♥ ohyellowbird wrote Color Theory 1/2 for aaronlisa
Title: Color Theory 1/2
Author: ohyellowbird
Summary: Violet is rushing to complete the last of her paintings before installation for her first solo show at a relevant gallery downtown when somebody in 6C cut the power.
Spoilers/Warning/Triggers: I don’t want to spoil anything. :)
Author Notes: I am so excited for this round of the exchange. I can’t wait to read all of your fics! I want to apologize to my prompter because this may have strayed a little from your suggestions. I chose to include the themes of betrayal and forgiveness, and death. There are characters from both season one and season three here. There are one or two twists in here. I hopehopehope you enjoy it! Love you guys!
Color Theory
Deadlines are bullshit.
So is the body’s reaction to them. Stress.
There are canvases like headstones set up against every stick of furniture, some of them still white and glaring while others burst with colors and movement.
Sad music plays from an open laptop on the window seat. Outside, in the dark, it snows.
Violet wipes a smear of cadmium red across her forehead, stains the corner of one blonde eyebrow. The sharp stink of turpentine is making her dizzy but installation is in eight hours and there are still pieces left half-finished and not started.
Set up for her first solo show.
At one of the most relevant galleries in town.
It would be exciting as fuck if she weren’t so terrified.
Dorian, a grey cat that has taken to snoozing on her fire escape before she’d shown mercy and let him in, walks figure-eights around her legs.
“Screw off, hairball,” she hisses after nearly tripping into a wet painting and righting herself at the last moment; her paintbrush blots a smudge of turquoise on the sofa arm.
By the end of the night there won’t enough paint thinner in the world to save the apartment, her hands, her hair.
Dorian meows and curls up behind one of the propped canvases, makes use of it like a tent.
Violet, stepping in bare feet over rinse cups and open newspapers covered in brushes, retreats to the kitchen for a rag and hot water to soak up the couch stain.
She’s rounding the counter with arms outstretched for the soap when the power cuts.
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
The corner of the microwave leaves a dent in her forehead.
She wants to feel out if it’s bleeding, but her hands are covered in paint.
Setup is in eight hours and her paintings aren’t finished and it is pitch-fucking-black.
From across the hall, there’s a loud, though amused, “Sorry!”
Her works are like landmines while she edges through the dark for the door, intent on tearing the a new asshole for the shithead responsible. Luckily, only one painting topples during her blind walk. Please god, don’t let it be something wet.
Once the chain and deadbolt are open, Violet steps boldly out into the hall with eyes open and unseeing, and screams.
“Which one of you degenerates fucked the power?!”
There’s the telling squeak of floorboards in more than one direction that mean she isn’t alone in the hall, but other than that there’s silence.
Violet counts to ten. It’s what her therapist-father was always asking of her as a girl.
She counts to ten, to twenty, then out loud to thirty. She breathes in, out, in, and tries not to think about how fucked she’s going to be come morning if she isn’t ready to install or how her reputation as an artist will already be in the shitter.
“If nobody fesses up to this shit, I swear to God I’ll burn this entire apartment building down.”
More silence.
A squeak.
The door across from hers opens.
“Wow, who crapped in your cereal? I said I was sorry.”
She doesn’t know the voice and she can’t see a face, but her hand finds the guilty asshole’s cheek with a hard, precise slap.
6C laughs. Violet fumes.
“Whatever you’re doing in there - washing your laundry or running a meth lab, I don’t give a shit - better not cut out the power again before tomorrow morning or I will break your fucking neck, you got me?
Warm breath. A shuffle of movement. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” Violet says, working the air out of the knuckles in both hands, before disappearing back into her apartment to find her phone and wait.
The Super gets the power back on in about twenty minutes.
The painting that fell had been wet. It leaves a nice imprint on the cream-colored rug in front of her couch.
Violet screams.
But she gets everything done. Without taking even a ten minute break to rest her wrist or smoke, she gets each and every piece to a place any outsider would call complete.
Two friends with a van waiting in the alley a few blocks down buzz in just after six to help with transporting and installation.
Violet fingercombs her hair and puts on a new sweater over the one she’d been wearing. Everything smells like chemicals and death, but her friends will understand.
They bring her a bouquet of wildflowers that she puts on top of the fridge for now, knowing Dorian will nibble the petals, and an Americano with more shots than letters in her name.
“Fuck, this is why we’re friends,” Violet coos, arms reverently outstretched, holding the coffee to her cheek for a moment of bliss before they brave the cold.
It takes three or four trips each to get everything downstairs safely. The van in the alley’s trunk has had shelves installed for this type of thing. Only one homemade canvas scares them, her largest piece - 4x4 feet - but with a little rearranging it fits.
She says a prayer to God, and also Jesus, and shuts both heavy, white doors.
“You guys wait here. Get the heater going. I’ve gotta run upstairs and brush my teeth, put on deodorant, y’know.”
It feels like there isn’t enough time, not until she’s gotten her paintings installed and her name and artist statement up on the wall and one hundred other little things done. Then she can rest. And hide, because, Jesus Christ, she looks like a fucking tweaker.
Hair in a bun and in a clean pair of jeans, with minty breath and mascara, Violet steps back into her flats and locks up; she’s lathered in lotion to conceal the worst of her Artist stink.
The elevator ride is quiet. People are up all around her, but few of them are leaving for work yet. The air when the doors open is new-morning crisp, she’s only just slowed down enough to take notice. It turns her cheeks and nose pink, her lips red.
On the way out the front door, she passes someone at the mailboxes sending off a letter. Hunkered over in a sweatshirt and pajama pants, a man with ridiculous, crazy blond hair looks up at the sound of her footfalls. “Morning,” he says amicably, flashing an electric white smile.
Violet’s steps stutter. She traces the sweep of her hair back to her bun and blinks doubletime.
“Hey,” she manages after a short delay and steps around him, eyes on the side of his face, on the leftovers of paint colors still crusted in his hair.
Almost at the van, she fantasizes about going back inside to ream him out for the night before and maybe to get a better look at him, but climbs into the back seat and lets his open smile be swallowed by nervous energy and the angry sounds of Friday morning commute.
-
Set up takes nine hours. She knew it was an all-day thing because of art school, but it doesn’t make the whole ordeal any less exhausting. By noon Violet is laying flat on the tile in the center of the gallery space, directing her friends, whom have risen in attendance, as to where each piece should be hung. In her crazed dash this morning, she’d forgotten to bring a level; thank Christ there’s an app for that.
There are black curtains over the front windows, hiding her show from the street until it is unveiled at the opening reception tonight. She imagines them stopping people on the street, peaking curiosities.
Ben and Vivien are coming, separately and with their idiot SOs. They’ve both left multiple voicemails about it, letting her know they’re in town, asking if she wanted to meet up for dinner one night.
She doesn’t.
Their facade of supporting her isn’t admirable. Neither of them have cared to visit until there was an event they can attend, then later brag about to their social circles.
Ben likes to think of her bright-colored abstractions as Rorschachs. They’re not.
Vivien worries about her being so obsessed with death. That’s not her concept, not only anyway.
They don’t get it. They can’t see why she’d prefer an overstimulating city to the suburbia. They think her friends are weird.
It’s all irrelevant anyway.
She doesn’t care.
Everything wraps up by 4:30. The podiums with postcards and information are out, the catering is taken care of, the ambiance is set.
Violet has three and a half hours before the gallery opens. She is a flight of butterflies. Four years and almost $100,000 of debt and this is going to give her the first idea of whether or not everything was worth it.
-
She sleeps for two hours, walks in the front door and passes out on the couch with an alarm set on her phone.
When it goes off she swears it had only been fifteen minutes. Her bones are still heavy. It takes a while staring at Dorian batting the gauzy white curtains to remember what tonight is, but even after that, she still moves slow.
Adrenaline and delirium will wake her up the closer the reception grows. Right now, everything is surreal.
A shower puts movement back into her, the water washing off last night and most of today, leaving her brand new when she steps out onto the rug and swipes wet fingers over her phone screen to turn the music up.
Conor Oberst sulks through the speaker.
She blowdries and straightens in a towel, then bends to the mirror for makeup.
And I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss.
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it.
Her lips look painted with fresh blood, but her hand shakes on the eyeliner, so difficult to make each eye match.
They better serve something hard at the show. It will take more than champagne to kill these creeping nerves, to stomp the hiccups out of her heart.
Armor isn’t heavy metal tonight, it’s black stretch with a dark floral pattern. Violet turns on the carpet in bare feet facing a mirror bolted to the back of her bedroom door. The thick black stripes running down the sides of her dress boost the illusion of curves.
All this make believe, makeup and frizz-free hair and this clinging dress, make Violet feel like she should be hung in the gallery next to her Untitleds. But agents and collectors want the package deal.
