Work Text:
***
There was something to starting a new project. The piece of marble had been delivered from his dealer almost two weeks before, one Chan had been there to pick out. He liked it, touching the stone, seeing if he felt any vibes. Most times he didn’t. Most times he just went with the one he wanted that fit the shape or size - and most importantly budget - of his intended project. Marble could be expensive. And the project he’d had in mind had gone out the window almost from the first moment. When he’d touched that stone, he hadn’t been able to leave it. Fingers skimming over the rough top. It’d been a fairly large block, almost knee height, and heavy. Fine grained. The single most expensive piece of stone he’d ever purchased. He’d worked with marble before, and with alabaster, and granite, and limestone. He liked the different feel of stones.
But he couldn’t leave that one behind.
And the night it was delivered, he dreamed. Water, dripping from the tip of a nose, lips parted in a sigh, elegant fingers rubbing cream onto clear skin. Long lashes parting to reveal dark eyes as the man looked at himself in a mirror. Amusement. That same face, as Chan murmured and turned, pressing against the soft fur of a purring orange cat.
Chan woke from it in the middle of the night, rolling to turn on his bedside light, and pulling the sketchbook he kept there just for that reason.
He was still sketching when the sun rose.
***
There were projects that Chan picked at, at times. Things he started, thought about, circled back to. When he had a show coming up, he had plans for anything and everything almost. The gallery curator knew him, which helped, since Chan was at least invited to give more of his thoughts on how the showing would go in the wing of the gallery he’d been allocated. A larger part than the last time, which was gratifying. And one thing he tried very hard not to do was haul in unexpected pieces when deadlines for printing flyers and programs were on the doorstep. It was just that the piece of marble, once he’d taken a chisel to it, hadn’t let him go. Some other showing, had been his thought. He didn’t like to rush. Art could be like that, but it hadn’t usually been for him. Sometimes a show had art he’d started years before. Not weeks. But there was no relenting for it.
Hyunjin, who shared the workspace rent with him and had his own studio space away from Chan’s, as Hyunjin put it, “clanking,” remarked that Chan was there before Hyunjin got there, and still there when he left. And Hyunjin only knew the half of it. Chan’s sketchbook was filling up, and Hyunjin whistled as he flipped through it. More of the man, with his beautiful profile, and mischievous eyes. More soft cuddles with the cat, or sleepy sips out of a mug with “#1 Cat Dad” written on it. Another sketch of the man with friends, a messy pizza box between them. He liked those dreams. He had a whole backstory that Hyunjin laughed at. The man with his three cats, who had a nice job, and nice friends, and a cozy life. And just happened to be coming out of the marble for him.
But none of those thoughts were meant for the marble. Instead of planning, and measuring, and sketching. Instead of making a model of clay to work on the proportions, or any of the other ways he made sure he wasn’t wasting his product, he merely picked up his tools. He could see the man in the marble as though the marble was made of glass, and all he was doing was knocking the outer shell away to reveal it. There was no choosing the size. The stone told him. Showed him. Roughing out the shape of a head, and the top of shoulders. Finding the edge of a brow, the hew of an ear. The shape of a jaw emerged, the rise of cheekbones. A slightly long lock curled over one eye. His eyes were closed, something Chan could see. The man’s head was slightly tipped back, as though waiting for something. As though basking in the sun, or enjoying the fall of rain. His lips weren’t quite even, one corner pulled up in amusement. A smirk that from one angle might’ve been witty, another sweet.
Chan’s hands ached as he worked. His shoulders groaned as he rolled out of bed to sketch another dream of the man cutting vegetables in his kitchen. A nice place. Homey. A little messy, but nice. The man never looked at him, or spoke. Just sort of existed in the fringes of his mind, as Chan fed himself and went back to the marble. He smoothed the shape of the man’s nose, perfected the inner corner of his eyes. And went last to his mouth, to finish the texture of it. Lifelike, not just smoothing those lips to unnatural perfection.
When he let his hand fall, he stared. Was that it? Was there anything left. Any sharp edge, any imperfection. Though, too much could be done. Picking at tiny imperfections that only he could see could lead to the creation of more. He was… It was perfect. The face from his dreams, though he’d never seen that expression exactly. A beautiful face, a handsome face, meant for marble as Chan walked around the stand. The marble face looked proud, and happy, and on the verge of breaking into a radiant smile. And on the pretense of feeling for imperfection, Chan touched the cold stone cheek, his fingers drifting down to the corner of the marble lips. He’d made them look soft, though he knew better. He’d seen them pressing a kiss to the head of a cat. Grinning as the man scrolled on his phone. All of that, wrapped up in the statue. He felt like he should still be working on it. But it was there. It was done. It clutched at his throat for a moment, like he was losing something, before he shook his head. He wasn’t losing anything. Dreams were just dreams.
“You look like you deserve a kiss. But I think that’s a step too far, even for me. We’ve spent a long time together, my friend. I’ll kiss you when you become real. How about that?”
And Chan felt lighter, as he turned away to start putting away his tools. The marble bust went on the front of the programs. The centerpiece of the show which came far too quickly. It was impulse that had him scribbling down a title to send to be printed.
And printed it was. He’d been there for setup, but the room was then half full of murmuring people. Chan felt almost sick as he toured the room, chatted with patrons, thrilled as little sold stickers appeared on discreet price tags. He’d be able to pay his rent, and continue on. One offer for the marble bust had come to him. And despite the price of the stone, he’d rejected it. It would’ve filled back in a hole in his account that he’d made by carving it. But if it was good, it meant he’d sell others.
A man in a nice suit stood in front of the marble bust with a companion as Chan approached. He’d scared a few people sneaking up on them, so he made a small sound before stepping the last little way. The heads of both men turned, though the man who was closest to him looked a beat later.
“Oh, it’s the sculptor,” the man furthest from him muttered, trying to be subtle.
But as the man closest to him stared at Chan, Chan stared back as though he had seen a ghost. Dark eyes looked back at him. Long lashes. A lock of hair, a little too long, curled above one eye. His lips, soft, were slightly parted, as he blinked several times, and Chan’s heart almost jerked back into starting again as heat flooded his face. He was staring. He knew it.
“It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” the man’s companion said, who Chan had still not looked at again. “Doesn’t he look like the statue?”
Looked like? It was like someone had copied the marble, or put it to a mirror. Given it color, and softness, and mobility, and life. Chan tore his eyes away, looking to the other man. He looked both eager and amused, like he was expecting Chan to laugh at the similarities. To joke about the coincidence. How strange! How strange the world was. What a laugh.
“I’m sorry?” Chan asked, because other words were not willing to come out of his mouth.
“I saw the flier for the show. I work a few buildings down, right, and I sent it to him like hey, doesn’t this look like you? And was able to snag tickets so we could come see it. It looks even more like him in person. Doesn’t it?”
He elbowed the man beside him. The ghost. Who seemed as startled by the question as Chan was. Chan’s attention went right back to him. If he could’ve stopped time, Chan might’ve circled him, taken in every perspective of his profile, his hair. Compared it to the images in his mind. None of it would’ve changed the marble.
“I guess it does,” the man agreed.
The voice was smooth, but noncommittal.
“Do you have…cats?” Chan asked, before he could stop himself.
The man blinked at him again, though he nodded. “I do?”
Chan could hear the question in the confirmation. Chan needed a seat. A large drink he had no intention of drinking. A century to process.
“I’m Chan,” he said, and held out his hand, a moment too late to realize that yes, they knew. Obviously. There was only a moment’s hesitation before it was taken.
He could’ve almost said the man’s name before the man confirmed it for him, like he could’ve tasted it on his tongue. Minho. It was like his lips had wanted to form it. Had formed it in his dreams, without him knowing. And his friend, Jisung, who was watching the exchange with open fascination. Something wasn’t right. Or was too right. It was a bit like doppelgängers meeting, where only one could survive. There wasn’t enough time with people milling, with any one question could be the interruption that broke the chance for Chan to know more. He fumbled into his pocket, cards there with his personal phone number on them.
“Would you both like to come see my studio?” he asked. “You can text, or call. See the…process.”
The last part hesitated out of him, even as Jisung eagerly took one of the cards. Minho took one also, slower. He tried to hand it to Jisung also, who wouldn’t take it.
“No, he gave it to you.”
