He's five years old and his sister hands him some crayons and a paper to keep him busy. He winds up drawing the park they're in, but the sun is blue and the trees are a deep purple. She looks at him funnily, but never says anything about it.
The drawing continues – the drawing never really stops, actually – and soon his walls are full of computer paper pictures that are just on the left side of reality. His mom never comes in his room and he's never known his dad but his sister sometimes compliments them, so he supposes that's enough.
Sometimes he gets caught drawing in class and the teacher sends him to the principal's office. The guidance counsellor insists that his interest in the visual arts is "rare" and "wonderful" so the principal lets it slide with a warning each and every time. The only instance in which he gets punished is when he colours the principal and his moustache is bigger than his head.
He's eleven years old and has discovered paint. It dries under his fingernails and sometimes in his hair but he loves it more than anything else he has ever known. He wakes up for school and finds himself consumed with inspiration; he misses classes that day.
It's just like drawing but better. The range of colours available is infinite and the finished products are so much more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. One evening he stays up late painting and accidently gets a bit of cerulean on the wall. He tries rubbing at it, though he know it won't work, and soon the smudge is thrice the size of before. Thoughts, images, visions fill his head and without even realising what he's doing, he splatters more and more paint on the wall. His brush slides through the colour and quicker than it seems, his masterpiece is finished. Chuckling, he notices he's painted the same blue sun from six years previous. With a sharpie from his pencil case he signs his name at the corner and goes to sleep with the scent of acrylic filling his nostrils.
He's seventeen years old and building his portfolio for the prestigious art school near his little hometown. A few months later and We regret to inform you that…
The rejection sparks an anger in him that he's never known, and he takes scissors to every canvas in his room. But it's not enough. Hastily grabbing the closest brush and opening the container of black pigment so quickly he makes his palms bleed, he streaks dark lines over the blue sun on his wall. It no longer looks beautiful – he thinks of it as a metaphor for the damnation that is his life.
He's nineteen years old and living in New York. He hasn't painted since the acceptance letter arrived. His apartment is tiny and shit and he only gets paid three dollars above minimum wage for his barista job at the local café. He keeps up with the rent and the groceries, so it'll have to do.
He's nineteen years old and on the subway when he spots a girl with the most amazing eyes he has ever seen. They're blue and green and brown and gold all at once and for the first time in two and a half years, he feels the itch in his fingers to paint again. Pushing his way out of the train at the next stop, he sprints the twelve blocks back to his apartment complex and jams the key into the lock. He'd kept one canvas in the back of his closet – mostly just to remind himself of how he is worth absolutely nothing in the bitter, cold world. He's not got an easel, so he sets it on the kitchen counter and dips his fingers in the jar of paint. (He cut the hairs off his brushes after one particularly violent outburst). His hands swirl across the page, creating an image he doesn't even know how to identify until it is finished. Somewhat predictably, he's painted eyes – the girl's eyes. He takes a sharpie, covering it with blues and greens and browns and golds, and signs his name in the corner and titles it My Muse, My Saviour.
He doesn't see the girl again, but after that initial burst of inspiration, he's continued painting once more. Suddenly the world is like he used to see it as a child: bright and wonderful and full of so much colour that it makes his heart ache in his chest. It's no longer the dark and dreary monochromatic hellhole he saw it as for two years of depression and self-hatred.
He doesn't see the girl again, until one day he does. She just walks right into his café and then she's talking to him – ordering – and he almost forgets to breathe. For here she is – his muse, his saviour – and he can't even thank her because she has absolutely no idea what she's done. Eventually he gets her the coffee with cream and two sugars she asked for three times, and when his shift ends that evening, the first thing he paints is her hands bringing the mug up to her lips. (They're nearly as colourful as her eyes. But only nearly).
She starts coming in regularly as the school year begins. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; always at two o'clock. He fiddles with his schedule, working it around hers, and ends up painting every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday because of it.
He's twenty years old and completely, utterly smashed. He's had beer and vodka and shots and tequila and even a particularly fruity martini; it's a miracle he can even walk. Somehow he makes his way to Central Park and then crashes into someone. They both fall down and he hits his head quite roughly on the concrete pathway. Giggling turns into laughing which turns into cuckawing and soon he's crying from the amount of laughter exploding from his lips. Hands grab on to biceps and pull him into a sitting position. They pat at his cheeks and rest on his neck. They're so warm and soft and loving that he opens his eyes and finds himself face-to-face with the beautiful ones from the subway. It's destiny, he decides, that she would be the one to come upon him like this.
He doesn't remember much of what happens after that, but in the morning when he awakes on a lumpy couch in a foreign apartment, he assumes she took him to her place and tucked him into bed. There isn't a clock in the room, but the sun is seeping through the cracks in the blinds, so he knows it's not yet noon. The red and orange and yellow of the light fall across the floor and the wall and the couch and himself; his fingers twitch with that familiar longing and he's scrambling around the kitchen for something – anything – to draw with. There's food colouring in one of the drawers and when the girl with the kaleidoscope eyes emerges from her bedroom, she discovers a string of paper towels tinted with dye and a name scrawled in sharpie.
When she walks into the café on Tuesday, his face flushes pink and he averts his eyes. He goes to prepare her usual order, but she opens her mouth and melodies come out.