Tonight, she needs to be as pretty as her paintings, just as interesting.
The stilettos still boxed up, a gift from her mother, are too much though. She wants to bring something of herself downtown, a reminder that this entire reception is bullshit. It’s her art that matters.
Her phone lights up with another missed call, buzzes half a minute later with a voicemail. Violet feeds it into her clutch without looking at the screen.
Dorian wraps around her bare legs, reminding her to grab a coat, and purrs something of a good luck or goodbye when she’s slipping out the door.
Black on black velvet oxfords don’t click-clack down the stairs like high heels would have. They thump, thump, thump twice as slow as her heart is beating.
Showtime.
-
There’s a line forming down the side of the building when she arrives, people huddled with cigarettes and easy conversation. The sight of them all does something funny to her stomach. Her skin is freezing, but it doesn’t bother her, just background noise to the main attraction.
The gallery owner and one of the curators are busy working when she gets inside. They pull her in for hugs and cheek kisses and spew praise. Violet tries to keep up with their gushing, but her eyes wander to the preparations that have been made.
Everything is perfect. Lights from the ceiling shine down on each painting, there are white twinkle lights hung around two podiums filled with articulated animal skeletons. The air inside is warm and the tile s swept. Her name looks beautiful in Helvetica at the entrance.
Her phone buzzes again. Friends on their way probably. Maybe Vivien or Ben.
The curator disappears for a moment and returns with three glasses of champagne. They toast to her and clink glasses. She waits until they’re not looking to down the entire flute in one tip.
Macaroons in pretty pastels on a plate have been placed at the long table near the back of the gallery where they store leftover prints from other exhibitions. The finger food looks amazing.
Violet isn’t hungry.
A boy, someone who must also work for the gallery, introduces himself and takes her coat. When he’s back from a locked door there are keys in his hand. His walk to the front of the gallery is measured in empty breaths and the slow swell of sound.
She feels her heartbeat everywhere.
The front doors crack open, letting in small talk, a freezing wind, and then people. It’s a steady trickle of mild excitement that Violet watches in slow motion as her own joy hits.
It’s happening. Her first grown-up, real world art show. As a little girl, making art was the one dream she wasn’t afraid to want. Watching as it swings low and within reach steals every sad, bad feeling she’s ever had and shuts them out.
Her parents are some of the first people inside, careful to admire Violet’s work on opposite walls while the space between them fills up with bodies.
Vivien finds her first. “Honey, this is so wonderful. I am so proud of you,” she coos, drawing Violet into a hug, petting down her hair. “I overheard people talking about putting an offer in on one of your pieces.
Violet smiles and nods, her brain on autopilot. It’s so loud. There are so many strangers’ faces looking into her paintings, it overwhelms.
Letting her mother pluck a rogue eyelash from her cheek, she waves Vivien off to check out the rest of the gallery and quarter-turns to embrace her father.
“Violet, you’re a vision,” he says, turning her in a circle with his hand in hers overhead. His eyes crinkle with his compliment. She smiles and nods.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Ben lifts a drink from the long table and sips. “I think I’m going to need one of these in my office,” he grins, gesturing to the room of color. The ice in his glass bobbles against the sweating plastic of the little cup.
Violet grins. “That’d be pretty sweet.” Then she’s swept out of sight by a arm linked within her own.
“Hey, bitch. Too cool to answer your phone?”
Madison Montgomery kisses her own fingers before pressing them to Violet’s lips. It’s their deal.
She and Violet met in high school, freshman year: glass art. Now she’s a big shot movie star with a penthouse on each coast. She’s the first person Violet is truly happy to see. Some of her nerves unspool.
Madison offers a sip of her drink. Violet pulls most of whatever’s inside. “Hey, bitch,” she parrots back. “Where’s Leah?”
Leah’s the girlfriend. A-list pouts. “She had a nursing final, couldn’t make it.”
After a little more catch up they walk the room together, Madison giving her review of each piece; she wants one of the triptychs for her bedroom.
More and more people flood in, filter out. A few old professors stop by, they love how her art has progressed, how she has incorporated something of William Turner’s style into her recent series.
Everyone writes sweet nothings in the guestbook with gilded edges.
Violet talks and drinks, gets swept up in anxiety and finds her footing again.
Two hours deep, her eyes stumble onto a strange-familiar face.
6C makes eye contact and threads his way through the crowd towards her. Violet looks for Madison, sees that she’s occupied with two people in the far corner.
If she weren’t four drinks in, she would probably feel something about this meeting. Guilty, pissed off, embarrassed?
All she feels is her hand sliding automatically into mystery boy’s grip.
“Hello 6D,” he says slowly, ducked down a little to hold her eyes.
Violet blinks. She feeds him her name, moves her hand like you should when it’s locked with a stranger’s.
“Hi Violet, I can see now why you needed the lights on last night. I’m Kyle. Really diggin’ what you’ve got going on here.”
Residual anger flares up and then fizzles at the reminder. “Wait, how did you know that was me? And how did you know I’d be here? Kyle, are you a stalker?”
He smiles that whitewhite smile that curls at the ends, and sways a little. After a dramatic pause, he tells her about the postcard pinned to the residents’ bulletin board. “And yeah, okay. Maybe I asked the old lady in G who the pretty blonde was.”
Maybe it’s that he’s tall and handsome or maybe it’s just because she’s drunk, but Violet fits into a smile of her own and laughs. “Creep.”
“Psycho,” he returns warmly. His cheek is paint-free. His hair too. Violet could change that.
That last thought catches her off-guard, she shakes it, steadies herself on the pre-washed bright navy of his blazer and the logo t-shirt he’s wearing underneath.
“Khakis are for old people and Best Buy employees,” she informs, and he opens his mouth in a laugh.
Kyle shrugs. “Well, we can’t all look like that.” His eyes are on her dress, her legs.
Suddenly she feels the cold in a room full of body heat and breath.
Other people in the peripheral are wanting her attention, asking for it with silent eyes. “Well it was nice meeting you, Kyle--”
“Are we good? I mean, can you forgive me for yesterday?”
Violet pretends to consider him, full on too much vodka to have any real animosity for someone so handsome. “I’ll think about it, but you will never fuck with my lights again.”
Kyle chuckles, “Scout’s honor,” and waves her off with a low bow. “Nice to meet you, Violet.”
She sees his mop of gold bob through the crowd a few times in the next hour. He spends time with each of her paintings and gets involved in tiny conversations over the ones where he lingers.
Violet takes to smiling and nodding again, surrounded by adoration. Most of the people who think they’ve got her art figured out are so wrong, but she listens patiently to their hair-brained opinions, all the while sipping drink after drink.
By eleven, she’s wasted. There aren’t enough macaroons and finger sandwiches in the room to save her. Her mirror pep talk earlier in the bathrooms about not getting too drunk tonight didn’t account for how having eyes all over her and her work would feel. There were just so many people talking at her, pointing, shoulders and chests skating by when she moved.
The lights are too bright and everywhere. She rubs at an eye gone fuzzy and smears eyeliner.
Vivien finds her up against one of the few bare walls attempting to appear sober.
“Hey, honey. How are you?”
Violet just looks. Her eyes are probably glassy. The room spins.
Vivien doesn’t take notice. “So, I saw you talking to a tall man earlier. Are you two…” She crosses her fingers with a smile. Violet reaches forward to physically separate them.
“No.”
Her mother shrugs. The next time she opens her mouth Violet can see that there’s something sad on her tongue.
Fuck no. Not tonight.
She can’t think about that tonight.
The crowd parts and she can see Kyle putting on his coat by the door. Violet snaps her arms around Violet in an aggressive hug, “Bye, Mom. I’m not feeling well. Let Dad and everybody know for me okay?” And before Vivien can respond, she is cutting through the dwindling number of people straight for Kyle.
She latches onto his arm, woozy but decisive. “I need to go. Take me home.”
Kyle startles and then grins when he sees it’s her pawing at his side. “Okay,” he replies easily, draping his coat around her shoulders instead of his own.
Shit. She left her coat in the back room. Whatever, it will still be there for the closing reception.
“Yeah, It’ll still be there,” Kyle agrees, which means her brain to mouth filter has clocked off for the night.
Great.
Fortunately, she sleeps the entire cab ride home.
Kyle holds her hair and bag when she pushes out of the car door to puke against the front of their apartment building.
He pays the driver and carries her up six flights of stairs when she won’t stop crying in front of the Out of Order sign on the elevator.
“My hero,” she babbles, righting herself with hands on his chest when they reach their floor. “Thanks for the ride, lift, carry. Whatever.”
Kyle has been smiling this entire ride home. He must be straight out of a Disney movie. Violet reaches to touch his teeth.
“You’re cute.”
