Archive of Our Own

From somewhere above the high rise building, the wind blows and it whistles a well-known song of wealth and games, of being on top and the metaphor of the whole world below.

At the same time, behind the floor-to-ceiling windows, Yuma breathes into Jo’s shirt.

"Don't leave." He says, more like commands in a soft whine, and Jo fights back the sigh, his left hand immediately wrapping Yuma’s neck as he pulls him closer.

Jo complies.

Of course he does, of course he would. He always complies.

The lights are blinding, a headache being birthed behind Jo’s eyelids, and Yuma’s eyes are hooded. A feline in the wild. Both of their elbows are nearly touching.

A thousand people pass them by and yet, they still seem to be only ones in the crowd, every living person another blur in the background, and Jo cannot help but wish that their hands were clasped, fingers intertwined.

Jo looks at Yuma with the corner of his eyes, his soft features contemplative of something secret as his head is tilted back. He is watching the sky with his hands in his pockets, eyes dark with light reflecting like pearls twinkling brightly against the darkness, shiny and hard.

So hard. So devoid of any meaning Jo could read, and his hands hurt with the paint brush remarkably absent from being balanced around his long fingers, the sheer need of capturing the vastness of whatever’s behind the machinations of Yuma’s mind suddenly too unbearable.

It is constant, the need of capturing Yuma into something more, making whatever it is between them eternal. Jo has to let the thought go too constantly - he lacks the supplies, needs to save up for crayons, let alone paint and a canvas.

Yuma offered to buy him a tablet and some sort of digitalizing pen? Jo’s ears were ringing from the offer alone, his neck painful from the muscular spasms of the suggestion Jo couldn’t afford it something to give him sobering thoughts when he was up at night.

"What are you thinking about?" He decided to ask, because dwelling on the fact that Yuma’s building is the most expensive penthouse in all of Tokyo and Jo lives an hour and a half away by train is ill-advised, a mood killer, and Yuma would pout at him if he could read Jo’s thought as well as Jo can hide them.

However, Yuma does not answer with words, and this seems to be the standard as of late. He decides to simply look at Jo instead.

He just does that, keeps doing that for a full ten, fifteen seconds. The tick of the clock loud against the silence that wraps around them like an invisible cloak, or a curse.

It feels like a curse to Jo, the not knowing.

Yuma continues looking at him.

Blinks.

Then shrugs.

"Am I?" Yuma offers him the sweet relief of a reply at last, albeit spoken so softly and reflectively that Jo wonders what his original question even was. Is he what? Thinking?

His hooded eyes are so feline that Jo cannot help but wanting to extend his hand for Yuma to bite, the look in them of a naughty house cat watching the prey before it plays with it.

All of the world is hanging in that single glance, all of Jo’s devotion probably imprisoned in his hands.

His heart is there too, still beating. Jo wonders if Yuma can hear it too, for he is sure that he can smell the blood and the ceaseless pounding.

Yuma doesn't mention it though.

Never really does.

It's a Saturday and Yuma is standing right in front of Jo’s door, black leather coat, cigarette hanging between his lips and a food bag in his hands.

He looks gorgeous. Delectable. Edible. Jo’s fingers twitch from around his notebook where he is sketching the outlines of the city, the subway’s entrance caught between the frenzy of people and the city’s nightlife.

Yuma shakes a bag of food in front of him, takes a final drag of the cigarette since he decides he did not want the thing anymore while at least a good half of it was left. Crushes the thing between his boots as he exhales.

"Brought some Chinese food." Yuma announces, and Jo could smell the steamed buns, rice and noodles from where he was sitting.

Yuma’s favorite.

Jo nods, stepping away from the door so Taehyun can come in. He makes a mental note to pick up the discarded cigarette and throw it in the trash later so he doesn’t get fined.

Yuma is there, at his doorstep, hair pushed back and food in hands. This is still a mental image he cannot get used to, not in the suburbs away from the lush life and the wealth that smothers Yuma and everything he does. From the five cars at his garage to the doorman that carries home his groceries, the two rooms he has to store clothes and the 15 square meter dedicated area of his house to his vinyls alone.

Jo looks at him from up, as he is a full head taller, reserved in his own prayers, and stares at the Devil that is one Nakakita Yuma - wearing God as a costume, leather jacket and the teeth of someone that bites, and Jo is irrevocably devoted.

"I hate it when you smoke." Jo offers instead, because adoration out loud sounds too much like a confession that none of them are ready to face.

Yuma offers him a small smile - a concession, rare and adorable, and he steps inside, kicking his shoes off.

