Archive of Our Own

There were spots in the painting that shone like diamonds. Like stars, under the displays’ spotlights. Something about the obvious white flecked ever so carefully into blue, between smaller strokes of yellow and green, easily seen but not easily removed…something about the way it looked like both rain and snow at once.

Yunho thinks about the exhibit on the walk home, at four in the afternoon, when he really should be thinking about other things. Like the upcoming comeback and YouTube live he’ll be doing with Changmin.

Unfortunately, he can only dedicate so much of himself at once. And everything, for the most part, is already done—recorded, filmed, polished to whatever degree of shine is deemed proper for artists of their caliber. Taking a break seemed like the only reasonable thing to do three days before Christmas Eve. Which is five days before the comeback.

God, he really is a workaholic. He’ll have to ask Heechul out to coffee again, if he’s not too busy. Anything to get his mind off wanting to perfect the work he’s already completed.

He doubts Changmin has this problem. Or he could be wrong, since it’s been five years since their last Korean album. What about it is so intimidating, Yunho can’t say, but it’s scaring the hell out of him and it’s awful that even now, he can’t go out and relax with this kind of anxiety weighing on his mind. 

Maybe he’ll feel better when he gets home. He nods to himself, as if needing to affirm the thought. Back at his apartment, he can see all the lights from high up. Christmas glows here in Seoul, illuminating the streets with a soft yellow in some places and much brighter reds and greens in others, every bulb placed with care by someone who wanted the holiday season to look a little more beautiful for everyone around them. He appreciates the effort; he sort of wishes he’d done it someplace other than his apartment, in a public space where people could hold hands and gaze at them with a little bit of love swelling in their hearts at the sight.

The holidays always did make him feel a bit romantic. Too romantic, Changmin would say if he was here. You’re being silly. I doubt anyone loves Christmas the way you do.

Which wasn’t true, of course. But he’s never minded Changmin’s teasing, just as Changmin doesn’t seem to mind his, so he lets the imagined sound of his voice wash over him like the sun and warm him all the same.

~

The canvas is a bright, vivid, beautiful red—and Changmin is scraping away at it like the thing owes him an explanation. Why he ended up here, in this place, in this position. Why he has to suffer in order to create something people can love.

No straight lines, no perfection. Just art—which is perfect, in and of itself.

If he were Yunho, he wouldn’t have been satisfied with any of these pieces until he’d gone over them a good five times more with different colors, different strokes, making sure they were up to par with his incredibly high standards. Changmin has standards, too. They’re just different. Stricter and less self-critical, more focused on the viewing after all is said and done. 

It should be impossible to know it’s his. His paint, his hands, his heart. None of that should be seen through the work he does, so much of it sent out and displayed before he has the chance to let himself oppose the decision.

He once read that disguises are simply a mirror of one’s soul. But he believes that his disguise is truthful enough to hide behind, hints hidden among the strokes of orange and red and pink, all of them buried too deep for anyone to know whose body lies beneath all the hours spent making scenes that even he cannot always understand.

Sunlight, kind and blinding, streams through the windows of Taemin’s living room. Being here feels a bit strange, but it’s better than trying to hide the huge canvases in his own home. It only took closets stuffed full of half-finished paintings barely dried from their time out in the open and Buzzi almost getting paint on her nose more than once for him to be convinced by Minho that he needed somewhere else to work. Not that he volunteered his own place, but Taemin was kind enough to give him a key to his apartment.

“I’m gonna order dinner, hyung!” 

Speak of the devil. 

Taemin’s voice draws Changmin out of his reminiscing, his presence quickly following. Dressed in shorts and a light sweater, he looks like he should be freezing, but the heater is on and apparently he’s more concerned about Changmin because his expression has already shifted in the four seconds they’ve been looking at each other.

“What would you like?” he asks now. A little quieter, a little softer than before. His heart sinks when he realizes it’s due to his melancholy mood of late. “We can get pretty much anything.”

Buzzi, who had been sleeping peacefully between Kkoong and Daeng about two hours earlier, now follows behind Taemin, nosing at his socks as he waits patiently for Changmin’s answer.

“Uh…” Funny. He hadn’t even known he was hungry until now, his stomach cramping almost the moment he recalls that he hasn’t eaten since ten-thirty. “I don’t know.”

It’s the same answer he’s been giving everyone lately, no matter who they are or what they’re asking him. Maybe he needs a better go-to, or at least a more believable one

“Sorry,” he says, just adding to the list of things he’s been doing too much. “Does tteokbokki sound good?” Of course it does. Only someone crazy would say no to tteokbokki, especially on a night that the forecast says will drop to negative-seven degrees. “Unless you had something else in mind—”

“No! No, that’s great. I haven’t had it in months, actually...”

Taemin smiles then, the stretch of it just a hair too wide to be proper. Clearly he’s trying to be nice, acting like the obsessive behavior over his latest painting is normal, but the effort is futile. Changmin knows exactly what’s eating away at his smile as it fades into concentration, fingers tapping away at his phone screen to find the delivery place closest to his house.

Now sitting at his feet, Buzzi barks to get his attention. He rubs her head with the back of his hand, making sure no paint gets in her fur, sighing as the sun sets over Seoul. Hopefully dinner will fill the hole in his stomach that’s starting to grow as he looks out at the city.

It won’t. He knows that. But he also knows that hunger is preferable to the ache he’s been nursing for months now, and it would be so much easier to pretend he isn’t as lonely as everyone else believes.

~

“You’re crazy. I really can’t do that, Yunho-yah, I mean—come on! Christmas is two days away, I’ve got a party to attend in Seocho, my family is practically begging me to be home on the twenty-fourth…”

“I get it.” 

Yunho smiles into the phone, hoping the effect isn’t lost on Heechul, who seems more stressed than usual about Christmas creeping up on them again. He’s glad that no one else is in the exhibit right now, many people still doing their last-minute shopping for stocking stuffers or dinner ingredients or better coats for the storm that’s supposed to hit on Christmas Eve.

Well. All that, and the fact that it should technically be closed. He’s not one for breaking rules most of the time, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the pieces he’d seen the day before and now he’s back, staring at a different painting than last time, studying it like a piece of choreography he’s yet to master. 

