Your Lips Are My Muse
ʚ Title: Your Lips Are My Muse for everyone ♡
ʚ Pairing(s): Kai/Kyungsoo
ʚ Rating: PG-13 for language
ʚ Word Count: 3.5k
ʚ Summary: illogicalities of infatuations aside, Kyungsoo finds he still really needs him anyway.
ʚ Message for your recipient/author note: i am a womping piece of failure im sure you didn't have anything like this in mind for your prompt but i really really hope you still like it!!
Kyungsoo had seen these bricks once before, just before the sunrise and after he’d left the bar, shuffling his way to the apartment. Lingering behind were the eyes of the streets, watching him-waiting to catch him for the moment his legs tripped, and it was the red concrete that had stood by as the money in his pockets were forcefully evacuated to weigh down another’s. Back then Kyungsoo hadn’t felt any pain, could barely even register the ground beneath his feet. Now the bricks were the backdrop to all his thoughts. A painting created at the break of dawn.
“It’s a wall,” his roommate stated, “bricks.” Not at all impressed. Kyungsoo smirked faintly.
Chanyeol stood. Probably measuring about 2 metres, Kyungsoo thought. His roommate squinted, tilted his head, and moved one-two, one-two, like a novice in an introductory ballroom dance class, trying to find the deeper meaning.
“Bricks.” Kyungsoo shrank into the covers as the windows, opened for his roommate’s morning smoke, allowed the first breath of winter to waft in. “Exactly what you see there.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope.”
“Expected nothing less from Picasso.”
Kyungsoo laughed, a bit.
No one noticed the first time he entered the alleyway. He remembered the red bricks his fingers tried to grip, the dim lights hanging off a street post and the man’s tight grip on his mouth and arm, dragging him to the back of the building. The gate he slammed open with his back was now broken, leaving the hinge creaking as the wind rushed by.
The first time, the images were distorted; his eyes couldn’t follow the flow. Now, the second time, he absorbed everything, and the scene quickly overwhelmed him, bits and details suddenly jumping forth and jamming themselves together to repair his incomplete picture. Kyungsoo stopped, eyes shutting briefly as he took a deep breath, before regaining his calm and moving forward again.
The police tape was still here, yellow strips of plastic standing as a barrier to forbid his entry. The barrier divided the scene between the victim’s point of view from the passing pedestrians that would momentarily occupy the entryway of the alley over and over again, with cleaner precision than Kyungsoo could find coincidental. He crossed this tape without a thought, one leg up, the other leg over, and crouched in the center of the shrubs now grown waist high to pull out his sketchbook and pencil.
He hunched, his shoulders cropped forward, spine bent, and he began to scratch his way across the fresh page of paper cradled in his left arm. Scribbles, sketches, they looked the same to him, if they were his. Reds and greens and browns and that goddamn yellow dominated the scene, but he never coloured his sketches, and he won’t start now. This, especially, this deserved only black and white.
His breathing was slow, even, but his hand was sketching fast. The trees were quiet to make room for the pencil grinding against the paper and the few crows that had circled down to keep him company, cawing at each other for elbow room. Eventually Kyungsoo felt his muscles stiffen, and he arched up and pulled his elbows backwards until his shoulder blades touched, rustling the bush in the process.
A few black feathered faces turned, then hopped away, round the corner deeper into the alley. Their business, it seemed, was there.
The pencil scratched all over the page until shadows, shapes, an image, emerged from the depths of smudge and pulp. This was how he worked, unrelenting, never erasing. The way he saw it, life didn’t leave you room to erase your fuck-ups, and your artwork deserved no less.
He glanced at the scene and then back at his work. It looked nothing alike.
It satisfied him, because he understood that something was missing.
In his sketch the yellow lines wrapped around the trees, creating a box, an enclosed space for the crime scene which played out Kyungsoo’s memory. After what had happened, this place had become the spot where numerous of the city’s homeless were suddenly, continuously, and inexplicably found starved or frozen or beaten. More crudely, it was now notorious as a dump for the dead, a septic tank for all the shit this city had to offer.
It had been over a month, yet the scene played in his mind endlessly.
Kyungsoo stayed, and he kept quiet.
And that was when a man staggered in, wheezing like the dying.
It was another homeless, unmistakably so-shaggy overgrown hair, fuzz on the upper lip, clothes that went beyond being simply second-hand. Tattered blue windbreaker, blue jeans, white shirt. Kyungsoo knew if the man took three mores steps he’d probably reek the air foul with eau de souring garbage. He looked empty, someone dreamt for days, a dead man.
“I’m looking for my wallet,” the man said.
The granite at the tip of Kyungsoo’s pencil shattered in his grip. Something about this one had every muscle in Kyungsoo’s body drawn tight and it unsettled him all the more that he didn’t understand why. “I haven’t seen it,” he replied, and he forced his voice out steady, calm as pond water.
