✨ Simple Gif Colouring for Beginners ✨
I wrote up my basic gif colouring process for a friend recently, but a couple of people here mentioned they'd also find it helpful! so, as requested, this is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of the way I colour my gifs :) it's aimed at brand new gif makers with no prior experience with photoshop or photo editing.
when I first started gif making I found colouring and photoshop in general suuuper daunting, so I've tried to simplify everything here as much as possible. hopefully this will be relatively easy to follow and not too intimidating!
a couple of things to begin with:
I'm only talking about colouring here - this is not a full gif making tutorial. I've linked to some of my favourites of those here!
I personally like to make bright, 'clean' looking gifs with vibrant but natural colours, so that is the style of colouring this tutorial is geared towards. most of gif colouring is subjective and about personal taste - the only thing that I'd say is possible to get wrong is skin tones, which I talk about a lot in this guide.
as I mostly gif Thai dramas, most of the advice is geared towards colouring for East Asian/South East Asian skin tones - but the techniques should be fairly universally applicable (and here are some tutorials that talk about gif colouring for other skin tones).
I'm not an expert! I'm not claiming this is the best or the only way to colour gifs - it's just how I do it.
this post is very image-heavy. if the images aren't loading (or the gifs are running slowly or cutting/looping weirdly), then try viewing the post in its own tab (rather than on the your dash or someone's blog) and refreshing the page.
okay, full walkthrough beneath the cut!
contents:
1. intro
a. natural gif colouring goals
b. very very basic colour theory
2. super simple colouring (the essentials)
a. curves
b. selective colour (and skin tone correction)
c. hue/saturation
d. saving and reusing colouring
e. another simple colouring example
3. other adjustment layers
a. brightness/contrast
b. levels
c. vibrance
d. colour balance
e. channel mixer
4. troubleshooting
a. curves
b. saturation
5. fin!
1. intro
the colouring part of gif making can be super overwhelming, especially if (like me when I first started!) you're completely new to photoshop and/or have no experience with colour theory or photo/video editing.
if you're opening photoshop and making gifs for the first time, I highly recommend getting used to making a few basic, uncoloured gifs to begin with. just to practice, rather than post anywhere (though you can always come back and colour them later if you want) - but it'll make the rest of the process much easier if you're already beginning to get used to working in timeline mode of photoshop. give yourself a bit of time to practice and get a feel for things like how many frames you tend to like in a gif, where you like to crop them for the best loop, what kind of aspect ratio you like etc* - so that you're not trying to navigate all of that for the first time on top of everything else!
* frames: for me between 60-90 frames is ideal, but 40-120 frames is the absolute min-max I'd personally use in a normal gifset
loops: for the smoothest loops, try to avoid cutting someone off mid-movement or mid-word if possible.
aspect ratio: for full-size (540px) gifs, I tend to go for either 8:5 (slightly 'skinnier' gifs), 7:5, or 5:4 (particularly big, thick gifs lmao)
✨ natural gif colouring goals
part of what can be so daunting about starting gif making is not knowing where to start or what you want to achieve. this is definitely something that gets easier with practice - the more gifs you make, the more you'll get a feel for what kind of look you like and the more instinctively you'll know how to get there. it also helps to see if any gif makers you like have made "before and after colouring" posts - these can help with getting a sense of the kinds of changes made through gif colouring. here's one I made!
in general, I like to make my gifs bright and 'clean' looking, with vibrant but natural colours. these are the things I'm usually hoping to achieve with colouring:
brighten dark scenes
remove muddy, yellowish lighting or filters
saturate colours
correct any skin lightening filters or overexposure
make lighting and colours as consistent as possible between gifs within a single gifset, especially gifsets featuring gifs from multiple scenes/episodes/videos
this guide is focusing on natural colouring, but of course there are many cool ways to make stylised/unnaturally coloured gifs. imo you'll need to master these basics first, but if you want to learn how to do things like change the background colour of gifs or use gradients or other cool effects, then @usergif's resource directory has loads of super helpful tutorials!
