A.N. - My first try at E/R! It's a modern AU, based on a photo-collection on Tumblr. Hope you enjoy, and please review!

His mother thinks it's because he's lonely, his landlord thinks it's because he's a slacker, and his therapist thinks he's suicidal.

They're all right, but there isn't enough Prozac, Valium, or vodka in the world to block it all out.

He hates the world, and the world hates him back. It's an old arrangement, and it still works.

The liquor burns him on the way down, and only an expert would notice the wateriness in grey eyes... Too grey.

Satisfied for now, he turns back to the table by the window – a mess of waterlogged paper, tubes of colored oils, heavy acrylic, and turpentine, all bathed in natural light.

The canvas is still fairly blank – just a few splotches of red, and a swathe of olive. Not enough to look muddy, just... different.

The two-inch brush is the best for this kind of work – it can hold a load of paint, and still keep things detailed...

Redder – he feels like blood this morning.

People don't understand his art – they pretend to, but in the end it just looks like a bunch of splotches. He's okay with that, really. He doesn't do it for them.

The brush strokes start to look like leaves, so he throws some black in for contrast, and what could a bit of lime green hurt?

Curlicues, swirling, straight lines –like daggers – a few slashes, a crosshatch here and there...

It's ten a.m. when he finishes, and tosses back another bottle, running a critical eye over the canvas.

He'll call this one "Decay."

The door buzzes, and he doesn't even have to look through the spy-hole – it's Thursday, and it's noon. Which means one thing...

Clothes are coming off before they even make it away from the door, and for the next hour and a half it's just a lot of wild, sweaty chaos. In other words, the usual.

He supposes it might be a bit crass, tasteless even, but who cares? He's as human as anybody else, and sometimes he gets tired of his right hand.

Besides, it's a buzz he can't find anywhere else, something to help him forget about this messed-up existence he's leading. And when Apollo's sprawled out underneath him, on the bed or the couch or the kitchen counter, ankles on his shoulders, everything else definitely fades to black. His therapist ought to be proud.

He decided to call him Apollo at the beginning, back when they said no names. He'd been taking Greek lit. at the time, and with the blond hair and the blue eyes, it just seemed to fit... like their bodies. He wasn't a blond anymore though, all the curls had been cut off several weeks back, and the whole straightened mess dyed a kind of milk chocolate. There had been some irritation when he showed up with the new look, which led to hours of mutually gratifying "punishment," and Apollo threatening to come back the next week with his head shaved.

It's nearly six in the evening, and they're both finally shagged out enough to take a break. Somehow they made it into the bedroom – though he has no idea about the specifics – and he's finally able to crawl out of the bed sheet tangle once his... well, whatever he is... once he's fallen asleep.

There's a smattering of pale freckles over his left shoulder blade. Weird that he hasn't noticed it before now. The sheets make it stand out.

He flicks on the night light to give himself something to see by, pulls out a tiny eight by eight canvas, and sprawls over the floor on a blanket – they must have kicked it off at some point.

He doesn't feel like taking the time and effort for oils, so he grabs a few acrylic tubes at random with a half-inch brush, and just screws around. Blue – blue is good... Grey woks too... and black, in huge, watery swathes...

This one's "Sated."

They met in a grocery aisle, somewhere between the sugar cereal and the canned vegetables. His first impression was one of incredible physical beauty and "why the hell would anyone need that much peanut butter?"

He had asked – turned out it was almost all he ate – the tension was instantly as sharp as nails, he'd literally dropped the peanut butter, and half an hour later they were in his apartment, rolling around like cats in heat.

Sometimes he wonders if he was just an experiment – a phase. Must have done something right though, otherwise why would he keep coming back?

The first time they fucked was like a... well, what could he compare it to that hasn't been overworked or clichéd? He'd felt like he was debauching an angel really, though if he'd been a virgin beforehand he didn't give any signs of it. He took to sex like a bird to flying.

It wasn't a relationship, not really. He didn't know a thing about him aside from the fact he'd been blond once, he had some faint Beat generation throwback tendencies in his clothes, and he ate peanut butter in quantities that should prove fatal, to mere mortals at least. And he's not stupid enough to think you can build romance and affection off of that.

White. Lots and lots of white, until the grain of the canvas is erased. And then a bunch of wet, black speckles, with a dollop of bright orange in the center.

"Anemia."

It takes two months for things to get complicated.

One Thursday he's taken it upon himself to paint the back room, and when Apollo shows up they strip off their clothes and splatter the walls with acrylic, which turns into splattering each other like kids.

