Work Text:
Expressing your emotions through art had always been a part of you. It started when you were just a kid. Where others would play in the sandbox or jump on the monkey bars, your tiny hands were moalling a piece of clay to look like a pointy star with little details that most adults thought were made by an artist. Then weeks later, you had made so many little stars that the teacher helped you hang them up in the back of the class, creating little constellations that appeared in your imagination.
As you grew older, art wasn’t limited to modelling clay figurines anymore. You picked up some brushes and paints one day, a few days after a block of clay was delivered and then a week after you got a second-hand reflex camera to haul around the city. Some weeks, sculpting was the only thing that could satiate the craving deep inside your soul. The craving that made your art so tangible and made others feel so many things at once, from being unsettled to being comforted that you weren’t alone in feeling a certain way.
Lately, painting had taken over your every thought (and the majority of the apartment you shared with Matt). Thhere was something about transforming the blank canvas into a piece with colours - a two-dimensional print of your emotions and feelings.
Matt had learned to appreciate the smell of paint that stuck to your skin. It was like you had developed your own brand of cologne or perfume and decided to bottle it in a tiny flask that resembled the shape he thought your love looked like.
He knew exactly what you were doing by just concentrating on the smell once he turned around the corner to the apartment building. Whenever you were painting, there was a heavy scent of turpentine that stuck to your palms and subsequently, every surface you touched would have a slight whiff of it.
However, you had received some acrylic paints from an unknowing friend, and their heavy ammoniac scent clung to your hair, clothes and it clung to your skin as if you had showered in it, making him feel so nauseous sometimes that you stopped painting altogether for over six months.
Then, one day, after you had bought new supplies, he detected a very faint, new scent that hung around the cupboard where you stored your supplies. Matt hadn’t asked what was different - he guessed you’d just gotten some new colours to stain the clay vases you were making for a friend.
But then that day, it finally clicked.
There was no more heavy scent of ammoniac that enveloped the apartment, instead, there was a slight walnutty scent to be found. Some of your paints had a slight whiff of lavender, while others just smelled a tiny bit like rosemary. He guessed every colour had a slightly different smell, and it just made him love you more as he realized that you were trying to visualize your two-dimensional art for him.
You claimed the paint just felt better when you stroked it over the canvas, however, he knew that was not the only reason.
That evening, when the night had already fallen and you were cleaning off the paint from your brushes, softly humming to whatever song was stuck in your head, he could smell the scent of dark red plum. It had notes of deep violet, bitter yet sweet. It tasted like how he imagined Hell’s Kitchen to be on the changeover from summer to fall.
Your humming only intensified the closer he got and he caught himself slowing down to keep enjoying the sound from your voice. He tapped his cane to the beat you were setting, a content smile on his face at the feeling of your happiness.
Matt closed the door behind him and put his cane against the wall, dropping his keys in the little ceramic bowl you had made a few months ago.
“How was your day?” you asked him, speaking on a normal level as Matt turned around the corner to the kitchen.
“Was able to get ms. Nowicki full custody over her kids,” his voice travelled closer to you, until his arms wrapped themselves around your waist, his front pressing against your back as he inhaled your scent. “And she promised to bring us some babka tomorrow, so I’ll try to save you a piece.”
“Matt, that’s amazing! Alina and Nikolai were so sweet when they waited in your office. I think Nikolai really liked the clay sculpture I made for decoration,” you recounted when you were doing some paperwork in his office. You turned your cheek slightly so Matt’s scruffy one could slide against it, his musky scent enveloping you. “Try is the keyword there, I know Foggy will defend that babka with his life.”
“He adores you, darling,” Matt murmured, pressing a kiss against your cheek before letting you go again. “I’m sure ms. Nowicki will have made enough babka for everyone and their families.”
“I got something for you, too, by the way,” you softly announced, leaving the brushes in the sink to dry. “You remember that piece I told you about, right?”
“The one you are so secretive about that you won’t even describe the colours?” he mused, a soft smirk on his lips as you lightly tapped his chest in retaliation. He simply laughed at your gesture and pulled his tie a bit looser with one finger.
“I can’t hide anything from you if I don’t!” you countered. “You should save listening to the heartbeats of people you’re questioning, not your partner.”
“And where would be the fun in that?”
