the sound of art
the sound of art
jaejoong/changmin
PG-13
warning. character death
a/n. not so sure at all about this, but i had it in my head and it wasn't going away. ending was going to be alternate, but it's what i originally planned on writing, so i kept it.
will i see you tonight
on the downtown train
every night, every night
it's just the same
downtown train - rod stewart
Changmin had just turned eighteen when he moved to New York, full of hopes and dreams and everything young adults are made of. At the airport, his mother cried and hugged him so tight he wondered if she thought he was never coming back. Her eyes wished him luck where her voice couldn't. His dad was at work, couldn't make it to see him off. Changmin's little sister hugged him the longest, but she didn't cry. He told her to take care of their mom, to help their dad whenever he needed it, even if he never asked.
And then he left, and didn't look back. He didn't want to cry.
Changmin's apartment is a tiny thing, nothing more than an extra-large room with a bathtub in one corner, a kitchen in another, and his bed somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, he feels like he's in a movie, the starving art student striving for his place in the world. It's untitled, a work-in-progress.
Changmin's first painting hangs above his bed, crude and inexperienced, but with the potential for so much more. It's a reminder, some kind of self-portrait that looks nothing like him and everything like what Changmin imagines the world to be. Then, the world was his backyard, with the brand-new, red swing set his father bought him and his sister for Christmas, the grass in desperate need of mowing, the clear, blue sky with the clouds lazily floating by. Now, it's a city of Picasso, with rough edges and too many things to single out, beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Changmin's classes are overwhelming at first; he misses three of them on his first day. He has to take the train to the campus, and there were no trains in his small town. Even with a map, he still has trouble remembering the names of streets and which ones run north and south from the ones that run east and west. What's worse, Changmin's never been one for crowds, so the close proximity of so many strangers only adds to the antsy state he's already in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that sees only the art of the world, Changmin paints a picture of blurred faces and over-sharp hands, clutching at their priceless shopping bags and purses, time stopped as the world speeds by.
After classes, Changmin's got his job at the art gallery a few blocks away, minimum wage that'll barely be enough to cover his rent and food. His boss is a sharp woman with heels that clack against the hard flooring, her lips always pressed into a thin line of almost nothing. But she's honest and blunt with her words, with what she expects of Changmin, and Changmin respects that, craves it. She reminds him of his father, hard-working and stern - driven. It's the way Changmin wants to be, the way he shapes himself little by little.
The gallery closes late, despite the long train ride Changmin will have before he'll be home. The world waits for no one and Changmin is no exception. He's shown all the things he'll have to do to close on his own someday, then he's set free for the night. He's already missed the train he was hoping to catch, so he'll have to wait another thirty minutes for another. Fifteen of that is spent walking to the station, with a pause for iced Starbucks coffee and a Snickers from a convenience store.
The train station's nearly deserted at this hour, the few random stragglers like himself paused at the edge of the concrete in uneven spaces. Through casual glancing, Changmin picks out someone hidden in the shadow of the stairwell, all of him dark save for his hair - it's almost a platinum color, sticking up at different angles down the middle of his head, and framing his face everywhere else. His face is hidden, but Changmin sketches it in his head, imagines endless eyes and the same emotionless mouth he's seen on too many strangers today. Caught up in that hidden part of his mind, Changmin doesn't notice the train coming until it illuminates the station.
From the shadows, he looks up, and Changmin catches his breath as it stutters out of him. The painting in the back of his mind melts away.
(When Changmin shuffles through the door of his apartment, the hinges creak over the loud and abusive arguing from the couple next door. Changmin studies and thinks of the shivering art student striving for his place in the world, and the way that student's world came crashing down around him with a pretty face.)
The second week of school, Changmin's art teacher assigns them their biggest project of the semester. It's worth a little less than half of their grade, which is why they're given the entire semester to work on it. Changmin asks his boss for ideas, and she smiles primly, the first sign of almost-warmness he's seen from her, and tells him to do what his heart tells him to. Changmin thinks that's a little amusing coming from someone who doesn't seem to have much of a heart, but he supposes she's right - art, after all, is what his heart desires most, and it would make sense for him to follow it.
That doesn't help him much in the matter of what he's going to do, however. Something like this, something he needs to put as much extra effort as he can into, it takes all the time he's given. Each day that passes by in a flurry of papers and books and paintings, without so much as a murmur of what he wants, is torture. There are so many things he could do, so many different scenes of his new life that he wants to capture, but they're not right.
