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Day 3: Flowers, Colors, Braids (gradient relief)
"You want to paint me?" Claude asks, flabbergasted, and then, after a second to consider what exactly it is that he's just said, he asks instead, "Wait, since when have you learned to paint at all?"
It's not a question meant to be judgmental at all, really. One of Claude's close friends over in the Alliance is Ignatz, after all, so he can definitely appreciate the worth of art just by the virtue of it being art and something that another human being created. Rather, he never thought it to be a hobby that Dimitri would have ever thought to try. Even back in the academy, well, those from Faerghus certainly had a rather martial reputation.
For good reason, of course. Claude was well versed on Faerghus history back then, and he's become even moreso now, despite the fact that he's ruling an entirely different country and he's certain that no small amount of his countrymen on that side of the border would wonder at the need. But Faerghus founded itself by war when it severed its land from that of the Empire, and then went into conflict with Sreng regularly. Plus the harsh lands where hunting is often needed to make up for the poor land? And that's just the average culture of what is now Northern Fodlan. Dimitri's childhood in particular, with the Tragedy...
Well, it was no secret that the once Crown Prince of Faerghus (now the King of a unified Fodlan) was a model soldier and knight, and even Claude can recall early mornings or late nights when he would pass by the training grounds to find Dimitri hard at work. He'd never really heard much of Dimitri's other hobbies outside of that, besides things like horseback riding - which almost doesn't seem to count. Every decent noble learns how to ride at some point. (If they decide to ride is something else entirely: see one Felix Hugo Fraldarius.)
Even Dimitri seems aware of this. He tilts his head down slightly from where he sits across from their little table where they're having lunch together, pink teasing at the tips of his ears. By now, Claude's visits to Fodlan have become so common that the regulars of the castle don't even bat an eye. Certainly their friends don't, since he knows Felix and Ingrid are in a fairly involved discussion outside the door on the benefits of wyverns versus pegasi. "Just recently this year," Dimitri admits, carefully tearing some bread in two over his plate. "Lorenz came to visit to help celebrate the new year."
Ah. Claude smiles. "So I take it Ignatz came along with, huh?"
"That's right." Dimitri smiles back. "We ended up talking when I was inquiring his opinion on some decorations - it was going to be one of the first proper celebrations after the war, after all. I wanted it to be as good as it could be, so that the country as a whole could come together under the best conditions... You know." Claude does know. Celebrations can bring a nation together, and help rejuvenate it - not only through commerce and trade flowing through the roads, but the very act of being happy, the setting of somewhere that can afford to be happy now... That's important too.
If something like that gets ruined, well, it's hard to do, certainly. After so many years of war, people want to throw a party. But if that does happen... It can hurt a fledgling united nation very much. Claude hadn't been surprised back then when Dimitri had passed along a letter, telling him of his concerns and work to make sure that the very opposite happened. It's one of the reasons why Claude had thought he would always make a good king, even if perhaps it would be better for Dimitri personally if he could simply have a nice cottage away from the duties of royalty.
Dimitri has the training, the education, for all of this in a way that not many other people do... and, more importantly, he has the heart that is focused on nothing more than the actual people of Fodlan. Claude doesn't put his faith in people very often, but with Dimitri? With Dimitri, he feels that he can take this risk, and not get burned for it.
He continues, with Claude's rapt attention. "After we talked business, I managed to convince him into a conversation about more personal topics, and he managed to tell me about an art movement that's been taking a life of its own in the days immediately after the war. Apparently, with art supplies finally being able to circulate properly, and more people able to have some measure of free time depending on circumstances... Well, he seems to think we may hit a renaissance, especially after I talked with him on some of the plans and movements for trade and reaching out to other countries."
"So that had you become interested in giving it a try yourself?"
"Well... I couldn't help it, when he told me about how some people are approaching art." Dimitri pauses, taking a sip of his tea as he figures out how to best word it. He has a certain way about him when he's doing that, the way his lips shift and his gaze flicks away. Faintly, Claude wonders if the potion that Mercedes, Dedue, and Ashe helped to make is helping with his concentration, with the voices he was worried he'd be trapped listening to for the rest of his life. "It was more... symbolic, I suppose?"
Raising his own cup of chamomile, Claude raises an eyebrow. "Symbolic?"
"Well, you know the art we see regularly? With a focus on portraits, or scenes of certain every day life?" Dimitri waits for Claude's nod before continuing. "Well, this veers away from such a strict focus on an exact replication of life with paint on canvas, and more something... representative. When Lorenz joined the conversation, he compared it to poetry - so is metaphor to a sonnet, this style is to the physical arts. Ignatz... thought it might be good for me to experiment with such a style."
If he says it like that, Claude has to get interested. "I'll do it, only if you show me the end result," he agrees, and realizes that he could almost be tempted into never seeing it. Not with the way Dimitri blooms into such a radiant smile that it puts the comfort of a harvest moon to shame.
