Work Text:
It’s been hours.
“Why don’t you take a break?”
The canvas is blank.
“Do you want some more coffee?”
The reference photo is pulled up on her monitor, a simple sunset beach scene.
“Why don’t we take a walk! You should stretch your legs!”
Raora stares at the blank canvas, clawed fingers digging into the wood of her desk as she takes measured breaths. In for four. Ignore the stinging in your eyes. Hold for four. Resist the urge to rip up the canvas. Out for four. You’re a terrible artist.
“Raora,” Mococo, poor Mococo who has been sitting so patiently, making herself comfortable on Raora’s bed as the artist drew…or at least tried to. Each time she reaches for the brush it’s like an invisible hand grips her, stopping her just before she can begin to paint. “Let’s walk now, okay?”
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
How long has her tail been swishing, knocking agitatedly against her desk? Long enough to hurt it seems, as Mococo gently tugs her from the chair.
How tightly has she been gripping her desk? Tight enough, she realizes as her girlfriend massages the feeling back into her joints.
How long has she been dreading the very hobby she loves so much?
-
It’s three in the morning.
Mococo is still asleep, snoring airily as she basks in the warmth of Raora’s arms. The little spoon, only because Raora had claimed the title for the past week. Raora’s tail is draped over their hips, gripped lightly between her pup’s claws as she hugs it to her chest. The sight is always adorable, if not a little painful when Raora has to— say, get up to pee.
But she doesn’t tonight. No, it’s not her bladder that’s woken her up at this ungodly hour.
“Let’s leave the painting until tomorrow, Bau Bau!” Mococo’s words echo in her head as she stares at the wall past her girlfriend’s shoulder, emotion sparking in her chest. If she were to look, the canvas would still be there. Sat upon the easel, the faintest pencil marks of an outline there.
‘Just forget about it. Thinking about this will only make you more upset.’
But…does she really want to? She had been so excited to paint that piece.
‘Give up on it. Draw something easier for now-‘
Are we so regressed in skill that we cannot draw a simple fucking beach?
Shame coils deep in Raora’s chest, stinging at her eyes as her lip curls. Disgusted. Embarrassed. Angry.
Frustrated.
Mococo grumbles in her sleep, and it’s then that Raora realizes that her tail has been swishing in her girlfriend’s grip, fur puffed up and agitated. She wills herself to calm, splaying her fingers across the soft swell of Mococo’s chest, and lets her lover’s gentle breathing guide her own.
With great difficulty, Raora sleeps.
-
It’s five in the morning, and there is dancing fruit on the TV screen. It’s stupid, the way they bounce across the screen, and perhaps even more stupid is the way that she can’t tear her eyes off of them.
Mococo presses a kiss to the top of her head, pulls the blankets around them a little bit tighter as she cradles Raora in her lap. Elizabeth had walked in a few moments ago, looking between the dancing fruits on the TV and the couch, where the two were still swaddled in their pajamas. She had sighed, shook her head, and walked out of the living room.
The living room, because Raora’s bedroom was a bit of a mess…
She hadn’t meant to rip up the canvas. She wasn’t even sure she was fully awake when she had stumbled over, staring blankly at the empty canvas. She wasn’t thinking when she had ripped it in two, bitter feelings prickling at her veins. And then she had turned, and saw the unfinished portrait of Nerissa in her sketchbook, the sketchbook that had collected dust over the past month…and, well…
Mococo had woken up to her curled up on the floor, a ball of tears and snot and tremors and surrounded by a hurricane of torn paper. She had ripped them all. She had ruined it. And Mococo had glanced at the paper, and at her. And Mococo wordlessly picked her up, carrying her out to the room and had put on that stupid fruit video as she made them comfortable.
“Why are they all smiling?” Raora whispers to herself, bewilderment stamping down the panic that had sunk its claws into her ribcage, squeezing her girlfriend’s hand in a repetitive pattern.
Squeeze for four, release.
Mococo shrugs against her back, hugging Raora close as their tails twine together. “I have no idea, bau bau.”
Squeeze for four, release.
It’s all stupid, the fact that at five in the morning she’s sitting here doing grounding techniques with her girlfriend because she couldn’t draw a stupid-
“Did that pear just do a backflip?”
Wh…what?
-
It’s three in the afternoon when Raora finally returns to her room. Mococo had gone by now, returning to Advent’s home after breakfast. Raora hadn’t been avoiding her room per say, but she did change in Liz’s, borrowing her best friends clothes to wear for the day.
She didn’t want to face the mess she knew she made. But alas, Justice needed her Eyes on a new target, and that meant grabbing a (not torn up) sketchpad. So Raora sighs as she opens her door, expecting to wince at the absolute carnage—
Nothing. The floor is completely clean of paper.
What?
And then she sees it. On her desk is a stack of papers, neatly folded…and taped at every angle. Each doodle, every unfinished sketch has been carefully puzzled back together, the only explanation of how being the empty tape container sitting innocently at the table's edge.
And beside the pages, a single pink sticky note.
‘Your art is too pretty to be torn up, bau bau! xoxo- M’
There's a drawing of two stick figures holding hands, ‘R+M’ scribbled inside a heart beside it.
-
She still can’t draw. Not anywhere close to what she’s used to. And it still frustrates her. But it’s…easier when Mococo is there, tail wagging as she presents a brand new painting canvas and a pack of paints.
Raora’s first painting after a month is the messiest, crudest finger painting of a beach ever.
She names it ‘Artblock’, and she hangs it above her desk.