COLOR WHEEL
Title: Color Wheel
Written By: faramir_boromir
Timeline: Post-Pink Posse
Rating: G
Summary: Justin branches out, and Brian learns to follow him.
Note: Answers a question I always had about how Justin got from one type of art to another in such a short period of time.
"Brian. Brian? You're not paying attention." The sharpness in Lindsay's voice could flashfreeze vegetables at 20 paces, but it took one last "BRI-an!" to bring his attention back to her. He'd stopped watching Gus, asleep on his blanket amidst a pile of toys, and was gazing absently at the darkened monitor on Justin's desk.
"What's the matter with you? You haven't heard a word I've said." She was scrounging for a sock Gus had lost under the table when Brian finally answered.
"Has Justin ever invited you to PIFA? I mean, inside?" He turned from staring at the side of the monitor and was now looking at one half of Lindsay's face, the half still visible above the table edge. When she saw the unsettled frown on Brian's face, she stopped fishing for the sock and straightened to answer him.
"No. Did he-?" The sometimes-telepathy they shared made the rest of the words unnecessary.
"Yes." Two eyebrows moved closer together, combined with the wrinkle in the forehead, and Lindsay knew something was wrong. Brian was looking at her, and not looking at her, as if he could concentrate a puzzle into clarity by sheer force of will.
"Did he say why?"
"Wants me to see something, I guess. Don't know why-he's always brought things back here. Before." The wrinkles were practically furrows now, and Brian was pushing fingers and thumb into closed eyes as if he were in pain, though he'd never admit there might be any in his life.
Lindsay began nodding, slowly, as if she understood something. "He's begun painting. Not just sketching or the computer-generated work like his first year classes. They give second year students studio space, Brian. Maybe he wants to show you his studio?"
Shaking his head rapidly, he countered, "No, that's not it. Justin told me about his space four months ago. A glorified walk-in closet, he called it, with paint on the floor from the 200 students who had it before him." Brian stopped pressing his eyes closed, and opened them again, looking at Lindsay as if she had all the answers.
She tried again. "Second and third year students move on to challenging projects, Brian. They're given assignments personally designed to stretch their abilities, test them in new ways. Has he mentioned anything?"
Brian shook his head, though Lindsay's line of reasoning made sense. Slowly, he said, "I think you're right; it must be a new assignment." Fingers waved vaguely in the air as he gestured his feigned indifference. "I don't ask, figure he'll show something when he's ready. But it's been a while."
"Then that's probably what he wants: to show you some new piece he's been working on. Just…take it easy if it's pink. Be kind," Lindsay counseled. Cody and the Pink Posse had only recently exited Justin's life, but everyone around Brian knew he breathed easier with Justin off the streets at night.
"Right." Brian looked over at the sleeping toddler that lay sprawled on his blanket, so much more at peace than his father, and smiled. At least one member of the family was getting his beauty sleep. "I'll brace myself for a wall of Pepto-Bismol."
Brian parked the Corvette in a visitor's spot and climbed out, the empty parking lot making him wonder whether artists worked on Saturday afternoons, or if they were all recovering from their Friday nights. Maybe artists didn't have cars.
Taking the steps two at a time, Brian soon was inside and striding down the hallway toward the art and sculpture wing. A few corners, a few more halls, down a set of stairs into a basement that had seen better days, and then he knew he was in the right place: the smell of turpentine and paint fumes was everywhere, plus the bolt of raw cotton piled in a corner next to a mitre box, a saw, and some disused picture frames were all the clues he needed.
"Justin…Justin!"
A few seconds later, a blond head popped out of a door halfway down the hall. "Hi Brian. You're early."
He might be, but he'd never admit it. Walking carefully down the hall so his leather jacket wouldn't be stained by whatever wet paint might be lurking, Brian advanced towards the artist. "You made it sound like a big deal, so I figured it must be worth turning up. Whaddya want me to see?" He tried peering around the shorter man's body, now blocking the door, but couldn't see much of the interior.
Justin took an uneven breath and started talking. "Y'know how I draw. How it's what I see, or imagine I see-you as Rage, or Lindsay holding Gus, or-"
"Yes, Justin," Brian answered, with a tad too much obvious patience. He hadn't folded his arms across his chest, but that was probably not far in the future, from his tone of voice and the look he gave Justin.
