~ Josiah ~
I stood in the doorway to the old spare room, watching Bodean paint. The first light of morning came in low and cold through the big window, washing the walls in the kind of blue that only showed up on the far side of sunrise.
It spilled across the floorboards and climbed Bo's back, turning every scar and tattoo into a blacktop road map that pulsed with life whenever he moved.
He had his shirt off. He always did when he worked, claimed the fabric made his arms itch, but I figured it was because he liked the way the sun felt on his skin. He held the brush like a weapon—tight in his right hand, knuckles white, pinky finger flared out for control. Every stroke was deliberate, a slash or a caress, nothing in between.
He didn't know I was there. Or, more likely, he did, and was pretending not to. The room was silent but for the wet scratch of bristles against canvas and the soft slurp whenever he dipped for more paint.
On the side table, a mug of black coffee went cold beside a rag that used to be one of my shop towels. Oil, turpentine, and the bitter edge of caffeine filled the air, lacing it with a tension that was somehow more sacred than sexual.
When I'd decided to overhaul this room for him, I'd gone all in. If I was going to keep him, I was damn well going to give him a reason to stay.
I started with the floors, sanding off the old paint stains and years of cigarette burns until the wood glowed honey-gold. I bought an easel sturdy enough to survive a hurricane and a workbench with a drawer for every brush, pencil, and blade he could dream of.
The walls, once scabbed with thumbtack holes and sun-bleached posters, now held prints of artists I knew he worshipped: Basquiat, Francis Bacon, a couple of raw, furious things by Jenny Saville. I hung them exact and level, measured twice, stud finder be damned.
The real surprise had been the supplies. Bo talked a big game about how all he needed was a Sharpie and a scrap of cardboard, but I'd seen the way he lingered in the art aisle at the hardware store, fingers hovering over the expensive tubes of pigment and the synthetic brushes that came wrapped in plastic like contraband.
So I ordered it all. Professional-grade oils, graphite, pastels, even those delicate Japanese sumi inks he'd once ranted about after half a bottle of whiskey. I lined the shelves with blank canvases and sketchbooks, stacked by size and grain.
I found a first-edition copy of"The Art Spirit"by Robert Henri and left it on his desk with the page flagged where the old bastard said,"Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best."
When I first showed him the room—ten days ago, but it felt like forever—he'd stopped dead in the doorway. The paint on his hands was still wet; he wiped it on his jeans before he even stepped inside.
His eyes went everywhere at once, fast, like a stray dog checking for the catch before the treat. He didn't say shit for a full minute, which had to be a personal record. Then, real quiet: "This is for me?"
I shrugged, pretending I didn't care. "Nobody else here needs it."
He walked the perimeter, fingertips trailing over the shelves, the edges of the frames, the stacked canvases. When he found the paint, he picked up a tube and just stared at it, as if waiting for it to disappear.
He didn't cry, exactly, but he got that look on his face—eyebrows pinched, jaw working, whole body tense like he'd been sucker punched. "You didn't have to," he said.
"Yeah, I did," I told him. "Only way you'll ever get any fucking peace is if you have a place to make a mess."
He shook his head, lips pressed tight, then set the paint down with a care that told me exactly what it meant to him. For the rest of the night, he kept drifting back to the room, like he couldn't believe it was real.
Now, two weeks on, he was up before the sun every day, painting until his shoulders locked and the pads of his fingers stained blue and red. There were five finished canvases stacked against the closet wall, each one more brutal and beautiful than the last. He hadn't let me look at them yet, but I could smell the work in every molecule of air. Creation had its own ozone, its own static.
He glanced over his shoulder, and for a split second our eyes met. There was paint on his cheek, a dark green slash that made the rest of his face look brighter, sharper. He caught me looking, hesitated, then put down the brush.
"You gonna stand there all morning like a goddamn ghost?" he said, but his voice was soft.
I grinned, slow and mean. "Only if you keep working like that."
He ran a hand through his hair, leaving a smear of cobalt at the hairline. "Makes me nervous, you watching."
I shrugged. "Don't care. I like watching you."
He snorted, but his mouth twitched at the edge, like he was trying not to smile. Then he turned back to the easel, shoulders hunched, and started in on the canvas again—bolder now, like my gaze had given him an extra jolt.
I took a step inside, just enough to catch the full scope of the room. The sunlight was climbing, shooting shards of gold acrossthe desk, the floor, the curve of Bo's back. The smell—paint, sweat, bitter coffee—was thick enough to taste.
I wanted to cross the room, to wrap my arms around him from behind and press my mouth to the bruise at his neck, the one I'd left there two nights ago when I pinned him to the mattress and told him he'd never get away, not even if he begged. But I didn't. He needed this, the work, the privacy, the knowledge that I trusted him to make something out of nothing.
So I just watched, hands in my pockets, letting the pride and hunger wind together until I couldn't tell which was which.
He worked for another ten minutes, then paused and looked back again, this time with less bravado and more... uncertainty. "You got somewhere to be?" he asked.
