THE SMIRK
Title: The Smirk
Written By: etextraordinary
Timeline: Early S3
Author's Notes: Thank you to my fantastic beta!



“Fuck!” I exclaimed.

I was so frustrated with my latest project for school. The assignment was about opposites. The professor wanted us to pick a pair of opposites and express it on canvas. We were supposed to take something old and make it new, something ordinary and make it extraordinary or even something small and make it large. I had tried everything I could think of, and all of it was crap.

I tried taking famous paintings and making them modern; but it ended up looking like something an amateur would paint in their basement. I thought about taking something ordinary, this beat up, reject apartment Ethan and I share and making it into something fabulous and trying to convey that on canvas; but I’m fairly certain no one is talented enough to turn this place into something extraordinary. In fact, it almost looks better in its ordinary state.

I threw my stylus across the room; I was torn between screaming and simply drowning everything in lots of alcohol and sweaty men. But I didn’t have time for either of those options. I really needed to finish the sketch tonight and start painting it tomorrow.

I poured myself a double shot of cheap vodka and downed it in one gulp. It burned as it went down, but in the tradition of great artists for centuries, getting drunk might help spur my creativity. Or at least that was my hope.

I sat at my computer, staring at the blank screen, getting more frustrated by the second. I decided to grab a sketchbook and hope that the tactile sensation of the paper would help inspire me to create something fabulous; I wasn’t optimistic, and I didn’t have too much time before my hand would give out.

I started sketching; I wasn’t sure what it was at first. It started as a doodle, but then it turned into something more, something very familiar. I stared at it for a minute and realized what I was drawing: Brian’s smile. But it wasn’t his full smile; it was his smirk, the one he got when something touched him deep inside.

I kept sketching, it felt good and the idea kept solidifying in my mind with every pass of the pencil on the paper. I loved this, I was taking something small and making it larger than life and at the same time taking Brian-someone who is larger than life-and shrinking him to something so small, his smirk. It was perfect for this project.

After what felt like just a few minutes, the sketch was done, and I was more than happy with it. I stretched my hand it didn’t hurt at all. Which only made me happier. I looked at my phone and was shocked to see that almost an hour and a half had passed since I started the drawing. I blinked. There is no way the time was right, I must have forgotten what time I started. I got up and looked at the time on the computer-it said the same thing as my phone. It really had been an hour and a half since I started sketching.

I couldn’t believe it, since the bashing, I had worked my way up to being able to draw for twenty minutes or even a half an hour before my hand started shaking and I had to rest. An hour and a half was un-fucking-believable. I was so excited. I had to tell someone. I picked up my phone and subconsciously dialed, before I hit the call button, I looked at the number I dialed. It was Brian’s cell number. Fuck, I couldn’t call and tell him. He’d make some snarky remark about “Ian” and “true love”.

Ethan. I should call Ethan, but he wouldn’t understand. He never really has. Fuck.

I grabbed the bottle of vodka, completely forgot the glass, and started to drink.