✨ very very basic colour theory
[disclaimer! I don't know shit about fuck. I do not study light or art. this is just an explanation that makes sense to me exclusively for the purposes of gif making.]
the primary colours for light/digital screens are red, blue, and green. having all three colours in equal measures neutralises them (represented by the white section in the middle of the diagram).
so to neutralise a colour within a gif, you need to add more of the colour(s) that are lacking.
in practice this usually means: the scene you want to gif is very yellow! yellow is made of red and green light, so to neutralise it you need to add more blue into your gif.
it can also mean the reverse: if you desaturate the yellow tones in a gif, it will look much more blue.
looking at the colour balance sliders on photoshop can make it easier to visualise:
so making a gif more red also means making it less cyan.
removing green from a gif means adding magenta.
taking yellow out of a gif will make it more blue.
tl;dr:
neutralise yellows by adding blue (and vice versa)
neutralise reds by adding cyan (and vice versa)
neutralise green by adding magenta (and vice versa)
2. super simple colouring (the essentials)
starting with a nice sharpened gif in photoshop in timeline mode. (these are the sharpening settings I use!)
some scenes are much harder to colour than others - it helps to start out practising with scenes that are bright/well-lit and that don't have harsh unnaturally coloured lights/filters on. scenes with a lot of brown/orange also tend to be harder.
I usually save a base copy of my gif before I start colouring just in case I end up hating it, or find out later that it doesn't quite fit right into a set and need to redo it etc.
so here is my base gif!
it's an okay gif, but it has a bit of a yellow tint to it that I want to reduce.
colouring is easiest to do in adjustment layers, which can be found under layer -> new adjustment layer - or for me they are here:
there are lots of different types of adjustment layers that do lots of different things - but for me the absolute essentials for colouring are curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation.
I also use brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, vibrance, colour balance, and channel mixer sometimes, depending on the gif - but I use curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation on every single gif.
✨ curves layer
the first thing I always do is a curves layer. when you first open one it will look like this:
first I usually click the ‘auto’ button, just to see what happens. sometimes it makes a big difference (it usually brightens the gif a lot) - but on this gif it didn’t do much.
if it had made the gif look nicer then I would have kept it and added a second curves layer on top to do the rest of these steps.
the next step is selecting the white and black points with the little eyedropper tools.
the bottom eyedropper lets you pick a white point for the gif. click somewhere super light on the gif to see what happens - for this gif, I clicked on the lampshade on the left. if it looks weird, I just undo it and try somewhere else - it usually takes a few goes to find something that looks good.
here's what that did to the gif:
then I pick the top eyedropper and use it to pick a black point by clicking somewhere really dark, again playing around until I find a black point that looks good.
here's what the gif looks like after picking the white and black points:
this can take some experimenting, but you can make super easy drastic changes to your gif just with this. in this case, the curves layer took out a lot of that yellowy tint.
and this is what the curves graph looks like now:
you can click and drag those lines to make further changes if you want - I usually leave them alone though. the colours of the lines indicate which colours have been changed in the gif - for example, you can see from that steep blue line on the graph that blue has been added to neutralise those yellows.
next I usually do another curves layer and just press the ‘auto’ button again to see what happens. usually it brightens the gif a bit more, which I like.
‼️if nothing is working: usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :( the troubleshooting section at the end goes over some options, including starting with a levels layer instead.
✨ selective colour (and skin tone correction)
skin tones are made up of a mixture of yellow and red.
removing yellow (or adding blue or red) to a gif will make the skin-tones too red - and removing red (or adding cyan or yellow) to a gif will make the skin-tones too yellow.
adding blue to this gif with the curves layer took out the yellowy tint, which I wanted - but it also took the yellows out of Kim's skin tone, which I don’t want. so I need to put yellow back into the skin tones specifically - without putting it back into the rest of the gif.
selective colour layers let you select an individual colour and adjust the levels of other colours within that colour. you can change how yellow the green shades are, or how much cyan is in the blues, for example.
I need to add yellow back into the red tones to correct the skin tones on this gif. this is the case for most gifs in my experience - the vast majority of the time, unless a scene is very heavily tinted in another colour, a curves layer will add blue/remove yellow.
in the 'colors' dropdown, select the 'reds' section and drag the 'yellow' slider higher - this will add more yellow into just the red shades within the gif.
the amount of yellow you need to add back into the reds depends on how much yellow was taken out of the gif initially - I just play around with the slider until it looks right. if you're not sure, it helps to have some neutrally-coloured (not white-washed!) reference photos of the people in your gif to compare to.
here's the result. Kim's skin is a lot less pink toned and much more natural looking:
✨ hue/saturation
this adjustment layer lets you adjust the hue and saturation of the gif as a whole, and also of each colour individually.
