Chapter Text
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Wooyoung has a bad habit of subconsciously chewing on his pencils when he’s anxious or distracted.
Aside from it becoming a gradual dental problem, the worst offense is that the pencils are expensive; he’d handed over a laughable amount of money to the school store for them, a painful amount, and despite that cost he’s made a sizeable (literal) dent in his collection by littering half of it with tiny little pockmarks of artistic frustration.
He’s been told — repeatedly — that it’s gross and bad for his incisors, two valid points that he’s very well aware of.
For some reason, those declarations always seem to come up before he’s reminded about the exorbitant amount of money that he’s willingly sticking into his mouth.
He’s tired of the nagging, so he’s switched it up and now also relies on fidgeting as another option to deal with the anxiety. Of course nobody can be happy, ever. It openly irritates those who are around him — like if he’s not allowed to be gross or careless anymore, he’ll just be annoying instead.
That’s okay, too, because being annoying is a lot easier and a lot more entertaining and a lot less expensive.
If there’s anything about Wooyoung that he can’t argue with, it’s that whenever he aims at minding his manners like a good boy, he usually misses.
So why not just accept it and own being the shitty little brat that some people view him as?
It can be funny.
And it’s free.
The fidgeting manifests itself in two very distinct ways, and Wooyoung does them both so often lately that he doesn’t know which one has been chosen unless it’s pointed out to him.
The first habit is simply rolling his pencil back and forth under his fingers along a tabletop; it wouldn’t be so bad, probably, if it weren’t for those pre-existing serrated nibble marks. Those make it louder and more noticeable. Granted it’s not like a bubble-wrap-filled-with-pebbles kind of loud, but it succeeds in being whatever the younger, smaller cousin of that noise might sound like. The cousin nobody likes having around.
The second anxious tick is the one that drives people the most out of their damn minds between the two. He holds the pencil between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers and seesaws it, assaulting whatever’s under his hand with a series of quick, repetitive, relentlessly unending taps, sometimes fast enough to chip the pencil’s lead a little in the process.
Right now, though, he’s right back to the nibbling.
He’s sitting in a small, warm and quiet cafe about three blocks away from his shared apartment with Yeosang, his best friend, in hopes of trying any last-ditch effort to chisel away at his very poorly timed artist’s block. He comes here to sketch a lot — the decor inside has a lot of satisfying textures with a brick wall backing the sleek marble register counter, and tables that have been coated in dark varnish but still hold on to a hint of their natural wood’s dips and bumps. Vining plants hang along the fronts of every window, spidering down the panes and swaying only slightly whenever the front door opens.
He’s tried drawing out some of these already today, and each time has resulted in a hushed growl and the frustrated (maybe aggressive) flip to a new page of the sketch pad.
Instead of trudging through a knee-deep swamp of self-perceived failure for maybe the sixth or seventh time, he’s taking a break, turned away from the table with his back leaned against the window beside it. His legs are stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles and taking up enough room to officially be deemed as Probably Rude. One arm is hooked over the back of his chair and the other elbow is planted against his sketch pad on the tabletop. He has a pencil in that hand, and the end of it is tucked between his right front teeth.
It was only a matter of time before the fidgeting did fuck-all for his agitation.
When in doubt, chew it out, right?
He watches as Yeosang finishes paying for a pastry at the register across the cafe. The cashier is a younger girl, a part-timer that Wooyoung has only had a couple of encounters with. His schedule apparently doesn’t cross streams with hers too often, which is strange considering he’s a regular lurker here, sometimes coming in twice a day over the course of the summer break. She’s nice, he thinks. Just young and awkward, trying her best and deserving of a bronze medal for her efforts.
Yeosang exchanges some compulsory pleasantries before shifting over to the drink counter next to him, where Choi San, the head barista and assistant manager of the cafe, is already laying a croissant down on a small gray plate for him.
Wooyoung likes how the guy works — fast and reliable, always acting like he has eyes hidden all over the place to keep things ready for anyone in record time. He knows his regulars and what they like. He’s inviting and friendly. He's always approachable. If he’s ever had any escalated altercations with a customer (which he highly doubts, in all honesty), Wooyoung definitely wasn’t present for it.
Yeosang takes his plate with a polite little bow of his head and turns to head back to the table. Wooyoung isn’t watching him anymore, but it doesn’t really matter what or who he’s looking at. Behind the knock-off designer sunglasses shielding his eyes, he feels invincible.
