Work Text:
"Towa!”
His name practically echoed through the clinic the moment he splattered paint all over the place in aim for his canvas. The oil drips down his arm and onto the floor, from the canvas down the eisel, and from the eisel to the paints below it.
"God, we're gonna have to clean this up…" And by 'we' Taku meant him. God forbid Towa lift a dainty finger.
"I'll just ask Rei to clean it."
"No, you will not."
"So, you'll clean it?" Taku sighs, and it brings a smile to Towa's face. "I'm kidding, relax."
"I know you, and… you are not kidding."
“I was kidding a little .” Taku looks in Towa's direction and reaches over to wipe some red paint off his cheek. It must have splattered while he threw the bucket.
“Will you try not to make a mess of things this time?”
“My room, my mess to make.”
“Then, you can clean it.”
“The paint on the floor doesn’t bother me,” Towa grins smugly. “-if it bothers the good doctor, then he can always take care of it himse- ow.” Taku grabs his nose and pinches him. Towa pulls away and rubs his face. He stares Taku dead in the face, almost as if to ask what gave Taku the audacity to treat him like a child. And he already knows Taku will reply ‘quit acting like one’ so he doesn’t bother.
“Abuse.” he grumbles, and Taku meets his whining head-on.
“Justice.”
“Excuse.” Towa counters flatly and pulls away when Taku tries to grab him again.
“Stop it, old man. No more fucking around, pay attention.”
“I’ve been trying to come up with a theme this whole time, you know…” They’ve been residing in Towa’s room for the past hour or two with nothing but buckets of paint and the tools that accompany them. Towa has wanted to gauge Taku’s desires (besides the obvious one) for a while now, but he’s had no success. When his birthday finally rolled around, he asked Taku for only one thing (besides the obvious).
That ‘thing’ was to paint together– something that appeared more challenging than he first thought it would be.
"Don't know what to paint?"
"I swear, there's just…" Taku taps the end of the paintbrush against his temple with a frown. "-nothing going on up here as far as scenery goes. I told you I was bad at this."
"I can't paint without inspiration either. We just have to find something for you to paint. How about still life?"
"Still life? Oh. You mean… painting from a real life example?" Towa drapes one arm over his canvas and leans against it. As he does so, he puts his own paintbrush between his teeth to mimic a rose.
"I can strip if you prefer that."
"Still life is painting inanimate objects."
"I'd say I'm good in mating, sure."
"Towa." Towa pulls the paintbrush out of his mouth with a deep sigh and steps away from the canvas.
"God, you're no fun at all."
"If you want me to paint, you can't ask me for sex. I'm too old for this. I can't multitask anymore."
"You're not that old, stop trying to deny me a good time."
"Do you want me to focus or not?"
"I want you to show me what's in-" Towa taps his hand over Taku's belt, and it makes the older man raise a brow at him. "-here."
"I think you mean," Taku taps the end of his brush against Towa’s chest to counter his argument. "-in here."
"No. I already know what's in there. It's mushy fluff and vanilla kisses. I'm gonna need the good doctor to start thinking with his dick."
"Towa, this might sound harsh, but I believe you're the only artist that paints with their libido."
"I don't know how to tell you this, but some of the most stunning art was drawn and carved in marble by horny, old, gay men. You'd be a natural at it."
"Ha-ha." He acts annoyed, but he's clearly having fun.
"If I need to undress to inspire something in the name of art," Towa begins to undo the buttons on his shirt, and Taku swiftly looks away.
"I have an idea."
"Damn. That was fast."
"I was suddenly under a lot of pressure." It was an act of self-defense.
“Alright. Then, let’s begin.” He knows Taku has no clue where to start, and that’s exactly why he eyes him as intently as he does. His inability to pick a color alone would be humorous if it wasn’t a drag. Eventually, he settles on black and begins drawing some sort of shape. Towa assumes he has a theme in mind and chooses to focus on his own painting. After a moment of self-indulgence, he checks back on Taku, and he unintentionally snorts with laughter. He doesn’t bother turning his head away when Taku looks at him funny. Towa clears his throat in an attempt to fake professionalism. There was no reason to do so… but it was funnier to think he had anything he could teach Taku by playing tutor.
"...Let's start with a box." Taku folds his arms across his chest in that ‘he’s about to dad me right now’ manner Towa was so used to seeing.
"If it looks bad, you can tell me it looks bad."