I don't use the hue or lightness sliders unless I'm trying to do something more complicated with the colouring.
clicking the dropdown menu that says 'master' lets you edit the saturation of each colour individually. this is useful if your gif is still super tinted in one colour.
I thought the yellows on this gif were still slightly too bright, so I switched to the yellow channel and desaturated them slightly. (remember if you do this then you need to go back to selective colour and add more yellow into the red skin tones to balance out the desaturation!)
then I increased the 'master' saturation of all the colours to +5:
I usually find the right amount of saturation is somewhere between +5 and +12, but it depends on the gif.
‼️if the gif feels undersaturated, but the saturation slider isn't helping/is making the colours worse, try a vibrance layer instead.
done!
✨ saving and reusing colouring
you can copy and paste adjustment layers between gifs to make your colouring even across each of your gifs for one scene - so if you're making a set of multiple gifs of the same scene, or you think you might want to gif the same scene again in the future, you can save it as a psd so you can reuse the colouring again later.
each gif's colouring will then still need tweaking - different cameras/angles/shots of the same scene can still start out with slightly different colouring.
I recommend uploading the gifs as a draft post on tumblr so you can see what they all look like next to each other and catch any inconsistencies.
✨ another one! (speedrun!)
HI KEN!
the white point for the curves layer was in the window behind them.
the curves layer removes the muddy yellow tint, but again it makes their skin tones (especially Ken's) very red toned, which is adjusted by the selective colour layer.
3. other adjustment layers
imo many many gifs can be coloured really nicely with just those three adjustment layers, but some need different adjustments.
✨ brightness/contrast
pretty self explanatory!
I personally usually avoid using the 'brightness' slider because I rarely like the effect - I only tend to use the 'contrast' one.
the 'auto' button is sometimes useful though, especially if you’re struggling with the curves layer.
✨ levels
levels alters the white and black points of the gif, like curves - but unlike curves it doesn't also alter other colours.
use the sliders beneath the graph to alter how dark/light the gif is. you can slide the black slider further to the right to make the blacks darker, and the white slider to the left to make the whites lighter.
levels is a good place to start if your curves layer isn't working.
(I'm going to hit the image limit for this post lol so here are some screenshots of a table I made to demonstrate this rather than actual gifs. sorry!)
on both sides, I dragged the sliders up to where the big jumps are on the graph - this is usually a good place to start!
✨ vibrance
vibrance... makes the colours more vibrant. it's more subtle than saturation.
it's really helpful for gifs that feel grey. sometimes adjusting saturation just makes the greys kind of weirdly tinted, but a vibrance layer can fix that.
vibrance is much more subtle!
✨ colour balance
colour balance affects the overall balance of colours within a gif.
it's good for scenes with heavy tints.
I tend to stick to the 'midtones' dropdown, but you can also alter the colour balance within the shadows and highlights if you want.
✨ channel mixer
I avoided channel mixer for such a long time because it scared me. but it's great for scenes that are very heavily tinted in one colour.
basically, it works with the levels of red, green, and blue within a gif. you select an output colour and then play around with the levels of the colour you selected within each other colour.
kind of the reverse of selective colour?
so in the 'blue' channel, the levels of blue are at 100%, and the levels of red and green are at 0% - but you can impact how much blue is in the reds and greens and blues.
this tutorial explains it well - but imo the best way to get to grips with channel mixer is just to play around with it a bit (sorry)
(when I made this guide for my friend, I also made a slightly more complicated gif colouring walk-through that included using channel mixer. there isn't space to include it within this post, but if anyone is interested I could always upload it as an 'intermediate' gif colouring tutorial - lmk!)
4. troubleshooting
‼️curves
usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :(
for example, with this base gif:
using many of the brightest points as a white point turn it wacky colours, like this:
yikes :(
some options for these cases:
try brightening the gif first with the 'auto' button on the curves layer or with a levels layer. having a brighter gif to start with can give you better options for picking a white point.
try finding an alternate, whiter/brighter white point. look for places the light reflects - on this gif, using the light on Porsche's cheekbone works well as the white point. it also helps to find places that would be white if the scene wasn't tinted - the lightest part of a white shirt is often a good place to start, for example.
skip the curves layer, and instead use a levels layer to alter your white/black points, and colour balance or channel mixer to balance the colours.