Justin recognized the Kinney-speak signs for 'get to the point.' "Okay, okay. So the instructor of my painting class gave me an assignment-"
I knew it. Right on the money, Lindsay.
"-to stop painting what I saw. Stop being representational. No more faces, no more bodies. Use only color and abstraction to express my ideas." The Adam's apple in Justin's throat bobbed up and down rapidly, Brian noticed, and he steeled himself against whatever he might see inside.
Even if it's pink. I can say it's shit if it is, without destroying him in the process. What the hell have you been painting, Sunshine?
Brian realized Justin had stopped speaking, and was waiting some kind of reaction. "So, these are abstract. That's a big departure for you."
"Yes." The nerves were obvious now, the way he had one hand jammed down into the pocket of his cargo pants.
Brian took refuge in sniping, as usual. "Do I get to see them, or are you planning to take abstraction to the highest level and merely discuss your art on a theoretical plane for the rest of your life?"
Justin's cheeks reddened a little, but he swung the door back, so he was no longer blocking the way into the room.
As Brian walked past, he put an arm around Justin's shoulders, drawing him into the room by his side. "They're still you, that's what matters, right?" he said, offering consolation, as he moved to stand in front of the first canvas.
"Right." Through a few layers of clothing, Brian picked up on the tension radiating through Justin's body. Still nervous.
Then Brian realized that he was a tad scared himself. What if he couldn't understand what Justin was trying to say? Before now, he always knew what the other man meant with his art. But abstracts…? A few art history courses in college-plus ten years of hanging around Lindsay-were all Brian had to go on. That, and his own instincts about what he liked in commercial art. And what he'd picked up from Justin in the past few years.
Brian swallowed down his uncertainty, and began looking, really looking, at the painting before them.
The first thing he noticed was that the canvas wasn't square or rectangular, but a triangle, flat along the top, both sides angled equally towards a point at the bottom, like an upside-down pyramid. Brian didn't say anything, though he knew that made the composition unusual. Probably worth extra points with teacher. Good thinking, Sunshine.
He went on looking, trying not panic as he puzzled at the meaning. Brian knew enough not to cheat by asking the name of the work. He'd work out the clues by himself. The interior of the shape was black, with vibrant splashes of color at the top two corners. Red, dark blue and pale yellow encircled a blob of paler blue, as if twisting around it in knots, ready to tear it in two. The three colors together made sense-they were Justin's school tie from St. James, though he wasn't so sure about the pale blue imprisoned within it. The other corner at the top was a frizz of too-bright red against a smaller banana yellow triangle, which he recognized instantly: Debbie's hair, and her sofa. Though it wasn't Debbie, and it wasn't her sofa.
His eyes went to the bottom of the triangle, where he saw neon Caribbean blue mixed with pale orange, swirling together. Brian's head tipped back, as he looked sideways at Justin, a tiny smirk lurking in his smile. "If you named this one 'Home' you're being too obvious." Justin shook his head, saying, "It's called 'Safe Havens'."
"Thought it wasn't supposed to be representational."
"It's not," Justin emphasized. "They're just colors that…mean a lot."
"And it's a triangle…for obvious reasons. Why you might need a safe haven, huh?" Brian turned back to look at the canvas once more, then asked another question. "What's the blue? Inside the tie?"
"It's not a tie, Brian," Justin immediately replied, then Brian could feel him shrug, as if submitting to Brian's interpretation. "The blue of the swimming pool. Daphne. But that haven wasn't so safe, which is why it's knotted up."
Brian nodded. "Got it." One of the knots in his stomach had unraveled, somehow.
Justin grinned, answering, "Knew you would."
The two men smiled at each other, and Brian pushed Justin over with his hip, so they could stand in front of the next painting. Internally, Brian was letting go a breath that he hadn't known he was holding. This isn't so hard.
Then he took a good look at the second painting. This time a square frame. More black, nearly all of it black, with some gray at the top and off-white at the bottom.
