Chapter Text
Rothko. White Center. Pollock. Autumn Rhythm. Kandinsky. Sign.
On a Tuesday afternoon the museum is nothing but high, painted ceilings, cold marble floors and crushing loneliness. The edges of the pamphlet you hold clutched in between sweaty palms dig into your skin just a little, enough to keep yourself awake. For the moment, at least. You’ve already spent the last hour or two stumbling along the hallways, only half entranced by the paintings slanted against the lower walls.
By the time you reach a second Rothko, down the hall and around the corner, your feet start to hurt. The bright squares of the canvas seem to prick at the corners of your eyes, red and sullen and determined, until you decide you can’t bear to look at it anymore.
Instead, you avert your eyes to glance at the little red notebook underneath the exhibition pamphlet in your hands. Its spine is still pristine, the little elastic wrapped around it clamping the pages shut as if it didn’t even want to be opened. You shift uncomfortably. They’re empty, the pages, but you don’t have anything to write down—nothing nice, nothing of value, anyhow.
Rothko: Likes squares. Seems like a square. Predictable, unpleasant. His paintings make my eyes itch like they do during pollen season.
You can’t help but swallow a laugh at the idea of scribbling down your petty insults about long-dead men. As if anyone like them—anyone with real artistic insight—would even bother giving a shallow girl like you a second glance.
Rothko, noted square enthusiast. May he rest in abstract peace.
Your feet are starting to hurt again. You spot a bench across the room and make your way over, sinking down without grace, too tired to care.
There’s an older couple in the corner of the room, a balding man and a lady whose glasses are threatening to slide off her nose. You don’t pay the painting they’re standing in front of any mind—it would barely take two seconds for you to decide that you hate it anyway, that it bores you. The lady squeezes her husband’s arm, points at something in the corner of the canvas. Do they hate it, too, you wonder?
The husband leans forward, nods, and they smile at each other, disappearing into the next room. You’re not sure what that means. You’re not sure what anything means, and you don’t feel like opening the notebook now, either.
You cross your legs instead and decide to grant the piece in front of you another chance to change your mind. It displays two figures, a man enrobed in a red gown, the other resembling a sullen nun.
Egon Schiele. Liebkosung.
You lean forward, elbows on your knees, and let your eyes fall heavy-lidded on the raw, knotted limbs rendered in red and green and sickly pale skin. There's something grotesque in it. Something invasive, maybe. It feels like something you're not supposed to see.
You think, not for the first time, that you’re probably just too stupid for this kind of thing. That your mind was wired too literally, too clumsily, to understand what others seemed to find so profound. Is this really what beauty looked like to people? Is this love, or desire? Or is it supposed to make you this uncomfortable?
A sigh escapes your parted lips.
Maybe if you were smarter, you’d get it. Maybe if you had read more, studied harder, listened closer in that Advanced Art class you’d dropped halfway through high school. You could imagine someone writing a dissertation on this— the tension of bodies in disarray , or the vulnerability of eroticism in Schiele’s early works —and you’d nod along, not understanding a word.
It was all just lines on a piece of paper, anyway.
You shift, rubbing your thumb against the edge of the exhibition pamphlet. All of a sudden even your thoughts feel too loud in here, and you barely realize you’re still staring at the painting when a voice cuts through the fog in your head.
“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?”
His words come out low, unhurried, as though they belonged in this echoing room more than you ever could.
Your eyes struggle to adjust, and for a moment the shape in front of you blends into the canvas behind him. For a moment you can almost convince yourself that he’s not real, drawn in sharp, offending lines like everything else in this room.
Only he’s not.
He’s real in a way that startles you—there’s nothing abstract about him. Not in the same way the artworks were, at least, the clean line of his jaw and ocean blue eyes framed by lashes so long and full they all but knock the air out of your chest. His hair falls in a sleek bob, ink-black and impossibly tidy, parted with surgical precision. It should look strange, bizarre, it should look abstract, and yet on him, you think it makes sense.