"Art is subjective," Towa looks back at Taku's canvas and can't help but to hold back a snicker. "-and it looks bad. If it's supposed to look like a box, it doesn't. If it's supposed to look like a circle with edges, it's perfect."
"Did you suggest painting to humiliate me…?"
"Maybe. Is it working?"
"Towa."
"It's not my favorite kink but I can work with it.” He decides to give his teasing a rest when he sees Taku cup both hands over his face to hide. He's really pushing him past his limit.
"Try painting something familiar. Maybe… something you associate with the clinic. Or something you see everyday." That was the best advice he could give someone that’s never painted a thing. How did he go his entire 40 years of life without painting? Sketching? Even a doodle? Towa couldn’t imagine just what Taku spent his time doing while he was in school. Hard to imagine straight-laced Murase as anything but a teacher’s pet with perfect grades.
"Hmmm…" Taku scans the canvas in silence. The gears in his head must have started to turn, because he picks up the brush with a new sense of confidence. Towa watches him curiously as he picks an array of bold colors. He seems to know what he’s doing, or rather– he’s got an idea of what he wants to achieve. Towa continues to look his way between pauses to see his progress. He fully expects Taku to ask him what to do, which colors would be complementary, or how to blend them. Instead, he’s become completely focused on the task at hand; just as if he was treating a patient.
Blue, white, gray. Little specks of red and green.
Towa only intervenes to help Taku flick the brush to splatter small dots of paint like rain over the canvas. The madman was making each little dot by hand, and that was going to take forever. Instead of lining the canvas with one color at a time, Towa dots the palette knife with 3 colors and draws it over his own canvas to demonstrate how to make a clean gradient without the added brushstrokes. To Towa's surprise, Taku is very precise with his movements. He assumes it's years of having worked as a doctor coming into practice through art, but something told him that Taku could finally visualize what to paint. It may be flowers without stalks. It may be the different colored tubes next to the syringes. Towa can't say he recognizes it, but he feels like it seems familiar when he squints.
After what feels like an hour, Taku looks away from the painting to turn towards Towa. It sounds like he had a different question to ask him but changed his mind.
"...Is everything okay?" He must not have noticed him staring. Or maybe he did, and that’s exactly why he asked.
"You look like you're enjoying yourself."
"Actually… yeah. I think I understand why you paint."
"Oh?" Come on, share with the class, Murase-san.
"It's… not a huge revelation or anything. But you sort of melt away when you paint. I didn't realize how much time passed until I had to look away," he turns towards the half-open curtains, motioning towards the windows with his brush. "-the sun is setting."
"Yeah. I usually don't notice it when they're closed."
"I can see why wanting to tune out the rest of the world would be appealing to you."
"...I hadn't really thought of it that way."
"I'm not saying that's all it is. It's just one of the good aspects for us, I guess."
"You too?"
"What?"
"You find tuning out the rest of the world appealing?"
"...Sometimes." Taku gazes back at his own painting and sets the brush down on the easel. "This painting is the closest thing I could think of when you said to visualize the clinic."
"Flowers?"
"Fatigue." Towa leans a little closer to scan the paint, but he doesn't know what it's supposed to be. It’s too abstract to be an object, and too messy to be a landscape. There’s no color-cohesiveness to outline a foreground, background or anything alike. The closest thing he could compare it to was the ceiling- and that in and of itself felt like an insult even he wouldn’t issue in jest.
"Fatigue?" He asks, because he’s genuinely curious.
"Whenever I spent the night, I'd either get stirred awake by an alarm or because Rei would check up on me. Every time I'd rub my eyes open, I'd see dots everywhere. The world would turn fuzzy… and it was always so obnoxiously bright every time." White. The base. Yellow, the sunlight. Red, blue, green… the overlapping dots that blurred his vision directly out of slumber. Towa could see it now. Though, he wishes it wasn't a work born out of something negative. That wasn't what he wanted to inspire. He’d hoped to bring out some sort of hidden desire.
"...Did you hate it?" It slips out without him noticing.
"Waking up early? Yeah, but I enjoyed working more than sleeping. Sometimes, it was just… a bit too much."
"I mean drawing," Towa taps the tip of his palette knife against the bucket on his stool to calm his nerves. "-was it just annoying?"
"No? Why would you think that?"
"I can't see your smoke anymore so you have to tell me if you're being honest with me."