He then makes his way in, leaving the boxes of Chinese food on the counter, fetching another cigarette from somewhere inside his jacket along with a pretty and expensive looking silver lighter. He brings the filthy thing to his mouth, taking a drag.

Bad house cat, bad kitty, Jo thinks, and makes a face at him. The disapproval is immediately disregarded by Yuma, as he decides his new place will be Jo’s small couch.

He sits there, lounging as he looks around. Assessing, taking the place in. Jo stands awkwardly at the door, his ears already burning up.

He is only wearing sweats and a simple white shirt, and he has been wearing that for the past two days. Laundry day would be tomorrow morning.

"Do you really hate it that I smoke?” Yuma asks, and signals with his head to the cigarette burning at the tip. Ashes are about to fall, so Jo scrambles to find a glass he could use to flick that thing off.

Yuma thanks him with a small nod, and Jo sits at the edge of the couch, the both of them barely fitting there together.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t smoke inside. I hate cigarettes.” Jo offers him a small smile, apologetic even if he does indeed hate the thing, but usually Yuma offers him an olive branch in the form of a mint that he eats afterwards, and their kisses are usually nice, in spite of it all. Jo shivers slightly. “The smell.”

Yuma is humming to himself, a song that is stuck on his mind for a melody he has been chasing since last week’s Monday. Almost two weeks, and he nods slightly to Jo, understanding. Gets up from the couch quickly and smoothly, cracks the living room window open slightly to exhale the cigarette smoke outside.

“Do you?” He turns his face around slightly to ask Jo from behind his shoulder, and his profile is so startling handsome that Jo gets up from the couch and fetches his notebook quickly, doodling on another blank page the soft edges of his pouty lips, the curve of his long nose and the jaw that Jo traces every night with his own mouth, committing that to mind with the tools of his body.

He allows Yuma to finish the cigarette, both of them deciding not to speak, only the sounds of Yuma’s soft humming harmonizing with the sounds of his pen scratching against paper.

Just right there and then, Jo doesn’t hate Yuma’s unhealthy habits, nor the smell of the smoke wrapping around them in the moment.

Jo doesn’t seem to hate Yuma’s smoking, he notices.

Did he ever?

Yuma finishes the whole cigarette before they start digging at the food he had brought, and they sit at the small table that divides the living room and kitchen in Jo’s small apartment.

They eat silently and Yuma just stares at Jo, his chopsticks playing around with the food in front of him, holding Jo’s heart in his hands all throughout, and Jo suddenly feels anxious.

The silence fills the room, sits between them like a mediator.

"So..." Jo starts, voice a little louder than a whisper. "What actually brings you here?"

Jo doesn't dare look at him as he drags the chopsticks next to his mouth and shoves his rice in there, hoping to do something with his hands and mouth and keeping himself from exploding.

He cannot fully gather enough strength to look Yuma in the eyes.

"Hunger." Yuma answers, and very simply, his eyes heavy on Jo’s face and he can feel the stare as if it was a physical stroke to his face, caressing his cheeks, beckoning him to be brave and actually, fully look.

Jo hates that Yuma doesn't speak to him sometimes, just offers him one-liners, and Jo is usually the quieter one.

He has seen Yuma in his element, domineering a room and going on and on about any topic, usually music. Frequently music, really.

Composition, theory, either going on about a plethora of artists or even singing himself, his voice airy and unique and so beautiful that someday it will haunt Jo even in other lifetimes away from this one.

Sometimes, Yuma doesn’t look him in the eye with the warmth Jo craves. And he craves, and he wants, and he yearns so much. But Jo is stuck in this place somewhere Yuma and himself, somewhere between the ground level and the 56th floor where Yuma’s ridiculously large penthouse sits, so up above.

A world of distance between them, even if now they sit so close, knees barely touching as Jo’s long legs take up all of the room, and Yuma never shies away from it.

He will say two or three words, if so. In this moments alone.

Maybe the silence is more comforting to Yuma, between the two of them. A secret language.

Later, Yuma fucks down on him so hard that Jo moans his name like it's a prayer and he's a believer.

Or this is a curse and Jo is the one carrying through his own sentence.

Yuma doesn't say anything at all, he whimpers and moans and places both of his hands on Jo’s naked chest, claiming him without the need of speaking that ownership into existence.

And this is the thing - Jo loves everything about Yuma - even the things he hates about him.

The silence, the smoking, the glances behind hooded eyes. The leather jacket that costs four times his rent for the entire semester.

