Chapter Text
why don’t you be the artist, and make me out of clay?
Wendy is staring again. She knows she is, and she knows that if she doesn’t stop staring soon, the subject of her attention is going to notice. And then she’ll probably die of embarrassment. No change there, though: Wendy feels like she’s going to die of embarrassment at least three times a day. But if he catches her staring, it really will happen.
She drags her gaze down to her open sketchbook, but the half-finished sunflower on the page can’t distract her from the guy on the other side of the room. He comes in every Tuesday when she has still-life class, and works quietly in a pool of mid-afternoon sunlight at one of the potter’s wheels lining the back wall. Luckily for Wendy, both he and the rest of the class are so absorbed in their own work that they never notice her distraction. Because this guy is seriously distracting, especially when he rolls his sleeves up and gets his hands stuck into the wet, shining red clay.
Wendy has spent a lot of time thinking about those hands: large and agile, probably warm and calloused, as many artists’ hands are, most likely talented at things other than clay-shaping. A pair of heavy leather cuffs sit around his wrists, and he never takes them off, even when he’s at work, so they’re pretty much permanently encrusted in clay. The guy has tattoos that start somewhere under the cuffs and snake all the way along his arms. Birds and butterflies and paper planes swoop across his skin and underneath his shirtsleeves. There’s a crown wrapped around his bicep, which Wendy has seen only once on the hottest day of the year, and she cherishes that memory even now. Vaguely piratey images of ships, crossbones, and nautical stars fill in the gaps. Her favourite of his tattoos — the only coloured one, a bright sun and a luminous moon folded together like fated origami on the back of his hand — is currently half-hidden under a smudge of clay. There’s a streak of it on his cheek, too, and Wendy would really like to rub it off with her thumb. But that would be a violation of personal boundaries.
She casts a sideways glance at the professor, but he’s working on his own project at his desk, barely aware of the students around him. When the class ends, he’ll probably be surprised to look up and see twenty students filing past him and through the door. Wendy leans down and pulls a tiny, battered sketchbook from her bag. Her potter’s sketchbook. She leafs through pages upon pages of the boy’s hands, in ink and watercolour and coloured pencils and biro. On a fresh page she begins a new study, trying to capture the fluid essence of clay-making; the wonderful way that the substance becomes a living thing underneath the guy’s hands. She can never quite replicate that mercurial, breathless, intangible atmosphere of the guy as he works, but she’s almost there.
At four pm, the professor looks up from his work, startled — as Wendy expected — to see his class preparing to leave.
“Don’t forget,” he calls, clapping his hands; a few people pause to listen, but most keep going. “The Spring showcase. If you want your work on display for classmates, future students, and even prospective customers, you need to submit by Monday.”
Wendy closes the cover on the sunflower sketch. She wants people to see her work, but nothing she’s done this semester so far jumps out at her as showcase-worthy. She’s painted plenty of flowers and landscapes, one rather nice piece of her brothers playing with the dog in the garden…but they’re all a little twee, too much like something you’d find on a get-well-soon card. Wendy herself is already a little twee, and she doesn’t really want to encourage that perception anymore. When did she become so predictable and uninspired? At her old school, Wendy’s whole identity had been art. But here, at the prestigious Fine Arts College, everyone is an artist. Everyone stands out. And Wendy’s never been good at that.
With a sigh, she pushes her portfolio away. She picks up the little sketchbook again. This is where her inspiration goes: all her best work is of the potter with the tattoos. Wendy has never shown these sketches to anyone, but she knew that if she did, they’d stop looking at her like they’re trying to work out exactly how she earned her place here.
Wendy skips her classes on Friday, choosing to spend all day in the little studio adjacent to the kiln, with the hope that she might see her potter. She could get by with just the material in her sketchbook, but the sight of him reverentially carrying a fragile grey bowl to the kiln just after lunch makes her glad she isn’t attending her Art History lecture: his dedication to art nurtures hers. She’s careful to spread a few large sheets of paper over her work as he passes her table. He’s never been so close before, and Wendy closes her eyes, gripping her paintbrush tightly as his presence kicks up a draft of air. He smells like damp clay and mown grass. Wendy sighs. After this piece is done, she should really get over her infatuation and find a new muse. One who actually notices her.
She finishes the piece on Sunday. Even with the limited palette, it’s vibrant. It’s memorable and it’s good — really, properly good. It’s precisely what her classwork is not, what she wants it to be. Wendy feels proud of herself for the first time since she was accepted to the college. She traces the striking lines of black ink, illuminated by traces of majestic gold leaf, with her finger, and makes a snap decision.
The art department is quiet: only a handful of students with upcoming deadlines choose to practise their craft on these few and far between days off. The showcase coordinator is in the gallery, sorting submissions and deciding where to hang them. She finds the perfect place for Wendy’s piece, low on the wall near the back doors.
There is a moment, as Wendy is filling in the submission form, where she thinks about the possibility of the potter seeing her work. He'd probably be appalled and disturbed by her frankly rather unhealthy fixation with his hands. That scares her, as it has every time she’s imagined it this week, but it’s too late now for doubts. The painting is hanging on the wall. Wendy tells herself that this is the best work she’s ever produced. It would be lunacy not to share it with the world. Besides, it’s such a tiny painting, amongst hundreds of others: what are the chances he’ll ever see it?
i tried out a smile, and aimed it at you; you must have missed it — you always do.
