Prompt #138 -- Filch (picture) -- Apples -- lordvisucius -- original

[lordvisucius.livejournal.com]

Title: Apples
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Filch (picture)
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: Jess is making a painting; Ed is not modeling. He's posing.

"Stay still," Jess snapped, scowling at his friend. "Don't move your hand."

Infuriatingly, the hand moved. So did its owner. "Can't be helped. You didn't tell me I was coming to pose for some insane painting of yours."

The scowl didn't change. "And if I had, would you have come? Or at least worn a better shirt?" The years-too-small T-shirt, complete with the grinning face of his favorite band's guitarist, was more than a bit distracting. Ed wasn't apologetic.

"Of course I'd have come--to make fun of you, at least."

Jess shrugged; the conversation was over. "Just don't move," he repeated, turning back to the canvas propped in front of him.

A careful brushstroke. Another. Another. Another. He fell into a peaceful rhythm, letting the silence grow between them.

Seconds--minutes--hours--days--weeks--years. It must have been decades. Jess dropped his brush, and then it was no more than a handful of minutes that had passed.

Ed stifled a laugh. Jess transferred his glare onto him.

He laughed harder.

"Go sit down," said Jess, frowning at his half-made painting instead. There was the barest smudge of black on the corner, though hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. The floor was a mess.

He was back, paper towels in hand, before Ed could ask where he was going.

"Why'd you pick me?" Ed asked suddenly.

"Pick you for what? Oh, sit down, you'll get paint all over yourself."

"For... you know. This." He sat, waiting awkwardly. Shouldn't he try to help anyway?

Jess paused, looking up and raising an eyebrow at his friend. "What in the world are you talking about?"

"Posing." There was a mutual, unspoken rule--it was not modeling. "For the, um, painting."

A shrug. Jess turned back to his cleaning.

"Tell me--Jess! Tell me?"

Finally, he said something. "Er hafr soofl," he muttered, gathering the paint-soaked rags and turning away.

"What--?" called Ed, looking after his friend. There was no reply but the crash of running water.

"Jess," he whined, when said person reappeared, shirtless and wet.

"There was paint all over me," he said, by way of explanation. "Take your shirt off."

The reply was several seconds late in coming. "Wh--no! I'm not doing that!"

Jess scowled yet again. "Yes you are. It's not like we aren't both guys."

No reply.

"It's your own fault for coming over with that hideous face on your chest. Now take it off, or go change into one of mine."

Ed frowned. Jess frowned back. "Come on Ed."

"You come on. Tell me why I'm here."

"I already told you that. At least get back into..." Jess paused, gesturing for Ed to go back to his position by the table.

"Not until you tell me why. And why you couldn't have started painting the table before I got here. I didn't plan to be standing all day."

"I can't do that. The shadows don't fall right."

Ed made a frustrated noise. "You're avoiding my point."

"What point?"

"The point. Why you picked me and not any of your innumerable female friends. They'd love to do something like this."

"They'd be vain as all hell. You know how girls are. Besides--you told me, a while ago, that you liked apples more than anything."

It didn't seem like something he'd tell his friends. Too girly, he supposed, but they had been friends since only forever... and it really was, too...

But he was lying. Jess was intent on mixing his paint to just the perfect shade. His eyes were too concentrated, too focused.
He was always contemplative, but dreaming. Wondering what it would look like with just that shade of paint, and if it'd look better with another color.

It made him wonder if he'd known Jess for too long.

Like all good friends did, Ed called him out on it. "Liar," he said, good-naturedly, and laughed when a swipe of pale, fleshy paint ended up on Jess's arm rather than the scrap of cloth.

"For god's sake, Jess, just tell me. What do you think is going to happen?"

Jess hesitated. "Just get back into position," he sighed, nodding to the bowl of apples sitting on the desk.

"No."

"What do you mean, no? Ed, this is important."

Ed didn't need to explain. Jess sighed, dipping his brush into the black paint sitting off to the side and absentmindedly filling in some of the details of the background.

Time inched to a stop as Jess worked and Ed waited endlessly. An eternity passed before he spoke.

"Your hands," Jess said slowly. "Your hands are beautiful."

He was not expecting that.

"I... wow," Ed whispered. He paused, rethinking his words. "Yours are too, y'know?"

"They are not."

"Are too." Ed took two quick steps, and grabbed his friend's hand in his own. "They make things. Like art. As opposed to mine--"

"Which are art."

Jess looked down at their hands. "Art. Friendship is an art, really... I bet we'll be friends forever, and all that. What with hands an all."

Friends forever. Yeah. He'd like that.


Years later, after they had long since drifted apart and all but never spoke, Jess found the painting gathering dust in his basement--never completed. It lay next to an old watch of his, and an old book: an address book that he never really used, save for a few details of his closer friends.

"Hey, um, Ed? Remember that old painting of... yeah, you and the apples. Wanna come by so I can finish it up? It won't take... alright, then. I'll see you then..."