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Fog had settled over the endless skyline of Seoul. Tiny specks of light from faraway windows blinked lazily across the city; faded bleach-orange stars in the night, blurred by the charcoal smudges of the sky.
The real, genuine stars that were usually present at this hour were absent - tucked away behind the clouds. Overcast. They were not watching tonight.
From his position on the edge of the balcony, Woojin could barely see the roads below; pavements turned to mist and the bustling nightlife of the city had drowned away, far below the flat he was staying in. It wasn’t his own; Woojin lived rather close to the ground in the company housing, but the apartment behind him was boundless stories from the street below in a completely different building.
The flat in question belonged to Taeyong, stood to his left. A lithe silhouette in the dark. He had leaned against the frigid railings of the balcony’s edge, one arm resting along the top while the other was propped up on its elbow, slender fingers curled around a cigarette.
Every now and then, Taeyong would take a drag, holding it to his lips as it thrummed with a dim orange glow - holding the blurred windows of Seoul in his fingertips. When he would exhale, smoke would funnel from his mouth in a stream.
Woojin would watch as it seemed to curl in crescents around the air, dissipating into the grey. Becoming one with the city. Ashen flames dancing in the frozen midnight breeze.
April hadn’t been merciful to the sun, and the only warmth in the country was the flickering tip of Taeyong’s cigarette. Winter was over but the chill of its presence still curdled in the waking heart of spring.
Woojin’s eyes followed the other man’s hand, observing the way he would tap the cigarette gently between his fingers, the ash crumbling from its end.
It fell away into the void of the city below, drifting like a passing thought into the wind, far away from the bubble of their shared silence on the balcony. The only sounds were the soft puffs of breath from Taeyong as he smoked, alongside Woojin’s own quiet breathing.
With the older man’s schedule ever piled high with opportunity, with the silver sheen of hard work scribbled into every corner of his calendar, it was always hard for Woojin to find him alone.
But up here, the world was empty: void of responsibility, floating above the city on a cloud of smoke where time seemed to fall away. Where it was just them and no one else.
Woojin turned to study Taeyong’s face as he finished the drag from his cigarette. The shadows of the skyline followed the sharp plane of his jaw, burnt sienna lining the junctures of his neck.
Taeyong was a painting; oil and turpentine and the heady fumes of white spirit, every soft blend of colour, every collision between light and dark. He was chiaroscuro. He was the stun of detail, the hypnotising lights of a camera. Woojin couldn’t look away.
(Picture of “Grey”, Henry Scott Tuke, 1922)
The city lights glittered in the fading puff of smoke, gathering in neon specks of stardust across Taeyong’s skin. They smudged the paint of his body; cadmium orange, pthalo blue, mars black.
Every gleam of the faraway windows caressed the shell of Taeyong’s ear, white as lead where they glinted over his earrings. In the haze of the night, Woojin wondered how the silver studs would feel against his lips. Would they be cold? Icy with the chill of early April, carrying the last words of a winter that has since passed?
A shiver crawled its way up Woojin’s back, coursing through the live wires of his veins into the pale edges of his fingernails, catching in the reddened ridges of his knuckles. The frigid wind carried none of the comforting warmth of spring, its skeletal hands tugged at his hair, grappled at his neck; a pressing reminder of the inevitable.
It was getting late. And with every day that passed, Taeyong’s enlistment drew ever closer. They had one week left, and Woojin doubted he’d even get to see Taeyong one last time before his departure.
It seemed fitting that their final moment together would fall on his birthday.
April 8th. When the world was still waking from its hibernation, when the snow had melted but its touch lingered in the frost on the grass, on the cracking eggshells of birds nesting on high-rise roofs. When the stars arose from a wintry sleep and blinked sleepily from between the clouds. When the moon shone its soft blue light onto the warming world below.
It was always the day Woojin felt more alone than ever.
Going so long without many friends and a career left to collect dust in the basement of stardom had left Woojin hollow. He was a paintbrush in a clay pot, bristles worn down by repetitive failure. Left to rot in the dust, he was stained with reminders of what he could never be: marked by the paint of his past.
