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Science and mathematical facts made up the physical world, but stories guided the collective human experience. Stories inspired people and pushed society onwards, persevering beyond dark frontiers where all sorts of new discoveries lay in wait. And in the spaces between words? Music and art in innumerable forms, filling in the gaps, a balm to ease wounded souls and supply some respite from the turmoil of everyday demands. The world was a turbulent, chaotic place and it would be easy to let it wear down your spirit like rushing water over rock.
But in the creation of art, the composure of music, there was peace. Each brushstroke took an emotion and released it onto canvas where it could no longer hurt him but continued to tell a story to others – like the Law of Conservation of Mass, the feelings weren’t destroyed but translated into something different: sadness transformed into an inspiring story as someone read a tale of perseverance from his painting of a tiny boat battling a storm at sea.
For the first eighteen years of his life, Virgil kept all important artistic expression hidden within the worn pages of a notebook he kept beneath a mattress. Rough sketches, scrawled cartoon panels when he finished assignment too quickly and was subsequently bored in class, notes which refused to leave him peace – the music in his mind drowning out quadratic equations until he gave in and jotted down alternate semibreves and quavers – and dabs of acrylic or watercolours, even a few smudges of pastel – all of those were readily available for viewing. He made no attempt to hide them. A couple of pictures – painted upon request – were stuck on the fridge or attached to bedroom walls, hanging from generous layers of sticky tape. The rest were spread across miscellaneous pages or spare notebooks which he made no attempt to conceal.
But the art which mattered? He kept it locked away until his head grew too loud and the only way to achieve blessed silence – and in turn sleep because insomnia was a bitch when you had midterms coming up – was to let it spill across the pages. It was personal expression – a coping method with the anxiety of academic validation which he would freely admit he put far too much emphasis on for it to be healthy, but at least he wasn’t as bad as John, who had never received a single bad grade in his life and would probably drop dead on the spot if he achieved anything less than 90% on an assignment – and letting someone see all of that would be akin to allowing them to view his soul, unguarded and open to be judged. It was scary.
So, he hid it all and it wasn’t until his freshman year of college that it dawned on him there was potential in these works. Their honesty invited consideration which turn inspired possibilities – aka stories. This realisation changed absolutely nothing. In his defence, he was snowed under with coursework – attempting to bury himself in studies as an excuse for avoiding parties (because drink and drugs had never been his scene and he had no intentions of becoming a social butterfly now) which had the added bonus of distracting him from the crippling fear of disappointing Dad. So, he kept his art hidden away and only ever played the piano in the early hours (when he couldn’t sleep, and the rest of campus stood still and silent) and didn’t let anyone read the stories hidden between the ink.
Everything changed on a nondescript day in December. Virgil still had a week to go before finishing for Christmas break, but John’s semester had ended slightly earlier and so rather than heading straight back to Kansas he’d decided to visit Virgil with the plan of travelling home together on Friday evening. This plan had struck Virgil as odd upon first hearing it – because Dad was caught up in last-minute meetings, Scott was still overseas and Gordon seemed to be permanently at swim meets, which just left Alan and Grandma, both of whom John would usually leap at the chance to spend some quality time with, so why was John choosing to hang out with him? – but he didn’t question it because experience had taught him that tackling a problem head-on didn’t work with John. Not that there necessarily was a problem. He was just… well, you know, concerned. It was his thing – he spent more time worrying about his family than pretty much anything else. Basically, his life was a gigantic ball of stress and if John wanted to visit him, then hey, so be it.
The perks of private accommodation meant a) no roommates and b) a tidy kitchen. It did, however, occasionally invite loneliness, particularly when the siren song of a college party echoed across campus, trending songs blurring with the riffraff of raised voices and alcohol-fuelled laughter. Virgil had grown up in a house filled with constant noise and sometimes his newfound silence could be suffocating. In this regard, it was a relief to share the space with another person, even though John wasn’t much of a conversationist and spent the vast majority of his week’s stay swamped under blankets on the couch, leafing through a book or reading over lecture notes from his past semester. Virgil found reassurance in John’s presence alone – talking wasn’t a necessity.
That being said, he spent more time detailing his complicated emotions in his sketchpad than he had done in weeks. He managed to skip the common cold (which was steadily making its way around campus) but caught a case of the worries instead. Thursday night saw him coaxing something edible out of mostly bare cupboards whilst secretly trying to figure out what it was about his brother which seemed so painfully off. He leant against the kitchen counter, surveying the delicate way John turned each page, the cuffs of that pale blue sweatshirt pulled low over hands to hide chapped knuckles.
