Work Text:
Sasha’s mind stuttered as she tried to come up with concepts for her character study. She’d already done so much art of Johnny and she really needed to branch out if she wanted to draw anyone’s face besides her beloved’s.
The voice over the speaker announced an upcoming stop and Sasha let out a hard sigh. She had five more stops to go. There was only standing room and her toes burned from her heels. Why she had to wear heels for an internship where she was constantly on her feet she didn’t know. Such a stickler for the rules, she didn’t want to challenge the dress code. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Sasha stretched her neck and shoulders, keeping the cloth handle between her pointer and index fingers.
In danger of falling asleep standing up, Sasha scanned the subway car. Fellow professionals stared into space; students with headphones jammed out or stared blankly. A couple of teenagers shared an earbud each and watched a movie on one of their phones. But the one commuter that actually kept Sasha’s eye was a young man with a sketch pad.
He was very tall, his legs bunched up in front of him and his back hunched around his sketchpad. Sasha noticed he wasn’t passively doodling like any other bored kid on the train, but scratched away with purpose, fully engaged with his drawing.
Sasha leaned around a well-dressed businessman to get a better look at the artist. He wore a baggy hoodie and jeans, his hood down so Sasha could see his dark curly hair. He had a longer face and chiseled cheeks, but not in a way that looked unhealthy. He swiped his hand across his sketchpad and Sasha deeply empathized with the discovery of graphite stains on the side of the guy’s hand.
“The struggle,” said Sasha under her breath. The sound was swallowed by the subway. She could just as well have never opened her mouth.
The subway pulled to a stop and the sketchbook boy made no move to get up, but the businessman blocking Sasha’s view did. She knew she’d regret this underground transit faux pas, but Sasha left her original position to stand closer to her preferred stranger. She wondered what he could be drawing -- it sounded like it could be lightening, or an animal, something with a lot of back-and-forth motion. Maybe he was coloring in his significant other’s hair, or adding grass textures to a landscape.
Sasha looked down and quirked her mouth to one side. At first she couldn’t figure out just what she was looking at. It wasn’t a portrait or a landscape or a still life -- it was some kind of asymmetrical pattern… some kind of warped flowers? But why did they all have the same relative shape?
“Oooooh.” Sasha hadn’t realized she had spoken aloud until the guy looked up. His eyes were dark brown and also alarmed. He looked up at Sasha then down at his sketchpad, then up at Sasha again, panicked. Sasha watched the gears in his head turn as he tried to fabricate a reason why he was drawing so. Many. Dicks.
People loaded up the car again and now Sasha was caged in on both sides by people. Still, it was almost as if she and the artist were the only two people in that subway car.
After a minute of glancing between the two of them, the artist sucked in a breath. “I don’t have an explanation,” he croaked, a slight blush rising to his cheeks.
Sasha smiled, honestly charmed. “True art doesn’t require an explanation.”
They rode out the rest of the way in a comfortable silence, unlike the silence that surrounded them. This was a companioned quiet, with two people choosing to be quiet together, not because there was nothing to talk about, but because they didn’t need to speak to understand.
Sasha reached out her hand. The artist looked up. “This is my stop coming up here,” she said.
“Oh. It was, uh, nice to meet you...” The guy, forgetting the graphite dust on his hand, shook hers, rubbing the grey dust off on Sasha.
“Sasha,” she smiled and released his hand.
“Oh,” breathed the artist. “Justin.”
Sasha had been formulating a story for Justin in her head most of the way. “You go to NYU?” she assumed.
“What?” The way Justin asked it, it seemed like he was amazed to me mentioned in the same sentence as the university. As if he wasn’t worthy. “No,” he corrected. “I’m…” he phrased his words carefully. “Visiting friends. I already graduated. University of Pittsburgh.”
The train pulled to a stop and Sasha really wanted to stay and talk to this kid more. What was his degree in? Where did his friends live? Did he know how to find his way around the city even though the streets were numbered? She resolved to ask aone single question before heading home and never seeing this person again.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
Justin hid a cringe behind a smile. “East Village? I think?”
Sasha offered a smile she hoped came across as knowing and warm. “The gay part of town?”
Justin blushed and pulled his knees to his chest. “Yeah, my friend Shane lives there. I’m crashing on his floor tonight.”
Sasha checked her bag on her shoulder and unlocked her knees. “Well, that’s actually my neck of the woods, so if you wanna join me I can get you in the general vicinity at least.” Sasha chuckled somewhat awkwardly. But the poor baby was away from home and she couldn’t just leave him to figure out the big city all on his own.
Justin looked up hopefully. “Really? You’d do that?”
Sasha reached out her hand for the second time that evening. “Hell yeah. c’mon, mister sketch artist, hold on to me if you need to--just don’t fall behind.”