Enfolded Midair Chapter 1
When I originally wrote this, it was two snippets only posted on my live journal and not to any comms because I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. It was short, but it got a respectable response considering it was only here. So I've added a few pages to it and I'm going to try posting it around and see what happens. Please don't feel like you have to comment again if you already have.
I'm unhappy right now with my two WIPs so I'm trying something different.
Title: Enfolded Midair
Author:englishblue
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Rating: Eventually nc-17
Summary: "Do you model?" A simple question, but to an eccentric sculptor and the man who embodies his masterpiece, it becomes a long, complicated obssession that could end in tragedy for both of them or a love that the very angels might envy.
NWS manip behind the cut through the extreme generosity of my darling girl Sue, candygramme.
Enfolded Midair
manip by digitalwave/drawing by the generous and lovely candygramme
Chapter 1
One-handed, Jensen pulled up the blinds that ran the length of his studio’s east-facing wall, then cracked open the louvered windows, inhaling the sharp-bladed taste of morning as it rushed in to surround him. A shiver goose bumped its way down his skin. He laid his chisel aside, flexing his cramped fingers after a night of intensive work. The cold invigorated him. Got the creativity flowing through his veins again along with his blood. It always had. Jensen thought he might be part Eskimo somewhere on his mother’s side to like the cold so much.
He stretched the sleeves of his hoodie down over his fingertips and turned to face the solid shape looming in the center of the studio floor. The rising light was bright and white this morning. It was perfect. There was no time for rest, though his eyes felt full of grit and his belly hollow from lack of food. Eating was at the very bottom of Jensen’s list of priorities. When his muse swept him into her arms and made love to him, he could only follow her blindly. Throw himself completely into what he was doing until the piece came alive, lived and breathed with the authenticity of flesh.
Jensen had been working on the same life-sized sculpture of a kneeling man for months now, the project occupying his every waking, and most of his sleeping, moments. It was fighting him. The struggle between stone and imagination wrecking havoc on his brain.
A passing cloud dimmed the knife shine of the rising sun as Jensen studied the previous night’s progress. He blinked, rubbing a hand across his face in irritation, the rasp of stubble reminding him he hadn’t shaved for days. It wasn’t important. Nothing was when he worked, only the marble and what lived inside it, struggling to be free.
He put his back to the wall and slid down onto the floor, feeling a stir of disquiet unlimber itself at the bottom of his gut as his eyes flicked over the rough lines. Curling his arms around his knees, he stared at the statue. It dominated the space where it stood seeming to push all the other pieces into the shadows.
Jensen had been at it feverishly all night, possessed, obsessed with getting the lines right; the way the limbs twined around each other, the dip of the head and the bow of the long, lean neck. But something was wrong. Jensen just couldn’t pinpoint what it was. And it was driving him crazy, making his head jolt like a bolt of electricity had been thrown into it from a light socket.
He looked down seeing marble dust embedded beneath his fingernails. He stared at it idly. His eyes burnt a little and his head was full of mushy cotton. He’d worked straight through, last night and the night before. The passion was consuming him as the figure began to emerge from the stone. Watching it take shape kept Jensen awake when his arms ached to stop, and he could barely hold the chisel up, make the careful, revealing taps that breathed life into the inanimate.
Downstairs, the unimportant part of the house where Jensen barely took the time to live and sleep, a door suddenly opened, letting in the sounds of the city, then shut them out with a decisive bang.
“Jensen? You up there?”
The voice was loud. Familiar. Jensen stretched his long legs out over the wooden floor, the cramped knots behind his knees appreciating the relief. He waited, anticipating what was coming, mouth watering, smelling it as Tom thudded up the staircase, not taking the time to shed his coat and knit cap or the scarf twisted in a loop around his neck. He appeared at the top of the stairs, grinning.
“Jesus. It’s freezing in here. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
He shoved the huge Styrofoam cup of coffee into Jensen hands and straightened, his eyes following Jensen’s concentrated stare to where it was fixed halfway across the studio. The room took up the entire top floor of the building, smooth wood surfaces and white-painted walls, the simplicity a perfect setting to showcase Jensen’s sculptures and the few paintings he did when the mood seized him.