"Yuma." Jo’s voice is a plea in the dark, quiet in his loud desperation, this all-consuming desire burning through him, burning everything about him. "What am I to you?" He asks, watching as if he is outside of his body as his hands are stroking Yuma’s soft blond hair, and Yuma doesn't reply.

Not at first.

He chooses to again just look at him.

Blinks.

Then shrugs.

"Something." Yuma offers at last, and Jo releases a breath he felt himself holding for what feels like a century.

And Jo hates himself, because he settles for it.

"Yuma." He calls, and Yuma looks up from the laptop that sits on top of his knees - he is editing a song and his eyebrows are wrinkled in concentration as he edits a song, one earphone in. He looks concerned, so absolutely concerned.

"Yes?"

"What are we?"

Yuma, unsurprisingly, just looks at him.

His eyes betray nothing, not even surprise at the question. He looks down as he types something absentmindedly, then looks back up, locking Jo in place, breath again failing from leaving his lungs.

Blinks.

Then shrugs.

"Something." Yuma says, and Jo releases the breath in half. The other half of it stuck to his lungs in burning disarray.

And Jo settles for it - cannot help but settle for it, albeit unsettled.

Yuma is everything to him. His first thought when he wakes up and the last when he goes to sleep - and every one of them in between.

Yuma wakes up next to Jo some mornings and doesn't kiss him goodbye.

He often chooses to leave without a word or a kiss. Without a glance. Gets up from the bed and goes about his day, locking the door behind himself.

He goes and leaves and comes up again. Kisses him in bed, in dark alleyways after nights out, somewhere between light and dark that lives at 5am. Never out and about, never underneath sparkling lights.

They fuck so hard. So good. So intimately.

In the dark hours or in the quiet between four walls here and there, there are kisses and scratching on skin and hands traveling south, there is some hair pulling in desperation and hungry kisses, even hungrier taking, and so much heat, so much skin, so much touching.

Jo’s skin burns with so much he cannot say, so instead his notebooks pay the price for all the heat and the flames and the burning desire, this neverending want, so much so that Euijoo always comes and collects him during workdays.

“He is the only thing you draw now.” He comments one time, wiping the counter of the bar they both work at, and Jo nods.

He is.

“You used to draw so much of nature, and Tokyo, and skylines.”

He doesn’t tell Jo what Jo already knows - the world. You used to draw so much of it and now all you do is draw Yuma, and think of Yuma, and draw him again and again.

Jo nods, unable to lie or make excuses for himself. Euijoo nods too, clasping his shoulder as he passes him by, the comforting touch wrapped in obvious pity.

Last week Jo had overhead Euijoo and Nicholas discussing him, and they sounded concerned. Nicholas said that Yuma was like a rich bitch, and Euijoo chastised him about it. “Blonde, skinny, rich. He is obviously a little bit of a bitch.” Nicholas offered Euijoo, and Euijoo slapped his head.

“Quit it. You know he is Jo’s…” But couldn’t finish the sentence, and Jo had left that night and found Yuma already inside his apartment, smoking inside with the windows open and working on the same melody he had been a month ago.

Maybe it is the fate of the artist, and Yuma makes it so Jo cannot regret this, not when they are wrapped around each other’s naked bodies and Yuma’s soft lips on him offer Jo artistic visions of colors and lines and shapes on paper that Jo sees only in him.

One night, Yuma’s playing with Jo’s hair after they lie in bed, sweat drenched from having sex.

Yuma had taken his sweet time consuming Jo whole, eating him up then spitting him out. It had started as it usually does, with Yuma’s tongue on Jo’s ear, then his hands reaching inside of Jo’s pants.

Somewhere along the road, Yuma climbed on Jo’s lap, telling him to lose the condom, that he had readied himself before hand, then handed him the lube.

Jo poured it on himself and barely had time to adjust himself before Yuma was reading him senseless, their breaths condensed as Yuma was feasting on him, kissing him senseless, begging him to come inside.

Jo did, their bodies then mending together into one, Jo not knowing where he started and Yuma ended, their sweat and their saliva and their cum all turned into one single mess of words unsaid.

Yuma laughs it off now, telling Jo he is the most fun playground he has to himself.

Jo is silent, contemplative of the feeling spreading on his chest.

"Why do you play with me?" He asks, unable to contain himself but immediately regretting it as the traitorous words leave his mouth. "As if my feelings were your toys?"

Yuma looks at him.

Smiles.

Then shrugs.

"Because you let me."

Jo remains in silence then, and they fall asleep tangled like that, words unspoken clinging to Jo’s skin, Jo’s embarrassing devotion to Yuma’s.

