Jonghyun checked his watch then checked the piece of paper in his hand.This is the place he affirmed to himself, hitching his bag higher onto his shoulder. The customer hadn’t specified what the problem was, so he’d simply brought along the most general power tools he could find: he’d gotten very little time to change that before being herded out of the shop by his dad.

It had only been a few weeks since he’d started helping out the family business; visiting homes and fixing peoples’ plumbing was fairly new to him. But he was already used to the odd hours and silly questions. Even the sweltering dark blue coveralls didn’t bother him anymore.

He walked up the plinth of the apartment and pressed the button for the number on his crumpled chit. He let his gaze stray as he waited for someone to answer. When nothing happened for a minute, he pressed the button again. When still nothing happened he frowned and called his boss.

"Neh, appa, you sure it says Kim Kibum, Hongdae? … No of course I’m not insulting you, I’m just saying— Tch! Appa there are a lot of Kibums in Seoul!” 

Kibum the brush over the man’s chest, over the protruding bones of his rib cage, over the flare of his hips, defining his abs and highlighting his immaculate skin, when the apartment intercom chimed like a wailing baby, interrupting his concentration. The plumber, he’s early, a short yet bloody battle with his inner self and a lot of grumbling later, he invited the unfortunate soul with honeyed voice to his apartment.

The hesitant knock came much later than he expected; his cigarette had burnt down to the filter and a fresh streak of cadmium red decorated his collarbone. He swung the door open to a mop of ash blonde hair and wide coffee brown eyes set in a perfectly sculptured face; the dream of every artist.

"Took you long en—"

Jonghyun’s mumble was cut half way so suddenly that it almost choked him. His eye twitched when he saw a man answer the door in the , a towel barely hooked to his sharp hips, an unlit cigarette sticking to his bottom lip, a stream of water running down from the end of his familiar blonde hair and—

"Blood!" he yelled, jumping up and then scuttling around in his place as if he’d find some kind of bandaging in the near vicinity. The guy didn’t respond, remaining coolly leaning against his doorframe. “Sir! You’re bleeding!" Jonghyun insisted with worry, pointing at the man’s chest. “We have to treat it as soon as…"

The other swiped a finger over his collarbone, smearing it with what was clearly paint. “Come in,” he jerked his head towards the living room. 

The liveried man stared at him, his brown orbs widened and glistening, fixated on a patch of skin right above his towel. Kibum cleared his throat once, twice, and the other snapped out of his stupor, his face crimson and his eyes b with embarrassment.

"Sir, I- I-" he suppressed a chuckle and the flush in the plumber’s cheeks intensified, the colour horribly contrasting with his blue overalls. “Call me Kibum," with a rictus of a smile playing on his lips, he motioned the man to follow him as he walked towards the leaky faucet. He could feel the other’s burning gaze on himself, tracing every muscle, every contour of his back, as if trying to memorise a map.

"J-Jonghyun. My name, it’s Jonghyun." Despite the nervous stutter, his voice was euphonic; a brush that could paint a bare canvas into a lustrous iridescence of colours. Kibum looked over his shoulder, his face pulled into a genuine smile, and repeated the name. Jonghyun, his full lips parted in a soft breath, tripped on thin air and fell forward, trapping Kibum between his heated frame and the cold floor.

So far, the day had been little more than a series of dumb mistakes and horrible underestimation of flooring material on Jonghyun’s part. He’d ogled at a customer in the first few seconds of meeting, needlessly given out his name to a complete stranger, had proceeded to almost decapitate said stranger by stumbling on him… and had managed to look like a generally moronic human being.

It was only ten forty.

Jonghyun held the ice pack to his chin while the customer— Kibum, as he’d been repeatedly reminded— stood above him with his hands on his still- hips, a worried frown lining his sharp features. If he could move his mouth against the ache he would tell the strange guy to put some clothes on please, for the love of everything holy. But all he could garble out was a string of apologies and pained yelps.

"It’s not your fault," Kibum reassured, his voluptuous, well-shaped profile reclining sedately against his sofa. “I should’ve mopped all that leaked water. My bad." He chuckled and made to scratch the back of his discomfited neck. And when his arm raised in the action Jonghyun caught a glimpse of short prickly—

"Hair," he abruptly blurted, then worked hard to control his pained groan. “That usually causes blockage in the drains. Yes. Hair. Yes," he rambled.

"B-but… this is the kitchen sink…" 

Jonghyun was an inferno, ready to combust, to shatter into a shower of embers. Or he was in a sea of flames, Kibum wasn’t sure. Waves of heat radiated from the man, and along the nerve endings just beneath his skin, leaving his body dry and his hair in a total disarray.

