The brush lays flat over the wall's smooth surface, and the newly dead weight of her arm drags the bristles down with it, fingers gripped loosely over the alloy handle.
A waving block of yellow appears just as the spent brush falls away and to her side, colouring one single stretch at the centre of a large stenciled circle. It crests just at the top of her head, and so she will have to reach above herself to fill it in, hold her wrist more firmly if she is to stay within the lines.
"I told you this would be fun,"
Keiko calls down, but she is a gardener and not a painter: the room - to Deanna at least - is bright, glaring and garish.
But she smiles anyway, not caring about the colours enough to say, rather endeavoring to feel each of the bristles as they pivot and spin away from one another each time the brush caresses the wall.
She smiles, because yes, Keiko had been right, and there are a thousand other things she could be thinking of, much less absurd than yellow circles on playroom walls. And yet that is what she is thinking about, that and the sight of Keiko's toes hanging tightly to the rungs of a ladder.
"Yes, but you will recall I never tried to argue that fact,"
She says softly, unsure if she's loud enough for her voice to travel so high up above her.
A charming laugh drips down like water, and she nods gently to herself, assured.
"Hmmm, you've changed your tune."
Bare feet stick and slap as they descend beside her, and she's met fairly soon with the arched eyebrow of her companion.
She tries to say nothing about her tune, decides it's probably some human expression that means nothing important anyway.
"Still okay where you are?"
Keiko asks her, still jovial and just now reaching for the rag that is hooked through her belt loop; she wrings it through her hands methodically.
"I have barely even begun -"
Deanna criticises herself with a frown:
" - unless you are aiming for a room full of straight lines, it's probably best that I stay put for the moment."
"I didn't mean it like that, just didn't want you to be stood too long."
The other woman corrects her, with an expression that does not quite match her words, pushing her tongue out just a little between pursed lips as she considers all they have left to do. She had extended the invitation with insistence and not option, only now she is not so sure.
"I am fine, thank you,"
Deanna assures her, and remembers how she is supposed to be doing something more than she is, reanimating her arm just soon enough to stop the drip gathered on the end of her paintbrush from falling to the floor.
A sudden scratching of coarse bristles against the papered walls reminds her that she isn't supposed to be quite so tragic today. It is comforting that she has the distraction.
"Any idea where I left the stirrer?"
Keiko asks through obvious distraction as Deanna twists the brush upwards and away from herself, following the tight curve just at her hip.
Her arm falls back to her side, and she looks around too.
"I -"
Something solid and wooden stuck down the waistband off Keiko's pants stops her from saying much more.
Like a child, she giggles recklessly.
"What, have I sat in paint or something?"
Keiko, with her back turned asks, scratching her head like it's a bad joke. She whirls around to fix Deanna with exasperation.
"Hm,"
The counselor stifles another laugh with the palm of her left hand, eyes gleaming simple joy.
"No not at all."
Her voice cracks a little as she speaks.
"I believe you have something in your pants?"
Diplomacy will only get her so far, and at Keiko's jarred movements to pat down her own backside, she erupts out in another jolt of rainfall laughter.
The woman brandishes her paint stirrer with similarly gleaming eyes.
"Knew I should've stolen Miles' work belt,"
She grumbles in good humour, turning to climb back up the maintenance ladder with careful feet and those same clinging toes.
"Miles?"
Deanna finds herself sing-songing like a teenager, dipping her brush down in the paint pot on the trestle table at her side - her back is grateful for not having to bend.
"Yes Miles, I let him off the hook this time."
Off the hook: another something probably not worth the explanation.
"Oh?"
There is a suggestive pause.
"Well, let's just say I found a - mutually beneficial way for him to make it up to me."
Keiko's coy smile is near audible.
The path of Deanna's latest trail of paint runs a little unevenly as she stifles another giggle, taking her other hand to cover her mouth again.
"I will remember that next time he energises."
Above her, there is a sudden spit of laughter, and the ladder rocks the woman's lack of control.
Keiko sputters before she's able to speak.
"Who knew, our counselor a comedian!"
Her exclamation brings an unusual shade of embarrassment to Deanna's cheeks, and for less than a second she worries that she has - in the past - been too much of a 'stick-in-the-mud'.
At least that one she does understand.