Almost. He's still far too curious and nosy to just let it lie like that.
Both of them agree to get it started immediately at the end of lunch, while they still have some free time to get it started at all. Ignatz really did start something special in Dimitri; he's fully prepared for artistic endeavors. He has canvas, an easel, paints of many colors - "Ignatz was able to recommend a good deal to me," he explains sheepishly as he takes Claude into a sitting room with access to an open balcony. Apparently the lighting is good in here. Claude suspects Ignatz made that recommendation, too.
With the both of them being kings, they don't have a lot of them to spend on such a leisure activity, but they get a good while in before they stop for the day, and, well... After that, it just becomes a habit. Whenever Claude drops into Fhirdiad, he visits Dimitri and, if they have time and the weather is good, his partner in bettering the world guides him to that same sitting room with the balcony, and he paints. The length of time varies, depending on all sorts of factors, but it's something that Claude quietly begins to look forward to regardless.
Oh, sure, the stool Dimitri has him sit on isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, despite Dimitri's best attempts at getting it a cushion that fits just right. But, so long as the balcony door is open or closed properly depending on the season, the sun that filters in from that direction feels pleasant, and Dimitri always makes sure that he has a book that he can get lost in to help make up for everything. As it turns out, a good book can go a long way towards making a lot of situations bearable. It helps that, with how much work Dimitri does reaching across borders and encouraging trade, he often gets new books to read that he hasn't already devoured from Garreg Mach, his own royal library, or Dimitri's royal library.
So that would be a pretty decent fee all on its own for an hour or two or just sitting around looking pretty.
But there's something else, too. It's being able to watch the way Dimitri paints, sitting there as sunlight spills gently over him. It's like seeing the moon for the first time and realize that it's taken on an entirely different hue, an entirely different shape. Dimitri is still the same person, of course, just like the moon is always the moon no matter which side of it appears in the night sky. But there's a... sort of tranquility to him as he sits there, just across from Claude and partially hidden by his canvas. It's a peace he doesn't ever think he's seen in him, or at least not draped over him so completely.
Oh, sure, Claude has seen him calm before. Back in Garreg Mach, Dimitri could get so focused it was as though he were more an arrow sinking into its target than a human person. But that was simply an absence, or something that masqueraded itself as absence, of any more passionate or frenetic emotions. When they went horseback riding together, he saw Dimitri significantly more relaxed than how he presented himself, but that hadn't really been the same either. It had just been relief.
There is some calmness as he watches Dimitri puzzle over the occasional book for reference of something else, spine balanced on his knee and a brush raised questioningly over the canvas, yes. There is some relief, too, as he flicks and drags his tool along, heavy with paint, in a way that's nothing like the more delicate ways Claude is more familiar with whenever he's gotten his portrait done.
But those words can't adequately describe the feeling that Dimitri radiates as he sits there. He's not a king. He's not even really an artist, despite holding all the trappings of one as he steadily works. But somehow, with his brow furrowed when he tries to get something right, or the easy little smile on his lips as he fusses with color... He just seems like a man.
And Claude loves him.
"I think I'm done," Dimitri announces one day, leaning away from his canvas with his head cocked.
Claude looks up, in the middle of pouring some tea for himself - something Dimitri also started to allow as their little sessions have gone on. "Oh yeah?" he asks, and tries to dust away the little soot sprite of disappointment that scurries about in his heart. At some point, and he doesn't know when, he'd started to look forward to these painting sessions. There is some tranquility in it for him, too, even though he doubts it's anywhere near the level that Dimitri feels.
An absent minded nod. Dimitri is holding one of the smaller brushes in his hands, one with a more delicate tip. Claude has always wondered how he could hold them so well when he's snapped apart scissors and shattered swords. Maybe it's just been a lot of practice. Maybe this is really more good for him than anyone could ever have thought. A dark sort of gold - or maybe a light brown? - hangs heavy to the tip. "It still has to dry... I would like for it to reach that stage before I feel it is properly finished enough to show you. But that may take a couple of days or so..."
Setting the teapot down, Claude hops down to his feet so that he can begin stretching. He's loved this time between the two of them, but it's quite the dastard on his muscles. "Mm, well, I have time," he says, winking over to Dimitri. "I'll probably be back in a week's time, remember? Sylvain is giving me a tour of the Gautier lands so that Almyra has an idea of routes to Sreng, but that shouldn't take too long, honestly. A couple of days, and then I'm done. So show me then, alright?"
"All right." And Dimitri smiles at him, then. Smiles at him like he's been smiling at his painting. "I will."
That smile stays with Claude all the way up to the freezing lands of Gautier. He doesn't let it get in the way of his work, of course. He takes in the conditions of the roads, learns about what animals work well in the colder conditions both on Gautier and who can push through in Sreng, and how relations have been so far with Sylvain taking a more active role in his family's position. Yet whenever he turns in for the night, whether at Sylvain's place or in an inn, his mind always drifts back to the way that Dimitri had smiled at him.