‼️over/undersaturation
if your gif (especially the skintones) is looking a little washed out or lifeless, it might be undersaturated. boost that saturation - or if that's not working, try a vibrance layer.
oversaturation is often easiest to spot in the mouths and ears of any people in a gif. if the mouths are looking unnaturally, vibrantly red, then you've gone too far with the saturation.
5. fin!
and done! I hope this was coherent helpful to somebody.
if there's anything that I've missed or that doesn't make sense pls feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to help! I've also collated a bunch of additional reading/resources below.
happy gifmaking 🥰
✨ some links!
photoshop basics by @selenapastel
gifmaking for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki
gifmaking guide for beginners by @saw-x
dreamy's gif tutorial by @scoupsy-remade (includes instructions on how to blur out burned-on subtitles or annoying video graphics)
beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza
how to fix orange-washed characters by aubrey-plaza
colour correcting and fixing dark scenes by @kylos
does resampling matter? by usergif
how to put multiple gifs on one canvas by @fictionalheroine
watermarking using actions by @wonwooridul
resource directory by @usergif
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whole wide world
rating: t ♥️ cw: criminal-levels of softness, rockstar!Eddie, teacher! Steve, gooey-clingy-heart-eyes Eddie needs his Stevie ♥️ tags: established relationship, rockstar!eddie, teacher!steve, rockstar husbands, amateur musicals, steve needs to stop using a ladder unsupervised because nothing bad happened this time but eddie is concerned that is the love of his life, soul-deep love, slice of life, softness
for @steddielovemonth day thirteen: Love is showing up when someone doesn’t ask ❤️ (@steddieas-shegoes)
look who's back, just like every other day, it's the rockstar husbands from je ne regrette rien being their codependent, desperately-in-love selves again! ♥️
“Goddamnit,” Steve curses the staple gun, the dry-rotted wood he’s trying to use it on, the acrylic-covered tarp masquerading as a backdrop leaving little crackle-dust everywhere every single time it fucking falls because the wood’s shit, the staples are shit, his co-advisor’s kid’s sick with the flu, the kids are in the band room rehearsing the opening number and Steve really cannot fucking believe he got roped into this to begin with, actually, like, how the fuck did the middle school guidance-counselor-slash-study-hall-monitor get conned into helping with the high school drama club, just because one of his JV soccer players landed the lead and bemoaned loudly enough during laps how they didn’t know if they’d be able to make the performance even work, because the choir teacher’s on maternity leave and the band director’s kind of a dick, and the needed more help—
Steve only is even in the high school for the goddamn athletics office. For, y’know, the equipments for the athletes.
Yet: here he is. Standing on a rusty fucking ladder that probably needs a spotter, to be honest, and if Steve’s admitting that then yeah, it definitely needs someone holding the goddamn thing, but here he is, already two hours after the final bell, trying to stick a painting of mattressesin a stack that only vaguely looks like mattresses so thank god that’s in the show title—
The ladder wobbles a little when he tries to catch the tarp-thing again but he can’t reach far enough without risking a long way down to a very hard stage floor, so the backdrop’s sacrificed back to the ground—a-fucking-gain—as he shifts his weight to steady the steps and it’s a close thing, he’s about ninety-seven percent sure he’s aimed the teetering feet of it back to solid ground okay but he glances around quick just in case, tries to figure if there’s anything he can grab for and let the ladder go on its own if need-be, and—
“That’s fucking dangerous, big boy,” a deep, and deeply unexpected, voice trails up from the floor, clipped with stress, with fear because Steve fucking knows that voice, and the ladder’s suddenly fully steady so he can turn and look and—
“Gonna give me a goddamn stroke or something, finding you up on one of these all by your lonesome,” Eddie’s staring up at him, and the words could be teasing, and Steve thinks maybe they intend to be, but: those eyes are too big. There’s a pulse Steve can count in that throat, even from seven-feet-up.
