Frame
Itachi was a picture. He swirled around with colors of blue, grey-blue, gray on normal days. On special occasions, he became abloom with colors of red, orange, purple, blackest black. Lines and forms, space and creation, swerves and concentric circles- he made them real. More than just an item on a shelf, more than just 2-dimensional.
Itachi did not care that people was always looking- it was something that just was. The colors of him lit the air, making the oxygen we breathe sweet with its gentle, caressing promises of a dark, mysterious place that only the spectator had prerogative to understand. It bewitched men and women alike, young and old. His colors set it in the minds of the weak that they could touch them, touch him. They plastered it in the minds of the strong that he was strong too, that it would take someone ludicrously strong to capture him, and that they might just be the ones.
He could not paint anything, he was no artist, but the colors, the lines, they made him seem so talented. At art, and music, at dance, and killing, at loving, at living- there was nothing he could not do. That was what paupers and princes saw alike. And their stares told him what they saw, and he would wish he could make his back straighter, his posture more of the air of someone ridiculously confident if for no other reason than to express it. He held it in, though, because he could not. He was already perfect- change for the better was impossible.
He was elegant, he was pristine, he was high-borne, but he was dirty, scarred, his hands rough from work. He smelled of sweat, he smelled of honey. When he walked, his long ponytail stirred the air behind him, forcing the smells into the noses of those who watched him with love and lust in their eyes. When he felt those stares on him, spurts of green danced about on the canvas that he was. He enjoyed watching them ogle at him, enticing them closer.
As he gasped in pain, caught between a never-ending expanse of blue skin and purple bedsheets, he felt sure of one thing- it could hurt worse. But quickly the pain left, quickly his colors erupted. Yellows and lavenders, pinks and oranges shone vibrant like the neon signs of the bars where he got the most attention. He dragged his nails across a hard thing that was so inevitably warm. Curls of white-gray skin came off like wood shavings.
He was shaping the wood by force, carving harsh lines as he panted. Sweat dripped into his own minor wound- a slight bite mark on his neck. The salt stung him, and it made him feel better to know that the same was happening to his partner. A small, guttural growl told him he was right. He pressed his fingers deeper.
Yes, he was a painting. A most exquisite painting, one that had everyone staring at him no matter where he went. But when he shuddered violently, jerking to a stop yet somehow still going, longing for euphoria, he realized that his life was not complete. Not until that very moment had it been. As he smothered in the heat of it all, pressing against the one above him, he felt that warm, scarred and battered skin engulfing him. He was surrounded.
Like a painting with its frame.