“You know, I wasn’t serious,” is the first thing Yuta says when he wakes up that morning. It’s a Sunday in the middle of April and the sun is already lighting up their modest studio and right in the middle of the floor, between their bed and the sofa, Hansol has laid out an old, white sheet. It is held down by heavy books on each corner and stretched flat across the floorboard. Hansol is sitting on his haunches beside it and looks up at Yuta with wide eyes, a small bucket of lilac paint opened in his hands. He looks from Yuta to the sheet to the paint and back to Yuta and gapes speechlessly at him.

“But I liked the idea” he mumbles quietly and quite frankly, in that moment Yuta thinks he both looks and sounds like a kicked puppy and he can’t help but smile fondly at his gentle boyfriend.

“What colours do you have?” he asks and Hansol’s face lights up with a cute smile and he starts stacking all the different coloured paint he has bought. There is a cute baby blue and a dark orange reminiscent of a setting sun, and a neon pink and yellow, forest green and the lilac one he has already opened. Yuta tugs his tights up his calf and pulls his socks off one by one and throws them in the direction of the bathroom. Then he picks the orange and pours all of it into one of the flat bowls Hansol must have also bought the previous day. Yuta at least doesn’t recognise them. Hansol has risen to his feet and is doing the same with the lilac paint and with a look at each other they place one foot into their respective bowl of paint and steps onto the sheet. The paint feels slimy on the underside of his foot, but Yuta is already enjoying himself. He takes another step and reaches out for Hansol and the other man takes his hands as they balance on one foot.

“We should start in the middle, and then work our way outwards” Hansol says as they recoat their feet in paint and Yuta sets his down on the sheet so that the toes of their feet touch and the paint ends up overlapping and mixing together. Yuta thinks it’s an accurate representation of the two of them. They make about a dozen footsteps each and then they want different colours. Hansol throws an old towel at Yuta and keeps one for himself and they end up stumbling around as they dry their feet, leaning on each other to keep from overbalancing and getting paint on the floor. Their tenant wouldn’t be very happy if they did that. With dry feet they argue over who gets the baby blue, but Hansol caves rather quickly and takes the forest green instead. As a thank you Yuta takes a small dollop of the blue paint on his finger and smears it on Hansol’s cheek. He laughs loudly, but Hansol is quick to retaliate and Yuta soon finds himself with a matching green stripe on his nose. He goes cross eyed trying to see it and Hansol laughs that quiet laugh of his so Yuta swats at him before he takes his hand and steps back onto the sheet.

While they insist that neither of them are in any way sappy or romantic, they end up making a heart out of the blue and green footsteps and when they meet at the end they share a lengthy kiss. With their hands clasped together and almost loosing their balance three times they kiss several more times and then they hobble on one foot off the sheet and wipe their feet of paint again. The neon coloured footprints end up a jumbled mess on the edges of the sheet, but the two of them laugh louder than ever as they hop around with their fingers linked across the expanse of the sheet. When he wipes the yellow paint from his foot, Yuta sees the flash of a camera go off and when he looks across at Hansol the man is holding his camera loosely in one hand with the lens angled at Yuta’s raised foot. He isn’t even looking through the lens, but is rather taking the pictures haphazardly.

They leave their painting to dry and take a shower to wash all the paint from their body. Hansol ended up with pink streaks in his hair and Yuta knows he has at least three neon yellow stripes on each cheek and probably some in his hair as well. Their clothes are miraculously spot free, but their hands are another matter and their calves are splotched in several different colours. They dump their clothes in the laundry basket anyway and step under the hot water together. Hansol steers Yuta under the spray first to soak and Yuta swings their hands between them and hums a random tune as he tilts his head from side to side and smiles up at Hansol. Hansol smiles back at him, that close lipped one that lies more in the eyes, the one he uses most often to tell Yuta he loves him.