“It looks good, Jen. This one looks good. I think you’ve got it.”
“No.” Stream rose from the black surface of the coffee, tendrils winding around Jensen’s pugnacious face. He inhaled a mouthful and shook his head angrily. “No. It’s not right. It’s not right. There’s something missing. I’ll have to start over again.”
Jensen’s good mood plummeted. He set the coffee down, climbed to his feet, ignoring Tom’s protests.
“Christ, Jen. Don’t do it. This is the third one! Even if it’s not perfect, we can still get a good price for it. You’re the only one who can’t see how great it is.” Tom’s voice rose in urgency when he saw Jensen snatch up the crowbar he’d used twice before, flexing his fingers around the solid iron. “I haven’t had anything to sell in almost four months. At least give me the Father picture,” he pleaded.
Tom winced at the clang of metal on marble, turning a shoulder to protect himself from flying chunks of stone that began to pepper the air. Jensen’s back flexed under the over-sized hoodie, muscles bunching and relaxing. The edges of the sleeves hid his hands, but Tom could imagine his tenacious grip. Jensen’s arms rose and fell, again and again, battering his creation until nothing recognizable was left only a pile of expensive rubble.
Focused on his shattered hopes, it took a few minutes for Tom to realize that Jensen was talking to him, his voice low and excited, his cheeks pink with exertion.
“Wings,” he nearly shouted, tossing aside the crowbar, eyes wide and green and glowing with an inner fire. “Wings! The wings are missing. My God, why didn’t I see it before. He needs to have wings.”
“What? He’s an angel now? I thought... That’s... Okay, man. Whatever you say” Tom brushed back the thatch of dark hair falling across his forehead, feeling befuddled-and cold. Very cold.
He blew on his fists and watched Jensen’s caged strides as he paced off the studio, passing through stripes of sunlight that made him look ethereal himself. Glints of gold shone on the tips of the stiff spikes of blonde covering his head, and when he turned his face to Tom, teeth gleaming in a maniac grin, his eyes glowed greener than Tom had ever seen them.
“So I guess you want the new marble soon?”
There wasn’t much hope behind Tom’s question. He knew Jensen. Knew the way he flung himself into his passions. Nothing could hold up against their tsunami force. Tom was already rummaging in his head through the list of friends who could be blackmailed into helping him-how much the truck would cost and the forklift.
“Yesterday. I want it yesterday.” Jensen’s reply burst out adamantly, his voice graveled from lack of sleep. The long bristle of his lashes drooped. “You know which one I mean.”
Jensen sketched a space in the air with his hands, leaning against the counter. Tom thought of the pale pink block of marble waiting beneath a tarp in the warehouse. Jensen had come so close to choosing it the last time. Perhaps he’d known, deep in that instinctual furnace that drove him, that he still didn’t have the concept right yet. He was saving the pink for perfection he’d told Tom time and again.
A chill that wasn’t the product of the late November morning ran up Tom’s spine. He had his own presentiments on occasion. This was one. That marble would fly. He could feel it in the depths of his bones.
“Okay. Fine. Far be it from me to stand in the way of genius. But I still want the Father picture.”
Jensen snorted. “Genius, huh? Don’t think flattery is going to get you what you want, dude. When are you going to give up on that? I told you. The painting isn’t for sale. You can have any of the others. But not that one.”
“Jesus. You’re a stubborn, bull-headed asshole sometimes, man. Why the hell are you so attached to it? You don’t care about the rest.”
Jensen shook his head. He had never been forthcoming about what Tom had come to call the Father picture; a scruffy-haired man crouched between a pair of boys, one slightly bigger than the other, his arms a bastion of protection against the encroaching darkness that pressed flat and frighteningly against the room’s only window pane. It gave Tom a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he could get big bucks for it, more than all the others combined. But Jensen had dug in his heels and wouldn’t relent.