And San’s too busy right now to notice that he’s the one being watched, anyway.
By the time Yeosang joins him again, he has the tip of his tongue touching the end of his pencil. He hears his friend sigh as he takes his seat.
“Be more obvious,” Yeosang says over the clatter of his plate hitting the tabletop. “Creep.”
Wooyoung shrugs a shoulder, lazily twisting the pencil before removing it from his mouth only long enough to reply with a careless, “Whatever, he can’t tell.”
Yeosang scoots his chair in. “I bet he definitely can. He’s not stupid.”
“I know he isn’t,” Wooyoung replies, turning his head to watch his roommate take his first messy chomp into his croissant.
Yeosang lifts a hand to cover his mouth for decency and Wooyoung gives him a few seconds to finish chewing. “Go buy something to eat from him,” he says. “You’ll get to be weird to his face. And you’ll have something to calm your oral fixation down that won’t give you lead poisoning.”
Wooyoung huffs a small laugh under his breath and wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think I need to waste a backwards blowjob joke on you, hm?”
Yeosang pauses with the pastry halfway back up to his mouth in a way that Wooyoung could swear is almost self-conscious. He’s not quite frowning, but he’s close. “You said that word too loud.”
Another shrug. Sometimes, unfortunately, Wooyoung and Boundaries forget to wear their get-along tee shirt. “You set the bait, I took it.” He lowers his hand and spins the pencil across his knuckles. “And he’s going to come over here anyway.”
This is met with an even flatter air of tired skepticism. “I hope not. You really don’t need any more distractions.”
He’s right, of course.
“And your paper is still empty.”
Right about that, too, but that one is more obvious to physically point out.
Wooyoung hisses a soft ‘ssss’ out over his tongue and turns away from Yeosang, straying his attention with very loud intent from the little gremlin and placing it back on San.
The first thing San ever said to him when he found the cafe on the way home from the last day of Freshman finals (a mentally debilitating day, as one could probably surmise) was ‘Hey man, how’s it going?’ He isn’t too precious to admit that he was interested in the guy at ‘how’s it’ and suffocating himself in the angry ocean of infatuation by ‘going’. He caught the crush in record time, and it’s been an interesting navigation through that ocean to juggle the fact that they legitimately actually became friends almost immediately, and the fact that Wooyoung wanted to climb that fucking literal mountain of a man like he had a point to prove.
It should be a criminal offense to exist on the planet looking the way that San does. His eyes are daggers of glass shards that fold into downward-facing crescent moons when he smiles wide enough, and those smiles are so bright that they could strike a match and keep it alive in the middle of a torrential tropical hurricane. His face is a lovingly crafted combination of sharp angles (his jawline, his high cheekbones) and with graceful rounded arcs (the curve of his forehead, his softly cratered dimples), his skin is kissed with honey, and he has one of the largest, widest arsenals of carefully honed and well-timed expressions that Wooyoung has ever seen in any other person. Especially with his eyebrows.
The cafe dress code is presumably all black, because San is always swathed in it like some sort of brilliant shadow, and the shade looks damn good on him. The signature apron is a steely gray, but it does very little to mask the incredibly obvious muscles loitering inside the tight tee shirts that he always chooses to wear underneath it. He’s shaped like a fucking Dorito and having those straps wrapped and tied around his midsection really pushes the visual home.
Strong build, small waist.
Together at last.
Geonbae.
Wooyoung isn’t secretive about his attraction to men. He isn’t loud about it, though; he prefers to stay tightrope-balanced in the middle — he doesn’t hide anything, doesn’t masquerade, but he leaves the interpretation of his sexuality up in the air. He was hesitant to flirt with San at first; his initial impression half-convinced him that the guy was as straight as a steel rod, but the reception of Wooyoung’s toe-dipping experimentation was telling.
If he is straight, he’s deliciously okay with flirtations from all sides.
And flirting with straight guys could be a potential embarrassment — something that responds well until it’s taken too far, then it suddenly throws its hands up, palms forward, all ‘no, officer, I didn’t tamper with it, it tampered with me.’
Or sometimes — preferably — it’s like sitting down to hormonally driven arts and crafts. Take that plain sheet of poster paper, slap some glitter on there with glue, see how it sticks.
“Young-ah.”
He blinks and jerks a little, legitimately surprised this time. “What? I’m not chewing on it anymore.”
