Pygmalion: Chapter 1/2
PYGMALION
Pairing: Minho & Taemin
Rating: R-17
Genre: Drama/Romance
CHAPTER 1: Don’t look up, the sky’s falling
He wouldn’t be able to tell you when or how it began either. He can’t recall. Perhaps a passing glance, something small, he might mutter, hushed, under his breath, if you were able to keep his attention long enough for him to answer. Then, he would rush off before you could say another word, hands full of brushes and pigments. He really could not remember where he had seen that picture; maybe he had haphazard a furtive gaze somewhere in the obscurity of his college? Maybe not even there, somewhere even more obscure, more far away; it had been nothing more than a glance, after all. Some uninterested glimpse that had marked the beginning of his descent into madness. Of course, like all profound obsessions, it had started off utterly innocent in nature.
A failing artist, anchored to mediocrity, at a local college. Nothing special there. He had at one time been a renowned artist for his blunt portrayals of the world as seen through his untainted eyes. But as we all know, even the purest among us can not remain uncontaminated by the corrupting nature of age. A young man left to his own devices, he turned inward on himself, eventually burning down his entire studio. The conflagration, which he believed would bring him tranquility, only bought him misfortune, a scarred back and a shattered reputation. He spent weeks locked in his room, listening to every genre he could find, from aphonic symphonies to verbose rap songs, searching for the slightest bit of inspiration to strike him. He would gaze at the mediocrities lining his room; painted fruit in a bowl, portraits commissioned by some intrigued by his background as a ‘tormented artist,’ and would look back up at his ceiling, close his eyes, and just breathe. He could almost hear the applause again, and the hands patting his back, whispering words of appreciation into his ears. He was ten again and everyone loved him, and for a few moments, he allowed himself to forget reality.
Minho found himself sketching the face later that day. He didn’t even recognize it at first but it rose to his mind like a hazy fog lifting. The background he couldn’t remember; a garden? Maybe a stony array of buildings? He could care less; the face was such that it would be equally resplendent regardless of the backdrop, with eyes that reflected the colors of sunlight. The sketch emerged from the ambiguity of the lined paper.
First the eyes, the large doe eyes glinting with mirth. He was ripping Minho’s walls down with those eyes. He could see Minho - see right through him. He could see the scars on his back that Minho had never shown anyone else.
He knew, he knew.
The picture became clearer as he added on layers in an attempt to understand. Was he sympathizing with Minho? Was he pitying him? Minho’s heart was pounding in his ears, the dim hammering against his chest, suffocating him. But at the same time, it was the most alive he had ever felt. He could roughly make out his own ragged breathing, as if he himself were being reborn in a flash of flames, flames from those eyes. A phoenix rebirth for the dying artist, he would have said had anyone asked. A superior smirk made its way onto the face and goosebumps broke out on Minho’s skin. He had never been so indubitably entranced before; he was being dragged into the paper and the very thought was giving him a kind of sick joy. The dignified gaze grew colder under Minho’s steady gaze.
He was trying to escape, he was bound to the paper, and Minho to him. But he couldn’t leave the confines of his paper- no, not ever. He would be corrupted, just like Minho, and tarnished and beaten down by the weight of reality. There is a kind of sorrow that only exists in reality; the feeling of ‘this is all there is’ then wrenches the imagination and shatters it to pieces. No, he couldn’t leave - Minho wouldn’t permit it. His gaze was piercing him now and the smirk was looking down on Minho.
“Worthless,” Minho could almost hear him whisper. Voice mellifluous as honey, but cold, so very cold. “Worthless,” he whispered again. Minho flinched, looking back down at the picture looking for signs for movement. With the smile still fixed on his face, it now struck a chord of fear in Minho.
A hand tapped Minho’s shoulder and he jumped, sending pencil flying over the page. Minho could scarcely listen to the person’s babble, much less respond to it. The spell was broken. His entire body felt numb, like he had been sleeping for a long time and someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on his face. He avoided looking at the sketch and instead pretended to be intrigued by whatever the person was telling him. His heart was still pounding, his breathing was still slightly erratic. He could feel the face looking at him, demanding Minho’s immediate attention, ordering him to turn around. The person’s hand reached past Minho and grasped the notebook paper he had been sketching on, snapping Minho back to reality.
“Taemin?” the boy in front of him looked at the sketch more closely. “Yeah it’s definitely him - I didn’t think you two would be acquainted...” he muttered and rubbed his chin.