At first he thought the black was one coat, but then he realized it wasn't, and had to look at the colors a little more closely. The black wasn't even. Across the canvas, the black shifted from purest black to a lighter black, then back to total darkness again. The color was swirling, almost violent. He looked up at the gray near the top, and realized it was a half-circle, perfectly shaped, with absolute black inside the arc. At the top of the gray half-circle there was a notch, straight up, gray as well. No school tie to help me out on this one.
Brian looked to the bottom of the painting, and the blob he'd thought was off-white wasn't. Off-white, that is. It looked white, but then he began getting closer, and he realized it had the faintest tinge of pink to it, almost as if the pink were hidden in the white.
Pink…Cody…guns…violence…. The words were flashing through Brian's mind, and suddenly, the half-circle of grey was something else. He'd been looking at it from the wrong direction, but if he were Justin, seeing things from that side…. "It's the gun, the muzzle of Cody's gun. And what's left of the Pink Posse. Fading away?" He turned his head so he could see Justin's reaction.
The man tucked into his side was nodding. "You pointed the gun at me that night. I've never forgotten what it was like when you held it. That's when things began to change. I began…to doubt."
"But you're still angry." All that black, swirling across the canvas, wasn't lost on Brian.
"I was then. I am now. But it's different." The comment was a little enigmatic, but Brian didn't care. So far, he could understand what he was seeing. With one last painting on the wall, he hoped his luck would hold. They shuffled sideways, so that the third one was in front of them.
This was a long rectangle, hung lengthwise like a landscape, filled with a riot of color. It looked as if Justin had started dribbling the paint, Jackson Pollock-like, at one end, then given in to the urge for using a brush in the middle, using every width and thickness of stroke he could imagine.
Brian stared at the painting for a few silent minutes. It wasn't as simple as a rainbow, or gay pride. It was every color, as if a child's box of crayons had melted…. Gus?
His fingers tightened on Justin's shoulder, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Brian kept looking, hunting for clues, but there was nothing to help guide him, no half-circles, no neon blue. At least he's not painting everything pink. Or black he admitted to himself, though Brian felt…lost. Lost in too much color.
Then he realized, that's how Justin must have felt, painting without images. The end to his representational art, forced to rely solely upon color and abstraction to make his meaning clear. It was liberating, but it was also terrifying. To step off the cliff, off the known world, into something else altogether.
"You have to take chances," Brian said, before he realized the words were out. Justin's head turned towards him, but Brian went on looking at the canvas, mesmerized. "If you don't, you reach a dead end. You have to challenge yourself, do something unfamil-"
"Brian, how did y-"
"-iar and strange so that you keep growing as an artist," he continued, as if Justin's words were unspoken. "Even if it makes you uncomfortable. It's like...."
"Doing something on a dare."
Brian swiveled his head so he was looking at Justin, and cocked it to one side. "Yeah. Just to prove that you can."
Justin was quiet for a moment before he offered, "That's what the professor said to us. We can't be safe in our art."
"Safety's an illusion. If you're not out on the edge, somebody else will be," Brian said with the voice of experience. Then he turned back, to look at the painting one more time. "So this is what the edge looks like. You know…one of your classmates is gonna make some comment about 'technicolor yawn', right?" He couldn't resist the subtle dig.
"I know. I still don't like it." Justin's criticism sounded harsh in the small room.
"You don't have to like it. You just have to paint it."
"Yeah."
Brian pulled the other man around and the two walked towards the door, weaving around the easel and supplies spread in one corner. He was walking with authority now, his earlier doubts obviously dismissed. I can still read you, Sunshine.
"You never said if you liked them."
"They're you. Do you need to hear it?"
Justin glanced back at him, as he turned off the light and began locking the door. "Your opinion matters, Brian."
Brian stood there in the corridor, thinking about what to say. "Your best work is ahead of you, Sunshine. You'll cringe when you look back at these 10 years from now."
Justin joined him in the hallway, and they began the slow stroll toward the exit. "I know. It's why I'm worried."
"Can't grow unless you take chances. Can't jump to the conclusion without the crap in the middle," Brian replied, almost sagely.
"I know. It still feels stupid. Like a kid's game. Taking little steps."
