The studio
is a large and bare room, the top floor of a reformed industrial building, a
factory or a warehouse.
Neil walks in
suspiciously, as he always does with new places, cursing his agency for sending
him here to please the needs of the photographer instead of using one of their
usual locations. The fashion magazine featuring Neil wants a new aesthetic,
though, some purposefully rugged décor to go with the model: himself, all
ruined skin and striking pale eyes.
He’s twenty one and he’s got paint on his knuckles the color of coal dust, flecks of white smudging up his wrist like tiny snowflakes, a dash of fire red splashed across the bridge of his nose where he pushed his glasses up. Neil hasn’t painted like this since he was a baby, dipping his fingers into cold acrylic and smearing it across canvas like it means something. He tilts his head to the side and squints. There’s yellow ochre dancing on the edge of his glasses lens. He’s been careless with his glasses in a way he’s not careless with the art. Blue, he decides, it needs blue. Blue and black transform into violent clouds almost indigo, splashing over reds and yellows of flowers and bushes. His paint brushes sit abandoned and lonely in their little clay holder, just out of his reach. He’s almost tempted to reach for them but he leaves them out of reach for now.
The door in front of him bumps open, his cat King worming her way around drying paintings and wet paint to walk across the canvas in front of his, tracking her paws over the surface. She looks up at him, the canvas under her vibrating with a purr.
Neil snorts, covered fingertip to elbow in paints, and blows a raspberry in her face. “That was going to be my Mona Lisa,” He says very carefully.
Thanks for the prompt! It was super fun to write. Also, this is 2.5k because what even are drabbles. Anyway have some Foxes camping.
“—then he
feels something crawling up his arm, creeping—”
Next to
Nicky, Kevin shivers once, inching on the left to get away from Nicky’s wriggling
fingers. No one else reacts; Aaron even rolls his eyes.
“That’s the
lamest scary story I’ve heard,” he says.
“Like
you’re not gonna check your sleeping bag three times before going to sleep
now,” Nicky retorts. The Foxes exchange looks. Satisfied, he rests back on his
hands. “My work here is done.”
Renee gets
up when it becomes clear no one wants to take their turn after Nicky; they’ve
been unsuccessfully trying to scare each other for the past hour, but Andrew
can’t even be bothered to pay full attention.
ok but hear me out bc you know how in exy the players have these scarves they wear during games to keep their hair out of their eyes?
well what if. they flipped them around. so instead of a knot at the nape of their neck. it’s a lil bow on top of their head.
sO, here’s neil wearing the scarf as it’s supposed to be because ‘why would i wear it the other way around? that’s impractical’, nicky rocking the bow because you know he started it, and allison, because even though she’s a fashionista and a glaring orange scarf ain’t exactly runway material, she gave up her life for exy and would proudly represent her team and does in fact wear this scarf even outside of games
+ bonus andrew
he lost a bet and was forced to do this. if you ever mention it again, he won’t hesitate to pull up a knife on you.
Nothing but My Aching Soul 