"Yuma."

Today is one of those days, one of those which Jo is unable to hold back on his affection, the embarrassing utter devotion, and he is laying in bed with Yuma wrapped around him loosely, one of his hands caressing Jo’s neck, drawing circles around the sensitive skin with leisured ease.

"Yes?" Yuma says, and he sounds a bit sleepy, his eyes aren’t as hooded, and he feels and sounds so soft that Jo cannot help but think of wild cat with his guard down.

"You are probably everything to me." Jo confesses, cheeks heating up with how crazy he is from letting his own guard down, bravery quickly turning into stupidity.

Yuma looks up at him, not entirely unsurprised, his eyes open a slight fraction wider than they usually are this time of night, with their naked bodies touching everywhere and the hunger satiated.

Yuma blinks.

Smiles.

Then shrugs.

He offers him a bargain, a snack, breadcrumbs of some sort, enough to satisfy the famished state of Jo’s heart.

"Isn't that something?"

Jo settles for something then. Gladly.

Something feels like they are meeting somewhere in between the sky and the earth that dusts their feet, and this realization alone gets Jo to go to the supply store and spend his savings on that canvas that he has been eyeing for three months now. The paint is a cheaper one than the one he likes, but he will take it, he knows what mixture will get him to translate the color of Yuma’s eyes and the soft curves of his neck.

Everything else are just things - and they can come along eventually.

The paintbrush strokes the canvas as be traces Yuma’s hair, and he immortalizes the look that Yuma had given him that day, conjuring the image of when Yuma had blinked against Jo’s chest, his eyelids making his skin ticklish.

That's something indeed.

It drives him crazy.

Jo looks around the room and it drives him crazy, the brush helping Yuma take shape in front of him and the blank spaces be filled with color and lines that resemble Yuma’s cheeks and mouth and the forehead Jo had kissed absentmindedly as they both fell asleep earlier that night.

A week later, Yuma and Jo having met only a couple of times at Yuma’s penthouse, there are dozens of paintings of him scattered around Jo’s small apartment - all in different styles, and sometimes of singled out different parts of him.

There are some of just his eyes, of his jaw, of his profile.

Of his ankles, and Jo is a bit embarrassed of that one, but he was a man possessed when he painted that, of his back when he's asleep and lying in bed and of his shoulders, head down.

It drives him insane, and Euijoo noticed that Jo had paint behind his ear last night and looked concerned. Nicholas offered him a drink after work hours and Jo said sure, then he let Jo know that people like Yuma are muses but not lovers, and Jo only nodded, sure, whatever you say, because he could spot the concern, but Jo did not mind it.

Yuma let himself in a week later, before Jo had arrived from work, and Jo is already sweating as he opens the door and sees Yuma standing with his back turned at him.

And he just stands there, that’s all his does, staring at the paintings and  Jo is fighting the urge to puke.

Nervous, hands shaking and sweating, his life’s work now coming down to Yuma and everything about him.

He hears the breath being taken out loud, the loudest Yuma has taken in his presence to date, and Jo closes his eyes, unable to face whatever he fears he will see once he opens them.

"Hm." Is all Yuma says. "I see."

Jo doesn't say anything. He doesn't even move, doesn’t dare to. The silence is primarily his now, and this is a weird change in the dynamics of how this usually goes.

It's not like him - to not have something to say to Yuma. Even if it's dumb and ridiculous and so so pathetic, he usually says them.

He loves to see what it will cause him, because few are the people that Jo allows with something other than silence.

"Aren't you gonna say something, Jo" Yuma asks, and Jo might be truly spiraling into utter insanity, because he can swear that Yuma sounds nervous.

Anxious, even.

He's anticipating for Jo to explain this to him, to let him know that this is simply artistic creativity. A spark of the illumination that artists can have in the middle of the night for consecutive nights. Of that little spark of something that makes them what they are.

Or maybe the expectation of caressing him with his words, letting him be praised like Jo is no stranger to doing.

Funny enough, Jo wants to hum the melody Yuma had stuck on his mind. It is the one thing that takes over his thoughts at the present moment, either bringing him the final blow in diagnosing him as insane, or offering him a bit of sanity at the end of it all. Light at the tunnel.

And shit.

He opens his eyes, and Yuma’s own gaze is on him, so big and bright and open that Jo’s knees are getting week.

“The paintings are beautiful.” Yuma tells him, and Jo agrees.

You are, he doesn’t say.

