He’d known Kieran would say that, because he always did and it still wasn’t true, but they could go around in circles about that forever and there was nothing Jude could practically give him that would make a difference the way he wished it could.

The latter part of Kieran’s response, however, made him blink. Because he was wearing the roses? He had thought they were the art project, but maybe they were just a part of it? “Really?” Jude asked eventually, his eyebrows still raised in surprise but his tone fairly even in spite of it. He quirked a brief, disbelieving sort of smile. “You don’t have anything better to paint than me?”

He was the only one left here right now, sure, and maybe this was something Kieran had begged of everyone else already or needed specific practice at painting people or maybe he really was desperately bored and had run out of all ideas, Jude didn’t know: he did not know enough to fathom how an artist’s mind worked, any more than he could ever fathom Kieran’s.

He surveyed him with an uncharacteristic degree of hesitance, and didn’t say anything else, but he supposed - as evidenced by the roses and that he was not in the habit of denying Kieran’s requests unless there was good reason to - that his silence was not exactly a hard no, either.

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