if that’s always how he smiles, that sweetly.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you!”

“You too.” He wonders if admiring another man’s smile to this degree counts as emotionally cheating on your not-yet-boyfriend boyfriend. “So, should we get into it?”

They all drag chairs to a corner of the studio bordering the glass wall and Johnny tries to figure out the best place to start. A ‘thank you’ seems to be in order.

“I really can’t thank the two of you enough for helping out on this.”

“Yeah, you can’t,” Donghyuck says. Lucas laughs without an ounce of meanness and Johnny’s left wondering how he did it. “Love you, Johnny.”

“Thanks, Hyuck.”

“Welcome.”

“ Anyway , the clothes. Nothing too difficult I don’t think, but also I don’t know anything about making clothes, so there’s that.”

“Off to a good start.”

“I don’t appreciate it, Hyuck.”

“But I appreciate you.”

Lucas watches their interaction like a tennis match, his eyes shifting between them, amused.

“As I was saying, I currently have someone casting three models, and I already pretty much have two, but the project requires two pieces for each person.”

“Jesus,” Donghyuck whines. “When are you going to have all the models?”

“Really soon. Maybe by the end of today?”

“That’s good. We could get them in for measurements tomorrow. And with two of us working, it should go a lot faster,” Lucas says.

“What kind of outfits are we talking about?”

Johnny thinks that, before settling on this concept, he should have considered how many times he’ll have to explain it to people. “Dance costumes, I guess? Like, they need to look kind of like regular clothes, but also kind of like things people wear to dance.”

They look back at him like he’s grown two extra heads.

“I mean this in the nicest way possible,” Lucas starts, “but that makes no sense.”

“People wear anything to dance,” Hyuck explains. “My roommate dances around the room naked sometimes. And what do you mean by ‘regular’? Like, going for a walk in the park clothes, or business casual, or what?”

It takes a moment for him to process and collect his thoughts. Never knew just how little he knew about actual fashion language. He just knows what looks nice to the eye, not how to speak about it.

“The concept is the dichotomy of having two lives.” He ignores their confused eyebrows knitting even further down and continues. “Each model is going to have two photos right next to each other. Exact same pose, or extremely similar. One will be of them doing what they do most of the time, their main thing. The other will be them dancing because all my models are dancers. That’s the whole thing, looking at how they keep dance in their lives even with everything else they do.”

“So how similar do you want the outfits for each person to be?” Hyuck asks.

“As similar as possible. But different colors. Like, the median between dancey and normal?”

“Then could I suggest something?” Lucas asks. Johnny nods, grateful for his patience. “We should probably start with designs for the regular outfits and then base the dance outfits off of those. I think that would make the whole thing a lot clearer.”

Hyuck nods, and slowly, the confusion on his face melts away to excitement. “We’re gonna eat this, I can tell. I already have ideas.”

“I have no idea what that means but I’m glad you’re enthusiastic.”

Hyuck and Lucas share a glance and Hyuck says, “You’re so fucking old. But I love you.”

“Thanks,” Johnny answers, dragging his chair back to the table he stole it from. “So, as soon as I have all my models and information about the designs, I’ll send them over.”

“ Not as soon as you have all of them, we have to get started ASAP. Send them as they come!” Lucas calls.

“Got it!”

And he’s done it, wrangled Donghyuck (a feat in itself) and managed to keep Lucas on, even through his fumbling. This is what it’s like, organizing art. This is what he’s worked for, what his life will be when he’s finished. One step closer.

~

I found two people last night

Facebook is actually good for something other than misinforming boomers

Who knew

owe you my life

How about you buy me a meal instead

am I finally getting my date?

Yeah, it’s time

Cause I’m hungry >:]

you mean now?

Unless you’re busy

nope!

be there in around fifteen

~

Each time Johnny imagined taking Ten out, it led somewhere different. Sometimes he would go the traditional dinner-and-movie route, sometimes a museum visit. Sometimes something so artsy and pretentious his brain couldn’t even conjure specific details. But he never considered the possibility that they might just end up on another bench in the city sunset.

Maybe they just got it right the first time.

“God, street food never disappoints,” Ten comments as he tries to keep his taco from falling apart.

“On a scale from zero to couples unironically reenacting Titanic every time they’re on a boat, how cheesy am I allowed to be right now?”

“Hmm.” He has a tiny spot of salsa on his lower lip. Johnny doesn’t know how bold he’s willing to be about that. “I wouldn't object to a little bit of cheese.”

“You’re beautiful all the time. Even when you have salsa on your lip. Like now.”

Ten looks up at him and swipes at his lip with his thumb, sucks at the tip a bit. It’s a dirty move. Johnny’s glad he wore one of his longer shirts and a jacket made for covering things up like fashionable white-out, just in case.

“Do I get to be cheesy back?”

“If you want. I’m not a cop, I won’t stop you,” he teases.

“I like being with you. I like the things you say and the things you do.” He kicks at Johnny’s foot softly and adds, “I just really like you .”

Johnny sets his own paper container down and shifts a bit so he can face Ten head-on. “Could I ask you something?”

“You don’t need my permission to say things. Go for it.”

“Will you be my boyfriend?”

He’s never wanted his camera so badly. Hopefully his memory will do justice to the way Ten’s eyes light up like fireworks, or like flame itself. Hopefully he’ll be able to remember.

Or see those eyes every day so he doesn’t have to.

“Yeah, duh,” he laughs. “Yeah, I’ll be your boyfriend.”

He must have his too-wide, nearly-closed-eyes smile on, the dopey one he only ever deliberately wears for pictures to send Taeyong to make him laugh when he’s stressed, because Ten kicks at him again (harder this time) and teases, “You look like a dork. Eat your taco.”

He fights back by poking at the junction of Ten’s neck and shoulder, but then Ten tenses up and almost drops his food, so Johnny has to either surrender or run the risk of having to buy him a replacement meal. Looks like he’ll have to surrender.

“So, I found you some people,” Ten starts.

“Yes, yeah, the people. From facebook.”

“One of them is a freshman at IIT. Kid’s studying astrophysics, it’s insane. But he’s a dancer for sure, and he’s kind of gorgeous.” Ten pulls out his phone and finds the guy’s profile.

And he is. Sharp jawline, strong frame, and a soft smile.

“His name’s Jeno. He said he thought the project sounded cool and would be glad to help out. And then here,” Ten shoves his phone forward. “He said ‘as long as I can do my homework on set’. That’s adorable.”

“So that’s two and a half models.”

“A half?”

“I haven’t asked my friend Taeyong yet but I can’t imagine he’d say no. He complains every single day about never having enough time to dance, and this would be a perfect excuse.”

“And then there’s another one I found. His name is Jisung. He didn’t say where he goes, but I imagine he must be in the area if he’s willing to help. They both seem really nice, and I definitely think they look pretty enough to be in a fashion photographer’s project.”

He lets his head fall to the side and runs through the ever-growing to-do list. “So now I need to ask Taeyong and find one more model. I need Jeno’s and Jisung’s contacts so I can get them in to the designers. And you too, in with Hyuck and Lucas. And then I need-”

“What a list,” Ten murmurs, pressing himself into Johnny’s side, the paper taco containers sitting beside them displaced and forgotten. “I can take care of some more of that.”

“You’ve already done more than I can thank you for.”

“Mmm, and you can make it up to me. Maybe sometime when Yuta isn’t in the apartment. I find that when I’m allowed to be loud, it’s a little more enjoyable for everyone.”

“ Well , if you insist-”

“I have another dancer friend. He owes me a favor and he’s too sweet to turn me down, so that’s your last model. You send me the details of where to find your fashion boys and I’ll pay them a visit soon.”

Johnny laces their fingers together and leans back against the bench, pulling Ten along with him. If they had been together for longer than five minutes, then this would be where a boyfriend would say ‘I love you’. But this is just the beginning. So instead of love, they sink into silence and the colors of the city as it slips into evening.

Everything is easy with Ten. Together, their every touch is a frenzied creation, a storm of inspiration. No thought, and yet, a masterwork. The sort of thing every artist dreams of, and here it is, holding his hand and looking at him like “Starry Night”.

~

More slowly than he would like, things come together.

It lights up his soul, to work on a project like this.

Ten, Jeno, and Jisung each find the time to visit Donghyuck and Lucas. Donghyuck texts him excitedly after each measurement session to gush about how pretty they all are.

Ten texts him about the friend he had mentioned, Sicheng, and sends their newest model to the designers’ den. That day, Johnny gets messages from Donghyuck and Lucas.

He makes a visit to the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop where he met Ten. That’s how he thinks of it now (more interesting than ‘the place Taeyong wishes he weren’t working’) and collects his final missing person. Donghyuck already knows Taeyong, so there’s no need to worry about his phone exploding from a tidal wave of messages.

The best part of preparation is the location scouting. That’s what he likes to call it in his head, this mostly aimless meandering around the city to find places to shoot. He ducks into performance venues, assesses the aesthetic merits of different brick walls, wastes an afternoon wandering a favorite little park.

Much more slowly than he would like, things come together.

But each falling into place is a spark to his heart, a secret glimpse into the future.

And there’s no timeline for the rest of his life.

~

Whispering. Warm light. The smell of cinnamon on the air.

Softly, “It’s day one, man.”

“Huh?” Johnny grumbles, fighting to slip back into sleep.

“You’re starting to shoot today, right?” Taeil grabs his wrists and pulls him up. “I can’t remember who you’re starting with, all I know is I put on my house husband hat this morning and made breakfast.”

He rubs at his eyes and blinks at his window. “What time is it?”

“Eight. Early bird gets the worm.”

If Johnny really wanted to, he could wrest his wrists from Taeil’s grip and sleep for another hour at least, but the smell of whatever he’s been working on in the kitchen calls to him. “Okay.”

“Race you to the kitchen,” Taeil says. Before Johnny can protest, he’s taken off. But he’s not going down without a fight.

“My legs don’t work this early in the morning!”

When he slides into the kitchen (almost tumbling into the dining counter), Taeil is standing at the oven with two paper plates sagging under the weight of fresh coffee cake. “Here,” he says, sliding one across the counter to Johnny.

“Oh my god,” he groans. “I never once in my life did anything good enough to deserve coffee cake on a weekday.”

“What can I say? Sometimes even people like you end up with angels like me.” He takes his first bite and they sink into relative silence punctuated every so often by miscellaneous noises of contentment.

His mind wanders. Today is Taeyong and Jeno. He’s going to head over to the IIT campus in around two hours, but until then, he’s planning. Coordinating with Hyuck and Lucas to get the outfits on site, double-checking that all the spaces he needs permission for are really free when he needs them, making sure Taeyong and Jeno understand the concept of the shoot-

“Enjoying it?” Taeil asks.

“Huh?”

“Breakfast.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. It really is delicious.” Taeil smiles at him and cocks his head to the side. “Thank you for making it. And just generally taking care of me.”

“You’re a big sap,” he says, batting at Johnny’s hand. “I’m sure today will go perfectly.”

“Yeah.”

“I could see the wheels turning in your mind. But you’re you . No need to worry.”

“Yeah.”

" And you have some friends there to lighten the load. Well, Taeyong. I know Hyuck can act like more of a menace around you sometimes, but-”

Johnny turns and wraps his arms around Taeil, the best I-love-you-but-stop-talking hug he can muster. Thinks about how much he lucked out living with him, how maybe nothing is coincidence. Because Taeil makes this minorly shitty apartment feel like home, and something like that couldn’t have been just a lucky pass.

Taeil lets Johnny latch on, even lets him have that precious little bit of thinking time. And then he whispers, “I made breakfast, so you get to do the dishes.”

“Okay.”

Johnny untangles his arms and grabs the plates Taeil used. The paper plates. Even in giving Johnny work, he was kind.

Today will be fine.

Today will be a good day.

~

Today is incredibly difficult and also terrible.

His entire crew stands behind him and warily watches him flail his arms (carefully, so as to avoid damaging his camera) as he tries to explain the situation to a very old professor. Probably has tenure, because he’s so ancient it seems he only hears about half the words Johnny says.

“Sir, I assure you, I checked and double-checked and then checked again this morning, and this lecture hall is supposed to be free until two o’clock.”

It takes at least five whole seconds for anything to register. Johnny’s surprised flies don’t buzz around this guy like in cartoons; he’s halfway dead. “I’m sorry, young man. I am teaching a class here in twenty minutes.”

“Sir,” Donghyuck starts. Johnny becomes immediately nervous because Hyuck has a well-documented talent for getting thrown out of places. Mostly large gatherings of republicans (disturbing the peace) and nightclubs (terrible at using his fake ID), but Johnny doesn’t doubt that his skills could shine in this arena, too. “We can be done in five minutes.”

“Well, I don’t know abo-”

Hyuck steps on his foot and keeps talking. “Certainly within twenty. May I ask, what do you teach?”

As talented as he is at getting forcibly removed from wherever he is, he’s also an expert at turning the charm on (usually to save himself from the aforementioned removal). The professor’s shoulders lose some of their tension and the first sign of life Johnny’s seen yet flashes in his eyes. “I am a professor of behavioral health.” Rehearsed, but not without pride.

“ Perfect ,” Hyuck says. “We were planning on using the space for an art project related to exercise. So that’s health. And I’m sure we’ll be behaving interestingly enough to study.” Towards the end, his voice drops down like he’s sharing an inside joke. “Behaving well , of course. Don’t worry, professor.” And then he winks.

Johnny feels himself withering away.

The professor’s eyes glaze over again, and Johnny has half a mind to call an ambulance. But then he huffs in that old man way, raises his hand to wave them in, and says, “Try not to be too rowdy while I’m having my tea.”

Johnny can’t believe it. It’s all he can do to stifle his gasp, and Taeyong can’t do even that. Good thing the professor is nearly deaf.

“Did you just flirt your way into this lecture hall?” Johnny whispers once they’re all in the hall and getting set up.

“I guess? I just did what I normally do when I want something from a stranger.”

“Hyuck, I am in love with you right now.”

“Eww, no thanks.” He adjusts the collar of Jeno’s shirt and adds, “You’re like my boyfriend’s annoying little brother.”

“I’m older than you, but whatever.”

“Uh, Johnny?” Jeno asks. “Since we don’t have much time, I kinda need some instruction now.”

“Of course. Could I explain it to you while you write a bunch of complicated astrophysics genius things on that board over there?”

“Genius things?” Jeno’s face scrunches up in an adorable cocktail of confusion and worry. “Like what?”

“Just anything that will look like astrophysics to art students.”

“So basically anything above basic geometry?” And it would have been a lethal comment coming from anyone else, but Jeno asks it as a genuine question. Incredible.

“I love your brain. Yes, anything mathy and graphy and nerdy. If it turns out the way I want it, people will only pay a passing glance to the board. They’ll all be looking at you.”

Jeno looks down at his hands and mutters a small, “Oh, okay,” before picking up a marker and starting in on his math.

“Okay, so mostly your part is very simple. The real hard part is on me. But there is one thing you’ll need to be really conscientious of during shooting.”

“Mhmm,” Jeno hums.

“ Jesus , I’ve never even seen some of these letters before.”

Dr. Decomposition hushes them from his podium and Jeno giggles softly.

“Anyway,” Johnny continues. “There are going to be two photos of you in the final product. One will be of you doing your ‘day job’ basically. You at this board, doing math I could never understand in my life. And the other will be of you dancing. They’re going to be entirely different photos, except for one part of your body that will be in the exact same position in both. Does that make sense?”

“What part of my body?” Jeno asks, still focused on his equations.

“How would you describe your dance style?”

Jeno’s hand falters a moment and he looks to Johnny at his side. “I don’t really know? Maybe… no, that sounds too-”

“No, what were you gonna say?”

He looks back up at the board and analyzes his work. To Johnny, it looks perfect. Neat, overwhelmingly mathematical, but not enough to outshine Jeno. “Powerful.”

“Hot.”

Jeno laughs again, and Johnny tries to see it in his mind, his ideal photo. And it’s there, Jeno’s figure in the dark, strong and beautiful, plucked straight from the stars. “Your arm. If you think you could hold the marker out like this,” Johnny demonstrates, his arm extended against the board, shoulders squared, “and try to keep your legs kind of natural, but have the arm out like that, standing out. That would be perfect.”

“Like this?” he asks. He stretches his arm out against the board and turns so his profile faces out. Tilts his head up just the tiniest bit.

Johnny wants to cry.

