Paris in the Early Days 1/6
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 1 of 6
Master post
Art
Tel était le Paris de notre jeunesse, au temps où nous étions très pauvres et très heureux.
But this is how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy.
--Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
The Luxembourg Gardens
Paris in spring, when a young person's fancy turns to thoughts of love. In Jared's case, love could mean many things - his studio, his art, the new brushes he bought yesterday when Sandy unexpectedly gave him some francs, the flowers blooming in the street below his windows, Christian's chicken-in-the-pot, the soft blue sky outside, the cabaret where Sandy and Genevieve danced, the sound of French drifting up from the street and through the floor, the entirety of Montmartre, the really excellent sex he'd had last night which had led to some really good sleep, and his boyfriend Jensen, who was... not there.
Jared shoved the duvet over to the empty side of the bed, swung his legs off the mattress, and stood. He stretched. The studio was full of indirect morning light - the windows faced south and west, more or less, so he and Jensen got some really glorious sun in the afternoons, but the morning light was a bit more diffuse. He could see dust motes floating in the air, and paintings leaning against the walls in shadow. It really was beautiful.
There was a note on the table, scribbled on a scrap of paper that Jensen had probably ripped out of his notebook:
You looked so peaceful I didn't want to wake you. See you tonight.
That meant Come by Christian's café for dinner and he'll feed you, which Jared was more than happy to do. Christian was a good cook, he poured decent wine, and he'd known Jensen since they were kids and felt a kind of obligation to feed his old friend and his old friend's bottomless pit of a painter boyfriend. He'd give Jared and Jensen a hard time about floating them credit, he'd refuse to take a painting in payment, and he'd eventually dish something up and serve them.
If there was one thing Jared would change about being in Paris, it was that he'd like to actually sell some paintings and make some money. He didn't like having to scrounge off his friends.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't do it. A boy had to eat, after all. And he was only twenty-three - he could still be growing.
He wondered where Jensen had gone. Maybe he'd found a sidewalk table at a little café or a patisserie along the Rue Lepic or the wider Boulevard de Clichy or any of the narrow side streets in Montmartre, for a coffee and a croissant and a first-row seat to the goings-on in their corner of Paris. Or maybe he was sitting inside, listening to morning chatter and trying to write. He hadn't sold any stories yet, and it was hard to get an English-language play produced in France. He was currently working on a series of stories and vignettes about Paris, including a few tales about a young poet and the love of his life, both characters thinly disguised versions of himself and Jared. (Or more well disguised versions, as the poet's love was a pretty French girl who made lace, rather than a tall boy from Texas who liked to paint.) There was no shortage of story fodder in their neighborhood, that was for sure.
They lived in a studio on the top floor of an old converted factory. It hung off the slope of the hill, the old factory windows unobstructed by trees and thus a conduit for the inescapable noise of their neighbors and the smells of lilac and hawthorne and baking bread. It was an old, flimsy building, the walls thin enough that Jared and Jensen could hear the girl who lived below them, and the two American brothers next door. Edwin was a composer and musician, and he'd hung blankets over his walls to try and improve the acoustics and coincidentally deaden the noise from Jared and Jensen's studio.
Jared hadn't thought they were that loud - they certainly tried to be mindful of the fact that they had close neighbors - but sometimes they got so excited that they'd knock the bedframe against the wall, and he imagined that could be annoying and distracting. And no one needed to hear him and Jensen having sex.
There was a sign on their door that said, in English and French, "Please knock. We might be naked." It had been nailed there last autumn when one of their building neighbors, a painter and illustrator named Sebastian, had waltzed in to borrow something - the door had been unlocked - and interrupted Jared and Jensen fucking on the sofa. "If I'd known there was going to be a free show I would've invited some friends," he'd commented drily. Jensen was mortified (much more than Sebastian was) and the next day the sign appeared on their door.
