Did I ever tell you I have a thing for brunettes?

(OOC: Slightly short post! Sorries.)

With a wave of a brush with a wider head, a deep, night sky blue was spread over the pebbled, pale ceiling. Using the tip of the thinner brush, just like on the end of Lily’s nose, little blobs of yellow were put over Stewart’s evening sky. Then, using the larger brush he swept a line, stepping around Lily, winding it around her dragon and along until he could go no further, barred by the footboard of the bed. He pouted a little and looked down at the board before taking out his wand. Flicking his wand at the brush he sent it along the ceiling where he wouldn’t have been able to reach and once it made it to the other wall he called it back.

“What’s your favourite song, love?” He inquired, calling up a marker pen from the tray, beginning to draw a handful of parallel lines. He put the marker between his teeth and blobbed a few dashes of yellow around again before glancing over at Lily, smiling. When she answered him finally, he removed the marker and hummed a few bars of the song, glancing at her for confirmation before drawing on the notes over the lines. A few dashes of yellow and he moved on, hopping round her, passing a hand across the small of her back briefly to steady her should she lose her footing.

Leaning down, Stewart kept his hand on Lily’s back as he dropped down the wider brush and put his smaller one in the water pot. He flicked it around a bit, drying it off on a bit of paper once he’d taken it out and dipped the brush into a bright shade of pink. Resuming his stance he leaned up, drawing a ribbon of colour around his sloping line of blue. His thumb absent-mindedly began to draw circles into her skin through the top. It was a reflexive, instinctive gesture, his hand at home in that space of a person’s back – it was par for the course for shapes to then be rubbed in, a reassuring thing that he had picked up from his grandfather after years of watching him do the same to his grandmother.

“This is organised mess,” Stewart decided resolutely. “Plus, I reckon, once we’re done this will look great, won’t it?” He followed the ribbon of pink back along the length of the bed as far as he could manage without relinquishing the touch of his fingertips with Lily’s back.

“Now,” he began, sticking his paintbrush in the bright green after washing it off. “Can I treat you to pizza or would you prefer Chinese? Italian, maybe? I’ll buy.”

He was moving as though he was very accustomed to painting - artist, then. Lily was getting stuck on this little dragon, and she did not even particularly like dragons. She gave him sad eyes and a sputtering flame before leaning down, trying to pick out the next color, the next project. Lily tried to think of what she missed, what she would like to see every day. The next project came easily, once she thought in those terms. Her brush caught up black color and she began looking for the place she would like to place him. She glanced to her bed and tried to figure out what patch of ceiling would be most visible to her. Deciding, she adjusted her perch and began the next little project.

Steward called out to her and she continued her progress, thinking. She had never really been a fan of magical music, never able to find songs of cauldrons and broomsticks at all genuine. Fortunately, she had been raised in a family who did not flip over themselves if muggle property ended up in the home, so she had managed to become quite acquainted with muggle music, which she had found far more appealing to her personally. She did not know if she had a favorite, but she certainly had preferences, and a few that she could always listen to.

"Pompeii," she answered curtly. "By Bastille." She was still working when she heard the tune of the very song she had named. She looked over at him and their eyes met, as he waited for confirmation. She faltered, swallowing, before managing to nod. It seemed Steward Harding was the Bringer of Surprises, Great and Small. He approached and she reminded herself that their was work to be done, so she began working on the feathering of the body she was creating above her bed.

He was on the move again, and he felt her touch. She breathed, her shoulders expanding into his hand as she became ever more focused on her painted figure. She wanted it perfect, and big enough that she could see it and know what it was, and Stewart's hand still had not left its perch on her back. And then came the circles. His finger rubbed warmth into her shoulder blades as she painted, and no matter where the painting took him, his hand remained. Remained. It was a word she had come to love and long for.

He spoke and she managed a smile. "It doesn't exactly make sense, but it'll keep me from trying to make sense of it." It was truthful, and what she had been thinking. For there were skies, dragons, ribbons, bursts of color and now (as she finished up with dotted white eyes and a lolling red tongue) her beloeved dog Jag. She had not seen him for a very long time and was certain he could bring her some comfort. Perhaps the figure on her ceiling would remind Teddy. "You're right. It will look good."