The closed face turned to him made Tom sighed in defeat. “I’ll get going then. Maybe Steve can give me a hand.”
“Good idea.”
But Jensen wasn’t really listening. He was off in his head somewhere seeing wings.
Steve had a gig coming up. Tom only remembered hearing about it when he was leaning on Steve’s buzzer, hollering curses at him and kicking his toe into the doorjamb. An old lady stuck her head out into the hallway and called Tom a miserable bastard.
“He’s gone to Texas. Fuck off.”
It seemed kind of a rude thing for an old lady say. The door slamming gave Tom the beginnings of a headache. Driving through afternoon traffic, the solution crept up on him. The warehouse where Jensen rented space for his marble was a big, glass-front building on Baker street. To look at it, you’d think it was an empty shell. But inside, it was organized, things stored there kept in roped off areas and neatly tarped. Between the shrouded piles, the cement floors were swept clean.
The place was overseen by a guy even taller than Tom, and that was saying a lot because Tom was a really big guy. Tom had only spoken to him a few times. The kid never seemed over-friendly, but Tom recalled on more than one occasion he’d offered help while Jensen’s volunteer crew was struggling to get the forklift into position, either loading or unloading it; offered to ride along in the truck to the delivery point and help Tom get the piece up all the stairs that he’d been complaining bitterly about.
Tom found the man he was looking for in the little office at the back of the building. A desk, a file cabinet and a pair of huge shoulders hunched over a book were all the furniture that would fit inside the small space. He opened the door to the glass-walled room carefully and leaned in with an ingratiating smile on his face.
“Hey.”
A mop of curly hair fell away to reveal a frowning face. “What can I do for you? I’m kind of on my lunch break here.”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess you wouldn’t be up for lending me a hand then?” The statement rose into a question. Tom scratched at the back of his head. “I”d be willing to tip. A lot.”
“A lot, huh?” A hint of a smile pulled at the corner of the guy’s lips, his eyes warming over the mention of money. “That’s kind of music to a poor man’s ears.”
He folded his book closed and stood up-and up-his eyes reaching a level a little bit above Tom’s own, which was something pretty unfamiliar to Tom, though he knew the guy practically walked on stilts.
“The Ackles stuff,” Tom clarified. “I need to deliver one of the big hunk’s of rock he’s got stored here.”
“Ackles. Oh yeah. I remember that one.”
The man’s gaze lost a little focus, as though he were remembering that one time he’d seen a pale face, the eyes and mouth of a voluptuary rounded in bliss as he chose one of his blocks of marble. Tom knew himself that vivid sense of Other that set Jensen apart. He rarely interacted with the real world and was mostly a deranged saint untouched in his own paradise of stone dust and tapping hymns.
“Yeah. That’s the one,” Tom muttered, backing off as his new assistant came forward. The two of them together made the room pretty crowded.
A file drawer screeched open and the man pulled a folder out, flipping it open to a couple of sheets of paper, pretending to read. He riffled through them with business-like efficiency for good effect, before turning to give Tom a dimpled smile more friendly than any Tom had ever seen from him before. Evidently the old saying ‘money talked’ was far truer than he’d ever known. Or Jensen, quite possibly, had a stalker on his hands..
“I’m all yours. Lead on.”
& % & % & % & %
Jensen grabbed a stick of charcoal eager to keep the inspiration sparking in his head now that he finally knew what was wrong. Barely aware of Tom leaving, he drew swiftly; a figure crouched on one knee, fingertips braced on the floor, about to push upward in an uncontainable surge of joy. Above the bent form, wide arcing lines filled the paper with a sweep of motion, the flex and pop of beating wings ready to lift and fling him into the clear sky.
Some of the rattled tenseness eased out of Jensen’s bones with the captured swirl of vivid action. He breathed easier knowing he’d finally snatched what had eluded him from near defeat. The idea of starting again and failing again had made his stomach roll with queasy panic. It was the kind of thing that sucked Jensen into the swamp of depression he was prone to, his personal plague that sought him out and took his spirit away when things weren’t going well.
