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Yeosang is just minding his own business, reading by the Black Lake, when Jongho shows up out of nowhere and shoves something in his face. Yeosang screams, dropping his book, and while the other is busy laughing his head off at his reaction, he focuses on glaring at the younger boy and more importantly, the strange device he’s pointing at his face.
The thing is black, like a weirdly shaped box thing, with something sticking out of it not unlike the telescopes they use in Astronomy classes, and before he knows it, Yeosang is leaning in, planning on inspecting it further. His nose is nearly touching the strange circular glass thing when Jongho clicks a button, and a light flashes in his face.
Yeosang stumbles backwards, backing right into the tree trunk behind him, and Jongho chuckles, lowering the strange device to reveal a gummy smile Yeosang has to tear his eyes away from. His heart is racing (from the light in his face, not the smile), and he glares as Jongho takes a seat beside him up against the tree.
“What the hell is that?”
“Good afternoon to you too,” Jongho says, grinning. He nudges Yeosang’s shoulder, and Yeosang feels his resolve crumbling, his soft spot for the younger always the cause of his downfall.
“Good afternoon,” Yeosang says, “Now what the hell is this.” He pokes at the device now sitting in Jongho’s lap, and the younger picks it up to show him.
“This,” Jongho says, turning it over in front of Yeosang, “is a camera. I can’t believe wizards don’t know what a camera is. I’ve been getting weird looks all morning.”
Camera. Yeosang has heard that word before — some journalists use them, he knows, for newspapers and such — but he’s never seen one in person, and he has to admit, it does pique his curiosity.
“You have pictures, don’t you?” Jongho is asking, “Photographs? Those weird moving ones, right?”
Yeosang nods. “It’s just a spell though,” he explains, “I think people used to enchant cameras and such, but that’s a bit outdated now, I’ve never seen one before.”
“They are cool,” Jongho admits, and he has this fond look in his face as he gazes down at the camera in his hands. Yeosang can’t tear his eyes away from it, the soft smile he usually keeps hidden, even as the younger holds the device out for him to take.
He blinks a couple of times as Jongho waves a hand in front of his eyes, realizing only now that the younger expects him to take the device, and he focuses on reducing the flush of his cheeks as he brings it into his own lap, immediately inspecting the controls so he doesn’t have to think too much about why he was staring at Jongho’s lips.
“I’m really glad it works here,” Jongho says, changing the subject as he turns the device on, showing Yeosang the screen with all kinds of options he can’t even begin to understand. “I was worried the Muggle technology would have some trouble.”
Yeosang sits there silently while Jongho presses seemingly random buttons, and then lifts the camera to his face. Jongho still has his hands on it, but he lines the viewfinder up with Yeosang’s eye, and Yeosang takes a quick peek. “Woah,” is all he can say, and Jongho laughs beside him.
He tilts the camera towards Jongho, so he can see his face through the little viewfinder, but Jongho takes it away before he can snap the pic.
“What do you take pictures of?” Yeosang asks, and it’s the younger boy’s turn to drop his gaze towards his lap shyly.
After a moment of thinking, Jongho looks back up at Yeosang. “Anything, really. I’m hoping to find some better inspiration here,” he answers with a soft smile.
He nudges his shoulder, an unnecessary action as Yeosang’s attention is already fixed on him. But Yeosang hums in response anyways, nudging him back with his knee.
There’s something quiet about being with Jongho, maybe it’s the boy’s soft words or the way they communicate like this, with subtle touches and slow conversations, or how it’s just so comfortable, in a way Yeosang himself doesn’t understand.
“Are you busy?” he asks, eyeing the discarded book in Yeosang’s lap.
“No,” Yeosang breathes, because he could be doing absolutely anything and he would still drop it in an instant for Jongho.
Jongho smiles. “Good, cause I heard Wooyoung and San were going to play a prank on Seonghwa.”
Yeosang shakes his head. “Poor Seonghwa.” That boy is the butt of the younger’s jokes too many times to count.
Jongho chuckles. “Except I just saw him studying with Hongjoong. Want to come with me, watch the chaos when they realize?” He holds his hand out like an invitation, eyeing Yeosang mischievously.
Yeosang takes it without a second thought, letting the other boy pull him to his feet. He loves a little chaos, and he thinks he could probably follow Jongho anywhere. “Hell yeah I do,” he answers, grinning.
They find them exactly as they expected, Hongjoong looking like he’s ready to beat Wooyoung’s ass for disrupting their peace, while San tries to calm everyone down and Seonghwa buries his head in his hands.
Yeosang and Jongho watch the shit go down from the classroom’s entrance (all parties too distracted to notice their presence), giggling to themselves quietly.
In this moment, Yeosang wishes he knew how to use Jongho’s camera, because catching Wooyoung’s face would be priceless. He turns to the boy, who surprisingly seems to be thinking the same thing, his fingers already closed around the device hanging from his neck.
But as Yeosang waits for him to take a picture of the chaos in front of them (Hongjoong now chasing Wooyoung around the table), he watches Jongho angle the camera in his direction, his wide grin on full display, and take a picture.
