Work Text:
"It was a dumb thing to say."
The couch cushions are soft, more so than some of the beds you've slept in over the years, but the blanket smells like moth balls and there are butt indentions causing your shoulders and hips to rise and sink at odd angles. You're too long for the love seat, having to curl your knees up towards your chest to fit. Your glasses are sitting on the arm of the couch, but you can make out Feferi's form seated on the coffee table, her chin in her hands and a small scowl playing across her features.
You resist the urge to pull the blankets up over your head or tell her to get the fuck to bed, but your temper has already gotten you thrown out of one house today, and you'd really rather not make it two. "I know that," you say sullenly, pushing your fingers through your already mussed hair and wincing when you grazed the bruise blossoming under the black strands. "I wasn't trying to be an ass."
She laughs, because really, your genetic make-up has you predisposed to be an ass at every opportunity. "You were trying to be practical," she says, plucking at the too-small bracelet on her wrist, the elastic stretched to the breaking point and the beads unevenly spaced. "But I think it was a poor time to try and push an issue that he really doesn't want pushed."
Eridan is a photographer. The spare bedroom in your condo has been a dark room for as long as you've lived there, a thick black curtain blocking any additional light from seeping through the cracks in the door and the scent of chemicals wafting out after him when he finally emerges, blinking at the bright light and stumbling in to the adjacent wall. He graduated with a BFA and no job offers, because while his work has the potential to be remarkable, he's impatient and haughty and hard to work with. He'd never dream of working as a university photographer while he works on building up a gallery show.
He'd come stalking out of the room, dripping fix on the hardwood as he carries half-developed prints to the trash bin, muttering furiously under his breath about how nothing he does ever comes out right and how he should just give up, and you'd asked "well why don't you?". You know he loves it, wouldn't put up with the smell clinging to his clothes and the skin around his fingers being dyed brown if he didn't, but sometimes people aren't made to do what they love for a living. You'd tried to articulate this, but the glossy prints of half-formed faces and sunlight streaming through bare branches were crumpled in his shaking fingers, and through the tears shining behind thick lenses there was nothing short of murderous rage in his eyes.
The more you tried to back-pedal, make your case, the more upset he got, until you took a bottle of developer to the head and got the hell out of dodge. As you scraped the ice from the windshield of your car, you could hear thumps and crashes through the cracked window of the kitchen, but the nausea kept you out in the cold.
"You know our parents never supported him being an artist," Feferi chastises gently but firmly, and you pinch the bridge of your nose to try and stop the rush of saline that will either make you cry or cause your nose to run like crazy. You know about the absence of phone calls and the tightness in his face when he sees the recent family pictures in his sister's house, have seen the checkbook he keeps private from your shared bank account that helps him keep track of his student loans. And the longer you lay there, even after Feferi has gone to bed, the more lousy you feel.
You don't understand what it's like. You write computer programs, have a steady job, and don't have to worry about finding inspiration for your next line of code. You don't understand how he even knows what to take pictures of in the first place, and with that much disconnect, you haven't even the slightest right to tell him what he should and shouldn't be spending his time on. For as often as he comes out looking exhausted and fed up with stacks of ruined prints, there are times when he'll be waiting at the door when you come home, hair tied up out of his face and work clothes still hanging off his slender frame, a still-damp print held as delicately as a baby bird with such joy in his eyes you find yourself grinning before you even look at the image.
The darkroom is in disarray when you come home, but the damage isn't as bad as it should be. You turn on all the fans and tear down the black plastic to open the window while you mop up the spilled chemicals. You take the print trays out to the kitchen to wash, taking care to use the lilac dishwashing liquid designated for all his equipment as opposed to the plain Dawn you use on the dishes. The tables are wiped down and meticulously dried, and you right the enlarger from where it got knocked in to the wall. Aside from the one that hit you, none of the chemicals are out of place, but you check them just to be sure.
There are prints drying in the rack, the few you suppose he deemed "good enough" before storming out yesterday evening. The surface is slick and glossy under your fingers, curled slightly at the edges, and of course it's your own face looking back at you. You had been shoveling the driveway, and he'd followed you with the damn camera the entire time, going as far away as the neighbor's yard and so close you could practically feel the lens against your cheek. Almost everything is out of focus, but the contrasting colors of your eyes are visible even in black and white, and the shift of contrast shows the flush of exertion (and exasperation) on your cheeks. Your smirk fades out in to the muddled grey of the rest of the image, but it's striking in it's simplicity and lack of concreteness. You pin it to the clothes line running from one end of the room to the other, along with the others (you just barely a shadow against the white of fresh fallen snow, you throwing a shovel full of the white stuff right at the camera while he shrieks in horror but takes the picture anyways).
"Thanks for cleanin."
He's wearing oversized plaid pajama bottoms slung far too low on his hips and the t-shirt you got at your latest team building conference, gaze on his bare toes and fingers worrying his ring (like he always does when he's afraid you're mad at him, which in this case is stupid, he's the one who should be mad). His glasses are dirty, smudged and tear-spattered, and you don't have to say anything, barely turn your body towards him, before he's pressed against your side, warm and smelling like easter egg dye.
"Hey," you say, knocking him lightly with your hip and gesturing at the pictures. "You know I don't have an artistic bone in my body, so don't listen to a thing I say, okay? I don't know what I'd do if you stopped making us late to stuff so you can take pictures of the sunset over the bypass or photographing my, admittedly thrilling, cooking skills. I just…" you flap a hand towards the stained trays and neat lines of bottles and sagging clothes line, "want you to be happy."
He has a hand in his hair, blocking his face from your view, but you can see the tip of his ear is stained pink and his adam's apple bobs as he swallows thickly. "Yeah," he replies, pulling a pocket-sized print of the two of you kissing in the snow, horribly blurred and out of focus as he holds the camera at arm's length like a high school girl, but still easily recognizable. "I am."