Cinnabar red. Vermillion.
Woojin was always alone, and his birthday was never an exception.
It left him reminiscing the days of his childhood, when April wasn’t so cold and unforgiving. The mild sun dappling the walls of his childhood home, golden with nostalgia. The salty tang of miyeokguk, a plastic spoon too big for his tiny fists. Cheap cakes shared with trainees from one agency after another, the dull lights of overcrowded dorms playing pretend as birthday candles.
And then he was sat with a rueful smile in front of a camera alongside two rather scrappy mascot bears. A tiny room decorated sparsely with balloons and banners. In the daze of the memory, the scent of wax and smoke from the wicks of flimsy candles was warm. It was the first time Woojin had felt like he belonged in a while: he was alone, but he was home.
Until the company was sold off to a new subsidiary, and Woojin, never allowed to settle, was moved again.
This was his first birthday at his new agency; a small, meagre branch of the much more expansive SM Entertainment. After his previous departure from the main company nearly a decade prior, it felt strange to be returning.
Much had changed about the building he had once called home. What was once familiar and teeming with the challenges of his trainee days had been painted over with something new. Lead white, lamp black. He had arrived with the blossoming chill of March, carried by uncertain footsteps into another change.
He fell into a new dawn of his journey, one he could only feel unsure would lead him in a stable direction. It had seemed like a good opportunity at the time, but lately he felt that his management had been making decisions with the sole intent of compromising the last shining dregs of his dream to sing.
(Gallery Interior II, Jason Line, 2022)
He had barely been here a month, and the little shred of hope that had peered out from behind his trampled heart had already died, curled in a cold ball on the floor of his ribcage.
Any of the faces he once knew from his trainee days hadn’t spared him a glance. The friends that once laughed with him into long nights spent dancing to the same tune for hours now stiffened when they passed in corridors, strangers in the face of forgotten days. Payne’s grey.
The hands that held his own when the particularly strict managers would berate them for slacking off, the hopeful stars in their eyes when the possibility of a debut edged closer and closer, the dejected tears that spilt into each other’s shoulders when they would eventually be cut from the final lineup.
All of it was left behind, lost in memories only Woojin remembered. He was merely a faceless shape in the hundreds of hopefuls waiting to be chosen back then. It was laughable that he expected anyone to remember him. The thought of it bought a pensive tilt to Woojin’s lips. Because nobody remembered.
Nobody except Taeyong.
Perfect in the way every leader should be. Fierce with the fluorescent fire of confidence. A protective ember burned bright in his nature, compassionate and righteous. He was vaseline glass; delicate, complex, and thrumming with radioactive energy. He was passion and creativity and everything Woojin could only wish to be.
And he remembered Woojin.
Not as the disgraced face of the industry, not as the ties that bound him. He didn’t see Woojin for the words spat by strangers on the internet, the whispers behind his back. Taeyong didn’t see him as the backhanded statement that dug his name into a grave.
Woojin may have been nothing like the shy, smiling trainee he used to be, but that desperation to prove himself was still aflame in his eyes; pinpricks of stars in the pools of his irises. Transparent orange.
Woojin wondered what exactly it was Taeyong had seen in him. Was it talent? Potential? Was it simply the need to befriend him out of pity? Or was it the urge to scrub away the stains of dirt that clung to his identity until he shone with something long since gone from his reach?
Either way, Woojin hadn’t been seen like this in a long time; no one had looked past their judgement to learn the winding map of his soul, the soft edges of his heart. But Taeyong had.
In the gentle solidity of a handshake. In quiet talks sat alone in the older’s studio. In nights spent like this on his balcony; companionship shared in the charcoal haze of cigarette smoke, under the foggy black sky.
An empty stage curated solely for them to dance amongst each other’s words. To bask in the dim glow of the moon; iridescent white and naples yellow. Manganese blue.
But it couldn’t last.
(We Two Boys Together Clinging, David Hockney, 1961)
Woojin blearily blinked the memories from his head, turning to glance back at Taeyong. The older’s hair, once brushing the top of his shoulders, was now shorn completely, buzzed down to the skin of his scalp. It made him seem every part the soldier he was about to become. He was a majestic painting of a ship, coursing through the foaming spray of waves. The fluttering expanse of its sail, the sturdy plane of its hull: Taeyong was all of it.
