Work Text:
Do you know you’re my favorite person in the world?
Johnny hopes Yuta knows, but things like that are hard to say, get stuck somewhere between intention and actualizing. Glancing at the rearview mirror, he sees Yuta sitting in the backseat of his car, since earlier he complained that he’s too tired to sit up front, wanting to sprawl out. He’s bopping his head sleepily to the radio, the late afternoon sun leaving his face so golden it seems possible he was crafted out of bronze. Johnny takes a moment to wonder what the odds are that he’ll perish from spontaneous combustion, maybe the light reflecting off Yuta will burn him from the inside out. It feels like it would be romantic enough anyways.
It’s a spring day, with the kind of gentle weather that makes gripping the steering wheel for the past 2 hours a lot easier to stomach. The window is open and Johnny lets his left hand hang out, riding the wind before he hears a snore. He lets out a small laugh, Yuta’s finally out. His poor boyfriend had been working on a piece restlessly for the past few days, only taking breaks when Johnny reminded him that no good will come of his project if he passes out from exhaustion. To that Yuta only gave him a bright smile and a wink.
“I know, but what is the creative process without a little risk?”
Johnny supposes he wouldn’t know, working in management doesn’t exactly leave much up to the imagination, but the routine is much needed; having too many variables is overwhelming, and he doesn’t have enough space in his life for more creative freedom; he craves the confines of structure. When he came home from work yesterday he saw Yuta proudly standing beside a canvas, exhaustion creeping into his smile, but his chest puffed out with pride, needless to say he was surprised.
“What do you think?”
Johnny’s thoughts freeze and he feels his grip on his work jacket start to slip. Painted right in front of him is an explosion of colour, golds and pinks swirled together, like a sunset right on the canvas. Dotted with rich greens and purples, the scene looks lush and lively, but what really stands out is the figure in the center. He likes to think he’s not being conceited right now, but it really seems like the figure painted in the center is supposed to be him, broad and strong, surrounded by flame and light.
I love you. Sometimes you remind me that there’s oxygen going in and out of my lungs, that I am a real person because I can forget.
“Oh… wow.”
Yuta’s smile widens,
“You’re speechless, huh? Glad to know it’s a good painting. I looked at it for so long things started to meld together.”
Johnny pauses to ask what he needs to know.
“Yuta, is that- did you paint me?”
Leaving his perch, Yuta comes to stand behind Johnny, going on his tippy toes to tuck his chin on the taller man’s shoulder. He gives Johnny a good squeeze before planting a quick kiss on the back of his neck.
“Of course, angel, I painted you in all your glory.”
He says it so simply, like it’s common knowledge. If it wasn’t for the arms wrapped around him, keeping him tethered to earth, Johnny thinks he might have already floated up to heaven by now, or somewhere nearby. Johnny usually doesn’t feel holy, instead of blessings it felt for years like he was in the middle of a storm, the rain not letting up for a moment. It’s a simple tale, really. After a messy coming out to his parents, Johnny was given no option but to couch surf, moving from living room to living room, feeling like he left a part of himself behind once he crossed each apartment’s threshold. At nearly 20 this wasn’t the way he pictured his life to be, but then again not many people can say they plan to be kicked out.
It wasn’t until he was introduced to Yuta through a friend, saying he had space but Johnny didn’t have to pay him or anything, he only wanted one thing in return. Having grown wary through moving from place to place, Johnny can’t say he expected only hearing he has to model for the man. What kind of modeling wasn’t made clear to him, but the opportunity still seemed too good to pass up. So, he went to knock on a door on the 3rd floor of a small apartment complex, backpack in hand, breathing a little more shallowly than he would consider ideal. Before his anxiety could even lead him to question if he knocked on the right door at all, it swung open, exposing Johnny to the smell of something baking and old, classic rock coming out of a speaker somewhere. The apartment was decorated in swaths of yellow and orange.
“Hi!”
He looks down, not having immediately noticed the figure leaning against the doorway, dried paint from his hands cracking around the doorknob. Bright white hair with a wicked smile greets his eyes.
“I’m Yuta, you must be Johnny right? Let’s get you inside.” Johnny takes a deep breath and nods, stepping into the apartment, feeling a little warmer than usual, like he maybe was already taking on this new environment.
