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fic: snapshot
pairing: hyunjae/juyeon
rating: T
content warning: brief mentions of body image issues, vague references to harassment, drinking
wordcount: 4153
tags: models au (both hyunjae and juyeon are models), introspection, slight angst, developing relationship
a/n: wrote this one in 2021! never felt like posting but who knows, maybe posting it here will make me want to post to ao3 too? shoutout to isa for being so kind about it when I showed it to her!! :')
Jaehyun has a specific memory that comes back to him from time to time.
He was four, maybe five. That might be his oldest memory. It’s more of a snapshot than anything; standing to one side, in the big house he grew up calling Auntie’s house, watching the adults around him while he played with his favorite toy car. He can’t recall what the game was, if there was a game at all, only that his toy car—green with silver detailing, huge in his tiny hand—was his own particular world. He may not have known what his relatives were talking about, or what they were even doing there, but it didn’t matter.
He had his own little world, with his cool little car, and that was enough. With his sister off to the side with their older cousins, within distance so he could hear her laugh, it didn’t register to him then that he wasn’t a part of the grown-up world.
Sometimes, it feels like he’s still in his own little world.
There is no toy car anymore, and his sister is too far away. But he still feels like a kid looking from outside in. A grown-up that is still not allowed in grown-up world, watching things happen around him, never including him. Or including him, but not interesting him. He can’t bring himself to care enough about the easy gossip the people around him are going on about, can’t bring his own ears to pay attention when the conversation circles back around to numbers and sizes and shots and lines. The beer is just bitter. Not good, not bad. Just beer.
He checks his phone discreetly. There’s a new notification that wasn’t there last time. Opening KakaoTalk, he sees the picture first. Taken at nighttime, he’s looking at a brick wall, except it’s covered in graffiti. Faces of different kinds and shapes, all in bright colors, forming a stunning art mural.
Jaehyun takes his time going over every inch of it, pinching his fingers to zoom in and out. He thinks he can make out some Japanese words, but it’s dark enough that he can’t read them. When he goes back to the chat he notices the tabby cat in the corner, sideways in relation to the picture, like it’s walking away in the middle of its midnight stroll.
LJY
I’ll give you the photo next time
the one I took with the film camera
Jaehyun wonders if it’s Tokyo. It hasn’t been long since his last visit. Consciously making an effort to keep himself from smiling—he doesn’t want to answer questions, not right now—he reacts to the message with a little thumbs up.
Next time.
It’s snowing outside.
Jaehyun is warm, so the white outside the window feels like decoration. Like the special effects in a movie; not real, but pretty enough to be convincing. Next to him, Juyeon stirs.
“Can’t sleep?” Juyeon asks, voice shot with sleep.
They were both tired by the time Jaehyun got to the hotel, jetlag clinging to his every bone. Juyeon looked fine, like he always does, as if immune to exhaustion if not for the bags under his eyes, but he fell asleep fast enough to give away just how untrue that was.
Right now, he shifts closer until he can fit his chin against Jaehyun’s bony shoulder. Jaehyun smiles.
“Jetlag,” he says.
“Want some help with that?”
Juyeon kisses the side of his neck, sending a shiver down Jaehyun’s spine. The mere proximity, the touching—he’s still not used to it. He doesn’t think he can get used to it. He doesn’t think he wants to get used to it.
Getting used to it would mean letting the novelty of it wear off. Jaehyun doesn’t want that. He wants it to take hold of his breath, seize his heart, remind him of the physicality of his body every single time.
He brings his hand to Juyeon’s chin to tilt his head up. “I do.”
There is a rhythm to Juyeon. To the way he speaks, mostly, but Jaehyun has learned that he has a particular rhythm to everything. It’s easy to fall in step with him, at least to Jaehyun, who has been drawn to the pace of his kissing ever since the first time they did this, months ago, in a different hotel room.
Different, but just as comfortable, and just as endless as this one.
That’s the thing, Jaehyun thinks as he pulls Juyeon over him, hands finding their way under Juyeon’s shirt, pressing him closer—things feel endless here. Time itself, stopping for a short while; the world outside, staying out like it doesn’t have the key to the room; the part of Jaehyun that longs for more, quieted down until it’s voiceless, irrelevant.
