Full Summary:

Jean's life hadn't been ideal so far. Then again, ideal for Jean equated to living in a glass room in the night sky, fitted with a lamp, a sketchbook, and a load of comfy shit. People were frightening, responsibilities were terrifying. Ideally, he'd be as positive as Connie and Sasha or as uncaring as Hitch. He'd have their ability to push on with the worst dragging him down.

But life wasn't supposed to be ideal, and there had been definite barriers between the elements of Jean's for years for a reason. But all reasoning didn't have any choice but to fall and fall hard when Jean found himself back at his roots, at a foster home, kitted with the cutest trainee care worker tragically possible and nuisances in the form of human children. Jean's blushing face always found a way to grow redder; thus was his evolution.

Additional Mentions: #jeanmarco #springles #yumikuri #mikehan #slow build #foster care #social anxiety #every character is here #at least half of them are queer

A/N: This story will freely discuss and describe symptoms and triggers of anxiety through Jean, so if you are easily triggered please proceed with caution. Otherwise, look forward to lots of idiocy, fluff and gay.


It feels like your mother
Has gone to set you free
You're loving every minute
It's chemical, a pesticide, a cannonball
You're lost in time.
- Peace, 'Waste of Paint'


The blond strands between Jean's fingers were slick. If they'd been coarser he could maybe've pretended they were threads pulling each digit taut into a fist on his head, trapping them away from the canvas, convincing them out of their shakes. Most of all his hand was there to knock on any doors in his skull – see if the neighbours fancied waking up and bringing a little inspiration to the board room. But he was just sweaty. And the canvas was staying blank.

At this slow recognition, Jean wiped his hands on his jeans. He idly recalled that time one of the house kids insisted to the others that his name was denim in French. Then he went back to idly dropping paint tubes into plastic drawers, feeling a little more exasperated than he did before. At this point it was just a matter of testing his idle limits: How many lazy twitches called for a coffee? How long could he stand tidying simply for sake of keeping his hands busy? How little could he bear his pupils to shrink from compulsively staring at the glowing white of the – bare, very bare – canvas? How gross could he leave his scowl to morph, dwelling on the French fuckups of the old house? How many questions could he ask before he was standing still and blank and sweaty again?

Apparently five. Not his best effort.

His fidgeting fingers tapped the flat shape of his student card through his pocket, and not a moment later, typically, his phone vibrated loudly against its plastic. He opened the text from "Mr Potato Head":

Coffee w fam?

Phone shoved back in his pocket, Jean's fingers travelled to his face, found the sleeve at his wrist, used it to wipe down every plane of heat-irritated skin, pushed his glasses back up the oil slide of his nose. He never trusted himself to multitask. So he prescribed himself mono-tasks. Because a parent with a baby wouldn't teach walking step by step, but foot-lifting by foot-forwarding to foot-landing. And even babies had confidence and determination beyond Jean's capacities. Baby Jean lifted bag. Baby Jean dumped sweaty jumper. Baby Jean checked he had enough change for the bloody coffee in the first place. Then, there, and only there, by the stairwell door, did baby Jean stop calling himself baby Jean.

Outside the art building students were lounging, some sketching, more pissing about. Whenever the sun came out in the city, people leaving buildings got caught up in a cosy trance and felt the need to flop and roll on the grass, squinting up like cats baking in the light of the living room window. Cats were daft and people were daft, so the correlation made sense. Jean couldn't entirely blame the pasty bodies for leaving themselves to tinge pink, bare on the grass with mums grimacing at them across the road from the ASDA car park. The weather made him feel, as Hitch always said, like he was living in Satan's arsehole. She tended to carry statements like that with more grace though, of course. Usually a snort, or five.