Late at night, when Changmin's waiting for the train, he's always there, in the same spot every time. Changmin wants a name to go with the face, but he's not sure he can untie his tongue and untrip his feet to go ask. He catches Changmin looking, and Changmin offers a fleeting, casual smile before turning away, cheeks burning.
He never has to ask, though. When Changmin looks up from his shoes as they scuffle awkwardly along the concrete, he's there, with a tiny smile and dark-rimmed eyes that completely contradict each other in every way. His name is Jaejoong, and he asks about Changmin's shirt, easily guessing that Changmin is not from here. Changmin wonders if maybe Jaejoong's as out of place as he is, with his ripped jeans and his black-tipped fingernails. Your clothes should be screaming obscenities, Jaejoong tells him, tugging at a sleeve, not who the fuck am I? Changmin thinks maybe Jaejoong isn't so out of place, after all.
They never talk outside of the train station. Changmin begins to look forward to the nights spent there, waiting on the dull roar of the train, listening to Jaejoong talk away about everythings. Jaejoong, with his quirky personality and his bright hair and clothes. Jaejoong, with his smile and laughter and his open ways, even when he's closing himself off to the world completely. Changmin thinks if he tried to paint Jaejoong, the colors would just smear together into some semblance of Jaejoong, but would never fully take shape because he shifts a little more every night.
But it's with each shift that Changmin feels a little closer to Jaejoong, tectonic plates of their relationship re-arranging themselves into something a bit more. Changmin's never been in love before, but he imagines it would be a lot like this.
(This:
Jaejoong loops an arm around Changmin's shoulder and tells Changmin about life as he knows it - how the sky is actually green and the grass is really blue. Jaejoong tells him that the world is not round, but triangular, and that aliens built it, not God. Changmin just laughs and laughs, doesn't bother to point out that if the world was triangular, they'd all be dead by now.)
Jaejoong doesn't say anything he doesn't mean. So when Jaejoong tells Changmin that falling in love is a little like dying, Changmin can't help but wonder who broke Jaejoong's heart.
When Jaejoong finally finds out Changmin is an art major, he's excited, eyes sparkling with it. He listens patiently when Changmin tells him about the big project and how he's still without a subject. He tells Changmin that life is like a box of chocolates, now go paint some, the kind with the cherries inside, and Changmin doesn't know if he wants to laugh or slap Jaejoong upside the head - so he does both. Jaejoong's retaliation is swift and hearty, and all the while he's complaining about his hair and how it took ages to get it perfect - it's black now, and last week it was a dark red. Changmin tells Jaejoong that he's doing more damage to his own hair than Changmin could ever hope to do. Jaejoong only snorts and declares that he's going back to platinum.
It happens a day later, after Jaejoong goes back to blond, face pale against the shocking strands. Jaejoong's talking about how the color was actually supposed to be tamer, it's okay though, I suppose I've always been more fond of the radical stuff, right? Changmin's heart murmurs Jaejoong's name, and in his head, he paints picture-perfect.
Every second of spare time Changmin has is spent painting. Lines of skin and hair come alive slowly, each stroke of color a caress on paper, caresses Changmin's never dared give to the real thing. In his mind, Changmin imagines a scene so beautiful it makes his hands tremble and his breath fall short of his lungs. This is the halfway point of the movie, where the art student realizes he's completely in love, and maybe it does feel a little like dying.
There's a strange sort of silence between them the next time they're together. Changmin's had two days off and he's almost finished with the painting, and maybe Jaejoong's had too much time to think about the way Changmin could feel about him. Does feel about him. Jaejoong looks more wan than usual, his face is hollow beneath the fringe of his hair. Changmin tells himself it's just the lights from the station playing tricks, but his hand reaches over to cover Jaejoong's anyway. Jaejoong looks up, and Changmin's heart tries to claw its way out of his chest through his throat. He swallows it down and paints a picture, instead.
In it, he is kissing Jaejoong softly, and Jaejoong's lips are soft and taste like cherry lip balm. When Changmin opens his eyes, Jaejoong's kissing back.
(Jaejoong comes home with him for the first time. Changmin covers the painting with Jaejoong's shirt, watches Jaejoong as he falls to Changmin's bed like art come to life. And maybe, just maybe, that's what Jaejoong is. Changmin's not imagining the beauty of this world anymore. He's living it.