Whatever the reason, Jaehyun basks in it. He forgets the snow outside in favor of kissing Juyeon and running his hands up his warm back, pleased when Juyeon presses down heavily on top of him, seeking the contact, the warmth, the friction.
They take their time tonight. It’s kissing that delves into something more heated before finally getting to the part where Jaehyun needs to keep his mouth busy to keep the moans from spilling out. Juyeon doesn’t care either way; he’s quieter, speaks with his body and his eyes, the occasional moan coming up proudly uninhibited, but his gaze is still the loudest. The careful pressure of his fingers against Jaehyun’s skin from someone who knows Jaehyun’s body is also his job.
But no brand, stylist, or runway has ever made Jaehyun more aware of the possibilities of his body the way this thing between them does.
It’s only later, when they’ve both had their turn in the bathroom, that it hits Jaehyun, hard and clear—how he wishes it didn’t have to be like this. Only ever thinking of his body as his own here, between four walls and on top of expensive sheets, craving something he doesn’t have the time nor the luxury to want right now.
Juyeon turns the bathroom light off and walks over to Jaehyun’s bed. His own bed is untouched, serving more as another surface to leave their things on. It’s been like this since the first time they shared a room together—two double beds, even though the second bed has always been pointless. An excuse and a last resort, always there, in case they need it.
They never do. Juyeon climbs into bed again, and throws an arm around Jaehyun’s middle, sighing like one does when finally finding comfort.
The photo of the mural in Tokyo is in Jaehyun’s wallet. He has been carrying it around ever since Juyeon first gave it to him, weeks ago.
lee jaehyun
i’ll be in bern next week
wed thru sat
LJY
I’m in vienna
lee jaehyun
i know lol
i can take the flight back from vienna
Jaehyun starts typing i can meet u saturday and leave on sunday but deletes it without sending, just as Juyeon’s reply comes.
LJY
can you come and stay until sunday?
“You lost weight.”
It’s the kind of comment that makes Jaehyun bristle when he’s outside. The words that put his guards up immediately, force him to school his face into the cold but still socially acceptable smile to soften whatever his answer is. No matter how long he has been in this job—and it has been a while, even if he didn’t start as young as the people around him—he still needs to pull himself back, keep the biting answer inside his head and dilute it into something palatable before it leaves his mouth.
Even if he doesn’t put his guards up now, he still tenses up. Juyeon is watching him, waiting for his answer. Jaehyun closes his email app and sets his phone down on the nightstand, plugging it to the charger again. He looks back to where Juyeon is sitting with his back against the headboard.
“Is that a compliment or a criticism?”
“It’s a question.”
Jaehyun smiles. “I’m fine, Juyeonie. It wasn’t on purpose. These last couple weeks have been… hectic.”
Hell on Earth, more like. Jaehyun has a feeling he spent more time in cars, trains, and airplanes than he did actually working. He’s tired, more than he has been in a while. He noticed the weight loss, of course he did. But he chalked it up to muscle loss more than anything; it just so happens that he hasn’t been to the gym in a while now.
It doesn’t bother him. It’s nice to think that Juyeon noticed, however. Even if it shouldn’t mean anything—Juyeon is just as attuned to form as he is, for the same reasons, and he does have privileged knowledge of Jaehyun’s body—Jaehyun still wants it to mean something.
“Do you ever wish you had chosen a different life?”
The question catches him off guard as he’s getting under the covers. Juyeon lies back down with him, turning on his side so he can look at Jaehyun, expecting an answer Jaehyun doesn’t know how to give him.
“Like, a different career?”
Juyeon shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe not a career at all. Just a different life.”
“I can’t imagine not having a career. What would I even do?”
“Marry someone,” Juyeon says, promptly. “Have kids. That sort of thing.”
“If I’d been born into money…”
It’s a half-joke, buying him time to think of a way to answer what is possibly the most personal thing Juyeon has ever asked him. They talk, and they share everything from bad job experiences to the people they’ve met at work, the friends and non-friends they have in common, the opportunities they’ve had and would like to have, but it’s always framed in the perspective of their profession.
For the first time, Juyeon is giving him a window to talk about the things locked away in the recess of his mind. The things he doesn’t have anyone to share with, because no one would understand.
He didn’t expect Juyeon to understand it, either.