Did you get home alright on Sunday? I wanted to check if you had a concussion once you were sober, but you snuck out before I woke up.
He definitely had a concussion and he most likely still does.
The next nine months go by in a blur.
They talk more and more each day in the café and soon she asks him out, suggesting they go to dinner and see a movie. He says yes, wanting to know more and more of her. The date goes swimmingly and he kisses her on her doorstep. When he gets home the first thing he does is paint. It's more abstract than anything else he's done; honestly it just looks like a bunch of colours on a canvas. But when he turns his head at just the right angle, it looks like the feeling in his stomach when his lips touched hers.
Eventually they become a thing; an item; boyfriend and girlfriend. She learns about his love for brushes and canvasses and colour and the way they all make love to each other at once. She insists he has a talent but he knows he just wings it.
The day she stumbles upon the original painting of her eyes is the first time he says I love you. If he thinks about it, he's loved her from the beginning. She brought back his inspiration; she reignited the flame within him and managed to weasel her way inside him in the process.
He finds her in his bedroom, painting in hand, just staring at it. He slips it from her fingers – delicately, as if it will fall to pieces if he applies too much pressure. (It all does eventually). She switches her gaze to him and he can see her eyes are filled with tears. Oh, how he longs to paint that as well. Still not speaking, she walks to him and he wraps his arms around her. They stand there for minutes or hours or days or weeks. He whispers it into her hair on a whim, and then gains confidence and repeats it over and over until nothing is left but the scratch of his throat and the shaking of her sobs.
Two months after that they move in together. Her apartment is bigger than his, and closer to the heart of the city, so he packs up his easel and his paint, his brushes and his canvas, and sets them right back up in the spare room. He wakes up in the middle of the night a lot, not used to the new bed and new sounds coming from the window. Painting is his therapy and once he's calmed down, he slips back into bed smelling of chemicals and feeling much more relieved.
His toothbrush sits in a jar next to hers. (He paints that too).
She graduates from university and gets a day job at the local newspaper writing articles about love and travel and money. He continues working at the café, but insists painting is his true profession. He paints the trees and the sun and her eyes and her hair and her everything. One day he paints her.
They're lying in bed, her head on his chest and his hand in her hair. He whispers, Let me paint you. She doesn't reply, but unbuttons her blouse and unzips her pants. Spread out across the double bed, he comes to the conclusion that she's the most beautiful creature he's ever known. He's determined to capture that and keep it forever.
He dips his softest brush into a forest green mix and trails it across her stomach. Next he adds sky blue and burnt sienna and pastel lilac and bright yellow and then he's just taking his hands and spreading pigment all over her body – her beautiful, beautiful body.
She's wonderful and never moves; never questions. His masterpiece is finished – and that's all she ever really was: his masterpiece.
He quits his job at the café and stays home to paint all day. Though his salary was low, it was still a source of income and they don't realise how much they needed it until it's gone. Most of their money goes towards the rent and the rest is for necessary groceries. Those necessary groceries don't include his supplies. He runs out of canvas and winds up painting over old pieces, making them white and fresh again only to stain the emptiness with brand new colour and brand new stories.
She starts to get irritated with his constant painting. The apartment smells like shit, I find dried up paint everywhere, and I have to carry the both of us. Why the fuck can't you go and do something worthwhile?! She exclaims during one particularly nasty argument. He'll never admit it, but it hurts more than he lets show.
Despite her pleas, he continues painting. He notices that she doesn't kiss him anymore; she hardly even touches him. There's always a frown present on her face. Frowns look wrong on her, so he paints her smile. She just stares sadly when he shows her. They don't talk to each other. They only dance around on their tip-toes.
One afternoon, he comes home after restocking some of his paint tubes and finds the place emptier than when he left it. The bed and the fridge and the coffee table are still there, but her toothbrush and her mittens and her love are gone. On the island in the kitchen is a string of paper towels. He vaguely recognises them as the same ones he soaked with food colouring after waking up on her couch. There's writing on them now – written in sharpie – and it's her goodbye note. It says everything he already knew, but the fact that she kept the paper towels and then used them to break his heart hurts more than anything else. His aching heart doesn't feel the same as when he was rejected from art school. Then he could feel it actually breaking into a million tiny pieces. Now he's just numb. The numbness spreads all over and he falls asleep on the kitchen floor.
He wakes up and walks into his studio room in a trance. He paints over some creations, and rips up and tears others. There's screaming echoing all around him, but he doesn't realise until afterwards that it was his own. Once all his paintings – all his love, all his purpose – are destroyed, he crumples to the ground and sobs until he passes out.
He's twenty three years old when the landlord finds him in his apartment. The coroner's official cause of death is a head wound. He must have fallen on one of the knives or pairs of scissors strewn about the mess of ruined paintings. She blames herself at first, knowing that he wouldn't have done such a thing if she hadn't left him. But she knows that it couldn't have been her fault; he always loved painting more than he loved her.
A/N: four a.m. inspiration. oh, woe is me.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to RSquared
Note: I've had maybe three hours of sleep and wrote this in less than two. I'll probably end up editing it when I get home from my audition tonight. (Basically, excuse any terrible mistakes).