Donghae didn’t really know much about what he was doing at all, really. He could mix the acrylic colors, he could sketch with all the different pencils, he could paint between the lines. The recognition began in his earlier years of high school with his friends commending his sketching ability. He’d branched out to painting, water colors and acrylics and whatever else, won a few awards and sold a few portraits for good money.

What he was currently working on wasn’t his best, though it was alright, he supposed. As he ran his fingers along the corner of the paper to flatten it, he thought that maybe he’d never been completely satisfied with anything he ever drew.

He was new to this setting. A class, that is - a college course, full of other painters and sculptors and artists of different shapes, sizes, shades. He’d only spoken to his professor, though she’d had little to say other than “good work.”

Their first assignment, simply enough, was to sketch whatever was on their mind. So he started doodling fish on his paper. As least he was honest, considering the person next to him was going all-out with some sort of flower.

Who thinks of flowers?

Donghae snorted, shading a bit here and there.

Not that he was one to talk. Who thinks of fish?

On his left, a man was in the middle of creating the long, thick dark strands of a woman’s hair, pouring from her scalp and spilling onto her dainty, slender shoulders. Her features were still vague, having taken on a shape but no real depth as of yet. He could see that this person had her visage memorized by the way his long slender fingers carefully and assuredly flicked the sharp tip of the pencil on the white paper without any doubt or hesitance.

“Girlfriend?” Donghae asked.

“Sister.” The man didn’t look up from his work as he replied.

“She’s beautiful.”

“She would have been,” the man said cryptically. He stopped drawing, removed his pencil from the paper and picked up a sharpener that lay between their work spaces.

When the stranger looked up and met Donghae’s gaze with his own, he kind of wondered if there was ever a moment when he’d felt so entirely compelled to draw another human being in his life. He wanted to map out a perfect face, darken long eyelashes as they fluttered around black irises. He could envision the precise shape of the man’s lips, his ears, the slight waves of his dark hair on a sheet of paper under his hands.

“She died a long time ago. This is what she would look like if she hadn’t,” the man elaborated, clearing things up.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Donghae said sympathetically. “You’re amazing.”

So maybe he could have worded that differently, Donghae thought as the man’s lips widened in a smirk. “Thank you,” he man replied. “You… don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

Donghae looked down at his paper, the school of fish darting through clear water with sunrays striping across their backs a moment captured in time. “I like to think about fish,” he stated. “They’re cool.”

The man laughed soundlessly, closing his eyes and shaking his head at Donghae’s foolishness. “Well, whatever inspires you,” he finally said and went back to detailing the portrait of his sister.

“I’m Donghae.” He had panicked a bit, just blurting out the first words that popped into his mind. Introduce yourself.

“Kyuhyun,” the man replied. “Nice to meet you.”

He became used to sitting next to Kyuhyun in class, though they didn’t talk much when they were given an assignment. His fascination with Kyuhyun’s ability only broadened each time he’d glance over and see Kyuhyun in the process of creating a masterpiece.

Once Kyuhyun invited him to his dorm and showed him a portfolio of sorts dedicated solely to his sister. Drawings of her younger and as a woman, drawings of just certain parts of her like her eyes or hands, drawings of her and a puppy together.

It wasn’t really until Kyuhyun drew Donghae for the first time that he realized he was falling, in a subtle way. Falling for Kyuhyun, falling in love. It didn’t bother him. It was a nice feeling, to notice how his heart fluttered as Kyuhyun’s calm, collected gaze took in his features from a short distance and relayed them to his hands and on to the page he drew on.

“You can draw simple things on your own,” Kyuhyun told him one day as they sat in class, the room quiet except a low murmur of hushed conversations and the occasional tap of a paint brush as it met a tabletop. “But anything complicated and you copy it.”

Donghae looked up from the drawing he’d been working on for two days now and met Kyuhyun’s eyes with a confused stare. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Kyuhyun picked up the photograph Donghae had been using as a source, his fingertips grazing the tips of a bald eagle’s wing. “Without this,” he said slowly and then touched Donghae’s drawing, “this wouldn’t exist.”

