Work Text:
It was one of Tobin’s hidden talents Christen liked to say. She never spoke about it unless asked, it was simply a part of her.
So when Christen decided to tell Tobin to leave a few bags of her things at her house in LA...an easel was certainly not one of the things she expected from the older girl’s duffle bags. She remembers waking up one morning to Tobin perched on her knees, trying to add detail to a canvas that she had clearly been painting for hours. Her tongue poked out against her blushing lower lip, her brow fraught with concern over the slightest dappling of her paintbrush. It was the cutest thing Christen had ever seen. Her normally fidgeting, constant dribbling, lost in her own head Tobin was focused with precision. So began Tobin’s sunset/sunrise series.
Christen wakes up to her bed empty, rolling around to feel the cold sheets. Tobin never woke up early unless it was—one of those painting days.
The sun gleamed into their apartment in sunny Los Angeles, off season welcoming them with a warm sunshine filled hug. She crawled out of bed, draping a robe across her body and went out to find Tobin. Usually their space was filled with the scent of coffee, from Tobin’s favorite roasters in Portland, but today all Christen could smell were the oil paints in Tobin’s palette. She never minded much, not when the output is absolutely gorgeous.
“Tobes?” Christen calls out, walking from the bedroom to the living space still searching. A few oil paints sat open on their living room shelves, Christen quickly closing their lids. One unmistakeable trait of Tobin’s — of any artist was that they got too caught up in their work to take care of anything properly. As Christen saw again when she discovered their patio door wide open and Tobin sitting in her pjs painting the sunrise. “You’re going to let in the spiders and bugs and then I’ll have to rescue you mid shower again babe.”
Christen teases, slipping onto the porch herself, closing the door. She sits next to Tobin, rubbing her side as she focuses on the canvas in front of her. Warm golden paint streaked across the canvas, fading and swirling with pinks and purples as she painted the rising sun. Tobin grunts in response, too engrossed in the shape of the wispy clouds she was swirling over with light blues for shadows against the white forms.
Most often people get annoyed at Tobin when she’s in her ‘zone’. Be it in her gym zone, her soccer zone, her art zone, even her ‘Mario Kart Zone’ as Allie once dubbed it. A grunt of response was usually the limit of conversation, if you’re lucky you’ll get a yes or no response to a question. But Christen never minded that. Once she’s even said that she could live in their silence because they're in tune with each other. Tobin had her routines, her tells. Like the sleepy grunt before, letting Christen know that coffee had not been on her mind as she rushed out to catch the sunrise.
She kisses Tobin’s cheek softly, careful to avoid her palette with her elbow and just like that she’s on her feet once again. Padding to the kitchen, she turns on the coffee maker and starts to grind their beans just the way Tobin likes it. A splash of vanilla cream, a dash of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Perfection in a mug.
Christen makes her own, bringing the two mugs back to the patio. Tobin is in a different position by now, laying on her stomach while adding texture to the golden center of the sun in the painting. She kicks her feet out behind her, restlessly like a child. Paintbrush handle between her teeth as she pauses to think. Carefully Christen sets the mug next to Tobin, nudging her.
“Coffee’s here babe.” She cooes, running her hand softly down Tobin’s back. Tobin mumbles between the brush in her teeth what sounds like a “thanks” but was sounding more like jumbled gibberish. Christen sips her own mug, eyes drawn to the steam curling up from Tobin’s despite the warmth in the day already starting up.
This was what painting days were. They were always gentle, always quiet, and just beautiful. The stillness of the day, as if time stopped was what intrigued Christen the most. She felt like watching Tobin was like seeing time freeze while she worked. The brunette had never complained about being watched while she painted, Christen merely faded away as her ideas took hold.
So Christen minded herself for a few hours, letting Tobin have her own space to work. The quietness of it all made her heart skip a beat, the domesticity curling around her like a warm blanket. When you truly love someone, you love them in their silence. The quiet is gentle, hovering and waiting for the next move instead of lingering and awkward, heavy at your side. Christen loved Tobin’s silence. It wasn’t truly silence, not with the golden haired brunette whistling as she decided to play around with texture in the work. But silence in her responses to Christen. It wasn’t a purposeful ignorance but simply the sweeping nature of artistry.