He tries every key on her ring before the door opens. “You’re cute,” he shoots back, bending low for her arms when she lifts them. She swings on his neck for a second, feet in the air, smile high, and then drops down and totters into her apartment.
The door is already shut when she remembers to say goodnight.
“Bye!” she yells through the wood.
There’s a melodious knock and a quiet, “goodnight,” from the other side.
Violet sleeps in her dress on the couch.
When she wakes up Dorian is curled up on the small of her back and there is cat hair in her mouth. The ripe taste of vomit too.
The portrait of an artist.
-
The texts in her phone from after she left are, for the most part, understanding. Madison left a voicemail demanding they lunch before she jets off to New Zealand to start production on a new movie. Her parents record that they’ll both be in town for a few days and hope to spend some time with her when she’s free.
Maybe.
She strips and soaks in a bath so hot it turns her skin pink, then brushes her teeth, twice.
Her hangover is vicious.
“Why didn’t you start some coffee?” she gripes at Dorian who chirps and follows her into the kitchen, batting after the loose threads hanging from her towel.
It’s below freezing outside, snow shaken out of the sky in a lazy flurry. Violet dresses in black fleece-lined leggings and a mustard sweater, wraps her throat with taupe knit.
After lunch, she’s going to hole up at home for the rest of the day. Last night filled her social quota for the month at least. Being happy and engaging exhausted Violet. Home alone with a canvas and paint is where she belongs.
Sliding toes cold from hardwood into new sherpa moccasins is orgasmic. Her eyes are half in the back of her head when she opens the front door and nearly trips over a rolled newspaper on her mat.
Violet never put money into a subscription. Print is dead. Still, she picks it up to guess which one of her neighbors is missing the news.
On the front page, off to the right side, there is a little bolded title that’s been circled in blue ink.
Her show got a review.
Holy fucking shit.
Buzzing, any sleepiness and nausea temporarily muted, she stuffs the entire paper into her bag to read it together with Madison at the café.
But first she tears off a corner and scribbles a quick Thanks Kyle, stuffing the note under his door because it seriously could not have been anyone else. The entire building hates her.
-
She doesn’t tell Madison about where she got the paper or even mention the neighbor living in 6C; it isn’t important. They do, however, flip to page nine together and devour the rectangle of text regarding her show.
They’re calling her approach to Memento Mori refreshing and her execution brilliant, claiming that Violet Harmon might be one of the most important blossoming artists in the city.
“Fuck. And they even used a sexy picture of you, I’m jelly. This week’s People magazine has a photo of my ass fat on the cover.”
On the surface Violet scowls, but deep down she’s butterflies.
She’s might really fucking make it. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
No more freelance work, putting somebody else’s ideas on paper or wasting her talents on soulless advertising.
Free. No longer the little bird with clipped wings, Violet could be really and truly free.
Madison and her gab and sip Bloody Marys for the better part of an hour, but it’s not until Violet gets back home that she feels she can really celebrate.
Taking Dorian into her arms, she spins in a dizzy circle to The Ramones alone in her apartment, slides in socks with the heater breathing warmth.
“We’re gonna be okay,” she whispers against Dorian’s fur, “We really, really are.”
Her chest holds a lighter heart than she can ever remember.
-
Kyle asks her out to dinner that night, and Violet, she says yes. After a shitty college boyfriend, she hasn’t watered any new relationships. Home alone on Friday nights suits her better than heartache, but something about Kyle feels easy, harmless.
They go to a Greek restaurant he found during his own days of higher education; it’s good. There’s no sitting room, and that’s fine. Kyle towers over her in a green school sweatshirt and cargo pants while they enjoy gyros and a local band plays in a wide empty corner. Violet wishes they sang about more than girls and fucking, but it’s a free show and Kyle looks to be enjoying himself, his head moving in time with the bassline.
Kyle tells her he’s originally from Los Angeles then moved to New Orleans when his parents split, then here. He’s an engineer, one of the few people lucky enough to find a job straight out of school - reluctantly, Violet high fives him about it.
It’s the same twenty questions game she’s used to, but tonight doesn’t feel like a date. Even though Kyle pays and looks at her mouth when she talks, there’s no pressure.
After dinner, they shiverwalk two blocks to the movie theatre. A French Independent film just opened the night before, but they end up seeing the new frat pack comedy instead.
The past two days have felt like a cheery made-for-tv movie and the way Kyle kisses her at the end of the night is no different.
“I want to see you again,” he says after the mini lip lock, his voice low and his eyes half-shut.
Violet rolls her eyes. “I live across the hall.” Her hands are hanging onto the front of his sweatshirt. The door to her apartment is open.
“You can come in if you want,” she says, stepping over the threshold, putting a strip of metal between them. Kyle drinks in what he can see of her place from the doormat like it might reveal the secrets of the universe, but politely declines after a moment’s temptation.
“Nah, I’ve gotta be a gentleman about this, but maybe we could do something in a few days?”
It’s the beginning of something that doesn’t need a name.
-
Some nights when he’s home from work and she’s not painting or having awkward dinners with her parents, Kyle will cook or they’ll go out. They trade on where to eat and who pays for what and after food, usually they’ll go somewhere else, meet up with friends or go for drinks just the two of them.
Most of the time it’s easy, but there are conversation snags. Kyle gets skeeved out by her cynicism sometimes and even moreso whenever she talks about anything morbid. Mr. Positive only wants to banter about movies and tv, rage over which of his teams lost the night before.
It doesn’t feel like a forever thing and maybe that’s what she likes most about the whole idea. Violet doesn’t find herself replaying their nights together before sleep, doesn’t imagine the fit of his lips against hers when she’s painting. He doesn’t distract. But he’s cute and he’s nice to her and it’s kind of wonderful knowing you could cut and run without feeling torn open.
They haven’t fucked yet, but he’s been flat on his back without a shirt on, worn bruises from her mouth under his uniform polos the next morning.
This thing between them is just two stops from innocent.
“I’ve sold almost all of my pieces,” Violet tells him one night, cocooned in babysoft fleece on his sofa. There’s a game on, but neither of them are giving it much attention.
Kyle picks a piece of popcorn out of his fingers with his tongue. “Sweet! Doesn’t the gallery take a percent though?”
“Yeah, forty,” she shrugs, and speaks the rest hidden in layers of blanket with a quiet smile. “But I’m still going to be making like thirteen grand.”
His eyes go wide as coins. “No shit?! Congrats, babe!”
She flinches at the pet name, but leans into his offered kiss, pushing happiness through her hands and into his skin.
-
She’s had too many good days. Too many hours without feeling hollow, too many true smiles and finally having a sense of self-worth. Too many good phone calls about art with happy voices on the other end of the line. Too much life.
It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.
Violet wakes up the Sunday before her closing reception mid-panic attack. Her lungs are made of origami, folded up within themselves without any room for air. Her heart is a stone over coals, melting a hole through the back of her ribs, ready to spit itself onto the sheets.
The dream she’d torn herself from hadn’t been fantastical except for the fact that they were together again. Sitting on a riverbank with sandy feet and books, taking pictures of the summertime insects.
Turned over under the blankets with her face pressed down into the mattress, Violet can almost see the different cloud shapes in the neverland sky.
The air outside her covers is freezing.
She drags in breath after breath, pushes out a sob. In, out. In, out.
Why, why, why.
The stage lights go out on everything good in her life, everything being missed. Violet screams against the fluttering ache in her sides from crying, wholly consumed by all that they can no longer share. The opening of her show, the last book of their favorite series, the new restaurant on 8th with the best malted milkshakes in the world.
Every moment is half-experienced alone.
The entire world feels monochrome.
Dorian hops onto the bed and snuggles up on top of the covers. He pushes his nose against the barrier between them, makes a curious sound but Violet remains buried, wringing herself of yet another wave of unbearable loss. They are neverending, still crashing against her with the same force of the very first, years ago.
“I hate you,” she grits out, her fury aimed at the universe. It’s so horribly unfair, having to push forward alone, living for two.
Her gums are slick from crying, she can’t breathe through her nose anymore, just takes wet gulps of the air and sinks.
-
It’s a knock at the door that finally retches her from the bed. Throwing a plum sweatshirt over her sleep shirt and without bothering to change out of thermal pants into anything socially acceptable, Violet answers the door looking through ghosts of tears.
Kyle is standing there holding an empty measuring cup. Something in her belly squeezes, it’s like seeing him for the first time.
She can’t make out his expression before it turns to something vaguely concerned. “Are you okay?”
No.
Not even a little bit.
She closes her eyes to keep her breathing somewhat even, letting little stutters of breath pass through open lips, and slowly lifts her hands up to Kyle’s chest, anchors them in the open flaps of his dark flannel shirt.
He breathes in, a full, long breath that leaves her envious.
Violet surges up to steal it.
The glass in his hand drops. It doesn’t break.
