Lauderhill you and i are panoramic [nsfw]
#1
It took a good chunk of paycheck to get enough supplies for this. But it was still less than what it would have taken to buy a bunch of actual art. He felt like it would be worth it to do this together. And if things turned out like shit, then they could trash it and save up to get something else.

He had ten canvases of differing sizes, sixteen different colors of paint, two packs of brushes, some sponges that stamped different shapes, old dish rags for smudging, even some clear coat to preserve their half-assed artistry. He wasn't ever much of an artist, but he had looked up "easy paintings" and had a few saved on his phone for reference. Some plants, some clouds, one with lemon slices he thought would look good in the kitchen. But he'd rely on Lora's opinion for most of it, probably. He was just here to set it up.

As for that setup, he'd shoved all of their meager living room furniture to the corners of the room. To protect the laminate, he'd draped two old sheets across the floor. He'd opened the windows to prevent paint fume brain cell loss. Also had ordered pizza, got a couple packs of beer, and had two pans of brownies in the oven. One pan had about a quarter of weed baked into it. And some catnip, but don't tell Lora.

With everything set, and the clock approaching six, all he needed now was Lora herself. He waited until he heard her car in the driveway to sit himself down on the floor in the middle of his display, a small canvas propped in his lap for her to read as soon as she walked through the door.

¡Hola!
#2
The drive home was a sacred thing. A moment of peace, even on the freeway, even surrounded by countless other motorists eager to get wherever they were going. Lora had not lived alone for much of her life - it had been her parents, and roommates, and restaurant employees, with her own spaces sprinkled here and there. Such spaces in Ridgefield County had always been colored with something sour. And now here she was again, living with someone. Some part of her was still not used to it, was still stiffly keen for consistent solitude. Most of her had fallen in love with it easily.

This was her compromise. The drive. Leagues above the city bus. A window cracked for escaping cigarette smoke, the wires of her earbuds tangling with her hair, the setting sun prodding at her eyes and her head utterly empty. For a little bit, she was alone, and she was someone else entirely.

Getting home was sacred, too. Their street was no fancy suburb; there were houses with foil on the windows and cars that hadn't run in years sleeping on lawns. Young men with kitchen table tattoos smoking joints on their front porches, old women herding barefoot babies through dead grass. Lora couldn't put her finger on it, but she loved it. She loved these glimpses into crunchy human life as before she parked the old Subaru next to the old Chevy, loved the ugly blue paint on the siding of their sagging little rental house.

She could smell the brownies before she even got up the steps, lips pursing curiously as she pulled her earphones out. The front door opened with a weary creak, and there was Mateo in the middle of their rearranged living room, holding a painting in his lap. It took her a second to absorb the scene, the sheets and the paints and the open windows. Even the hyena was quiet, curious and looming.

"Hola?!" she laughed, plopping her purse down on the floor as she approached him slowly. "What's this, huh?"
#3
He fought to keep his smile measured, but it was hard when he saw her step through the door. He smiled broadly, a laugh in the back of his throat at her puzzled assessment of it all. Reclining back onto one of his hands, Mateo twisted his shoulders in a bouncing shrug and lifted a hand to gesture at the supplies. "Home improvement." Though, "improvement" was probably questionable. Interior decoration was not exactly in either of their wheelhouses, let alone painting. But it was fun anyway, and they rarely got to do things that were fun, so he wouldn't overthink it.
#4
She loved to see him smile. A big smile, a real one, like the one on his face. He leaned back, shrugged as he answered, and she chuckled. "Home improvement," she parroted him with playful incredulity, squatting before him to lean in for a kiss. Chaste, calm, nothing to cause alarm between the damn beasts. One hand patted his chest, head tilting as she searched his face, making a show of sniffing at the air. "And dinner, and dessert?" Her eyes narrowed in faux suspicion. "This a bribe?"
#5
A hand reached up to fondly cup the curve of her hip as she leaned in, his chin already angled up for her to return the kiss. He was still smiling when she pulled away, watching her face with teeming contentment as she sussed out what he'd planned tonight. The suspicion was what broke the smile, to be replaced by an exaggerated crumple of a frown.

Clicking his tongue, he jellied his neck and let his head roll to the side, "Ay, chu think I always want something?" He countered, and glanced down at his hand as he moved it to give the back of her thigh a little pinch, "Maybe I jus' want to paint wichu." Ever thought of that LORA?????? >:[
#6
Awww, poor man. Lora grinned at his theatrics, relishing in the simple human moment. The sweetness of uncomplicated quality time. She hissed at the pinch, barked a laugh and swatted at him harmlessly. There was an impulse to tackle him to the floor, smother him, wrestle and laugh. Better to behave for now, lest his good plans for the night go wasted. The intent that had all gone into it was so warming, anyway, a little ray of sun on her heart.

