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Thog squinted at the painting they were standing in front of and Ashe watched him unable to hide her amusement. His mouth thinned as he stared, and to the uninformed, it looked very much like the piece he was studying him had offended him somehow.
Nearby, a couple began quietly whispering about what reason her companion could possibly have to scowl so darkly at a simple textile piece, and Ashe had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.
It wasn't that Thog didn't enjoy art; they actually spent quite a lot of time at various art museums and galleries, chatting about meaning and passion and whatever else there was to chat about when staring at slivers of someone else’s soul rendered on canvas.
Actually, it was more that sometimes Thog looked at paintings and lithographs and prints and found himself with more questions than answers and no way to figure it out on his own.
Ashe watched him mouth silently at the exhibit, tilting his head this way and that before, taking a step back, sighing quietly.
“What do you see?” She prompted kindly, crossing her arms and looking over at him, watching his shoulders go rigid as he got more frustrated.
He frowned a little deeper, chewing on his lower lip as he continued to stare. “Black, white and orange blocks.”
Ashe glanced over at him, finding his struggle sort of endearing, even if he looked like he might like to put his foot through the piece in aggravation. “They’re red and yellow,” she said helpfully, gesturing at the diagonal stripes of the aforementioned colours.
“What are?”
She pointed again. “The orange blocks. They’re actually red and yellow.”
Thog put his hands on his hips and stared again before lifting his shoulder in defeat before walking off, apparently having lost interest altogether. “If you say so.”
They walked for a few moments, winding their way through the exhibits, until Thog stopped in his tracks and pointed, not bothering to keep his voice down in the otherwise deathly quiet museum. “What the fuck is that?”
Ashe looked over at the splotch of red, green and black hung on the wall. “It looks kind of like a multi-coloured Rorschach. Red and Green.”
He snorted and started walking again and Ashe smiled secretly to herself.
It was interesting, really, walking through art museums with Thog.
He asked quite a lot of questions and sometimes stood and stared blankly at the canvas, and that irritated a lot of people, but Ashe was well aware that it wasn't because he was contrary or willfully ornery or trying to suss out meaning that was beyond his grasp.
The simple fact was that sometimes he simply couldn’t see what was happening in a piece of art and occasionally that interfered with his ability to enjoy their walks through the empty halls of whatever gallery or museum caught their fancy.
Actually, Ashe hadn’t known that Thog was colourblind from the outset. And once she found out, she rather thought that he should have been a walking disaster of clashing colours. That mystery, such as it was, had been solved when she walked into the Thog’s apartment one day to find his roommate separating their clothes out into colour coordinated outfits.
Apparently, Moren had been doing that sort of thing for years, mostly just putting together Thog’s outfits, as well as occasionally shouting at him when he tried to go shopping by himself. Evidently, it didn’t help that Thog had an aversion to bright colours, and that Moren rather thought that was unfortunate, because black and blue were easy to confuse for each other.
In the end, Ashe sat down beside Moren to watched while Thog crashed around the apartment, listening to him joke about how she was going to be in charge of laundry by default and how terrible that would be.
And it wasn't, not really.
They worked out a system of clothespins with symbols drawn on them to indicate what other clothes they could be paired with, so that Ashe didn't have to put together all of Thog’s outfits and Thog didn't feel like a very large six-year-old. It mostly worked, with only the occasional hitch, but in the grand scheme of things, Ashe didn't think that Thog wearing navy socks with charcoal slacks once every so often was that much of a problem.
Her boyfriend’s voice interrupted Ashe’s musing and she looked up to see that he’d lead her into what seemed to be a shrine to the Occupy Movement.
He was pointing at a red and green print, looking unamused. “Is that supposed to be a person?”
She squinted at the print for a moment before nodding in affirmation. “Corporate Fat-Cat.”
Thog scoffed in response, which some might have mistaken for contempt, if not for the fact that he crossed his arms and stared at the print, squinting slightly as he adopted an expression that told Ashe that he was trying to see what she’d told him was there.
He did the same with a screen-print in another room, sighing in defeat after ten minutes of silence simmering between them.
“Should we go?” Ashe asked, her voice loud in the stillness, worried that this trip had ceased to be fun for him.
Thog lifted his shoulders. “Nah.” He didn't expand upon his answer and Ashe wasn't sure he wanted her to ask. He jerked his head in the direction of the next room, waiting for her to follow before properly making his way to the next exhibit.
Ashe chatted with him as they continued through the museum, slipping her arm through his and laughing when he asked bewildered questions about things he didn't think should be counted as art. He listened to her rambling and opinions without comment and smiled when she decided to tell him stories based on whatever they were looking at.
They were making their way back out to the entrance of the museum when Thog stopped so violently that Ashe was nearly jerked off her feet. She was about to ask him what was wrong, when he disappeared from her side, stalking back into the maze of paintings they’d been passing by.
She looked around the hallway, recognizing a couple of the paintings. “Van Gogh?”
Thog shook his head in response, not quite shushing her as he came to a stop in front of The Starry Night, looking like he was seeing the face of God or something, even though she was sure he’d seen it before. He blindly reached for her arm, missing a couple of times before grabbing her wrist and pulling her to stand properly by his side, whispering an awed, “look, Ashe,” at her.
“I always liked Van Gogh,” she mused, tilting her head as she studied the vibrant colours and impassioned strokes that made the Dutchman’s art so recognizable. “Who paints the sky green?”
Thog jerked his gaze away from the painting and stared silently at her for a moment, before shaking his head. “What are you talking about?”
Ashe lifted her shoulder, pointing at the streak of minty green that wound through the stars. “The night sky isn’t usually green, Thog.”
He shook his head borderline violently. “That’s not green... It’s…” he went quiet for a few seconds, turning back to the painting, “it’s… everything’s...”
She looked over at him, slipping her fingers in his, “go on.”
“I can’t really explain it… It just looks...” words seemed to fail him for a moment, “I... it just looks right.” He was quiet for another long moment, squeezing her hand. “The sky’s the right shade of blue and the stars look like stars…”
Ashe hadn’t realized how easy it was to fall in love with someone because they didn't have the right words, but there was something about listening to him stumbling through his sentence when he was usually so sure of what to say that made her heart wobble in a nice sort of way.
“It’s beautiful,” she agreed, still unsure of what he was seeing that she couldn’t.
Thog nodded, looking away from the painting again and back at her like he’d never quite seen anything like her before. “Yeah… yeah, it’s beautiful…”