A couple of months later Sebastian moved out and shifted his stuff to a new studio on the Boulevard de Clichy, but the sign remained.
On the first of the month, like clockwork, the landlady's grand-niece Marion came by to collect the rent. Sometimes, when they didn't have the money - and a lot of times they didn't have the money - she'd accept a painting instead. The building creaked and leaked and the windows rattled in the least wind, but it was cheap and the light was good and Jared liked being able to go out into the tiny plaza in front of the old factory and look up to the top of the butte - the "mont" of Montmartre - and see the white basilica of Sacré-Coeur rising over the city. He liked being able to look out the drafty many-paned windows of his studio and see the roofs of the houses marching down the hill, the occasional windmill with its still blades stretching into the air.
Compared to the rest of Paris, with its orderly boulevards and stately buildings and formal gardens, Montmartre looked like the village it still partly was - uneven streets winding up the butte, cheap cafés, rowdy bars, lilac and wild roses clinging to the crooked wooden buildings, painters and prostitutes and butchers and bakers and laundresses and cats and the occasional cow. It was a wild place, in the way of old neighborhoods reluctantly nestled hard against a more civilized city. Montmartre rolled down the butte, met the rest of Paris, and flowed across the Seine, the whole a busier and more crowded and more exciting city than the one Jared had left.
He was Texan, and he'd always be Texan, and someday he figured he'd go home. But until then, he was young and broke and living in Paris with the man he loved, and he was going to enjoy it.
Today that meant taking advantage of the light and hauling his paintbox and easel to the Jardin du Luxembourg. There should be a puppet show today, which meant crowds to paint if nothing else. It was a glorious day and he wanted to be out in it. He pulled on some clothes, packed his things, dug up a handful of coins in case he needed to buy something, and went.
He ran into Danneel, his American nanny friend, in the gardens, where she had taken her charge Baby B to watch the puppet show. Baby B was apparently having none of it, and Danneel was bouncing him around the garden's formal paths in his wicker baby carriage when Jared found her.
He was in such a good mood he kissed her hello, on both cheeks in the French fashion, even though she'd once told him that wasn't really the proper thing to do with a member of someone's household staff. Now she just laughed.
"You must be having a good day," she said. "We came to see the puppet show but the little Monsieur had other ideas." She wiggled her fingers under the hood of the baby carriage, letting Baby B know that she was talking about him. Jared peered into the carriage. The baby looked calmly back at him.
"He's quiet now."
"You should've heard the squalling before." She pushed the carriage along the path. "Come on, walk with me. I have an hour still. What did you paint?"
"Crowds. Trees. Shrubbery." He'd sketched, mostly, feeling too overcome by the weather to do much more than make vague marks on his canvas. He'd probably end up painting over everything anyway.
"I would've thought you'd be in the Bois de Boulogne." That was where they usually ran into each other, and was in fact where Jared finally talked to her in the first place, having seen her several times and having heard her speaking to Baby B in American-accented English. He and Jensen had been in Paris ten months now, and his French was still embarrassing. Jensen did a lot of translating.
"Tomorrow, probably. I was hoping you'd come to watch the puppet show today and I could say hi."
"Well, we tried to watch the puppet show." Danneel glanced at Baby B, who now seemed to be falling asleep. She rolled her eyes. "So hi." She grinned at Jared.
He thought about a half-finished painting back in the studio, showing her wheeling the baby carriage along a sunny path in the Bois de Boulogne. He should finish it. She was very pretty and made a good subject. He had no idea how Baby B's parents, Danneel's employers, would feel about their child and his nanny showing up in a stranger's painting, but it wasn't as if he was ever going to meet them, and you couldn't see Baby B's face anyway. And painters made paintings of people they didn't know all the time.
"Where are you going after this?" Jared asked.