"Hmmmm," she decided uselessly, and sort of flopped all the way down to the floor, sitting somewhat in front of him and somewhat beside him. Looking at it all again renewed the dopey smile on her face, and she laughed for the sheer pressure built up inside of her. "Alright. Pretty sweet, Mateo. We going with a theme?"
#7
His hands lingered on her as she settled down, one on her thigh and the other reaching to squeeze her calf lovingly. Squeeze squeeze. She was down. And coming in with more of a plan than he had already. Mateo, shrugging, lifted his hand to gesture vaguely. "Eh, whatever you think you can paint. Some stuff that would be good on the walls. Plants or something." So, literally anything. He did have those pictures on his phone, but they weren't really a theme.

"Wanna eat first?"
#8
The problem was that Lora didn't think she could paint a fucking stick figure. She laughed again, enamored by the whole idea still, by his warm hands kneading at her legs. Plants or something. Her gaze wandered to the off white walls, trying to picture something there. A sunset, maybe. That could be easy, right? Just a bunch of colors.

But first, food. Of course. "Always," she decided easily, grinning at him. If it weren't for hunger, she could just lay down on the aging hardwood floor and work out some half-assed painting. Instead, she moved to ruffle his hair in delight, and hobbled up to her feet, traveling into the kitchen at nothing short of a trot. "Pizza!" came her ridiculous exclamation as she reached for plates out of the cabinet. "Maybe we should just paint pizza."

It was a dumb idea, and one she wouldn't commit to, but it was easy to say dumb shit when she was in a good mood.
#9
Her energy inspired his own. It was refreshing not to feel like the end of the day was such a trudge through hours. He followed after her, light on his feet.

Her suggestion drew a laugh from him, and he opened the box as she fetched the plate, glancing down at the timer on the stove that indicated he had a couple minutes left before needing to get the brownies out. "I thought about food ones in the kitchen." He told her, "Saw some on Google that are lemon and orange slices." It was better than just a fruit bowl or something.
#10
His idea was a good one. A cute one! She grinned her approval, setting the plates down on the long strip of fake granite just across from the oven. "Good idea. Probably easy." And god knew they probably needed easy. She did, anyway. Maybe Mateo was secretly a master painter. She shuffled to the fridge for the bottle of ranch, and was greeted by cases of beer. She grinned at those, too, and pried two free of a box to come along with the well-loved bottle of knock-off Hidden Valley.

Hip against the counter, she pried both beers open and reached to scavenge a piece of pepperoni off the top of the nearest slice. The hyena offered its usual suggestion of simply eating the entire thing before he could have any of it.

"...That weed I smell?"
#11
Easy was the goal here.

Surprise, he'd already pulled up a piece of pizza before the plates were even set down. He held it in one hand, half-eaten already, as he piled another two slices onto each plate. Her question paused his chewing, and he smirked around a mouthful, sauce on one corner of his lips. Eyebrows lifting in fake surprise, he swallowed down what he had in his mouth, "Is it?" >:]
#12
Oh! Was it! So innocent! Shithead. She laughed at him, eyebrows up in appreciation of his mischief. "Oh my god. These paintings are going to be so bad." And they would be fucking ripped, thinking they were making masterpieces! She snatched a pizza slice off its plate with one hand to take a hasty bite, using the other hand to reach over and wipe sauce off his face. She spoke with her own mouth full in turn, trying at least to not show it all off. "I'm gonna eat one as soon as it come out of the oven. Just burn the shit out myself and see if I can feel my taste buds healing when I'm baked."
#13
Bad! Weren't all the greatest artists secretly blazed out of their minds? He swore he read somewhere that some famous dude was always on LSD. Maybe he was making that up. He laughed, flinched away briefly from her hand, but let her wipe the sauce away as he chewed down another bite. Her plan was bordering masochistic. "Naw, then you won't kiss me." Mateo pouted, as if it was a given she'd kiss him at all. Who wouldn't wanna kiss pizza face!
#14
Tragedy! She snickered at him, setting her slice down as she remembered the bottle of ranch. "That’s the price you pay for being with a fool," she sighed, wiping her sauced thumb on a hand towel before she popped the ranch bottle open. She wondered how long it would take for the brownies to kick in. Wondered whether the hyena would hate it still or be able to relax enough to fucking enjoy it.
#15
He huffed out a laugh through pizza. "You right. Shoulda known from the start. Sleeping behind the wheel." He tsked his tongue thickly, the sound dampened by the residual pizza in his mouth.