“We’re not,” Minho said curtly, grabbing the paper from the boy’s hands. A pencil line marred the picture, going straight through one of the eyes he had worked so painstakingly on. Taemin. Putting a name to the face made it far less fantastical, far less frightening. Taemin. Some grubby kid that probably just happened to take a nice picture. He probably spent his spare time like the rest of the masses, probably used his pretty face to fuck some girl when he felt like it, probably drank and smoked and god knows what else. Tainted. Minho closed his eyes and he could see that pure face twisted, twisted because of humanity. Screwed up by emotions, contorted by anger, dotted with sweat; those same eyes, hooded with lust, squinting in concentration, closed with quiet rage. It was hideous, hideous and Minho couldn’t take it. His eyes flew open and he crumpled the paper, stuffing it into his bag. In front of him, the boy started. Minho shot him a glance, daring him to say something. He didn’t and Minho stalked off, skipping the rest of the day and going to his apartment instead
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The face appeared in his dreams. He wasn’t sure what was happening or the details exactly, but the face was there. It was staring at him again, and his apartment was on fire. His lifetime’s worth of paintings were on fire and it was beautiful. He was crying, it was beautiful and pure, and alongside him was him, Taemin. He wasn’t sure how, but he knew he was there, and he was laughing. The smoke was rising further and the painted fruit was burning and Minho felt strangely at home next to this boy, this figment of his imagination.
Minho’s eyes slowly fluttered open. He was drenched in sweat. He looked beside him, where the crumpled paper had been smoothed out on his nightstand and got up. His body was heavy, and the sweat made him feel sticky and his fingers left smudge marks on the paper when he lifted it but Minho didn’t care. He looked at the face and an urge struck him so hard he almost wanted to cry. He had to draw this man.
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Minho stood next to the classroom, lying in wait. He had to track down that boy for Taemin's phone number and they had arranged to meet up at the classroom after his literature class. He came out in a group, surrounded by a gaggle of girls. Minho couldn't recognize him right away. His hair was different; he must have cut it after the picture. He was the one to approach Minho. The feeling was gone. The throbbing sensation in his heart that he had when he looked at the picture disappeared. This Taemin was exactly what Minho had been expecting: normal. Chewing gum with that superior smirk as he waved to someone behind Minho as he approached the older boy. His face was so animated, so utterly human. By this time, he had reached Minho and the older boy averted his gaze. He could hear the gum snap over the buzz of the hallway. This was Minho's muse, the first to inspire him to paint in 9 years and he was standing in ripped jeans snapping gum in his face. The situation was almost laughable.
"You're Minho, right?" the voice was lower than what Minho had expected. He exhaled slowly and turned around. He was just an ordinary boy- Minho had to forget about that picture. He forced it into the back of his mind.
"Yeah." but even as Minho said it, his eyes were elsewhere. At last, there was something that remained the same. The eyes. They gave him the confidence to continue. He had to draw those eyes again. "Yeah, that's me."
"All right, I got it the first time," Taemin said and laughed, waving for his crowd to move on without him. He snapped his gum again, right in Minho's face. “So I heard that you have an internship for me? Not going to lie, I kind of need the money right now.” He lifted his hand to scratch the back of his head.
“Not really an internship, per se,” Minho’s voice picked up confidence and he relaxed his posture as he continued talking. “I’m an artist- well at least that’s what it says on paper- and I’d like you to model for me for a bit of time. Nothing fancy, no nudes, nothing like that. And I have the means to pay well too.” The words came out a little too quickly, slamming into one another a little too much to seem natural. However, if Taemin was dubious of Minho’s motives, he certainly did not show it. “We can discuss the details over coffee if you’re interested in the job.” The younger boy shrugged and ruffled his hair again. The gum popped and the buzz of conversation in the hallway overtook them.
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“Wow,” the boy said, dropping his bag on the sofa and looking around. It had been a week since he had accepted the job as a model. They had usually been meeting in libraries or in the hallways so Minho could scribble something hastily in his notepad, but he finally decided to let the other boy into his apartment. Minho looked up from the kitchen where he was setting up the coffee maker.
“It’s nothing special.” Minho pulled out a rubber hand and tied his long hair up. He had been meaning to get it cut for a while now but hadn’t gotten around to it quite yet. In the meantime, Taemin was wandering through the open doors in his apartment, making comments throughout.
“Woah!” Minho heard from inside the bathroom “Your bathtub is the size of my room!” With every word, Minho’s image of Taemin shattered a little bit more. He shook his head and went back to his work, setting out pots to make pasta. He closed his eyes to try and bring back the image of those eyes, but he was interrupted by Taemin exclaiming about something or the other. Minho opened his eyes and rubbed his temples. A breeze drifted through the window Minho had cracked. It was still August and the humidity was making his shirt stick to his skin. Minho’s shoulders relaxed with the breeze and he inhaled deeply.
