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This was what he considered beautiful.
Blue’s head, from where he’d packed himself in with cushions on the floor, shaded against a dizzy halo of tv light. There was plenty of room on the sofa but he’d insisted on taking the floor- “better view”, apparently. The half-empty bowl of popcorn gripped between his crossed legs had started to slouch to the side, leaking fat kernels any time he inhaled too deep.
Dream had gradually fused with Ink’s side over the course of the film, stuck on his front, skull pressing uncomfortably against the base of Ink’s ribcage, one arm blocking access to his paints and the other stuck between couch cushions. His elbows were starting to pinch. It looked awkward, distant from that image he liked to hold up for the multiverse, something brilliant that should be preserved in oil paint and protected for decades.
Ink didn’t feel much at first- nothing beyond the objective, artsy observation that this was beautiful, and that he enjoyed looking at it.
But after manoeuvring himself around Dream’s forearm, after hooking first the yellow then the pink paint with his fingers, he began to sense something blooming in his chest, something that rose to the top of his throat and spun out into a light flush. He really liked it here.
It was wonderful. Warm and real.
He wanted to keep it.
Swilling the selected paints, he stared aimlessly at the tv, smiling alongside the silly characters from whatever thrifted movie Blue had put on for them. There were options. He could stay still, keep the moment still with him, or he could contain it somehow. Put it on a shelf to look at forever.
A sketch, maybe. He had sketchbooks everywhere, stolen from various multiversal art stores, Dream chastised him for it- talked about fairness and the rules of exchange. Ink called it his rightful payment for protecting the multiverse.
He tipped his head up to the ceiling and watched the shadows for a while.
Blue whistled when he breathed, his torso lolling from the weight of the blankets it was under. He’d organised all of this. A purposeful, planned sleepover, one that didn’t start with a prolonged meeting, something they weren’t really used to. Ink remembered him preparing about seventeen different activities on a schedule. They’d only made it through a couple before he passed out on the floor.
Dream made no noise at all. Ink could never tell what he was feeling. But he seemed happy now. Dream-happy, not job-happy.
Ink began blocking the scene in his head. Then he remembered that he’d lost his nice coloured pencils recently.
A few ginger tugs freed his painting hand, which he used to awkwardly select one of his pencils. He’d write something down, as a reminder of the moment. But he… couldn’t quite reach his scarf. He tried angling himself around Dream’s shoulders, shifting himself so that his nose pressed into one of the clean spots of fabric, but his handwriting wouldn’t come out clear like this. It absolutely had to be clear. If any of his chicken-scratch could be considered readable.
Another push got him onto his back, so that Dream’s elbows jabbed into the inner portion of his spine. Now he could stretch the scarf out above him. But there was no surface to write on here.
He scowled. How inconvenient.
Dropping the scarf back to his collar, he stared back into the tv and the jittery light it drew onto the floor. Blue’s head was starting to tip to the side, pulling the rest of him with it, so Ink stuck his leg out and nudged it back into place.
Writing was too simple. Writing made it hard to visualise, he was never good at including all of the details. He popped open the pink again- compassion, very volatile- and dropped his head back, to turn the world upside down. Shaded purple, a warm gold in the light places and silk-shiny black through the windows. Staying in one spot was boring, anyway.
Gently, he squeezed Dream’s wrist, then shuffled him across and off his chest, so that he slumped against the back cushions. Upon pulling his head back up Ink saw all the soft shapes of his friends again and sparkles of happy yellow burst open in his ribcage. The circlet was slipping into Dream’s eyes; Ink pinched the edges of it and lifted it away as he stood up, tucking his knees to his chin to avoid hitting Blue as he twisted out of the way.
A rush of dizziness pulsed behind his temples when he was half-upright. It waltzed him a step forwards then took him back into the arm of the sofa. His heel caught the trailing end of his scarf and he fell backwards, cracking his skull against the floor.
“Shit!”
He clapped a hand over his mouth.
Staying precariously still, ignoring the radiating pain that drummed through his head at the impact, he gently pushed himself into a sitting position.
…Still asleep.
Blue’s head had fallen back and he was now snoring lightly, popcorn bowl now decanted onto the floor. But they were both still asleep. Ink exhaled all of the air in his chest, loosening himself and dropping the circlet. Then he took more yellow.
Standing up again, slower this time, he prodded the base of his skull with a wince; if he had skin (or blood, for that matter) it’d probably be bruising badly. But yellow was turning him somewhat numb with joy at this point. It fizzed up in his face and ran into the nooks and crannies of him.
A way to contain the moment, he remembered. He scanned the room, rocking from one foot to the other, checking over his shoulder every few moments just in case his friends had been abducted in the time he was looking the other way. Fridge, microwave, flowers by the microwave- they’d been haphazardly stuffed into an empty jam jar, prepared for pressing whenever Ink got around to it.
Oh! Maybe- maybe he could bring some kind of scientist round and get them to shrink the room down, so that he could keep Blue and Dream in the jam jar as well-
No, no, that was stupid. Blue didn’t like jam. And the jar was already full of flowers.