“Jeno, you are everything I have ever wanted in a model,” he says, scrambling to get the settings on his camera right. “Try not to move! Just breathe naturally, stay exactly like that. Lucas, can you turn out the lights for a sec? I think the windows are gonna give us some great light.”

The professor only begins to protest about the lights after Johnny’s already gotten his shot. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission when the payoff is a photo like this.

“Young men-”

“I think we’re all done, sir,” Johnny calls. Taeyong pokes him in the side and makes a shushing gesture, but by then it’s too late to be quiet. “Thank you for letting us use the space.”

The crew files out quickly, carrying the most portable equipment Johnny could find that would do the job, long plastic bags with the shoot outfits, and whatever else they foolishly decided to bring along to a mobile shoot.

“Thanks, professor,” Taeyong says just as the door closes behind them.

“One more photo and then we’re off campus. Taeyong, lead us to the laboratory.”

Taeyong laughs beside him. “You act like it’s someplace exciting. It’s just a less impressive setting for even more math.”

“Well then lead us to the less impressive setting for even more math.”

Lucas giggles somewhere behind them and they all begin the trek to Taeyong’s third (or maybe fourth?) favorite spot on campus: his computer lab.

~

“Oh, so you were telling the truth,” Donghyuck says.

Usually Johnny would criticize him for so bluntly insulting another person’s happy place, but he’s right . The lab is just a gray room with rows of computers and nothing else. The one aesthetically redeeming quality is the windows, which are large enough to let in good light, but Johnny honestly wanted something darker for this shot anyway.

This is what real photography is , he reminds himself.

Solving problems, getting creative, getting the shot. He can do this.

“Okay, Taeyong, I want you over here,” he directs, pointing to the computer at the end of a long table. “Hyuck, he needs his clothes.”

“Jeno had a bathroom to change in,” Taeyong whines.

“You can find one if you want. Or you can strip here like a real man,” Johnny answers.

Taeyong pouts, but starts pulling his sweater over his head nonetheless.

“Oh, okay,” Jeno says, looking away. Johnny laughs and Donghyuck and Lucas start helping Taeyong into his ‘regular’ outfit (terminology they still mock Johnny for).

Once he’s properly dressed, Johnny pulls the chair away from the table and grimaces. “Do you guys have any non-ugly chairs at this school?”

“Uh, no?” Jeno answers.

“Lucas, Hyuck, look at this.”

“I don’t know anything about furniture design, but I could design circles around whoever made this piece of garbage,” Hyuck wagers.

“Stop flaming the chair,” Taeyong interrupts. “What do you wanna do about it?”

Johnny thinks for a moment, sincerely wishing the universe would just calm down with the little surprises and minor inconveniences. One of them is going to end up being the straw that breaks the camel’s back. “What other sorts of rooms are in this building?”

“Uh, offices, bathrooms, maintenance closets. Maybe a traditional classroom, but I really don’t know.”

“Lucas, Donghyuck, I want something with sharp lines. Preferably in neutrals to match the rest of the room. Small, I’d like to see as much of Taeyong’s body as possible, so none of those fucking gamer chairs.” Taeyong has his worried face on, so Johnny assures, “We’ll return it, obviously. It’s just for the photo.”

Donghyuck and Lucas hurry out of the room, and Johnny starts directing Taeyong. “Your dance is that kinda sharp, robot style-”

“ Not the robot-”

“So, depending on the type of chair they bring back, I’m thinking maybe shoot you from the back with your right leg out like this.” He tries to squat down and bend his leg at a right angle, something edgy and angular, and Taeyong laughs at him.

“Okay,” he says between giggles. “You looked terrible doing that, but I get it.”

“That’s all I ask,” he says, struggling to stand back up.

“So, will I also have to be facing away from the camera in the dancing shot?” He seems a little disappointed, and it engages Johnny’s damage control instinct immediately. Sirens on.

“Of course not, your face is too perfect for me to not use it.”

“Doesn’t my leg have to be the exact same, though?”

If Johnny has to do any more improvising today, he may change his major to acting. “Well…” And then it comes in, the inspiration that’s always flown in to rescue him from the very beginning of this project. “Yes. The leg has to be facing away from the camera. But you’re flexible, right?”

“Yeah. I’m also very scared.”

“Relax, I can see it. It’s gonna be perfect,” Johnny says, patting his shoulder. He can hear Hyuck and Lucas crashing through the hall, so he leaves Taeyong at the table to attend to the two of them.

“What’d you find?”

Lucas hoists it above his head like a trophy as he runs down the hall to the lab. If this entire floor weren’t deserted, they would be kicked out in a minute flat. Small mercies.

And one very important, larger mercy: the chair is almost exactly what he was envisioning. Made of clear plastic with modern-looking edges and a low back, so low it’s practically useless as a chair. Perfect for their purposes.

“Taeyong, exactly as I said, if you can.”

He settles into the chair as best he can, but it really does look horribly uncomfortable. Pulls his shoulders up, straightens his back, stretches his leg out to the side as if he’s pressed it into an invisible wall and isn’t just holding it there. It’s incredible. Johnny scrambles to the floor to get the angle he needs and curses the positioning of the window, fiddles with his settings, prays he doesn’t lose this moment.

“Wow,” Lucas says the second after Johnny’s taken the one, the one he knows is going to be on a gallery wall before any of them can even blink. The one that’s going to have a little plate with his and Taeyong’s names next to it, the one that’s going to be one of ten pieces introducing him to the world as an artist . A real artist.

“Yeah,” he says. “Wow.”

He goes through his camera for a moment, sorting through the photos. Some he can delete immediately, but Jeno has several he could use, several that he’ll have to pore over later. Several that, miraculously, make him proud .

“Uh, Johnny?”

“Huh?” He looks up and meets Jeno’s eyes.

“We should return the chair, right?”

“Oh, yeah, yes,” he waves absentmindedly. “Guys, take it back to wherever you stole it from.”

They drag their feet a bit this time (apparently the return trip isn’t nearly as exciting), but he doesn’t have to offer any more incentive to get them moving. Just has to wait.

“Taeyong, Jeno, my lovely stars,” he starts. Taeyong nudges Johnny’s back with his knee and pulls him up from where he’s squatting on the ground. “Thank you for being perfect. Only a little more, and then you’re done.”

Jeno smiles, his eyes disappearing to little crescent moons.

“The outfit…?” Taeyong asks, tugging at the edge of his sleeve.

“Oh, yeah, you can take it off. Your next picture is in a different one.”

Taeyong sighs and begins undressing again. Johnny can see Jeno willing himself to look anywhere but Taeyong; funny how Taeyong always seems to have that effect. A magnetism that he vehemently denies whenever anyone else notices.

“So, Jeno, we haven’t talked much,” he supplies, something to draw the focus away from Taeyong changing, a mercy for everyone in the room.

“I guess not.”

“What’s your deal? Cause obviously someone who mainly does space math and dance is gonna have some interesting things to say.”

His eyes roll back and he rests his chin on his hand, a caricature of deep thought. “Not to disappoint, but there’s not much to say.”

“Come on, there’s gotta be something.”

“Hmm, I really like cats.”

“Wow, okay, maybe there really is nothing.”

Jeno’s eyes go wide and he pushes Johnny lightly, not even enough to make him shift his feet. Just enough to make it feel like they’re friends. And Johnny guesses they could be. Thinks he would like that.

“The chair’s been returned to its rightful place in the world, great master,” Donghyuck announces at the lab’s doorway. “What next?”

Taeyong passes his clothes over to Lucas and everyone awaits their next instructions. If Ten were here directing, he would pause for dramatic effect, because this is the sort of thing that he knows will get a reaction, at least from Hyuck. But Ten isn’t here, and Johnny decides to rip the bandage off. “The L.”

“No way,” Hyuck says. “Take all this shit on public transportation ? That’s literally asking to get robbed.”

“Take all this shit on public transportation,” he confirms with a nod.

Donghyuck laughs, and it’s equal parts frustrated and amused. “If I weren’t your biggest fan, I would quit right now.”

“Well, thank you for loving me, then.” He turns to the others and asks, “So, are we ready?”

And they, the perfect crew that they are, start packing up and filing through the door towards the superior location of the day. Towards glass and stars and wide open space. Towards the place that will redefine ‘stargazing’ as photographing Jeno and Taeyong. All because they trust him to create something beautiful.

~

It doesn’t take Johnny long to realize that Jeno’s excited face is easily one of his favorite sights.

“I love this place! I used to come here with my mom all the time when I was little! I thought space was the coolest thing ever, and that was before I knew there was so much math in it, but obviously that didn’t stop me. I just loved it here so much.” It’s the most Johnny’s heard from him the entire time they’ve been working together.

He knows the wonder Jeno’s feeling, and he doesn’t. He feels something akin to it himself, but it’s coming from someplace different in the mind, some other part of human fascination. He sees the planetarium for its beauty, for the way he aches to capture it. But what Jeno must be feeling is bigger. A longing not for the way the planetarium looks, but for the things it means . Its impact on his life, the way it’s acted as a doorway to his world.

It’s the best shoot location Johnny’s ever picked, if only because he’s never gotten a reaction like this before.

“Did you ever want to be an astronaut?”

“Huh?” Jeno asks, still looking around the lobby.

“Did you ever want to go to space? Usually that’s what space kids wanna be when they grow up.”

“Oh, no,” he answers. “It always scared me. But I still wanted to figure out new things about it. I just wanted to learn everything.”

“Well,” Taeyong says, “I don’t imagine we’ll be doing very much learning today.”

“I feel like just being here is making me smarter,” Lucas contradicts.

Taeyong shrugs and turns to Johnny. “Where are we headed?”

For the millionth time, Johnny thanks the universe for letting him meet Ten. Otherwise, they would be going absolutely nowhere near this place for the shoot. But Ten, being the supportive boyfriend ( boyfriend! ) that he is, used his singular connection to hook Johnny up. He steps up to the counter without answering, hoping this whole thing will make him look very cool and professional to the crew. He prays Ten’s friend isn’t on break.

“Hi,” he says to the girl at the counter. Glances down to her nametag and hopes she knows he isn’t looking at her chest. “Wendy. I’m here for a project? I was told to ask for-”

“Kun!” she calls to an employee standing at a touchscreen directory. “He’s here.”

Kun turns to the counter and Johnny smiles, hoping to come off as highly professional and not at all a nuisance. He’s sure Donghyuck and Lucas can take care of the latter without his help.

“Hi, welcome to Adler Planetarium,” he greets, smiling like a catalog model.

“Hey, I’m Ten’s, uh, friend.” He hears someone bite back a laugh behind him and briefly wonders whether it was Donghyuck or Taeyong.

“Great! Is this everyone?” He nods toward the group struggling to hold onto all their equipment.

“Yeah.”

“Awesome, follow me. You wanted the Universe, correct?”

“Uh, yeah. Thank you so much. This is gonna come out so much better in a location like this, so really, thank you.”

“No problem. I owed Ten a favor, and it’s honestly nothing anyway. Breaks the monotony.”

Kun leads them through different exhibits Johnny almost wishes he had the time to explore, but he knows why he’s here.

After what seems like a little bit too long without talking, they arrive. The walls are covered with screens displaying images of stars and planets and everything else a space nerd could ever want to see. The colors shift slowly along a uniquely cosmic palette, and Johnny makes a note to watch a full cycle once they start setting up. Figure out when he wants his shot.

“It’s perfect.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I heard you sing at that open mic a while ago.”

For the first time since Johnny saw him that night, Kun looks surprised. “Oh? Thank you.”

Johnny laughs and Kun looks away, a rigid smile pulling at his lips. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. You were really good. You were,” he says, elbowing Kun hopefully not too hard.

“Thanks.” Kun reaches up to the back of his neck, something Johnny saw him do a lot at the open mic. “Anyway, I’ll be around this area for a while. I’m gonna put an ‘exhibit closed’ sign out, so just tell me when you’re done so I can put it away. People get snappy when things are closed.”

“Thank you so much,” he says again, figures it bears repeating.

As soon as Kun is gone, Donghyuck asks, “Do you think he always talks like that, or just when he’s doing business?”

“Talks like what?” Taeyong asks.

“Like Mr. Corporate in every Hallmark movie.”

“I liked him,” Lucas says.

Donghyuck pretends to convulse and says, “I know you liked him, he was wearing the type of shoes wealthy people got shined in the 30’s. I know way too much about what you like.”

Lucas pouts and turns to Johnny. “Hyuck is bullying me for-”

“I don’t even wanna know. Everybody, start getting ready.” He keeps an eye on the screens, contemplating a twinkling space-dust sort of green color before they all begin to shift to a starry gold. And that’s it. That’s the one.

Lucas and Donghyuck wrestle Jeno into his second outfit, a slightly shinier, tighter version of his scholarly ensemble. Johnny finds the few photos he got of Jeno earlier, sorts through them and finds one to show Jeno so he can match his arm’s position. Hopes it won’t be too challenging to get a shot that accomplishes everything he needs.

“This is where I’m gonna be standing to get the same angle, okay?” Jeno nods from where he’s still being restrained and perfected. “You can just freestyle. Try to get some interesting shapes, but remember that this is about personal style. Mine and yours. So don’t worry too much about the way the rest of your body looks, just that arm.”

Taeyong and Jeno both laugh and exchange a look.

“What?” Johnny asks. “What did I say?”

“You told a trained dancer to not worry too much about how his body looks when he dances. That’s like telling a painter to not worry too much about the colors in their painting.”

“You know what I meant-”

“Should I start?” Jeno asks, having broken free from the twin havoc-wreakers.

“Do you have any music, Johnny?” Taeyong asks.

“Why do I have to have music?”

“Because you are the one orchestrating this circus.” He gestures in sweeping motions to the entire crew, a cute grimace on his face.

He groans and looks up at Taeyong from where he’s bent over to find his angle. Decides to try his luck with pleading eyes (Taeil uses that on Taeyong often enough, and he has a one hundred percent success rate). If he concentrates, he can almost visibly see Taeyong’s will crumbling.

“Fine!” He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and rolls his eyes at Johnny. “Jeno, what genres do you usually use for freestyle?”

“Mr. Suh, can you help us find someplace to put these bags? They’re kinda heavy,” Lucas calls.

“Sure. Why am I suddenly Mr. Suh?”

“Donghyuck told me that’s what you prefer.”

Johnny looks over to where Hyuck is toting the bags of clothing around and he looks less than a second way from pissing himself with laughter. “Seriously, Hyuck?” But he can’t control his own smile at the joke. With all the bite he can muster (not enough to do anything), he snaps, “You’re actually bullying him, stop!” Donghyuck loses it then, and Johnny isn’t far behind. Lucas laughs too, because he’s always in on the joke, even when it’s about him.

It would be the easiest thing to keep laughing until he can’t breathe, to dissolve with his friends and let himself truly relax for the first time since he left his apartment, but Taeyong’s found his music and Jeno stands in front of the universe. Waiting for Johnny.

This is what he came to do.

And with a scene like this laid out before him, it’s not terribly difficult to get to work.

The music coming from Taeyong’s phone is strong but not jarring. It’s rhythmic, something Johnny recognizes as Korean but can’t identify beyond that. Jeno’s shoes catch on the carpet, but he still moves more smoothly than Johnny ever could. He watches him melt into the song, camera poised.

“Jeno, take as long as you want. Vibe with it. But give me some warning when you’re gonna do the arm.”

He had known it would be a challenge. Taeil had told him at the very beginning, Taeyong had told him as he was enlisted. But he knew the energy would only be what he wanted if he got the shot while his models were actually dancing, not just posed like beautiful mannequins. The bottom line is that he would be ashamed to submit a collection about dance without movement.

So here they are.

Jeno’s eyelids flit shut as he turns, and by the time he’s facing the camera again, his eyes are burning. Intense, lightning that’s begging to be bottled. He says it so softly, Johnny almost misses his chance.

“Now.”

His arm extends as the rest of his body goes rigid. His head hangs to the side, mouth falling open just enough. He’s gorgeous. A statue, an idol to be worshipped. Strong and seductive, the center of the universe.

Johnny hasn’t felt religion in a long time. Hasn’t felt the peace some of his friends talk about, the calm, the power of knowing something great is afoot. But the weight of his camera in his hands, the way the shutter’s subtle click fills his lungs with a light purpose, he imagines it’s similar. He imagines taking the perfect picture is his heaven, his nirvana.

He imagines that’s maybe what being a real photographer feels like.

Jeno keeps moving, occasionally throwing his arm up for another try. Johnny follows his lead, keeps taking photos, revels in the feeling of knowing he got a good one. But at the back of his mind, tugging gently but ceaselessly, is the knowledge that he already has his shot.