He fished for his phone in the pocket of his old shorts while he braced for her retalitation.
#16
His response earned a harsh laugh. Low blow! "Always attacking my driving," she lamented, thinking distantly of their night at the hotel, how his confession of feelings had been tangled up in teasing about driving the uhaul. Ugh. Her heart. She fucking loved this man. But also.

On a devilish whim, she shook the ranch bottle just enough to try to splatter some on his shirt. >:3
#17
Actually, she hadn't been driving, and that was the problem. He would have informed her of that, but she was instead wasting ranch.

"Ay!" He cried, and skirted back, light on his feet. Still, there was a glob down his shirt, their speed matched. "Loraaaa, this was my favorite shirt!" He chastised with a grin, and logically scooped the ranch up with the crust in his hand, leaving behind an eventual stain to join the rest of the stains that smattered the shirt that was absolutely far from his favorite. No food went to waste here.
#18
His yelping movements and lamenting earned a giggle, which erupted into an "oh my godddd" as he scooped the splatter onto his pizza crust. It felt good to feel so playful and light, but she had to measure it carefully all the same. Some part of her wanted to slap the crust right out of his hand.

"Pobresito," she sighed dramatically, dumping ranch onto her pizza-laden plate before plucking it up, along with her beer. Another part of her wanted to sit in front of the oven and stare at the brownies finishing through the glass. She decided instead to move back to the sheet-layered living room and plop onto the ground, lying on her stomach with dinner in front of her, one hand reaching for a set of paints. "What made you decide to do all this, huh?"


"Poor thing."

#19
He was a poor thing. In so many ways. So he ate what he could, Lora.

Still smiling, the lion pacing from the momentary excitement of the dodge, he scooped up his own plate and bottle and followed after her, chewing on the shirt ranch pizza crust. Sinking down beside her, Mateo promptly placed his plate atop her butt.

"Just felt like things looked bare. Figured we staying here a bit, so might as well make it feel like a real house." He answered as if he wasn't using her as a coffee table. "But real art's expensive and this is more fun." He added as he shoved a new piece of pizza into his mouth.
#20
There was something fond in being used as a coffee table, much as she had to roll her eyes at him for it, and much as the hyena was all but frowning for it. Lora kept a practiced thumb on the beast's attitude, grinning around a bite of dinner. She thought about what he'd said more than a year ago, how he was only good for a night. She'd turned a hoe into a house...cat. Haha, too literal to be funny, almost.

"It is more fun. Good idea, babe." She denied the continuous destructive impulses, such as rolling over and upsetting his plate of pizza, in favor of observing the array of paint colors. For another moment, she was quiet, feeling that complicated concoction of sentimental and rowdy, turning a tube of carmine red over in her free hand.
#21
He smirked around pizza, "Sometimes I got those." He told her. Then grabbed his own paint, this one a bright yellow called Maize.

"If we do good we can sell shit on that Ezzy shop." He joked, having seen a couple pictures of paintings he searched being linked back to the website. He gathered it was some kind of place to sell art. Popping the cap of the paint, he brought it to his nose to sniff.

Lion thing, he swore.
#22
Sometimes. She laughed. Probably about as often as she did, huh.

"Etsy," she corrected him with another laugh, eyeing him as she polished off a pizza slice, watching the paint tube float under his nose. "You're gonna have to be the good one. I'll get back into building robots and you can paint them for me."

In the kitchen, the oven timer wailed, and so did the hyena. Lora looked to Mateo pitifully. She couldn't get up, she was trapped under pizza!
#23
Yeah. Etsy. Whatever.

Lorena had little faith in her art, but maybe she was onto something with the robots. That was a hobby she seemed to have been falling out of practice with around the time they started spending their time together. Or maybe it was something she'd still done when they weren't together, and he'd been too stupid to really realize. It was only after the turning that he really started doing right by her, paying attention to the things she was interested in and did in her free hours. By that point, she was a bit preoccupied by trying not to become a monster to fuck around with robots.