A lump starts to form in your throat. You’re too embarrassed to admit that you hadn’t even been properly looking at the painting anymore and, really, just been trying to focus your eyes, so instead, you let your eyes linger on him—if only for a moment. Somehow you’d almost expected to forget what regular people looked like—what real people looked like when they were more than simple, twisted lines pushed onto stretched canvas, grey and jagged and distorted, and your eyes drink in the sight of him like you’ve been wandering a desert and he’s an oasis offering your first taste of clear water.
He’s tall, dressed in a white, meticulously ironed shirt, burgundy slacks and expensive leather shoes. A small enamel pin clings to the fabric of his top, and it spells out his name in blunt, all uppercase letters.
Bruno Bucciarati.
If he notices your staring, he doesn’t show it. He only raises a hand and gestures, vague and nonchalant, toward the painting in front of you.
“It’s beautiful, the way they’re so entwined with each other. The abstractionism in this kind of figurative art is gorgeous, but I think the message underneath is so much stronger.”
For a second you almost think he’s mocking you. Perhaps he is. You wouldn’t blame him for it.
“It’s pretty,” you murmur, but the words falling from your lips make it sound like you still haven’t managed to convince yourself of the thought. He seems to pick up on this—of course he does, you think—and you drop your eyes down towards the floor when he laughs, buries his hands into the pockets of his pants.
“It doesn’t sound like you really believe that.”
Because you don’t. Because you're shallow and stupid and predictable, and you don’t want to be here, with nothing but evil thoughts about Schiele and Rothko and Kandinsky and yourself. If you were to leave right now, you wonder, would they be left behind, too?
“I’m not into art,” you confess. It’s only half a lie—you weren’t into this kind, anyways. “I-I’m afraid I don’t really understand it.”
Bruno graces your ignorance with a mere smile. A tentative, polite one—it suits him, and it makes you wonder whether perhaps it was one of the things that got him hired. For a moment he shifts a little, turns to look back down the corridor, at the paintings lining the walls left and right.
“ I shut my eyes in order to see, ” he says eventually, his eyes unwavering, “Paul Gauguin.”
Your face falls before you can stop it. The words sound nice, poetic, but you don’t understand them. Not really. Not in the way you’re supposed to. Your gaze drops and you focus on a pattern in the tiles, ashamed.
He notices. Of course he does.
There’s a moment of silence between you, heavy but not cruel. Then, he speaks up again, softer this time.
“Follow me. I’ll show you something.”
You hesitate—half because your legs still ache, and half because you’re not sure whether you’ve earned the right to be here with someone who gets it . But he’s already turned toward the corridor, the small, gold necklace he’s wearing catching in the light, and something in his step is beckoning you to obey.
So you rise, and you trail behind him. The soles of your leather boots tap softly against the marble, echoing in the quiet. Even the old couple seems to have left, now. You keep a careful distance behind him, not too close, not too far, just enough to feel like you aren’t intruding.
After a while, his voice cuts through the hush between rooms.
“If I may ask, if you’re not fond of art, why are you here alone?”
You blink, caught off guard by the question. There’s no accusation in his tone, but it still makes something shift inside you.
“It’s not that I’m not fond of it,” you admit. “I mean, I study architecture. I’m just taking an elective."
Bruno hums knowingly, but he doesn’t reply.
You wonder what he must think of you, and the thought of it makes your stomach twist. Did he find you as stupid, as small, as two-dimensional as you found yourself? Did your desperation taint the air around you, begging him for some kind of sign, some proof that it was worth the effort? For some reason, you feel like people like him could—see things, read people. Because after no more than five minutes with Bruno, you’ve managed to convince yourself of this much: he sees more than you do. He sees through things.
The thought still claws at your insides when he slows to a stop, and you nearly walk right into him. He stands in front of a moderately sized canvas, its surface alive with color—swirls and blooms of paint that seem to pulse under the gallery lights, as if the artwork itself were breathing quietly in the hush of the room.
