Chapter Text
The paint’s peeling off the streets again
And I’ll drive and close my eyes in Michigan
And I feel nothing, not brave
It’s a hard day for breathing, again
"Paint's Peeling" by Rilo Kiley
A blank page…
Johnny stared at it until his mind matched its emptiness. His fingers, tightly pinching a graphite pencil, ached.
He moved to bring the pencil point to the pristine sheet, preparing to make a mark—but then stopped.
It was no use. He flipped his sketchbook closed and tossed it into his backpack. Between the covers, every page was blank.
--
The elevator was taking forever, but Johnny was grateful.
I can use this, he thought, looking at his watch. Class had started nearly twenty minutes ago. It’s not my fault I was late. The elevator was broken. No matter that he’d left ten minutes later than he should have. No matter that he hadn’t really wanted to come at all.
In fact… He still didn’t have to go. He could always turn around here, send the instructor an email: The elevator was broken, so I couldn’t get to the studio. Perfectly valid. Can’t expect the student in the wheelchair to get to the top floor.
Johnny could go right back home, right back to the bed that he’d rolled out of about fifteen minutes ago. Who cared that it was already past one p.m.? Not him, that was for sure. This busted elevator could be his escape from—
Ding. The doors opened.
Damnit. Johnny gripped his wheels and considered, once more, turning back regardless of the elevator’s functionality. But then he remembered the email exchange that had led him here.
Mr. Joestar—I heard that you were back in the city, so I wanted to reach out. It was from Steven Steel, a professor he’d had for one class back when this whole art school thing still seemed like a good idea. I have some of your paintings from your last semester, and was wondering if you’d like to get them back.
No thanks, Johnny had thought. But then he read on.
By the way: I know you’re not currently enrolled, but if you’d ever be interested in sitting in on one of my studio classes, I’d be happy to have you, Steel had written. Either way, let me know about your old paintings—it would be a waste to throw them out.
Johnny didn’t even remember Steel that well. He was just another vague, older male face, one that Johnny could only envision with pity in his eyes and useless critiques on his tongue.
A waste? If only he knew the kind of waste that Johnny was capable of.
He deleted the email.
And yet…for the rest of that evening, he couldn’t get the offer out of his head. An art class that was free of grades, free of homework, and—most importantly—free of charge? Maybe it could be helpful. Or at least just an entertaining waste of time. Maybe it would unblock him…
Well, that was unlikely. But he fished the email out of his trash anyway and told Steel he'd come. After all, it wasn’t like he had anything better to do. And when was the last time anyone had shown interest in his art?
Johnny entered the elevator and hit the button for the top floor.
Steel’s teaching studio enjoyed high ceilings and big windows that let in tons of light. The walls were plastered with an eclectic selection of references and inspirations: prints of Renaissance and Dutch masters next to movie posters, album covers, and pages torn from fashion magazines. Johnny didn’t know if the decor was exclusively Steel’s, but it sure gave off that “peculiar uncle” energy that seemed very like him.
“—warm-up,” Steel was saying to the gathered students when Johnny entered. He stood atop a short, wide pedestal in the center of the room, around which the class was assembled in a haphazard circle. “Then two ten-minutes, and ending with a twenty-minute pose.”
He saw Johnny and smiled. “Mr. Joestar! Glad you could make it.”
Several students twisted around in their chairs to get a look at the latecomer. Johnny cringed and ducked his head as he navigated his wheelchair to the nearest open spot.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Elevator’s busted.”
“Your timing is perfect—we’re just about to get started with some figure drawing,” Steel said. “We have a live model today.”
Johnny exhaled as he fished his supplies out of his backpack: the blank sketchbook, one pencil, and a soft eraser. He could do figure drawing. It was easy, even mindless when he got into the swing of it. Like a light jog for a marathon runner: an exercise so simple that it was almost beneath him. Or it would have been, if he’d been doing any other drawing in the last six months.
He picked up a nearby drawing board to balance on his lap and cracked his knuckles. Live model, huh? He would’ve preferred a still life setup to study, but this was fine.
