Work Text:
Pigments age and crack with the slow oxidation of oil; fading in harsh sunlight back to pencil sketch ghosts and crumbling canvas, mistakes or misshapes, scribbled nonsense. Adelaide felt the opposite. There was pliant anticipation all through her brushstrokes, like she was still fresh and as glossy as sun-thickened honey. She felt young, ripe and almost bursting. The bulging roundness of the feeling was the strangest; a forgotten approximation to three-dimensional life.
It was funny how the words and phrases from outside the frame clung to the tongues of those who inhabited canvas. Adelaide could speak of the air crackling with anticipation without having drawn breath for centuries. She could vaguely remember all the analogies for touch and taste, but the memories were shaky and, she was sure, nothing like how she experienced it now. Oil paint had its own language of sensation, from the frisson of dematerialisation as one crossed from frame to frame, to the slow, diffuse feeling when your brushstrokes touched another portrait.
Adelaide didn't really know how this was going to work, but she was accustomed to placid waiting. She sat on the plush red sofa in the corner of the empty portrait at the top of the West Tower and tried to remember the fluttering two-step of her breath the first time she had met James.
She nearly captured it when James stepped into the frame. He had on his helmet and gauntlets and the fussing bombast of his character, but he dropped them and emerged young-faced and so like the boy Adelaide remembered that she felt shy of touching him.
Shape didn't matter much after long years of portraiture, but for a moment Adelaide remembered just how she'd changed from the last time she'd seen James in the flesh, when they had both lived under Woodward's roof. She felt every one of the pounds that the years had put on her, each one of the wrinkles that Woodward's malice had edged into her skin, that he'd then faithfully transferred to canvas. But James didn't look at them and Adelaide sank back into the comfortable expanse of her pigmentation, forgetting the heaviness of flesh. She felt reassured, that both of them could look past the outside to the specificity of their essence.
When James reached out to her, Adelaide didn't hesitate.
"I wasn't sure I hadn't dreamed you," he said. Adelaide smiled and let his hand enfold hers. The surface tension of their brushstrokes pushed against each other in delicate pressure. It shivered across her pigments.
"I wanted to see you again," she said. "I feel like I can never catch up." James laughed softly as he settled next to her on the sofa with a slow creak of his armour.
"I thought of you so often, especially after I was first animated," he said. Adelaide knew what he meant; human concern wore down quickly after animation. She herself had not thought of James in many long years, and it was only after meeting again that she realised just how much she had missed him. It was a little like how she sometimes thought of the other Adelaide and wondered about her fate, knowing that she must have been dead many long years.
Silence fell between them. If they'd still been alive, Adelaide knew they'd have been able to hear the swift intake of breath. Their hands, sandwiched together, would have been clammy with anticipation. As it was, they could feel the nervous tremor of anticipation through the places they were touching, each brushstroke like a nerve ending. Adelaide had never felt so uncertain. She looked up at James and saw the way he was biting his lip, gazing at her with nervous eyes. She shifted, turning in the seat to face him more squarely. When she reached out and slid her other hand up over his thigh, she didn't feel the cold ripple of plate armour. Instead, she seemed to go right through the surface, like they were melding and quickening together. For a moment, she felt afraid, like she could lose herself in James and never rematerialise. When she met James's eyes, she could see that he felt it too.
Adelaide had not had many opportunities to feel honest desire in her life before animation, but she realised that this must be what it felt like. She felt like she was running and melting, even as all her brushstrokes seemed to catch alight with tension. James became a new canvas, new pigments, new oils to merge with, crosshatching like a snare to trap themselves in. Pressing closer to James, she felt his free hand curl over her shoulder, felt him lean into her shape. The diffuse blur of contact was underlaid with tension, with wanting, and Adelaide moved her hand, sliding up and over James. It felt like she was reaching in to him, like she was swimming through him. Each fleck of his shading was a caress on her structure, winding her brushstrokes tighter.
Moaning, James's hands on her tightened, tugging her closer. She wasn't sure where their boundaries were; she didn't care. She wanted more of the feeling or closeness, more of his touch on her. They moved through each other, pulling each other apart and sifting through the layers and strokes they found there in a most intimate exploration. She called James's name, more to feel the way the sound vibrated through them both than for the need to make him pay attention. She could feel each set of pigments sharpen and twist tighter as he grazed over them with his own brushstrokes, as he touched her. The taste of linseed was on her lips, fresh and heady, and she'd never felt more three-dimensional.
This was nothing like Adealide had expected. It was slow-building and yet urgent. It had the terrifying sense of dematerialisation and the round warmth of youth. As she and James moved together, pigments and brushstrokes humming, singing like a choir, she took the last step off the edge of sensation, letting go of her edges and dropping into a blissful void. Inside the silence and the stillness, she was James and he was her, and for a long moment she thought the feeling might break the frame, splitting the canvas and gushing forth in waves of oil.
Blinking, Adelaide fought for a moment to recognise her own edges. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or disappointed to find herself intact, separate and sitting on the sofa next to a dazed-looking James. She began to laugh and James looked at her in bemusement.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"After all Woodward did to keep us apart, before, when we were three-dimensional, and now I suspect that it is his brushstrokes that match us so perfectly," she said. James looked at her, lips curving in a smile.
"That, maybe," he replied. "But mostly, I believe, it's because of who we are, underneath our imposed structure. I would know you anywhere, by any artist."
"Love, perhaps?" Adelaide asked. She reached out and touched James's hand again, and could feel the desire under the surface, waiting for them both. James lifted their joined hands to his lips.
"I've waited a long time for it," he said. "I'm so glad it came."