gentle vandalism aka cate introduces mixed media into naptime tw: canon divergent, domestic, fluff, canon universe, post canon, mom!cate, dad!reader, two year old daughter, parenting, slice of life, summer, body art, tattoos, bath time, established relationship, etc. 2.7k+ words
author's note: dedicated to the lovely 🤡 anon who suggested this idea hehe. hope you enjoy<3
The apartment had that late July hum to it. A box fan in the hallway doing its best impression of a small airplane, distant sirens soft as a lullaby, the windows open to a soup of heat and traffic that smelled faintly like warm tar and someone’s barbecue two buildings over. You’d made it as far as the couch, tank top damp at the collarbones, bare legs stretched over the armrest like abandoned scaffolding. Sun freckled the bridge of your nose where you’d forgotten sunscreen, a smear of dried popsicle lived on your left knee, and every tattoo on your body looked sun-warmed and a little extra alive.
Cate stood in the doorway with a dish towel over her shoulder and Riley perched on her hip, both of them watching Daddy lose a battle with consciousness. It had been one of those good, simple summer days: plastic kiddie pool on the balcony, a rotation of grape and cherry pops, sidewalk chalk all over the stoop, the inevitable tantrum when someone (Riley) wanted to bring a plush cat into the bath, and then forgiveness sealed by watermelon slices nearly the size of her face. You’d hauled a box fan out of a closet like you were rescuing a hostage, set it to the longest extension cord in the world, and then collapsed with the dramatic finesse of a woman who had wrestled a plastic pool and won.
“Dada ‘eepy,” Riley whispered, reverent. She was all knees and ponytail and a constellation of glitter from the cheap craft kit Cate had foolishly opened earlier.
“Daddy’s very sleepy,” Cate agreed, pressing a kiss into the toddler’s soft hair. “She fought the hose and she fought the sun. A brave soldier.”
On the coffee table: Cate’s makeup bag, splayed open from earlier when she’d re-applied lip balm and then, apparently, decided that ownership had transferred to the chaos of motherhood. Mascara, blush, sticks of creamy highlighter. Next to it, Riley’s packet of washable markers like a rainbow had been tamed and laid out for inspection.
Cate felt the idea arrive as gently as a yawn. Mischief didn’t always come with a thunderclap. Sometimes it tiptoed in, tried a hat on, and looked at you with Riley’s grin.
She took a breath. She could feel the low hum of your thoughts from across the room like a radio left on downstairs—hazy, pleasant static. Post-Shetty, post-meds, post everything, Cate had gotten better at letting the signal pass through without reaching for it. She didn’t want to be inside your head, she wanted to be next to you with a handful of color.
“Hey, Riles,” she murmured, shifting the toddler to the floor. “Wanna do art?”
Riley clapped, then pressed both hands to her cheeks because this was her most powerful emotion. “Art!”
Cate crouched to Riley’s level. “Okay. Rule number one: gentle touch. Daddy’s sleeping. Rule number two: markers are for tattoos only, not for skin that doesn’t have pictures. Rule number three: no face. Ever. We’re artists, not villains.”
“Not villains," Riley parroted solemnly. She bounced on her toes. “We do color?”
“We do color.”
It felt like a tiny heist. Cate tiptoed to the couch with the makeup bag while Riley toddled after, carrying markers like a bouquet. Your hand had fallen palm-up, fingers slack. Cate knelt by the couch and took in the sprawl of ink she knew by heart. The lines always made something tender open in her chest. Your body was a newspaper of stories, headlines and graffiti, jokes and scars and the weather in all its moods.
“Which one first?” Cate whispered, up on her knees. Riley had both hands on the couch cushion, watching Daddy’s chest rise and fall like it was a whale she’d been promised would surface.
Riley pointed to your arm. “Red,” she announced, very serious.
“Excellent branding.” Cate uncapped her lipstick—true red, reliable—and carefully, luxuriously, colored like she had all the time in the world. The pigment went down silky against the ink. She glanced at your face after each stroke, but the only reaction was a slightly deeper exhale and a sleepy twitch at the corner of your mouth. Sunshine had wrung you out, you were gone.
Cate leaned back so Riley could reach and offered her the red washable marker. “Your turn, apprentice,” she said, and Riley grinned so hard her dimples took over her whole face.
Riley could have scribbled chaos. She usually did. But the intensity with which she colored—tongue peeking out of her mouth, body tipping into a little sway—made Cate’s throat go soft. It was so you it hurt: the same concentrated face you wore over a simmering pan, over a stubborn screw, over a chord progression you wanted to crack. Cate steadying Riley’s back felt like steadying both of you, past and present lined up for a second. “Beautiful,” she whispered. “Daddy’s going to be so impressed.”
They moved outward like they were coloring a map. Cate took another tattoo and layered metallic champagne shadow over it until it caught the fan’s breeze. Riley appointed herself captain, choosing bright blue and—after a thoughtful inspection—green. “Wave,” she narrated, adding a long, looping swirl.