Steel stepped down off of the platform and put a chair there. He draped a piece of fabric over it, arranging the folds in what Johnny supposed was meant to be an artful manner. Once he was satisfied with the setup, he turned his attention to a Japanese-style room divider screen that Johnny hadn’t noticed before.
“All right, Gyro,” he said. “Go ahead and get comfortable, then we’ll start with the two-minute poses.”
A voice replied from behind the screen: deep, musical, perhaps a bit bored. “If you’re ready.”
Their model stepped out. And Johnny—Johnny was not ready.
This “Gyro” guy looked more like a fashion model than a figure drawing one. He was tall—easily over six foot, though Johnny sometimes had a hard time judging from his vantage point—and tan, with blonde hair that cascaded well past his shoulders. But rather than the latest couture, he wore a purple silk robe and… presumably nothing else.
A nude live model?! The thought of this man getting naked in front of him made Johnny’s eyes bulge. He had to take his glasses off, clean them on his shirt, and put them back on. Get a hold of yourself, man.
Of course the model would be naked. That was typical in art classes. Johnny had participated in hundreds, if not thousands, of sessions just like this. There was nothing remotely suggestive about studying the human form for artistic purposes. The models weren’t there to be ogled, but observed; that was the norm.
Except, came his mutinous thoughts, models aren't normally this fucking hot!
He looked around the room and found he wasn’t the only one taken aback by the person Steel had found to pose for them. Two girls put their heads together and giggled softly. The model glanced at them and smirked.
Johnny took a deep breath and looked down at his sketchbook. At the blank page…
Gyro sauntered to the middle of the room.
“Hi, everyone,” he said, undoing the sash of his robe. “Thanks for having me. This is something I should probably be saying to my girlfriend, but it’s a pleasure to be naked for you today.”
That got some laughter, even from the serious students who appeared somehow unaffected by Gyro’s looks (or perhaps were just sublimating their lust into art). Johnny couldn’t help but roll his eyes. You can kind of just say anything when you’re that hot, huh?
He glanced up, just in time to see that Gyro had been looking at him. He had a quirk in his brow—he must’ve noticed Johnny’s dismissive expression.
Pursing his lips, Gyro adjusted the chair on the podium so that its back was directly towards Johnny. He disrobed and sat down facing away from him for the first pose: a demure, Thinker-esque posture with one leg folded over the other and his chin on his fist.
Shit… I pissed him off. Now he was probably going to get the worst angles.
Whatever, Johnny thought. He liked a challenge. Or, he used to.
“Two minutes starts now,” Steel said.
Johnny put his pencil to the blank page and, finally, marked it.
He began with a long, languid line that created the top of Gyro’s shoulders. Traced out his neck, slightly compressed. Made a gesture for the crown of his head, the fall of his hair. Then he looked up, his memory failing him for what came next.
Logically, he should have moved on to sketching out the proper proportions: visually measuring where to place the seat of the chair, the curve of a thigh, the locations of elbows, knees, ankles. Technique-wise, that was the correct place to start.
But Johnny’s eyes got stuck on Gyro's shoulderblades. The trapezius muscles there. How they came together gracefully, symmetrically, on either side of the spine. Then, the rear deltoids: defined, but not strained. He watched the afternoon light fall over this frame, warming the skin, inviting it to display its high and lowlights. He touched the paper…
“Next,” Steel said.
Gyro stood and cracked his neck, as if he too was just getting warmed up. Still with his back to Johnny, he clasped his arms behind him and tilted his head, a sort of homage to classical statuary.
Johnny looked down. He had drawn roughly three lines for the last pose; it barely suggested a human. Damnit.
He moved quickly to the next pose, restarting before the feeling of failure could sink in. In a few strokes, he sketched out the shape of Gyro’s torso, the placement of his head and legs. Then, he zeroed in on exacting the curvature of his arms.
Gyro had them in a really interesting position: twisted until his palms pressed against one another, facing out. It added some tension, some dynamism to the pose, like he’d stopped himself mid-stretch. The hands were large, long-fingered, a little veiny, clearly strong—and yet they still looked soft. The nails were painted an emerald green, and on one finger there was a golden ring.