The languid stretch of his body as he leaned against the railings was an anchor dug into the wet sand of Woojin’s conscience. He couldn’t look away. His silhouette was the low hum of a sea shanty, drawing Woojin in until it swallowed him.
Taeyong seemed to notice, and his eyes glinted with mirth, amusement, something deep and unreadable. Burnt umber. He shifted to face Woojin, cigarette held close to the edge of his mouth.
The thick scent of smoke used to bother Woojin; he would always hurry past smokers in the street, holding his breath and scrunching his eyebrows in distaste. But it had quickly become a familiar comfort, a reminder of something so inherently Taeyong. It arrived with his presence and clung to Woojin’s clothes long after the other man had left.
It drew dark sketches into the grooves of his skin, the same way Taeyong’s eyes did when they would ghost over his frame. Woojin found it hard not to notice the intensity of his gaze; it caught fire in the soft underbelly of his heart, raising the hair on the back of his neck.
After his inevitable departure, Woojin wondered how long the scent would stay. Would it eventually part with the fibres of his clothes, washed away in suds of fabric softener and cleaning agent? The smoky perfume of Taeyong’s company soon to be lost in the days left for Woojin to count until his return.
“What are you thinking about?”
Taeyong’s voice broke the silence; the question was low, murmured like poetry into the space between them. The sentence carried with it that heady scent of ash; birthday candles, a cigarette between slender fingers, silver earrings. Taeyong’s lips.
And how was Woojin supposed to put it all into words?
The flickering memories of his journey, dim and buzzing like the broken ceiling lights of old dormitories, the budding anxiety for the future. How he’ll miss Taeyong once he leaves for the sea. The fear that this fleeting night between them would become just another stain on the paintbrush, something that the older would forget in favour of the crashing waves, that only Woojin would remember.
“Don’t worry about it.”
That was all Woojin could say. The words tumbled awkwardly from his mouth; too quiet in all the wrong places and cracking at the last two syllables. Woojin cringed internally, his spine grew stiff and his knuckles turned white where he gripped the railings.
As Woojin expected, the silence returned. It filled the air between them, cloying ever more so than the smoke curling from Taeyong’s cigarette. He wanted to look away from the older, to hide behind that same shell of himself he always did. To bury any doubt, any vulnerability. Entomb it all in the plastered-up cracks in his heart.
But he couldn’t.
Woojin knew that Taeyong could see everything. All of that fear and anxiety, that shaking train of his past and the way it hurtled through his very soul. Woojin felt as if its wheels had veered off course, and could only helplessly watch as the train barreled from his tongue with his words and vanished into the radiant void of Taeyong’s eyes.
He couldn’t hide anymore, and Taeyong knew it.
But the older didn’t pry.
He just stared at Woojin, a mixture of curiosity and something knowing. He took one final drag of the cigarette, never breaking eye contact with the younger. There was a certain physicality to the way he moved; slow and deliberate, like a statue come to life. As if he were paint on a canvas, mixing and moulding himself into his very own work of art. As if movement itself was a means of creation.
(XXX-Military, Yongseok Oh, 2015)
“I’m sorry.”
The expression left Taeyong’s lips with a ripple of smoke, the edges of it brushing against Woojin’s face like loving fingertips.
Woojin’s eyes widened slightly, startled by the sudden apology. Brows furrowed, he asked anxiously in return;
“What for? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“For leaving so soon. I’m sorry that we couldn’t get to know each other properly before I enlist. It’s just sad that we couldn’t have spent more time together. Especially on your birthday.”
Taeyong spoke with a smooth, considerate cadence, as if every word was another twig in the nest of a mother bird, built together so perfectly to shelter Woojin in his warmth.
This side of Taeyong was different from the laid-back, passionate leader who carried the industry on his back. It was the compassion of a heart that cared for many; that had raised them and loved them through every obstacle. The softness of a life spent penning lyrics and humming sweet nothings to fish through the glass walls of their tank. The burn of smoke making its home in the folds of a baggy t-shirt.