So he does what any man in love with his husband would do in the face of said-husband in fear, and for him: Steve climbs down careful, but quick, with Eddie’s hands scrambling to make sure of the ‘careful’ part as soon as he can reach, and then he turns, and then he lands on solid ground again to pull Eddie in and thank every colleague of his he’d been cursing in his mind for leaving him alone to do all this shit, because alone is the reason he gets to kiss his lover hard, and full; wrap around him and let him squeeze Steve to the point where it aches, where it creaks in his bones, like proof.
Lets Eddie attach his lips to suck a bruise, possessive and needy and protective all at once along his throat, and yeah:
Exactly like proof.
“What are you doing here?” Steve asks when they pull apart just the slightest bit, because he wasn’t expecting Eddie to be home until probably close-on to midnight, let alone at the school well before five.
“Thought you could maybe use an extra set of hands,” Eddie shrugs like it’s a casual thing, showing up just to help out when he’s on a press cycle, and it’s evident even in his attire that that’s the case, if you know what to look for: more chains from his jeans, thicker soles on his boots just flirting with being platforms, at least two rings on every finger—save just one.
One has a ring, and a carefully-preserved and repeatedly-reinforced bread-bag tie: both serving the same purpose in very different points in their lives.
Point being: Eddie was wading through photoshoots and magazine spreads and radio spots and every fucking thing, and no matter how high he’s raising his eyebrow in a clear calling out of how he found Steve atop a shaky ladder as being obvious evidence of having use of an extra set of hands, the fact remains:
“But you’ve got the interview—“ the big ass interview with that shock-jock guy Steve kinda hates, but that’s a big fucking deal, and was the precise reason Steve wasn’t lamenting giving up his afternoon and evening to the at-least-halfway-to-lost-cause of the not-even-an-actual-full-fledged-theatre department: he wasn’t going to have Eddie home before bed anyway.
And yet: here stands the man.
“The boys have got it,” Eddie shrugs, like he actually doesn’t give a shit, and that’s…he does give a shit, he had sounded excited about it last night when they’d talked about their plans for the week over dinner, when Steve had bemoaned the travesty of this fucking production of Once Upon A Boxspring or whatever, and Eddie’d told him he was pretty sure he was going to be able to say fuck on the show even if they’d edit it, like he wouldn’t get in trouble, and he’d looked like a kid in a goddamn candy shop about it so yeah: Steve thinks he kinda did give a shit.
But he’s…not there.
“Gareth’s been itching to take the reins after he won out the final track list,” Eddie offers as explanation; “cocky bastard.”
And they collaborate on all the writing, music and lyrics, they’re not even the slightest bit competitive about it which would be hard to believe if all you saw of the members of Corroded Coffin were their goddamn shenanigans during a campaign; but the one think in their music that they docompete over?
Whose title-idea gets the opener on a given album. And Gareth did end up scooping them all when the execs came back with a shuffle. Steve had watched it unfold in real time; he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a grown man crow like Gareth had, and he is married to Edward fucking Munson.
So that’s saying something.
“Eds,” Steve tries to prod a little at the point of it all though, because Eddie’s got press, and this is a high school, and probably Eddie could get to the studio in time to catch the end of whatever, it’s prerecorded, he knows that much, they could squeeze a live interview in so they could probably do Eddie at the end and just shuffle it around, right, it’s easy, and that’s so much more important than this because this:
“Eds, it’s just a—“
“It’s the spring musical, baby,” Eddie says like he’s announcing the arrival of the president, of the Queen of England, then his eyes soften a little as he flicks at one of the real mattresses that will, presumably, be props for the actors if the show’s title isn’t a fucking lie: “you know that’s where my DM throne had its humble origins, before I elevated it to greatness?”
Steve did know that, not least because they’d smuggled Eddie in to DM a few special sessions before the gremlins graduated, and he’d taken his seat with regal aplomb every time, and Steve had learned that yeah, they used the random storage room that was mostly drama shit for Hellfire.
And the way he’d learned that was by sucking Eddie off hidden by some very ratty but very conveniently poofy ballgowns from a production of Cinderella.
“I missed you.”
Steve turns to him and blinks; Eddie’s eyes are on the mattress, his stance almost a little shy.
“You saw me this morning,” Steve doesn’t ask, exactly, but he…he’s not sure he’s following, is the thing.
“I was,” Eddie sighs, and flops to sit down on the mattress which, thankfully, is a mattress and gives a little, bounces under him.