Unwillingly, Johnny unfolded the model in his mind so as to confirm: the ring wasn’t on his left hand. Not that he cared about this man’s marital status. It was just interesting, what you could learn from looking at someone who was otherwise naked.
“Next pose,” Steel said. “Five minutes.”
He was walking around the room as everyone drew, checking in on the students and offering pointers. As Gyro was resetting for the next pose, Steel came up to Johnny and smiled.
“I’m glad you could make it,” he said in a quiet voice.
I almost didn’t, Johnny thought. He gave Steel a tight smile in return.
“Thanks for having me,” he said.
“Of course,” Steel said. He peered at what Johnny had drawn so far. “Hm. Looks like you might be getting caught up in the details on these quick poses.”
“Uh—yeah.” Johnny looked down and cleared his throat. “It’s, uh… It’s been a minute.”
“Take your time.”
Steel gave Johnny a nod and moved on. Johnny bit his lip, hard.
Take your time? What kind of bullshit was that? God—he knew that Steel was just trying to be nice, because he probably knew Johnny was having what his mother would unhelpfully call "a hard time" and he didn’t want to push, but—fuck, he just hated the goddamn kid gloves. Hated them after what happened to Nick, hated them after he was paralyzed, hated them now. How was he supposed to actually progress with critique like that? How was he supposed to get any better at the one thing he had left?!
His pencil tip snapped off. Johnny blinked. He didn’t realize he’d been pressing it to the paper that hard.
He glanced up at Gyro. For this pose, he’d put one foot up on the chair. He was in profile relative to Johnny. Johnny’s eyes swept over him, taking in the length of his legs, his biceps, the jut of his chin. For the first time, he noticed how his sandy beard was carefully shaved into squares.
He had to tear his eyes away. Gyro was so—so—visually interesting. It was unfair.
Johnny put down his board for a second and wheeled over to grab a pencil sharpener.
Get real, Joestar, he told himself. There was no way that Steel invited him to do this out of anything but pity. That hope that had been briefly kindled in him—that perhaps the older artist had seen something in him, something worth giving a shit about—was nothing but a delusion.
Everyone in the art community knew his story. They knew damn well about his brother, about his injury, about his dropping out of school. They knew that Johnny had never demonstrated so much as a fraction of the potential that Nick had, that even his father wouldn’t show him—not out of some adherence to meritocratic ideals, but because he didn’t think Johnny ever made anything worth exhibiting at one of his galleries.
Johnny looked at his pencil. What am I even doing with this…?
He forced himself to go back to where he’d been sitting and pick up the board again. The meager lines on his sketchbook page haunted him.
Maybe it was too soon after all. Too soon to try and get back into art. Too soon to come back to New York. Every day he’d spent in Kentucky, in that cavernous house where his mother fretted over him and his father (when he was there) avoided him, made him sink further into depression. But every day here was a reminder of the happiness he could never have, the beauty that he was locked out of. Just seeing it around him—the kids laughing together, the artists honing their craft, the leaves beginning to change—was too painful.
A beam of light pierced Johnny right in the eye, as if the sun had purposefully moved into the perfect place to blind him. He reflexively squinted and looked up.
For a moment, it looked as though the light was emanating from Gyro—like he was glowing with some otherworldly energy. Johnny blinked again, moving his head out of the sunbeam’s direct ray, and realized it was just the window behind him. A trick of the light, in other words.
What wasn’t a trick of the light, however, was that Gyro had committed the cardinal sin of a figure drawing model: he’d changed his posture mid-pose. Whereas before he’d been gazing to the left, he had now tilted his head enough that he could look right at Johnny.
Huh? Johnny looked around the room, at the peeved expressions on some of the other artists' faces. Gyro had totally just ruined their sketches by moving. But… why? The other pose didn’t look uncomfortable—if anything, this was more strenuous.
His trail of questioning went cold, however, as he studied Gyro’s face. The many other clamoring thoughts in his brain quieted, and then became silent.
