The Art Guy (18+) COMPLETE, FREE to READ

No Oil Painting

Glasgow. Six weeks later

"Why didn't you tell me!"

He sounded outraged, a weird, outrageous exclamation of words.

Kippy's mind raced. What was he supposed to have told (or not told) John? That could cover a lot of things, from just what went on with Jordan to Queen's Park, having pretended to be not gay via Daisy and more.

Kippy sat up, matching John's pose. The bruises were beginning to fade, and he no longer limped, but movements had to be careful still. He jiggled around, positioning himself so they two of them sat side by side, their bare legs hanging off the edge of the bed. Now was not the time to reach for John, much as he wanted to—every bit of that bare body was still a massive temptation, from the shoulders that curved over, to the back that hunched, or the thighs aligned next to his. He could kiss every bit of them.

"I wasnae keeping secrets," he began. "I just didnae want t-"

"To tell me about George MacAskill."

No-one had ever called him George. Sometimes even Kippy had heard the name George MacAskill and wondered for a second or so who that was so ingrained was the nickname. And now, someone had put two and two together and finally made four.

John wasn't asking about Kippy coming out, or Kippy finding himself in Glasgow and deciding to explore gayness as best he could. It wasn't even about Kippy pretending to be straight, via the channel of a young, naïve girl.

"There's this picture you have—the charcoal drawing of the guy with the anchor tattoo? I saw it a few days ago, hidden away. It's an incredible picture, by the way. But, I'm no art expert. I just wondered why it was hidden away."

So, that's what it was about. It was about Dod.

Years of discretion seemed to unfurl themselves at once.

Dod was ma best friend.

Yes, the words untumbled, they spilt from him. We were put together when we were four years old; our mothers stuck us in the same bed because they wanted us to get chicken pox when we were little. We got it. We recovered, our mas stayed friends, we went to nursery together and then primary school. And all the time...

All the time, I WANTED TO FUCK HIM.

I didnae know it at first. I just knew I liked him. He was always there, laughing, smiling—gorgeous. He would be on the back of my bike, in the van beside me, standing next to me as we watched the other guys trying it on at the local disco.

They knew nothin'.

It was torture. Bloody, bloody torture. He sometimes told me he loved me when he was drunk. 'I love you, man. You're like ma brother. Ma best mate.' He even kissed me once, a pretend snog when he was off his tits on something, and it took everything in me not to do it back. I had to shove him off, pretend I was disgusted and tell him to get tae fuck.

I drew him. I got him to strip for me. He peeled off his overclothes, folded them down to his waist. I watched as the anchor tattoo emerged and tried my best to sketch it in charcoal. It pointed to the exact place I wanted to go, the place my bitch cousin had access too. Yeah, she was allowed to touch his dick. I wasn't.

"What—he went out with Katrina?"

The interruption seemed to come from miles away. Kippy turned glassy eyes to John; his gaze still fixed on the far-away, a small fishing town where he'd done his most painful piece of growing up.

"Sort of. Ma cousin was hung up on Mick—y'know the TV chef—but Dod worshipped the ground she walked on. She'd sleep with him from time to time, but she didnae want him in that way."

And then, then... he died. Dod, the fisherman. He went off on a fishing boat one day and did not return.

A hand Kippy wasn't aware of seeing covered his own, a small, slight squeeze signifying its presence.

"That picture you drew of him. I think it's the best thing you've ever done."

John was no artist. He worked as a lawyer, a buttoned-up world where you kept your sexuality to yourself. What would he know of great art, and why would his opinion count?

And yet it did. Kippy knew the charcoal sketch he'd made of Dod some years ago was the best thing he had ever done, which was why it was never on show.

"How? Where did you see it?"

"Lillian showed it to me," John said. Another gentle squeeze of the hand.

She was the world's most interfering cow. Taking it upon herself to make John aware that she thought Kippy had something he wasn't sharing with John and it was her mission to do it for him. Honestly, she...

Oh, hang on.

"She shouldn't have. And I should have refused to look," John said. Kippy felt him move closer, that muscular solidity of him sliding up and radiating warmth. He had thought Glasgow had freed him of an internal heaviness, the dragging around of your secret gayness for years. His gran had told him, after all, that she thought him changed the first time he returned from Glasgow. Not that she was able to put her finger on it, though Kippy often wondered if auld Granny Burnett knew more than she let on.

But some traces of that internal heaviness must have remained. The unfurling of the secret self made him stretch up, pulling John with him, so they stood facing each other, pressed close enough to be chest to chest.

"She should have shown you. I should have shown you. And told you before now." He leant his head forward, and their foreheads touched. It was the kind of thing he would have cringed at years ago, that intense eye contact and no place to hide.

John's answer was just to stare back. The first time Kippy had met him (well, the second time when he'd woken up in his bed the next day sober), he had noticed his eyes, the dark intensity of them that would be a struggle to paint.

Would it, though? As he continued to hold the stare, he imagined the mixing of colours, the reflection of light on the dark and the strokes of the brush as he worked on canvas, and recreated the look of the lover he now adored.

It was time to put Dod's picture on display. He'd maybe keep it out of sight of Marion and her husband, as explaining the unrequited gay crush he'd had on their son would probably change the way they felt about him. They'd only just got over realising he batted for the other side, as Dod's father put it. Marion had said stoutly that they still thought of him as Kippy, the young man they'd known since he was a four-year-old.

Aye, aye, we dinnae see you as any different, son.

The 'son' thing was said with wistfulness, a sad reminder that these days they no longer had one of their own.

But yes, time to put the best piece of work he'd ever done on show.

"Would you pose for me?" It was a whisper, his words and breath gently warm.

"I'm no oil painting," John's eyes sparkled. Yes, painting them was going to be a challenge. How to capture all that was in there, love, life, laughter, knowingness, experience? How to do them justice and show people what he saw when he looked at John?

Time also to paint something again that he loved with every bit of him.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to everyone who read (and championed) this book on Wattpad, in particular, Caron Allan and Gordon Lawrie. Your encouragement worked wonders for my morale, and thanks for the suggestion Caron, on how to get Katrina to finally work out that Mick was one hundred percent rotten.

Thanks too, to Rennie Hutchison who gave me some background on what it was like to be a student at Glasgow School of Art in the early 1990s. Any misrepresentation is my own!