UGH! / SOPE & VMIN.

TWO, PISS-POOR ARTIST.

PISS-POOR ARTIST.

     THERE'S PAINT EVERYWHERE. this would be a concern to most people, right? the fact that the floor, the sofa and a lot of your skin are all covered in paint? which is kinda supposed to just go on the canvas?

well, not if you're an artist who doesn't give a fuck. and this one certainly doesn't. all he cares about is finishing this, his masterpiece, his starry night ( of course, every painting is his mona lisa, his sistine chapel, until the next girl or guy he drags home ). his palette is heaving with colour, and so is his skin.

meet park jimin. he's an artist, and he has this habit of painting whilst mostly naked. it's just a thing; van gogh cut off his ear to paint it in perfection, michaelangelo lay on his back to do the sistine chapel, da vinci didn't make mona smile. jimin paints in his boxers and nothing else. this habit came to be over the course of a year and a half, and it'll be explained soon enough.

jimin's got a tape on, a bowie album he's pretty much enamoured with, and he's also pretty much enamored with the painting in front of him; smooth, starlight skin, hair with waves crafted by venus, gorgeous curves of the spine and the hipbone and the nose and — god, jimin really needs to stop obsessing over the perfection of girls. he's found that he has an obsession with soft curves, shoulder blades and collarbones, and so jasmin was his choice for a hookup last night, and today she's his muse.

call him weird ( he won't mind, he calls himself that too ), but he paints his hookups. divulges himself in the human body, in the soft curves of a girl's hips, the sharp cut of a boy's jawbone, the smooth skin of a cross dressing jazz player at the hampton, the delicate orange curls of a pretty waitress at the mcdonalds down the road. he immortalises the bodies he traces with his hands and his lips at night with oil paints and lead pencils in the day. he has sketchbooks filled with naked bodies, canvases stored away in a chest with skin tones and jutting collarbones. jimin's an artist; don't tell him he should get a proper job.

the final brush stroke completes water dripping off a gorgeous girl's lips, the ebony haired, thick thighed beauty he dragged back home from the nightclub two streets down. jimin smiles, satisfied, and blows a kiss toward the girl, before carefully moving the easel toward the heater so the paint will dry. he stretches his cramped legs, before grabbing his jeans off the floor, along with a button down he's pretty sure actually belongs to the aforementioned jasmin, mostly because it ends above his bellybutton and there's too much space in the chest. oh well.

jimin's flat is a true piss-poor artist haven ( well, his parents pay for it, but no one knows that ), made up of four rooms with big windows and light wood floorboards that are so stained with paint, it looks like a different place to the one jimin moved in to. the walls in the living room slash kitchen are painted a startling shade of turquoise, which was a semi-bad and very impulsive decision on jimin's part. the couch which he's been sat on for the good part of two hours is crushed blue velvet from a skip near morrison's, and also covered in paint. jimin's uncaring.

it's eleven thirty, and jimin supposes it's an alright time to drink. his fridge is pretty much occupied by six packs of larger and bottles of red wine — shit, cheap stuff from the pub he lives above — and leftover food because he always makes too much. he grabs a bottle of beer and yesterday's lamb curry, ruffling a hand through his black and orange dyed hair. bowie croons in the background about moonage daydreams and space age lovers, whilst jimin sits on the kitchenette counter and looks at his voicemail machine, which beeps with a message. he taps the button, beginning to eat the curry as it plays.

"hey jimin, it's namjoon... you remember me, right? from the nightclub? anyway, i was just wondering if you'd like to meet up again. that night was... really something, you know?" the voice is familiar, an american guy that he took home last week. he was pretty, with charcoal hair and skin the colour of cinnamon. jimin sketched his hands, his lips and his cock in his a4 sketchbook with charcoal, but he'd never show it to anyone. namjoon sighs on the recording and trails off. "... anyway... hope you're doing alright. just, call me back, yeah? this is my home number. bye."

jimin's not gonna call him back. he doesn't keep connected with anyone for longer than a day or two, and occasionally he sleeps with the same person twice just to spice things up. he's not even fucking sure why or how namjoon has his number.