Brian thought back to Gus, asleep on the blanket, and how he had crawled everywhere before he walked. "If you're gonna play with the metaphor, think of it as a marathon. You'll have a good race."
Justin looped an arm around Brian's waist as they walked up the stairs. "So long as somebody else knows where I'm going, it's okay."
Brian knew the 'somebody else' was him-and how his few words must've been what Justin had been waiting for, nervously, all day. Must've wondered whether I could understand 'em. Scared, even.
As they took the steps together, Brian admitted, "You're good enough, everyone will want to follow. Give it time." Maybe Justin would hear the 'I' in 'everyone.'
Justin looked over at him as they went around the curve in the stairs. "Everyone?"
"The ones who matter. They'll push to understand, as hard as you pushed to paint it in the first place."
"Oh."
Silence carried them along empty corridors, as Justin digested this last idea. The two emerged into a warm afternoon, but before they went to the car, Justin turned, and grasped Brian's forearms. "I was nervous."
Honesty deserved honesty. "So was I."
Now Justin could smile. His fears had company as they waned away. "Why?"
Brian tried to figure out how to explain. "That you'd paint something…so abstract I couldn't understand what you meant."
Justin wove his arms under Brian's, wrapping him up in a hug, and Brian's arms pulled Justin closer, letting his nose ruffle the fair hair as they each considered the fear the other had faced. "Won't happen," Justin replied quietly, confidently.
"Might. The symbols you use instead of images will get more and more abstract." Who knows what the hell you'll paint next week, Sunshine. Suddenly Brian was grateful that the parking lot was empty on a Saturday afternoon.
"Then you'll ask, and I'll tell you," Justin answered with greater certainty. "Though you'll have to admit that you don't know, first."
"If you don't ask, you don't learn," Brian responded, the words sounding clichéd in his ears.
Justin leaned back far enough so that he could see the murky green eyes. "Promise you'll ask, if you don't know?"
Brian tilted his head to one side, thinking back to how he had been the teacher in another time, with another boy, a boy before tuxes and hospitals and violins and Stockwell. Who was the teacher now? Did it matter, when one was out on the edge?
He nodded, slowly. "Promise."
Written By: faramir_boromir
Timeline: Post-Pink Posse
Rating: G
Summary: Justin branches out, and Brian learns to follow him.
Note: Answers a question I always had about how Justin got from one type of art to another in such a short period of time.
"Brian. Brian? You're not paying attention." The sharpness in Lindsay's voice could flashfreeze vegetables at 20 paces, but it took one last "BRI-an!" to bring his attention back to her. He'd stopped watching Gus, asleep on his blanket amidst a pile of toys, and was gazing absently at the darkened monitor on Justin's desk.
"What's the matter with you? You haven't heard a word I've said." She was scrounging for a sock Gus had lost under the table when Brian finally answered.
"Has Justin ever invited you to PIFA? I mean, inside?" He turned from staring at the side of the monitor and was now looking at one half of Lindsay's face, the half still visible above the table edge. When she saw the unsettled frown on Brian's face, she stopped fishing for the sock and straightened to answer him.
"No. Did he-?" The sometimes-telepathy they shared made the rest of the words unnecessary.
"Yes." Two eyebrows moved closer together, combined with the wrinkle in the forehead, and Lindsay knew something was wrong. Brian was looking at her, and not looking at her, as if he could concentrate a puzzle into clarity by sheer force of will.
"Did he say why?"
"Wants me to see something, I guess. Don't know why-he's always brought things back here. Before." The wrinkles were practically furrows now, and Brian was pushing fingers and thumb into closed eyes as if he were in pain, though he'd never admit there might be any in his life.
Lindsay began nodding, slowly, as if she understood something. "He's begun painting. Not just sketching or the computer-generated work like his first year classes. They give second year students studio space, Brian. Maybe he wants to show you his studio?"
Shaking his head rapidly, he countered, "No, that's not it. Justin told me about his space four months ago. A glorified walk-in closet, he called it, with paint on the floor from the 200 students who had it before him." Brian stopped pressing his eyes closed, and opened them again, looking at Lindsay as if she had all the answers.