“The colors are so blunt, so natural, so accurate.” Yuma nods, appreciatively, and there it is, that little tilt at the end of the syllable. Nervous.

Yuma is nervous.

“I could see you took your sweet time memorizing the subject’s… My body. You have mastered technique, that much is clear.” Jo is unsure why Yuma is openly criticizing his work now. Maybe it is because he had known art theory from the moment he was born, running around in expensive galleries after afternoon tea parties that were hosting whatever posh events that he had to attend before he would even legally need to do his taxes.

Perhaps he could tell then, how all of it was entirely different from everything Jo had ever painted. Maybe he could spot the way he had taken such care of transmitting Yuma into it that it made him nervous.

Maybe Jo’s love, maybe Jo’s unapologetic devotion was indeed too much for him.

Because there was affection in every brush, and that much was clear.

Now Jo really wanted to puke.

"Jo." Yuma calls, and Jo lifts his head to look at him very, very slowly.

The whole weight of the world hangs on his shoulder, all the words inside of him dragging him down to hell below.

"I don't think anything of it, not on a personal level.” Yuma says, with a finality that scratches Jo’s skin, startling him. “Art is not to think, at least not as much as it is to feel."

And do you? Do you feel? Jo wonders, and he must’ve done it out loud, for Yuma tilts his head to the side with a slight smile as he takes Jo in.

He was obviously caught a bit off guard with Jo’s own words, and he can tell because Yuma’s hands are both shaking and maybe he isn’t noticing, because he’s not trying to conceal it, and Jo is noticing because he notices everything about Yuma at all times.

And Jo is taken back to the night in which he had first heard a song that Yuma had written and produced.

There was so much of his soul there, so much Yuma that Jo recalls his heart had nearly exploded with the love he had felt right then, and all Jo had mustered to offer in return to Yuma after he had asked what he had thought was that it had made him feel. That was it.

"Well, you seem to have felt a lot." Yuma adds at last, eyes having left Jo’s and now directed at a painting of Yuma’s eyes: they were closed with tenderness, his countenance soft and relaxed, and that was what Yuma looked like right before he fell asleep.

It was also painfully obvious that Jo had caressed the canvas rather than simply painted it for this one, the strokes feather like and imbued with all the fondness in the world.

Jo is left speechless at that. He simply nods.

"I see." Yuma whispers, so little words and no catch. No sarcasm, no irony.

A bit of a blank.

He was blank like a canvas when Jo was sure anyone that looked at him could see the colors around him screaming in red and blue.

A beat of silence, pregnant with all the words that were floating around them, as heavy as a rock.

Yuma breaks it after a while, hands now turned into tight fists.

"I saw it in them. Lots of things." He apparently cannot stop himself, and Jo hates how this moment feels so delicate and fragile between them. Hates how his heart is beating so loudly that he needs to make the conscious effort of listening to Yuma’s voice above it.

Spines on his heart and against his chest and they’re climbing all the way to his throat, to his tongue, out of his mouth as they slip and he's pricked.

"Yes. I saw love and I saw so much of your heart in there. Words unspoken of care. I saw things. I saw something."

And he delivers the last word like a blow to Jo’s chest and his knees buckle, falling to floor with a muted thud.

It feels more like a stab for now Yuma’s tongue are too akin to a knife, Jo is the blank canvas with all the words he cannot utter, cannot say, but Yuma makes sure he is fit to cut through them masterfully.

Jo can see the red from blood starting to drip from where he was stabbed.

It was said so carefully, so perfectly, so poignantly.

“I see that this… This is not enough.” Yuma is shaking all over now. He is saying something that causes his whole body to react so violently, and he delivers the violence just the same. He is looking at Jo from high up above, their height difference switching in hierarchy.

How ironic, the metaphor.

“Something is not enough. Caring is not enough."

Jo looks up, his veins about to burst through his skin, the blood running there taking over his brain and making him lightheaded as he looks around the room and laughs. A man possessed.

“I was enough to carry promises and kisses and touches and it is enough for me.

“It was love for you. Clearly. Not just something.” Yuma accuses him, and something inside of Jo breaks.

“But I wasn't enough then. The love I carry, the caring, the affection, the nights of laying in bed and your humming, your constantly humming, the song that lives between us? Even that wasn't enough?”

“It's never enough!” Yuma is shaking so hard that Jo has to fight back the urge to grab him and steady him. “We are worlds apart.”

“I love you so fucking much." Jo has to stop himself. He is losing his mind looking at Yuma’s eyes and he knows a thing or two about getting lost in them, lost in the unspoken words and the way he is held hostage by how sneaky and perfect and insanely mysterious they get to be. He should know, because he has lost himself in Yuma’s eyes way too many time as he was falling for him.

