Quentin James (boycott_love) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-01-05 14:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-06-28, quentin |
I'm just a painter and I'm drawing a blank.
Who: Angel Ambrose and Quentin James
Where: A local art supply store
When: Mid-afternoon
What: Two artists meeting up :)
Angel was still not used to judging if he needed more paint or not. His paints were the one thing that stayed safe during any of his angry outbursts because it would be impossible for him to organize them again. He had them in little cubby holes with Braille for the color. One of the therapists from his outpatient therapy had come over and helped him organize. The colors were not just "blue" or "green" but "azure" or "fresh pea green" to help him visualize the colors better. The only indication he had on if he was getting low in paint was the tube feeling light.
So Angel gathered his almost empty paint tubes and put them in a messenger bag. He already had the address to an art supply store and had already called a cab. Once he harnessed Annie, they went outside to wait for the cab. When it finally arrived, Angel gave the cab driver the address and held on to Annie during the ride.
Once the cab dropped them off at the store, Angel went inside and walked up and down the aisles touching everything to find the paint tubes he wanted. He finally found them after a few minutes but was totally dismayed when he realized they didn't have Braille so he had no idea what color was what. "Dammit, I hate this," he hissed to Annie. She whined and put her paw on his foot as a sign of comfort.
It had been a while since Quentin had made an art supply run. Sure there were demons out there, but there were less and less reports of attacks and he was almost out of a few colors. Even though his website was just shy of being up and running, and he had yet to get a commissioned painting since getting to Scarlet Oak, he wasn't going to let his art fall by the wayside. It was the only part of his life where he had any sort of dedication, and even if he didn't quite know what to make of the things that he'd seen in his paintings, he wasn't going to give up on it.
He was looking over the selection of paint, trying to decide between a few different shades of green, when he noticed the other man standing near him. It didn't startle Quentin to see someone else there - but the fact that he was also carrying a seeing-eye dog did. A blind artist? That was - well, kind of cool, actually, and Quentin was suddenly wondering what kind of art he created. Who cared if the guy was blind? Quentin hoped his work was brilliant.
At the moment, Quentin was holding up two tubes of paint, a hunter green and another, deeper, darker green color. Either would work for the scene he had in mind, but which would be better was another story completely. When the man spoke, Quentin's head snapped up again, and one of the tubes of paint floated in mid-air for a second before he grabbed it again. The telekinesis tended to pop up when Quentin forgot to control it, which happened a lot when he thought about his art. "Hate what?" he couldn't help but ask.
Angel could hear someone else in the aisle but really didn't care. That was, until said person decided to ask questions. "Being fucking blind," he growled back to the stupid man and his stupid question. He dug in his messenger bag and brought out a handful of empty tubes. "Do you see someone that can help me match these colors? There's no Braille on the shelves so I have no idea if this-" he picked up a random tube from the shelves, "-is the same as this-" as he gestured to the pile of tubes in his hand. Angel absolutely despised asking for help. He felt it so degrading and weak. He wished he was on good enough terms with Saoirse to ask her to come with him, but he wasn't yet. Things were still tense between them. Angel shook his head to clear the thoughts of Saoirse out of his mind and focus on the task at hand.
Quentin's particular psychic powers didn't include telepathy (yet, he wasn't supposed to be clairvoyant either) so how the hell was he supposed to know what the other man was thinking? "Jesus, don't be an asshole," he muttered under his breath, shaking his head. Why was it that, every time he came into an art store, someone got snippy with him? First that Geth girl, or whatever the hell her name had been, Quentin hadn't seen her since, and now this guy. He wasn't about to pick a fight, he didn't really care either way; he had the sense that the guy was angry at something else, not Quentin.
"I can," he said, facing the man. Not that Quentin worked here or anything, he'd probably kill himself if he did, but he'd been here a few times since moving to Scarlet Oak. The fact that the man was blind really didn't matter so much to Quentin - he was kind of curious to see what kind of art he painted, actually, but that was neither here nor there. "Those ones aren't the same brand as the ones you already have, but they're close. The kind you're looking for is on a shelf about... three feet to your right. You want me to grab those ones?"
Angel opened his mouth to smart back at the mystery man but said mystery man volunteered to help Angel with the paint. He wisely shut his mouth for once and listened before making a face when he heard the new paints were a different brand. His fingers moved up and down on the tube, trying to figure out a difference between the old and new. The cap was slightly different now that he stopped to feel it. "Huh. Well I'll be damned." Reaching back to the shelf, he clumsily put the new paint tube back, not entirely sure he'd put it back in the right color rack.