A true leader. One who saw people for the light inside of them and took them under his wings.
He spoke to Woojin as if he was one of them, and Woojin didn’t know why.
“You don’t need to be sorry for that.” The younger spoke carefully, trying to steady his voice. “I’m happy that we can see each other at all, I understand how busy you get. And besides, we can always stay in touch over the phone. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Taeyong huffed out a sigh, fixing Woojin with a somewhat concerned look. The dark plumes of the clouds above their heads reflected in the furrow of his brows, in the spilled ink of his gaze. Woojin shifted under the intensity of his stare, suddenly conscious of how little he’d managed to hide the self-depreciating tone of his voice.
It was as if every time Taeyong stood beside him, speaking lowly into the filter of his cigarette and brushing their shoulders together in the dark, Woojin felt his carefully curated mask begin to crack and unravel, revealing the delicate inner workings of his heart. The shield of his ribs was no longer enough to hide behind.
“But I do worry.” Taeyong murmured, barely above a whisper. His words were nearly lost in the midnight fog, floating away into the sky and etching themselves into the craters of the moon. Woojin strained to hear them, leaning closer as Taeyong continued.
“I don’t want you to be alone again.”
Woojin felt his breath hitch in his throat, and his grip on the railing became impossibly tighter. He felt too exposed in the cold night air, like a deer locking eyes with its hunter. Such simple words held too much meaning, and Woojin had to look away, fixing his gaze on the cityscape before them.
It must have taken Woojin too long to think of a response, because a hand on his jaw had snapped him out of his reverie. Slender fingers tilted his head around so that he was looking Taeyong directly in the eyes.
The older’s hand was held underneath his chin, gripping the soft edges of his jaw; gentle but firm enough that Woojin couldn’t withdraw from his grasp. His body moved instinctively, shifting to face Taeyong, own hands releasing from the cold railing of the balcony.
He was closer than before, leaning into Woojin’s space and falling seamlessly into orbit around him. The cigarette was forgotten, dangling from his spare hand.
They were the same height, eye to eye, matched together so intricately. It was too intimate, the urban reaches of Seoul around them shrinking into their bubble. It was as if Woojin was the clay Taeyong had chosen to sculpt, malleable and pliant under his hands. To become something purely of Taeyong’s creation.
It seemed Taeyong was still waiting for Woojin to respond. Anything to reassure him that the younger would be fine. That he would attempt to thrive in a company that was actively chasing him into his downfall. That he would make connections in an agency that had taken his name at face value.
That he wouldn’t be alone.
But Woojin didn’t know what to say. Doubt clouded the moonlight in his eyes, pencilled a crease into his forehead. He wasn’t certain that his moment in the sun would come, that he would no longer be isolated in the bubbling gut of stardom, staring up through its throat at the stars above.
He could only stare at Taeyong, any resolve left in his expression dissolving into the wind, falling away into the misty streets below. Nothing he could say would communicate to Taeyong that he didn’t see any point in trying anymore. That he had failed and been failed too many times. He would never be able to clean the stains from his canvas. The orange city lights were the closest he would get to seeing stars. The closest he would get to becoming one.
Woojin was doomed from the start, muddied by a narrative spilled from the keyboards of strangers.
In the time Taeyong was gone, absolutely nothing would have changed.
And all he could do was accept it.
He searched Taeyong’s face, as if it held some kind of answer. As if the distant glow of windows were a halo of gold leaf embossed around his head. The frail, beaten-down part of him wanted nothing more than to just give up. To give out completely, collapse into the sanctuary of Taeyong’s arms and hide there forever. To become a tapestry of oil and colour, woven into the painting that was Taeyong’s life.
He couldn’t have the stars but maybe, just maybe, he could have Taeyong.
That would be enough.
Taeyong’s fingers soothed the skin against Woojin’s jaw, pressing against the soft angle of the bone. He seemed to study him for a moment, how the haze of the city painted his skin; Woojin wondered what colours Taeyong saw in him.