This one is greener, though. Its colors are still cold, but the landscape is reminiscent of a final frost melting into spring. Standing on a smaller piece of wall that juts out from the rest, it feels like the centerpiece to all the works around it, despite each and every one pulling their weight and using it to wrench Yunho’s heart from his chest. The pressure grows again, worse he remembers. Just a little too heavy, a little too angry to be accidental.

There’s pink freckled throughout the greenery, barely finding a path through the melting snow he knows must exist somewhere in this piece. It’s all lines and strokes, layered colors to make vague shapes that only some can recognize as what they’re meant to be. After coming back here a third time, Yunho has to wonder why it affects him so much. Why he can’t take his mind off the artwork and leave it where it belongs: in this exhibit, several blocks from his apartment, hung for everyone to see. These are not cocoons, which he knows, but many fully-fledged creatures, which he can’t fully accept. They remind him of emptiness—of a person that has yet to find their way.

He knows better than to analyze art not his own. He knows he shouldn’t place his own meanings on a piece made of someone else’s heart. But the draw towards them is greater than he imagined they would be, his love of art set aside, and he simply doesn’t understand why.

“You still there? ” Heechul asks, his voice vibrating through the speakers of Yunho’s phone. The damn thing hangs by his side now, like he’s forgotten he even had someone on the line. “ I did say I’m sorry. That I can’t come see you.”

“It’s all right,” Yunho assures him. “Maybe after Christmas? When you’re not so swamped with responsibilities.”

“Oh, I’m always swamped,” he half-jokes, laughing and maybe hoping that Yunho will, too. He doesn’t; he should have. “But I’m never too busy for you.”

“You shouldn’t say that. They might pack your schedule twice as much next year! Then no one would get to see you.”

This time, he does laugh a bit. To get his point across, to make sure Heechul knows that he does care and isn’t just saying this to be nice…it doesn’t really matter. He’ll be standing here in silence after he hangs up, so he isn’t in much of a hurry.

“Please. I’m ancient, remember? They wouldn’t do that to a poor old man like me.”

“I hope not. So, Heechul—”

“Hanging up already? I thought I was your favorite,” Heechul pouts through the phone. Forty years old and he can still make Yunho feel guilty by acting like a sad little kid. He shouldn’t even be surprised at this point. “I’m kidding. In case you were being quiet because you thought I was actually upset.”

“You’re not?” Yunho replies, like he doesn’t know Heechul’s habits by now.

“Never. Just…stay dry. And stay inside on Christmas! Don’t be stupid and get stuck out in a storm again. Lord knows you’d do that if literally anyone asked you for help with something.”

“See you soon, hyung.”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you, too.”

And with that, it’s quiet again, the faint buzzing of the overhead lights hardly enough to fill the empty space. His breath comes out shaky, unlike his hands, which are steadier than he expected them to be.

The painting before him seems to beckon, its depiction of early spring a blessing in the midst of winter. Yunho, enamored, almost reaches out to touch it. But he doesn’t. That sort of foolishness might be permitted in youth, to some degree, but he isn’t about to make that mistake now.

Only when he reads the plaque beside the painting does he wish he had.

~

“I have actual beds, you know.”

Standing above him is a vaguely disappointed-looking Taemin, eyebrow raised as bounces Daeng in his arms. He’s not intimidating by any means, but the judgmental stare is enough for Changmin to feel cowed as he sits up, the couch cushions probably indented with the shape of his body by now.

“I didn’t—”

“I sound like Kibum, don’t I? Always nagging.” He frowns, shaking his head and giving Daeng a kiss before setting him down on the carpet. “Anyway, I need your help figuring out this coffee thing Jinki-hyung sent me. You have a—what’s it called, a drip coffee?”

“Pour over,” Changmin corrects, rubbing sand from his eyes. “I think drip is different.”

Taemin mulls it over a second before nodding, one hand tugging on the ends of his hair as he waits to be followed into the kitchen. “I’ll remember that,” he says. “He won’t make fun of me, but I know someone will if I don’t dedicate it to memory. You know that English meme that goes 'Clearly, you don’t own a fryer'?”

He doesn’t say anything this time, though he’s pretty sure it’s “air fryer.” Instead, he pushes himself off the couch, taking another look at his almost-finished painting as Taemin guides him over the stove, a pot of water already boiling in advance. Reminds him of the emotions he’s been trying to shove down of late, only letting them bleed onto the canvas once he’s got all his supplies out and ready to continue. 

Nothing hurts more than knowing how to finish this piece, unless he counts the reason he knows in the first place.

“Are you gonna tell him? It’s only like…three days until Christmas,” Taemin says to him, holding the pot handle with an oven mitt that he absolutely does not need to use. 

Changmin hesitates. Sure, it would make sense. Maybe it would even release him from some of those self-fashioned chains weighing him down every moment of the day. But what would be the point if it never amounted to anything? If he spoke aloud and his words only fell to the floor like snow, melting beneath his shoes and on his tongue as if they were meant to be water under the bridge, never seen or spoken of again?

Taemin has set the pot down at this point. There’s no coffee in the filter, Changmin thinks, so he looks around the countertop for a bag of anything that looks remotely like coffee. No such luck. Apparently it’s supposed to come out of nowhere.

“Where’s the coffee?” he asks, leaning back against the island when his knee almost gives out beneath him.

It ends up being in the fridge, for some reason. Changmin genuinely has to wonder how Taemin has survived this long. He also wonders, when the coffee has finally been made, if this painting is even good enough for the man he’ll be giving it to. 

Unlikely. Closer to impossible, if he’s being truthful. But there’s enough time to change that. He just has to act faster than he ever has in the past fifteen years. 

Shouldn’t be too hard.

~

Back at home, Yunho drinks. Two hours should be enough practice for something already ingrained in his memory, he figures, taking another sip of the white wine he bought for Christmas. He’s already invited the people he wants to see, but is that going to keep his mind off what he saw at the exhibit earlier today? 

Not that he should be thinking this hard about it. His wine glass is tipping precariously in his hand and all he can think about is the plaque he finally decided to read, the initials printed carefully onto shining metal, the name of the painting and the message spoken so quietly beneath the rest of the words that he wouldn’t have heard it at all if he hadn’t lost his focus. White pants and wine are a bad mix, but that’s not much of an issue if the wine isn’t red and he isn’t drunk out of his mind.

