Trigger Warning: somewhat dodgy references to art techniques.

“Don’t forget that your final portfolio is due in a month’s time! I don’t take the I have no inspiration bull like other TAs so make sure to hand it on time! Got it?”

 

There was a collective shudder that ran through the class, each of them avoiding their TA’s searing glare fervently. There was a crack and then the beautiful blonde dismissed them, a scoff exiting when the class practically ran for the door, Irene included. The brunette was barely past the threshold when her mentor called out to her, loud and clear like cold ice.

 

“Irene, a moment?”

 

Screwing her eyes shut, Irene froze on the spot, ignoring the pitying gazes from her peers as they filed past her. Taking a deep breath, she nodded to herself and turned around, facing her mentor who was looking at her lazily from her desk, pointed chin rested on a delicate hand. Her feet made heavy footfalls against the marble floor and she forced herself to meet Nana’s gaze, shivering again from the look.

 

“Y-yes?”

 

There was a pause before mirth filled brown eyes, the tension that ran through Irene’s ramrod straight spine spilling out like water out of a broken vessel. She scowled at her mentor, a pout forming when Nana gently.

 

“Honestly. You’d think I was going to hit you or something.”

 

Irene scoffed lightly.

 

“You had your scary voice on.”

 

Shaking her head, Nana reached out and ruffled Irene’s hair, the brunette ducking away to avoid any further messing. Grinning, Nana laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them, tilting her head to the right as she questioned the aspiring artist.

 

“So, how’s your final project coming along? Any ideas?”

 

Irene had to force her blush down, her fingers white against the rings of her sketchbooks as the mere thought of seeing an expanse of smooth white skin and just Wendy being her model sprang to the front of her brain.

 

“I-it’s coming along well. I’ll be finishing it by the end of the week.”

 

Nana nodded, her facial expression barely changing even though her voice was slightly fraught with worry.

 

“Is it giving you any trouble? You’ve been quite out of it in class. I can always look over it and give you a brief overview before-”

 

Anything else Nana was saying was completely tuned out by Irene, the brunette unable to keep the blush off her face this time around. Although she was sure that no one knew what her final piece would be like, it felt like Nana knew exactly what she was going to do.

 

Something bold and exciting! Something different! Out of your comfort zone!

 

She wasn’t only distracted in Nana’s class, she was distracted in all her classes, just enough for Jessica from Design to ask her whether she was under the weather and if she needed someone to accompany her to the doctor’s. Irene had blushed before shaking her head roughly, wondering just how to explain to Jessica that she wasn’t ill and it was her imagination running wild.

 

Because a very exposed Wendy, a Wendy whom she had the biggest crush (was it still a crush after so long?), fueled the parts of Irene thought only existed in distant dreams and realities.

 

Really, Irene never thought she would be this much of a ert until she caught herself thinking about how Wendy’s skin would taste like on her lips.

 

(But there were other things, other mundane things in her imagined scenarios.

 

Be the cause of Wendy’s smile.

 

Waking up to Wendy’s sleeping face.

 

Many, many mundane things, many things that would bring Irene jolting back to Earth and feeling more stuck in the mud than before.)

 

“-rene, Irene?”

 

Irene brought her wandering attention back to Nana, the blonde raised a brow at her, her questions asked and lingering midair. Coughing, Irene rummaged around for a reply and settled on the most innocuous one, plastering on a small smile whilst her fingers started drumming against the black cardboard of her sketchbooks.

 

“It’s fine. I don’t want to make it seem like you are biased. I’ll submit the full thing in time for the deadline. I won’t disappoint you. Promise.”

 

Nana, seemingly satisfied with the answer, nodded and pulled her hands over her head, her shoulders popping mid stretch.

 

“Alright. Just remember, the best works will be showed in the hall at the end of the semester and I expect yours to be amongst them.”

 

Irene gulped, completely forgetting that small detail, but nodded quickly.

 

She exited the room at Nana’s dismissal, another bubble of guilt settling in her stomach.

 

(Well, .)

 

*

 

By Friday morning, Irene had cleaned her room at least twenty times since the week started, folding and unfolding her clothes back into the cupboard, hiding away books and CDs before taking them back out and placing them on the shelves, even pushing her bed around to make her room seem less like a nerd’s and more like a normal person. Somehow, she felt like if her room was neat, her impression of a complete fool would be erased in Wendy’s eyes and maybe, just maybe -

 

She cut her train of thought right there, choosing instead of focus her attention on the books that spoke of many genres, but was primarily on thrillers and children’s tales.

 

God, she couldn’t be more eccentric if she tried.

 

Irene groaned and pushed her face into her hands, thinking that she should just call Wendy and cancel this.

 

(Then Wendy’s face, pulled up in that side smirk she loved so much and eyes filled with concern, dim but bright like the stars, as she questioned about Irene’s project and the supposed completion of it.

 

The amount of care for something that would inconvenience her had Irene forgetting that line of thought.)

 

But it was set, the message containing her building and room number with time and directions had already been sent out. Wendy had already replied with a simple okay and a smiley face, an emoticon that had Irene dazed for the remainder of the day, her imaginations now shifting from expanses of skin that looked softer than clouds and white enough for Irene to trace images for days to smiles that healed souls with eyes like stars, dark and mysterious like the skies sparkling planets were home to.

 

It became less and less about the project and more about the ache settling between her chest and the intense want for this not to be because of her grades but because Wendy wanted it just as much as she did.