“I was just feeling, I dunno,” he gives a shrug that fades into something like a shiver, and then Eddie’s arms come around too hug around his middle as he ducks his chin and, oh no.
None of that.
“I thought about you being, you know, you,” and Eddie gets to gesture at the mess of the stage only halfway before Steve’s catching his hand, lacing their fingers and pulling Eddie back up to standing, then back into Steve’s arms here he leans heavy, sighs deeper this time; relief instead of something shallow.
“Just you doing all this when you don’t even have a horse in the race, y’know?” Eddie muffles into the side of Steve’s neck, burrowed in tight. “And I was supposed to be in the zone about press and shit, and it just,” he shakes his head, which is more like the brush of his lips back and forth against Steve’s skin; “it wasn’t clicking at all, like I posed and did the looks and whatever,” and oh, Steve knows the looks, Steve has about half those looks printed out and framed in various parts of their home or tucked safe inside his wallet, whereas the other half he takes great joy in recreating at random to the chagrin of his darling husband, love of his whole goddamn life.
“Then Jeff asked if I wanted to duck out,” and Eddie smiles up at him, a little sheepish; they both know the boys can see right through Eddie feeling needy, or lovelorn; Steve’s grateful as shit for Eddie’s bandmates, their friends, for knowing when Eddie just needs Steve.
“I didn’t even think twice, just,” Eddie swallows hard, a little, peeking up through lashes and bangs as he exhales:
“Just wanted to see you before the middle of the fucking night.”
And what can Steve do in the face of that, really? He can’t argue it. Wouldn’t ever fucking want to.
“I love you,” he frames Eddie’s face and kiss the bridge of his nose, then soft between his brows as he breathes out with his whole heart: “so goddamn much.”
“Can you promise me you won’t do the,” Eddie tips his head behind them; “the ladder thing, at least not by yourself?” And Eddie’s eyes are so, so big again. “Like, pretty please, don’t do that again?”
“I won’t,” Steve swears it, and kisses him firm to seal the promise: “thanks for coming to the rescue.” Because there was a three percent chance Steve was going to wipe the fuck out from very very high, and he’s have survived it, but he’s not twenty anymore, and it would have fucking sucked, probably for a while.
“Always, baby,” Eddie murmurs, still tight against Steve lips before he straightens a little, and this time he’s framing Steve’s face, but more holding him still in place, emphatic:
“Actually, amendment,” he says seriously, eyes darting between Steve’s a tiny-touch frantic: “next time you need to be on a ladder, you call me first,” he damn-well declares it, rather than asks; “so I can hold it steady.”
“My hero,” Steve breathes against him with a smile, and there’s not even a hint of teasing in it.
“I don’t trust any other hands to catch you, baby,” Eddie tells him, a little too raw; full sincerity bleeding from him all the sudden as he caresses down the cheeks he’s still cupping: “no one else in the whole wide world appreciates what you’re worth.”
“And what’s that, exactly,” Steve scoffs a little, playful where he’s held in Eddie’s arms but Eddie: Eddie’s holding him tight, now, and his heartbeat’s heavy where he’s moving to crush Steve to his chest, and there’s a little wavering pitch of something in his voice when he whispers:
“The whole wide world,” and oh.
That’s the answer.
It’s Steve’s answer, too, to the same exact question, but hearing it said so plain never stops feeling like the ending and remaking of the whole wide world, every time.
So yeah, Steve has to take a minute to swallow through the tightness in his throat, and maybe he does that with his forehead bowed against his husbands so they breathe each other in as a rule just in the course of living in the moment, together—and when the straighten up Steve steals a kiss first, quick but hard, with feeling, before he cracks his neck and sighs, taking in the scene that’s settled around them.
“Help me try and figure this out to hang?” Steve kicks at the tarp-tapestry, and Eddie walks its perimeter critically before frowning up at Steve.
“Think it needs some touch ups,” he pronounces solemnly, and fuck, yeah, all the color-dust from the useless staple-holes and the falling. But his husband’s actually really good with details, and matching colors, and using a brush, and fantasy settings—
“Paint’s in the back,” he says with a lilt of suggestion and Eddie lights up and grabs Steve’s hand to drag him toward the promise of painting, like maybe all he needed really was just…this.
tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson
♥️
divider credit here
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