In a flurry of movement and wanting to forget, Violet leads him backwards into her apartment, bangs the back of her leg when they fall in a heap back onto the couch.
Their teeth click on accident, but Violet wants him purposely vicious. “Please,” she feeds in past his lips, tearing at everything keeping them from touching skin to skin.
Kyle hesitates, pulls out of more than one kiss like he wants to say something, but doesn’t. It has never been like this between them.
She speaks over his uncertainty with her hands, her teeth.
“I just really, really need you to fuck me, okay?” she whispers with hardly any voice, her throat in ribbons from remembering. With a tiny amount of distance, she finds his eyes, “can you do that?”
Silence long enough for her to realize her feet are freezing, notice there’s stubble on Kyle’s jaw.
Violet follows the up-down bob of his adam’s apple and then a switch flips.
Hand coming up around her jaw, he presses all of himself more firmly down and takes her mouth, making sounds of his own when she whines. “Like this?”
The strung up ache in his voice drowns a little of Violet’s loss, puts things like the pressure from his hips at the forefront of her mind.
Her mouth goes dry. She settles for tying her legs around his waist in answer, maps the expanse of his back with her hands and soothes freshly popped blood vessels in his neck with her tongue.
The whole city block goes lopsided when Kyle strips off her bottoms and fumbles open the fly of his jeans in a clumsy rush to meet her demands. His face against her neck and his shoulderblades winged level with the ceiling, she opens her legs up around him.
“Do it,” she breathes, the back of his shirt raked up around her wrists and the heater growling overhead.
Her words roll through him, trickle down every step of his spine, and then he’s pushing inside.
Everything from there is a Jackson Pollock painting. Forceful and impulsive, entirely id. The only thing inside her head is wanting to put the drag of their skins on canvas with color.
Her mouth is full of prayer when she comes, shaking.
Kyle pulls the blanket onto her lap that’d been folded on the back of the couch and peels himself away from her, gets back onto his feet before she’s back in the atmosphere.
Violet would probably feel the creep of embarrassment if she weren’t so fucking blissed out. She unfolds the blanket over her legs and watches him . “Sorry about that.”
He doesn’t respond, just looks down at her shaped like a comma on the couch with a nest of hair around the sides of her face, then turns to pick his shirt from where Dorian’s snoozing on the floor.
Violet scrambles up to sit, blinks everything back into focus.
“When did you get that?” she asks slowly, pointing at Kyle’s arm. On his left tricep there’s a dotwork tattoo of some kind of bird skull. “I thought you hated tattoos.”
The muscles in Kyle’s back shift, reminding her of the way feathers ruffle. He doesn’t turn to face her again, pulls on his flannel one arm at a time looking at the door.
“He does.”
-
Tate.
The tall blond that fucked her into a coma earlier in the day was not Kyle, but Kyle’s brother.
Twin brother.
Violet discovers this and more during a phone call with Kyle. She doesn’t mention anything about how she and this Tate really met, feeds Kyle an easy lie that she’d seen him and his bird tattoo in the hall earlier.
Getting her head around the idea that there are two of them takes a while.
Twins. Her insides whine.
“Yeah he’s staying with me for awhile.”
Fucking his twin, even though it had been without her knowledge, feels like a betrayal. And Kyle is nice, he likes her.
Violet holds the phone with one shoulder, mixing up a salad on the kitchen counter. “Why?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Just until he gets into a new place,” Kyle says quickly, and then, “do you want to do something tonight?”
Subconsciously she shifts on her feet, the ache of Tate earlier still between her thighs. “I’ve got some phone calls to make, art stuff. But tomorrow, yeah?”
“Sure. Night, babe.”
Violet hangs up.
She eats without the tv or music on, sits on the couch where she’d come apart just this afternoon and feeds Dorian little slivers of cheese.
With the sun gone again, the unbearable strand of thought from this morning presents itself again, always lurking just below any temporary respite, but she doesn’t cry. She presses her legs more firmly together under the blanket over her knees and remembers Kyle’s brother with his breath in her ear and his hands holding her, pinning her in place for his hips.
The entire situation should revolt her, and it does - Tate will be sporting a black eye tomorrow - but it just felt so fucking good too. A loss of control she hasn’t allowed in forever.
After midnight, Dorian hogging up half her pillow, Violet falls asleep and dreams of double.
-
Kyle surprises her the next afternoon with tickets to a basketball game.
“Sports are stupid,” she says, sitting cross-legged in front of a new painting. The brush in her hand is still.
Working with others around feels strange. Her color exchange is private.
Ever optimistic, Kyle just laughs. “Whatever. Seeing them live is fun. Shitty food and beer and yelling, what’s not to love?”
Violet eyes him from the floor.
“Come on.”
Her to-do list is empty, lunch with Vivien and a hundred emails checked off. She folds with a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, but give me like twenty minutes to look a little less homeless.”
He smiles, does a little happy boy victory dance. “Yesyesyes. Okay, just come over when you’re ready.”
Evil twin is sprawled across an armchair reading when she lets herself in. He’s not just wearing different clothes than Kyle, but a different face altogether. It’s settled into a quiet scowl. (How did she ever think he was Kyle?)
His eyes pull up from the pages at the click of the door. Violet is wearing a burnt orange sweater over a light denim shirt, her twiggy little legs peeking out in their usual black leggings.
“Hi,” he says, expression plain. His eyes look so much darker than Kyle’s, their stare is heavy. Above one cheek is a purple-black crescent from her fist.
It is physically painful to keep from branding a red mark shaped like her palm across his cheek to match, but Violet manages, screws her mouth up into a wry grin. “Hi.”
She feels his eyes all through the apartment. Kyle is in the kitchen shaking up mixed drinks. “Hey you.”
Good twin beams and reaches to pinch at her cheek. “You’re so cute it’s annoying. Have you met my brother, Tate?”
Her eyes roll on their own, settle where Tate is spread out in his chair. The book in his hands looks old, the title too small to read from here but printed in gold on dark leather. “Kinda. Why aren’t you going?” she asks, voice raised in the long room.
Tate raises an eyebrow. “Sports are a fucking joke, like Bieber concerts for middle-aged men.”
Violet doesn’t want to laugh. She chugs the drink Kyle has just poured them and follows his quick exit. doesn’t let her eyes wander this time. “Okay, bye.”
-
It’s so loud in the stadium, whistles and drunks and those clappers people hold at either end of the court to distract the players.
Violet has three beers and some of Kyle’s nachos. He cheers and groans with the crowd, peeks through his fingers when the other team’s lead grows in the fourth quarter. She halves her time laughing at his reactions and trying to guess what Tate had been reading.
Probably something depressing, or fucked up.
After, Violet pets Kyle’s hair in the back of the cab. His head is in her lap, one arm hugging her shins. “I told you. Sports are stupid.”
Kyle isn’t really sulking, but he huffs. “Shut up, you.”
Usually this is where the night ends. Out of the taxi and up the elevator, but Violet doesn’t kiss Kyle goodnight and disappear. She follows him into his dark apartment and lets him lead.
They’re both in giggles over some crazy guy from the elevator. Kyle presses his finger against her mouth.
“Shhhh, my brother is asleep.”
“That beer was disgusting.”
Kyle hiccups. “I know.”
She wants the feeling of yesterday. The total eclipse of every bigbad in her head. She reels herself in against Kyle’s chest somewhere near the 4-disc stereo and talks to the dark. “Let’s go in your room.”
Kyle feels out for Violet’s face with one hand, cups her cheek so gently. “Okay.”
These apartments are only one bedrooms. Tate must be somewhere out in the black, sleeping on the couch or not.
They make it to bed and bury under covers. Violet takes off her leggings and the button-down under her sweater. Kyle strips until he’s just in boxers and pj pants. She’s glad the dark spares her the Superman print.
“So, maybe we try baseball next?” Kyle whispers, scooting into Violet’s space, putting his arm around her shoulders.
Violet makes gagging sounds. He kisses her quiet.
It starts slow and simple, but Violet doesn’t want that. Early on she tips up to straddle Kyle, her hair irritating and everywhere.
His hands are featherlight on her waist, even his mouth is cautious.
“Do you want to have sex?” she asks bluntly, rolling down over where Kyle’s hard. Are Tate and him identical? Dicks too?
He does want to.
They do.
It isn’t like it was with Tate. She doesn’t give herself over, can’t disappear into the rhythm of them together. Kyle holds her like she might break and for every push-pull of their bodies she is too present, too aware.
With Tate everything was raw. Need and flow. Like painting.
After, Kyle holds her up against his chest and they talk about nothing.
“My closing reception is this Sunday. Do you want to come?” she asks, a little sweaty, her skin sticky where they’re touching.
“Like a date?” His voice is a tease.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll be there.”