“Who’s there?” a voice shouted, hidden in the zig-zags of the fire escapes above.
The presence of a third party revived Kyungsoo. He inhaled sharply-his first real breath since the man had arrived-and shoved himself up on frozen legs, booking it out of there without looking back.
“You went to the crime scene to draw.”
“Yes.”
“The place where you almost got raped.”
“No.”
“Wait. What happened?” Chanyeol interrupted.
Sehun glanced over to where Chanyeol sat dwarfing Kyungsoo’s stool like an eighth-grader in a kindergartener’s seat. “A man dragged Kyungsoo-here,” Sehun pointed at the sketchpad, and he threw his eyes to Kyungsoo’s direction before starting again, “to the back of a building and stuck his hands in Kyungsoo’s pants.”
Kyungsoo stalked off to the kitchen, Chanyeol’s laughter ringing throughout the studio.
“I wasn’t raped. I was mugged.” Kyungsoo said, rummaging through his fridge and coming back with three bottles of water.
“Running back to the danger zone. By God, what would your poor mother say,” Chanyeol deadpanned.
“Promise you won’t go back there.” Sehun spun the chair around and braked short to face Kyungsoo, crossing his ankles round the base cylinder. He leaned forward until his elbow was digging into the bit of his thigh just above his knee. The serious look on his face didn’t change as he balanced his chin on his fist.
“I promise. Just stop moving.”
They worked another three hours after that, Kyungsoo drawing, Sehun unmoving, Chanyeol lazing around on the couch and swinging his sock-clad feet like twin metronomes on the armrest as he played jazz and blues records on his thrift-shop gramophone. This was why Kyungsoo liked their company when drawing; they respected his work, and you would never catch them uttering a breath until Kyungsoo said so.
“I’m done.”
Kyungsoo massaged the back of his shoulder as Sehun and Chanyeol get up to crowd his shoulders. Chanyeol whistled while Sehun stared. “I look like me,” Sehun remarked.
“You should.”
“It’s really good. I can’t find the words to describe it. Your mother would be proud.”
“Thanks,” Kyungsoo said, carefully. He wasn’t satisfied.
The third time he came, the yellow strips surrounding the premise were gone, and there were even more crows hopping around and making a ruckus than before. Now, he drew the scene again with the police tape etched in from memory. Now, he drew scene with a figure streaked and watered down in the far corner, almost completely shrouded in the hues of four a.m., hunched in on himself and recoiling from the center point of the scene, the spot where all the action had taken place.
It was only after he finished, taking the thing in in its entirety, that Kyungsoo stared at his own drawing, blinking, stunned. He’d never noticed before.
“Oh.”
There was another man in that scene.
Someone else had been there.
Kyungsoo hadn’t even noticed him. He was too busy to notice, too preoccupied with the stranger already up in his face and pining him up, patting him down. The stranger in the back had melted right in with the scene. Only now Kyungsoo saw him, really saw him, a man who had collapsed ten feet away to watch completely immobile as Kyungsoo was denied the right of his autonomy for two earth-shattering minutes.
He kept going back, and he drew again, and again, and again. Until the details were runny around the edges, until the bricks became more intimate to him than a lover, until the crumpled creature bore a tattered blue windbreaker and blue jeans and a white shirt.
Kyungsoo exhaled, hard.
A couple of girls were peeking round the corner of the building as Kyungsoo approached.
“Do we call the police?”
“I don’t think he was dead.”
“Are you sure?”
Kyungsoo walked round them and headed straight until saw the man they were talking about, the man lying half atop the shrubs and weeds as if they were his bed. The man didn’t notice him until Kyungsoo was standing right above him, and then he rolled onto his stomach, reaching for a paper cup frayed around the edges that stood poised nearby.
His eyes scanned Kyungsoo as he said, “Spare some change?”
Kyungsoo pulled out his wallet, face hardened, and dropped it into the cup.
The man gave him a strange stare. “I don’t need all of this. Just your money is fine.”
“Of course. That’s why you had your friend take my whole wallet last time, right? It’s okay, really,” Kyungsoo said, holding one hand up to stop the man as he tried to sit up with a shock, “sell it, burn it. Do whatever you want with it. Whatever you did last time. After all, you must be desperate, if you hired someone else to do the job you couldn’t?”
The man stared up at him, speechless. Kyungsoo turned sharply on his heel and walked away.
“You dropped your entire wallet,” his mother repeated slowly, “in a homeless man’s paper cup.”
Kyungsoo pinched at the inner corners of his eyes, sighing harshly into the receiver. “Mother, I insist that you don’t worry about this. I didn’t have anything important in there anyway.”
“Your credit cards?”
“I mean nothing like my social insurance. I can cancel credit cards.”
His mother sighed, too, although much softer. “Honey. I wish you’d stop gallivanting for trouble.”