When Yuta’s hair is soaked and covering his eyes Hansol lifts his hands to his face and thumbs at his cheeks. The wet paint comes off easy and he rubs until all of it is gone. He runs his hands through Yuta’s hair a couple times and ends with sweeping it away from his forehead. Yuta tugs at his elbow and they switch places, Yuta’s hands immediately going up to Hansol’s hair and at the pink paint gluing chunks of it together. Getting all the paint out of Hansol’s hair takes a bit longer and when it is all gone they are pressed together from head to toe and kissing under the fall of hot water. They are suddenly back to the lazy Sunday mood they are normally in at the end of the week and their lips move slowly against each other, meeting and parting in short sweet kisses and coming together firmly so their tongues can move between them and against each other in a slow dance.

When they turn off the water and get out of the shower they do it with the same lazy pace and as Yuta towels his hair with drooping eyes, Hansol pats on wet feet to their closet for a new outfit for the both of them. He never comes back however, so Yuta ties his towel around his waist and goes looking for him. The clothes he finds right outside the door and so he pulls on his boxers and pyjama pants and deliberately takes Hansol’s sweatshirt from the pile before he lets his gaze sweep around the room.

Hansol is standing in only boxer shorts with the strap of his camera slung around his neck, taking pictures of their footprint painting. Yuta laughs quietly at him and brings the clothes with him to the kitchen island where he dumps them in one of the high chairs. He circles the island into the kitchen nook and opens the fridge. They had been painting for hours and Yuta hasn’t even had any breakfast so when his stomach growls at the prospect of food he pats it fondly and promises to fill it with yummy food as quick as he can. Hansol is busy photographing so when he asks whether he wants something to eat all he gets is an unintelligible mumble that he takes to mean yes. In his experience Hansol is always hungry anyway.

As he cuts the onions and cabbage and fries meat on a pan and puts rice in the rice cooker, that he almost forgets to turn on, he watches Hansol step carefully around the sheet and take pictures from every angle. He likes watching Hansol work, how concentrated he is on what he is photographing, how attentive he is to every detail. His assignment for this term is to make a portfolio with the theme being Childhood. He was nearly done, left with only one more picture when Yuta had jokingly suggested two days previously that they should finger paint or something and then Hansol could take pictures of the result. It had been an off-hand comment that Yuta didn’t even remember making the next day, but Hansol obviously liked it and, as it turned out, so did Yuta. He wonders if they have space on any of their walls to pin the sheet up, but highly doubts it. Maybe if they cut it down to just the heart it could fit behind their bed or something. Maybe they should stick to having Hansol’s pictures made into a canvas print.

“Your meat is burning” Hansol says, suddenly only inches away from him and Yuta moves his head distractedly from side to side before realising that yes, his meat is indeed burning. He hurries to move the pan off the stove and hisses as some of the cubed pork meat sticks to the bottom of the pan.

“Oops” he says and pulls a grimace. Hansol comes around the counter, fully clothed now and picks a cabbage leaf from the cutting board. “Still eatable” he says and presses a kiss to Yuta’s temple as he reaches above him for plates and glasses. He takes the cutting board after and dumps the onions and cabbage over the meat and uses Yuta’s hand holding the spatula to mix it all together and then he walks away again to take some more pictures. Yuta robotically puts the pan back over the heat and pours the sauce over the meat and vegetables and flips it a little just until the cabbage starts to shrink together. The he puts it aside and places a helping of rice on each of their plates and splits the meat and vegetables into two portions and piles it on top.

Hansol is back in a chair at the kitchen island before Yuta has even put the pan back on the stove, with chopsticks in one hand and the other pulling the chair on his left back for Yuta. Yuta smiles warmly and spins circles until he reaches the chair and can climb up on it. He then leans over and steals a kiss from Hansol before the other man can dig into his food and they smile at each other and Hansol bites his lip and looks extra cute and then Yuta has sauce all over his lips from the piece of meat Hansol swiped across them and they are kissing once again. He can’t simply leave Yuta with sticky lips after all.