At some point one of them jumps the other and they end up flat on their backs all over the mess of newsprint on the floor, and after thirty intense minutes their sweat has soaked up all the ink and you could read the headlines on their skin –at least in the places that aren't stained red or blue or green.

Pink. Just lurid, bright pink.

"Fantasy."

The mess from last week is nothing compared to this – he's starting to wonder if maybe they both have this underlying fetish or something. But it started innocently enough.

After an hour and a half of naked wrestling, they both fall asleep on the rug. He wakes up first to find his Greek god incarnate clutching at his wrist like a child, post-nightmare, his many bracelets digging into the flesh.

It's lovelier than anything he could have done justice to with oil – and the thought sparks something in his mind.

Apollo opens his eyes to a brush running down the length of his sternum, and by the time the windows have gone black he's covered in red striping like a zebra...

The red is sloppier and wetter much later, after they've made angel hair – because peanut butter has about two and a half months before it tastes tragic – and a food fight (which he instigated, he fully admits it) quickly deescalates into simply smearing tomato sauce over each other's bodies as an excuse to touch. At some point Apollo spreads him out over the kitchen table and licks him clean – though they do both agree on the need for a shower to take care of their hair.

The steam in the cubicle seems like it's increasing as he lifts him and slams his back against the glass door – because god or not, he's too thin – and the feeling of strong but slender fingers knotting in his heat-frizzing, pasta sauce drenched curls is going to stay with him until his death...

A creamy beige tint, and a splotch of watered-down blue in the upper corner.

"Sex."

They break it off a month later.

He suspects, but can't prove, that it has something to do with two weeks ago, when they were lying in bed together, enjoying the afterglow, and he started combing his fingers through light brown hair.

It was... close. It was tender and intimate, and they don't do that. It's why they agreed on anonymity – no strings attached.

So, yeah, he's fucked everything up.

Like always.

The sun isn't even up yet, he's shit-faced drunk, and angry. Which, like usual, leads to squirting paint over the biggest gallery-wrapped wide-stretch he's got – and once he's emptied his entire supply, he smashes his fist through the canvas.

"Life."

He goes to look for a bottle that isn't empty.

He doesn't know why he ever expected to hear back from him – it's not like fuck-buddies are supposed to keep in touch after one of them calls it.

It takes two months for him to get it together – and then it all comes crashing on his head.

He's paying for this week's vodka supply at the bar two blocks down, and half watching the breakfast shows they're running on the widescreen overhead. And then he sees him. On the screen. In a crowd. With the words "Why The Fuck Are We Angry?" drawn over his forehead in black marker. Molotov cocktails are burning in the background, armed police all over the place, the whole picture is fogged up by tear gas, but it's unmistakably him.

There's some narration that he can't catch over the screaming, but the street name is running on a banner at the bottom of the screen, warning about closed roads...

He drops the liquor and hears the glass smash on the tiles, but it doesn't matter because he's out the door and running.

It's summer, and the heat has his clothing glued to his skin in a matter of minutes. He doesn't notice. It takes an hour to get there.

Who knows what it's about, if anything, but whatever it is, it's started to fall apart. The cops have broken out the cattle prods, there are warning shots being fired all over the place, and it's only going to be a matter of time before –

" 'Aire?!"

His voice comes out over the screaming, and their gaze locks from only six feet away. His blue eyes are wide as moons, and for an incredulous moment, he thinks his god has finally shed a tear.

Then he's running to him, reaching out, covered in red paint and scorch marks –

There's a crack, an explosion – too damn loud to be real – and he watches his face freeze up, his jaw slackening just a little, more shocked than in pain... But it's no better than if he'd been screaming. He watches him fall, and one minute he's just another shattered body on the pavement, and then he's gone, under hundreds of feet.

He somehow shoves his way through the wall of armed bodies, doesn't feel the hands yanking at him, tearing his sweat-soaked clothes, and there are legs everywhere, stomping, trampling, and it takes eons before he finds him, looking like road kill, and drags him to the edges of it all by his shirt, screaming curses at anyone he can see.

The sidewalk has bloodstains all over it. He's adding a few more. He can feel him breathing under his hands as he rolls him over and cradles his head in his lap. It isn't until now that he feels himself sobbing.

A few crushed fingers brush at the stubble on his cheek, and he whispers something, something too low to hear, but he knows anyway, and tells him so, brushing the dirt off a torn lip with a softness he usually reserves for watercolors...

He makes a sound, maybe it was a laugh, because he's smiling, and then his eyes are suddenly dark and the breath rattles out of him.

Red. Red on grey. And pink. And black. And blue. Soft, bright, piercing blue.

"Coda."