“Mom, I’m twenty-”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ve always had a knack for...crazy, exciting things, but it will get you in trouble if you don’t watch for yourself. Will you do this, for the sake of saving me a headache?”
“Mom,” Kyungsoo said gently. “Turn off the TV. Don’t watch the news for a while. I promise you’ll feel better.”
He hung up, then stared at his laptop screen, at his record of credit card usage. It’s been eight days since he gave away his wallet. But there was nothing here to show for it.
For the first time Kyungsoo doesn’t come to draw. He checks along the brick wall, kicks the shrubs around a little in an attempt to find contact with soft flesh. It takes the umpteenth try before his efforts are rewarded with a groan.
“Are you fucking mocking me?” Kyungsoo spat.
A tired, tan face emerges from the grass and leaves, like an urban-decay version of a dryad. “What.”
“Did you just burn it in a barrel or something one night for warmth?”
It took a second for the boy to catch on. “I haven’t used it. I threw it away.”
“You threw it away.”
“You think I don’t remember you?” The boy’s voice became strained. “The man, from before, he was a friend. I was starving and afraid. He just acted on his own. I didn’t tell him to do it. I haven’t forgotten since.”
“Are you telling me you’re too guilt-ridden to take what I’ve given to you?”
“You were trying to hurt me. That was a slap to the fucking face. It still stings.”
Kyungsoo took a moment to study his face, his first, and was promptly taken aback. The more he looked the more the boy stopped being the hunched blue figure in the corner of his drawings. This boy, gaunt, with his dark circles, his cracked, dry mouth, his dirtied skin and tired eyes and long greasy hair, was disgusting and filthy and inherently beautiful.
Kyungsoo pressed his lips together tightly, leaning back. “Then I’m satisfied,” he said curtly, and he left.
It was probably the fattest lie he’d ever told.
“Fucking Jesus,” Kyungsoo cursed, pacing his apartment. “Shit, fucking, fuck.”
He had to be an idiot. He had to be. What else would explain this...this...completely stupid train of thought he was having?
He had Sehun and Chanyeol. He had Sehun and Chanyeol for friends, Sehun with his lithe wiry frame and his dyed blond hair like lion’s mane and his dainty pink mouth, Chanyeol with his firm muscled limbs and round childish eyes and wonderfully shaped ears, both of them tall, both of them attractive beyond any artist’s dream, both of them constant, willing subjects. For each of his two hands Kyungsoo had crown jewels to admire and cradle in his palms, in artistic purposes.
And then there was that kid, that stupid kid who had other people do his dirty work and thought he still had the face to turn his nose up at an offering that could very well save his stupid insignificant little life. It made Kyungsoo so goddamn angry, because he was helpless to the very plain fact that he, needed, him.
The tables have turned, and Kyungsoo was angry, but he wasn’t stupid. He’s going to take what he needed.
He needed a definite answer that must be a yes.
He tried to think of ways to convince the boy. Hey, do you want to be my model? I can make you look like you. A camera can do that.
Hey, do you want to be my model? I can pay you. But Kyungsoo was a student himself, surviving off a government loan for school.
Hey, do you want to be my model? I have instant ramen. Genius.
Maybe he could play the pitiful backstory card. Kyungsoo has never been one to spew woes with the intention of gaining sympathy, and honestly it was selfish to try and induce compassion from a man who probably hasn’t slept in a real bed for months. But, on the other hand, Kyungsoo wasn’t past being selfish.
There was also all sorts of issues that arose when inviting a homeless stranger who once got someone bigger than him to mug you into your apartment, but Kyungsoo was going to ignore those.
“Hey!” When Chanyeol runs, he stampedes, and Kyungsoo sighed as the floorboards thundered. Pretty, but not graceful. “Kyungsoo, I need your help!”
Kyungsoo turned, hoping Chanyeol wouldn’t recognize the alleyway he was standing in front of. “What?” he asked. “How did you even find me here?”
“Not the issue here. Sehun’s sick. Cook for him.” Chanyeol and Sehun have gotten it in their heads that Kyungsoo’s cooking has preternatural healing powers when in reality they’ve just never seen Kyungsoo mix ground-up painkillers into their congee.
“How sick is he?”
“Well, it could be worse.”
“It literally could not be worse,” Kyungsoo corrected promptly, deadpan. “Oh my god. Your snot is green. And-I’m gonna throw up. Go to the hospital.”
“I’m just gonna be stuck in the waiting area for five goddamn hours in some crappy chair instead of resting in bed. I’ll tough it. It’s not that bad.”
Kyungsoo looked over at Chanyeol with a raised eyebrow, disbelieving. Chanyeol shrugged in response.
“Look, I’ve got a paper due, honestly. I can’t look after you.”
“When’s it due?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How much have you done?”
“...A bit.”
Sehun groaned.
“And I’ve got graveyard shift in two hours,” Chanyeol said apologetically. “Sorry man.”