“ The Virgin ,” Bruno says, folding his hands behind his back. His posture is relaxed, though somehow sophisticated in a way that feels practiced but sincere. “Gustav Klimt. You’ve heard of him, surely?”
“Yeah,” you breathe, once again feeling a little out of place. “Heard of him.”
He nods, as if that’s enough for him. “A symbolist. His works were said to be a major influence on Egon Schiele—the painting you were just looking at. But, in my opinion,” he tilts his head slightly, eyes fixed on the stretch of canvas, “Klimt handles themes like love and sexuality with a much softer touch. More intimately.”
You watch the way his expression shifts—subtle, but deeply focused. There’s a soft crease in between his eyebrows, some of his jet black hair falling into his face.
“So you prefer Klimt?”
He considers your question for a moment. Then, he nods once. “I would say so.”
You let your gaze wander across the swirl of figures on the canvas, all limbs and color and impossible grace, then glance back at him.
“You know a lot about these,” you say.
He doesn’t answer right away. For a moment you’re afraid you’ve somehow offended him, but then he swallows a laugh and shakes his head.
“It’s my job,” he says, “but I like to think I’d still be here even if it wasn’t.”
He glances over at you then, not with expectation, but with a softness that makes it hard to hold his gaze. You look away first.
“I studied European art history for a while. Sometimes I paint, too,” he smiles again, “or at least I try.”
“That’s nice,” you breathe in response. His shoulder knocks into yours when he turns a little, and your nose catches onto the hint of perfume stuck to his collar. You apologize, try to ignore how pleasantly his scent makes your insides twist.
“Do you do expressionism?” you ask instead, your voice a tad bit hoarse, and it all makes it sound like you’re somehow scared to know the answer. Bruno, however, only laughs. He has a nice laugh, you think—soft and warm, like milk and honey, like invisible, liquid gold spilling past his lips. It makes a shiver run down your spine, and you force yourself to hold your breath.
“You’re really not a big fan, are you?”
“I’m surprised you could tell.”
But he can. He can tell, because he sees . And you’re sure he sees that you don’t belong here too—that you’re out of place, the way the marble and the colors and he himself are making you shrink, more and more with every step. As though your skin doesn’t quite fit right, and he’s the first person to ever notice.
He humors you, yes, but you feel utterly unremarkable, your innermost contradictions, your fascination and your discomfort, laid bare underneath his piercing eyes.
“I do a little bit of everything,” he clarifies eventually. Then, without so much as a second of hesitation, “I’d love to show you sometime, if you would allow me.”
There’s something about the way he says it—casual, almost—but his eyes linger for just a moment too long. An invitation, maybe. Or a test. It catches you off guard—but something inside you, stubborn and insecure and desperate to understand, is rooting you into place, your hands balled into fists at your side.
“Forgive me,” he says after a second, catching himself with a faint shake of his head, “this is not very professional of me.”
“No, it’s alright,” you cut in quickly, too quickly. “I mean, I could definitely use some help.”
You hate how it sounds—how eager you are, how obvious. But the thought of leaving this museum with nothing of him, no trace, no proof that he was real and here and talking to you—it stings in a way you weren’t prepared for.
Bruno smiles again—warm, a little more certain this time. Then he nods toward the little red notebook still clutched in your hands. “I could write down my number, if you’d like.”
You scramble for the pencil in your tote bag so quickly you nearly drop the notebook altogether, fingers fumbling through the clutter like your body’s one step ahead of your brain. When you finally find it and hold it out, his hand brushes lightly against yours—just a ghost of a touch, but enough to make your breath hitch. It feels like you should be embarrassed, the way you have been since you first stepped foot into the museum. But somehow, at this moment, you’re not. For the first time all day, if only for a second, you don’t feel out of place.
Bruno scribbles his number down neatly on the first page, just below the invisible line where under different circumstances you feel like your thoughts might’ve begun.
You stare at the digits for a moment.
It’s the only thing in the notebook now. Not a single note on expressionism, or Schiele, or Rothko and his itchy little squares.
Just a number and a name—something warm, something human.
And somehow, that feels like enough.