Work Text:
Red
I sit tucked under Matt's arm, despite the unusual heat of a Georgian October, a heavy photo album in my lap. He tells me little stories as I admire the photos, recalling memories with a smile in his voice.
Matt and his brothers each have an album dedicated to documenting their growing up, but inevitably, there are many pictures of them together in the albums — Nick, he tells me, is the boy his 11 year old self is engaged in a lightsaber duel with; he's eight years old, and the baby he's cradling in his arms, with the aide of a pillow in his lap, is Tyler, about a week after he was born; in another, he's thirteen, peering over Lucas' shoulder to guide him through the game he's playing, matching looks of intense concentration on their faces.
There are photos of the first time he stood on his own, of him grinning the day he learned to ride a bike. In one picture, he stands pool side, doubled over laughing at something beyond the frame. In another, he's beaming, showing off the space left by a missing tooth. There are several candids of him at various ages with a console in his hand, or sitting at a computer desk; one of them shows him asleep on the couch, still wearing his glasses, a Game Over message displayed on the television screen.
In one photo, a grey-muzzled Rottweiler has him pinned to the floor, licking the side of his face. He's laughing, his hands blurred just a little, petting it maybe, or trying to push it off; but even with the fuzziness, I can see that there's a hospital bracelet on his wrist. Neither of us mention it.
We flip through pages and pages of tangled timelines — his childhood, his adolescence, holidays and birthdays, snapshots of achievements and smiles, glimpses of obvious "do you really need to take a picture?" moments that result in awkward poses and near-grimaces.
It's towards the back of the album that I see them.
In the first picture, Matt's smiling a little awkwardly under fluorescent lights, his nose is colored a sore-looking dark blush, and in his left nostril is a little, silver stud. In the second picture, the stud has been replaced with a little black hoop. Matt looks bashfully into the camera, shoulders rolled forward under a black-and-white striped shirt, stained hands tucked into the pockets of a pair of skinny jeans, his hair a mop of brilliant cherry red.
"I was 15," he says defensively. "I had a sorta…punky phase for a year 'r two. Thought I looked kinda, I dunno, edgy or some shit," he shrugs a shoulder, chuckling uneasily.
I turn until I can see his face, reaching up to touch his jaw and gently turn his head to the side. He's watching me curiously from the corner of his eye, and I'm trying to imagine him with a shiny little ring in his nose and startlingly red hair, but I can't quite see anything but chestnut brown tresses. I poke the side of his nose, and he pants a little laugh.
"So what d'you think? Think 15 year old me woulda had a chance with 15 year old you?" He drawls, teasing, relaxed knowing that I'm not going to mock him. I nod, feeling his lips curve into a smile as I touch a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.
Orange
"Hey, Nate? You awake?"
"…Barely."
"…Can I ask you somethin'?"
"Mhm."
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
"The egg… Eggs were being laid for millions of years before anything evolved into what we know as a chicken."
"…I meant chicken eggs…"
"That isn't what you asked."
"Okay — the chicken or the chicken egg?"
"The chicken, then. Something would have had to evolve into a chicken before it could breed and lay an egg that would produce a chicken."
"…You really thought about this, huh?"
"Mhhhm."
"…Baby?"
"Yes?"
"Glass half empty or half full?"
"Mm…that depends on how the water level got to that point; were you pouring water into, or out of the glass?"
"Huh. Guess so."
"Oranges."
"Nngh, what?"
"Oranges."
"What about them?"
"Are they named for the color, or was the color named after them?"
"…I…I don't know."
"…Last one, promise."
"Nnnhm."
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
"…Go to sleep, Matt."
Yellow
His hair is a rich, dark, brown. His eyes are mesmerising sapphire blue. His mole-speckled skin is a canvas for largely-dark hues — smokey grays, deep forest greens, midnight blues, and inky blacks. But to me, he's yellow.
Honey-hued when he holds me in the dark, hands warm and eager, his touch melting over my skin.
The warm glow of a candle when I recede into my mind, the gentle light a beacon, drawing me in, drawing me out.
Striking as highlighter ink when his moods are poor, attention grabbing, eye catching in all the wrong ways, disconcertingly vivid; or else the desaturated yellow of thin cloud cover over the morning sun, it's radiance just out of reach.
His smiles, his laughter, his joy, like the summer sun, brilliantly bright and bone-deep warm.
His heart is gold, pure and genuine, precious and beautiful.
I'm sure he sees himself as blue or gray, dark, dull, dismal… He's a sunflower — growing under the downpour of tear-drop blue, and the smothering thickness of gray cloud, stronger and brighter when it passes.
He's yellow — my sunflower.
Green
I don't mean to glare at cashiers when they smile a little too brightly at him.
Sometimes I can't help but slide an arm around his waist, tug him closer, when I notice someone admiring him.
Occasionally, when I meet him at work, he'll be talking to a customer, smiling or laughing with them, and something ugly twists up in my chest.
I can't help that I'm apparently the jealous type now, that the green-eyed monster dormant in me for so long, roars and thrashes whenever it decides that someone is paying him too much attention.
I can't help but think he knows, that maybe he's a little more friendly when we're out together because he likes how I press myself closer to him for it; that maybe he likes when I tug lightly at his hand to draw him away from the flirty cashier, or when my fingers curl tighter, possessively, against his waist.
I'm sure he knows, and that he plays on it, just a little; but I can't say I mind, because more than once he's wrapped an arm around my shoulders, kissed my hair, laid a hand on the small of my back.