The beeping from the kitchen delayed his response, and he jumped slightly at the unexpected sound. Cat paced, snuffing and huffing, but he ignored it in favor of retrieving something that would shut the cat up for a good few hours. Hopefully. Smirking at her pitiful look, he unfolded his legs and rolled to his feet, heading toward the kitchen, "Stay there an' look at my pictures on my phone. See if theres things you wanna try and paint." He instructed her over the hollow sound of his weight on pier and beam, intent on being the one to get the brownies out so he could guard her against actually burning the shit out of her mouth.

"Maybe getting high will turn me into Picasso." He added as he jabbed a thumb into the worn cilicone button, which read Tin, as the rest of the word had been rubbed off after years of use.
#24
She was ordered to stay, to browse his phone, and she laughed at him as he unfolded to stand. She would obey, for the sake of not disrupting his pizza plate, keeping that same oppressive thumb on the rowdy energy in her gut.

One hand fed a constant stream of pizza bites into her mouth, while the other plucked through the pictures he'd saved. The one that appealed to her most was a little clip of clouds, soft and sleepy on a sunset sky. It looked easy enough, for all she struggled to picture how it all came together. How to make the shadows look real. How to blend the colors of the evening. She had a distinct memory of painting a sky as a small child and finding that the blue was too dark, and the yellow circle of a sun did nothing to brighten it.

"Paint me like one of your French girls, Mateo. But all fucked up." She laughed at herself around a pizza slice, realizing belatedly that he might not get the reference. Maybe he'd never seen the Titanic. He wasn't missing much, if you asked her. "One time, in high school, I took acid and went to an art museum with a bunch of his pieces on display. They were all put up chronologically, showing the way his style changed as he got old. Which was just... his shit getting weirder and weirder, really? And so I felt like I was just getting higher and higher." She laughed distractedly, eyes still on his phone. "The paintings crawled out of their frames and I had to leave."
#25
He'd seen Titanic, and he did laugh at the joke. He wouldn't mind trying to paint her naked, even if in the end he'd end up probably paintin-

He cut that line of thought off, instead focused on pulling out the oven mits from the drawer, one of them dark blue and forearm length, the tip crusted with dried sauce. The other was a wrist length one, black in color with a quilted texture. That one was his and the other one was Lorena's, a marriage of household items. He pulled them on as Lorena spun her story, the heat of the oven warming his cheeks as he carefully lowered the oven door and pulled out the top rack.

It sounded like a nightmare, or some kind of fucked up movie. "I think I'd lose my shit if that happened to me." He answered, as he placed the first pan of brownies up on the stove. It was all he could do not to stick his head in and inhale the perfume of the pan on the bottom rack, the catnip very apparent even mixed with weed and chocolate. "Never fucked with acid. You do that a lot?" He asked over the rattle of the coils and pan meeting, then thunked the oven door shut.
#26
Yeah. Acid could make anyone lose their shit. The brain was such a delicate organ. Blast it with a bunch of stimuli that it had never been exposed to before, and things could get pretty rough.

Working intently on her next slice of pizza with one hand, she did her best to keep herself somewhat upright while reaching for the paints. "No. Well - yeah. A handful of times. The last couple of trips just went... really bad, so I stopped."

She could see some distorted version of her last dance with that particular devil in her mind's eye. It had been a small explosion. A lawn chair in a vast stretch of nothingness in bum-fuck-nowhere, New Mexico. But her "friends" had seen it, and it had been terrifying for more than just that fact. Reality had blurred into hallucinogenic hysteria. The explosion lasted for hours in her rotting brain, melting everyone's faces off, turning them into black puddles of tar.

Her nose wrinkled as she stared down at the paint tubes, wondering if she'd ever have the balls to tell him about any of that.
#27
Went bad. Wondered what that entailed, but ultimately he figured it was for the best not to make her relive any of it. "Prolly for the best." He decided as he slipped off the mits and set them to the side, before reaching over to pluck a knife from the knife block by the stove. "Plenty other shit to fuck you up now."

Steady hands dragged lines through the two pans of fudge, gooey insides collecting around the blade as steam billowed up from the scoring. He held his breath and told the cat in his brain to behave as it bellowed in interest at the smell.
#28
"Yeah," she laughed to the carpet, sticking an overly-large bite of pizza in her mouth. Who needed acid when your life was a fucking trip, right?

Listening to the knife drag over mush and metal, Lora did her best to gently pull his pizza plate off her back. It didn't go so smoothly, greasy slices threatening to cascade right onto the sheet at the touch of her unsteady hand bent behind her back. Somehow, by some god damn miracle, it all stayed on board, and she was able to set his plate down without any mishaps.