"But it won't do, will it?” Yuma’s voice is rising and every syllable in them shaking with something so deep and so strong that it causes Jo’s heart to stop beating for a moment. “Love won't do. Is that why you painted me, Jo? To have me forever locked to you?"

Yuma’s eyes are two globes of pure black. His hands are clenched into fists and he's breathing so fast and heavy it seems like he will burst out any second.

"No.” Jo breathes, his voice no louder than a soft whisper, lost in the way out. He becomes desperate to his own ears. “God. We are artists. It's what we do. I captured how I felt about you in this glimpses of art.”

Yuma sighs loudly, hugging himself to try and stop the heavy shaking of his own body.

“I will fuck you up. Jo.” He laughs then, weakly, humorless. “Look at you. For fuck's sake… The purest. You know what you I showed you the other night? That thing that made you feel?” He starts pacing around at the spot, shadows cast by the light around him oddly beautiful. “That sound was you. The sounds you carry around, the melody I’m working at right now. I noticed it the other night, as you were doodling. That made me feel so…“

He takes a deep breath, stops pacing with his back turned to Jo, and Jo is helplessly sitting there, on his knees, begging for something that is bigger than them to grant him a wish. To make a dream come true.

Yuma doesn’t turn around. Jo hasn’t been heard yet.

“I was the only thing you could see. You were the only thing I could hear. It’s killing me.” Yuma is shaking and Jo is frozen and the paintings of Yuma are witnessing this exchange unabashedly.

"Love won't do, Jo. How could it, Jo?"

He is crying. Jo is crying and still, all he wants right now is to hold Yuma tight and he can't.

All Jo can do is remain frozen in place, and he sinks a little bit more into himself as Yuma goes on: "How could it? How could you settle for the things I gave you? For the little things? I love weirdly and crookedly and you didn't care about that. You still painted me so softly and so full of devotion.”

Yuma cannot stop, Jo cannot speak up to stop him either.

“You took me in, this rich bitch that I can be, and I know your friends think that because Nicholas has told me as much when I went to see you at that bar last week, and you took it all and you said nothing. You were happy to have whatever it is we had because I called it something! How could you? How could you settle for anything less than my utter devotion, Jo?"

Yuma’s entire body is shaking so hard and his voice is so full of emotion that Jo’s heart is no longer an organ nor a muscle nor a part of his body anymore, but a secret, worst thing.

It’s like the whole world is crumbling and none of them can get a fucking grip.

“How, Jo? When you deserve nothing else than to be praised and worshipped and loved as big as the Universe can go and I love you but not that much. Not enough for this, for… Us.” Jo’s lungs are also useless and stop working, his tears keep falling and Jo feels as though the floor is the only thing keeping him from going under.

“And I can't love you more than this. And you can't love me less than this. And it's not enough." Yuma stops for a second, shrugs seemingly to himself. "It's never going to be enough. What we have is limited and you are fucking endless. You and your smiles and how you can give yourself all to me. All I do is give in and love is not a game. It shouldn't be. And I can't play with you any longer, Jo." He closes his eyes.

Sighs.

Turns his back to Jo again as a sign, a warning, a request.

Jo takes a deep breath, trying to will his body to cooperate. All he can do is stand there.

Yuma walks around him, heads to the door, but not quick enough that Jo can’t smell the alcohol in him.

"I'm sorry." Yuma says, at last, and Jo’s world finally crumbles.

Yuma leaves.

"No." Nicholas tells him as he finds him there the next morning, Euijoo tagging along with him. "He is not."

Jo wants to fight him. Tell him Yuma sounded sincere. He loves him, too, but he is scared of loving Jo any less. He probably cannot fathom how to love him in a way that isn’t Yuma’s, and Jo was too frozen, too weak to tell him as much.

Jo also wants to call him and tell him he's an idiot. Because he frankly is, and at least that is something new to this, this realization.

Jo wants to scream to his face that he's also a motherfucking coward.

Euijoo helps Jo with some food, rice and a hearty soup. Nicholas suggests they go out for drinks, and Jo wants to say yes, but Euijoo is shaking his head.

“Harua said not to let you drink tonight.” And the scowl on Nicholas face is clear as day.

“Harua is Yuma’s friend.” Nicholas accuses, and both Jo and Euijoo can see how Nicholas’ loyalty is a beautiful thing, but misplaced in face of Yuma’s friends, who are actually quite nice and not at all biased in this.

