Clarity || John Murphy

Chapter Thirty - Maps

"Done!" Hannah said, grinning.

Jay's painting had taken less time because he only wanted swirls, while Eve wanted to cover Murphy in stripes.

"And... So are you!" She smiled at him. "How's it look?" She asked, pulling him up to stand in front of the mirror.

He had stripes going from his spine to his stomach or middle of his chest area. They were all neon colors, including lime green, bright yellow, highlighter orange, and highlighter blue.

He grinned at her. "Thank you, it's great." He reached out to pull her into a hug, but she grabbed his arms and pushed him away gently.

"Ah ah ah, you're still wet." She smiled.

"We're gonna head to the party, we'll see you there." Hannah said before running out of the room with Jay in tow.

Murphy looked in the mirror, and his lips parted. His eyes caught sight of something, and he froze.

"What is it?"

"The paint... It almost covers up the scars. I just noticed that." He mumbled, his fingers going up to his scars that weren't covered in the paint. He grazed his fingers along them.

Eve reached up, taking his hand in hers. She pulled it down to her, and kissed the back of it gently. "They'll go away soon, don't worry."

"It's not that I'm worried about... They bother me."

"Why?"

He frowned, sighing again. "Because I got them from helping you out of a fire I caused. They remind me of the danger I put you in."

She smiled at him. "That's in the past, remember? It's over. I don't care about that anymore."

He paused for a moment, then sighed and nodded. "Alright."

"Good. Now let's go have some fun." She grinned.

*

"What?!" Jay yelled back to Murphy over the extremely loud music.

Murphy laughed, taking another sip of his drink. He had stolen Jay's an hour ago, seeing how the guy was so drunk that he might faint if he drank even a simple drop of a shot.

"I said, are you having fun?!"

Jay grinned. "Hell yeah! This is awesome!" He shouted back, and began waving his arms around strangely in an attempt to break dance.

Luckily for Murphy, Hannah showed up to stop that dancing disaster. She dragged him over to the doors outside.

"Hey!" He heard Eve yell in his ear.

He grinned at her. "Hi!"

"Do you wanna dance?!"

"Yeah, sure!" He actually really liked the song that was playing, he would have no problem dancing to it.

She led him through the crowd to a more closed in area, where people were about as close to each other as they could get. Murphy listened to the song absentmindedly while Eve held his hand and led him along.

"I hear your voice in my sleep at night,

Hard to resist temptation."

She moved closer to him, smiling at him. He took her hands in his, moving her so that she was less than an inch from him. He moved her hands so that they were resting on his bare shoulders as he moved his own hands to her waist.