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Title: Blue
Author: kiltsandlollies
Note: Originally for lotrips100, but some things just refuse to be cut. 300 words, la.

Left alone in Viggo’s studio for the afternoon, Dominic stands over a table littered with tubes and brushes, tiny jars, and flat, thin canvas stretched tight over small frames. He mixes the deepest blues and the brightest whites, working toward the shade he wants, the exact twin of one so carefully detailed in Viggo’s colour matching book, open at his side and smudged slightly by tinted fingers.

They’re in the middle of pickups, and it’s rare enough that Dominic has this time to himself, away from Elijah’s manic giggle and frenetic touch, away from flat American accents and cold American hands. To spend this time in silence, measuring levels of light and dark in acrylics is a larger blessing, one that will infuse itself into the resulting painting.

He’s already done most of the work, sketching a profile he’s only recently—and perhaps too late—come to love. Dominic stares at the marks of his pencil now, tracing the line of Billy’s nose and the curve of his lips. After a moment and the slow spread of a smile, Dominic reaches for the jar of blue paint he’s mixed to within an inch of its syrupy life and dips one finger inside. A brush’s precision will no longer serve, as Dominic’s vision has become more abstract in the hours he’s been left here in peace.

As he smoothes paint over canvas, rounding off the sharp edges of his portrait and letting his impression of Billy soften even more, Dominic breathes a bit slower. The blue he’s created from Viggo’s direction is the colour of the Scottish flag, of a dreamer’s sky and a swimmer’s sea.

It is everything but the blue of Elijah’s eyes.

It’s called Pantone 300, according to Viggo’s book, but to Dominic, it’s the colour of freedom.


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