“No,” Yeosang replies, the impatience he’s been holding back with a dam of determination finally threatening to break. “But you’re not concentrating. Why don’t you just draw him? It’s probably going to be easier than watching you get all weird and then float into space every time you can’t get something down right.”
The pencil’s fluid movement along Wooyoung’s knuckles slows, then stops.
Yeosang has no idea that he’s been doing something like that for weeks, and that the cluster of pages hidden in the back of his sketch pad could look like the makings of some sort of freaky serial killer.
He likes to warm up by sketching San’s hands, whenever he’s close enough. They look strong, but they’re fitting for his work as a barista, careful and slender. Hands are tough, but San’s have always been an easy study, even though they’re moving at lightning speed most times while he’s on the clock.
It feels skeezy sometimes, but it helps to put kid gloves on Wooyoung and lead his art-brain back to the right place when it decides to grow feet and wander away.
He doesn’t confess any of this to Yeosang because saying it out loud into an audible space makes it feel even more scuzzy — he’d rather keep it to himself. It sounds a lot less like some kind of federal offense when he rationalizes it to himself.
Instead, he shrugs again and dips his head down a little to look at Yeosang over the top rim of his sunglasses. “If only. He’d make a good model, I bet.”
Yeosang’s eyes drift over in San’s direction, but Wooyoung doesn’t take that bait. A fox never approaches the same trap twice.
Yeosang finally hums. He’s still holding his dumb snack and temporarily forgetting about it for the sake of concentrating on being antagonistic. “I guess so? I haven’t been watching him like you have.”
One of Wooyoung’s eyebrows ticks up. “What the hell does that mean? You’re probably right, but I’m curious.”
Yeosang rolls his eyes back to Wooyoung, hard enough to power the cafe through the next ten typhoons. “You watch him like he’s a buffet and you’re starving to death.”
Wooyoung has to laugh at that. It’s a short, quick one, almost a quiet snort. “I don’t think you want to hear the first response that just came to me for that one.”
“Uh?” It takes a second, but after a few seconds Yeosang catches on and his nose wrinkles. “No. I don’t want to lose my lunch before I’ve even finished it.”
Wooyoung knows he’s kidding — this is just what it’s always been like between them; poking and jabbing and digging at one another. He gives him a strange look regardless. “What’s with you today? You’re supposed to be the sweet one.”
Something in Yeosang’s expression softens. Yeah, that’s right, Wooyoung thinks. Feel bad, little pabo.
“You’re just annoying me lately,” he says. His voice has even softened, too. “Sorry.”
Wooyoung senses sincerity in the apology. Yeosang never fakes those kinds of sentiments, especially not with him. They’ve been living together for almost a full year (or year and a half?) now, and he’s gotten used to keeping his Library wide open, mostly because he trusts that Wooyoung will be receptive to it without getting all insulted.
But he knows when he’s maybe getting a little too cranky.
Choosing not to jab back for that very reason, Wooyoung just smirks and jerks his chin in the direction of the half-finished pastry still clutched in his best friend’s awkward little praying mantis hands. “Shut the hell up and eat your thing.”
He does. Wooyoung doesn’t need to watch another person eat something so butter-greased and flaky right now. He has better things to look at.
And indeed, that Better Thing is an aptly analogous living, breathing buffet.
He’s just finished sliding a drink into a hot cup sleeve and he makes direct eye contact with his customer when he pushes it across the pick-up counter to them. The customer sticks around for a second, talking to him - he’s attentive, listening and nodding, and then he smiles that fucking radiant smile. He laughs a little at a joke or quip or compliment that Wooyoung can’t hear over the surrounding white noise of chatter and music, then puts his hands together in front of him and bows his head. Twice. Still smiling. Always smiling.
After the customer leaves, San reaches under the counter for a rag and gives the sleek marble of the bar top a couple of quick, sweeping wipes. When he’s done, he of course happens to look up, and those catlike eyes meet Wooyoung’s like an imaginary (listen, Wooyoung is down bad, let a touch-starved boy have feeble dreams) magnet.
The sweet mountain grins and raises a hand, gesturing to his own lips.
There is a highly, highly neurotic moment when Wooyoung’s dysfunctional mind tugs on his sleeve, asking him like an unwanted and insistent four year old ‘kiss? Want kiss? We kiss now?’
Instead, San waggles his finger at him like, ‘don’t do that, dumbass’.
Do what?
Wooyoung pulls the end of his pencil out from between his teeth again.
When did that get there?