Lightweight, a voice in his head chastises. 

It sounds exactly like Changmin’s.

Yunho wonders how long it’s been since he called. Probably days, but hopefully no longer than a week. He hasn’t been anywhere near busy enough to ignore Changmin like that.

The sky bleeds blue as the last dregs of orange sun disappear behind the horizon, his drink catching a faint and fiery glow between glass and liquid before fading back to the color of starlight. He wonders if he’ll see many stars tonight, or if all the decorations strung about the city will simply become light pollution instead.

He picks up his phone, taking another swig of wine in a decidedly un-classy manner, wincing when the taste goes from soft to overpowering in half a second. The name ‘Changminie ♥’ shines enticingly on his screen. A long stretch of time passes before he remembers to breathe properly, the air in his lungs trapped until he sighs into the alcohol. It fogs up the glass and reminds him of the many, many times he’s pushed Changmin into breathing on window panes so they could write their names in the same tiny space, his fingers betraying the self-preserving instincts he should have had and drawing little hearts there, too.

Changmin never brought it up. Never told him to stop that specifically. Only rolled his eyes like usual, mumbling about how cheesy Yunho was being before following his example. 

They’re not kids anymore, but he still does it. He pretends it’s innocent and acts oblivious when he knows damn well he’s anything but, and that’s because being thirty-seven adds some perspective to a lost cause he’s been trying to save since he was in his twenties.

Before he presses the icon on his screen, an incoming FaceTime interrupts Yunho’s too-clear memories with a loud ringtone he hasn’t bothered changing in about three years now. ‘Taemin :)’ is displayed in large, bright letters before he picks up.

“Hi!”

Taemin waves with more energy than even Yunho has right now, his smile just about the cutest thing he’s seen all day. He won’t say the most beautiful—though Taemin is well known for his good looks—because he hasn’t stopped thinking about that exhibit for days, but he’s certainly sweet enough to make Yunho go a little soft at seeing his face

“Changmin-hyung taught me how to use the…what is it called again?”

“It’s a pour over.”

“Right! He taught me how to use a pour over coffee maker! Wanna see?”

Of course. Whether it’s insult to injury or just plain irony, Yunho has to force himself to smile wider to make up for the shock to his system. It’s a strange place for him to be, at Taemin’s house. Then again, how much would he know, spending less time with a man he’s known for over twenty years than someone like Minho, who’s constantly kissing up to him and—

“Yunho?”

“Here,” he answers automatically, the roll call voice immediately making him want to curl up against the lower cabinets and cry. After ending the call, obviously. “Sorry. I’m here, Changmin-ah.”

"He’s so sweet with you…” Taemin complains from behind the phone

“Did you spend decades attached to his hip?” Changmin asks. “That’s just how he is. Right?”

“Caught red-handed,” he says, all teeth and Christmas cheer. Yunho wants to melt onto the floor and let his wine glass break on the tile. Wants to mix with the alcohol and get mopped up by whoever finds him first, letting go of his physical form with all its wants and needs and horrid invisible wounds. No more longing for what could have been. No more pain over what he couldn’t say.

“Did I tell you I’m not coming on Sunday?” Taemin says, sliding back into frame. “I couldn’t get anyone to watch Kkoong and Daeng, so I’m inviting a couple friends over instead. Is that okay, hyung? I promise I feel bad for bailing!”

“You’re fine. I still have people coming over,” he assures kindly. “We’ll miss you, though.”

“I told you he’d be fine. When has he ever gotten mad at you?”

“One time, back in 2014, I remember—”

“See, now I know you’re lying—”

“Were you calling to tell me something?”

"Oh! Yes. Yes, we were.” Gleefully, Taemin slips out of view once more, grinning the whole way. Yunho can hear it in his voice as he shouts from further away to say, "Changmin-hyung has something to tell you."

That would get his hopes up if he wasn’t realistic. 

It gets his heart racing, though. Which is the closest thing to a death sentence he’ll ever have.

“I…”

“Go ahead.” 

Please be something irrelevant. Please be something small or golf-related. Anything that won’t break my heart.

Anything that won’t give me hope.

“I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Changmin says, but he looks off in the distance and glares at something—someone, more likely—right after he says it. “I guess he wanted me to say I’m coming? To your place. For Christmas."

He adds the last part hurriedly. Like it’s suspicious to say things like that after all this time.

“You told me you’d say it!”

“I didn’t promise. Sorry, Taemin-ah.”

Changmin shrugs, looking at Yunho with a helpless expression. As always, he only needs to raise an eyebrow or heave a sigh and it’s clear what he won’t say out loud.

“Coward,” shouts Taemin, who must be closer than he was when Changmin shot daggers at him a minute ago. “If you won’t say it, then I will. Yunho-hyung, he’s—”

And just like that, the call ends. Leaving Yunho alone in his kitchen, leaning against the countertop, using it as a support for his body because he knows that if he tried to move now, he’d crumple like flash paper set aflame.

What was he going to say? What did he tell Taemin that he couldn’t tell Yunho?

Why does his pulse feel harsher than a rainstorm, heart pummeling against his rib cage, rising in his throat the way a hot air balloon should rise into the air?

The view from his apartment is perfect. He can see so much of the city from here. But it’s lonely up here. Cold, too. 

Yunho wishes he could share the cold with someone, or keep it out with their body pressed against his own. It’s too bad the only someone he wants won’t ever get that close. Not even if he begs, which he can’t bring himself to do.

It’s humiliating. Asking to be loved.

It’s humiliating to cry over the night sky and a barely-decent wine, too, yet even that is better than wanting the impossible.

~

“Lee Taemin!”

“You’re just mad because you’re scared!” Taemin yells, standing on his bed and holding a pillow like a baseball bat. Getting any closer might mean a face full of memory foam, Changmin reasons, but he’s willing to risk that for a chance at wringing Taemin’s throat. “You told me, it’s been years since you knew this! Why can’t you just tell him?”

