Click.

The soft, familiar sound of a camera clicking filled the small upstairs bedroom of a tiny house just outside of the city. 

Click.

Flash.

Kibum opened his tired eyes, his mind still heavy with sleep.  He turned his head in the vague direction of the clicking sound and his eyes settled on a blurry version of Jonghyun sitting on the windowsill with the dim morning sunlight bouncing off his silhouette, bare and holding a camera, pressing the shutter whenever something caught his eye.

Click.

Jonghyun honestly looked like a rated version of those hipster kids on Instagram with their brand new Nikon cameras, poised and ready capture the perfect the scene and slap a filter over it.  Except Jonghyun already looked filtered with the way the sunlight was hitting him just right.

Click.

Kibum rolled back over and closed his eyes.  Thoughts were already beginning to fill his head, and he didn’t really care to think those thoughts at that particular moment.  He just focused on the soft click that filled the room.

Kibum opened his eyes again when the clicking stopped and the other side of the bed dipped with a new weight.  He rolled over and was met with an eyeful of Jonghyun all in his personal space.  He groaned inwardly.  And outwardly.

“’Morning, gorgeous” Jonghyun grinned, and it was so sincere that Kibum couldn’t help the smile that spread across his own face despite the cheesy compliment.

“You see something good out the window?” Kibum asked, gesturing to the camera with his hands, moving the comforter along with his motions.

“Saw some birds out there.  Got a few good shots I think,” Jonghyun said, looking through his pictures on his camera, squinting his right eye and sticking out his tongue in focus. 

“Can I see?” Kibum asked, scooting over and raising up so he could see the camera, too.  He didn’t admit it often, but he loved the photographs that Jonghyun took.  He always captured nature so well with a click of a button.  Sometimes the pictures he took almost seemed better than the real thing, like you could brush your fingers across the photograph and it would feel like you were actually there.

“I like this one.  I might send it in to the editor,” Jonghyun said, pausing over a picture of two birds taking off in flight from a tree branch.   One bird, heavily decorated with beautiful tail feathers that hung down like a cascading waterfall of vibrant blues and light grays, appeared to be chasing after the other bird, much smaller and duller in color, with tiny little wings that spread out nicely in flight.  The birds contrasted against the bright green spring foliage of the tree and the light orange that dusted the morning sky.  Kibum liked it too.

“I agree.  You should send that one in to the editor,” Kibum nodded, sounding almost professional despite his voice being hoarse with sleep, and Jonghyun couldn’t help but laugh.

“Right, will do,” Jonghyun said, laughing even harder when Kibum shot him his signature Pissed Off Diva ™ face.

“Quit laughing at me.  I was being helpful, you ,” Kibum rolled over and hid himself in the blankets.  In a few seconds that familiar click filled the room again, except it sounded closer and he rolled over to see Jonghyun pushing the shutter button down with his camera facing at Kibum.

“What are you doing?” Kibum asked, ready to reach his arm out and smack that camera out of his boyfriend’s stupidly skilled hands.

“Taking some more pictures to send in to the editor,” Jonghyun said simply, and he reached out his hand to pull the blanket down, exposing more of Kibum before going back to his pictures.

“But you’re a nature photographer.  The editor won’t take pictures that aren’t of nature,” Kibum said, indifferent to the fact that he was now slightly exposed to the flash of Jonghyun’s camera.

“But I’m photographing you in your natural habitat,” Jonghyun reasoned.

“Our bed is not my natural habitat,” Kibum scoffed.

“Pfft,” was all Jonghyun could manage before a pillow was tossed at his head, courtesy of Kibum.

Kibum didn’t say anything else, he just moved the blanket and showed off more of his legs that he knew Jonghyun loved even more than his camera.  In his heart, he was teaching Jonghyun a lesson, but in his mind he knew that he was showing off his legs.

