Author's Notes: This appeared in my head when I was shelving books. Plus, it's been quite some time since my writing muse really nagged at me to finish a story, so...
RATING: PG
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Gwendolyn only asked him once if he could pose for a sketch.
(Yet her sketchbooks (five out of the thirteen she currently has on her) are filled to the cover with his images.)
She asked him three months after her arrival in Azeri, only two (or maybe four) weeks of being ‘on the job’ as his Secretary. She is 18 at the time, and finds her eyes being drawn to the tall 31-year-old man, who is happy to indulge Gwendolyn of her wish. Frankly, she’s surprised with how long it took her to work up the courage to ask the Mayor to pose for her. He’s carefree and whimsical, easy-going and lively. He is always smiling when Gwendolyn isn’t asking him about paperwork, and (almost) always in a good mood. The man is a delight, yet an absolute horror when it came to doing work for long periods of time. Being as ‘fresh-faced’ as she was, Gwendolyn could already tell she would be in for some hell if she chose to stuck with this man.
However, that wasn’t the point.
What was the point was that he had said yes and not laugh in her face or called her silly. He’d smiled at her (shut up, heart, he smiled at everyone) and gave her a jovial pat on the shoulder. Perhaps he thought she just wanted to capture him, just once, in her sketchbook.
(It was what Gwendolyn had thought, until she breathed life into his sketch.)
The older man had made funny faces and posed ridiculously at the request to ‘just look natural’. That day, Gwendolyn had tried very hard not to burst into a fit of giggles, to keep a straight face at his silly antics. More than once, she had to remind him that she couldn’t draw him looking at his best if he kept moving and shifting around. Maybe he had been teasing or messing around with her. Maybe he had actually taken her request to heart. His silliness really was just him being as natural as he could be. Either way, she’d drawn him as he looked through her bright green eyes.
Funny enough, he never did ask to see that sketch. A shame, since the brunette thought her first sketch of him was among one of her best out of the five sketchbooks.
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Always, always, always did she start on his eyes. They seemed to twinkle with unhidden mirth and happiness. On the happiest of days, one could see all the joy and she wanted to make sure that in the sketches of him he conveyed that feeling freely. She would use the lightest of browns to color those eyes, but never beige. Beige would a boring color, and the Mayor’s eyes were never boring. Those brown eyes would sometimes crinkle with warmth (not at her, she was new) or they’d close in thought (the rare moments when Gwendolyn caught him thinking by himself). She always made sure they reflected how she thought he was feeling in that moment. Were his eyes still bright and happy because he just finished playing hide-and-seek with the children? Or did the brown seem darker at the sound of bad news within his beloved city? If his eyes didn’t betray his feelings, then—
(She never spent too much time sketching his cheeks or lips simply because after three years of working by his side, she had his smile burned into her mind. Oh yes, she could draw every dimple and curve of his mouth in her sleep.)
His hair, a darker shade of brown but not enough to be black, would fall into his eyes and she liked how he would sometimes pout when he couldn’t get it to stay put after running his hand through it. Speaking of his hands…she thought they were lovely to watch, whether they were gesturing wildly or being ran through dark locks. They looked strong yet warm, just like his eyes. She made sure that if his hands were in a sketch, they were doing something that fit the mood reflecting from his eyes. They were busy, always busy, even when it looked as if he weren’t doing anything…
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Gwendolyn is both shocked and in-awe when the realization hits her. It doesn’t come at her like a bullet in the back or a train hitting her straight on. Rather, it hits her slowly like a light drizzle that becomes a heavy downpour. One drops becomes a few more until you realize you’re soaked to the bone. One sketch became five that doubled to ten until suddenly she couldn’t stop sketching him. Over the course of the second year working under him, she had somehow managed to fill up two sketchbooks consisting solely of him. Expressions ranging from happy to frustrated to simply content in all sorts of poses Gwendolyn could think of.
(Nothing racy or obscene of course. She still held the highest of respect for this man and would never think of drawing him in that light. Plus, she never knew if her sketchbooks would fall into the wrong hands…)
She didn’t understand. What she going crazy from how many times she sketched him while he wasn’t looked? Was she sick, for even being able to fill up two sketch books of him? It was strange, almost scary, how she could just close her eyes and imagine the smile of his, so warm and brilliant.
Sketch what you see or what you can remember vividly, that’s what her art teacher told her years ago. She finds his eyes the most captivating part of him, not his smile or his proud stride. His eyes, so full of life, are what make her stare longer than necessary. His eyes compel her to look at him and maybe, perhaps—
It’s when she almost gets caught sketching him napping in his tree by an intern that she realizes exactly what’s wrong with her and why it’s so very dangerous to be doing what she’s doing. Yes, it may be calming, but she would love nothing more than to crawl into some small hole and die if anybody were to discover that the Secretary liked to sketch the Mayor, as if she had a cru—
She had choked on the word so many times after realizing what it (the sketching, the staring, the remembering) all meant. Gwendolyn couldn’t say it at first, not even when she was alone to muse in her thoughts. It didn’t make stopping herself from sketching him any easier, or if anything it made it harder. She’d look through the sketches of him, studying each of them closely. The curve of his lip on this one, the way his hand was positioned in another. She hadn’t realized, not until after closer observation, how much of her emotions and feelings she poured into his sketches. Nothing since her sister’s sketches did Gwendolyn pour raw feelings into and it was amazing that the message in each of these sketches of him were both alike and different.
’If only I was your’s.’
A certain longing, a tinge of sadness hid behind the sketches. Like a shadow that clings to the body, the longing seemed to grow and develop within the colored sketches. It became almost unconscious, the way she would reveal her feelings for him through the sketches she drew of him. It didn’t matter how detailed or rough the sketches looked because the feelings were there in every carefully-made pencil mark and every thought-out expression.
The message…would always be there, hiding behind that smile, the gesture of his hands, those meaningful brown eyes. What she wished they held when they landed on her green ones, but couldn’t.
’…If only you looked at me like that and meant it.’
-- END --
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