The man stumbled over his words and stammered incoherencies, and Kibum could feel his heart thumping like a spring rabbit on ecstasy. He entwined his hands, scratched the back of his neck, pulled his hair, resisting the temptation to caress the plumber’s swollen chin and kiss the bruise away. Mind set on what he wanted, what he needed, he leaned towards Jonghyun, their breaths mingling in an dance. The other’s discomfiture seemed to have extended itself, like an inflated balloon.

"Will you-" Jonghyun’s breath hitched, those long lashes fluttered, his lips parted, "-model for me?"

He wasn’t an idiot. He tried to convey as much with his terribly useless pulp of words, but the other man—his proximity, most pointedly—had Jonghyun on the brink of sobbing out excessive apologies and other ramblings. A stupid utterance later, he blushed and continued blushing till the whole world became uncomfortably hot and prickly.

The feeling seemed to emit out in circular waves around him, because even the strange Kibum fellow was twitching and wriggling in his place… almost like he was dancing on hot coals. The two sat drenched in a filthy puddle of mutual embarrassment, until the customer suddenly launched himself onto the sofa, plopping down beside him.

"Will you—" there was a pause in which Jonghyun had to bite down on his tongue lest he release an unbidden wail from his pulsating apprehension. He tried squirming away from the other, fingers clutching on upholstery. "—model for me?"

"Eeeeeeeehhhh?!" Jonghyun loudly exclaimed. "Mo-mod-model!? Me?! Eeeeeehhhh?!" He shook his head, holding up a cross with his arms in refusal. "T-terrible choice, sir. Terrible. No, no. I can’t model. No, sir."

Kibum hissed and tutted in genuine annoyance. “Why not?!” his hand demandingly slapped the forgotten ice-pack on Jonghyun’s lap, which now pressed against a place on his body one should never press ice against. He jumped a foot into the air with shock

Jonghyun vehemently refused his request, his only chance to create a painting that would have been a plum worth untold millions. He slapped what he expected to the other’s thigh in frustration, ready to cajole the man, to woo him into saying ‘yes’, but he could feel his palm collide with something chilled and slightly damp, and Jonghyun jumped as if he’d been electrocuted.

Or castrated.

It was a moment of utter delirium. If asked later, Kibum would deny it ever happened, would concoct a story about supernatural forces possessing every ounce of his body, blame it on the strange atmosphere brewing in the room.

An incessant blabber of apologies poured from his lips as Jonghyun whimpered, his eyes tightly shut in perturbation and his hand clutching his crotch. Eyes wild, Kibum searched the room for something to ease the pain. Heat. He needed heat.

His mind blank and his energy frenetic, Kibum kneeled on the floor, his face inches away from the other’s crotch. Heat. More heat. Not thinking twice about his actions, forgetting the repercussions, he entwined their fingers, rubbing hard over the rough fabric of the plumber’s blue overalls.

The plumber jumped for a second time that day, yelping and falling to the floor. He scrabbled on his hands to get away from the other, feet kicking and lengthening the distance between the two of them. He almost slipped on the same floor once more, and he almost hurt his arms and scraped his elbows but the pain never registered over his shock.

In his time working with faulty drainage pipes, never once had Jonghyun felt so very violated.

"S-suh-sir!" he shouted in an accusatory tone. "What… What’re you doing?! I-I! We don’t offer that kind of service!” He closed his legs in a sort of self-defense, his voice shuddering and breaking in stops. “W-we just…! We just fix your plumbing!” he insisted, still moving across the hall.

And as he kept moving backwards with the customer standing stock-still in his place like he daren’t move a muscle, looking as shocked as himself, the plumber bumped against something heavy behind him. He heard it clatter before he felt it land on top of his head like a great landslide of paper and canvases and the wooden legs of an easel.

Kibum didn’t know how everything turned so sour within a matter of a few minutes. Or hours, he had lost the track of time since the plumber knocked on the door. He could almost feel his life hurling lemons at him without mercy. Unfortunate events, it was. A series of unfortunate events, that left his dignity and shame down that metaphorical drain; his kitchen sink was still a leaking mess.

Blood drained from his face as he stared at his paintings and the easel take a well-aimed dive at Jonghyun, promptly knocking him down on the floor. His breathing caught in his throat, a sob close to the surface, and his erratic heart pounded like a war drum, loud and thundering.

"Jonghyun," he whispered, crouching over the man, his towel barely hanging on his hips. Did I kill him? "Jonghyun," a saline droplet fell onto the prostrate man’s cheek. CPR. He had seen people perform CPR on the television, he knew the basics of it. It couldn’t be too hard, right?

"Please wake up," his eyes fluttered close, hot breath his face as he leaned in, faster, harsher, and a fist flew into his jaw.

Jonghyun was shocked by his own violent reaction. He wasn’t really an aggressive person in general, but the punch was completely by reflex; an automatic response from his well-trained defense mechanism. His body felt threatened and it reacted in the only way it saw correct.