“It’s not like you risked anything with Jongin!” Changmin yells back. He can feel the heat rising in his cheeks, staining his ears as they start to burn. Now he wishes he hadn’t cut his hair so short. All that vulnerability left out in the open, an easy target for someone who shouldn’t know how to hit him where it hurts. “Hell, you were barely in SuperM for two years and you couldn’t keep yourself together. I remember you coming to Yunho, asking how you could get rid of your feelings for him, and he told me that he knew you wouldn’t let it go even if he told you that you had to.”

He doesn’t realize his chest is heaving until he pauses. One moment turns into several, broken up only by his breathing and Taemin dropping the pillow back on his bed. 

“So don’t patronize me,” Changmin finishes, voice trembling so hard he’s afraid it’ll crack, “for being scared. It’s not as simple as you want it to be.”

They must look stupid, he thinks to himself, Taemin standing on his bed and Changmin staring up at him with eyes wetter than melted snow, both of them encased in soap bubbles too fragile for their current state. If he reached out to break Taemin’s, he’d break his in the process. The thought leaves him frozen, only a few steps away from the man he’s playing roommate to until Christmas comes, and he wishes he could walk away but he can’t. He’s been trying to for years now, and just like Taemin said, he’s only mad because it’s terrifying to think of a world where he doesn’t have Yunho by his side.

Damn him. Damn Yunho and all his stupid, romantic tendencies. All the times he laid his head on Changmin’s shoulder, bought him coffee when he swore he wasn’t tired, said I love you to him no matter the time or place. Changmin wasn’t ready for what that would ignite in him. 

He wasn’t ready for a lot of things, it seems.

“You should finish your painting,” Taemin says, and he sounds more defeated than tired, but that could be Changmin’s imagination playing tricks on him. Same as the light did earlier today, making him see shadows that weren’t there and whispering to him late in the afternoon about nothing at all.

“It’s late,” is all he can manage.

“Not really.”

With that, he watches Taemin climb off the bed, walking straight into his chest to throw both arms around him in a warm, solid embrace.

“Please tell him,” mumbles Taemin, the words sinking through his skin and pushing the knife in his heart a little deeper than he could have done himself. “You can’t hide like this forever.”

Changmin just breathes as Taemin peels away from him, nothing physical pushing him into the living room but every emotion shoved down inside of him pulling his tired body to the canvas he’s barely touched today.

He thinks about what was said. What he couldn’t say, even now. 

That he loves Yunho. That he doesn’t think he could live without him. That even if he had to, it would be miserable and he would hate a life without Yunho in it. So many what-ifs and excuses whirl around in his head as he sits down before his painting, so dissimilar to his other work and yet so much like every piece he’s done that it scares him to look any closer. But he has to. That’s how art is made, after all: people looking too close and finding beauty in that microscopic view, then searching for it in the mundane and in the bigger pictures, their lives turned into a million different explosions of light all at once when they discover every new wonder the world has to offer.

There is so much beauty outside—from the neighbors’ porch lights leaving pools of champagne yellow on the welcome mats outside their doors to the blinking Christmas string lights hung on their roofs, every color repeated but no less joyous for the uniformity.

Changmin picks up a tube of deep pink, the shade so dark it could be red to an untrained eye. But he knows better. So he picks up the palette knife with purpose this time, starting to layer on the color in his hands, and hopes he’ll find the courage to love Yunho before he turns again to cowardice.

~

One day before the party, Donghae cancels on him. Usually, he wouldn’t be so concerned, but he sounded a little frantic over the phone and Yunho’s worried that he didn’t mention some sort of emergency that he could have helped him through. 

He also thought he heard laughter in the back, but he’s sure the busking performance on the street a few floors down had something to do with that. Either way, he’s left with just a few guests on his list (and any plus-ones they want to bring), which makes planning a little easier and getting rid of all the alcohol much more difficult.

Now that he’s down two more people—Donghae was going to bring Hyukjae, obviously—it leaves him in a bit of a situation. Nothing huge. Just a question of what he should be ordering for dinner and how much he should have based on the remaining guests’ appetites.

He lists them off in his head as he stares at a painting called ‘Departure.’

Kibum. Minho. Ten. Taeyong. Changmin.

It’s a small list. 

It’s a large painting. One he’s been looking at for the past five minutes very closely from his place on the bench, which is a couple meters away, clean gray carpet and light gray walls highlighting the oranges and yellows of the paint as they fade with some effort into brown at the very edges of the canvas. A halo of sorts, Yunho guesses. He’d have stood before it any other day, pretending to be some manner of angel that had come to stand on Earth for a minute to bask in the glow of human creation.

Today, he simply stares into its center, willing it to tell him things he wants so badly to believe. How childish of him, wishing on the earthbound equivalent of a star for closure he won’t get for free.

Someone sits on the bench beside him. Two someones, if he’s being particular about it, sandwiching themselves together so they fit on the remaining space to his right.

“Yunho-sunbae?”

Ten is looking at him in surprise, eyes wide open and mouth slightly agape. He turns back to the person beside him, whispering what sounds like Why didn’t you tell me it was him?! before whipping back around and saying, “We didn’t think we’d see you here.”

“Neither did I,” he lies, a well-preserved fake laugh bubbling up in his throat. Ten doesn’t know it’s fake, and neither should the person with him, but he still lets it down carefully so it can die without much strain. “I guess I got a little caught up in the artwork.”

“Always so cool…” the person beside Ten says in awe. They get an elbow to the side for that.

“Taeyong-ah?”

A large bucket hat is removed, then a flimsy mask pulled down. Of course. Who else would have come with Ten?

“Hey, sunbae,” says Taeyong, a little sheepish now that he’s been found out. “Happy holidays?”

“Happy holidays.”

Tearing his eyes away from the picture once more, so much larger than life as it hangs on the wall opposite them, Yunho looks Ten in the eyes as he stares expectantly. He’s waiting for something, clearly. It’s just not obvious to him what that is.

“So…about the party,” Ten starts.

“We can’t go.”

Taeyong flinches as he says it, bracing himself like Yunho should be upset with him for this. A ridiculous thought, but he’s had worse in his lifetime, so he gets it. In a sense.

“I’m…sorry to hear that.” One day before…do they know something I don’t? “Can I do anything about it?”

