"Look at the stars," Finn hummed. "Look how they shine for you, and everything that you do, and they were all yellow."
He tucked his bottom lip between his teeth, furrowing his brow in concentration as he poured the paint into a plastic tray. His only experience with painting came from redecorating his childhood bedroom over and over again. The walls went from dark blue to pastel green to light blue to dark gray over a span of six years.
Even after all of the changes, he was never happy with his room. It may have been his space, but it was always his father's house.
"I came along, I wrote a song for you, and all the things you do, and it was called yellow." As he balanced the plastic tray full of paint on the ladder he had set up in the middle of his living room, Finn already felt a bit better -- a bit more in control. "So, then I took my turn, what a thing to have done," he sang softly, "and it was all yellow."
There was something about living alone that Finn cherished when he was in Chicago. He didn't mind the loneliness there, but here, he felt unbelievably alone. Maybe it was harder knowing that everyone knew him, he thought as he climbed the ladder, because they still didn't care.
"Your skin, oh, yeah, your skin and bones. Turn into something beautiful. And you know, you know I love you so," he hummed. "You know I love you so."
He dipped just the tip of his paintbrush into the bright-colored paint, swirling it around a few times just to watch the paint follow the brush. Then he drew it back, shaking the stray drops of color back into the tray, and lifted the brush to the blindingly-white ceiling.
"I swam across, I jumped across for you. What a thing to do," he murmured. "'Cause you were all yellow."
He had gotten a few weird looks when he went to the hardware store and picked up two gallons of bright yellow paint. The weird only looks increased when he announced to the cashier that he was painting his living room ceiling.
"The ceiling?" the teenage worker had repeated. His tone earned him a sharp warning glare from his supervisor.
"Yeah, the ceiling. I don't mind the wall color so much."
As he stood staring at the harsh whiteness, Finn only felt more justified in his decision. It was vast -- the never-ending nothingness. He refused to drown in an ocean of nothingness.
"I drew a line, I drew a line for you. What a thing to do, and it was all yellow."
He brushed a tentative stripe of paint across the ceiling, secretly a bit terrified that he would hate the color as soon as he saw it on the wall. He tilted his head to the side, pursing his lips out as he thought.
It wasn't an obnoxious yellow. It wasn't sticky-note yellow. The color was bright but soft around the edges, the muted yellow of a fading sunrise. It was yellow like a sunflower, warm and happy and natural.
Happy. Maybe someday he could be as happy as his ceiling was about to be.
"Your skin, oh, yeah, your skin and bones. Turn into something beautiful. And you know, for you I'd bleed myself dry." He smiled as he sang to himself, falling into the steady rhythm of brushing the paint onto the ceiling, back and forth. It was therapeutic, he thought, as he hummed under his breath, "For you, I'd bleed myself dry."
A knock at the open door nearly startled Finn off of the ladder. He clutched at his chest with the hand not holding the paintbrush, cursing uncontrollably, "Fucking hell! You're never supposed to sneak up on a man on a ladder!"
Ashton's amused voice rang through the small room. "Well, I didn't exactly know you were on a ladder, did I? You should hang a warning sign on the porch."
"What does this look like -- a construction site? I don't have those types of materials."
"Noted. I'll order you some traffic cones."
Finn threw his head back and laughed, shaking the ladder just enough that Ashton rushed across the room to steady it, staring up at the younger boy from below. He furrowed his brow, only just then noticing the patches of yellow paint decorating the ceiling above.
"What are you doing, anyway?"
"Painting."
"Yeah, dummy, I can see that. But . . ." He scrunched his nose, clearly confused. "The ceiling?"
Finn frowned, like he was only just realizing what he was doing. It hadn't seemed all so strange until he had to explain it to someone else -- someone other than a judgemental, overworked and underpaid teenager.
"I just couldn't stand to look at it anymore," he said finally. "I just . . . I needed something new. Something different."
"Well, this is definitely different," Ashton agreed. "Do you want any help?"
"No, that's okay. I'm almost done."
A blatant lie. Only half of the ceiling had touches of yellow paint, the rest glaring white. Ashton didn't call him out on it, though, because Finn was already adding in a quiet tone:
"You can stay, though. If you want."
There was a note of question even in his statements. Ashton was starting to realize that everything about Finn ended in a question mark, everything from the tiny favors he asked of his friends to his place in the world.
"Is it weird being back here after so long?" he wondered aloud. He slid into a stool at the kitchen counter, an unspoken agreement to stay for a while.
"Sort of. Not really. In case you haven't noticed, time moves pretty slowly around here." Finn smiled absently, stretching to reach the far corner -- and Ashton had to fight the urge to jump up and steady him again. "It takes a while for things to change."
Even as he spoke, Finn thought back to the night before. As hard as he tried to change his life, some things never changed.