"Yeah, I like my same brand," Angel said. He sat cross legged on the floor to get all his paint tubes out of his messenger bag. He also had a sheet of Braille labels that he pulled out. "If you can hand the new tubes to me one at a time and tell me what the color is, I'll put a label on it." Angel felt slightly bad about involving this unsuspecting shopper into his inner hell, but he'd volunteered.
Angel looked up to the mystery man, well at least where his voice had been last, and nodded. "Name's Angel. You an artist too?" If the man was going to be helping him, might as well try and make some small talk.
Quentin watched the man's face as he examined the paint tube he was holding. He didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, so to speak, but he wasn't going to let the man buy the wrong kind of paint - and his opinion, the new kind was inferior anyway. "That's because it's a better brand, your stuff," he said, looking over the colors he'd started to spread out over the floor. So what if he was sitting on the floor in the middle of the store? They were artists, weren't they supposed to be creative and unique souls or some shit?
"Sure, that'll work," he said, picking up one green color and pausing for a moment to compare it to the two he'd been looking at before. Angel's was too light for what he was looking to do. Shaking his head, Quentin stood up and grabbed the one that matched it. "Okay, this one is a light seafoam green color, but it's not quite that pastel shade everyone likes so much." Thankfully it looked like the colors he was looking for were different enough to easily tell apart, at least for Quentin.
"Quentin," he said by way of introduction, "and yeah. A painter, mostly. Good to meet you, Angel."
"Oh yeah, the new stuff is shit. Even though it's cheaper. I've tried to switch but it's so much more watery and I hate it." Of course he'd tried the switch before he went blind. He's lucky now to even paint something that looked halfway decent. As for sitting in the middle of the floor, Angel didn't give a shit. He couldn't very well balance tubes of paint, labels and Annie while standing up. It was good problem solving, he thought. His occupational therapist would be proud.
Angel's hand searched until he found the paint tube in the other man's hand. He took it, his other hand searching for the correct Braille label. After applying the label, Angel put the new paint tube to his left and the old tube in his messenger bag. "Painter? Cool, man. What do you paint?"
"I managed to finish one canvas with the stuff. It's too thin, took me like three or four coats on some sections. Wasn't what I was looking for." If he'd been working on a watercolor, maybe it would have worked. Quentin had immediately hauled ass to the nearest supply store and bought all new paints, in every color he wanted. That was the good thing about coming from money, Quentin didn't worry about what it cost to pursue his art.
Quentin paused for a moment. I paint the future was the first words that popped into his head, followed shortly thereafter by, And in that future everyone I paint ends up dead. "Depends on if I'm working for me or if on a commission," he said, grabbing another color for Angel. "Right now I'm big on landscapes, ocean scenes, specifically. Done a lot of fantasy work too, especially dragons." Being blind Angel couldn't see the dragon tattoo he loved to show off, on his forearm. "Here's another color. Dark blue, little darker than cobalt."
Angel nodded, he'd had the same problem. "I hated throwing away all that paint. It pissed me the fuck off." Back then, he'd been much more easy going than he was now so it hadn't bothered him too much. Now though? He would have bitched out some poor unsuspecting retail worker at the art supply shop. Wouldn't be a pretty picture.
"I do landscapes - mostly abstract though. I like playing around with colors and textures. A bit hard now, of course." That last bit was said with a hard edge. Angel was very bitter about his blindness and the fact that it had the potential to completely rob him of what he loved most in the world, art. "I'm trying to learn to paint again, but I don't know how well that is going. I hate not being able to see what I'm producing." It was so frustrating. Normally if he messed up, he could find a way to paint over it but without being able to see mistakes, there was no way to adjust for them.
"Is that a midnight blue or more of a stormy ocean blue?" Angel had really specific names for his paints so it would remind him exactly the color he was looking for. He'd never forget the way a stormy ocean looked, how the blues mixed and muddled together.
Quentin shrugged, then realized Angel couldn't see it. "I tried to make the best of it, and then got pissed and bought all new stuff. Had a hell of a time explaining that one to my parents, I lived at home then." Naomi James knew enough to stay out of her son's studio, but explaining why he'd spent a couple hundred dollars on paint in one sitting had been another story. His parents had never really been all that accepting of his art, because it wasn't something that a James should do. Quentin had long stopped giving a shit about what his parents thought of him, hence why he'd dyed his hair black and covered himself in tattoos. They couldn't dictate the kind of man he'd become.