“Can one of you at least run by the drugstore for me if you’re not going to coddle me and nurse me back to health?”
“I’m not coddling you. I don’t wanna be five feet near you.”
“Alright, fuck off, Chanyeol.” Sehun looked up with atypical puppy eyes. “Kyungsoo-hyung?”
Kyungsoo sighed. What was another half an hour wasted before his essay deadline.
He didn’t pay too much attention to the alleyway, on his way to the pharmacy.
Sure, it was on his mind. It was impossible not to be. Whether he wanted to or not Kyungsoo pictured the boy curled in on himself in the brush, hunched against the evening cold, beating off the one or two crows still hanging around who probably thought him dying.
It was only on his way back, plastic bag weighed down with cough syrup and sinus pills and lemon tea and hot packs, that the idea hit Kyungsoo.
It was fucking crazy even for him, but all the same Kyungsoo made quick work of weaving down the alleyway, the shopping bag hitting his leg repeatedly and twisting round in his grip.
“Kid!” Kyungsoo called. An even stupider idea, making himself known in a quiet alleyway at night. He wondered if he had a subconscious death wish. “Kid! It’s me!”
“Kid” currently didn’t have a name in Kyungsoo’s book so he wasn’t sure how successful this was going to be. Kyungsoo wondered why it never occurred to him to ask for his name, this idiot who’s caused him so much trouble while he just sat all the while like a stupid dead log. A name would heat the fires of his annoyance nicely. Something to brood at while he swears justice.
There was a rustle, and Kyungsoo whipped around, immediately falling silent. from around the corner of the building, a head slowly poked out to peek.
“I thought that was you,” the boy said.
It was too dark to see him well, so Kyungsoo took a step forward. “My friend is sick,” he said. “I can’t take care of him. I need you to do it for me.”
Surprise registered in the boy’s shadowy form. He was still for a while. “Why?”
“Because you owe me, you little prick,” Kyungsoo responded. “And I won’t pretend like I haven’t been waiting for this.”
In retrospect, Jongin will laugh.
“Okay,” the boy agreed breathily, and Kyungsoo, for the first time, felt satisfied.
The first thing Sehun said, somehow understanding at once, was “Your mother. Is going. To skin you.” Then, after Kyungsoo’s threatened to rip his tongue out if he tries, was
“Let him shower first.”
Kyungsoo let him.
“Hyung,” Sehun said, eyelids drooping, “I’m going to die because of you.”
“The world awaits with baited breath.”
“You abandon me and then pick up your homeless boy crush to watch me instead.”
“I’m so sorry that general practitioners are not commonly found operating in back-ghetto alleyways.”
“You. And you forgot the chocolate pudding.”
“You deserve a homeless man doctor, you dumbass.”
All banter ceased the second the boy emerged from the shower. He was the closest in Sehun to height and so ended up in his clean clothes. Kyungsoo very clearly assured him that he’s welcome to whatever in the fridge because he really couldn’t use his attention to entertain anything other than his essay anymore, and without listening to any further snark from Sehun he retreated to his bedroom and pointedly slammed the door shut.
The essay, as it turned out, wasn’t all too bad, or maybe Kyungsoo was just finally getting the hand of spewing bullshit. It was finished in three hours. He finally emerged from his bedroom to reward himself with a can of sprite, not entirely sure what to expect given the time lapse and the scene he’d left behind.
Sehun was fast asleep on the couch, coddled in blankets and the television turned on to his favourite movie. The boy was on the floor, sitting cross-legged and rapt, with the dishes for about half of the fridge’s contents lying empty before him on the coffee table. He was still nibbling on some bean sprouts and Kyungsoo almost snorted.
When he approached, sprite can in hand and voice soft with the question “Can I paint you?”, the boy looked up and gave him a small smile.
Studio lights never looked as good as daylight, but Kyungsoo positioned and shone as many of them and as perfectly as he possibly could while the boy tried to get comfortable in the stool. He brought out his biggest canvas, every brush, every colour palette, all his tools. He couldn’t remember the last time he was ever this happy.
“I was wondering if you were an artist,” the boy said, sitting primly with hands folded delicately in his lap, while Kyungsoo began with his pencil. “Maybe we should wait. I’m probably bloated.”
In reality he was emaciated, probably malnourished, his hair now clean but dull and lacking of softness or shine, his skin blotchy, his eyes tired. Kyungsoo’s eyes drank it all in, buzzed, sated.
“You’re fine. Really.”
“I ate a lot.”
“I noticed.”
Kyungsoo carefully stroked in the shadow of his calf. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Jongin. I’m Kim Jongin.”
“Kim Jongin,” Kyungsoo repeated, loud and sturdy. “Will you be my model?”
There was no follow-up, no promises of talent or money or any other kind of payoff. But Jongin, inexplicably, smiled like Kyungsoo had just offered him the sun. “I was hoping you’d ask that.”
Kyungsoo smiled back.