“Why does that matter?” Donghae inquired, eyebrow rising slightly.

“What kind of artist can’t create an image from his imagination only?” Kyuhyun asked.

And though it kind of made Donghae mad, kind of made him hate Kyuhyun just a bit, he knew that Kyuhyun was right. He could draw well, certainly, but was he an artist? He could mix the acrylic colors, he could sketch with all the different pencils, he could paint between the lines, but he couldn’t do it on his own, from his own mind.

A week or so later Donghae came around.

“So teach me how to do it right,” Donghae said in class as he ceased drumming his fingers on his blank paper.

“One can’t teach another person how to be an artist,” Kyuhyun stated. “Figure it out yourself.”

This made little sense to Donghae, and he told himself that Kyuhyun was just being a snob. One night found the two of them in Kyuhyun’s dorm, Kyuhyun on the bed and leaning against the wall with a sketch pad on his knee and a pencil in his hand. Donghae lay sprawled on the floor with his earphones in.

“I can’t see to draw you if you’re not even facing me,” Kyuhyun called from the bed nonchalantly.

“You’re the artist here. You shouldn’t have to look at me,” Donghae said grumpily, huffing slightly and keeping his face turned away.

He heard the bed creek and then Kyuhyun’s bare feet hit the cold tile floor next to him. He watched with interest as Kyuhyun stood over him, a foot on each side of his waist. When Kyuhyun dropped to his knees and sat on Donghae’s lap, the sketch pad resting on top of his chest, Donghae felt his heart jump in his chest.

His eyes locked onto Kyuhyun’s concentrated face, his mouth open slightly in speechless amazement as Kyuhyun glanced from his face to the paper several times with fluttering lashes and focused eyes. He absorbed with his eyes this great work of art, this perfect masterpiece. This faultless human body which encompassed an intellectual and artistic genius, this set of eyes that saw past material and into what was so much more than just that. With his amateur eyes, his oh-so inexperienced eyes, he imbibed Kyuhyun’s appearance, his exhilarating presence.

His mind had stopped transmitting messages to his entire body, sitting up against his will. Distantly, he heard Kyuhyun’s pencil and sketchpad drop to the floor from between their bodies. He closed his eyes and immersed himself in Kyuhyun, his soft lips and solid body.

“How did we get here?”

From there he kept Kyuhyun in arms reach when he could. He wanted him there, he wanted Kyuhyun for himself.

He imagined himself walking through a gallery and spending hours just going through different paintings and sculptures until he found the right one, the one that held his attention and enraptured his senses. He could stand there in that gallery and stare, just stare at this beautiful work of genius, product of absolute perfection.

That was Kyuhyun.

“Draw it without this,” Kyuhyun stated one day in class as he removed the photograph from between their workspaces and slid it to his opposite side and out of Donghae’s sight.

Donghae did.

And as a reward, he was privileged to watch Kyuhyun’s shirt fall into a navy blue pile on his floor. He greedily committed Kyuhyun’s shirtless torso to memory, taking in his slim figure and taut stomach, his chest sculpted from a soft milky white medium through which his lungs breathed life into. He took in the feel of Kyuhyun’s bare skin against his with a short breath and narrow, lust-drugged eyes.   

Limited self-control led him to the bed, on top of Kyuhyun with his entire weight spread over Kyuhyun’s body. He pressed his lips to Kyuhyun’s neck, his shoulder, dipped his tongue into the hollows of his collarbone and into his bellybutton as his hands worked at his belt buckle. When Kyuhyun was naked, a statuesque being beneath his eyes, he slid his hands over the inside of a pair of slender thighs and watched them jerk with tension just slightly.

He’d never considered himself one for fellatio, but as his lips parted over the tip of Kyuhyun’s erection and he heard the deep, breathy moan escape red, moist lips, he wasn’t complaining. He felt Kyuhyun’s deft fingers thread through his hair and knew he was doing at least something right to extract those noises, to sense that Kyuhyun was loosening his grasp on his control as well.

He brought Kyuhyun off without really thinking of himself and how his dick strained against his pants annoyingly. He pulled himself upwards and pressed their mouths together, his fingers smearing the come on Kyuhyun’s stomach slightly as his hand wrapped around Kyuhyun’s undressed hip.