Looking at the painting, Johnny feels emotion twisting around his guts, his knee jerk reaction is to identify it as being anxiety, something he’s become intimately familiar with, but no, on second thought, it’s love. Yuta waits patiently for him to say something else, his thumb rubbing small circles into Johnny’s abdomen.
“It’s really beautiful,” Johnny lets these words fall out of his mouth, fully feeling the weight of his tongue “you’ve made me look so special.”
Yuta lets go of his waist to turn around and face his painting again, taking a moment to shift his eyes between looking at both the painting and real-life Johnny. Time feels like it isn’t moving for a second, until Yuta let’s out a hum.
“Hm, I painted you exactly as I see you.”
Just like the colors Yuta decorated him with, Johnny feels like he’s emanating light, maybe if he takes a glance to the left he’ll see himself shining like in the painting. But he doesn’t look just in case he’s wrong, and Johnny wants to stay in this feeling for as long as he can.
“I’ll heat up something for us.” Yuta pecks his cheek and steps away into the kitchen. Johnny gets lost in watching him quickly chop up a couple vegetables, his hands holding onto the knife the way they probably held the brush with confidence. I wonder what it would be like to be a paintbrush of yours, to know I can create something good, stroke by stroke, as a conduit. Johnny really tries not to think like that anymore, but he slips up. Yuta reminds him he’s good, tries to show him to recognize he’s good, but when confronted with an image like this there’s always a moment where he thinks he’s somehow pulled the rug out from Yuta’s feet and tricked him into thinking so. That there’s no way how Yuta sees him is true.
He knows Yuta can tell he’s thinking too much. He knows he has no poker face, for better or worse Johnny wears his heart on his sleeve. Dinner is eaten mostly in silence, and he knows he is being given space to think, but that it’s not gonna last for too much longer. Too much time uninterrupted means his mind will figure out a way to configure a labyrinth of thoughts in his head.
Yuta decides to finally break the silence after putting on a record and sitting back down again. He and Johnny had moved to the couch and the only other noise in the apartment is the distorted warble of their secondhand record player. Johnny picks up on something jazzy before Yuta finally clears his throat.
“Can you tell me what you’re thinking right now?”
Johnny leans back a little to think. He knows Yuta is patient, he knows he won’t push him, but that doesn’t stop his stomach from feeling like something is trying to crawl its way out. At times like this Johnny wonders why his brain couldn’t just make things easy, for him or others, why he couldn’t just feel like things go from A to Z from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to-
Yuta nudges his shoulder.
“Still stuck up there, huh? I’m sorry if that was too much before.”
Panic seizes Johnny, this isn’t where he wanted this to go. This is his fault not Yuta’s.
“No!” he answers a little more loudly than he planned, “That’s not what I mean, I just… that isn’t me, Yuta.”
A hand is gently splayed on his shoulder, and it moves to snake around to holding his shoulder. Yuta tugs him down to have him tuck his head on his shoulder.
Yuta tries to sound lighthearted, but there’s an obvious tension in his voice.
“What d'you mean that’s not you, little bear?” Yuta’s hand threads through his hair, giving him a real sensation to focus on, “All my thoughts were of you the whole time.”
“But” his voice almost fails him, “that’s not me… that’s not what I- what I think I look like. I don’t feel like that.”
He continues, brain whirring to find the appropriate phrases.
“I really love the painting, I just… I feel so small and you made me seem so grand.”
Yuta’s hand falters for a second before continuing his movements, the repetition bringing much needed comfort to Johnny, if only a little. No one says anything for a while, and the record stops, starting to skip on nothing.
“How’s work been going lately?” Yuta asks softly.
Normally he’d be thankful for a reprieve from talking about his emotions, but unfortunately Johnny knows he can't and shouldn’t escape this tonight. He doesn’t really want to talk about his boss that pushes him too far, and his monotonous time sitting at a desk, the way each new phone call he has to take feels like it lays a new brick on his shoulders, the greyish tone in his skin he’s developing from the lack of light in the office.
‘Not too well really, I'm far too disillusioned with capitalism for this job.” Johnny tries to joke and luckily Yuta snorts.
“Maybe it’s time we finally go full cottagecore what do you think? Wanna run away, grow strawberries, and get 3 cats?” Yuta asks.
“Why 3?” Johnny responds.