>:]

One hand gracelessly milled pizza further into its toothy grave, the other one holding Mateo's phone, as she shuffled to the kitchen. She leaned innocently against the archway, eyes pointedly down on the screen in her grasp. The grassy, dirty smells were stronger with the brownies out of the oven, perfuming the house with sin.

"I'm thinking... sunset clouds," she mused between bites.
#29
What if he just... what if he at least licked the knife. Holding it aloft in front of him, Mateo studied the way steam rose from the chocolate that clung to the blade, beckoning him cartoonishly, as if the desire itself was personifying.

Her voice from nearby startled him, and he nearly dropped the knife as he turned to smile at her, bluffing his way out of a sheepish smile. Sunset clouds, huh? "Sounds nice. Where we hanging it?" He... placed down the knife on the stovetop, finding it himself to leave the brownies to cool as he approached her, waving his hand for the phone.
#30
There was a basic human sort of delight, however minor, in seeing him jump a little bit. The hyena amplified it, giggling like a demented school girl in her head. She smirked as he approached, relinquishing the phone to his extended hand as she finished off her pizza slice. Her shoulders bobbed and fell in a shrug, but immediately her eyes were moving, thinking. "I dunno. Living room?" It was pretty barren, after all. Not like any of the rest of the house was expertly decorated. "I do like the little citrus slice paintings, too," she decided, hovering near the stove top, feeling the heat lick off the pans. She thought of the time they'd made catnip brownies in his old apartment, how immediately tantalized he'd been, and glanced to him curiously. Maybe he'd be the one to burn his mouth.
#31
Living room would be good. Would brighten it up. Really compliment the... what the fuck was he thinking? He didn't know shit about interior design. But if Lora thought it would be good, then it'd be good. He nodded, turned to press the small of his back against the bullnose of the counter beside the dishwasher.

One knee locked, he bounced the other in its socket idly as he scrolled through the other pictures. "What about this in the bedroom?" He questioned, voluntarily ignoring her proximity to the brownies for as long as possible. Didn't need the lion's input about it.

He turned the phone to show her the two pictures he saved of what he'd seen referred to as "painters tape art."


like dis

#32
The brownies were tempting for her, too. Probably not nearly as bad as it was for Mateo, who was doing a good job of keeping himself composed. Or distracted. Maybe both. Lora wanted to plunge her hand into it, to scoop out a shapeless chunk of green-brown goo and shove it into her mouth on a sheer bull-headed, animal whim. Just to see how fast she could get high, how fast her mouth would heal.

It was a dumb idea. Lora had been pretty good about not following too many of those lately. Better keep up the streak.

She wandered closer to him as he showed her his screen again, grinning at the picture there. "Hey, I like that!" she chirped, genuine, pulling herself up to sit on the counter at his side. "'Cause it looks easy," came her tacked-on confession. "You get tape?"
#33
Yeah, that'd been the draw for him, really. "Yeah, s'in the bag." He confirmed, gesturing to the living room as he smirked up at her and turned to place the phone down on the counter beside her so he could busy his hands with squeezing the tops of her thighs. He'd greeted her when she came in, of course, but not enough.

So he put himself between her knees and exhaled some of his held breath, and placed a kiss on her lips. Head tilting up, he bumped their foreheads, trying his best to ignore the aroma of the dessert behind him. Nnnnn. Want. When he pulled back to blink at her, it wouldn't be hard to note his eyes were much greener where they were not being swallowed by blown pupils.
#34
Look at him, all prepared and shit. She grinned at him, and it grew wider when he came to cuddle, even as the hyena seemed to consider it all with the same old narrowed eyes. She trapped him with her legs, ankles locking behind him, squeezing his arms as she met his kiss. Sweet man. What a way they had come along.

He was all big green eyes when she could see him properly again, and she chuckled, taking his face in her hands. She loved his big stupid face. Even when there was a lion lurking behind it.

"Pretty eyes," she teased. She tilted her chin towards the living room. "You better finish your dinner before you eat dessert." She didn't let him go, though. Challenge initiated.
#35
He tingled. Everywhere, but especially where skin was on his. It was definitely the brownies, the sheer strength of even a few good whiffs of the catnip. Mateo felt his brain cleaved in two, one half yearning for him to return to the steaming tray of brownies, and the other half convincing him that he should push his entire face into her chest.

If he pushed hard enough, would he fall right into something warm and cozy? Images of languid puddled bodies draped against one another played in his mind, but it was hard to tell the shapes. Somewhere between lion and human. Just a concept, but he longed for it as much as he did the source of the high.