It would’ve felt odd to invite only one of them. Luring the fly to his den. Or whatever it was. However it was.
“I’m not sure if we can afford to buy anything,” Minho said.
The amusement in Minho’s voice nearly knocked Chan’s brain flat for the hundredth time. That was how he sounded. He just…sounded like that. So incredibly right.
“No. I’m not expecting you to,” Chan said. “Just to see it.”
And for Chan to hopefully get answers. Or maybe to confess if those answers lined up. Hey, I dreamed about you for weeks. And by the way, that marble doesn’t just look like you by accident. Why? How? Those were answers he didn’t possess. He made it through the night, turned down other offers to sell the bust. Minho and Jisung had left not long after, and it felt like he could somewhat breathe. He wanted to march to the middle of the room and ask everyone to be quiet while he tried to process how. How the man from his dreams was real.
***
Chan got a text the next day from Jisung, who was accepting on both their behalf. Maybe Minho hadn’t noticed Chan staring. But with Jisung having been the one to take Minho there to begin with, he definitely had some view of Chan having a crisis in the middle of an art gallery, even if it had been a hopefully subtle one.
Hyunjin insisted on being there. He didn’t entirely believe Chan when he said he’d found the man from his dreams at the show opening either, not until he’d texted Hyunjin the five frames of a security video he’d gotten the curator to send him. Minho, turning his head. There was no footage of Chan gawking at him, thank fuck. But even Hyunjin had marveled at the pictures. Yeah. It really did look like him. There was no mistaking it. There was no squinting and maybe it sort of looked like the statue, or the sketches. No. Nothing so simple as that.
The studio was tidy, despite Chan being deep into another project. He’d started that, pulling a stone out of his limited inventory, when the bust of Minho had been finished. But the image of a tiger had been slower to emerge, nothing so intuitive as the last project. And yeah, he’d started thinking of the statue as being of Minho. It’d settled firmly into him. As firmly as knowing what the statue subject had. People could look alike, sure. But not that way. Not that feeling. He didn’t delegate, letting Hyunjin be the one to let them in. No, he went to the door, played the greeter, closed the door behind them. Minho, in the light of day. Black jacket. Dark jeans. Not a figment of his imagination. Not a hallucination from stress and the gallery opening. And when he turned, he saw Hyunjin had gotten his first real look at Minho’s face. Hyunjin, never particularly good at hiding his emotions, didn’t succeed that day either.
“Nothing for sale here,” Chan joked, as he moved around the table he used for sketching, and staging, and all manner of other things. “Unless you want some rock chips as souvenirs, but those are free. This is Hyunjin. He has a painting studio off this room so he doesn’t get deafened by me working the stone.”
“Nice to meet you,” Hyunjin said, as introductions were made.
Chan gave a small overview of the space. What he did, how he worked, how he’d gotten started. They seemed suitably interested, though Minho’s attention wandered, looking up at the rafters, at the unfinished stone on the stand. But there wasn’t any putting it off any longer.
“I wanted— I told Hyunjin I’d met someone who looked like the bust,” Chan said.
Jisung laughed immediately. “I can imagine. I saw your face,” he said to Hyunjin. “And his too, when he got a look at Minho. If it was surprising for me, it must’ve really been for you.”
“Why did you ask if I had cats?” Minho wanted to know.
Ah. That. Straight to the point, then. Chan licked his lips, and lifted a box up from under the table. Out of it he pulled a roughly framed sketch, larger than his little sketchbook of Minho cuddling a cat like a baby. The second thing he pulled out was a much nicer framed watercolor of it - Hyunjin’s. There was no color to Chan’s drawing, but there was in Hyunjin’s, based off what Chan had described to him.
“Whoa,” Jisung said as he stepped forward. “Is that Soonie?”
Minho, still a step or two back, stared between the two images. “It looks like him.”
“I didn’t know you were real,” Chan said. Before the awkward questions could emerge. “I don’t have social media except for posting about art. I don’t think we’ve met. I bought the stone for the bust, and had a series of dreams. Of someone— Of you, I guess. Of two orange cats, and one dark gray one. Just. Snippets of your life, I guess. I couldn’t ever hear anything, just see you for maybe a few seconds once or twice a week. And then, I finished the statue, and the dreams stopped. And then…you were at the showing. So if I looked like I saw a ghost, it felt like I had.”
“And he was there because of me,” Jisung said, and stared back at Minho to gauge his reaction. There wasn’t much of one to gauge, really. He’d stayed still through Chan’s rundown. “That’s cool. Weird?”
“There’s this, too,” Chan said, and took out the sketchbook. All the furious sketches he put down after waking up, wanting to document that face, that beautiful life. The face looking at him in blank… Something. Confusion wasn’t quite right. Wariness maybe. Minho took it from him, when it was clear Chan was holding it out to him alone. Jisung looked at it over his shoulder. Maybe one image was coincidence. But several dozen, no.
“That’s Seungmin’s new apartment,” Jisung said. “Hey, that’s me! Did we even take pictures that day?”
Creeping dread had begin to steal into Chan’s stomach as they looked through the book. Jisung was there, too? He didn’t remember sketching his face. It was possible though. It felt like everything had been instinct.
“I don’t know what happened,” Chan said honestly, and felt the levity, the giddy rush of surreal emotion, begin to ebb toward worry, and consolation as he sat rather than sink to the floor. “I wish I had answers. I can imagine what a weird thing this would be. If… I didn’t do any other art based on the dreams, other than what you see here. I can destroy all of this. I can make sure nothing else gets out.”
“I don’t think that has to happen,” Minho said, still flipping through the book. “My mom might like some of these sketches. I’ve never been an artist’s muse before.”
“Take it. Take all of it,” Chan said. He surely couldn’t have displayed it. Flipping through the book, looking through the smiles. Knowing they weren’t a figment of his fantasies. No, he had to be rid of everything. Replace it with something else. He leaned over in his chair, resting his head in his palm. “Take anything you want. I’ll destroy the rest.”
There was shuffling. He half expected to hear a door slam, Minho taking the book or whatever, and leaving. Instead he heard a bit more sound, and then a voice.
“You okay?”
The words were close. Too close. When he barely opened his eyes, he realized Minho was crouching right by him, peering up with a titled head like a curious bird to see his face.
Chan’s head swiveled up, looking around, aghast to see the room was empty. Hyunjin had abandoned him. Jisung was gone.
“I sent them away. I think they’re looking at the painting room. Easier to talk without an audience,” Minho said.
Minho looked some strange mixture of concerned, and curious. Chan was a stranger. Probably a creep to him.
“I’m sorry for this. I’m sure you’re going to go home and look for a camera or something, but I just… All I can say is, it never happened that way.”
“I’ll probably look for one, but unless you had one in my friends’ places, too, you’re the most effective stalker ever. What was the meaning of the sculpture title?” Minho asked.
The title—
He’d been so focused on Minho, and his face, and his being real, and him seeing the workshop, that he hadn’t circled back around to worrying about Minho wondering what the sculpture meant. Of course the title meant something. All titles did, even if they were thrown at something. If not to the person titling them, but to the person reading the title. Interpreting it for themselves.
“I can’t—“ Chan said, pushing up to his feet.
Minho just stood with him, so Chan didn’t bowl him over by accident.
Kiss You Tomorrow. It was meant to be kind of a breezy take on things. It was a lighthearted sculpture. Not just a goodbye of see you tomorrow, but also a promise of a kiss. And his promise to the marble. He didn’t want to kiss what was dead and unreal. He hadn’t been in love with the lines of stone. It had been the thought of the man who existed beyond it. Minho didn’t move or push. Just stood there, looking at him. He didn’t know that he owed that to Minho, as his eyes closed briefly. Though maybe to exorcize it, he needed it out, and gone. Giving the words to reality. For Minho to take them, to add to the pile of oddity.
“This is where I sculpted it,” Chan said, gesturing to the spot he’d stopped in front of where the stand for the marble had been. “Hours, and hours, getting the right depths, and lines, and smoothness. All those dreams. The sketches. I was making the marble real, but you outside of it felt even more real than that. Something I could look at, but not touch. Something warmer than the cold stone. So I promised—“
He stopped, the most important part of the ramble catching him around the throat before he could get it out. Minho had leaned back against the table, his smart black jacket parted, his face focused as he listened to Chan.