Ink rapped a knuckle against his head, removing the yellow and pink again. Chairs, table, overhead light, phone on the table, so that’s where he’d left it. He stumbled over in the wake of dizziness and slipped it into his palm, taking more pink, more yellow as he did. He should change his lockscreen to a picture of his friends.
Picture! He could take a picture! His arms twitched up to his chest in excitement at the idea and the phone dropped from his hand. He careened forwards to stop it before it hit the ground, sticking a leg out for balance, catching himself with his free hand on the table. A picture! Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
It took a second to calm himself down enough to select the camera function. The screen on the phone was all spiderwebbed, chipping at the edges, he kept forgetting to replace it. He held the phone just above eye level, to get a top-down view.
Numerous packets of assorted multiversal snacks had been discarded like dead worlds across the carpet. Every pillow and blanket that Dream owned had been pushed in here through a portal, ending up sprawled over sofa-chairs and wadded up beside Blue, someone’s socks would probably appear in one of the pastel-patterned masses in a few months' time. The tv glittered blue through the hazy wash of golds and oranges. Blue was in a cotton t-shirt and cyan boxers. Dream wore bunny-patterned slacks, lying splayed out like a handprint. The room felt very still.
Ink was the only one who’d stayed in uniform. The thought of people seeing his chest was… itchy.
But they made him feel so welcome. Despite the very essence in him being little more than void. Despite the endless minutiae that made him unlovable. They loved him anyway.
The thought made his head spin. He clutched the pink again like a lifeline. Oh… maybe it was the paint that was making his head spin.
He held the camera up a little higher- he wanted the whole scene in frame. But, upon finally finding an angle and taking a shot, the photo came out grainy. It was too dark.
He frowned. Tiptoeing around the back of the couch, he tried another angle, then another. He was getting a little desperate; he needed this, some physical reminder that his friends existed, in case he forgot one day. He tried standing near the tv, then right next to one of the lamps, but every picture he got seemed wrong. Too… static. Too lifeless.
The yellow was starting to ache. Ink scrunched his face up, rapped a knuckle against his skull.
Thoughts of sketchbooks staggered back into his mind. Dropping his phone again, he began to skitter around the room, bobbing his head up and down as he searched for one of the leather covers. Oh, right, his coloured pencils were missing. He jolted to a stop beside one of his bookshelves and felt quite stupid.
If sketching wasn’t an option, he’d just have to paint something. He wasn’t really in the correct headspace, what with shades of yellow and pink building up in his vision like symptoms of pastel glaucoma, what with impatience making his fingers weak. But he was an artist. He’d figure it out.
There was a studio easel tucked into one corner of the room, paired with a few blank canvases. Ink uncorked pink again- suddenly he wanted to be back, lying with his friends, they were so wonderful- and felt himself stumble as he grabbed them. He set the easel up opposite the couch, on an angle so he could fit the tv in, then ran off for his paints. Orange, blue, yellow and pink, it would be perfect. The nice oil tubes wrinkled in his palms as he rushed them onto a palette and grabbed a brush.
This was what Ink considered beautiful: his friends and their many unique kindnesses, the way they found something real in a forgery. The way they softened in places like this, away from the multiverse, the way they were comfortable around a soulless creature, their team and the selfless good they did.
Ink had found friends before. He remembered chatting, laughing with creatures from all walks of multiversal life as he hovered brush over the canvas. But the second they saw his empty chest he became more 'thing' than person. A deathless, distracting item.
These monsters, in his house now, they could look at him without shame. They found humanity in him. Ironic, huh?
Ink realised he’d started crying. Before he could even select a base colour.
He palmed at his face. That didn’t seem right. Tears were a blue feeling, he wasn’t blue, or cyan or turquoise or anything cold. The palette clattered to the floor. He buckled forwards, collapsing into the vacant easel and crashing. On his way down he noticed that both pink and yellow vials were beyond half empty.
Sudden waking grunts and shuffles came from around the sofa but he didn’t care much. He sobbed.
“Ink?!”
There were two voices he knew. He cocked his head and saw his friends poised to attack in front of him, crease-marked and spotted with popcorn. The smile on his face was huge and quivering.
“Wh… are you okay?” Blue asked. The sounds he made were slurred with post-sleep fuzz. They still sounded beautiful.
“He’s overdosed,” Dream replied. He stepped closer through the pink-yellow fuzz and kneeled down, placing a palm on Ink’s forehead. It was sunlight-warm. He leaned further into Ink’s vision. “What happened? If you can talk.”
Ink tried to lift himself but found gravity to be too much. He stayed still. Thin, streaky tears were drawing patterns on his cheeks.
He tried to speak and struggled, cutting off into shaky laughter after the first word. Then he tried again.
“I… I love you guys so much.”
He saw brief passes of confusion over their faces. That made him happy, somehow. He laughed again.
Then his eyes rolled back, and he passed out.