Work Text:
When Marie smiles, her eyes light up.
It’s something that Shiver notices early on. The (slightly inconvenient) thing that comes with the prowess of a keen painter’s eye is the ability to notice the smaller details of a person’s face, things that the average eye would miss— an ability that can’t be turned off. There’s an inherent romance about the small details Shiver’s noticed within the faces of the people in their life without trying; Frye has a freckle right underneath her left eye that’s only visible when the sun hits her perfectly. Big Man’s crescent-moon pupils narrow just slightly when Shiver or Frye says something he finds particularly amusing. Assistant lady Callie’s ears are especially expressive, even when she’s simply standing there looking out at the sky. Shiver notices tiny finer points here and there, intimate details of what makes a person themselves, and it’s not reserved for any one person in particular. Art doesn’t discriminate in its beauty, after all.
But they notice more things about Marie than they notice about anyone else. And it’s strayed from their usual innocent observations of artistic beauty into something more… admiring. Romantically beautiful.
For example; her eyes.
They light up when she smiles. Initially, Shiver thought Marie’s face was an untelling one, a direct contrast to Callie, who seemed to scream even her most mild emotions through her smile. But through a painter’s eye, Shiver came to realize that Marie’s emotions spoke through her eyes instead, something impossible to look away from once they noticed. Her eyes are heavy, with thick lashes that give her a romantically sorrowful look, but her happiness shows through the slight crease of her lower eyelid when she smiles, the way her starry pupils catch the light and give her a new sparkle of life. That look is typically reserved for when Callie cracks a joke, but the rare occasions Shiver’s able to get that look out of her are moments they’re rendered speechless for a few moments.
Marie’s face is their favorite piece of art to analyze.
(They’d call it a masterpiece, but that’s terribly sappy, even if it is true.)
When they’re alone in their room sketching idly before they start painting, they find themselves doodling the little things about Marie. It’s not an odd thing for them, painting the small details of the people in their life. There’s entire pages of Frye and Big Man somewhere strewn about their room, and even more sketches of random inkfish that catch their eye outside the studio. But the sketches of Marie that their hands create out of instinct feel… intimate. Analyzing, in a way that’s different from the innocent curiosity of an artist.
They draw her eyes. Their charcoal brushes their sketchbook carefully, as if one wrong stroke would be a disgrace to Marie’s beauty. It’s not about precision or practice, like the rest of their sketches. It’s something akin to reverence, worship, and Shiver knows that their appreciation of Marie’s beauty has long since blurred the line from artistic to lovesick.
Marie is Shiver’s muse. The way they analyze the features of her face changes with the revelation.
The painter’s eye disappears gradually. It’s replaced by the gaze of someone irrefutably, undeniably in love.
Perhaps one day they’ll get the confidence to tell her. For now, though, they’re content to observe through the guise of art, analyzing her beauty from afar and wondering if it’ll ever be theirs for observing without excuse.