"And I'm asking why you'd think so. If I was bored, I'd tell you." Would he though? Towa wasn't convinced Taku had it in him to insult his hobby.
"I was hoping to get you to draw something you desire or enjoy."
"...I see. I might not have explained it well, but it is actually the catalyst to a lot of good memories."
"It is?"
"Yeah. It was normally right after being awoken from naps like this that I went to fetch you for your shift."
"..."
"The piece represents fatigue, sure. The negatives are obvious from its name. But it also reminds me of both you and Rei. My reason to keep seeing this every time I wake up-" Taku holds his open palm towards the painting to guide Towa's eyes to the canvas, but Towa can't help but stare at Taku's hand instead. It was the first time he's seen it covered in paint. "-was because you both motivated me to keep going despite the fatigue. I didn't express it at the time, but I really enjoyed when we would hang out in the cafeteria or eat together during lunch. So… you don't have to look at it so glass-half-empty."
"Really? Because every time you woke me up to drag my ass downstairs, I'd try biting you."
"What do you mean try? You succeeded a handful of times."
"I failed more times than I succeeded."
"Glass-half-empty." Towa grins and dips his paintbrush in some red paint before telling Taku to hold still. He doesn’t have time to resist before Towa drags the brush over his cheek. When he pulls away, Taku glances towards the side-mirror in hopes of understanding Towa’s actions, but it only raises more questions.
"Your name?"
"You put your name on work you're proud of. I figured I could also mark you. You know, because you're mine."
"Towa-!" He always found it silly how awkward Taku got. "Tell me the paint comes off."
"Of course it does," he grins. "-no promises on the pigment, though."
"Towa."
"Yup. That's my name. On your cheek. So you don't forget it." Taku sighs.
"Alright, turn your head. It's time for revenge."
"What makes you think I'll just let you paint on me?" He's smug and flirtatious up until Taku's palm cups his cheek and the other takes a hold of the paintbrush Towa just put down.
"Intuition." Towa glares at him when he smirks.
"Intuition my ass…" he was using his hands to cheat. Though that sentence made no logical sense for Towa to say out loud, he was still very convinced Taku cheated by using his hands.
"You know my name. I think there's something else I want you to see every time you look in the mirror." Oh no. This was going to be something drawn from Taku's mushy heart, Towa could tell. He closes his eye and tries to paint the kanji in his head, but it doesn't align into a familiar shape.
When Taku finally finishes, and Towa opens his eye to stare into the mirror near the exit, he sees a word painted on his cheek.
That word was 'precious'.
Towa has to hesitate rubbing it away before the pigment stains his skin. This was too much all at once. Of course he didn’t recognize the kanji. When has he ever been told he was precious?
"What do you think?" Towa turns his head away from the mirror and stares at the floor. The paint is cold against his cheek, but it feels like his face is burning up. Could a single word truly peel back the shield over his heart and hit him with a ferocity similar to the first time Taku showed him what real love truly was? He isn’t sure he can put a word on it, but it makes him feel similarly to how he felt that night. It’s as if something so simple could shatter years of degradation and humiliation.
As if Taku somehow managed to reach past the parts that made him insufferable and pulled out something of value from within him.
‘To think there was anything of value at all in there…’ he told himself again and again that it was fine to just sleep around. His life didn’t matter. There wasn’t anything to look forward to. There was also no one that really treasured him the way he never knew he desired to be treasured.
…No, that’s a bit of a lie.
He was aware that Rei and Taku treasured him, but it was hard to see it for all the fussing. They acted more like a mom and dad than partners.
“Towa?” It’s such a silly thing to feel emotional about. ‘Precious’ - a word he couldn’t understand the meaning of just a few years ago. A word that he first heard from Taku. A word that Taku somehow has come to associate with him.
The kanji feels like it’s glowing by how hot his face feels. He rushes to hide it in case it’s that stupid mushy-blushy thing that happens whenever Taku says something that makes him really happy. He leans his cheek against Taku’s chest to ask for a hug, and Taku wraps his arms around him without hesitation.
He completely forgets which side the paint is on until he pulls away.
The end result of his embarrassment brings a grin to his face.
"Dumb luck but," he points at the kanji stain over Taku’s chest with a grin. "-it's mutual." It left a perfectly identical smudge over Taku’s clothes, unintentionally marking him back. Taku doesn’t seem to understand the implication. He looks at it less as a symbol and more of an accident. Unironically pragmatic for someone so mushy.
