The Painter & The Pianist

ii.

CHAPTER TWO

"How long have you been sitting there?" Amadeus questioned, positioning himself on the armrest of the sofa. Monserrat remained silent, which, in Amadeus' opinion, put an enormous damper on the whole 'rekindle your relationship with your sensitive ex by barging into his life during a bout of drunken sadness' thing.

Amadeus began whistling. Monserrat, as expected, ignored him, like he'd been doing for the past few hours or so. Amadeus tilted his head to peer at the book Monserrat was reading. It was titled "The Obstacle is the Way."

Amadeus briefly wondered if it was as boring as it sounded, when all of the sudden an alarm began to go off, which seemed to come from Monserrat's watch, shrieking like some sort of dying iguana.

"Is your watch, like, possessed by a demon, or am I just going crazy?" 

Monserrat narrowed his eyes and quickly turned the watch off. "You're already crazy," he said. "And I... I have to go somewhere."

He looked at Amadeus. "Uh... so maybe... you should go... I mean you can't...." He cleared his throat. "I'm not comfortable with you staying here alone and if I don't go, my internship will be ruined. So, um, do you have anywhere..?"

Amadeus breathed an elongated sigh, then purposely fell off of the side of the couch with a dramatic gusto. "I guess I'll just go hang out with Uncle Marty, under the bridge where all the cool homeless kids do drugs," he whined.

Monserrat rolled his eyes, but let out a hint of a smile, tilting his face to the side to hide it. "Okay, have fun sweetie, but I have to feed Lennon first." When they were... dating, they had bought a chameleon together. After debating over what to name him for weeks, they had finally decided on 'John Lennon,' a man who was both an artist and a musician.

"Couldn't I just go with you to... wherever you have to go that's so important that you're debasing our parental bonding time?" Amadeus casually tossed one of the throw pillows into the air above him.

Monserrat bit his lip. Potentially, this could ease his concern about the apartment being destroyed, and allow him to keep his eye on an emotionally chaotic Amadeus, or, this could embarrass him in front of his respected colleagues and force him to actually interact with the Jew who was currently coming close to bursting one of Monserrat's favorite pillows.

He reached his arm over and snatched the pillow out of the air. "Don't do that, those pillows cost twice as much as the meth you were planning on buying today," he snapped. 

Amadeus grinned."So, is that a yes?" he inquired, propping himself up on his elbows. 

Monserrat gingerly placed the pillow back in its rightful place, and then spun around, a frown plastered on his face. "This is important, Amadeus, and you're..." he began, but promptly stopped himself from continuing.

"Hey! I'm what? Gorgeous..? Funny..? Um... Dapper..? C'mon, Mon, don't leave me hanging." Monserrat grumbled to himself something along the lines of 'a pompous prat' and walked to his room to get some clothes for him to be dressed in that preferably wouldn't be as degrading as the shorts Amadeus was wearing now. Shorts that seemed strikingly familiar.

"Did you take my pajama shorts? Because that is completely inexcusable, and if you've so much as torn one string of the fabric, I will leave you to 'Uncle Marty the drug dealer' more quickly than you can say thieving manpuppy," he shouted from the hallway, still walking towards his room.

"If you want these back, you're gonna have to get them yourself!" Amadeus said, a smirk on his face, as Monserrat stomped into the room with a nice black dress shirt and a pair of slacks in his hands.