Tom’s remark about an angel came back to Jensen, echoing in his brain with hollow force. An angel? It wasn’t an angel. Jensen tore the sheet of paper from his sketch pad, the square, creamy texture ripping a little from his impatience. Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, he sipped his cold coffee, scarcely aware of its bitter taste, while his eyes scanned the great swath of smeared black lines he’d drawn.
His head was busy fleshing out the sleek curve of shoulder muscle that echoed down chest and thighs into the long arch of a bare feet. But part of Jensen stood aside and repeated; it wasn’t an angel. Never that. It had to be a man. Icarus attempting to capture the sun and finally falling in his hubris. Prometheus stealing fire and paying for it with unending agony under that savage beak. A man. A man beautiful and forever doomed by his belief in his own invincibility.
The surcease of sound that had enveloped Jensen was broken by the street door below suddenly slamming open, reality drifting up the staircase from the first floor on the discordant cacophony of voices and car horns. The clatter that was Tom invaded Jensen’s peaceful kingdom for the second time in one day.
He climbed stiffly to his feet, bones protesting as they unfolded, eagerness nudging its way past the discomfort as Jensen waited to get his hands on the new marble. Expecting to fall on it the moment it appeared, the creative clamor in Jensen’s blood dropped away at the sight of a broad back hunched in a straining curve over the flesh-colored stone, almost as if the man were a part of it and struggling to tear himself free.
It wasn’t Tom. It wasn’t anyone Jensen had set eyes on before. He knew he would have remembered that dark tumble of hair brushing over a strong neck, the slanted eyes that turned to him, gray and green and gold flecked, full of question and knowledge. It was as simple as that. Jensen’s face flushed deeply pink as heat engulfed his body, and he was swept out of his closed off little world into a place of stark reality.
He had been an asexual robot for so long it felt strange to have blood pounding between his legs again. He rubbed his eyes, grit scratching under the lids from too many sleepless nights, trying to remember the last time he had gotten laid. Jensen looked on sex as purely medicinal. A vague recollection of height and breath pinning him down, striping him of clothes and places to hide came to him as he stared at the person with Tom.
The two men wrestled the huge block of marble into the studio’s center, easing it down with profanity and gentleness, despite which the weight of it landing caused a thunderous clap that rattled the walls.
“Here it is,” Tom crowed, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. He strode forward, swinging a hand in the stranger’s direction by way of introduction. “This is Jared. From the warehouse. He saved my ass by agreeing to help. Thank the man, Jensen.”
“Uh. Thank you.” Too little sleep and the deep pulse of blood in his ears made Jensen’s voice sound husky, even raw when he pushed the words out, fingers tightening spastically on the sheet of paper in his hand. “Really. Thank you.”
Laughing, Tom shook his head. “Once is enough, Jen. I paid him so it’s not like he did it for free.”
“Hey. I’m right here. And you didn't pay me that much.”
The man in question shot Tom a somewhat jaundiced glare and came forward, hand extended. Jensen took it. He hadn’t any recourse except rudeness, though the thought of touching a miracle made a few invisible shivers course along the knobs of his spine. Their flesh met palm to palm. They shook, Jared’s long, elegant fingers curling around Jensen’s calloused hand, the one that shaped stone and exposed its perfect beauty. Jensen disengaged immediately, electricity crackling under the thin layer of his skin. He took a quick step back, tall himself, but threatened by the giant looming over him, and the harsh sound of breathing. He wasn’t sure if it was his own or Jared’s. Or which would be worse.
“Do you model?”
The question was out before Jensen had time to consider what he was saying. He only knew that before him stood his Icarus. It was imperative he didn’t escape. Jensen was already striping him down to his naked form in his mind’s eye. Seeing the sleek lines of the man’s body; flat belly, his thighs long and bunched, the rounds of his knees and how the softness of his cock would lie between the revealed bones of his skeleton.
There was nothing lascivious about it. The sexual man was submerged in the head of the sculpturer. Jensen was already tracing invisible lines, making connections, his work at last come to life before him. He grabbed the paper he’d dropped up off the floor. Rolling the charcoal between his fingers, he began to correct his drawing.