After experiencing how absolutely frigid Gautier can get even in more mild months, Claude is almost bewildered, in an amused sort of way, to find relief upon returning to Fhirdiad. The city now seems like an absolute saint's shelter after all of that. But he's even more relieved when he makes some greetings to Dimitri, and their roles fall away almost the instant they're out of more public view. "I thought you might like to see what other things I've worked on since I started drawing months ago," he tells Claude as he escorts him through the halls of the castle. Claude doesn't think he's really been in this area too much. "I hope that wasn't presumptuous."
"Honestly, if you didn't make the offer first, I absolutely would have started nosing about all on my own," Claude replies, and winks up at Dimitri. "I'm looking forward to what you have to show me." That's around the time that they pause at an otherwise unassuming door which Dimitri has to unlock twice, for two different locks. Now his curiosity is definitely active, and he grins at Dimitri when the other man holds open the door for him.
The room he steps into is a plain one, all things considered, although he sees magical ruins inscribed here and there for careful temperature control and preservation. No windows to allow anything inside. It's just this one door... and perhaps dozens of paintings hanging from the walls, with even more propped up unobtrusively wherever they can be. He sees, now, just what Ignatz had meant when he'd told Dimitri about painting things in a more symbolic way, although he's not sure if this is exactly what he was referencing or merely the turn that Dimitri decided to take of his own initiative.
Some of them just seem to be... wild slashes of color, both in oil painting or acrylics that lend a frenzied dimension to the canvas. They leave a sense of disorientation to Claude, almost like his heart wants to burst. Most of those use dark colors, eating up the white of the canvas until nothing has been left of it, and he wonders if this is how Dimitri has felt in his worst moments. Others lack just as much shape, but they seem more composed, more calm - gentle swirls of pale blues and yellows that merge into lovely greens. He's walking through the stages of something, it seems, as he quietly starts to walk along the perimeter to take in the many different canvases. The paintings.
One in particular seems to somehow have more... organization to it, somehow. It tickles at his memory, and Claude pauses to take it in with his fingertips tapping along the outside of his thigh. "Is this like out in the gardens?" he asks, and knows that he's right the second the question has actually left his tongue. The castle gardens were left to languish horribly during the war, when it was not Dimitri defending his homeland but an usurper who would see it rot from the inside out.
That had been as literal as it had been metaphorical, apparently, and most of the pleasant outdoor areas of the castle had to be redone entirely. Dimitri had done it half because such places are pleasant to be, in the rocky aftermath of picking up a newly united kingdom where a lot of stress piles up, but also to give people jobs, and the literal fruits of their labor eventually. He'd replaced a lot of more decorative plants with vegetables or fruit trees that flowered beautifully throughout most of the seasons.
Claude can remember this particular shape, the way dark greens go light in the painting under a remembered sun, and there are streaks of white that lay out a path of sorts. He's sat out there many times, in his visits to Fhirdiad. He's sat out there many times with Dimitri, who beams in pleasure. "That's right," he says, standing alongside Claude. "I thought it was a little too abstract, but... I suppose to your keen eyes, it was easy to spot even despite my lack of skill."
"You sell yourself short," Claude says, clicking his tongue. "Even if the details aren't done down to the slightest leaf - the opposite, I'll admit that - the overall image is still right. Honestly... You've managed to catch the feeling of being out there. Looking at it reminds me of days I've dozed off out there, and woken up to look to it all through eyes fogged over by sleep."
"I'm glad that it's recognizable... After some of my earlier paintings-" Dimitri nods over to the more frenetic canvases. "I wanted to actually try... recognizable things. Ignatz recommended that I try drawing or painting the same thing over and over again. Familiarize myself with it. Actually..." He turns away from Claude, going over to something near the door that he had missed on his first walkthrough. It's a small bookshelf, filled with sketchbooks that Claude knows very well. In Garreg Mach, he saw them in Ignatz's hands many times.
Dimitri tugs one free at seemingly random, almost trotting back in his eagerness to hold it out to Claude. Well, if he's so excited... Claude can't disappoint. He starts to flip through the many pages, and gives a small whistle. A lot of the images are charcoal drawings, many of the same subject repeated not only on the same page, but on a good few pages after that. Dimitri is clearly not the elegant artist that Ignatz is, with some objects or scenery a little too stiff... but on others, he's carefully applied paints and it's there that Dimitri seems to shine. Something about his painting just brings images to life. It's in the colors he chooses, or sometimes the way he's emphasized brush strokes.
"I think you've found a talent, Mitya," he says, grinning sidelong up at Dimitri before he hands the sketchbook back. He has more pictures to look over... and there's a certain easel he's had engraved into his memory over by the corner.
