let them boys be

(paint you my heart)

Summary: He's looking at her again.
Tags/Themes: first person pov. pining. onesided. paint. school setting. festival season?
Warnings: i wrote this as a writing exercise. i suck at painting. super short.

(paint you my heart) - 

He's looking at her again, his hands slowing, his eyes distant and that gag-worthy expression of utmost admiration on his stupid face. 

I sigh. Then, in one quick practised movement, I lift a spare paintbrush and whack him upside the head.

"Ow! What was that for!" he cries, clutching his head, eyes back on me.

"For making googly eyes at someone that's way out of your league," I reply, grabbing my paintbrush again. I'm amazed that my voice can still come out so calmly and so much like normal, like before when we were clearly just best friends and my mind didn't start to blur the lines between everything.

"But even you gotta admit she's one of a kind." He dips his brush into his carefully mixed sunset orange paint, eyes trailing to the girl, who's balancing on a ladder at the moment. "There's no law that says I can't feast my eyes on delicacies when they're right in front of me."

I snort. "Please don't ever say that again." I dab a blank spot with light blue, barely restraining myself from putting a hole into the cardboard. "You can be creepy all you want later, but we have to finish this today."

He frowns, glancing wistfully at the brunette beauty once more before returning to his steady careful strokes on the cardboard. 

I love watching him paint. Even if this is just a welcome sign for our school festival, that intense look of concentration on his face, the sure calm movements of his careful hands, the way the colours spill out evenly and vibrantly... It's like watching a sunrise for the first time: breathtakingly beautiful and infinitely awe-inspiring. I can say I'm jealous but mostly I just want him to never stop.

"Hey, I thought you said we had to finish this," he accuses, pointing his brush at me when he notices that I'm just sitting there watching him.

"We do," I say. I paint my side of the board quietly, trying and failing to find that perfect balance of his painting that he achieves as easily as breathing.

We work together easily and quickly, passing the paint back and forth without needing to speak. It was familiar, it was steady, and I find myself smiling slightly at our falling back to that years-old rhythm of teamwork. I can stay like this forever, with him.

Until, of course, I reach out to find the tray of red paint missing and look up to see him watching her again. I growl, glaring across the cardboard.

"Ow! Stop abusing your best friend!"

"Stop slacking off and ogling at girls, then!"

"I'm sorry!"

I sigh, releasing his hair and sitting back down. His hands go back to painting the letters elegantly and I go back to mixing paint. And then:

"Do you think she'll say yes if I asked her out with------"

"Eat paint!"