ʚ Pairing(s): Kai/Kyungsoo
ʚ Rating: PG-13 for language
ʚ Word Count: 3.5k
ʚ Summary: illogicalities of infatuations aside, Kyungsoo finds he still really needs him anyway.
ʚ Message for your recipient/author note: i am a womping piece of failure im sure you didn't have anything like this in mind for your prompt but i really really hope you still like it!!
Kyungsoo had seen these bricks once before, just before the sunrise and after he’d left the bar, shuffling his way to the apartment. Lingering behind were the eyes of the streets, watching him-waiting to catch him for the moment his legs tripped, and it was the red concrete that had stood by as the money in his pockets were forcefully evacuated to weigh down another’s. Back then Kyungsoo hadn’t felt any pain, could barely even register the ground beneath his feet. Now the bricks were the backdrop to all his thoughts. A painting created at the break of dawn.
“It’s a wall,” his roommate stated, “bricks.” Not at all impressed. Kyungsoo smirked faintly.
Chanyeol stood. Probably measuring about 2 metres, Kyungsoo thought. His roommate squinted, tilted his head, and moved one-two, one-two, like a novice in an introductory ballroom dance class, trying to find the deeper meaning.
“Bricks.” Kyungsoo shrank into the covers as the windows, opened for his roommate’s morning smoke, allowed the first breath of winter to waft in. “Exactly what you see there.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope.”
“Expected nothing less from Picasso.”
Kyungsoo laughed, a bit.
No one noticed the first time he entered the alleyway. He remembered the red bricks his fingers tried to grip, the dim lights hanging off a street post and the man’s tight grip on his mouth and arm, dragging him to the back of the building. The gate he slammed open with his back was now broken, leaving the hinge creaking as the wind rushed by.
The first time, the images were distorted; his eyes couldn’t follow the flow. Now, the second time, he absorbed everything, and the scene quickly overwhelmed him, bits and details suddenly jumping forth and jamming themselves together to repair his incomplete picture. Kyungsoo stopped, eyes shutting briefly as he took a deep breath, before regaining his calm and moving forward again.
The police tape was still here, yellow strips of plastic standing as a barrier to forbid his entry. The barrier divided the scene between the victim’s point of view from the passing pedestrians that would momentarily occupy the entryway of the alley over and over again, with cleaner precision than Kyungsoo could find coincidental. He crossed this tape without a thought, one leg up, the other leg over, and crouched in the center of the shrubs now grown waist high to pull out his sketchbook and pencil.
He hunched, his shoulders cropped forward, spine bent, and he began to scratch his way across the fresh page of paper cradled in his left arm. Scribbles, sketches, they looked the same to him, if they were his. Reds and greens and browns and that goddamn yellow dominated the scene, but he never coloured his sketches, and he won’t start now. This, especially, this deserved only black and white.
His breathing was slow, even, but his hand was sketching fast. The trees were quiet to make room for the pencil grinding against the paper and the few crows that had circled down to keep him company, cawing at each other for elbow room. Eventually Kyungsoo felt his muscles stiffen, and he arched up and pulled his elbows backwards until his shoulder blades touched, rustling the bush in the process.
A few black feathered faces turned, then hopped away, round the corner deeper into the alley. Their business, it seemed, was there.
The pencil scratched all over the page until shadows, shapes, an image, emerged from the depths of smudge and pulp. This was how he worked, unrelenting, never erasing. The way he saw it, life didn’t leave you room to erase your fuck-ups, and your artwork deserved no less.
He glanced at the scene and then back at his work. It looked nothing alike.
It satisfied him, because he understood that something was missing.
In his sketch the yellow lines wrapped around the trees, creating a box, an enclosed space for the crime scene which played out Kyungsoo’s memory. After what had happened, this place had become the spot where numerous of the city’s homeless were suddenly, continuously, and inexplicably found starved or frozen or beaten. More crudely, it was now notorious as a dump for the dead, a septic tank for all the shit this city had to offer.
It had been over a month, yet the scene played in his mind endlessly.
Kyungsoo stayed, and he kept quiet.
And that was when a man staggered in, wheezing like the dying.
It was another homeless, unmistakably so-shaggy overgrown hair, fuzz on the upper lip, clothes that went beyond being simply second-hand. Tattered blue windbreaker, blue jeans, white shirt. Kyungsoo knew if the man took three mores steps he’d probably reek the air foul with eau de souring garbage. He looked empty, someone dreamt for days, a dead man.
“I’m looking for my wallet,” the man said.
The granite at the tip of Kyungsoo’s pencil shattered in his grip. Something about this one had every muscle in Kyungsoo’s body drawn tight and it unsettled him all the more that he didn’t understand why. “I haven’t seen it,” he replied, and he forced his voice out steady, calm as pond water.
“Who’s there?” a voice shouted, hidden in the zig-zags of the fire escapes above.
