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He knows those eyes from somewhere.
Or, he thinks he does. He’s going off of a feeling—not the most substantial evidence. But something nostalgic twines around his heart and constricts in a way that attraction to another man he’s seen in passing has never done to him before.
It happens within minutes of entering the fairgrounds, amongst the lights and chatter and music and bustling crowd, his only tether pulling him forward being Jisung’s hand gripping his. Face painting is the first stall, and as he stumbles too close to the face painter’s easel the same time the man turns to apply more paint, their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds.
God, he's cute, Changbin thinks. He’s got this white feline-like face paint on, little white ear hair clips to match. Wisps of black hair lightly curl in the humidity and frame his face.
But the eyes are what click. Black, glossy, unusually wide in their surprise. So bright, as if all the carnival lights marbling the night sky got caught in his gaze.
And he sees images—
black horizons broken mirrors skin just before it tears and eyes, eyes that hold —
—and then Jisung pulls him further into the crowd, where the images become nothing more than memories, or recollections, clinging to his consciousness for the rest of the fair like molasses.
And so Changbin knows it’s just a feeling but it’s a powerful one he just can’t shake even if he wanted to. He returns to the face painting stall near midnight, when the fair is coming to a close and the crowd thins. At least when this goes badly he can escape with ease.
When he’s next in line, he’s able to take a closer look at the face painter. Definitely familiar, both in memory and in reality, and it hits him—he’s spent so long worrying over where he’s seen his face that he didn’t stop to think that the guy might recognize him too. Surely they can’t possibly know each other that well, but what if he remembers Changbin’s name while Changbin can’t remember his—then it's too late, and the girl in front of him gets out of her seat to leave. The face painter looks up and meets Changbin’s eyes for the second time that night.
“So, uh, see any face paint drawings you like?” He begins. “Or I take requests, if there's something you don't see that you want.”
There's no recognition in those eyes. Changbin lets out his breath he didn't realize he was holding, but for some reason it doesn't feel like relief.
He looks at the range of sample photos on the wall. He tries to find the easiest looking one, hoping to give the face painter a break after the long night. “How about that cute pig-like animal?”
“Got it,” he says, and takes Changbin’s fair ticket.
As Changbin sits down, the face painter reaches behind him to retrieve and arrange the appropriate colors on his easel. Changbin follows the movement, the way his lithe torso extends and twists.
A man’s back exposed, silhouette bone-white against a black backdrop. The slope of his bare shoulders doesn't curve; it cuts down with the sharp, precise angles. The ground is red and seeps into the man’s feet where he stands .
“Sorry, this might be a little cold at first,” he hears the painter say. He’s back in Changbin’s space, leaning closer.
“Okay,” Changbin croaks out. He didn’t think this part of his plan through well enough. He’s aware of everything too closely, how loud he's breathing through his nose and how gently the painter tilts his jaw upwards with one hand to stabilize, the other beginning to apply the first strokes.
But it's all overwhelmed by the new memory he just recalled. Now he’s sure he hasn’t just seen those eyes—he’s memorized the whole body, once before. It’s hard to accept. He thinks he would remember hooking up with someone this beautiful.
Unless. The only other time he sees men naked are—
“Do you work out?” Changbin blurts.
The painter leans back with one eyebrow raised. He holds up his arm and dangles it limply to emphasize his point when he says, “Does it look like I do?”
“No—or I mean—-you could've had a sleeper’s build, I don't know,” Changbin flounders. The painter’s lips quirk up at the corners—that does something to Changbin’s heart, too. ”I'm a physio major, so I have an eye for these things. Usually.”
“Well, clearly your eyes are mistaken this time,” he snorts. “The heaviest thing I’ve lifted is a paint brush.”
Changbin sheepishly resigns himself back to his thoughts. Okay. Definitely haven't seen him at the gym, then.
At least from this close, Changbin can observe the painter’s face more closely. He does his best to work out what else is familiar. The humid summer night has left an oily sheen of sweat over the painter’s skin (Changbin tries not to think about what his own skin looks like right now). The white face paint stubbornly remains. There’s two circles of pink paint on each cheek for blush, black whiskers, and a black mole right under the corner of his eye.
A face so close up it becomes an entirely different object: frenzied slashes of white and silver-gray. The red has made its way upwards to where it now rolls down the cheeks in rivulets. Where two eyes should have been, a single lateral tear in the canvas blinds him.
