Prompt found on askboxmemes on tumblr.
Open paint cups on the floor. Splatters of paint on the canvas. And at the easel in the middle of the room, paintbrush in hand, a ghost white shinigami, frozen, eyes wide with horror.
"Oh... Rem! You - uh, do... art?"
Rem could not bring herself to do anything but stare back at the intruder. She had not expected that clown to be home; didn't he mean he was leaving the house when he had said he was "looking around for apples?" She wanted to open her mouth to snap something back at him, but she could not even bring herself to do just that.
"Uh - well, hey, that looks pretty fun! What can you draw?" Ryuk added, after a moment of awkward silence.
No response.
"Your, uh... paint... is dripping from your brush."
Why was he still here?
"Well... Ya know, I did find an apple, see, eheheh." He held it up proudly. Rem could not think of a time when she cared less than at this moment. "Hey! Ya know, if you're not busy, you could try drawing me eating it! How about that?"
Rem's eyes widened even more, but now with a different feeling. He wasn't making fun of her? Even though she was in such a humiliating non-shinigami-like state? Then again, Ryuk himself was pretty uncharacteristic of a shinigami at times. Her initial shock subsiding, in response, she turned her head back toward the canvas, as a silent gesture for him to stand behind it.
With an excited whoop, Ryuk disappeared immediately behind the easel. "Hoho, great! Can't wait to see how this turns out."
Resisting the urge to roll her eyes at his overenthusiasm, Rem flipped a sheet of her drawing pad, ready to start on a fresh sheet. She inched her head a little to the left to check how Ryuk looked - with a hand holding an apple pinched in his teeth, he looked utterly ridiculous, as usual - then returned to the canvas. She hesitantly dipped her thick paintbrush in a black paint cup, and touched it to the canvas.
"Rem," said Ryuk, after what could not have been more than a minute, "could ya hurry up a little? This apple's makin' me really hungry."
Rem gave an exasperated sigh, but slightly quickened her speed. She glanced at the other shinigami again, then back at her colors. Black, light blue - or was that white? Maybe a mix - and red.
"Rem," said Ryuk again, after what was maybe five minutes after the last time, "I can feel the withdrawal symptoms coming, ya better hurry! I can't stay like this much longer!"
"Ryuk, I am working as fast as I can," answered Rem with a moderately annoyed tone. Why had she agreed to let Ryuk be her model? Why not use someone who actually knew how to model, like Misa Amane? Well, that was probably because Misa wasn't available; she was out of town for the weekend - and anyway, Misa did not know of Rem's love for painting. Thinking of Misa and her pretty blonde hair, Rem's hand moved the paintbrush to the yellow paint cup and added some of that to the painting.
"Rem," said Ryuk yet again, this time after what seemed like an eternity of painting, "I ate my apple."
Rem inched her head to the left again to check, and indeed he had. With a sigh, Rem put her brush down and admitted, "I guess I am done anyway."
"Ohoho! Let's see it then!"
Ryuk hopped over to her side to take a look at her finished drawing. An urge to fly far, far away came over the white death god. Rem did not want to wait to hear his comments, She already knew what they were, already knew what his silence meant. How could a shinigami ever learn to paint as a human could? Not daring to make eye contact with Ryuk or even her painting, Rem dropped her brush in one of the paint cups and started making her way toward the door. This would be her last painting; after being careless enough to be found out, she would give up painting altogether, and never pick up a paintbrush again.
She had one foot out the door when -
"Hey-hey, this is great! Let's hang it up on the wall where everyone can see it!"
Rem had never thought she could feel such human emotions.
Light had definitely noticed the painting when he returned home that night.
"Ryuk, what is that thing on the wall? It looks hideous."
"Really? I thought it looked pretty cool. We should keep it there."
As Rem looked out the window, thinking again of the shinigami realm, she thought, for the first time, that maybe the human world wasn't intolerable after all.