The presence of a third party revived Kyungsoo. He inhaled sharply-his first real breath since the man had arrived-and shoved himself up on frozen legs, booking it out of there without looking back.
“You went to the crime scene to draw.”
“Yes.”
“The place where you almost got raped.”
“No.”
“Wait. What happened?” Chanyeol interrupted.
Sehun glanced over to where Chanyeol sat dwarfing Kyungsoo’s stool like an eighth-grader in a kindergartener’s seat. “A man dragged Kyungsoo-here,” Sehun pointed at the sketchpad, and he threw his eyes to Kyungsoo’s direction before starting again, “to the back of a building and stuck his hands in Kyungsoo’s pants.”
Kyungsoo stalked off to the kitchen, Chanyeol’s laughter ringing throughout the studio.
“I wasn’t raped. I was mugged.” Kyungsoo said, rummaging through his fridge and coming back with three bottles of water.
“Running back to the danger zone. By God, what would your poor mother say,” Chanyeol deadpanned.
“Promise you won’t go back there.” Sehun spun the chair around and braked short to face Kyungsoo, crossing his ankles round the base cylinder. He leaned forward until his elbow was digging into the bit of his thigh just above his knee. The serious look on his face didn’t change as he balanced his chin on his fist.
“I promise. Just stop moving.”
They worked another three hours after that, Kyungsoo drawing, Sehun unmoving, Chanyeol lazing around on the couch and swinging his sock-clad feet like twin metronomes on the armrest as he played jazz and blues records on his thrift-shop gramophone. This was why Kyungsoo liked their company when drawing; they respected his work, and you would never catch them uttering a breath until Kyungsoo said so.
“I’m done.”
Kyungsoo massaged the back of his shoulder as Sehun and Chanyeol get up to crowd his shoulders. Chanyeol whistled while Sehun stared. “I look like me,” Sehun remarked.
“You should.”
“It’s really good. I can’t find the words to describe it. Your mother would be proud.”
“Thanks,” Kyungsoo said, carefully. He wasn’t satisfied.
The third time he came, the yellow strips surrounding the premise were gone, and there were even more crows hopping around and making a ruckus than before. Now, he drew the scene again with the police tape etched in from memory. Now, he drew scene with a figure streaked and watered down in the far corner, almost completely shrouded in the hues of four a.m., hunched in on himself and recoiling from the center point of the scene, the spot where all the action had taken place.
It was only after he finished, taking the thing in in its entirety, that Kyungsoo stared at his own drawing, blinking, stunned. He’d never noticed before.
“Oh.”
There was another man in that scene.
Someone else had been there.
Kyungsoo hadn’t even noticed him. He was too busy to notice, too preoccupied with the stranger already up in his face and pining him up, patting him down. The stranger in the back had melted right in with the scene. Only now Kyungsoo saw him, really saw him, a man who had collapsed ten feet away to watch completely immobile as Kyungsoo was denied the right of his autonomy for two earth-shattering minutes.
He kept going back, and he drew again, and again, and again. Until the details were runny around the edges, until the bricks became more intimate to him than a lover, until the crumpled creature bore a tattered blue windbreaker and blue jeans and a white shirt.
Kyungsoo exhaled, hard.
A couple of girls were peeking round the corner of the building as Kyungsoo approached.
“Do we call the police?”
“I don’t think he was dead.”
“Are you sure?”
Kyungsoo walked round them and headed straight until saw the man they were talking about, the man lying half atop the shrubs and weeds as if they were his bed. The man didn’t notice him until Kyungsoo was standing right above him, and then he rolled onto his stomach, reaching for a paper cup frayed around the edges that stood poised nearby.
His eyes scanned Kyungsoo as he said, “Spare some change?”
Kyungsoo pulled out his wallet, face hardened, and dropped it into the cup.
The man gave him a strange stare. “I don’t need all of this. Just your money is fine.”
“Of course. That’s why you had your friend take my whole wallet last time, right? It’s okay, really,” Kyungsoo said, holding one hand up to stop the man as he tried to sit up with a shock, “sell it, burn it. Do whatever you want with it. Whatever you did last time. After all, you must be desperate, if you hired someone else to do the job you couldn’t?”
The man stared up at him, speechless. Kyungsoo turned sharply on his heel and walked away.
“You dropped your entire wallet,” his mother repeated slowly, “in a homeless man’s paper cup.”
Kyungsoo pinched at the inner corners of his eyes, sighing harshly into the receiver. “Mother, I insist that you don’t worry about this. I didn’t have anything important in there anyway.”
“Your credit cards?”
“I mean nothing like my social insurance. I can cancel credit cards.”
His mother sighed, too, although much softer. “Honey. I wish you’d stop gallivanting for trouble.”
“Mom, I’m twenty-”
“That doesn’t matter. You’ve always had a knack for...crazy, exciting things, but it will get you in trouble if you don’t watch for yourself. Will you do this, for the sake of saving me a headache?”