“You know,” the painter's voice rushes in from the outside world, snapping Changbin out of his thoughts. He's stopped painting Changbin’s face again to pull back, and even with the face paint, Changbin thinks he sees the painter’s face reddening. “Most people close their eyes when someone else is this close to their face.”
“Oh,” Changbin says. He should definitely be more embarrassed about being caught staring—but the most recent image has left him reeling. He’s getting more context.
An art exhibit, then. They must've met there.
Well. Changbin considers—if he’s already been this obvious, he might as well be shameless about it. “When else do you lean in close to someone and close your eyes?”
The painter scowls, nose scrunching up adorably. “I don’t know. The dentist? Haven’t you gotten your teeth cleaned before?”
“2 times a year,” he replies smoothly. “I like to upkeep my dental hygiene for my close-eyed activities.”
The painter’s definitely blushing. Changbin’s sure of it now.
“Okay, ew. Don't close your eyes then, I don’t care,” he replies, and for a moment Changbin is worried he misread things—but then he notices how the man’s chest shakes as he tries not to laugh in between careful strokes where he’s resumed painting.
Changbin still feels like an asshole, so he says, “Sorry. It’s just, I feel like I’ve seen you from somewhere before.”
The man smirks a little at that. Changbin can feel how the painter’s retort puffs out in amusement, light and warm on his cheeks. “Hard to believe that when you're seeing me in face paint.”
“I know,” Changbin admits, and now his face is definitely flushed too. “I was kinda just going by your eyes. They look familiar.”
He removes his brush from its point of concentration on Changbin’s face and regards him curiously—Changbin’s whole face, and not just the parts of it from an artistic angle, and once he’s realized what Changbin’s realized he ducks his head down and intensely focuses on applying more paint to his brush. “I don't think I’ve seen you before,” he murmurs, attention returned to the area around Changbin’s eyebrows. “It’s a big campus, though. I could’ve run into you a while ago and not remember?”
“Yeah,” is all Changbin can say.
Self Portrait #3, Untitled. The man hunches over a weeping bathroom sink, water pooling at his charred-red ankles. His face is hidden again where he leans his forehead against a cracked mirror, too close to show a reflection. His face is hidden to everyone but himself, so close his lashes kiss the surface.
“These are all your designs, right?” Changbin asks, referring to the face paint designs surrounding the tent. It comes out rushed. The painter hums in assent, focused. “They're good.”
“They weren’t that hard, really,” the painter answers. “Any of my classmates could’ve done the same design, no problem.”
“An art major, then?” Changbin prods, expectant.
“Yeah.” He grimaces when he says it. “You know—Fine Arts. The fake major.”
“Physio is a fake major too,” Changbin offers. “I mean, besides the one anatomy class I barely passed—it’s all fitness training stuff. Not a lot going on up here.” Changbin can’t move his arms this close so he raises his eyebrows to his hairline to indicate his brain, and it's so stupid but—it works. The painter giggles and to Changbin’s devastation it's the prettiest sound he's ever heard.
“Maybe you're imagining seeing me,” the painter teases. “If there's not a lot of activity going on up there.”
The emotions are too close to the surface now. He feels his delusions cementing into conviction, too concrete, set in reality. “I would’ve remembered a face like yours,” Changbin replies.
He doesn't want to see the painter’s reaction to that. He finally closes his eyes to give them both a respite, instead focusing on the way the brush moves across his face—methodical, and effortless.
Self Portrait #4, Untitled. He’s sitting, knees drawn to his chest. Lithe arms wrap around themselves. Nails scrape away the thin skin on his shoulder blades. He raises his head, but a bare hand swipes through wet oil paint, directly across the face. His gaze is rendered skewed forever.
His eyes fly open again. “Do you use oil paint, usually? As your medium,” he presses.
The brush stills again—but instead of moving back, this time its movement immediately resumes, a little shakier and rushed.
“Almost done,” the painter murmurs. He’s avoiding eye contact—Changbin’s probably scaring the shit out of him, but the images are clearer, and he racks his brain desperately—
# 5. Atmospheric Perspective. The man’s face is a blurred dot in the distance. It’s still labeled a self-portrait.
The paint brush finally relents. The man’s turning away to hurry through clean-up.
