Summary: It's been a long time since he's resonated so deeply with someone else's art; he didn't paint this, but it feels like, at another time in his life, he could have. Artist AU.
Warnings: Wesvis. Artist AU.
Disclaimer: I neither own nor am affiliated with Common Law in any way.
Shy artist nerd!Wes and slightly-less-shy artist nerd!Travis is my aesthetic.
I am not an artist. I took like two art classes in high school. Adjust your expectations accordingly.
OOOO
Brushstrokes
"Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist."
—Hans Hofmann
XXXX
The painting takes his breath away.
It's a soft mix of purples and blues, lighter around the edge and getting ever darker toward the center, until the middle of the canvas is pitch black. In one corner of the canvas, there's a splatter of orange, but that's swallowed so easily by the dark whirlpool the rest of the painting conveys.
The emotion seeps from the brushstrokes. Of quietly drowning, of being trapped. An awful, aching sense of hopeless desperation. It makes his throat squeeze, makes his chest go tight with something he doesn't want to name.
He can't look away.
A hand falls on his shoulder, startling him from his reverie and almost making him spill champagne down his front. He turns, relaxing when he sees the familiar, smiling face of his friend.
"How're you doing, Trav?" Paekman says, taking a sip from his own champagne.
Travis turns back to the painting, eyes drawn to the center of that dark whirlpool. He points. "I want this painting."
Paekman hums thoughtfully, studying the canvas. "Doesn't look like it's for sale."
"I can see that." Paintings that are for sale tonight have a little gold sticker beside the placard on the wall. This painting is most definitely missing that gold sticker. "I still want it." He continues to staring, falling into the swirls of pain, into that dark hole in the center of the canvas. It's been a long time since he's resonated so deeply with someone else's art; he didn't paint this, but it feels like, at another time in his life, he could have.
"What do you know about the artist?" As Travis's art friend with connections, Paekman probably represents half the artists at this gallery showing tonight. If anyone will know about the artist of this captivating piece, it'll be him.
But Paekman looks at the placard under the painting and says, "W. Mitchell. Sorry, man, it's not a name I recognize."
"Oh." Travis can't keep the disappointment from slumping his shoulders. He was hoping Paekman would know the painter, might even be able to introduce him to the person whose art strikes such a chord in him.
Paekman gives his shoulder a soft squeeze. "I can ask the gallery owner, see what I can find out."
"Yeah?" Travis beams at his friend. "You're the best, man."
Paekman gives his shoulder another little squeeze and wanders off. Before he's even disappeared into the crowd, Travis is back to staring at that painting, utterly and completely entranced.
It's called Mood. How painfully perfect is that?
XXXX
Travis has a painting in his room, carefully placed facing the wall. It's a bright, fiery background of oranges and reds and yellows, with a thin layer of black over the top, thin enough that the colors shine through like lava. And, just for the fun of working with mixed media, there are thin, vertical strips of aluminum foil, carefully lining the canvas from top edge to bottom.
He knows what he was feeling with the painting, what he was trying to convey. That's why it's leaning against his wall, why he doesn't look at it—it hurts to see the emotions in the paint.
He imagines what it would look like on the wall next to this painting, next to Mood, and he lets out a slow, shaky breath. The two paintings are so very different—but they're exactly the same. They hurt just the same.
Travis takes a big gulp of champagne, bubbles ticking down his throat, and can't bring himself to move from his spot for the rest of the night.
XXXX
As they're leaving, Paekman admits that the gallery owner didn't give him any info on the mysterious W. Mitchell. "But she said she'd pass your name and number on," Paekman assures him before Travis can get too dejected. He shrugs. "Maybe you'll hear something."
"Thanks for trying," Travis says, but doesn't hold out too much hope.
XXXX
W. Mitchell is not an artist, according to Google. W. Mitchell is an illustrator, of children's books and brochures and textbooks, pictures of animals so lifelike they could jump off the page, of landscapes so detailed he feels he could step through the computer screen. He is not, it seems, the kind of artist that splashes his emotions on canvas and hangs them in art galleries for the world to see.
