Work Text:
Sai stared blankly at the white canvas propped up on his easel, trying to imagine swirls of colours covering the white, but he couldn’t look past the emptiness, couldn’t see which colours he should use. Red was too harsh, yellow too bright, green too murky.
He closed his eyes, trying to will some image to appear in front of him, but it was all blank. His inspiration was gone, leaving behind a hole that should have been filled with images, and he had no idea what he should do. He hated this. Hated seeing a clean canvas in front of him and not knowing what to do with it. Starting a new painting was always hard, because nothing seemed right. The canvas was dead, didn’t speak to him, couldn’t tell him what it hid.
Normally it wouldn’t be a problem to be art blocked, it happened to everyone, but Sai had a deadline.
Looking back, going to art school was a horrible idea. He had been content living in the basement of his foster father, painting whatever and whenever he wanted, but apparently he was a recluse, and didn’t know how to interact with people, so it was decided he needed to study. Not so much to further his art, but to meet people, because going to art school meant attending classes, meant living in a dorm, people everywhere, talking, asking, making noise.
Sai didn’t like it. Didn’t like having to paint specific things when people told him to, didn’t like people watching over his shoulder, pointing out parts they didn’t agree on, as if they had the answer to what good art was.
Sai put down his brush, knew he couldn’t force it.
With his mind no longer focused on the blank canvas he noticed the soft sounds of metal against wood, and he tilted his head and looked across to the other side of the dorm room, seeing his roommate hunched over his workbench, slowly chiselling away chip of wood, making faces appear where there were none before.
Sai hadn’t been very impressed by Kankuro’s woodcarvings in the beginning, because to him art was swirls of colours, but as he watched Kankuro work he had started realising it was art in its own way. It was as if the shapes were always there, hidden beneath the wood, and only Kankuro was able to bring them to life, unearth them.
They were closing in on the end of their first year at school, and both of them were working on their final projects, but where Sai had nothing but blank canvases Kankuro already seemed to have an idea, working hard, creating.
The heat in the room was stifling, an early heat wave coupled with a faulty air conditioning unit having forced Kankuro into taking off his shirt. Sai didn’t mind. It was hot, and fewer clothes made it less hot. He wasn’t particularly bothered by the heat himself, but judging by the wetness of Kankuro’s brown hair, he was. The hair on the nape of his neck was clumping together, and small droplets of sweat falling from it, sliding down his back to collect in the waistband of his pants.
Sai watched one drop fall, followed it with his eyes as it made its journey. Not quite straight, but pushed this way and that by the unevenness of muscles and bones that made up Kankuro’s back. The swell of shoulder blades, the dip of a spine. Tiny dimples in the small of his back that caught a lone drop for a moment before it fell again, following the soft skin until it vanished, soaked into fabric.
He lifted a hand, tracing the next drop with his finger in the air, following its path, seeing how it clung momentarily to the sharp edge of a shoulder blade before following Kankuro’s spine. Alive, moving as the surface allowed it, finding new paths, each drop making their own journey. Translucent but there.
Sai knew what was wrong, and pushed his tubes of acrylics away. Too harsh, too saturated. He moved to his desk and dug through his supplies for his watercolours. Not the box of pans, but the tubes. Not brown, or orange, or pink.
He knew the moment he found the right one. Soft and calm and beautiful.
He grabbed a dish from his desk, squeezed out paint and diluted it with water from his water bottle until it was the right colour. See-through, there but not. The soft turquoise of ocean water on some tropical isle. Cool to the warmth of the sun. Perfect.
Balancing the dish of paint in his hand he drug his chair across the short expanse of floor between his and Kankuro’s work stations, not even noticing the sharp sounds the metal of the legs made as it scraped across the wood. Kankuro did, however, and turned around, looking at Sai from behind a wet bang, eyebrows frowned as he tried to figure out what Sai was up to.
“Turn back around,” Sai said as he dropped the chair right behind Kankuro. Kankuro just shrugged and did as he was told, going back to chipping away at the piece of wood, well used to Sai’s antics by now.
Sai could see the trails where droplets of sweat had been sliding, marring tan skin with nearly invisible traces.
He dipped a finger in the paint, and dragged the finger down one of those paths.
Kankuro tensed beneath him, making to turn around again.
“No, sit still,” Sai said, as he dipped the finger again, tracing a new pathway down Kankuro’s strong back, feeling soft skin and hard muscle and the sharp edge of bones, marking it all with the soft blue. More trails, new trails. Crisscrossing their way across Kankuro’s back, meeting and dividing and vanishing. Down his spine, over his sides, following the bumps of ribs and the raised edge of a shoulder blade. Painting an abstract pattern that was so much more. The blue of water on the brown of skin. Earth. Ocean meeting the beach in soft browns and blues. Translucent. Beautiful. He made new pathways, saw old ones change as droplets of sweat obscured the edges, made it something new, something alive. Changing with every breath Kankuro took.
