Paint splashes
Ship: Javid
Words: 1.5k
Era: Modern au
-o-
In which Javid are very in love, do some painting together and I enjoy making it as fluffy as possible.
-o-
The paints were always stored in the weirdest places. David had come to terms with that in the four years since he had moved in with Jack. Letting out a quiet sigh, he scanned his eyes left to right, across each long shelf that was filled with Jack’s art supplies.
“Jack!” he called, and paused for a second, waiting for a reply.
There was a distance shuffling of feet as Jack yelled back to him. “What?”
“Where are the watercolours?”
The door swung further open as Jack pushed his way into the spare bedroom. He held his hands aloft; bubbles clung to his wrists still and they shone with water that he had not properly dried. A tea towel was slung over his shoulder.
He raised a teasing eyebrow at David and pointed to the top shelf. “Far left,” he said, “Under the pencil box.”
“Why under the pencil box?” David muttered under his breath. He extracted the tin carefully - it was completely obscured from view by pencils - and stepped back. How Jack knew where any of his stuff was defeated David. To him, it looked like a system of ‘where ever it fits, it goes.’
David turned towards Jack, who was wiping away the last bubbles with the tea towel. “Do you need paper, as well?”
“Uh, yeah, can you grab some?” Jack replied, sending him a bright grin. “Next to the reference files.”
He grabbed a few sheets and followed Jack back to the main room, which contained everything except the bedroom, bathroom and spare room with the cupboard where Jack kept all his art supplies.
Jack returned to the sink and began scrubbing a glass while David put everything onto their small paper. He frowned at it. “Is that everything we’ll need?”
“Brushes?” Jack suggested, not looking up from the washing-up.
David sighed and clapped a hand to his forehead. “Brushes,” he repeated, walking back to the cupboard.
“Next to the acrylics!” Jack shouted after him. “The ones with the green handles!”
Muttering under his breath, David took a few minutes to return with the brushes. By that time, Jack was already spreading out the paper and paints he had already gathered, putting them into specific areas that he liked, and accompanying them with a pristine glass of brush water and a pencil.
“Awesome, thanks, Dave,” Jack said, beaming as he took the brushes from David. He held them up to his eyes and scrutinised each one. “You’re still joining me, right?”
David let out a quiet laugh. “Only if you want me too,” he said.
Jack grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and pulled him the few steps back to the table. “Of course, I do,” he said as he pulled David’s chair out for him and pushed him into it. “I always want to do stuff with you.”
He sat in the chair next to him and handed him one of the brushes David had collected. “Okay, so you should use this one to put some water all over the paper before you start,” he said. He looked like an excited puppy, with wide eyes that sparkled with happiness and a grin that was infectious.
David took the brush from it and dropped it into the water.
As Jack took him through the different brushes, and finally gave him the pencil, David found himself unable to stop smiling. He loved listening to Jack, lost in the world of his beloved art. Every time he saw Jack’s eyes light up like that, he felt like the luckiest man in the world, so completely undeserving of being Jack’s husband.
“Got it?” Jack asked, finally pausing. “Oh, wait, I can put some music on, too.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and fiddled his way to the music app.
David nodded, scanning the range of things in front of him. “Sure. But, this isn’t going to be pretty.”
“Anything you do will be amazing,” Jack said, glancing up from his phone screen.
Giving him a raised eyebrow, David picked up the pencil.
Jack backed off with a laugh. “Okay, even if it isn’t amazing, I’ll still love it, at least,” he said, and then tacked on, “That was in our wedding vows, right?”
“Something like that,” David agreed, putting the pencil to the page of thick, watercolour paper that sat in front of him.
Some soft, floaty and vaguely romantic music floated from Jack’s phone and he set it down next to him. Taking up his own pencil, Jack slanted his paper and began to sketch. David could not see what it was from where he sat, but he did not worry himself trying to find out.
Jack drifted into his own, relaxed world, and so did David. The music set the tone, and David could not think of a single place he would rather have been than sitting next to Jack right then, on the eve of their wedding anniversary.
Unlike the hundreds of hours that Jack spent filling art commissions, this was simply for fun. He had asked David if he wanted to join, too, in a spur-of-the-moment question while they washed the dishes that they had eaten their dinner off together.
David had not taken an art class since high school (which he had hated. The teacher had been a nightmare), but it was easy to fall into an easy rhythm. Where there were no rules, no end goal and Jack sitting next to him, David had no reason to worry about how his art ended up. It could have been the ugliest painting in the world, and he knew Jack would gush over it, even he was laughing and teasing as he did so.
The song changed, and David’s head snapped up, his brush pausing mid-stroke on the page.
“This was our-.”
“First dance, yeah,” Jack said, smilingly at him with soft, brown eyes. “I know.”
David’s heart melted into goo as his whole body filled with a wonderful warmth. Words could not describe how much he loved Jack. It was like a flame inside him, licking at his skin and kissing all of his thoughts.
Jack hummed the song softly and continued to drag his brush, forwards and backwards across his page. The colours of a rainbow shone on his page, glistening in the light that shone above them.
David stared at him, lost in the moment. He wanted to freeze time and live in that moment forever. Everything felt right.
“I really, really love you,” he suddenly blurted, still looking at Jack.
Jack gave him a dazzling smile. “I really, really love you, too,” he replied and then launched head first into singing the chorus of the song at the top of his lungs.
David laughed and joined him, struggling to continue to paint at the same time as Jack was doing.
A few more songs passed, all of which Jack sang along to before he spoke again. “You done?”
David looked at his slightly limp trees that looked strangely out of place before a dark, looming background. It looked more like Cirith Ungol than Cerin Amoroth. “Done as I’ll ever be.”
Jack pushed his chair away from the table and walked over to David, peering over his shoulders.
“It’s good!” he proclaimed, immediately, but David could hear the laughter in his tone.
He glanced up at him. “Do you know what it is?”
Jack’s chortles launched into reality. “I’m getting an impression of trees?”
“Close enough,” David said, laughing. He swirled his brush around one in the, now murky green, water and rubbed his hands on his jeans. “What did you do?”
He moved to Jack’s side of the table and looked at the painting. His heart stopped for a moment, as his face broke into a grin that hurt his cheeks. “It’s beautiful,” he said, finding Jack’s eyes and staring into them.
“Bunch of trees,” he said, waving an embarrassed hand, but moving to stand next to David, anyway.
Riverdell, in all its beautiful colours, was unmistakable on the page.
“Did you seriously do this from memory?” David asked, still looking at the watercolour. It was almost perfectly in line with what he envies whenever he read the books.
“I mean, I might’ve read the books before a bit before so I remembered what it looked like.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck and gave David a bashful smile. “You’ve just been talking about it a lot recently. Thought I might try to paint it for you…”
David turned to him and kissed him on the check. “It’s perfect,” he murmured. It meant so much more when David remembered how much the Lord of the Rings agonised Jack. The number of times that David had forced him to watch it during the years they had been together was higher than it had any right to be.
Jack kissed David in return, brushing their lips lightly together, and wrapping his arms around David’s waist. The music continued to play in the background, and they swayed to it, slowly rocking from one foot to the next.
David leant his head against Jack’s. He could smell his aftershave, still clinging to his skin, and the inherent paint-like-scent that hung around him. It smelt like home.