“It’s hard not to feel something about the art you make in the best of times,” Chan said, starting at it from a different angle. “There were a lot of things I wish I could make happen. But the dreams felt so real. So real. Sketching them out, working on the sculpture. I’d never wished so intensely for something to be true. Like, I was pulling the man of my dreams, literally, out of the rock. But you can’t… You can’t be in a relationship with a statue. It can’t love you back. I always knew that. There was no confusion about that. You have a nice face.” And Chan laughed a little shakily, angling his head a little. Firming his jaw. “When I was done with the sculpture, really done and not just picking at it, I spoke to it like it was real. And I told it, ‘I’ll kiss you when you become real.’ And then—“
He waved a hand, already having laid himself so deep in a wretched ditch that there was no escape from. And it wasn’t something he could have hidden. It was not something he could have pretended to Minho’s face about. Not unless they had moved to some remote area of the world where Chan’s friends and family also didn’t exist. If he had not let it out, someone would have, if only accidentally.
“So, you’d kiss him - me - tomorrow. Makes sense, I guess. An extra reason for you to look like you saw a ghost when you saw me standing there,” Minho said.
Chan laughed wryly. An understatement.
“You can see the care you put into it. Even these sketches. It wasn’t half-assed. It’s flattering more than anything,” Minho said, his face still a bit inscrutable. Even his voice was lovely, and Chan sighed internally at himself. “You weren’t actually expecting a real-life man to leap out at you. What do you plan to do next?”
“Find a new muse. Prepare for another show,” Chan said. “Move on. That’s all I can do.”
“Why did you want to show me this? Why not…just say it was a coincidence that I looked like the sculpture.”
“It’s selfish,” Chan conceded. “I could have hidden it. Let you go about your life. I don’t expect anything from you. That’s not why I brought you here. It was impulse that had me giving you the card, but I didn’t want to hide it. It’s been so strange. It felt like you needed to know. If I was wrong, I’m sorry.”
“It’s… a lot,” Minho said, honestly. “I don’t know what it means.. But I don’t want to have the shots called for me.”
Chan nodded. “I can understand that. If you have questions, if— I’ll be around. Publicly I’ll be at the gallery on and off over the next couple of weeks. It’s on the site schedule.”
“Will you sell the sculpture?”
“No.” The word was so forceful, so immediate, that it startled both of them. He softened his tone. “No. There are some pieces I make that are meant for that, but that’s not one of them. I’ve already turned down offers. I wouldn’t have before, and now knowing you exist, I definitely won’t. Unless you wanted it. I’m not going to just sit and stare and obsess over it either. I’ll put it in storage.”
“Marble busts of myself aren’t really in my decorating plan. It had to be expensive.” And Minho winced when Chan stated how much the marble cost. “And that doesn’t even count what you did to it.”
“It started after I touched the stone. I had my first dream the night I bought it.”
“Psychic marble,” Minho said, almost in a monotone, and made them both laugh. It made a bit more of the knot in his stomach give.
“Maybe I’d have titled it that instead if I knew what I know now,” Chan said. “Thank you. For… Coming. For existing, I guess. It’s definitely not going to be an experience I’ll forget.”
“I’m pretty glad to exist, too,” Minho said, and smirked when Chan let out a helpless, nervy giggle. “Don’t be sorry, anyway. If you didn’t choose this, then… It happened to you, that’s all.”
Jisung came back not much longer after, and they left with the sketchbook, some of the marble chips. Hyunjin judged him for just giving it away, but Chan felt it was right. He’d have given all the rest if Minho had wanted it. Maybe a part of it was apology, for freaking Minho out even a little. The rest of it felt right. He didn’t need to see the sketches he had so desperately put down. He didn’t need the dreams. He could start layering things out of his mind, letting them go mentally as well as physically.
Minho existed. He smiled, and laughed, and lived. He had that full life that Chan had imagined he had when he’d been deep in the midst of the dreams. It was bewildering, and lovely. Him feeling sick about it wasn’t what Minho had wanted, either. So Chan at least did his best to try.
***
“There you are,” Chan murmured, stroking along Minho’s cheek to the corner of his mouth, and then to his jaw. Warm palm cupping against his skin. For a moment, Chan’s eyes were sad, though the way he touched Minho was with utter fondness. A wistfulness there that for a moment that almost looked like pain. “You look like you deserve a kiss. But I think that’s a step too far, even for me. We’ve spent a long time together, my friend. I’ll kiss you when you become real. How about that?”
And Chan’s eyes curved in a happier smile, as he turned away to start putting away his tools. As Minho watched. And waited. And inhaled, struggled to breathe, struggled to reach, struggled to—
Minho came out of sleep gasping, sweating, tugging at the neck of his pajama shirt.
***
The last place, and the last way, that Chan expected to see Minho again, was at the gallery. Putting himself into the work was the best way he knew out of it, but he couldn’t yet. And the gallery hours made it so that he could circulate and talk to people for a while before going home to contemplate his life, or work on his new pieces. Instead of avoiding the statue, like it would burn him, his eyes lingered on it sometimes. Having seen the real thing, he was mostly impressed with himself, Minho’s mouth, about to burst into a full smile. He hadn’t seen that exact expression on him in person, happiness without reserve, but he wasn’t an artist for nothing. It felt of Minho, viscerally. Even more so than the dreams had, even if he hadn’t had the chance to touch, to feel the texture of his skin, and the contour of his cheekbones. Minho really would’ve gotten a restraining order if he’d asked.
After four or five non-consecutive days of it, he was starting to get fatigued. It’d been hard getting going that day, feeling like he was dragging somehow. Too many people, was what he’d told himself, and yet, it was the last afternoon and evening he’d promised to his friends the gallery owners to be there. But when he glanced again, and saw Minho standing by the statue, he’d nearly stuttered to a stop with his drink. Minho wasn’t looking in Chan’s direction, only at the statue. It seemed odd to see them together, like some paradox of time and space. The sculpture was even at the right height, so Minho could nearly look into his own eyes, if they’d been open on the sculpture. Minho wasn’t in a suit that time, but nicely dressed. Chan turned, deliberately, finding conversation with someone admiring one of the sketches on the wall. But aware, so aware, of Minho’s presence. So much so that he jolted, Minho no longer by the statue when he looked back. But still there, and coming at Chan from a different angle, like he’d been looking through the rest of the gallery.
“Decided I wanted to have another look,” Minho said.
“Yeah?” Chan asked, and congratulated himself on his utter gift with words. He didn’t know what else to ask. How to ask forgiveness for something he hadn’t realized he was doing, or for anything else. He wanted stasis, he guessed. Balance. A new place that wasn’t the seesaw inside of himself swinging wildly with Minho so close and looking at him. He hadn’t expected to see Minho again.
“I didn’t realize stone could be handsome,” Minho said, smirking a little when Chan burbled a laugh.
“It helps when the source is,” Chan acknowledged. Not too far, not too much. Just the truth.
The moment of fluster was adorable, and had Chan clutching at his internal control not to reach out, to stroke against Minho’s arm, and comfort him. Laugh with him. But it left him breathless as they stared at each other, as Chan knew he should’ve said something, so many things. So many things he’d probably think of later and regret not saying. But before he could even think of the things he’d probably regret actually saying, Minho held out his hand, and Chan took what he’d offered without thinking at it. A card. Not a business one. Handwritten.
“Call me sometime. If you want to meet my cats,” Minho said.
Cats. Minho— Chan stared at the card, his muscles frozen. But the only word out of his mouth was, “Why?”
“We looked over the book some more. There were things you couldn’t have seen, or— I’m curious,” Minho said eventually, and left it at that.
About Chan. About the dreams. About the sculpture. Chan exhaled, nodded. And fought against a tingle in his throat that urged him to cough.
“I’ll do that,” Chan said, and meant it, as Minho’s lips parted, then curved a little. Closer to the expression on the statue than he’d ever gotten to in Chan’s presence.
That was left at that, too, Chan wondering what else to say, when someone else approached. Minho left him to that, and left altogether not long after. The gallery informed him that there had been several more inquiries if the sculpture of Minho was for sale. It wasn’t. That was all he could tell them.
***
The tingle in his throat became a tickle, and the tickle into something that felt like a pin was being shoved into his esophagus. He went from fairly normal if tired, to snotting on himself, and unable to sleep much for coughing. He had the number that Minho had called him from before, and there was the card. Instead of coughing in his ear, after several days of misery, Chan texted him.