After a while though, Christen gets needy .
She wants Tobin’s attention. It had been long enough and that crisp golden sun was fading away through lavender wisps of cloud across the skies. Christen is never put off by Tobin’s art, she needs to identify with her work. But she wants to be touched, to be heard, and to enjoy the sunset with Tobin not while watching her merely paint it.
“Hey you,” Christen dips down to sit next to Tobin, her hand on her knee. She presses a kiss to Tobin's cheek, cupping her face softly. Her face, fraught with worry lines and deep set bags under her eyes. She wouldn’t let herself rest until her thoughts flowed into the canvas.
“Chris—,” Tobin started to say later in the day but got distracted by the prospect of mixing paints, splaying a few together across her palette with the flick of a brush—
“Shit!”
“Shhhh…” Christen held up a finger to Tobin’s adorable, pouting lips. Tobin had spilled the mixing paint all over the two of them, distracted by Christen’s smooth moves as she settled in closer to her. Slowly Christen hooked her leg around Tobin’s, sliding onto her thighs.
“You’re—so—lucky, it’s washable.” Tobin mutters through desperate kisses, feeling Christen’s weight against her. She could feel her pressing down, settling into her thighs.
“Come on inside,” Christen begs, her lower lip pouting at her girlfriend, whom she missed far too much. Tobin strokes a lazy hand across her back, seeing the paint smeared all over her t shirt front. Her fingertips dance along the hem, suddenly clutching at it and taking the top off. “Tobes— we’re at the— porch,”
“No one looks over here.” Tobin mumbles, kissing Christen’s neck, just to feel the younger girl shiver against her. Christen rolls her hips against Tobin out of habit, her bare chest against her as she dips her head lower to nibble at Tobin’s strong jaw. The brunette gasps, her hand sliding down Christen’s back and rubbing against her ass.
“ God ,” Christen breathes out at Tobin’s rough palming, feeling the wet paint across her knees as it kept sliding down the porch. “We have to shower babe,” She pulls herself up enough to breathe heavily between them, shaking her head. Tobin playfully placed a hand in the paint puddle, then smacks it teasingly across Christen’s chest. The darker haired woman squealed, leaping off her girlfriend’s lap.
“ Tobin Powell—!” Christen yells as she follows the impish woman inside, off to their bedroom to draw a shower.
Tobin’s painting lay resting on the porch with the swirl of paint on the stairs leading into the sandy beach below. Pinks and golds and oranges mixed with each other to give themselves the most beautiful streaks.
The sunrise had so many of their favorite colors, and so did the sunset of that night. They may not have caught the next day’s sunrise but at the very least they had a memory of yesterday’s to hang on the wall of their bedroom maybe in Portland where the sun only shines ever so often.
They’d decide on that later after they’ve laid in the golden rays of California sun.
Oh to be in love like the swirling colors of the sky.
Not all of Tobin’s sunsets were beautiful and soft though, sometimes they were blazing red and full of dark clouds.
“Tobin, can we talk?”
The brunette grumbled at her girlfriend from behind a canvas in their little Portland studio apartment. Thunder clapped in the distance, lightning striking overhead as clouds buried what was left of the red sun sinking away into the night.
“Tobin. I’m serious, look at me.”
“What’s the point?” Tobin snapped as she threw aside her paintbrush, glaring at Christen with dark eyes. Christen shook her head, walking closer to speak but Tobin got there first. “Really Christen, what is the point!? You just want to get rid of me, I’m just a notch on your path to success right? Poor me following you around like a lovesick puppy while you find it endearing I want something real for once!”
“Tobin-Tobin no, you have to listen,” Christen reached out to Tobin’s shoulders, gripping firmly. She took a deep breath, starting to talk again. “That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking to Tyler and I told her that I don’t know where home is right now. I spend so much time here and in Utah, and LA. It’s a lot.”
Tobin yanked her shoulder away, trying to focus her eyes on her painting and not Christen. The younger woman pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration, turning on her heel to leave only to turn straight back to Tobin. She stalked up to the canvas, leaning over it so she was eye to eye with the brunette.