She tried again. "Second and third year students move on to challenging projects, Brian. They're given assignments personally designed to stretch their abilities, test them in new ways. Has he mentioned anything?"
Brian shook his head, though Lindsay's line of reasoning made sense. Slowly, he said, "I think you're right; it must be a new assignment." Fingers waved vaguely in the air as he gestured his feigned indifference. "I don't ask, figure he'll show something when he's ready. But it's been a while."
"Then that's probably what he wants: to show you some new piece he's been working on. Just…take it easy if it's pink. Be kind," Lindsay counseled. Cody and the Pink Posse had only recently exited Justin's life, but everyone around Brian knew he breathed easier with Justin off the streets at night.
"Right." Brian looked over at the sleeping toddler that lay sprawled on his blanket, so much more at peace than his father, and smiled. At least one member of the family was getting his beauty sleep. "I'll brace myself for a wall of Pepto-Bismol."
Brian parked the Corvette in a visitor's spot and climbed out, the empty parking lot making him wonder whether artists worked on Saturday afternoons, or if they were all recovering from their Friday nights. Maybe artists didn't have cars.
Taking the steps two at a time, Brian soon was inside and striding down the hallway toward the art and sculpture wing. A few corners, a few more halls, down a set of stairs into a basement that had seen better days, and then he knew he was in the right place: the smell of turpentine and paint fumes was everywhere, plus the bolt of raw cotton piled in a corner next to a mitre box, a saw, and some disused picture frames were all the clues he needed.
"Justin…Justin!"
A few seconds later, a blond head popped out of a door halfway down the hall. "Hi Brian. You're early."
He might be, but he'd never admit it. Walking carefully down the hall so his leather jacket wouldn't be stained by whatever wet paint might be lurking, Brian advanced towards the artist. "You made it sound like a big deal, so I figured it must be worth turning up. Whaddya want me to see?" He tried peering around the shorter man's body, now blocking the door, but couldn't see much of the interior.
Justin took an uneven breath and started talking. "Y'know how I draw. How it's what I see, or imagine I see-you as Rage, or Lindsay holding Gus, or-"
"Yes, Justin," Brian answered, with a tad too much obvious patience. He hadn't folded his arms across his chest, but that was probably not far in the future, from his tone of voice and the look he gave Justin.
Justin recognized the Kinney-speak signs for 'get to the point.' "Okay, okay. So the instructor of my painting class gave me an assignment-"
I knew it. Right on the money, Lindsay.
"-to stop painting what I saw. Stop being representational. No more faces, no more bodies. Use only color and abstraction to express my ideas." The Adam's apple in Justin's throat bobbed up and down rapidly, Brian noticed, and he steeled himself against whatever he might see inside.
Even if it's pink. I can say it's shit if it is, without destroying him in the process. What the hell have you been painting, Sunshine?
Brian realized Justin had stopped speaking, and was waiting some kind of reaction. "So, these are abstract. That's a big departure for you."
"Yes." The nerves were obvious now, the way he had one hand jammed down into the pocket of his cargo pants.
Brian took refuge in sniping, as usual. "Do I get to see them, or are you planning to take abstraction to the highest level and merely discuss your art on a theoretical plane for the rest of your life?"
Justin's cheeks reddened a little, but he swung the door back, so he was no longer blocking the way into the room.
As Brian walked past, he put an arm around Justin's shoulders, drawing him into the room by his side. "They're still you, that's what matters, right?" he said, offering consolation, as he moved to stand in front of the first canvas.
"Right." Through a few layers of clothing, Brian picked up on the tension radiating through Justin's body. Still nervous.
Then Brian realized that he was a tad scared himself. What if he couldn't understand what Justin was trying to say? Before now, he always knew what the other man meant with his art. But abstracts…? A few art history courses in college-plus ten years of hanging around Lindsay-were all Brian had to go on. That, and his own instincts about what he liked in commercial art. And what he'd picked up from Justin in the past few years.
Brian swallowed down his uncertainty, and began looking, really looking, at the painting before them.
The first thing he noticed was that the canvas wasn't square or rectangular, but a triangle, flat along the top, both sides angled equally towards a point at the bottom, like an upside-down pyramid. Brian didn't say anything, though he knew that made the composition unusual. Probably worth extra points with teacher. Good thinking, Sunshine.
