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The paint wasn’t flowing from his brush like usual, the lines wrong, the color just a shade off. The art was not cooperating with him like it usually does. The canvas, grand and full of color, sat dully in front of him. The creativity hasn’t been locked off, no, that wasn’t the issue. Creativity has always been kind to him; there was no lack of abundance in that treasure trove of wonder. No, his distraction came from elsewhere.
Verso hadn’t come down from his room.
In fact, he hasn’t left his room besides haunting the dining hall when dinner was served. Though, it seems he gave up on that too. He has not seen the pale face of his son all day. Verso was entitled to his space, his privacy… but the vacant smiles and shallow conversation felt staged, even for him.
A single hair from his brush made a rebellious streak where there should have been no streak. Renoir huffs, deciding to give up for now. Diligently, he cleans his brushes and leaves them to dry, hoping the bristles will want to work properly tomorrow.
Perhaps it is his brain that needs to work properly.
He makes the trek up black marbled stairs, red carpet sinking to his socked feet. The halls are quiet, his children and wife most likely asleep. Renoir’s about to turn to retire to his room, exhausted from the disobedient art, when Verso’s door beckons him.
A siren’s call of duty, the door that remained closed from dawn til dusk. It will not remain closed if Renoir has anything to say about it.
His cane taps a foreboding rhythm as he approaches, the golds and blacks elongated in his tunnel visioned need to check on his son.
Renoir knocks.
There is no answer.
It is a breach of privacy, of trust, but he cannot resist. The door opens, unlocked and unguarded. Verso does not shout at him to leave. Renoir sees the lump of him in his bed, but he is strangely still. The distance from the door to the bed feels like an entire ocean, wading through deceptively calm waters though smelling the scent of a storm brewing.
He would not be afraid to weather it.
Verso is not asleep, like he had first thought. He is staring at the ceiling, barely blinking. Renoir would have think he’s dead if it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest. Life giving breath, though Verso does not look alive. His hair is greasy, skin matching the sheen of it. Stubble overgrown, not neatly trimmed like usual. His lips are bleeding from how dry they are.
Red bleeds into pink bleeds into white.
Renoir sits on the edge of Verso’s bed, trying to figure out what he should say to the storm that is brewing. He doesn’t have to.
“You noticed.” Verso breaks the oppressive silence. His voice is that of rust, grinding together even though it has not been used in some time.
“Noticed?” Renoir echoes, leaning over to try to get those pale blue eyes to glance at him. He does not get his wish. Verso continues staring at the ceiling, which must feel like the most interesting thing to him right now.
“That I was gone.”
His hair raises, the chilling indifferent tone setting off every sense he had inherited the moment he became a father. There is no emotion behind the voice. It is hollow in a way that makes Renoir yearn to hear his shouting.
Anger, joy, sadness, mirth, amusement.
Anything but this paralyzing, indifferent despair.
“Of course, I did. You’re my son.” Renoir finds his voice, warring with his own shout. It would not serve him here. Guilt, though he has used it before, should not be his weapon of choice in this encounter. Guilt will build and build and build until it explodes, and knowing Verso, he will go out in a blaze of glory.
“And what of it? What does it matter?” Verso hums, moving his head to the side slightly. “What joy does life bring that blocks out the melancholia that has infested me?”
Oh, my son.
Renoir can’t answer, not now at least.
“Those things that bring light to my life have faded and dulled. The happiness that I thought I brought, a lie. I am… but a fragment of dust. Unseen, old and dead and waiting to be cleansed.” Verso continues when he senses Renoir won’t answer. He cannot bare to hear his son talk like this, but what could he do? Telling a drowning man to just swim is useless advice. Telling a person to see the light when shrouded in pitch darkness is idiotic.
Telling his son to be happy when he cannot find it is barbaric.
“You are… so much more than you know.” Renoir starts, trying to grab his thoughts by their leashes. “You say you are dust? Perhaps that matter is derived from the heavens? Those bright specks of stars that look, to us, like specks of dust.” He leans over, obstructing Verso’s view of his self-inflicted cage. His beautiful mind his prison.
“The stars cannot know how brightly they shine without others to observe them, so to themselves, they seem like simple dust.” Renoir hesitantly reaches out to his star, his angel, his everything. The cosmos, the universe, the planets, and constellations laying in this bed believing he is nothing but a waste of his flesh. Tears spill out of those glacial eyes, torment escaping him physically now. Chains weigh him, and Renoir does not have the key, but he could be the window that gives Verso’s soul the hope it needs.
He leans down and presses their lips together, the cosmos bursting behind his eyes. Arms become mobile again, reaching for his salvation. Verso wraps him in arms that are in turn wrapped in days old clothes.
“So, you see? How could I not notice when my favorite star goes missing?”
The dam breaks, tears flooding from Verso’s eyes as his despair breaks into sorrow, into that leech called guilt.
The black hole that had swallowed Verso’s heart has been thwarted for now, but Renoir is no fool. It will never leave the beautiful galaxy of his son for as long as he lives. For now, in these dark hallways and treacherous waters, Renoir will battle those shadows that haunt his son’s mind.
He tucks away the ball of melancholy to his chest, until he falls away from the waking world of pain.
Renoir can only hope that when the sun rises tomorrow, that the light in Verso’s life will shine with it once more.
But for now, they rest.