Sorry I’ve been MIA. Must’ve caught something at the showing. Trying not to cough my lungs out.
Didn’t want you to think I’m putting you off. I want to talk, but don’t want to get you sick.
It took less than five minutes for Minho to reply.
There was no time limit on it. You just have to get better first. Can’t talk if you’re dead.
The laugh turned into a coughing fit, and Chan turning over in his bed to rest on a cooler part of a pillow.
You’re just what I thought you’d be like, Chan texted back.
Weird. You like that? Did you dream we were dating or something?
It was an honest question. One he didn’t mind answered. For all he’d said, all the things Minho had seen, it was obvious that in some way that Chan had been obsessed. Maybe not in a creepy way that someone would’ve expected, but the obsession of artist with subject. Maybe with feelings that weren’t entirely rational. But he’d also never had dreams like that. He’d have been more worried if he’d had multiple dreams of something more like fantasy, of a relationship that wasn’t happening. The disconnect was almost comforting in a way.
No, just about your life. It felt like getting to know someone. But I didn’t actually think you were real.
You know I am now.
Chan had smiled at that message, almost a reassurance that Chan hadn’t expected. But the picture that Minho sent after, that was something else. There was an orange cat lying on Minho’s chest, Minho’s hand on the cat’s back, and the white chin partially on Minho’s and obscuring a bit of his face. Minho had clearly been trying to take the picture while not disturbing the cat. You know I am now. Minho and his soft friends.
That’s a healing picture. Thanks.
It’d better be.
Chan laughed, and coughed, and whimpered, and curled up again under the blanket to try and sleep a little. He kept the image of Minho in his mind, cuddling with his cat. And half dreamed of the feeling of Minho’s touch, of Minho resting beside him, of his cool hand on Chan's forehead. Not the dreams of before, strange and detailed, and real. Just one of sweetness.
***
Chan thought he was getting better. He was still coughing, but his bodily fluids were mostly staying inside finally, leaving his nose less angry. He felt like his body was heavy still, as he tried getting back to work. The first day, just trying to tidy his apartment, and sketch a little. The next day, he’d dressed warmly, and gone to the studio. Part of the time he spent organizing, walking around in more of a daze than ambition. He scooted around in his rolling chair, and had even taken a nap with his head on the table. And that night, spent the whole of the night almost shivering in his bed, as he coughed, and coughed, and shed blankets when he got too hot, and pulled them back when he almost seared with cold. He was going to make another appointment with the doctor. He’d gotten medicine, but they’d only given him something for his cough. He didn’t think he was still supposed to feel more exhausted than he had when he had just gotten sick. The appointment was made, when he got up, and he couldn’t even make himself do more than eat that day, what little he could get down. He made an appointment. Day after the next, just in case.
He just had to get through it, that was all. He had no excuse, he realized, when he got up the next day. He was getting better. He hadn’t texted Minho to set up a time, but he’d turned it over and over in his head. He owed it to Minho, even if part of him wanted to sever the connection immediately. He dressed, and almost missed his stop on the bus. And realized how late it was already, when he could smell dinner being made at a nearby restaurant. He hadn’t realized he’d slept so long, or taken so long to get ready, winded between each stage of getting dressed, and napping before he’d left.
But once there, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. It was getting darker, the light going outside. When he realized what a stupid thing he’d done, he reached for his phone.
He didn’t have it. He searched all his pockets, twice, his face uncomfortably flushed with fever as he sweated inside of his jacket. No phone. Great. He couldn’t call Hyunjin. There wasn’t any phone line or wifi in the studio, and the thought of walking the two dozen feet to Hyunjin’s art room to check there made him dizzy. He tried to nap with his head on the table again, and nearly fell out of the chair when he pushed himself back in his sleep, his heart pounding as he hitched in a breath. If he fell, he could break something. So instead, he curled up on the floor instead, on a mat he sometimes used to rest stone on, with a drop cloth over himself that he dragged behind him.
He was just going to take a nap, he thought. Get some strength back. Catch the next bus. He’d call someone when he got home and found his phone. He curled his arms around his face, trying to warm the air he was breathing as he shivered and rocked, and the fever ate him in tiny, ravenous bites.
***
Chan did remember some of the next part of what happened. The bright light of the morning. Hyunjin’s voice, being rocked to wake up. The frigid cool of a hand on his skin. Other hands, and voices. Being helped to stand, and lie down. Answering questions, or trying to. The sensation of being wheeled. The whoosh of movement. A car. No. An ambulance. They put oxygen on him, strapped him to the bed. Put blankets on him. Maybe not in that order. There was a doctor. The hospital, and a nurse. He winced, as the needle pierced the skin of his arm. An IV. Antibiotics, he was told. Pneumonia. Fever. He swallowed other medicine, his throat sore again.
And as he slowly came back to himself, he was given lukewarm soup to sip, and the doctor was admitting him overnight. It was fine. That was fine. He was warm again, and no longer shivering. And the bags of fluid went with him, as he was wheeled to a different room on a short elevator ride. And helped into a different bed after getting changed, and helped from the bathroom and back. And he felt— He didn’t feel good. They’d given him some kind of breathing treatment. But he slept, gripping the blankets to himself like they might fall away, and drawing in careful breaths as the oxygen wheezed into him.
He heard voices when he woke, quiet ones. And when he opened his eyes, he saw Hyunjin first, who hurried to his side.
“Hey, you’re awake. You scared the shit out of me when I found you this morning. I had no idea you were this sick! Why didn’t you—“
Hyunjin might’ve said something else, but movement caught Chan’s attention. Minho. It wasn’t as though his ears stopped working. Or his lungs, either. But Minho was there, looking at him. A hallucination, he thought for a moment, still at the edge of fevered, before Hyunjin turned his head to look where Chan’s attention had gone.
“Oh, yeah. He came by the shop this morning just after they’d hauled you off because you had a stupidly high fever and had literal pneumonia. Lying on a stone floor looking like you were dead with dirty canvas on you.”
For all Hyunjin’s words were dramatic, his eyes were concerned. And Chan tried to smile at him.
“Sorry,” Chan said.
“Don’t be sorry. Just. Get better,” Hyunjin said, grumbling. “You say hi to him, maybe he doesn’t need me to yell right now.”
Hyunjin said that to Minho, the last part.
“Hey,” Chan said, when Minho did ease forward on the other side of the bed to stand near enough to see. But not to touch.
“Hey. You look like shit.”
The laugh was a bit of a creak, and Minho’s mouth quirking told Chan he’d hoped for a laugh.
“Yeah, I feel like it. Didn’t realize I’d gotten so bad. I’d been trying to… To get back to work.” His breath hitched, mid-sentence. And stabilized, as he inhaled steadily through his nose. Minho at the hospital felt surreal. He didn’t know what to think. Why. Why any of it. “Why— You went to the studio?”
Minho’s eyes flicked to Hyunjin, like it was something they’d talked about, but he was looking at Chan when he nodded.
“Yeah, I did. I dreamed,” Minho said, “that you were lying on the floor of the studio. And you were cold, and shaking, and coughing. And you were close enough for me to touch, but I couldn’t reach for you, because I was trapped in stone.”
“What was he wearing?” Hyunjin asked.
Minho thought a moment. “A blue jacket, with a baseball and what I assume was a baseball team on it. I didn’t recognize the name.”
Hyunjin’s head came up from where he was sitting, Chan saw that out of the corner of his eye, and Minho looked to him before Chan did. Hyunjin nodded. Chan had no real recall of what he’d been wearing. He didn’t think he’d worn that jacket in months. He must have really been sick, because he had an older coat he liked to wear to the studio that he didn’t care so much about. He’d given up on keeping one there to change into, because then he leave his nice jacket behind and wear the old one anyway.
“So you’re dreaming about Chan, too, now?” Hyunjin asked.
Minho shrugged. “I guess. I had one other one. I dreamed about the day you said you’d kiss me if I became real. Like I could feel you touching the stone. ‘We’ve spent a long time together, my friend.’”
Chan’s sudden inhale led to a spate of coughing, not from his lungs that time but saliva getting sucked where it shouldn’t. Still he had two men hovering, offering him tissues, and to call a nurse. Chan waved them off, got his breathing under control with a hand over his mouth as Minho still stood there, hovering. He was being such a sexy specimen of a man in front of Minho. But he was sick. That was all.
