Emotional Connection

Together

Ashley-Rae would freely admit that she hated decorating. Even with magic, it was all a little tedious to her, not to mention she never stayed in one place long enough to actually make anywhere her own. Until now.
And apparently, Charlie loved decorating.

She'd made it very clear early on that she really didn't care much for decorating, as long as she liked the colours of the paint or wallpaper he'd decided on, and she wouldn't want to help, which he was completely ok with - until it came to the 'nursery'.

"You have to help me! Come on, just one wall, it won't take long, I promise!"

Ashley sighed, throwing her medical bag onto its hook by the door. "Charles, I'm two seconds off an eight-hour shift, can we have this argument again after I've had caffeine?"

He nodded, waving his wand, and having a cup of perfectly made coffee in front of his girlfriend in less than twenty seconds. "It's our nursery! For our babies! This is one thing you need to help me on."

Glaring, she sat heavily on the sofa, being careful not to spill her coffee. "Charlie, I told you when you moved in that I wouldn't help with decorating any of it. Why does it matter that it's the nursery? They're dragon babies, I'm not sure they care what colour their room is as long as they get fed on time."

"But I care. And when I'm on shift you'll have to be the one in there caring for our kids, so you need to like it too. I'll make dinner for a week and do the dishes?"

Ashley turned, a mischievous look in her eyes.

"Oh no, I've seen that look in the twins before." Charlie's face dropped.

"If you're bartering chores, then I'm game." She considered, sipping her coffee. "Dinner and dishes for five days and you sweep the floors."

Looking a little lost, he thought about the offer for a few seconds. "How long am I sweeping the floors for?"

"Five days."

"Done."

"Hand me a paintbrush!" Ashley laughed, making Charlie drag her to the nursery room, where there were dismantled shelves piled on the floor and they had to step over several incubators in order to get anywhere. "Ok, I know I said I'd do this, but this is ridiculous. Let's put the incubators in the spare room for now - the empty one we can convert to a bedroom or whatever - so we can walk around without fear of dying. Or falling flat on our faces."

Charlie rolled his eyes, hiding a smile, but did as she said anyway, while she opened the can of mint green paint.

"Charl, babe, why mint green? I thought you said you were going to do blue?"

He reappeared, looking a little guilty. "I liked the mint green better so I did the spare room blue instead, so I can enjoy the green."

Ashley stared at him for a few seconds before chuckling softly. "I can't argue with that. Ok, so... How do we do this?"

Blinking, Charlie frowned, looking down at the can of paint by Ashley's feet. "What do you mean? Grab a brush and paint the wall?"

"There's no particular way of doing it you just paint it?"

"You've never decorated before?"

"Never had to." She shrugged, "and it always seemed boring."

Charlie smiled softly, "ok, grab a brush, dip it in. Ok, yeah that works, but you gotta scrape some off otherwise you're going to put an inch of paint on the wall and it'll never dry." He carefully explained, walking her through it until she managed to get the hang of it.