( Color Theory 2/2 )
Author: ohyellowbird
Summary: Violet is rushing to complete the last of her paintings before installation for her first solo show at a relevant gallery downtown when somebody in 6C cut the power.
Spoilers/Warning/Triggers: I don’t want to spoil anything. :)
Author Notes: I am so excited for this round of the exchange. I can’t wait to read all of your fics! I want to apologize to my prompter because this may have strayed a little from your suggestions. I chose to include the themes of betrayal and forgiveness, and death. There are characters from both season one and season three here. There are one or two twists in here. I hopehopehope you enjoy it! Love you guys!
Color Theory
Deadlines are bullshit.
So is the body’s reaction to them. Stress.
There are canvases like headstones set up against every stick of furniture, some of them still white and glaring while others burst with colors and movement.
Sad music plays from an open laptop on the window seat. Outside, in the dark, it snows.
Violet wipes a smear of cadmium red across her forehead, stains the corner of one blonde eyebrow. The sharp stink of turpentine is making her dizzy but installation is in eight hours and there are still pieces left half-finished and not started.
Set up for her first solo show.
At one of the most relevant galleries in town.
It would be exciting as fuck if she weren’t so terrified.
Dorian, a grey cat that has taken to snoozing on her fire escape before she’d shown mercy and let him in, walks figure-eights around her legs.
“Screw off, hairball,” she hisses after nearly tripping into a wet painting and righting herself at the last moment; her paintbrush blots a smudge of turquoise on the sofa arm.
By the end of the night there won’t enough paint thinner in the world to save the apartment, her hands, her hair.
Dorian meows and curls up behind one of the propped canvases, makes use of it like a tent.
Violet, stepping in bare feet over rinse cups and open newspapers covered in brushes, retreats to the kitchen for a rag and hot water to soak up the couch stain.
She’s rounding the counter with arms outstretched for the soap when the power cuts.
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
The corner of the microwave leaves a dent in her forehead.
She wants to feel out if it’s bleeding, but her hands are covered in paint.
Setup is in eight hours and her paintings aren’t finished and it is pitch-fucking-black.
From across the hall, there’s a loud, though amused, “Sorry!”
Her works are like landmines while she edges through the dark for the door, intent on tearing the a new asshole for the shithead responsible. Luckily, only one painting topples during her blind walk. Please god, don’t let it be something wet.
Once the chain and deadbolt are open, Violet steps boldly out into the hall with eyes open and unseeing, and screams.
“Which one of you degenerates fucked the power?!”
There’s the telling squeak of floorboards in more than one direction that mean she isn’t alone in the hall, but other than that there’s silence.
Violet counts to ten. It’s what her therapist-father was always asking of her as a girl.
She counts to ten, to twenty, then out loud to thirty. She breathes in, out, in, and tries not to think about how fucked she’s going to be come morning if she isn’t ready to install or how her reputation as an artist will already be in the shitter.
“If nobody fesses up to this shit, I swear to God I’ll burn this entire apartment building down.”
More silence.
A squeak.
The door across from hers opens.
“Wow, who crapped in your cereal? I said I was sorry.”
She doesn’t know the voice and she can’t see a face, but her hand finds the guilty asshole’s cheek with a hard, precise slap.
6C laughs. Violet fumes.
“Whatever you’re doing in there - washing your laundry or running a meth lab, I don’t give a shit - better not cut out the power again before tomorrow morning or I will break your fucking neck, you got me?
Warm breath. A shuffle of movement. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good,” Violet says, working the air out of the knuckles in both hands, before disappearing back into her apartment to find her phone and wait.
The Super gets the power back on in about twenty minutes.
The painting that fell had been wet. It leaves a nice imprint on the cream-colored rug in front of her couch.
Violet screams.
But she gets everything done. Without taking even a ten minute break to rest her wrist or smoke, she gets each and every piece to a place any outsider would call complete.
Two friends with a van waiting in the alley a few blocks down buzz in just after six to help with transporting and installation.
Violet fingercombs her hair and puts on a new sweater over the one she’d been wearing. Everything smells like chemicals and death, but her friends will understand.
They bring her a bouquet of wildflowers that she puts on top of the fridge for now, knowing Dorian will nibble the petals, and an Americano with more shots than letters in her name.
“Fuck, this is why we’re friends,” Violet coos, arms reverently outstretched, holding the coffee to her cheek for a moment of bliss before they brave the cold.
It takes three or four trips each to get everything downstairs safely. The van in the alley’s trunk has had shelves installed for this type of thing. Only one homemade canvas scares them, her largest piece - 4x4 feet - but with a little rearranging it fits.
She says a prayer to God, and also Jesus, and shuts both heavy, white doors.
“You guys wait here. Get the heater going. I’ve gotta run upstairs and brush my teeth, put on deodorant, y’know.”
It feels like there isn’t enough time, not until she’s gotten her paintings installed and her name and artist statement up on the wall and one hundred other little things done. Then she can rest. And hide, because, Jesus Christ, she looks like a fucking tweaker.
Hair in a bun and in a clean pair of jeans, with minty breath and mascara, Violet steps back into her flats and locks up; she’s lathered in lotion to conceal the worst of her Artist stink.
The elevator ride is quiet. People are up all around her, but few of them are leaving for work yet. The air when the doors open is new-morning crisp, she’s only just slowed down enough to take notice. It turns her cheeks and nose pink, her lips red.
On the way out the front door, she passes someone at the mailboxes sending off a letter. Hunkered over in a sweatshirt and pajama pants, a man with ridiculous, crazy blond hair looks up at the sound of her footfalls. “Morning,” he says amicably, flashing an electric white smile.
Violet’s steps stutter. She traces the sweep of her hair back to her bun and blinks doubletime.
“Hey,” she manages after a short delay and steps around him, eyes on the side of his face, on the leftovers of paint colors still crusted in his hair.
Almost at the van, she fantasizes about going back inside to ream him out for the night before and maybe to get a better look at him, but climbs into the back seat and lets his open smile be swallowed by nervous energy and the angry sounds of Friday morning commute.
-
Set up takes nine hours. She knew it was an all-day thing because of art school, but it doesn’t make the whole ordeal any less exhausting. By noon Violet is laying flat on the tile in the center of the gallery space, directing her friends, whom have risen in attendance, as to where each piece should be hung. In her crazed dash this morning, she’d forgotten to bring a level; thank Christ there’s an app for that.
There are black curtains over the front windows, hiding her show from the street until it is unveiled at the opening reception tonight. She imagines them stopping people on the street, peaking curiosities.
Ben and Vivien are coming, separately and with their idiot SOs. They’ve both left multiple voicemails about it, letting her know they’re in town, asking if she wanted to meet up for dinner one night.
She doesn’t.
Their facade of supporting her isn’t admirable. Neither of them have cared to visit until there was an event they can attend, then later brag about to their social circles.
Ben likes to think of her bright-colored abstractions as Rorschachs. They’re not.
Vivien worries about her being so obsessed with death. That’s not her concept, not only anyway.
They don’t get it. They can’t see why she’d prefer an overstimulating city to the suburbia. They think her friends are weird.
It’s all irrelevant anyway.
She doesn’t care.
Everything wraps up by 4:30. The podiums with postcards and information are out, the catering is taken care of, the ambiance is set.
Violet has three and a half hours before the gallery opens. She is a flight of butterflies. Four years and almost $100,000 of debt and this is going to give her the first idea of whether or not everything was worth it.
-
She sleeps for two hours, walks in the front door and passes out on the couch with an alarm set on her phone.
When it goes off she swears it had only been fifteen minutes. Her bones are still heavy. It takes a while staring at Dorian batting the gauzy white curtains to remember what tonight is, but even after that, she still moves slow.
Adrenaline and delirium will wake her up the closer the reception grows. Right now, everything is surreal.
A shower puts movement back into her, the water washing off last night and most of today, leaving her brand new when she steps out onto the rug and swipes wet fingers over her phone screen to turn the music up.
Conor Oberst sulks through the speaker.
She blowdries and straightens in a towel, then bends to the mirror for makeup.
And I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss.
So many men stronger than me have thrown their backs out trying to lift it.
Her lips look painted with fresh blood, but her hand shakes on the eyeliner, so difficult to make each eye match.
They better serve something hard at the show. It will take more than champagne to kill these creeping nerves, to stomp the hiccups out of her heart.
Armor isn’t heavy metal tonight, it’s black stretch with a dark floral pattern. Violet turns on the carpet in bare feet facing a mirror bolted to the back of her bedroom door. The thick black stripes running down the sides of her dress boost the illusion of curves.
All this make believe, makeup and frizz-free hair and this clinging dress, make Violet feel like she should be hung in the gallery next to her Untitleds. But agents and collectors want the package deal.
Tonight, she needs to be as pretty as her paintings, just as interesting.