He went on looking, trying not panic as he puzzled at the meaning. Brian knew enough not to cheat by asking the name of the work. He'd work out the clues by himself. The interior of the shape was black, with vibrant splashes of color at the top two corners. Red, dark blue and pale yellow encircled a blob of paler blue, as if twisting around it in knots, ready to tear it in two. The three colors together made sense-they were Justin's school tie from St. James, though he wasn't so sure about the pale blue imprisoned within it. The other corner at the top was a frizz of too-bright red against a smaller banana yellow triangle, which he recognized instantly: Debbie's hair, and her sofa. Though it wasn't Debbie, and it wasn't her sofa.
His eyes went to the bottom of the triangle, where he saw neon Caribbean blue mixed with pale orange, swirling together. Brian's head tipped back, as he looked sideways at Justin, a tiny smirk lurking in his smile. "If you named this one 'Home' you're being too obvious." Justin shook his head, saying, "It's called 'Safe Havens'."
"Thought it wasn't supposed to be representational."
"It's not," Justin emphasized. "They're just colors that…mean a lot."
"And it's a triangle…for obvious reasons. Why you might need a safe haven, huh?" Brian turned back to look at the canvas once more, then asked another question. "What's the blue? Inside the tie?"
"It's not a tie, Brian," Justin immediately replied, then Brian could feel him shrug, as if submitting to Brian's interpretation. "The blue of the swimming pool. Daphne. But that haven wasn't so safe, which is why it's knotted up."
Brian nodded. "Got it." One of the knots in his stomach had unraveled, somehow.
Justin grinned, answering, "Knew you would."
The two men smiled at each other, and Brian pushed Justin over with his hip, so they could stand in front of the next painting. Internally, Brian was letting go a breath that he hadn't known he was holding. This isn't so hard.
Then he took a good look at the second painting. This time a square frame. More black, nearly all of it black, with some gray at the top and off-white at the bottom.
At first he thought the black was one coat, but then he realized it wasn't, and had to look at the colors a little more closely. The black wasn't even. Across the canvas, the black shifted from purest black to a lighter black, then back to total darkness again. The color was swirling, almost violent. He looked up at the gray near the top, and realized it was a half-circle, perfectly shaped, with absolute black inside the arc. At the top of the gray half-circle there was a notch, straight up, gray as well. No school tie to help me out on this one.
Brian looked to the bottom of the painting, and the blob he'd thought was off-white wasn't. Off-white, that is. It looked white, but then he began getting closer, and he realized it had the faintest tinge of pink to it, almost as if the pink were hidden in the white.
Pink…Cody…guns…violence…. The words were flashing through Brian's mind, and suddenly, the half-circle of grey was something else. He'd been looking at it from the wrong direction, but if he were Justin, seeing things from that side…. "It's the gun, the muzzle of Cody's gun. And what's left of the Pink Posse. Fading away?" He turned his head so he could see Justin's reaction.
The man tucked into his side was nodding. "You pointed the gun at me that night. I've never forgotten what it was like when you held it. That's when things began to change. I began…to doubt."
"But you're still angry." All that black, swirling across the canvas, wasn't lost on Brian.
"I was then. I am now. But it's different." The comment was a little enigmatic, but Brian didn't care. So far, he could understand what he was seeing. With one last painting on the wall, he hoped his luck would hold. They shuffled sideways, so that the third one was in front of them.
This was a long rectangle, hung lengthwise like a landscape, filled with a riot of color. It looked as if Justin had started dribbling the paint, Jackson Pollock-like, at one end, then given in to the urge for using a brush in the middle, using every width and thickness of stroke he could imagine.
Brian stared at the painting for a few silent minutes. It wasn't as simple as a rainbow, or gay pride. It was every color, as if a child's box of crayons had melted…. Gus?
His fingers tightened on Justin's shoulder, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Brian kept looking, hunting for clues, but there was nothing to help guide him, no half-circles, no neon blue. At least he's not painting everything pink. Or black he admitted to himself, though Brian felt…lost. Lost in too much color.
