Paints, by John Duffin

Dedicated to ebonbird, who misses her Peter.  Besides, I nicked one of her
ideas to write this thing. :)


The afternoon was clear, crisp, and cold.  Spring had come, at least in
name, but twinkling snow still lay on the ground.  This was an unseasonable
and sudden chill; the trees on the grounds of the Xavier institute showed
signs of growing buds.

The house looked deserted.  All of the windows were dark, and there were
tracks in the driveway belonging to cars and motorcycles and even booted
feet.  On a normal spring day, there would be lights, music, and voices
raised in happiness or anger issuing from an open window or two.  The front
gates were shut.

On the back lawn, one set of tracks in the snow led from a french door to a
place sheltered from wind, but not sunlight, by the trees.  There, a big
man busied himself arranging a stool and easel and paints.  Another stool,
already well-anchored on the earth, was the perch of a beautiful woman, who
stood rather than sat upon it.

When the stand was arranged to his satisfaction, the canvas secure, and the
tubes of paint laid out in a newly bare patch of lawn, the man sat. He was
very tall, and thickly lain with muscle.  His neck had a circumference that
most men would not be embarrased to have for their thighs, and his arms
were titanic.  Long, coarse black hair was pulled back from a broad,
handsome face into a ponytail.  His facial features were not angular-- if
anything, they were boyish, with soulful robin's egg blue eyes.  He wore a
loose white Egyptian cotton shirt that made his own pale skin look ruddy,
and a voluminous pair of denim jeans.  He did not appear to be disturbed by
the chill.

No more did the woman, who was also tall, with long muscular legs and neat
little feet.  She wore a pair of tan cheenos, belted over a narrow waist
with snakeskin, and a white T-shirt.  Her feet were bare, and her icy white
hair was loose.  A smooth noiriste complexion complemented high cheekbones
and sensuous lips.  Her eyes, delicately slanted, were blue.

"How would you like me to pose, Peter?" she asked.

"It has been quite a while since I've painted one of my friends," he
answered.  "Let me think."

She smiled mischieviously at him.  "I noticed that you were drawing
sketches of the local girls in Harry's Hideaway.  Surely you cannot be too
far out of practice."

He shrugged.  "Sketches only.  Those are easy.  Working with paint is
another dimension."

"Very well."

"How about a nude, Ororo?" he asked, picking up a tube of paint and eying
the dried crust on the cap.  "It is the easiest, and most beautiful."

"Well..."

"The contrast with the snow and trees will be very striking," Peter said.
"I feel good about the idea."

She averted her eyes, and murmured, "I am not certain that I do."

"Errr..." Colossus said helpfully.

"I..." she started.

"We don't have to do a nude," the big man offered, embarrassed.  "It was
just a suggestion."

"No.  No... it was a good idea," she said.  "I will do this."  She started
plucking at the hem of her T-shirt.

"Ororo, I..."

She pulled off her T-shirt in one fluid motion, baring herself to the
waist, and her fingers tugged in a business-like manner at the snakeskin
belt.

"We don't..."

The cheenos puddled around her ankles, and she stepped out of them.  They
fell in a sad little pile into the snow.  The T-shirt made a similar pile
behind the stool.

"Well..."

She took a deep breath and stood straight, with stiff shoulders and fists
clenched at her sides.  Peter couldn't help but notice that a muscle on her
thigh kept jumping.  He closed his eyes, a little confused, and took a deep
breath himself.

"Ororo," he said, "what is going on?"

"You are going to paint my portrait." she said, as if he were simple.

"Yes," Peter remarked patiently, "and you are doing a wonderful job of
keeping still.  But I wonder why you are so uncomfortable.  Nudity has
never troubled you before."

"No..." Ororo said.

Colossus waited, but she did not elaborate.

"Are you not going to paint?" she said.

"Yes," he replied.  "I would like you to relax.  Perhaps to sit, if that
would make you feel more comfortable."

She shrugged infinitesimally and sat.  Taking another deep breath, she
stared at him.

Peter nodded to himself, deciding that she was unlikely to explain her
nervousness, and he mixed the paints.  Seeing colours blend into each
other, blurring into other colours at the edges of each blot, was very
relaxing, like a form of meditation.  White, grey, and brown; blue, green,
and red; the hint of purple; these were like separate worlds or planes of
existence or ideas.  Where they met, there was the whole of human
experience explored or explained.