There's no bio online, not a single picture of the elusive artist anywhere to be found. All Travis wants to do is look at the face behind the paint and see if it's…
—it it's like looking in a mirror.
But the internet doesn't provide any images of anything he wants to see.
Travis scowls at the screen, glowering at the thumbnails of landscapes and animals Google images pulled up. How extremely unhelpful.
When his phone rings, Travis doesn't look away from the monitor. He grabs his cell and, thinking it's Paekman, answers with a casual, "Sup?"
There's a long pause, and then an unfamiliar male voice says, "Um…is this Travis Marks?"
Travis blinks to attention. "Yeah, this is Travis. Who's this?"
"This is Wes Mitchell." Another hesitant pause. "Alex MacFarland from Sunset Gallery said you wanted to talk to me."
"Yeah?" Wes Mitchell. W. Mitchell! Travis sits up. "Yes! Hi. I wanted to talk to you about your painting, Mood."
"It's not for sale," Wes says quickly, leaving Travis nonplussed. At his silence, Wes hastens to explain, "It's personal."
"No, yeah, I get that." Most of Travis's paintings are like that, too deep and personal to ever want to sell them. He paints to exorcise his feelings, not for profit.
"Okay. Good." Wes sounds frighteningly final, like he's about to wrap up this conversation any second now, so Travis hastily blurts, "Can I meet you?"
The silence on the other end of the line is deafening.
Travis fumbles. "I just…I know you're not planning to sell your piece, but I'd really like to talk to you. About art, and stuff."
"And stuff…"
"Yeah." Travis waves a vague hand Wes can't see. "Art. Stuff."
"Right…"
Travis winces. This is going so poorly; he didn't prepare for this. He's always prepared for conversations that may come his way, but he didn't actually think this guy was going to call him. He has no idea what he's saying anymore.
After an interminable silence, Travis hears Wes inhale. He braces himself for rejection, for a polite but firm 'No,' because surely his bumbling has ruined this entire conversation.
Instead, Wes says, "Was that you?"
Travis blinks. "What?"
"Alex…told me there was someone at the gallery that spent all night just…staring at my painting. Was that you?"
Travis grips the phone, and his eyes flick towards the canvas leaning against his wall. "Yeah," he says hoarsely. "Yeah, that was me."
Another long moment passes, one heartbeat, two, three.
"Okay."
Travis releases the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
Wes continues. "I wouldn't mind talking about stuff. Art stuff. Sometime."
Slowly, Travis grins. "Cool."
XXXX
The community center is bustling in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Travis smiles genially at everyone he passes, hugging to wall to avoid getting in everyone else's way. He stops once to get directions from a trio of silver-haired ladies in workout sweats; it takes some twists and turns, but eventually, he finds the room he's looking for. He pauses in the doorway, adjusting his grip on his package.
The only person left in the room is a tall, slender blonde wiping down the plastic chairs and neatly stacking them in the corner. A bowl of fruit sits at the front of the room; along the wall are two dozen sketches and drawings of the same bowl of fruit, drawn with varying levels of skill and attention to detail.
Wes is a teacher, Travis realizes, and he smiles to himself. How…appropriate.
He clears his throat. The blonde's head comes up, face blank and puzzled.
"Can I help you?"
"Wes Mitchell?" Travis moves into the room. "Hi. I'm Travis Marks. We spoke on the phone?"
Confusion shifts to recognition. "Oh, hello!" Wes holds out his hand, then realizes he's still got hold of the wet washcloth and quickly lowers it back down. "Sorry, I was just cleaning up."
"That's fine. You need a hand?"
"No, no, I'm okay." Wes waves him off with the washcloth. "I've got it."
"Alright." Travis shuffles back out of the way while Wes wipes down the last few chairs. He quickly loads the fruit into a canvas tote bag, then turns to Travis with a small, uncertain look.
"So…"
He's nervous, Travis muses, watching Wes's fingers play on the handles of his tote bag. Then he recognizes, I'M nervous! and he forcefully swallows down the butterflies in his throat. He stopped having butterflies in middle school when he finally realized they didn't do a damn thing to help. No need to fall back into those old patterns.