Yeosang notices the exchange and softly snickers with his mouth full.
Wooyoung, without turning away, points his roommate to heaven with his middle finger. “I asked you to shush.”
He watches San drape his rag over one shoulder and glance around the cafe before rounding the counter and heading in their direction.
Wooyoung subconsciously starts that wild, flailing tapping with his pencil. He doesn’t pretend that he’s interested in anything else, even though he can tangibly feel Yeosang’s irritation starting to rise back up. It’s getting harder to stop the transition from barely a grin to a really really wide and stupid smile with every step closer. He expected him to come over; he told Yeosang that he would with such surety for a reason. He and San have known each other for just over three months and they’ve very naturally taken to getting close with one another’s quirks, mannerisms and thought processes, well enough to leap like gazelles over being acquaintances and land into the soft cumulus warmth of close friendship.
Wooyoung is proudly known to crash into first-impression boundaries like a battering ram. It’s how he’s made most of his friends over the Freshman run.
It worked with San like magic, from day one. They both seemed to meet in the middle and understand precisely what ‘yes, and’-ing entails during a conversation. They vibe, and Wooyoung finds that much more promising in any relationship, romantic or sexual or otherwise, than physical attraction.
“Hi San-ssi,” Yeosang prompts when he sidles up to them.
Wooyoung echoes the greeting, but not in the same tone. And without the ‘ssi’. He feels like it isn’t necessary because they’ve become acquainted enough to not need the formality. Yeosang is cordial and nearly saccharine with other people, though, and he doesn’t know San as well as Wooyoung does.
Wooyoung is also perfectly capable of being nice, but he has the hots for San — sugar-sweet just doesn’t feel right at this stage of their friendship. A more suggestive tinge to his voice is probably expected by now; San’s never reacted with anything other than his usual bright but sly friendliness.
“Hey!” San responds casually and easily. His eyes dart between the two of them, but they linger a bit longer on Wooyoung. "Still no luck, huh?"
Wooyoung sighs; he’s disappointed by the reminder that his artist’s block is eating him alive. “No,” he replies. He’s still tapping that pencil with one hand. He raises the other to slide his sunglasses off, shaking his head to readjust the blonde mess of hair that falls into his line of sight. “Just the same empty garbage can.”
San bends slightly to the side to take the now empty plate that Yeosang is handing to him and hums his acknowledgment. He doesn’t even need to glance down at the table — he still notices, “You’re breaking your pencil again, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung looks down at his right hand and sees that yep, he’s managed to snap the lead down to an unattractive stump of delicate, jagged little cracks.
The page — at least a quarter of the nothing he’s been making any effort to draw on — is peppered with loads of dotty marks from the pencil’s impact on the pad. A majority are in an ugly cluster, others are scattered, but overall most of them have been hard enough to leave impressions into the surface of the paper.
He frowns at the whole stupid mess like it is the problem and he is the long-suffering victim before he growls, with his lips pulled in tight.
“Damnit.”
“Going for a new style or something?”
“It’s abstract,” Yeosang cuts in and replies like an asshole, his sights fixated on Wooyoung like a conniving demon with a knock-off dollar store halo. “Right, Woo?”
Anyone who doesn’t know him as well or as closely as Wooyoung does could interpret the unprovoked interruption as a ‘Good Looking Out, Bro’ response.
They would be wrong.
It’s nothing but more bait.
Yeosang is very sneaky, even when he doesn’t a hundred percent mean to be.
San lifts an eyebrow. “Abstract, huh?”
Wooyoung shoots Yeosang the darkest, hardest glare he can muster before he looks back up at San with a forced smile. “Sure. It’s whatever I say it is.”
San’s gaze lingers on him. “But he — ” He gestures toward Yeosang with the hand holding the plate. “ — is the one who called it that. Not you.”
Wooyoung’s lips form some kind of word in response, who even knows which one, before Yeosang punches down a little harder, “Yeah, Wooyoung-ah, isn’t abstract supposed to make your viewers feel something when they look at it?”
Wooyoung’s jaw tightens.
San chokes on a laugh.
“Oh, you too?” Wooyoung asks him, glowering like a big baby, uncrossing his ankles and pulling his legs in so he can lean forward a little more. “Why am I even friends with you bullies in the first place?”