Was he the watery bloom of ultramarine, clouded and blue? Did the honeyed warmth of sepia swim in his irises? Or was he still that broken paintbrush, tainted with the muddied hue of painful memories spat into his bristles?
(Figures In A Landscape, Francis Bacon, 1956)
Woojin didn’t know. But before he could further ponder on such a thought, Taeyong had pulled him into a hug, silencing his anxious mulling.
It was a tight hold; Taeyong had discarded the cigarette into his ashtray, using both hands to press Woojin firmly into his embrace. Their bodies were flush against each other, and Taeyong had wrapped his arms gently around Woojin’s shoulders. In the bitter chill of the night, his touch was warm; it was the buzzing heat of electricity, alight in every point of contact between them.
Woojin felt the tension slowly bleeding out of him, seeping from his bones like the remnants of rain dripping from an awning. Resigned, he let Taeyong carry it all, melting into his arms. Woojin clung to the back of Taeyong’s shirt, gripping the fabric as if letting go would send him crashing into the traffic below.
Taeyong moved one hand from where it rested at Woojin’s shoulder, lifting it to cradle the back of his head and pressing Woojin’s face into the juncture of his neck. His fingers curled into the younger’s hair, a comforting gesture.
From where Woojin was hidden in Taeyong’s collar, the spiced fragrance of the older’s perfume enveloped his senses, dizzying where it mingled with the smoke clinging to his t-shirt. With every breath he took in Taeyong’s hold, it only grew more intoxicating.
Woojin closed his eyes, overcome with a strange, desperate urge to beg Taeyong to stay, that his military service could wait. That they could stand side-by-side in this balcony forever.
But he didn’t, instead choosing to tighten his hold on the older. A shipping dock helpless to do nothing but watch as the boat turns its back, drifting away into the watercolour blur of the sea. No eyes to watch the clock’s hands tick or the calendar turn its pages. Woojin would be alone again.
But not for tonight.
He felt Taeyong pull away from the hug, releasing Woojin from his hold. His hands fell to the curve of Woojin’s waist, resting gently against his sides. There was a questioning look in his eyes; something deep and full, yearning in the way a canvas calls to its paintbrush. It was heavy and dark, and yet it was illuminated, swimming with tiny lights, orange and white. The city itself seemed to live in his eyes. The horizon parted at his eyelids and moonlight hung from his lashes.
But when did the city get so close?
When did the skyscrapers fall into place so near to his face? The glow of the windows, once distant pinpricks in the concrete expanse of Seoul, now shone their light onto Woojin’s skin. For a moment, he could see into each one; hundreds of lives intertwined, inky silhouettes warping together in the daze of Taeyong’s eyes.
Lamp black.
They were so close that Woojin could feel Taeyong’s breath against his face, laced with that heady scent of smoke; it saturated every fibre of his being, down to the curl of his lashes, the pores of his skin. Woojin wanted to drink it up, breathe him in until he drowned in the ash. Until he was submerged in Taeyong completely, sinking into the sand of his soul. An anchor chained to his ship.
One of Taeyong’s hands released its hold from his waist, instead coming up to rest at Woojin’s chin, the pad of his thumb pressing gently against his bottom lip. The touch of it sent a shiver coursing through Woojin’s spine, and his mouth parted involuntarily as the older’s thumb brushed along the soft expanse of his lip.
“Can I kiss you?”
The question hung heavy in the air between them; dizzying in the chill of the wind, burning in the pressure of Taeyong’s thumb against Woojin’s mouth, the cradle of his hand against Woojin’s chin. Previously frigid with fog, the April night suddenly grew hotter, thawing at the residue of winter’s departure. Spring had burst to life in the wake of Taeyong’s touch.
Woojin could only nod. His words had left him, floating away from their home in his head into the depths of Taeyong’s eyes. His heartbeat thrummed in his chest, beating its wings at his ribcage, dazed and desperate.
He was a moth, lured to the lights in Taeyong’s gaze. The stars above were merely the blackened ends of matchsticks in comparison; their dim orange glow was smothered by his radiance.