The stilettos still boxed up, a gift from her mother, are too much though. She wants to bring something of herself downtown, a reminder that this entire reception is bullshit. It’s her art that matters.
Her phone lights up with another missed call, buzzes half a minute later with a voicemail. Violet feeds it into her clutch without looking at the screen.
Dorian wraps around her bare legs, reminding her to grab a coat, and purrs something of a good luck or goodbye when she’s slipping out the door.
Black on black velvet oxfords don’t click-clack down the stairs like high heels would have. They thump, thump, thump twice as slow as her heart is beating.
Showtime.
-
There’s a line forming down the side of the building when she arrives, people huddled with cigarettes and easy conversation. The sight of them all does something funny to her stomach. Her skin is freezing, but it doesn’t bother her, just background noise to the main attraction.
The gallery owner and one of the curators are busy working when she gets inside. They pull her in for hugs and cheek kisses and spew praise. Violet tries to keep up with their gushing, but her eyes wander to the preparations that have been made.
Everything is perfect. Lights from the ceiling shine down on each painting, there are white twinkle lights hung around two podiums filled with articulated animal skeletons. The air inside is warm and the tile s swept. Her name looks beautiful in Helvetica at the entrance.
Her phone buzzes again. Friends on their way probably. Maybe Vivien or Ben.
The curator disappears for a moment and returns with three glasses of champagne. They toast to her and clink glasses. She waits until they’re not looking to down the entire flute in one tip.
Macaroons in pretty pastels on a plate have been placed at the long table near the back of the gallery where they store leftover prints from other exhibitions. The finger food looks amazing.
Violet isn’t hungry.
A boy, someone who must also work for the gallery, introduces himself and takes her coat. When he’s back from a locked door there are keys in his hand. His walk to the front of the gallery is measured in empty breaths and the slow swell of sound.
She feels her heartbeat everywhere.
The front doors crack open, letting in small talk, a freezing wind, and then people. It’s a steady trickle of mild excitement that Violet watches in slow motion as her own joy hits.
It’s happening. Her first grown-up, real world art show. As a little girl, making art was the one dream she wasn’t afraid to want. Watching as it swings low and within reach steals every sad, bad feeling she’s ever had and shuts them out.
Her parents are some of the first people inside, careful to admire Violet’s work on opposite walls while the space between them fills up with bodies.
Vivien finds her first. “Honey, this is so wonderful. I am so proud of you,” she coos, drawing Violet into a hug, petting down her hair. “I overheard people talking about putting an offer in on one of your pieces.
Violet smiles and nods, her brain on autopilot. It’s so loud. There are so many strangers’ faces looking into her paintings, it overwhelms.
Letting her mother pluck a rogue eyelash from her cheek, she waves Vivien off to check out the rest of the gallery and quarter-turns to embrace her father.
“Violet, you’re a vision,” he says, turning her in a circle with his hand in hers overhead. His eyes crinkle with his compliment. She smiles and nods.
“Thanks, Dad.”
Ben lifts a drink from the long table and sips. “I think I’m going to need one of these in my office,” he grins, gesturing to the room of color. The ice in his glass bobbles against the sweating plastic of the little cup.
Violet grins. “That’d be pretty sweet.” Then she’s swept out of sight by a arm linked within her own.
“Hey, bitch. Too cool to answer your phone?”
Madison Montgomery kisses her own fingers before pressing them to Violet’s lips. It’s their deal.
She and Violet met in high school, freshman year: glass art. Now she’s a big shot movie star with a penthouse on each coast. She’s the first person Violet is truly happy to see. Some of her nerves unspool.
Madison offers a sip of her drink. Violet pulls most of whatever’s inside. “Hey, bitch,” she parrots back. “Where’s Leah?”
Leah’s the girlfriend. A-list pouts. “She had a nursing final, couldn’t make it.”
After a little more catch up they walk the room together, Madison giving her review of each piece; she wants one of the triptychs for her bedroom.
More and more people flood in, filter out. A few old professors stop by, they love how her art has progressed, how she has incorporated something of William Turner’s style into her recent series.
Everyone writes sweet nothings in the guestbook with gilded edges.
Violet talks and drinks, gets swept up in anxiety and finds her footing again.
Two hours deep, her eyes stumble onto a strange-familiar face.
6C makes eye contact and threads his way through the crowd towards her. Violet looks for Madison, sees that she’s occupied with two people in the far corner.
If she weren’t four drinks in, she would probably feel something about this meeting. Guilty, pissed off, embarrassed?
All she feels is her hand sliding automatically into mystery boy’s grip.
“Hello 6D,” he says slowly, ducked down a little to hold her eyes.
Violet blinks. She feeds him her name, moves her hand like you should when it’s locked with a stranger’s.
“Hi Violet, I can see now why you needed the lights on last night. I’m Kyle. Really diggin’ what you’ve got going on here.”
Residual anger flares up and then fizzles at the reminder. “Wait, how did you know that was me? And how did you know I’d be here? Kyle, are you a stalker?”
He smiles that whitewhite smile that curls at the ends, and sways a little. After a dramatic pause, he tells her about the postcard pinned to the residents’ bulletin board. “And yeah, okay. Maybe I asked the old lady in G who the pretty blonde was.”
Maybe it’s that he’s tall and handsome or maybe it’s just because she’s drunk, but Violet fits into a smile of her own and laughs. “Creep.”
“Psycho,” he returns warmly. His cheek is paint-free. His hair too. Violet could change that.
That last thought catches her off-guard, she shakes it, steadies herself on the pre-washed bright navy of his blazer and the logo t-shirt he’s wearing underneath.
“Khakis are for old people and Best Buy employees,” she informs, and he opens his mouth in a laugh.
Kyle shrugs. “Well, we can’t all look like that.” His eyes are on her dress, her legs.
Suddenly she feels the cold in a room full of body heat and breath.
Other people in the peripheral are wanting her attention, asking for it with silent eyes. “Well it was nice meeting you, Kyle--”
“Are we good? I mean, can you forgive me for yesterday?”
Violet pretends to consider him, full on too much vodka to have any real animosity for someone so handsome. “I’ll think about it, but you will never fuck with my lights again.”
Kyle chuckles, “Scout’s honor,” and waves her off with a low bow. “Nice to meet you, Violet.”
She sees his mop of gold bob through the crowd a few times in the next hour. He spends time with each of her paintings and gets involved in tiny conversations over the ones where he lingers.
Violet takes to smiling and nodding again, surrounded by adoration. Most of the people who think they’ve got her art figured out are so wrong, but she listens patiently to their hair-brained opinions, all the while sipping drink after drink.
By eleven, she’s wasted. There aren’t enough macaroons and finger sandwiches in the room to save her. Her mirror pep talk earlier in the bathrooms about not getting too drunk tonight didn’t account for how having eyes all over her and her work would feel. There were just so many people talking at her, pointing, shoulders and chests skating by when she moved.
The lights are too bright and everywhere. She rubs at an eye gone fuzzy and smears eyeliner.
Vivien finds her up against one of the few bare walls attempting to appear sober.
“Hey, honey. How are you?”
Violet just looks. Her eyes are probably glassy. The room spins.
Vivien doesn’t take notice. “So, I saw you talking to a tall man earlier. Are you two…” She crosses her fingers with a smile. Violet reaches forward to physically separate them.
“No.”
Her mother shrugs. The next time she opens her mouth Violet can see that there’s something sad on her tongue.
Fuck no. Not tonight.
She can’t think about that tonight.
The crowd parts and she can see Kyle putting on his coat by the door. Violet snaps her arms around Violet in an aggressive hug, “Bye, Mom. I’m not feeling well. Let Dad and everybody know for me okay?” And before Vivien can respond, she is cutting through the dwindling number of people straight for Kyle.
She latches onto his arm, woozy but decisive. “I need to go. Take me home.”
Kyle startles and then grins when he sees it’s her pawing at his side. “Okay,” he replies easily, draping his coat around her shoulders instead of his own.
Shit. She left her coat in the back room. Whatever, it will still be there for the closing reception.
“Yeah, It’ll still be there,” Kyle agrees, which means her brain to mouth filter has clocked off for the night.
Great.
Fortunately, she sleeps the entire cab ride home.
Kyle holds her hair and bag when she pushes out of the car door to puke against the front of their apartment building.
He pays the driver and carries her up six flights of stairs when she won’t stop crying in front of the Out of Order sign on the elevator.
“My hero,” she babbles, righting herself with hands on his chest when they reach their floor. “Thanks for the ride, lift, carry. Whatever.”
Kyle has been smiling this entire ride home. He must be straight out of a Disney movie. Violet reaches to touch his teeth.
“You’re cute.”
He tries every key on her ring before the door opens. “You’re cute,” he shoots back, bending low for her arms when she lifts them. She swings on his neck for a second, feet in the air, smile high, and then drops down and totters into her apartment.