The movie fades to black.)
In the morning, Jaejoong's not there. Without classes to distract him, Changmin can't shake the worry that gnaws at his skin throughout the entire day - but even through it he manages to finish the painting. Glancing up at his backyard, Changmin reaches a decision and removes it from its place without hesitation. Instead of replacing it with Jaejoong, however, he wraps the painting up with Jaejoong's.
Changmin sits at the train station until the crowd fades and night falls, waiting, but Jaejoong never shows. The last train does, however, and Changmin stares at the painting for a long while as the world spins by. Falling in love, it's not dying, not at all. It's living through the pain.
It's two weeks of being in between determination and giving up when Changmin sees Jaejoong again. Jaejoong's hair is black at the roots, messy, his nails are devoid of color and his face is so gaunt, so lifeless. The sadness in Jaejoong's eyes hurts the most, though, a knife in Changmin's heart. I'm sorry, Jaejoong says, hidden in shadow under the stairwell like deja vu. I'm sorry I never told you.
Something clicks in Changmin's brain, and he sags to the bench, hugging both paintings to his chest. He says, love is a little like dying, and almost wants to believe it.
Jaejoong tries to say something, but coughs instead. When he's done, there's blood on his hands, bright and red and real. Jaejoong smears it across his pants and runs fingers over the painting instead, the skeletal beauty of his face even more prominent in the light. Show me, his eyes say, where his voice can't.
Changmin shows Jaejoong himself, seen through the eyes of love. Jaejoong doesn't cry, but his eyes shine and his hands tremble as he brushes a fingertip over the white-yellow of the painting. Jaejoong's taken over by another coughing fit, and Changmin clutches his hand tightly through it. After it's over, he gives Jaejoong his first painting. It's yours.
Jaejoong doesn't tear away the wrapping. Changmin wonders if he knows, or if he's just afraid of what he'll see. Jaejoong doesn't say I love you, he doesn't say I'm dying - he doesn't say anything. He just kisses Changmin softly, and Changmin tastes red. Beside them, the last train of the night shudders to a stop, and the world goes on.
Changmin looks back as he steps onto the train, but Jaejoong isn't there. Changmin doesn't cry.
(The credits roll, and the art keeps on living.)
jaejoong/changmin
PG-13
warning. character death
a/n. not so sure at all about this, but i had it in my head and it wasn't going away. ending was going to be alternate, but it's what i originally planned on writing, so i kept it.
will i see you tonight
on the downtown train
every night, every night
it's just the same
downtown train - rod stewart
Changmin had just turned eighteen when he moved to New York, full of hopes and dreams and everything young adults are made of. At the airport, his mother cried and hugged him so tight he wondered if she thought he was never coming back. Her eyes wished him luck where her voice couldn't. His dad was at work, couldn't make it to see him off. Changmin's little sister hugged him the longest, but she didn't cry. He told her to take care of their mom, to help their dad whenever he needed it, even if he never asked.
And then he left, and didn't look back. He didn't want to cry.
Changmin's apartment is a tiny thing, nothing more than an extra-large room with a bathtub in one corner, a kitchen in another, and his bed somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, he feels like he's in a movie, the starving art student striving for his place in the world. It's untitled, a work-in-progress.
Changmin's first painting hangs above his bed, crude and inexperienced, but with the potential for so much more. It's a reminder, some kind of self-portrait that looks nothing like him and everything like what Changmin imagines the world to be. Then, the world was his backyard, with the brand-new, red swing set his father bought him and his sister for Christmas, the grass in desperate need of mowing, the clear, blue sky with the clouds lazily floating by. Now, it's a city of Picasso, with rough edges and too many things to single out, beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Changmin's classes are overwhelming at first; he misses three of them on his first day. He has to take the train to the campus, and there were no trains in his small town. Even with a map, he still has trouble remembering the names of streets and which ones run north and south from the ones that run east and west. What's worse, Changmin's never been one for crowds, so the close proximity of so many strangers only adds to the antsy state he's already in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part that sees only the art of the world, Changmin paints a picture of blurred faces and over-sharp hands, clutching at their priceless shopping bags and purses, time stopped as the world speeds by.
After classes, Changmin's got his job at the art gallery a few blocks away, minimum wage that'll barely be enough to cover his rent and food. His boss is a sharp woman with heels that clack against the hard flooring, her lips always pressed into a thin line of almost nothing. But she's honest and blunt with her words, with what she expects of Changmin, and Changmin respects that, craves it. She reminds him of his father, hard-working and stern - driven. It's the way Changmin wants to be, the way he shapes himself little by little.