“Mom,” Kyungsoo said gently. “Turn off the TV. Don’t watch the news for a while. I promise you’ll feel better.”
He hung up, then stared at his laptop screen, at his record of credit card usage. It’s been eight days since he gave away his wallet. But there was nothing here to show for it.
For the first time Kyungsoo doesn’t come to draw. He checks along the brick wall, kicks the shrubs around a little in an attempt to find contact with soft flesh. It takes the umpteenth try before his efforts are rewarded with a groan.
“Are you fucking mocking me?” Kyungsoo spat.
A tired, tan face emerges from the grass and leaves, like an urban-decay version of a dryad. “What.”
“Did you just burn it in a barrel or something one night for warmth?”
It took a second for the boy to catch on. “I haven’t used it. I threw it away.”
“You threw it away.”
“You think I don’t remember you?” The boy’s voice became strained. “The man, from before, he was a friend. I was starving and afraid. He just acted on his own. I didn’t tell him to do it. I haven’t forgotten since.”
“Are you telling me you’re too guilt-ridden to take what I’ve given to you?”
“You were trying to hurt me. That was a slap to the fucking face. It still stings.”
Kyungsoo took a moment to study his face, his first, and was promptly taken aback. The more he looked the more the boy stopped being the hunched blue figure in the corner of his drawings. This boy, gaunt, with his dark circles, his cracked, dry mouth, his dirtied skin and tired eyes and long greasy hair, was disgusting and filthy and inherently beautiful.
Kyungsoo pressed his lips together tightly, leaning back. “Then I’m satisfied,” he said curtly, and he left.
It was probably the fattest lie he’d ever told.
“Fucking Jesus,” Kyungsoo cursed, pacing his apartment. “Shit, fucking, fuck.”
He had to be an idiot. He had to be. What else would explain this...this...completely stupid train of thought he was having?
He had Sehun and Chanyeol. He had Sehun and Chanyeol for friends, Sehun with his lithe wiry frame and his dyed blond hair like lion’s mane and his dainty pink mouth, Chanyeol with his firm muscled limbs and round childish eyes and wonderfully shaped ears, both of them tall, both of them attractive beyond any artist’s dream, both of them constant, willing subjects. For each of his two hands Kyungsoo had crown jewels to admire and cradle in his palms, in artistic purposes.
And then there was that kid, that stupid kid who had other people do his dirty work and thought he still had the face to turn his nose up at an offering that could very well save his stupid insignificant little life. It made Kyungsoo so goddamn angry, because he was helpless to the very plain fact that he, needed, him.
The tables have turned, and Kyungsoo was angry, but he wasn’t stupid. He’s going to take what he needed.
He needed a definite answer that must be a yes.
He tried to think of ways to convince the boy. Hey, do you want to be my model? I can make you look like you. A camera can do that.
Hey, do you want to be my model? I can pay you. But Kyungsoo was a student himself, surviving off a government loan for school.
Hey, do you want to be my model? I have instant ramen. Genius.
Maybe he could play the pitiful backstory card. Kyungsoo has never been one to spew woes with the intention of gaining sympathy, and honestly it was selfish to try and induce compassion from a man who probably hasn’t slept in a real bed for months. But, on the other hand, Kyungsoo wasn’t past being selfish.
There was also all sorts of issues that arose when inviting a homeless stranger who once got someone bigger than him to mug you into your apartment, but Kyungsoo was going to ignore those.
“Hey!” When Chanyeol runs, he stampedes, and Kyungsoo sighed as the floorboards thundered. Pretty, but not graceful. “Kyungsoo, I need your help!”
Kyungsoo turned, hoping Chanyeol wouldn’t recognize the alleyway he was standing in front of. “What?” he asked. “How did you even find me here?”
“Not the issue here. Sehun’s sick. Cook for him.” Chanyeol and Sehun have gotten it in their heads that Kyungsoo’s cooking has preternatural healing powers when in reality they’ve just never seen Kyungsoo mix ground-up painkillers into their congee.
“How sick is he?”
“Well, it could be worse.”
“It literally could not be worse,” Kyungsoo corrected promptly, deadpan. “Oh my god. Your snot is green. And-I’m gonna throw up. Go to the hospital.”
“I’m just gonna be stuck in the waiting area for five goddamn hours in some crappy chair instead of resting in bed. I’ll tough it. It’s not that bad.”
Kyungsoo looked over at Chanyeol with a raised eyebrow, disbelieving. Chanyeol shrugged in response.
“Look, I’ve got a paper due, honestly. I can’t look after you.”
“When’s it due?”
“Tomorrow.”
“How much have you done?”
“...A bit.”
Sehun groaned.
“And I’ve got graveyard shift in two hours,” Chanyeol said apologetically. “Sorry man.”
“Can one of you at least run by the drugstore for me if you’re not going to coddle me and nurse me back to health?”