The oils seeped into his snowy palette like footfalls in the snow, settling
a little and braiding the thread of its surface.  A sparrow, unhappy with
the weather, began to chirp and sing stridently, which gave him an idea
about movement in the background.

He looked up.  She hadn't moved a muscle.

"I'll start with the broad strokes," he said.  "Let's talk for a while."

"What would you like to talk about?" she asked in her mellifluous alto.

"Anything." he said.  "You first."

"Very well," she said, mastering the beginning of a cramp.  "How does it
feel to be back in the mansion?"

"Fine."

"Do better than that, little brother," she said.  "It must be strange,
after so many months away from the Professor."

His hand floated over the canvas, and felt its way through the first
stroke, which was the curve of her thigh.  "It feels as though I have come
home at last, yes.  Excalibur is gone."  He swallowed.  "The Asteroid has
fallen."

She crooked an eyebrow and gazed at him sympathetically.  "I missed you, in
those months."

"Thank you," he smiled.  "I also thought of you often."  A few casts of the
tip of his brush, and there was her outline.  Even without the details
filled in, any close friend of hers would recognize it.  He put down the
sharp-tipped brush and picked up another in his thick, deft fingers,
dabbing it in the paint before it could become tacky and difficult.  The
posture, the sweep of hair, and the tilt of the chin were unmistakable,
except...

"Ororo, your shoulders are hunched in," he said.  Peter's accent, redolent
of his native Siberia, had little hints of Khazakhstan in it, and more than
a little New York.

"Sorry," she said, and straightened up.

"Is it me?" Peter asked, casting a stroke of bronze across the canvas.

"Pardon me?"

"Are you embarrassed because of me, or is it something else?"

She sighed loudly.

"Are you going to make me guess?" he said, trying to inject some humour
into his voice.  "Perhaps you have gained weight."

A growl in her throat told him not to pursue that particular avenue.

"Is it a blemish?  You are flawless, from my vantage." he said.

"I am not flawless," she answered, "but there is no blemish on me that I
would shame to display."

This sunlight captured her perfectly.  There was no dust in the air, so it
was easy to let the simple single-direction light source do its work for
him.  He could close his eyes and see her, now.  He could almost, almost
paint her if she got up and left.  Another stroke of bronze.  He dabbed at
the puddle of paint again.  No dry-brushing today.

"I wouldn't ask," Peter continued, "if I didn't think that this was strange
behaviour for you.  If you want me to stop pestering you, I will."

"Thank you."

His lips tugged away from his teeth in a great boyish smile, and he leaned
around the canvas to catch her eye.  "That was neither a yes nor a no.
Therefore, I will ask another question."

Her eyes rolled a little, but Ororo was smiling.

"I would not have thought of it," he said, "but this makes me think about
your costume.  You were never shy, when a costume could give you freedom of
movement.  You always chose to bare most of yourself.  True?"

"Yes," she said.

"But you changed your style, Ororo," he said, mixing up a stronger, deeper
brown, having gone as far as he could with the bronze.  "Your silver
costume covered you from neck to toe.  I wondered about that.  You haven't
worn a..." He groped for a word.

"Revealing?" Ororo offered.

"Yes.  You haven't worn a revealing costume in some time.  Is there a
particular reason?  Am I treading too close to your privacy?" Peter said.

"Are you interested in seeing more of my skin more often?" she asked
archly.

Peter reddened.  "I didn't mean..."

"Come to think of it," she mused, "I have not noticed that you have been
forming any romantic attachments, of late.  Your heart has always been
large, Peter, and open.  Would you like to tell me something?"

"Ororo, I..."

An alto chuckle cut him off.  "Forgive me, Peter.  I was having fun at your
expense."

He stayed red for a while, but chuckled as well, a great baritone sound
that reflected his size.  "I forgive you," he said.

"Thank you."

"I forgive you your deftness at changing a subject," he amended with a
mischievious smile that almost canceled his visible embarrassment.  He
added a touch of burgundy to the canvas, and it looked right.  The deep
curves of her breasts, her well-muscled stomach, the hint of collarbones
and the shady interstices of arm and torso were coming out under the
flickering, teasing movements of his fingers.

