Ovenshine

4.

Percy's nose wrinkles automatically at the stringent scent of turpentine and acrylic, mingling with the copious dust of the top floor art studio. He adjusts his position on the stool and tries not to sneeze.

"Quit squirming."

Gatz hasn't even looked up from the canvas. On one hand, they balance a weathered painting palette covered in so many splotches of paint you can't even tell what color it was originally. The other holds a dainty detail brush, with which Gatz keeps making delicate strokes, frowning, and making more strokes. Admittedly Percy agreed to be Gatz's muse mostly out of his own ego, but now it's been two hours, and he's beginning to regret it.

"And stop doing that thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"I don't know. You keep crinkling it all weird."

"That's because I have to sneeze. Haven't you noticed it smells like a fucking meth lab in here?"

Gatz sighs—Percy has heard this sigh many times before from Gatz, and it's almost always his fault—and drops the brush to the easel with an echoing twang. "Somehow I doubt you've ever been in a meth lab," Gatz says. "Take a break. I'm almost done."

Glad to be free from this prison to which he voluntarily condemned himself, Percy grins and hops off the stool, going to wrestle his water bottle free from the sleeve on the side of his backpack. "And you have been?" he asks.

Gatz doesn't reply for a while, and Percy looks over to find them gone. It's not that they've left the room. They haven't moved from their spot right in front of the easel, fingers scratching at the dark stubble beneath their chin, a startling contrast to the blond buzz cut they got a few weeks back. Nevertheless, Percy recognizes this look, as he's seen it on Indy's face, too. Like nothing else in the surrounding world is important. Like the process of thinking is just as much physical as it is mental, and they've split their presence in two.

Percy doesn't want to disturb them. But also, they're freaking him out. "Gatz."

Gatz blinks. "What?"

"Have you been to a meth lab?"

"No, unfortunately. I wanted to make my own once, but my mother seemed to be against it," Gatz says. "Break time over. Back on your high horse, Percival."

"That was barely a break!" Percy whines. He tosses his water bottle down again, careful to avoid knocking over the styrofoam heads and other dummy models of various materials gathered there in the ostensible storage corner. "At least let me see how it looks so far. What if I've been sitting here this whole time just to find out you're not doing me justice?"

Percy starts to walk over behind the easel, but Gatz flicks paint at him. "Art's more than the finished product and I can make you as ugly as I please. Sit, Percy."

Percy has been friends with Gatz for two years now, and he's never won an argument against them. Percy sits.

"You haven't heard anything from Indy today, have you?" Percy asks once he's positioned himself how he was before: turned sideways, towards the sun streaming in through the dust-streaked windows, head tilted up and back.

For a moment the swish swish swish of Gatz's brushstrokes is their only reply. "No. She wasn't at lunch for some reason. Why?"

"I don't know. I ran into her earlier, and we talked or whatever. I just still don't know if we're...good, you know?"

Gatz clicks their teeth. "Do not turn this studio into a therapy session, Percy. Does that stool look like a therapy bench to you?"

"She's just still so hard to read, even after all these fucking years. I think I know her, but then—I don't know. It's like I never really do."