What was so different? Virgil prodded the saucepan of mismatched pasta shapes, wishing he’d thought to add oil to the water because now it had formed one giant lump, all clumped together and sticking to the base. He stole another glance over his shoulder. John had lost weight – which was yet another concerning factor given he’d been scrawny to begin with and Virgil could just picture how Grandma was going to react - but it wasn’t that. There was something else, a sense of perpetual sadness which hung around him like his own personal weather system – this week’s forecast: constant grey skies with a chance of rain.
The pasta spat frothy bubbles onto the stove. “Shit.”
“Maybe you should spend a little less time trying to read my mind and focus on not burning down your apartment,” John suggested without lifting his gaze from the pages. He reached over to switch on the lamp as cloudy skies hastened the oncoming night. Darkness had come early tonight but it gave the place a cosy feel and, when Virgil peered out of the rain-studded window, the spreading gold lights across wet tarmac below looked welcoming and homely.
“I’m not trying to read your mind,” he replied, warming his hands above the rising steam. “You’re not all that interesting.”
John let out a surprised laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be the nice one of us.”
“Not all the time.” He dished pasta into two bowls and used up the remainder of the parmesan in an attempt to make it look slightly more appetising. “So.”
“So,” John echoed, with a tiny nod of gratitude as Virgil handed him a bowl. There was a slight pause in which Virgil watched him expectantly and it slowly dawned on him that he was supposed to start the confessions. Instead, he raised the supposed book into the light.
Recognition hit Virgil like a brick wall. Instinct almost had him snatching the sketchpad from John’s hands, but logic reminded him that there was little point, not now John had already seen it. He forced himself to relax against the armrest, curled into the spare chair in a position which would have his spine complaining in the morning, and took a bite of pasta to give himself chance to organise his thoughts.
John cautiously placed the sketchpad back onto the table between them. “Sorry if I overstepped. You left it here, so I assumed I could take a look.”
There was an odd note in his voice, something akin to uncertainty yet more insecure. He twirled a fork around his pasta, unable to meet Virgil’s searching gaze. The sketchpad lay between them, perfectly innocuous and yet carrying enough raw honesty to tip their understanding of one another into unknown waters. Virgil wasn’t sure how to navigate that conversation, but the one thing he could be certain of was that he hated seeing John look small. No other adjective was fitting.
“What did you think?”
John blinked, taken aback by the question. He didn’t reply immediately, but his grip on his fork tightened so that his knuckles paled. Most people would have chosen a simple compliment, aiming for polite neutrality or tried to pass off confusion as a lack of true understanding – art is subjective, you know, and I’m not sure I quite grasped the true meanings of your works – but this was John who didn’t waste words and never said anything without deeper intentions.
“You,” he said at last, quietly so that the rain drumming against the glass threaten to drown his voice. “It’s you, without filters. If someone stripped back all of your walls – and don’t pretend you show the world your genuine self because no one does; we all value being liked above authenticity – then the contents of that sketchpad would be the result.” He took a deep breath. “It’s an honest replication of how it is to exist in your shoes. It’s real. And quite aside from the meaning, those works are incredible on a visual level. No, don’t scoff. I’m serious. Maybe you should major in art rather than engineering.”
Usually when Virgil found himself at a loss for words it was because he’d been confronted with something too beautiful to comprehend or a truly genius piece of engineering. He wasn’t used to being struck into silence by another’s observations. He’d held no expectations as to John’s reactions and yet was still shocked by such a response. His voice was tangled up in the mess of emotions snared between his ribs and for several long minutes he did nothing but awkwardly stab his pasta and try to sneak glances at John without being obvious. It was rare for them to hang out without Gordon or Scott also tagging along, which was a shame because they were actually the likeliest duo and now, watching as John tried to fuse with the couch cushions as if silently wishing to be engulfed by a black hole, Virgil was struck by a wave of fondness.
“I wasn’t expecting that.”
John shrugged. “You asked for my thoughts.”
“You had a lot of thoughts.”
“So did you, apparently.”
