Sehun wishes he wouldn’t have looked at himself in the mirror when he took his shirt off.

            But he had. And the sight had been more startling than he had imagined.

            Purple and blue bruises were blooming across the skin of his stomach on one side, curling up over his ribs and passing down his hipbone, a painting of pain. It hurt to breathe in and out too deeply, hurt to lift his arms above his head, hurt to move too much in general.

            At least peeling off his wet clothes feels good, although his skin is as cold as ice.

            As the hot water of the shower cascades over Sehun’s head, he worries about how he’s going to be able to dance when it’s torture to lift his shirt up over his head.

The pizza arrives just as Sehun steps out of the bedroom and into the living room, hair towel-dried and colorful as always.

            Kai is moving towards the front door when he catches sight of the younger boy, who’s looking down, dressed in his clothes, and Kai almost forgets about the pizza delivery because seeing Sehun in the too big clothes (Kai had accidently bought them a few sizes too large in a rush a few weeks ago, so they were big on him as well) makes Kai’s heart thump irregularly, makes his throat go dry, the clothes a mark of connection between the two, marking Sehun as belonging to Kai and Kai as belonging to Sehun.

            But the doorbell rings again, and Kai is shaking away what he assumes must be a dazed expression, mouth hanging open and everything, and moving for the door again, opening it, and paying as two boxes of pizza are shoved into his arms by a sodden, disgruntled employee wearing a raincoat and a permanent scowl.

            “Thanks,” Kai says to the employee, looking at his drenched red and white checkered uniform with sympathy, making sure to tip the guy extra.

            “Yeah, whatever,” the pizza delivery boy mutters, before turning around and leaving.

            Kai makes a face at his back like a five year-old before closing the door.

            Sehun is curled up on the couch by the time Kai turns back around, knees drawn up to his chest while he fiddles with his camera, fingers dancing over the buttons even though he’s not actually doing anything with it.

            Kai sets the pizzas down on the coffee table, the silence in the apartment slightly uncomfortable.

            “Ummm, we can eat in here,” Kai says, trying to break the silence.

            Sehun glances up at him through his eyelashes, and affection runs like a drug through Kai’s veins.

            “Okay,” Sehun agrees, unfolding his legs and setting his camera on the coffee table next to the pizza.

            Kai sits down beside him, reaches out, opens both pizza boxes.

            “I ordered two kinds because I wasn’t sure what you liked,” Kai surveying the pizzas, one pepperoni and the other cheese.

            There’s a flash, and Kai looks up in surprise, catching Sehun in the act of setting his camera down again hastily.

            Sehun gives Kai a wide-eyed look, like a deer caught in headlights. “Sorry,” he says. “And I like pepperoni,” he adds hastily.

            Kai sits perfectly still, breath stuck in his throat, pizzas forgotten on the table.

            Every time Sehun takes a photo of him, Kai feels like kissing him, and he’s not sure why. Actually, Kai feels like kissing Sehun anytime, but especially when the other boy is looking at him through his camera, the only part of his face that is showing his mouth, lips sometimes straight and pressed together in concentration, or curved into a smile, or partly open because he’s so lost in what he’s photographing.

            “Kai?” Sehun asks, waving a hand in front of Kai’s face.

            Kai looks at Sehun curiously, a question on the tip of his tongue. He blurts it out before he can lose his confidence.

            “Do you really like photographing me?” he asks, watching Sehun’s face carefully, unconsciously holding his breath and waiting for Sehun’s answer.

            Sehun isn’t sure how to answer Kai’s question.

            Kai already knows the answer of course, considering Sehun had decided to blurt it out that night at dance practice.

            But now Kai is looking at him with those eyes that Sehun loves to photograph because they’re always so full of emotions, each feeling waiting to be captured by the lens of Sehun’s camera.

            Even when Sehun takes pictures of Kai in black and white, Kai’s eyes are alive, bright with energy, with stories that Sehun wants to transfer to film.

            Sehun finds stories with his photographs.

            Life stories, stories that have been created over the course of years, stories that sparked to life spontaneously over a bowl of soup in one of the many small restaurants that line the streets of New York City, short stories, made-up stories, stories that are constantly changing with the ebb and flow of life.

            Back at home, Sehun loved taking pictures of his family, his mother cooking in the kitchen, his father reading the newspaper in the living room, of his school, shots of rows of lockers and of the trees outside, making patterns against the sky, of the bubble tea shop that Sehun spent so many hours at with his few high school friends, talking about that one teacher who just assigned three hours of homework, or the last fight that broke out in the cafeteria, or what they were going to do over the weekend. Usually it involved playing video games at someone’s house, sprawled across couches and the floor, the remnants of snack food littered around them.

            Usually Sehun is satisfied with his pictures, satisfied that he manages to capture a piece of a story through a photograph, a small frozen piece of time in his hands in ink. A friend’s side profile, the corner of a building, the boba balls in the bottom of a cup of bubble tea, the neon-colored straw.

            But Kai is different.

            Sehun had realized something that day he took his first photo of Kai, drenched in rain, the day Kai spilt green tea frappuccino all over Sehun’s shirt.

            Sehun can’t capture Kai’s story.

            At least, not like he can with his other photographs.

            There’s always something about Kai’s pictures that leaves Sehun dissatisfied.

            They’re too still, too stable, too unlike Kai, who always seems to be moving, fidgeting, blurring with energy.

            Sehun can never get everything he sees in Kai onto a photograph.

            But he wants to keep trying, wants to keep taking photos because he is beginning to piece together a kind of story, piece by piece, learning new things about Kai all the time.

            And Sehun wants to learn more so much it hurts.

            Sehun would never say it out loud, not right now at least, but he thinks Kai is beautiful, everything about him begging to be developed under Sehun’s camera and brought into focus through the lens.

            Sehun has never felt this way towards one of his subjects, never wanted to take more photos after the perfect shot was taken.

            But Sehun has a feeling that even if he ever is able to capture that perfect picture of Kai, he still won’t stop wanting to photograph him.

            Sehun’s infatuation with photographing Kai has gone deeper than just wanting to capture a story.

            Kai is still watching him, waiting for Sehun to answer his question, and Sehun clears his throat, the noise seeming to be ten times too loud for the fragility of Sehun’s thoughts, pulse thrumming through his wrists, not sure how to put everything he feels into words.

            “Ummm,” Sehun says intelligently, “yeah?”