But the rest of the paintings, first, and Claude doesn't just say that out of some sort of desire to do things in order and nothing else. It's simply fascinating to him to take a step, and see how the next painting shows another bit of Dimitri's progress in another moment of time. "So you actually liked just drawing and painting the same thing over and over again?" he asks. It sounds kind of strange, really. Wouldn't one get bored? Then again, Dimitri is the same person who religiously practiced his lance technique, even the basic ones that he long ago had committed to muscle memory.
Still holding his sketchbook close to himself, so delicate in how he grips it, Dimitri shakes his head. "I found it... I call it 'calming' but that doesn't sound quite right. I only have to focus on that one thing before me. Sometimes there are details that I have to study a little harder, or learn how to figure out a mistake, but... I begin to know the image so well that it's - soothing, yes. That's the word I was thinking of. It's both a relief from my duties as king, where I have to consider so much, and yet also... helps me consider things better, I suppose." Dimitri chuckles, soft. "I just apply my way of thinking away from painting to ruling, instead."
Claude laughs. "Now that's inventive! You should write that down in your memoirs." But then he has to stop, because there's another painting he recognizes, and Claude grins. "Oh, I'd recognize Felix anywhere."
Or, at least, he recognizes him in Dimitri's chosen style of painting. The shapes are more defined at this stage, now, making out the boldly flowing image of the swordsman with his sword reared back, low with the rest of his body as he eternally prepares to swing his sword upwards in the painting. Once again, fine details have been left behind in favor of bold strokes showing motion, blurs of color that make it feel as though movement will occur at any second. Despite this artistic choice, it's still easy to see Felix's ponytail, the distinction of his clothing against itself, and those bright amber eyes which stand out compared to his pale skin and dark outfit.
Dimitri's grin becomes more playful. "I have a sketchbook that's full of nothing but Felix," he says, nodding his head over to the bookshelf. It's positively filled to bursting. Claude has no idea how he'd find anything in it, really. "I think he got flustered at the idea of someone drawing him while he was training, but he allowed me to do it, in the end." It's a sign of how much better their relationship has gotten since the end of the war, since they've been able to reconcile the trauma that happened to both of them.
It's good to hear, honestly, but Claude doesn't press. He simply allows Dimitri to bask in that happy memory, all while he starts to step around the easel to finally get a look at the picture he posed so many days and hours for. Dimitri doesn't discourage him, only follows. Claude knows that he's being watched, but, honestly, he can barely recognize that as a simple fact of the world. Not when he looks upon the painting, and feels his breath get stolen away. In what feels like a distance, Dimitri's voice speaks up again. "I call it Verdant Wind."
A lot of artists have painted his likeness, at this point, and so while he loves Dimitri, he'd thought he wouldn't necessarily be impressed by anything that he could spring upon him. But gods... Hasn't he been proven wrong. Out of everything in Dimitri's own private and personal little art gallery, this portait of Claude is perhaps the most carefully detailed work yet, while still carrying the simple shapes and beautiful brush strokes that he so loves to indulge in.
There, in the painting, Claude sits upon a stool that he has grown to know well over these many months, but the room is not well lit like he remembers it. Not... exactly. Instead, light spills in from the open balcony door, and, with it, so too do numerous plants spill through as though a wave of spring and greenery. In comparison to the darkness of the room... the green of leaves and vines is almost too much, brilliant and lush, so green that it could make one dizzy. It's life blossoming into where it is not expected - and, once again, it is as literal as it is metaphorical, with a myriad of flowers carried on in the rush.
All of it spills about at his feet, mid-rush, and him... He never thought he could be painted with such painstaking love. It doesn't matter that the image is not engraved with the most painstaking detail. None of those artists ever had him so illuminated before, as though sunlight is just naturally drawn to his figure. He's always sat, in the modeling he's done, but Dimitri must have been paying attention to before and after, because, in the painting, he's right in the middle of hopping down: one knee bent, his other foot touching the floor by only the tip. All of this, almost aglow, ablaze, with the light of a green and brilliant outside that is filling that dark and bare room.
Similarly verdant, as much as any of the leaves fluttering on the wind inside this painting, would be his eyes, crinkled in a smile that has not been painted and yet which is still the most beautiful he's ever seen himself depicted. They catch the eye, tie it in all together... but there's something else that catches Claude's eye, too. In the painting, he has one hand back, just like that foot, keeping his balance as he leaves the chair. And the other... the other is raised to his chest, over his heart, and there something gold gleams.
Entranced, Claude leans closer to make out the details. "I don't wear rings often," he says, breathless, even as his heart is beating swifter and harder in realization of something even his quick mind has not quite absorbed. Not truly. But in the picture, there is a ring. So close, he can tell it is extremely detailed - a benefit of a tiny brush and a massive canvas. It is a very particular kind of ring, that of a braided design. But the braids, the lines that make them up... are made out of words. Elegant cursive, the kind that only someone with such a careful royal education would be able to write so neatly and beautifully.
I offer my life bound to yours, my shining star.