“I’m not coddling you. I don’t wanna be five feet near you.”
“Alright, fuck off, Chanyeol.” Sehun looked up with atypical puppy eyes. “Kyungsoo-hyung?”
Kyungsoo sighed. What was another half an hour wasted before his essay deadline.
He didn’t pay too much attention to the alleyway, on his way to the pharmacy.
Sure, it was on his mind. It was impossible not to be. Whether he wanted to or not Kyungsoo pictured the boy curled in on himself in the brush, hunched against the evening cold, beating off the one or two crows still hanging around who probably thought him dying.
It was only on his way back, plastic bag weighed down with cough syrup and sinus pills and lemon tea and hot packs, that the idea hit Kyungsoo.
It was fucking crazy even for him, but all the same Kyungsoo made quick work of weaving down the alleyway, the shopping bag hitting his leg repeatedly and twisting round in his grip.
“Kid!” Kyungsoo called. An even stupider idea, making himself known in a quiet alleyway at night. He wondered if he had a subconscious death wish. “Kid! It’s me!”
“Kid” currently didn’t have a name in Kyungsoo’s book so he wasn’t sure how successful this was going to be. Kyungsoo wondered why it never occurred to him to ask for his name, this idiot who’s caused him so much trouble while he just sat all the while like a stupid dead log. A name would heat the fires of his annoyance nicely. Something to brood at while he swears justice.
There was a rustle, and Kyungsoo whipped around, immediately falling silent. from around the corner of the building, a head slowly poked out to peek.
“I thought that was you,” the boy said.
It was too dark to see him well, so Kyungsoo took a step forward. “My friend is sick,” he said. “I can’t take care of him. I need you to do it for me.”
Surprise registered in the boy’s shadowy form. He was still for a while. “Why?”
“Because you owe me, you little prick,” Kyungsoo responded. “And I won’t pretend like I haven’t been waiting for this.”
In retrospect, Jongin will laugh.
“Okay,” the boy agreed breathily, and Kyungsoo, for the first time, felt satisfied.
The first thing Sehun said, somehow understanding at once, was “Your mother. Is going. To skin you.” Then, after Kyungsoo’s threatened to rip his tongue out if he tries, was
“Let him shower first.”
Kyungsoo let him.
“Hyung,” Sehun said, eyelids drooping, “I’m going to die because of you.”
“The world awaits with baited breath.”
“You abandon me and then pick up your homeless boy crush to watch me instead.”
“I’m so sorry that general practitioners are not commonly found operating in back-ghetto alleyways.”
“You. And you forgot the chocolate pudding.”
“You deserve a homeless man doctor, you dumbass.”
All banter ceased the second the boy emerged from the shower. He was the closest in Sehun to height and so ended up in his clean clothes. Kyungsoo very clearly assured him that he’s welcome to whatever in the fridge because he really couldn’t use his attention to entertain anything other than his essay anymore, and without listening to any further snark from Sehun he retreated to his bedroom and pointedly slammed the door shut.
The essay, as it turned out, wasn’t all too bad, or maybe Kyungsoo was just finally getting the hand of spewing bullshit. It was finished in three hours. He finally emerged from his bedroom to reward himself with a can of sprite, not entirely sure what to expect given the time lapse and the scene he’d left behind.
Sehun was fast asleep on the couch, coddled in blankets and the television turned on to his favourite movie. The boy was on the floor, sitting cross-legged and rapt, with the dishes for about half of the fridge’s contents lying empty before him on the coffee table. He was still nibbling on some bean sprouts and Kyungsoo almost snorted.
When he approached, sprite can in hand and voice soft with the question “Can I paint you?”, the boy looked up and gave him a small smile.
Studio lights never looked as good as daylight, but Kyungsoo positioned and shone as many of them and as perfectly as he possibly could while the boy tried to get comfortable in the stool. He brought out his biggest canvas, every brush, every colour palette, all his tools. He couldn’t remember the last time he was ever this happy.
“I was wondering if you were an artist,” the boy said, sitting primly with hands folded delicately in his lap, while Kyungsoo began with his pencil. “Maybe we should wait. I’m probably bloated.”
In reality he was emaciated, probably malnourished, his hair now clean but dull and lacking of softness or shine, his skin blotchy, his eyes tired. Kyungsoo’s eyes drank it all in, buzzed, sated.
“You’re fine. Really.”
“I ate a lot.”
“I noticed.”
Kyungsoo carefully stroked in the shadow of his calf. “What’s your name anyway?”
“Jongin. I’m Kim Jongin.”
“Kim Jongin,” Kyungsoo repeated, loud and sturdy. “Will you be my model?”
There was no follow-up, no promises of talent or money or any other kind of payoff. But Jongin, inexplicably, smiled like Kyungsoo had just offered him the sun. “I was hoping you’d ask that.”
Kyungsoo smiled back.