Their laughter peters out in a familiar way, and she continues with her gentle brush strokes until the circle is near complete. The companionship is easy, and not uncomfortable as it might be with anybody else; she likes Keiko, has to admit it to herself that she cannot hold herself distant from everybody.
Besides, the woman is so good at not looking down even once, or saying the word baby, that it's easy to forget herself.
Here, for a half-day perhaps, she will not be a bomb that ticks down to her own demise, but rather just any other person.
Stretching up for the topmost swell, she sighs out the easy feeling.
"You can leave those bits for me if you like - "
Keiko calls down, misinterpreting the sound.
Their eyes lock, and hers gleam mischief.
"- shorty,"
She adds dangerously, and Deanna scoffs, reaching for the exposed ankle beside her on the ladder, and swiping out playfully with her paintbrush.
Keiko squeals the cold prickle, and knocks the handle of her own brush against the side of the ladder to let loose a hail of tiny paint droplets.
Deanna squeals then too, scrunching her eyes where they had been up-cast, letting her face and shoulders be flecked in near-neon green.
"Comments like that will get you sent to the brig, you know I am close with your Captain."
"I'd like to see you try - civilian remember,"
Keiko says smugly, pulling tongues and adjusting her belt as she begins to climb down, the patch she had worked on now saturated and glaring.
"Well,"
The empath hums in response, adjusting her gaze to accommodate the movements, turning her body away from the wall and resting back down onto the heels of her feet.
"I'm sure I can find a way around that, if there should be further incidents,"
She goes on coyly, and they trade those joking grins as Keiko reaches the ground, and begins to shuffle the ladder slowly along to the right.
"I'll keep that in mind, shorty."
The other woman scoffs under her breath as she goes, and then casts a furtive glance over to Deanna, who looks especially small in the denim dungarees she has been put in, wearing a huge white t-shirt beneath it that is probably long enough to double as a dress.
Paint flecked plimsolls highlight the childish size of her feet, and - equally as childish - her hair is twisted into two shortened braids that thin out towards their ends but plume and escape into curls at her crown.
She rubs at her eyes with the back of her paintbrush hand, and stifles a small yawn.
"Not keeping you up am I?"
She pretends she had been doing nothing at all.
"Not at all,"
Deanna follows along to the right where another, lower circle has been revealed, wheeling along the trestle with her.
"But if I should be driven to insanity by dreams of big yellow circles tonight, then I'll know who to blame,"
She goes on joking, raising her eyebrows separately in suggestion.
Keiko laughs, mounting the first few rungs of the ladder again.
"But you are having fun?"
A fleck of paint drying on the side of her nose begins to cause a problematic itch, and she responds while scratching at it distractedly:
"Yes, of course."
"Well then you'll just have to go mad then won't you,"
The smirk is near-audible in Keiko's voice as she responds fast, no time for dwelling on just what they are making of their day.
"Besides,"
She continues;
"If you think this'll make you lose your mind, imagine the poor soul that's gonna have to teach here everyday!"
Deanna frowns whilst smiling lowly, just now starting to fill the outline of this second circle, the other woman's self-indulgent laughter becoming the soundtrack to her day.
"Oh Keiko,"
She admonishes, grimacing a little to the feeling.
"Please tell me you checked before choosing these colours?"
The raised pitch of her laugh is all the answer the counselor needs, that and the smell of mischief that seems to seep out of the bristles of her brush, and soak into all the surfaces around her.
"That is why you asked me to help instead of the playroom staff,"
She works out aloud, huffing deeply.
"Well I hope you know I'll be denying all knowledge of this when an angry mob of children is set upon me!"
Her laugh now rises too, not so enthused and perhaps a little tired sounding, mingling with Keiko's for a few moments.
In the silence that follows, the other woman finds some other comment to make.
"Oh but you'll lie so well, nobody'll ever know a thing!"
And Deanna can't decide if this is a prelude to something more deep, stretching out the small of her back as she replenishes the tip of her brush, can't help but wonder if she is alluding to a much greater issue. She has told herself to not go fishing in the thoughts of other people as often as she has been, so decides it is best not to know.
Further silence follows, until another thought appears to occur to the woman.
"Also, you're the only other person I could think of who'd raise no objection to doing it the old-fashioned way,"
Keiko says, coming down the ladder again with a fluffed roller hanging at the end of her arm.