She'd been great to him since they started at the school. At first he'd thought the greeting "dork" had been a little uncalled for, but he'd now learned to accept the quirks and the farts and pretend they're endearing. She lived closer to the art building than he did – in the high-ish rise with the dripping black stains creeping down the old paint job. She was also right next to the only Chinese this side of high street. Throw in a mention of obnoxious confidence, and there you had many of the things Jean envied Miss Hitch Dreyse for.

He tilted his head upon passing her building, but not even his chunky lenses could allow sight of any cigarette smoke by her balcony from the pavement.

For a moment, over-thinking his steps past the Chinese, he was reminded of Rom-Coms. Any book, any movie, you could tell when a character was smitten just by the look on their face around the person, their comfort, the light that made their eyes the most lifelike pair in the picture when they thought of them. You could tell especially by the beads flying off the rods on the abacus counting the amount of times the other person slipped into their thoughts. It was honestly scary how often Jean had to remind himself he was not in love with Hitch on any romantic level. She was familiar. She was a link in the map of his brain, from the art building, to her balcony, to the nights spent sat on her takeout-stained carpet eating more takeout, watching one star movies. Hitch had popped up and spread everywhere, so abruptly, and so quickly for someone he'd only had in his life for three years. She was kind of like cancer, but not so bad.

It also didn't help that Jean had an odd habit of looking at unrelated things and comparing them objectively. Thinking on the world that way left opposites appearing the same, making false links, planting false hopes, tying excuses together to make mistakes seem okay. But in no universe did Jean have any "Rom" or any "Com" in his life. Just sardonic appreciation and Hitch's farts mixing with paint fumes.

This tended to be the point at which Jean reached another of his limits. Two blocks from the main campus, at the traffic lights with the green man missing his head. It was always such a hopeful symbol for when he made the soggy walk on a Monday morning. Today was Thursday and lunch was well past, but the feeling was the same. The next corner, on the high street, was where Jean's veins immediately started begging for caffeine. It was the burn that came with an empty mind – an itch for the energy to cheat his way through the day, through the crowds – to pretend he was more personable, even with himself, and to excuse his shaking hands when he reached for paint, for paper, for a veil to pull over his face. Other faces in the crowded street merged and swept into a mass onslaught Jean could feel pricking and irritating his skin, their judgement crawling into his stomach with staring eyes and clawing eyelashes. A podium always stood where his feet walked, he felt.

He was being an idiot, obviously. But, obviously, it wasn't something Jean could help much.

By the time he reached the Waterstone's opposite the university, he'd thankfully forgotten to breathe consciously or lift and place his feet under watch. The swirling crowd had been left behind glass doors and now there was just the rich smell of new books and coffee beans. Voices were quiet for the most part. However, even from the entrance door, the boisterous tones his ears twitched to were aisles of shelves and around an open wall he found a shit-eating grin and a cookie-eating pout, which was quick to burst.

'It's Jeanbo!' Sasha squealed, cookie chunks falling to the table.

Sighing, Jean pulled a chair out at said table. 'Can't tell you guys anything.'

Connie raised his hands, at first in surrender, but then to manually lift Jean's pale limbs and take a hi-five.

Shaking and tightening her ponytail, Sasha cried, 'don't be like that, Jeanbo. The name's adorable.'

(Jean recalled walking monologues on "endearment", but couldn't quite align his childhood pet-name with Hitch's farts in any context.)

'Live and let live.' Connie waggled his finger at Jean before licking the chocolate off it. Then he took his napkin to the corners of his mouth with perfectly sarcastic eloquence. 'We'll banish you once we're done with the name,' he added with a wince, 'and it has already lasted quite a long time...'

There tended to be very few words of Connie's which Jean elected to acknowledge when it came to bullshitted sayings and irony. 'I'm already pretty well banished, considering the art campus is on the other side of the fucking country.'

Connie smirked. 'That'd explain why your head's got a little sweat-shine going on.'

Jean self-consciously ran the back of his hand across his forehead as he stood from his seat. 'Well, yours is shiny from bald,' he quipped.