"I want to show you something." Ignoring the way his stomach is churning, Travis crosses the room, setting his package on the front table. His fingers are quick when they untie the string; his hands are careful as he pulls the paper away, reverent, almost.
And just like that, his soul is laid bare on the tabletop,
He doesn't look over as Wes approaches, doesn't even look at the painting in front of him. Instead, he stares at the mess of paper and string and waits with baited breath—
To his left there is a sudden, sharp exhalation, and then a shaky, almost soundless Oh. Travis's heart skips a beat, and he knows, he just knows without looking that Wes understands.
Wes gets it.
He turns with a smile, not one of his charming, flirtatious ones, but something deeper, more genuine, and asks, "Can I buy you a coffee?"
XXXX
Wes seems more than happy to sit in silence, fiddling with his coffee cup and twisting it back and forth, back and forth in front of him.
Silence has never been Travis's strong suit.
"So," he says, jumping face-first onto the conversational bullet, "you teach as well as illustrate?"
Wes glances up, the right side of his mouth quirking upward. "You looked me up." It's not a question.
Travis shrugs. "Google is free and basically omnipotent, so..."
Wes chuckles, his fingers still twisting his cup, back and forth, back and forth. He hasn't taken a single sip yet. "I teach classes on Saturdays, and alternate Wednesdays. It started as a temporary thing, but, I don't know…" Twist, twist, twist, back and forth. "I like it. It's…rewarding."
"Yeah." Travis smiles, soft and fond. "I get that."
"You teach too?"
"At the high school. Art history and theory, plus two art electives."
Wes smiles back, a shy little thing. "High school. That's a tough age to teach."
Travis shrugs. "It's worth it. I adore kids." That's not the whole reason he teaches high schoolers, but it's a pretty decent part of his motivation.
Wes nods and ducks his head, cup going twist, twist, twist. The conversation stalls, and Travis's leg bounces a little, a nervous tic he never managed to get rid of.
He doesn't know what to say. Travis has never really had that problem before. It's one of the things he learned growing up, knowing The Right Words for every situation. Oh, sure, occasionally he'll stick his foot in his mouth, but that's a separate matter; whenever an awkward silence falls, he always has a few ready conversation-starters of change-of-topics on hand. But all of those ready-made words just seem flat right now.
"I liked your painting," he blurts, the first thing that comes to mind. Wes looks up through his lashes, and Travis fumbles for more. "It was…I don't know how to explain it. I just…" How to put this feeling into mere words, this kindship he feels with someone he doesn't even know, like they're the same inside. He's never had to do this before. He doesn't know how to express everything that's swirling inside him.
"Me too." Wes ducks his head again, twist, twist, twisting his coffee cup. "Your painting was…it touched me, here." He taps his chest with his free hand, right in the middle.
Yeah. That's it exactly.
Wes just gets it.
He leans over the table, grasping Wes's hand in his own. "This might be a bit fast, but Wes…would you maybe…want to paint together sometime?"
Wes stares at their joined hands for a long, silent minute.
And then he smiles, slow and shy, and says, "I'd like that."
XXXX
Travis doesn't usually paint with an audience. It's one thing to teach his kids a new technique, to stand at the front of a classroom and give them the tools to express themselves. It's quite another thing to lay his heart out on a canvas and give people a chance to judge before he's ready.
But it's going to be different with Wes. He just knows it, an instant gut feeling from the moment he met the man. No, earlier than that, from the moment he saw Wes's painting in the art gallery, hanging there and resonating on the same wavelength, a harmony that said the artist had the same heart, the same soul that Travis held. It won't be odd at all to paint with Wes, he thinks. It'll be amazing.
Travis has never been more fucking wrong in his life.
Wes has a ten-by-ten tarp taped to the floor of his loft, perfectly flat against the floor. Which, fine, whatever, Travis has a tarp under his easel at home too—not taped down or anything, but there, because he would like his security deposit back someday. But there's a second tarp taped next to it, just as perfectly square, edges so straight it was probably put down with a fucking ruler. But Travis pushes down the foreboding and sets his supplies up.