I'm unhappy right now with my two WIPs so I'm trying something different.
Title: Enfolded Midair
Author:englishblue
Pairing: Jensen/Jared
Rating: Eventually nc-17
Summary: "Do you model?" A simple question, but to an eccentric sculptor and the man who embodies his masterpiece, it becomes a long, complicated obssession that could end in tragedy for both of them or a love that the very angels might envy.
NWS manip behind the cut through the extreme generosity of my darling girl Sue, candygramme.
Enfolded Midair
manip by digitalwave/drawing by the generous and lovely candygramme
Chapter 1
One-handed, Jensen pulled up the blinds that ran the length of his studio’s east-facing wall, then cracked open the louvered windows, inhaling the sharp-bladed taste of morning as it rushed in to surround him. A shiver goose bumped its way down his skin. He laid his chisel aside, flexing his cramped fingers after a night of intensive work. The cold invigorated him. Got the creativity flowing through his veins again along with his blood. It always had. Jensen thought he might be part Eskimo somewhere on his mother’s side to like the cold so much.
He stretched the sleeves of his hoodie down over his fingertips and turned to face the solid shape looming in the center of the studio floor. The rising light was bright and white this morning. It was perfect. There was no time for rest, though his eyes felt full of grit and his belly hollow from lack of food. Eating was at the very bottom of Jensen’s list of priorities. When his muse swept him into her arms and made love to him, he could only follow her blindly. Throw himself completely into what he was doing until the piece came alive, lived and breathed with the authenticity of flesh.
Jensen had been working on the same life-sized sculpture of a kneeling man for months now, the project occupying his every waking, and most of his sleeping, moments. It was fighting him. The struggle between stone and imagination wrecking havoc on his brain.
A passing cloud dimmed the knife shine of the rising sun as Jensen studied the previous night’s progress. He blinked, rubbing a hand across his face in irritation, the rasp of stubble reminding him he hadn’t shaved for days. It wasn’t important. Nothing was when he worked, only the marble and what lived inside it, struggling to be free.
He put his back to the wall and slid down onto the floor, feeling a stir of disquiet unlimber itself at the bottom of his gut as his eyes flicked over the rough lines. Curling his arms around his knees, he stared at the statue. It dominated the space where it stood seeming to push all the other pieces into the shadows.
Jensen had been at it feverishly all night, possessed, obsessed with getting the lines right; the way the limbs twined around each other, the dip of the head and the bow of the long, lean neck. But something was wrong. Jensen just couldn’t pinpoint what it was. And it was driving him crazy, making his head jolt like a bolt of electricity had been thrown into it from a light socket.
He looked down seeing marble dust embedded beneath his fingernails. He stared at it idly. His eyes burnt a little and his head was full of mushy cotton. He’d worked straight through, last night and the night before. The passion was consuming him as the figure began to emerge from the stone. Watching it take shape kept Jensen awake when his arms ached to stop, and he could barely hold the chisel up, make the careful, revealing taps that breathed life into the inanimate.
Downstairs, the unimportant part of the house where Jensen barely took the time to live and sleep, a door suddenly opened, letting in the sounds of the city, then shut them out with a decisive bang.
“Jensen? You up there?”
The voice was loud. Familiar. Jensen stretched his long legs out over the wooden floor, the cramped knots behind his knees appreciating the relief. He waited, anticipating what was coming, mouth watering, smelling it as Tom thudded up the staircase, not taking the time to shed his coat and knit cap or the scarf twisted in a loop around his neck. He appeared at the top of the stairs, grinning.
“Jesus. It’s freezing in here. I don’t know how you can stand it.”
He shoved the huge Styrofoam cup of coffee into Jensen hands and straightened, his eyes following Jensen’s concentrated stare to where it was fixed halfway across the studio. The room took up the entire top floor of the building, smooth wood surfaces and white-painted walls, the simplicity a perfect setting to showcase Jensen’s sculptures and the few paintings he did when the mood seized him.