The queue by the counter was only three bodies long. He could feel the blood quake in his jugular, along with his voice when he ordered, and his hands felt cold and limp when he handed over the money. Unfortunately, he didn't escape the leg bounce when he was left to wait for his coffee by the high table. It sprung on him and continued to spring incessantly as he tried not to stare at anything for too long. Settling on the tray bombed like a battlefield with Sasha's crumbs and napkins, Jean managed to think mostly empty thoughts, and he barely heard his name being called over the white noise of another of Connie's "bald by choice" rants.

Of course, he immediately felt awkward and beyond irritated when he reached out for the cup labelled John, but he used the emotion to distract him from over-thinking and spilling as he traipsed back over to the table he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to sit at. He immediately regretted lifting his hand once he saw it quiver, but Jean felt to awkward to let it fall again; he peeled the plastic lid from his cup and watched the steam cling to his fingers as they withdrew. Thankfully when he looked up the clowns across from him hadn't caught sight of his trembles. Connie was too busy babbling about some movie with the Rock in it, and Sasha was preoccupied with staring at Jean's black coffee as though it were alien placenta.

'We've got to watch Hercules –' Connie's eyes bulged out from their lids and his hand whirled in wild gestures to a very disinterested Jean. 'He got so big for the role his head merged into his neck!'

'I'm pretty sure Dwayne Johnson's chin didn't deflate,' Jean grumbled. 'There's kind of a bit of bone there. Maybe a skull.'

'And he wears a leather nappy,' Connie continued, grin inerasable.

'Probably a loincloth.'

'And he has this hefty handlebar moustache!'

'Ah, yes. My favourite of the Ancient Greek fashions.'

Hands-first, Connie sprang forward. 'Will you come see it?'

Jean blinked. 'No.'

Connie's hands squeaked grotesquely across the wood of the table as they slid with him, back into his seat.

Cookie crumbs all hoovered up into the void, Sasha pouted, 'but you'll at least come over, right? We always do movie night.'

Jean blinked again. 'No, you two always do movie night.'

'Exactly,' both Connie and Sasha countered in synchronisation, like the twins from The Shining, only goofier and incestuous.

A garbled noise emitted from Jean's throat. 'Of course, I'm not part of "we". That's what I get for hanging around with couples – don't hi-five that,' he added in vain.

After clapping Connie's, Sasha's warm fingers reached over and squished Jean's cheeks. Her breath fanned his face and steamed up his glasses. 'You're too cute, Jeanbo. And there's going to be someone just perfectly cute for you around the cute corner.'

Even with the dense frames of his glasses pushed up at an awkward angle, Jean could see his own red reflection in her brown eyes. He felt intimidation wriggling underneath the constant aggravation he experienced around the two sat across from him. He eased her off before his leg could start jumping and the blood could pound in his ears; begging him to count his own breaths and heartbeats as though his body and mind could ever be controlled by the shaky, transparent thing he considered his only self.

Outwardly, Jean just scowled at the turn the conversation had taken. That turn being towards him. And towards personal thoughts he'd wondered and dismissed, personally, on his way to the shop. His favourite thing about inner monologues was that they were made to stay internal. After all, if Sasha knew the shit pile something as innocent and annoying as her touching his face could stack in his brain, or his body, or whatever made him what – the way he was... He honestly had no idea how she would react. What he feared most was being told that he was being silly. He already knew that. And it didn't change a thing.

'Jean?'

By the sudden lifting of his head and his vacant blinking, it was probably obvious that he was waking up from something irrelevant.

'Do you want to come over later?' The expectation bursting from Sasha's eyes was daunting enough from this newfound distance. Back in her seat, bouncing a little, she elaborated, 'what we watch will be up to you. It doesn't have to be anything remotely romantic.'

'Leather nappy,' Connie hissed.