Both of San’s eyebrows lift this time and his lips pout in a way that Wooyoung has seen before — an innocent, guileless, and overall infuriatingly irresistible gesture that he’s still unable to convince himself is deliberate. “I didn’t do anything!” He turns to Yeosang and nudges that dumb plate in Wooyoung’s direction this time, with a lot more purpose. “What the hell did you feed him this morning?”
“Ya!” Wooyoung protests loudly before Yeosang can provide a response that could potentially bury him four thousand feet underground with embarrassment. “Don’t start talking about me like I’m not here.”
“Okay, okay,” San soothes, pulling a proverbial olive branch out of his pocket to settle the tension down a bit. “Okay. Sorry. No more picking on you.”
“For now,” Yeosang says under his breath.
San gives him a quick warning glance. It at least shuts him up.
“What’s the big deal?” he asks Wooyoung. “Do you have some kind of assessment demand to meet or something? Like for an art elective?”
Yeah. Elective. Sure. That.
Thankfully, Yeosang keeps his pretty mouth shut. Wooyoung can feel his eyes on him, though, entertained and expectant.
“No,” Wooyoung answers with half a slice of truth. Movement out of his peripherals indicates that Yeosang may have just willingly swallowed more intrigue than he was invited to, leaning forward on the now empty table space in front of him. His best friend has never exactly been talented in the art of reading the room, so it’s up in the air if the curiosity is genuine or sarcastic. “But I can’t go into any extracurriculars looking this talentless, you know?”
Hedging all of his bets on the dodge succeeding.
Thankfully, it does.
One side of San’s lips tilts slightly upward again. “Perfectionist.”
Wooyoung scrunches the bridge of his nose back at him. “Superiority complex, but nice try.”
The barista’s eyebrows knit together and he lifts his chin, looking slightly more down on Wooyoung now. It drums a soft warmth up in his stomach because it’s inexplicably hot. “What did you say your major was again?”
Yeosang emits a barely audible, but actually authentically confused, “Uh?”
Wooyoung’s eyes slide to him, sidelong.
He tacks on, “You never talked about this before?”
Yes. They have. …right? Wooyoung’s gotten this question from San before. He thinks. Maybe? And if he did, unless he’s remembering wrong, he gave a completely fabricated horseshit answer.
He doesn’t want to admit to art and illustration. After watching him beat his own head in with a tire iron over artist blocks for so many months, the last thing he needs San to know is that his major study is the one thing he has been sucking supremely at for almost the entirety of their friendship. In his presence and workplace, even. That’s a tad too humiliating for Wooyoung to bear at this point.
So, he feels his mouth twitch before he spits out the first nugget of bullshit that comes to mind. “Math.”
Silence at his right side. Yeosang’s brain must be buffering.
San squints with open skepticism. “Math,” he repeats flatly.
“Yeah, mathematics.”
The other man shifts his weight slightly onto one hip. “Hm. Okay.”
Wooyoung feigns petulant offense. “What? Am I not smart enough?”
“I didn’t say that,” he replies. “I just could’ve sworn you said fashion design or something last time I asked.”
Oh.
So he did ask once.
Oops.
“It’s both,” Wooyoung insists, frowning without heat. “Double major.”
It’s so obviously pulled directly out of his ass, gift-wrapped and placed directly into San’s hands, but instead of calling the bluff any further, he laughs, his dimples making a reappearance and palm-heeling Wooyoung at point blank range directly into the sternum. He pulls the rag off of his shoulder and snaps it at him playfully, pivoting his hips slightly to indicate that he needs to walk away and get back to work. “Okay, asshole, I get it. I won’t ask again.”
Wooyoung lifts an arm reflexively to block the half-assed ‘attack’ and hums his own laugh out in kind, the barest tinge of it reflecting in a way that Yeosang always says sounds like a fox being joyfully smothered to death. He’s thanking the sun, moon and stars that he’s been blessed with the inherently flawless ability to pass his own flubbing idiocy off as just being a big silly jerk. “Don’t swear, San-ah, you’re on the clock.”
San’s smile is so brilliant and endearing and perfect. “Whatever, get back to sketching.”
Oh.
San.
That’s a major mood killer, babe.
Wooyoung’s expression drops and he shrugs. “Or trying to.”
San must have this innate sense for other peoples’ feelings, because he rushes to fix the atmosphere again, saying “Hey — ” and posing like he’s freaking Superman, one hand still holding the plate and the other curled into a fist on his hip. His lips pout dramatically and he raises his head toward the ceiling. “You could always draw me.”
It’s a joke.