Behind him, he can feel Dimitri step closer until their hearts almost seem to be so close that they beat as one, and Dimitri's hand settles so very delicately upon his shoulder. "Claude... Will you marry me?"
It's not a question meant to be judgmental at all, really. One of Claude's close friends over in the Alliance is Ignatz, after all, so he can definitely appreciate the worth of art just by the virtue of it being art and something that another human being created. Rather, he never thought it to be a hobby that Dimitri would have ever thought to try. Even back in the academy, well, those from Faerghus certainly had a rather martial reputation.
For good reason, of course. Claude was well versed on Faerghus history back then, and he's become even moreso now, despite the fact that he's ruling an entirely different country and he's certain that no small amount of his countrymen on that side of the border would wonder at the need. But Faerghus founded itself by war when it severed its land from that of the Empire, and then went into conflict with Sreng regularly. Plus the harsh lands where hunting is often needed to make up for the poor land? And that's just the average culture of what is now Northern Fodlan. Dimitri's childhood in particular, with the Tragedy...
Well, it was no secret that the once Crown Prince of Faerghus (now the King of a unified Fodlan) was a model soldier and knight, and even Claude can recall early mornings or late nights when he would pass by the training grounds to find Dimitri hard at work. He'd never really heard much of Dimitri's other hobbies outside of that, besides things like horseback riding - which almost doesn't seem to count. Every decent noble learns how to ride at some point. (If they decide to ride is something else entirely: see one Felix Hugo Fraldarius.)
Even Dimitri seems aware of this. He tilts his head down slightly from where he sits across from their little table where they're having lunch together, pink teasing at the tips of his ears. By now, Claude's visits to Fodlan have become so common that the regulars of the castle don't even bat an eye. Certainly their friends don't, since he knows Felix and Ingrid are in a fairly involved discussion outside the door on the benefits of wyverns versus pegasi. "Just recently this year," Dimitri admits, carefully tearing some bread in two over his plate. "Lorenz came to visit to help celebrate the new year."
Ah. Claude smiles. "So I take it Ignatz came along with, huh?"
"That's right." Dimitri smiles back. "We ended up talking when I was inquiring his opinion on some decorations - it was going to be one of the first proper celebrations after the war, after all. I wanted it to be as good as it could be, so that the country as a whole could come together under the best conditions... You know." Claude does know. Celebrations can bring a nation together, and help rejuvenate it - not only through commerce and trade flowing through the roads, but the very act of being happy, the setting of somewhere that can afford to be happy now... That's important too.
If something like that gets ruined, well, it's hard to do, certainly. After so many years of war, people want to throw a party. But if that does happen... It can hurt a fledgling united nation very much. Claude hadn't been surprised back then when Dimitri had passed along a letter, telling him of his concerns and work to make sure that the very opposite happened. It's one of the reasons why Claude had thought he would always make a good king, even if perhaps it would be better for Dimitri personally if he could simply have a nice cottage away from the duties of royalty.
Dimitri has the training, the education, for all of this in a way that not many other people do... and, more importantly, he has the heart that is focused on nothing more than the actual people of Fodlan. Claude doesn't put his faith in people very often, but with Dimitri? With Dimitri, he feels that he can take this risk, and not get burned for it.
He continues, with Claude's rapt attention. "After we talked business, I managed to convince him into a conversation about more personal topics, and he managed to tell me about an art movement that's been taking a life of its own in the days immediately after the war. Apparently, with art supplies finally being able to circulate properly, and more people able to have some measure of free time depending on circumstances... Well, he seems to think we may hit a renaissance, especially after I talked with him on some of the plans and movements for trade and reaching out to other countries."
"So that had you become interested in giving it a try yourself?"
"Well... I couldn't help it, when he told me about how some people are approaching art." Dimitri pauses, taking a sip of his tea as he figures out how to best word it. He has a certain way about him when he's doing that, the way his lips shift and his gaze flicks away. Faintly, Claude wonders if the potion that Mercedes, Dedue, and Ashe helped to make is helping with his concentration, with the voices he was worried he'd be trapped listening to for the rest of his life. "It was more... symbolic, I suppose?"
Raising his own cup of chamomile, Claude raises an eyebrow. "Symbolic?"
"Well, you know the art we see regularly? With a focus on portraits, or scenes of certain every day life?" Dimitri waits for Claude's nod before continuing. "Well, this veers away from such a strict focus on an exact replication of life with paint on canvas, and more something... representative. When Lorenz joined the conversation, he compared it to poetry - so is metaphor to a sonnet, this style is to the physical arts. Ignatz... thought it might be good for me to experiment with such a style."
If he says it like that, Claude has to get interested. "I'll do it, only if you show me the end result," he agrees, and realizes that he could almost be tempted into never seeing it. Not with the way Dimitri blooms into such a radiant smile that it puts the comfort of a harvest moon to shame.
Almost. He's still far too curious and nosy to just let it lie like that.