If he closes his eyes and focuses his attention on it, he can see Jeno’s part of the gallery. He sees the two photos hanging next to each other. One looking rich and elegant, and if he’s done his job, artfully rigid. The other loose and glowing, full of movement. But anyone can see they’re the same person, nearly the same clothes. The same life, at once led in two completely different directions.

Jeno dances through two more songs with a captive audience of four. By the time he’s done, his breathing is a little ragged and his hair is in disarray. He looks so different from when he walked into the planetarium that Johnny almost doesn’t trust his memory. But he also looks happy, like he’s done what his soul needs him to do.

“Your turn,” he smiles at Taeyong, his eyes curving into their cute crescent moons.

Lucas fusses at Taeyong’s hair while Donghyuck rolls the ends of his sleeves up. They make Taeyong look like a child being dressed by his parents. If Johnny could take a picture without the sound giving him away, he would.

Johnny’s faced with a choice: see if he can make the room look different enough from Jeno’s shot for his liking, or move the whole thing to his second-favorite planetarium location. He can see them both in his mind, and choosing one feels like killing the other. Only one thing to do.

“Taeyong?”

“Yeah?” he asks on his tiptoes to peer over Lucas’ shoulder.

“This same place or somewhere else?”

“Huh?”

Lucas and Hyuck pause their ministrations.

“Do you want me to take your picture here or do you want me to see if I can get Kun to let us go somewhere else in the planetarium?”

His eyebrows knit down in the Taeyong-thinking-hard face that Johnny usually teases him for. Then, “Did you want everyone to have different locations when you planned it?”

“I did, yeah.”

“Then we should do it.”

“So all of our fixing him was for nothing? We have to lug everything around again?” Johnny almost admires it, the way Donghyuck is so reliable in picking on him.

“It’s not far. And it all depends on whether we can sweet-talk Kun into sacrificing himself to even more tourists and miscellaneous Karens.”

They stand in silence. The exhaustion catches up to Johnny then, and he knows it’s getting to everyone else, too. Knows they’re doing this for nothing in return. Knows he couldn’t have gotten better help. “After we’re done, we can all get food. I’ll treat.”

Donghyuck pulls him into a constricting hug, looping his arms around Johnny’s neck and clinging there. Lucas smiles widely and says, “Well, call him in. Let’s see if we can move.”

Johnny lovingly pries Donghyuck’s vice-like arms from his neck and sidesteps the sign Kun put out to keep people out of their way. Scans the area for someone dressed overly-formally directing something or someone, as Kun so often tends to be doing according to Ten.

“Oh, Kun!” he waves after finding him.

Kun gives him a smile, but it’s one of his practiced, customer service ones. “Done already?”

“Actually, I was wondering if I could ask for another big favor.”

His smile never falters, but Johnny catches him wring his wrists once, twice. “Sure, what can I do?”

“You can say no if it’s too much. But we were, well, I was wondering if we could possibly shoot in one other location.”

“In the planetarium?”

“Yes.”

He cocks his head to the side and takes a moment before answering, “Where were you thinking?”

“The long LED lights tunnel thing? With the bright colors and the-”

“The welcome gallery,” Kun supplies.

“Yes, that.”

Johnny hates to overstep, but he would hate wondering what could have been even more. He knows he has to take this chance and ask.

Kun’s gaze travels over Johnny’s shoulder to the room they originally made him hijack for them. Suddenly his eyes soften and he nods. Johnny turns to look over his shoulder, expecting his crew to be waving some sort of impromptu artsy offering they MacGyvered together or (god forbid) a bribe. But from where he and Kun stand, he can only see one thing.

A softly smiling, starry-eyed Lucas.

Taking both designers really was one of his best decisions to date.

Kun’s real smile is so much better than his practiced one.

~

“Do you wanna stay and watch?”

Kun comes back to earth in an instant, spooked from his lounging against the flimsy fabric walls of the tunnel and staring in the general direction of the outfit touch-ups. “What?”

Johnny’s able to suppress his laugh, and Hyuck could have too if he had tried. “Do you wanna stick around and watch the shoot?”

“Well technically I’m-”

“ Technically , I think your boss might find it wise to have you supervising us anyway,” Donghyuck says, throwing a glance Lucas’ way. “You were just floating around the area doing nothing last time, right? So hang out with us this time.”

Johnny assumes Kun’s going to protest, insist that he had been doing important work while they were getting their shots, and none of them would be able to dispute; they had no idea what he had been doing. But he just shrugs and leans back against the wall. “Okay, sure.”

For someone who seems so serious, it must be hard. Or maybe, it would be hard if Lucas weren’t here.

Donghyuck runs his hands through Taeyong’s hair more times than Johnny can count with increasing force. He’s almost to the point of worrying for Taeyong’s scalp when Hyuck steps away, brushes something off Taeyong’s shoulder, and turns him toward Johnny. “Here’s your model, just as pretty as he was before we moved.”

There’s a complaint in that comment, not even buried very far down, but Johnny elects to ignore it. He’s buying Hyuck a meal, and that’s enough.

Taeyong hands his phone off to Jeno and goes to stand against one of the stretched fabric walls lit a dramatic teal. “So, my entire leg has to face away from the camera in a pose that I promise you does actually already hurt a lot, but somehow my face will still be visible. I’ve been waiting to hear an explanation since we took the first one.”

“So, I don’t know anything about dance.”

“I know this already.”

“How bendy is your back?”

Taeyong’s face knits together in confusion, so Johnny can pinpoint the exact moment he begins to understand. The unraveling. His eyes flash the same way they do whenever Johnny tells him he’s going to pull an all-nighter or go on a walk by himself. That specific Taeyong brand of panic.

“No-”

“Is it possible? You tell me.”

He pouts and answers, “I don’t know. It would hurt.”

“Would you be willing to try?”

He doesn’t answer, brings his nail to his lips to bite. Before Hyuck can yell at him for that, Johnny pulls out the strongest weapon in his begging arsenal. Pushes his lips out, puffs his cheeks just enough, pitches his voice up and says, “Yongie, please.”

He makes the frustrated little growling noise that means Johnny’s won. “I need some more time to stretch. I don’t wanna break my back for you.”

“I’m wounded. But take however long you need. I love you.” He earns a glare, but it’s worth it. If anyone can pull it off, it’s Taeyong.

“What’s he doing?” Jeno asks.

Johnny takes the opportunity to leave Taeyong to stretch in peace. “Getting ready to perform a miracle.”

“Huh.”

“You look at Taeyong a lot.”

Jeno blushes and dips his head. “Oh, yeah, I guess.”

“Everybody does, I get it. It’s a rite of passage, having a crush on him.”

He’s quiet, still looking down at his hands. But even with the quiet and the shy, Jeno’s still in control. He still knows what’s going on, still knows himself. “I don’t know if that’s it.”

Johnny surveys the scene in front of him: Taeyong strewn across the floor in a position too painful to look at, Kun and Lucas orbiting each other and pretending to be doing anything but, and Donghyuck scrolling on his phone with a subtle smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t mean to assume, sorry.”

“No, that’s fine. Usually people don’t, and that’s even more annoying.”

Normally, Johnny is able to maneuver conversations without overthinking, the way Taeil hums to himself while cooking or Ten doodles whenever he has a pen and paper in front of him. Second nature, a skill he’s honed to the point of it just being a part of him. But Jeno’s thrown him off here and he’s not sure where he’s allowed. “So, you’re…”

Jeno looks back up and smiles, less innocent and more amused. Like he’s watching a show. “I’m…?”

“So you would like Taeyong? Except you don’t? But not because you don’t, hmm, swing that way.”

He must decide it’s finally time to end Johnny’s suffering. “I like guys, yeah.”

“ Shit ,” Johnny curses and pushes at Jeno’s shoulder. “You made that so unnecessarily difficult for me.”

“Yeah?” He looks proud of himself.

“God, you’re crazy. Just earlier today I was ready to start praying to you and now you’re just as annoying as all my other friends.”

“I’ve made great time, then.”

“Johnny, help me up!” Taeyong calls from where he’s folded himself in half on the floor. “I’m not as flexible as I used to be, I’m afraid.”

“You know what,” he grunts, hoisting Taeyong off the ground, “You just do your best.”

The room goes silent, the others hovering like vultures around a dying animal, waiting to see if Johnny’s going to make Taeyong kill himself for a photography project.

“So, you know how your leg was before, out to the side and parallel to the ground and all?”

“Yes, I do in fact remember about an hour ago.”

“Was that just an hour?”

“Focus,” Taeyong reminds him.

“Right. I’m pretty sure you know exactly what I’m about to say, but I’m just gonna go for it.” He braces for impact and explains, “Your leg should be like that, obviously. If it’s possible, you need to bend over backwards to look at the camera.”

“It’s possible,” Lucas chirps. “I saw contortionists do it in a show once.”

“ Contortionists ?” Taeyong groans.

“Please just try,” Johnny begs.

Taeyong makes sure he has witnesses on the scene, pouts one more time for good measure, and walks over to the brightly lit wall. “No music for now, please. I’m just gonna try.”

Slowly, he stretches his right leg out, bends it into a hard right angle. The pose is already dynamic because that’s just Taeyong . He can’t help being captivating. He has his audience drinking in every moment, from the second he begins to tip his head back, to the second he tumbles to the ground.

“ Oh shit .” Johnny lets his camera fall heavy around his neck and rushes to pick him up from the heap he’s fallen in. “You don’t have to do it if-”

“No,” Taeyong brushes him off and scrambles to stand on his own. “I wanna try a few more times. I felt something, I think I can do it.”

Johnny looks back to the crew for guidance. Jeno looks conflicted, Lucas and Donghyuck just shrug, and Kun seems entirely lost.

“Okay,” he says. “But don’t hurt yourself, please.”

“I know you want these shots to have a lot of movement, but this is gonna have to be a still pose. And I need someone to help me get in position.”

Inspiration strikes, and it has nothing to do with photography. “Jeno, you’re a dancer. You can help him, right?”

Taeyong and Johnny look to Jeno, who’s turned into a blushing, minutely fidgeting puddle. “Uh, yeah. Yes, I can help. What do you need?”

Taeyong waves Jeno over to where he’s standing. “It’s when I’m going down. My center of gravity is too far back and I fall on my ass. I need you to hold onto my arm until the last second before the shot, okay?”

“And then let go?”

“Yeah, he’s gotta get the picture,” Taeyong shrugs. “Ideally, you would catch me before I hit the floor, but we’ll see.”

The thing about Taeyong is he’s never able to see the effect he has on people. He’s oblivious to the nervousness, blind to the blushing. It makes watching him all the more interesting.

Taeyong bends back slowly, keeping his leg sharply angled to the side. It looks beautiful and excruciating. Johnny makes a mental note to buy Taeyong something nice for agreeing to model for him. As soon as his back is parallel to the ground, he drops his head and rolls his eyes back, just glancing at the camera.

“Stop! That’s it!” Johnny jumps at the opportunity, scrambling for his camera.

And Taeyong falls to the ground. Again.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Jeno apologizes, pulling him up by the arm he had been holding just seconds before.

“It’s okay-”

“That was it. I didn’t get the shot, but that was the pose.”

Taeyong and Jeno wait for him to get his thoughts in order, decide on the instructions he wants to pass off. “You don’t need to bend any lower than that. When you rolled your eyes up to just barely catch the camera, that was perfect . It was all in your eyes, please try to do that again.” Hoisting the camera to his eye, he asks, “Ready to go again?”

It’s a good thing Taeyong’s always liked a challenge.

He’s all confidence, the way he always is once he’s melted into dance. Spins once, arms flowing like wings around him, getting warmed up. Johnny gets to watch him slip into the easy movement he only gets to showcase when he’s dancing. He gets to see him glide around in the smooth (and then jilted, and then smooth again) way he does when he’s happy. And then Taeyong flicks his wrist towards Jeno, lets himself be supported, and leans back.

Johnny’s one second too late.

They try again.

And he’s one second too early.

“Yongie-”

“I wanna get it.” Dusts himself off, rubs aggressively at his hip. “Again.”

Johnny wants to ask Kun, the most put-together, adult-acting one here, at least from what Johnny’s seen of him so far. But Kun doesn’t know Taeyong yet, and he doesn’t know his drive to dance, or his drive to do anything someone’s told him he can’t do.

He doesn’t know those things, but Jeno does. Johnny looks to Jeno.

He’s holding Taeyong’s wrist, correcting the angle of his leg.

So they go again. And again. And again.

Hyuck grows restless at some point, starts hanging onto Johnny in between takes and alternating between flicking and leaving abrasive kisses on his shoulder. When it’s time for another shot, he stands just behind Johnny, ready to latch back on when Taeyong and Jeno inevitably redo the set-up.

So he gets to see the shot over Johnny’s shoulder. He sees Taeyong’s eyes, sees Jeno’s arm dart from the frame. Hears the near silent gasp when Johnny realizes what he’s just done.

“That’s gotta be it,” Hyuck says.

Johnny’s face breaks out in a smile and he nods. “Yeah, we got it for sure.”

Taeyong flops to the ground dramatically and huffs. “Thank god.”

“Kun,” Johnny calls. “Thank you so much for letting us use this place.”

Kun doesn’t hear him at first, only realizes he’s been spoken to when Lucas taps him on the shoulder and points. He had been too engrossed in their conversation to notice his name. Johnny thinks he should reorganize his perception of Kun, thinks that maybe even successful big shots can get carried away with pretty boys.

“Oh, sure. You’re very welcome.” Cue million dollar smile. “You got your pictures, and I got even with Ten. Win-win.”

Win-win is right.

Walking out the doors of the planetarium with all his equipment, treating his crew to a hard-earned meal, Johnny sure feels like he won.

~

How’d it go today babe

Johnny’s heart jumps at the name, at the sight of the little yellow heart.

it was good

i'm so exhausted tho

,,,, can I come next time even tho it’s not me

He wonders how someone like Ten could possibly type out such a message, how he could think Johnny would even consider saying no.

please do

might be good to have my muse around

;)

Nothing comes in after that, and Johnny lets his weary body wind down. Showers, grazes through the kitchen, settles into his favorite spot on the couch. Only after choosing something on netflix to play in the background of his instagram browsing does he get another text notification. The heart stands out.

You’re so cheesy

But I still love it when you call me that

Ten loves it when Johnny calls him that.

It’s a good feeling, this warmth in his chest. He thinks he’d like for it to stay.

~

He goes through two days of classes in the sort of daze that only hangs over a creator in the midst of a lull. No other person at no other time is so graced with its ugly presence. Even when he meets with his advisor to talk about the very project occupying so much of his mind, it’s dull. Because it’s not the real thing. It’s not the weight of the camera in his hands, the transformative feeling of seeing the world through a lens.

The morning of day two, he wakes up to his alarm instead of his roommate, just as early as the first day. Drags himself to the living room, where Taeil’s passed out with his laptop resting on his chest.

He sets the laptop on the coffee table and makes his way to the kitchen, figuring he may as well repay Taeil for all the times he’s made him breakfast for no other reason than his being perfect.

It’s easy to drift away in the morning. Taeil joins him for a quiet breakfast, and some rare soft sunlight filters in through their living room windows. He sends messages to his crew with the information for the day, texts Ten good morning and a cat picture, and cleans up. It’s all slow, easy for his mind to follow. That’s especially good because it was so much more taxing to wrangle Donghyuck and Lucas than expected last time, so he needs to conserve all the energy he can for today.

Soon enough, he’s calling, “I’m headed out,” to Taeil over his shoulder and catching a train to pick up some of his supplies and his designers.

The sky is clear, perfect for hard work.

~

“How’s my boyfriend doing, gremlin?”

“Wow, what a greeting.” Hyuck just smiles at him, wide and toothy, and waves his hand in sort of an ‘answer the question’ prompting way. Johnny elbows him and points to the long plastic bags with today’s outfits, answering, “He’s fine. You could always text him, you know.”

“I texted him this morning. I just want the news from an eyewitness.”

“Good morning, Johnny,” Lucas greets.

“Hello Lucas, light of my life.”

Lucas beams and hefts three of the bags in his arms, leaving the last one for Donghyuck to grab. Saddled with so much to carry, he looks like a pack mule (an incredibly charming pack mule, though, so it works in his favor). “When is this Ten guy coming?” he asks.

Johnny thinks back to the text he sent out this morning, trying to remember ever telling them Ten would be here today. Nothing.

