Archive of Our Own ^beta

Park-biseonim drives Taehyung as far as Montepulciano, one point five hours from their boarding in Florence. Around the bend of the loam road there’s a van already waiting, prompt for their rendezvous—prepared to escort him through the wheatlands and farther into the outskirts… alone.

“Stay here,” Park-biseonim says, shifting the gear into park with the car still running. “I need to go talk to them first, and… give Namjoon-nim a call so he can confirm their identity.” Taehyung takes a peek out the window toward the inconspicuous van and its backdrop of rolling hills, olive trees.

Seojoon unbuckles his own seatbelt, cracks open the driver’s seat door, then pauses. He turns to consider Taehyung. There’s a tremor at his fingertips. He says, “You know this is really dangerous?” as if it’s the first time and not the fifth.

No way to deflect even if he wanted to. Taehyung smears his forehead against the passenger window. “Yeah.”

“Don’t get me wrong… I didn’t take you all the way out here to try to talk you out of it now. And you’re clearly not gonna change your mind.” Seojoon hesitates some more, rolling words behind his teeth. “For your career, this is great. No doubt about it. That’s the end of what I like about this.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung repeats, for nothing else but to get him to shut up. The cracked driver’s door is letting all the hot air in.

“If I don’t warn you, nobody will. You know that. I’m not trying to… I’m on your side here. The agency will book you for anything if the kickback talks loudly enough.”

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That’s what Seojoon and his booker at KPLUS both told him, ad nauseam, since the offer first popped up in their inboxes—like this isn’t a lesson he’s had to contend with endlessly since his start in junior high.

But he can’t deny it; the signs are there: no open (or closed) casting call invitations, no portfolio or comp card requests, nothing but a one week email correspondence with Seojoon, contract attached, stating in no uncertain terms that Taehyung already has the job if he wants it.

Exclusivity for Indigo’s S/S campaign. Then there’s secondary and tertiary work to model for the season’s lookbook, and—if (when) he rejects every other fashion house’s MFW casting call—to walk for Indigo’s show as an exclusive. He’d read the word ‘exclusive’ more than once and then the rest of the contract hadn’t mattered because, mildly disconcerting stipulations or not, he knew his answer.

Seojoon’s reluctant departure says it all: if Taehyung returns to Seoul in one piece, this will draw a line delineating his before.

Namjoon has drawn his own line, established his boundaries. Taehyung understands as much as everyone else in their world that artists have their neuroses. This must be Kim Namjoon’s.

Indigo’s intern escorts Taehyung the rest of the way to Namjoon’s Montepulciano workshop. He’s driven through foothills, seemingly endless stretches of olive tree saplings, and then into the flatter land of Tuscany’s vineyards, beyond the town’s boundary. Taehyung’s eyes follow Torre di Pulcinella as it shrinks farther into the distance, a smudge against the pastel blue skyline. The intern hasn’t said a word since their first introduction, and Taehyung hasn’t bothered to make polite conversation.

He’s been to Italy before, of course, has been booked for work here numerous times since signing with Elite Milan at eighteen—but he has seldom if ever ventured outside of Milan. At least, where work was considered. There were one or two clients in Florence, he’d toured Rome with his parents while in-between shows, bathed in Naples’ sea after trudging through fashion week a few years back… in the end, he’d never had the opportunity to experience Montepulciano.

Taehyung already knew Namjoon had a studio in Italy. His Kim Namjoon knowledge is sparse, though not from lack of trying; neglecting to study up on neither past nor current fashion houses and their creative directors might be occupational suicide. It might just supersede pissing off the wrong creative director, or egregiously botching your measurements, only to show up to a booking five cm wider. Namjoon was just… careful. Elusive at worst, diplomatic at best.

He has studios in New York City, Montepulciano and, foundationally, in Seoul. He was born in Ilsan, briefly grew up in Florence with his nationally-Italian, ethnically-Korean mother, then returned to finish high school in Seoul. There was a period of time during which he bounced between NYC, Paris, and Florence, attending fashion school in New York while interning in Europe; he’d worked under Número’s editorial team for a stint, then moved on to work for Hanae Mori’s fashion house, an experience that—according to his rare media appearances—he’d cited as the most enlightening and pivotal for his career. He was a stylist, partly an illustrator. Some say that was his job on paper, that he was actually Mori’s lackey. The details are vague.

