A/N: I have a huge thing for Artist!Dean! Requests welcome :)

Prompt: 40. Key

Pairing: Dean/Seamus

The first time Dean paints a self-portrait, Seamus tells him it's wrong.

"It doesn't make any sense, mate. Why is this red? Where is the green coming from? What's that line supposed to be?"

Dean tells him politely to mind his own bloody business. The colours are right, he knows it. Because he feels like a slope of blues and greens, with a blackened ribcage and a bright, cherried smile. He feels like a green-veined monster, bearing wings of gold and a mind of silver. And he paints with his heart, not with his head.

Seamus just doesn't get it though. He sees a human form lost in so many colours, drowned in things that don't exist and lines that don't belong. He still doesn't get it even after Dean explains.

"The key is to feel it, not to see it," he says. Seamus scoffs and still can't grasp it.

In fact, it takes him six years to get it, and by then Dean's already achieved semi-fame in a world he doesn't belong in, and Seamus hasn't seen him for a long time.

He sees that first self-portrait once again, in a newspaper. And he just gets it. Just like that.

Dean wasn't trying to paint himself photo-realistically. He was trying to tell a story. His story. And when Seamus looks at that first portrait, it tells him more about his old best friend than he ever thought he'd know. Seamus can see, no, not see, feel Dean's hopes and fears and dreams echoing around the stark white page and falling into the nothingness. He can feel Dean's worries sloped on scattered lines and sense Dean's confusion in that haze of colour, and somewhere along the way, finding secrets hidden behind quill scratches and ink splotches, Seamus realises he misses him.

So he sends Dean a letter and tells him he's sorry and that he was right and did he mention it (he) was beautiful? And when Dean replies he feels his heart jump into his throat as he traces the sharp angles and lines scratched onto the parchment. They make up Seamus' face.

"From memory," he's written.

And Seamus thinks he might be in love.