Most of Kyungsoo’s life had been grey.

He had spent a great deal of time suffering because of the monochrome world he had to live in, tired of all the black and white and grey surrounding him. He was tired of trying to hide, of trying to not stand out.

At some point in his life he had started wondering if it was bad that he was different. If it was something he should have been ashamed about. The monochrome people around him sure made it feel that way with their confused stares and hushed whispering.

And he did try, back then. He tried to blend into everything boring in this world. He tried to hide all his colors, he tried to make them fade away. He tried and with time, it only felt like he would succeed. To turn completely black and white and grey like everyone else.

It was a dark time for him.

While he did fit in, for a while, and while he tried to look black and white and grey just like everyone else, his heart’s color had still not quite faded out. This change, this world – trying to be part of it was hard. But the people around him seemed to accept it. To positively embrace that change in him. They were praising him for it.  

It brought nothing but sadness and boredom in his life.

It was causing bad thoughts to invade his mind all the time. Dark ones. So bad and dark that he had started fearing the color in his heart too would fade out. So scared that he would actually turn black and white and grey.

He really didn’t know where he would have been now had he continued having those thought. Had he really remained black and white and grey with a washed out colorful heart.

Had he not bumped into his fate on that random monochrome Thursday.

Bumped. Literally.

He still remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. Bumping into that boy on the street.

He remembered looking up with the intention of quickly apologizing and then continuing down his way, but then stumbling back in momentary shock.

What he had been greeted with had been an explosion of color.

Suddenly bursting to every corner of his vision, painting the entire street around them. Filling up his entire body again, he could feel the tingling in the tip of his fingertips.

Kyungsoo knew then, he just knew, that the black and white and grey life wasn’t for him. He knew it when he saw that boy with pink hair and laughter on his lips.

He knew then, that color was powerful. More so than anything black and white and grey.

Color was beautiful.

Jongin was everything Kyungsoo had always wanted to be, and more.

Jongin was confidence and happiness and joy and passion and creativity.

Jongin was the single most outstanding person he’d ever met in his life.

People stared at him. People scrutinized him with their glances and with their hushed whispers. Those same things that had made Kyungsoo feel insecure for years, the badly concealed disgust and the vicious words – they didn’t seem to bother Jongin.

Jongin was above all that. It felt like he was floating in his own, little world where none of that existed.

Kyungsoo was lucky to have been invited to that world. He was lucky to be part of it now. He was lucky Jongin had let him in.

Because with him by his side, the color in his life returned.

With Jongin by his side, he started feeling happiness and joy and passion again.    

With Jongin by his side, he was confident.

“You know what?” Jongin asked and Kyungsoo looked up from their linked arms on the table. The boy was already looking at him with the same dreamy gaze in his eyes, half hidden by the pink bangs. He was smiling. “You should try putting on makeup.”

Kyungsoo blinked at his colorful boyfriend.

He had never really thought about it. He appreciated it, appreciated seeing it on other people, but had never really thought about it on his own face.

Jongin was still looking at him, hands gripping his tightly, as he was waiting for an answer.

Kyungsoo just kept staring at him. He really couldn’t help it. Jongin was magnetic.

With the matte lipstick painting his lips, that were stretched in a beautiful smile and the barely visible glitter around his eyes, he was beautiful. He knew how to make his already gorgeous face stand out even more. He knew his way with makeup, so if he was saying Kyungsoo had to try it, then he was probably right.

“Alright.” He ended up saying after a while, squeezing Jongin’s arms. “I’ll try it.”

The boy’s face just lit up even more, his eyes sparkling not because of the glitter and his smile stretching even more. He was beautiful.

“Really?”

“Only if you do it for me.”

Jongin let out a beautiful chuckle then, and before Kyungsoo knew it he had leaned over the coffees on the table to kiss him on the lips.

Not caring about the other people in the café throwing glances at them and whispering.

Kyungsoo too, didn’t care. He didn’t care about them either.

All he cared about were Jongin’s lips pressed against his and the faint taste of cherries lingering on his tongue.

It wasn’t even an hour later when Kyungsoo was staring back at the mirror, dark coal around his eyes and a tingling feeling on his skin everywhere Jongin’s brush and hands had touched his face.

He looked like himself, but in the same time – he didn’t.

Kyungsoo loved it. That boy staring at him in the mirror, with the messed up black hair and the beautiful face, with dark around the eyes – that boy was what Kyungsoo had always wanted to be.