“I have always been honest with you. Tobin, I need you to listen to this. Because I know what you’re feeling,”
“ Bullshit ! You don’t know. No you don’t.” Tobin cried out, still angry. Her lower lip trembles, and Christen is so close she can see the bitemarks in the chapped flesh. Her eyes are dark, darker than she’d ever seen them. Christen has seen a lot of shades of brown in Tobin’s eyes but nothing this intense.
“Then help me to?” Christen askes quietly, her hand reaching out again for Tobin’s shoulders. This time she was met with no resistance. Not even a shudder. Tobin leans her head over the canvas, resting on Christen’s sternum. She could hear her heart thumping away, and a small tear streamed down Tobin’s cheeks.
“I don’t want you to leave me.” She whimpered out lowly. “It’s stupid. It’s selfish. We’re not even— it’s been like 9 months or whatever. But, I want to be an option.”
Christen’s heart breaks as she realizes what her words did to the woman in front of her. She gasps, her hand running through Tobin’s long hair and massaging her scalp gently. “I'm not leaving you Tobes. That’s not in the cards here.”
Tobin shudders, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand and smearing a bit of paint on her cheeks. She slowly steps back from Christen, trying like hell to calm down. The darker skinned woman gently led Tobin to sit down behind her easel again. Thunder clapped overhead, lightning lighting up the small apartment in a flash. Tobin jumped at the sound, knocking over paint and her elbow nicking the canvas itself.
The dark paint spread over her light wood floors with a smash, Tobin groaning out in frustration at all of it.
“Okay...okay Tobes, hey look at me.” Christen crouched you Tobin’s eye level in her slouched chair. She kissed the older woman’s quivering cheek, trying to calm her down. “What’s going on? Just talk to me. Why were you afraid of me leaving you?”
Tobin sticks her chin out dejectedly, her eyes on the ground where the paint kept spreading through. She scuffs her bare feet on the floor, brushing her hand against her face again nervously.
“Sometimes I feel like you could do better than me, and you wouldn’t have to go out of your way to be in Portland, where you don’t think of it as home…” Tobin mumbles.
Christen gets up, grabbing a rag from a nearby shelf and crouching to wipe up the spilled paint. She rubs and blots at the garnet color, looking up at Tobin between motions, sighing. The paint spill would have to wait- Christen decides as she gets up to comfort Tobin. Her hand squeezes the older woman’s shoulder as she steps back over.
“Tobin. Home isn’t a place. It’s a person.” Christen sighed out, kissing Tobin’s soft cheeks. “You really don’t think of yourself like that do you?”
Christen’s eyes seek out Tobin’s dark ones in the dim studio, her heart sinking at the realization. Tobin Heath is many things. Ultimate hard chill, and calm are a few of them. But what Christen was slowly coming to understand was that Tobin didn’t see herself as good enough for someone like Christen, and that hurt. The older woman taps her bare foot on the floor, telling Christen before she even spoke how she felt.
She doesn’t know how others didn’t see it before, even Tobin herself didn’t know. Each time Tobin was in a meeting she was uncomfortable in, or an interview she wanted to be anywhere but there her knees would start bouncing, her foot tapping. She was constantly fidgeting and part of it could be her lack of focus but Christen was always picking up on her body language to tell her how she felt. And clearly now, Tobin was uncomfortable with this conversation.
“Tobes, I don’t know where this is coming from. I don’t want to do better than you because you’re the best for me. Portland is home, I never want you to think it's not. It will always be home to me, even if in a decade you leave. Even if you never look back, this apartment has so many of our memories. It’s our home. Not mine, and not just yours. Ours.”
There’s a moment of silence between the two of them. Tobin’s legs stop bouncing. Christen takes a breath to stare at Tobin, and take in her beauty.
Tobin buries herself in Christen’s chest, the tears falling against the fabric of her shirt while thunder booms again. “Sometimes I don’t know what I did to deserve you. It’s like a cruel joke of a gift from God because I could never repay Him for this. No act of service would be enough.”