“That’s not something you told me that you said,” Minho said. “Did I make it up?”
“No,” Chan said, his voice even more of a croak than it had been before. In a way that had Minho’s lips twitching clearly despite himself.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” Minho said.
“I do,” Hyunjin muttered, but flapped his hand in the air by his head when Chan looked over at him.
“It’s whatever—“ And Chan had to pull in a breath, swallow. “It’s whatever we want. Nothing else. Nothing more.”
Minho nodded. And Chan, already confined to the bed, lay absolutely still as Minho reached out, fingers skimming along Chan’s cheek to the corner of his lips, along his jaw and up again until his palm rested against Chan’s face. He understood what the touch was, immediately. A demonstration of a moment Chan himself couldn’t forget. He clutched Minho’s hand to his face, his palm slightly damp, cooler than Chan’s own skin. He could have held that hand there against his face for hours, felt the fine bones of Minho’s fingers, the softness of his skin. But it was an awkward angle, Minho already having leaned over to touch him.
“Thanks,” Chan said, and tried to convey the rest of those thoughts with his eyes. For checking on him. For not writing him off. For not running away screaming. No matter what else, for all of that.
“Yeah,” Minho said.
“How long are they keeping you?” Hyunjin asked.
“Overnight,” Chan said, and let Minho’s hand go. It rested by Chan’s wrist, the one with all his newfound plastic hospital bracelets, just barely touching. “Long as my oxygen’s okay. Giving me the IV antibiotics, sending me home with others. Doctor suggested having someone with me for a day or two, but I should be okay.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Hyunjin said, grimacing. “I can see if I can change my plans. Maybe someone else—“
“I’ll stay with him.”
Chan’s head and Hyunjin’s both swiveled to look at Minho, who shrugged.
“I’ll go home tonight, get a bag together, and get everything else. I’ll get my neighbor to feed my cats tomorrow night. Might not be able to swing forever, but the weekend is fine. If it’s okay with you.”
Minho was a stranger, looking straight at him. No. Chan was a stranger to him. Dreams or no dreams. Sculpture or no sculpture. But Minho hadn’t been in any way unsure when he’d said that. If Minho could give him the benefit of the doubt, then Chan could extend the same.
***
It felt good to leave the hospital with Minho the next day, in the back of a taxi. He no longer felt hot, even though he felt like shit still. He had a list of instructions the length of his arm, and Chan sighed, watching the scenery go by. The trip inside was slower, but Minho didn’t race ahead of him. They walked together, and Chan got changed into clothes he could relax in after getting back from the hospital. He had the capacity to tell Minho he could use anything. The TV. Food. Whatever. He had a dose of medicine with a snack, and got settled in his bed. And then, maybe rudely, slept most of the afternoon away. When he woke, he detoured to the bathroom, and wandered toward an incredible smell emanating from outside his room.
Minho was relaxing on his couch, and did a double-take when he saw Chan, before he stood up.
“Hey. How are you feeling?”
“Like death warmed over,” Chan said, still sounding hoarse. “Is that soup?”
“Yeah. Come, sit.”
Chan gingerly poured himself into a chair at the small table, was served a bowl of soup with a spoon, a smaller bowl with fruit. A glass of water, and cup of tea.
“Do you do this as a job?”
“No, I’d be bad at it,” Minho said. “Try it.”
Chan was just going to take one bite, like Minho offered. But one turned into two. And then another. It was just salty enough. Soft vegetables, tiny cubes of meat that were easy to get down without having to chew forever. It was better than any soup he’d ever had.
“Where’d you get this from?” Chan asked, five bites in, having to stop himself before he inhaled it.
“I made it,” Minho said. “Don’t look so shocked.”
“I’m…not?” Chan disagreed, feebly, when he knew his eyes had about fallen out.
“There were some drawings of me cooking. Maybe you thought all I could do was scramble an egg, then.”
Offended. But delighted to be offended, like he enjoyed sparring with Chan somehow. Chan sighed at him, but was happy about it as he ate. Minho had some too, watching Chan to be sure he didn’t just slip to the floor, or faceplant into his bowl. Sure, he felt like shit, but not like that. Instead of going back to his bed, he felt well enough to stay wrapped in a blanket, to sit on the couch with the remnants of his water by him. It struck him again that Minho was there. He’d changed, Chan realized, into sweatpants. He looked comfortable, and not out of place.
“I’m not a very good host,” Chan apologized.
“You’re just supposed to recover. Trying to do too much is how you got here,” Minho observed, not incorrectly.
“Thanks, anyway. For everything. You said the cats will be okay?”
“My neighbor is checking in on them. They might be grumpy at me, but they’ll survive. I’d have just had you go there, but it’s nice to be somewhere familiar when you feel bad.”
“At least you can tell I didn’t have my walls plastered with your face, too,” Chan said.
“It is good,” Minho said, nodding seriously, and looking around at the walls. “You know how they have posthumous museums or whatever. Would’ve been awkward if you kicked it from pneumonia and then having to go visit the Lee Minho exhibit. Just a room full of me.”
Minho made a face like he couldn’t imagine something worse, and Chan chuckled.
“It made me wish I could paint. The watercolor that Hyunjin did, that was beautiful. I don’t think anything was ever going to be detailed enough.”
“Needed HD reality, 8k?” Minho asked.
“Maybe. But no picture was enough. There was a feeling in the dreams like getting to know a friend. Even if I couldn’t hear the soft way you’d talk to your cats, or laughing at something you read on your phone, I could feel it? I know it sounds still like I was some kind of weird stalker. But it was just…snippets. An impression of something that felt real. It was almost a relief when they stopped.”
“But you didn’t go looking for me. You thought I wasn’t real,” Minho said.
Chan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Would it have felt better if you never found me?”
Chan considered that. “I guess I can’t really know. I had to put it aside, because there wasn’t any choice. That or make every piece of art about you for the rest of my life. People would’ve gotten bored. Hell, I’d have probably gotten bored.”
Minho snickered. “It’s just…weird. Like it’d be on one of those mystery shows on TV.” Minho picked up his phone when it buzzed. “Ah, time for your medicine.”
He was being cared for. They watched TV for a little while, before Chan reluctantly gave in to the exhaustion. Minho brought him a fresh drink as he poured himself miserably into bed.
“Thanks,” Chan said. “My place is your place. Just. Be comfortable.”
“I will. Get some rest.”
He laid awake for a while, hearing Minho putter. Rinsing dishes. Moving. Minho. Minho, who woke him up briefly to take more medicine before sleeping himself. And Chan, if not feeling impressive, felt alive when he woke up the next morning. He took more medicine, and poured himself into the shower. That made him feel more alive too, although he felt drained like he’d run for hours afterward. It took no pleading at all for Minho to warm him some more soup, and then… Then he slept some more. His ribs were so sore from coughing. His voice sounded like he’d rounded out his vocal cords with power tools. But fuck if he didn’t want to melt coming out of his room, seeing Minho curled on his couch, looking up at him, blinking, looking him over.
“Can I get you anything?”
A thousand years to process his presence, maybe. He had no more than 24 hours with Minho there, and he didn’t want to ask why. No, he more or less knew why. Minho was there because of a dream, maybe. Because of curiosity. To suss out what kind of person made a sculpture of his face.
“I told my mom about the sculpture. She and my dad are going to go see it. She thinks it’s really ‘neat’ as she put it.”
“I wish I could be there to introduce it to her,” Chan said. And in another way, no he didn’t. How did he look a woman in the eye and tell her he’d promised a statue he’d kiss the man who inspired it? No.
“Maybe when you feel better she could visit the studio. I think she’d enjoy that. She’ll probably want to buy the watercolor of me and Soonie if you’re willing to part with it.”
“I said you could have that,” Chan protested.
Minho waved him off like the words were unimportant. “You said that when you were feeling guilty and awkward.”
“She could pay Hyunjin, then,” Chan said.
“Wasn’t it a gift to you?”