Wes paints in an ugly steel-grey smock that goes from neck to ankle and all the way down his wrists. (Honestly, Travis isn't sure why Wes even needs it, because there's no way paint would ever dare go anywhere but the exact spot on the canvas Wes wants it to go, Travis fully sees that after one day.) Travis wrinkles his nose at the second god-awful smock Wes produces and most definitely does not put it on.
Wes has all his paints organized by color. Which is fine, seems normal enough. What isn't normal is that every tube of paint has a label underneath and putting any color back in the wrong spot results in a truly epic death glare and a five-minute tirade about how this is where the paint goes, Travis, there's a label for a reason.
Wes listens to jazz music while he paints.
It's nothing like the messy, cluttered room Travis paints in, with splatters of colors on the walls and floor from where he missed, his paints piled in stacks on the fruit-crate-shelves he made. This is so clean and orderly and hardly an environment to induce creativity at all, and Travis isn't sure how Wes managed to make Mood in this sterile place.
But Travis is here to paint, so he grits his teeth and pulls out his brushes and does his best to liven things up a little. He pops his headphones in and cranks his music, until the soft strains of saxophone are all but smothered in guitar riffs and pounding drums. He grabs colors at random, two or three at a time, putting them back in the wrong places on the shelves because that anal-retentive color-coding makes his skin itch, and he ignores Wes's glower every time he does it.
At one point, frustrated by Wes's clean, small strokes and his deliberation over every color choice like it's a life-or-death situation, Travis splashes half a dozen globs of paint on his canvas and fingerpaints like a kindergartener. The horrified disgust on Wes's face makes him laugh.
It's not at all what he expected, nothing like the easy cohesion he thought would occur. It's frustrating and vexing, and about twenty minutes in it stops being about painting together and becomes a competition. Every untidy thing Travis does to annoy Wes will cause Wes to one-up his nitpicky perfectionism, which only makes Travis get messier.
It's a complete disaster.
It's the most fun Travis has had in a long time.
"Wow," Travis says at the end, headphones slung around his ears as he wipes his fingers on his ratty old T-shirt, leaving smears of pink and green and gold down his side. He grins at Wes, unmarked and scowling. "That was annoying and frustrating and we should totally do this again."
Wes's eyes narrow. "Only if you stop putting my paints in the wrong spot."
Travis's grin only grows.
XXXX
Getting together with Wes quickly becomes the part of his week Travis most looks forward to.
He couldn't explain it if he tried. On paper, he and Wes shouldn't get along. Hell, they don't get along—they manage to find a way to argue about everything, from what takeout they want for dinner to the best size of paintbrush. Outside of art, they don't have any common interests: Wes likes gardening and cooking; Travis enjoys motorcycles and going to the shooting range.
And yet, somehow it works. They just click. Especially when they're painting, letting the colors and the brushstrokes speak for them. They get along much better when they're not using words, which makes Travis laugh a little to himself—he can't remember the last time he could be in someone else's company without filling the silence with words.
Maybe that's why he keeps coming back.
XXXX
"That's different," Wes says one day, during their usual meal break.
"Wha' 's?" Travis says around his fourth piece of garlic bread.
Wes rewards him with a sneer. "Charming. Your manners always impress me."
Travis—charmingly—flips him the bird.
With a roll of his eyes, Wes waves at their easels. "I meant your painting. It's different. Usually your art is a lot…louder than that."
Travis looks at his canvas, studying the soft, pastel swirls and gentle waves of color. Wes has a point—usually he'll grab the brashest, boldest colors he can find, harsh slashes and jagged colors streaking across the page, because that's usually how he feels—harsh and broken and sharp enough to cut.
"I dunno," he shrugs, reaching for another piece of garlic bread. "Guess I was just feeling soft today."
XXXX
"Art is an expression of your feelings," Travis always like to tell his classes. "Art talks. Sometimes it speaks better than words can. Everyone has things inside them that they can't put into words, or they don't want to. But to take a pencil, or a paintbrush, clay or chalk, and make something…well, then you don't need words at all."
Painting has never been about fame or recognition, not for him. It's about release, finding a way to expel everything toxic inside him and finally being able to breathe.