It doesn’t matter what he was or wasn’t. What matters is that shortly thereafter, Indigo was born.

There’s a subtle glow from the workshop’s dimmed sole lamp, and the window shutters are tilted open, inviting in ribbons of an Italian sun. Taehyung watches the light—little that there is—catch all the waves of dust as they tumbleweed through the air. Below him, the floor space is constrained, made smaller by the stacks of books, clothes chests, fabrics, rejected posters, polaroids, and sketches—but with its vaulted ceilings above, the villetta fortified by visible wooden beams, there’s an undeniable feeling of excess.

Even so, it’s dark. The lamp and sunlight aren’t enough. How can Namjoon see his handiwork like this? On the wall behind them hangs Namjoon’s vision board, its cork littered in haphazardly-taped polas, each memorializing Taehyung in the outfits he’d already been fitted for. Those photos are dark, too; scarce lighting cuts shadows into his cheekbones and the rungs of his ribcage before the neckline of whatever top he was wearing covers him up.

“I don’t know if you remember,” Namjoon is saying, slowly circling Taehyung as he stands as still as he can manage, “but we’ve met before. Not… I don’t mean this recent time for the, uh, measurements. I mean… back when—”

“I remember.” He wonders, transiently, if this is some sort of test; it’s laughable to think he’d ever forget. “Namjoon-daepyonim. I walked for your ‘18 menswear show.”

“Please.” Namjoon sounds embarrassed. Forgetting himself. “That’s all not… you can call me hyung.” He adjusts the flanks of the corset he’d squeezed Taehyung into.

Hyung? They’d met that one time, years before. Every other time, Namjoon was a blurry spot across a room (or runway) from him. Still, he’d be foolish to reject a request made by Kim Namjoon—and this isn’t a request he wants to reject, either. So, “Yes, hyungnim. Thank you.”

Taehyung is breathing in a lungful of dust with every inhale. His knees are beginning to feel stiff from standing in one spot for too long, myalgia radiating up his thighs and into his hips. There are too many delicate pieces of fabric (Namjoon’s prototypes) precariously pinned to his person to be able to move anytime soon.

“No, I should be thanking you.” Namjoon’s circling comes to a stop in front of Taehyung. He’s got pensive fingers beneath his own stubbled chin, a crease between his furrowed brows, jaw locked handsomely. He’s draped in all-black: loose blouse, looser dress pants. Taehyung straightens his spine against that hard gaze.

Namjoon continues, “I thought about you the entire time I worked on this collection. It had to be you.”

Had to be you. Easy as that, his stiff knees fade into his subconscious. Taehyung asks, “Me?”

“A whimsical beauty. A fantasy.” Now Namjoon’s looking at him, into him, not what’s been pinned to his body. “You sell the world a fantasy, and we’re willing to take out a loan to pay the minimums. I imagine… for the campaign film, I thought about you, in a field of wheat or—even out here, playing in the olive trees. You’re wearing this. A fantasy, wearing fantastical clothes, selling a fantasy.”

He… what could one say to give that explanation (compliment?) the level of gratitude it deserves? “Hyungnim. Wow.” Taehyung isn’t sure what face he’s wearing. Eye contact suddenly becoming impossible to maintain, he glances down at the fantasy he’ll be selling: an unobtrusive, handmade corset with trimmings, constructed from remie and silk brocade. Its patterns are floral, multi-colored, deep shades of celadon green and purple. Wine, mulberry, a whisper of magenta.

The corset is light but sturdy with its steel bones, gentled by the ribbon lacing criss-crossed along his spine and done so tightly that Taehyung barely has to make an effort to stand straight.

Namjoon adjusts the hips of Taehyung’s matching silk brocade pants. “Fusing Korean and Italian fashion is a fantasy in and of itself,” he muses in a quieter voice. “It’s a moment where we can pretend our histories are subjective like our hemispheres, and that… highlighting the best of our two worlds through our clothes is a decision we made—consciously. This is what I love about fashion.” His fingertips drift above the pants’ hips to Taehyung’s midriff, just beneath the corset. He resumes his slow circling.

That’s beautiful, Taehyung thinks. And terrifying, and overwhelming, like he’s been tasked to slay a large beast, equipped with only a honed piece of tree bark to do it. Forget conveying gratitude with words: what does it mean to bring justice to such an idea? His mouth says, “I don’t know if—your vision is so… poignant. I’m not sure how I can bring it to life with my…” He tapers off. My body? My facial expressions? How can he say this in a way that’s understood?

