Jinyoung walks into the silence of his apartment and locks up, tossing the keys on the table beside the door thereafter. He leaves his coat on the rack and trades his shoes for a pair of house slippers and proceeds into the great room. “Jaebeom hyung, I’m home.” he calls out as he walks to the kitchen to put the groceries down.

There is no response from Jaebeom the entire time Jinyoung spends putting things away in the kitchen. He assumes it’s because Jaebeom is nose deep in work. After he’s finished with the task at hand, Jinyoung goes upstairs to look for his boyfriend.

Unsurprisingly Jaebeom is in his studio, sitting on the floor with his legs folded under him, and hard at work painting. “Hi.” Jinyoung announces his arrival.

Jaebeom stills at the sound of a familiar voice and looks over his shoulder. “Hi.” He smiles at Jinyoung who is walking towards him.

“Where the hell is your phone? I’ve been calling and calling.” Jinyoung says, purposely sounding miffed so that there is no doubt about how upset he  wants Jaebeom to think he is.

Jaebeom’s smile slips and he pouts in confusion as he starts looking around on the floor for his phone. “Never mind.” Jinyoung waves it off and stops beside Jaebeom and slowly sinks to the floor as well, sitting down next to Jaebeom. He groans tiredly as he stretches his legs out in front of him.

Jaebeom looks at Jinyoung with earnest in his eyes. “I’m sorry. My phone is probably on silent.”

Jinyoung shakes his head as he takes in Jaebeom’s appearance- worn t-shirt and worn jeans both covered in splashes of paint and that’s not even all. There is paint of Jaebeom’s forearms and face as well. Jinyoungs gaze slides up to Jaebeom’s hair and he clicks his tongue in dismay. The wavy, black locks are a mess of grease and traces of paint that are starting to look like highlights. Jinyoung thinks perhaps he is not taking the necessary time to take good care of his boyfriend or at least drag said boyfriend out of him to give him a shower and some food.

“Jaebeom hyung, have you even eaten today?” Jinyoung asks

Jaebeom nods. “I had ramen.” The answer is clearly not what Jinyoung wants to hear if the unimpressed look on his face is anything to go by.

“I left some proper food for you in the fridge.” Jinyoung points out, scolding tone of voice in full effect. “Ramen is not food, hyung.”

“It tastes good.” Jaebeom shrugs shamelessly

Jinyoung’s face contorts. “And when did you last take a shower?”

“Only last night, dear.”  Jaebeom is now using the tone of voice he reserves for teasing Jinyoung especially when he’s implying that Jinyoung is being unreasonable.

“Your hair is dirty.” Jinyoung gestures at it with his chin. “Did you wash it when you showered last night? Gosh do I have to do everything myself?” Jinyoung is just lamenting at this point while Jaebeom looks on with a fond lopsided grin on his face.

They’ve had this conversation nearly every day in the four years they’ve dated. Jaebeom doesn’t have hygiene issues or anything like that. It’s just that the two of them have different hygiene standards. For Jaebeom washing one’s own hair once in three days and taking one shower a day is enough. According to Jinyoung on the other hand, a person needs to wash their hair every time they take not less than two showers a day.

Admittedly dating someone laid back and simple like Jaebeom has loosened Jinyoung up a bit recently. Nowadays Jinyoung can even sit on the floor like he is right now while wearing an expensive fitted,  tailor made suit. In the same way, Jaebeom has learned to pay a little more attention to himself since he’s been dating Jinyoung, for example, he no longer keeps the same food for longer than a week in his fridge.

In this way, they’ve learned to a balance each other out better. In the past they had harder times because they couldn’t understand each other. Getting to this point where they can co-exist together in the same space has taken them a lot of growth and learning about respect, trust, understanding and compromise. Before they moved in together they thought their love would be enough for them to survive as a couple, that their love would be strengthened by sharing the same space.

