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Chrissy stepped under the grand arches of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, feeling her entire body relax at the familiar sight of the white and gold pillars and buttresses inside. Her heeled shoes clacked on the marble floors as she stepped up to the ticket desk. Flashing her student ID, she purchased a ticket and headed inside. By the time she was in the museum proper, she’d nearly managed to get her trembling under control.
The meeting with her parents had gone… badly. Not that she’d expected anything else. Learning from her parents’ last few visits to see her in NYC, Chrissy had refused to let them come see her at her dorm room, instead pushing for a meet-up at a popular coffee shop down the street. It had turned out to be the right move; not one to make a scene in public, Laura had made her disapproval of Chrissy’s lifestyle known through subtle barbs hidden in flowery words and delivered with a razor-sharp smile. And Philip’s silence at his wife’s cruelty was, as always, deafening.
“They don’t have power over me anymore,” she whispered, hugging her arms around her middle as she made her way through the lobby to the exhibits. “I live my own life now.”
And didn’t that just go straight up Laura’s butt sideways! She couldn’t stand to see Chrissy living on her own terms, couldn’t stand knowing that the family money had no sway over her anymore. All her threats to cut Chrissy off financially if she didn’t toe the line amounted to exactly nothing. Chrissy was making her own way through life - not as Laura Cunningham’s perfect little doll or Jason Carver’s obedient wife, but as an art student waiting tables to put herself through her Master’s program.
She’d spent countless hours here, studying the different exhibits for inspiration. Not just the ones at the Costumes Institute, which was her area of study, but everywhere. In her opinion, there wasn’t a single room in the sprawling museum that didn’t have vast potential to inspire. Maybe a piece of clothing in an eighteenth century portrait, or a particular shade of green in a pastoral painting, or the sweeping lines of a sculpture. There was beauty everywhere, simply waiting to fuel the imagination.
And the room she’d absentmindedly wandered into was no exception. This room, filled with paintings from Dutch masters from the seventeenth century, was one she hadn’t had much chance to explore. On one wall were paintings of mundane things: coastal scenes, landscapes, still-lifes, and images of people going about everyday tasks rendered in lovely, warm tones. The second wall was lined with paintings of biblical scenes, which Chrissy admittedly glossed over. Maybe someday she’d be able to draw inspiration from those paintings. But right now, those paintings simply tore open wounds left by her religious upbringing.
The final wall was taken up by various portraits of Dutch painters from the 1600s - mostly depicting and painted by Rembrandt and his pupils. As such, most of the paintings were very similar: portraits of men in dark clothing painted before a rich, earthy brown background.
She was about to pass the display by and move on, when one particular portrait caught her eye. The picture was of a boy. Well - not a boy, a man, one who looked more or less her age - maybe mid-twenties? Like all the others, he was dressed in garments of black and dark brown. There were small embellishments of golden embroidery at the collar of his white undershirt and the cuff of his coat’s sleeve, and the velvet cap on his head was a more russet shade of brown, but apart from that, his dark clothes clearly blended in with the brown of the background and the wooden table he rested his arm upon.
None of that was in any way remarkable. But his face - his face halted Chrissy in her tracks. Soft-looking, brown, shoulder-length curls framed a pale face lit in chiaroscuro, half in light and half in shadow. Defined cheeks, a slightly cleft chin, and full, slightly parted lips made her breath catch in her throat. But what truly held her spellbound was the man’s eyes. Large and brown, the paint on the canvas managed to capture both their intelligence and the soft expression in them.
He was beautiful.
Heart pounding in her chest, she stepped as close to the painting as she could get, close enough that she could see the individual brushstrokes that made him. She couldn’t speak too much to the artist’s technique - painting wasn’t her area of expertise - but that was okay. According to the small golden plaque underneath, it wasn’t a self portrait.
Portrait of Carel Fabritius, by Ferdinand Bol.
To be honest, she’d never heard of either of them. But the name of the boy in the painting sparked something deep inside her, like a single match struck in perfect darkness.
“Carel Fabritius,” she whispered. “Do I know you, Carel?”