Although he rolled his eyes, Jean was just thankful that at least one person was oblivious to the weirdness he emitted and let cling to his skin, almost like steam, but more like sweat. (It was sweat.) It was that unbalance in intuition between the two of them that made Connie and Sasha so balanced together. It created a dynamic Jean could envy and a pair of friends he could be grateful for. Someone needed to know what was going on in his head to some extent. Maybe that interest was a little selfish. But he had no excuses – not for the tying and unravelling in his stomach, not for the night.

Jean unleashed his lip from under his teeth. 'Sure, I'll come over,' he agreed. A grin lit up across from him, and he added, 'as long as we don't watch Hercules.'

When Connie started vocally counting up every Hugh Grant movie he had in his arsenal, there was a moment in which Jean grew a little less grateful for the cackling attraction he'd apparently joined at the book shop. But returning laughingly to his drink he saw a heavy frown in his dark coffee, saw spills and slips and ticking drops in the ripples his breaths caused. He felt burns peel his skin into shivers at the steam that breathed back to him. He remembered a blue office, a red face, crowded space, and daunt burrowing up inside his small body with every footstep he heard brush the carpet, with every drop of brown dripping to his small feet – so he forgot his usual worries, his usual clumsiness. He just slapped the lid back on the cup. He'd drink the coffee; then later he'd be grateful for Connie and Sasha's distractions.


Jean binned the empty cup on his way up the stairwell, and when he walked through the studio doors two immediate acknowledgements occurred to him. One being, everyone was sat outside their work stations chugging down red liquid; followed by the side note that this kind of reminded Jean of the last supper because of that one heavily bearded guy with the vast collection of plaid and sandals – but then not at all, because Beard Boris wasn't dying and he wasn't Jesus. The second acknowledgement was Hitch's presence. And a third was added when she launched a juice carton at his nipple.

'Dork's back!'

Picking up the battered carton, Jean stalked over to the outer wall of his station, where Hitch sat, on his stool, which was supposed to be by his desk, but wasn't, because she fucking loved endorsing his madness –

'I have been here two seconds, and you've already made my tit numb.' Even as he spoke Jean knew something definitely wasn't right about the way his eyes were squinting. 'What the hell is wrong with you?'

Hitched beamed, 'Oh, this should be fun! Name something and I'll tell you if I've got it.'

Jean unleashed some of the chemical nonsense from his system in a deep groan, dragging a hand down his face and forgetting all about the massive goggles he wore. Wiping the lenses on his shirt, he blurted out a guess. 'A grave tendency to be annoying?'

He nearly dropped his glasses when Hitch honked like a game show buzzer and the sound burst through his ear drums.

'The best possible answer was syphilis.' She barked, 'now drink.'

Vision no longer impaired, Jean found the dropped juice carton back in his face. 'Dare I ask why?'

He turned the packaging over in his hands, the smiles on the cartoon berries creeping under one of those doors in his skull and casting grotesque shadows.

'The vendy broke down,' Hitch elaborated between slurps of her own. 'We could only borrow so many coolers from the labs and the Ben and Jerry's took priority. Do it for the cookie dough.'

Jean reluctantly stabbed the straw through the foil of his carton and passed Hitch to sit it on his desk. Leaning against the opening in the walls of his station, he soaked in the sight of heat-stroked students reduced to juice sponges. He prompted, 'aren't usually so many in when the sun's out.'

Hitch's empty carton hit the metal of the bin at the other side of the room. 'We were all out on the grounds, but then Mike awkwardly wandered up to us and asked us to meet him here at four.' A snicker spat past her lips. 'He kinda walks like you.'

'Oh do go on,' Jean grumbled, swiftly rolling back around the wall, into his work station. He didn't have to hear her movements or breathy chuckles to know Hitch was lumbering behind him with a great grin on her face. He didn't need to be stuck facing it to be aware of the giant fucking blank canvas he'd left behind earlier, to get coffee. The coffee which had tasted of blue and red the entire walk back to campus.