Slowly, Taeyong closed the space between them, lips meeting Woojin’s in a kiss, feather-light. His hand moved from Woojin’s chin into a firm hold on the side of his neck, thumbing at the curve of his jaw. Fire seemed to rush through Woojin’s blood: scarlet lake, burning through his veins. Alive.
The kiss started softly; closed-lipped, slow and languid. Taeyong kissed Woojin like he was fragile, as if he were a delicate ornament, cracks patched together with masking tape. As if he would fall apart at the slightest touch.
Maybe Woojin wanted to fall apart. Maybe he wanted Taeyong to ruin him: to shatter his glass heart with the press of his lips, break apart his hollow soul with the shape of his hands.
In one swift motion, Taeyong had turned their bodies so that he had Woojin’s back pressed into the balcony railings, caging him in his hold. All while never breaking the kiss. Heat surged in the air between them, colours swarmed in the void behind Woojin’s eyelids.
Taeyong deepened the kiss, tongue tracing the plush outline of Woojin’s bottom lip. Biting back a whimper, Woojin parted his lips, welcoming the slide of Taeyong’s mouth against his own. There was something intense about the way Taeyong kissed him: desire seemed to drip from his very being, aflame with a yearning Woojin had only felt in the dark, secret corners of his dreams. His lips tasted of smoke: fire and ash bloomed on his tongue, charcoal sketches of cigarettes exhaled into Woojin’s mouth. He was a dark cloud, volcanic and fervent, and Woojin wanted to devour him.
The older kissed Woojin as if he were an unfinished painting, and every touch of their lips was caught in the details; fine brushwork, the deepest shadows, the brightest highlights. Woojin was merely Taeyong’s underpainting, submitting to his artistry. Walnut oil, turpentine, the bleed of paint against canvas.
Trembling in Taeyong’s hold, Woojin’s hands were shaky where they grasped at his shirt. Taeyong’s teeth bit down into the younger’s bottom lip, and Woojin couldn’t suppress the moan that escaped him. That shameful, thirsting part of him hoped that the imprint of his canines would bruise. A myriad of colour against the swell of his lips: tyrian purple, venetian red, deep violet, permanent carmine. Would it be beautiful? A stain on that broken paintbrush that Woojin would welcome instead of hide?
Woojin kissed back with a fervor; returning the desperate hunger that Taeyong had led with. If this was to be their last meeting until the older’s discharge from the navy, then Woojin wanted it to last. He wanted it to become something eternal, to mark the canvas of their lives forever. He wanted Taeyong to remember him. To remember the Woojin of nights spent writing under fluorescent studio lights, of painted skin, kiss-swollen lips, the shower of starlight in his eyes.
Eventually, their heated kisses slowed, became something delicate and languid, soft as the fall of sand in an hourglass. The raging fire between them dimmed to a flickering ember; the blackened tip of Taeyong’s discarded cigarette. They pulled apart, breath mingling in the cold air between them.
Taeyong’s hand remained in its hold against the side of Woojin’s throat, and he used it to keep the other man close, pressing their foreheads together. His fingers threaded their way through the short hair at the nape of Woojin’s neck, playing lightly amongst the inky strands.
The sounds of the city below had settled, falling asleep under the pale lustre of the moon. Each blinking star had closed its eyes, now blanketed by the dark clouds. All that remained was the pair’s quiet breathing, the rise and fall of their chests in tandem.
Despite the biting chill of the April wind, Woojin’s skin was flushed, hot to the touch. A beautiful red bloomed throughout his body, colouring his face and fading down the column of his neck. It wasn’t the harsh, noxious red of pain long since passed. It was new and welcome and flooded his skin with a warmth he wanted to keep. Quinacridone red.
But in the end, it was still cold outside.
Rubbing his thumb against Woojin’s jaw once more, Taeyong smiled softly at him.
“Let’s head inside now.”
And Woojin nodded, letting Taeyong reach for his hand, lacing their fingers together in the dark.
He turned to follow Taeyong into his flat. To fall asleep beside him in a monochrome work of art, curled together in the centre of their canvas. Encased in the mid-tones. Light and shadow.
Lead white, lamp black.