Christen hums softly, trying not to choke as she listens to Tobin speak about her like she’s some beautiful heaven sent angel. She could feel warmth radiating off of the lean woman in her arms, and it made her own chest flutter. Thousands of memories coasted through the back of Christen’s eyelids as she closed them at the next flash of lightning. Memories of this apartment, the one she and Tobin had stumbled back into after their first official Portland date--both on a warm white wine buzz. Christen had ended that night tangled in the sheets, and fully realizing that Tobin might be just a bit of a cuddler. Memories of Tobin making her coffee early in the morning before a 9am flight, to drink on the car ride to PDX so she wouldn’t have to buy overpriced sugary and burnt airport coffee. Or when Christen nearly set the kitchen on fire in a disaster of a dinner date where she tried a Pinterest recipe gone wrong while Tobin was out at afternoon training. (They ordered Thai in that night and made love against the couch with the fireplace going).
Stormy nights always turned into painted sky mornings though. No cloud cover lasts forever.
Sometimes the clouds were hazy though. But Christen learned to like them.
She steps into the apartment with a bottle of red wine in her hand, a take out box from an Italian place in her other hand.
Christen’s green eyes surveyed the small open kitchen & counter, catching the multiple canvases the brunette had attempted to paint different skylines on and a few discarded messes. She set down the food and wine, tiptoeing around the canvases on the floor, and headed to the balcony. Out on the balcony stood Tobin, joggers riding low on her waist as the bulk of a back muscle warming band jutted out over her narrow hips. T Shirt white and wrinkled.
“I brought some wine and Italian home babe,” Christen called from the doorway with a small tapping on the glass. Tobin’s head turned slowly to face Christen as she blew out a ring of smoke from her mouth. In the dim balcony lighting Christen could see the redness in Tobin’s eyes, and the droop in her energy.
“Hmmm? Oh...Italian? It smells soo good, Chrissy,” Tobin mumbled as she shuffled closer to Christen. It took all of Christen’s energy not to giggle at the sight of her girlfriend high. Honestly, she was a little pissed about the whole drug aspect but Tobin was just so cute…
“Toby are you high?” Christen asked point blank, reaching over to pull Tobin closer to her face to face. The brunette let out a hesitant laugh, her blunt still burning on the dish she brought out with her. She could smell the drug on her lips, the scattered ash on her bare feet.
“It hurts.” Tobin croaks out, taking another hit and then smashing out the blunt. She sets the dish inside the apartment on the counter and limps over to the couch.
“All your paintings are on the floor, Tobin, I’m sure if you just tried painting on the table—”
“What an idea!” Tobin mocked, crossing her arms as she settled down. Christen pauses on her way to open the pasta boxes, tilting her head at Tobin with raised brows. She heard the attitude, and she wasn’t here for it.
“Tobes, I think you need to go get a second opinion if it’s hurting this bad,” Christen starts firmly as she starts to scoop pasta into a bowl.
“It’s weed. Chris, listen...it chills me out. It helps my painting. It takes the pain away. Not like I’m being fitness tested anytime soon.” Tobin replied slowly, her words slurring slightly. She got up from the couch, going to get the second bowl of pasta for herself.
Christen takes a deep breath, uncorking the wine bottle and pouring herself a glass. The smell of the weed took her back to college, of sweaty frat parties with Kelley at her side. She took a sip of wine, then stepped closer to Tobin. Her hand reached out for her side, trailing along the bulky muscle belt on her hips. She hated seeing Tobin like this.
The brunette had dark eyes, her hair messy under that damn beanie in the mid summer breeze in Portland, and she seemed frail. Smaller than she usually is.
Christen looked at one of the sunset paintings hung in their kitchen, watching the pinks and oranges merge and flow together. It reminded her that this too shall pass, and Tobin won’t feel hurt forever.
“Your ankle hurts too, right?” Christen asked as she let her hand tug Tobin closer. She nodded with a sad smile.
“I’m broken Chris. All of me.” Tobin said with a bitter laugh. Her glazed eyes shone with a few angry tears but she blinked them away before they could fall.
