Work Text:
Sometimes, it can feel as though Saeyoung Choi is man meant be a painting—someone meant to be adorned in the grotesque shades of scarlet, azure, and violet that are only meant for those who dare test the limits of what life can be. He is covered in differing textures, scars that she cannot fully see now as he wraps himself tighter in his clothes, but ones that she knows lay beneath those layers, ones that she can see peak out from under the seams and the hems.
A bitter crimson now flows from his brow down to his jaw, and he does not dare meet her gaze, not as she gingerly raises a hand up to press at the wound, her touch interrupted by the raised skin of an old scar there.
Sometimes, it feels as though Saeyoung Choi is nothing more than messy watercolor—an outline that was meant to be followed that has now flown out past sketches and black pen. There is too much of him to contain, too much of him left to leak out from the barriers he’s set, even months after he’d sworn he’d take them down.
Of course, he doesn’t feel that way to her. Those are all his words, ones said in poetry or in the confidentiality that only the bloom of nightfall can bring.
Soap and water touch the wound, and he winces, his eyes scrunching and a breath searing past his teeth. He mumbles an apology, leans back into her touch; this is where her interpretation of Saeyoung Choi can begin.
He’s come home to her more times than she could ever wish to count, bloodied and beaten and begging for something of forgiveness as if there was anything he ever had to be forgiven for. She’s seen him collapse onto chairs and lean onto walls, a half-felt smile pressing into his cheeks as though he could hide how hurt he was through the weakest of facades. She’s held his weight against her, led him to their bathroom and helped him sit on the counter when walking made his head feel a little too light.
She’s seen the ways color has adorned his skin in the worst ways, and though she hates to see him like this, wishes to never press another bandage into his flesh, she knows part of his messy watercolor—the part that has broken past the original sketch—is the part that allows himself to come to her.
“I’m sorry,” He whispers again, as though any louder and he may bleed in darker hues than before.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” She replies, a sweetness in her voice that contrasts against the bitter feeling that pushes into his flesh, a softness in her touch against the bandages that lay just ahead of his temple.
“You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“And you should do it yourself?” She says, and although it hardly feels appropriate for the situation, there’s a familiar air of teasing that lays somewhere in her voice, one that makes Saeyoung’s lips perk into a hesitant smile. “You can hardly stand, babe.”
He doesn’t speak again, only bows his head further into himself. She can see the way his fingertips press into his own thigh, the way his jaw clenches and unclenches at the silence that settles into their little space.
She cleans a scratch on his cheekbone, a bruise and a scrape formed together into awful hatch marks amongst the wash of violet. He winces again beneath her, and an ache forms somewhere deep in her chest. By habit, an apology falls out of her own mouth, but as the words curl around the room, as the trill of her muttered voice creeps past both their ears, he leans into her—he pushes himself into her torso, and she’s so sure that he can feel an undeniable ache from the way his wounds press into her, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even make a sound.
His name falls past her lips in a question, her hands now in his hair, her fingers careful against his scalp. She feels as he slips his hands around her waist, wrapping them closer together.
In this moment, it feels as though pieces of him have fallen apart into her hands, as though she can feel the hues of his hurt and his pain slipping through the cracks of her hands, seeping into the pieces of her skin that she’s left open to him (Which is every part. No matter how deeply 707 lays into him, no matter how many layers he’s left for her to uncover, there is nothing he would ever have to work for to know every part of her. It’s the only gift she can think of that may be good enough for him).
She knows the words that lay on his tongue. In the death of nightfall, he’s murmured them into her ears thinking she’d been long asleep—but that pull could never outweigh the wish to hear his every thought, and so she knows.
There is so much more you could do without me.
Something he’d said nearly five days ago, after they’d danced in the kitchen when she’d pulled him to his feet away from his desk, when she’d smiled into his chest as music filled their little kitchen.
I am forever indebted to you, and it will never be something I could repay. I can only wish for you to move to better things, for you to know how much you deserve, and that though I will always want to give it to you, I don’t know if I can.
