Work Text:
love’s as warm as tears
∾
“ Flowers are my art. Since I can’t have portraits or photos of the people I admire, I garden,” Seokjin boasts proudly from the ground, “I see people in what I grow, odd may it be . . .”
Jeongguk raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t understand why this stranger would want to explain his passion for horticulture to an electrician from the city, nor why he was straining his voice so unnecessarily while Jeongguk worked fifty feet up on a broken powerline. Yet every time the lineman would glance down at Seokjin, his heart shuffled, and he lost his breath for a few seconds at a time. He couldn’t tell if it was because his childhood fear of heights was suddenly resurfacing or if he was simply starstruck. Either way, he didn’t mind the smalltalk.
Jeongguk regains his composure, “I don’t make art. Haven’t painted since high school.”
“But you did? Paint?”
Jeongguk quickly reminisces over the stress and joy of watercolor, “Yes, but I wanted more. Wanted to paint beautiful people . . .” His eyebrows furrow and he concentrates on the wires.
“Ah, you’re one of the angry ones.”
He chuckles, squinting his eyes, “You could say that.”
“I hope one day you see a portrait that reminds you of someone you love.”
“That would be impossible,” he inhales sharply, “people are too complex to be limited to sunrises and trees and oceans.”
“Yet I make humans out of flowers,” Seokjin remarks, smirking at a box of sunflowers. He walks to the entrance of his shop, “I’ll be right back.” When he comes out, he’s holding dearly a bouquet of lavender roses and other flowers Jeongguk does not recognize. Stems with petals that seem like snowflakes from the distance. He was never the type to learn about flowers. After twenty-eight years of life, Seokjin’s tender love for them made him reconsider.
“So why here? You make such wonderful arrangements, yet you’re in the worst place for this type of business,” Jeongguk asks. Seokjin looks at the bouquet in his hand and breathes in their fragrance. Although he’s so high up, Jeongguk imagines their scent. How they must heal someone’s heart, no matter their pain.
“Places like this, dear Jeongguk-ah . . .” Seokjin sighs and inhales polluted air. His eyes strain momentarily. “places like this deserve beautiful things.”
Jeongguk lifts his head and runs his gaze across the city. The sunset is gray. Skyscrapers stand in the far distance, obscured by low clouds. Rickety homes surround him. Dented rooves. Opaque windows, boarded up. Even the powerline pole he’s harnessed against teeters beneath him. He smells his own sweat mixed with oil and smoke.
“Beautiful things like you deserve better.” He speaks softly so Seokjin might not hear him. When he looks down again, the scent of flowers fills his nose, ridding the smell of the city. Seokjin holds his bouquet with such adoration one would think he was cradling a child.
His lips draw back, curving into a fragile smile. Jeongguk regrets speaking a word. It wasn’t smart for a man to be so riled up while fifty feet in the air. But, alas, here he was, ogling over a stranger who wasn’t so strange, admiring the softness of his features and the strength of his voice.
“Beautiful things only deserve what is given to them,” Seokjin answers, tone too solemn for his expression.
Jeongguk shakes his head and focuses on the power box. He fixes the last bit of wiring and a low hum spreads from the powerlines to the surrounding homes and businesses. The streetlights flicker on. He sighs in satisfaction as he wipes sweat from his forehead. Then he descends from the powerline and unbuckles himself.
“What has been given to you?” He asks, walking toward Seokjin. Crates of sunflowers and carnations frame the man. Yellows and pinks and greens. His flower shop was the only colorful place on this side of the city. Jeongguk wishes to come back. He wishes for the power to go out again so he has to.
Seokjin squints his eyes and strokes a rose petal. Wrinkles formed from years of feeling fond curve around his eyes and lips. “I have been given a power outage and a smart man to fix said power outage.” He holds out the bouquet, “And this smart man will now be given this bouquet, my portrait of him.” Jeongguk wipes his hands on his jeans, then takes it.
“It’s delightful.”
“It’s more than that.” Seokjin’s cheeks turn the shades of blooming roses. He speaks quietly, diligently, “Stay for dinner.”
Jeongguk does.
When he gets to his apartment late that night, he places the flowers in a vase on his creaky dining table. A singular overhanging light illuminates them. He looks up what the snowflake flowers are. Baby’s breath.