She began to wash her own brush, before placing it where it seemed to be wanted, when he spoke. She straightened up and looked at him. He wanted to go out and eat. Alright, she had to draw a line somewhere. "Oh, no. No thanks, I don't-" eat. "I don't-" leave the house. She knew that claiming either of these would guarantee her a one-way trip out of the house, if she had learned anything about the Harding boy. So instead she said, "I don't want to go, thanks."

There was something cathartic about art. But there was also something painstaking and downright painful in it, too. It was that rejection that so many artists feared that Stewart had lived through which had brought him to this point. In fact he was sure that was why he was stood in his odd socks on the bed of a young witch who desperately needed, quite frankly, for someone to give a flying toss about her. He was a great believer in a greater chain, some sense that came with every passing event. With this one, he wasn’t sure at all. It was as if someone had sent his world off axis – as though someone had put him there, here, to fix things. There was no way he could do it without time, though. It wasn’t a quick fix. Just like he was sure the hurt in him was no salvageable feeling. He loathed it. But the art helped. It always had done.

“Hopefully, some things will begin to make sense then,” he murmured, carefully beginning to outline the beginnings of a flower with a soft, pale pink colour which would blend with whatever he put over it. He picked up another paintbrush, dipping it in the white, and then he began to fill in the lines he’d drawn, pointing his wand to that patch of ceiling, colouring it green underneath. Then, slowly, a small, white lily began to come into life. He thought it was cliché – no, he knew it was cliché – but that didn’t stop it from being important. As he drew out the yellow middle, speckling it somewhat and using the sponge for texture, he wondered if she liked her name. In fact, he doubted it. He wasn’t entirely fond of his, if he was to be honest, which might have provoked his need for multiple identities.

“All order comes from chaos first, after all,” he added after a minute, bringing a brush handle between his teeth.

Stewart turned when she spoke in regards to the food, his eyebrows rising gently as a smile curved up around the brush. With quick fingers he removed it from his lips, wincing at the feel of wood on his teeth and then, when he reflexively licked it away, his tongue, too. He set his things down and looked at her, hard, for a few moments. She didn’t want to eat. She looked as though she hadn’t for a good long while. Go, though. Go meant out. Out meant dinner. Out meant a date. That hadn’t been what Stewart had been going for though he found that he didn’t mind the concept too much. Nevertheless, that hadn’t been his intention. Certainly not having climbed through her window and put her in pyjamas. He wasn’t going to then dress her and take her out.

“I meant order in,” Stewart replied gently, smiling at her. “But if you’re not hungry, that’s fine all the same. It was just a suggestion. Though, I’m starving, if you don’t mind.”

Jag was done. Though he was not as beautiful as the dog was in person, it definitely struck a likeness to her magnificent friend, and she knew she would enjoy seeing it. Now, she surveyed the ceiling, seeing that Stewart had done so much more than she had. She chalked that up to his own skill level, obviously much higher than her own, and the fact that he probably spent most of his days on the move. She was expending more energy than she had done since she had last gone out, which had been nearly two weeks prior. He moved quickly, sharply, like the sentient being he was. She moved like a rusted machine, stalling and jerking when she encountered a movement that required a joint that had rusted or had fallen into disrepair.

Nevertheless, she found she was slipping into a calm that was not numbness. It was a calm she could feel and enjoy, and was, therefore, unfamiliar but wonderful. She could not muster up anything else. She had painted a dragon, and a dog – a fulfilling day, if she said so herself. But she was content to watch Stewart work, so she lowered herself onto the bed, moving so she could sit at the head of the bed, the pillows propping her up, one leg dangling off the edge of the bed while the other curled towards her. She leaned back, and watched Stewart work.

“Sense is overrated,” she said, though the usual darkness was absent from her voice. It had been sense that had ruined everything, after all. The questions that she could not find proper answer to. What was the point of school? What was the point of trying to prove herself to be the cleverest witch in her year? Why bother trying to make a special name for herself when she would always be devolved to the name Potter? Why try to live when everyone just had to die? Sense had never fixed the anxiety, the fear, the horror that had been created by these questions. She doubted sense would suddenly help.

Though some form of clarity would be nice, some days.