“Taeil told me you were bringing him,” Hyuck supplies with a shrug.

“Oh. Yeah, okay.” And Johnny knows it doesn’t matter, but it tugs gently at his heart. He was looking forward to introducing Ten on his own terms, seeing the way his face would light up when Johnny said ‘boyfriend’. “He’s gonna meet us at the park, along with the models.”

“Ooh, I love it when you call them models. Makes me feel like an actual fashion designer,” Hyuck muses.

It’s all Johnny can do to laugh. He understands too well. Ten was right, everyone must feel that ache.

“Shall we get going?” He holds his free arm out and loops it with Lucas’, partly to help him keep the bags from dragging on the ground and partly just for the chance to link arms with Lucas. The two of them nod and Hyuck runs ahead to hold the door open.

It rolled over him in waves the first day (powerful enough to motivate him to use his struggling bank account to pay for five meals), and it laps gently at his feet like seawater at the shore now. He’s never been luckier than the moment he found his crew.

~

They hear Ten before they see him. That’s usually how it is.

He stands, hands on his hips, at the edge of the fountain where Johnny got his favorite shot of Momo in her ballgown. Towering over him is someone Johnny’s only seen in photos. Ten has a dramatic look on his face, scandalized by something.

“Ten!” he calls, hoping to distract him from whatever is already falling apart before they’ve even started the shoot.

He waves the three of them over and gestures emphatically at Jisung Park, one of the models he found for Johnny on facebook. “Johnny, you will never believe what I’ve just heard with my own two ears.”

Johnny extends a hand and greets Jisung, tries to act normal enough to make up for Ten’s antics. Jisung seems surprisingly unrattled by it all.

“Jisung is a high school junior .” He pauses and waits for a reaction.

Johnny can tell he waits too long before answering, “Yeah I know. He told me when you hooked us up. I had him get his parents to sign something, so we’re all good.” He smiles at Jisung as apologetically as he can.

Ten turns to him and puts on his best pout, so good that it melts something in Johnny for just a second. “I can’t believe this baby child is so talented. And so much taller than me.”

Johnny and Jisung laugh, but Johnny makes sure to grab Ten’s hand, rub his thumb over it to reassure him they’re laughing with him , even if it may not be entirely true. Ten turns from Jisung and leans into Johnny’s arm, still loaded with equipment.

“So,” Jisung starts, eyes darting from Johnny’s face to the ground. “Are we gonna get started?”

“We’re actually waiting for one more-”

“There he is!” Ten says, pointing.

Sicheng, even though Johnny’s only seen a couple photos and a blurry video of him, is immediately recognizable. He walks with a quiet confidence and a bright smile, waves at them and tilts his head to the side like a bird.

“Hi,” he greets softly. “Johnny Suh?”

“That’s me,” he says, trying to free a hand to extend.

Ten beats him to it and pulls Sicheng into a hug. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Sicheng smiles down at him but still fights to wriggle free. Ten laughs likes that’s exactly what he expected.

Jisung looks up at Johnny with that look that every high schooler has mastered, perched precariously on the line between cooperation and impatience.

“We can get started now if you’re all ready.” His crew nods and he turns to Sicheng. “Sorry to ask for you here now, I just wasn’t sure when we would be done with Jisung, and you said today was the only-”

“It’s okay,” he assures with a smile. “I have all day, and it’s been a while since Ten and I got to spend time together.”

Johnny lets the two of them catch up, slowly piecing bits of their relationship together from what he overhears while preparing the shoot. Sounds like they met online, maybe have only met in person once or twice. Ten looks so happy talking to Sicheng. His smile is a distraction, but the most welcome distraction Johnny’s ever faced.

“Okay, so you said you volunteered getting people to sign your little clipboard?”

Jisung skates the divide between miffed and cooperative so well he could mention it on his resumé. “I raise awareness and get donations for sustainable development in the city.”

“Uh huh, with a clipboard, right? You’re one of those kids?”

“Yes, I have a clipboard.”

“Good.” He explains the concept of the shoot more fully than he was able to through facebook messages, how he’s going to need two separate photos in two separate outfits in two separate locations, unified by a single piece. Jisung seems way more interested now that he has the details, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Come here,” Johnny waves towards an outcropping of trees that’s mostly devoid of people. “We can get your first picture right now,” he smiles.

“Not without your outfit!” Hyuck yells, and Johnny knew something had seemed too easy about the whole thing.

Jisung looks up at Johnny confusedly. “There’s nowhere to change?”

“Yeah,” Johnny concedes, rubbing at his neck.

“So… what am I gonna do?”

“What you’re not gonna do,” Donghyuck starts, pulling a straight white pant leg out of his plastic bag of wonders, “is forgo the outfit Lucas and I worked so hard on.” He directs the last part at Johnny, and it hits its target. Message received.

“There’s a coffee shop near here with a nice bathroom,” Lucas offers. “Enough space to change, for sure.”

Jisung smirks at Johnny and muses, “Taking me to a secondary location. Sounds pretty sketchy to me.”

“We’re not gonna kidnap-”

“I’m just kidding,” he laughs. “Let’s go.”

Donghyuck hefts the garment bag over Jisung’s shoulder and Lucas walks him to the coffee shop to change. Johnny hopes it doesn’t take too long for them to return; he remembers the exhaustion of the first shoot day. Remembers the way he woke up the next morning with angry red lines across his face from how firmly he had been nestled in his blankets, out like a light.

He shifts his weight from side to side, fiddles with the settings on his camera, then puts them back. Notices the hole in one of his socks, and it transports him back to the night he met Ten. Remembers the way he had been mildly annoyed at his holey-sock-related discomfort, feeling entirely left out of the crowd of people he was supposed to belong to. And then Ten found him.

Where the beginning of the night had been nerves and the chronic emotional ache that comes with imposter syndrome, the end was soft light and sparkling cat eyes. It was forgetting about his brokeness and his brokenness and walking home with numbers spelling out hope in his pocket.

Arms snake around his waist now, a welcome weight. “How ya doin’, babe?” Ten has to stretch his neck to rest his chin on Johnny’s shoulder. It seems uncomfortable, but Johnny won’t fight it; he knows better than to turn something like this away.

“I’m good. How is it seeing Sicheng?”

“It’s nice,” he hums. “I missed hanging out with him. He’s just so busy.”

“Not to sound ungrateful for the attention, I really do lo- I really do like it a lot, but why aren’t you talking to him now?”

“Donghyuck stole him. I’ll fight for him again later.”

Johnny turns around and grabs Ten’s hands, content to just stand there and look at him. His jeans stained with burgundy and rose colored smudges, his hair that he’s recently decided to grow out so he can tuck it behind his ears. It feels like they’re alone here in the shade of these trees, and Johnny knows it hasn’t been long since they’ve seen each other, but he misses this intimacy.

“I have a little bit before Thing 1 comes back with Jisung.”

Ten swings their hands back and forth, a tiny smile playing across his lips. “I thought Donghyuck would be Thing 1.”

“He probably is,” Johnny agrees, pulling Ten a little closer. He wants to kiss him, but he and Taeil have always been the types to hate on couples for too much PDA, and he wouldn’t want Donghyuck to rat him out to his roommate.

Ten’s looking up at him all bright and smiley, and he wishes they could walk around the park together. Maybe it’s good that Lucas and Jisung come back then; if they hadn’t, Johnny would have seriously considered abandoning his project today for a café date.

“Ready to go?” Lucas asks, hands on Jisung’s shoulders to turn him slowly so Johnny can inspect the outfit on him. It looks good, fits perfectly. He makes a mental note to find some way to repay his stylists (another meal?) for their work and tries his best to forget the state of his bank account after the group lunch they had last time.

“Yeah, ready to go.” He hands Jisung the clipboard he stole from under Taeil’s desk. Even in his non-dancing shot, he’s eye-catching, all white and tan against the thick earthy tones of the trees. “Remember your wide stance. The legs need to be noticeable enough for people to see the connection between the shots.”

Jisung spreads his legs a little further, strengthening his stance. He clutches the clipboard and tries a new pose every few seconds. Arms out, face blank, torso turned to the side, and then arms at his side, smiling, turned back to the camera. Constantly changing. Johnny relishes the feeling of having a model who gives him so many choices.

Some of the shots are more realistic, and some are wildly stylized. He clicks through his collection and asks, “Jisung, have you modeled before?”

He looks embarrassed as he answers, “Uh, yeah. Just a little bit.”

“I can tell. These look really great,” he assures. “Can’t believe that never came up while we were discussing online.”

“You know what I can’t believe never came up?” Ten asks from where he’s standing with Sicheng. Johnny rolls his eyes, knows immediately what the answer is. He mouths the words to Jisung as Ten says, “That he’s a child.”

“Don’t know why you’re so bent out of shape about that,” Johnny laughs over his shoulder.

“Why did your parents even let you come do a shoot with a bunch of strangers in the park?”

Jisung scowls back, playing into the charade Ten is building. He looks down and mumbles, “My mom was looking over my shoulder while we were messaging so she could vet you.”

“If I were a parent I would never let my kid do this.”

Jisung shrugs and says, “Maybe I’m just a better kid than yours would be.”

Johnny lets them bicker, secretly enjoying the way they play off each other. Loving what he gets to learn about Ten just watching him at times like this. Who could have guessed that Ten would be so playfully antagonistic with people younger than himself? It’s something to add to the collection of trivia and memories he builds every moment they spend together, a collection he hopes he’ll be building for-

Well, for a long time.

“Jisung,” Johnny calls, tearing him away from the play fight he’s gotten himself into with Ten. “Ready for your dance shot?”

He gets to watch the kid’s eyes light up, the way Jeno’s and Taeyong’s had before. He gets to see what this whole thing means to people other than himself, people who have their own passions and art.

“Yeah.”

~

It feels fitting, to shoot part of his final project at the same place he got his favorite photo, the one that makes him feel like a real photographer. The one that he can look at and say it belongs in a fashion magazine. Maybe it’s the fountain, maybe this one will turn out the same. Or maybe it was just luck in the moment.

Whatever it was, it has led him back to the spot, where he gingerly holds Jisung’s hand as he steps up on the edge of the fountain.

“So, my legs have to be the same? I can’t move them?” He doesn’t seem disappointed like Taeyong had. He’s just asking so he can know, so he can adapt.

“Yes, I was thinking your arms could express most of the movement.” Jisung nods pensively, his face scrunched in concentration. “You’re very professional by the way. Thank you for making this easy on me.”

Jisung runs his hands along the creases in his pants (now a midnight blue for the second picture) and smiles. “Ready?”

Johnny nods and starts adjusting his camera to the light, finding the same angles he got last time to match Jisung’s legs. It doesn’t take long to get everything ready; the only slow moment is when Ten sidles up to him with Sicheng in tow to ‘cheer him on’ as he messes around with the camera. But it makes him laugh, and seeing Ten standing right next to him reminds him how he got this idea in the first place, what it will mean to him when it’s done.

Having Ten there makes him want to do better.

And it is better. So much better.

Jisung may have modeled in the past, but his soul belongs to dance. Johnny lets him dance freely on the edge however he wants for a while before he gets in position for the picture. In that time, Jisung transforms from the quiet (if not occasionally sassy) professional face to a graceful, powerful dancer. He moves along the edge in interesting shapes to music Johnny might have found annoying in any other circumstance. But here, it’s the backdrop to something captivating.

It’s almost painful to tell him to stop. But he does, no complaints.

He plants his legs, somehow still looking like he could float away on the wind if he wanted. Extends his arms like wings and twists his spine like it’s something insubstantial, something that can’t bind his movement the way it does to everyone else.

The flowing water behind him, the sky above, the stone of the fountain and the fabric and metal he wears, it all falls together.

Even standing in place, he’s in flight.

“Wow,” Ten whispers. “He’s like a bird.”

“Or an angel,” Johnny answers, lowering the camera.

“Jisungie,” Ten coos. “I take back what I said about you being a brat. How about you be my baby? Tell your mom not to worry, I’m great with kids.”

Jisung scowls at him, falling out of his dance reverie.

Johnny’s absorbed in clicking through what he was able to capture. Wonders how he’ll ever repay Ten for finding Jisung.

An angel, photographed by Johnny Suh.

He likes the sound of it.

~

They send Jisung home with a bouquet of ‘thank you’s and hugs (mostly from Lucas and one particularly crushing one from Ten). Johnny tells him they’ll keep in touch so Jisung can attend the gallery showcase.

Donghyuck doesn’t groan nearly as much when Johnny instructs them to move all the equipment. Must have learned to accept his fate after the first time.

“Not gonna lie,” he smiles, “it felt pretty good to place a request to use a lab at Northwestern. Even if it’s not to actually do science or anything. Maybe I’ll take a picture for instagram to trick people into thinking I’m some sort of genius.”

Sicheng laughs at his side. “You should. Going there doesn’t mean anything about being smart, though.”

Johnny’s turn to laugh now. “I mean, it does a little bit.”

Ten nods and loops his arm through Sicheng’s. “What sort of engineering genius stuff have you been up to?”

Johnny watches Sicheng’s head dip, a blush spreading across his cheeks and the tips of his ears. Shy with compliments. “Not much, really.”

Ten turns to Johnny and explains, “Sicheng is too humble. He does biomedical engineering shit. He’s gonna save the world one day.”

The trip to the lab space isn’t too long, and it’s full of Ten bragging about his friend’s accomplishments with more pride than if they were his own. So it’s a good trip. An excuse to listen to his boyfriend get excited about something and an opportunity to get to know more about his model. Plus, Lucas and Donghyuck get to act like fools together in public.

The lab is devoid of people but full of projects in progress, so Sicheng directs them. Tells them that it’s his head if they mess anything up and warns them that some of the equipment costs millions of dollars. Of course, this all puts Johnny perfectly at ease.

Lucas and Donghyuck help him into the outfit they prepared. It’s a simple gray ensemble, form-fitting except for the coat they designed to look like a lab coat if it was worn to New York Fashion Week. Sicheng admires their handiwork and pays them compliments easily, much better at giving praise than receiving it.

“So, where do you work?” Ten asks.

Sicheng guides them to a desk towards the back of the room with a rack of test tubes and a cabinet of petri dishes drilled into the wall above it. He grabs one of the petri dishes and shows them all, eyes lit up, explaining, “This is part of the framework of a pig pancreas. I’m seeing if I can put new cells in it to create an artificial pancreas. Artificial organs like this are the future of transplants.” His lips pull up in an excited smile, the unrestrained sort that only shows up when someone is talking about the thing they love most.

“You seem really excited about it,” Donghyuck says. “I don’t understand anything about this, but you seem to like it a lot.”

Sicheng blushes again. “Yeah, I do. I’m just shocked they let me take such a big role on this project. Other people have made artificial organs like this, but they’re usually not undergrad students. If I can get the new cells to take to this section of the frame, then I might be able to continue with even bigger research like this.”

“So this is your fashion design,” Lucas muses, eyes still glued to the petri dish. “The thing you want to do forever.”

“Yeah. This is my fashion design.”

He sets the dish back on the shelf and closes the cabinet door. “Okay, so the photoshoot?”

“So, based on the video Ten sent me of your dance, I was thinking something very strong and angular. But restrained.”

Sicheng nods along as he describes his ideas. Johnny’s relieved to see he’s excited about the one he had been leaning towards. He wants to take his models’ artistic styles into account of course, but it’s so much easier when they just agree with what he suggests. Maybe he’s controlling, but it’s worked out for him thus far.

Sicheng grabs a few of the test tubes from the rack on the wall and Johnny finds his angle, having to gently (more gently than he ever thought would be necessary) move a stool out of the way. For all he knows, this shitty rolling chair with flaking fabric on the seat could be the million-dollar equipment he was warned about. Doubtful, but better safe than sorry. Last time Johnny checked his bank account, he had to take the rest of the day off to recover.

“I hold my arm out like this?” Sicheng asks with his arm straight out to the side and bent in at the elbow, the test tube in his hand nestled close to his chest.

“Uh, yeah,” Johnny answers. But there’s something wrong with the shot. Something that doesn’t look how he planned-

“Your desk faces the wall,” Ten observes.

Johnny wonders if Ten can read minds. Wonders what he might have seen in Johnny’s brain already. Suppresses a shudder.

“Oh, yeah. It does.”

“Is there another station we could-” Johnny starts. But Sicheng is shaking his head before Johnny’s even halfway through the question, and he understands, he really does. It’s disappointing, but it’s a punch he’ll have to roll with.