“Well we just have to make you better huh then.” Christen replied before pressing her lips to Tobin’s gently. She tasted the drug in her lips, and the forever peppermint taste of Tobin’s eternal gum as the brunette made the kiss deeper.
“Tobes, it’s like 2AM come back to bed,” Christen pleaded from the hallway as she squinted at her girlfriend sprawled across their kitchen floor with a canvas, wearing only a pair of boxers and a fitted tank top. The light in the kitchen gleamed over Tobin’s defined muscles, letting Christen trail her eyes over the exposed skin where she could see the sun had kissed her.
“I’ve got this. I'll come back soon,” Tobin swats her gangly arm away from herself, telling Christen to walk away. But the curly haired brunette wasn’t about to leave Tobin alone in their kitchen. She sat down beside her, folding her legs under herself with a blanket tugged around her shoulders.
“Toby,” Christen starts in a singsong voice, teasing her, “Bed now. Paint later.” The darker skinned woman said gently as she closed the lids on Tobin’s paints one by one.
The brunette sighed, setting down her brush. She sat back on her hands, taking a moment to see what she had accomplished in the past hour after sneaking out of bed while Christen slept. Sometimes inspiration strikes at the most inconvenient of times.
The canvas was around medium sized, with a golden and purple sunset across the upper horizon. There was a peach colored body along the lower portion, and Christen had closed the lid to the rich browns she had outlined a second body with. All abstract shapes and concepts.
“Is that supposed to be us?” Christen points to the two bodies, having sex in an abstract sort of way. The hands were merely shapes, curving sharply into v’s and squares of bodies. Tobin turns pink, getting up. She starts to turn Christen towards their bedroom.
“Like you said it’s time for bed so let’s just,” She’s deflecting away from Christen’s question, trying to get her to stop looking at the canvas. Tobin had stood up to her full height, avoiding her usual slouch to try and get in her view. “Chris, c’mon I’m tired--”
“Tobin. Did you paint us having sex?” Christen asked point blank, wriggling her way out of Tobin’s grip and away from her poor attempt at blocking her. She raised an eyebrow at Tobin.
The brunette pulled at her own hair frustrated by Christen’s curiosity, and the lack of privacy for her own art. She paused in their hallway, turning back to face Christen’s curious green eyes.
“That depends.” Tobin replied sheepishly, her cheeks absolutely blooming with embarrassment. Her eyes were downcast, trying not to notice the strip of warm tanned skin on display between Christen’s boyshorts and her old Pali blues tee. Now was not the time to be thinking about... that .
“On what Tobes? ” Christen asked, her voice lowering to a dripping rumble. Oh fuck, that wasn’t fair - Tobin thought as she tried to sqaure her jaw and avoid the tension Christen had created.
“If you like it or not.” The older girl mumbled while Christen stepped closer. Christen breathed in deep, close enough to smell the moisturizer on Tobin’s cheeks. Her eyes watched the brunette’s, envying her long curling eyelashes before her lips met Tobin’s jaw. Her hands cupped Tobin’s cheeks, drawing her into the kiss deeper while her tongue slid between her lips.
“It’s kind of hot Tobin, of course I like it.” Christen laughed, kissing her lips with heavy warmth. “You painted us, and the sunset, and it’s beautiful,”
“Oh it’s beautiful huh?” Tobin replies as she sighs into Christen’s kissing, her body relaxing into her. Tobin’s head tucked into the space between Christen’s shoulder and her neck, pressing a soft kiss against the skin there--tasting her unique scent. Being vulnerable about her art was still new to herself, surprised at how gentle Christen’s affirmation was but yet also how much it made her more comfortable with her art.
“But I’m not letting you sell it for an auction you perv.” Christen laid down the rules with a firm eye roll, nudging her girlfriend back to their bedroom. Tobin eventually pulled off her boxers and messy paint covered tanktop, sitting on the edge of the bed. Christen slides back into their bed, a blanket pulled up to her neck. Tobin curls up next to her, an arm across her chest.
“You’re my sunrise Chris,” She mumbles quietly before closing her eyes and collapsing into sleep after staying up until 2AM working on it.
And so the days of their lives continued with sunrises and sunsets on canvas.