That’s the story he was sticking to, anyway.

He covered his mouth in shock and waited for the other man to recover from the blow. It already felt bad because there were tears on his face, a reddish bruise forming beneath spindly candle-shaped fingers. “S-sir…” the plumber tried once, twice, before he was shrugged off with a mumbled 'sokay, I'm fine.

"Just… give me a minute," Kibum said and shakily stood up to walk away around Jonghyun. "Don’t look this way I’m changing," he called and then aaah-ed softly in pain. The plumber felt his cheeks burn at that, and pointedly stared at anything but the customer. 

He rubbed a new bump on top of his head from the toppled easel, trying to ease the clot with his palm, and looked around him at the flat slates of canvas that were now strewn across him. his lips and pausing to think about it, he curiously flipped some up, studying the contents of the paintings hoping he wouldn’t get caught.

He found cascading fabric and billowing grass and shimmering stars smothered by a careless brush, as if racing to finish their work. But the focus of each scene was the body of a human being, drawn in great detail unlike the background surrounding them. Pretty necks, flowing hair, muscular chests, straining arms, curling backs— whoever had created these works had taken a lot of interest in capturing the emotion more than the anatomy of their subjects. And Jonghyun could only stare with his mouth open.

"Ahem," Kibum cleared his throat.

Tears welled up in Kibum’s eyes, blurring the room into a chaos of colours. His cheek burned and a growing blockage choked his throat. He could feel something similar to regret and despair churn in his gut as he covered himself, trying to shrug off the numbness that crept from his tailbone up to his cranium.

He deserved it, he knew. He deserved much more than a punch. Kibum looked over his shoulder at the plumber, the other’s back tensed and his head low. He had demanded Jonghyun to model for him, given him a , and almost stolen a kiss when he was barely conscious. He slowly, carefully, the bruised flesh to assess the damage, and winced at the sudden jolt of pain. He was not trying to take advantage of the situation; he was trying to save a dying man, he assured to himself with a slight nod.

As he walked towards the man, he could almost taste the bitterness and confusion radiating from himself. Jonghyun seemed to be frozen, wrapped in a haze of bewilderment and awe and something similar to clarity. Almost as if he unveiled a mystery.

His paintings.

Jonghyun was lost in his most recent work, his eyes wide and lips pursed into an ‘O’. Kibum cleared his throat, and the other jumped with a small squeak.

"I- It’s-" Jonghyun lowered his gaze, finding the floorboards suddenly interesting.

"You should get going," Kibum mumbled, his eyes vacant and his demeanour stoic.

"E-eh?" Jonghyun’s sight fluttered to the other. He was supposed to be on duty, not prying into his customers’ personal lives. "Uh… right," he bashfully righted himself from under the mess of paintings. "So-sorry, sir," he apologized, vaguely pointing to the other’s reddening jaw.

"Just Kibum is fine," he was reminded once again by shying eyes that he just now noticed were as black as a raven’s, depthless and mysterious and… he frowned and shook his head, carefully standing back on his feet. "I’ve mopped the floor, you shouldn’t have any trouble inspecting below the si—ah!" the Kibum guy suddenly yelped in pain, fingers flying to cover his injury. 

The plumber hissed in pity, reflexively touching the other’s arm with concern. “You should… you should bring the swelling down with something cool. I—I think there’s some ice on the sofa…?” he suggested in a quiet voice, biting his lip unsurely. “Shall I—?”

"It’s fine," his contact was shrugged off. "Please just finish up what you came for, it’s caused a lot of inconvenience already."

Jonghyun blinked his hurt away. He pursed his lips and nodded sincerely. “Right. Of course, sir.” He walked away from the spot then stopped a few feet away. “If… If it’s any consolation I won’t charge you for the repairs, sir. I— seem to have damaged a few things in your house…” he meekly offered.

Jonghyun expected a scowl, he expected a curt rejection in response. Even a nonchalant reassurance of some sort would’ve done. But what he recieved was a frighteningly tight hug, capturing him in a pair of surprisingly muscly arms.

Nothing made sense anymore. Kibum held the other against his chest, his hair, breathing in his scent, overcome by so many indescribable emotions and feelings it was difficult to name them all.

"Thank you," it was barely a whisper, yet the soft words echoed in his small apartment like the resounding brass cymbals banging together. His eyes fluttered close, and hoped Jonghyun would comprehend. He would understand.

It was all the other needed; thin arms wrapped around his torso and he could feel the other’s facial muscles pull into a smile against his chest, against his rapid heart.

"If you have any problems with the plumbing, a leaky faucet, anything at all, call me?" Jonghyun murmured, his voice muffled by Kibum’s shirt, and he could not suppress the grin that he felt appearing on his face. He did not want to.

"Always."