Because with Gyro looking at him, the sun gilding him in the way that it was… How his golden hair fell gently across his strong shoulders and neck, like a ray of light woven into corporeality, a soft frame to his sharp features… The proud prominence of his nose, the perfect angle of his jaw, the gemlike glint of his green eyes…
Johnny's hand started to move, almost without his noticing. He found himself leaning forward, eyes falling into the step of that practiced dance: look up, absorb the image, look down, recreate it. Every time he returned his eyes to Gyro, he found Gyro looking right back at him.
I can’t believe I didn’t bring my colored pencils, he thought. Where did he even keep his colored pencils these days? Were they still in the boxes he hadn’t unpacked despite moving back here months ago? He hadn’t used them in so long… but not being able to capture the green of those eyes felt like a crime.
Gyro wasn’t hot. That was like saying the Venus de Milo was “hot”—so insufficient that it was amusing. He was beautiful.
“That’s five,” Steel said. “One more five minute pose and then we’ll take a break.”
Gyro straightened up, breaking the spell. It was only then that Johnny realized—or remembered—that he was completely naked.
He buried his head in his sketchbook, as if obsessing over some little details, his cheeks burning. Then, he realized what he’d drawn.
It was a portrait of Gyro. A quick, rough one, for sure, with flaws everywhere that he looked, but—it was him. The other sketches were just collections of lines, but this—this was a human.
“Start,” Steel said.
For this next pose, Gyro moved the chair aside to lay on his back on the raised platform, propped up on his elbows. He tipped his head back as if sunbathing, letting his hair fall freely behind him, and closed his eyes. If Johnny wasn’t mistaken, he was smiling ever so slightly—not so much that he couldn’t hold it for five minutes, but enough that it drew attention to his full lips.
It was the perfect angle for a profile portrait. Johnny got to work immediately. His hands felt warm, as if the sun was absorbing directly into his veins.
This time, he marked out Gyro’s edges first, sensing where to leave each suggestion: a shoulder, a hip, the top of his foot. The muscles no longer felt like discrete parts to tackle, but threads in a fuller tapestry. Johnny placed them and felt confident they were where they belonged.
He returned to Gyro’s head. The structure of his face. The way the light struck him. His expression, and the mood it conveyed: comfort, ease, confidence. He ought to have been vulnerable, exposed like this in front of so many eyes, but instead he took it in stride, made it look effortless.
And why shouldn’t he? He didn’t need the artists to create him. He was already created. Before he even stepped in this room, he was art.
“Pause,” Steel announced. “All right, let’s take a fifteen minute break.”
But Johnny didn’t want to pause. And Gyro didn’t open his eyes at first, either. As the other students around him shifted and shook out their wrists, mumbling to each other about foggy eyes and cramping hands, Johnny leaned in and drew faster.
Eventually Gyro took a deep breath; Johnny watched his chest expand. Then, as if waking from a nap, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. Johnny kept going, adding everything that he could until Gyro finally grabbed his robe and, to his immense chagrin, covered himself again.
He looked down, nearly panting, as if he’d just finished a sprint. And even though Gyro had moved, he remained as he was on the paper—still stretched out and languid, like a cat, completely assured of its utter necessity.
Johnny’s mouth was slightly agape. He… He actually drew something. Against all odds, the page was no longer blank.
He looked at his hands as if they were foreign to him, sudden interlopers grafted onto his wrists. How many times had he tried this—tried sketching something simple, far simpler than a human body—and been left near tears in frustration? The lines never seemed to meet in the right places, the values never quite matching up to reality, let alone the visions in his mind. How long, now, had he wondered if he would ever make art again…?
“Wow,” a voice above him said. “Impressive.”
Johnny’s head shot up. Standing before him with brows raised was the figure that had stepped out of his drawing: Gyro.
He almost jumped. It was as if he’d been doing sculpture studies at a museum and one of the marbles came to talk to him.
“Uh—thanks,” Johnny said. He resisted the urge to close his sketchbook, as if it was somehow inappropriate to show Gyro that he’d drawn him unclothed (even though that was the whole point).