Ten turns his body towards Johnny but keeps his eyes trained on Sicheng at the desk. Brings his hand to his chin, lost in thought. “Maybe if he turned and sat facing towards the camera, backwards at the desk. It would look odd, but you could still have all the science stuff in the background. Might even make the picture a little more interesting to look at.”

“And you could see his whole outfit, not just the top,” Hyuck adds. “Which is my top priority, of course.”

He rubs his hands on his jeans, reminds himself what he always has to: It’s a life of uncertainty and constant rethinking. But it’s the life he wants.

“No harm in trying.”

Sicheng pulls his own shitty rotating stool out from the desk and perches himself atop it like a bird. “How accurate do you want the pose to be? Should it be more model-like, or more like I’m actually working?”

“Let’s try it both ways. I have material from everyone that could go either way.”

Sicheng is stiff at first, moving only when Ten makes a suggestion. But slowly, Johnny gets to see him become more comfortable, poke his head outside his shell a bit.

His photos shift from rigid and definitely leaning more towards ‘actually working’ to something softer, more relaxed. He slumps back against the desk, brings a leg up to rest on the bar of the stool. Lets his head hang to one side, relaxes the arm holding the test tube. He looks intriguing, intelligent, just the slightest bit bored in a cooler-than-you way.

Johnny thinks that he is.

“You’re doing really well now,” Ten praises from over Johnny’s shoulder. A little smile plays across Sicheng’s mouth and he stifles a giggle. He turns his head to the side and covers his mouth with his hand. It’s not the sort of photo Johnny’s looking for in this project (not even the correct arm positioning), but he snaps it up quickly. Figures Sicheng deserves to see how he looks in moments like this where he’s unguarded and happy.

Everyone should be able to see themselves like that sometimes.

Soon enough, Johnny’s satisfied. As soon as Hyuck sees him opening his mouth, he interrupts, “Pack it up! We’re heading somewhere else. Bunch of pack mule assholes headed to the L.” He grins up at Johnny and wraps his arms around him in a bear hug just short of constriction.

Johnny just smiles and nods, hanging his head to meet Hyuck’s eyes. “Yup. To the river.”

~

This might be his favorite thing about the city. Well, his favorite touristy thing. There’s no beating the little hidden gem, hole-in-the-wall places he’s weaseled out after years of exploring, but in the arena of landmarks everyone knows (Chicago-specific perks), it’s the river.

Johnny’s been excited for this part of the project ever since he came up with the concept, ever since Sicheng and his beautiful traditional dance fell into his lap. He’s been falling asleep each night to visions of an urban oasis, a sharply-dressed scientist dancing steps older than Johnny can comprehend.

Sicheng is outfitted in another form-fitting look, this one black. Lucas and Hyuck translated the lab coat into a hanfu-adjacent robe cinched at his waist. Johnny lets himself get lost in taking in the outfit, reminding himself that if (no, when ) he’s a fashion photographer, he’ll be expected to get carried away with this. Expected to study the clothes with the same fervor and attention to detail as his camera (or the delicate slope of Ten’s nose when he’s looking somewhere else).

Someone is always filming on the river, which theoretically means that there is always at least one available space without shit in the background. It seems, though, that sometimes theories can hold out on those who need them to be true.

They wait an hour, walking along the river in all the places they can, lugging their equipment along the way. They keep their eyes peeled for a spot, and they watch the shadows the skyscrapers cast grow long on the ground.

It’s frustrating, to say the least.

But Johnny has learned that sometimes divine intervention is frustrating.

Just as the light begins to turn dusky, soft and nostalgic, Ten squawks at his side and points. An open spot on a platform looking out over the river with absolutely no one occupying it. No tourist couples looking for a romantic instagram picture, no freshly off-work big business types having a smoke before heading home. Just the air and the water and a very inviting ten-by-ten square of space that practically calls their names.

“There it is,” he breathes. Donghyuck threatens to collapse from relief, and Lucas holds his arms out as if to catch him.

They flock to it and set up in record time. Everyone is busy with something, positioning Sicheng, positioning Johnny, retying the sash around Sicheng’s waist for the millionth time. Lucas finds a nearby bench to lay their garment bags on and stays to ‘keep them occupied’. The only person who isn’t bustling with work is Sicheng.

He stands passively as Donghyuck pulls at his sleeves and pant legs, staring off into the river. Johnny thinks he understands, thinks he feels the same way sometimes. Especially at the beginning of something new.

“Something’s wrong with Sicheng,” Ten whispers.

Johnny nods once, says, “Yeah. I could be wrong, but it’s probably nerves.”

Ten nods along, thinking. “Should I talk to him?”

“Let’s see if it really affects his performance or if he seems like… well, like he’s struggling.”

Ten obviously wants to say something now , but he hums and goes back to clearing the platform of stray leaves and litter.

As they get closer and closer to starting, Sicheng seems more and more fidgety. He wrings his hands, looks back and forth across the river, taps his feet against the floorboards.

Johnny approaches him slowly, remembering the way Taeyong spoke about anxiety, the way he says it feels and the way it’s so easily sparked. “Hey, Sicheng?”

“Huh?” He looks like a deer in headlights.

“Feeling okay?”

His eyes widen and he reaches for the back of his neck, shrinking in on himself. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He treads lightly. “Nervous?” Sicheng doesn’t answer. Johnny puts on his best reassuring voice. “It’s okay if you are. It’s okay, really.”

He worries that he’s no good at this. In the seconds before Sicheng answers, he realizes that he didn’t actually say anything to help. Thinks that maybe he should call Ten over-

“I just… normally don’t dance… out in the open, I guess.” He looks over to where Ten is sitting with Lucas and the clothes. “Normally when people see me dance, it’s a planned thing. They know what’s going on, and I do, too. I don’t have to really put myself out there.”

“I think every time anyone performs anything, they’re putting themselves out there. I think it’s always brave to show people your art in real-time.”

Sicheng dips his head. “I haven’t performed for people in a while.”

“That’s okay,” Johnny says. “This can be your reintroduction. If you still want to do it.”

“We already did the first photo.”

“But I’m not gonna make you do something you’re not interested in. If you wanted, you could leave right now. Could even keep the clothes. No hard feelings, I promise.” He smiles and offers Sicheng his hand, palm up.

He’s not sure what response to expect, braces himself for the loss. But Sicheng laughs (more, giggles) and says, “Put your hand away, I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He smiles out at the water, rolling gently in the setting sun. “I agreed to do this for a reason.”

“I thought you owed Ten a favor.”

“Yeah, I did,” Sicheng laughs. “But I also wanted to do it. I need to get reconnected to dance. And I don’t have any nice photos of myself.”

It’s Johnny’s turn to laugh now. “So, are you ready? I promise I’ll get you a really great photo, something you can send to your parents and they can frame it and put it on the mantle.”

Sicheng nods. It’s still a tight movement, the sort of thing someone does to steel themselves against something that will hurt, the sort of nod before ripping off a bandage. But it’s a nod. A sign that he’s ready to try , for Johnny and for himself.

“Alright, everyone, let’s go,” Johnny directs.

Sicheng steps out onto the observation platform, arms wrapped around himself. The soft dusky colors of the fading day bring out the contrasting sharpness of his features and the delicate sweetness of his eyes. Johnny hopes he can find a way to capture some of that sweetness as Sicheng dances.

And it’s a dance like nothing else he’s seen. He only wishes he was able to find a bigger space for him. This tiny square of wood isn’t meant for the graceful gliding, the wide leaps, everything that he knows Sicheng is holding back. It isn’t meant to see things this gorgeous.

Like the others, he dances a bit himself before giving Johnny the pose he needs. Every second is stunning in the way that work by masters always is. His every movement drips with skill, screams the years of training that led to its execution. He has talent too bright to be kept under cover, talent that Johnny truly feels he is lucky just to be able to see for free, let alone use in his own work.

Unlike the others’, the photo he knows he’ll use for Sicheng is almost inconsequential in the moment. There’s too much else to take in. Johnny knows he’s gotten the picture (the perfect angle of his arm, the best lighting, the dynamic look of his subtly swaying robes) but he keeps going. There are more photos to be taken, ones that he can’t use in his gallery. But he feels the pull to take them, and he feels the pull to give Sicheng more than just one picture on a wall with his name printed next to it.

He needs to give him proof. A collection to commemorate a return to performing from wherever he had been before.

When Sicheng comes to a stop, controlled and strong in his final movement, everyone is watching. Ten, the designers, a few onlookers who had been observing from a bench (who Sicheng had tried his best to avoid looking at). They are in awe. The feeling of light on your face after emerging from the movie theater at a life-changing showing, chills down your spine at the perfect delivery of a line of dialogue under stage lights, the shock of finding a piece of art that mirrors your own life. Sicheng tapped into it. He skimmed for the soul of his dance and pulled it to the surface for everyone to see.

Ten runs to him and envelopes him in a hug, crushing the delicately-laid folds of his robe. Sicheng tries to squirm away, but Ten’s grip just tightens. He cranes his neck up to whisper something in Sicheng’s ear, and Sicheng smiles shyly and shrugs him off.

With the other shoots, Johnny had immediately felt the itch to look through what he had gotten. Had taken his evening slow, but had still used it on the project. Now, he just wants to go home and sleep. Knows that sifting through these deserves more energy than he can give it right now, and knows that Taeil’s not going to wait for much longer before ordering dinner.

“That was incredible, Sicheng,” he praises softly while helping pack up the equipment they brought (less this time around; they’ve made it to the other side of the learning curve). “Really, thank you so much for letting me use this.”

“You’re welcome,” he shrugs.

Johnny notices that he doesn’t so much deny compliments as he does deflect them. He resolves to make him see that some things are impressive enough that they can’t be brushed off.

~

Johnny sits through classes, does his best to pay attention. He works and he spends time around the apartment. Eventually sits down to sift through all the photos he’s amassed for this project, even the ones he’s already been through. Figures each time he looks, his eye gets better. May as well take the time to appease that perfectionism in himself.

The photos aren’t the only thing taking up his thoughts, though. They’re not even the main thing. Because he has hundreds of photos of four incredible dancers, hundreds of photos of four beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes that will look great as a collection in the final gallery. But there’s still one more session.

He zones out pouring his cereal at the thought of Ten posing for him. He misses lecture notes here and there because his mind has wandered to the idea of Ten in the clothes Hyuck and Lucas made for him. It’s a welcome distraction, the sort of problem he never got to worry about before meeting Ten in that coffee shop. And this daydreaming about Ten’s shoot effectively gives him tunnel vision for what he really cares about: finalizing the project.

Taeyong’s dance shoot reel is pulled up on his laptop on the coffee table as he paws through the pantry for something with too many calories to be considered a reasonable snack. By the time he’s back, Taeil has taken up residence on the couch and pulled the laptop onto his lap. He clicks through the photos slowly, occasionally cocking his head to the side. Johnny leans against the arm of the couch and watches Taeil’s expression change.

He settles on one. Tilts his head. Squints his eyes, which he never has to do (Johnny frequently curses his undeservedly good eyesight).

“What? What did you find?” He vaults over the arm of the couch, ignoring Taeil’s complaints of him treating the furniture like a jungle gym (as if it’s nice furniture or something).

“I like this one a lot.” He points to the screen and Johnny is faced with one of the three photos he’s been agonizing over for thirty minutes.

During the shoot, it had felt so certain. He got the picture and he knew . Donghyuck knew, too; he had seen it. But his photography is the one thing he lets himself overthink. Maybe aiming for perfection will give him more peace of mind when he has to call himself ‘photographer’. Maybe he actually has an obsessive personality as a default and he only lets himself really go for it in this one department. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that once that moment of certainty faded, it was replaced with heavy indecision.

“This one,” he starts. “What do you like about it?” Maybe he can get Taeil to make his decision for him, to walk his mind through the photo.

He lifts his hand and points at Taeyong’s mouth. “Most of the composition is the same across the board because of the restraints with the pose.” Johnny nods along, and Taeil looks up at him before continuing, “But in some, the pose is pulling at his neck too much and his mouth is open too wide. In some, it’s clenched shut too hard. Even if you can only see the edges of his mouth, it still affects the mood of the shot. Here, it’s slack enough, but not open wide like a fish. Overall look is better.”

“It’s seriously just the mouth?”

“Not just the mouth. But this is the only one I’ve found without the problems I just mentioned.”

“I can’t pick, Taeil. I’ve been poring over this for like half an hour, and this is the second time I’ve sat down to try to pick his dance picture.”

“If it helps your decision, this is my second favorite.” He clicks over to one of the others Johnny is considering. He groans. This won’t make it any easier. Taeil laughs and says, “But I found too many things I didn’t like that the other one fixed. Like, here, you can see just the tiniest bit of… I actually don’t know what this is on the side.”

He passes the laptop to Johnny and Johnny squints as hard as he possibly can. Taeil’s right. He never noticed it before, but at the edge of the photo, there’s a flash of peach. A tiny, blurry smudge.

“Oh my god, those are Jeno’s fingers.”

“Huh?”

Johnny waves dismissively. “It was necessary to get the shot. Could you go through these and write down the ones that have that little smudge? I never even noticed it before.”

“You have got to find something to do about your shitty eyes. Photographers shouldn’t legally be allowed to have shitty eyes.”

“I will love you forever if you help me with this.”

Taeil pokes his side. “You already love me forever, think of something else.”

“I’ll make you dinner?”

Taeil pretends to think about it before nodding. “Okay. I’m always down for things I don’t have to make.” Johnny migrates to the other end of the couch and pulls out his phone. They’re quiet for a while, both absorbed in their own tasks, until Taeil says, “You just think about it too much sometimes. You don’t trust your eye, and you don’t realize what you’re seeing.”

Johnny turns to him, sets his phone on the couch. Waits for him to continue.

“You’re the most talented photographer I’ve ever met. You would have noticed the fingers eventually.”

He’s not sure what to say. Usually Taeil doesn’t get serious without warning like this. Usually, he tries to keep everything light and surface-level until it becomes impossible to do so. This isn’t quite uncharted territory, but it’s not a place they frequent. So Johnny keeps waiting.

Taeil takes a breath and looks back to the screen. “I know you already know which one of these you want in that gallery. But it’s your work, so you make yourself think about it until you don’t see it anymore. You have the talent to be a real photographer, Johnny. So trust yourself and do what you want with it.”

And just like that, he’s done. He goes back to clicking through the photos and occasionally marking one when he finds the smudges.

“Taeil, you can stop.”

“Huh?” he asks, still focused on the screen.

“You can stop looking through them. You’re right.” He thinks back to how it felt at the shoot, the moment he took the one that stole his breath. “I knew which one I wanted the second I took it.”

Taeil smiles to himself and hands Johnny the laptop. Waits a beat and asks “Do I still get dinner?”

He feels himself rolling his eyes (a reflex at this point) before he even has time to think. “Only because I’m the best roommate ever.”

~

When Donghyuck had insisted on coming to the shoot, Johnny had gotten a taste of what it would be like to have a younger brother. He found it disgusting.

The idea of himself and Ten in an intimate little art studio with the afternoon sun pouring in, going about the photoshoot lazily and with ample breaks (for very important business, of course), had been his motivation for days. His go-to fantasy to drift away on when his mind was bored, or worse, when he had something else he was meant to be focusing on.

The idea of himself and Ten and Donghyuck was, admittedly, less appealing.

He knows it’s work. He knows it’s work that he organized and roped Hyuck into. But he couldn’t help but feel disappointed, the sort of disappointed that quickly transfers itself into the frustration that drives one to strangle their loved ones.

And that’s still where he’s at as he and Hyuck follow Ten up the stairs to the studio he’s been using for a project of his own.

“Whoa,” Hyuck muses. “This place is so nice.”

“Yeah,” Ten says, smiling widely and rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “I’m really lucky the school lets me use this space. Not everyone gets a place to set up shop like this.”

Canvases are propped up on and against easels, and what looks like the beginning of a tapestry lies sprawled across the floor in one corner of the room. “This isn’t all yours,” Johnny notes.

“Oh, yeah,” he answers as he collects paint brushes lying on the floor at his feet. “I share this studio with three other juniors.” He points at a painting of an overgrown riverbank, the tapestry on the floor, and what looks like an animation storyboard Johnny hadn’t noticed taped to the wall, adding a name to each one. “Jennie, Alexa, Changkyun.”

“There’s somebody here who goes by Changkyun ? And white people actually learn that instead of just calling him some shitty nickname? I really must be god’s least favorite child, then,” Donghyuck says, disbelieving.

