For Research Purposes | ✔

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

     Sage's week goes like this: class, researching between classes, getting fucked by Sam between research, and then painting Sam between getting fucked by him.

     The painting Sam is not a new thing for Sage. It's actually been his best kept secret for three years — a dirty little thing that he's always kind of pretended he never did. Yeah, no, portraits of Sam were just osmosing their way under his bed.

     The thing is the painting Sam thing has gotten kind of completely out of control. It's gone from something he did once in a while, usually after an especially aggravating day with the boy, to a thing he absolutely has to do after they fuck, otherwise, he will, in fact, implode.

     Sage is pretty self aware. He can be willfully ignorant all he wants, but he knows that the painting Sam thing is very much a reflection of his feelings, feelings he can't express, so he hides them instead. And every time they fuck, the feelings get stronger.

     And every time they fuck, Sage thinks I'm in love with you. 

     But he can't say it and he can't do anything about it, so he's painting. He's painting Sam.

     It's Saturday night, and he's been sitting by the windows for hours. He finished a piece earlier in the day and had started something new. It's Sam but he can pretend it isn't for the moment, because it's a corner of his face, eye and eyebrow, half his nose and lips. It's an abstraction of Sam. He's covered the canvas in a thin layer of warm chestnut brown. He's working with watercolors for this one and layering all the details on the brown will aid in the dimension. But right now, it's nothing. Right now, it's just a murky outline of a person. Anyone.

     Sage listens to post-war jazz when he paints, which is a thing he picked up from his father. He doesn't listen to it anywhere else. It's definitely not his preferred music but he has a pavlov association of jazz music and creativity, probably from painting with his father growing up.

     It's getting late and he's hungry so he's about to stop and order something to eat when there's a knock at his door. His immediate thought is that it's Sam. He goes rigid in his spot, glancing from the door to the painting. It doesn't look like Sam. He knows it doesn't. Not yet, at least. But he still feels like he's been caught doing something.

     "I know you're in there, Sage, I can hear your music," Sam says on the other side of the door after a long pause. Sage grabs his phone, cutting the music like that's going to help anything.

     His heart is racing and there's paint caked under his nails. It's stained his fingers and splattered over the backs of his arms. All over his tee shirt. He takes it off, tossing it behind him as he goes to get the door. He opens it just enough to be visible, raising both eyebrows at Sam.

     Sam looks good, always does, but this is fresh. He must've seen his barber earlier because his fade is sharp, and his eyebrows have been cleaned up. He's wearing a white button-up, the top buttons undone, and there's a suit jacket in his hand. Sage wants to ask about it but he's got a portrait that will be Sam when it's finished less than thirty feet away.

     So instead he says, "Hey," aiming for casual.

     "Uh, hey? What're you doing?" Sam asks mimicking his expression but with more scrutiny in the brows. He smells good, too, and Sam rarely wears cologne. Sage wants to question all of it, the daytime suit, the unexpected visit, but he'd like to question these things not in the doorway of his apartment where he's storing a questionable amount of Sam contraband. One would think it was the night before his Sam exhibition opening.

     Sage thinks depending on how this goes he might have to do a Sam exhibition, call it heartbreak in motion or something equally as dramatic and pathetic.