Hands on his hips, Gyro leaned down for a better look. His hair almost brushed Johnny, and he felt the slightest suggestion of his body’s warmth. So not marble, then…
As he bent over, one edge of Gyro’s robe crept open, revealing his bare chest underneath. Johnny bit his tongue.
“You’re not one of Steel’s kids, are you?”
Johnny blinked. He lifted his eyes to find Gyro looking at him, rather than at his drawing. He couldn’t help but blush.
“Uh, no,” he said. “I’m not a student.”
“I could tell,” Gyro said. “You’re a lot better than the others.”
Johnny’s mouth opened, but his grasp of the English language had gotten ridiculously sweaty. Gyro smiled, and revealed shiny metal.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“...Johnny. Johnny Joestar.”
He feared that the name might provoke some recognition. But Gyro just extended his hand.
“Gyro Zeppeli,” he said.
Johnny grasped his hand and shook it. Just like he thought, Gyro’s palm was soft.
“Nice to meet you,” Gyro said. “Keep making me look as good as you can, yeah?”
His grin widened, until he had two full rows of golden teeth on display. Not only were they polished to a shine, but they were engraved: Go! Go! Zeppeli!
“Nyohoho!” Was that supposed to be a laugh? Johnny was so stunned by the sheer aesthetic unorthodoxy that he didn't—couldn't—respond.
With that, Gyro wandered off, surveying the other students’ work with his hands in his robe pockets. Johnny looked at his drawing, then back at the man who originated it, who had passed his confidence and power into the paper somehow—and all Johnny knew was the peerless pounding of his heart.
Steel reconvened the class and Gyro took his place for the first of the ten minute poses. He sat back in the chair, legs crossed at the ankles and hands behind his head, and again seemed to relax into the posture as if it came naturally to him. Like he was just doing what he always did, and the artists scrambling to capture him were not even important enough to be distracting.
Johnny had never drawn so fast in his life. He had a skeleton settled in thirty seconds, filled out the musculature in five minutes, and then took the rest of the time to revel in the finer points.
He traced every shadow with his pencil as if to touch them with his fingertips. Rendered the shine in Gyro’s hair so carefully it made him squint. Paid special attention to that face—the kind of face you’d see once on the subway and remember for the rest of your goddamn life.
“Time’s up,” Steel said, in what felt like a blink of an eye.
Gyro sat up, and glanced over at Johnny. The corners of his mouth twitched upward, and Johnny felt his fingers twitch. He wanted to draw that smile…
“Next ten.”
Gyro sat backwards in the chair, chuckling to himself. He tossed his hair over his shoulder. Before he’d even fully settled, Johnny was drawing him again.
“Well, that’s more like it!”
Johnny’s head shot up, a sharp remark on the tip of his tongue: shut up, I’m trying to focus. He had the tail of something in his grip, and he didn’t want to let it go. He bit it back just as he realized it was Steel, looking at his work.
“Really well done, Johnny,” he said. “You’re capturing the shapes very nicely.”
Johnny gave a perfunctory nod, but in his head he thought, fuck the shapes. The shapes were the easy part. He wanted the rest of it: the shifting quality of light, the microexpressions, the spirit, the meaning. The precious, temporary things that only art could render. The things that only he could see, in a language he barely remembered how to speak.
I need a brush, he thought for the first time in a year, the thought having become so foreign it was almost incomprehensible. He couldn't have thought it on purpose if he tried; something had to drag it out of him, against his will, against his better sense. I need a canvas, and paint.
Before he knew it, another ten minutes had gone by. Steel looked at his watch with a nod.
“All right, folks, here comes the moment you’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Final pose. Twenty minutes.”
Gyro rotated the chair. He sat down, clasped his hands in front of him, and looked directly at Johnny.
This one’s for me, Johnny realized. He adjusted his glasses and started.
Gyro Zeppeli. The more Johnny drew him, the more he felt like he knew him—and the more he realized that he had no actual information about him whatsoever. Who was this man who made strutting nude in front of an entire classroom look easy, even fun? He had an accent—where was he from? How did he come by this grace, this nonchalance, this apparent embrace of himself, of risk, of the uncertainty of another’s perception?