He spoke again and a soft “Hmm” came out of her, sounding very much like she agreed. She continued to watch his movements, the creations that burst from his paintbrush, from his mind. Her ceiling was transforming. She could hardly tell it was her ceiling. It was almost hard to remember what her ceiling had looked like, and she had spent many days and nights staring up at it. But now, it was interrupted with bursts of color, with animals, with flow- She smiled. Lilies had never been her favorite, but it was better than that horrible, beige textured wall. Who would have thought? Change could happen.

He turned, smiling, informing her that he had meant something different than she had assumed. The sly smile on his face made her feel as though she should be embarrassed by her words. A small squirm in her stomach, a small tint in her cheek, but no other indication that she had picked up on his strange reaction. “Oh.” She blinked. “Right. Yeah, I’m not – I’m not hungry. But, um, yeah. Go ahead.”

Stewart didn’t move. He didn’t elect to go and fetch his sought after meal. He didn’t really want pizza – certainly not in the manner the uncouth Britons made it. No, he stood and he watched as Lily sat down, content to watch him. He almost felt embarrassed, having really only been used to a handful of people watching him paint. Caravaggio was the newest addition and between the yawns and the yowls the cat often allowed to pass into the air, Stewart could measure how well his forgery was going – it seemed the cat was well named, if nothing else. There was another person amongst that handful, the thought of whom made Stewart still, made him think twice about a meal for he found with sudden clarity that he was no longer hungry.

Ezra. Merlin, it had only be a handful of months. Stewart would have thought he’d inherited his mother’s hard heart but that man had riddled it, broken it down to dust and in its place he put his own. Then, so cruelly he’d taken it away again, whistling away like a restless breeze whispering through the olive trees. Gone. To find his path, his normativity. Bitter, Stewart had hoped, prayed, that he’d find neither and had spent hours in confession, his chaplain quite unable to grasp the premise of the story, let alone the fact that Stewart, such a devout, selfless creature (ha-ha), would willingly, intentionally, wish harm upon another. Torn up enough, he had not wanted neither needed his priest’s ineptitude. Yet, as ever he remained cool, stifling his ill temper for fear of upsetting a natural order and the peace of the church. Ezra had left him with nothing. A hole in his chest. Distrust in his skin. Recklessness in his mind. It was reason enough, of course, to ruin one’s self in the usual manner a man deigned to do.

They had sat together so many nights with uncorked wine left to breathe for mere seconds until desperation, impulse, got the better and they sloshed it into glasses, forgoing convention. Covered in wine, sweat procured from their cells by the teasing heat, dipped in paint, with a guitar pick between one pair of fingers, a cigarette in the other as sloppy, lustful kisses were exchanged, hands pulling, pushing, desperate to find the point in one another where everything just made sense. It was found upon rumbled bed sheets having knocked over canvas, paint pots and a vase, the latter crashing to the floor, splaying water, crockery and flowers across the boards in a crude form of art. Sated, but always insatiable, they’d lay, scrape the paint on their skin with their nails and stamp out the cigarette threatening to light fire. Perhaps they’d smoke. Perhaps they’d drink some more. More likely the two, most likely he would role and watch his lover as Stewart took to his stool once more, took to his art and painted for himself. With Ezra, he painted what he painted because he loved it, not for a meal ticket.

Clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, Stewart wiped one of the paintbrushes in a rag. He swallowed absently and looked over at Lily, trying, albeit somewhat in vain, to resume his countenance once more.

“I’m fine, actually,” Stewart spoke after a moment, colouring the bristles of the brush anew. “I wonder, do you want to talk? About things that actually matter, I mean. I refuse to discuss the weather. We’re in Britain. It’s always going to be terrible.”

There was a long pause between her answer and a reaction, as Stewart seemed to have forgotten his own suggestion to pick up food. He feel silent after she turned down his offer and she found herself vaguely wondering whether or not she had somehow offended the man that had climbed through her window and begun painting her ceiling – was it possible to offend such a man so easily? She, personally, could only be tempted out of her self reflection by the worst of insults or offenses, and then she was thrown overboard into a famous Potter rampage.