Ten laughs (possibly) harder than Johnny’s ever seen him laugh before, nearly doubled over. Once he catches his breath, he explains, “He used to go by Daniel. But everybody over here is called Daniel, so… started using his Korean name. Looks a lot cooler in the credits of stuff anyway.”

“Couldn’t look cooler than Ten, though,” Johnny says, wrapping Ten in a deliberately too-tight hug.

“If I want something that, for sure, one hundred percent, nobody else has, I should use my legal name.”

Johnny kisses the top of his ear and lets him break from the hug. “You could use whatever name you wanted and you’d still be the best person I know.” Ten and Donghyuck fake gag at the same time, and it seems to be a significant bonding experience for them.

Donghyuck swats Johnny’s arm and hisses like a raccoon caught in the trash. “Quit fucking around, let’s do the shoot.” Ten gives Johnny a pointed look, equal parts ‘ can you believe this? ’ and ‘ he’s right, you know ’. The moment is not romantic, not even particularly tender. Not what he had wanted from this afternoon. But Donghyuck doing his usual little sibling performance and Ten taking any opportunity to tease Johnny, it all feels familiar in a soft way. Feels a lot like family.

“Okay,” he answers, fighting to keep the fond smile off his face. “Make up my man, Donghyuck.” And then the gagging routine is back, and he gives up on the smile. If they see him being terribly endeared by things that really should just be annoying (that were annoying just minutes ago), then so be it.

Donghyuck gets to it, pulling items out of the first bag he brought. “Lucas was really sad about not needing to come,” he says as he works.

“Really?” It had never occurred to Johnny that cutting him free of unpaid labor would be a disappointment. He had been genuinely shocked when Donghyuck had insisted on coming.

Hyuck laughs. “Hah, no. He’s on a date with Kun right now.”

“Oh?” Ten asks, pulling the shirt Lucas designed for him over his head. “When did that happen?”

“The day I shot Jeno and Taeyong.”

“It was so out of left field, I was losing my mind.”

“Ooh, baseball words from our very own Donghyuck Lee?” Johnny teases.

“Shut up or I’ll make Ten look ugly.”

Just as Johnny begins to say something very corny, possibly along the lines of ‘ nothing you could do could make him ugly ’, Ten protests, “I’m not the one antagonizing you! I deserve better than collateral damage.”

“You’re right. I’ll convince Taeil to let me move into their apartment.”

“Okay, fine, no more teasing!” he surrenders, shuddering at the thought of having a perpetual front row seat to all their gross couple stuff.

Hyuck steps away from Ten for a second to examine his work. Johnny knows it’s not exactly his field of expertise (though he really should learn more), knows that even though Hyuck is only a freshman, his eye will pick up on things Johnny’s can’t. But as far as he sees, Ten looks perfect. It almost seems silly to make sure the outfit is flawless when the model radiates his own light.

After a few rounds of ‘adjust little details, step away to check, repeat’, Hyuck nods. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

“Looks good,” he nods. “Ready?”

Ten nods and walks over to his easel.

Ten has shown him his paintings before. As soon as he walked into the studio, he knew exactly which piece was his. It had been sitting in the golden light, a canvas of deep color and thick layers of paint. Stylized, just like everything Ten does, the way he lives and breathes and is . The shapes are in some places blurred and in some places sharp; the colors aren’t exactly accurate, much richer than they are in Johnny’s memory. But it’s an unmistakable scene: a café filled with figures, two standing at the forefront facing each other, their faces nondescript and bodies seeming to gravitate towards each other.

It’s hard to articulate what he feels.

“That’s beautiful.”

“Thanks, Donghyuck.” Ten’s eyes flick to Johnny’s, obviously expecting some sort of acknowledgement that he understands.

Johnny allows himself a few more moments to take it in. It is beautiful, and he has no idea how to put it all into words. This painting isn’t just Ten’s most recent project, it’s his time with Johnny. It’s all the times they’ve sat around and talked each other’s ears off about things other people are sick of hearing, the feeling of having a hand to hold, the yellow heart that was supposed to be temporary and is now an installation in Johnny’s life.

“I wanted to wait to show you until after your gallery. It’s not even done yet.”

Hyuck has retreated to a far corner and gotten on his phone, always one to read the room (bless him), and it’s a good thing because Johnny’s next move is so much easier without an audience.

Kissing Ten has never been hard. They were meant to be doing this, he thinks.

This one is quick, sweet and fleeting. “It’s so perfect.”

Ten’s eyes stay closed for a moment after Johnny pulls away. This is one of Johnny’s favorite parts, just getting to look at him. Feeling the weight of Ten’s hands in his.

He waits for Ten to step away and fix the ends of the wide sleeves he’s working with before calling, “Okay, Hyuck. Make your actual final, for real actually really the final time adjustments and then we’re gonna start.”

If the huff from the corner is any indication, he’s pissed at them for possibly disturbing the adjustment he had just finished. But the cat’s out of the bag; as soon as he went over there to give them their privacy, they knew he cared about them having that moment. As much as he plays the bratty kid, he loves them.

Hyuck looks him up and down and nods gruffly, but because it’s Hyuck and because he’s not really mad, it comes across as more puppy than intimidating.

“I guess I’m good,” Ten says with a wink. “This is the one time you’ll get to tell me what to do, so relish it.”

Johnny rolls his eyes and steps toward the easel. He grabs a clean brush and holds his hand out so Ten can see the way his fingers splay out dramatically. “I was thinking these last three fingers out like this. You can actually paint or you can just use a clean brush, it should be unnoticable in the light.”

“So I can just do whatever as long as I hold these fingers like that?”

Johnny can hear the mischief in Ten’s voice and nips it in the bud. “Make it look good, please. For you, if it comes out bad, it would have to have been a deliberate offense. I’ve got my eyes on you,” he jokes.

Johnny brought some things to correct lighting just in case the universe decided to test his resolve, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll need them. The way the sun spills in like honey creates a mood he hadn’t envisioned, but it’s better than what he was planning on creating himself. Maybe it’s just that this is clearly the light Ten was meant to be viewed in. Maybe it’s the way the folds in his top break it and cast shadows across his chest. Whatever it is, it works.

Ten stands at the easel and brings his hand to hover just centimeters from the canvas, fingers splayed delicately like Johnny showed him. He turns his torso to look over his shoulder with a bright smile. “This good, babe?”

“Very good,” Johnny smiles, hoisting the camera to his eye. He manages to snap a few shots before Ten moves. It occurs to him that this may be a perk of studying photography that he hasn’t yet taken full advantage of: always having an excuse to take photos of his boyfriend just for safekeeping, and for downloading to his phone to look at when things are tough. Or when he’s bored. Or for no reason at all.

As cute as Ten is when he’s sweetly smiling and messing around, Johnny is by no means disappointed when he gets serious. He learned the first time they met eyes that Ten knows how to look good. The way he carries himself, drags his eyes across a body, bites his lip in a dark room. There’s no mistake in that performance. And he distills that same skill and self-control into modeling for Johnny (which is only a slightly less important endeavor than picking him up in the first place).

He blends in with the art around him, a chameleon for all media of beauty. As if he himself was painted with a practiced hand by one of those souls born to create. He doesn’t move much, and when he does, it’s slow. Just a gradual shift to catch new light and cast new shadow, to look up and down the camera and back at his painting. Johnny recalls an exhibit he saw once where an artist took famous paintings and animated them. Swirling “Starry Night” and warmly breezy “ A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte”. How wonderful it is that he has someone who feels like art in motion.

Johnny snaps picture after picture until he feels the camera’s subtle weight burning in his arms. This is the type of shoot he could ordinarily spend forever rooting through and overthinking, but he promised Taeil over dinner that he would try to trust his gut more. So here, still in the studio, still capturing new poses, he makes that same promise again to himself. That instead of wasting away trying to choose the perfect Ten from an online set, he’ll pick whichever one sticks out to him and spend the rest of his time with the real deal.

“It’s good,” he says, lowering the camera. “Very pretty, perfect shape. It’s all good.”

Ten smiles over his shoulder and sets the brush down. Swings the loose sleeves of his shirt around and calls to Hyuck, “Hyuckie, come here-”

“Don’t call me Hyuckie-”

“I need help with my clothes, Mr. Fashion Man.”

Donghyuck had sounded annoyed, but when he trots over, it’s with a wide grin. He unties the back of the shirt while Ten swats at him lightly with the sleeves (which he’s made clear are his favorite part of the ensemble).

“If you like these ones so much, you’re going to love the sleeves on your next fit. Lucas really went all out for it.” Ten’s eyes go wide with interest and Hyuck continues, “Big bell sleeves, really pretty. They were a bitch to sew cause he’d never tried that style before. But they’re very dramatic, so you’ll like them.”

“They’re gonna look great with the dance concept,” Johnny confirms, packing things up.

He didn’t get his cozy, intimate studio shoot with Ten. But he got his work done, got to see Ten in his element. He might even count spending time with Donghyuck a plus, too. But Hyuck can never know.

He pauses to watch Ten pull on his street clothes while Donghyuck makes fun of him for being so shameless about it, and then they’re off. They say goodbye to the studio, take one last look at the work there. And then it’s a cold walk to the theater.

~

“Please let me have this, Hyuck.”

“It’s your project, why are you so dead-set on sabotaging it?”

“I’m not sabotaging it ,” he hisses. “ Please , you can do the whole ‘getting everything perfect’ routine and then go home, and I’ll take care of everything else. I don’t understand how this isn’t the best possible situation for you.” It’s already been too long since Ten left to find the bathroom outside the theater, and Johnny worries they’re running out of time. He’s dangerously close to begging.

“Maybe I want to work on it, like, actually. Actually work on it.”

That’s not what Johnny was expecting. He also wasn’t expecting the way Hyuck’s lip quivers once, and the way his arms are crossed tightly over his chest. “What do you mean? You have been working on it.”

He averts his eyes, training them over Johnny’s shoulder. “If I leave before it’s over…”

“If you leave before it’s over?”

Donghyuck takes his time to answer. “This is the first artsy project I’ve ever been asked to help with. No one has ever wanted to use my designs for anything. I want to feel like I’m important here. Like I’m actually doing something.”

“Oh.” And now Johnny feels shitty. Hyuck isn’t angry, he can tell, but he still won’t make eye contact. “I get that.”

He recalls the time in junior year of high school when Jaehyun had wanted to start his own business. Johnny can’t even remember what the gag was, something involving sneakers or phone cases (or maybe both?). What he does remember is the time Jaehyun asked him to photograph something for the instagram he was starting for the business. It would honestly be disrespectful to classify what happened as a commercial shoot; it was much more like what dads do when they’re selling a grill on craigslist. But Johnny had gone to sleep that night feeling, for the first time, like a photographer.

He tries to relay the story to Hyuck, tries to tell him that he understands exactly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was your ‘high school friend's ambiguous small business promotional shoot’.”

That earns him full eye contact and a little huff of a laugh. “It’s okay.”

“You are important here. We couldn’t have gotten to this point without your talent, and my models would all look significantly worse without you, I am absolutely certain.” He squeezes Hyuck’s shoulders and adds, “Please stay. I want to finish strong, and I can’t do it without you.”

“But you won’t get your romantic photoshoot with your pretty boyfriend,” he protests, but there’s nothing behind it. It’s a nicety, something he can say he did to try to preserve Johnny’s wish.

“I don’t need that. We can be sappy off the job, but it won’t get done without our genius stylist.”

Donghyuck smiles, softly pleased.

Technically, Johnny lost the negotiation. But it really doesn’t feel like he’s actually lost anything. That’s just Hyuck’s power, he supposes.

“Ready?” Ten asks from one of the entrances to the little theater.

It’s just a tiny local venue, a stage meant more for somewhat-known stand-up comedians and toddler ballet recitals than the type of performance Ten’s used to putting on. But it’s what Johnny could find, and once they drape the thick red fabric Lucas ‘borrowed’ from school in the background and set up the lighting Johnny brought to mimic a spotlight, it will be exactly what they need.

“Getting there,” Johnny calls. To Hyuck, he directs, “You start doing your thing with his outfit. Take your time, I’ll get the other things ready.”

Donghyuck nods and says, “Maybe we should’ve dragged Lucas away from his date. How are you planning on hanging those curtains?”

“I’ll manage. And if I can’t, I’ll make you help me. Because you’re so instrumental to the process and are really, actually working on the shoot.” Hyuck scowls at that, but there’s no way he can refuse to help now.

It’s a much slower process this time around, setting up. The other times, the locations were enough themselves. They were hand-picked because they were what he saw in his mind’s eye or were damn close. This one, he knew going in, would take some sprucing up. But with time, more sweat than he thought he would be producing in a shirt he really likes, and some coerced assistance from Donghyuck, he gets the theater looking about half as good as what he wanted. With the final product due soon, it’s all he could ask for and more.

When he finally gets Ten up on that stage, standing strong in the spotlight he cast, he gets the thrill he’s been waiting for. The scene is beautiful, and it’s real . No longer just an idea in his head or a mandatory project for school.

Donghyuck pulls music up on his phone for Ten to dance to. Some of it is flowing and gentle, smooth like silk and soft as well-worn cotton. Some is harder with sudden drops and turns in sound, songs for running from things or for forgetting yourself where you stand. Songs with a sharpness.

Ten hits every beat. One minute he bends gracefully like a ribbon in the wind. The next he’s stick-straight and taller than he’s ever looked, eyes bright as flame and even more intense. Like with Sicheng, it feels almost like robbery to use a photo of performance like this for his own gallery.

But these photos deserve to be seen. Keeping them hidden away on his computer, they’d burn a hole in the world. If he doesn’t give them an audience, something will be lost. An opportunity (or a feeling) for everyone who wasn’t lucky enough to meet Ten at that open mic all those nights ago.

Ten makes sure to give him the pose over and over again, and it’s a good thing. So many moments are worth snapping, so he misses the exact moment he’s supposed to capture once, twice, more times than he wants to admit. But he feels it each time he hits the target, and by the time Ten stops twirling his sleeves across the stage, Johnny knows he has enough options for the final product to be daunted by the prospect of choosing. Good thing he promised Taeil he wouldn’t spend too long on it, because he definitely could .

The last song Ten gave Hyuck ends and he comes to a stop, panting. His voice is unstable and breathy as he says, “Been too long since I got to just freestyle. Just do whatever.”

Johnny stands up straight from where he had been hunched over at the apron of the stage. “You looked good.”

“I know,” he answers with a toothy smile. “I always do. It’s why I’m your muse.” It’s not lost on Johnny, the way he draws out the word ‘muse’, savoring it.

“You should dance for just me sometime,” he mumbles, coming to hold Ten, camera abandoned with care at the stage’s edge.

“Hmm, maybe I will.” They’re close, getting closer, as close as they can be before-

“Hyuck, we’re gonna do gross couple stuff, just a warning!”

Ten giggles and presses in.

This one is less moored in the heavy emotion of seeing their time together on canvas. Looser, more a celebration of being one step closer to a dream. So, naturally, where their kiss in Ten’s studio ended without Donghyuck’s intervention, this one lasts until he starts complaining. They get a good minute or so; he must have gotten distracted by something on his phone.

Johnny pulls away with a smile and Ten complains to the rafters (because no way will Donghyuck listen to him).

“Let’s go, geriatrics,” Donghyuck calls from the back of the theater. Definitely a smart choice because the proximity to the door gives him just enough time to dart out of the room before Ten’s jumped off the edge of the stage to chase after him. And like that, Johnny is left alone to begin packing up.

He’s already lovingly set his camera in the big, ambiguously-shaped case he uses to take it places without getting robbed and is halfway through taking down the makeshift curtains by the time he hears Hyuck shriek. If he weren’t riding the high of having finished the hardest part of his project and being somewhere dangerously near love, he would be worried about someone working in the theater hearing and banning them for life. But as it is, he can’t bring himself to care.

Ten wrestles Hyuck back to the theater and the two of them help him haul equipment to the subway. They take the extra time to make sure Hyuck gets back home (and beg him to let them drop some of the equipment at his place for the night).

They’re on the L for another two stops together. Even though it takes some rearranging of their cargo, they hold hands the whole way back, and Ten rests his head against Johnny’s shoulder. “My eyelids are so heavy. My whole face is tired.”

Johnny smiles and reaches up to play with Ten’s hair. Ten mumbles something into his shoulder, but he misses it. “Hmm?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.”