Minho grinned when Chan whined, and pouted. It was much easier to speak of himself in ways that didn’t concern Minho. How he had chosen the pieces being displayed. What types of things he preferred working with. Minho asked smart questions, displayed obvious interest. It felt a bit like he was being humored, ask the sick man about easy topics. But his brain was a washing machine eventually swirling back the oddity of the fact that…Minho was there. Minho offered up some facts about himself, and his own life. Chan felt…unprepared to ask those kinds of things, even if he wanted to. Nothing about his sneak peek into Minho’s life had been deliberate. Nothing about it had been meant to be intrusive, or at all by choice. For all he knew, in whatever had happened, Minho hadn’t been the end game at all. Maybe only the marble bust had been. A beautiful piece of work, and everything else was just incidental.
They had sandwiches for lunch, and Chan napped again with both reluctance, and necessity. He took his pills, his inhaler. He felt incredibly grateful for the fever that had been sapping him to break a little as he woke up in a sweat that necessitated another shower. Walking out to Minho again. Minho’s expression calm, his eyes bright, and curious. He wrote it in his mind, instead of memorializing it on paper. Minho was someone he could’ve counted as a friend. As a stranger, he was doing more for Chan than many friends might’ve. He let Minho look through the gallery on his phone. Past pieces. Progress pictures of the bust. Progress pictures of the tiger he was working on. He explained the marks he’d made on the marble, why they were there to help Chan figure out the depth of the stone he was removing. And, why there were none on the one of the bust.
“I don’t freestyle often,” Chan said. “And definitely not with an expensive stone like that. You could’ve looked like you were in a funhouse mirror with one hammer blow. It worked out. It was like it couldn’t end up any other way.”
“I just realized you even have a scar there,” Minho said, turning Chan’s phone to show the chin of the bust. And then touching his own chin. A small raised line that Chan had opted out of smoothing away on the bust, and that he hadn’t even noticed on Minho. It wasn’t that it was imperfection, exactly. Though there was beauty in that. It was… It had felt right. He didn’t remember seeing that in his dreams. But looking at it then, looking at Minho, had the hair on his arms rising.
“That’s creepy,” he said after a moment, his voice still husky and squeaky at the same time.
“It’s one of those things that tell me you weren’t some creeper,” Minho said, not nearly as affected as Chan was as he scrolled to another picture. “It’s not something you can really see in regular pictures. So I don’t know what made this happen, but I know what didn’t happen.”
Chan exhaled slowly. “I’m glad for that, at least.”
“You’re the famous, handsome artist who invited a stranger into your house. I could be a con artist or something seeing a chance from resembling a statue and playing on that.”
“I don’t know what made this happen either, but I sure as hell know that’s not what is,” Chan said.
Minho’s glance to him was amused, and Chan was helpless to do anything else but smile back. He had that comfort. That day of it, when he was alive enough to enjoy the snatches of it he got. To enjoy Minho’s cooking, and his laughter, and his questions. And to wake the next morning with the dread of letting Minho go. Again. But knowing it had to be done, for both their sakes. Minho made him breakfast, when he’d asked Chan what he wanted. And his appetite was better, able to eat most of it. The kitchen was cleaner than when Minho had arrived by the time Minho was done, and there wasn’t all that much for him to pack up.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” Minho asked, when he had traded his sweatpants for jeans.
“You said there’s still soup and fruit in the fridge. Hyunjin will be back in town later today. And I have your number. The cats will be missing you,” Chan said.
“They’ll tell me they haven’t eaten in a decade,” Minho said, laughing.
There was that moment of quiet, looking at each other.
“Thanks for letting me come,” Minho said.
Chan nearly started coughing from the surprise. “What?” he squeaked out, elegantly. His voice afterward wasn’t all that great either. “No, thank you. You went above and beyond.”
He’d at least let Chan repay him for the food he’d ordered in to make the soup, and everything else.
“I got the answers I was looking for,” Minho said, and didn’t elaborate on what those were.
But the way he said it felt significant. And Chan nodded, relaxing from his state of incredulity. Maybe, if those answers meant Minho could sleep at night without fear of being watched, then it really had been all worth it.
“I’m usually better company, but still. Thank you, really,” Chan said, and followed Minho to the door.
“There’s always next time,” Minho said. “Rest. And take your medicine in an hour.”
The alerts were on his phone. He wouldn’t forget.
Minho and his bag were obscured behind the door, and Chan avoided the couch, going back to the bed to hug a pillow to his chest and breathe. They’d spoken. Barely touched. Minho’s voice curled around him like smoke.
***
They stayed in contact by text, here and there. Chan with the aid of modern medicine got better, though slowly. He was able to get back to work, to spend a couple last days at the gallery. He had no new desire to kiss the marble when he saw it again. It was still beautiful, but it was inferior to the reality of Minho. He hadn’t touched that skin, other than his hands. Hadn’t kissed Minho. Hadn’t even hugged him. But Chan knew that well enough. Hyunjin stayed in touch with Jisung, becoming friends with him from that first meeting, too. So he felt like he had a different source of Minho news than his dreams. And yes, Hyunjin had asked if he could share. Minho had been amused in confirming that to Chan directly.
Stop acting like a creep when you’re not, had been Minho’s admonishment to Chan saying he just wanted to be sure no one was making Minho uncomfortable. Minho had sent a picture of his mother at the gallery, of her surprise at seeing the statue. There was a second picture, of Minho stood next to the bust, his chin angled slightly to match it. It wasn’t perfect, of course. No art was. But it was breathtaking to see, side by side.
Someone in the gallery asked me if I was the model, Minho texted him. So you’re pretty fucking incredible.
He was glad Minho thought so.
The first time they met up, after Chan was better, was in a park near the gallery. Minho was meeting Jisung after, and Chan had an appointment to check when the art would be packed up and brought back to him, or to storage. He felt strong again, able to walk without being winded. And Chan was taken by Minho like he had been from the first dream. The way he walked, and talked, and how direct he stared. Chan, not knowing if they would’ve ever met again, felt a bit like a child whose toy had been found in a corner and handed back to him. All the while knowing no, it wasn’t his toy at all. Borrowed at best.
Minho let out a faint laugh as a gust of wind rushed them, leaves scattering overhead. Minho’s hair blew, eyes closed, expression caught in the laugh. Just like— Or very like the sculpture. Only more, and there, in front of him, in flesh and blood.
Chan, locked in the shock of the moment, looked away as soon as Minho opened his eyes and looked at him.
“What? What’s that look for?”
Chan shook his head. He might’ve spoken, if he could’ve.
“What?” Minho insisted, catching at his jacket, stepping around him and keeping Chan from moving forward any further. “Another dream thing?”
“Something like that,” Chan said. “More like… How you looked, it was close to the sculpture, I guess.”
He didn’t know what to do with the frown on Minho’s face, as Chan buried his own hands deeper into his jacket pockets.
“So. When are you going to kiss me?”
The words jolted through him so much so that Chan was fairly certain that he had misunderstood at first, and then thinking that Minho was alluding to the dreams, or the stone, or whatever else.
“I said that to a piece of marble,” Chan said, hoping he sounded unaffected and amused. At least he had his own voice back.
Minho’s scowl was immediate, and somehow adorable.
“I’d grab you and kiss you myself, but you’re the one who has a promise to uphold,” Minho said. “How are you ever going to move on without making it happen?”
Chan exhaled, cautiously. “You’re not the statue,” he said. He’d tried to be very clear, and very deliberate about that. Separating the two. Making sure Minho understood that as well.
“But you didn’t promise to kiss the statue. You said you’d kiss it, or me, when I became real. And here I am. So? When are you going to kiss me? If you can’t keep that promise, I don’t know what else you might go back on.”
He could’ve written entire books on trying to disentangle the two things. Why Minho was not the subject of that promise. The statue hadn’t become real. It hadn’t turned from stone, to flesh. It was still there, in the gallery, gathering dust. Minho had been real before, during, and after its creation. There was no promise to be broken, when the terms of it hadn’t really happened.
“Don’t be a pedant,” Minho almost growled, like he could read Chan’s thoughts. His hands lifted, gripping Chan’s jacket even though Chan had not moved away. “Do you want to kiss me?”
“Not because—” He could’ve, again, spewed entire oceans of words, assuring Minho of the disconnect between him and the statue. That what Chan wanted was not because of anything other than just seeing his face and being close to him. But there was something dark glittering in Minho’s eyes, something dangerous. Chan closed his eyes for the briefest second, and nodded. And when Minho saw that, he yanked Chan halfway there, until they were almost nose to nose, staring at each other. Not a dare. More even a demand than an invitation. Almost feeling Minho’s breath as Chan’s hands found his waist. And when he leaned in, did his half of the moving, and closed his eyes - he didn’t need it to be perfect. He just needed it to be.