Wooyoung knows it’s a joke.
But it hits pretty damn close to home, all things considered.
He swallows and responds with a dry half-smile, regardless. “Put your ego away and go make coffee or something.”
San relaxes his posture and concedes, much to Wooyoung’s benefit. “Alright, fine. Want another Americano?”
Wooyoung couldn’t be more smitten, for real.
He lets it show by tucking his hair - the blonde part that often falls into his sight - behind his ear. Dramatically impish, always on purpose. “I mean,” he practically coos. “if you’re offering, I can’t say no…”
San grins again. “Iced with room, I got you.” His focus swivels to Yeosang. “How about you?”
Yeosang seems to have rebooted his mental computer and he smiles pleasantly, shaking his head. “No thanks. I’m good.”
San nods and turns fully away, but not before shooting Wooyoung a wink over his shoulder.
The way his ass moves in those black jeans should be considered a war crime.
Yeosang speaks up incredulously. “Why haven’t you been telling him the truth? Seems like something really dumb to lie about.”
“Mm,” Wooyoung’s eyes are locked on how snatched San’s waist is with that apron on. “I just don’t want to.”
That’s half of the reason. His hands are partially clean; he’s not technically lying. To Yeosang, at least.
There’s a long pause that he isn’t quite cognizant of before a wadded-up napkin is launched at his shoulder. He jumps and recoils, breaking the spell San’s entire lower body effortlessly has on him. He glares down at the offending projectile, disgusted. “No, gross, that’s been all over your buttery mouth.”
Yeosang snickers. He gets it. This isn’t the first time he’s had to fight for Wooyoung’s attention in this cafe. He’s thrown countless things at him to bring him back down to Earth. This just happens to be one of the yuckier ones.
“He’s going to catch you again,” he says casually.
“Mm,” Wooyoung repeats, immediately forgetting about the nasty napkin as his sniper-crosshair focus naturally drifts right back to San, who’s already back behind the counter and taking a new order ticket from the cashier.
He doesn’t put his sunglasses back on. Jig is up.
He already got caught with them on, so why bother caring?
The pencil habitually starts edging back toward his mouth.
He doesn’t bother to care about that, either.
___________
The weeks progress (three, to be specific) and Wooyoung is still fighting to settle himself back into the uncomfortable, too-tight-jeans routine of typical college life.
Socially, he’s thriving as he usually does - he can tell people like him, want to hit the cafeteria with him, want to stick to him like glue when any free time aligns — but despite making the painstaking effort to keep his sanity intact this year, it falls right back into the familiar feeling of slipping up in his decision for his class schedule.
The truth is, he didn’t. When he chose his courses, he made a point to be a lot more meticulous; he did and redid the math, considered and reconsidered how burnt out he was by the end of each Freshman year semester, and even went so far as to look to Yeosang for opinions and advice. That was a desperate measure in and of itself — not because he doesn’t trust his best friend, but because he didn’t want to get to the point of crying for assistance over something that should be well within his own control.
And yet.
What doesn’t help, probably, is the fact that he’d exceeded his major-centric courses so well last year that he was awarded the opportunity to skip a module and move up into a more advanced classic art course. Yeosang managed to get into the same class by the barest skin of his teeth, which is a comfort Wooyoung is willing to grasp at with desperate, needy hands.
No issues with any other classes, of course.
But art has been an avoidant, fickle little bitch for half the year, and to say that Wooyoung’s pride spent that time getting chiseled down little by little with the world’s smallest ice pick is a hysterical, exaggerated understatement.
They entered the figure study leg of the class a week ago. Wooyoung was dreading this from day one, because it’s easy to weave a half-baked excuse around mentally decreasing effort in something like still life. It’s the angle. It’s the lighting. It’s the shadows. It’s a banana, who even gives a shit about a stupid banana.
The list, though short, still goes on.
With a human body, it’s different. The possibility of insulting the model, no matter what angle he decides to try and formulate an excuse of shoddy work for, is always (in his mind, anyway) high. He recognizes that he’s most likely too tangled up in his head about it and any model could care less how bad his representation of them looks on paper.
It bothers him regardless.
The model for last week was actually amazing overall; she was patient and nice, experienced, knew exactly how to turn toward and face a different part of the student circle surrounding her platform. She knew how to pose and provide the best possible amount of curves or muscle. She had a great body and Wooyoung could tell by how she moved it that she’d been doing this sort of thing for a long time.