A horribly garbled voice announces Ten’s stop, so he pulls himself up from his seat and rubs Johnny’s knuckles. “Call me soon. This is cheesy as shit, but I already miss you.”

“Text me when you get home.”

“Will do, baby.” He sticks around just long enough to see the beginning of a blush dust Johnny’s cheeks and then disappears.

He’s not alone on the train. Normally in this situation he would stare at a randomly selected entitled-looking, suit-wearing white man until he gets visibly uncomfortable, but that’s a habit formed out of a lack of compelling things to think about when he’s alone. Now he can think about the work ahead, eating with Taeil, or the way that he’s about halfway confident that what Ten muttered earlier was something like ‘I love you’.

Much more compelling than ruining a Brad’s ride home.

~

“House husband?” Johnny calls.

“Rat I allow to live in my apartment?”

“Don’t fucking test me, I pay rent.” He hangs his keys on the hook he attached to the wall a couple days ago in order to procrastinate working on his project. “I did it! No more taking photos.”

“Until you get your dream job, of course,” Taeil adds from the kitchen. “Then there’s gonna be a lot of taking photos.”

“I appreciate your faith in me. What’s for dinner? Takeout?”

“Close. Two boxes of kraft.”

Johnny sighs and tugs at his keys. The hook stays on the wall. If the photography thing falls through like his uncle keeps telling him it will, he could do home improvement.

“So how’d it go? Did you guys fuck or just do work?”

Johnny scoffs. “Hyuck was there.”

“I see.” Taeil goes back to stirring two dollars and an entire pot’s worth of mac and cheese.

Johnny leans against the counter and asks, “Does he talk to you about his work?”

“Of course he does,” Taeil answers. “Why?”

“He seemed… well, he seemed a little insecure about his role in the project. Has he mentioned anything about feeling, like, left out or unwanted?”

Taeil turns to him and tilts his head back to think. “No, not about your project.”

“About other things? Has someone in the department been saying things to him about his designs?”

“He’s just stressed. He’s trying to get this big internship, but the interviewer he saw told him he was the youngest one trying for it. Said he probably wouldn’t make the cut because of a lack of experience. Probably just thinking about that.”

It’s a small consolation that Johnny wasn’t the one to make him feel unappreciated. But it still gets under his skin, that same itch he feels every time someone tells him he’s on a dead-end road with photography. “Well, that interviewer doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Taeil smiles and then promptly remembers he’s supposed to be stirring the mac and cheese. Some of it has burned on the bottom, but it’s still not a bad yield.

They stand at the counter with the biggest bowls they have clean and eat in relative silence. After ingesting what his aunt might consider far too much and his grandma would say is only half a meal, Johnny briefly pauses shoveling noodles into his mouth to say, “I hope he gets it. He’s really talented.”

“I know.” Taeil’s lips are pulled tight in a line; he’s nervous.

“When does he find out?”

“Thirteen days.”

It takes a little too long for Johnny to calculate (there’s a reason he isn’t studying math). “That’s the day of the gallery.”

“Yeah.”

“Will he know before?”

Taeil shrugs. “They just said they’ll call him, didn’t say when.”

“Well I hope he knows before. I want an update first thing when I see him there. You both have to come, I won’t allow you to miss it.”

Taeil laughs and they fall back into their macaroni. Johnny’s not sure exactly what thoughts are occupying Taeil’s mind, but he doesn’t have the mental capacity to wonder too extensively. His own mind is swimming with the same things that have monopolized it for the past few weeks: the final project, closely followed by Ten.

In terms of things to be utterly consumed by, they’re not too bad.

~

The following week is a blur, moving far too quickly and agonizingly slowly all at once. Johnny guesses that’s what having a job you really care about is like.

At least once a day, Taeil hangs over his shoulder on the couch and refuses to get off until Johnny takes out his laptop and makes headway with refining his shots. He must have recruited the others too because, like clockwork, he receives daily badgering texts from Donghyuck, Taeyong, and Ten.

If Taeil hadn’t involved himself quite so much toward the end of the process, Johnny would have felt bad about barging into his room. But he figures he brought it on himself, so turning that doorknob at 1 a.m. doesn’t feel all that mean. Especially since what he’s greeted with is not a freshly woken-up and groggy Taeil, but a crumb-covered netflix-watching Taeil.

“What do you want?” he asks without tearing his eyes from his laptop propped up on his legs.

“What are you watching?”

“New drama. What do you want?” He still hasn’t even paused the show.

Johnny puts on his best pouty voice and says, “Look at me. It’s big news.”

Taeil groans but doesn’t put up much more of a fight than that. “What is it?”

“I just submitted my shots. It’s done.”

Taeil scrambles out of his bed and claps Johnny on the back. “Hey, that’s awesome! Congrats!”

Johnny takes advantage of this opportunity and scoops him up in a hug. “I bet I’m not even the last one that’ll submit tonight. Art students don’t sleep.”

“No college students sleep, we’re not special,” Taeil answers over his shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

“Less than a week until the gallery.”

Taeil wiggles from his grip and dusts himself off, probably littering his floor with crumbs. “I can’t wait.”

Johnny turns to leave, more tired than he’s been in a while with all the overthinking and eye strain. He gives Taeil one last wave before resealing him in his cave and begins the process of winding down for bed. Does his entire skincare routine without skipping steps for the first time in what must be a month. There’s a new lightness, a weight off his shoulders.

This is what it feels like.

~

“I’m going crazy here.”

“What’s wrong?”

Ten sighs. Johnny imagines him flopping back on his bed like a teen girl in an 80’s movie. “Yuta is driving me nuts. And it’s been like eleven days since I last slapped your ass.”

“You’re keeping track? You’re obsessed with me, babe.”

“Shut up.”

Johnny holds the phone between his chin and shoulder and double checks the placement of the nail on the wall. “So, Yuta?”

“ God yes. It’s painful. He keeps dancing around Mark and not doing anything about it and then complaining to me about how he’s lonely.”

“Well not all of us are brave like you.” He readies the hammer and splays his fingers as far from the nail as he can get without it falling. Can’t risk the medical bills.

“I guess not. I keep telling him he needs to ask him to the gallery. But then he starts on his whole thing about how he doesn’t even know why you invited him , and it’s just-”

“Tell him I invited him because I consider us friends. And I think you’re right, he should ask Mark to come too.” He brings the hammer against the wall with too much force and nearly drives it all the way through. With any luck, the landlord won’t notice this tiny little nail, but the chances of him missing a massive hole in the wall are decidedly worse.

“What was that?”

“I’m currently mounting a painting. That was the nail killing our landlord’s virgin wall.”

“If you get evicted, just know that Yuta and I do not have space to let.”

“Aren’t you going to ask what painting I’m mounting?” he asks.

“I know what painting you’re mounting,” Ten answers.

Johnny had stopped by Ten’s apartment only once since the night of their shoot. Ten had promised to make a visit worth his time, and that had sounded like a good deal to him. He figured maybe a meal, maybe they’d mess around. When he arrived, Ten kissed him quickly at the door and pushed a small canvas into his arms.

Not the one from the studio. This one was much smaller and less detailed, obviously done in a shorter span of time. Like the span of time between Ten getting home from the theater and this impromptu summoning of Johnny to his place.

He had looked down at it and felt the same thing he had in the studio. This one was the back of two people’s heads. They sit snuggled closely on a train, saddled by mounds of fabric and photoshoot equipment. One of them leans on the other, turned into his chest.

Looking at it now, trying his best to balance it on the nail, he feels warmth unfurl in his chest. Remembers how he had asked ‘Why this moment?’ and how Ten had only answered ‘You’ll see.’

“I really love it, Ten.”

“I figured you needed something to decorate your apartment. And god knows Taeil wasn’t gonna suddenly turn into the interior designer of the century, so I had to step in.”

“Well, it’s not in his wheelhouse,” Johnny says and steps back to admire his handiwork. “Try to convince Yuta to do it. I wanna meet his church boy.”

“Will do,” Ten laughs.

“I’ll see you soon. So soon you’ll be wishing you had had a longer break.”

“Probably.”

“ Hey -”

“Okay, bye! See you soon.” And like that, Ten hangs up.

Johnny wonders if he also felt the emptiness of that ending. Wonders when either of them will finally get brave enough to say what they really mean.

~

Johnny’s been lying on his bed for an hour now. Just lying, and thinking. Five minutes ago he texted Lucas, so now his excuse is that he’s waiting on a response. But he’s got nothing to account for the other fifty-five minutes. Taeil, unaccustomed to seeing him like this, has ducked in three separate times to check on him.

Hey sorry man! I just saw this

Go with the sweater & red jacket

Maybe a necklace

And earrings!!

He pounces on his phone immediately to reply while he still has Lucas on the line.

that's not too art student??

Ur an art student tho?

touché

thanks man

His gut reaction when he realized he had no idea what to wear was to ask Donghyuck, but today is the day he’s finding out about the internship. With Johnny’s luck, he would ask Hyuck for advice five minutes after he hears back that he’s been rejected or something. So he asked Lucas.

It’s not that Johnny hadn’t trusted Lucas’ judgment right out of the gate, but he’s not as familiar with Johnny’s own style and image (like he has one). He briefly considered just barrelling on without consultation, but one more glance at his closet had scared him into caving and texting anyway. So now he pulls on a charcoal sweater he bought two winters ago and never wore and a jacket he’s always loved but rarely has an occasion for. Trusts Lucas enough to forgo calling Taeil in for a final review.

And he has to admit, he gets caught up in the mirror while putting in the earrings Ten bought him and dropped off one afternoon. He does look good.

“I’m gonna head out,” he announces. Checks the angle of the painting before grabbing his keys off the hook by the door. God, why hadn’t he taken up little handy time-killers earlier? He already can’t imagine having to put his keys on the counter or in a drawer like a commoner.

“Already?”

“Students have to be there a little early. I think they don’t trust us to act like human beings at our own gallery.”

“Think really hard about how people in your classes act, though.”

Johnny thinks. It doesn’t even take long for him to concede, “Okay, yeah. I see it. That’s fair.”

“See you at seven?”

Johnny nods. “Remember, I want to see Donghyuck happy tonight. If he doesn’t get the internship, that duty falls on you.”

“I won’t disappoint you,” Taeil responds mock-seriously from the couch. “You have my word.”

He rolls his eyes and waves goodbye. The short walk and couple stops on the L are quiet. He tries not to let the last-minute doubt about his project eat away at him. Reminds himself that he got approval on his concept, and his professor wouldn’t have approved something that was destined to fail. And, more importantly, it hadn’t failed. He had pulled it off. Tonight is supposed to be the payoff.

The venue is nice. A small converted industrial building that skates the line between modernity and antiquity. Exactly where Johnny had envisioned something like this happening, especially since the exceedingly hipster kids in his department had been given a voice in the planning. He hadn’t pitched anything in, as he was busy organizing the project. He hopes it’ll be evident in his photos.

He was happy with the shots when he submitted them, still is. But he’s not sure exactly how they’ll look on the wall with everyone else’s work, complete with tiny plaques listing his and his crew members’ names. He hopes they look better than anything he’s done before (even the photo of Momo) because the whole point of tonight is exposure. The right person seeing his work could set him up exactly where he wants to be.

“Johnny Suh,” a voice calls from the other side of the room.

“Dr. Hanson, hi,” he answers, pulling at the bottom of his jacket to straighten himself out.

“Excited? Nervous?” she asks. She knows his process and outlook on photography almost better than anyone else, bested only by Taeil.

“A mix of the two.” He tries to keep his eyes on her as they talk, but he catches a glimpse of photographs going up in a room to the right and can’t help but crane his neck to see if they’re his. “Big night.”

She smiles brightly. “Yes, it is. I saw your shots.” Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper as she adds, “ Stunning , Johnny. I was very impressed.”

“Oh, thanks.” He’s usually good with praise, but it’s usually not directed at his work, and definitely usually not by someone he admires as much as Dr. Hanson. Without having been in her classes, he might never have found his style. To hear her call his work stunning sends chills down his spine.

“I’m not supposed to do too much to promote specific students tonight, but I just might find it very difficult to not mention your work to colleagues.”

“Ah, thank you so much, it means a lot coming from you.”

She gives him one last smile and wishes him luck, and just like that, she’s off to supervise some of the final touches. He checks his phone. The photos he saw being hung must be the last ones to go up, because it’s only half an hour before the official start time.

Another professor, one he’s never had but has run into occasionally, herds all the students together and gives them a lecture that is equal parts pep talk, last-minute tips and reminders, and warning. Standing there listening, he’s glad he decided to consult Lucas and especially glad he decided to follow through with the jewelry. He would have stood out in the worst sort of underdressed way otherwise.

“So good luck tonight. Remember it is a very important professional opportunity to have your work displayed like this, so please treat it as such.”

Johnny zones back in as they’re released. Everyone starts wandering around to find their work, so he begins to make the rounds.

There aren’t many of them graduating in photography this year, so each person’s work is in its own little room. He almost wishes they could all be closer together just so he could see how everyone else is handling themselves. But he’s done this much with just help from his friends and not from examining the others, so he can make it this one final night without comparing himself to them. He can at least try.

After wandering through four rooms, he finds his. It’s on the second level of the building, a little more tucked away than some of the other spaces. But that just means his will be some of the last work people see, means it might stick a little better. That’s what he hopes.

It’s surreal to see his pieces so large, so tangible. This collection, until now, has only ever existed on his laptop, has only ever been displayed in his shitty apartment’s living room, has only ever been examined by himself and Taeil. Some of his professors saw the prints before he did. Knowing that makes it feel a little more out of his hands than he would like. But that’s how it starts.

“Make sure you’ve found your collection!” Dr. Hanson calls to them from the main lobby. “Opening in five minutes. Good luck!” Johnny can’t see her from his roost, but he can visualize her smile. Lets it comfort him in these last moments before people start filtering in.

He hears his guests before he ever sees them. Knows the sound of Hyuck’s boisterous laugh and the cadence of Taeil’s gait when he’s looking for something specific (something he learned through months of listening to him traipse around the kitchen for late-night snacks). He should have texted them to let them know he was on the second level, but he figures they’ll want to see the other collections at some point anyway.

Seeing as the doors just opened a few minutes ago, he figures he can spare a glance at his phone. And he’s right. The yellow heart waits for him in his notifications.

Where are you babe??

upstairs on the left :)

“Got it,” he hears from the direction of the stairs, announced triumphantly in a voice he’s come to know pretty intimately since they met.

“Hi,” he greets with a smile. Ten’s eyes go wide when he sees all the photos hung up. Johnny thinks he had been going in for a hug, but he’s been distracted. He gravitates to Sicheng’s portraits, one finger held up as if to tell Johnny ‘wait’.

“Donghyuck?”

“Yes?” he answers, smiling. If it were anyone else, Johnny wouldn’t have to ask about the internship after being greeted with a smile like that. But Donghyuck knows how to put his best face forward, so as far as Johnny knows, his grandmother could have just died.

“Any news?”

Donghyuck pretends to look confused, but then Taeil pokes him in the side and he doubles over. “I got it!” he giggles. “I got it, Johnny.”

Johnny pulls him in for a hug and he feels Donghyuck cling to him like he always does when he jokes about being Johnny’s fanboy. He’s never told him, but he loves the way hugs like that make him feel. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks.”

He lets him go once Taeil begins to whine about him stealing his boyfriend ( “You have your own right over there!” ). Johnny can’t argue with that.

No one else has found his room yet, so he has an opportunity he may not have again tonight. Ten’s still at Sicheng when Johnny wraps his arms around him. He hums softly and leans back a bit. “Wow, PDA at your gallery. Not very professional.”

Johnny laughs and lets go, shifts to stand next to him at the print. “Okay then, I’ll keep my distance.”

Ten grabs his hand and says, “This stuff is really gorgeous. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally sure you could pull it off at the beginning-”

“I’m wounded , Ten-”

“But it looks beautiful. It all looks beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

They don’t speak for another few moments, just stand together. Then Ten says, “Well, you can’t just stand around looking at Sicheng with me all night.”

“You’re right,” he concedes. “I was told to make the rounds and promote my stuff, but to not be ‘over the top’, so I have no idea how to do that. We’ll see.”

“You’ll kill it. I’ll talk up your work to everyone I meet.”

“Great,” Johnny drawls sarcastically, earning him a barely-there punch on his arm. “I’m also supposed to ‘keep an eye on my territory’, which I don’t know how to do if I’m in other rooms, but-”

“Whoever gave you these instructions is really bad at it.”