“I thought you liked working,” he says. A little hesitant. Testing the ice underneath his feet.
“I do,” Juyeon says. “That’s the thing. I don’t know if I’d like to leave it all behind. One day I’ll have to do that, though.”
“One day, but not right away. Your career is far from over.” Another step. The ice feels sturdy. “Why are you thinking about that now?”
There’s a pause. “It’s nice, not being alone.”
Jaehyun knows, without having to hear it, that Juyeon means him. That this, sharing the same bed, sharing the warmth and the endlessness of hotel rooms that all start to look the same after a while, is what brought all of it on. The thoughts about loneliness, and family, and company.
For one unexplainable second, Jaehyun doesn’t feel like he’s looking from outside in anymore.
“It is nice,” he agrees. Marveling and not trying to hide it. “I wanna have kids someday.”
“You’d make a great dad.”
Jaehyun has to laugh. “You can’t know that.”
“You’re right,” Juyeon says. “But I think you would. Be a great dad, I mean.”
“Are you just sweet-talking me right now?”
“Why would I need to sweet-talk you? You’re already in my bed.”
They laugh at that, Jaehyun going as far as pushing him away as a joke, shouting yah, this is MY bed! and laughing harder when Juyeon pulls him in again for a kiss.
LJY
[IMG_4335.jpg]
the weather is nice
lee jaehyun
where r u
LJY
you don’t recognize it?
I thought you said you
were a football fan..^^
lee jaehyun
ㅎㅎ i say a lot of things
are u in rio already??
LJY
yeah
the taxi drove past the stadium
I’ll try to get a better pic tomorrow
you’re still coming right?
lee jaehyun
👍
It takes Juyeon a surprisingly long time to turn his camera towards Jaehyun.
It’s a surprise because this is what they know best, posing for pictures, conditioned to think of angles and lighting, of gaze and intention, but so far the only pictures between them have been of places. It’s usually Juyeon sending those, though Jaehyun has sent him a picture or two of sumptuous museums Jaehyun himself didn’t have the time to visit but knew the architecture would interest him.
When they stumble back into the room late into the night, Jaehyun’s thoughts are still swimming in a swirling pool of caipirinha and cigarette smoke. He crashes into bed with a sigh while Juyeon walks into the bathroom; he tries to recall the lyrics of the song he tried to memorize so he could look up later. Why didn’t he use his phone to find it while it was still playing? Where was his phone? Where is his phone? How did the song go again?
Juyeon drapes himself over him like an oversized dog, warm and pliant. No. An oversized kitten. The thought makes Jaehyun giggle.
“You’re drunk, aren’t you,” he teases. Juyeon just buries face further into the crook of his neck, mumbling something. “What was that?”
“‘m not drunk,” Juyeon slurs.
“Huh. Wonder why I don’t believe you.”
That gets Juyeon to look up at him, all half-lidded eyes and a slight frown before he stands up from the bed and trips over his feet on his way to his bag. Jaehyun watches him, the warm tones of the bathroom lights spilling over his broad back as Juyeon straightens up again with a camera in hand. Not his beloved film camera, but a digital, expensive one that Juyeon brings close to his face as he presses the buttons and works through settings.
Finally, right before Jaehyun can ask him what’s so urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning, Juyeon lifts it up to his eye and snaps a picture of Jaehyun in bed.
“What are you doing?” Jaehyun asks, somewhere between a screech and a laugh, hiding behind a pillow.
Juyeon brings the camera down again to climb onto the bed, this time on his knees, until he can straddle Jaehyun’s hips. “Can I?” He gestures with the camera.
“I look like shit,” Jaehyun argues. He can still feel the city sticking to him, sweat and perfume and smoke and the air freshener in the taxi, can tell his face needs a wash and a face mask, whatever he put on to hide the dark circles under his eyes long gone by now.
But Juyeon just turns the camera around to him. “You don’t, though? Look.”
The picture he took of Jaehyun is, at first glance, atmospheric. It’s dim here, and the dark wallpaper of the room in an already low saturated picture makes the white of the sheets stand out in stark contrast. The bed is in disarray; Jaehyun is right in the middle, still in the clothes he wore to the afterparty, looking up at the camera with such an unguarded, relaxed expression on his face that the real Jaehyun, the one looking at his digital rendition, takes a second to accept that Juyeon is right.
