He paints a road flower from four stories up.

The canvas is a murky brown with splashes of red and an odd shape to the side that looks suspiciously like a baseball bat.

The flower stands strong, bright yellow white soft hues of green around the edges, amidst browned blood and fresh red stains.

He paints the street dirty and ruined - the flower stands proud.

---

Paintings that come after nightmares haunt me, force me into my own terrors of sleep and I wake up to him holding me.

Harsh brush strokes of fiery red and painful splatters of bone white and silky cream chase me through labyrinths, his screams from long nights and early mornings of nightmares hold me still in chains and cuffs.

He kisses my shoulders.

---

He wakes one night with an angry sound, a moaning groan as he throws the comforter off himself and storms down to his easel.

I leave him for an hour, I watch the clock tick over every minute while I lay in silence and wonder if he's okay. Listen to the painful squelch of too much paint and too much pressure while he drags the brush with too much anger.

He sniffles once, twice, so I brace the cold of the night - his heart - and force myself down to calm him.

Hardy sobs wrack his body by the time I've reached him and I don't need to touch him, or speak to make my presence known, because he throws himself at me before I'm even close enough. I barely catch him.

He speaks. Jumbled words and unintelligible sounds this I can't understand but must mean something.

I listen to him moan and cry and hiccup around words I can't decipher, I rub his back and kiss his head and I never shush him once because these are real words he needs to scream them.

When it's over and he's gasping, I pull him back to arms length and watch him heave his chest.

He nods once and pushes back into my chest. I hold him a little longer.

---

I wake from my nightmare to a lonely bed and the tink tink tink of a paintbrush hitting glass.

He's painting.

I wander out to him, drink some of his water when I get there and force the bottle into his hand when I'm done. He has a mouthful.

The canvas is purple and orange, disgusting. I wonder where he's going with it.

He watches my reaction. He huffs a breath. "That how I woke up feeling."

Ugly?

I don't ask.

---

His laugh echoes through the loft, l I don't really remember what I was talking about, but it feels like I haven't heard it in months.

It's beautiful.

"What is?"

I tighten my lips and raise my beer bottle to my mouth. "You are."

---

He asks for help when I find him.

He's standing beneath the window with his easel and a paint brush, a hand in his hair. He drops the hand, reaches for me.

I frown at him and he takes my hand and pulls me towards him. He puts the brush in my hand and dips it in brown.

I let him guide the brush to the canvas without pulling away, because I love his work and I don't want to ruin anything he puts his heart into. He pulls my hand around the canvas and then dips it into his red.

I want to complain about paying too much for him to not wash his brushes between colours but the outcome is amazing.

There's still brown on the bristles when we hit the canvas again, and it runs a little through the red. Like rusty blood.

"I remember this," he whispers it, and I wonder if the words will dry into the paint. "The blood on the concrete. The last thing I saw was a rusty door sign."

He dips the brush in grey, barely let's it stop dipping, before dragging it angrily from the bottom corner to the middle and back down to the other side. My arm hurts a bit from the tug, but he's still talking so I focus on his words.

"I hate it. I remember a fucking rusty door sign and not you. Never you."

I don't remember a rust door sign, but I know the moment he would have seen it.

His eyes had opened for a moment, unfocused and glossy. Blood had run across his face and his whole body was limp but he stared across the room for a second. Then there was white. And then there was red red red.

I look back at what we're painting and I understand it now.

The rusty sign on a door seen through eyes clouded red with blood and a concrete ocean stretching for miles and miles with no help in sight.

He hadn't seen me.

I guess the blood rushing past his ears blocked out my sobs and I'm selfishly thankful for that.

---

He brings my coffee with a restocked basket of sugar and winks at me before placing the basket across the table.

I sip the coffee and scowl at his retreating form. He knows I hate it straight.

He has a shit eating grin on his face when he turns back to me and there's a road flower in his hair. It stands strong and proud next to his bright face.

He said me painting had helped.

I think he's lost his mind.

---