Lily found herself sincerely interested in whatever it was had overtaken Stewart. Everyone in her own house hid any real emotions from her. The family members entered her room seeming generally pleasant or generally irritable, but there was no anger, no sadness, no true optimism.  They acted as though her room was a zone where their outside lives did not exist, and they offered her nothing of themselves. They came in to ensure that her structured environment was still functioning, but gave her no signs of life.

Stewart had interrupted that pattern. He came in, not minding her comfort, and convinced her to join him in an activity that inspired something beyond apathy within her chest. So, she watched him, noticing a change in his brush strokes. Slower, seemingly more deliberate though the thoughts seemed far from the colors. Her eyes glanced across his shoulders, the way his shirt clung to the upper part of them and rested against his spine. She took in the muscles in his arms that were stirred by the act of creation, dancing to a rhythm that matched that of his painting.

And suddenly, the pace picked up to its prior deliberation. He turned towards her and her eyes flicked away from their general perusal and to his face, a mild interest mingling in her eyes as she tilted her head, a quiet reminder that he was dealing with one of the most harmless beings currently in the magical world. His decision not to secure himself a meal surprised Lily, but she nodded slowly. Perhaps he had just been trying to get her to eat, after all.

Talk. Talk about what – the weather, general news, the usual subjects that pervaded her bedroom walls? No, things that mattered. She was not sure that she knew what that meant, anymore, but she was willing to try. She nodded, saying, “Sure. I’m not sure I’ll have very much to say, but...” She wasn’t sure what reason allowed her to want to talk anyway. She cleared her throat and an idea struck her. She lied on her belly sideways across the bed and reached beneath it. Her fingers curled around the neck of a bottle of Firewhiskey that no one in the home had noticed. She stretched up and sat back into her position, uncorking the bottle.

A quick swig and then she tapped Stewart’s leg with the bottle, offering to share. “Why do you paint?”

She found she was truly asking. He was obviously skilled, but why painting? Why not a desk job in the Ministry, or something normal? And as someone who was supposed to be ‘looking towards her future’, she supposed she could start by figuring out why other people chose to their ways.

Why did he paint?

“I don’t know,” Stewart murmured.

It wasn’t a job, as much as the forgeries provided an income. He painted, he supposed, because it was all he’d ever wanted to do, because it felt as though he was getting back at everyone who said he wasn’t good enough. With every Rembrandt, Picasso and Caravaggio he felt as though he had a success. With every packet that came in thanks, sealed in the bright purple wax that his fence afforded him, he knew he’d won. With every sculpture, painting and forged piece of identification he’d succeeded. In hiding his signature within the art, a play to his narcissism, in painting… he breathed. He felt, he knew who he was when he was painting. Everything that made no sense suddenly had the clarity that he desired.

“I paint because it’s the only thing I know how to do, I suppose,” he considered after a moment, swirling his brush around the sky coloured ceiling. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, I guess. But it didn’t pan out quite the way I’d imagined.”

Nothing had. Four months into his little black market escapades and Stewart had found himself in the back of a range rover, hurtling through the backstreets of Rome. He’d been arrested, sprung and arrested again as three completely different people. He’d impersonated officials, been accessory to a dozen murders. He’d painted because he’d loved it. Then, as things changed, he painted because it was electric, because it meant danger, because it was nothing he’d ever thought. Because it made him feel like he had always imagined his mother must have felt when doing all of her dark dealings. It was much of the same. It only served to highlight how similar they were.

“I wish I could do it for a living,” he admitted, well aware of the irony and, importantly still, the hypocrisy of the statement. It certainly wasn’t the paycheque from the Daily Prophet which kept him afloat – no sir.  No, it was the art. So, in many ways he did do it for a living. He just so desperately wished it was his own art that was recognised, not the fakes that were lauded by those desiring to make money – and make money they all did but it wasn’t the same as he thought it must have been if you were praised for what you did in your own guise, not the ghost of someone else’s.

“When I was growing up, every Sunday my grandmother and I would go to one of the great basilicas in Florence and I’d spend hours looking at the frescos on the walls, desperate to do the same thing as those that had spent weeks, months, doing those pictures. I wanted so badly to be like that… to be so great, to give that same inspiration and … well, I didn’t. I mean, I think I did. I was only ever very good at restorations according to my teachers. So, restoration is what I went into, in a funny sort of way.”

