30 day fluff challenge: day five
"painting together"
(aka, a mini deleted scene from The Devil Doesn't Bargain)
Evan leans back against the wall from his space on the floor, staring at the canvas in front of him. It’s definitely…something.
He looks up at where Tommy is standing a few feet away, his own unstretched canvas stapled to the wall. He’s working in much larger dimensions than Evan an his little eight by eight tile, but the work is also far more definitve than the little swirls of the brush Evan is making.
“You seem at peace,” he states softly, staring up at his boyfriend.
Tommy doesn’t reply right away, giving his brush a spin around the glass palette in his right hand before he goes back to the canvas, working in a layer of blue to properly coat the canvas.
“It took me a while to find something that was calming enough,” he admits when he finally steps back from the canvas two minutes later. He glances down at Evan, smiles at the tile in his hands.
“I mean obviously you like art,” Evan replies. “I’m surprised you don’t commission it.”
Tommy shakes his head as he swipes another line of paint across the canvas and then presses a finger into it, blending together two shades.
“I don’t do it because I want money,” he states over the paintbrush between his teeth. “Sometimes I have an idea and it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.” He pauses as he steps back from the canvas again, and then moves and sets the palette on his supply cart before dropping the paintbrush in his water cup and turning his attention towards Evan again as he sits down on the stool he never uses.
“When I was first working with Rob, he knew I would draw; sometimes these really dark things that I would remember,” he explains. “But we were in a session one day, and he’d told me to draw the memory I couldn’t get out of my head, onto a canvas. He said ‘whatever it is, however dark it is, just draw it’. And I thought that was crazy because it brought up all of these really dark emotions about it all. I got really angry.”
Evan nods, watching Tommy with rapt attention as he talks. Something about it has him drawn in. It might be that it’s the first time they’ve really discussed Tommy’s trauma without him being upset about it.
“So, I get it done, and I bring it into my next session, and it’s this drawing on a twenty-four by thirty-six sheet, black and white and in paint pens, with a ridiculous amount of detail.” He pauses for a beat, staring at the floor as though he’s caught in the memory. After a time, he looks back up at Evan. “Rob looks at it for all of six seconds, and then takes it and puts up on this wall, and when he comes back over, it’s got all of these little holes in it.”
“Wha?” Evan furrows his brow, confused. Tommy lifts a finger, one second, a small smirk pulling across his face.
“He’d glued all of these thumbtacks backward on a corkboard with superglue. So when he put it up, he pushed all of the pins through, and then came back, and I was kinda like ‘what the fuck’ you know? Like I put all this work into this project, and he just destroyed it.”
“Please tell me this resolves in a good way,” Evan states with a small chuckle.
Tommy nods, drumming his fingers gently against the seat of the stool.
“So he walks over to me and hands me this water balloon. And I’m still miffed about the picture. But he tells me to throw the balloon. And at first I was like ‘fuck no, I did all this work and you just messed it up’. But he says ‘just trust me, and throw the balloon,” Tommy explains, bobbing his head slightly as he retells the story. He rolls his eyes as the smile reemerges on his face. “So I threw the damn balloon.”
His smile falls then, but there’s still a look of contentment on his face that Evan hasn’t seen in a long time. He sets his tile on the floor and pushes himself up, walks over to where Tommy is sitting on the stool. He rests his hands on either side of his boyfriend’s neck, thumbs circling in the space behind his ears.
Tommy narrows his eyes, his gaze pointed at Evan’s shoulder but not actually looking there.
“There was crimson red paint in the balloons.”
Evan stands in front of him, watching and waiting. Tommy’s gaze drifts up to him a few moments later.
“After the first one, I kept throwing them, and when they were gone, I went up and ripped it off the wall,” he explains. “And of course he asked me how it felt.” His gaze drops again, eyes searching before he nods at a thought inside his own head and looks at Evan again. “Felt like someone had seen the inside of my head for the first time, and what it felt like to be in here.”
Evan lifts Tommy’s head gently, presses his lips against the older man’s. Tommy’s hands rise to meet his waist, pulling in a step closer. When they finally break apart, Evan remains in the same spot between Tommy’s straddled legs.
“I still have that canvas around here somewhere,” he admits, glancing around the room. “And it was the first time I felt like paint might do something more than a pencil could.” His gaze trails back up to Evan. “That was also the first session I was able to actually say ‘I was sexually assaulted in the military’. So I guess you could say his methods work.”
Evan smiles at him, laughing silently at the statement. Tommy laughs with him, pulling him another step closer and nuzzling his face into Evan’s neck. Evan strokes his hand down the back of Tommy’s head, fingers massaging lightly against the back of his skull.
“I like seeing you like this,” he murmurs to him. “Like you feel at home in your own body again.”
Tommy nods, though he doesn’t lift his head.
“Thank you,” he rasps softly after a tick. “For loving me through it.”
Evan pulls back then, making sure Tommy is looking at him before he speaks again.
“I’d never be anywhere else,” he murmurs. “I meant it when I said I’d love you no matter how far you got in the healing process. I choose you, Tommy. Every time.”