~
As the week goes on, Yeosang is startled more times than he can count by the telltale flash of the young Gryffindor’s camera. It catches him in the Great Hall, when his oatmeal is halfway to his mouth, or in the library, when his head is buried in his books. It’s always accompanied by Jongho’s little laugh, and a quick, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
As he sees Jongho taking more pictures, and watches the smile grow on the younger’s face when he catches a particularly good one, Yeosang only grows more interested in the whole thing.
He makes it four days before he’s seeking the Gryffindor out, catching him just as his Defense Against the Dark Arts class gets out.
Jongho’s eyes light up when he notices him, and he waves goodbye to one of his classmates, a Hufflepuff in his year he thinks is named Jeongin, before joining Yeosang down an empty hallway.
“What’s up?”
Yeosang points to the camera slung around the younger boy’s neck, sticking his finger in the straps and tugging lightly. “Can you teach me to take pictures?” he asks sweetly, and Jongho lets out a real laugh, smiling so wide Yeosang can see the little crinkles he gets between his eyes. If he were a painter, Yeosang thinks he’d spend much of his time trying to capture Jongho’s face like it is now, cheeks all pinched and gummy smile on full display.
He’s a little breathless by the time Jongho tells him, “Of course, of course I can,” and then is grabbing him by the hand and tugging him down the hall. He follows without question, his hand feeling warm in all the places it’s wrapped up in Jongho’s.
The younger boy leads him out of the school, onto the grounds, and straight out to the tree they were at just days before. It’s one of Yeosang’s favorite places, just by the lake, and there’s so much scenery he is already thinking about capturing, once he learns how.
Jongho tugs him to sit beside the tree, letting go of his hand to pick up the camera around his neck. Yeosang misses the warmth, but it’s suddenly replaced by Jongho’s body heat beside him, their knees touching and shoulders brushing together as the Gryffindor leans into Yeosang’s space to offer him the camera.
He shows him a few simple buttons, how to focus, adjust the zoom, and actually take the picture. He then sets the device in Yeosang’s lap to let him try it out himself.
Yeosang is hesitant as he lifts the camera, both scared to be trusted with something so important to Jongho and excited to be trying something new.
He looks at the scenery around him through the viewfinder, the trees and grass and beautiful lake, and then angles the camera at Jongho, focuses the lens, and clicks to take a picture.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he teases, and swears he can see tinges of red in Jongho’s ears. He looks at the camera in his lap. “How do I see my picture?” he asks, and Jongho’s quick to lean over and press the button.
They’re both met with a smiling Jongho, shockingly focused well on his bright face, eyes fondly gazing in the camera’s direction, a soft smile on his lips.
“Cute,” Yeosang comments. He tries to get back to the main screen, clicking a button he doesn’t recognize, but the camera’s screen only shows the previous picture.
It’s one of Yeosang, his eyes lit up and mouth open as he talks to someone beside him. He turns to Jongho, who has stiffened besides him. “I don’t remember you taking this,” he says, his voice small, but Jongho doesn’t answer. He’s staring helplessly at the device in Yeosang’s hands.
Before he can think about it too much, his heart racing, Yeosang clicks the button again, going back further. It’s another image of him, but this time, it’s just his eyes, closed as he sleeps on an open book in the library. Yeosang recognizes this moment as one just the afternoon before, when he met Jongho for some studying after class. He was really tired, he remembers, but he doesn’t remember falling asleep, nor the other taking pictures of him.
He keeps going back, and Jongho stays quiet beside him, and he slowly realizes that the camera’s memory is filled with him, smiling and laughing, staring into the distance, talking, reading, walking down the hall. He recognizes some of himself with various poses, in the cases in which he catches Jongho and his sneaky camera, but many are from times he can’t even remember over the past week.
Yeosang reaches the first photo, the one of his face scrunched up against the lens, and then lets the camera rest in his lap.
He turns to Jongho finally, and the boy is looking at him, something akin to fear in his eyes. He’s holding Jongho’s heart in his hands, and he realizes he hasn’t said anything, he’s just been staring dumbly at the boy like he’s waiting for him to say something.
But Jongho has said everything with these images, and now it’s Yeosang’s turn to speak.
“You’re an artist,” is all he can get out, and his voice cracks and it surprises him.
Jongho exhales, closing his eyes, and Yeosang can feel some of the tension between them dissipate. When Jongho doesn’t move or speak, he’s not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse.
Yeosang’s not very good with words, or with expressing his feelings in general, but he knows Jongho isn’t either, and with his camera, he’s managed to do just that. Yeosang owes him something, and so maybe that’s why he takes the device in his hands, lifting the viewfinder to his eye.
He angles it at Jongho’s face, his eyes still closed, and takes a picture.
Jongho opens his eyes at the click of the shutter, but Yeosang just shifts the camera lens, zooming in on those big brown eyes, that Yeosang finds himself lost in too often. He snaps a second picture.