“Curious,” he says, taking a stem out of the vase, “curious and beautiful.”
∾
Jeongguk kneels on a rosewood rug at the center of the flower shop, woven as a wedding present by Seokjin’s grandmother. He feels like crying but he’s worn of tears. Bringing his knees to his chest, his hands follow, holding his husband’s wedding band in one hand and a thin silver chain in the other. He weaves the ring through it despite shaking fingers. Then he unclasps the necklace and puts it on. A weight like fog overcomes him. He shuts his eyes as his shoulders fold over.
Rain patters against the windows at the front. Harsh wind rattles the doorhandles. The whole shop aches for its owner who will not return.
Familiar fragrances intoxicate Jeongguk even though the flowers have been gone since the funeral. He inhales lilacs and lavender and Seokjin’s vanilla perfume. And then . . . and then he can’t bear to breathe.
“Roses,” he mouths, saliva parting from his lips.
His fists barrel through the rug into the wooden flooring, splicing panels. His screams are engulfed by the thunder.
“Come back!” He begs desperately, facing the sky, “Come back before I can’t-” his hands cover his face, as if he were a child hiding shame, “before I forget the sound of your voice,” he confesses defeatedly, softly, “before I can’t remember your face . . . the touch of your lips . . .”
Memories of a tender Seokjin swell in his mind. Arms wrapping around him, skin the tint of a sunrise. A smile pressing into his neck. Voice as rich as honey, “ Good morning .”
Jeongguk shuts the memories out. He bites his tongue and screams at himself to stop thinking of him, but he can’t.
He keeps seeing his dark almond eyes and plush lips. His soft brown hair. He sees Seokjin in his dreams. In the dark corners of his room at night. In the faces of strangers. He sees him and curses himself for it, anxiously waiting for the day he won’t.
Because the more you think of them, the quicker they disappear.
And you are not allowed to keep them, or else they will be gone before you are ready to say goodbye.
It is an abomination to keep a soul in a portrait, photos and paintings alike. When you put a person into an image, a piece of them is kept there. You do it enough, you make it detailed enough, the person is gone. Jeongguk has witnessed passerbys fall dead in front of him. Not often. Only thrice. But enough to know that the law is not a lie.
He wishes he could have kept Seokjin. Everyone wishes to see their loved ones again.
“‘But it can only be in the mind, ’” Jeongguk monotonously recounts the phrase he learned in grade school. He grimaces, then smiles.
Seokjin had found a way around that. He painted his portraits with flowers. Wrapped them in bows and paper and adorned them with baby’s breath.
“She’s definitely a lily.” “I think they’re a sunflower surrounded by red roses. Strange, right?” “He’s carnations. Every color.”
“You are my lavender rose. Mine , Jeongguk.”
Tears sting in his eyes.
‘What do you think I am, huh?”
“Tulips. Bright pink.”
“You didn’t even hesitate! I’m shocked.”
“I think I’ve picked up on a few things watching you.”
“Oh, really? Then what’s that girl out there? With her friends?”
“Uhh . . .”
“Aha! You only know me! You love me!”
“. . .”
“My beautiful blushing boy. Come here.”
The storm bellows. Jeongguk opens his eyes and pulls away the rug to ponder the wooden splinters on the ground. His hand hesitates over one; he can’t help it. He takes it, gripping it tightly in his right hand.
And then he etches into a wooden plank a circle.
“It’s you,” he promises, squinting his eyes.
A line.
“It’s you ,” he swears, biting his bottom lip.
Two Arms.
“Come on.”
Two legs. A side smile.
“Seokjin,” he vows.
A blimp of warmth runs across his hand, as if Seokjin briefly held it. He stares at his opened palm and drops the splinter.
“Seokjin,” he whispers, “It’s you.”
Frantically, he picks up another piece of wood and daggers another stick figure into the ground. Drool pools in his mouth. He’s rabid, desperate. He says Seokjin’s name like it’s an oath.
Even so, he feels nothing.
He sits back, staring at his doodles, how empty they seem now.
He wonders if Seokjin is gone, then scorns himself for thinking that way. There was no way an insignificant scribble could consume the entirety of Seokjin’s soul. He wouldn’t be swiped so easily.
“Come back,” Jeongguk lingers his fingertips over his engravings, “please.”