He knows. I know he knows. But it's alright, because he's just the same.
Blue
I don't know how he found it, tucked away in the back of the closet as it was, but when I walk back into my bedroom after my shower, it's sitting on my pillow, eyes of black thread staring at me accusingly.
I've had it for longer than I can remember, and it shows — its beige feet and face have greyed a bit, it's soft, blue, faux-wool body is threadbare in places, neatly patched up with varying shades of blue thread in others.
A strange mix of emotions settles in me as I cross the room and sit on the bed, carefully taking the sheep in my hands — wistfulness, guilt, sadness, fondness, embarrassment.
"I wasn't snoopin', promise," comes Matt's voice, so sudden that I flinch, head turning sharply to find him leaning on the doorframe, watching me. "I dropped a shirt, 'n' when I went t' pick it up, I found 'im…"
"Her. She's a girl," I tell him; I don't know why.
"Sorry. She have a name?"
My face flushes hot with a blush. "…Um…she's, um…Gregg. I…I don't know why I chose that name, I-I don't think I even knew anyone named Gregg, I suppose I just liked it…"
"I had an imaginary friend named Greentail," he offers easily, "So Gregg's a pretty good name."
"What did it look like?" I ask when he's sitting beside me on the bed.
"He was uh, a ring-tailed lemur, but the rings on his tail were green 'stead 'a black," he tells me, a shoulder rising and dropping as if he can shrug off his embarrassment. "How long've ya had her?"
"I'm not sure; I don't remember ever not having her."
"Looks like she's been through a lot with you, she's more patch-ups than anything now," he says laughingly, but not unkindly.
I hum airily at him in response, too focused on Gregg; her stitched-on smile, one of her ears puckered where the thread was pulled too tight during a repair. I bring her to my chest, running my thumb over the mismatched patch of thread on her side, the same slow arcs that wore through the fluff of her faux-wool, made it so thin that only a mass of thread could keep it from becoming a hole.
"You don't hafta hide 'er, y'know," Matt says after a few minutes of quiet, "I'm not gonna laugh atcha or nothin'."
"It's silly. It's…it's a baby's toy, I shouldn't even have it anymore." It stings as much to say as it did to hear.
Matt lays a hand on my back, running it down my still-wet skin, from my shoulder to my hip, resting at the small of my back where his fingers trace absent patterns as he speaks, "She ain't silly if she's special t' you, an' she obviously is. Keep 'er, don't hide 'er if you don't want to… She's no different than bronze baby shoes, or those plaster-cast baby hands… You don't hafta hide 'er from me, Sugar; don't ever have to hide anything from me."
I turn and lean into him, my head on his chest, both of us ignoring how the water from my skin is soaking into his shirt.
When Matt walks into my bedroom the following night, he smiles at seeing Gregg on my bedside table.
Purple
"You really do bruise easy, huh?" Matt muses, warm fingers gentle on my hip. "’S it sore?"
"Nhho…maybe if yhh press a li'l," I manage, sleepiness setting in.
I'm laying on my front, my face buried in a pillow to save my rapidly-tiring eyes from the lamp light; Matt lays beside me, propped up on an elbow, watching his fingers move over my mottled skin.
"I'll take y're word for it." His hand inches down and inward, his fingertips brushing my inner thigh — heat zips up my spine. I untuck an arm from beneath the pillow, reaching back and digging a fingertip into the skin somewhere around my hip; the dull throb prompts a noise of protest in my throat and Matt pushes my hand away with a chiding, "Baby," the pad of his thumb sweeping soothing arcs over the spot.
After a couple minutes I feel his hand slip lower, barely reaching the skin above the back of my knee before sliding back up, slowing over the curve of my butt, to rest low on my ribs. "Sorry 'bout all this…"
"Don't be." I force my eyes open to look at him, thankful that it's the lamp on the other side of the bed that's on — he's looking down at my body, but as if sensing that my eyes are open, redirects his gaze to my face. "I like that when closer is physically impossible, 's still not close 'nough," I tell him, shifting my head so my mouth isn't pressed so far into the pillow.
"Never is," he agrees, running his hand over my hair. "You'd be one giant bruise before y're even close t' close enough."
"Mkay."
"Yeah?" Matt laughs. "Probably hurt pretty bad, though. Maybe I should just carry ya 'round ev'rywhere — Luke and Yoda style."
"Mmhm. Hold yuh allthuh time." As tiredness settles in deeper, my words start to slur, and my brain-to-mouth filter weakens. "Wouldju lemme? Even outside? With people around?"
Matt snorts another little laugh. "Yeah, Baby, 'course I would. Anywhere and ev'rywhere." I think I manage something like a smile at him, and yawn so loudly that my eyes water, so I close them — that feels much better.
"…Nate, Baby, somebody not let you?" I can hear that his smile is gone, and I'm glad I can't see it.
"There were reasons."
"Bull. None of 'em were good enough," he declares vehemently, "don't even hafta hear 'em t' know it… You still coherent?" I try for a hum of agreement, but the best I can manage is a nasal sigh. "Good, 'cause I want you to remember it's always okay for you t' touch me; hold m' hand, hang offa me like a li'l koala, whatever you want."
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. "Luff yhoo."
He smoothes over my hair once more. "Love you, too, Baby." I flinch and shiver when his hand is suddenly on my back, relaxing again almost immediately. "Get some sleep, we got asshole ex boyfriends to hunt down when ya get up." My smile widens and his fingertips begin to trace flowing shapes over my skin.
I'm asleep before I can make sense of even one doodle.