 

Removing her hands, Irene let out a heavy sigh, eyes falling on the two bottles she had purchased the night before, her identification card used for the first time in such a manner, the rays of the sun passing through glass and reflecting an odd combination of green and red on her tabletop, moving in a manner that reminded her of ocean waves. Her eyes moved towards her clock and she jumped in her spot, frantically reaching for her bags and books before bolting out the door, only realising now that she was late for her morning classes, so deep in her contemplation of what’s to come.

 

The door shut firmly behind her, leaving behind a room that was so clean it would pass military inspection, with two bottles of wine sitting by the window.

 

***

She has always been taught that an orderly room, an orderly impression meant that she had an orderly mind.

 

Even after, very much after the screaming and the terror and the abuse spat from mouths of parents who were supposed to love her always, Irene maintained the facade of an orderly room, an orderly impression.

 

The orderly room would serve to be a cover, an image she maintains to keep her sanity.

 

A silent hope that maybe one day, just one day in the near future, she would be her parents’ golden child again, that one day her father’s words would soothe instead of cutting wounds into her fragile psyche, that her mother’s arms would envelope her in warmth rather than push her out into the cold.

 

(Later, much later, the room would serve to be a cover for her very broken heart, caused by a girl who wanted nothing more than the security of the image of perfection.)

 

***

 

By six pm exactly, Irene had her soul jarred out of her body when knocks resounded on the wooden door, the brunette fumbling with her pencils and charcoals while trying to keep the folded easel in her arms. She failed spectacularly when it slipped out of her arms and landed directly on her toes. Holding back a particularly crude swear word at the back of , Irene forced her tears to still before yelling out, her voice cracking from the sheer pressure at not screaming at her throbbing extremities.

 

“Hold on, be right there!”

 

Irene quickly gathered the fallen materials and placed them on the table, limping her way towards the door. She took a deep breath before opening the door, Wendy’s arm in mid raise, presumably to knock again. The blonde looked startled at her sudden appearance before the shock made way for a shy smile to curl on pink lips, her hand going back to her side. Swallowing thickly, Irene stepped aside wordlessly to let Wendy into her room, the image of Wendy curiously glancing around somehow looking very right.

 

(Like she wanted Wendy to look at every aspect of her life for a long, long time.)

 

Irene closed the door quietly, not wanting to jolt Wendy hovering near her visual wall, her blonde hair falling forward as she leant closer to several pictures. Wendy even poked at some of the coloured post its Irene had placed beside some of the pictures, smiling at the small messages and annotations of things Irene found particularly inspiring. Irene smiled along, her hands stilling over her messy stationery box and the slightly ajar easel, before she in a breath at the sight of Wendy kneeling down to check out a sketch of a girl with her hair blown by the wind, face covered but smile bright and noticeable.

 

(, , , she should’ve taken it down, she should’ve shoved it behind her bookcase where it would never see the light of the day again-)

 

“This is gorgeous. Was it by the park?”

 

Irene fumbled for an answer before realising what Wendy said.

 

“It’s just by- the corner with the barbecue pit? I - Wait, how did you know?”

 

She watched as Wendy’s tracing fingers still slightly before she answered with a light tone, her back still facing Irene.

 

“The background seems familiar.”

 

There was something else, something hidden behind the words that Irene can’t decipher but she pushed it aside.

 

(There was no reason to think that Wendy would be following her.)

 

Wendy straightened her back before turning around, her lower lip pulled into while she smiled, Irene struck by the image of a very cute hamster in front of her. The blonde tucked her hair behind her ears, the brunette once again taking in the sharp jawline and the slope of her neck before snapping her attention back to Wendy’s eyes, the other girl speaking quietly but loud in the midst of the silence that had fallen between them.

 

“So how do you want to do this?”

 

There was a nervousness in the way Wendy held herself , so far from the usual confident Wendy. The guilt that had made home at the base of her stomach flared, clutching at in a vice grip and choking her, her mind whispering just how bad of an idea this really was.

 

(Maybe it would be right to just cancel this.)

 

Wendy had moved to her bed in the midst of her freakout, which had thankfully gone unnoticed, sitting down without an invitation (not that she needed it), brown pools filled with something Irene can’t explain. She swallowed the lump in and pushed past the restriction around her voicebox, watching the way Wendy’s face went from polite curiousity to confusion.

 

“We- We could just ...not do this, you know?”

 

Blonde hair fell over slim shoulders, Wendy tilting her head and pursing her lips.

 

“What do you mean? Did you want to change models or something?”

 

There was hurt lacing her words now and Irene could hardly blame her, not after proclaiming Wendy as her muse and wanting to back out right now.

 

The explanation she tried to give seemed like a cop out, something incomprehensible to both Wendy and her inner voice which was warring with her conscience, very vocal against cancelling this.

 

“It’s just that... you seemed a little nervous? And it’s probably making you uncomfortable as well... I just- I don’t want to do anything to ruin the friendship between us... I -”

 

She trailed off, not really sure if there was a friendship between them.

 

Irene had only ever seen Wendy at the corridors and the moments where the blonde came to the library to borrow books. As far as she was concerned, the need, the want of a proper relationship, a friendship, was her own unrealistic wishes.

 

She has only ever confined the image of Wendy to her sketchpads, a smile that could heal with a twinkle in her eyes that even the stars would be envious of drawn in pencil, charcoal, any medium Irene could get her hands on. The silent image behind the good girl, the cigarette between Wendy’s fingers, smoke billowing from her pink lips shaped like a bow on top of a present Irene would never receive, was hidden between sketches of Wendy laughing,