Work Text:
A solid wall of yellow ochre made with hundreds of strokes with her paint brush stands in front of Jenna Chen. The bristles of the brush glides over each spot of the canvas, carefully and gracefully, not leaving a single spot of untouched canvas behind. The repetition of the simple movement brings her great peace, up until it gets interrupted.
“So,” a voice calls, one Jenna knows far too well but nevertheless is always anticipating. She didn’t expect to hear it now, though, having been so focused she hadn’t even heard her bedroom door creak open. Her concentration breaks, shattering in an instant and causing her to drag her brush upwards with a jolt. “I hear you need a muse?”
Jenna whips around on the stool she’s sitting on, spinning her whole body 180-degrees to face the speaker head on.
“Aaron,” she gasps.
“Jenna,” he says back.
Before Jenna, standing in her doorway is none other than Aaron Cai. Aaron, who was maybe once the bane of her existence for a few years, but now is the light of her life. Aaron, who drops everything he’s doing at her call, who is doing exactly that at that moment, showing up to her house on a weekend just because she complained a little bit about lacking inspiration. Aaron, whose face holds a small smile, but a corner of his mouth is quirked up a little too high for it to not be a smirk.
“I nearly ruined everything because you crept up on me!” Jenna says to him, exaggerating for the fun of it. There isn’t anything about a canvas of straight yellow that’s exactly susceptible to ruin. But she shoots him a playful glare anyway while he sets down a chair he brought up from downstairs.
She turns away from him, returning her focus to the start of a painting in front of her. Jenna mixes away, swirling each color in the wells of her paint palette with her brush, trying to determine the right color scheme.
“You? Ruining things?” Aaron asks rhetorically, though his words are no less sincere, “Never.”
When Jenna looks back around at Aaron, his eyes are on her, waiting. To her, he looks picture-perfect even if all he is doing is sitting there with his legs crossed and propping his head up on a fist. She immediately turns around to face her canvas once more, all too aware of Aaron watching her.
“Right, um,” Jenna clears her throat, slightly flustered by her boyfriend’s attention. “Yes, I do need a muse. For my final art project, that is.”
It’s a bit embarrassing to be so easily rendered awkward by the person you’re dating, isn’t it? She certainly wouldn’t know, only a couple months into her first relationship after all. Aaron always manages to throw her off balance. Mostly in good ways, like when he would do something unexpected like show up at her door with her favorite dessert simply because he had passed by a bakery, while other times bad ways like her brain buffering when he, all too knowing of his effect on her, flashes a conspiratory smile or wink at her for a reaction.
“Well, I don’t mind sitting still and looking pretty for you,” Aaron tells her, so casually and matter-of-fact it nearly makes her splutter. Nearly. She’s certainly glad she’s no longer sitting facing him. “Is there anything specific for the project?”
Jenna surveys the array of paints she brought home from school, searching for a good one to unify the hues she’s decided to work with. She has settled on a warm color palette, one that will be reinforced by the yellow ochre base she’s starting with. There’s already an idea in her mind of what she wants to put on the canvas, but it’s up to all the little decisions during the creation process that will ultimately produce her vision.
To some, it may seem like a lot of pressure to be the one in control of the end product, but art is her field, after all. It’s what Jenna’s good at, what she knows the ins and outs of. To her, this is as comfortable as breathing, and especially so when it comes to replicating Aaron’s likeness.
Jenna gnaws at her lips for a moment before responding, hesitating. “I have to create a portrait of someone who has made an impact on my life.”
“And you thought of me?” Aaron questions, genuinely touched. There’s even a little bit of awe in his voice.
She looks back at him over her shoulder with a bright smile. “Of course I did.”
This time, it’s not her losing composure, because her reply is enough to render Aaron speechless. Though, unfortunately, the effect only lasts for a moment.
“Does it help that you’ve apparently painted me enough times to say if you couldn’t paint me, you couldn’t paint at all?”
Jenna stills; the hand she was using to mix paint freezes in place.
She had made an irrevocable mistake just a few weeks ago, and for someone like Aaron, he would not be forgetting it any time soon. Or ever. Actually, knowing him, he’ll ensure that he remembers it, which is clearly what is happening now. There is no rebuttal, refutation, or anything of the sort for her to make here, because what she told him had been an honest, panicked admission.
“...Maybe,” she says slowly, eyes refusing to meet his.
Compared to anything in existence that she has painted, Jenna has likely painted Aaron several hundred times more.
Portraits? The amount of times she has drawn or painted herself is incomparable to the number of ones she has done so with Aaron. Flowers? Maybe it’s a close one, because Jenna really does like doing flowers, but Aaron still wins. Landscapes? Aaron. Buildings? Aaron. Still-life? Aaron.
It’s all Aaron.
She has painted Aaron more times in her life than she can express. From beginning with photos as reference to advancing onto painting straight from memory, Jenna has done it all. She’s done it all except for painting the real person directly in front of her, where neither cameras nor her memory can warp his features, lighting, or the tiny intricacies of details that cannot be captured.
The one time Jenna had, she had been in Jessica’s body, without her own talent and materials. The whole incident was far from how she had imagined having Aaron as her muse in-person would be like. So, she can hardly count that time.
When she musters up the courage to look up from the paint palette in her hands, Jenna finds a smug expression on Aaron’s face.
One part of her mentally face palms at the fact she fanned his already large ego once more, but another part feels warm at the sight of his expression. Some people truly have it all, don’t they? Smarts, looks, and personality. Jenna is glad to say that, for once, there is no bitter feeling that overwhelms her after thinking like that.
“I want to see them some time,” Aaron declares, tilting his head to the side, emphasizing his infuriatingly attractive smile. “I’m sure you have them all stashed away somewhere.”
“What– No, I don’t!” Jenna rushes to exclaim. Embarrassingly, it takes her a lot of effort to not glance over at the row of sketchbooks that line her bookcase, but Aaron figures her out anyway, reading her like an open book.
“Let me guess, some can be found in those, probably, sketchbooks over there?” he asks, pointing at the exact shelf she didn’t want him to notice.
At times like these, she almost wishes he didn’t know her so well. She says almost, though, because if he didn’t, who knows what things would be like right now. Maybe she would still be stuck as Jessica Chen, with Jenna Chen lost to the void.
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Aaron lets out a dramatic full-body sigh, slouching as he exhales deeply. “I won’t snoop. I guess.”
“There is nothing worthy of snooping over there.”
“If you say so,” he replies, sounding very much like he does not believe her. Mentally, Jenna vows to herself to never leave Aaron alone in her room.
But finally, she sets down her palette and rises from her stool. She picks up her easel and canvas set-up and spins around to re-place it so that she will have a perfect view of Aaron as she paints. Now it was time to really get started.
Aaron asks, once more, “How should I pose?”
“I want to go for something wistful. Dreamy, maybe,” Jenna hums, thinking. She turns an analytical gaze onto her boyfriend. “You can pose however you like, but that’s the vibe I’m trying to go for.”
Taking her words into consideration, Aaron repositions himself and the chair in just a few moments. Now, he’s sitting backwards on the chair, leaning forward on the backrest with his arms crossed over the top of it. He looks upwards at her ceiling and does something with his face that makes it go soft in a way Jenna has only witnessed directed towards her specifically.
“How’s this?” asks Aaron, keeping his eyes trained on one spot of her ceiling.
Jenna is a little stunned at how easily he captured the idea she had in mind.
“Perfect,” she says, beginning to drag her brush across her canvas in delicate, precise movements. She will make a masterpiece for the both of them to treasure.