"Paint Me" - one character drawing a picture of another

"Remind me again why I agreed to do this?"

"It's just a portrait, not a death penalty. And I asked very nicely when Cole happened to be around so you wouldn't wuss out."

He grimaced. Okay, so that was kind of underhanded of her. What, did she think I wouldn't agree any other way?

"Stop moving, damn it."

Oh wait, I wouldn't.

Baird was perched in a chair in Sam's quarters as she sat cross-legged on her cot, a beaten and thin sketchpad in her lap. He still wasn't entirely sure how he had gotten roped into this; it was all one big blur. One minute Sam was blabbering about how their off-duty schedules always intersected, then about skills fade, and suddenly Cole was on his right talking about tattoos and—shit, it was set up. So why exactly do I get to be the guinea pig?

He didn't like posing. He didn't like portraits. Once every three years—or maybe it was five—his parents would dress him up and sit him down for a family portrait. It wasn't good enough to use a camera. Jocelin Baird insisted on an artist—"The man who painted Embry's Regret," he said one year; another year it was an award-winning woman. So little Damon was subjected to several rounds of torture. He never saw any of the finished portraits. He assumed his parents had burned them or they were lost in the sinkhole that was his house.

"You're frowning again," Sam said, annoyed.

"Are you done yet? You said this was the last session, that it wouldn't take long. And you never said why I had to do this."

"Just hang on. Bloody impatient today."

"I'm a busy man," he replied, a self-satisfied grin in place. Truthfully, he didn't have much to do. He just hated being in the same room as Sam this long, especially with the way she kept looking at him—he wasn't a thing to be studied, damn it. It was too personal. He couldn't take it much longer.

But he sat five more minutes and watched her work. She was devoted; bending over the paper, head bowed, eyes peeking up at him regularly with their unsettling gaze. Her hand moved with sure strokes that maybe she had finally figured him out and could get it all on paper. Baird felt a pang of jealousy. He hated artistic types. He hated that they could create something from nothing. He couldn't do that with machinery.

After much sighing and fidgeting—and Sam snapping at him to knock it off—she stretched her spine and smiled. "Ah, finally done. You can move now, you big baby."

Baird stood, rolling his neck and shoulders, and made his way toward the door. "Great. See you later, Sam."

"Hang on. Don't you want to see it?"

He paused in the doorway. "I have a mirror, thanks."

She crawled off the cot and shoved the paper into his hands. "Take it, asshole. Maybe you'll get it through your fucking fat head." She shoved past him and he watched, confused, until she disappeared around a corner.

Then he looked at the portrait.

It was a detailed charcoal sketch; he could see individual strands of his hair, the stubble on his chin, all the worn lines of his face. But for once Baird wasn't seeing himself through his own eyes.

The man on the paper looked exhausted, maybe even a little lost. The small smirk on his lips wasn't fooling anyone; he was full of shit. He was nearly middle-aged and still acting like a petulant child.

Is that how people really see me? Shit, what was that saying my grandfather used? Kitten with a lion's mane?

Baird scoffed and tore the portrait in half, folding it to fit in his satchel to be used later as scrap.

I fucking hate artistic types.