They were so wrong that two weeks into living together, they actually laughed at how naïve they’d been. The love is certainly still there and it has grown stronger but not without the help of mutual respect and a deep understanding of each other’s boundaries and comfort. Most important they had to learn that pretending to adore each other’s annoying flaws only heightens the frustration. While being understanding of each other, they try to be honest as well about how certain good or bad traits in each of them make the other one feel. 

Right now Jinyoung is making it known that even though he loves Jaebeom and respects Jaebeom’s standard of cleanliness, but he’s not too satisfied with it and he hopes for and improvement. For them that’s better than Jinyoung having to pretend that he finds Jaebeom’s dirty hair attractive.

“I’ve been lost in this piece all day.” Jaebeom points at the canvas in front of him. “Inspiration was hard enough to come by, so I couldn’t take too much time away cooking or cleaning up today.”

Jinyoung glances at the painting in question and then at Jaebeom, then the edges of his lips curve up into a small smile. “Yeah? What’s this one about?” Jinyoung knows close to nothing about art, paintings and such but he maintains keen interest since it’s an area of importance to someone that’s important to him.

“The story of rage.”

Jinyoung’s gaze goes back to the painting. It’s obviously incomplete but he tries to read what’s there so far. It’s something Jinyoung would describe in layman’s terms as a deep red circle with two tails and those tails have various colours transitioning into each other like a relay. “What story are you telling?” he asks, tilting his head to the side as he observes.

“Rage is the bright red because it’s a violent attribute. From this point there are two outcomes. On one side as that rage is let out through aggression, it temporarily brings a feeling of deep malevolent satisfaction, like you are alive again. That’s the blue and yellow mix that makes the green here- the colour of life. Rage has no life though, so eventually when the red for rage joins the green, it turns into black which symbolises death of one’s spirit. On the other side that rage can turn into inspiration-the blue- to make a new start- the green- and this brings hope of a better day- that’s the final yellow colour.”  

Jinyoung feels like his chest might combust because of how pride he is the progress Jaebeom had made since he made the conscious decision three years ago, to walk away from the dark place of anger and temper tantrums to start anger management therapy. Jinyoung feels a deep sense of accomplishment having walked that journey with Jaebeom up to this point when Jaebeom can share his story with other through art.

“I like that story.” Jinyoung tells Jaebeom.

“You do?”

Jinyoung nods. “I probably don’t say this to you enough, but I’m really proud of you and your work.”

“I know. It’s a huge help for inspiration.” Jaebeom gives Jinyoung an appreciative smile.

“It occurs to me that I’ve been sitting here for nearly 5 minutes and I haven’t kissed you yet.”

“I’ll take the blame for that since I’m the one walking around with supposed dirty hair.” Jaebeom teases.

Jinyoung laughs and scoots closer to Jaebeom. “I love touching your hair and I can’t do that if it’s a mess.”

“Fair enough. I’ll wash up. Can we kiss now?”

Without wasting another second, Jinyoung leans over and catches Jinyoung’s lips in a tender, slow, sweet kiss. Jinyoung reaches up and curls his fingers around the strands of Jaebeom’s hair anyway because he can’t resist. The length of Jaebeom’s slightly overgrown hair is just reaching a little above Jaebeom’s shoulders and Jinyoung is just blatantly obsessed with the length. Tugging on it when they make love is amazing.

Jaebeom slides his arms around Jinyoung to pull him closer, and to deepen the kiss.

Jaebeom pulls away slightly ad gently nudges his nose against Jinyoung’s.

“I have some news.” Jinyoung whispers

“What news?”

“I’m going to Japan in about 2 weeks’ time to oversee our Osaka office. Our financial services recently and suddenly gained popularity over there and the branch is terribly understaffed. Until a proper hiring process can be done to engaged qualified staff, a properly honed finance manager from any one of the other branches will be sent over there to oversee things. I happen to be one of those managers. It’s a rotation and my