Out the corner of his eye, Jean saw Hitch bouncing from foot to foot with her shoulders hunched, and out the other corner he saw his paints in their drawers. He decided to ignore one and lunge for the other, but before his mind could quite decide which deserved which reaction, a low, slow voice called out from behind the walls.

Jean breathed finally when Hitch walked like her lazy self, out into open space. His breath fined out as he was met with space closed with bodies. He stuck by his station, Hitch leaning beside him, glancing at his clenched face.

In the centre of the circle, Mike scratched the stubble he hadn't had the self-awareness to shave that morning. 'If that's everyone here, I'm just going to get right down to it. "It's" just a memo, really – one you've all been ignoring,' the painter and tutor raised his eyebrows in the way that suggested his eyes would just fall closed into sleep if he didn't.

A sigh puffed out of Jean's nose at mention of the notice board, piled out as ever, and neglected sorely. He could feel Hitch nudging his side, and he knew that this was probably going to be about the post on the board he wanted to ignore most. Everything was fine in Fine Art until Jean Kirstein slacked off.

In reply, he elbowed her back – harder.

Mike continued, 'You all are aware of the optional blocks in the FA courses – One of those blocks being one which allows you to go out and get some folio-assisting experience, yes?'

There were grumbles of affirmation here and there. They served as a well-synced soundtrack in the second it took for Jean's eyes roll up somewhere between his brow and the ceiling.

'There's the work experience where you spend time with a freelance or elsewhere employed artist, designer or photographer. In this case you would learn as an intern. And then you have international blocks, which can be longer depending on where you are placed.' Mike's head lolled around as he spoke, and his hands lolled forward in his usual, tidal gestures. 'There are also volunteering blocks, which can be local. Or you can find yourself with some of the other students from our sister campus in Thailand at construction sites for youth shelters.'

Some students volunteered themselves to nod along dumbly so the whole body didn't look entirely dead.

Mike was familiar with this strategy, so the next sweep of his hand through his hair woke him up a little for the slog: 'You have some really great options here-'

Jean wouldn't deny that.

'-And it would be especially helpful for those of you who are just lounging around, drinking shit tons of BerryBerries because all your work is blank.'

Jean couldn't deny that. Even Hitch stopped drinking from the straw in her pocket.

'You are all aware of how this relates to each of you – you've heard it all, read it all-'

Jean should probably have denied the fact that Mike's voice had always reminded him of pebbles running down a washboard.

'-But the only thing that's different now is that this block is no longer optional.' Mike's lips pressed together as hisses broke out amongst the students. His voice then sped up to a rate Jean would have called "normal" if he wasn't too busy internally screaming. 'So, come to any of the tutors for references and ideas, and fill in forms at admin accordingly. The blocks will be month-long projects and will contribute to how your final folio is marked. There needs to be a clear alignment between the work you produce now, and the work at the end of the year. You need to show how your experience influences your Enquiry. If you're staying national, or you are exclusively arranging your own international placement, you must have a place organised by the end of the month. International – you have to have signed up by then, and payments will be sorted October-November. National projects – you need to have done your month's experience by the end of term, before Christmas.' Mike's arms swung to the right, and his voice receded to a grumble as he added, 'any further specifics are on the updated notice.'

At this point all chatter had evaporated from the air and settled in Jean's gut. His veins tugged away from the building, his leg rattled, but his face just frowned and stared as Mike clapped his hands and turned to the door. He knew by now, that was a full stop or a partially sarcastic "good luck" in the language of lumbering trees.

He really hoped he didn't walk like that.


In the sky there was a layer of shit spiralled out across the city like the ruffled fallout of smoke from a space launch. Of course, it wasn't created at the cost of any marvel – any monkeys sent up and beyond; just the throw up of factories and cars. Jean knew of the dense load's existence, gawking up from the bus window. But through the scratches and smudges of the glass, the wall which met him in the sky couldn't be described as something so dense and gross. It was the lights. The pollution caused by the stale glow of the very lights that allowed city-walkers to see their dreading steps prevented sight of the world which stood by in transience; there to prove nothing and simply be, but proving to be comforting and extraordinary all the same.