Once upon a time, he'd been an angry, moody teen, looking for anything he could use to get the mess of feelings out of his chest. He'd smoked, drank, got into fights, anything to distract him from the pain he'd been carrying his entire life, rooted so deeply in his heart he couldn't dig it out. He'd been drowning.
And then a teacher placed a paintbrush in his hand, allowing him to swim to the surface and take a breath. Art had given him an outlet, a way to release what was inside him without hurting anyone in his periphery. Art had saved him.
If he can give even one teenager that same release, if he can save someone who's just like he had been, then everything has been worth it.
It's not about the money. It's just about feeling, because he's terrible at doing that without paint in hand.
XXXX
Sometimes he wonders what Wes is feeling.
Wes's art is gorgeous, lifelike landscapes and animals drawn with such detail they could walk through the page and into the room. He'll spend half an hour mixing paints just to get the perfect shade of green, and Travis kind of admires his dedication—he's more of a right-out-of-the-tube kind of guy.
There's no doubt, Wes's paintings are beautiful. But none of them evoke the same emotion Travis got from the gallery painting.
He asks Wes about it once. Wes snorts derisively and rolls his eyes. "I was coerced into giving a painting to fill wall space," he explains. "All my other paintings at the time were for work, so that one got to go."
Something in Wes's voice makes Travis pause, frowning. "You don't like your painting?"
"Not that one," Wes says shortly. "It's too…" His hands grasp air. "…exposed."
Travis thinks about that for a while, and decides it makes sense. Not everyone can be like him, splashing their emotions in a rainbow of pigment. Wes keeps things close to the chest, feelings included, so Travis can see why such a viscerally emotional painting like Mood would make him uncomfortable.
But that's exactly why Travis loves that painting so much.
"Is that why you don't paint like that?" he ponders, gesturing vaguely. "Why you always do landscapes and animals?"
Wes points his paintbrush at him. "First, I do landscapes and animals because I'm good at it, and I get paid. Gotta make a living, Travis. Second, yes, that is most of the reason."
"Okay," Travis concedes, and doesn't push it, because he may not have known Wes long, but it's been long enough he recognizes the way Wes's voice gets a little tight and his shoulders pull back, signs that say I'm done with this conversation, move on.
But he lingers over the thought. He studies Wes's paintings, watching the shapes form from globs of paint, and he studies Wes from the corner of his eye, and he wonders what's going on in that sharp mind. What kind of thoughts, what kind of feelings churn beneath the surface of that cool exterior?
Sometimes, in quiet moments, Travis will look up from his paint and find Wes staring at him, those sharp blue eyes distant, and sometime in his gaze leaves Travis feeling uncomfortably vulnerable. Sometimes, Wes will glance up from his sketchbook with this look on his face like he wants to say something, but he never does.
Sometimes he feels like Wes is waiting, for the right moment, the right words, but it never comes.
Travis thinks about trying to find out what's on Wes's mind, of poking and prodding until he gets answers, but he bites his tongue. If it's so important, Wes will tell him. Eventually. And Wes is hard to read; all the normal cues Travis goes with to read people don't work on Wes. Wes is private; he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, or splashed on a canvas.
Travis doesn't know what Wes is feeling, and he's too afraid to ask.
It might be something he doesn't want to hear.
XXXX
Still. For all that…
Travis feels good around Wes. They're so different, but at their core, they're so similar, and Travis is soothed by that.
XXXX
Wes answers the door wearing that stupid grey smock he's so fond of. "Travis? Were we going to paint today?" He actually pulls back his sleeve to glance at his watch, like somehow a reminder should have popped up there.
"Nope." Travis ducks past him into the loft, showing off the two bags in his hands. "I brought takeout and beer. Take off your smock and put up your paintbrushes, babe, we're celebrating!"
"Oh really?" Bemused, Wes shuts the door and follows him into the kitchen. "And what are we celebrating, pray tell."
There is no such thing as clutter in Wes's world, so Travis spreads the takeout containers over the empty counter and immediately starts unpacking. Delicious scents of curry and peanut sauce waft into the air as he opens the boxes.