He took his time filling out Gyro’s body this time. His chest, arms, torso… He looked so strong, so complete. Johnny gnawed on his lip as he gave shape to the way Gyro’s skin betrayed the musculature beneath. He filled in, with short, shy strokes of his pencil, the dark hair that dusted his chest, trailing downward…
For the first time, Johnny paused in his frantic rendering. Obviously this was a nude figure drawing session, so drawing everything was allowed, even encouraged. But… for whatever reason… Whether it was the poses and angles Gyro chose, or the light, or Johnny’s own uncertainty, he hadn’t yet touched his… and by touched he meant sketched, of course, not, well, actually…
Mid-crisis, Johnny met Gyro’s eyes. It was so much harder when his model was looking right at him. Wherever Johnny looked, Gyro would see him looking.
But it’s part of the class, Johnny thought. If Gyro really didn’t want to be seen like that, he could have worn, like, skintight underwear. Some models did. Clearly, he didn’t care.
And anyway, this was art. It was neutral. Non-sexual.
Gyro’s expression was unreadable, or at least Johnny couldn’t parse it. But he seemed calm. He blinked, slowly.
Johnny let his pencil lead. He detailed out the sharp V that defined Gyro’s abdomen, dragging his eyes over it in a way that he told himself was purely artistic. Did Gyro say something about a girlfriend? Fuck it. Johnny stopped trying to hide his staring. Staring was the point, after all.
He worked out Gyro's torso for a minute before glancing up again. Gyro's face hadn’t changed, and yet the feeling of him was different somehow—like, if Johnny was painting him, he’d have to change his color palette. Was Johnny just imagining it? Or did he seem… pleased?
A feeling shot through him, from the top of his head to the pit of his stomach. It was like trying to fight in a dream, all molasses-slow, only to wake up really swinging—feeling the speed, the violence. The shock of the unreal becoming real.
Gyro could stand up right now, come over here, and lay the hands that Johnny had obsessed over on him. He wasn’t an image; he existed. If Johnny wanted to, he could go over there and feel the body he’d spent the last hour memorizing.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to look away. Of course, he couldn’t actually do that. And—and he didn’t want to. He had no idea who this man was.
Anyway, it was completely inappropriate to even consider thinking that way about a model just because they were naked. If Steel knew what Johnny had in mind about the innocent person he’d hired, he’d be ashamed—and he’d have every right to be. If Gyro knew what Johnny was thinking… he’d probably be disgusted.
And he'd have every right to be. Gyro didn't come here to be leered at. He came to be drawn by thoughtful students with actual talent worth nurturing, a group that didn't include Johnny. He, on the other hand, was washed-up. Or perhaps even that was too generous. To be a "has-been" implies that you were something of worth once, whereas Johnny...
I'm not Nick, he thought. And I never will be. So what's the point?
Johnny resigned himself to idly batting his pencil around the page, adding meaningless marks here and there to seem busy. Whatever elation he had felt so temporarily was soiled now. The rush of excitement was transmuted into shame.
“Time’s up,” Steel called, mercifully.
Johnny flipped his sketchbook closed immediately. That was it—class was over. This whole silly experiment was over and done with. All Johnny had left to do was leave.
The other students began getting up, gathering their things, and migrating to the exit. Johnny clenched his jaw. They basically formed a wall that he couldn’t get through unless he started ramming people. Which, mind you, he wasn’t against doing, but—
“Hold on a second, Johnny.”
Johnny closed his eyes and sighed. God damnit.
He turned to Steel. He was sporting a hopeful expression.
“Will I see you next week?” he asked.
“Uh…” Johnny glanced behind him, trying to judge how much longer he’d have to sit here. “I’m not sure.”
"Well, the invitation is always open." Steel folded his arms. "I'm sure you know this, but... it's important for us artists to keep exercising both our visual muscles and our literal muscles—hand-eye coordination and all that. I know it can be difficult at times, but..."
