Whole Grain

home is everywhere.

    Jongin has dyed his hair.

    He had been a blonde for as long as Kyungsoo can remember—since before they met. Jongin attributes the hairstyle to an impulsive decision made during a high school fling with Oh Sehun, and he had liked the color so much—the way the silvery-white strands accented the golden and yellow undertones of his skin—that he had never thought to change it.

    He had also never thought that he would keep the hairstyle for a very long time, but as weeks turned into months and months turned into years, Jongin simply found himself touching up the color every now and then, applying a deep conditioner every third wash, to keep his strands soft to the touch, and sometimes letting his dark roots grow longer if he felt so inclined, but never really changing the color, or lack thereof.

    Kyungsoo has only ever known a blonde Jongin, only ever photographed a blonde Jongin, and sometimes grumbled at how the colorless strands attracted so much light beyond the lense of a camera—but Kyungsoo had adored Jongin’s blonde hair, nonetheless. The blonde was different, gave Jongin an edge of rebellion, made people look at him twice on the streets.

    But, a desire for change was a desire for change, and when Jongin had woken up on a Tuesday morning with wild bedhead, peered into the bathroom mirror and declared that he was going to dye his hair, Kyungsoo, who had been half-asleep and not keen on waking, nor fully listening to his boyfriend in his own incoherency, had only murmured a okay babe into his pillow, before tucking himself away in the sheets of their bed.

    Kyungsoo had woken up an hour later to an dark haired, brunet boyfriend, and had fallen in love all over again.

    It’s been four days since Jongin has dyed his hair, and because his hair had been so deprived of pigment before, what had only four days earlier been a rich, chocolate brown, has already begun to lift, underlying ashy shades and highlights of sun-kissed golden blonde through the tufts.

    Kyungsoo absolutely adores it, and it’s on a chilly Winter afternoon that Kyungsoo and Jongin find themselves tucked beneath a white blanket on the white chaise sofa in their living room, a marathon of some old nineties show that they had found on Hulu playing on the television.

    Jongin is stretched out across the couch, his head laying where the sofa extends into a chaise lounge, his feet on Kyungsoo’s lap, eyes focused on the television screen. One of his arms is lifted above his head, his fingers aimlessly playing with the swirls of his newly-dyed hair, and Kyungsoo finds himself envious, because he wants to run his fingers through Jongin’s hair.

    Blonde Jongin had been this mythical figure, this person that had caught Kyungsoo’s eye so many years ago, and within a matter of days, had transfixed himself within Kyungsoo’s heart. Blonde Jongin was this person whom Kyungsoo had travelled the world with, their bodies bound in red thread. Kyungsoo had seen home a thousand times with Jongin, in a thousand different places, from the rolling hills of Italy, to the sparkling skyline of Singapore, and midnight joyrides full of nostalgia and cool breezes in San Francisco.

    But as a brunet, Jongin is sophisticated without so much as trying—for even as he is now, wearing a thin, long-sleeved black turtleneck, and covered to his chest in a white duvet, occasionally huffing with laughter at the television, there’s something so homely—so domestic about him, something that makes Kyungsoo want to , chase him, follow him to the ends of the Earth and watch their past, present, and future as it all unravels and ties together.

    Kyungsoo, who’s well aware that he’s staring (and a bit surprised that Jongin hasn’t noticed), shimmies from beneath Jongin’s legs, and Jongin, still with one hand in his hair, directs his attention from the television to Kyungsoo, brows raise and lips pouted in a silent question.

    Kyungsoo only smiles and stands to his feet, murmuring a quiet I’ll be right back, before hurrying off into their bedroom.

    Jongin purses his lips together as he watches Kyungsoo disappear into their bedroom, and his lips part as he clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, but he otherwise doesn’t say a word, and turns his attention back to the show on the television.

    Kyungsoo’s always had a fleeting attention span, anyway.

    In the bedroom, Kyungsoo doesn’t skip a beat, his body mindlessly moving toward the nightstand, to pluck from it the white Fuji Instamax polaroid camera that has taken all of the pictures in their photo albums, and those tacked up on the Memory Map, and a black sharpie.

    Kyungsoo pauses on his way out to spare a glance at the map, his eyes drifting over the photographs.

    He revisits Barcelona for a fleeting moment, eyes flickering over a photograph of Jongin interacting with one of the street vendors, a kind old woman who had been selling mangoes. Kyungsoo remembers the infatuation that the woman had had with Jongin’s blonde hair, and the way the woman—far more clever than she had pretended to be in her old age—had hilariously sprinkled an obnoxious amoun