"One of my students' paintings won the regional art competition," Travis crows, rummaging through the cabinets for plates.
Wes pauses in the act of hanging up his smock. "Your student?"
Travis squints at his tone. "Yeah, what about it?"
Wes merely shrugs, gliding into the kitchen and pulling out silverware. "You were so excited, I thought something good had happened to you. But your student, go on."
"Oh man, Wes." Travis spins plates onto the counter and leans against it, starry-eyed. "She won a five grand scholarship and art supplies for a year. You should have seen her when she first started my class, she had no idea what a color wheel even was. And now! First place!" He can't stop beaming. "I'm so proud I could burst."
Wes smiles, pleased if only because Travis is so happy. "Well then," he says, pulling two beers from the six-pack Travis brought. "A toast." He slides one bottle to Travis. "To teaching."
Travis lifts the bottle high, giddy emotion bubbling in his throat. "To teaching. The best goddamn profession in the world."
XXXX
Mrs. Margie Lopez placed a paintbrush in one hand and a palette in the other and pointed at the easel. "Paint."
Travis looked at the palette, at the bright rainbow splotches of colors, his lips twisted in a sneer just shy of disgust. "What am I supposed to paint?"
Mrs. Lopez shrugged, moving to her desk. "Whatever you feel like."
So Travis painted. He didn't want to, had never cared about art in any way, but he was stuck in detention and it was better than writing essays or doing homework or whatever other punishment they could think of.
For fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, he painted, dabbing on a splotch of orange here, a smear of blue there. He drew a stick-figure face, wide jack-o-lantern grin and eyes crying red. Then he covered it all with black, a huge dark spot on the page.
He was the only student in detention today. The room was quiet except for the gentle scritch scritch of Mrs. Lopez's pen and the soft sh-sh of his paintbrush. With every brushstroke, his annoyance rose, his frustration, his anger at—at everything, at detention and school and home and he couldn't believe he was sitting here fucking painting—!
Travis let out a roar, from somewhere deep in his belly, and slammed the palette against the paper. Silence filled the room, silence except for the slow slide of the palette, leaving smears on the page, until it clattered to the floor. Travis stared at it, chest heaving, breaths coming fast like he'd run a mile.
Mrs. Lopez set down her pencil and folded her hands in front of her. "Do you know why I love art?" she asked. Her voice was gentle, calm, no trace of anger or upset. Travis's head shot up.
She smiled, warm and tranquil. "Art talks. Words…words can be difficult. But art—it can speak a million words in a brushstroke."
She rose, crossed the room to stand by his side. She studied his painting, and he did the same, angry smears of color against a background that was mostly black.
When she put her hand on his shoulder, he started, forcing himself not to jerk away. But she didn't linger, merely gave his shoulder a squeeze and dropped her hand.
"Art talks, Travis. And people listen. There is someone out there who needs to hear the words only you can say."
She gave him one last pat on his shoulder before moving back to her desk, leaving him staring at the paper, dripping paint and rage and despair.
"Mrs. Lopez?" His voice was hoarse, like he'd been screaming. He swallowed and licked his lips before continuing. "Can…can I have another piece of paper?"
She turned, and she smiled.
That was the start of it all.
XXXX
Pleasantly buzzed on half a six-pack and full of delicious curry, Travis wanders through Wes's loft, touching things. Wes follows in his wake, reordering what he's touched and grumbling under his breath. But there's no heat in the words so Travis doesn't stop.
He makes his way up the stairs to the bedroom while Wes is straightening the books Travis thumbed through. Travis takes a moment to lean against the rail, looking down at the rest of the loft apartment, at Wes's bowed head and the way his hair gleams like gold in the light.
"Have you ever had guests over and thought 'I could spit on them from up here'?"
Wes's head shoots up, scowling. "Don't you dare spit on my floor or I'll…I'll…do something bad to you."
"Yeah?" Travis asks, a teasing grin on his face. "Like what?"
"I'll replace all your paintbrushes with ones from the dollar store," Wes deadpans, but his eyes are sparkling. Travis throws his head back and laughs, and the sound echoes the big space like butterflies.