Virgil lifted his feet onto the edge of his chair. He was wearing stripey socks, yellow-and-black fluffy things which looked as if he’d stolen the fur off a bumblebee, and the contrast of colours tripped up his brain for a moment. On the couch, John balanced his bowl on his knees and ran a hand through his hair, which was well overdue a trim and threatened to flop into his eyes at any given second. Night had swallowed the world entirely, save for the merry windows across campus which still glowed gold, busy silhouettes flitting back-and-forth behind the glass. In the soft light cast by the lamp, the dark circles ringing John’s eyes were clearer than ever and the slump of his shoulders betrayed the soulful exhaustion he’d been trying to hide. Maybe that was the reason why Virgil was able to summon the courage to confess the truth behind the paintings.
“There’s a lot going on in my head sometimes. Too many thoughts, too many worries, general pressures and this? This makes it quiet. It’s an outlet, but it’s too personal for me to let anyone see it. You’re right, people prefer being liked to authenticity and I’m no different. You know high school sucked for me. College is my fresh start. The idea of people seeing my true self and rejecting him? It really doesn’t appeal.”
John reached for words, faltered, and stumbled back into silence. He coiled a corner of the blanket around his thumb, gaze on the worn cover of the sketchpad – the smears of colour where watercolour paints had bled through the pages and the indents of heavy pen lines – with a contemplative light in his eyes, glasses pushed up into his hair to leave his expression open. Virgil left him to his thoughts, collecting the bowls and stacking them in the sink, drowning out the noise of his own mind with a rush of water. The soap suds gathering around his forearms held tiny rainbows within the bubbles – a multitude of different colours – and he tapped his heel absently to the new tune writing itself within his head.
“Does it really help?” John spoke in a rush as if the words were poisonous and he couldn’t get them out quickly enough. He slid off the couch, blanket still draped around his shoulders like a cloak, and took up a clean cloth to dry the bowls as Virgil washed them. “Taking it out of your head and putting it on paper – does it really quieten everything?”
Virgil hesitated. “Not entirely,” he admitted, stacking now-clean forks on the draining board. “But it gives me chance to think clearly, get assignments done or just sleep for once without worrying about everything for hours on end.” He stole a glance at his brother. “If you want to talk about it…”
“No.” John strangled the cloth between his hands. “I don’t know.” He tipped his head back to examine the shadows pooling in the corners of the ceiling. “Maybe one day. I don’t think I physically can talk about it yet. But I get where you’re coming from.” He sighed. “Your art tells a story. Do you realise that? There’s an untold tale between the pages. It’s like the paintings are incomplete. There are missing words which would link them together.”
“I always thought it was art which filled in the gaps between words.”
“Sometimes. I suppose it’s like a relationship, isn’t it? An equal partnership overall but requiring more support from either side at certain points.”
Virgil caught onto the despondent tone. “I have my friends here and I love them, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes…”
“It’s not the same anymore. It never will be.” John’s sad smile appeared haunted, but, more than anything, painfully lost. Virgil was vividly reminded of the boat caught in a sea storm that he’d painted two years ago on the anniversary of their mother’s death. “I am so tired of feeling alone.”
Feeling alone was different to actually being alone. Virgil knew the distinction on a personal level. He’d spent his first week of college surrounded by strangers and yet had never felt lonelier in his life.
He clapped a hand to John’s bicep. “You should write the story.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I want you to.” He caught John’s gaze and held it. “Really. I mean it.”
John watched the rain leave patterns over the window. “I write stories for Alan. I try to send him one every other week, but I’ve been busier lately. At least once a month though. They’re only short things, but he likes them, texts me to ask about characters and plot lines. His only criticism is the lack of dragons.”
Virgil let out an undignified snort. “Sounds like him.”
“Would you really let me write something?”
“Based off my art? Sure. Just don’t show it to Gordon.”
“Deal, on one condition.”
“Which is?”
John faltered, voice drifting into a whisper, “Don’t tell Dad.” He held up a hand before Virgil could speak. “Please, Virgil. Don’t say anything to him about this.”
“About the art or your writing?”
“The art is your secret to tell. But my writing? I’m not ready for all the questions which would follow. So, for now at least…”
“Our secret,” Virgil agreed, holding out a hand for a fist-bump because John wasn’t big on physical touch only to be pleasantly surprised when he was dragged into a warm hug. “It’ll be okay,” he murmured, tucking his face into John’s shoulder to hold onto the feeling of home that came with having his brother in his arms.
“I know it will,” John replied, equally as softly. “If it’s not okay, then the story isn’t over.”