Peter loves clay pottery — he really, really loves it, but at times like this when his phone is ringing and he can’t pick it up because his hands are covered in clay, he wonders if something less messy, like photography, might have been better.
He fumbles for the speaker button.
“Yup?”
“Peter,” Tigerlily says. She sounds bored, as always, but she must want to tell him something important, otherwise she’d have texted instead. “Am I on speakerphone? Take me off, because I have something extremely sensitive and private to tell you.”
Peter feels his face burn as the three other occupants of the room look over with interest, including a pretty girl in a blue dress that he’s only ever seen in the still-life class on Tuesday afternoons.
“Gimme a sec,” he says, and goes to the sink to wash his hands. He catches the eye of the girl again, and she looks down at her work hastily. He’s fairly sure that this girl is actually a Literature student from the college across town, enrolled in the still-life module here to unwind — little does she know that art is one of the most stressful subjects ever — because she’s always got two or three poetry anthologies with her. Plus, she just doesn’t look like an artist. Artists are experimental, forgetful, messy; she is none of those things. She wears cute little dresses and bows in her hair, and shiny Mary-Jane shoes. If she were a real artist, the dresses would be paint splattered; the hair dishevelled and held up by a pencil or paintbrush; the shoes scuffed and decorated with spilled dollops of ink or white spirit.
Peter grabs his phone and ducks out of the room.
“What’s this private information, then?” There’s a fleck of clay on his forearm — what else is new? — and he picks at it as Tigerlily replies.
“Have you visited the Spring showcase yet?”
“No,” Peter says, wondering why she’d ask. Tigerlily hates the showcases and only ever goes to poke fun at the pieces she thinks are pretentious. Peter doesn’t go at all, because there’s never very much 3D work, which he feels is unfair.
“I think you should go. There’s a piece that you’ll find very interesting.”
“Really?” Some porcelain work, perhaps? A stone carving or metalwork? “What is it?”
“It’s a painting of you.”
The gallery is dark and empty. It’s supposed to be shut for the night, but Tigerlily, who doesn’t care much for rules, strides in and flicks the lights. Peter blinks and looks around. There’s some good work in here, he’ll admit, but simply not enough variety. It looks like the gallery for a painting institute, not for a highly-ranked and diverse arts school. He pauses to look at a triptych of photographs on the wall: he recognises the work of his friend, Nibs, in the golden sunset light of the pieces.
“This way,” Tigerlily says, beckoning. Peter follows her to the back of the room, where a few students’ sketchbooks are on display. Mounted on the wall behind them is a piece done in ink. The only colour is the earthy, rich red; a colour Peter knows well, for it’s a painting of someone working with clay. Just a pair of hands, the pot taking shape under the fingertips. He leans closer, with a strange sense of deja vu. Those are his hands. That’s his tattoo, half hidden beneath the red; that’s his pot, the one he finished a few weeks ago. It came out of the kiln cracked, a waste of three days’ work. Evidently not for this artist. The back of Peter’s neck prickles with the feeling of being watched, but he’s mostly flattered and impressed. The piece is startlingly good: a strange mix of realism and dynamic flowing lines, so that while he can see himself in the art, he can’t see the art in himself when he looks down at his hands. The artist is credited below simply as “Angela”.
“How does it feel to be someone’s muse?” Tigerlily asks, grinning.
He ignores her. “Who is Angela? Do you know any Angelas?” Tigerlily shakes her head. “I’ve got to find her — ask her why she painted me…”
“Beats me,” says Tigerlily. “I can’t imagine a more boring subject.”
“Shut up,” says Peter. “And let’s go, before someone catches us in here.”
“If they wanted to keep intruders out, they’d lock the doors,” she says. “That’s basic crime prevention.”
They turn towards said doors, and Peter’s eyes widen when he realises there’s someone just outside the door. It’s the girl — the English Lit one — clearly en-route from the library if the stack of books in her arms are any indication. She steps back as Tigerlily opens up the door.
“Gallery’s closed,” Tigerlily says.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” the girl says, her eyes darting to Peter and then away. “But then that would mean you’re breaking the rules. And I’m sure you wouldn’t do that.”
Peter laughs, mostly in surprise: very few people, upon seeing Tigerlily, with her half-shaved head and multiple piercings and visibly taut anger, would choose to provoke her. But this girl has, which means there’s more to her than dresses, pencil drawings of flowers, and the Collected Works of the Romantic Poets.
“Move along, honey,” Tigerlily says. “Must be almost curfew for you, right?”
The girl pulls herself up to her full height, which isn’t much, compared to Tigerlily. “You work with spray-paints, right? Anything of yours in here?” She cranes her neck to look. Again, her gaze slides right over Peter. He might as well be a painting of a bowl of fruit.
Tigerlily scoffs. “No.”
“That’s a shame. I’ve seen some of your work; it’s really great stuff. Well,” the girl takes a step back from the door. “You two have a nice evening.”
Then she walks away.
Tigerlily sputters. Peter grins. “Re-hinge your jaw, Lil. There was bound to be one person on Earth you couldn’t intimidate. Looks like we found her.”