An echo of life lingers in Seokjin’s vanilla scent, wrapping around his nose. He stands and walks over to the cash register, eyes trained on the small images. Wincing, he looks down and tears off a piece of paper from the receipt machine as he reaches for a pen.
“It’ll be you.” He begins to draw, carefully. A head, shoulders, arms, a buttoned shirt. Even a flower in hand. In the end, it’s menial. But.
A phantom hand palms Jeongguk’s face, wiping away spare tears, and then travels through his body into the paper. Jeongguk gapes at it, ogling the deformed version of his husband. Pressing a hand against the thin paper, he feels warmth. Home.
“My love,” he sighs contently, “it is you.”
The moment lasts shortly, and the thin glow of the paper sinks inward, as if Seokjin’s soul was suffocating. Jeongguk clenches his teeth and braces a hand over the sketch. He feels home slip from him.
Yet this time, he . . . had stayed. A while.
Jeongguk studies Seokjin’s features and imagines how they should’ve been. The broad shoulders like cliff edges. Eyes like almonds. Nose with the arch of a cascading waterfall.
And lips like tulips.
Seokjin made people from flowers, somehow equaled their souls to nature. Jeongguk, seeing stars and mountains and valleys, vowed he would do the same. He would master the elements. Every plant. Every landscape. Every sky. And he would equal them to Him. To the only one that mattered. He would paint a portrait just like life, and have him breathe again.
Jeongguk briskly folds the drab sketch of Seokjin and puts it in his pocket, then he runs outside, runs to the nearest painting sanctuary.
Tulips. Jeongguk would start with tulips.
∾
Months passed like breaths. Life fell into a monotonous cycle. Work. Paint. Secretly sketch Seokjin at home. Sleep. Work. Jeongguk often forgot to eat as he poured his attention to the shadows in Seokjin’s eyes and cheekbones and hair. His fingers cramped in constant complaint, but their rigidness merely made every stroke of the brush more sure.
He thanked himself for learning the basics of watercolor when he was in school. It made it easier to not screech every time the colors shifted in a way that distorted Seokjin’s handsome features. He simply laid a hand over the blemishes and apologized. Apologized to Seokjin’s remaining soul, somewhere in the space between himself and oblivion.
He didn’t wonder often if Seokjin would like this development. If he would approve of the intent desire for him to be captured in a painting. Sometimes Jeongguk imagined that he would be proud. Would smile at him for putting love over the law.
But today, as he drifts asleep, Jeongguk knows he would be furious. He would tell him to learn to see people in flowers. Remember that he was tulips and urge him to just keep those around the house.
“But that is not warm,” Jeongguk grumbles himself out of the comfort of his cool blankets, reaching over to one of the many sketches cluttering his bedside table. He smells his armpit as he reaches, close to gagging. He forgot his last shower was three days ago. It had been short, hurried, so that he could get back to the arch of Seokjin’s fingers, like the arch of doves’ wings.
After a short, disgusted sniffle, he focuses his eyes on the curve of Seokjin’s calf.
“A whale,” he notes mentally before setting it aside to reach for another one. He frowns, “orchid” while studying his arms lazily draping at his sides.
It was hardest to decide colors. Shapes were easier for Jeongguk. Closer to reality, to being able to tangibly feel Seokjin’s body. And he had to steal paints in small amounts from the painting sanctuaries. It had taken six months for him to steal all that he needed.
Within that time, it took nearly two months for Jeongguk to choose the perfect shade of pink for the tulips, his lips. Salmon mixed with lavender. And his skin, a month later, wheat and rouge. As for his cheeks, they were red as roses, blooming in eternal blush.
But it had been sixth months and he had yet to capture his eyes, always too dark or too light. It was nearly impossible to encase the comfort, the tenderness of the sweet gaze which always lingered a moment longer than one would think. That always made Jeongguk scramble and brace his surroundings.
He thinks of him now, desperately clinging to details that he knows he shouldn’t. The longer he pictures him, the quicker he’ll fade. He knows this. And yet.
They’re in the mountains. A day into their honeymoon. Exhaustion coats their every movement; after the extravagance of their wedding and the slight annoyance of traffic, they would rather be asleep than anything. The sun sets outside the cabin they’ve settled in. Tall flowers border the lower half of the windows, invitations to visit the outdoors.