The door is already shut when she remembers to say goodnight.
“Bye!” she yells through the wood.
There’s a melodious knock and a quiet, “goodnight,” from the other side.
Violet sleeps in her dress on the couch.
When she wakes up Dorian is curled up on the small of her back and there is cat hair in her mouth. The ripe taste of vomit too.
The portrait of an artist.
-
The texts in her phone from after she left are, for the most part, understanding. Madison left a voicemail demanding they lunch before she jets off to New Zealand to start production on a new movie. Her parents record that they’ll both be in town for a few days and hope to spend some time with her when she’s free.
Maybe.
She strips and soaks in a bath so hot it turns her skin pink, then brushes her teeth, twice.
Her hangover is vicious.
“Why didn’t you start some coffee?” she gripes at Dorian who chirps and follows her into the kitchen, batting after the loose threads hanging from her towel.
It’s below freezing outside, snow shaken out of the sky in a lazy flurry. Violet dresses in black fleece-lined leggings and a mustard sweater, wraps her throat with taupe knit.
After lunch, she’s going to hole up at home for the rest of the day. Last night filled her social quota for the month at least. Being happy and engaging exhausted Violet. Home alone with a canvas and paint is where she belongs.
Sliding toes cold from hardwood into new sherpa moccasins is orgasmic. Her eyes are half in the back of her head when she opens the front door and nearly trips over a rolled newspaper on her mat.
Violet never put money into a subscription. Print is dead. Still, she picks it up to guess which one of her neighbors is missing the news.
On the front page, off to the right side, there is a little bolded title that’s been circled in blue ink.
Her show got a review.
Holy fucking shit.
Buzzing, any sleepiness and nausea temporarily muted, she stuffs the entire paper into her bag to read it together with Madison at the café.
But first she tears off a corner and scribbles a quick Thanks Kyle, stuffing the note under his door because it seriously could not have been anyone else. The entire building hates her.
-
She doesn’t tell Madison about where she got the paper or even mention the neighbor living in 6C; it isn’t important. They do, however, flip to page nine together and devour the rectangle of text regarding her show.
They’re calling her approach to Memento Mori refreshing and her execution brilliant, claiming that Violet Harmon might be one of the most important blossoming artists in the city.
“Fuck. And they even used a sexy picture of you, I’m jelly. This week’s People magazine has a photo of my ass fat on the cover.”
On the surface Violet scowls, but deep down she’s butterflies.
She’s might really fucking make it. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
No more freelance work, putting somebody else’s ideas on paper or wasting her talents on soulless advertising.
Free. No longer the little bird with clipped wings, Violet could be really and truly free.
Madison and her gab and sip Bloody Marys for the better part of an hour, but it’s not until Violet gets back home that she feels she can really celebrate.
Taking Dorian into her arms, she spins in a dizzy circle to The Ramones alone in her apartment, slides in socks with the heater breathing warmth.
“We’re gonna be okay,” she whispers against Dorian’s fur, “We really, really are.”
Her chest holds a lighter heart than she can ever remember.
-
Kyle asks her out to dinner that night, and Violet, she says yes. After a shitty college boyfriend, she hasn’t watered any new relationships. Home alone on Friday nights suits her better than heartache, but something about Kyle feels easy, harmless.
They go to a Greek restaurant he found during his own days of higher education; it’s good. There’s no sitting room, and that’s fine. Kyle towers over her in a green school sweatshirt and cargo pants while they enjoy gyros and a local band plays in a wide empty corner. Violet wishes they sang about more than girls and fucking, but it’s a free show and Kyle looks to be enjoying himself, his head moving in time with the bassline.
Kyle tells her he’s originally from Los Angeles then moved to New Orleans when his parents split, then here. He’s an engineer, one of the few people lucky enough to find a job straight out of school - reluctantly, Violet high fives him about it.
It’s the same twenty questions game she’s used to, but tonight doesn’t feel like a date. Even though Kyle pays and looks at her mouth when she talks, there’s no pressure.
After dinner, they shiverwalk two blocks to the movie theatre. A French Independent film just opened the night before, but they end up seeing the new frat pack comedy instead.
The past two days have felt like a cheery made-for-tv movie and the way Kyle kisses her at the end of the night is no different.
“I want to see you again,” he says after the mini lip lock, his voice low and his eyes half-shut.
Violet rolls her eyes. “I live across the hall.” Her hands are hanging onto the front of his sweatshirt. The door to her apartment is open.
“You can come in if you want,” she says, stepping over the threshold, putting a strip of metal between them. Kyle drinks in what he can see of her place from the doormat like it might reveal the secrets of the universe, but politely declines after a moment’s temptation.
“Nah, I’ve gotta be a gentleman about this, but maybe we could do something in a few days?”
It’s the beginning of something that doesn’t need a name.
-
Some nights when he’s home from work and she’s not painting or having awkward dinners with her parents, Kyle will cook or they’ll go out. They trade on where to eat and who pays for what and after food, usually they’ll go somewhere else, meet up with friends or go for drinks just the two of them.
Most of the time it’s easy, but there are conversation snags. Kyle gets skeeved out by her cynicism sometimes and even moreso whenever she talks about anything morbid. Mr. Positive only wants to banter about movies and tv, rage over which of his teams lost the night before.
It doesn’t feel like a forever thing and maybe that’s what she likes most about the whole idea. Violet doesn’t find herself replaying their nights together before sleep, doesn’t imagine the fit of his lips against hers when she’s painting. He doesn’t distract. But he’s cute and he’s nice to her and it’s kind of wonderful knowing you could cut and run without feeling torn open.
They haven’t fucked yet, but he’s been flat on his back without a shirt on, worn bruises from her mouth under his uniform polos the next morning.
This thing between them is just two stops from innocent.
“I’ve sold almost all of my pieces,” Violet tells him one night, cocooned in babysoft fleece on his sofa. There’s a game on, but neither of them are giving it much attention.
Kyle picks a piece of popcorn out of his fingers with his tongue. “Sweet! Doesn’t the gallery take a percent though?”
“Yeah, forty,” she shrugs, and speaks the rest hidden in layers of blanket with a quiet smile. “But I’m still going to be making like thirteen grand.”
His eyes go wide as coins. “No shit?! Congrats, babe!”
She flinches at the pet name, but leans into his offered kiss, pushing happiness through her hands and into his skin.
-
She’s had too many good days. Too many hours without feeling hollow, too many true smiles and finally having a sense of self-worth. Too many good phone calls about art with happy voices on the other end of the line. Too much life.
It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped.
Violet wakes up the Sunday before her closing reception mid-panic attack. Her lungs are made of origami, folded up within themselves without any room for air. Her heart is a stone over coals, melting a hole through the back of her ribs, ready to spit itself onto the sheets.
The dream she’d torn herself from hadn’t been fantastical except for the fact that they were together again. Sitting on a riverbank with sandy feet and books, taking pictures of the summertime insects.
Turned over under the blankets with her face pressed down into the mattress, Violet can almost see the different cloud shapes in the neverland sky.
The air outside her covers is freezing.
She drags in breath after breath, pushes out a sob. In, out. In, out.
Why, why, why.
The stage lights go out on everything good in her life, everything being missed. Violet screams against the fluttering ache in her sides from crying, wholly consumed by all that they can no longer share. The opening of her show, the last book of their favorite series, the new restaurant on 8th with the best malted milkshakes in the world.
Every moment is half-experienced alone.
The entire world feels monochrome.
Dorian hops onto the bed and snuggles up on top of the covers. He pushes his nose against the barrier between them, makes a curious sound but Violet remains buried, wringing herself of yet another wave of unbearable loss. They are neverending, still crashing against her with the same force of the very first, years ago.
“I hate you,” she grits out, her fury aimed at the universe. It’s so horribly unfair, having to push forward alone, living for two.
Her gums are slick from crying, she can’t breathe through her nose anymore, just takes wet gulps of the air and sinks.
-
It’s a knock at the door that finally retches her from the bed. Throwing a plum sweatshirt over her sleep shirt and without bothering to change out of thermal pants into anything socially acceptable, Violet answers the door looking through ghosts of tears.
Kyle is standing there holding an empty measuring cup. Something in her belly squeezes, it’s like seeing him for the first time.
She can’t make out his expression before it turns to something vaguely concerned. “Are you okay?”
No.
Not even a little bit.
She closes her eyes to keep her breathing somewhat even, letting little stutters of breath pass through open lips, and slowly lifts her hands up to Kyle’s chest, anchors them in the open flaps of his dark flannel shirt.
He breathes in, a full, long breath that leaves her envious.
Violet surges up to steal it.
The glass in his hand drops. It doesn’t break.