Both of them agree to get it started immediately at the end of lunch, while they still have some free time to get it started at all. Ignatz really did start something special in Dimitri; he's fully prepared for artistic endeavors. He has canvas, an easel, paints of many colors - "Ignatz was able to recommend a good deal to me," he explains sheepishly as he takes Claude into a sitting room with access to an open balcony. Apparently the lighting is good in here. Claude suspects Ignatz made that recommendation, too.
With the both of them being kings, they don't have a lot of them to spend on such a leisure activity, but they get a good while in before they stop for the day, and, well... After that, it just becomes a habit. Whenever Claude drops into Fhirdiad, he visits Dimitri and, if they have time and the weather is good, his partner in bettering the world guides him to that same sitting room with the balcony, and he paints. The length of time varies, depending on all sorts of factors, but it's something that Claude quietly begins to look forward to regardless.
Oh, sure, the stool Dimitri has him sit on isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, despite Dimitri's best attempts at getting it a cushion that fits just right. But, so long as the balcony door is open or closed properly depending on the season, the sun that filters in from that direction feels pleasant, and Dimitri always makes sure that he has a book that he can get lost in to help make up for everything. As it turns out, a good book can go a long way towards making a lot of situations bearable. It helps that, with how much work Dimitri does reaching across borders and encouraging trade, he often gets new books to read that he hasn't already devoured from Garreg Mach, his own royal library, or Dimitri's royal library.
So that would be a pretty decent fee all on its own for an hour or two or just sitting around looking pretty.
But there's something else, too. It's being able to watch the way Dimitri paints, sitting there as sunlight spills gently over him. It's like seeing the moon for the first time and realize that it's taken on an entirely different hue, an entirely different shape. Dimitri is still the same person, of course, just like the moon is always the moon no matter which side of it appears in the night sky. But there's a... sort of tranquility to him as he sits there, just across from Claude and partially hidden by his canvas. It's a peace he doesn't ever think he's seen in him, or at least not draped over him so completely.
Oh, sure, Claude has seen him calm before. Back in Garreg Mach, Dimitri could get so focused it was as though he were more an arrow sinking into its target than a human person. But that was simply an absence, or something that masqueraded itself as absence, of any more passionate or frenetic emotions. When they went horseback riding together, he saw Dimitri significantly more relaxed than how he presented himself, but that hadn't really been the same either. It had just been relief.
There is some calmness as he watches Dimitri puzzle over the occasional book for reference of something else, spine balanced on his knee and a brush raised questioningly over the canvas, yes. There is some relief, too, as he flicks and drags his tool along, heavy with paint, in a way that's nothing like the more delicate ways Claude is more familiar with whenever he's gotten his portrait done.
But those words can't adequately describe the feeling that Dimitri radiates as he sits there. He's not a king. He's not even really an artist, despite holding all the trappings of one as he steadily works. But somehow, with his brow furrowed when he tries to get something right, or the easy little smile on his lips as he fusses with color... He just seems like a man.
And Claude loves him.
"I think I'm done," Dimitri announces one day, leaning away from his canvas with his head cocked.
Claude looks up, in the middle of pouring some tea for himself - something Dimitri also started to allow as their little sessions have gone on. "Oh yeah?" he asks, and tries to dust away the little soot sprite of disappointment that scurries about in his heart. At some point, and he doesn't know when, he'd started to look forward to these painting sessions. There is some tranquility in it for him, too, even though he doubts it's anywhere near the level that Dimitri feels.
An absent minded nod. Dimitri is holding one of the smaller brushes in his hands, one with a more delicate tip. Claude has always wondered how he could hold them so well when he's snapped apart scissors and shattered swords. Maybe it's just been a lot of practice. Maybe this is really more good for him than anyone could ever have thought. A dark sort of gold - or maybe a light brown? - hangs heavy to the tip. "It still has to dry... I would like for it to reach that stage before I feel it is properly finished enough to show you. But that may take a couple of days or so..."
Setting the teapot down, Claude hops down to his feet so that he can begin stretching. He's loved this time between the two of them, but it's quite the dastard on his muscles. "Mm, well, I have time," he says, winking over to Dimitri. "I'll probably be back in a week's time, remember? Sylvain is giving me a tour of the Gautier lands so that Almyra has an idea of routes to Sreng, but that shouldn't take too long, honestly. A couple of days, and then I'm done. So show me then, alright?"
"All right." And Dimitri smiles at him, then. Smiles at him like he's been smiling at his painting. "I will."
That smile stays with Claude all the way up to the freezing lands of Gautier. He doesn't let it get in the way of his work, of course. He takes in the conditions of the roads, learns about what animals work well in the colder conditions both on Gautier and who can push through in Sreng, and how relations have been so far with Sylvain taking a more active role in his family's position. Yet whenever he turns in for the night, whether at Sylvain's place or in an inn, his mind always drifts back to the way that Dimitri had smiled at him.