Seokjin takes Jeongguk’s hand in his own, causing his husband’s gaze to rise. He voices his name as if it were a vow, “Jeongguk.” Their faces reflect one another, morphing through every emotion they had ever felt for each other, melding in this singular moment in time. The spark of attraction when they first met, the warmer, permanent tenderness that grew through friendship, the eternal love that began to flow from their hearts as a relationship formed.
“Until the end of time,” Seokjin swears softly. His gaze is resolute, narrowing with pure intention to cherish, understand, and protect his beloved.
Jeongguk smiles at Seokjin, taking in each of his features like a breath of fresh air, before promising, “To which there will be no end.”
Before they kiss, Jeongguk’s eyes flicker up before closing. And Seokjin’s-- they’re tree bark dipped in honey sap.
“Yes,” Jeongguk scrambles out of bed, crawling toward an empty canvas. The colors lap over him like waves. He closes his eyes and sees Seokjin in trapped in that moment, face half-shadowed by the violet sunset. It takes everything inside of him to ignore the words they shared in that conversation, their promise to stay together for eternity. Had only they known their appointed eternity would last a year and a half.
But Jeongguk . . . Jeongguk would change that.
He nearly breaks a sob as he blends the colors for his eyes. Finally, finally the last pieces were coming together. Seokjin would be here, with him. He wouldn’t be a black and white sketch in his pocket whose warmth fades within hours, not just a mouth, not just a nose.
Water and paint splashes his face as he takes testing strokes, the ones he can pour his wrath and grief into, the ones that cannot mar the painting. The slight coldness against his cheeks only increases his urgency. He wipes chunks of hair from his forehead, feeling grease slick against his skin. In recent days, he didn’t dare look in the mirror. Unable to accept the inevitable stranger that would be staring back.
He wondered, as Seokjin was brought to life in paintings, had pieces of him died? Or is it just despair that made him this way?
“It’s you,” he brushes away the thoughts as he effortlessly sketches Seokjin with a faint pencil, “it’s you.”
The experience was like a ritual at this point. Like Victor Frankenstein reaping the monster with merciless intent. The air suffocates Jeongguk. He barely opened the windows nowadays, mostly out of fear that someone would be able to impossibly smell the watercolors or see the papers around his house. Some innocent flowers and fields . . . others entrapping a man’s soul.
It is seen as cruelty. Abuse. Torture.
But Jeongguk chooses to believe it is a release. A gift. A promise of eternity.
Hours pass and he has work at seven, but sleep won’t come tonight.
Manipulating brushes of every size, he carves out the essence of Seokjin. The gleam in his eyes. The playful tufts of his hair.
It’s you it’s you it’s you
Shoulders like the great expanse of a cliff, waves crashing against it as it holds firm. Poised and proud. Beautiful, sharp lines and edges somehow delicate. Jeongguk meditates over those shoulders, wishing he could bury himself into them. His hand hovers above the drying paint.
Come back to me
He is. He is coming back.
As tears burn his eyes, he turns away, unable to cope with the warmth already expanding from the portrait. It reaches after him, wrapping around him, and he is as still as Seokjin is in that perfect memory.
“Until the end of time,” he mouths, reaching over his body to feel the ghostly hands wrap around him, somehow smelling faintly of vanilla.
It is pain, turning around to see the nearly finished portrait. His chest cracks and he tugs on it with clawed fingers, calming himself with trained breaths.
“I promised you,” he says before he slowly lifts the brush again.
The contents of his love river through the painting. Jeongguk lets himself imagine, lets himself hold every living memory of Seokjin at once. To capture his soft yet stern jaw. The fuzz above his upper lip. Faint strokes of hair on the outskirts of his eyebrows. Moles doting his necks, his collarbones, his left wrist. Even faint freckles that can only be seen in the depth of summer on his cheekbones. A little more rouge mixed with the salmon. Dot, dot, dot.
It’s 3:17 a.m. when Jeongguk finally sits back after finishing the highlights.
And he cannot bring himself to say, “it’s you” without bile rising in the back of his throat. Time stops as his eyes meet Seokjin’s, that eternal gaze of bark and honey. It is perfect, truly. It is Him.
