Work Text:
The message arrives at 11:47 on a Friday night, formatted with the confidence of a man who has never in his life doubted himself and probably isn't about to start now.
I've been thinking.
You put down your wine. When Hyunjin starts a message with that, it means he's either been staring at a canvas for six hours and has discovered the secret to human suffering, or he's three drinks in - and you already know by now he can only take one before he’s somewhere between tipsy and totalled. Given that it's Friday and the boys have the weekend off, you're placing your bets accordingly.
I'm going to send you something.
Not like that. Well. Actually like that. But also more than that.
I'm going to send you the most artistic nudes in human history. The Greeks would weep. Michelangelo would retire.
You stare at your phone for a moment. Then you type back: Hyunjin, how much have you had to drink?
One beer and a half.
One beer and a half.
Enough. You set your phone face-up on the coffee table and wait.
The first image arrives four minutes later.
You pick up your phone.
You put it down.
You pick it up again.
It is — and you want to be very precise here, because precision matters — a smear. A beautiful, abstract, completely unidentifiable smear of what might be warm beige tones against a darker background, blurred so comprehensively that it looks less like a photograph and more like someone has taken a spatula to a painting while it was still wet. There's a shape in the middle that could be a shoulder. Could be a knee. Could be a seagull.
You stare at it for a long time.
The second arrives.
This one is worse, in the sense that you can tell it was taken mid-movement, because there are multiple of him somehow, like a Futurist portrait of a man who is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. A streak of dark hair crosses the frame like a brushstroke. One hand is a long pale blur. You think you can see an ear.
Then there are three more in rapid succession — five in total, a gallery of what the Impressionists might have produced if they'd had iPhones and extremely shaky hands. One of them appears to have been taken facing the ceiling. Another has a sock in it. Somewhere in the bottom corner of the last one, you think you can see a tattoo, but the image has shaken itself so thoroughly loose from reality that you're honestly not sure you're not looking at his living room floor.
You sit with this for a moment.
Then you call him.
He picks up on the second ring, already laughing, the sound of him low and bright and a little unsteady. "Did you get them."
"I got them."
"And?"
"Hyunjin," you say, very carefully, "you look like a Picasso."
A beat of silence. Then, delighted: "Which one."
"The — the one where the face is on sideways. Both eyes on one side." You scroll back to the fourth image. "This one might also be a Monet. The one where everything is just light."
"That's my best angle."
"It's not an angle. It's a direction. A vague gesture toward the concept of you."
He's quiet for a second, and then he starts laughing properly, the real kind, the kind that means he's leaning against something because he can't hold himself upright and laugh at the same time. You wait it out with the phone pressed to your ear and something warm settling in your chest that you've stopped trying to name.
"You could have just taken a normal photo," you say, when he surfaces.
"Where's the artistry in that?"
"The artistry is being able to tell what I'm looking at. This looks like the ending of The Substance.” You pause, inhaling slowly. “Bro. Bro, I’m not sure if that’s what it is, but it looks like your dick’s coming out from under your armpit."
"You knew what you were looking at. And also: yikes. I’ve been demoted to bro!"
"I genuinely didn't. I thought number three was your hallway."
More laughter. You pull your feet up under you on the couch and watch the blurry smear of him in photo number three, and honestly - honestly - even blurred into impressionist abstraction, even motion-corrupted into a fever dream of colour and light, he's still somehow unreasonably beautiful. That's the thing about him. That's always been the thing.
"Come over," you hear yourself say.
The laughter settles. His voice drops just slightly, comfortable and warm. "Yeah?"
"Come over. I'm making a cake. There's Bailey's."
A pause. You can hear him moving. "I'm going to come over," he says, with great seriousness, "and we are going to have a very good time."
"Okay."
"I'm talking very good. My hallway will be in your hallway."
"Hyunjin, I believe you. Just take a cab."
He arrives forty minutes later, which is enough time for you to get the cake half assembled, the Bailey's measured out and sitting in a small cup on the counter while you work on something else. You hear him at the door before he knocks — a soft thump of someone who has misjudged the step, then his voice murmuring something you can't make out, then the knock itself, unhurried and a little theatrical.
When you open the door he's leaning against the frame with his coat still on and his hair doing something complicated from the wind, and he looks at you the way he always does, like you are the specific answer to a question he's been asking all night.
"The artist," you say, "arrives."
"The artist arrives," he agrees, very solemnly, and steps inside, catching you after a brief struggle with his shoes and smothering you with a somewhat sloppy, but nonetheless loving kiss. You can taste the Stella Artois on his lips and you shiver. Back home, it’s grounds for divorce, but Hyunjin is judged by Hyunjin rules.
You go back to the kitchen. He follows, shedding his coat somewhere in the hallway, already talking. Something about the cab driver, something about Jisung texting him seventeen times, something about how he genuinely believes he has a future in photography if this whole music thing doesn't work out and you're mixing and half-listening and smiling at the counter when you notice he's gone quiet.
You look up.
He's standing at the counter with the small cup in his hand and an expression of great contentment.
The small cup that had the Bailey's in it.
"That was-" you start.
"This is really good cocoa," he says.
You watch him. He watches you. Something in his face shifts slowly, like a cloud moving.
"Jinnie. My boyfriend in Christ."
"Mm?"
"That wasn't cocoa."
A long pause.
"How much was in that cup."
"Enough for a cake layer." You pause. "It was pre-measured."
He processes this with the focused attention of someone doing very serious maths. "So I've had," he says carefully, "one beer. One half beer. And now-"
"30 ml of Bailey's."
He nods once, with great dignity, and sets the cup back down. "I stand by what I said," he announces. "We're going to have a very good time."
"Of course."
"I have plans. Because… you know what comes after nudes.”
"I know." You nod.
"You do."
"I believe you completely." You start covering the bowl. "Why don't you go get ready."
He points at you. The gesture is meant to be meaningful. "I'm going to go," he says, with tremendous authority, "and take off my shirt. With intensity. And then." He pauses to locate the end of this sentence. “My pants."
"Okay," you say.
He goes down the hallway. You hear the bedroom door. You hear some shuffling. You hear him say something in Korean that sounds like it might be an annotation on his own life.
Then silence.
You finish covering the bowl. Wash your hands. Turn off the counter light.
When you get to the bedroom, he's on his stomach in the centre of your bed, shirt half-off, one arm still partway in the sleeve, face turned sideways into your pillow with the absolute boneless serenity of a man who has made his peace with things. His hair is everywhere. His mouth is slightly open.His jeans are open and bunched around his knees.
He is completely, profoundly asleep.
You stand in the doorway for a moment.
You get his arm out of the sleeve, gently. Pull his jeans off and the blanket up. He doesn't stir, just makes a small sound and presses further into the pillow, like he's settling into something he trusts entirely.
You turn off the light.
In the morning there'll be cake. In the morning he'll wake up slow and warm and squinting, and he'll be embarrassed for approximately four minutes before he finds a way to make it funny, because that's who he is, that's always who he is.
But right now it's just the dark, and him breathing, and the very faint smell of Bailey's, and the Picasso of a photo still sitting in your camera roll that you are absolutely never deleting.
You go back to finish the cake.
You're smiling the whole time.
END