Stars. Jean thought about stars. The sky was masked into a blank canvas, light and fuzzy and varying from purple, to green, to yellow. It was a bruise on the ankles of a kid who could never touch his toes. Or a petrol leak, pooled and tracked on the road beside a car that'd glugged its last fuel on the way to the station. There was no way to see the pollution, for those who ditched environmental science documentaries for Take Me Out. There was no way to see the stars. There was just a fuzzy, still wall. And city walls were always a stained waste of paint.

M83 mumbled in Jean's ears. He supposed he was just looking for something that would make the journey seem worthwhile or wistful, like something you'd expect from an underground short film. He'd expected something dark, speckled with blinking lights, something never-ending. When his eyes hit the ceiling the music sounded too sombre.

He decided he hated bus journeys. It wasn't first time he'd decided it. Jean just liked to frequently remind himself of rant material. Anger kept his brain turning over things he would've considered monotonous had he not been blindsided. Supposedly, it was like he was reliving that night with Hitch, on her carpet, with the bottle of limonchello her aunt had brought back from Italy. The neon substance hadn't so much tasted of lemon as it had petrol and brash city lights, but at the time no one had much cause to think of anything other than the fire blazing down their throat. Jean liked bitter tastes on his mind.

Yet, on this bus there wasn't Hitch. No Sasha, no Connie. And before the question of missing comfort could even come into play, there were no distractions beyond rants. Rants didn't evoke change – the people around him weren't moving, were barely breathing, practically comatose after a hot day – but they were still there – the man mirroring his lean against the window in the seat across the aisle, holding a steaming cup of black tea, was still there – and Jean's leg, shuddering beyond cause of the bus's movements, knew it. Actions did evoke change. So Jean pulled his bag strap onto his shoulder and shuffled to the bus door at the next stop.

The bus was left behind him. Then the man and his tea and all the other breathing bodies overtook his heavy pacing legs in windowed blurs of light. Their muggy, crowding heat was replaced with the casual warmth of summer evening. Jean filled his lungs and his ears exhaled blood.

Walking under neon signs, the city ceiling was indefinitely green. It was a reminder of something Jean had taken bus rides away from all day. Jean saw past thoughts in reflections and colours – in dark drinks, in frowning faces, in small rooms, in vast crowds, in running feet, in blank canvases. He remembered thinking hateful thoughts. He remembered his childhood rants were never those worthy of burning limonchello, but rather the toxic burn of drinking petrol itself. This wasn't the sort of reminder he could be thankful for.

And still, as he walked away from the bus, the memories from the old house kept up with his pace; in the rattling bus windows he remembered the incessant shake of a baby's rattle, held in a chubby hand on a chubby body, cradled in lithe arms. The couple had stood in the living room doorway with their baby in tow, gazing into the enclosure of kids who feigned subdued, as though their blood had suddenly chased out the dilution of sugar. Jean hadn't a clue why a newly married couple who already had a rattling, drooling chub-sack in their arms, waiting to grow up a disappointment in some way – why were they there? All parents, whether they meant to or claimed to or not, had expectations for the growths called children that they carried around everywhere. So why was this couple looking for another burden, and why in the place where the world stored the little monsters others had already brushed aside? Jean had thought it all, sat away from the other kids, drawing under Mr Dok's desk, listening to the rattling.

Being honest with himself, as he walked past travel agents and supermarkets and newsagents, Jean knew he could have made a better effort. He might have ended up growing up with that couple, with that rattling baby. He might have had a childhood spent booking holidays in that travel agents, or getting afterschool sweets from Rosa's on the corner. Instead he'd hidden with his drawings, regretting the positioning of his skinny legs every time the blunt coloured pencils burst through the paper and stabbed the bobbled carpet.