So Angel's blindness was something recent, then; no wonder he was so bitter. Quentin couldn't blame him - he didn't know how he'd manage to live if he couldn't paint, or draw, or anything. "Mine aren't abstract, but I appreciate those who can pull it off," he said. "You talking like Picasso abstract, or can you still tell what the scene is supposed to be?" Having not seen Angel's art for himself, who knew, maybe the work was still as good as it was before he lost his eyesight. In Quentin's mind, it had the potential to be better.
He examined the paint again, "More midnight blue," he said, pointing to the paint in Angel's hand. "This one" - he placed another tube in Angel's other hand - "is stormy ocean blue. Like when the water crashes into the rocks in the middle of a storm blue, the color of the water at the wave's base." Ocean scenes were, obviously, something Quentin had spent a lot of time painting.
"After the first few strokes, I just threw it the fuck away and bought the same old brand. I hated it so much." He hated that people put out shit paint. He felt sorry for any artist who wasted their money on that shit.
Angel gave a bitter chuckle, "I imagine they look more Picasso like now - but originally, they were more defined abstract landscapes or seascapes. You could tell if it was a seascape or a tree infused landscape." Angel had been very proud of his work and it had received good reviews. He felt like if he'd had longer, he could have really made something of himself.
Angel couldn't see that Quentin was pointing so he was looking confused, until he put the other paint tube in his other hand. Angel nodded and quickly found and stuck on the corresponding labels. Quentin's description of the ocean was gorgeous and Angel could see it in his mind's eye. It was quite inspiring, actually. "Now I want to paint a seascape," Angel chuckled.
Quentin actually grinned a little at that. "Man knows what he likes, I can appreciate that," he said, nodding his head. It was good to have standards, though it had been his experience that not everyone lived up to them. Specifically, he'd never lived up to anyone's standards but his own. Standards when it came to art, well, that made more sense to him.
"They say Picasso's a legend, it won't hurt to be compared to him," he pointed out. "Either way, sounds like interesting work. Maybe I'll see it sometime."
He chuckled a little with Angel. "I always want to paint seascapes," he said. "Where I'm from, my parents' house was right on the ocean, I spent a lot of time just out on the rocks watching the tide come in. They never really figured out why I wanted to paint it all instead of, I don't know, help with the family business like my brother did." Kevin. The man who was now dead, the scene which Quentin had painted, currently hidden in his bedroom closet.
"I'm very particular when it comes to my supplies. It's the one thing that I don't mind spending money on." And now-a-days, said money was hard to come by. He's sold one of the paintings he had in a cafe a few weeks ago and that had helped the situation greatly, but it was still tight to manage everything.
Angel cocked his head, wondering if Quentin really meant that. He could use some help with his art, he really could. "I have a couple of paintings hanging at a random cafe if you want to check them out and see what you think." Angel gave him the address of the cafe in case he wanted to go. If he liked his stuff, maybe Angel would see if he'd be willing to help him out with painting again - give him some pointers.
"Sounds beautiful," Angel said. "I grew up not far from here. I've gone to see the ocean a few times and found it gorgeous. I can't imagine living there and seeing that view everyday." Well, now he'd be able to hear the view - not so much see it. "What kind of business is your family in?"
"You and me both." Quentin paused, "Though, to be fair, I usually don't mind spending money anyway, but that's besides the point. Half my living room in my apartment is set up as my studio right now." He probably could afford a bigger, better place, but Quentin liked where he was.
Looking down at the address Angel had given him, Quentin wondered if he'd ever heard of the place. Likely not, but maybe Lia or Roxy had. Both of them knew how directionally challenged he could be. "I think I'll do that," he said. "I've just moved here not too long ago, so I'm still working on getting connections and all that for my work. I'll definitely let you know what I think of it."
"It is," Quentin agreed. "I don't lie, I'm getting used to the fact that I can't just, like, walk out and see it. My parents own a marina, in Maine. I can sail a boat just fine if I need to, I just want nothing to do with the business." As the younger son it hadn't posed much of a problem... until Kevin died. "So now I paint it instead."
Well Quentin could spend some of that money on Angel then. He needed it. It could be like charity or something - helping the blind man. Angel snorted softly at his own thoughts. He'd never accept money from some rich ass stranger out of pity. "My guestroom is my studio. And is it ever a mess. Or so I've been told. My occupational therapist bitches about it all the time."
