"Lets play a game."
"Pardon?"
"A game. You know."
"No. I don't."
Reid frowned from atop the stool he was sitting on.
"A game. Come on. For fun."
Iris leaned to one side and let him see her puzzled expression from behind the canvas. Then she starting laughing quietly, and retreated to behind her painting.
"Bear with me. I don't paint models usually, I just paint from memory…"
"Like the people on your wall?"
"Yes. Like them." She leaned over and frowned at Reid again. "You could tell they were people? No wait. Don't answer that."
"Why not."
"Because. It adds to your aura of mystery."
"You'd rather paint my aura of mystery than know anything about me?"
Iris stayed silent for a bit.
"I dunno." She whispered eventually.
Reid didn't say anything, and let her wallow in her silence. He looked around her dorm room while she painted some more. It was in less of a mess than the last time he had seen it, the clothes were put away, and so were all the scrap bits and pieces of art supplies. But the walls were still splattered with paint, and now that it was cleared Reid could see that the floor was too, but not purposely.
He turned his head to one side, and let his power part the curtains that were blocking the sun from penetrating the room. The flood of light washed over the floor and the rest of the room, and Reid's black eyes got a lovely view of the city from her window.
"Lets play."
He turned and looked at the figure behind the canvas oddly.
"Huh?"
"You wanted to play a game. Lets play." Iris smiled playfully.
"Sweet." He grinned. "Lets play: What's wrong with me."
"Excuse me?" She raised her eyebrows.
"What's wrong with me."
"You make up stupid games, that's what."
Reid snorted rather loudly and Iris laughed. The silence that followed was a lot less awkward.
"The rules are that you say something that's wrong of weird about yourself. Not the obvious, something profound. And then the person you're playing with responds. Wanna go first?"
"Nah…"
"Alright then. What's wrong with me? I sleep with socks."
Iris laughed.
"Your turn!"
She pondered the question a bit, then replied in a firm voice.
"I once put hair removal cream accidentally in this girl's shampoo."
Reid laughed really loudly at this, and fell off his stool, landing on a bed and falling off of that too. Iris yelped in surprise and quickly stood to help Reid, who was examining the underside of her bed.
"Sorry!"
"That's ok. You store a lot of paintings under there don't you?"
"Yeah… it takes up less space that way."
They stood beside each other in silence for a moment.
"Hair remover?" Reid finally hazarded.
Iris blushed.
"It was an accident…"
"Suuure it was…"
Reid snorted and put the stool up straight again before sitting on it and looking back at the brunette, who was standing with her arms crossed.
"It was." She insisted. "It was a while ago. My roomie and me where helping this girl organize her stuff, cause she had just moved in. There was a bottle of shampoo in her bag, but it had opened and spilled while we were carrying it. So my roommate, Myriam, said that she had some we could transfer into the bottle, because she didn't want to get blamed for spilling it all. So I went into the bathroom, grabbed the bottle on the side of the bathtub and-"
She interrupted herself when Reid started laughing again.
"Oh man! And she never thought it was you?"
"She didn't know! And she still doesn't…"
"You never told her?"
"Well I never realized my mistake until Myriam pointed out that all the cream was almost gone, and this other girl said that her hair was thinning out oddly… Stop laughing at me!"
"Sorry Iris, but that's too freakin' funny…"
She crossed her arms angrily and huffed off to her canvas. She sat down and hid behind it, not even painting. Reid eventually noticed she was upset and stopped laughing.
"Iris…"
She didn't reply.
"Iris!"
Her right arm stuck out from the side of the canvas and grabbed a paintbrush on the table beside her. She violently dipped the paintbrush in a pot of dark paint, sending splatters of it on the floor and towards Reid, who used quickly to avoid staining his white uniform shirt.
"Iris…" the droplets of paint floated in the air in front of his worried eyes. "Iris I'm sorry." The paint slowly drifted in her direction and landed in the open pot.
"Sure you are." She streaked the canvas with paint with a swift twitch of her wrist.
"I really am!"
She didn't reply and dipped her paintbrush, albeit more gently, in a pot of sky blue. Reid felt a pang of guilt, something he had never felt before, in the back of his mind. Whether it was because she had trusted him with a secret and he had been a jerk, or that it was the first she had reacted at his insensitivity.
"I'm an insensitive jerk."
She stopped painting.
"That's what's wrong with me. I'm a jerk. And an asshole. And I'm not too clever either. And insensitive. And-"
"I get it, Reid." She smiled. "Thanks."
They stayed silent again for a while.
"What happened to your roomie?"
"Hm? Myriam?"
"Yeah."
"Operation." She said quietly.
"Operation? What kind?" Reid said naively.
Iris sighed, and put her brush down.
"To fix her eyes." She tapped gently on her glasses. "Her optic nerve. The nerve that transmits images that the eye captures to the brain. Got it fixed. Moved out."
Insensitive ran through Reid's head.
"Is she one of the portraits?" he said quickly, shooing the thought from his head.
"Yeah. Top right corner."
Reid stood up and shuffled over to the wall. As he was doing so, he glanced at the work in progress that was his portrait. It wasn't much, yet, just a splash of odd colour here and there.
I wonder what it would look like if I touched it now. He pondered. Would he be lacking certain features, or appendages? Would he be paler, like a shadow of a real person?
He let the thought exit his head as he placed his open palm on another painted silhouette, of a girl with dark glasses on like Iris and vivid red hair. He curled his fingers into the wall and the girl's glasses disappeared and the eyes underneath were green.
"What are you doing?" Iris asked. "Every time you go to that wall, you stay silent."
"Does it bother you?"
"No. Its curious, that's all." She said monotonously. "You usually talk. A lot. So when there's silence I get suspicious."
"Is that another thing that's wrong with me? I talk too much? Or does it add to my aura of mystery?"
"Maybe both." Iris said. "However, it doesn't count in the game."
"Huh?"
"And neither does that bit about you being a jerk and such."
"And why not?" Reid said with a huff. Iris grinned maliciously.
"Because you said it yourself. It cant be something obvious – Hey!" She squealed when Reid threw a stray pillow at her.