When Minho kissed him back almost immediately, it had tingles bursting and chasing over his skin. They adjusted, never losing contact, kissing again. The hands that had been balled in Chan’s jacket loosened, Minho’s cold hands first touching Chan’s neck, before his arms looped behind it. Chan’s arms, too, wrapped tighter around Minho. Until they weren’t kissing any more, and instead clinging together, almost swaying, and still nearly in the middle of the park path.
“Now I know you keep your promises. No hunk of marble can do that,” Minho teased.
Chan shook his head. “It wasn’t ever the marble I wanted.”
It was always Minho. Maybe Minho was right. He had kept his promise. He could be content with that, somehow. Minho kissed him one more time, before letting Chan go so they could continue walking. And that was where Chan thought yes, he could begin letting Minho go. Maybe not happily. Maybe not without regrets. But Minho was kind, and handsome, and had his own life that Chan had upended. He’d been given an enormous gift, and one he wasn’t unthankful for. But if that was all? It was something he was happy to have gotten.
***
Moving on meant quite literally moving on. Not in location, no, he had a lease. But emotionally, maybe. He put out tentative forays in a dating app, not aggressively, but to see if there was any, even meager, interest. From himself, and not just toward him. Though that certainly would help. Pulling back from texting Minho, as much as was polite. Putting off Minho’s invitation to meet his cats. As much as he desperately wanted to.
Hyunjin was doing something that looked like yoga, using one of the stone mats, as Chan worked to smooth the base of the tiger statue. It was when Chan brought up the search, half knowing that Hyunjin would judge him for it. But if he was fucking up, he thought he probably ought to hear it.
And Hyunjin did judge him for it.
“What about Minho?”
“What about him?” Chan asked, just before he hissed as Hyunjin’s shoe ricocheted off his ankle. “I kissed him.”
“You what?” Hyunjin asked.
He’d sat up while asking it, the sound almost like a bellow in the studio as Chan winced.
“It was nice. I think he thought I’d have an easier time moving on if I just got it out of my system. He’s great. Really a nice guy. I mean, I’d still have kept the statue if he was a jerk, but it’s nicer that he’s nice. I can let him go now.”
“Moving— Did he tell you that, or did you fabricate it?”
Chan frowned at him. “No? We talked about it. He said explicitly I should kiss him or I wasn’t going to be able to move on.”
“Okay,” Hyunjin said slowly. “And did he mean move on alone, or with him. Like, there’s a gulf of different meanings in there, right. Like, move on and forget his number, or move on from when you thought he wasn’t real to the sweet sweet reality that he is and that you can kiss him all you want. Did you just give him a sweet little peck?”
“No. It was just once, and we kissed a few times, but—” Chan stopped when Hyunjin made a sound like he’d heard something significant. “We’re not dating. I don’t need you to fall into the delusion ditch on top of me.”
“I mean, no, because he’s already in there with you, and three’s a crowd when it’s not invited. Maybe he’s a nice guy but he didn’t just ask you to kiss him out of the kindness of his heart. You have a standing invitation to go and cuddle his cats. He took care of you when you were half dead. I feel like I need to ask what his intentions are toward you.”
“He should be the one asking the question.”
“Sure, some hot artist had some kind of a magic dream about him, and carved an incredible sculpture. He has to make sure to carry a taser with him at all times! Please.”
He was being mocked.
“Maybe it’s best to leave it be,” Chan said. “He might always have that question in the back of his head.”
“And he might not,” Hyunjin said. “You’re still coming to the party this weekend, right?”
Jisung’s. A small get-together. Hyunjin had brought it up first, and Jisung had texted an explicit invitation. And Minho had confirmed with him he’d been invited. Like the tines of a fork, skewering him into compliance.
“I said I would. If I manage to get a date, I’ll at least go for a while,” Chan said.
“I think you should just go,” Hyunjin said.
But he didn’t nag. And Chan did get a date. Saturday night, supposedly to meet a couple of hours after the party started. Though, as Chan was getting ready to go, he got a text indicating that no, maybe it wouldn’t work out that night and he’d text Chan as soon as he could.
It put Chan in a bit of a grumpy mood as he headed out, because he had no out suddenly. He arrived just minutes before Hyunjin, grabbing himself a drink just in time to see Minho exit the kitchen. He wore soft blue, draped down his chest, and arms. The music, a cliche, faded, as their eyes met. He’d greeted Jisung already, made his introductions to some others. But when Minho set down the tray he was holding, and moved into Chan’s space, that was where all his focus was.
“Hyunjin seemed a little worried you weren’t going to show up.”
“I try and keep my word,” Chan said, and felt the sick tug of adoration inside of his chest when Minho smirked at him.
“Come sit.”
He knew what that mouth felt like against his. What Minho tasted like. How he felt, holding Chan close. It was easy to push away, when he wasn’t seeing Minho. Harder, when Minho was right there, close enough to touch on the narrow two-seat chair.
“Seems like it’s been a while,” Minho said.
“Yeah,” Chan agreed.
Minho’s leg touched his as they chatted, caught up. He swallowed hard, paying attention. Glancing at his phone. Taking in all of Minho’s face. It seemed impossible that he was real. Someone stopped by the chair, making Minho belly laugh before he introduced Chan who seemed understandably famous.
“We didn’t tell anyone the reason. My family, yeah, but… That’s yours to tell, when you want to,” Minho said.
Chan appreciated that, he supposed. He could be the eccentric artist, he guessed.
“Waiting for something important?” Minho asked, having clearly seen Chan trying to subtly check his phone for the tenth time.
He could’ve hidden it. Lied. But there was no point in it.
“Waiting on a guy to get back to me about a date we had scheduled tonight,” Chan said.
Minho’s eyebrows had risen, when Chan looked back at him.
“A date, huh? So that’s why— I didn’t realize you were dating someone.”
“I’m not. I’ve never met him, so that’s to be determined,” Chan said.
Minho’s eyebrows rose higher. “Okay. So, that means you’re not…interested in me. Was the kiss that bad?” Minho asked.
Chan goggled. “What? No. It was great.”
It had invaded his dreams in ways that were far different than the others. Abstract touches. The touch of Minho’s hands on his neck. The pliant, subtle give, and the equally insistent demand. A different type of comfort to it, not a yearning.
“I thought it was, too. I assumed you were busy,” Minho said.
“I have been.” The words were immediate, almost sharp. That hadn’t been a fabrication. Part of it maybe had been a forced business, but he’d put everything he had into it. “I have been. And trying to get my head on straight. Not interested in you?”
Chan chuckled, darkly, even as Minho relaxed slightly.
“I’m not going to have my life arranged by some magic stone,” Minho said. “But you kept telling me it wasn’t about the statue, and I get that. Because me liking you as a human wasn’t about the statue either.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt your life more than I already had,” Chan said.
“Maybe it’s an interruption still if it’s invited. But is that bad? Are you getting points for denying yourself something you want?”
“I don’t get to choose for you.”
“You are, if you’re making the choice for me, too,” Minho said. “I thought I knew what you wanted when I asked if you were going to kiss me, but I guess I have to be more precise. Do you not want me as more than a muse? Or are you trying to date a stranger because you think you can’t have me?”
“I don’t know if I can even trust myself with what I want,” Chan admitted. “I think about—”
His words broke off before his voice itself could, looking down to see Minho had clutched their hands together.
“You want what?” Minho said, though Chan almost had to strain to hear the words. He touched Minho’s hand with his own opposite hand, his fingers, the veins on the smooth back. And lifted them together, pressing a soft kiss against Minho’s knuckles. He lingered there, breathing. Trying to organize his thoughts as Minho’s thumb stroked against his finger.
“I don’t need you as a muse. I want this. I want to be your friend. I want to wake up every morning and know it won’t be long until I can see you smile. I want to pull you in my lap, and kiss you until we can’t breathe, and laugh until we’re half sick, and hear your secrets. I want…the ocean. And the dreams were barely a drop.”
Minho tugged his hand away, but instead of telling Chan that yes, he wanted too much before walking away, he stood. But he stood only long enough to squirm his way into Chan’s lap, and loop an arm around Chan’s neck.