“It looks good, Jen. This one looks good. I think you’ve got it.”
“No.” Stream rose from the black surface of the coffee, tendrils winding around Jensen’s pugnacious face. He inhaled a mouthful and shook his head angrily. “No. It’s not right. It’s not right. There’s something missing. I’ll have to start over again.”
Jensen’s good mood plummeted. He set the coffee down, climbed to his feet, ignoring Tom’s protests.
“Christ, Jen. Don’t do it. This is the third one! Even if it’s not perfect, we can still get a good price for it. You’re the only one who can’t see how great it is.” Tom’s voice rose in urgency when he saw Jensen snatch up the crowbar he’d used twice before, flexing his fingers around the solid iron. “I haven’t had anything to sell in almost four months. At least give me the Father picture,” he pleaded.
Tom winced at the clang of metal on marble, turning a shoulder to protect himself from flying chunks of stone that began to pepper the air. Jensen’s back flexed under the over-sized hoodie, muscles bunching and relaxing. The edges of the sleeves hid his hands, but Tom could imagine his tenacious grip. Jensen’s arms rose and fell, again and again, battering his creation until nothing recognizable was left only a pile of expensive rubble.
Focused on his shattered hopes, it took a few minutes for Tom to realize that Jensen was talking to him, his voice low and excited, his cheeks pink with exertion.
“Wings,” he nearly shouted, tossing aside the crowbar, eyes wide and green and glowing with an inner fire. “Wings! The wings are missing. My God, why didn’t I see it before. He needs to have wings.”
“What? He’s an angel now? I thought... That’s... Okay, man. Whatever you say” Tom brushed back the thatch of dark hair falling across his forehead, feeling befuddled-and cold. Very cold.
He blew on his fists and watched Jensen’s caged strides as he paced off the studio, passing through stripes of sunlight that made him look ethereal himself. Glints of gold shone on the tips of the stiff spikes of blonde covering his head, and when he turned his face to Tom, teeth gleaming in a maniac grin, his eyes glowed greener than Tom had ever seen them.
“So I guess you want the new marble soon?”
There wasn’t much hope behind Tom’s question. He knew Jensen. Knew the way he flung himself into his passions. Nothing could hold up against their tsunami force. Tom was already rummaging in his head through the list of friends who could be blackmailed into helping him-how much the truck would cost and the forklift.
“Yesterday. I want it yesterday.” Jensen’s reply burst out adamantly, his voice graveled from lack of sleep. The long bristle of his lashes drooped. “You know which one I mean.”
Jensen sketched a space in the air with his hands, leaning against the counter. Tom thought of the pale pink block of marble waiting beneath a tarp in the warehouse. Jensen had come so close to choosing it the last time. Perhaps he’d known, deep in that instinctual furnace that drove him, that he still didn’t have the concept right yet. He was saving the pink for perfection he’d told Tom time and again.
A chill that wasn’t the product of the late November morning ran up Tom’s spine. He had his own presentiments on occasion. This was one. That marble would fly. He could feel it in the depths of his bones.
“Okay. Fine. Far be it from me to stand in the way of genius. But I still want the Father picture.”
Jensen snorted. “Genius, huh? Don’t think flattery is going to get you what you want, dude. When are you going to give up on that? I told you. The painting isn’t for sale. You can have any of the others. But not that one.”
“Jesus. You’re a stubborn, bull-headed asshole sometimes, man. Why the hell are you so attached to it? You don’t care about the rest.”
Jensen shook his head. He had never been forthcoming about what Tom had come to call the Father picture; a scruffy-haired man crouched between a pair of boys, one slightly bigger than the other, his arms a bastion of protection against the encroaching darkness that pressed flat and frighteningly against the room’s only window pane. It gave Tom a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he could get big bucks for it, more than all the others combined. But Jensen had dug in his heels and wouldn’t relent.
The closed face turned to him made Tom sighed in defeat. “I’ll get going then. Maybe Steve can give me a hand.”
“Good idea.”