Ashton seemed to think differently, though, and he replied with a proud grin, "What about me? I'm a change."
He smiled. "Yeah, you're the biggest change since they tore down the mall on Reynolds. And I was still in elementary school when that happened, so . . ."
"I'll take it as a compliment, then."
"So," Finn asked, changing the subject out of the blue. "'Faye' is a French name, isn't it?"
Ashton snorted out a surprised laugh. "I mean, I really don't know, Finn. I grew up in Massachusetts, but my parents are from England originally."
"Massachusetts? Like, Boston?"
"Yeah, yeah. Right outside of Boston."
"Do you ever wish you had a Boston accent instead?" Finn wondered. Putting on his best shot at a Boston drawl, he tried to clarify, "You know. Pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd, right?"
Ashton grimaced -- an amused grimace, though. "Jesus, no. I clung to my accent with everything I had, thanks. If I sounded like that, I'd just annoy everyone I spoke to."
"It's not so bad. Not as bad as the nasally Midwestern accent."
"I don't mind it. Just on the right side of Southern," Ashton replied. "If I had to have any other accent, though, I think I'd go for a French one. They always sound so smart when they speak English."
"A French accent would be nice." Finn sighed, embarrassingly dreamily. "Sexy."
The older boy snorted. "So you don't think my accent is sexy?"
"Of course it is. It's just --" His cheeks darkened, like the confession had slipped out without his approval. "I mean. Uh. Nevermind."
Luckily, Ashton swooped in to save him. Sort of. "I definitely wouldn't mind a French accent."
"It'd match the French name," Finn added safely.
"True," Ashton agreed, biting back another round of teasing. He couldn't help how much he loved seeing Finn blush. Instead, he told Finn honestly, "My mum loved Paris, but she never got the chance to go."
Finn didn't want to push, but he couldn't help asking: "Why not?"
"She was a big believer in family. She stuck by her parents when they were going through tough times, and when she married my dad, she had to leave everything she knew behind to follow him to New York. Our family meant the world to her, so she did all of that for us."
"It must've been hard for her," Finn replied quietly. "Leaving home."
"It was. It's always hard to leave the people you love -- the place you grew up."
"Not always."
"Anyone who leaves home is running from something. That's what I've always thought."
Finn paused, letting the words settle before he wondered, "What are you running from, then?"
Ashton rolled out his shoulders, tearing his gaze away from Finn's as he lied, "I'm not sure."
Thankfully, Finn didn't press the matter.
A calm sort of quiet blanketed the room. Ashton had forgotten the feeling; even his quiet moments roared with stress, a never-ending scroll through a thousand and one tasks he hadn't yet finished. The buzzing of his thoughts rarely quieted, but watching a pretty boy he had only met two weeks before paint his ceiling, he couldn't think of anything else except living this moment.
Then Finn paused, pursing his lips into a pout. "I think I fucked it up," he said, tilting his head to the side. The spot he was working on looked a bit splotchy, the color a bit thicker than the rest of the ceiling. "Do you think it matters how many layers I put on at once?"
Ashton couldn't fight back his fond smile. "It looks perfect to me, love."
Finn shrugged, satisfied, and started painting again. He kept humming softly under his breath, gentle mumbles of "look how they shine for you, look how they shine," and all of the stress of Ashton's day started to melt away.
/
The yellow was a good choice. Finn kept glancing up at the ceiling and smiling as he wandered toward his bedroom that night, rubbing at his itchy eyes with the back of his hand.
Even if he was a shit soccer coach, he wasn't the worst painter.
As soon as he crawled into bed, slipping his bare legs underneath the cold covers, he knew that it was one of those nights: endless, restless, lonely, disappointing. He sighed deeply, forcing the air from his lungs just to suck it back in, slotting his fingers into the familiar curves of his ribcage. It had been nice having Ashton there -- a nice break from either being alone or surrounded by people -- but the house had returned to silence. Heavy, suffocating silence.
Finn didn't even think twice when he reached for his phone. Muscle memory overpowered any logical thoughts trying to tell him to stop, and he scrolled mindlessly through his contact list. His fingers knew the way.
His heart still fluttered when he tapped the video call button. His fingers remembered, but so did his heart. He could already feel the familiar ache in his chest, the fear in the pit of his stomach, a useless attempt at comforting himself on repeat in his head: it doesn't matter if he doesn't answer, it doesn't matter if he doesn't answer, it doesn't --
"Hey," James answered the call with a smile on his face. Finn immediately knew where he was -- where James had the phone, anyway -- based on his view of James's room, the Ohio State bed sheets and high school sports trophies in full view. "How's it going? Being back and all?"
He choked on a deep breath. "It's good." He leaned back against the wall at the head of his own bed, folding his legs to his chest and propping the phone up on one knee so that most of his face was visible on the screen. "How are you?"