He looks beautiful. Not fabricated, carefully-poised beautiful. Just beautiful.
“See? Do you mind if I take more?”
Jaehyun shakes his head no. This time, he’s expecting it when Juyeon brings the camera up and snaps the picture, but he doesn’t grab the pillow to cover himself. When Juyeon turns the camera around to show him the result, it’s still a surprise to him.
Maybe because he can’t remember the last time he took a picture of himself like this—just as himself, and not as a product, not trying to sell anything. Just being. Existing as he is.
It’s weird, realizing he’s seeing himself for the first time in a while.
“Is this how I look to you?”
Juyeon is drunkenly squinting at the screen, but he stops to look at him. There’s a pause before he asks, “Want me to show you how I see you?”
It starts off with Jaehyun not really sure what to do. His first instinct is to pose, because that’s what he does whenever there’s a camera pointed at him, but that’s not what he wants to do. Especially not with Juyeon, especially not here. It takes Juyeon almost toppling over him, still far from sober, and Jaehyun having to hold him before he gets an elbow to the stomach, for them to laugh and break the spell, and then Juyeon is taking picture after picture of him laughing, of him trying to hide his face, of him trying to cover the camera.
At some point Jaehyun grabs Juyeon’s waist and flips them over. Juyeon goes easy, too easy, only careful not to drop the camera but letting Jaehyun move him otherwise. The pictures are still coming. Jaehyun doesn’t ask to see them just yet. He just exists for now, standing up to grab a bottle of water for his parched tongue, taking off his shirt before climbing into bed again.
The photos stop when Jaehyun puts the bottle down on the nightstand and turns back around to find Juyeon staring at him. Jaehyun eyes the camera, curiously. “Did it run out of battery?”
“No.” Juyeon shakes his head and repeats, “No. I’m just starting to think I can’t capture it.”
“What?”
“The way I see you.”
Jaehyun feels the smile forming on his lips before he can help it.
“Lemme see it.”
They sit side by side and go over the pictures. Some are just a blur of movement; some are shaky, since there is no technology in the world capable of stabilizing drunken hands. Most of them, however, instill Jaehyun with the same kind of wonder that first one did. Seeing himself through Juyeon’s eyes—Juyeon’s lenses, at least—is still very much a curious thing.
“You did a good job,” he tells Juyeon, quietly, thumbing through the pictures as slowly as his curiosity will allow him. “These are nice.”
“The model helps.”
It’s stupid, but it makes them laugh. Words that they have heard countless times before, usually accompanied by some unsavory proposal further down the line, but repurposed for this moment, here.
“It’s still not what I wanted to show you,” Juyeon continues, a little more serious now, even if still drunk. There’s the faintest trace of lime on him, either on his breath or on his skin. Jaehyun feels compelled to kiss him and find out, but holds his ground, waits for the rest of his sentence. “You have more life in you than I can capture on camera. You’re shining with it.”
It doesn’t sound like something Jaehyun would ever hear in real life. Maybe a line from a book, or lyrics by an artist his sister would try to get him interested in. He’s a little embarrassed, though embarrassed isn’t quite the right word, either. His hesitation doesn’t deter Juyeon from leaning even closer, going back to the picture Jaehyun was just looking at.
“Here,” he points. “I love your smile here.”
It’s his real smile, Jaehyun notices. The big, toothy one, that not a lot of people get to see. Jaehyun is laughing in the picture, looking into the camera, in the process of getting into bed again, so in a half-crawling position that should look unflattering but doesn’t.
Jaehyun looks away from the camera. Watches Juyeon’s face, the smudged eyeliner, the disheveled bangs. Wonders when it was that he fell in love with him, or if it’s just happening now, simultaneous with his realization, the car crash he can’t look away from, unavoidable and unstoppable.
There’s still the faintest trace of lime on him. Jaehyun takes the camera off his hands and catches his lips in a kiss, intent on tasting it himself.
LJY
[IMG_5012.jpg]
lee jaehyun
oh i know that hotel ㅎㅎ
its been a while..
what are u doing there
LJY
thinking of you
lee jaehyun
ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋbe serious
LJY
I am
I miss you
lee jaehyun
when are u leaving
LJY
leaving manila?
next week
why?