“Doesn’t that just feel like the right number?”
“Hmm.” he nods in response. “I guess I can’t argue that.”
Patting the top of Johnny’s head, Yuta lets out a sigh.
“Well since you completely agree with me, I think we should go ahead with it, really. The apartment is nice you know, but who needs all of this? We can go to the North and start a new life”
Suddenly, Johnny turns out of the shorter man’s grasp and grabs his hands.
“How about we go to the beach?” he propositions. “I’ll take the day off of work. We can spend the day together and we can go to that small shore you like.”
Yuta’s smile goes the widest it has been throughout the whole evening.
“Sure Johnny, let’s go.”
I just wish I could become what you see of me in your eyes, forgiving and whole.
“Lucky there was only some light traffic, huh?” Yuta yawns out, stretching his arms so far above his head there’s a pop.
Johnny, still a little winded from the drive, only had the energy to hum at this, arms full of the picnic basket they had packed earlier that morning, blanket shoved haphazardly between his arm and torso. As Yuta began chatting about his commission he took on last month, Johnny lets him lead the way to the spot of his choice, waiting for his boyfriend to pop down wherever he is inclined to. They end up settling down on some rocks right near the sea, away from some of the small crowds. So close to the edge of the water, their shoes have been discarded in favor of dipping their toes into the water, letting the waves lap up onto their ankles. The warmth of the sun is a welcome constant to the irregularity of the water on their feet and for a while they just lie there basking in sensation, the stimuli enough that no words needed to be exchanged.
Finally, once the sun begins to set, they crack open the basket they brought and begin their small feast. Johnny sneaks his phone out of his pocket for a couple candids of Yuta. Hours of joking around pass and maybe a few strawberries were pelted at his head after a particularly lame joke. Yuta is smiling at him and Johnny can tell he feels lighter, like his bones are hollow similar to the seagulls flying around. A similar weightlessness to what he felt before but Yuta has always had more of a sense of direction than he did, like he was born knowing what he was supposed to do. Johnny shimmies closer to Yuta to connect their pinkies. He hears an audible sigh come from Yuta.
“Thanks for inviting me out here” Yuta smiles at him, “it’s just so…” He trails off, turning to look at the sunset.
Johnny looks too. It’s like the sea is on fire, burning red where the sun meets the ocean, fading out into a gentler pink across the entire sky. Something wells up inside of Johnny and he feels so lucky to be here, to have red blood cells flinging oxygen around his body so he can witness this moment, breathing it in and out so hopefully it gets lodged somewhere inside his veins too and he never loses it. Out of his periphery he notices something and turns his head only to almost collide with Yuta’s phone.
“Woah, warn a guy before you shove a phone in his face!” Johnny tries to joke but the intention stills when he sees the look on Yuta’s face. He’s staring so hard at him Johnny starts to shift where he’s seated, unused to such a strong gaze. Yuta hums and slightly shakes his head, the seaside wind pushing his long hair to the side.
“You know, you really look exactly like my painting right now, I feel like I can’t take my eyes off of you right now.”
“Oh.” Is all Johnny can breathe out.
Yuta holds up his phone with a photo displayed of Johnny just moments ago and he’s right. Johnny looks at peace, and he looks pink, red, gold, and good. He feels good too, for the first time in a long time feels connected to the image he sees and what he feels. No longer just the difference between being a body and being a body. He doesn’t even realize his eyes have welled up until Yuta thumbs away a tear and places a kiss on his cheek.
Always being in a state of fear is hard to grow from, it shapes the way your body responds, reacts, learns. Johnny has struggled to shake the fear that comes with expecting bad things to happen, the constant anticipation of now! The bad thing will happen, or if not now then… now! Coming out as trans was exactly the drop of a hat he had expected and the fear has echoed after him since, like it's waiting for some new tragedy to befall him. Right now though, he thinks he’s slowly learning that maybe good things can come to him too. Goodness is something he can be as well. The pair pack up soon to drive home, the drive isn’t quiet and there’s traffic, their neighbor even managed to be extra noisy tonight, but that’s okay. Johnny and Yuta smile at each other and know this is experience, this is being alive. It ebbs and flows but I think maybe it is okay to be everything and nothing, I think I’ll figure out how to be both and you’ll be right there with me.