Thursdays
Notes: Thanks to Beth for encouragement
Techno rhythms pound against support beams and hardwood in the still mostly empty loft. Justin times his running leap from the bedroom, landing with a crash of drums and guitars that make him laugh, sliding spectacularly as his socks glide over the polished floors. He stops just short of the old sheet that serves as his dropcloth and with a giddy hop he launches himself onto his stage, hitching up his paint-spattered sweats as he dances over to the wooden crate that serves as his workstand. The arms of the soft charcoal sweatshirt are raggedly cut just above the elbow, the impatient work of a palette knife and a stubborn muse months ago. Justin likes the paint-dotted shirt too much to replace it.
His palette is ready as is his canvas and he twists right, then left, and takes a full turn looking upward, feeling his head get light and spinny before he reaches out for his brush and unerringly dabs it into the aqua.
It's Thursday, and he's indulging in what's rapidly becoming his favorite time. Justin time.
He knows there's a pun in there and makes a face at himself in the mirror before shimmying a line of color across the white canvas. The cd changes to Moby and he stretches his hands up high, psyching himself up for the real workout ahead. Moby kicks ass on canvas.
Brushes and body moving fast, he works quickly, letting the colors slide onto the canvas, using brushes first, and then his hands to translate the music and movement into something visual. He doesn't think as he works, pushing away the realities of the last few years - of his father rejecting him, of his relationship with Brian and whatever that was with Ethan, the whole dysfunctional circle of Liberty avenue friends and family, even the responsibility of being whatever he is to Gus.
Shit.
Is it any wonder his head is messed up? He isn't even 21 and he has enough issues to keep a shrink employed full-time. Thank goodness for Prof McLean's painting class. Rather than make his students sit in lecture for hours, he lets them paint, working where they chose as long as the assignments get done and since Brian and Justin still don't have a lot of money to rent a studio, and the loft is practically empty anyway, this is it. For now at least.
So, for four hours every Thursday, Justin has the loft all to himself, no work concerns, no worries about finding unexpected visitors - just himself and his music and his muse.
It is freedom like he's never experienced before and he loves it. Painting, which he has been struggling with, now flows, and his canvases are dynamic even to his hypercritical eyes.
He swivels his hips to the music as the brush insinuates a wave of lemonchiffon through the sea of darker colors. Justin's lips curls up as he pictures himself cutting a path through the men at Babylon straight to Brian. He is there, of course, a triangle of bold copper, off-center, but still the focus of everyone's attention.
Justin twists again, body supple, taking up a smaller brush, selecting other colors to fill in the lesser details – Emmett, the aqua of course, Ted in neutral browns and Michael in blue. The others are there but more subtly, all abstractions anyway so who will know. All included, and also witnesses. To him and Brian. Together. Deal with it.
Justin smiles dabbing the final bit of paint onto the canvas then raises his arms upward, arching his back in triumph just as the song ends. He catches sight of himself in the mirror and smiles.
Light from the late afternoon sun slants through the windows casting patterns through the loft. He moves, making the patterns dance and delights in the wonder of it. Next week, he decides, he'll play with shadows in his painting. He'll have to find the right music, though. Maybe Daphne will have some good suggestions.
Just for pure devilment, he turns his finished canvas a quarter-turn to the left and sets it back on the easel to finish drying. Let's see what Brian makes of that, he thinks, before bopping over to the kitchen for a candy bar and some soda.
He cleans himself up and then his supplies before restoring the loft to it's usual order. There's plenty of time for one of his favorite little indulgences - well, besides the second candy bar he's eating - so he kills the music and fishes around in the sofa cushions for the dvd remote, powering it on while he races up into the bedroom to his dresser where he extracts one of his secret stash of dvds from the place where Brian never looks - aka - the underwear drawer.
Brian loves to tease him about watching the PowerPuff Girls, but Justin doesn't mind. Sometimes Brian sits down next to him on the sofa and kind of pushes against him until they're mashed up nice and tight together and then they sit like that until the show ends. Justin likes those episodes the best.
He thinks that some day he might accidentally "forget" to put this dvd away just to see what happens. He can imagine being stretched out on the sofa watching with Brian pressed up all hard and warm against him, maybe even laughing a little at the terrible puns while Rocky and Bullwinkle try to foil Boris and Natasha's evil plots.
He can just imagine it.
He's still laughing when the door slides open and Brian enters, home early to surprise him. Justin dances over to greet him and the pizza Brian's balancing almost doesn't make it. Once dinner is safely on the table, they greet each other properly, which means the pizza gets cold, but they're both happy.
Later, they smush together on the sofa and watch Justin's DVD and Justin notices that sometimes Brian's lips move along with the dialogue. He leans up and kisses Brian and thinks that he really likes Thursdays.
:::END:::