The rag swings like a pendulum against her hip, until she is upright on the level ground.
"I know it'd take a quarter of the time, but holographic wallpaper just isn't the same."
"Little Relissa will be grateful I'm sure,"
Deanna mentions, balancing the brush over the paint can as she turns around, wiping her hands on the tops of her legs as she goes.
"You know I hadn't even considered that,"
Keiko gestures with the pointed end of the roller as she talks, and they are referring to a young Trill girl whose eyes have begun to fail her; Doctor Crusher cannot explain it, and her parents are loath to try surgery until she is old enough to understand.
For now, the sensitivity in her fingertips has delighted her, and the grainy surface of the painted walls, with all those changing textures, will surely help her to visualise these great murals they've begun blocking in.
"You're right, I'll make sure to mention it to Tamak, that'll show him!"
Keiko calls triumphantly from the other end of the room, fumbling with the tins of paint that are stood atop one of the tables that has been pushed up against the far wall.
That one, they will not be painting - thank gods.
"Wait,"
She adds quickly, swiveling around as though something urgent has just come to her.
"Weren't you two dating for a while?"
Deanna raises her right eyebrow, scratching again at that spot on her face, and she begins to tread slowly over to the tables too.
"No,"
She breathes out in an obvious kind of tone, tries not to sound too indignant by the suggestion.
"I invited him to eat with me when he was newly aboard, because it was his birthday and I did not want him to feel forgotten about,"
She explains carefully, clearly recalling the drinks they shared in ten-forward a few months ago, talking for the sake of simply saying words.
He had been a terribly kind man, not too nervous as to say nothing at all, but not quite so obnoxious that he could only speak of himself; they had a small glimmer of something between them.
Perhaps, had they not been so separately busy in the weeks after, they could have seen eachother again.
Of course, nothing ever came of it.
"Oh,"
Keiko sighs dreamily, maybe a little insincerely, she cannot be too sure.
"You're too good to us Counselor."
She digs a little deeper, and the tone is mocking, but the feeling behind it a genuine and thoughtful one.
Deanna reaches her side, glances the fingers of one hand over Keiko's shoulder in thanks, then draws it around to push again at the small of her own back.
She turns both hands into kneading fists, and groans near-silently.
Keiko notices anyway, and sets down the roller on the side of a tray she has yet to fill with paint.
"Lower back?"
She asks, already knowing the answer before Deanna has even begun nodding; embarrassed to have been seen, she takes her hands away and down limply to her side.
"Here, here."
She is beckoned to turn and face away from Keiko, whose own arms are wide in fluid movements, hurrying her on.
Then, she takes the solid pads of her thumbs and lines them up with the dimples at the base of Deanna's spine. She pushes in firmly, and forces out a sharp hiss from the girl.
Something is said in Betazoid that the computer in the playroom refuses to translate, and Keiko, oblivious, moves to knead small circles in the same area.
The knuckles of her fingers draw up on both hands and push inwards too, so that there are four points of contact where she can feel the uneven tautness of the muscles there.
"God, you're more knotted up than a wind-sail,"
Keiko tells her in a whisper, continuing on in the motions as she feels the muscles slowly begin to lose tension.
A small hum escapes Deanna's closed lips, and she is only a little self-conscious.
The exercise lasts fewer seconds than can be counted as minutes, until the sudden relief that she feels is enough to have Deanna stepping out of the touch.
"That's incredible,"
She sighs out contentedly, and stands a little straighter than she could do before.
Keiko smiles, humble, and winks when the other woman turns around so that they are face to face again, grabbing up the tray and roller now that her hands are free.
"You come see me any time, I've got magic fingers, you'll see,"
She jokes, lighter than most people, and begins walking back to the ladder, Deanna following distantly behind.
"I might just have to take you up on that offer some time soon,"
The counselor carries on gratefully, taking up her paintbrush again with a sense of renewal in her, resolved to carry on in the same mood as they have been.
She feels restored - if only a little - and can manage to forget whatever else might ail her, for the sake of what has been lifted away.
The two women turn to smile at one another, and again, she watches Keiko's toes go tightly against the rungs of the ladder, something repetitive and familiar, something normal about it all that she simply doesn't mind.