After experiencing how absolutely frigid Gautier can get even in more mild months, Claude is almost bewildered, in an amused sort of way, to find relief upon returning to Fhirdiad. The city now seems like an absolute saint's shelter after all of that. But he's even more relieved when he makes some greetings to Dimitri, and their roles fall away almost the instant they're out of more public view. "I thought you might like to see what other things I've worked on since I started drawing months ago," he tells Claude as he escorts him through the halls of the castle. Claude doesn't think he's really been in this area too much. "I hope that wasn't presumptuous."
"Honestly, if you didn't make the offer first, I absolutely would have started nosing about all on my own," Claude replies, and winks up at Dimitri. "I'm looking forward to what you have to show me." That's around the time that they pause at an otherwise unassuming door which Dimitri has to unlock twice, for two different locks. Now his curiosity is definitely active, and he grins at Dimitri when the other man holds open the door for him.
The room he steps into is a plain one, all things considered, although he sees magical ruins inscribed here and there for careful temperature control and preservation. No windows to allow anything inside. It's just this one door... and perhaps dozens of paintings hanging from the walls, with even more propped up unobtrusively wherever they can be. He sees, now, just what Ignatz had meant when he'd told Dimitri about painting things in a more symbolic way, although he's not sure if this is exactly what he was referencing or merely the turn that Dimitri decided to take of his own initiative.
Some of them just seem to be... wild slashes of color, both in oil painting or acrylics that lend a frenzied dimension to the canvas. They leave a sense of disorientation to Claude, almost like his heart wants to burst. Most of those use dark colors, eating up the white of the canvas until nothing has been left of it, and he wonders if this is how Dimitri has felt in his worst moments. Others lack just as much shape, but they seem more composed, more calm - gentle swirls of pale blues and yellows that merge into lovely greens. He's walking through the stages of something, it seems, as he quietly starts to walk along the perimeter to take in the many different canvases. The paintings.
One in particular seems to somehow have more... organization to it, somehow. It tickles at his memory, and Claude pauses to take it in with his fingertips tapping along the outside of his thigh. "Is this like out in the gardens?" he asks, and knows that he's right the second the question has actually left his tongue. The castle gardens were left to languish horribly during the war, when it was not Dimitri defending his homeland but an usurper who would see it rot from the inside out.
That had been as literal as it had been metaphorical, apparently, and most of the pleasant outdoor areas of the castle had to be redone entirely. Dimitri had done it half because such places are pleasant to be, in the rocky aftermath of picking up a newly united kingdom where a lot of stress piles up, but also to give people jobs, and the literal fruits of their labor eventually. He'd replaced a lot of more decorative plants with vegetables or fruit trees that flowered beautifully throughout most of the seasons.
Claude can remember this particular shape, the way dark greens go light in the painting under a remembered sun, and there are streaks of white that lay out a path of sorts. He's sat out there many times, in his visits to Fhirdiad. He's sat out there many times with Dimitri, who beams in pleasure. "That's right," he says, standing alongside Claude. "I thought it was a little too abstract, but... I suppose to your keen eyes, it was easy to spot even despite my lack of skill."
"You sell yourself short," Claude says, clicking his tongue. "Even if the details aren't done down to the slightest leaf - the opposite, I'll admit that - the overall image is still right. Honestly... You've managed to catch the feeling of being out there. Looking at it reminds me of days I've dozed off out there, and woken up to look to it all through eyes fogged over by sleep."
"I'm glad that it's recognizable... After some of my earlier paintings-" Dimitri nods over to the more frenetic canvases. "I wanted to actually try... recognizable things. Ignatz recommended that I try drawing or painting the same thing over and over again. Familiarize myself with it. Actually..." He turns away from Claude, going over to something near the door that he had missed on his first walkthrough. It's a small bookshelf, filled with sketchbooks that Claude knows very well. In Garreg Mach, he saw them in Ignatz's hands many times.
Dimitri tugs one free at seemingly random, almost trotting back in his eagerness to hold it out to Claude. Well, if he's so excited... Claude can't disappoint. He starts to flip through the many pages, and gives a small whistle. A lot of the images are charcoal drawings, many of the same subject repeated not only on the same page, but on a good few pages after that. Dimitri is clearly not the elegant artist that Ignatz is, with some objects or scenery a little too stiff... but on others, he's carefully applied paints and it's there that Dimitri seems to shine. Something about his painting just brings images to life. It's in the colors he chooses, or sometimes the way he's emphasized brush strokes.
"I think you've found a talent, Mitya," he says, grinning sidelong up at Dimitri before he hands the sketchbook back. He has more pictures to look over... and there's a certain easel he's had engraved into his memory over by the corner.
But the rest of the paintings, first, and Claude doesn't just say that out of some sort of desire to do things in order and nothing else. It's simply fascinating to him to take a step, and see how the next painting shows another bit of Dimitri's progress in another moment of time. "So you actually liked just drawing and painting the same thing over and over again?" he asks. It sounds kind of strange, really. Wouldn't one get bored? Then again, Dimitri is the same person who religiously practiced his lance technique, even the basic ones that he long ago had committed to muscle memory.
