Trust [Lams AU]

12

John absolutely loved drawing.

It had started out as simply a way to pass the time, little doodles in the margins of his note pages to pass the time in class, simple sketches on notebook paper to keep himself entertained during school vacations and sick days, splashes of color on the cuffs of his jeans and sleeves of his sweaters.

But as he'd gotten older and life had gotten more difficult, drawing had become his outlet, his escape, the raft keeping him afloat in the treacherous ocean of life.

Not many people knew that John liked to draw.

Art wasn't something that people tended to associate with John.

To them, he wasn't someone capable of creating beautiful pieces of artwork with nothing but a pencil and an idea, he wasn't someone capable of bringing entire worlds to life on a sheet of paper.

To them, he was John the Pothead.

To them, he was John the Disappointment.

To them, he was John the Psycho.

To them, he was John, the boy who had been kind and cheerful in elementary school.

To them, he was John, the boy who had become too weird to bother talking to in middle school.

To them, he was John, the boy who had become so weird and creepy and depressing that by sophomore year of high school everyone was convinced that if you looked at him the wrong way he'd either call down a demon to destroy you or put your name on a hit list.

To them, he was John, the one everybody ignored unless they were making fun of him.

To them, he was John whose freckles looked like someone had sprayed his face with dirt.

To them, he was John whose hair looked like he had a Brillo pad on his head.

To them, he was John who smelled like weed.

To them, he was John the faggot.

Nobody looked at him long enough to notice what he was doing in his notebook.

Nobody noticed that he had a notebook. Nobody even noticed that he was there.

Lafayette knew that he liked to draw. He'd never shown Lafayette his sketchbook, but he'd occasionally drawn things for Lafayette. For his birthday last year, John had drawn him the Paris skyline, complete with the Eiffel Tower lit up rainbow against the night sky. He'd read somewhere that it was illegal to take photographs of the Eiffel Tower at night, so he'd decided that he'd find a loophole and draw the Eiffel Tower at night. It had taken him nine hours and used up most of his good colored pencils, but the look on Lafayette's face had been worth it.

His parents knew that he liked to draw. When he was younger and they'd had a good relationship, he'd shown them all of his drawings, running excitedly into their bedroom with his sketchbook clutched in his hands, bouncing on his heels as he anticipated their response.

To this day, his parents would still occasionally look at his sketchbook. John didn't mind. His art was the only thing about him that his parents seemed to approve of. It was the only thing that they could talk about without it ending in a screaming fight. Or worse.

John had considered showing Alex some of his art. After all, Alex had let him read his writing. To John, artists and writers weren't really that different. They were both creating the same image, just using different mediums. They were both creating something beautiful out of nothing but their imagination.

John was drawing a bird. Contrary to popular belief, John's favorite animals were birds, not turtles. Granted, turtles were much more pleasant to draw than birds, but John still liked birds better. Birds were free. They could soar into the sky and fly away from their problems.