"I'm doing alright. Just working and passing the rest of the time."
"How's work?"
"Boring. Even worse than school, which I didn't even think was possible."
Finn hummed sympathetically, his mouth drooping into a genuine frown. He didn't like the idea of James being unhappy; he wanted to hear James laugh, and he wanted him to feel proud of his work and himself.
"Tell me about it," he said, although he knew that James didn't want to. It was good to talk about things, he tried to silently justify his own pushiness. Friends talked about things.
"My coworkers are just assholes, and work is boring. People ask for help with problems that are so easy to fix, and I have to act like they aren't dumbasses when I fix it in a click," James replied in a clear glossing-over of the real details. Finn wasn't surprised. James had never been one for detailed stories, at least not about the important stuff. Feelings, memories, childhood moments and everything that made him him got shoved deep into the closet, hidden from Finn like he was nothing more than a stranger.
Even when they were together, Finn still felt like a stranger.
"At least it's easy for you. Why don't they just look up how to fix it themselves?"
"I don't know, Finn. I think they're scared they'll break the machine, so it's probably good that they don't try to do it without help --"
He kept talking, more about computer details and protocols than any actual stories. Finn gave in to his sagging head and crawled back under the covers, leaning the phone up against a pillow and laying down, cuddling into his fluffiest blanket.
"-- but they keep coming back in with the same problems. You'd think they'd watch us work and figure it out for themselves at some point," James was still droning on. Then he paused. "Why'd you call, anyway?"
His voice sounded muffled, wrapped up in his blanket when he confessed sleepily: "Jus' wanted to listen to you talk." Probably too honest, but his filter didn't exist past a certain time of night.
James glanced directly into the camera then, sending Finn's heart shrinking deep into the pit of his stomach. An unspoken moment of recognition passed between them, an acknowledgement of how deeply strange it was for both of them to still find such comfort in a long-burned-out flame. Neither of them made any move to stop themselves.
"You're tired," James guessed finally, grinning like he already knew the answer. To be fair, he was right. He had years of practice memorizing tired Finn: his hazy eyes, his blushing cheeks, his pouty lips.
"Not that tired," Finn argued. A huge yawn betrayed him.
James shook his head, laughing softly. His brown eyes were glowing with adoration, and Finn felt his cheeks warm at the familiar attention.
"Not that tired," James repeated his last statement, his tone dripping with joking disbelief. "What are you going to do with all of this leftover energy, then?"
Finn ignored the playful question. "Are you playing a video game?"
"Not right now. I was before you called. Why?"
"Can I watch you play?" he asked softly. There was a question mark left unsaid, a crucial clause left unfinished: can I watch you play like I used to?
It was an instant catapult into old times. James didn't seem surprised in the slightest. The wheels of his rolling chair squeaked as he moved back to his desk. "Yeah. Of course. Hold on, I was just about to start a new game."
"Okay. Is it a cowboy game? Or car soccer?"
"It's new. I just started playing it . . . oh, I don't know. Maybe a few months ago now. It's sort of a mix of a war game and crime game . . ."
As James rambled on about the finer intricacies of this new game, Finn settled into his bed, his cheek squished quite unattractively against the pillow. He propped the phone up against the wall, smiling contently when he found that he now had a perfect view of James's game.
"What's the goal?" he asked, mostly wanting to hear James talk a bit more. "Like, is there any purpose to it? Or are you just shooting people?"
"There's always a reason for shooting people, Finn. It's not just complete chaos. Look, here, I'm just going to . . ."
Finn tried to listen. He really did. But he didn't really care about the dramatic backstory of the video game or the different characters' abilities. He just wanted to hear James's voice, deep and smooth and familiar, just a hint of a Southern accent twisting every "e" up into an "i." His eyes were already drooping shut, and he snuggled deeper into his pillow.
Through most of their teenage years, this was the only way that Finn could get to sleep. It had always been the perfect cure for his insomnia. It had always made him feel safe, even when he was alone.
"Hey. Finn."
"Hmm?"
"Are you asleep?"
"No," Finn half-lied. He didn't open his eyes. The world had gone hazy, soft around the edges as he started to let sleep overtake him. James's voice sounded like a dream, too deep in his head for him to believe that it was reality.
"I'm glad you called," James told him quietly, like he wasn't really sure if he wanted Finn to hear what he had to say. "I, um. I think about you a lot."
"A lot?" he repeated, too tired to respond in any other way.
"Yeah. I think about you all the time."
Finn hummed again, but he forced his eyes open a crack, just in time to catch James staring at the phone with the ghost of a smile twitching at his lips. Satisfied, Finn let his heavy eyelids droop closed again, and to the steady soundtrack of animated gunshots and James's rumbling voice, he finally drifted into a fitful sleep.