a painted exterior.
He smiled up at her, his eyes focused on every detail of her face -- the playful curve of her lips, the way her hair fell into the soft sweetness of her dark eyes.
She didn't notice his stare; she was too busy painting. Her elegant hands graced his skin with fingertips and fine, gentle brush strokes. She had started early in the morning with rich, violent shades of indigo, blue, and red, smiling and dabbing along his arms, torso, and legs. Come mid-morning she had moved on to citrus greens, yellows, and oranges for his collarbone and his throat, globs of white smoothed into soft, puffy streaks across her entire canvas.
"This," he said, exhaling the hours-long silence, "is the most intimately I've ever been touched." The realization stuck at the back of his throat, hooked back his words and stung at his eyes. Of all of the lovers he'd had in his life, not a single one had taken such attention, their fingers didn't linger the ways hers did. To them, he didn't exist much past a breathing creature, but to her -- she claimed there was a deeper meaning to his existence, although she'd never told him what that deeper meaning could be.
She smiled and paused her work for a moment and looked down at him, that same familiar expression of adoration across her face that he had grown to love. He had no idea what she saw in him, but he was thankful that there was at least something.
"You're lovely," she said, cupping his cheek in the palm of her hand. He took her hand in his and pressed his lips to her palm, covered in cracked, dry paint.
She giggled.
A moment later she pulled away from him and retrieved the full-length mirror from the wall, turning it to face him.
His breath caught in his chest in a sharp inhale. He admired the result of her long hours of tireless work: layers upon layers of dynamic color crafted in such a way that he seemed to change shape and shade and color and feel with every movement, with every shift in the way the light hit him.
"Now, what do you think?" she asked.
He smiled despite the outpour of tears.
"You've made me beautiful," he said. He chuckled gently. "Covered up all of the rotten parts."
Her mouth dropped open and she set the mirror down, crossing the shallow space between them.
"No," she said, "no that isn't it at all." She placed a hand on either side of his face and looked him straight in the eyes. "You were already beautiful," she said. "But you refuse to see it. Look at these colors, they're impossible to ignore." Her fingers traced the drying paint on his bare skin, flaking off in some places onto the carpet.
"Now you have no choice to see yourself the way that I see you."