“I don’t think so,” says Ten, his cheeks starting to flush as he looks away. “We’ve got, uh. Well, stuff came up and we—”

“I’m taking him home for Christmas,” Taeyong explains easily, his face also turning pink but in a much less embarrassed way. “It sort of came out of nowhere. I’m really sorry we couldn’t tell you before. We really thought we’d be going until this morning.”

“Family is more important than any party you’ll attend,” is all Yunho says, nodding his approval while Ten finds the courage to straighten his back and pull himself together. There’s no one in the exhibit once again, so it’s not as mortifying as he probably fears it is. “Have fun. Send me some pictures, if you can.”

“Always.”

They hang around the exhibit a while longer, Taeyong pointing at the prettiest parts and Ten admiring how well the titles match each artwork. Layered sweaters beside a bright green puffer jacket, dark hair almost melding with the shadows outside the exhibit’s spotlights…they’re a good fit, Yunho thinks. Not too different but not too much the same.

He wonders if Changmin could ever see him that way.

Yunho runs his hand along the silver plaque of ‘Departure’ and wonders if those letters could mean anything other than what they already do.

Did you know disguises are actually mirrors? We make them to hide who we are, but in reality, all we’re doing is reflecting our true selves on the outside.

ㅅㅊㅁ

How much are you hiding from me, then? If being yourself isn’t truthful enough?

The artists he’s looked for with these letters in their names…they don’t have styles that match what he sees here. So the idea of connection is as much a moot point as him believing in something this stupid.

But maybe it isn’t. Stupid, that is. He’s seen Changmin scrambling to hide things from him in his own home, promising they were gifts for his birthday or New Year’s or just any old occasion. Years ago, it started, and now he can’t help but admit to himself how oblivious he’s been. All the silly, overpriced trinkets from airports and shining rings from jewelry stores to make up for his secretive behavior, the smiles that never reached his eyes, the new habit of calling Yunho’s attention away from the questions about his dirty hands and hair…

Did you know disguises are actually mirrors?

Long gone are Taeyong and Ten, their held hands likely separated as they walk across the street. Out into the world and away from the safety of silence. He knows, somewhat, how it goes.

The separation is never easy, but he’s grown used to the feeling of burying his true emotions to some degree. Or hiding them behind a mask—a disguise. One that gives him away at every turn and fools no one but himself.

“Changmin-ah,” he murmurs to himself, fingertips drawing back from the black letters spelled so plainly across a silver square. He should have seen it all along and yet his own self-centeredness led him to believe that he was the only one in pain, drowning in this need and longing all by himself.

Yunho steels himself against the inevitable: tears, hot and earnest, dripping down his face and onto the collar of his coat. He also wonders if the description of this painting is true, and if so, does it speak of him?

ㅅㅊㅁ 

Departure, 2023

Oil and acrylic on canvas

(Dedicated to a love not said aloud.)

The question alone could kill him where he stands, an arrow of lightning shot straight through his chest. He can’t live without knowing the answer.

He dashes out the door before the woman at the front desk can say goodbye. With energy he wasn’t even sure he had, Yunho runs down the street, his shoes in no way cushioning the impact of sprinting on pavement, arriving at the bus stop just in time. He digs around in his pockets for change, transportation card left back at his apartment, and finds more than enough for a ride to Changmin’s place, which isn’t as far away as it was two minutes ago now that he’s boarded the bus. The sun in his window may be shining a little less, preparing for the coming storm, but his chest is still flooded with its light. 

Whatever disguise Changmin’s been wearing all these years, Yunho wants to be the one to take it off. He wants to be the one who pushes back the veil, who tears the mask from his face and sees every part of him, no matter how harsh the reveal might be.

He wants to see Changmin’s heart uncovered and laid bare beside his own. It will always be too much to ask, but in the same breath…it’s Changmin.  

Yunho would do anything for him.

Is his honesty really too much to ask for?

~

As it turns out, Changmin isn’t home. So Yunho takes out his phone, finds his contact in seconds because it’s always the first one open in the app, and hopes the darkening sky doesn’t mean the storm will be here early. He didn’t even bring a heavy jacket to block out the cold, his decision catching up to him as he stands on Changmin’s welcome mat and stares at the closed curtains like they’ll open if he looks at them long enough.

“Changmin-ah.”

“Not even a hello?” teases the cotton-soft voice on the other end. 

Yunho thinks he might cry, finally standing still with no one to stand beside him, but he holds it in. Holds the phone tighter, pretending it’s Changmin’s hand withstanding all his unspoken emotions.

“I’m sorry. Hello,” he corrects himself. Stuck in his throat are too many declarations that swallows before opening his mouth again. “Are you still with Taemin?”

“I’ve been…well, I’m just staying here for a little while. I’ll be back home by tomorrow, so I can get ready for your Christmas Eve party.”

“Not much of a party. I get the feeling my other guests are going to cancel on me before the day ends.”

“That’s crazy. There’s no way everyone bailed already.”

“I did not bail,” a sluggish protest in the background corrects. “I have to watch my cats, hyung…I thought you’d understand.”

“Of course I do. It’s just that I only have—”

“One guest coming to your party?” Changmin asks. 

It’s not that Yunho’s blood runs cold, per se. No, he’s been cold the whole time, looking around the neighborhood Changmin lives in as he talks and contemplating, in the back of his head, how bad he’d have to be to think of moving at a time like this. His heart is still pounding at the sound of Changmin’s voice; maybe he isn’t fully prepared for this like he thought he was.

The statement catches him off guard more than he expected, though. 

“One guest?” he repeats quietly, eyebrows drawing closer as he goes through his list again.

God. That can’t mean what he thinks it means.

He keeps the call open, changing it to speaker as he checks his messages. Sure enough, there’s a couple each from both Kibum and Minho, the two of them notifying him they won’t be attending and then apologizing for their absence in advance.

This had to have been planned. Now that he knows—or thinks he knows—what it all means, Yunho is dead certain that he’s the last person to figure it out. Otherwise, this would all be some stupid, cruel prank with hardly any humor behind it, only pulled off to make him feel upset for the short notice with which he’d planned his event.

“You still there, hyung?”

