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The first time he met Shane Madej they were thrown together for a video. He couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was for, but God, could he remember the way Shane looked leaning against the wall. All long limbs and thin smiles. Greyed out and hollow, a God built in monochrome.
For the first time in his life, Ryan saw.
They didn’t talk much. A rare statement here and there, a nod in his general direction. Shane Madej was a mystery he wanted to unravel.
Propped up on an air conditioning unit on the roof, joint smoldering in his hand. Leaning against the counter in the canteen, sleepy eyes half lidded as he nodded along to whatever Sara was saying. Slamming his phone down on the desk between them after a call with his mother.
They were all pieces to a disjointed puzzle of blue and grey.
The first time they really talked it was well after the time they should have been gone. Backs pressed against the stone of the building and the fading sunlight ahead of them. He said his brother called him today. For the first time in 3 years. He said he wanted to get together, to talk.
He said he missed him.
What did it mean? To have a family who didn’t seem to care? What did it mean for him to reach out so suddenly like that? Shane didn’t know, but Ryan could see him tearing apart at the edges. Could see the pain dripping through like a broken inkwell. Dark and black and infinite.
He learned that the Madej boys had a rift. A falling out. He learned that their parents were of a different sort. Of abuse that Scott took and took and finally shattered. That he left and begged Shane to follow.
He wondered why he hadn’t. Shane said it hadn’t been his problem then. He never elaborated, but Ryan suspected it was his problem now. With his dull vacant eyes and smoke soaked lips. He could see it, the rainbow of emotion saturating him from the inside out.
He took another hit and smiled, a slow curling thing, colder than the blues of his coat. Happiness is a fickle fiend. She’s found in the darkest places, not the brightest smiles. You could medicate and still never find the truth. He wondered if it was an answer or a product of the high. He wondered if Shane meant Ryan’s own smile.
Distantly he wished it were the former. Wished it was a puzzle piece not greyed out and torn. He knew better though.
The first time they touched, his knuckles were bloodied and Shane’s lip was split. He couldn’t remember how it started, the fight. He could just remember seeing that twisted look in Shane’s eyes, the shattered phone on the ground. The red covering his hand and Shane’s face.
Shane was living in monochrome. He was going through the motions but nothing felt right. He said be careful or you’ll get cut on the edges and lose it all too. He said there was nothing else for him. He said Scott was only trying to twist the knife in deeper, trying to steal away the only color Shane had managed to keep.
He loves you. It had been screamed into the void between them. He wants you to be okay. He needs you to be okay.
I need you to be okay.
Because—
There were cracks in his monotone exterior. The colors oozing out and covering them both. He held tight to the blue and grey to the pain he knew. They didn’t accept him, so they wouldn’t accept you. It’s all a bullshit excuse. Then again, there was always another bullshit excuse at the ready.
Because—
There was more to Shane Madej than he let the world see.
He was blue and grey and black. He was smoke and mirrors and lazy distant smiles. But there, lying spread bare he was bursting at the seams.
Red on his lips where they sucked purples into Ryan’s hips. Gold glinting in his eyes from the fading sun seeping through the window. Pink and orange and brown coloring his skin, warm where he pressed in. Green in the possessive way he begged him to stay.
Shane was a tidal wave of color, washing over him. Drowning him, and saving him. He made the colors burst from Ryan himself and he feared he’d never be the same.
Now that the seams were ripped and the shutters were thrown open. He would never be the same. Could never be the same.
Do you believe in God?
Shane didn’t have an answer right away, but the shine in his eye gave him away. If he does exist, the closest he’d ever gotten to him was when they were together. Ryan wondered if that meant Shane felt the same.
Let me give you all the colors in me if only to keep you for one more night. Let me love you and be loved by you. Let us make a masterpiece for the world to behold. Shane turned the joint around in his fingers. Contemplating before offering his brush to Ryan.