Chapter Text
Something like dread filtered through Andrew’s mind, settling heavily between his thoughts, blanketing, suffocating, and spilling out. He shook his head once and looked back at his sketchbook, open to a blank page, its empty white taunting him. He sighed and stretched, popping his left shoulder first, then his right. Renee smiled at him from behind the counter and he nodded at her – a greeting and acknowledgement rolled into one.
“Any progress,” she asked, taking out a plate and loading it with choux parties and a cinnamon roll, and walked around the counter to sit next to him. The café had floor to ceiling windows that filled the place with buttery sunlight every day from 4 in the afternoon. Andrew always chose the seats near the windows. Renee joked that he was secretly a cat, and Andrew secretly agreed.
“I wouldn’t know progress if it stared me in the face,” Andrew sighed, and reached out for a pastry, chewing it slowly, feeling its sweetness dissipate on his tongue.
“It’ll come to you,” Renee murmured, adding “eventually” when Andrew shot her a glare. He sucked in a breath. “Maybe. But maybe I’ll forever remain blank. What would I do then?”
“Frame the blank canvases and call them modern interpretations of your subconscious mind,” Renee shot back, even as Andrew leveled her with a withering stare.
“How’s King?” she asked, changing the topic, unraveling the cinnamon roll a little, dusting off crumbs that fell on her skirt. Andrew shrugged, “Fat and lazy, the attention-seeking idiot.” Renee laughed, a quiet sound that Andrew pictured as liquid silver.
He had few friends, and fewer among those that he truly felt comfortable with. In college, when he had gotten into a fight with a group of homophobic assholes, help had come from unexpected quarters. He had watched in awed silence as Renee had deftly knocked out two men twice her size in minutes, smoothed down her dove grey skirt and turned to him with an effortless “alright there?”
She had taken him to a café (hers, she later told him) called the Fox’s Tail, given him a slice of cake, introduced him to her girlfriend Allison, and had spoken to him in a way not many people bothered to. He had felt seen. He had left with his chest feeling a little less tight. Now, two years later, Renee always had Andrew’s spot ready for him.
“So, have you decided what you’re going to do about the roommate situation,” she ventured, breaking Andrew from his trail of thoughts. He shook his head minutely, and looked up at her. “Not yet, no.”
She nodded once and got up, swiping crumbs off her shirt. “Let me know if you need anything. More choux pastries, paints, inspiration,” she smiled mischievously before walking off.
And Andrew returned to glowering at his plain white blank sketchbook. He knew what exactly would break his art block, he knew what he had to do to make colour saturate the blank expanse of his sketchbook again. But he was also a stubborn bastard who refused to give in to his ideas.
His mind always went back to that moment two months ago when Nicky had dragged him and Aaron to go shopping with him. A harshly lit trial room at a thrift store wasn’t where Andrew Minyard thought he’d find the highlight of his day. But there he had stood, one hand tangled in a sheer black tank top, staring at a pair of blue eyes like it was his second coming. It could have been his second coming that day if he had kept looking, but he had averted his gaze to look away from the full-length poster, cursing when he saw it reflected in the mirror facing him.
This should be illegal, he’d thought, even as he had dragged his gaze over the man’s terribly blue eyes, the freckles along his nose, and the almost obscene way his lips curved around a cherry, another dangling down his chin.
“Andrew, are you done, I’m hungry,” Nicky’s voice had come floating in and Andrew mentally cursed himself again. Those shoulders would look great in pastel yellow, or sheer black. Or your dark blue bedsheet, his treacherous brain had helpfully supplied before he had stormed out.
It was ridiculous, the way some random model on a worn out poster on the back wall of a nondescript thrift shop had managed to snag Andrew’s attention, or ‘art brain’ as Renee liked to put it. His fingers inched towards the tubes of paint scattered on the table, favouring blue over the others, before he stopped himself with a mental slap to his forehead.
Ultramarine.
Cerulean.
Azure.
Cornflower.
He sighed and stuffed another choux pastry into his mouth, as though aggressively biting into it would cure him of his art block, and his blue fever.
He had more pressing issues at hand; assignments from clients that kept piling up, apartment rent that seemed to be impossible to pay by the minute, a possible part-time position that he had been eyeing for a while but didn’t have the courage to take up. He sighed, stowing away the paints and the sketchbook in his bag, fidgeting with the straps like that could offer him answers.
Art block: 1, Andrew: 0
“See you later, Renee. I’ll text you,” he waved at her on his way past the counter where she was decorating a large cheesecake with strawberry coulis. Allison gave him a small nod of acknowledgement that he returned. They didn’t have the best of relationships, but Andrew tolerated her for Renee’s sake, and she did the same and they didn’t disturb the tenuous quiet of the café with their unsaid thoughts.
Andrew stepped out on to the pavement, sighed and hoisted his backpack higher up his shoulders. He headed to the supermarket to buy pasta for himself and cat treats for King. He had practically done nothing today.
Like yesterday, like the day before, a voice whispered in his head.
But was glad to be getting back home.
Aching, empty and expensive as fuck. But home, nevertheless.