Jongho is confused now, he laughs a bit, and Yeosang internally cheers as he catches his gummy smile in the next image, his little teeth showing slightly.
He keeps taking them, more of his whole face, his cheek just below his eye, the little scrunch in between his eyes when he smiles that takes Yeosang’s breath away. He’s sure the images are blurry, they probably missed their mark more often than not, but when he’s done, he offers them to Jongho, laying the camera carefully in the boy’s lap.
“I’m not an artist,” Yeosang tells him, “At least not with a camera.” Jongho looks between the camera, the pictures he took of him, and Yeosang.
Yeosang is grateful for the moments he’s looking away, the seconds he feels like he can breathe again, but for this, he knows he needs Jongho’s eyes on him, so he slips his hand into the younger’s beside him, a small movement that achieves what he’s hoping for, Jongho’s gaze meeting his.
When he speaks, his voice feels so small, and he knows he’s shaking, but Jongho squeezes his hand, grounding him. “Sometimes, when I’m with you,” he tells his eyes, refusing to look away, “I wish I was.”
Jongho looks at him for a moment, and when his eyes fall to his lap, a soft smile on his lips, Yeosang feels like he’s letting go of something, a tension he hadn’t realized before. The younger boy fiddles around with the camera for a bit, his focus on the device in his lap, and when he looks up, everything feels normal again, his smile teasing in nature as he pushes the camera screen in Yeosang’s face, revealing one of the photos he had just taken.
It’s the one of his lips, turning up in a smile that’s kind of blurry on the screen. Yeosang looks back up at Jongho, who’s looking at the picture, chuckling silently, and he finds himself out of breath at the implication.
“You like my lips, huh,” Jongho says, and Yeosang would get up and walk away if it weren’t for the slight flush of his friend’s cheeks that reveals his nervousness. He’s not sure if he’s looking to reassure him or to defend himself when he claims the camera and scrolls a few images back to one of Jongho’s, of the lower half of his own face, pink lips on full display.
He shoves it back in the younger boy’s face accusingly. “Oh?” he teases, and Jongho grins.
“You caught me,” he says, and then he’s looking at the real thing in a way that’s different than the way they’re reflected through the camera, in a way that’s so real it’s making Yeosang’s heart race, his mouth go dry, his own eyes fall to the smile he can never look away from, the way Icarus is drawn to his sun, so bright it burns him.
Before he thinks, he leans in, and they meet somewhere in the middle, and Yeosang’s heart explodes when their lips touch and he feels the pieces in every inch of his body.
Everything is soft, from the light press of their lips together to the way Yeosang’s hands come up to cradle Jongho’s face carefully, like it’s a piece of art he needs to protect. Jongho won’t break, Yeosang knows him well enough for that, but he wants to communicate how important he is, how he finds him precious, in case the images haven’t told him already.
They haven’t moved; Yeosang’s too scared and his mind is still trying to process this, but then Jongho’s arm slides around his waist and everything changes as he’s pulled closer, and he sighs against Jongho’s mouth that is now moving against his own.
The camera lies forgotten on the grass beside them, and Yeosang hums when Jongho’s other hand comes up, fingers threading through his hair. Their noses brush when Yeosang tilts his head, deepening the kiss.
He’s losing himself in Jongho, melting into his comforting embrace, and he’s struck by how right this all feels. It should be different, it should change everything, but somehow, it doesn’t, and the way Jongho holds him now is the same as when he sits by him while he’s studying, the way he takes his reading glasses away when he falls asleep, or takes a picture when he’s looking away. It’s quiet, it’s present, it’s real, and Yeosang is drowning in it.
It’s just starting to get interesting, Jongho’s lips parting and his tongue sliding carefully over Yeosang’s bottom lip, when they’re both startled by a sudden flash of light.
Yeosang spins around to find Wooyoung, camera clutched in his hands, grinning wildly as he takes another picture of them. Jongho whines beside him, burying his face in his neck, and Yeosang glares at his friend, trying to ignore the faint blush rising to his own cheeks.
Wooyoung waves the photo he took around, of Yeosang and Jongho, all tangled up in one another, and giggles as Yeosang tries to snatch it from him.
“You guys are cute,” he teases, and that’s all Yeosang needs before he’s jumping up, bolting after the younger and the camera hanging off his arm.
The rest of the afternoon is spent chasing Wooyoung around the lake, and it’s tiring and Yeosang’s sweating by the end of it, but he thinks it might be worth it when Jongho steals his camera back and takes a few pictures of his own.
They crash by their tree, Wooyoung already off to go bother someone else, and look through the pictures they took. When they get to one of Wooyoung’s, with Yeosang’s lips turned in a little pout, his eyes staring in what he had hoped at the time was a menacing glare, Jongho giggles. Yeosang shoves him a bit, teasing, and then rests his head on his shoulder as they go back one further.
It’s quiet, and they don’t say anything about what happened before, but just being beside each other is enough, and Yeosang doesn’t need words when the pictures before them say everything on their own.