“You’re a menace,” you threatened, grabbing onto his bicep to guide him to where your easel stood close to the window. Both of you knew he didn’t need the guidance at all, let alone in his own apartment, but an opportunity to closely hold onto him was something you’d never refuse. And Matt really liked how you wrapped both your arms around his arm, too.
“So, you want to tell me what we’re looking at now?” he asked, angling his face down a bit to stress his question.
“No.”
His brow rose up in the air, not expecting you to deny his request for you to describe your artwork to him. You had never done that before either. Usually, you were giddy with excitement to explain why you used a certain colour and what meaning it had. What was different now?
“I don’t follow, sweetheart,” he said, his eyes nervously shooting around, his senses hyperfocused on every little move you made, every breath you took, the way your chest expanded and contracted, your heartbeat that was still the steady rhythm that was a baseline for him to calm down.
“Here,” you unwrapped yourself from his bicep and grabbed his hand instead and guided it to the middle of the canvas. “Tell me what you feel.”
Matt delicately traced his digits over the canvas, not expecting anything but a smooth surface. However, as his fingers softly dusted over the top, there was a slight bump of thicker paint.
Matt softly gasped, unable to process that you made visual art tangible to him. It was such an unexpected surprise to him, as paintings were something that was usually off-limits to him.
“What- what’s it exactly?” his voice broke the delicate silence. “I feel lines and corners and bends and- and…”
“You got it,” you mused, scanning his face and taking in all the little movements his eyes made, how he quickly furrowed his brow and relaxed it again. His fingers, trembling just a bit too much as they tried to figure out what exactly you had painted.
“I know this?” he asked, more a statement than a question as he put both his hands on the canvas as if he’s trying to trace the braille instead of trying to figure out what you had painted.
“Okay, I’ll give a hint,” you smiled as you slid your arms around his waist, cuddling close to him and basking in his body heat. “You really love it.”
“I fail to see how these lines could be translated into a portrait of you,” he said, a smirk audible in his voice as you sighed deeply and rested your forehead against his back.
“Matt,” you groaned, dragging out his name as you felt his chest vibrate with laughter.
“Okay, okay, just give me a minute,” he tapped on your hands with his fingers, then returning them to the canvas, continuing his journey.
For the first time in his life, Matt was speechless. There was something lodged in his throat, preventing him from speaking. Was it his heart, crawling up the cavity of his chest, wanting to put itself on a silver platter, just because you did the impossible? Because you gave him back a piece of his vision that he thought was forever lost?
As his fingers continued to trace the many lines that were slightly elevated from the canvas, because of the thickness of the paint, he felt himself getting more emotional. The lines felt so familiar because they resembled a map of the city he loved the dearest.
Hell’s kitchen was a neighbourhood he knew like the back of his hand, he literally knew how to navigate it blindly.
And you had made it into a painting.
A few weeks ago, he had explained to you how he navigated around the many corners, bends, rooftops and fire stairs that made up Hell’s Kitchen. He had explained how certain scents lingered on rooftops, how he heard the creaking of water towers of buildings, how the air tasted when the seasons were changing.
You had translated it all into a piece of art, a piece of art you made for him, about him, about him and the complex relationship he had with the city he grew up in.
“It’s- it’s magnificent,” he softly uttered, his hands glued to the canvas as his voice was the most delicate you had ever heard. “I can’t believe you made this.”
“Well you know, you deserve magnificent things, Matt,” you uttered, resting your chin on his shoulder, watching his fingers discovering the painting. “For everything you do for this city. Everything you do for me.”
It was silent for a second as Matt processed everything that had just happened. From the reveal of the painting to your words that solidified all the feelings, he had for you even more.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice breaking as his brown eyes grew glassy. His hands moved from the painting to your face, softly caressing your cheekbones as he delicately pressed his lips against yours.
His hands cradled your face so softly, still shivering a bit from all the sensations that were just bared to him as he tried his best to convey his every feeling into the kiss.
“This is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me,” he breathed out after he pulled away, his hands not leaving your face as you pressed another small kiss to the palm of his hand. “I love you.”
“I love you,” you whispered back, matching the smile on his face as his arms snuck around you and pulled you in an intimate embrace.
You two were so in step with each other, like a moon orbiting around a planet, always pulling at each other, making sure the other was always in range, even when the other was pulled into the dark side. You’d always make sure they’d come out at the other side, back into the light and warmth. Back to you.