Angel nodded, he knew how hard it was to establish connections. "I wouldn't mention my name," Angel warned him. That cafe had very nearly stopped showing his work after the murder investigation and all, but when he went blind they decided he'd suffered enough and left up his paintings. So he wasn't sure how well they would react to a friend of his coming in looking for connections.
"Painting is good," was Angel's highly intelligent response. "You said you mostly paint. What else do you do?"
The only good thing about his parents having money meant that Quentin could live the life he wanted. Joshua James was all but happy to pay for him to be living out of state, where his "freak" of a son couldn't tarnish their reputation further. It was a double-edged sword, and most of the time, Quentin was okay with living away from everything he'd ever known. Sometimes he missed his sister Renee, and the ocean. "I should have gotten a bigger apartment, as I would have done the same thing," he said. "And an artist with a clean studio is a broke artist who isn't producing any work. Tell your therapist that."
Quentin raised an eyebrow. "Okay, if you say so." What, did Michigan have a thing about blind painters or something? If the art was good, who gave a shit? Whatever, he didn't really care much about the politics behind selling his art. Maybe, if Brady was done with the renovations at the Liberty Inn, Quentin could get a piece or two up there. "Hell, I don't even know everywhere I could approach about paintings yet. That's the shitty thing about starting over, you know?"
He grabbed another few colors down, matching them to the tubes Angel had laid out. "So this one is bright-ass sunshine yellow. As bright a yellow as you can get. And I sketch a fair bit, in my downtime from painting. And, somehow, I've started designing tattoos for people."
Angel chuckled, "I'll be sure to pass that along. I'm sure that'll earn me a slap upside the head though." His therapist didn't like sarcasm and bitterness, which is par for the course with Angel, therefore he gets lots of slaps and irritated noises.
"Oh, I know all about starting over," Angel commiserated. He'd had to start over and totally rebuild his life after the murder investigation. The public formed their own opinion of him and they didn't let those opinions go easily. So even though he had absolutely nothing to do with Saoirse's supposed murder, people still thought he did. There was nothing he could do to change their minds... even a statement from the police hadn't changed any minds.
Angel tore off the bright ass yellow label and put it to the tube Quentin had handed him. "I've never sketched so much. Before, my "specialty" was my coloring... I always made new, different, brighter, lighter colors when I painted. It's a bit hard now, but a lot of it was instinct, so I hope it stays that way."
"Oh, tattoos? That's awesome. I've always loved tattoo art. Tattoo artists don't get nearly the recognition they should for the artists that they are. Some of that shit is so detailed and amazing." Not that he'd be seeing any of that now. But when he could, it was always a favorite of his. "Do you have any?"
"A slap in the head? Some therapist." At some point, if Quentin had been in Angel's shoes, he likely would have punched said therapist back. Or used telekinesis to throw something at him (or her, Angel hadn't said).
Quentin had the impression that his starting over was drastically different from Angel's. After all, he'd just moved to a new place, everything about him intact. He could argue that he'd moved because of the visions or whatever the hell he was calling his paintings these days, but that was a fact that he kept to himself. Lia only knew because she'd been the unfortunate witness to him being absolutely wasted and drunk!Quentin did a lot he wasn't proud of.
"Coloring's harder to pull off, in most cases," he said, figuring art might be a safer subject than starting over. "And that's the kind of stuff you can't always teach someone, so I bet it's still there. Sketching for me is more habit than anything else, something I just have to do." Sometimes they transferred into paintings, but if they didn't, he was still happy.
Did Quentin have tattoos? Man, how he wished the guy wasn't blind. "Covered in them," he confirmed. "Lots of dragons and boats. A few Chinese characters I let a friend tattoo on me, when he was an apprentice. Some have held up better than others, but I love each and every one of them. Getting the marina tattooed on my back now."
"She's a bitch," Angel said cheerfully. As bitchy as she was, she was necessary if he wanted to continue to live on his own. She taught him all the necessities and he would be totally lost without her.
"I just need someone to really look at what I've done since I went blind to see if it's any good. I have my therapist but she just says if it's good or bad. No really constructive criticism there." He rolled his eyes at that. She could criticize everything else he does, but when it comes to his art, she's very monosyllabic about it. At no point did it occur to Angel that by saying what he did, it might have come across as an invitation.