“Yeah… Yes, I’m still here.” Great, great. Try coming up with your own words now. “I’m just…surprised, I think? I didn’t know it was only going to be us.”

“Crazy, right?” Changmin doesn’t sound as enthusiastic as he probably hopes he does. Then again, if Yunho’s hypothesis is correct, he’s got to be even more nervous than Yunho about what’s to come. “Well, I promise I won’t rescind my promise to be there. That would be rude.”

“Why does it sound like you’re making fun of me?”

“Maybe I am.”

Nerves aside, he has to laugh as he hears Taemin complain across the room about Changmin’s word choice. The two youngest members of SHINee and TVXQ…maybe not the best mix of roommates when it comes to staying off each other’s backs. Then again, Taemin must be easier to deal with than he is, considering the time he’s spent with Changmin without being the cause of the latter’s ire. 

~

“Finished yet?”

Changmin whips around, nearly dropping his palette on the carpet and disproving everything he’s been telling Taemin for days now. I’ll be careful, I promise. No paint except what’s on the canvas. Unless your cats get into my stuff when I’m not looking. He feels his heart pulse threateningly at the back of his throat as he sets down his things on the coffee table—covered with plastic wrap that he’s a little surprised Taemin had on hand—and finally turns to look at the person who is…decidedly not Taemin.

“Not if you scare me like that,” he says to Minho, who’s standing in the living room with two very full grocery bags of God-knows-what to spend Christmas Eve right here at Taemin’s place. 

It was a sneaky trick, he’ll admit, but also surprisingly clever. Having everyone cancel in such closely-staggered intervals would have been suspicious at any other point in time, but it seems the holidays really are packed enough for Yunho to believe that everyone but Changmin won’t be able to attend.

Minho laughs then, that bright smile of his overshadowing the vibrant orange Changmin’s still painting on for a finishing touch. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. But…I’d wash off the red on your forehead before Kibum gets here. Pretty sure he’ll have a conniption.”

He swipes at his face with the back of his hand. Sure enough, a streak of crimson comes off on his knuckles. “Perfect…” he mumbles, heaving a sigh and standing up to greet Minho properly. “I’ve already promised to clean up the mess, before you say anything else about Kibum.”

“Just wanted some help,” Minho says, still smiling. “Turns out snack plates don’t make themselves no matter how hard you wish. Christmas miracles aren’t for everyone, are they, hyung?”

“Guess not.”

Changmin does return the smile, but he isn’t sure it quite reaches his eyes. Snack plates are one thing—keeping secrets from Yunho is very much another.

He follows Minho into the kitchen, where he washes his hands and starts opening up a pomegranate that just so happens to be as fragile as the heart inside his chest. He doesn’t stop staring at the painting in the living room, finished to every eye but his, but he does get pomegranate juice on his face, which is just as startling as Kibum arriving twenty minutes after they’ve started. There’s three types of alcohol in one bag and several gifts in the other. Changmin is only a little surprised to see just how many he’s brought.

“I sent Jinki his stuff in the mail,” he explains hurriedly, setting the presents on the dining room table and yanking open the fridge to store the soju and wine. “Hope he got it in time for tonight, otherwise I have no idea what he’s going to open all the way in…wherever he is right now. I forgot, but I’m sure he’ll tell us when we call.”

“Wow…so thoughtful,” Minho teases. Changmin can’t be sure how his face isn’t tired from all that smiling, but it’s sweet and it makes him feel warm despite the heater turning off about an hour ago. Kibum tells him to shut up, which only makes the two of them laugh as he scowls in Minho’s direction. He’s glad to be a part of this for now, because soon he’ll be standing at Yunho’s door with an enormous present and two confessions that may not be taken as lightly as he hopes.

Changmin wishes he didn’t want the things he’s been asking of the universe.

Isn’t it selfish for him, of all people, to ask for more?

~

By the time six forty-five rolls around, snow has begun to fall in Seoul. It’s beautiful—all that whiteness, blanketing cars and sidewalks as far as the eye can see, sprinkling a little bit of holiday magic over everyone that has yet to find their way inside.

He’s been pacing since six-forty, but that doesn’t matter. Not when he’s already rewritten five different texts to Changmin, then deleted them all, then poured himself a glass of the same wine he was drinking a couple days ago when Taemin called with Changmin right beside him, then panicked about drinking for a minute before picking the glass back up and running a rut through the living room carpet.

Fine. Yunho’s nervous. By a longshot. That doesn’t mean he can’t grow a backbone and ask a silly question he should have known the answer to for years at this point.

Five minutes early, there’s a knock at his door. He hurries to the entrance, fixing his hair along the way, taking a deep breath before opening the door to find a package sitting on the doorstep.

Just the new kettle, then.

Stop scaring yourself, he chastises, picking up the box and shaking his head as he shuts the door. You’re not hosting the President—just Changmin. Shim Changmin, who you’ve known since you were both kids, who’s gone through pretty much everything with you over these past twenty years.  

That doesn’t stop his oxygen intake from being ever so slightly erratic, but it does unwind his shoulders a tiny bit. Which, Yunho decides, is better than nothing.

He opens up the kettle. Plugs it into the wall. Drains his glass of wine while praying for just enough of a haze to get through the night without acting like a fool. Maybe he’ll make hot chocolate for them. Is Changmin drinking that these days? His exceptions always did seem to come in the form of a certain person he can find by looking in the mirror.

“No.” Yunho sighs, staring at his empty glass like he can fill it by will alone. “He’ll be here in a few minutes, anyway. Stop making things up and focus. ”

The doorbell rings this time around. Then, to follow, two soft knocks, just loud enough to be heard from the edge of the kitchen. “ And stop talking to yourself, ” he adds under his breath, setting the wine glass in the sink in the hopes Changmin won’t see it as he makes himself comfortable.

Yunho steels himself as he opens the door, but of course nothing could have prepared him for the beauty that is Changmin in his winter-party best. He stands there with something large and rectangular in his hands, big doe eyes glistening under Yunho’s fairy lights. Dressed in all white, he looks like some sort of angel, the tiny flecks of snow in his hair a makeshift halo atop his head.