He might not have to, because Namjoon quickly counters, “No, no. You’re the vision,” in mild incredulity. That locked jaw is starting to burn like a scolding; Taehyung tries to breathe in through his mouth while Namjoon continues, “Kim Taehyung-ah, love,” and wow do those words and their placid delivery simmer in places within Taehyung’s chest, dangerous, “you’ll meet expectations because you’re the foundation. You’re the one that set them.”

His fingertips follow the perimeter of Taehyung, leading the rest of Namjoon through another lap until he’s at Taehyung’s rear, now out of his periphery, presence felt through touch and body heat alone. “That’s why it had to be you.” Then Namjoon’s touch retreats.

“Like a…” —muse?

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is… but this is the one time that nothing can tether him to steady ground, and there’s no one here that can do it for him. KPLUS is across two continents, Elite Milan is hundreds of kilometres away—Seojoon might be hovering around Montepulciano somewhere, anxious and restless.

Here, it’s only him and Namjoon.

Taehyung peers up. He finds Namjoon’s returned gaze through the wall mirror in front of them; it’d been haphazardly propped up against the floor at a slant, its glass and gold accents gritty like it’d just been taken out of the villetta’s cellar and there was no time for restoration.

Namjoon is looking at Taehyung’s face in something adjacent to admiration. Taehyung is watching their paired reflections, the backdrop of a dark, secluded workshop. Namjoon tells him, “Clothing is the least interesting part about fashion. I’ve had this debate a few times with designers—I’m sure, in your career, you’ve also heard it plenty before—but… I’ve always been of the belief that fashion is ninety-five percent us, five percent everything else. Our work can’t survive without human touch.” Namjoon’s palms flank Taehyung’s spine, the touch light and sweeping. “This one is about you.”

Then Taehyung is heaving in a stunned breath, posture suddenly forced pole-straight when Namjoon tugs the corset’s ribbon straps with a two-handed grip.

“Natural Korean beauty,” Namjoon explains, no hint of exertion in his breath. “Your features tell a story of strength… tenacity. Hardship, success. You give hope and fool us into thinking that for those thirty seconds the film lasts, or—for however-many minutes we stare at your photos, you’re ours and we’re you. We want you, we see ourselves in you. It’s the fantasy. You’ve set them. So: my clothes aren’t alive without you. Look.”

Taehyung looks—at himself. Then at Namjoon, who hasn’t once stopped admiring his face.

Peeking out from behind his disbelief, it makes more sense: this is why he’d wanted Taehyung by any means possible. He was first; the deathtrap of a corset, the jeogori-inspired tops, and silk and ribbons and remie… they’d all come after. Taehyung can only think to say, again, “Hyungnim. Wow. Thank you.”

“Thank your bloodline,” Namjoon retorts, his humored voice low, intimate. “The only thing I’ve done was look at you.”

“Then,” Taehyung pauses to think, “thank you for looking at me. I’ll work hard.”

Namjoon gives a breathy laugh. “Cute.” Taehyung tries and fails not to preen. “I know you’ll work hard. You always have. Thank you for letting the world know you.”

Thank you for wanting to know me. Namjoon steps away to fetch his film camera, and Taehyung follows along from his sole vantage point, imagining instead that this is the Kim Namjoon in his Seoul workshop, a half-year before today, flashes of Taehyung passing through the field of his mind. Namjoon lifts his camera until the lens is in eye-view, and mind-details fill themselves in: marl caked to Taehyung’s bare feet, breeze-tousled hair scraping his shoulders, Italian olive trees reaching for the sky. For those four-plus hours of filming that they’ll reduce to thirty seconds, he’ll exist as that fantasy—and it’s easiest to believe and become, what with the cameras, gimbals, reflectors, and lights. Surrounding him will be the film director, interns, stylists, and, inevitably: fashion house Indigo’s director Kim Namjoon.

Kim Taehyung—his vision, his fantasy—breathes beyond the borders of his mind-field. Namjoon will desire him. He’ll chase, absorb, and consume until they’re one in the same; then, once all is said and done, the cameras off and gimbal packed, they’ll return to themselves. That’s fashion.

Let’s consume too much of one another to ever become whole again. In fewer words, “I want the world to know me through your eyes.”