Spoiler! :
He never considers himself to be an artist.
Even when he’s holed up in the studio, smears of gold and black detailing his face, catching in his day-old stubble. When his lips are blue from the cold because he can’t afford to turn on the heat, and when that same shade of skylight is captured on his fingertips, falling a steady tap, tap onto the newspaper scattered below. Even then, he is never an artist.
Truth be told, he isn’t sure what he is.
* * *
He gets a new subject for his portrait. He doesn’t post ads online, and he doesn’t put up fliers around his block. He can’t pay well. He doubts he would’ve gotten much of a response anyway.
The woman is thin, her face pleasant. She’s no supermodel, but that suits him just fine. It works for the painting.
He sits across from her, canvas propped between them both as he sketches lightly. She looks off, out his window, imagining what it would be like to fly. A trivial thought, but there’s a pigeon jerking its neck side to side on the fire escape, and she can’t help but wonder.
Hours pass. She shivers in the cold. He scrutinizes, sketches, pause, glance, sketch.
* * *
She returns the following day. Sits and shivers as he takes her apart piece by piece with his paints, forgoing all method and dipping his fingers into first black, then blue. She watches with a calm certainty that can’t quite be described, but it’s almost as though she is waiting for something.
He never says anything, and she never tries. They are the nameless, faceless they that roam through each others dreams at night, unaware of their unconscious haunts.
She dreams of a warm summer day, spent high up in the trees, just talking.
He dreams of a sweet fall evening, hands intertwined for warmth, shoulders brushing.
* * *
Hours turn into days faster than the sun rises and sets. The woman returns every morning without comment, staying late into the evening. It is assumed she has nowhere else to be. She never complains about the time.
He traces the soft curve of her jaw, but feels only rough canvas beneath the pad of his thumb still covered in paint.
* * *
No matter how hard he tries, he can’t get the eyes right.
It’s like staring into the heart of a flame, that bright, bright blue. It’s as untamable as the ocean, and as infinite as the sky, but neither of those are born of a spark and neither seem so alive that they dance.
The more he looks at them, the less he seems to feel the cold.
* * *
He finishes the portrait, save for the eyes. He still can’t get those exactly right, but she doesn’t comment on how intensely he insists on gazing at her. There is an unfamiliar feeling settled in both their stomachs, but they pretend it doesn’t exist.
The paint on his fingers has spread to his entire hand, but now it’s only blue. He grazes his thumb across his cheek, leaving another smudge to stain his skin.
She watches him silently, biting her lip.
* * *
Her eyes are finished – finally, he thinks he has it right. He admires the work put into the portrait, yet he can’t bring himself to turn it around. If he does, it will lose something. Because those two orbs in the painting, he realizes, are blue. Blue like the ocean, or blue like the sky.
The fire in her dances as she notices some change, whether consciously or not. He looks from the portrait to the subject, then back again.
He can only nod.
She seems to understand, because she gets up and crosses the room to the door hours earlier than normal. Her hand hovers over the handle and she turns, questioning, as if seeking some sort of permission that he is unable to give.
He follows her, raises a hand, and slowly, so, so slowly, traces the soft curve of her jaw with his finger that for once does not feel canvas. A thin line of blue is all that is left.
* * *
It feels like the world moves backwards from that point. He steps away, and her hand lifts from the door as she follows.
He details intricate patterns of blue on her skin. He paints swirls and graceful curls on her face, brushing lightly against the delicate skin of her cheeks, flushed pink at his touch. He outlines wings, sweeping and elegant, down the curve of her spine.
She watches him lazily until finally the paint is gone from his hands. Then without a word she stands and moves onto the fire escape, where days before, perhaps weeks, she had seen the pigeon. Then, she had wondered what it would be like to fly.
She supposes having wings is close enough.
* * *
He always thought he was never lonely. But seeing her standing there, outlined against the setting sun and forever captured in his portrait, he realizes that maybe he was.
The man watches her, sees the lines of blue arcing down her back. But he’s no artist, and she’s no supermodel. And that suits them just fine.
They are the subjects of each others dreams. She turns to him, bare feet leaving faint traces of an ocean and sky on his floor, and they whisper their names into soft skin.
They are fire and the painter, performing an elegant dance of life for the audience of a portrait with watery, sunlit eyes. And together, they dream of the other in a haze of blue.
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