The gallery closes late, despite the long train ride Changmin will have before he'll be home. The world waits for no one and Changmin is no exception. He's shown all the things he'll have to do to close on his own someday, then he's set free for the night. He's already missed the train he was hoping to catch, so he'll have to wait another thirty minutes for another. Fifteen of that is spent walking to the station, with a pause for iced Starbucks coffee and a Snickers from a convenience store.
The train station's nearly deserted at this hour, the few random stragglers like himself paused at the edge of the concrete in uneven spaces. Through casual glancing, Changmin picks out someone hidden in the shadow of the stairwell, all of him dark save for his hair - it's almost a platinum color, sticking up at different angles down the middle of his head, and framing his face everywhere else. His face is hidden, but Changmin sketches it in his head, imagines endless eyes and the same emotionless mouth he's seen on too many strangers today. Caught up in that hidden part of his mind, Changmin doesn't notice the train coming until it illuminates the station.
From the shadows, he looks up, and Changmin catches his breath as it stutters out of him. The painting in the back of his mind melts away.
(When Changmin shuffles through the door of his apartment, the hinges creak over the loud and abusive arguing from the couple next door. Changmin studies and thinks of the shivering art student striving for his place in the world, and the way that student's world came crashing down around him with a pretty face.)
The second week of school, Changmin's art teacher assigns them their biggest project of the semester. It's worth a little less than half of their grade, which is why they're given the entire semester to work on it. Changmin asks his boss for ideas, and she smiles primly, the first sign of almost-warmness he's seen from her, and tells him to do what his heart tells him to. Changmin thinks that's a little amusing coming from someone who doesn't seem to have much of a heart, but he supposes she's right - art, after all, is what his heart desires most, and it would make sense for him to follow it.
That doesn't help him much in the matter of what he's going to do, however. Something like this, something he needs to put as much extra effort as he can into, it takes all the time he's given. Each day that passes by in a flurry of papers and books and paintings, without so much as a murmur of what he wants, is torture. There are so many things he could do, so many different scenes of his new life that he wants to capture, but they're not right.
Late at night, when Changmin's waiting for the train, he's always there, in the same spot every time. Changmin wants a name to go with the face, but he's not sure he can untie his tongue and untrip his feet to go ask. He catches Changmin looking, and Changmin offers a fleeting, casual smile before turning away, cheeks burning.
He never has to ask, though. When Changmin looks up from his shoes as they scuffle awkwardly along the concrete, he's there, with a tiny smile and dark-rimmed eyes that completely contradict each other in every way. His name is Jaejoong, and he asks about Changmin's shirt, easily guessing that Changmin is not from here. Changmin wonders if maybe Jaejoong's as out of place as he is, with his ripped jeans and his black-tipped fingernails. Your clothes should be screaming obscenities, Jaejoong tells him, tugging at a sleeve, not who the fuck am I? Changmin thinks maybe Jaejoong isn't so out of place, after all.
They never talk outside of the train station. Changmin begins to look forward to the nights spent there, waiting on the dull roar of the train, listening to Jaejoong talk away about everythings. Jaejoong, with his quirky personality and his bright hair and clothes. Jaejoong, with his smile and laughter and his open ways, even when he's closing himself off to the world completely. Changmin thinks if he tried to paint Jaejoong, the colors would just smear together into some semblance of Jaejoong, but would never fully take shape because he shifts a little more every night.
But it's with each shift that Changmin feels a little closer to Jaejoong, tectonic plates of their relationship re-arranging themselves into something a bit more. Changmin's never been in love before, but he imagines it would be a lot like this.
(This:
Jaejoong loops an arm around Changmin's shoulder and tells Changmin about life as he knows it - how the sky is actually green and the grass is really blue. Jaejoong tells him that the world is not round, but triangular, and that aliens built it, not God. Changmin just laughs and laughs, doesn't bother to point out that if the world was triangular, they'd all be dead by now.)
Jaejoong doesn't say anything he doesn't mean. So when Jaejoong tells Changmin that falling in love is a little like dying, Changmin can't help but wonder who broke Jaejoong's heart.
