As someone whose parents have kept more of the appearance of liking God rather than truly caring about it, art has become a religion to Keefe.

He's heard that there are those who live to serve, who dedicate each breath and heartbeat to a deity, pouring their soul into the cupped hands of a higher being and fervently studying the delicate precision with which it pools into human-like wrinkles.

It is not as though art is a physical being, or a way to make decisions, but rather when Keefe paints, it is his soul that coats the canvas, his blood tracing hard lines and tears feathering light details. His senses, his sight and hearing and touch, are the highlights, contouring out a hard jawline with joy and flicking freckles across lips with fury and sacrifice pouring bloodred from torn skin.

Blessings come when he looks outside and sees the colors and thinks of which paints to mix to achieve that shade of perfection, studying how light becomes shapes becomes darkness becomes beauty. The lazy confidence of a gray-lavender shadow as it stretches itself to meet the sun, the elegant curl of a emerald-green leaf, the pink-orange of the sky resting its weary eyes as night rises.

Keefe prays to his deity to find inspiration. He shoves his hands into the grass and grips the blades tightly enough that they snap, his nails digging into his palms deeply enough to sting, soft soil making its way into the lines of his palm like a worshipper's soul flooding their God's weary eyes.

In essence: art is religion because he gives everything he has to worship it. Art is religion because it is where he finds himself. Who he is has never been an easy question for him to answer, but he discovers it in the way his fingers grip the charcoal or paintbrush or pencil or oils.

Keefe's dreams splatter across his canvas and he covers them over with white paint to start again. They peek through in oily streaks when he scratches at the canvas. Color flakes away. The paper shreds. The pencil snaps in his fingers. A dark streak smears the cheek of his mother's depiction as a Hera-like statue in an empty temple. He thought it was symbolic. Now it feels like a very slight overbite— uncomfortable, right and wrong, something that fits perfectly but not quite right at the same time.

Who he is becomes clear when it's all out there on paper.

Who is he?

...

Tam believes in the strength of a body. Of flesh and blood. Of muscles and bones and teeth and the way blinking sometimes scrapes a layer of disguise from your eyes so you have to cry no matter how much you don't want to.

His flesh was the shield between Linh and the cold on the worst of those nights, the ones where they couldn't see their faces in the darkness, the black so thick Tam thought he was swimming in it, drowning in it, a soft sort of death that smothered him in velvet. They shook with cold, with tears, with pain, with hunger, with the knowledge that they weren't alone even though often Tam wished he was so that Linh didn't have to go through this with him.

His blood pumped fear through his body, the fear that honed his hungry body and let him steal when it had been two days since fresh food and Linh reached a dangerously weak hand to his cheek. He would bite his cheek and taste it, taste the adrenaline in the blood that flooded his mouth, and know that they could not go on this way.

He could not go on this way.

It was only a few more months from that day until they met Sophie. One more month where the darkness lasted too long, so long that the shadows he loves so much it hurts began to leach strength from his cold, aching body.

Now, he sits in a warm home and lets music be his shield. Not instead of flesh, but a part of it, the way the dark would melt into his skin if he sat still enough, like a wild beast that was only looking for a little warmth. Melody sinks into his body and becomes him, becomes Tam, putting pink back into his blue fingers and depth back into his eyes.

Tam places his steps in the footprints of music he's listened to a hundred times. The notes are not a religion, but they are a heartbeat. They are a lifeblood. They are a dream of safety and a recognition of luck, fingers pressed into guitar strings too quickly, too often, summoning red irritation to the surface as a reminder that he doesn't have to be numb anymore.

He's allowed to let out a breath that is not for the purpose of letting Linh inhale. They breathe separately now. Sometimes she sits in the room while he plays and lets the music trickle down her arms like she's fresh back from swim practice,  damp silver tips of her hair sticking to her neck. She's a painting, flesh and blood. 

He gives her form with his guitar, with the grand piano in the living room, with the lyrics he doesn't show her but still scribbles down into whatever notebook Tiergan buys him.

The music lets Tam become himself. It tells him that he is a heartbeat, a held breath. It does not need to be concrete. It's all right there. Who he is.

Who is he?

...

Keefe paints him over and over again.

But it doesn't start that way. It starts as sketches, simple renderings. He rehearses what he'd say if anyone realized who he was looking at: he's a good model. Unique, clear-cut, (and the unmentionable "hot as shit" description that waits at the tip of his tongue) interesting. Silver bangs cut dangerously across the gentle slope of his forehead. Keefe presses the shape of his nose into the paper so hard the tip of his pencil breaks.

It's just sketches, until he breaks out the watercolors at home, and sort of curses his photographic memory for remembering him so well but also knows it was the result of staring at him for too long. He gives the boy a pink flush in his cheeks even though it wasn't there before.

But that was only the first painting. The first day.

The next day, Keefe learns his name.