In a flurry of movement and wanting to forget, Violet leads him backwards into her apartment, bangs the back of her leg when they fall in a heap back onto the couch.
Their teeth click on accident, but Violet wants him purposely vicious. “Please,” she feeds in past his lips, tearing at everything keeping them from touching skin to skin.
Kyle hesitates, pulls out of more than one kiss like he wants to say something, but doesn’t. It has never been like this between them.
She speaks over his uncertainty with her hands, her teeth.
“I just really, really need you to fuck me, okay?” she whispers with hardly any voice, her throat in ribbons from remembering. With a tiny amount of distance, she finds his eyes, “can you do that?”
Silence long enough for her to realize her feet are freezing, notice there’s stubble on Kyle’s jaw.
Violet follows the up-down bob of his adam’s apple and then a switch flips.
Hand coming up around her jaw, he presses all of himself more firmly down and takes her mouth, making sounds of his own when she whines. “Like this?”
The strung up ache in his voice drowns a little of Violet’s loss, puts things like the pressure from his hips at the forefront of her mind.
Her mouth goes dry. She settles for tying her legs around his waist in answer, maps the expanse of his back with her hands and soothes freshly popped blood vessels in his neck with her tongue.
The whole city block goes lopsided when Kyle strips off her bottoms and fumbles open the fly of his jeans in a clumsy rush to meet her demands. His face against her neck and his shoulderblades winged level with the ceiling, she opens her legs up around him.
“Do it,” she breathes, the back of his shirt raked up around her wrists and the heater growling overhead.
Her words roll through him, trickle down every step of his spine, and then he’s pushing inside.
Everything from there is a Jackson Pollock painting. Forceful and impulsive, entirely id. The only thing inside her head is wanting to put the drag of their skins on canvas with color.
Her mouth is full of prayer when she comes, shaking.
Kyle pulls the blanket onto her lap that’d been folded on the back of the couch and peels himself away from her, gets back onto his feet before she’s back in the atmosphere.
Violet would probably feel the creep of embarrassment if she weren’t so fucking blissed out. She unfolds the blanket over her legs and watches him . “Sorry about that.”
He doesn’t respond, just looks down at her shaped like a comma on the couch with a nest of hair around the sides of her face, then turns to pick his shirt from where Dorian’s snoozing on the floor.
Violet scrambles up to sit, blinks everything back into focus.
“When did you get that?” she asks slowly, pointing at Kyle’s arm. On his left tricep there’s a dotwork tattoo of some kind of bird skull. “I thought you hated tattoos.”
The muscles in Kyle’s back shift, reminding her of the way feathers ruffle. He doesn’t turn to face her again, pulls on his flannel one arm at a time looking at the door.
“He does.”
-
Tate.
The tall blond that fucked her into a coma earlier in the day was not Kyle, but Kyle’s brother.
Twin brother.
Violet discovers this and more during a phone call with Kyle. She doesn’t mention anything about how she and this Tate really met, feeds Kyle an easy lie that she’d seen him and his bird tattoo in the hall earlier.
Getting her head around the idea that there are two of them takes a while.
Twins. Her insides whine.
“Yeah he’s staying with me for awhile.”
Fucking his twin, even though it had been without her knowledge, feels like a betrayal. And Kyle is nice, he likes her.
Violet holds the phone with one shoulder, mixing up a salad on the kitchen counter. “Why?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Just until he gets into a new place,” Kyle says quickly, and then, “do you want to do something tonight?”
Subconsciously she shifts on her feet, the ache of Tate earlier still between her thighs. “I’ve got some phone calls to make, art stuff. But tomorrow, yeah?”
“Sure. Night, babe.”
Violet hangs up.
She eats without the tv or music on, sits on the couch where she’d come apart just this afternoon and feeds Dorian little slivers of cheese.
With the sun gone again, the unbearable strand of thought from this morning presents itself again, always lurking just below any temporary respite, but she doesn’t cry. She presses her legs more firmly together under the blanket over her knees and remembers Kyle’s brother with his breath in her ear and his hands holding her, pinning her in place for his hips.
The entire situation should revolt her, and it does - Tate will be sporting a black eye tomorrow - but it just felt so fucking good too. A loss of control she hasn’t allowed in forever.
After midnight, Dorian hogging up half her pillow, Violet falls asleep and dreams of double.
-
Kyle surprises her the next afternoon with tickets to a basketball game.
“Sports are stupid,” she says, sitting cross-legged in front of a new painting. The brush in her hand is still.
Working with others around feels strange. Her color exchange is private.
Ever optimistic, Kyle just laughs. “Whatever. Seeing them live is fun. Shitty food and beer and yelling, what’s not to love?”
Violet eyes him from the floor.
“Come on.”
Her to-do list is empty, lunch with Vivien and a hundred emails checked off. She folds with a long-suffering sigh. “Fine, but give me like twenty minutes to look a little less homeless.”
He smiles, does a little happy boy victory dance. “Yesyesyes. Okay, just come over when you’re ready.”
Evil twin is sprawled across an armchair reading when she lets herself in. He’s not just wearing different clothes than Kyle, but a different face altogether. It’s settled into a quiet scowl. (How did she ever think he was Kyle?)
His eyes pull up from the pages at the click of the door. Violet is wearing a burnt orange sweater over a light denim shirt, her twiggy little legs peeking out in their usual black leggings.
“Hi,” he says, expression plain. His eyes look so much darker than Kyle’s, their stare is heavy. Above one cheek is a purple-black crescent from her fist.
It is physically painful to keep from branding a red mark shaped like her palm across his cheek to match, but Violet manages, screws her mouth up into a wry grin. “Hi.”
She feels his eyes all through the apartment. Kyle is in the kitchen shaking up mixed drinks. “Hey you.”
Good twin beams and reaches to pinch at her cheek. “You’re so cute it’s annoying. Have you met my brother, Tate?”
Her eyes roll on their own, settle where Tate is spread out in his chair. The book in his hands looks old, the title too small to read from here but printed in gold on dark leather. “Kinda. Why aren’t you going?” she asks, voice raised in the long room.
Tate raises an eyebrow. “Sports are a fucking joke, like Bieber concerts for middle-aged men.”
Violet doesn’t want to laugh. She chugs the drink Kyle has just poured them and follows his quick exit. doesn’t let her eyes wander this time. “Okay, bye.”
-
It’s so loud in the stadium, whistles and drunks and those clappers people hold at either end of the court to distract the players.
Violet has three beers and some of Kyle’s nachos. He cheers and groans with the crowd, peeks through his fingers when the other team’s lead grows in the fourth quarter. She halves her time laughing at his reactions and trying to guess what Tate had been reading.
Probably something depressing, or fucked up.
After, Violet pets Kyle’s hair in the back of the cab. His head is in her lap, one arm hugging her shins. “I told you. Sports are stupid.”
Kyle isn’t really sulking, but he huffs. “Shut up, you.”
Usually this is where the night ends. Out of the taxi and up the elevator, but Violet doesn’t kiss Kyle goodnight and disappear. She follows him into his dark apartment and lets him lead.
They’re both in giggles over some crazy guy from the elevator. Kyle presses his finger against her mouth.
“Shhhh, my brother is asleep.”
“That beer was disgusting.”
Kyle hiccups. “I know.”
She wants the feeling of yesterday. The total eclipse of every bigbad in her head. She reels herself in against Kyle’s chest somewhere near the 4-disc stereo and talks to the dark. “Let’s go in your room.”
Kyle feels out for Violet’s face with one hand, cups her cheek so gently. “Okay.”
These apartments are only one bedrooms. Tate must be somewhere out in the black, sleeping on the couch or not.
They make it to bed and bury under covers. Violet takes off her leggings and the button-down under her sweater. Kyle strips until he’s just in boxers and pj pants. She’s glad the dark spares her the Superman print.
“So, maybe we try baseball next?” Kyle whispers, scooting into Violet’s space, putting his arm around her shoulders.
Violet makes gagging sounds. He kisses her quiet.
It starts slow and simple, but Violet doesn’t want that. Early on she tips up to straddle Kyle, her hair irritating and everywhere.
His hands are featherlight on her waist, even his mouth is cautious.
“Do you want to have sex?” she asks bluntly, rolling down over where Kyle’s hard. Are Tate and him identical? Dicks too?
He does want to.
They do.
It isn’t like it was with Tate. She doesn’t give herself over, can’t disappear into the rhythm of them together. Kyle holds her like she might break and for every push-pull of their bodies she is too present, too aware.
With Tate everything was raw. Need and flow. Like painting.
After, Kyle holds her up against his chest and they talk about nothing.
“My closing reception is this Sunday. Do you want to come?” she asks, a little sweaty, her skin sticky where they’re touching.
“Like a date?” His voice is a tease.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll be there.”
( Color Theory 2/2 )