He smiled unevenly, looking over her face and across her neck, her shoulders, down at her legs and the thighs he squeezed. "Which part are you?" He questioned, mostly teasing. But she wasn't moving, so neither was he.
#36
His question earned a laugh, her shoulders scrunching up towards her ears. "Oh, I'm the midnight snack, sweetheart," came her grinning retort, and she wrapped her arms around him to just. Give him a full body squeeze, hugging him with every cell. She felt good, even stone cold sober. This felt good. Reprieve from chaos.

"Go on," she eventually muttered into his shoulder, patting his back with giddy speed. "Go eat, I'll bring you brownies so you don't eat the whole fuckin' pan."

The man had once tried to eat the batter raw. She could be proud he'd managed not to do that this time!
#37
Really, it was cruel of her to push the right buttons. Nothing convinced him to let his pizza get cold and the brownies to go stale more than that promise. He sighed into her hug, leeching her warmth, hands holding her firmly to the counter as he anchored his brain into her. It was easy to forget everything else like this.

But then she was sending him away, untangling him and ordering him to go finish the task he'd been distracted from. Eat, then brownies (definitely all of them), then... painting first. Maybe. Mateo frowned at her, but his will was slack and malleable, easily manipulated.

So he sighed heavily, planted a burrowing kiss into the crook of her neck, and gave her thighs another squeeze before he pushed away. Feeling like he was floating freely, he turned like a leaf on the surface of the water, lazy and moving vaguely in a direction. "I guesssss. But I'm stayin' hungry." >:]

He shuffled into the living room, finding his pizza waiting for him. With it in his sights, he was able to forget about previous cravings. Mostly. He ate, and waited, and looked over the collection of paints they had at their disposal for these grand projects they were planning.
#38
There was some unspoken protest that seemed to linger, earning something of a puckered smirk when he frowned. Aw. Poor baby. But he seemed easily convinced, at least, kissing her neck, his beard tickling her skin. It was almost enough to change her mind, but she grasped at the night's plans with an iron will. Brownies. Painting. He could stay hungry, just as he said.

She giggled after him, and wriggled off the counter to dig down two more plates. Dish pile could wait for the morning. Or later. A spatula joined the cluster of doomed dishes, and she set to a messy but dutiful job of prying brownies from the pan. They were still hot, crumbling apart in some places when she lifted them, wheezing hot, herb-y air at her face as they revealed their green-speckled insides. Oh, well. They didn't have to be pretty.

The hyena didn't seem to care much for weed. She didn't care to be incapacitated. It would be better if only the lion was high, so that she could have the upper hand! Lora waved these thoughts away with a physical shake of her head and a wrinkled nose. Sorry, honey, this was a group activity.

After a few minutes of trying not to dump brownie all over the counter or floor, Lora emerged into the living room with two plates full of what resembled small dirt piles. Steam wafted up from them in nearly invisible puffs, earning a warning - "Still hot, babe" - even as she set one down in front of him. As if to lead by example, she plucked up a semi-intact piece with two fingers and blew gently on it while another hand grabbed a canvas. Let the disaster begin.
#39
Lorena's work in the kitchen only made it worse. He did his best to focus on the smell of pizza under his nose, numbly eating, hardly tasting it. Greasy fingers opened a pack of paper plates and a set of paintbrushes, but he was unseeing as the cat trampled his focus. The waves of scent hit him like a harsh tide, the very smell peeling back his resolve like a corn husk. He'd tossed his empty pizza plate aside, and abandoned his task of setting up, ready to return to the kitchen when she arrived.

He regarded her as if she was walking toward him from some long, far away distance as she approached. But when she sat beside him, he blinked heavily, his mind taking sludgy steps through making sense of her being there. Shit. She was so pretty, he noted in the fleeting moments between seeing her and seeing the plate. All warm, all red and pink and honey and speckled brown. Vivid. Then blurry. He looked at the plate she was picking at.

Oh right. He smiled, and reached to pull the plate closer. He was swimming enough through the preemptive buzz to follow her lead, thankfully stopping himself from burning his mouth. Still, the bouquet of smell surrounded him, and he reclined heavily onto one hand which went immediately numb and forgotten as it kept his weight suspended upright. The other brought the clump of chocolate and plant to his mouth and promptly plopped it in.

It tasted!

And that's about all he could describe it as.
#40
He looked almost boyish this way, his brain a hijacked train on a one-way track to catnip land. She watched him take that first bite, and almost envied the fact that he'd be high sooner than her. It was amazing how catnip just walloped him right in the face. Asha, too. But she'd get her five minutes or so of getting to clearly watch him melt into a human-shaped cat puddle. That was reward enough.