By the time Wes wanders up the stairs to join him, Travis is standing in the middle of Wes's closet with his hands on his hips, trying to figure out the organization method. Color, obviously, but that's clearly secondary; there's a primary pattern here that he can't quite figure out. Maybe because he's never thought to organize his clothes, like, ever.
"Type of occasion, then color?" he ventures.
Wes makes a small sound, waving his hand sloppily through the air. He drank the other half of the six-pack, and is a little more hammered than Travis is. "Level of formality, then color," he corrects, like that makes any different whatsoever in Travis's world.
"Man, you are so weird." Travis shakes his head, but there's amusement and fondness in his voice. He blames the alcohol.
"Yeah, yeah." Wes makes a vaguely rude gesture, stumbling to the bed. He sinks heavily onto the edge, watching Travis through half-lidded eyes.
"Lightweight," Travis teases, thumbing through the rainbow of Wes's dress shirts. Maybe he should organize his closet too. It's kind of a neat effect.
"What's this?" The dress shirts falling back into place reveals a canvas face-down against the wall, hidden behind shifting layers of rainbow fabric. Delighted, he eases it out, setting it face-up on the bed beside Wes.
"Oh," Travis breathes, while Wes says, in an entirely different tone, "Oh."
It's Mood, Wes's painting, the one that had captivated Travis so thoroughly all those months ago. It's just as viscerally stunning as before, a sharp, painful punch in his chest, and maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe it's having gotten to know the wonderful man behind the paint, but Travis feels tears brimming in his eyes.
He blinks rapidly, running his fingers over the painting, an inch above the paint. "Why's this hiding up here?"
Wes scoffs. "Because I didn't want to see it, duh." The words are sharp and caustic, Wes's typical brand of sarcasm; it doesn't match his hunched shoulders or the way his hands are clasped so tight together.
Travis looks at the painting, then at Wes. "Why?"
The glare Wes shoots at the canvas is withering. "Because I hate that painting."
"Why?" Travis asks again. He doesn't realize he's moved until Wes looks up, vulnerable and unguarded. Acting on impulse, he reaches out, cups Wes's face in his hands. "I love that painting."
Something breaks on Wes's face, shatters into a thousand pieces and reforms right before Travis's eyes, and then he's leaning up and Travis is leaning down and they meet in the middle—and maybe this is what has been building since he saw Wes's painting in the gallery, maybe this is where everything has been leading, not a flash of color, but with this soft, pastel sharing of breaths that cuts right through Travis's chest and stops his heart.
Travis so rarely paints with pastels, always going for loud, bright colors, but maybe he could do it more often.
The sound of a key in the lock downstairs is loud as a gunshot, and Travis jumps back with a start. The door opens, and a woman's voice calls, "Wes, are you here? I picked up those paints you asked for."
It takes a moment for Travis to place the voice, and he hisses at Wes, "Why does the gallery owner have a key to your place?"
Wes blinks, looking dazed and preoccupied. "Well," he says absently, touching his lips with two fingers, "she's my wife."
Pain slices through him, sharp and hot, sobering him instantly. "What?" Disgusted, he backs away from Wes, from the bed, but it doesn't help. "Are you kidding me?"
Wes blinks again, focusing, and half rises. "Travis…?"
"No." Travis backs up a few more steps, groping behind him for the rail to the stairs. "I—I have to go."
"Travis?"
Ignoring Wes's call, he darts down the stars, rushing past the pretty, startled woman in Wes's kitchen.
He jams his helmet on his head and revs up his bike, and he's gone before Wes can try and stop him.
XXXX
He ignores Wes's phone calls, blocks his number. He deletes Wes's texts without reading them. When Wes doesn't still give up, Travis turns his phone off and lies in bed.
For the first time in a long time, he doesn't want to paint.
It's there, a riot of emotion swirling in his torso, and in the past whenever he felt like this, like he had too many feelings to contain and he was about to explode from the pressure, he'd go into the other room, grab a tube of paint and his paintbrushes, and purge it all in a wash of color.
But thinking about painting makes him think about Wes, and that betrayal hurts too much to bear.
