Work Text:
This was, perhaps, one of the more pleasant ways to spend a Saturday evening; considering the other possibilities. After all, only a week prior, both men had been locked away in cells halfway across the asylum from each other. With just a little luck and a lot of thermite, they were able to spend this lovely evening together.
Jonathan silently listened to the soft clicks of Edward’s heels only a few halls away, silently scolding the man for always choosing such a noisy wardrobe. He supposed he couldn’t complain though, as any attempts to do so would only draw out Edward’s complaints of the stench that radiated off his own scraps of fabric that he had long come to ignore. For now, they would just bicker in silence and at a distance.
His deep brown eyes scanned the various plaques on the wall, briefly catching on a few abstract paintings depicting colors and shapes that Jonathan had no interest in. He really wished that they could just find the damn painting that Edward needed for his newest scheme and leave. This felt like a waste of his time, particularly considering that Edward had springed it on him last minute.
“Jonathan,” He heard quietly, tearing his focus away from the paintings and down the hall where the voice had come from. After a few moments of paused silence, he watched a head peer out from under a dim light, a hand loosely holding the bowler hat from falling off at the angle. Slowly, he began approaching, watching as Edward’s head popped back out of view. “Come on, nobody is here with us, you don’t have to stand so far back.” The voice echoed, a little louder.
As Jonathan approached the hallway and looked to where it branched off, he expected that the genius had already located the painting they had been searching for and that they could just grab it and leave. What Jonathan was not expecting, however, was to see the other man leaning against a lone single picture frame hanging from the ceiling in the center of the gallery. Apparently he was not the only one becoming frustrated.
“What’s that?” Jonathan asked, quirking an eyebrow under his mask. His eyes flicked across the frame before settling back on Edward. It was just an empty golden frame. Sure, he didn’t even see the use for filled frames, but this seemed beyond useless. “Looks pointless.”
“Oh hush, you have no admiration for anything,” Edward snapped, strolling to the other side, trailing his finger across the edge of the frame.
“Neither d’ you.” It was one of the few things they agreed on. Jonathan saw paintings as useless and boring. Edward saw them as useless save for the few occasions in which he could tie them to a riddle, such as the one that Jonathan wished they could just find, take, and leave.
Edward frowned slightly before his eyes shot up and he grinned.
“Oh no,” Jonathan mumbled, recognizing the familiar expression.
“Riddle me this, I am useless to the blind, ignored by-”
“Art.”
Edward’s mouth immediately twitched down in a frown. Jonathan couldn’t help but smirk. After all, context is everything.
“So what, it’s a sculpture?” Jonathan mumbled, strolling forwards, watching Edward begin picking at the golden paint on the frame with disinterest.
He slowly picked off a thin flake, dropping to the ground unceremoniously. “Yeah, whoever created it must have had a truly dull and unexceptional mind. I don’t understand how anyone could see this drab thing as interesting!”
Jonathan rested a hand briefly on the frame, similarly picking at the paint for a second before deciding that he had no interest in wasting his time defacing the work. Really, he would prefer to just find the art piece and get back to his own work.
Instead, as his gaze flickered to the man just in front of him, the genius still quietly distracted, Jonathan couldn’t help but gain a slight interest. “Maybe you’re jus’ not thoughtful ‘nough.”
Edward stepped back sharply as Jonathan leaned forwards, resting both his arms neatly within the frame and craning his neck just slightly to bring his head within the frame. Edward blinked in surprise at the action before his cheeks flushed lightly, able to notice the faintest edge of a smirk under the poorly sewn seams of the other man’s mask.
Perhaps Edward just needed a little coaxing?
“I —” Edward began, staring at the masked face for a moment, unable to help but notice the glint of Jonathan’s sharp eyes staring back.
Jonathan couldn’t help but feel a pang of pride at catching the other man off guard. Still, Jonathan refused to take his eyes off him even as the other man stared back, Jonathan patiently trying to press his message to the other man. When the other man seemed to have completely frozen while piecing together the message, Jonathan decided to give the poor man a small hint, learning forwards slightly, still wearing the confident smirk, and flicked his eyes across Edward once.
“Oh,” Edward murmured, seeming to have finally caught on. “Oh! Okay, yeah, let’s find the painting and then we can go and —”
“Thank you, I’d ‘ppreciate that. Y’ said it’d be in th’ impressionist section, correct?” Jonathan asked unceremoniously, dragging himself off the frame and glancing towards the plaques on the wall of the section, noticing a gold one with a neatly inscribed ‘Impressionist’ writing. “O’er here.”
He approached the door, grasping the handle and noticing that there was no such familiar click of noisy shoes behind him. Glancing back, he saw the other man to still be frozen in place, just watching him. Jonathan sighed. “Better hurry ‘fore I change m’ mind.”
“Oh, yes, right,” Edward mumbled, cheeks flushed bright red as he darted forwards and entered while Jonathan held the door.
Jonathan shook his head with a sigh. Honestly, Edward was so quick to initiate such pointless things as sex, but the moment Jonathan decides to try it, the other man hardly even catches the hint. He closed the door behind them.
It seemed even geniuses had their moments.