“Theo, what are you—”
Audrey’s question turned into a squeak when he bent and picked her up, tossing her easily over one shoulder and locking the tops of her thighs tightly to his chest with his arm.
“Oh my god, put me down!” It was entirely unfair how strong he was.
“No.”
He shook his head and began to move, leaving the office and making his way over to a door set into the opposite wall. When he opened it, he took a few steps down a twisting staircase, and the upper floor of his house gradually faded away behind them.
“You’re going to hurt yourself! Put me down, I can walk!”
“No, trust me, this is better.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
“My studio. I don’t know if I got all the glass shards picked upwhen I was cleaning over the weekend, and I’d rather not risk your feet.”
“I’m wearing my Docs, I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t want it sticking in them.”
“They’re steel-toed and they have thick rubber soles. They’re literally work boots. I was in the lab today.”
“I said what I said.” He paused, contemplated something, and then lifted his free hand, jerked her laces free, and tugged her boots off before tossing them nonchalantly over his shoulder onto the landing. They bounced and skidded across his ceramic flooring, disappearing far out of reach upstairs.
“Hey! What the fuck, Theo, those were my shoes!”
He ignored her, gripping the banister tightly and moving carefully downstairs. But the light from upstairs eventually faded enough for Audrey to feel the beginnings of fear rise in her chest. His studio was dark, and it was getting darker still the more stairs they descended.
There must not have been any windows down there.
It was pitch-black.
“Th-Theo—!”
Her heart raced, so fast and so loud, she was convinced it echoed off the walls.
“I know, sweetheart. Hold on. Two more steps. Just a second.”
Theo turned and faced the wall when they made it to the basement floor, and Audrey drew in deep, gasping breaths, trying desperately not to panic when her face met the interminable blackness of the room. But right as she was about to close her eyes in terror, Theo flipped a few large switches on the wall—
And the studio exploded into color and light.
Signs of all kinds lined two of the three brick walls of the converted garage studio, the electrified shades of neon gas buzzing in delicate glass tubes. Everything from simple script phrases invarious fonts, to classic diner signs, to full, stylized images crafted with light were mounted into the brick, their myriad colors swirling and bleeding into one another on the dark concrete floors and bouncing off the metal garage door. Some of them moved and flashed, some of them were static, and some were brighter than others. But the largest sign was placed in the middle:Sullivan Lightworks, formed in bright, blocky, clean, and modern sans-serif yellow font. But that wasn’t all.
There were also the sculptures.
Some hung from the ceiling, neon plays on classic lighting fixtures rendered sharp and cartoonish with their perfectly curved lines in mocking facsimiles of antique chandeliers. Others stood in bases on the floor, upright and three-dimensional, arcing and curving in sweeping, interweaving abstract lines, alternating between chaos and grace, at once delicate and ephemeral, frantic and furious, futuristic and loud.
They screamed, but could shatter.
They were bright, but could break.
These were Lightm4st3r originals, and ones no one had ever seen out in the wild before.
Theo turned again and set her down on the surface of a work table that had been swept clean. There were several tables down there in the studio set between all kinds of untold machinery, tanks of gas and boxes of wires, scraps of metal and endless barrels of straight, glass tubing.
Chaos and beauty surrounded them.
