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The club is dark, but this guy’s t-shirt? It’s fucking black.
And, y’know, the look on his face is a bit off-putting, but whatever. Stuart’s had a drink, and he could care less right now.
“Hey,” he says, sliding close, pressing into the guy’s warmth. “I’m an artist. Wanna buy me a drink?”
“No,” the guy says, and starts to turn away, back to his friends or whatever. The important thing is it’s away from Stuart, and Stuart… isn’t about to let that happen.
“Wanna fuck me?” he asks, and the guy pauses, turning around to give him an assessing once over.
“Why not,” he says at last. “It's dull as fuck here tonight.” He curls his lip. “Sure even you can be better.”
It’s fighting talk, but Stuart is a lover, not a fighter, and he pulls the guy close, fisting his hand in his t-shirt.
“Promise.” He’s close enough that his lips brush the guy’s skin as he talks. “C’mon.”
He only lives a few streets from the club. It’s what he likes about living around here – everything’s close and he can live surrounded by his mates and the things he needs and he doesn’t have to give a fuck about the rest of the world if he doesn’t want to.
The guy follows him, half a step to the side and a step behind, maintaining a careful space between them like he’s not sure he wants to be associated with Stuart. It’s making Stuart edgy, like he wants to pull the guy close, mess him up, mark him so everyone knows who he’s been with.
Stuart would mark the fucking world if he could.
He doesn’t though. Just keeps walking, fisting and unfisting his hands as he moves, trying to find some magic combination that’ll stop him jumping right out of his skin before this guy even gets his jeans off.
“S’here,” he says when he sees the familiar colour of his front door.
“An artist,” the guy says with a sneer, cos he clearly doesn’t appreciate the riot of colour that Stuart has chosen to demarcate the boundary between his space and the rest of the world with.
For a second, he’s tempted to tell the guy to take a flying fuck, but Mrs Semple didn’t raise any rude kids, so he opens the door and ushers the guy through, overly courteous as if that’ll calm him the fuck down.
It’s no better inside. Stuart’s an artist; this is an artist’s home. There’s art – or its raw ingredients at least – everywhere.
“What do you do?” The guy’s hesitation about the front door hasn’t stopped him making himself at home. He’s halfway across Stuart’s living room that doubles as a studio and is picking up a tube of acrylic in a vivid pink. He uncaps it, sniffs it and puts it back down, cap still off.
“Hey.” Stuart snatches the tube and the cap, tries to get it threaded on correctly. It takes more concentration than he expects. “I’m not made of money.”
“I can see that.” The guy’s lip curls. “You’re hardly mainstream, are you?”
That’s something that Stuart would usually take as a compliment, but the tone it’s said in makes it clear it isn’t and he can’t help the defensive prickle that crawls across his soul.
“What do you know about it?” He asks, the words coming out too fast, too raw. “Think you know something about art?”
“Something,” the guy says, amused but not sharing the joke. “Enough to judge this anyway.”
“Yeah?” Stuart’s not even trying to keep the fight out of his voice. “Well, fuck you.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” he says and, oh. That’s it. Stuart’s on him before he can move.
It takes a moment to work out if they’re fighting or kissing. The guy’s teeth are sharp and his fingers pinch bruises into the pallor of Stuart’s arms.
It’s breathless and hectic and Stuart’s not sure how long it takes him to break free so he can breathe. Enough that the guy’s eyes are dark and his lips kiss-swollen, that’s for sure. He looks… ripe… incendiary… and Stuart can’t help it. He stops and looks.
For a second the guy doesn’t notice, but when he does his brows snap together and his eyes flash.
“What?” the guy snarls. “You wanna draw me like one of your fucking French girls or something?”
“Waste of fucking paint,” Stuart snarls right back, but he’s reaching for a tube of paint anyway and smearing it like warpaint down over the guy’s collarbone.
The guy’s lip curls.
“Like that, is it?” he asks, and yeah… it is.
It’s no holds barred, it’s fingers and words and teeth that leave marks… and only some of them will wash off in the morning.
It’s only when the guy shoves him against the wall, jerks him off fast and dirty using paint as lube, with his other forearm braced against Stuart’s throat, that Stuart realises how far they’ve gone.
Stuart can’t catch his breath and he’s not sure if it’s the arm or the look in the guy’s eyes or that fact he’s gonna come right fucking now… He just knows he doesn’t care any more and he flies apart as the guy watches him, his expression somewhere between amusement and contempt.
They fuck later, in the dark, when no one can see anyone’s expression, when everything is shrouded in a pretence of privacy. It’s brutal and raw and nothing that Stuart would do with anyone he knew. It’s just what he needed and he can see tonight’s fingerprints in the art he’s gonna make when he picks his life up again, flashing as colourful as acrylic against his skin.
He doesn’t so much fall asleep as pass out – the drink and the stress and the exhaustion finally catching up on him. Maybe he feels the guy’s hand on his shoulder for a second, but he shrugs and the sensation is gone.
It’s too bright when he wakes up, and he’s alone. It’s the least of his concerns, though. What he really needs is a glass of water, a pint of coffee and a piss that would do a racehorse proud – definitely not in that order.
It’s only when he’s done with that and is waiting for the coffee to brew that he notices the note stuck to the fridge with his second favourite obscene magnet.
He pulls it free and tries to hold it at some indefinable distance away from his face where he might be able to read it. There’s a thumb print in lurid paint at the bottom he notices, without feeling much either way.
He puts it down next to his mug and reaches for the milk.
Keep all the colours you want, the guy has written. I get the black. It’s signed Anish.
Fuck