Angel looked impressed by Quentin's description of his tattoos. "Sounds really cool. I have two - a black panther and the word Noel on my lower stomach." After he'd become blind, he tried to find them on his skin, but couldn't. It didn't have a different texture than his skin at all, so that was a little disappointing for him.
Quentin laughed at Angel's description of his therapist. "A necessary evil, then?" he asked, shaking his head. It sounded a bit like how Quentin would describe his mother. A bitch, yes, a self-centered socialite, yes, but he stayed on mostly good terms with her, easier to do now that he lived several states away.
"It's hard to ask someone who doesn't know art for constructive criticism anyway, they don't know what to look for. I'd be honest with you and tell you what I thought. Hell, I like having someone to discuss art with." Most of the people he'd met in Scarlet Oak so far weren't artists, not like he and Angel were. Lia appreciated his work, for sure, especially since she'd seen a lot of it now, but it wasn't the same. She didn't know how to criticize it - not that his ego looked for such criticism, she could tell him it was awesome until she was blue in the face and Quentin would probably enjoy it.
"Nice," he agreed, wondering what the black panther looked like, if it was abstract or not, or looked like the real thing. "Mind if I ask why you picked the panther? Not one I see that often." Then again, no one got boats tattooed on them either, but Quentin had his own reasons for that.
"I swear she's pure evil," Angel said, shaking his head. He wasn't joking either. The lady was a bitch and if he didn't have to put up with her, he wouldn't at all. "But yes, a necessary evil, I suppose."
Angel cocked his head when Quentin said he would be honest and tell Angel what he thought. "Yeah? If you're serious, I may take you up on that offer. It is really hard for a non-artist to help an artist paint again. Just knowing if my colors are blending or are too saturated would help." Well now, this was unexpected. Angel hadn't even thought to come out of this quick store trip with someone who could help him with his art.
"I had gone through quite a dark period in my life -wrong accused of something and it completely ruined my reputation. The panther symbolizes reclaiming one's power, knowing the dark and rebirth. It completely fit the place I was at in my life at that time." Angel shrugged. If he'd known he was going to go blind sometime later, he might not have gotten a tattoo. But, he unfortunately couldn't predict the future, so he was stuck with it.
"Sounds like most therapists I've ever met." Granted, the ones he'd been to weren't occupational therapists, but his parents had tried to send him to shrink after shrink when he was a kid, thinking it would bring a stop to his telekinesis. In the end, they couldn't find a thing wrong with Quentin - at least, not physically. He'd gotten countless recommendations to fix his "attitude problem," of course, but he liked his personality just the way it was, thank you.
"If you would like, then I gladly offer my services." Quentin bowed a little, only to realize after that Angel couldn't see the gesture. To be honest, Quentin didn't mind helping the guy out. He'd like to have an artist friend in town, someone who knew what he babbled about half the time. And he promised to be honest with him, which was something he didn't find in a lot of critics. They wanted to be douchebags for the sake of being douchebags; Quentin didn't work like that.
He sat back a little, wondering what Angel could have been accused of that would have ruined his reputation so. "A sign of a good tattoo," he said, "is one that means something. You don't need to see it, you know it's there." He paused, looking down at his hands for a second. "My marina tattoo? It's got my brother's boat in the scene, the one that killed him. I moved out here after the funeral."
Angel thought it over. He was wondering if this guy was any good and if so, if he was good enough to give Angel good feedback. For all Angel knew, Quentin painted with fingerpaints and his canvas looked like someone took a big steaming shit in the middle of it. From how he was describing colors and seascapes, Angel didn't really think that was the case, but it was always a possibility.
Deciding to roll with it, Angel gave him a small smile, "That'd be great, if you don't mind. I could really use a fellow artist's input." He said yes for two reasons: one, Angel really wanted to start painting well again and two, he needed friends in this town - people who didn't see him as a murderer who got off. Quentin seemed like a decent buy and at least Angel would be getting something out of this arrangement. "I have my post-blindness canvases at my house if you want to stop by someday to look at them. I'll give you my address if you have something to write on and with."
After Quentin told him the symbolism behind his marina tattoo, Angel hissed through his teeth. "Shit man, I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?" How precisely did a boat kill someone, Angel wondered. Even though Angel was an only child, he couldn't imagine losing someone so close to him. He'd thought he'd gone through hell when Saoirse "died" but they weren't even like that close. Having a family member or sibling die must be absolutely terrible.