“I know. So I’ll be around here, but not necessarily right here, all night. Come find me every once in a while.” He tugs at Ten’s wrists and pulls him into another hug before they part ways. Salutes Taeil and Hyuck, who have stationed themselves at Jeno’s portraits so Donhyuck can talk Taeil’s ears off about the particularly lengthy process of getting his pieces right. Johnny hears the phrase ‘sexy professor’ in an exasperated and mildly defeated tone exactly twice before he’s out of range for eavesdropping.

The other rooms are just as empty as his. He ducks in and looks around, says hi to the people who haven’t left their collections to explore yet. He’s one of only a handful of fashion photography-focused students, so most of the collections are cityscapes and cityscapes disguised as something more original like park scenes or murals. Occasionally there will be a person in a shot, but they’re usually more of a prop than the main focus. It’s a small comfort that he has so little competition in his specific wheelhouse here.

A lot of the work is eye-catching and well-executed, and he would probably be much more willing to sit and admire if he weren’t constantly trying to shake off his nerves. He had assumed tonight would be a little nerve-wracking because it could act as something of a debut into the photography world. His professors had drilled in that it could even mean the beginning of a career. He just hadn’t expected it to feel quite so suffocating.

The beginning of the night is slow. Mostly wandering around and trying to keep himself busy. Occasionally chatting with strangers and subtly-not-so-subtly nudging them toward his own room.

An hour passes before he lets himself stray a little further from his own room and go downstairs, where the crowd is much thicker. He comes to rest in front of a print of a little family-owned Chinese restaurant’s storefront at night. It’s his go-to place; he knows the teenager who usually works the register by name (Chenle, and he had Johnny’s order memorized by his third visit).

A sharply-dressed man comes to stand beside Johnny and crosses his arms, taking it in. Most visitors don’t bother speaking to people they didn’t come with, but he’s dressed like he’s there on business. Only a moment or two passes before he observes, “It’s good work.”

It catches Johnny a little off-guard. “Uh, yes. Yeah, she’s really talented.”

“I’ll be honest, though. My favorite work is in the room upstairs just to the left. I recommend checking it out.”

That sends a thrill through him. The room he had directed Ten to earlier that evening, the room holding his work.

“Are you a student at Columbia?” he asks.

“I am, yeah.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a Johnny Suh around here? Got a shiny business card with his name on it.” He pulls a card from a sleek leather holder and brandishes it with a smile. It’s simple, clean, sports the logo of a small fashion magazine Johnny sees around only occasionally. No Harper’s Bazaar or L’Officiel , but something he knows . People could know his work.

“Oh,” Johnny says, catching his breath and putting on what he hopes is a terribly charming smile. “I’m actually Johnny Suh. That’s me. You can find him right here.”

“Well that certainly makes my job easier,” he jokes. “Here, we’ve been looking to work with up-and-coming photographers. I’d love to talk projects with you some time. Visit our website, give me a call when you can.”

They shake hands and he floats away into the steadily growing crowd, leaving Johnny alone and on cloud nine. Someone who wants to hire him as a photographer . It’s a ball of light unfurling in his chest, something uncontrollable and so bright it burns.

He clutches the card in his hand, careful not to fold it or smudge the ink, and makes his way back upstairs as calmly as he can.

When he reaches the room (thank you, dear universe, for this magnificent room), he’s greeted with a huddle of familiar faces. Ten seems to have been directing Johnny’s people here all night. Lucas, Kun, and Jeno are pressed in close to Taeyong’s portraits, and Johnny hears an animated ‘can you believe this?’ from Lucas as he points to the one on the right where Taeyong’s twisted in his beautiful contortion.

“Guys!” Johnny greets. “I’m so glad you could make it!”

“Johnny!” Lucas laughs. “This stuff is crazy!”

“So much of it is thanks to you and your genius fashion brain.”

Lucas giggles and Kun looks on fondly, holding his hand.

“They turned out really well,” Jeno says quietly, smiling wide enough that his eyes have nearly disappeared.

“Thanks, Jeno.” They stand and stare at Taeyong for a moment longer before Johnny asks, “So, you like these ones? Taeyong’s?”

“They’re all gorgeous,” he answers, a little breathlessly. “I remember how hard it was to get this one specifically, though.”

“We couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Thanks for letting me be a part of it. I hadn’t really ever done stuff like it before. So, really, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. If I ever need a sexy as fuck astrophysicist in a future shoot, can I give you a call?”

“You better call me even when you don’t need an astrophysicist.” Johnny raises his eyebrows suggestively and Jeno laughs. “Because you said it yourself, we’re friends.”

“God, you’re the most ‘no homo’ gay kid I’ve ever met. No fun at all.”

“Sorry to rain on your parade.”

“Johnny!” Taeyong stands at the entrance to the room with Ten. His hair is newly bleach blond and probably feels like hay; it adds to the cartoon character thing he has going on. Jeno’s mouth hangs slightly open, so it’s safe to say he likes it. “Ten helped me find you.”

“He’s good for something , then.”

Ten bares his teeth, but the joke is on him because Johnny has never been less afraid of him and is instead helplessly endeared.

“If he doesn’t recognize your worth, I’m interested,” Taeyong says to Ten.

“Hey, don’t poach my boyfriend!”

Taeyong laughs and congratulates Johnny on the outcome of his project. Gives him a pretty good hug, even though hugging Taeyong has always felt like hugging a stick bug.

Once Taeyong leaves to see Johnny’s work, Ten quirks an eyebrow and saunters over, deliberately greasy. “Why hello there, handsome stranger.”

“Look, I’ll roleplay with you later, but I have some big news.”

Ten huffs, but he can’t disguise the excitement in his eyes. Johnny’s known him long enough (and well enough) to recognize that instantly. “What?”

Johnny holds up the card and gives Ten a moment to take it in. “Fashion magazine business card. In my hand. Because they want to work with me.”

“Oh my god, Johnny! I’m so proud of you!” He hooks his arms around Johnny’s neck and wraps him up in a hug. Johnny makes sure the card isn’t bent and hugs him back. They don’t stay like that for long because Ten’s phone dings (he insists he only has it unmuted because he’s the unofficial director of the ‘Team Johnny Party’).

“Sicheng is here! I didn’t know if he would be able to come, but he just arrived.”

Johnny had been hoping Sicheng would show up. Wanted to see the look on his face when he first sees himself up on that wall, the picture of grace and power, completely fitting in a life he’s flirted with abandoning. Putting up on a shelf and leaving to collect dust.

“Send him up.”

Johnny floats around the room, visiting with Taeyong and re-visiting Kun and Lucas, until he sees Sicheng at the top of the stairs. Waves him over and watches.

Sicheng greets Johnny and Ten politely and makes small talk, his back to his own portraits. Johnny almost wants to bodily turn him to look at himself on the wall, but he knows it’ll be a better reaction if he waits. Ten doesn’t seem to feel the same.

“I can’t stand this, you have to look at yourself,” he blurts out, pointing to Sicheng’s pictures. Johnny can pick out the exact moment he registers that it’s himself in this art gallery.

“Oh.”

Johnny and Ten wait for more.

“The lab looks messy, I should’ve done some rearranging of my space before the shoot.”

“Sicheng, I’m gonna beat you to a pulp.” Despite Ten’s size, Johnny would be afraid if he were in Sicheng’s shoes. Ten sounds deadly serious. “Look at yourself!”

“I see myself.” He’s being aloof, and Johnny knows he should have expected it. So he looks for a smaller sign, the appreciative glitter in Sicheng’s eyes. It’s there, a subtle recognition. Johnny doesn’t know him well enough to know if he understands what Johnny wants him to see in himself, so he has just to trust.

“I have a bunch of other photos from your river shoot I’d like to send you. Can I have your email or some other place you can receive an annoyingly large file?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” Sicheng takes his phone and Johnny busies himself with examining the lab picture again while he waits for it back.

“Enjoy the gallery, okay?” he says once Sicheng starts looking antsy to escape any further small talk. He gets a nod and watches him walk the perimeter of the room, a little too quickly to be truly taking anything in, but also what must feel uncomfortably slow for him. Maybe not the best at appreciating visual art, but no one has it all.

“Oh, more exciting news!” Ten exclaims at his side, walking the second floor with him and occasionally throwing glances at the other collections ( “Don’t worry, I’ve already seen them, babe.” ). “Yuta will be here in like five minutes with a ‘very special guest’.”

“His sugar baby!”

“Poor kid went for the wrong old man if he’s looking for money. Know how much a tattoo artist’s apprentice makes?”

“Not enough to survive?”

“Not enough to survive,” Ten confirms.

“Joh- oh. Sorry to interrupt.” Jeno looks slightly abashed. It’s a look Johnny hasn’t seen on him yet.

“You’re not interrupting anything. What’s up?”

Jeno smiles like he’s in on a joke, anticipating the reaction he’ll get at the punchline. “So Jisung found me on instagram and we’re friends now. Anyway, he just dm’d me and you will never guess.” He waits a beat (maybe for a guess) to no avail. “He’s not coming tonight because his parents won’t let him. The gallery goes too late and he has a curfew.”

Honestly, it’s nothing life-changing for Johnny, but Ten looks like he’s reached nirvana. “This is it! He is a baby ! A child ! Johnny!” He shakes Johnny’s arm for good measure, just to make sure he understands that Ten was right all along.

“I will never understand what you two had going on,” he deadpans. “The whole shoot was just me having to mediate my boyfriend antagonizing a kid.”

“So you admit he’s a kid. A little tiny child.”

Jeno looks like he’s watching the most entertaining exchange of his life.

“You said Yuta’s almost here? Wish he would hurry up.”

“You’re so annoying,” Ten complains.

Jeno looks like he’s about to add something, but he catches sight of Donghyuck and bolts. Johnny didn’t realize they had gotten close during the shoot. He guesses he wasn’t paying as much attention to his crew as he thought.

“Oh my god, speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Ten says and leans over the rail to point into the slowly thinning crowd below. There, Yuta’s parting the Red Sea with a fluffy-haired companion in tow. They watch the two of them make their way to the stairs, Yuta walking with purpose and Mark following behind like a puppy.

“Finally made it?” Ten calls once they’re at the top so Yuta can make his way over.

Now that they’re face-to-face, some of the bravado has fallen from Yuta’s shoulders. This is the Yuta that confessed to Johnny in the kitchen that he didn’t know what he was doing with Mark. This is the Yuta that took his advice and has had to deal with the attached feelings since then. They don’t know each other terribly well, but Johnny’s proud.

“Johnny, congrats,” he greets and pulls him in for a poorly-executed bro hug. Rubs at his arms (his usual nervous tic won’t work, as he doesn’t have access to snacks at the moment) and laughs. Tries to flush some of the unfamiliar nerves from his system. “Mark, this is Ten, my roommate, and Johnny, his boyfriend. Guys, this is Mark.”

Johnny waits a bit too long to respond, expecting some sort of qualifier to Mark’s name, but that’s it. Nothing else follows. “Good to meet you, Mark,” he says with a smile.

Mark looks more nervous than Yuta, but Johnny imagines it’s much less out of character for him. “Hah, yeah, good to meet you too, man.”

It’s not exactly a ground-breaking response, awkwardly-delivered and devoid of any real meaning at all. But Yuta looks hopelessly endeared. It’s mushy and gross, probably what Johnny looks like when he sees Ten do something inconsequential. And that helps him realize. Mark must mean a lot to him.

“So, how’ve you two been tonight?” Ten asks. “He hasn’t been annoying you too much?” directed at Mark.

“Nah, he’s uh,” Mark trails off, constantly shifting his eyes away from Ten. “He’s really cool,” he finishes, glancing at Yuta. “I’m having a great time.”

Johnny’s relieved at how sincere it sounds. “I’m glad. Thanks again for coming, I hope you’ll have a good time here.” He lowers his voice and leans in, hoping to go for a low-pressure, joking feel to put Mark at ease. “If it’s not your scene, you can leave whenever, no one’s judging. If it wasn’t my own thing I might have left already to get wings or something.”

Mark laughs at that, probably a nervous reaction because it’s far too boisterous for how mildly funny Johnny’s comment was.

They spend the next few minutes carefully tiptoeing around the new relationship, every once in a while trying to weasel out some more information in ways that won’t make Mark squirm. The process involves asking only easy questions (where they met, how long they’ve known each other) and spacing them out with questions like what Mark is studying and where he’s from originally (music and engineering, Toronto). Softball after softball.

But it works. Slowly, they piece the story together.

Johnny understands why Yuta was scared, but he also sees what Ten meant when he said it’s obvious Mark likes him. Mark’s got huge, sweetly-shaped eyes that would be a blessing to photograph, and he never uses them for anything except staring at Yuta and occasionally averting his gaze to pretend he wasn’t staring. He laughs softly when Yuta says almost anything, and he holds his hand. He’s inexperienced, but he knows what he wants.

Mark is not in over his head, and he never runs.

Remembering the Yuta in disarray in the kitchen that night he first explained, Johnny feels a lightness. His friend is okay now. He just had to be brave enough to ask for himself.

Eventually, Ten shoos them off to enjoy each other’s company.

“Now I’ve got you to myself.”

“Ah, so you had ulterior motives! What a scoundrel, I should have known.” He smirks, which he hadn’t known he was the type to do until he met Ten. Sometimes it’s the only possible course of action to deal with him.

“How long do you think we can be together until it becomes unprofessional?”

“Well, I’ve already got a business card in my pocket right now.”

Ten pushes his shoulder hard enough to send him back a step or two. “But never settle for just good enough! That card could turn into five by the end of the night if you take it seriously.”

Johnny smiles. “I thought you wanted to spend time with me?”

“I’m asking how much time I can have before you go out to secure the rest of those business cards. I can’t date an unambitious bum, baby.”

“Oh, I see. So it’s a matter of my career and my relationship.”

“Not make-or-break, but still serious.”

“Well then, how about this? I make the rounds, try my best to make a bunch of corporate magazine people fall for me and give me their cards, and you and I meet back here at the end of the night to enjoy the spoils.”

“Sounds great,” Ten purrs, a lot like the night they met. Turns from the railing and looks over his shoulder with deadly intention. Johnny wants to tell him he doesn’t have to work for him anymore, but he imagines it would be useless; Ten probably can’t remember what it’s like to be anything but alluring.

It’s the way he is, even when he’s angry, even when he’s tired, even when he’s entirely un-done-up and lying in bed just-barely-conscious and definitely snoring a little bit. Those few mornings they’ve had together have been unspecial in the most special way, just the two of them doing absolutely nothing and still being good company. Ten doodling and Johnny playing games. Johnny tracing the scar on Ten’s chest and begging for its story. Promising a nice breakfast that ended up being burnt scrambled eggs and buttered toast, and Ten complaining but eating it with a smile nonetheless.

Those mornings and the days that followed and each moment since and in between-

“Ten, come back.”

He turns back to the railing, cocks his head in question.

It’s difficult, stuck in his throat. But it can’t stay, he’s known for a while. It’s grown, and now it takes up too much space for him to handle alone. He has to let it go, send it Ten’s way and hope he takes it.

“I love you.”

It only takes a moment for him to catch up, snake his arms around Johnny’s waist and bury his face in his shoulder. Johnny holds him tight and feels the energy coursing through his own body, like the sun’s living in his chest and sending out rays. It’s a happiness purer than he ever remembers having felt.

“That’s why.”

“Why what?”

“Why I painted us on the train. Because I love you, and I know you didn’t hear that night, but I needed you to know.” Ten pulls away to look at him. Johnny melts. “I love you.”

He’s giddy, the sun’s glowing brighter. “I love you,” he says again. It sounds more beautiful each time, so he says it over and over. “I love you.”

Ten’s laugh feeds his own, and then they’re just two crazy people losing it at the balcony of Johnny’s photography gallery. Perfect and happy and loud and sunny. Like they deserve.

Johnny knows he’s an artist. He knows it the way he knows his own face in the mirror and the sound of Taeil cooking and the jolting click of a shutter flash. He knows he’s a photographer, not because of the card in his pocket or the three-letter major code he writes on university forms. He knows because of the way he can’t help but see art in his world.

Johnny knows he’s an artist because he has a muse.

Johnny knows he’s an artist because he captures beauty just to share.

Johnny knows he’s an artist because he wants to be one.

And because only an artist could be living a life pretty enough to paint a scene like this one, where he’s found someone whose heart beats in time with his own.

In a moment of clarity, Johnny sees the universe for what it is: an equal.

The universe is an artist, too.