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[abrightboy]

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[conning]

“Here.”

Neal walks him through it, guiding Malcolm’s hands, fixed on the process and ignoring how good it feels to be close to someone. Pretending to ignore it. Filing the thought away for later. He keeps up a soft commentary the whole time.

[abrightboy]

Neal's help stops the active dripping, and in a bid to distract from the too comfortable warmth at his back, he notes "it's still a mess, though, right?"

There are streaks from dripping paint all over the canvas.

[conning]

He smooths one of the drips into the grain of the table the paint-bowl sits on, hand still guiding Malcolm’s.

“What’s your favorite part of it?” he counters.

[abrightboy]

"Oh."

He stares at it a second.

"That... bit of shadow right there," he says. He shifts his weight just faintly. "The table looks wonky though."

[conning]

Neal ignores the last comment. "What about the shadow?"

He draws Malcolm's hand over to re-wet the brush before working on smoothing another bit of runny paint into invisibility.

[abrightboy]

“It… looks mostly not wonky,” Malcolm tells him distractedly, watching what his brush is doing in his hand but not by his hand.

[conning]

Neal lightens his grip a little so Malcolm can take more of a lead on correcting the next dribble. "Describe what you mean."

[abrightboy]

“I mean… it looks… right. Like. …Real, I guess. Not like the table. Something is wrong with the perspective or… the proportions or something,” he observes. “It doesn’t look right.”

[conning]

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," Neal says, tone still even and calm. Painting relaxes him. It always has. "The proportions are what help establish the perspective."

He nudges the brush along, helping flesh one side of the table out with a little of the extra paint built up there.

[abrightboy]

“Did you paint something else because you knew you’d end up having to paint my painting of this?” Malcolm asks with a wry but not unhappy smile.

[conning]

He grins, again not answering the question. “What do you know about perspective in art? About how we visually construct space and distance?”

Malcolm smells nice, Neal thinks absently. Whatever soap he uses, whatever aftershave it is or the Admiral recreates for him, it’s nice. Earthy. Sharp underneath. It suits him.

[abrightboy]

“Um. I know geometry… oh, that is better,” he notes of Neal’s change to the shape of the table. “I remember an exercise in art class at school where we had to draw the horizon and then choose a point on the horizon and draw two lines coming from that point towards the near edge of the page at… particular… angles…..”

[conning]

Neal expounds on the visual theories behind that particular exercise. Viewpoints, horizons, vanishing lines, the illusion of scale. The idea of linear perspective in Western art and shifting perspective and metaphysical use of depicted space in Eastern traditions. He’s tangented off down a track about the idea of “host” and “guest” image focus in Chinese painting when he realizes… they’ve run out of image to paint.

“Nicely done.” He gently lets go and takes a step back, resisting the urge to keep his hands at Malcolm’s waist. “I was barely doing anything by the end.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks over his shoulder at Neal, then at the painting, his expression a little dubious.

“Are you sure?”

[conning]

"More than I'll be doing next time, maybe, but less than I started out helping with." It's a little teasing, but mostly sincere.

[abrightboy]

"That's not saying much when it started with paint dripping on the floor," Malcolm points out. "I bet you never sucked that much."

[conning]

"Maybe not," Neal says loftily, "but we all start somewhere."

Teasing aside, his smile is genuine. He's calmed down. Art does that. "Do you want to keep learning?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him.

“You don’t think it’s a lost cause?”

[conning]

"Of course not." It's a genuine reply. "Not if you're willing to practice."

[abrightboy]

"I'll practice. I just... don't you need to have, like... an artistic soul or something?" Malcolm asks dubiously.

He's sure he doesn't have one of those like Neal does.

[conning]

Neal starts cleaning up the supplies, once again countering with a question.

“What’s something you love?”

[abrightboy]

“Solving murders,” Malcolm answers without pause.

[conning]

“What about it?” It’s not an answer he expected, not even in the category of usual things, but he’s calm enough now to roll with it.

[abrightboy]

“Saving people,” Malcolm answers. “Stopping killers.”

[conning]

Neal’s whole demeanor softens a little. “When you save someone, what do you notice? What about them, what about yourself?”