Her hand reached out, as if it had a mind of its own. She needed to touch him - needed to know if his curls were as soft as they looked, if she’d feel the rasp of stubble against her palm. She needed it more than her next breath.
Behind her, a woman cleared her throat loudly. A glance over her shoulder revealed a security guard, hands on her hips and lips pursed in a disapproving frown.
“Please refrain from touching the exhibits,” she said in clipped tones.
Chrissy took a hasty step back, face heating. “I wasn’t - I didn’t mean…” She swallowed hard. “Sorry. Won’t… won’t happen again.”
With a firm nod, the guard moved on. As soon as she was gone, Chrissy turned back to the painting. The detail was so good that she half-expected the boy to climb out of the frame and stand before her.
In fact… she could practically hear his laugh. She could see the way his eyes would crinkle at the corners when he smiled, or the way they’d narrow in concentration while he painted.
Seeing his face in such neutral stillness felt… wrong. She knew nothing of this man she’d never met, this man who had been dead more than three hundred years, but she knew for certain that stillness was anathema to him.
“Carel,” she whispered again, keeping her voice soft lest someone should overhear. She pulled words out of herself from deep inside, from some deep, unfathomable well she hadn’t even known was there until now. “I know you. I’ll find you, and you’ll know me again.”
Eddie closed his notebook with a snap, tucking the short, eraserless stub of his pencil in the spiral wire binding. The notebook went into an inner pocket of his leather jacket. Whistling the melody of a song he was working on, he left the ancient Egypt exhibit. He had band practice in a little over an hour, and he had to get going.
He just had one stop to make first.
He didn’t get to come here as often as he’d like. Growing up with his uncle in upstate New York, listening to metal albums, he’d learned that history and art made for some killer fuckin’ songs. And when he started DMing for Hellfire Club, that knowledge had translated to incredibly fleshed out worlds. Now that he was living in the Big Apple, it was easy for him to drop by the Met any time he needed some inspiration, whether for a song or a game.
But that wasn’t the only reason he came here as often as his wallet allowed. Turning into a room devoted to nineteenth century European art, he made a beeline for the far corner, toward one particular painting.
“Hey, Ginny,” he greeted the framed canvas, not bothering to keep his voice down. A few museum patrons looked at him askance, but ultimately moved on. The nearby security guard didn’t bother. Eddie had been coming here almost every week for years; by this time, he had a reputation among the museum staff as the weirdo who talked to a painting. “They treating you good, sweetheart? Keeping you well-lit and dust-free? If not, just say the word and I’ll bust you out of here,” he said with a disarming grin.
The painting, obviously, said nothing. Eddie might be a freak in a one-sided romance with a sheet of oils and pigments he had to pay twenty bucks to see, but he wasn’t so cracked in the head that he expected a response. Not yet, anyway.
The girl in the painting smiled down at him, just like she always did. Sitting backwards on a gilded chair with her head pillowed on one arm, she gave him the sort of soft, sleepy look he’d expect to see waking up next to a lover on a sleepy Sunday morning. Her hair was pulled back in some sort of bun (Eddie was no expert on hairstyles), her bangs curling prettily on her forehead. The harsh black of her dress was softened by the white, lacy ruffles at the sleeves and collar. The pink of the scarf draped over the back of the chair matched the rosy hue of her lips almost exactly.
The plaque underneath named the painting as The Parisienne (Virginie). Eddie just called her Ginny. Gin-Gin when he was particularly amped up, which was often.
Standing in front of the painting that had haunted his thoughts and dreams for years, he told it about his day. His latest shift at the garage. The gig he and his band had this weekend - this time, finally a paying one. The campaign he was setting up in the tombs of Egypt.
He ignored the weighty eyes of the museum’s more judgmental visitors. So he had an attachment to a painting. Sue him. Was it weird? Totally. Unhealthy? Probably. Sad and pathetic? Without a doubt. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Not when staying away left him feeling hollow, like he’d left a part of himself behind with the painting of the girl with the coppery blonde hair and the sweet smile.
He stuck around for nearly thirty minutes, chattering about work and D&D and this chord progression he was this close to nailing in practice. He likes to imagine that Ginny was listening, that she was pillowing her head on her arms and giving that dreamy smile all for him. He could practically hear her indulgent giggle as he let his motormouth run.