When it came to art, the idea of being "good" was subjective. For the most part Quentin was curious, and his own art tended to lean toward the extremely detailed. The painting he based his favorite dragon tattoo on, Twin Dragons, featured every scale in each dragon's figure, paint flicked on to perfection. He appreciated all art, of course, but he'd at least be honest with Angel about what he saw.
"Sure, I'd love to take a look at them. Let me just grab my sketchbook." Quentin was rarely without it, and he had left it on a nearby shelf when he started fetching colors for Angel. He always had a pen on him and he dug a few out of his pocket, and they floated around his hand for a second before Quentin noticed, snatching them out of the air. Stupid telekinesis. "All right, I'm good."
He was wondering if Angel would ask about it, and of course, they always did. Quentin closed his eyes, remembering the image perfectly, every detail he'd seen beforehand, how he'd worked on that painting like a madman, unaware of what he was actually painting. "Got caught in a storm," he said. "Boat sailed right into the cliff. If he hadn't washed up on shore..." His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. "Anyway. That boat is now on me. A memorial, so to speak."
Angel rattled off his address, hoping that Angel managed to catch it as he spoke. "Let me also give you my cell - don't call before 2pm... usually still sleeping until then." He gave Quentin his cell phone number as well. "Just call when it's a good time for you to come over. And hey - I really appreciate this."
Angel winced at the description of how Quentin's brother died. "Fuck," he muttered. "That's terrible." He couldn't imagine getting a tattoo of something so tragic, but hell, to each their own. He wished he could see it but that wasn't going to happen.
"So do we have all the paints matched up?" he asked. He felt his sheet of labels and noticed that almost all of them were gone.
As Angel spoke, Quentin's hand was moving, jotting down the address in one corner of the page. The rest of it was scrawled with sketches of the waves, from when he'd been sitting at the mechanic's shop for god knows how long. "You say that like I'm awake much before 2 in the afternoon," he said, chuckling. "I do some of my best work after midnight, so that gives me the right to sleep in." Lia made fun of him for it, saying she was forever waking him up when the day was half over, but that was the life of an artist. "And hey, I'd be glad to. Haven't met many artists out here yet, good to finally do so."
He paused for a moment, looking down at the waves in his sketchbook, tracing a finger over the edge of them. "Yeah," he said. Most people wouldn't keep that on their person forever, but Quentin didn't see a better way to remember Kevin by. It was a picture of the marina, the way it should be, with Kevin's boat at the dock. Joshua James was going to be so pissed when he saw the finished picture.
"Um, yeah, just one more that we need." He reached over to grab a red color. "This one is a reddish, orangey color - like the rust eating away at the metal of some piece of shit car sitting in someone's yard." There were a lot of houses with rusted out cars out front in Maine. Not in Kennebunkport, but when Quentin drove out of town, he saw them everywhere.
Angel chuckled at Quentin's description of the paint. He pulled off a label and held it up. "It says 'Car Rust'." He knew Quentin would be a good one to look at his art since they had similar descriptions of colors. "But yeah, just call anytime. I will look through my contacts to see if there are any that I haven't pissed off and give you some referrals." He knew all about what it was like to be a struggling artist - hell, he was still a struggling artist. Wouldn't have been so struggling if he hadn't been accused of Saoirse's murder. His career was really taking off and was showing great promise until that fateful night.
Angel pushed the memories out of his head and hauled himself to his feet. He scooped up all the paint tubes and grabbed Annie's harness. "Did I get all the tubes?" he asked Quentin.
This was going to be the start of a good friendship, Quentin was hoping, at least artistically speaking. Both he and Angel had similar ways of describing things, which made it easier to make sure they were both on the same page. "I'd appreciate it, definitely. And if I make any connections of my own, I can repay the favor." Maybe Angel would take him up on it, maybe he wouldn't. If there was one thing Quentin had learned from his parents, even though he tried to block out as much as he could, it was how to network.
Quentin glanced around, just to make sure. "Yeah, I think that's - hold on a sec." There was one more on the floor and rather than lean down to grab it, Quentin simply called it into his hand and passed it to Angel. "Don't want to forget your stormy ocean blue color, after all."
Angel cocked his head to the side, confused because he didn't hear the rustle of clothes that he should have if Quentin had bent over and gotten the paint tube. His hand reached out and searched for the tube before grasping it and adding it to his armful. Angel shrugged it off because how else would he get it. "Thanks, man, for helping me. Just give me a call whenever." Angel grinned at Quentin, he too thinking it might be nice to have a friend in this town. He headed to the check out counter and plopped the paint tubes down.