Yet Jeongguk feels his heart break in the same way it did that afternoon. Driving to the flower shop to meet Seokjin for lunch. Hearing sirens, seeing lights, wondering where they were headed. Eventually noticing the direction.
Speeding, sweating, gritting his teeth.
“No, no, no,” he bares through his clenched jaw, “No,” he denies even as he sees Seokjin’s body laid on a stretcher.
He parks the car, not bothering to close the door as he chases after his husband. The authorities yell. But he speaks, he screams and roars, “My husband! He’s my husband!” He’s let through, allowed to hold Seokjin’s hand as they load the ambulance.
“Seokjin, Seokjin,” he pants. But he doesn’t know what to say. This violates every vow. Every promise on which love stands. He begs God to end the cruel joke. Pinches himself to wake up. Leans over Seokjin’s chest only to be swatted away. Unable to hear his last heartbeats.
He digs and digs in his mind to remember the last time they spoke. That morning over breakfast.
A kiss on his cheek, soft as a petal, “See you.”
He begs for him to say something now, weeps over the body that lay too still. Grabs his hand. Grabs the other. Wishes him back to life.
Jeongguk sobs as Seokjin radiates from the painting. Each breath is like a cool blade against his throat.
No matter how beautiful Seokjin looked, no matter that he was here, trying to intertwine with Jeongguk, it hurt like hell. This wouldn’t do.
Running a hand through his hair, Jeongguk looks around the room, landing his gaze underneath his bed. It wasn’t the perfect place, nor too safe, but it would do. Until he figured out how to get rid of it without destroying it. Seokjin was still in there after all . . .
But he was without him. Which was against the whole point of this exercise in madness: to feel him. To be together.
He steadily slides the portrait underneath the paneling, then drops on his bed. He feels warmth raise beneath him, as if he installed a heater. He rushes to the bathroom and pukes over the toilet, Seokjin’s still eyes haunting him.
This wouldn’t do, not with the rage and despair broiling over. Not with his nose running and ears fuming and eyes burning. Not with his lips trembling, unable to form a single word.
As his heart bleeds and bleeds, he has an epiphany.
He sees a day, warm. Blue skies and radiant smiles. Seokjin, his tulip, in a pink sweatshirt, laughing. Both of them--laughing. A carefree day in the midst of the life they thought they would live forever. Flowers and flowers and flowers.
Together. Jeongguk would paint them together. And then they could live in a moment, a memory.
His fingers tremble around the toilet bowl as he lifts his head to the fettering bathroom light.
It is not Seokjin who needs to be saved from this loss. No, it is him.
∾
Jeongguk learned to face a mirror, but he did not learn to change what he saw. The heavy eyebags, the permanent frown, the greasy hair pulled into a ponytail behind his ears, and thin limbs to support a now oversized head. He merely saw past that and reflected on who he used to be. Waves of ebony hair and bright chocolate eyes. A chipper smile at things that enthralled him and broad muscles to tightly hold the ones he loved.
The colors were easier to choose, and it was the shapes that troubled him. He only knew lavender roses for himself and kept a vase of them in each room of the house, as if they would somehow speak to him. He eventually saw his eyes in the face of his neighbor’s cat. His rigid arms were like dead tree limbs strewn across forest floors.
On rare occasions, he pulled the burning painting from underneath his bed to ask Seokjin’s opinion. His only answer was a stroke up his arm, like a snake slithering across him. Jeongguk found himself tearing up. Always.
The painting brought out such agony in him. And though its warmth should have been appreciated in the winter months, Jeongguk tried to keep it buried beneath blankets so he wouldn’t have to feel it. Him.
It was only when he realized there was a slight damper in the heat that Jeongguk felt any pity for it. And that was when he knew his time was running out. Because even though he hated Seokjin like this, it was at least something. To be left with nothing after this long, Jeongguk couldn’t imagine what a night without that dreadful warmth would feel like.
He couldn’t sleep the night before and called in sick. Before the sun rose, he drew every curtain in the house and turned on every lamp. The ground croaked beneath his feet, as if upset with him for being so active so early.
He stands sturdy in front of a large canvas he stole from the painting sanctuary two nights ago. Noting it nearly covers up half of his wall, he wonders how he would hide this. Would he? He didn’t ask himself his own thoughts about this. Didn’t consider getting caught. Now he shudders at the punishment.