“Is this me?!” Taemin came running into the kitchen- almost slipping in his socks- holding the crumpled paper in his hands. Minho took it from his hands and placed it on the counter. He gave a curt nod before going back to boiling water for the pasta. He could see from his peripheral vision that Taemin had picked up the knife near the cutting board and started cutting the tomatoes.
“Let me help you,” Taemin said when he saw that Minho was watching him. “My mom told me that it’s rude to let the host do everything.” he flashed a smile and continued cutting.
“I’m not your host. I’m your boss.” Minho said, returning to the water. For a while, the only noise was coffee dripping into the pot and erratic chopping from Taemin. He started whistling a tune, and quickly turned to humming when the notes got too high for him. A breeze blew again as they worked in silence.
“You have a nice place- what do your parents do?” Taemin asked, breaking the atmosphere yet again. Minho paused as he was pouring the coffee into mugs but didn’t answer. He then poured the pasta into the pot and covered it. He looked at the cutting board to see Taemin’s progress. The tomato pieces were cut messily, all different sizes and there was more tomato juice on his hands than the board. With a sigh, Minho pulled out a jar of ready-made pasta sauce and Taemin washed his hands, keeping up a constant babble about Minho’s apartment.
Not soon enough for Minho, the pasta was finished and he placed one portion’s worth on the table and sipped at his coffee. Taemin plopped himself down onto the chair opposite Minho and slid the bowl so it was positioned right in front of him. Minho took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Oh, can I have one?” Taemin asked, reaching for the pack in Minho’s hands. He swatted the younger boy’s hands down and put the pack away out of his reach. Taemin ate in silence, his mouth too busy chewing to be prattling on about something or the other. Minho didn’t eat, choosing instead to read a book and smoke sitting in the sofa.
“It looks nice,” Taemin said from nowhere, catching Minho’s attention. “The picture of me, it looks really good. You’re really good- you should be a professional!” Minho choked on the cigarette smoke laughing.
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“Like this?” Taemin asked, arching his neck and back. Minho looked up from his sketchpad to see the younger boy twisted into a shape so complex, he was shaking from holding the position. He ripped out the paper where he was drawing Taemin sitting cross-legged out from the sketchbook and crumpled it up. When he threw it, the ball landed among several others from other failed attempts. The sun had already set and Minho had closed the window since the days were getting colder as winter closed upon them.
“How many times have I told you not to move?” he asked, his voice dangerously low. “And can you sit normally for God’s sake?!” Minho picked up his pencil as Taemin moved again so he was doing a handstand against one of the walls.
“How about this? It’ll be unique this way!” he said, cackling at his own humor. Minho resisted the urge to throw the pencil at his tottering figure. “Oh! A guitar!” Taemin crashed to the ground and then picked himself up quickly in order to run over to where a guitar was sitting. Minho clenched and unclenched his fists, exhaling slowly before looking up.
“Do you play?” he asked, looking at how Taemin was caressing the instrument.
“Yeah- I used to, it’s been a few years since I’ve played anything though. We didn’t have the money to continue my lessons and I sold my guitar for some textbooks for college.”
“Oh.” the syllable hung in the air for some time before Taemin started plucking at the strings. His eyes were closed and eyebrows were furrowed in concentration.
“It’s so out of tune,” he said, laughing. However, that didn’t stop him from playing a song anyway. All at once, the feeling hit Minho again, like a wave crashing over him. The ache returned into his chest and he instinctively grabbed for a pencil. It was all he could do to keep from crying- he had to translate it somehow. His hands were shaking as the pencil touched the textured paper in his sketchpad. Taemin had started humming a song while he was playing; he was as out of tune as the guitar was.
The figure was beginning to emerge from the paper and Minho couldn’t stop now that he had started. Where he had taken short, halting lines on the other abandoned sketches, he could scarcely lift his pencil from the paper. Without his noticing, Taemin finished his short song. Seeing the look of concentration on Minho’s face, he launched into another one, laughing again at the horrendous sound the guitar was making. He crooned out lyrics to a song that Minho dimly distinguished as “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles, although he could care less in the state he was in.
When Minho’s pace had finally slowed and he had begun filling in minor details like the shadows in the hollow of the guitar and the highlights in Taemin’s hair, the younger boy started talking.