He glanced at his watch. About forty-five minutes ‘til band practice. He had to get going. “See you later, sweetheart,” he said, swallowing hard against the pang in his chest he always, always, always got when he left her behind.
Jamming his hands into his pockets, he slouched his way toward the museum’s exit. Leaving the museum always put him in a shit mood. That was why he only did it after work, but before band practice. He’d meet up with the guys and channel all of his aggression, his frustration, and his sad fucking pining into his music. Then he’d go home, smoke himself into a stupor, and spend the next few days being uncharacteristically quiet.
His friends knew better than to ask what his deal was. That was something he kept to himself. How was he supposed to tell anybody that he was in love with a dead girl in a painting? It was pathetic. Even worse than those weirdos who fell in love with some celebrity they’d never met, because hey, at least those were living, breathing people. Him? He was in love with paint on canvas.
He was so lost in his own longing and self-disgust that he didn’t notice the girl until he collided into her. And judging by her startled shriek, she hadn’t noticed him, either.
His hands instinctively shot out to her elbows to steady her. “Whoa, sorry, didn’t mean to sc…” The words died on his tongue. His mouth went dry. Because standing before him, with the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder, was the girl in the painting. Strawberry blonde hair pulled in a high ponytail, a pert little nose, gray eyes wide and cupid’s bow mouth a perfect O of shock. “It’s you,” he blurted, like an idiot.
Her eyes softened, her lips spreading in a tender smile. “It’s you,” she echoed.
She knew him. She knew him. Holy shit, she knew him. Needing to feel her, to finally know the softness of the creamy white skin that had haunted his dreams for so many years, he reached out to brush his calloused fingers over his cheek.
This couldn’t be real. But somehow it was. “Ginny?” he asked tentatively.
Her nose scrunched in confusion, before her features suddenly lit up in recognition. “Chrissy,” she corrected. “It’s Chrissy now. And… you’re… Carel?”
The name went through him like a gong, like the thrum of music at a live show - hell, like someone put a pot over his head and smacked it with a mallet, Looney Tunes style. There was no reason for him to recognize that name. But it was his, a long time ago. He knew it in his bones.
“Eddie,” he offered.
“Eddie,” she repeated thoughtfully, as though tasting his name on her tongue. Her face broke out in an ecstatic smile - one that mirrored the goofy grin he could feel on his own. She combed her fingers through his hair. The sensation made his scalp tingle, sent a shiver down his spine.
For nearly two minutes, they just stood like that - his hand on her cheek, her fingers in his hair. Eddie was pretty much dumbstruck. What exactly were you supposed to say to the girl you’d been mooning over for years, now that she was real and standing right in front of you? Everything he came up with was quickly balled up and discarded.
Eventually, the voice of a security guard pulled them both out of the spell they found themselves under. “‘Scuse me, sir, miss? Please don’t block the exit.”
Ginny - Chrissy, her name was Chrissy - backed up a step. Which, just - no. No, he couldn’t lose her, not when he’d just found her after all this time. “Do you wanna grab a cup of coffee?” he asked quickly.
Chrissy glanced outside, where the sky was just beginning to darken. Her nose scrunched again. “Little late for coffee. For me, anyway. I’ll be up all night, and I’ve got class at eight.” Eddie nodded in disappointment, already backing up a step. Before he could get far, one of Chrissy’s tiny hands snagged his wrist. “But, um, dinner?” she asked quickly. Her cheeks went an adorable shade of red, and she hastily kept talking. “I don’t - I mean, I don’t have a ton of money ‘til I get paid on Friday. But my meal plan lets me bring a guest to the dining hall once a week. If… you know, if that’s something you’d be interested in.”
If he was interested. Oh, he was interested, alright - interested in the same way he was interested in music, in fantasy, in *breathing*.
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, hoping he wasn’t pushing his luck by doing so. But Chrissy didn’t seem to mind; she nestled into his side with a happy sigh as if he’d been carved just to make a spot for her there.
“Lead the way, Chrissy,” he said, his heart skipping at beat at how right her name sounded. “And tell me where the hell you’ve been the last, oh, hundred-something years.”