Sai stilled, all of his fingers splayed over the small of Kankuro’s back, the tips of all of them blue. Kankuro was warmth underneath his fingers, skin wet with sweat and paint, soft and warm. Sai was transfixed. His own fingers so pale. Too pale. Like ice. Didn’t belong in the warmth of the ocean and the beach. He pulled his hands away, looked at them. On his hands the blue looked cold. Not a refreshing cool ocean blue as it appeared on Kankuro’s skin.
He heard a soft exhale, and then the soft creak of Kankuro turning around on his chair.
There were small rivulets of blue traveling down his chest as well, where the colour had spilled over his shoulders. Five thin paths curving around pectoral muscles. Two caught in the hair, three continuing down the ridges of his stomach. One more lost in the dip of a bellybutton, the last two caught on the edge of his pants.
“What’s wrong?” Kankuro said, and Sai tilted his head and smiled.
“Nothing is wrong.”
Kankuro looked at him, seeing past his smile.
“What do you see in the colours?” he asked.
“The ocean,” Sai said, finding it hard to put words to all he was feeling when he was painting. “The way the ocean and the beach meet.” He let a finger trace across one of the trails of blue across Kankuro’s collarbone. “Your skin, it’s the beach. Sand warmed by the sun, and the blue is the water as it flow over it, mixing, cool and warmth.”
In truth it was so much more, but Sai couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t a thought, but a feeling, and he never knew how to put words to those. He dropped his gaze and looked at his own fingers. Cold. Harsh.
Warm fingers locked around his wrists, turned his hands over so Sai’s palms were facing upwards. Blue smeared across fingertips, more on his palms where he’d fisted his hands. Flowing into the thin lines of his skin.
“I see a glacier,” Kankuro said.
Sai looked at him, not understanding.
Kankuro let his thumb slide across the inside of Sai’s wrist, skin thin and sensitive.
“The white of your skin, and the blue of the paint. It’s a glacier on a sunny day. The deep ice shine blue, and it’s breath-taking. The ice is so strong, but so beautiful. More beautiful than an ocean. Different.”
Sai looked down on his hands, and tried to see what Kankuro saw. Still water, but this time frozen. A hard expanse of cold. Sharp edges. Deep blues hidden in the white. The sun making it all glitter.
Sai looked up at Kankuro again. He felt his pulse thrum in his ears, and his fingers itch. Not from the paint, but from the urge to curl around a brush, to put the images to paper, to show Kankuro what his words were making Sai see. Kankuro’s fingers around his wrist, the thumb still gently rubbing against his pulse point was creating warmth that flooded his system, made it hard to think of anything but the feel of it and the images of oceans and beaches and glaciers flooding together in a mix of bright blue.
“Go paint,” Kankuro said, giving Sai an encouraging smile. Sai didn’t want to leave, because that would mean pulling away from the hands encircling his wrist, but then Kankuro dropped the grip, and Sai shuddered from the sudden change from the clammy warmth of skin to the nothingness of air. He pushed his chair backwards, not understanding why he couldn’t shake the feel of Kankuro’s hands on his. The loud screech of metal on wood as the legs of the chair scraped against the floor pulled him out of his daze and he walked back to the empty canvas, filled with images of blues and a fluttering in his chest.
He lifted his discarded brush and started painting in big strokes, trying to convey the feelings bubbling inside. From behind him he heard the soft sounds of wood being chipped away, and he could still imagine how Kankuro’s back looked streaked in blue, so beautiful.
The image on the canvas grew, coming alive under his brush. Two bodies, side by side, one cold as ice, the other tropical warmth, both dominated by the same blue. Contrasted, but same. Sai’s heartbeat was still thrumming in his chest as his brush dipped again and again, bringing more shape to the soft colours, the picture growing clearer, the images and feelings swirling inside translated to the canvas. The world forgotten as he focused, and all he saw were blues, blues on his fingers and on Kankuro’s back, a path running from one person to the other, connecting them.
When a warm hand rested on his shoulder Sai continued painting. When a deep voice told him the painting was gorgeous he continued painting. When he was turned and soft lips brushed against him he stopped, but his mind was still alight with swirls of blue, intensified by the kiss.
It felt right kissing Kankuro, and when his hand rested against Kankuro’s chest, the tip of one blue stained finger resting against one blue streak he saw the beauty of ice and ocean even clearer.