Euijoo tells Nicholas as much, and Nicholas’ scowl deepens because he was reasoned with by Euijoo, and that at least makes Jo smile a little.

“Thank Harua for me. I won’t be able to work today, I think, but I won’t drink. I promise.”

Euijoo nods.

“I’ll cover for you. You cover for me next. On a weekend.” He winks at Jo conspiratorially, and Nicholas scoffs, but chooses to stay silent for the rest of their shared meal.

And even if he did have some beer and soju replacing his bloodstream a week later, funny enough with the help and sponsorship of Harua at a local bar in Jo’s neighborhood, his designer clothes going by unnoticed with everyone else’s department store ones, even then he can't bring himself to call Yuma.

To face him.

To hate him.

A week’s worth of clarity still could not suffice for the pain, but it still did not amount to any ill feelings towards Yuma.

His love stood there, at the same place.

“He will come around.” Harua tells him after they pay for the bill and Harua deposits Jo safely into his very own taxi. Harua is sweet and caring towards his friends, and he was a happy addition to Jo’s life, thanks to Yuma.

He is not picking sides, and Jo would hate for that to happen. Yuma needs Harua as much as Jo, maybe even more right now.

“You mumble your thoughts out loud when you are drunk.” Harua caresses Jo’s hair, then tells the driver Jo’s address. “You need me more, actually.”

They depart like that, and next morning Jo covers Euijoo’s weekend shift with a pounding headache and the happy breakthrough that he is alive.

Sitting in a cafe a month later, Yuma’s name is less frequent to come up between him and his friends. Harua calls Jo everyday, even Taki, who is Yuma’s best friend. They never mention him to Jo, and Nicholas has also resorted to other methods rather than trash talking.

So Jo’s way of handling it is by grabbing his notebook and pencils and doodling away.

He starts with random images of things that remind Jo of life before Yuma. Subways, short buildings, dogs and bicycles. There was no particular order.

Then he somehow lands on drawing a story, something he did not notice he was drawing at all until he came to his senses an hour later.

The panels sort of took shape on their own - a boy that lived somewhere in the outskirts of town, a high rise, the heat of kisses behind the bar, then being introduced to a world of private drivers, doormen that wear hats and tuxedos, delivery services for caviar, cats lounging on sofas, the smell of expensive cologne and cigarettes in a tiny room in the suburbs.

The emotions translate to love in all of those drawings. If you did not speak the language, you could still tell.

He's been waiting for a while, for his feelings to change. For the pages to scream

I hate you. I fucking hate you. I hate you hate you hate you

He feels like he's five years old, waiting for that. But he is twenty two, and there’s a gallery exhibition that he submitted a painting he’s finished last week that called him for an interview.

It is a small, independent gallery. They usually pay the artists handsomely, for some reason. Harua said it was for tax reasons, Nicholas thought it was money laundering, but Euijoo said they seemed legitimate.

“Koga Yudai.” The man is as tall and lean as Jo, his soft features very handsome. He smiles at all times, and it is a crooked smile, but very charming.

He offers to show Jo around the gallery, explaining to him that he takes great pride in collecting art from small, independent artists.

“It is how I started.”

He shows Jo the section of the gallery that have his own paintings, and Jo feels his heart racing.

Jo knows his paintings, would be able to recognize them anywhere.

“Kei?”

Koga Yudai laughs, nods a little shyly.

“Yes. You know my work, then?”

“Yes. Very much. I adore your style. You work uses the image of a muse majestically.”

He sort of admires Kei a lot. Koga Yudai, in the flesh, is still smiling at him.

He buys Jo’s painting for three million yen.

Which is absurd, but apparently Koga Yudai runs a philanthropic association along with the gallery, and they have money to spare on artists that come from more humble backgrounds.

Harua tells him it was indeed tax reasons, Nicholas still argues for money laundering, and Euijoo just tells him they’re all so happy for him.

They will celebrate after the exhibition that is set a week from now, the great launch being a huge party with various sponsors and collectors alike.

Jo gets to take Nicholas and Euijoo with him, and Harua and Taki will come too, although they have enough money and insisted on buying their own tickets.

None of them mention Yuma, and Jo’s heart longs for him.

Jo has tried to push away a bit of jis longing, but all he can do is to be pulled closer and closer and it's a little embarrassing. How whipped he is.

How his heart beats and it pumps blood and he feels so heavy and so weak at the knees and so full of Yuma, that all he can feel is love striking his chest everytime like clockwork.

1 o'clock, love.

He reads it as 1pm, here we go again.

