Though he would have rather ignored it, Waspinator shuffled over to answer the door when the bell sounded at precisely six-thirty that evening. The only thing keeping him from pretending there was no one there was the knowledge that Terrorsaur would have started screeching for him to answer it anyway, and he hated when his friend did that.
He yanked the door open, revealing Fiona waiting expectantly on the stoop.
"Hello, Nate." She smiled a bright, fake smile and he wondered if she could feel the dislike radiating off him, "Is Terry here?"
He ignored her, turning to yell down the hall. "Lady iz here, Terry-bot!" And without waiting for Terrorsaur to appear, he started cramming his feet into his shoes. By the time the aforementioned redhead appeared in the hall, Waspinator was out the door, slamming it behind him.
Fiona blinked as the door banged shut, then shook her head and turned to greet Terrorsaur. "Hey Terry-bot." Her smile was slow and easy, and she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
He frowned in reply, gesturing her inside and folding his arms across his chest as she passed, "Only Nate calls me that." He said flatly, tone leaving no room for argument.
She paused when she entered the living room, waiting for further instruction from the lanky man. Terrorsaur padded into the room after her, and without stopping continued on into the kitchen where he'd left a stack of unframed canvases on the table. "Have a seat," He called back into the other room, "and I'll show you some of my better pieces."
"What's the deal with Nate anyway?" She sat, crossing her legs primly and waiting. Fiona suspected his other paintings would be as good as the one from the park; she hoped this visit wouldn't be a complete disappointment. "He seems a little…off." Glancing around the room, she caught sight of numerous framed photographs, almost all of them in black and white, some with touches of color here or there, and most of them…of Nate.
Curious, she rose, crossing the room to inspect the ones hung on the opposite wall. Most of them were quite exquisite, almost every image had captured the smaller man in a different light: In one, he was sitting on the stoop, bent over a magazine or something, hair falling over his forehead and obscuring his eyes. In another, he was sprawled, upside down, on the couch, a silly grin lighting his childish face. There was a shot of him with his face pressed against the window of a florist's shop Fiona recognized from downtown and one that must have been a subsequent shot of him with his nose buried in a bouquet of daisies.
As she moved from frame to frame, she took the time to appreciate the angle of each shot, the tone and lighting. Terry was a master with a camera, she was quick to realize. Each picture told a story of who Nate was and each picture was beautiful in it's simplicity. Any one could take a picture. It was as easy as point and click. But it took a careful eye and a lot of thought to create art with a camera, which is what Terry had done.
"There's nothing wrong with Nate." Terry came back into the room, lugging a stack of paintings, just as Fiona plucked a small frame from the end table, this one an image of their bleak life: Nate standing, solemn, in a bus shelter, hands crammed into the pockets of his sweatshirt, hood pulled up, eyes downcast, while a torrential downpour spattered the ground outside the shelter. "He has a little bit of a problem with language, but there's nothing wrong with him. He's a good guy and far better of a partner than I deserve."
"'Partner', huh?" Fiona smirked, "I guess that explains all the photos."
It was hard to resist the urge to snap at her; Terrorsaur usually said whatever came to mind without a second thought. But he reigned in his temper, reminding himself again that humans and Cybertronians had different definitions for the word 'partner.'
"Look, never mind the paintings," She went on, "These are brilliant. Your photography is far superior to your painting; I don't even need to see any other canvases to know that. Your use of natural lighting and interesting angles is compelling, as is your limited use of color. I'd love to include some of these shots in my show; I think they'd been instant attention catchers. Just looking at them…it's clear that you care deeply about Nate. This is the kind of art people will pay money to look at."
Terrorsaur was so surprised, he nearly dropped the paintings on the floor. "What..?" He blinked, flabbergasted, "…You think my photography is that good?" He took pictures because he liked to; because some little moment caught his eye and he wanted to capture it forever, something he couldn't do in a human body without the aid of a camera. But never in a million years would he have believed his pictures were worth anything.
"I do." She nodded, replacing the frame on the table and loosely folding her arms, "The pictures in this room alone tell a fabulous tale. I think they'd add something that was missing to the show, rounding it off nicely. What do you say?"
It didn't take him more than a second to consider it.
"…Let's do it."