Kyuhyun offered more, but Donghae declined.

“Don’t do the assignment. Draw whatever you want,” Kyuhyun suggested one afternoon in class, having set his own work aside in favor of hovering near Donghae. “It’ll turn out better that way.”

“What makes you so sure?” Donghae asked, though he’d already started drawing. He didn’t really have a vision in his mind, any mental guidelines as he laid his foundation on the paper. He put life into a 2D portrait, his eyes only occasionally flitting to meet Kyuhyun’s as he worked.

“Looks great,” Kyuhyun said about halfway through.

“Are you saying that because it’s you?” Donghae asked, grinning slightly as he sharpened a pencil.

“No,” Kyuhyun replied. “I’m saying it looks great because I can feel the emotion in it. When I look at this, I can feel the same passion. It’s like looking through your eyes.”

Donghae looked down at his drawing. It was Kyuhyun, from the shoulders up and completely bare, his head tilted back in pleasure. He doubted it was something he should turn it. “Do you think I should turn this in?” he asked softly, looking to his right to make sure the person next to him wasn’t tuning into their conversation.

“Of course not,” Kyuhyun stated point-blank. “I have a reputation to uphold. That’s something you stick in the back of your closet for all eternity.”

When they should have been studying for their midterms, Kyuhyun came over and they lay close together on Donghae’s bed, or they went out to see a movie, or they made out in Kyuhyun’s dorm room.

“I’m going to be famous someday,” Donghae said against Kyuhyun’s shoulder as he straddled him from behind him while Kyuhyun played on his computer one night.

“Mhm,” Kyuhyun hummed, obviously preoccupied.

Donghae wrapped his arms around Kyuhyun’s waist, his mouth parting to press tongue dampened-kisses to the nape of Kyuhyun’s neck.  “Are you going to come to my galleries when I’m famous?” he asked absently as he pushed his hands under Kyuhyun’s shirt.

Kyuhyun sighed and set his laptop aside and then leaned back against Donghae’s chest. “Only if I get in for free,” he replied as Donghae’s lips trailed around his neck and upwards towards his jaw.

“You won’t ever have to pay a cent.” Their lips met and Donghae slipped his tongue into Kyuhyun’s mouth instinctively.

At some point after their midterm exams, Donghae and Kyuhyun sat in class working silently on their own projects. Donghae felt lost in the drawing, completely submerged in the image he conveyed through grays and blacks.

“I must say,” Kyuhyun stated, jerking Donghae from somewhere in his own world, “that this is the best thing you’ve ever drawn.”

He hadn’t looked at any pictures, hadn’t looked at any person’s face for inspiration. The entire picture, the setting in which it was derived, the indistinguishable colors he created through different shading – it was all him.

Maybe it was Kyuhyun’s way of celebrating, he thought as Kyuhyun stared at Donghae from across the dorm room. He had a captivating look in his eyes as he clicked the lock on the door into place and then walked slowly to stop in the middle of the room directly in front of Donghae.

Donghae breathed deep as Kyuhyun’s fingers curled under the hem of his shirt and hesitated before pulling upwards slightly, setting an entire process into motion by just initiating this move. He raised his arms compliantly as Kyuhyun pulled his shirt over his head, then tossed it aside to be forgotten.

Kyuhyun tilted his head and pressed their mouths together, his hands roaming over Donghae’s body in mindless patterns. Sheer excitement and thoughts of the future had Donghae hardening in his pants as Kyuhyun kissed his neck. Slow and experimentally, Kyuhyun pushed their hips together in one fluid move, drawing a quiet groan from each of their mouths.

Kyuhyun’s palms ran over Donghae’s arms from shoulder to wrist until he stepped backward and, as if he were relinquishing the steering wheel, he let Donghae pull off his shirt and slide his pants off before walking them backwards to Kyuhyun’s bed.