“I call your “pfft” and raise it with one of these,” Kibum said, using poker terms he didn’t quite understand, and he raised his left leg dangerously high, almost revealing things that the blanket was barely hiding, his fingers traipsing across milky skin almost sinfully slow.

Click.

“You make a good model,” Jonghyun said, capturing Kibum’s image in perfect still shots.

“Maybe our bed is my natural habitat,” Kibum shrugged and winked for the camera, which Jonghyun was sure to capture to forever be immortalized in his own collection, forget the editor.

-

Later that evening as the blue of the brushstrokes of orange and pink that peppered the sky were begging to fade into shades of navy blue and pitch black, Kibum wrenched himself out of Jonghyun’s arms while the latter slept.  Kibum tip toed around the room in search of his lighter, and when he found it he opened the bedroom window and crawled out onto the roof to sit for a while.

Normally he wouldn’t sit out on the roof in plain view wearing nothing but Jonghyun’s worn out old flannel that Kibum loved so much because it was too big and it smelled exactly like Jonghyun, but it wasn’t like they had neighbors or anyone else around to complain about public .  Kibum just shrugged and lit his cigarette, Lucky Strike, and took a drag.  The only time he ever smoked was after when Jonghyun had fallen asleep, and he always smoked on the roof, leaned back on his hands, legs stretched out, not bothering to cover himself because who the cares.

As Kibum lit his second cigarette, he could hear Jonghyun begin to stir.  He figured that his boyfriend would join him on the roof momentarily, and he was right.  Jonghyun climbed through the window to join him up on the roof.  He held in a pfft of his own when he caught sight of Jonghyun in the moonlight.  His hair was messy, parts of it still in tufts from where Kibum had yanked it.  He was wearing only an oversized t-shirt that Kibum had bought him from his trip to Germany a few years back, a faded pink shirt that read Girls’ Night Out in Berlin in black lettering with a coffee stain on it from about two years ago.

Looking at Jonghyun with his messy appearance, his eyes still fogged from his after- nap, it all just felt so comfortable to Kibum, so indescribably warm.  Everything felt right with the universe, like he was meant to be on that roof in that exact moment, sitting next to a beautiful man in a hideous t-shirt, and he just felt so…right.

Kibum got out his phone and turned the front flash on, snapping a selca featuring Jonghyun when the latter wasn’t looking, the flash almost blinding a poor, unsuspecting Jonghyun.

“Why,” was all Jonghyun said, not even bothering to put a question mark at the end of his one-word sentence.

“I wanted to capture a picture of this beautiful moment of us together, Mr. Photographer,” Kibum snickered and Jonghyun turned to look at him then, a deep, intense stare that made Kibum fidget.

“You know, when I look at you, every time I look at you, even now with your hair all messy and you’ve buttoned the shirt you’re wearing all kinds of wrong, I think of everything we’ve been through and how hard it’s been.  But when I look at you, and I know that you’re still here and that you still love me, then I’m content with the choices I’ve made and the person I’ve become,” Jonghyun said, still looking into Kibum, reaching out to brush his thumb across the other male’s face as if to make sure that he was actually sitting there.

Something in Jonghyun’s words made Kibum’s heart swell.  They had been through a lot together, that was true.  There had been plenty of I love you’s thrown in like glue to stick them back together through all the struggles between them.  But Kibum felt the same way about Jonghyun, being reassured by just looking at him.

“For a photographer, you sure do have a way with words,” Kibum joked because I love you was meant to be read between the lines.

Jonghyun just laughed and grabbed Kibum’s phone and snapped a selca of them both, smiling and ready this time, completely washed out by the flash but happy, oh so happy just to be there, together.  Jonghyun looked at the picture and smiled before handing the phone back to Kibum.  Kibum inspected the picture and thought that of all the magazine spreads and spotlight features Jonghyun had done, that this had to be the best picture that Jonghyun had ever taken. 

Kibum quickly locked the photo so that it could be forever immortalized in his gallery on his phone, and possibly Instagram, with no filter, of course.

Natural was the best filter, after all.