What would a paint fight hurt anyway?

"Speaking of different ways..."

Orion carefully removed his painted canvas from its easel and placed it aside.

"I'm feel like doin' another one. Maybe in a different style..."

He had gone over to the supplies where Faye had first retrieved their canvases previously to get another one. On the way there, he passed by a sink in what could be called an artist's cleaning station. He caught himself in the mirror that hung above and he finally got a good look at himself covered in various colors of paints, most of which had dried on his skin and clothes already. Some of the paint on his skin was already starting to flake and crust off from his movements.

A moment of inspiration hit him and he hastened his retrieval of a canvas and returned to Faye's side, beaming.

"Get ready, Faye. I got a killer idea for my next piece!"

Without wasting a moment, Orion reached down to the bottom of his shirt and pulled the whole thing off in one smooth motion. He looked even odder with his shirt off. His arms and face were colored and painted, but his torso had been spared completely.

He tossed his shirt onto a nearby table and grabbed several tubes of paint in its place.

"Feel free to join if you want."

Then he started squeezing the tubes of paint onto his chest, shoulders, and abdomen until he was just as coated as when they were paint fighting. He insured a wide coverage before dropping the tubes and then giving the canvas a full-on hug, squishing the paints onto the canvas.

"It'll be like I'm REALLY capturing myself."

To Orion, covering his bare torso in paint and then hugging a canvas seemed... Well, it didn't seem normal even to him. But it did feel like the right thing to do at that moment while he was still swept up in his enthusiasm for art. The literal act of capturing his form on the canvas felt like a natural extension of what he had so far learned about artistic expression. When feelings and thoughts could be put into colorful form, why couldn't his body do so as well?

His initial squeeze lessened and was followed by a few more, smaller squeezes to make sure that the canvas was getting everything in detail. He remained in place a little longer when it looked like Faye was going to take up his offer.

"You got it. You got it. Now just grab your canvas. No. YOUR canvas."

Even he was caught off guard by Faye's next move. Orion froze up for a moment while she hugged his back. It was unexpected and he pulled away from his canvas after she let go of him.

"Whats it look like?"

He craned his neck this way and that trying to see what Faye had composed, but failed to get a good look at it. Failing to see it for now, he put his hands on his hips and look down on his own paint-smeared chest and Faye's paint-covered shirt.

"But now your clothes are all dirty. Er, dirtier than they were before."

While Faye went off to grab her phone, Orion finally looked at his second canvas creation. It too looked like a blob color at first glance. But on closer inspection, there were details to be picked out. The multi-colored shape was clearly a silhouette of his chest and torso, capturing the sharp lines of his form with only a few rivulets of paint dripping down here and there. The differences in thickness gave an appearance of depth and texture that reflected his muscle tone. In the right light, it looked like a bust of his body.

He crossed his arms over his chest in satisfaction, only to immediately remember that he had covered himself in fresh paint. Looking down and pulling his arms away, he saw that it was now on his arms too. Orion was going to need a shower.

The electronic snapping of a camera got him to turn around. Faye was quick on the draw with her camera and he got to see what her piece looked like on his back. Her's was messier and blobbier, probably because of her shirt.

"Oh, pshaw! Of course you can take it off! You're in a safe place here."

From Orion's tone, it was apparent that he was understanding of her misgivings about taking off her shirt. But he also thought little of the potential embarrassment, and didn't even seem... Well, as interested in a topless woman as most young men would be. It was like it was hardly an issue to him.

I understand if you got reservations though. My attitude is usually pretty odd to most people."

"Interesting? That's very flattering of you to say. Thank you!"

Orion said as he drew funny shapes in the wet paint on his chest with his fingers. To be fair, Faye was seeing a version of Orion that was slightly different from the kind of person he had been when he had first arrived in the area. In the time between then and now, his public face had softened somewhat and become less of a wacky caricature. Slightly. He was still acting like a goof ball, but it was less rampant and more coherent, showing that there was still an intelligent man behind it all.

Faye had removed her shirt while Orion was looking down at himself an putting the finishing touches on another small bit of alien circuitry, so he had a pleasant surprise waiting for him when he looked back up. He was happy to see that Faye had gotten into the spirit of things.

"Ooooh. Check it out. The paint bled through."

He pointed at her tank top, which had taken on a subtle swirling of color from the wet paint on her shirt. It was a less overt coloring that allowed more gradients to show through. Orion found it quite fetching.

"I wonder... Hold still."

Picking up a paint brush and paint, Orion took to Faye's tank top like another canvas. Thin lines were drawn and weaved to compliment the faint paint soakings. All the while he seemed more engrossed in the fun and the painting than seeing Faye in a thin, slightly wet tank top.

Orion was engrossed in his work on Faye's tank top, much to the girl's seeming delight. He appreciated her efforts to not move and give him a stiller canvas to work with, and he tried to make short work of it all so she would not be strained. It was quite an effort though. Balancing speed with the need to produce a quality product was a tough process.

"I'll sign it if you want. Who knows? It could be a collectible some day."

Faye was right to assume that Orion was more concerned with the art than the fact that he was being allowed to put his hands so close to a girl's chest with little effort. But she would be wrong to assume that those kinds of thoughts had not entered his head entirely. Orion did take notice of her and her body, and could quietly appreciate it from up close. Stuff like that was secondary to the art though, and he just did not seem all that driven by those kinds of things as much as other boys who appeared his age.

By the time he finished, Orion was quite close to Faye. Whether through purposeful means or accidental happenstance, he was almost on top of her by the time he put the final stroke to his work. Then he took a big step back so he could see it all at once.

"There! All done! Whaddya think?"

The piece resembled his first in the sense that it was primarily made of the alien lines she had seen previously. But this time the lines were more guided and symmetrical, almost tracing her inner skeletal structure.