"It was Genosha," she said abruptly.

"Genosha." he repeated, uncertain what she meant.

"Nanny and Genosha pushed me, Peter," Ororo said bleakly.  "They changed my
body, attacked my mind.  They violated me."

He nodded, his mood gone sombre.

"When I came back to my right mind," she continued, "the first thing I did
was throw myself back into my relationship with Forge.  He was comforting
and familiar.  My touchstone."

Peter grunted, not willing to articulate anything.  It really should have
been time to block in the background, but instead he started working in the
fine details of colour on her body.  The neck's lines.  The shadow cast by
her nose.

"He didn't push me, or make me explain my feelings.  He understood that I
needed a little space as much as I needed closeness.  At least, he did at
first," Ororo amended lamely.

"We need not talk about Forge," Colossus said quietly, affectionately.  He
put down the detail brush, and picked up two others.  So equipped, he
swept in the colours of the trees with one brush, and dashed in the lines
of their trunks with his other, more deft hand.  Too much detail in the
background would draw the eye away from his real subject.

"I have not felt as... safe... as I did before Nanny, and Genosha." Storm
said.  "I suppose that in layers of cloth I feel more secure."

"I understand," Peter said gently.  "I wouldn't have handled your problems
so well."

She smiled.  "Thank you, Peter.  You often know exactly the right thing to
say."

"So long as we are speaking of things intimate," he began, working over the
trees with another sweep of colour, "I have not heard about your most recent
boyfriends.  Please."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Errr... 'dish', as Kitty would say."

She chuckled.  "Your soul is at least half woman, Piotr Nikolaevitch
Rasputin."

He shrugged expressively.

"My most recent lover was Forge," she said.  "I have not met anyone who
makes me feel the way he did."

"Have you been looking?" he asked.  "I must admit, I have not."

"Not really," she sighed.  "Ours is a dangerous business.  Would it be
responsible to become involved with someone who did not have to live with
those same risks?"

"Perhaps not," Peter said, mixing the white and grey and silver for her
hair, "but policemen have wives, yes?"

"Yes."

"Still, you think that a professional, another person in the business,
would be better?"

Storm sighed again, a frustrated sound.  "Perhaps, Peter, but my
relationship with Forge was so disruptive to the team.  As with Gambit and
Rogue, or Longshot and Allison.  When we break up, one of us must leave, it
seems."

Peter nodded, dabbing, dabbing.  "I suppose that a relationship with a man
on another team is out of the question?"

"With our schedules, I fear that we would drift apart like Sean and Moira,
or Charles and Lillandra."

"You need companionship, Ororo." Peter said firmly.  "I know you.  You need
closeness that you are not getting.  How long did it take you to speak
about Genosha to someone?"

"Not everything is meant to be told, Peter."

"Do you not feel better?" he asked, gazing critically at a tree that he had
just touched up with the grey.  The slant of it was a bit out.

"Yes, I do," she said slowly.  "Thank you.  But I do not need a
matchmaker."

"I have no match in mind," he replied, carefully selecting a brush to use
for her hair.  He daubed it in the darkest grey and spread it on the
canvas, smiling when he saw the effect.  "But, listen to me, please.  We
might live short lives, you and I.  We could die tomorrow, and if in a good
cause, so be it, but I think that you could use some more love in your
life.  Please think about this."

She sat silent for a while, listening to the strokes of his brush on the
canvas.  "I will," she said at last.

He grinned at her, which gladdened her heart.  "That's all I wanted to
hear." He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag, and said, "It is not so
detailed as some of my other paintings, but I think it is as good as any."

She stood up also, and walked through the snow to stand beside him.  "Oh,
Peter, do I really look like that to you?  That is a great compliment." 
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek, and then walked back to retrieve
her discarded clothing.

And although the paint was not yet dry, Storm seemed to stare out at him
with burning eyes.  He got the feeling, looking at her on the canvas, that
lightning really could come out of a clear sky.

As Peter Rasputin carried the canvas carefully toward the house, he
wondered who it would strike.