Tiger & Bunny Not!Fic - Paint & Sip

[mad_madam_m]

Another not!fic from the Tumblr files, this one unprompted. Originally posted to Tumblr here.

Okay so I went to one of those wine and painting places, where you can purchase an astonishing amount of alcohol and then follow along with an instructor as they walk you step-by-step through doing a painting and they blast an ‘80s rock Pandora station when they’re not explaining the next step, so you can karaoke “Come On Eileen” while you’re getting your Bob Ross on. 

(I fucking love these places, in case you couldn’t tell.)

This particular night happened to be a couple’s painting night, which is where you paint one half of a painting and your partner paints the other half.

It took all of half a glass of wine for my brain to go “FIC PROMPT.”

SO IMAGINE, if you will, that Kotetsu drags Barnaby to this painting thing for partner bonding purposes; hey, we’ll drink some wine and we’ll each paint something and it’ll be fun.

At first Barnaby is going to say no, but Kotetsu’s both earnest and kind of adorable and so he relents. It’s just for a couple of hours; it’ll be fine.

Then they get there, get settled, and ten minutes into the class (and well into their first glasses of wine) they find out that this is a couple’s painting and they’re going to have to work together to paint the entire thing.

You can guess where this is going.

A by no means complete list of the things they argue about as they’re trying to do it: 

- Which of them is going to paint the moon on their side of the canvas. (“We can each do one!” “It’s the moon.”)

- Whether the moon should be a crescent or a full moon.

- Who gets to paint Fortress Tower.

- Who gets to paint the Brox Bridge.

- Whether they’ve used enough blue for the night sky.

- How to properly mix the white and yellow paint for the stars and the glow around the city’s skyline.

- Whether Kotetsu is singing too loudly to the music.

- How many stars to add above the city.

- How many purple highlights to add to the wind gusts in the sky.

- Whether to add red and green highlights to wind gusts (Kotetsu says yes because it’s their colors, Barnaby says no because that’s not what the master painting has, Kotetsu.)

- The proper technique for painting the little dashes that make up 90% of the painting.

- Where to put the trees.

- How big to make the trees.

- How squiggly to make the trees.

- Whether they’ve added enough buildings that it’s recognizable as the Stern Bild skyline or if they need to add more.

- How many lighted windows vs. unlighted windows to put on the buildings.

Everybody around them is slowly scooting away because Barnaby and Kotetsu have literally not stopped bickering since they sat down. But they don’t really...seem to be mad about it? Kotetsu grins broadly whenever Barnaby is bent over his painting, frowning at getting the strokes just right, and only the person on Barnaby’s other side sees the small, soft smile that’s gone almost as quickly as it appears whenever Kotetsu says something that’s ridiculous and kind of sweet. There’s just. You know. A lot of arguing in between.

At one point, Kotetsu asks Barnaby what building he’s painting and Barnaby, without missing a beat, says, “All the building-shaped buildings you see are buildings” and Kotetsu laughs so hard he nearly falls off his stool.

At the end of it, they’ve gone through a bottle and a half of wine between them and everybody who’s been half-listening to this 3-hour bickering session is convinced that they are now going to argue over who gets to keep the whole painting. Instead, Kotetsu gives the entire thing to Barnaby without the slightest argument because “you have more space for it, Bunny-chan.” Barnaby complains that it doesn’t fit his decor, but takes the painting regardless.

He hangs it in his bedroom when he gets home. The painting is...interesting, to say the least. The two halves couldn’t be more disparate if they’d tried. One side’s completely chaotic, the other half is orderly and precise. They don’t mesh at all.

Except.

Except when you look closer, you start to see balance. You start to see where there’s a little bit of method in the chaos and where there’s a little bit of chaos in the order. You see how bits of one side are reflected in the other, and vice versa. You start to see how they do mesh, more so than you’d think they would at first glance.

Which is so very much like Barnaby and Kotetsu, after all.

It’s while he’s studying the painting one more time before going to bed that he notices the addition on Kotetsu’s side: a little green figure and a little red one on top of one of the buildings, watching over the city. 

It makes Barnaby smile, and every time he passes the painting, he looks for those small figures.

(When he and Kotetsu move in together later, the painting gets another place of prominence above the bed. Kotetsu teases him for it at first, but from the dopey grin on his face every time he looks at the painting, Barnaby knows he doesn’t actually mind much at all.)