When Jaejoong finally finds out Changmin is an art major, he's excited, eyes sparkling with it. He listens patiently when Changmin tells him about the big project and how he's still without a subject. He tells Changmin that life is like a box of chocolates, now go paint some, the kind with the cherries inside, and Changmin doesn't know if he wants to laugh or slap Jaejoong upside the head - so he does both. Jaejoong's retaliation is swift and hearty, and all the while he's complaining about his hair and how it took ages to get it perfect - it's black now, and last week it was a dark red. Changmin tells Jaejoong that he's doing more damage to his own hair than Changmin could ever hope to do. Jaejoong only snorts and declares that he's going back to platinum.
It happens a day later, after Jaejoong goes back to blond, face pale against the shocking strands. Jaejoong's talking about how the color was actually supposed to be tamer, it's okay though, I suppose I've always been more fond of the radical stuff, right? Changmin's heart murmurs Jaejoong's name, and in his head, he paints picture-perfect.
Every second of spare time Changmin has is spent painting. Lines of skin and hair come alive slowly, each stroke of color a caress on paper, caresses Changmin's never dared give to the real thing. In his mind, Changmin imagines a scene so beautiful it makes his hands tremble and his breath fall short of his lungs. This is the halfway point of the movie, where the art student realizes he's completely in love, and maybe it does feel a little like dying.
There's a strange sort of silence between them the next time they're together. Changmin's had two days off and he's almost finished with the painting, and maybe Jaejoong's had too much time to think about the way Changmin could feel about him. Does feel about him. Jaejoong looks more wan than usual, his face is hollow beneath the fringe of his hair. Changmin tells himself it's just the lights from the station playing tricks, but his hand reaches over to cover Jaejoong's anyway. Jaejoong looks up, and Changmin's heart tries to claw its way out of his chest through his throat. He swallows it down and paints a picture, instead.
In it, he is kissing Jaejoong softly, and Jaejoong's lips are soft and taste like cherry lip balm. When Changmin opens his eyes, Jaejoong's kissing back.
(Jaejoong comes home with him for the first time. Changmin covers the painting with Jaejoong's shirt, watches Jaejoong as he falls to Changmin's bed like art come to life. And maybe, just maybe, that's what Jaejoong is. Changmin's not imagining the beauty of this world anymore. He's living it.
The movie fades to black.)
In the morning, Jaejoong's not there. Without classes to distract him, Changmin can't shake the worry that gnaws at his skin throughout the entire day - but even through it he manages to finish the painting. Glancing up at his backyard, Changmin reaches a decision and removes it from its place without hesitation. Instead of replacing it with Jaejoong, however, he wraps the painting up with Jaejoong's.
Changmin sits at the train station until the crowd fades and night falls, waiting, but Jaejoong never shows. The last train does, however, and Changmin stares at the painting for a long while as the world spins by. Falling in love, it's not dying, not at all. It's living through the pain.
It's two weeks of being in between determination and giving up when Changmin sees Jaejoong again. Jaejoong's hair is black at the roots, messy, his nails are devoid of color and his face is so gaunt, so lifeless. The sadness in Jaejoong's eyes hurts the most, though, a knife in Changmin's heart. I'm sorry, Jaejoong says, hidden in shadow under the stairwell like deja vu. I'm sorry I never told you.
Something clicks in Changmin's brain, and he sags to the bench, hugging both paintings to his chest. He says, love is a little like dying, and almost wants to believe it.
Jaejoong tries to say something, but coughs instead. When he's done, there's blood on his hands, bright and red and real. Jaejoong smears it across his pants and runs fingers over the painting instead, the skeletal beauty of his face even more prominent in the light. Show me, his eyes say, where his voice can't.
Changmin shows Jaejoong himself, seen through the eyes of love. Jaejoong doesn't cry, but his eyes shine and his hands tremble as he brushes a fingertip over the white-yellow of the painting. Jaejoong's taken over by another coughing fit, and Changmin clutches his hand tightly through it. After it's over, he gives Jaejoong his first painting. It's yours.
Jaejoong doesn't tear away the wrapping. Changmin wonders if he knows, or if he's just afraid of what he'll see. Jaejoong doesn't say I love you, he doesn't say I'm dying - he doesn't say anything. He just kisses Changmin softly, and Changmin tastes red. Beside them, the last train of the night shudders to a stop, and the world goes on.
Changmin looks back as he steps onto the train, but Jaejoong isn't there. Changmin doesn't cry.
(The credits roll, and the art keeps on living.)