Tam and Linh Song are new students, the teacher tells them. Treat them with as much respect as you would any other classmate. Sophie twists to glare at him as if to say, That means you, Keefe, don't tease the new kids before they know you're just joking around all the time, and he smirks at her as if to say, What, you want me to change? What happened to loving me for who I am?

And, really, he wasn't planning on teasing them— not even him. He's content with the creepy sneaking-peaks-across-the-classroom-all-period he's got going on, and he isn't a bully.

But Tam is in his next hour, and Sophie isn't there to chide him for anything, so he slides into the desk next to him and says, "Yo, new kid, I hope you know that I'm basically in charge of this school, and there's a penalty for doing anything better than me."

Tam turns to meet his eyes, and Keefe suddenly finds a detail he didn't catch in yesterday's prayer (painting). His eyes are a dangerous sort of gray, nearly black when his eyes narrow and a blue-silver when the light catches them, and he has teeth straight enough to draw a line. "No need to worry about that," he says, his voice rough and unpolished. "I'm sure I couldn't possibly beat your... what? C+ average?"

Keefe's mouth drops open for a moment, and Sophie's words echo in his head as he's forced, for the first time in his class clown history, to wonder whether or not this kid is joking. Then his lips spread into a wide smile as he finds it doesn't matter. "No one in this hellhole of a school ever managed better grades than a C- before I came along, so that's a nice try. But I'm a record-setter here."

Tam regards him in a way that sends his eyebrows twitching up. Keefe wonders what he sees. "Luckily, I'm not a competitive person. Because if I were, I'd point out that there's no way someone hasn't done at least their hair better than you."

Keefe's nostrils flare. He ruffles his hair and says, snippily, "Lucky you aren't competitive, then, because I'd have to point out that bangs haven't been in since my grandmother was born."

His lips press together into a tight line, eyes narrowing. Tam turns back to face the front of the classroom, his back ramrod straight despite the way Keefe's arm is draped over the back of his chair, foot propped up on the desk. "I must have a four-leaf fucking clover, then."

Keefe is kind of obsessed with him. He hopes it doesn't show.

...

Tam was aware that being the new kid would invite a few questions, but he expected more of "Where did you go before?" or "Is it true you're adopted?" instead of an instant pissing contest with a boy who has ink splattered messily on his hands and scribbled all over the thighs of his jeans.

Not that he thinks Keefe is uninteresting. Definitely, certainly full of himself, and absolutely hiding something under that mop of bleached blond hair, but perhaps someone Tam would have liked to know, if only to see what motivated him to strike up a conversation.

Neither of them have spoken in the last few minutes, but Keefe's still moving, still shifting his weight back and forth, running his fingertips across the desk, scuffing his expensive shoes along the ground, and worst of all, messing with his pen. click. click. click.

Tam doesn't bother twisting to look at him as he says, "Could you... stop that? Please?"

He hears a snort. The clicking stops, and then Keefe's breath is on his cheeks as he leans over so far his chair tips to the side. He has the grin of an understimulated panther, and he lounges across Tam's desk like he's method acting as one for the school play.

"What are you trying to pay so much attention to, anyway? Can't be the lesson. No one listens to those."

If Tam were a liar, he'd say that Keefe has an annoying fucking voice. Unfortunately, he is not, and his voice is smooth and soft and has a practiced sort of velvet that makes him think this is a boy who is consistently excused for his mistakes. Maybe he can sing. He seems like he'd either be terrible or completely perfect at it.

"I'm listening to it. It's better than the alternative." Tam cuts his gaze to catch Keefe's reaction, finding the other's mouth falling open. All four chair legs land back on the ground as he retreats to a socially acceptable distance.

"I have never before been called worse than school."

"Must be both of our lucky days, then," Tam snipes. The notes spill out in his head, and he finds himself tapping a beat out onto the desk. "You don't seem all that interesting to me." Maybe he is a liar. New schools are meant for reinventing yourself, right?

"Oh, I've been called a lot of things," Keefe begins.

"Full of yourself? Dangerously overconfident? Terribly irritating?" Tam supplies.

Keefe glares at him. "I've been called a lot of things. But believe me..." He leans closer, a mischievous spark leaping from his icy eyes. His voice lowers like he's sharing a secret, even though speaking at normal volume hasn't prompted any reaction from the teacher so far. "Uninteresting has never been one of them."

...

Weeks pass, then months.

Keefe learns that Tam and Linh are adopted, that they were homeless for over a year before Tiergan took them in. In return, they learn that his parents don't particularly like him, that he acts out for attention, and the full depth of his hatred for his father. He views it as equal exchange, a secret for a secret.

As they spend more time with the group, they learn about what Fitz and Biana's brother did to their family. They learn about Sophie's adoption, about Dex's years of being bullied, about Marella's mom and Jensi's school struggles and the various other aches and pains that come from being alive. Secrets for secrets, piled up in snowdrifts until it's not an exchange anymore.