She readjusted herself some so that she was cross-legged with the plate sitting precariously in her lap, and the little canvas lying on the sheet-covered floor in front of her. It was tricky to try to multi-task, trying to slowly work on the dirt-tasting brownie disaster on her plate while also trying to open up paints. A paper plate-made-palette would come to collect gelatinous globs of acrylic, in red and orange and purple and green. Distantly, she wondered if one of them would slip up and try to eat paint instead of dessert. Ha.

Her gaze bounced up to him, her mouth twisted into an anticipatory grin. "Stoney-baloney?"
#41
Yeah, he went somewhere else in those few moments she continued to exist around him. His body remained, absently moving to fish tape out of the plastic bag, but his mind was elsewhere. Somewhere in a non-material space. It was hard to put words to. The cat existed, mostly. Marooned in this space untethered from reality, stretching into the warm abyss of the high.

The great cat mellowed, pushing his face into whatever non-concrete non-surface was there for his non-face to burrow into. It was an experience unlike anything Mateo had undergone in his life. Even the first time they did this had been different. The cat had been so present then, so aware and on guard, protective and possessive. This was different. It was... comfortable. It trusted. Was that the right word?

It left Mateo feeling spread apart, pieces of him drifting in different ways like the inside of a lava lamp. And the part of him that existed in the moment wobbled back into focus when Lorena spoke nonsense words to him. Stoniebalonie? Was that some Portuguese word he didn't know? It sounded silly. He grinned, facial expression out of his control, "¿Qué?" The word was mostly just a noise, hardly a conscious question at all.
#42
He looked at her, eyes bleary and green, smile dopey and real. He hadn't understood her - or maybe he hadn't even really heard her. She cackled, delighted by the sight of him stoned. She wanted to tackle him. Wanted to just crush the life out of him for how much she loved him. How was that a normal feeling.

"Que!" she mimicked him, popping a messy chunk of grass-brownie in her mouth, eager to get on his level. It was bordering on too fucking hot to actually eat, but she swallowed it down with some force of defiance she'd been experiencing earlier. "You're so cute." She laughed again, shaking her head as she looked to the paints. She didn't have any god damn idea where to start. "Ey. Pick a color for me." Did he know what colors were right now???
#43
What did she mean what! He asked her that! But then she was calling him cute, and he stared at her, bemused by the idea of anyone finding him cute.

He wasn't self aware enough to think about how stupid he looked right now, but he remembered what he looked like. Or maybe he remembered what he used to look like before the lion came along to make his body "perfect". Sometimes he forgot about the changes to his face until he saw them in the mirror. Still, he never really knew what she saw in him. She was so pretty and perfect and he was... being asked to pick a color.

His eyes dropped to the options before him. Colors. So vivid to him. Just pick one? "Whatchu making?" He questioned.
#44
He stared at her, and for a moment Lora was actually starting to wonder if he was struggling to hear her. Was the catnip making him deaf? Fucking with auditory input? But then his eyes drooped to the colors, and he managed a coherent question. She grinned, and shoveled another bite of drug-chocolate in her mouth with one hand, while the other waved dramatically over her paper plate. "Sunset," she informed him. "What do I start with?" She just wanted to see what came out of his intoxicated mouth!
#45
Right, yeah, the sunset. She said she was gonna do that, right. He nodded. What color for the sunset, Mateo? Blinking, he pictured a sunset. Blue... well, kinda. Red, mostly. And gold. Yellow. How the fuck was he supposed to know what order, though? Didn't shit just turn brown and ugly if you mixed it all together? Tongue probing the roof of his mouth, which was slicked with chocolate residue, he looked around the dim living room for inspiration. Then he saw it.

The window.

Smirking, he all but levitated to his feet. It wasn't actually that graceful, but he couldn't really feel the ends of his limbs. He felt like the air and floor were all one cohesive bubble that he drifted through as he made his way across the living room, and to the window that looked out into the front of the house. Pushing the curtain to the side, he squinted out at the sinking sun. It was late enough that things were less golden, and more peachy pink.

"Pink." He declared.
#46
Alright. The man could hear just fine, he was just suspended in some... void of time. She watched his mouth work around, and then twist into a smile, and then he was getting on his feet. He walked like a sack of potatoes on stilts, and she could help but giggle as she watched him go. Right to the window, moving the curtain to look out the pane. Her eyes wandered the back of his head, his hand on the curtain, the cracking paint on the sill. Pink, he decided.