“The engineering is ambitious,” Cate teased softly. Riley glowed, unoffended.
One tattoo got the royal treatment—Cate found a stubby tube of purple pigment in the bag and gently stippled it around while Riley added a little black heart nearby. “Hi,” she whispered. “Roar.”
One got eyelashes. Cate did not authorize this. She approved it silently, because honestly? The tattoo wore them well.
Every so often you shifted. Little muscle clench, breath catching, then falling back into sleep. Once, the arm Riley was decorating flopped with the weight of a dream and the marker wobbled. Riley froze, eyes huge, and Cate stroked her shoulder with reverent calm. “It’s okay, baby.” She was careful with the words, with her tone, careful not to glide into that honeyed command that made people pliable. “She’s just dreaming.”
Riley put her cheek to your bicep for courage. “Shh, Dada,” she whispered into your skin. “Art.”
Cate swiped highlighter over your skin like she was casting a spell and, because she couldn’t help herself, added a soft wash of rose at the edges, a tender bruise of color that made the whole space look weirdly hopeful. She brushed eyeshadow over one tattoo until it glimmered. She used a q-tip to clean up the edge of one where Riley had gotten enthusiastic and gone traveling.
“Fingerprints on a masterpiece,” Cate murmured, this time to herself. She tucked loose curls behind Riley’s ear. The toddler responded by smudging peach blush onto Daddy’s shoulder with the loving aggression of a cat making biscuits.
They were halfway down your left thigh when Riley spotted one small tattoo and became extremely serious about the color black. Cate handed over the smallest marker, watched her daughter frame it like a jeweler inspecting a gem, and felt something at the center of her sternum loosen and spread. There had been times in her life—too many—when touch meant fear, meant control, meant all her love came with the risk of a trigger. Here, in the ordinary heat of this stupid afternoon, the risks were washable, the mess was the good kind, and nothing was going to collapse if she leaned her cheek against your thigh for a moment and closed her eyes.
She felt the heat of sleeping muscles under her skin. Felt Riley’s small hand patting her hair.
“Mommy,” Riley whispered, “more red.”
“Always more red,” Cate said, and passed the lipstick back.
By the time they reached the bottom of your shins, Cate’s knees ached pleasantly and her heart had decided it might, in fact, be too big for her ribs. They saved the best for last. The glitter in Cate’s palette was not technically for bodies. She used it anyway, very carefully, blending gold and copper together until they haloed. Riley dotted the space around with tiny orange stars.
“Do we do that one?” Cate asked, pointing at a set of small numerals.
Riley considered, then nodded gravely and chose purple. “Birthday,” she said, even though they both knew it wasn’t exactly that. Cate didn’t correct her. She wrote a tiny crown above the numbers with the tip of a liquid liner and then giggled at herself. “This is getting out of hand.”
“Outta hands,” Riley agreed, delighted by the idiom.
They had just finished when your breathing changed. Not a jolt awake—more like a tide turning. Your lashes fluttered. Cate touched two fingers to the inside of your wrist not to push, not to pull, but simply to be there for the moment where consciousness would be confusing and sweet.
You blinked at the ceiling, then at the fan, then at the pair of them crouched like raccoons beside a trash can. The slow grin started in your eyes and moved to your mouth. You raised an eyebrow. “If this is a ransom,” you rasped, voice rough, “I can only pay in popsicles and begrudgingly shared fries.”
Riley squealed and threw herself across your stomach with a force that made the couch complain. “DADA! ART!”
“Whoa, hi,” you laughed, arm curving around her and then stopping because—oh right, markers. You tipped your chin down to your right thigh and inspected the art there, turning your leg a little to catch the light. The tattoo was now galloping over a genuinely impressive wave, bright swirls licking at the ink. “Is that…a hurricane? Are we in peril?”
“A’venture,” Riley corrected.
“We’re always in peril when you’re involved,” Cate said, leaning forward to tuck hair back from your eyes. Close up, she could see their handiwork properly: Riley had haloed a scatter of tiny hearts, the highlighter made the ink gleam like it was about to tell a secret, and one tattoo looked somehow even more feral. Cate had drawn a tiny rosebud near one without realizing, the shape coming from somewhere older than thought.
You looked down at yourself, slow and delighted. “Oh my God.” You flexed an arm and watched the eyelashes on one wink. “I look expensive.”
“Commission piece,” Cate said. “Collaborative. Mixed media.”
“Dada color,” Riley announced, lifting her marker like a ceremonial torch. “Me and Mommy.”
You tipped your face toward Cate, lazy and moved at once. “You two are menaces,” you said softly. Then, to Riley, solemn: “Apprentice, what are our rates?”
Riley blinked, then supplied the number that solved most problems in her life. “Two.”
“Two dollars?” You gasped. “Outrageous.” You tapped your mouth. “I can offer two kisses for you—” Riley squealed and presented her cheek “—and for mommy…” You held out your arms.