But Jensen wasn’t really listening. He was off in his head somewhere seeing wings.
Steve had a gig coming up. Tom only remembered hearing about it when he was leaning on Steve’s buzzer, hollering curses at him and kicking his toe into the doorjamb. An old lady stuck her head out into the hallway and called Tom a miserable bastard.
“He’s gone to Texas. Fuck off.”
It seemed kind of a rude thing for an old lady say. The door slamming gave Tom the beginnings of a headache. Driving through afternoon traffic, the solution crept up on him. The warehouse where Jensen rented space for his marble was a big, glass-front building on Baker street. To look at it, you’d think it was an empty shell. But inside, it was organized, things stored there kept in roped off areas and neatly tarped. Between the shrouded piles, the cement floors were swept clean.
The place was overseen by a guy even taller than Tom, and that was saying a lot because Tom was a really big guy. Tom had only spoken to him a few times. The kid never seemed over-friendly, but Tom recalled on more than one occasion he’d offered help while Jensen’s volunteer crew was struggling to get the forklift into position, either loading or unloading it; offered to ride along in the truck to the delivery point and help Tom get the piece up all the stairs that he’d been complaining bitterly about.
Tom found the man he was looking for in the little office at the back of the building. A desk, a file cabinet and a pair of huge shoulders hunched over a book were all the furniture that would fit inside the small space. He opened the door to the glass-walled room carefully and leaned in with an ingratiating smile on his face.
“Hey.”
A mop of curly hair fell away to reveal a frowning face. “What can I do for you? I’m kind of on my lunch break here.”
“Oh. Sorry. I guess you wouldn’t be up for lending me a hand then?” The statement rose into a question. Tom scratched at the back of his head. “I”d be willing to tip. A lot.”
“A lot, huh?” A hint of a smile pulled at the corner of the guy’s lips, his eyes warming over the mention of money. “That’s kind of music to a poor man’s ears.”
He folded his book closed and stood up-and up-his eyes reaching a level a little bit above Tom’s own, which was something pretty unfamiliar to Tom, though he knew the guy practically walked on stilts.
“The Ackles stuff,” Tom clarified. “I need to deliver one of the big hunk’s of rock he’s got stored here.”
“Ackles. Oh yeah. I remember that one.”
The man’s gaze lost a little focus, as though he were remembering that one time he’d seen a pale face, the eyes and mouth of a voluptuary rounded in bliss as he chose one of his blocks of marble. Tom knew himself that vivid sense of Other that set Jensen apart. He rarely interacted with the real world and was mostly a deranged saint untouched in his own paradise of stone dust and tapping hymns.
“Yeah. That’s the one,” Tom muttered, backing off as his new assistant came forward. The two of them together made the room pretty crowded.
A file drawer screeched open and the man pulled a folder out, flipping it open to a couple of sheets of paper, pretending to read. He riffled through them with business-like efficiency for good effect, before turning to give Tom a dimpled smile more friendly than any Tom had ever seen from him before. Evidently the old saying ‘money talked’ was far truer than he’d ever known. Or Jensen, quite possibly, had a stalker on his hands..
“I’m all yours. Lead on.”
& % & % & % & %
Jensen grabbed a stick of charcoal eager to keep the inspiration sparking in his head now that he finally knew what was wrong. Barely aware of Tom leaving, he drew swiftly; a figure crouched on one knee, fingertips braced on the floor, about to push upward in an uncontainable surge of joy. Above the bent form, wide arcing lines filled the paper with a sweep of motion, the flex and pop of beating wings ready to lift and fling him into the clear sky.
Some of the rattled tenseness eased out of Jensen’s bones with the captured swirl of vivid action. He breathed easier knowing he’d finally snatched what had eluded him from near defeat. The idea of starting again and failing again had made his stomach roll with queasy panic. It was the kind of thing that sucked Jensen into the swamp of depression he was prone to, his personal plague that sought him out and took his spirit away when things weren’t going well.