1 o'clock, love.

He reads it as 1am, I wonder how he’s been.

2am and 2pm are the same.

Universal time is love and he keeps being late to it, for some reason. Tries not to feel defeated, but the result is the same.

But really, he's always been there on time.

A week later, and he is standing surrounded by a lot of people he does not know, but he can tell by their clothes and the watches around their wrists that they share the same lifestyle as Harua and Taki. The exact same as Yuma.

They all come from wealth and it is clear that the sponsorships here are not based on the same philanthropy as Kei desperately wants them to share. But Nicholas told Jo that Kei plays the game well - he had researched more about him with Euijoo and he’s had a similar background to all of them, having graduated university on a full ride. His muse is apparently his husband, and they met during their years as undergrads.

“You two were awfully curious about him.”

“Need the money on your bank account to be clean.” Nicholas tells him pointedly. “Euijoo just thought he looked cute.”

“Hot.” Euijoo corrects him. “But I was also curious.”

Jo smiles at them, and feels the nerves starting to dissipate. Having good friends around him is a relief.

“I, on the other hand,” Harua tells them as he arrives with Taki in toll, having listened in to the conversation sneakily. “Have known Kei’s husband all my life. They are a very hot couple. The Murata family are also good people.”

“You are too rich to know what that means.” Nicholas antagonizes him, and Harua shrugs.

“It’s true though.”

Jo tunes their bickering out, and focuses on finding Kei in the crowd.

They had run through this before - Kei would do the introductions, show the sponsors around the room, advise on the artists being exhibited and their styles, so they could perhaps invest in other works and organize enough quorum for an auction later on. The profits would all go to art students spaced out through high school and university alike, sponsoring their studies of the arts as well as the materials and books.

Jo loved to hear that so much that he did not even mind the scrutiny from people staring at him, or the ones begging for his attention and commentary as he stood in front of the painting.

“What is it about?” A woman had asked him an hour in, the only one who had truly decided to ask him instead of telling him what the painting was about.

Jo looks behind himself, stares at the painting.

It is a dark room, only a small window allowing light coming inside. There are multiple shapes and lines concentrated in the middle, soft pastel colors fighting off the darkness that creeps around. There are hands in there, if you look closely, clasped together and tied with a red knot. It is barely noticeable, but it is good to be asked.

“Turmoils of love, and the inability of letting go.” Someone answers before he can, and Jo is stuck in place as he places the voice as someone he knows.

The woman nods and walks away, Yuma coming into view.

He looks skinnier than before, smaller. Bags under his eyes and wearing way too many rings and necklaces, his black suede suit is so perfect and specially noticeable against the sea of white that is the gallery.

“You came.” Jo says.

“You didn’t invite me though.” He looks at Jo accusingly, then looks away, fixating his eyes on the painting once more. “Me again.”

Jo nods.

“Still you.”

“I should’ve called.” Yuma says as he crosses his arms in front of his chest. He looks nervous. “How much did they pay you for it?”

“3 million.” Jo answers him. “You could have called.”

Yuma purses his lips, eyes still not meeting Jo’s. A stark change.

They remain in silence for a bit, none of them saying anything as some people pass them by, stare at the painting and make some remarks.

A bit of their routine, at least. Common ground.

“I am in love with you.” Yuma tells him after a while, and Jo’s heart beats faster. “Don’t say anything.”

Jo obeys, simply stares at Yuma as he summons the courage to say whatever he is clearly fighting to say.

He finally finds Jo’s eyes, stares back at him decidedly.

“I am sorry I played with your feelings. I fell in love with you somewhere between the doodling and the stolen kisses. But this is hard for me. Being with someone and allowing you to be with me, too.” He takes a deep breath. “Can I buy your painting?”

“No.” Jo tells him, and Yuma deflates a little. “I can paint you a new one.”

“God, there’s still room for more?” Yuma sounds exasperated.

“Did you finish the song? About me?” Jo is being obtuse on purpose.

“Yes. The title is I Will Love You Louder.”

Jo smiles at him fully,and Yuma looks away.

“You should develop some more self-love.” He points at him accusingly, then offers Jo his hand. “Can I start?”

“Loving me loudly?”

Yuma drops his hands and pouts. Jo reaches out and grabs it again.

Yuma doesn’t fight it, lets his fingers intertwine with Jo’s, then looks up at him.

Blinks. Shrugs.

Then smiles. Tentatively, shyly.

Jo looks at him, blinks away the tears. Shrugs.

Then smiles brightly, feeling content with a new beginning.