"fuckin' hell, i need to stop being such a slag," he says to himself, opening the beer bottle with a lighter he left next to the stove, before lighting the roll-up¹ he's been holding behind his ear since he went to sleep last night. "alright, alright... not gonna be phoning that guy back, that's for fuckin' sure."

he's got a bad habit of talking to himself, and he supposes it's because he bottles up his emotions a bit too much and therefore has a lot of thoughts he can't share.

monday lunchtime and jimin's wasting away his life. pretty easy thing to do, he reckons, considering he works about once a week and pisses about for the rest of it, drawing what most find crude, partying every night with new faces pressed into the bedsheets, smoking too many cigarettes and too much weed, and drinking red wine. king of doing absolutely nothing.

jimin's bare feet swing in the air as he dials a familiar number on his spray painted silver telephone, crossing and uncrossing his legs. the dial tone rings and when it's picked up, jimin's met with the background noise of a guns n roses record and a sleepy "'ello?".

"yoongi! alright?" jimin grins, knowing yoongi's probably only slightly awake, considering the boy works the night shift on sundays.

"alright jimin," yoongi murmurs back in his manchester accent, and jimin can picture him pushing his long black hair away from his place, probably laying on his sofa bed which never reverts back to a sofa. "what t'fuck are you callin' for? i haven't even fuckin' looked at weed yet mate, i ain't got owt² for you."

"come off it mate, what do you think i am, a stoner?" jimin laughs, blowing a smoke ring. "was just gonna check up on yous, is all."

"and then you want an eighth, right?" yoongi's scratchy chuckle makes jimin smile a bit. "look, my brother's not here. he's moved. i'm dealing strictly in thoughts and poetry now, mate. i also have no drugs in my flat anymore. so you can't score. stick that in your bifta³ and smoke it."

jimin rolls his eyes. "you think so shallowly of me. i was, actually, calling to ask if you want to go to a gig at menswear on friday."

yoongi groans, bedsprings creaking as he rearranges his position in bed; jimin knows his creaky mattress maybe a bit too well. "depends if you're gonna be fishing for a fuck, park," yoongi says, his voice still sleepy. "in that case, i'd prefer to stay in. i know what you're like, you fucking druggie."

"you've smoked more hash than i have," jimin points out, offended. "and i won't be fishing for a fuck. it'll be you and me, the lads, yeah? couple o' largers and a bifta 'n we'll have a dance or sommat."

"ugh," yoongi groans, yawning. "aiight, fine. i don't work on friday nights... you comin' over today? 'cause i can't fit you in."

"wow, company?" jimin asks, raising an eyebrow.

"just some geezer who wants to know about my bike i'm sellin'. he'll probably buy it if 'm lucky. i've gotta have some lunch, mate, i'll see you 'round."

"bye bye." jimin says, placing the receiver down. he finishes up the curry and runs the plate under the tap, before downing the larger. now he feels awake. and maybe he should actually get out of the flat ( he knows he should, get out and talk to someone, maybe visit his mum in the nicer part of london ), but he's far more enticed by the open sketchbook he can see through his bedroom door, left lying on his bed with a pencil on top of it.

oh well. it's not like he's ever actually contributed to society, anyway.

━━

written – 201218

BRIT VOCAB
¹roll-up: a hand rolled cigarette, as opposed to one bought in a packet.
²owt: an expression from the north of the uk, it means "anything", and its opposite, nowt, means "nothing".
³bifta: slang for a spliff/joint.

AUTHOR'S NOTE
sjksksksk i think jimin's character is one of my faves,,, yoongi too tbh i love my stoner dad

thoughts so far? i'm doing so much research on music for this era so i don't wrongly reference things. there's gonna be A LOT of abba, just a smol warning

hope ur all okay!! love u!!!

— love, jace