A whisper after they’d gone for a drive, when they’d explored the fields and the stars and he’d told her of all the ways she’d made him better, and she’d only returned the favor. A night where dusk had fallen into his eyes and left him buried deep into her shoulder.
Why me?
Last night. He couldn’t bring himself to shower, had avoided any reflective surface they owned in this damn house. She’d blocked him from the mirror and undressed him, pulling him into the shower. She’d washed his hair and called him pretty and told him every good thought that had ever come into her mind—past and present.
And she’s sure that now, those words have found their way to crowd into his mind—a broken mosaic of doubt and hatred and hurt so deep into his flesh and his bone that she can’t tell where it begins and ends.
She wants to erase the sketch that was forced upon him, to create something new out of what he’s painted with himself over the years, to let his borders and barriers fall with the breath of morning air as though dusk had never fallen over his bruised and scarred body.
“Saeyoung,” She repeats, broken whispers forming through the cracks in her voice, “Doesn’t that hurt?”
He doesn’t reply, no shake of his head, not even a hum from somewhere deep in his throat, so she sinks lower until she can meet his gaze.
It’s the first time she’s been able to look him in the eyes that night. He’d been so careful about it up until this point, sure to keep his eyes hidden behind his lashes. Now, she can see everything so clearly in him, from the scar that rests above his brow to the way he can’t keep his gaze still on her, lets it flick over her face as though there would be something more for him to discover in her.
His face has become red, little blotches dotting across his cheeks and his forehead, and she knows it’s from how hard he had pressed into his bruises, from holding back a whine that had begged to settle into his throat.
He’s adorned himself in more colors, forced his skin to mold into the pieces he was given, allowed himself to be hurt because hell, what else has he been?
Loved. Something in her begs. He’s been loved.
Looking upon him, she knows she cannot take away his scars no matter how badly she wishes to erase them from where they lay on his flesh. She knows that every drop of blood is one that she can only attempt to bandage and heal, but it is not one she will be able to forever remove from his mind. Every bruise will never be the way it was before. She cannot love away the marks that rest on his skin.
But hurt is not the only thing that should ever define him.
“I love you,” She whispers, because there’s nothing else to say beyond that. She will love him until he doesn’t let her anymore, and then she will love him beyond that. She will love him until a last breath passes his lips, when crows feet have crossed the corners of his eyes because if he goes any sooner than that hell will whisper her name.
“I love you,” She repeats, and then again, until it is no longer the words that hold the meaning but the way her voice feels as it carries in her breath, and the way it meets him both by his ears and the way it hits his skin.
He doesn’t say it back to her, the words lost somewhere on his tongue, but he doesn’t have to. She knows by the way his lips purse and how his body lurches closer and closer to her with every moment that he means it too.
She lets him do as he wishes, so he curls into her once more, wraps himself so close to her that there is no separation between them. When he does speak, it’s a mess of languages that she doesn’t know, mumbled into her skin with the cracks of whispers.
Te amo in Spanish.
Je t’aime in French.
I love you in English.
Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, Cantonese, and then Korean.
She doesn’t need the translation for the ones she doesn’t know, she knows by his breath that they all mean the same. He doesn’t press his flesh into her like he had before, but he holds her as though there is nothing else left on this Earth that’s keeping him here. He holds onto her as though the stars have begged him to leave, and he wishes for nothing more than to touch the grass with her one last time.
He holds her like he knows, like he has heard every one of her thoughts, like another border has been erased before her very touch.
Sometimes, it seems as though Saeyoung Choi is a collection—a movement of pieces that leave different whispers creeping at her skull. But, all the same, each of them are him. No matter the medium, no matter how much the paint spills past the canvas or the how far the protruding pieces reach past the glass casing they’ve been settled in.
Sometimes, it seems as though Saeyoung Choi is not a singular painting, but many, and she can only hope to be there as the gallery grows.