It Felt Like Art.

A/N: So, this started out as a poem. But then it turned into a fic? And I don’t know what happened?
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Painting on skin was never like painting on canvas. The polyester never moves. It stares blankly down the barrel of each tube of paint and waits to be used. It doesn’t move. Doesn’t sway in the wind when the window is thrown open to get some air in. The painting needs to move. It needs to breathe, live. Needs to inhale dust and exhale smoke.

Rae always hated canvases. The stillness of the fabric. The way her acrylics dragged against the dull, stretched cotton locked away under thin layers of primer. It urked her. The fire that sat wet and delicate when it should have crackled and flickered against the swirl of color behind it. How, when she looked at the oceans she’d painted all she would see was a blur of white and grey and every shade of blue imaginable, because the waves never broke. Never crashed into the sand or crawled up the shore like they’re meant to.

She hated how dead it felt under her roaming, disappointed fingers. No amount of sunshine could brighten the colours; the moon beams were never able to illuminate her palette like she wanted them to.

Rae sighed into her tea, as she had been doing for the last twenty minutes. Chloe decided fifteen minutes ago to ignore the whinging, which made Rae sigh louder. Chloe never understood why artists were always so dramatic- Rae never understood how the Theater Major didn’t see this as ironic.

“I crave movement, Chloe.” Rae grumbled. “I crave more than just these fucking canvases.”

“Then take up dancing, babe,” Chloe said. Her feet were thrown up onto the sill of Rae’s window, crossed at the ankles, toes wiggling in the chilly London air. She twisted her head back enough to give Rae a tired, cheeky smile. “Maybe Salsa, yeah? Or ballroom. I dated a ballroom dancer once-”

“I know,” Rae waved her hand and continued to breathe in the steam from her cup. She knew this story and didn’t fancy going through the details of a prose she’d already memorized the lines to. “Dated the dance teacher, he taught you how to twirl yourself so you wouldn’t get dizzy. I know.”

“But I ended up dizzy anyway,” Chloe’s voice drifted, as if far away. Rae knew that tone, too. Dramatics, she thought, but refused to tell Chloe out loud that the bubble appeared above her head again. Hovering low and shouting dreams of What Ifs. Chloe cleared her throat. Shrugging, she spun around in the rotating chair and folded her arms primly over her chest. “Then paint something that moves, Rae.”

A smoke outside of a pub. That’s how it started, maybe. Not that she smoked. She just needed air. New things brought with them the anxiety and fear that one day they might turn into something. Something real, something more palpable than air, more tangible than rain, and even if this new world of slamming words against a wall like they were a disaster ripping themselves out of some strangers mouth seemed like an invitation she’d been waiting to get in the mail, it was new. And new things brought with them a furious fear.

Painting was her niche. She knew this. Words were only a second nature- the first was arching her hand and twisting her fingers around a thin brush and creating worlds she found dull and boring. Perhaps it was just the way she saw things. Chloe fell in love easily; maybe it was no surprise she had five of Rae’s pieces hung up on the walls of her flat. But Rae had a hard time seeing anything loveable about a painting that didn’t live. Didn’t swallow atmospheres and spit milky ways. She needed them to be more than paintings.

And maybe that was her problem. This new world didn’t seem to do anything more than tell her that she should be proud of everything that she is, of everything that she does. This poet spoke eloquently of loving something fierce inside of herself. As if she could that. As if there was anything to love.

Rae couldn’t help but think of the self-portrait she’d started five years ago and never finished. Torn at the corners from rough handling. Sealed over with dust. The paints have probably faded. Her hair must be the shade of dirt it becomes when it’s wet, her eyes must have turned emerald hidden away in caves, the color of her skin must have claimed the canvas and erased any lines deciphering chin from neck, neck from chest, chest from shoulder. It must not look like any Rae she would recognize.

Air.

She needed air. As she sat in the pub, dark with just one spotlight focused on the stage, thinking about art and motion, she realized her breath was caught. The poet’s words choked her lungs with the tails of their letters, each line bubbled in her throat, the hook of every ‘y’ caught the inside of her cheek and she felt like a fish out of water.

Chloe didn’t blink when Rae excused herself. Weaving through the tables in a daze, she refused to look the poet in the eye, in fear that her cards were sewn into the leather of her jacket; instead of falling where they may. Outside, the bite of the wind nipped and stung the skin of Rae’s neck and she welcomed them like kisses. It felt like art.

A smoke outside of a pub. That’s how it started, maybe. Not that she smoked. She just needed air. Air that had been tainted by tobacco; laced with nicotine. Smoke always made her heart race. The same way it did when Chloe burned one in a clothing store dressing room. The same way it did when Liam blew wisps into her waiting mouth. Her heart raced, just like it did now.