Confidence. Confidence. Confidence.

That boy in the mirror had it all. He knew he was on top of the world and that nothing could ever drag him down.

He blinked quickly when he felt a weight on his shoulder and saw Jongin leaning against him, beautiful pink hair falling over his eyes again.

He looked at their reflection again, then. Jongin, with his pink hair leaning against that Kyungsoo, the Kyungsoo he had always wanted to be. They were smiling.

In that moment, Kyungsoo realized that he really was on top of the world.

“Why didn’t you put on any lipstick?”

“Because,” Jongin started and Kyungsoo felt a hand turning his face and gaze away from the mirror. He just stared at his beautiful boyfriend, who leaned in for another kiss. His lips, everlasting taste of cherries. “You can have all of mine.”

Kyungsoo’s hand slid down to Jongin’s waist, pulling him closer.

“Take it all.” Jongin urged and Kyungsoo pressed their foreheads together. He smiled, breathing in the sweetness of his boyfriend.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

Jongin wasn’t a painter, but he sure was damn good at it. It was apparent that it was one of his many passions, even if he himself didn’t know about it just yet.

With the amount of time Kyungsoo had spent staring at him, he had noticed that whenever there was a pen or a pencil in Jongin’s fingers he always found himself doodling things on napkins, on torn pieces of paper, on textbooks or on receipts from the coffee shops.

Kyungsoo always found it fascinating. Watching Jongin zoning off and just doodling around with his lower lip trapped between white teeth in concentration.

“What are you drawing?” Kyungsoo couldn’t help his curiosity, his hand resting on Jongin’s thigh, as he leaned down closer.

Jongin didn’t shy away, he never did. Instead, he pushed the napkin between them and Kyungsoo smiled.

It was a rose. A singe rose on that crumpled napkin, drawn with a pen that had torn the texture in a few spots. Even so, it was a beautiful sketch.

“Roses are beautiful,” Jongin sighed and Kyungsoo looked at him.

The boy was still staring at his drawing with that same dreamy expression on his face and Kyungsoo couldn’t help but agree.

Roses were beautiful.

Jongin was more beautiful.

And that expression on his face, of longing and joy, didn’t go unnoticed by Kyungsoo.

He let his arm travel down his thigh as he squeezed his knee and made a mental note to himself to help keep Jongin’s passion for this little thing alive.

Maybe a canvas and some good paints were going to be a good idea for a present.

Maybe, just maybe, Kyungsoo would see those roses come to life with color.

Jongin was talented.

He had been right – that passion had turned out to be something much more than just a habit when spacing out. From little and hasty sketches on napkins Jongin had reached the point of having most of his furniture covered in large canvas and paintings.

Beautiful, every single last of them.

The concentration in Jongin’s eyes whenever he was holding a brush in his hand and carefully fixing little, intricate details on the canvas in front of him always warmed something inside of Kyungsoo. He could just stand up and approach the boy, arms circling around his waist and chin resting on his shoulder as he’d watch him work. 

Kyungsoo’s heart could only swell at the joy in his boyfriend’s eyes whenever he finished another painting.

They were in the usual café down the street from Kyungsoo’s photo studio, just like almost every other day, when Jongin had grabbed Kyungsoo’s hand and pulled it closer, pressing the tip of his pen against his skin. It was tickling him when the younger boy started moving the pen.

Kyungsoo didn’t mind. He didn’t mind being Jongin’s canvas for once.

“You know,” he started, eyes focused on the face of his boyfriend. Or at least on the part of it he could see through the bangs of pink. “You should make your own exhibition.”

Jongin made some sort of sound that suspiciously sounded like a scoff as he continued his pen’s journey on Kyungsoo’s hand.

“I mean it.”

Only then did Jongin look up, momentarily halting his sketching and locking his gaze with Kyungsoo’s. He seemed skeptical.

“I’m not good enough to have an exhibition of my own.”

It was Kyungsoo’s turn to scoff. He raised his free hand, the one that wasn’t still being held captive between Jongin’s fingers, to cup his cheek. Jongin leaned into the touch.

“You are, Jongin. You are good. You are more than good.” He smiled. “Every time I see a new painting of yours, I am speechless. You create art.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re my boyfriend.” Jongin mumbled and Kyungsoo just shook his head.