“You’re in love with me. Right?”
The fingers are still on his hair, drawing gentle river flows down his scalp, lulling him close to sleep but not quite. The question is so abrupt that Jaehyun chuckles.
“People usually say ‘I love you’ and wait to hear it back. They don’t pose it as a question.”
There’s a pause. Minimal, cut short almost right away. With his ear against Juyeon’s chest, it’s impossible not to hear it when his heartbeat picks up. It’s just enough to be noticeable, breaking the pattern Jaehyun has been unconsciously timing his breathing to.
“I love you,” Juyeon says.
Jaehyun sits up. He heard it all right, but he needs to see it. See the look in Juyeon’s eyes when he does, the straightforward candor that’s more a part of him than anything else that could fit in a photo.
The shape of his lips forming the words.
“Say it again,” he asks.
Juyeon doesn’t hesitate this time. “I love you.”
Jaehyun kisses him like that night many weeks ago, as if trying to taste the words out of his lips, like lime, like they’re just there, sitting on his tongue. He kisses him and pulls back with a hand cupping Juyeon’s jaw, thumb brushing over his bottom lip, to stare into his eyes.
“Since when?”
“That I knew I loved you, or that I knew you loved me?”
“Both. First one.”
“A few months.”
“Second one?”
Juyeon kisses the pad of his thumb, the one still hovering over his lips.
“Tonight.”
His eyes are beautiful, always have been, but Jaehyun still finds himself drawn to them, especially like this. In the dead of the night, with not so great lighting, with little regard to angle, framed by nothing but the sincerity Jaehyun sees in them. The vulnerability. The familiarity.
The eyes are the windows to the soul, isn’t that what they say?
An open window, now an open door.
“I love you too,” he says in a whisper. Makes it a spoken truth rather than an implied one. “I really do, Juyeonie.”
Juyeon smiles, wide and beautiful, before he kisses his thumb one last time and pulls him in for a proper kiss.
The second bed remains empty.
“You’re squinting.”
“Yeah, well, there’s this thing called the sun…”
Juyeon lowers the camera and gives him a look, somewhere between fond and impatient. The wind picks up for a second, blowing his hair onto his face. He brushes it away from his eyes again as he walks closer, stopping right in front of Jaehyun.
“You look great.”
“Of course I do,” Jaehyun jokes. He mirrors Juyeon’s smile and adds, quieter, “Thanks.”
“Think you can take one of me?”
He hands Jaehyun the camera. It rarely ever happens; Jaehyun doesn’t find as much joy behind the camera as Juyeon does, since the only person he’d want to show the pictures to is right next to him, anyway. It’s more fun like this, letting Juyeon take photos of him. He likes seeing himself through Juyeon’s lenses, he already knew that much, and he’s recently found that he likes indulging Juyeon, too.
But he takes the camera and they switch places. Because on the rare occasion he’s on this side of things, he always ends up finding something to take his breath away for a second.
Right now, it’s the combination of Juyeon, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his hair still blowing in the wind, and the sight behind him. The sea is an expanse of greenish blue, the waves barely more than ripples from this distance. Endless.
Juyeon leans his back against the railing, fixes his posture and the placing of his feet, and smiles at him. “Ready.”
Jaehyun brings the camera up.
“You’re squinting,” he says, because Juyeon is, but also because he wants to be a little cheeky. He feels happy enough for that.
Instead of hearing it for the joke it is for the most part, Juyeon takes it straight and relaxes his face. The sun is setting but it’s still bright enough that it can’t be comfortable to open his eyes like that. Jaehyun takes the pictures first—pictures, plural, because what is he, an amateur?—and leaves the commentary for later, for when Juyeon walks up to him again and leans close enough for their shoulders to touch.
“You’re good at this,” Jaehyun says. He keeps his tone casual, waits until Juyeon has looked up from the camera to meet his eyes. “Ever thought about modeling?”
Juyeon cracks up laughing and tries to play along, “Yeah, I heard it pays well?” His smile grows when Jaehyun wraps an arm around his waist. “I don’t know, though. I’m scared it could be too much of a lonely job…”
“Who knows,” Jaehyun says, squeezing his waist gently and leaving a kiss on his cheek. “Maybe you could get lucky.”
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