But it doesn’t matter.
With tightened fists, he takes one last inhale of the empty canvas.
Then he sketches. Bodies to faces to flowers. Large petals framing Seokjin as he hugs Jeongguk from behind. Even in black and white, the portrait radiates an energy. It isn’t warmth, nor home. It is something out of reach. Dying as it is born.
“It’s us,” Jeongguk plainly speaks, more to fill the silence than to make any promises. He’s too tired to speak the ritual. His mind too weary to converse with Seokjin, with himself. As if the closer the painting is the completion, the more he doesn’t care.
He starts to color around noon, and he notices he’s parched. In response, he merely flexes his right hand to loosen his fingers. Then he continues.
It is at two he finishes the background. At four he marks the last detail of Seokjin’s hair. At six he draws the last ivory line across his cupid’s bow.
At six he’s . . . done.
A hollowness, a black well that might be mistaken for hunger, spread across Jeongguk’s abdomen, wrapping around his heart, plunging into his mind. He thought . . . he thinks he should be crying. At least from relief.
He puts a hand up to his cheeks. Dry.
An empty sigh later, he drags himself to bed and collapses.
∾
Jeongguk wakes to heavy knocks on his front door. Slowly, his heavy eyelids lift, focusing on the painting in front of him. He feels slight annoyance that his hands are so sore. And he has a headache. But nothing more.
“Hello?” A firm voice announces their presence outside the front door.
Jeongguk keeps staring at the slopes of their bodies, their gentle smiles. The radiance. A glow lived in the painting, within the two men. Eternally alive in a spring meadow, with so many colors it makes him blink a few times for him to focus. Jeongguk wears a blue shirt Seokjin gifted him when they first started dating. It’s strewn on the floor beside his bed. He thought to wear it as he slept that night, but nothing mattered anymore.
Only in the painting did he hear breath, smell vanilla and roses.
Until the end of time.
“Sir, we’re going to come in now,” another voice says. Jeongguk remains silent, merely shifting on his bed to face the bedroom door, slightly cracked open. He hears as the men come in, no doubt officers.
Their faces are not shocked when they see him. One slowly saunters toward Jeongguk, the other focuses his attention on the painting with a dip in his brow.
It is the former who slightly bends his knees in order to face Jeongguk evenly.
“Do you know your punishment?”
Jeongguk blinks. Then nods.
“Give me your wrists.”
He offers them, blank-faced. Then the officer escorts him outside to the waiting car.
The other, still entranced by the detail of the painting, sighs to no one in particular, “it’s one of the best I’ve seen” as he wraps it.
∾
The painting is hung by a golden frame on a while wall. Men, so many men in black suits with curt faces surround Jeongguk, half-suffocating him. The room is large, like a small movie theater. But everything is tight.
Jeongguk looks around, meeting eyes with each man, then focuses on the painting. On the ones he sacrificed his soul for. Two men. Smiling. So, so happy. And hopefully far away from whatever hell this was.
“Do you acknowledge your sins?” One man asks. Jeongguk does not bother to see who said it. He only raises his gaze to the saw above him, and then lowers it to his right hand, strapped against a sleek chair arm.
It is not worth escaping. It is not worth trying to.
He stares at Seokjin and wonders if they found the portrait of him under his bed. Whether they did or not . . . well. It doesn’t matter.
“Until the end of time,” he nods at the painting, “to which there will be no end.”
He braces for impact. He screams.
∾
Blue. The sky is blue here. And the flowers are in eternal bloom. Pinks and yellows and blues.
Jeongguk crouches on the grass, reveling in its softness. He wears a bright blue t-shirt. So unlike what he would normally choose, but it was a present from-
Seokjin.
Wisps of dandelions dance around him in the distance. He wears a pink sweater that compliments his cheeks. His hair sweeps slightly to the left in the breeze.
“S-seok,” Jeongguk breathes, struggling to stand on wobbling knees.
Seokjin darts toward him, wind lashing at his sides, and tackles him to the ground. Their arms and legs tangle in a tight embrace. Tears water the ground. In their place grows lilies and peonies.
Heaven. Heaven is here.
Jeongguk kisses his beloved for what feels like an eternity. And it might’ve been.
For there was no end.