drowning in violet - skephalo

07:30 AM, Wednesday

Darryl had always had a thing for describing people with colors; it was his little special thing. He himself had always considered that he was red, molten and fiery. Some days he felt bright like roses, and others he was as dark as crimson running from a fresh cut. Everyone special to Darryl had a color to them, creating a trademark of themselves with each pigment he transpired upon their sight.

His father was as white as snow; cold and icy like frozen rain. His mother was pink, light and delicate on days but vivid and bold on others, creating the perfect balance of just the right woman.

On his first day of class at a local art college, Darryl found himself more overwhelmed than he had thought that morning when he gave himself a quick pep-talk in front of the bathroom mirror. Darryl, though he had been expecting something larger, found the small campus to be quite charming, even though the breeze was tight on his dress shirt as if the white silk fabric wanted to strangle him black and blue. The towering brick buildings that he would be living and learning in for the following years of his life seemed to smile at the young man, and he beamed back. He absolutely could not wait to start college. He'd spent his entire life in both preparation and anticipation as the years between him and college slowly faded.

He stood with his head up high, making his way confidently to the two doors before him. There were crowds of people and grey features losing themselves within the two thin walls of the corridor. Shrieking laughs and sharp elbows bustled him into the door marked with the room number written hastily on the front page of his notebook. There's a central fixed point in every dynamic, but in this room, it was a short figure with tan skin and bottomless brown eyes.

Zak Ahmed was sort of a mystery to everyone surrounding him, because he was really more of an idea or an enigma or something more poetic if he had the time. And as much as Darryl tried to decipher the boy from simply his appearance, he knew that this was the only conclusion he could come to within the first ten seconds of laying eyes on him.

Darryl himself had been the same way his whole life: just marching along with his tail feathers flapping high behind him, never making dents into anyone or anything daring to cross his path. He did nothing to fix this, though - just shrouding himself in more and more layers of mystery until it was near impossible to tell exactly who he was. The only thing people ever knew him as was the boy who saw people as colors rather than flesh and bone, and this boy in front of him was blue. The only thing he could think of was sweet blueberries and beautiful crashing waves with a hint of blood in the water.

His eyes locked on the empty seat beside the mysterious boy and began stepping towards it. His anxiety crept slowly up his spine like a predator closing in on its prey, and every movement felt sluggish and drawn out. The air was warm and he could taste it on his tongue, metallic green and salty gray, shifting and blending at each of his steps.

He threw his bag down and sat in the plastic blue chair, his heart slowing to a shallow thump. The rays of the morning sun through the window casted a vibrant, gold sheen around the room, making the boy's brown hair glow like a fiery halo. Glancing at the boy beside him, Darryl's mind wandered to the sweet smell of blue hydrangea fields, the soft petals brushing against his weary ankles.

Zak must have caught him staring because his musings were suddenly interrupted by a voice softer than the petals that previously flooded his mind: "Hey, are you alright?" Zak asked, unruffled. He sounded like rose gold, tough in all of its glory but still smooth around the edges.

Darryl's heart felt like it was being mangled by a thousand veiny, sweaty wrestlers. His head snapped toward the boy with concerned eyes and a smile, gentle and sweet as if he was the child of Aphrodite herself. Their gazes melted together like rum amongst a fire as Darryl's throat began to crawl and flare.

"I'm fine! How are you?" was all he managed to croak out. He wondered what he would look like to someone who could see beneath the layers he always buried himself in, his frantic, desperate attempts to prove that he was fine, just fine - whether he was proving that to them or just trying to pretend to himself. He wondered what someone would find if they peeled back those flimsy covers that he held on so tightly to. Zak smiled knowingly at him and pulled a piece of gum out of his back pocket. Darryl studied him as he popped it into his mouth and began to chew.

"I'm doing as well as I can for not knowing what the hell is going on yet." Zak chuckled. His gaze faltered, but soon returned to the boy leaning closer and closer into his shoulder. "I'm Zak. You?"

"Oh, I'm Darryl. And that makes two of us... I literally woke up today not knowing where I was." Both boys giggled to themselves, making small talk as best as they could. The color of Zak's eyes were gleaming a smooth brown with fireworks of hazel near the iris. Darryl felt like he couldn't blink because he was afraid he would miss something.

The only thing stopping Darryl from asking Zak as many questions as he could until his tongue was raw and red was their teacher's booming voice before them. Both boys immediately tore their eyes away from each other's to view the small, sunken-eyed woman before them. She wore a long purple dress and her hair was tied up into a tight bun. Her eyes were cold and sour, and Darryl found himself not being able to look at her for too long. She began rambling about paints and the other tools they would be utilizing in the class, but all Darryl could focus on was the blue mess beside him. Perhaps he wasn't a mess, but just the abandoned artist's palette he looked of. Perhaps he was a watercolour, the colors melting into one another, helped along by the raincloud that constantly hovered nearby. Perhaps they didn't battle for him like it did for Darryl, the way it felt they did every day. Perhaps they lived in harmony, and maybe Zak could soon see that and promise Darryl that eventually he would feel that harmony too.

Or he could be a stain on a canvas that hurt to look at, Darryl thought, and he could become more akin to the feelings that devoured him from the moment he opened his eyes through to the darkness of the early hours, where every thought is more alive and more frightening.

The blue crawled up his chest, wrapping its soft fingers around his neck, trickling from his hairline into his eyes, where it stayed. He could already feel the blue making a mark on his heart, turning his once fiery red into a soft lavender.