"I think you mean to say ‘symmetrical’."
No, I was right the first time - is what he wants to say.
"Sure." But he lets it go.
You’re precious to me, too- but he doesn’t say it out loud. The doctor would have to begin using his head as effectively as he uses his hands.
“Anyway, I want kisses now.”
“You’re already bored of my painting?”
“It’s very nice but you haven’t touched me in forever and if you don’t do it right now, I’ll never recover from the neglect.”
“Towa.”
“Will the doctor treat my vitamin D deficiency before I pass out from cock-loss?” he doesn’t have time to grab Taku and push him against the wall before a familiar voice gasps from the open doorway. He hears a surprised ‘Taku!?’ Before he hears ‘You!’ He assumes Rei means him.
“What have you done to the place!? It’s covered in oils!” Towa answers before Taku has the chance to reply honestly.
“Making art. Wanna strip for us and model?” Rei’s cheeks turn red, but he looks to Taku for support, and Taku sighs in a fashion that tells Towa he’s grumbling a ‘what do you want me to do about it’ under his breath.
"Were you banking on me cleaning all this!? Taku, not you too!"
"I'll help you clean, Rei."
"Nice. Call me when you're done." Towa waves at Taku and heads for the door. Taku glares and looks towards Rei with a stern but fed up expression.
"Rei, grab him."
"Oh, come on," Towa whines when Rei's arms wrap around him tightly to lift him off the floor like a paperweight napkin. "-I hate this teamwork shit you two do to me."
"You only hate it because we make you take care of yourself and your responsibilities!" Rei squeezes him a little tighter, and Taku snickers.
"I think he hates that I can pacify him mentally, and you can pacify him physically." Rei makes an 'oh' with his lips and looks towards Towa with a bright, radiant grin.
"Aw! You like my hugs!"
"Put me down…"
"Keep holding him. It looks like he's blushing."
"You're on thin ice, old man."
"That's okay! If you're mad at Taku, I'll just give him kisses until you stop being so moody." Towa glares at Rei.
"Put me down and watch how quickly I make that not-happen."
"Don't put him down until I lock the door. He'll just make a run for it."
"Oh, you suck." Of course Taku could see right through him.
"Towa, have you gained some weight? You're a little heavier than last time."
"Are you calling me fat? With your diet?" A bright red flush covers Rei's cheeks and he lets go.
"Unbelievable! It was a compliment! I hate you! I despise you!"
"Rei-!" As soon as Rei lets Towa down, he sprints towards the exit only for Taku to grab him instead. Towa practically runs straight into a hug rather than through the open door. Taku sighs when he picks Towa up bridal-style with no issues and looks at Rei. "-you fell for it again."
"I can't help it! He always goes for my weakness! You know I'm self-conscious about my weight."
"Did you just run away from Rei so I'd carry you back?"
"I've resigned to my fate. The least you can do is carry me to it."
"Taku, drop him." If only. Taku smirks and grabs Towa tighter.
"Into hell or to the floor?"
"Guys, I'm still here and I can hear you."
"My bad," Taku corrects himself before he turns to Towa. "-hell or floor?"
"Doesn't matter. You'll still be holding me wherever I end up."
"Sorry to tell you this Towa, but Taku's not going to hell."
"No, he's right. I'll probably go to hell of my own volition if that's where Towa is going."
"You're still stuck on an 'if'?" Towa grins, and Rei chuckles.
"Come on, guys! I'm literally watching paint dry! It's just going to be harder to clean the longer we wait!"
"Sorry, Rei. I'll make it up to you. So will Towa." Taku turns to look at Towa with a 'say something' look on his face. Towa does as asked, and nothing more.
"No promises."
"Towa."
"I'm still impressed you think I'll end up anywhere but hell."
"There's always hope. Rei's definitely going to heaven, so you'll have to clean up your act if you want us to share the afterlife."
“Too much work. Can’t Rei just go to hell?”
“Towa, if you don’t start helping us clean, that’s exactly where I’ll end up because of you!”
“Sweet.”
Despite changing and growing past the life he used to live, one thing remained consistent and unchanged. Perhaps he only learned to appreciate it more when he realized he could feel pleasure in ways other than through pain.
I like it here.
It’s so funny he has to smile.
Maybe he’ll help them clean despite the hassle.
After all, this was his home, too.