𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗮 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴; renmin

f•our

─────── • ❥ • ───────

renjun sighed dramatically while staring at his current painting, dropping his brush into the murky jar of water on the small table beside him and dusting off his hands. really, this rather huge masterpiece was a pain in the ass to hide when his little sex partner was around, since it needed to be covered up and stored in a spot the younger never checked. "it's not...quite right," he murmured to himself, dismally running his long index fingernail along the dashes of black present.

in truth, the artist had been working on this specific canvas for the guts of three months now, but had many random ones of similar subject matter to match it that took less time. the rectangular object was almost bigger than him, but not quite. if someone were to walk in on him now and catch what he was doing...they'd have seen the most incredible image of na jaemin.

yet, no matter how much renjun retried, how much he added or subtracted or how often he walked past it to spot mistakes, he found it nearly impossible to figure out what it was he felt was missing. it was a human thing, he supposed, a special trait that he wasn't seeing.

"ugh, so frustrating," he groaned, pulling up one of his leatherback notebooks from the stack on the ground and flicking through his many secret sketches of the boy. they were all flawless and beautiful, done in charcoals and pencils and sometimes oil pastels to add a bit of depth...but they didn't answer his questions. he used the male as a secret model most of the time, and had been painting various images of him for a year.

"nana..." he whispered, holding one specific page open where jaemin had fallen asleep during one of their many movies nights, but naked on this account. he was splayed across the couch, perfect muscles just asking to be studied, and the younger didn't know it...but renjun loved holding onto his arms and chest to see how toned and ideal they were and how the shadows would shift when the black-haired boy supported his grip.

his gaze settled on the polaroid image stuck in with tape at first, admiring the real beauty...but slowly shifted to the side in order to observe his own work. the watercolour pencils weren't really ideal in this case, but they picked up the skin tones nicely, he'd admit. so pretty.

the artist had actually painted this onto a canvas already, and it turned out really well with his imaginative composition additions. renjun had manipulated the space he was lying in and replaced it all with a darker, more sexual ambience that he'd never show jaemin ever.

"fuck," he muttered defeatedly and dropped the notebook onto the stack again. "what am i doing wrong here?"

the masterpiece was just not finalising into that; the perfection. he stomped his foot like a child and decided to give up on it for today again. he'd really been hoping that with jaemin's sudden absence he'd have time to figure out the issue...but nothing came to mind. "so stupid."

nonetheless, the male pulled the massive painting off the easel and started bringing it back to the 'storage room', as he liked to call it. his partner had assumed that it was just full of the typical junk humans tended to lug around with them from house to house...but he was monumentally mistaken as soon as he used the term 'typical', because anyone who knew renjun knew that he was far from it.

whipping out his phone, the boy checked some of his notifications after locking the door on his hidden artworks. his feet subconsciously brought him to his bedroom and he nudged the door shut behind him just to flop onto his large mattress. a couple of people had tried to contact him, none of which were jaemin. he pursed his lips and read over a few of the messages just to make sure nothing life-changing was about to go down.

his instagram was littered with boys showing off what they had, and probably just for him at that. he didn't take nana's little degrading words to heart too much, because they were true. he was a slut, and he embraced that about himself. there was nothing wrong with accepting the bodies of a handful of men who wanted it as desperately as he did...and they were all distractions.

the chinese adult clicked his tongue at the sight of one post in particular, however, since he recognised both boys all too well. jeno and jaemin, he scoffed to himself, zooming in on the pretty baker's features and trying to identify everything he knew. there was, as expected, no answer to why he couldn't perfect his painting. meanwhile, the male's best friend was as smug as ever, both dressed in matching aprons and with icing on their fingers. "better not be vanilla," he whispered, because that was his favourite.

there was something to be said for how miserable and sad it looked that he refused to confront jaemin about the feelings the younger so clearly had, yet painted him and lusted for him as if he wasn't dodging the conversation every time. he rolled onto his back and let his phone rest idly by him. the open, dressy button-up he had on was drifted outwards on either side of his body where his arms extended, and only his underwear saved the ceiling from seeing his naked waist.

renjun never wore clothes when he didn't have to. well, the bare minimum anyway. it was a charm, people had told him, that he could wander around his apartment without coverings so freely and without a care in the world. he had no problems with his reflection, and the clothes he actually possessed were either boring for college or massive, female over-layers that were probably for comfort of chest size, but worked for him well.

the adult started to hum softly, hearing a wild orchestra in his head, yet producing a pathetic version in real life. his fingers played with the sheets underneath him while he daydreamed, and thoughts of everything flooded through his mind's eye. he tilted his head back a bit to glance towards the window at the now setting sun, smiling faintly at the pink hues it spilled across his bedroom. can you see this, nana?

jaemin yawned exhaustedly while packing six cupcakes into an elaborate red box. his mocha irises flickered from what he was doing to his temporary helper; jeno. the man was distracted anyway, too busy writing out orders from the register to notice his friend's look. so, moving it to something else, the ravenette caught sight of the sunset behind the glass doors.

his breath hitched and his lower lip caught between his teeth. he felt like kissing renjun right now under that salmon-coloured sky. was it silly to desire something so simplistic?

he'd like this, the boy thought, and little did he know that his counterpart was imagining the exact same thing.

─────── • ❥ • ───────