Sitting in the living room would have meant dealing with that Jaeger kid kicking his shins under the coffee table, pretending to watch TV, riling him up. That Reiner boy, who'd thought his introduction of Jean as "Denim" had been far too funny, would have been reading aloud, really loud. The sweaty kid the others used as a goal post for an entire week when one of the garden poles went missing – he would have been reading to himself, from a different book, at the crafts table, alone. Annie would have been playing the Game Boy she got for her birthday during those two mysterious months she'd been fostered then returned. If Jean had sat in that room while all the others spoke clearly and acted affably, there would have been expectations for him too. Ones he couldn't adhere to.

Bertolt could speak small and sweet about his book; Eren Jaeger, brash as ever, could mimic the explosions from his favourite cartoon; even the Armin kid who did everything in the garden, from homework, to sneakily feeding the birds in the bushes, could say anything he wanted to the couple with clarity, and confidence, and intelligence – and he didn't even live at the foster home, he was just Eren's school friend. Jean had been the French boy with the stutter. All he did was spill things and spell wrong. That couple wasn't seeing his drawings. They weren't getting near him with their expectant smiles and questions.

Back at the studio, the day had already taken its toll on him. Every day took its toll on him in the old house and from the late moment he'd left with a washboard-voiced, deadline-setting foster parent to now, walking past every face in the city night, the judgement he'd thought was going to face away from his back once he grew up – it never left. The feeling of having something impossible to prove, of being infinitely small never left, no matter how low and close the sky seemed from under a neon canopy.

So, after Mike had left the room he'd struggled to say the least. There was no weight on his shoulders. Just eyes on his back, his sides, his own nails scraping up and down his arms, his own blood heavy and scraping down his leg, which just wouldn't still. From the outside, he'd awkwardly stood in his work station, staring at a blank canvas while everyone else packed up and left with folders of work, sketchbooks, and more names of mention in their contacts for this new block than those listed in an Editor's Letter in Vogue. Inside his walls, under his skin, Jean's nerves in spasm and unauthorised buildings of thought and memory were constructing and crumbling in second-long bouts.

He'd rearranged all his paints, mind racing and not sticking at stops for too long in fear of dwelling. When he dwelled his lungs couldn't hold breath and his hands couldn't hold anything. His left'd wound up with one paint tube fisted in it. He'd watched the bar of light overhead fold over the silver peeled into view at the old tube's scratched edges. The labelled colour was one he used weirdly often. Objectively the colour was coarse, but it was one of the few things Jean didn't devalue with objective comparison. Mixed tonally it brought an overtly expressive edge to portraiture. But with neutral tones in other work it was soft and honest. The paint was adaptable beyond Jean's habit.

He didn't think about all this then – just slapped the colour on the canvas in a compulsive sort of way he'd never allowed himself before – never felt driven to. It was just now, with pitiful glances up to the phthalocyanine sky, that he came to his queerest realisation since confronting his sexuality. The night sky didn't look so green, but instead hung matt with the dank blue of council house carpet and the very colour he'd left his canvas. As the phthalo green dye seeped from the air through his skin the red of days Jean would rather forget returned to his mind, just as red flooded his ears and vision.


Six years old
Staring at my nose in the mirror
Trying to dip my toes in the mirror
Thinking, 'Who's that girl?'
And, 'Does the mirror world go on forever?'
Calmly you roll
Sharpening the knives in the attic
Trying to watch cartoons through the static
Thinking where am I gonna be
If I'm ever twenty-three?
- Lianne La Havas, 'Green & Gold'


A/N:

Waste of Paint - Peace
Leeway - We Were Evergreen
New Slang - The Shins
As Lucerne / The Low - Los Campesinos!
Midnight City (Trentemoller Remix) - M83
Green & Gold - Lianne La Havas
Stand Inside Your Love - Smashing Pumpkins