#it's two-fic Thursday to sneak in this week's 500 word prompt on top of flufftober

[bytheangell]

A Serious Work of Art

500 word prompt: paint (Read on AO3)

“What is this?” Simon sounds equal parts stunned, horrified, and confused. He’s looking at a painting that hangs on the wall behind the sofa which was not there when he left earlier.

Simon’s pretty sure he’d remember having a portrait-style painting of Count Chocula, except with a realistic artistic rendering of his own face where Count Chocula’s should be.

“Jace?!” Simon calls into the apartment, louder this time. He knows Jace has to be behind this. There’s no other reason for this to exist, let alone exist here, in his own home.

“Yeah, Si?” Jace asks, the picture of innocence as he shuffles out of the side hallway, barefoot and in sweats, tone impressively neutral.

“What,” Simon repeats, pointing at the painting. “Is this?”

“Do you like it?” Jace asks instead of answering. There’s the tug of a smirk on Jace’s lips, one that, once it starts, he’s entirely unable to stop from spreading.

“What is it?” Simon frowns. “No. I know what it is, but why is it here? Why is it anywhere? Why does this exist?”

Simon doesn’t know why it’s giving him such an existential crisis. Possibly because it’s really, really well done. This is an actual work of art... that just happens to be of him as Count Chocula.

“I thought it’d tie the place together. Don’t you agree? Better than a boring framed photograph,” Jace says. “Clary was thrilled with the generous commission to paint the pair of them.”

Simon thought the style looked familiar. Now that he moves closer instead of standing rooted in shock in the middle of the room, he can make out her signature in the corner.

“I’m going to kill her,” Simon mutters. Very belatedly, something Jace said registers in Simon’s mind. “...what do you mean, ‘pair of them’?”

Jace’s smile widens. “That’s right, you haven’t seen the bedroom yet.”

Simon isn’t sure he wants to, but his feet carry him there out of morbid curiosity, half-expecting a duplicate of Simon-Chocula. Instead, he’s greeted with a painting of his face, but on the body of The Count from Sesame Street.

“Oh my g-” Simon has never wanted to blaspheme more than he does right now, curse his vampiric restrictions. “No. This one has to go,” Simon says, shaking his head firmly.

“It isn’t that bad,” Jace argues.

“I am not having sex with a painting of me as a children’s show puppet staring at us from the wall. That’s too weird.”

“We could move it to the hallway,” Jace offers.

“We could move it to the trash can,” Simon mutters.

“We don’t have to keep them. Clary needed some extra cash and refused to let me loan her money, so I paid her to paint these instead,” Jace admits.

“Oh. That’s actually really nice,” Simon relents. “I suppose, since she went through the effort, we can leave them up through Halloween.”

It’s only fair, Simon thinks, since he has some artistic ideas of his own in mind for Clary now...