XXXX
"There's nothing wrong with artist's block," Travis will tell his students when they don't know what to create in his class. "It's as natural as writer's block. Creativity isn't something you can turn on like a faucet. Sometimes it just stops for a while. There's nobody to blame. Just remember that it will always come back."
The longer Travis stares at the paints in front of him, the longer his canvas remains empty, the more certain he is that sometimes, artist's block can be blamed on someone.
Wes.
XXXX
Travis almost tosses the package right in the trash when he recognizes Wes's neat, orderly handwriting on the front. But curiosity wins out, and he opens the manila wrapping, vowing to throw the contents away without hesitation if it's some lame-ass apology.
He frowns when he pulls out a sketchbook. Nothing fancy, he has a couple of this brand himself, but the edges of this one are worn and frayed, obviously used. He flips to a random page.
He flips to a few more pages, and his frown gets deeper and more puzzled.
Finally, he snaps the sketchbook closed and grabs his keys. Almost two on a Saturday—he knows right where Wes will be.
XXXX
Wes is alone in the community center classroom when Travis storms in, brandishing the sketchbook like a weapon. "What the hell is this?!"
The blonde doesn't pause in setting up chairs, though he does take a moment to glance up. "It's my sketchbook."
Travis rolls his eyes. "Clearly it's your sketchbook, it's got your name on the inside flap and everything. But what is this?" He flips to a random page.
The page is covered in doodles, half a dozen tiny snippets. Hands, lips, eyes, page after page of parts that form a whole that Travis recognizes in the mirror. Quiet moments, loud moments, painting or eating or laughing, Wes has filled most of the sketchbook with half-finished sketches of Travis.
Wes's eyes flick over, and he neatly unfolds another chair. "It's you."
"You—!" Travis makes an incoherent sound of rage. "Dammit, Wes, this isn't fair! Are you playing games? You're married!"
Wes thunks a chair down heavily, a metallic punctuation to his vehement, "I'm not."
Travis pauses midrant. "What?"
"I'm not married." Wes finally looks up, meets his gaze for the first time since he walked into the room. "Alex and I got divorced a year ago. That painting you like so much? I got drunk after signing the papers and made it. That's why I hate it." He looks down at his hands on the back of the folding chair. "Alex and I are still friends, and she cares for me—as a friend, but I—" He swallows. "I've had a harder time letting go."
Travis looks down at the sketchbook in his hands. "Then what's this?"
"That…" Wes lets out a breath, runs his hand over his face. "I don't actually know what that is. All I know is, ever since we started painting together…I can't stop drawing you."
"You called her your wife." Travis can't quite hide the hurt in his voice, and Wes winces.
"I'm not there yet," he says, his voice ringing with an apology even if he doesn't say the word. "I don't know when I'll get there, or how long it'll take. It's hard. But I'm trying. I am." He takes a long breath. "It…helps, being with …if you're willing to wait…I'd really like to paint with you again."
Travis looks down, turning the sketchbook in his hands. He could say no. He should say no, walk away right now from the pain and the heartache and waiting for something that may never happen. It's what he's always done, how he's always protected himself.
But then he thinks about Wes's painting, pain etched in every stroke. He thinks about the kind of heart that could create that, a heart layered in protective layers of snark and ice, and what a mirror it is for his own layers of fire and sarcasm. They're the same, underneath all the trappings that make them different—they're exactly the same.
Travis could say no and walk away, but he knows what that would do to him if their positions were reversed, and he just…can't.
"Yeah," he says softly, surprised at his own courage. This could hurt. This could be the most painful thing he's ever done, cracking his heart for something that may never come. But he takes a breath and nods. "Yeah. I'd like that. I'd like that a lot."
Wes glances up through his eyelashes and smiles, shy and uncertain, and Travis can't help smiling back, emotion swelling in his chest. He's pretty sure he'll be able to go home and paint tonight.
Maybe something soft, in pastels.
OOOO
I wrote three different versions of artist!Wes and didn't like any of them. Finally decided to make them both artists, and came up with something I'm pretty satisfied with. I hope you enjoy it too.
Comments, reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.
Until next time~!