#6. Side-profile, torso-twisting, half-a-face, eyes cast downwards, half lidded—
#7 shoulders squared facing you head-on and you can see the neck and the face and finally, the eyes, eyes that hold—
“Number seven, self portrait. Untitled. Oil on canvas.”
Hyunjin turns back and stares at him with wide eyes.
“Hwang Hyunjin?” He tests the name outloud from where he can now finally see it clearly in his head, written at the bottom of each description attached to his portraits.
“Yes,” Hyunjin says slowly. Then, a little incredulously: “That art exhibition was from over a year ago. How do you even remember something like that?
That’s an easy question, Changbin realizes—Well. Harder when you have to answer to the artist standing in front of you. Now that the memories are back, Changbin understands their duality, how he was able to forget a memory while still clinging onto the emotions it brought him.
“I think…I’ve never felt such emotion before, captured in a painting. So much—pain,” Changbin begins, watching Hyunjin’s face for any signs of discomfort, unsure of how honest he can be. But Hyunjin just listens intently, so he continues. “I remember—for weeks afterwards, when I finished my morning gym workouts, for the few seconds when I would check my figure in the mirror—I would think about how many hours you must’ve spent looking at your own body for your paintings, and I tried looking longer, to see what it felt like.”
“All day,” Hyunjin murmurs. “I had to look at my face all day. All night, sometimes.” Then, “How—how long did you last?”
“Not long,” Changbin laughs, heart twisting with the agony stored in the memory. “I would look for half a minute, tops, before my brain would snag onto my flaws and I had to look away.” Hyunjin seems more comfortable now, not ready to jump out of his seat at Changbin’s stalker-level memory capacity—so Changbin finally asks the question that’s been burning in the back of his mind from over a year ago. “Why did you make so many self portraits? So many angles and different ways of looking at yourself. It was your whole exhibit. Why…why would you if it…”
“Hurts?” Hyunjin laughs, but it’s gentle and low and tired. There’s a moment where he’s quiet, and Changbin lets him gather his thoughts. “I…I guess I want to believe the pain is worth something,” he continues quietly. “That maybe…I could face the pain, and keep looking, and one day I’d just look through it all and see…I don’t know. Something. I just haven’t found it yet, I think.”
There were two Hyunjins in Changbin’s mind up until now—Hyunjin the artist, and Hyunjin the painting. Changbin’s psyche slowly starts to meld and fill in the spaces:
Hyunjin, who had looked at himself for those few agonizing seconds a trillion times over, 7 times in several different ways, over and over and over again, and saw—Nothing. Everything. Is still looking for Something.
Or Hyunjin, who may have not seen Changbin the same way Changbin first saw him—but Changbin still felt seen.
The fair music that had been seamlessly blending into the background cuts off, and Changbin’s suddenly aware of just how quiet it’s become, the fair practically empty and the overhead lights turning off. “I haven't found that something, either,” Changbin says, even as he finds himself thinking automatically, ridiculously: I think I just found it. It’s right in front of me.
“Let me know when you do,” Hyunjin says wryly. He starts to pack up his supplies. Then, “Are you hungry?”
“No, not—oh,” oh, “I mean—yeah, you mean like, we could, together?” Changbin stutters, and Hyunjin laughs.
“Yes,” Hyunjin says. He turns back around with a little hand-held mirror and bunny ears. Changbin sees his own shocked face reflected back at him, comically rendered in hot pink with a pig nose as Hyunjin fixes the headband on his head and—they both can’t help but laugh, melting the mood into something lighter and warmer.
“We look too cute for Seven-Eleven, but—it’s midnight, and I'm starving. So.” Hyunjin tentatively holds out his hand to help Changbin up from his seat, “Wanna help me pack up this stuff to drop off at the art department first?”
“Of course,” Changbin responds. He's slow when he takes Hyunjin’s hand, interweaving trembling fingers with his. They've held a paint brush all night. They've held glass. He's known how to hold them, long before they've ever met.
“Let's go.”
1 year later
Couple’s Portrait, “Your Memory in Red”. Oil on Canvas.
Two men, heads angled towards each other, eyes meeting for the briefest of seconds, for eternity. What they see in each other's eyes is hidden from the rest of the world.
But the horizon is red. Always has been.