He shook his head, cleaning his brush. “What about you, though. Can I ask you why you shut yourself up in your room and read all these books?”

His quiet response was not long awaited. Lily found herself gently surprised, but also oddly glad that he had an answer so quickly at hand. When she had asked Teddy how he had come to work as a social worker and how he liked it, it took him several full moments of speaking before he said anything of real quality. The rest had been him buying time, trying to figure out an answer, and then trying to compose an answer when he could not find the truth. She did not like her cousin Sawyer horribly much, but say what you will... he knew what he was doing with his life, why he was doing, and he loved it. There was no hesitation, just like there was little in Stewart's. Even if his answer was so much different from Casey's redheaded brother.

He spoke of his ability to do it well, and Lily considered congratulating him on that point, but immediately thought better of it. People did things. James flew and drank. Albus wrote. Teddy fixed. Sawyer... tamed dragons or something. Most people had that thing they did because they were good at it, because it made as much sense as it did to breathe and move and exist. Lily wanted to congratulate him because she imagined it was thrilling to have something you knew you could do and do well, and it must have felt nice. But she did not, because here he was, seemingly not happy with it, and that made her believe that having something you could do did not mean it would make things better.

He expressed the desire to do it for a living and lily kept her eyes trained on his hands, wondering why he had not tried - or if he had failed. She relaxed her legs a bit so they were curled before her on the bed, one foot tucked under the knee of the other which dangled off the bed. her index finger trailed up and down the body and the neck of the bottle of Firewhiskey, circling the mouth of the bottle, rubbing her thumb over the glass as se wtched his movements. If he could not do what he loved, that was a real shame. And this was coming from someone who did not know if there was a use to doing any work.

She drank from the Firewhiskey, enjoying the feeling it brought to her abdomen. That fire, that shadow of life that she could not get from trying to live her own life. The alcohol and the drugs and the adrenaline from flirtations always helped her feign life. She did not think she was feigning now, but it certainly helped when they spoke of life, and she felt as though this were a subject in which she had the least expertise.

"I'm not sure if that story is happy or sad," she said, speaking honestly, because it was better than speaking in ignorance. 'It's sad that you bring it up because it reminds you that you might not be satisfied... but it's also really amazing that you were inspired so young. And that someone bothered to make sure you were inspired. Maybe it's both. I don't know."  she heaved a shrug and drank from the bottle.

He finished his question when she finished her drink and she stared forward, sucking all of the liquid off of her lips as she considered the question. Hesitation. "You can ask that," she said. buying time. My, how much she had learned from Teddy. Perhaps it was time to hang out with Sawyer. "I just don't know that I have the answer." She tapped a finger on the bottle of Firewhiskey again, the gentle taps reminding her of all the bottles she had gone through since she left Hogwarts.

"I stopped going to school." And like that, words came out. And kept coming, in a way they had not for a very long time. "I just... was tired of it. I thogght a weekend might make me feel better. So I took a weekend. And then a week. And school just never seemed worth it. I never felt ready. So I did whatever I could, not necessarily what I wanted or didn't want, just whatever could be done in the moment. Time passed, no one seemed to notice, and then someone did, and then the school made my brother look for me and he found me. And I think everyone felt so bad for having taken so long that no one told me to do anything. Exams were over, so school was useless. No one told me to do anything, so I didn't do anything. There's... There's nothing I want to do. I like reading, and it's better than anything else I can think to do. So, I do that."

Somehow, when Lily started to talk, started to confide, the painting didn’t feel important anymore. Slowly, of his hands own volition he lowered the brushes and the cloth back down onto the tray and he took a seat beside her on the bed. He teased the Firewhisky out of her small hands, taking it up for a swig of his own, his lips curling into a smirk either side of the bottle, before returning it to her once he felt the gulping burn slip down his throat. He crossed his legs and began to roll his sleeves back down, finding a sudden chill reach through him. He left the buttons undone at the wrist however and he fixed Lily with a tentative but imploring look, letting her know that he was listening and hearing every word, not just taking from it what he wanted to hear. He bit the inside of his cheek absently, wondering to himself where the train had derailed, wondering who hadn’t bothered to try to save her. Where had they failed her?

