Title: paint me with the colors of your life

Summary: what the world needs is starving artists/Tori and Andre, playing the role of college students.

Tori stood in the middle of his lawn, twirling in a white dress and beige flip-flops, thinking little at all about nothing in particular.

Her face was streaked with green, as was the lab-coat-turned-smock she'd thrown haphazardly over a patio chair.

"Tori,hold still!" André said, trying to point his Nikon camera at her, trying to capture the movement all too quickly.

Being a long-time ballerina, Tori could stay on her toes awhile,even in beat-up black Converse on a small square of mushy grass.

"Do you want me to fail my course?" He asked, half impatiently, half teasing.

"Of course not." She said, still pirouetting, her stonewashed jeans rippling in the wind. She stopped.

"Ok, get it over with."

The assignment was to depict your life. Lots of kids were taking pictures of carefully arranged textbooks or raging parties.

André,however, was shooting pictures of Tori. Just Tori. She was his life. When he woke up, she was asleep on the other side of his bed. When he fell asleep, only few inches seperated him from her warmth. She filled up every moment of every day, and yet she was too airy and carefree to pose for a few lousy pictures.
He snapped her by her canvas, her twirling. If this was Tori, he thought, this was life.

Tori brushed feathery red strokes onto her canvas, which was quickly being swarmed by multiple insects.

"André! These bugs are messing with my painting! Why can't we just go in the sunroom?" Tori pouted, attempting to swat away some buzzing pests.

André chuckled. "The lighting out here is better."

He guessed that lighting wasn't a considerable topic when it came to Tori. The sunlight gave her skin the same perfect,dewy sheen that the fluorescent lights in his kitchen did, and the wind blew her hair as sexy as the ceiling fan in the bedroom.

The sunroom was pretty. It was the best solace in the shabby condo André had bought using the money from his college fund when he got a scholarship.

Tori whipped her hair around, smirking. "Yeah, whatever" She said, the click of the shutter echoing as she turned back to face her painting.

"So what are you working on, Miss Vega?"

"Professor Masters assignment was to paint the thing most important to you."

André slipped his arms around Tori's neck and kissed the top of her head.
"So whatcha painting?" He asked in a singsong voice.

"You." She said, sliding the easel over where he could see it clearly. It was a picture of him, intently focused on the piano that used to be so important to him.

"That was so long ago." He said wistfully, staring at the bright blue sky, thoughts fluttering about all the lovely bad things hidden in the crevices beneath it.

"Ah, high school so much has changed. Jade and Beck disappeared. Cat's in 's about to join her, he's so desperate for her to get out. We're the only ones unbroken,Dré."
He laughed. " I think we're pretty broken."

"Just broken in half. Half of me and half of you. It's some fricken crazy mix that becomes us." She smiled halfheartedly.

"I like that mix. It's not perfect, but what'll ever be?"

"You." Tori said, hugging him. Light sprinkles rained down, not getting any harder, and not letting up.

"It's raining!" She laughed, twirling once again.

Because she was Tori, and she twirled in the rain, her TJ-Maxx clothes swirling behind her.

Tori sat down on the grass, plucking dandelions. "I'm also working on this" She grabbed a canvas behind her easel , covered with charcoal and pastels. It was the 7 of them, André, Tori, Beck,Jade, Rex,Robbie and Cat.
It hurt like hell to remember them, and hurt even worse to forget them.
The picture was like a comic books, thick, slashing lines bordered the 7 figures. A distinct feature of everyone was colored in, dark, angry lines, not meant to be ignored. Tori's purple top,André's keyboard, Jade's streaks, Beck's flannel, Cat's hair, Robbie's glasses, and Rex's hair.

High school nostalgia.

"I dressed better back then." Tori laughed. "Then again, I had a limitless credit card my parents paid for. Now, I'm a starving artist student, living off Ramen noodles and thrift-store castoffs."
"We're gonna make it big soon, Tor. I know it."

"Yeah. Of course we will. But I couldn't care less. Just don't leave me."
André sat in the grass next to Tori, and she crawled into his laugh, burying her head in his muscled chest.

"I don't think it would be helpful to either of our health or sanity to leave."

"You're right."

"As always."

"I love you." She laughed.

" Squared" He said.

"Say cheese."
Click.

/
When André got the photos developed, they came back sealed in a cardboard envelope. Sepia memories filled 4x10 frames.
Frozen in time, suspended in forever.

A/N Oh, my horrible attempts to write something that wasn't depressing. I forget which story it was, but there was a fic with the quote "he realizes in this world of black and white, satisfaction comes in gray". Now, I am obsessed with that quote. Whoever wrote it is a genius. Well, I was thinking about the interpretations, and somehow this came out. I was also watching one of those "Maxx-inista" TJ-Maxx commercials,so the starving artists thing came out of that... and it's fluffy because Toni told me I couldn't write anything that isn't tragic in depressing. Which might be true.

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