Usually, out of the two of them, Jongin was the one who always helped Kyungsoo discover new sides to himself. The one who added more and more colors to the palette of their life.

Now, though, it was Kyungsoo’s turn to make sure Jongin knew he loved him and cherished everything about him, even his art. That he would always be by his side and support him with anything and everything he could. Always. Forever.

“Maybe,” he ended up saying. “But because I am your boyfriend, you should listen to me. I wouldn’t lie to you. What you create…it’s a pity only I ever get to see it.” 

“I don’t know…” Jongin hummed quietly and after a few of his pen against Kyungsoo’s skin, he sighed and looked up. His gaze was soft and uncertain. “Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

He squeezed Jongin’s hand and smiled at him. He was talented. He was beautiful and he was kind and he deserved the whole world and Kyungsoo was planning on giving it to him or die trying.

Everything was worth it when Jongin smiled.

He still didn’t look all that certain, his smile was somehow bashful, but his eyes were shining with gratitude. Kyungsoo knew from that look, that if anything, he’d at least consider it.

“Thank you.” Jongin uttered.

Kyungsoo just nodded, before finally looking down. Jongin’s fingers were still loosely wrapped around one of his hands.

There was a small flower peeking underneath his fingers. It was on top of his hand, just above his thumb – a tiny rose gently drawn to remind him for the rest of the day that he was Jongin’s and that Jongin was his. To remind him that with every passing second, his heart became bigger and bigger just so it could fit all the love he had for the other man.

He looked at Jongin again then, at his dazed look and slightly parted red lips, pink hair messed up. A vision.

He kind of wished that flower on his hand wouldn’t wash out soon. If it meant he could have a part of Jongin with himself during the entire day, then he wanted it to stay on forever.

That entire evening was magical.

He couldn’t keep his eyes off Jongin. He couldn’t keep his eyes off his boyfriend, who was carrying himself around with pride and confidence. With the pink fur thrown over his shoulders and happiness radiating from every pore in his body, he was standing out.

Even among all his magical paintings showcased on every wall in the gallery, he stood out.

He always did. He was meant to stand out. 

The opening of Jongin’s exhibition was undoubtedly the first of many successes they’d celebrate together. The first of the many challenges they’d conquer together.

Kyungsoo didn’t doubt that for even a second. Especially when Jongin found him in the crowd and linked their hands.

Both of them stood out. Among all these people dressed in black suits and gowns, they were the only two standing out. Kyungsoo’s pink leather jacket matched the fur on Jongin’s shoulders and his smile matched the glint in Jongin’s eyes, as the younger man pulled him towards the exit.

“I can’t believe you ditched the opening party for your own exhibition.” Kyungsoo laughed, holding Jongin’s hand tightly as they walked down the empty road. He could hear the crashing of waves against rocks in the distance.

“We were there for hours and they all asked the same questions.” It was dark outside and Kyungsoo didn’t need to even look up to know Jongin had pouted. He could hear it in his voice.

His odd, peculiar flower. Kyungsoo couldn’t help the smile that stretched his lips again.

The road was empty, there were no cars at this hour. The only things Kyungsoo could see were bushes by the sidewalks and then tall fences.

One of the bushes in particular caught his attention. He let go of Jongin’s hand briefly to go closer and tear one of the flowers out. He didn’t mind when the thorn scratched his finger, not as long as he got to pick up the rose and give Jongin a smile as he caught his hand again and they continued down the road.

The walk to the beach was pretty quick. Their aimless walking had brought them here and none of them seemed to mind, as they took their shoes off and then toes were sinking into sand, as they continued down the shore hand in hand.

It was dark and only the distant city lights over the rocks were reflecting in the water. The moon was up in the sky, clear and cloudless and it felt like it was looking at them.

Kyungsoo’s fingers were picking on the thorns of the rose he had picked up earlier as Jongin dragged him down to sit on the sand. An action he almost whined at. They’d both regret this later, he knew, but the moment he found himself staring right at Jongin and the way the night breeze was messing up his perfectly styled hair and the way his lips were slightly parted, he forgot all reasoning he had. He just shivered when he felt Jongin’s hot breath on his skin.

“Thank you, Kyungsoo.”

“For what?”

“For believing in me.” Jongin said simply and Kyungsoo only looked down to smile. He pushed the last thorn of the stem to the side, getting rid of it, before raising his hand to tuck the flower behind Jongin’s ea