Cate went, laughing, careful not to smear the masterpiece, and kissed your forehead, your nose, the cupid’s bow, reordered by affection. It still astonished her, sometimes, the absence of fear. Your eyes, all mischief and soft Sunday, accepted it like the simplest thing.
“You’re going to terrify the neighbors,” Cate murmured. “Imagine doing laundry stairs like this.”
You looked down again, brutally earnest. “It would be a crime to wash this off immediately. We should preserve it. Museum quality.”
“Mm. There’s a toddler to bathe and that toddler is already trying to color the remote.”
You both looked. Riley was indeed test drawing on the TV remote, tongue out with the focus of a surgeon.
“Apprentice,” you said gravely. “We do tattoos, not electronics.”
Riley froze, marker mid-air. “Not ‘lectrics,” she repeated, abashed. She tucked the marker away as if she’d been doing that her whole life.
You rolled off the couch with a groan and, in a moment of unnecessary but absolute efficiency, scooped Riley up and headed for the bathroom. Riley shrieked delightedly and then the bathroom light snapped on. Cate’s heart did that silly stuttery thing it still did when you picked up your daughter—a reflex left over from the first time she’d watched it and thought oh, that’s what my life is now: a series of small miracles and loud noises.
Bath time was an experiment. The washable markers surrendered at once, bleeding into the suds in ribbons of color like melted sherbet. Cate knelt beside the tub, coaxing Riley into hands-in-water instead of full-body-dive, while you sat in the bath with her—knees up, arms draped along the rim, rainbowed water eddying around your thighs. “Feels like a crime to watch it go,” you said, looking mournful in a way that was ninety percent performance.
Cate leaned in and whispered, “We took pictures,” and the performance shattered into the grin of someone who had, in fact, been cheesing for a secret camera for the last ten minutes. You would get the digital album later: Cate’s hands, Riley's fists around markers, the close-ups of their artwork on your skin.
When Riley’s fingers got pruny and the bathwater went the color of a regrettable smoothie, you toweled her off and wrestled her into pajamas. You let the last of the makeup fade down the drain but kept the shimmer at the edges of a few tattoos like stubborn confetti. In the mirror you flexed. “Goodbye, eyelashes,” she intoned, and Riley said “Bye-bye lashies,” with such seriousness that Cate had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep it together.
You did books on the couch—Riley’s hair damp and smelling like watermelon shampoo, your tank top replaced by a soft t-shirt that said RIOT! in cracked letters. Cate read, you did the voices. Riley requested the one with the tuna fish which was, perplexingly, a book about trains. In the middle of the second story your hand found Cate’s knee under the blanket, thumb tracing lazy circles with the absentmindedness of long-earned permission.
Riley fell asleep in that fearless toddler way, as if sleep had pounced on her from behind. You did the practiced carry to the crib, the duet of kisses—forehead, cheek—and the retreat out of the room like burglars. Hallway fan. City noise. The apartment a little ocean finally finding its tide.
In the kitchen, Cate wiped errant red lipstick off the corner of the makeup bag. You leaned against the counter and lifted an arm to study the faint shimmer the bath hadn’t claimed. The colors were ghosts on your skin now, a blush of tint in the dips between bone. “Be honest,” you said. “Do I look more or less hireable now?”
“You look priceless,” Cate said, tossing the cloth over her shoulder. She pressed her palms to your waist and looked up, close enough to count the freckles on your skin. “Also a little like a canvas that’s hung in the sun too long.”
“Rude.” You dipped your head and kissed her cheek. “I can’t believe you two conspired without me.”
“You were snoring.”
“I do not snore,” you said, grasping for your dignity. “I breathe with authority.”
Cate laughed softly. She brushed a glimmer of gold from your collarbone and felt that helium sensation again, the strange lightness that came from loving something and not ruining it. “Next time we’ll upgrade our inks,” she said. “Face paints. Stencils. Better brushes.”
“Please,” you said, eyes bright. “Our toddler is clearly ready for her apprenticeship.”
“She is. Also, you are never sleeping unguarded again.”
“Oh, I’m absolutely sleeping unguarded again,” you said. “I wake up more beautiful every time you vandalize me.”
You stood there together for a moment, stupidly proud of a thing that would be gone by morning, two people who had spent too much time believing permanence was the only way to prove love. Cate rested her forehead against your chest, blinked at the trace of color that had refused to leave, and felt the hum of that good, ordinary radio: a mind she loved, a body she could touch without fear, a home noisy with summer heat and the aftermath of washable crime.
“C’mon, baby,” she said, nudging you toward the couch. “Let the art dry.”
You threw an arm around her shoulders. “Yes, ma’am,” you said, solemn as a kid. Then, as you both sank into the cushions, “Hey, did that one have lipstick?”
“Nope,” Cate said, eyes already closed, a smile in her voice. “You’re imagining things.”
“That’s terrifying,” you murmured, and a moment later, the apartment’s warm hum stitched itself around you two again—fan and city and the soft rustle of a toddler rolling over in her sleep—while the last bits of glitter clung to skin that someone you loved had chosen, today, to make brighter.