“When I was little, I wanted to be like one of those street performers,” he said, strumming and adjusting the pegs on the guitar in a valiant effort to tune it. “I thought it would be wonderful to just play for other people, not in one of those stuffy concert halls like what my mom made me play in.” He stopped strumming and exhaled, looking at the ceiling. “Wouldn’t it be amazing? Just playing by the moonlight and you’d probably have a different girl every night- they like performers, right?” Minho stopped sketching and looked up from the paper.
“Stop moving.”
“Don’t avoid the subject,” Taemin said, putting the guitar down. “I bet you have it made, I mean you even have an entire apartment to yourself- you must have girls over all the time, right?” Minho didn’t answer. Taemin jumped up and plopped himself down in front of Minho. “What’s it like? I’ve never done it before, you know.” Minho stiffly put down the pad and got up. Taemin got up too and followed Minho around, still talking
“I came from a really small high school in a small town- I knew everyone! You can’t sleep with someone you know for your first time, you know. My brother told me that- you don’t want people you know to realize that you don’t have any experience.” Minho went into the kitchen and started washing the graphite smudges off the palms of his hands. “So I waited- isn’t that amazing? I studied my ass off to get into a college in the city, and here I am!” Taemin sat down at the dining table. Minho remained standing. Something was changing in the boy’s tone of voice.
“I had to study really hard because we didn’t have any money to put me through college.” he put his feet up on the table. “I had to give up music because it’s not going to help pay off debts. We lost everything a few years ago, and it’s been hard trying to recover from that.” he toyed with the frayed ends of his jeans. “My brother had to drop out of college to help with the bills, so the least I could do was give up music, right?”
The ache was beginning again, coming back with a vengeance. The lights in the dining room were casting shadows all across Taemin’s face and accenting his cheek bones. He was staring right at Minho though, his eyes wide open. Minho could feel his breath catching in his throat. He was suddenly hyperaware of everything around him. The tap was dripping water into the sink and the wind was howling outside the window. The pain in his chest was getting stronger, but this time he didn’t want to draw the boy. He wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to do; his feelings were in utter turmoil. He took a few steps forward as if in a trance.
“Why are you telling me this?” Minho drew even closer to Taemin. The younger boy broke eye contact first, looking down at the table. Minho could feel himself relaxing again since those eyes weren’t looking at him anymore.
“I dunno, I like it here,” Taemin stretched his legs out and the chair tottered on two legs. Outside, Minho could dimly hear thunder rumbling. “It’s really quiet and I feel like.. I don’t know. Like it’s okay to be relaxed. Whenever I’m out with the guys from my classes, all they ever talk about is sex and girls. And then I get so conscious of what I say that I feel like I’m suffocating. Like I’m not Taemin anymore.” He shifted his weight so the chair was rocking back and forth. “And then I come here and I think to myself ‘that’s better.’” Minho opened his mouth to say something but before he could, the phone rang and the two of them started.
“You should go home now,” Minho said, pushing Taemin’s legs gently off the table. The phone rang again and Minho walked over to pick it up. He could hear Taemin grabbing his bag and slipping on his shoes. The door slammed and Minho collapsed into the sofa. The phone rang again but he ignored it. He put his head in his hands and breathed slowly. The phone rang again and went into message. Minho could feel his pulse in his sweaty palms. What was he going to do? The voice on the answering machine was requesting him to paint a still-life. Outside, it started raining.
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Minho knew he was dreaming because only in dreams could everything be so perfect. Taemin was walking through aisles of painted fruit, fingers grazing the dried paint as he walked. His back was turned to Minho, but he knew that the younger boy was laughing again. He turned upon Minho quickly. Somewhere in the distance, Minho could see smoke rising from the white museum walls. However, when he looked back, his shirt was gone and Taemin was running his hands over the scar tissue on Minho’s back. With strength that he did not have in real life, Minho pushed the boy down onto the white floor. He was naked and the fluorescent lights of the museum were highlighting Taemin’s already pale skin. The smoke was getting thicker and heading towards the two of them. Taemin reached forward to put his arms around Minho’s neck
“Don’t look away,” he said. ‘Isn’t this what you wanted?” He was so close that Minho could see the mole on his neck clear as day. He couldn’t answer, words were failing him. The smoke encompassed them and Minho woke up with a jolt.
He threw off the heavy blanket weighing him down and gasped, floundering like a fish out of water. What was that? He reached down and touched his erection gingerly. Shit.
Upon his return from the bathroom, he found that he couldn’t fall asleep again. Minho probed around his nightstand until he found a pack of cigarettes. He took them over to the balcony and smoked the entire pack, not caring that the ground was still wet from the rain or that it was cold out and he didn’t have a jacket on. The ashes fell to the ground and melted into the rainwater. When he was done, he stood still, letting the cold air wash over him until the sun came up.