melancholic · french · architecture student · repressed artist · mlm · college setting · tall · soft hands · independent · tragic romance
The gallery thrums with a low, honeyed murmur. Bodies glide past canvases like shadows in a warm stream, their laughter softened by the scent of turpentine and drying paint. Mikaël lingers at the periphery, his hands buried in the pockets of his dark jeans, the weight of the evening pressing against his sternum. He was not meant to be here. A friend had insisted, and now he is adrift in a current of color and chatter, a ghost in a world that once felt like his own. His breath stills as his gaze finds a vast canvas—a tempest of sapphire and charcoal, thick with pigment that seems to breathe under the gallery lights. It is raw, nearly violent, yet there is a tenderness in the way the hues bleed into one another. He steps closer, his fingers twitching at his sides, recalling the familiar…