Donghae sat down on the edge and pulled Kyuhyun to stand between his legs as he unbuttoned his own pants with trembling hands. Kyuhyun’s knees sank into the bed on each side of him as he seemed to grow impatient and crawled up until Donghae had to lie back on the bed. Upon glancing down, Donghae realized that at some point Kyuhyun had managed to pull off his own underwear. He took Kyuhyun’s naked member in his hand and pumped it, trying to keep his breathing normal even though Kyuhyun’s soft moans in his ear didn’t help to accomplish that.   

“Stop trying to do what you think I want and just do what you want,” Kyuhyun mumbled, a bit breathlessly.

Donghae licked his lips and then flipped them over so that Kyuhyun lay pressed into the mattress under him. As he leaned down to kiss Kyuhyun, he wiggled out of his pants and underwear simultaneously.

“Pretend,” Kyuhyun said quietly, “that you’re drawing. Forget everything around you. I’m your canvas. You’re the artist, and I’m the artwork.”

Donghae felt time stretch and slow as he devoured Kyuhyun’s mouth and claimed it as his own, dragging their erections against each other until he couldn’t take it anymore. His tongue marked a pathway from Kyuhyun’s lips, down his neck, over his chest until Donghae’s lips engulfed a hardened nipple and drew a weak groan from Kyuhyun.

Donghae maneuvered himself between Kyuhyun’s beautifully bare legs and parted with Kyuhyun’s nipple to slick his fingers with saliva. He pressed light, barely-there kisses around Kyuhyun’s stomach and chest as he pressed a finger into his entrance, drawing a noise of discomfort from Kyuhyun but no requests to stop.

Kyuhyun’s hand tightened around Donghae’s bicep as he pressed a second finger in and expanded the opening, and the tenseness was visible in Kyuhyun’s slightly contorted lips and furrowed eyebrows. But Donghae kept going until he could add a third and then couldn’t stand to wait any longer.

“You ready?” he asked Kyuhyun softly, though it sounded like a husky grunt to his own ears.

“Up to you,” Kyuhyun replied.

And with that, Donghae wasted no time in sliding into Kyuhyun, pulling pants and whines from Kyuhyun as he writhed against the bed sheets and squeezed Donghae’s upper arms until his knuckles were white. Donghae paused a split second to get a grip on Kyuhyun’s waist and then snapped his hips out and back in.

Kyuhyun’s back arched and his ass pressed against Donghae’s dick wantonly, his deep moans and breathy whispers of Donghae’s name filling Donghae’s head. Donghae didn’t know how long it was, didn’t care as he thrust in and out of Kyuhyun, reveling in the tight, tight heat and letting out unrestrained grunts.

Donghae could hear every breath from Kyuhyun’s mouth, see every bead of sweat on his flushed skin, feel every buck of his hips and it was incredible. It was a true masterpiece, the way Kyuhyun’s sweat-soaked hair clung to his forehead and his swollen red lips panted his name, the way his dick bobbed against his flat stomach and brushed a drop of precome next to his bellybutton. It was art the way Kyuhyun moaned, a pure musical phenomenon as Kyuhyun’s voice called his name and gasped and cursed.

And the final brushstroke on a nearly finished painting, the single last mark of a pencil on a sketch was when Donghae felt everything pool in his abdomen and then explode. His eyes rolled back slightly as he rode out his orgasm, pumping in and out of Kyuhyun without missing a beat. Not long after, he felt Kyuhyun’s knees clench against his hips and then Kyuhyun came with a drawn-out noise of pleasure and release.

As he lay against Kyuhyun’s side, his head propped on his elbow and their bodies naked under the seed-stained sheets, he smiled in the afterglow and stared at Kyuhyun.

He pushed the sheet down so that he could see Kyuhyun’s entire torso and then started at Kyuhyun’s belly button, signing his name with his fingertip along his chest and ending just under his clavicle.

“What was that?” Kyuhyun asked with an amused smirk.

“Just signing my finished artwork,” Donghae replied.

“You can really feel the emotion in this one,” Kyuhyun said and lifted his head enough to press their lips together.

Maybe his art had never really been worth anything until Kyuhyun.


A/N: Sooo that was my pathetic attempt at writing top!Donghae. Hope you enjoyed! Leave a comment and tell me whatcha think.