The way his eyes flashed and noticed every blemish and smudge on my skin, diligently brushing over my imperfections with his talent.
The impenetrable quietness that had fallen the moment Gil sprayed the first lash of paint only grew thicker.
If I wobbled, I earned a growl. If I twitched, I earned a pinch.
I wasn’t permitted to move a fraction without reprimand.
And not being allowed to move only made the urge unbearable.
I grew claustrophobic in the middle of his chilly warehouse with just him for company.
It cost everything to stay still and obey.
Not that Gilbert cared how I was coping. The intensity I’d witnessed taking him over when he was younger was even more potent now. His art replaced everything. His concentration was his master, making him a slave to colour.
I might’ve been jilted by the way he no longer saw me as Olin.
I might’ve been offended by the impertinent way he dismissed me, even while we stood so achingly close.
But because I knew him. Because I knew the savagery of his talent, I didn’t mind that his eyes stayed focused on a design I couldn’t see. I didn’t shy away when his cool fingers traced my inner thigh, branding me with a wake of fire. I didn’t complain when the soft lickings of his brush ensured I ached with things I had no right to feel.
I might have flaws but I had courage, and I hid every tingling, tangling, clenching reaction from his methodical painting.
I was the perfect human canvas.
Silent.
Abiding
Aloof.
I bit my lip as he ducked close. His messy hair that followed no law flopped over his forehead in strands of glossy dark. He stayed crouched by my lower belly, his breath heating my flesh, his brushstrokes cursing me.
With a low, displeased grunt, he straightened and tossed the fine bristled brush on his worktable. He swiped at the roguish strands of hair on his forehead, leaving a streak of mottled colour behind.
“What is it?” I asked quietly, knowing to keep my tone soft around a creative person so deep in their craft. I’d been the same way when I’d practiced new chorography. Noise sounded different when you were in the tight embrace of your calling. A voice was a shotgun. A demand a cannon.
Gil raked both hands through his hair, uncaring about the smears he left behind. He ignored me, hastily mixing new pigments with a feverish intensity that erupted goosebumps beneath the paint on my skin, disrupting the smoothness of his lines.
The longer I stood in his empty warehouse, the more I remembered our childhood. How his smile imprinted itself on my heart for always. How his laugh had been so hard earned—his true laugh and not the cynical, detached one he gave in class. I also remembered what it was like to tend to his injuries that he did his best to keep secret.
He’d been beaten up last night. By who, I didn’t know. But seeing him with a split lip and blackened eye wasn’t new.
He’d come to school with a few colourful shiners. I’d wiped away blood from his chin. I’d slipped him painkillers for his ribs.
I’d seen enough of the results of his home life to understand without him telling me: abuse rained under the roof where he slept.
But...he did tell me.
One day, when he’d gotten to school late with a bowed head of contrition and a hiss of agony as he slid into his seat, I’d known something was wrong. Something worse than normal.
After the bell rang and we’d walked far enough from school not to be seen holding hands, I’d gripped his comforting palm with both of mine and tugged him up my street.
For the first time in my life, I was glad my parents weren’t home. Because that night, I led Gil into my house and refused to let him leave. I ran the bath for his aching muscles. I waited with a fresh towel for when he finished. I stared at his naked chest rivering with warm bubbles and gasped at the horror of what he’d lived.
Bruises upon bruises.
Smudges and splodges, scars and slices. His body was a portrait of violence, and when tears came to my eyes and I’d walked into his shaking embrace, all I’d wanted to do was tell him I loved him. To take him to bed. To lie with him. Hug him. Kiss him. Give him what he’d given me: a friend. A person who cared. A person who could become our new family because the current ones