“Merry Christmas…?” he says, the words so delicate Yunho fears that if he speaks, he’ll break them as they linger in the air. “Sorry I’m late, I—”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re right on time,” Yunho assures him. Five seconds ago, he was most assuredly panicking over this. Now, he finds a grin spreading over his face as easily as hot butter, slipping into routine even as his pulse thrums at a rabbit’s pace beneath his skin. “Should I take that?”

“It’s, uh—fragile, actually. Yeah.” Changmin’s eyes, if possible, grow even wider than usual. “I’ll just set it in the living room, if that’s okay?”

“You act like I’d ever say ‘no’ to you.”

He goes too far, sometimes. Like now, with his smile barely wavering and Changmin staring at him like he’s started speaking Japanese out of nowhere. Maybe he has. Or maybe he’s just too scared of what he’s going to say later to care about what he’s saying now.

The walk into the kitchen is quiet. Enough for Yunho to exhale and pray it’s not too loud as he turns his back to Changmin in search of his other wine glasses. The ones that have yet to be used, of course.

“So, how have things been?” Changmin asks him, and Yunho is very glad to have the question aimed at the back of his head because he can feel his ears heating up as he opens a third cupboard, unsure why he can’t find the other seven glasses when he was just using one earlier. “Outside of work and the comeback, obviously.”

Yunho imagines Changmin with his hands folded on the island’s countertop, swallowing around nothing as his question gives way to the Christmas song playing faintly in the background. It’s cozy enough, a few stories up with the snow coming down harder, the two of them in one room despite the entire house being open. He knows it’d be hard to convince Changmin to sit in the living room as he gets their drinks. Even if the alternate solution is him trying to keep his mouth shut for another fifteen minutes at least, it’s much better than him charging right in with Are you the artist of all those paintings in the new exhibit? or the much worse Do you care about me more than you’re letting on?

“Uh…good. They’ve been fine,” he replies. Finally, he opens the right cupboard, pulling out two wine glasses to set on the island before he opens the fridge for something to fill them with. This must be what birds feel like, Yunho figures. Rushing around to impress the one they’re interested in with gifts and showy behavior.

He remembers how much he paid for the Zinfandel in his hand and quickly shakes the thought from his head.

“Nothing interesting?”

Prying…it’s not like Changmin to do that. Then again, Yunho’s nerves aren’t exactly typical, either.

Now or never, he decides, plunging right into the deep end.

“I’ve been going to art museums,” he says, opening the wine and acting like it hasn’t changed his entire perspective of their relationship. “Looking for inspiration, that kind of thing. Have you seen the new exhibit down the street?”

Just when he thought Changmin was getting comfortable, he’s back to that wide-eyed stare, like Yunho’s asked him something a lot more preposterous than if he’s been to an art exhibit lately.

“I don’t—well. I do, sometimes, I just…I haven’t gone to that one specifically, I don’t think.” He offers a half-smile that isn’t really a smile at all, just his mouth turning into a straight line, but that’s a fair reaction in his case. “What—” He coughs, looking away from Yunho in the process. “What kind of art are they displaying?"

“Not sure what it’s called. People say it’s some kind of inversion of dansaekhwa,” he starts with, taking a long sip of his drink. Already too close to home, but maybe if he keeps talking, that detail will get lost amid the rest of his rambling. “It’s all beautiful work, from what I’ve seen. The artist really knows how to bring out those hidden feelings in their pieces. Sometimes, when I think about it more, I feel like I know them. Or that I understand what they’re trying to say with their art, but maybe that’s me pretending to be special.”

He’s met with silence. With Changmin swirling his alcohol around the glass, then closing his eyes as he drinks from it.

“Why don’t we move to the living room?” he tries. At least that gets Changmin’s attention. Yunho tries not to walk too close to him, keeping at least half an arm’s length between them as he sits on one end of the couch and Changmin settles on the other. 

Suddenly he’s grateful that he didn’t choose white cushions. Otherwise, he would have had to bring this up standing in the kitchen and, honestly, nothing about that screams Merry Christmas, I’m in love with you. Unless it does and he’s fucked this up to an extreme he can’t even imagine, which could be even worse than all his guests but one cancelling on him last-minute because it’s left him with Changmin and his own unfortunate feelings—ones that he desperately hopes are returned with some semblance of passion.

“Yunho.”

He chokes on his wine, already halfway through downing the serving he’s given himself in hopes it’ll provide the courage he so clearly needs.

“Sorry—”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

If he’d been anywhere else tonight, Yunho might have been happy to accept his ridiculous behavior. But right now, he’s sitting on a couch too small for him and his aching heart, Changmin is looking at him with his gentle, dewy eyes, and he can’t possibly understand what’s taken him so long to say the things he’s felt for years. Things he wants Changmin to understand, to embrace, when he finally says them out loud.

“That I don’t want ‘friends’ to be the only thing we are,” spills off his tongue like wine from the mouth of a bottle. “That it’s good you’re the only person here tonight because I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of anybody else if you don’t like what you hear.”

His pulse throbs in his ears. Terrified of the look on Changmin’s face, Yunho goes on, hoping it’s surprise and not disgust painted on his beautiful features.

“It took me a long time to admit it to myself, and even then I didn’t…I didn’t want to feel that way. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship, which was already so fragile after what we went through, and I couldn’t risk you feeling guilty if you weren’t on the same page.”

Breathe, Yunho tells himself. He won’t leave now. Not until you’re finished.

“So I didn’t say anything. For years. I tried to wait for the right time, but I guess the right time didn’t want to find me.” 

He laughs, then—a watery, pathetic sound—hoping Changmin isn’t so upset that he can’t even find it funny, the situation Yunho’s put them in.

Changmin doesn’t laugh. His face just softens, gaze deep as a snowdrift, body statuesque in its stillness.

“Even when we were alone, just the two of us—I couldn’t say it,” Yunho admits. This alone could kill him, he thinks. With no answer, no real reason to go on…he’s stuck in a limbo of his own creation, left to finish himself off with the sharpest edge of his confession. “That would make it real, right? And making it real just makes it worse.”

No amount of alcohol can fix the things he's saying. Even if he takes it back now, pretends the crying is all from the wine and the "Christmas magic" he's been so excited about until now…the damage is still done. He's still landed so many blows in one go that it's impossible to patch up the hole in his chest without Changmin seeing right through him.

