Reposted fic: paint it black (P&M 2)
Aug. 16th, 2025 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownesspaint it black - Photographs and Memories two, ER, Universal, Neela (Neela/Ray), 389 words. First posted: July 2007. Lightly edited 1 August 2025.
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.
Spoilers for all of season 13, angst. With thanks to lusmeitli for looking over this.
paint it black: shallowness
It isn't even a photograph of Ray, but his hand got into the shot, and she can't stop looking at it. The picture's subject, slap bang in the middle of the shot, is a cake she'd made for Abby. Well, she did decorate it. Neela was so impressed that she hadn't mucked up the icing, which was the right consistency and the colour she’d meant it to be, that she had to take a snap.
But Ray had got bored of being banished from the kitchen. Camera in hand, she'd ordered him to move away from her work, and he sort of stepped back, but his hand got in the shot. The camera wasn't digital, so she hadn't known until she'd had the film developed.
It was in the early days, when they were still testing each other's boundaries. She didn't have to be so precious about the icing, he was, she thinks now, only pretending to reach for the cake. Typically, it got wrecked anyway, thanks to a slip on an ice patch, and she showed Abby this picture to prove that she had made a perfectly adequate cake. Then she had to go into a long explanation about how Ray hadn’t touched it, the accident had happened outside.
His nails were painted, and that brings back other memories of her watching him painting them black, despite herself, staring as if he were an attending completing a complicated procedure she'd never seen before. But her fascination wasn’t professional. He knew she watched him and would slow everything down as if to hypnotise her.
She'd complain about the smell, but she’d missed it when he stopped. Neela can't remember if it was because Frank said Weaver said it freaked the patients out or if it was after things went pear-shaped with the band.
The picture came out of a box full of near misses where someone had closed their eyes or got in the way that will never be put into albums or on show. She's on the end of a cleaning blitz, and emptied what was in the box into a pile. This picture was on top and she's got no further. She knows Ray's in a lot of them and she knows too that she'll put them all back in the box. She can't throw them away.
Fin.
Feedback is loved.
The Photographs and Memories index is here.
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.
Spoilers for all of season 13, angst. With thanks to lusmeitli for looking over this.
It isn't even a photograph of Ray, but his hand got into the shot, and she can't stop looking at it. The picture's subject, slap bang in the middle of the shot, is a cake she'd made for Abby. Well, she did decorate it. Neela was so impressed that she hadn't mucked up the icing, which was the right consistency and the colour she’d meant it to be, that she had to take a snap.
But Ray had got bored of being banished from the kitchen. Camera in hand, she'd ordered him to move away from her work, and he sort of stepped back, but his hand got in the shot. The camera wasn't digital, so she hadn't known until she'd had the film developed.
It was in the early days, when they were still testing each other's boundaries. She didn't have to be so precious about the icing, he was, she thinks now, only pretending to reach for the cake. Typically, it got wrecked anyway, thanks to a slip on an ice patch, and she showed Abby this picture to prove that she had made a perfectly adequate cake. Then she had to go into a long explanation about how Ray hadn’t touched it, the accident had happened outside.
His nails were painted, and that brings back other memories of her watching him painting them black, despite herself, staring as if he were an attending completing a complicated procedure she'd never seen before. But her fascination wasn’t professional. He knew she watched him and would slow everything down as if to hypnotise her.
She'd complain about the smell, but she’d missed it when he stopped. Neela can't remember if it was because Frank said Weaver said it freaked the patients out or if it was after things went pear-shaped with the band.
The picture came out of a box full of near misses where someone had closed their eyes or got in the way that will never be put into albums or on show. She's on the end of a cleaning blitz, and emptied what was in the box into a pile. This picture was on top and she's got no further. She knows Ray's in a lot of them and she knows too that she'll put them all back in the box. She can't throw them away.
Fin.
Feedback is loved.
The Photographs and Memories index is here.