Then he realized, that's how Justin must have felt, painting without images. The end to his representational art, forced to rely solely upon color and abstraction to make his meaning clear. It was liberating, but it was also terrifying. To step off the cliff, off the known world, into something else altogether.
"You have to take chances," Brian said, before he realized the words were out. Justin's head turned towards him, but Brian went on looking at the canvas, mesmerized. "If you don't, you reach a dead end. You have to challenge yourself, do something unfamil-"
"Brian, how did y-"
"-iar and strange so that you keep growing as an artist," he continued, as if Justin's words were unspoken. "Even if it makes you uncomfortable. It's like...."
"Doing something on a dare."
Brian swiveled his head so he was looking at Justin, and cocked it to one side. "Yeah. Just to prove that you can."
Justin was quiet for a moment before he offered, "That's what the professor said to us. We can't be safe in our art."
"Safety's an illusion. If you're not out on the edge, somebody else will be," Brian said with the voice of experience. Then he turned back, to look at the painting one more time. "So this is what the edge looks like. You know…one of your classmates is gonna make some comment about 'technicolor yawn', right?" He couldn't resist the subtle dig.
"I know. I still don't like it." Justin's criticism sounded harsh in the small room.
"You don't have to like it. You just have to paint it."
"Yeah."
Brian pulled the other man around and the two walked towards the door, weaving around the easel and supplies spread in one corner. He was walking with authority now, his earlier doubts obviously dismissed. I can still read you, Sunshine.
"You never said if you liked them."
"They're you. Do you need to hear it?"
Justin glanced back at him, as he turned off the light and began locking the door. "Your opinion matters, Brian."
Brian stood there in the corridor, thinking about what to say. "Your best work is ahead of you, Sunshine. You'll cringe when you look back at these 10 years from now."
Justin joined him in the hallway, and they began the slow stroll toward the exit. "I know. It's why I'm worried."
"Can't grow unless you take chances. Can't jump to the conclusion without the crap in the middle," Brian replied, almost sagely.
"I know. It still feels stupid. Like a kid's game. Taking little steps."
Brian thought back to Gus, asleep on the blanket, and how he had crawled everywhere before he walked. "If you're gonna play with the metaphor, think of it as a marathon. You'll have a good race."
Justin looped an arm around Brian's waist as they walked up the stairs. "So long as somebody else knows where I'm going, it's okay."
Brian knew the 'somebody else' was him-and how his few words must've been what Justin had been waiting for, nervously, all day. Must've wondered whether I could understand 'em. Scared, even.
As they took the steps together, Brian admitted, "You're good enough, everyone will want to follow. Give it time." Maybe Justin would hear the 'I' in 'everyone.'
Justin looked over at him as they went around the curve in the stairs. "Everyone?"
"The ones who matter. They'll push to understand, as hard as you pushed to paint it in the first place."
"Oh."
Silence carried them along empty corridors, as Justin digested this last idea. The two emerged into a warm afternoon, but before they went to the car, Justin turned, and grasped Brian's forearms. "I was nervous."
Honesty deserved honesty. "So was I."
Now Justin could smile. His fears had company as they waned away. "Why?"
Brian tried to figure out how to explain. "That you'd paint something…so abstract I couldn't understand what you meant."
Justin wove his arms under Brian's, wrapping him up in a hug, and Brian's arms pulled Justin closer, letting his nose ruffle the fair hair as they each considered the fear the other had faced. "Won't happen," Justin replied quietly, confidently.
"Might. The symbols you use instead of images will get more and more abstract." Who knows what the hell you'll paint next week, Sunshine. Suddenly Brian was grateful that the parking lot was empty on a Saturday afternoon.
"Then you'll ask, and I'll tell you," Justin answered with greater certainty. "Though you'll have to admit that you don't know, first."
"If you don't ask, you don't learn," Brian responded, the words sounding clichéd in his ears.
Justin leaned back far enough so that he could see the murky green eyes. "Promise you'll ask, if you don't know?"
Brian tilted his head to one side, thinking back to how he had been the teacher in another time, with another boy, a boy before tuxes and hospitals and violins and Stockwell. Who was the teacher now? Did it matter, when one was out on the edge?
He nodded, slowly. "Promise."