Stewart sighed a little and moved to lay down, deciding that of all of the liberties, this was the one that was the least intrusive of those that he’d taken. He turned his head and leaned over, pressing a brief kiss to Lily’s temple before shifting back. Looking up at the ceiling that was now bright with images and life, light. It wasn’t perfect. He wanted it to be, though. He wanted something to be perfect, even if life wasn’t and even if she’d been disappointed. He wanted that, at the very least, to be alright. He needed it to be, but for the life of him he couldn’t decide why. Stewart bit the inside of his cheek again and brought his arm up, draping it over his forehead as he thought, wondered, and couldn’t grasp the why and where-for-alls of what had happened. He had climbed in through the window with the intention to harass. This wasn’t the way it was meant to go.

“I think you need to go back,” he spoke slowly, betraying his hesitance. “But you need to want it for yourself. There’s no sense in going without wanting it. But I don’t think you’re going to feel alright again until you give yourself some purpose. And if it’s not going to be found in the regiment of the school then I think my-” Stewart stopped himself before he slipped, forgetting he already had done. “Madam Du Hunt’s offer is one you should consider. Even if formal teaching is now inappropriate then there are provisions that can be put into work that can help you, regardless. Coming and going from the school is an option because I think it’ll come down to personal tuition and giving you something a little bit more challenging – worth hanging around for.”

This wasn’t anything new. Stewart himself had been an impatient learner, never satisfied with anything he was given. He had wanted stimulation and challenge. Lily needed much of the same thing, something to keep the interest. But, he also knew that she needed it on her own terms and there was a part of him that considered whether or not it was also pertinent to make sure she was wanted and make sure she knew that she was. He certainly knew that he needed her back at the school – or in some sense of education. She just needed to finish. She needed to be armed with enough to go it alone properly. Because it hadn’t worked out before and she certainly couldn’t rely on her family to make it better.

“But, I’m not going to make you do anything. It’s not my place. All I’d say is you need to find something you want to do. And if you need to be steered, then I’d say Hogwarts is the place. Or Madam Du Hunt at the very least. Or I… could help. I could help you if you don’t even want to see her. I’m a multi-trick pony.” He smiled. “But you know, you’ve got to do what’s best for you… and I think I have a couple of books in mind, actually.”

((Reading through my last post made me cringe. All the typos. My keyboard is sticking, so I apologize! Also, sorry this is so horrid. My Lily muse is SUPER weird right now.))

She had only vaguely noticed him settling down from painting, so focused she had been on actually getting out the ever-elusive words out of her and into the air. Was that not half the battle? Admitting the problem was supposedly the hardest, biggest step. And as she took that step, Stewart shared in her drink and got comfortable on her bed. She liked him better relaxing – it suited him better than the pretentious messenger for the Hogwarts Headmistress.

He had given her a gentle kiss on the temple, and her skin flushed pink under the contact from another human being. It was warm, the touch was noticeably warm. The warmth she knew was from withdrawal fevers, and everything else was chills. Her family gave her chills because they were too afraid that relating to her would be too close to encouraging her behavior, so she was given an accidental cold shoulder because that was the safest option for her.

But it was nice to have a reminder that she did exist. That she could be touched, could be felt. She was not a ghost.

Now it was his time to speak, and she let him. She took the bottle, and took a long drink from it, swallow it down, and then another long drink. She had grown pretty talented at chugging in her party days, and she could let the liquid slip down her throat with relative ease. It would hit her in a few moments, she was sure, but for now she only had to suffer the humming buzz that came with deep drinking.  She blinked a few times and then leaned back, laying a few feet from Stewart. The bed felt nice on her back, and the warmth from a nearby being was pleasant.

“I can go back,” she said, a sigh expelling from her lips. “I… I had a feeling I would. I mean, avoiding it is not exactly making my life easier. And I can ditch class from my dorm,” she said, heaving a shrug. “Catching up will be a pain though. Went from Academic Hero to Zero in about a month flat.” She grimaced.

His offer was kind. She was a bit embarrassed to be in the position of needing such an offer, but… someone had noticed that she might need some help. It was a welcome change, if she was being honest. She smiled, allowing for a real smile, and immediately glanced down, surprising herself by the expression. “Well… I do like books.”