His Muse

A professional modeling career on the rise

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Given the fact that they had hours to kill by painting and talking, they each took turns rambling. They started with Kieran, since later on he'd have to stay still while Nic painted him. The kid was just as quiet about his life as he was in general, but there were a few tidbits Nic weaseled out of him now that a portion of his confidence was back.

"Wait, so where do you live? You never told me last week when we met," Nic asked, creating large brush strokes outside of the lines to fill in the background. He wrapped the colors around the edge of the canvas.

"I did't tell you because if you know, it'd be pretty easy to find me. I tend to think people are axe murderers at first glance," Kieran confessed, and Nic snorted, only to realize that Kieran was being entirely serious.

"No shit? Sav hardly seems like an axe murderer." Though, she does have a serial killer smile sometimes...

"Yeah, well. I like to think that if you keep your hopes low enough, you might be able to surprise yourself more frequently. That's basically the motto to live by in my major," he confessed, and after a quizzical look from Nic, he continued, "Environmental science. S'why I live at the Student Co-Op with all the other environmental students."

"Oh, that makes sense," Nic mused aloud. The Co-Op was the Arnette University's way of giving power to a bunch of plant nerds. It was sort of like a frat, but sort of not considering it was co-ed. It was on Frat Row, though. Nic saw it several times, and was shocked by the number of... signs out in their lawn. It was honestly the only lawn on Frat Row that even had trees for that matter, and a makeshift garden. "What's with all those signs out front?"

Kieran paused for a moment, and then said, "Oh, right, you're a freshmen. You probably don't know much about the frat guys on campus. There's almost an eighty percent higher chance of girls being raped by frat guys on campus, and there were several cases last year that were brushed under the rug. So we put all the signs up, and they can't tell us to take 'em down because it doesn't violate any rules."

"So, like, an anti-rape campaign."

"Exactly. It's funny because the University's board members were initially like, 'We'll do anything to make you take those signs down!' and when we found out that it wasn't violating any rules, we just gave 'em the middle finger and that was that. Some frat guys have frisbeed them across the road, but other than that... I mean, we started chaining them to the trees and stuff."

"Honestly the first time I saw the signs I thought they were, like, Beware Of Dog type stuff." Kieran laughed and shook his head, glancing out the window before turning back to where Nic was smiling softly, blending red into the background, and creating a soft glow where the window met the bricks. "Where do you normally live? Other than Arnette?"

"Illinois. Chicago suburbs," he replied, clearing his throat. "But I live here now, so... probably not going back to Chicago any time soon."

"Well, I'd take Oregon over Illinois any day, so that's not so bad," Nic murmured, swapping brushes to paint in the foundation of Kieran's skin color. Pale, almost pore-less like a mannequin, especially with the soft, indirect light of the sun. They were on the west side of the building, so it was all soft, glowing shadows in the morning.

"How long have you been drawing and painting?" Kieran asked as Nic started to get into the details of Kieran's face. He started with broad, wide strokes, and blended them in with patchworks of accented reds and pinks, and faint blues linking to the glow on the window—influence of the sky.