He shows all of them the smaller paintings, the landscapes, group portraits. He captures Linh's rosy cheeks after the snowball fight they had at the Dizznee's that winter, pressing a pink tint over her nose. He masters Dex's freckles, then the contrast of Fitz's hand in his, then Biana's grin that wrinkles her nose and squints her eyes and makes her jawline disappear. He draws the curls at the end of Sophie's hair and then adds gold highlights and gives it to her for her birthday.

And he draws him. Over and over again.

Pressing his likeness between the pages of his sketchbook, the faint dimples that form whenever he smiles (more and more often, he's been able to squeeze some amusement out of him), the way the silver in his hair catches light, the thick knuckles working delicately with fingertips to pluck the strings of his guitar. 

It's with reverence that he paints him, sculpting the softness of his jaw like some ancient artists designed their gods. It's not enough.

He wants him to see them, but also, he would rather die.

Keefe asks Tam to model with a nonchalance that could almost be called a lie if you cared about that sort of thing, which Keefe decidedly does not. He says, "I've been looking for a muse." He says, "It must be your dream to have me staring at you for a few hours." He says, "Please?"

Tam looks at him like he's considering an art piece himself. Then he looks at him like he's rolling an insult, a refusal, a mockery around on his tongue. Then he looks away like he started imagining how Keefe's lips would taste on his (or possibly that was just wishful thinking). Then, slowly, carefully, he says: "Okay."

...

Tam stretches out on the couch and thinks, draw me like one of your french girls but doesn't say it because it's far too easy and his humor is supposed to be elevated, the kind of jokes that he can watch Keefe flail and jump at from far below.

Instead he says, "You want me to pose?"

"Only if it's a cute one." Keefe is distracted, setting up his paints, adjusting the curtains so the light falls correctly, twisting the canvas stand back and forth as he tries to get a good angle. Also, he's dropping things more than he usually does.

He snorts and turns onto his stomach, resting the side of his face on his clasped hands as he waits for Keefe to finish. The couch is a worn forest green, parts of it peeling, and he wonders if it will be included in the portrait. He closes his eyes and lets the sound of the room swallow him and thinks about a song made from only Keefe's curses as he drops another paintbrush.

"That's good, actually," Keefe says suddenly, and Tam's eyes pop open to find his face barely a foot away, studying his face. Instinctively, he starts to rise on his hands, but a hand presses onto his head and forces him back down with an oomph— hey! "Sorry. I want you to stay there, though."

"What, like I'm sleeping?"

"Yeah." Keefe has freckles so light that it's impossible to catch unless he's this close. While Tam is noticing this, he also notices that he has the longest eyelashes he's ever seen, and also that pink is blooming across his cheeks as if he's noticing very similar things about him. Keefe lurches back onto his heels, then stands, the pink fading as if it was only in his imagination.

Tam smirks. Then he sets his cheek back down on his laced fingers and lets out a deep breath.

"Perfect," Keefe says. He hovers above him like there's something more to say, even though there really isn't, before saying it anyway: "I mean, for the shot. For the painting. The angle, I mean." Then his face closes into what Tam would call "determined embarrassment" and he retreats to the safety of his canvas and paints.

The process takes hours. 

Tam barely blinks, content to watch the way Keefe lives in his element. In school, there's always a sort of uncomfortable tension in the way he moves, like a caged animal. Here, his eyes go squinty as he checks details, paint splattering on his already stained jeans, scratching his cheek with a paintbrush and smudging his skin with pinks as he tries to rub it off.

It's endearing. Tam is so surprised that it's endearing. He hates it a little bit (he isn't often surprised, but he supposes that rule has never applied to Keefe anyway).

A song weaves around the back of his mind. He hums a few lines, the melody sinking into the ratty couch cushions until they become the forest floor, a peaceful night where it was just the wind and the sky and the two of them, his eyes fluttering between the waking and dreaming world.

It's an in-between. A fresh start, one that's less fear and hunger and more... peace. Breakfast in the mornings and pictures pinned up to the walls until no one can tell where he came from or who he was.

Who he is.

...

Keefe knows that many of the ancient artists were trying to preserve what they perceived as divine in their work.

A call and answer, maybe. When religion and creation are the same thing, he supposes inspiration can be a shout from whatever form of god they worshipped, hoarse and torn with the desire to be immortalized.

Painters would paint their lovers, parents, children, friends, and call it divinity. They'd paint a field of sunflowers, a bowl of fruit, messy bedsheets, castles with countless towers, and summon a piece of their god to live on the canvas. Keefe supposes that's as close to the definition as anyone could ever find.

He finds it here: studying the way light dapples Tam's side, the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders, the creases of his shirt as it rides up his side.

He finds it here: the way shadows deepen his cheekbones into something sharp and dangerous and alluring, the way his eyes cut over quickly like they're sharing some private joke, the way his lips quirk up when he smiles like he needs to get it over with and return to his usual scowl.

God, he finds his divinity. He finds his religion.