“Thanks,” Johnny said, hollowly. “It’s just that I’m… you know… trying to focus on my, like, health and stuff right now. So…”
He shrugged. Steel raised his hands in surrender.
“Of course, of course,” he said. He wasn’t going to be the professor who put too much pressure on the student who’d already shown himself to be unstable—no siree. Nobody wanted to have that responsibility.
It looked like the wall of bodies was clearing up. Johnny gave Steel one last nod and began to turn his chair around to leave.
“One more thing,” Steel said, before he could escape. “Your paintings, from your last semester.”
Johnny paused. “What about them?”
“I have them in storage here, and I’d like for you to have them back.” Steel rubbed his chin. “I’d keep them, but unfortunately I’m running out of space.”
Johnny's eyes were glued to the floor. Those paintings… from right before he left the city... He didn’t know if he could look at them, let alone take them home.
“You can get rid of them,” he said. “They were just experiments.”
Failed experiments. Time wasted as he was trying to figure out what the fuck he was doing and, more importantly, why.
“Johnny—”
“I really don’t want them, Steven.” Johnny clenched his fists in his lap. “Sorry.”
Steel gazed at him, brows drawn. Johnny had to look away. That look of disappointment… When would he ever be free of it?
“Hey, are you talking about these paintings over here?” A voice interrupted. “If you don’t want ‘em, I’ll take ‘em.”
Both Steel and Johnny looked up. Gyro poked his head from out behind the divider screen, evidently half-dressed.
“What?” Johnny stared at him, in a different way than before. “You… want them?”
“Sure.” Gyro shrugged. “I don’t have anything on my walls. And I’ll take anything I can get, especially if it’s free.”
He flashed them a smile. “Except for diseases.”
Steel looked to Johnny. “It’s up to you.”
“I mean…” Johnny looked back at Gyro, but he’d disappeared behind the screen again. “I guess you can have them.”
“Cool, thanks!” Gyro called from out of sight. “See you next week, Johnny.”
Johnny blinked rapidly. Steel’s smile had returned—smaller now, but renewed nonetheless. He looked expectantly at Johnny.
“See you next week?” he repeated, turning it into a question.
“I…”
Johnny thought of the sketchbook in his backpack. The no-longer-blank sketchbook. When he focused on that thought—the fact that he’d made art today for the first time in he didn’t want to think how long—all of his doubts wobbled like a late-stage Jenga tower.
Drawing Gyro felt so easy—when he focused on the drawing alone, at least. If he was back next week… if Johnny could do this again…
One more time, he thought. I just need to see it one more time.
He exhaled. “See you next week.”
--
When Johnny got back to his apartment, he opened his sketchbook again, as if to check that the work was really still there.
It was. And to his surprise, when he looked at it fresh, he… didn’t hate it.
The one he’d done of Gyro laying down, head tilted back, was his favorite. That relaxed pose made him want to fill in the blanks around the body, to put Gyro somewhere. At home, perhaps, in serene privacy. Or maybe by a river, fresh from a swim.
Dear God... he was having ideas.
Johnny turned from his desk. His studio apartment wasn’t much to look at. Although he’d been back in the city since the start of summer, he’d only unpacked the essentials, as if a part of him expected to move again soon. The walls were bare—except for a painting that hung over his bed, in the spot of honor.
It was one of Nicholas’s. A landscape. A simple scene from their childhood summers in Kentucky: a pasture with a hill, at the top of which sat a tree. The sun was setting in the painting. With care, his brother had managed to capture not only the way the light and land looked at that time of day, but how it felt—like well-deserved rest after a day of adventure.
Whenever Johnny looked at it, he felt that way again. Like he had when they were kids, traipsing through the countryside and drawing comics together, starring themselves. He felt that naivete reborn in him, and a deep awe that Nicholas had painted it into being while he was still a teenager.
Johnny gazed at the image. He’d always perceived it as a sunset. But he supposed it could have also been a sunrise.
Now, he thought, turning his attention to the boxes. Where did I put my colored pencils…?