"Pink it is!" she agreed loudly, rowdy in her good spirits. Another mouthful of brownie, gracelessly dropping crumbs into her lap, and then she was cluelessly picking up the most appropriate-looking paintbrush. Moss-green handle, fine little hairs packed neatly into a broad, square edge. It was pretty, even for a cheap thing. Oh, good god, she had no idea what she was doing. But that wasn't the point.

The brush dunked into a pool of rose garden pink, and then set to making unskilled strokes on the top edge of the canvas. With the chocolate-speckled fingers on her other hand, Lora grabbed her own phone and turned on some music. Santana, of course.
#47
He grinned back over his shoulder at her enthusiasm. She was excitable, a glowing, jumping little flame on the carpet. The house blurred around her, polarizing her image in his mind. He forgot the sunset, and walked back toward her. "Orange next." He supplied, and sunk back on the ground beside her as the music filled the quiet, unimportant background of the house.

She was painting, but he wanted to reach out and scoop her up. Not in his arms, but his palms. If he could shrink her down, or maybe grow ten times as big. Just hold her. It was a weird thought, but he thought it anyway. Sighing into his sitting position, he glanced down at his own workspace. He should start his own painting, right? He decided the shape one was easiest to try for, so he plucked up the tape, and scratched a nail at the fine line that indicated where it started on the roll. His other hand pinched a clump of brownie from the plate like a helping of rice, and brought it crumbly to his mouth. As if he needed any more of this.
#48
Orange after pink. Lora grinned up at him again, watching him shamble back to his spot, thinking of sunsets. Pink and orange. What order did they go in? She couldn't remember. Half of her focus was just on filling white with pink. The other half was basking in the knowledge that Mateo was just sort of staring at her, even if only for a few moments. What was going on behind those algae pool eyes, she wondered.

He set to his own painting, committing to the tape project, and Lora thought she'd like to do that next. For now, she would be doing good if she could just finish this sunset. If she could make it look like a sunset and not just some low-skill psychedelic mess.

After a while, she traded pink for orange, trying her level best to blend them together about a third of the way up the canvas. She wondered if she could come back and add... add... uh.

Her head felt light, disproportionately so. A hot air balloon lifting off her shoulders.

"Wuh," came her short laugh of realization. Stoniebalonie.
#49
A lot of elevator music, mostly, to answer the question about what was going on behind his eyes. Or, more accurately, the lyrics to Oye Como Va, which was playing through her phone's speakers and echoing off the walls of his clear mind. The lion was somewhere else, sunken into his pool of comfort and contentment, only occasionally giving him lazy cues to dp something that looked enticing like the bristles of a brush he plucked up, or squeeze the bottle of paint a few times to feel the thick liquid squelch inside. Stimuli that kept it at bay, a beast lulled to slumber. He reveled in it.

He was working on figuring out how he'd managed to wind blue tape around three of his fingers when her voice piped up. He dropped the loop of tape, letting it sling down into his lap like a limp yo-yo, hanging from his fingers. "Huh?" He questioned, her flame catching his eye again. It was a new revelation each time he looked at her. She was something shiny in a dark room. Hard not to look at. He grinned numbly. One look at her eyes, glistening and reddened. It took one to know one. She was joining him in whatever second existence he was trundling through.

Glancing down at his selected tubes of color, he gestured with his untaped hand, "What color first?"
#50
It hit her like a... weighted blanket. Heavy, but not. Not a brick. Just a force like... extra gravity that was also less gravity. It made sense! It felt good! It was an innocent thing, mostly - light and fun, relative to all the wreckage she used to sink herself into. It wasn't pills or hallucinogenics. But it was better this way. Even the hyena seemed fairly... complacent. Maybe not necessarily enjoying being stoned, but some of the air had been taken from her sail. The fire burned with less heat. She was quiet.

Lora's eyes, becoming increasingly more bloodshot as the high nestled into her veins, went swimming from his smiling face, to his ridiculously taped hand, to the other hand pointing at tubes of paint. How the tables had turned. Somehow, it was easier to pick a color for him than for herself.

"Hmmmmm," she said, thoughtful and not, the sound drawn out until she nearly forgot why she was making it. Color. Right. There was a tube of dark purple, and she picked it up, investigating it. "I like this one." She turned it so that she could see the name: "Eggplant." Eggplant! Ha. In Lora's head, it was a dick joke, and she was dissolving into deep, furious laughter in an instant, clutching the paint tube in her fist.
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