“We can start here, then,” Minho said. “I’ll give you my thoughts on the rest later.”
“Okay,” Chan said, and acknowledged that. “This is going to sound like a stupid question, but…is this what you want, too?”
The eye roll was done with what Chan took as affection, and with a sigh.
“Without taking out a billboard, yes.”
It was like iron sinking into his bones. Just that word. That one word. Actions were important, and he’d kick himself later and be laughed at about it by everyone who knew them, but apparently in that moment, he’d needed the words. Desperately. Just that yes, in Minho’s voice. Soft then, just loud enough to hear over the music. Just for him. He cupped that face, gorgeous and real. And with Minho’s permission, not verbal that time, discovered again how much Minho’s mouth was soft against his. And he had a warm man to both hold, and kiss. And to snort against, and giggle with, as someone almost tripped over Chan’s feet. And to get lost in, silken kisses, not all of them sweet. It made him hum, and turn them, so they were in their own little world in the corner of the chair. Oblivious to the party,
“I’m sorry,” Chan murmured at one point, when their faces were close, but they were content resting together.
“Artists are supposed to be strange. You get a pass this time.”
It nearly startled the giggles up again, before they both startled when Chan's phone buzzed. He barely got it free, but it was Minho who looked at the screen when Chan turned it to him to read.
“Ah, pity. Looks like your guy canceled on you,” Minho said, a sly look on his face as he tucked the phone back beside them.
“No he didn’t,” Chan said, squeezing Minho.
Minho scoffed a little. But Chan could feel the smile when they kissed.
***
Chan was sure the rest of the party was fine. Hyunjin was off toward home safely by the time they left together. Minho’s fingers in his might as well have been superglued as they wound their way out and into a taxi. When they tumbled into Minho’s bed, after Chan had met Minho’s would-be starving cats, it was late, and they were tired. He’d used some of Minho’s mouthwash, and some borrowed clothes after a shower, and slept like the dead. When he woke, it was light in the room, and there was something heavy and purring on his ass. A cat, who’d taken him as a living heating pad, he realized. When he opened his eyes, lifted his head a little, he realized Minho was already awake, and looking at him. Minho pasted a grin on his face that would’ve shown up in a number of sensitive people’s nightmares. Chan took only a moment to process why when he remembered his proclamation from the night before, and laughed so hard and immediate that the cat startled.
“That’s it. That’s exactly it,” Chan said, still chuckling, and getting a clumsy hand on Minho’s arm. Exactly what he wanted.
“Wow, you are really sunk,” Minho said. Judging. But not unhappy about it. “Wait here.”
Chan didn’t have much choice in the matter, as he tried to turn over so that he wasn’t quite so ungainly with every move and expression. He was still trying to rub the impression of the pillow off his face when he blinked, as Minho shoved a very familiar sketch book under his nose. He took it, though he looked up at Minho in confusion.
“All that has in it are impressions of something you couldn’t have,” Minho said, sitting back down, sprawling somehow both unselfconscious and elegant against his own pillow. “There are still pages. Maybe you ought to put something real in it.”
Chan sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, and fully made the transition to sitting. He took the pencil Minho offered, too. Not his preferred variety, but it wasn’t about that. The cat was satisfied to take up residence in Chan’s lap instead of on his ass as he sketched. He sketched Minho as he’d looked when Chan had first woken up, how he looked right then, a little lazy with a different cat attached to him. And turning the page, he sketched something else. A little more roughly. When he was done, he turned the pages back, and handed the book back to Minho.
“There,” he said.
Minho looked at his own face and form on the first page, and then second.
“It’s always just me,” Minho said, musing. “Or a cat.”
But he paused, when he got to the third page. Because Chan had drawn himself in there. Sitting cross legged just like he was right then, with Minho in front of him. But in the sketch, Minho had sat up, and leaned close. They were kissing, with the two cats caught between them and unconcerned. A future, possible thing. Not something that happened in the past, or was happening then.
Minho met his eyes, and sat up. And leaned forward. The cat by Minho grumbled, but moved, and Chan reached, cupping Minho’s jaw.
And with his mouth against Minho’s, he made that wish a reality.
***
Chan was friends with Minho’s cats. He was friends with Jisung, and the rest of Minho’s friends. He was Minho’s friend. He was Minho’s boyfriend. Minho was his. Dating apps had gone out the window. They’d spent the whole weekend after Jisung’s party at Minho’s apartment. Getting to know each other. It felt a bit like the dreams had been Chan cannonballing into the pool, and Minho grabbing a hook to fish him to safety. Because it had been his own worry that had needed rescuing. It wasn’t like Minho had looked at him and went yep, I’m going to marry that guy. They didn’t leap into living together, or promises, or any of that. It really was getting to know each other. Minho letting Chan map the contours of his face in tiny kisses. Learning the shape of his shoulders, and the strength of his thighs. Letting Chan know how it felt to be crushed into the mattress with Minho rolling on top of him and giggling like some kind of hyena at him.
It had been merely a drop, before. Impressions of a life. A life that had been full and real before Chan, and to which he’d been integrated with deliberation and purpose.
“Did you love me before we met?” Minho asked, his head resting over Chan’s heart.
“I loved—” Chan wrestled his hand out from under the covers, pulling one of Minho’s hands out with it. And bringing that hand to his face, he bit down at the very tip of Minho’s pinky finger. “I loved this much of you before I met you.”
Minho snorted, and wiped his finger off on the skin of Chan’s chest. Why Minho had gone along, somehow? It wasn’t because of the dreams. He had a bit of a stubborn streak. Independent. Chan loved that about him, too. But it meant he could’ve acknowledged what had happened, and walked away. Why? Apparently Chan had looked a bit like James Bond on the opening night at the gallery. And Minho had liked his smile. And how seriously Chan had taken things.
Well, fine then. He could take that. He liked the suit even more after the fact.
Going to Minho’s place for dinner wasn’t an uncommon occurrence by then, but walking in to not find cats greeting him was. It turned out there was a reason for that, when Minho led him into the dining area. Chan blinked at the blob on the table. It was about a foot high, and roughly in the shape of— Chan wasn’t sure what.
“What is it?” he asked, looking up, puzzled.
Minho clutched his chest like he had just had an arrow jammed into it.
“It’s a cake sculpture of you.”
Chan looked back at the blob. Okay, a human head. He could see it, when he moved slightly. It looked a bit like the Moai stones, if he was honest. There were colorful swirls on the white icing that looked like they came out of the tubes of gel decoration from the grocery store. His curls, he realized. A sculpture. Of him. But then his eyes shot up to Minho’s as reason started overcoming puzzlement. Minho was grinning.
“Now we’re even,” Minho said.
“Cake?” Chan asked.
“Yes. Sit, get a picture with your namesake. Namecake. Chancake? Whatever. Sit. Congratulations on the new show.”
Ah, that was what it was for then. It did not resemble Chan much at all, not from any angle. Maybe his nose. Minho got a picture of him in profile with it, so they knew that for sure. But Minho had made it, so that was the important part. The cake was delicious, and sweet. But so was Minho, not that he would’ve done anything but groan if Chan had tried to tell him.
There would be new art for the next showing inspired by Minho. A few cat pieces that had already sold even before the opening. One that wouldn’t be sold, for Minho’s own collection only. There were other things, too, unrelated. Even a few of Hyunjin’s paintings. Others were collections of sketches, impressions of a life happily lived. Pictures from Chan’s phone of Minho holding a mallet and chisel and looking at them like they were foreign objects. Minho’s bust would be back on display in that corner, and maybe the sketches and pictures would make people realize why it would never be sold. There was no magic inherent in the stone. More than anything, it’d been the lure that had drawn Minho into his life. It’d been Minho’s choice to stay, and Chan’s choice to keep him.
But Chan was at least a little glad there was a slight smirk on the marble lips. A bit of mischief, in the happiness. A bit of knowing. Satisfied, almost, like it knew it’d been a job well done. He’d seen that same expression on Minho’s face dozens of times. He’d had dozens more tomorrows, each of them with their own kisses, and triumphs, and trials. He’d kissed frosting from those lips, and within the week, would taste the lingering of champagne from the opening, with Minho’s hand squeezing his and drawing the worst of the stress from him. Minho wouldn’t be there that night to see the oddity of his own face in marble, but to celebrate the man he loved.
***