Tom’s remark about an angel came back to Jensen, echoing in his brain with hollow force. An angel? It wasn’t an angel. Jensen tore the sheet of paper from his sketch pad, the square, creamy texture ripping a little from his impatience. Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, he sipped his cold coffee, scarcely aware of its bitter taste, while his eyes scanned the great swath of smeared black lines he’d drawn.
His head was busy fleshing out the sleek curve of shoulder muscle that echoed down chest and thighs into the long arch of a bare feet. But part of Jensen stood aside and repeated; it wasn’t an angel. Never that. It had to be a man. Icarus attempting to capture the sun and finally falling in his hubris. Prometheus stealing fire and paying for it with unending agony under that savage beak. A man. A man beautiful and forever doomed by his belief in his own invincibility.
The surcease of sound that had enveloped Jensen was broken by the street door below suddenly slamming open, reality drifting up the staircase from the first floor on the discordant cacophony of voices and car horns. The clatter that was Tom invaded Jensen’s peaceful kingdom for the second time in one day.
He climbed stiffly to his feet, bones protesting as they unfolded, eagerness nudging its way past the discomfort as Jensen waited to get his hands on the new marble. Expecting to fall on it the moment it appeared, the creative clamor in Jensen’s blood dropped away at the sight of a broad back hunched in a straining curve over the flesh-colored stone, almost as if the man were a part of it and struggling to tear himself free.
It wasn’t Tom. It wasn’t anyone Jensen had set eyes on before. He knew he would have remembered that dark tumble of hair brushing over a strong neck, the slanted eyes that turned to him, gray and green and gold flecked, full of question and knowledge. It was as simple as that. Jensen’s face flushed deeply pink as heat engulfed his body, and he was swept out of his closed off little world into a place of stark reality.
He had been an asexual robot for so long it felt strange to have blood pounding between his legs again. He rubbed his eyes, grit scratching under the lids from too many sleepless nights, trying to remember the last time he had gotten laid. Jensen looked on sex as purely medicinal. A vague recollection of height and breath pinning him down, striping him of clothes and places to hide came to him as he stared at the person with Tom.
The two men wrestled the huge block of marble into the studio’s center, easing it down with profanity and gentleness, despite which the weight of it landing caused a thunderous clap that rattled the walls.
“Here it is,” Tom crowed, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. He strode forward, swinging a hand in the stranger’s direction by way of introduction. “This is Jared. From the warehouse. He saved my ass by agreeing to help. Thank the man, Jensen.”
“Uh. Thank you.” Too little sleep and the deep pulse of blood in his ears made Jensen’s voice sound husky, even raw when he pushed the words out, fingers tightening spastically on the sheet of paper in his hand. “Really. Thank you.”
Laughing, Tom shook his head. “Once is enough, Jen. I paid him so it’s not like he did it for free.”
“Hey. I’m right here. And you didn't pay me that much.”
The man in question shot Tom a somewhat jaundiced glare and came forward, hand extended. Jensen took it. He hadn’t any recourse except rudeness, though the thought of touching a miracle made a few invisible shivers course along the knobs of his spine. Their flesh met palm to palm. They shook, Jared’s long, elegant fingers curling around Jensen’s calloused hand, the one that shaped stone and exposed its perfect beauty. Jensen disengaged immediately, electricity crackling under the thin layer of his skin. He took a quick step back, tall himself, but threatened by the giant looming over him, and the harsh sound of breathing. He wasn’t sure if it was his own or Jared’s. Or which would be worse.
“Do you model?”
The question was out before Jensen had time to consider what he was saying. He only knew that before him stood his Icarus. It was imperative he didn’t escape. Jensen was already striping him down to his naked form in his mind’s eye. Seeing the sleek lines of the man’s body; flat belly, his thighs long and bunched, the rounds of his knees and how the softness of his cock would lie between the revealed bones of his skeleton.
There was nothing lascivious about it. The sexual man was submerged in the head of the sculpturer. Jensen was already tracing invisible lines, making connections, his work at last come to life before him. He grabbed the paper he’d dropped up off the floor. Rolling the charcoal between his fingers, he began to correct his drawing.