“What’s that face for?” he said. A voice in the shadows.

Rae took a deep breath and leaned against the wall of the pub. Nameless face, nameless place. No need for details, she thought. Don’t look into the dark. “Poetry, mostly.”

“Don’t like it, then?”

“Like it too much,” Rae’s hands shook as she remembered line after heartbreaking line. “Like it so much I feel it in my chest.”

“Breathe,” Nameless chuckled softly. Rae’s fingers twitched towards him. “Poetry helps you breathe if you let it.”

“I’m a painter,” she sighed, as if the thought of anything else giving her oxygen terrified her. The shadows moved slowly, and Rae watched Nameless move into the light, watched more shadows dance across his freckled face, slither down his arms, sneak to the toes of his shoes. “I don’t do poetry. I do art.”

“What makes you think there’s a difference?”

A smile. That’s how it started. A wicked, steady mouth.

Painting on skin was never like painting on canvas. Skin breathed. Skin was warm, flushed, it changed color and texture depending on where you touched, how you touched, how you felt running your fingers down the planes of a body you wanted to learn. As if it were a book. As if there were words scribed deep into the flesh like a tattoo. Rae wondered, a first, if he had tattoos. (He didn’t.) His body felt like art in motion. The blood that rushed like a running river, the heart that beat rhythms under the palm of her hand. This body was art.

“I don’t do poetry,” Rae would whisper. Finn would nod with his lips still pressed against her throat. “I do art.”

“Then paint, Rae.” he said. He always said it like this. With the lust that scratched at the back of his throat, clawing and desperate. “Paint.”

And she would paint. The lines of his chest; red as fire, heaving in time with the breaths that left his quivering mouth. The dip between his collarbones; yellow, warm as sun under her tongue. His neck; a deep purple for all the bruises she’s ever created there. The length of his thighs; a spattering of every colour on her palette. This body, she thought, shaking with delight and invincible pleasure, this body that trembled with every stroke she made with her brush, was art. His body was a canvas. Breathing, warm, living. He inhaled dust and exhaled smoke.

Words were Finn’s second love, Rae discovered. Stacey was his first, but Stacey wasn’t art. That’s what he told her when she kissed his shoulder as he wrote. Rae learned that Stacey wasn’t a flower. That she had teeth like a shark’s. That they had ripped through Finn’s flesh hungry for secrets.

(Finn had secrets. But so did everyone else.)

Finn knew what art tasted like, now. It was sweet on his tongue. It tasted like wrapped legs around his neck, nails digging into the skin of his arms. Art tasted like acrylic paint and retardant. You’re not supposed to put those in your mouth but Rae never meant to get it on her thighs. That was Finn’s fault. Skin slid against skin and they became a painting. Heaving and breathless, they lay on the floor of Rae’s flat like a mural of colours.

“So this is art, right?” Finn chuckled. Rae looked at their arms and saw the sky. She didn’t remember how that happened but she reached out to intertwine their fingers, red. Burning embers catching each other’s fire to create a bond. “Poetry doesn’t look like this.”

“Poetry sounds like this feels,” Rae said. The inside of her thighs were purple. The bruises from Finn’s neck. “Poetry feels just like this.”

“You’re gonna become a poem one day, Rae.” Finn crawled over to her and swung his leg over her hips, pressed his forehead to hers, and she felt like there was a goodbye in his lips. “I’ll write it myself.”

The phases of the moon repeated themselves four times. Rae missed painting. That’s not to say she stopped. She didn’t. She even managed to dig up her self-portrait. It was covered in dust, but the abstract lines and the curve of her lips still reminded her of plaster. Her eyes still looked made of glass. Nothing faded. So, she painted. Monotonously.

She missed painting. She missed a canvas that breathed. A canvas that breathed with her.

See, new things brought with them the anxiety and fear that one day they might turn into something. Something real. Something more palpable than air. And it did. It brought with them heartache and rusty words that sat on her tongue like a disease she couldn’t get rid of. Maybe she didn’t want to get rid of it. It reminded her that art isn’t supposed to be sweet. It’s supposed to be real. And this- the tears in her heart, the vodka in her system, the piece of paper he left on her bed that read: Dear Rae- this was all real. Tangible. And the thing about reality is that it hurts.

-
Dear Rae,

You said that you craved motion. I’m sorry that I’m made of wind. I’m sorry you couldn’t paint yourself wings.

Love, Finn. xx

A poem. That’s how it ended.

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