Sorry.
He paints a lot when he's high, when the blood swims, rushing just under the pale nothing of his skin.
The lines are looser or sharper, depending on what is sparking his veins.
Acrylic smudges across the palms of his hands and flakes between his knuckles. He clenches and unclenches his fingers and watches his wrists, nails, the ridges that roll as his hands curl, as they smudge with purple ink from leaking pen nibs, the dark made bright against the translucence of his skin. And he paints in the etchings of Victor Trevor as well, fingers slipping over skin, smoothed by colored fingers, mouth tracing the lines left by all five along the column of a neck. Along his jaw, a drag of his thumb over lips. Purple, yellow, green. Orange swept across his brow, blue over the plush of his lips. Everything is burning with the poison of paint scenting the air, and the slide and slap of color between them.
He's not the man, but Sherlock tries to fill him in.
Tries to paint him so he fits.
Victor always showers afterwards, and Sherlock doesn't watch him as his hips swing around the door to the bathroom, sometimes green, sometimes red, sometimes a blur of nothing, as he hums, as the layers of color splatter and run in the wet steam of the shower, already marred by sweat and the slick press of bodies.
Sherlock doesn't watch him as he towels the dark brush of his hair, as he covers himself up, tucks away the canvas of his body.
The sheets are a mess, purple and green and brown and blue and yellow acrylic dry into the fabric and mould themselves to the streaks of Sherlock's limbs. He stays there for hours watching the blank of the ceiling. He paints the man over and over again, new parts every time the paint dries. He fills in his lines and makes himself with the layers.
Later, after showers and showers and skin painted pink only from scrubbing, he steps around the drying paint of the man spread out in smudges on the floor. Two dimensional, too many colors. Where tanned skin should be, are hues of green and pink. The camouflage of his rifle and his clothes is brown and burgundy and the middle color of fire just before it dies. The blood though, the blood is still red. It soaks through the fabric, running and smudging with too much water and drying in swirls of muddied brightness. The blood starts from his shoulder and has spread down an arm, over his chest, staining both the man's uniform as he gasps, and at the same time, spilling onto the the splintering plywood that carpets Sherlock's concrete floor.
The pads of Sherlock's fingers are still beading blood now, skin rough around the scrape and paint hanging on the dying cells, spikes of wood making him sigh every time they dig further into him.
Sherlock doesn't clean the floor or the sheets for three days. When he does, they're both stained and the ceiling still looks the same.
Hey everyone. I'm feeling really, really terrible today. Really terrible.
I actually started crying. I don't think that I've ever just started crying for no reason except for just generally feeling terrible. I don't really cry. So yeah.
Sorry. To like, push this towards you. I hope I'm not bringing you down. I hope you have a wonderful day, and you're wonderful (even if you don't like the story, you're still wonderful).
Thank you. xxx
(and I'm not sure that this part even makes sense, maybe none of it makes sense)