If Changmin stuck his hand between Yunho’s ribs and held his beating heart so fast it stopped, he wouldn't be mad at all. But he'd still want more.

How mortifying.

"I'm trying to tell you that I love you," he finally says, swiping his tears away only for several more to fall. "If you feel anything, I just want to know, and if you're angry, I understand. I do. This is—I mean, it's a lot to hear and I don't—”

“Yunho.”

Through his blurry vision, Yunho can’t see a damn thing. Just the outline of Changmin setting his glass on the coffee table. Just Changmin taking his and placing it there, too.

“What…”

“Hey.”

A cool hand cups his chin, steadying him so soft fingers can brush the saline off his cheeks. He doesn’t even realize he’s shaking until Changmin smooths a hand over his hair, lower lip trembling, in a too-kind attempt to soothe him.

“At least one of us was brave enough to say it.”

It’s funny, the realization of that finally dawns on him. After being so sure the day before, no doubt in his mind that he was right—that it was him, the love not said aloud theirs and no one else’s—he was so afraid of admitting what he’d already known to be true. He may have loved Changmin for all this time, but now it’s easy to see that Changmin has loved him, too. Just as much, if not even more.

“I just kept painting all those damn canvases, hoping you’d see them one day,” Changmin says, shaking his head at the measures they’ve both taken to hide what they feel. “Guess the exhibit wasn’t a bad idea after all.”

“You should’ve done it earlier,” Yunho chastises through his tears. “I only just looked at the name on them two days ago.”

Smiling, Changmin reaches up to thumb at the corners of his eyes. They come away wet, of course, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“Just one?”

“I’m not smart all the time.”

They stare at each other for a good few seconds. Then Changmin starts to laugh, giggling like a child over nothing at all, and Yunho can’t help but join him because it really is that funny. He can’t believe it took this long for either of them to say something when all the evidence was practically laid out in front of them, only unseen because they’d both looked the other way.

Yunho leans into Changmin, wrapping both arms around him. The snow in his hair has long since melted and, through the haze of expensive Zinfandel, Yunho can only imagine that this is what it feels like to embrace an angel.

“So…what now?” asks Yunho. He doesn’t feel like getting up, unless it’s to drink the rest of his wine and see if Changmin is willing to kiss him while he’s tipsy instead of fully sober.

Changmin stiffens, like he’s just thought of something a lot more unpleasant than spending the night with Yunho while drinking the rest of their wine. “I am so sorry—” he mumbles, wriggling free from Yunho’s arms and hurrying off to get what can only be the large, flat gift he arrived with. The one Yunho has been wondering about all this time, the thought of it being for him lingering in the back of his mind.

When Changmin returns, he’s carrying the gift like it’s precious cargo. He holds it like a bottle of sparkling cider that’s been sitting in the freezer much too long, handing it off to Yunho who realizes it’s slightly less heavy than he expected, then settles back down with wide eyes that could rival the deer he’s so often compared to.

“Go ahead,” he says quietly. “I…I made it. Hopefully it doesn’t clash too badly with your apartment.”

Tilting his head, Yunho sniffs, glancing down at the enormous present and then at Changmin’s nervous expression. He’s got his hands clasped in his lap, all-white outfit somehow enhancing the tightness of his body as he waits for Yunho to open the package he clearly wrapped with presentation in mind. 

That is to say, he cared more about appearance than function. The amount of tape holding the shiny paper together has to be at least half a roll, if not more.

So he starts off carefully. Slides his finger beneath the small spaces of overlap that aren’t covered in tape, technically ruining the paper but leaving it with very few tears as he undoes Changmin’s wrapping job step by painstaking step, every section he undoes adding to the hope swelling just behind his sternum. 

When he finally unveils his gift, Yunho feels like crying all over again.

“I knew it was you,” he whispers now, the painting in his hands the greatest testament to love he’s ever seen. “I should have seen it before then, but I…”

“You what?” 

Changmin’s smile is a winter sky: clear and bright and joyous to those who truly understand it. For what it’s worth, Yunho thinks he understands both Changmin and the winter sky better than most.

“Shut up.” Already tears are beading on his lashes again, threatening to fall on the perfect work of art Changmin has given him. Yunho bets his cheeks are all flushed, too, pinker than they’d be if he was standing in the storm currently blowing snow all over Seoul. “I’m just an idiot, alright? I know that’s what you want to hear.”

“One of two things,” Changmin tells him, huffing out a laugh as he takes the painting from Yunho and sets it gently on the floor, leaning his perfectly-painted canvas against the coffee table. “I’m sure you know what the second one is.”

“I said it already! Do you know how much effort it took? How scared I was?” Yunho sighs, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re so ungrateful,” he teases, sticking out his tongue to emphasize his point. “After everything I do for you—”

“Everything you do for me? Oh, that’s a little—”

“Whatever you’re about to say, I’m ninety-five percent sure it isn’t. ”

♡

Christmas Eve. A night of excitement and happiness. A night where children run around decorated trees, friends toast to the good fortune of being with one another during the holidays, and people of all ages soak in the final joys of the holiday season.

Christmas Eve is a night of happiness, which also makes it a night of love.

The best example I can offer is a new couple sitting in a Seoul apartment, drinking wine and laughing over a confession either of them could have made years before this moment. They are not just happy, but full of the Christmas spirit that truly defines tonight, and I don’t think it’s possible to ask for something better than that. Not when they’re warm both inside and out, slightly tipsy from a strong, sweet wine that one of them bought solely for tonight, staring into each other’s eyes with an adoration stronger than the storm outside.

Love takes many different forms, as we all know. But tonight it comes in the form of two dark figures. Ones made of vertical and horizontal strokes, blurry at first but clearer if one looks a bit closer, standing against a brilliant sunset of pink and red and orange that seems to radiate warmth despite being only paint on a canvas.

They have always stood side-by-side, this couple I am currently describing to you. I don’t think they’ll ever be apart. Of course, I’ll wish them the very best of luck in their lives and the very best of love in their hearts…but I don’t think they need my help. 

If you know who I’m talking about, I’m sure you’ll understand why.

The End