I notice a pattern where Killian posts more family pictures with his mother and his aunt, his mum’s identical twin, who’s also Nikolai’s mother, than with his father or Gareth.
In fact, the only time he posts a picture of his father is when his mother is around.
And there’s only one time where he’s posted a picture of Gareth, who’s out for a run in the rain.
My big bro’s leg day might turn into swim day in this weather. Get it together, England.
However, there are tons of pictures of his mother. In the last one, he has a selfie of her trying to feed him a biscuit while he scrunches his face.
I told my favorite woman that I stopped being six more than a decade ago, and she said “Not on my watch” as she stuffed me with a cookie. Thoughts on convincing your mom you’ve grown up?
Then he has another picture where he’s standing between his mother and aunt. His mum pinches his jaw while laughing and his aunt grins.
Guess who’s the queens’ escort for the night? Be mad @nikolai_sokolov.
My eyes blur with all the similar images. The normal, hyper, absolutely mesmerizing documentation of his life.
Oh, he’s good.
He’s so good at blending in that even I am starting to wonder if it’s all real.
I go back up to the last picture he posted about five hours ago of the five neon purge masks.
Night of mischief.
I scroll up and I freeze as the profile refreshes. During my snooping, he posted another picture.
It’s black and white, showing his middle and ring finger inside a mouth.
Mymouth.
This is the picture he took earlier when I was underneath him as he told me I can hide from the whole world but not him.
Nothing is visible aside from my neck and my lips, but I know it’s me.
Damn him.
God damn him.
My fingers shake as I scroll to the caption.
Caught a little rabbit tonight and I decided to keep it.
Keep it, my butt.
I’m fuming, and all the ‘that’s hot’ and ‘holy fuck’ comments aren’t helping. So I close the app and throw the phone on my bed.
Then I think better of it. How dare the bastard post that picture of me after the whole show with Cherry?
He wants to play?
I will play.
It takes me five minutes to find the sketch I was playing with at lunch earlier. I place it beside the blank canvas and pick up my warm colors.
I only have a vague idea of where I’m taking this, but stroke after stroke, the image comes into focus.
For the first time, I’m thankful I don’t have a problem painting humans, and I do so with flying colors.