And he still couldn’t grasp it.
The prolonged artist’s block left him with only one thing that he’s been able to sketch out with any last morsel of his nearly depleted confidence.
It lurks like a permanent stain in the back of his practice pad. The one he always takes to the cafe with him, the one he regularly gets distracted from as he watches San work.
Hands are usually pretty hard, so he can at least still give himself the tiniest pat on the back for honing the ability to get San’s right.
Maybe I *should* ask him for more help.
It’s not a new thought.
Honestly, it’s been a naggingly common one. A frustratingly common one.
The model is scheduled to come back for tonight’s class and as Wooyoung drops into a seat with Yeosang sliding in next to him, he already feels a concrete sense of indifference. If his skill couldn’t bitch slap itself out of whatever funk it’d fallen into last week, he sure isn’t optimistic that this week will be any different. This is his only evening class, taken twice a week, and he hates ending his day feeling defeated and trying to sleep inside a dark iron maiden of aggravation for the rest of the night.
His sour musk must be pretty strong; Yeosang’s giving him a strange look as he sighs dramatically and allows his personal bag to slide down his shoulder.
He frowns back at him, only slightly. “What? I’m fine.”
Yeosang’s mouth twists humorlessly. “I didn’t ask.”
Wooyoung doesn’t bother to react outside of a small noise rumbling up from the back of his throat. He carefully removes his portfolio duffle from around his torso and sets it down to pull out his drawing pad.
“Hello?” Yeosang pries.
Wooyoung finally responds as he adjusts the pad on his assigned easel. “What?”
There’s no reply, so Wooyoung gives in and looks up.
Yeosang is frowning pretty damn hard.
“Oh my god,” Wooyoung growls, digging out his charcoal kit. “Sang-ah, leave me alone.”
“I literally haven’t said anything aside from hello,” Yeosang replies. “You’re being defensive for no reason.”
“You said ‘hello’ in a big brat way.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Wooyoung’s movements slow. He’s still focusing on his task, but murmurs, “Fine. Sorry.”
The professor at the head of the room claps once, loudly, for attention. He announces that they’ll have a new model this week, but to focus on something in the room to use as a warm-up until arrival. Wooyoung nearly rolls his eyes; warm-ups have been like a forgotten song for longer than he’d like to admit, and not a single one since the semester started has done a damn thing to inspire or uplift him.
As argumentative as he’s dying to be, he begrudgingly chooses to set his sights on an empty chair a few seats down from him for his ‘warm up’. It’s going to look like the same stupid chair that’s taken up twenty-five percent of his pad so far - shoddy and weird and wrong.
He hears the door to the room open just as he’s trying to finish his last half-assed details and almost curses out loud.
Oh, cool.
The model is already here and he’s not even done drawing what a toddler could have done in half the time.
“Uh, Woo.”
Yeosang’s voice only annoys him right now.
“What,” he says blandly - a word that seems to be coming out of his mouth as easily as air lately - and sets his charcoal on the lip of the easel, leaning back in his seat and rubbing the leftover smudges on his fingers across the old sweatpants he always wears to this class, already speckled with a rainbow of paint from the past that never washed out.
He feels the sharp jab of Yeosang’s elbow.
He hears the model’s voice at the same time, politely greeting the professor.
As deep as an unexplored cavern.
As rich as the world’s most expensive chocolate.
As familiar as home.
Wooyoung’s gaze quickly lifts just as the model turns to address the class with an introduction.
Their eyes meet immediately.
They both freeze.
Wooyoung’s expression is wide open and fixated, like a raccoon getting caught fucking around in a dumpster in the middle of the night. They’ve made eye contact so many times across the cafe, they’ve talked almost every single day, they laugh and joke while Wooyoung flirts and nothing, literally nothing has ever felt even close to the ballpark of awkward until now.
But this is Choi San, here. The king of charm.
Nothing ever stays uncomfortable with him for too long, whether the other party is prepared for it or not. His presence is like a natural sedative, a wonder drug, a cure for uneasiness, and it seemingly doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing; he always makes it work.
His back straightens and his shoulders square up.
He barely smiles. It’s a hint, a phantom, but Wooyoung knows his face so well by now. He can tell that while the expression is quiet and light, it’s deliberate. It’s meant as yet another olive branch, maybe even an unspoken and hopeful request to not let this continue to feel stranger than it already does.
Wooyoung doesn’t smile back, though.
Not yet, at least.