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title: Painter Man date: september 03, 2002 He tells you, “I’d like to paint you,” and you’re ready to kiss him, there, with the lion on his house badge winking at you and his scratchy woollen vest twisted between your fingers. It’s winter now. Winter in all is wet, sodden, down-trodden dirty-snowed glory. It smells like home. It smells like the Eton prep, almost as big as Hogwarts but cleaner; sterile wood and rubber gloves for lab work in Chemistry. Eton with those terrible striped jumpers and the football boys, glowing in the sun, running after the ball and still running, never running out steam. You only run out of film. You’d like to paint, but you don’t know how. Painting comes naturally to him, because anything wooden and slim in his hand turns to magic; pure magic that makes your gut twist because you could never do something like that, never be someone like him. Ernie has been telling you, “He’s trouble, he is. Nothing but trouble. From the day he started talking to the snake in Duelling. I knew it straight from then.” No, you want to say. No, he’s lovely. He’s lovely. When you photograph things, they stay neatly encapsulated within their frames. They can move, but they don’t have residual energy spilling out around the edges, like he does. From a corner of a photograph, just continuously looking back and forth, a blurry face, he can somehow dominate the entire photo. You don’t know how, people call it presence, but then they don’t know about magic. “I’d like to paint you,” he says. “Can you meet me later tonight?” Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You stand in the old classroom, which smells of musk and dust and old preserving fluid. It must have been another Potions room, or something. It’s cold, and you’re only in your pyjamas and overcoat. You suddenly wish you weren’t wearing the stupid checkered slippers your mum gave you, they must look fucking ridiculous. You shake them off and slide them under a table. It’s colder now. But then he’s come in, smiling a bit, humming a tune under his breath, and then everything’s warmer. Like the sun’s come out, and it’s all gorgeous and sandy beaches and ice-cream shared by two people, licking messily to get to the centre, never knowing what would be there... “Do you mind stripping?” he says, and he’s almost apologetic. He puts down some books on sketching and oil painting and a shabby old diary. You want to take it from him and read through every page of his recorded life. “They’re kind of new paints,” he murmurs, almost to himself, as you unbutton your pyjama top. “Wizarding stuff. I’ve never tried them.” He watches as you step out of the pyjama trousers, breath steaming in the air. “Aren’t you cold?” he asks, curiously, beginning to unpack little tubs of murky colour. “N-no,” you reply. He walks to you and rubs his palms down your arms. “Nice,” he says, and turns his head to look up at you and smiles. You’re taller than him, but you’ve never noticed because you’ve never been this close to him before, and oh god. Oh god. He puts a hand on your naked hip and it burns. Then he dips a paintbrush into an opened tub and you’re too engrossed to notice that when paint drips on the floor, it hisses through. He’s got his face buried in the crook of your neck, hair tickling your shoulder, by the time he raises the brush to paint a long streak on your arm. It’s cold. Your arm stops moving, stops feeling, but all you really want to feel anyway is Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry. So cold. So warm. Brush. Mouth. You almost come, but Harry’s barely touched you anyway. Your entire arm is numb now, but then Harry’s nicking little crescent moons on your chest with his fingernails. Now it’s across your shoulders, and his kisses there are half memories, slowly glazing over with paint. Up your neck, across your nose, eyes wide but unpainted. Now your torso. The curve of your spine. Your legs, your groin, and you jerk and thrust against his hand, familiar sobs of frustration starting to surface again, at having something you want so near and yet so far. Harry rounds the tip of your cock and captures a drop of pre-come, suspended a milli-milli-litre from falling. You want to tell him something, but your ears are painted over and deaf, and your lips are flaking off. Your skin is crusting over. You feel heavy and you want to sleep, arms around him, whispering fingers over his stomach. He paints over a right eye, which solidifies and turns blind under the approach of his brush. Then he stops to turn around. Your left swivels madly and finally alights on the hazy mirage of a boy who looks like Harry, only stretched out -- thinner, taller.. He opens his arms to Harry, who drops his brush and runs into them, and suddenly the boy is as solid as anything, holding Harry like a father. But he winks at you with red eyes. Harry buries his head in the boy’s chest, and you can tell that this is home to Harry. And you won’t ever be, because now you’re nothing but a... *** The day after, there’s a new statue in the hall. Harry passes it by without a second glance, gently tucking his diary under his arm. “What should we call it?” asks Ron critically. “Not a terribly nice one.” “Colin, I think,” says Harry, and smiles like a snake. |
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