Still holding his sketchbook close to himself, so delicate in how he grips it, Dimitri shakes his head. "I found it... I call it 'calming' but that doesn't sound quite right. I only have to focus on that one thing before me. Sometimes there are details that I have to study a little harder, or learn how to figure out a mistake, but... I begin to know the image so well that it's - soothing, yes. That's the word I was thinking of. It's both a relief from my duties as king, where I have to consider so much, and yet also... helps me consider things better, I suppose." Dimitri chuckles, soft. "I just apply my way of thinking away from painting to ruling, instead."
Claude laughs. "Now that's inventive! You should write that down in your memoirs." But then he has to stop, because there's another painting he recognizes, and Claude grins. "Oh, I'd recognize Felix anywhere."
Or, at least, he recognizes him in Dimitri's chosen style of painting. The shapes are more defined at this stage, now, making out the boldly flowing image of the swordsman with his sword reared back, low with the rest of his body as he eternally prepares to swing his sword upwards in the painting. Once again, fine details have been left behind in favor of bold strokes showing motion, blurs of color that make it feel as though movement will occur at any second. Despite this artistic choice, it's still easy to see Felix's ponytail, the distinction of his clothing against itself, and those bright amber eyes which stand out compared to his pale skin and dark outfit.
Dimitri's grin becomes more playful. "I have a sketchbook that's full of nothing but Felix," he says, nodding his head over to the bookshelf. It's positively filled to bursting. Claude has no idea how he'd find anything in it, really. "I think he got flustered at the idea of someone drawing him while he was training, but he allowed me to do it, in the end." It's a sign of how much better their relationship has gotten since the end of the war, since they've been able to reconcile the trauma that happened to both of them.
It's good to hear, honestly, but Claude doesn't press. He simply allows Dimitri to bask in that happy memory, all while he starts to step around the easel to finally get a look at the picture he posed so many days and hours for. Dimitri doesn't discourage him, only follows. Claude knows that he's being watched, but, honestly, he can barely recognize that as a simple fact of the world. Not when he looks upon the painting, and feels his breath get stolen away. In what feels like a distance, Dimitri's voice speaks up again. "I call it Verdant Wind."
A lot of artists have painted his likeness, at this point, and so while he loves Dimitri, he'd thought he wouldn't necessarily be impressed by anything that he could spring upon him. But gods... Hasn't he been proven wrong. Out of everything in Dimitri's own private and personal little art gallery, this portait of Claude is perhaps the most carefully detailed work yet, while still carrying the simple shapes and beautiful brush strokes that he so loves to indulge in.
There, in the painting, Claude sits upon a stool that he has grown to know well over these many months, but the room is not well lit like he remembers it. Not... exactly. Instead, light spills in from the open balcony door, and, with it, so too do numerous plants spill through as though a wave of spring and greenery. In comparison to the darkness of the room... the green of leaves and vines is almost too much, brilliant and lush, so green that it could make one dizzy. It's life blossoming into where it is not expected - and, once again, it is as literal as it is metaphorical, with a myriad of flowers carried on in the rush.
All of it spills about at his feet, mid-rush, and him... He never thought he could be painted with such painstaking love. It doesn't matter that the image is not engraved with the most painstaking detail. None of those artists ever had him so illuminated before, as though sunlight is just naturally drawn to his figure. He's always sat, in the modeling he's done, but Dimitri must have been paying attention to before and after, because, in the painting, he's right in the middle of hopping down: one knee bent, his other foot touching the floor by only the tip. All of this, almost aglow, ablaze, with the light of a green and brilliant outside that is filling that dark and bare room.
Similarly verdant, as much as any of the leaves fluttering on the wind inside this painting, would be his eyes, crinkled in a smile that has not been painted and yet which is still the most beautiful he's ever seen himself depicted. They catch the eye, tie it in all together... but there's something else that catches Claude's eye, too. In the painting, he has one hand back, just like that foot, keeping his balance as he leaves the chair. And the other... the other is raised to his chest, over his heart, and there something gold gleams.
Entranced, Claude leans closer to make out the details. "I don't wear rings often," he says, breathless, even as his heart is beating swifter and harder in realization of something even his quick mind has not quite absorbed. Not truly. But in the picture, there is a ring. So close, he can tell it is extremely detailed - a benefit of a tiny brush and a massive canvas. It is a very particular kind of ring, that of a braided design. But the braids, the lines that make them up... are made out of words. Elegant cursive, the kind that only someone with such a careful royal education would be able to write so neatly and beautifully.
I offer my life bound to yours, my shining star.
Behind him, he can feel Dimitri step closer until their hearts almost seem to be so close that they beat as one, and Dimitri's hand settles so very delicately upon his shoulder. "Claude... Will you marry me?"