"I have to pick up some things from the cobbler and then we have to go home. Oh, I might start getting Saturday afternoons and some evenings off. I can catch up with you somewhere and meet your famous friends." Because Jared had told her about Christian and his partner Steve, and about Sandy and Genevieve, and about Edwin and Aldis, the brothers in the studio next door, and about Sebastian and some of the other people in his building, and of course he'd told her about Jensen. But she'd never met any of them. They'd like her. She'd like them. He should introduce them all.
"I don't know for sure, though," she continued, pausing to let a small herd of little boys thunder past. Baby B made a curious noise, which Jared interpreted as baby for "What the hell was that?"
"You can probably just show up," he told Danneel. "Come to the Cherokee. If we're not there, Christian can point you in the right direction. Or leave me a message ahead of time. Whatever works best."
The Cherokee was so named because Christian had once worked in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as a sharpshooter and trick rider, alongside a group of native Cherokee and a number of white cowboys. The show had come to Paris in 1889, seven years ago, but during their 1892 tour in London, Christian was injured in an act that went wrong. He quit, cashed in his contract, and came back to Paris to open a café. The Parisians had loved Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and Christian felt some loyalty to the job that had taken him to Europe, and more importantly to the territory where he'd grown up.
There was nothing to be gained back home by claiming any kind of kinship - or any friendship - with the native tribes, but in Paris it was exotic and western, and while very few people would ever go out of their way to find a tiny café in Montmartre run by a former cowboy, to Christian it was a little piece of home, and Jared always felt comfortable there.
And more importantly, Christian would accept Jared and Jensen's mail, and it was the most reliable place to leave them a message. None of Jared's artist neighbors could be counted on for that.
Danneel paused to pull a little notebook and a pencil out of the front pocket of her apron. "Did you ever tell me where it is?" she asked.
"In Montmartre?" Jared answered. Danneel gave him a "that was a stupid answer to an honest question" eyeroll. "Here." He took her notebook and pencil, rested the notebook on top of the hood of Baby B's carriage, and wrote the address next to a quick sketch of what he hoped was a Cherokee warrior's head. His experience with Native Americans was limited.
"Am I ever going to get to see your finished paintings?" Danneel asked, after they'd walked a little more.
"If I ever find a dealer, you can convince your employers to buy one."
She chuckled. "So you haven't found one yet, huh."
"Nope." He paused to switch the hands carrying his paintbox and collapsible easel. He was used to carrying his stuff around the city, but the gardens were crowded and people occasionally jostled him, and he didn't like worrying that they were knocking into his easel. "I tried to meet with a guy last week, but it didn't work out. Part of the problem is that I don't know anyone, and no one I know knows anyone either. I think Katharine was just accepted into an exhibition - she's a sculptor, she lives below me and Jensen - but I haven't had any luck there either." He shrugged. "I know it can take time. But we have a hard time paying our rent, and we owe Christian for months of feeding us, and I'd just like to sell something. It would make me feel like I'm on the right track, you know? Like I'm doing the right thing."
Danneel patted him on the arm. "It'll happen. The stuff that I've seen looks good. I know it's not finished" - and here she gave him a meaningful look - "but it's a good start. And I know you paint more than just the gardens or the Bois. Someone will want a painting of dancing girls. Look at Toulouse-Lautrec. Or Degas. It will happen for you, I know it will."
Jensen said the exact same thing later that night at the Cherokee. But he would - he was Jared's boyfriend and offering comfort and encouragement was part of the job. In return, Jared read Jensen's latest work-in-progress and offered reassurance that it was good, because that was part of his job.
"We'll go to the Green Door," Jensen suggested. That was the cabaret where Sandy and Genevieve danced. "We'll see the girls and you can draw Sandy flipping her skirts over her head." He grinned. "Maybe they'll let you draw them getting dressed."
Sometimes there were distinct advantages to being a boy who liked boys. Dancing girls didn't care so much if you wanted to sketch them changing their skirts or pulling up their stockings or lacing other girls into their corsets or just lounging around their dressing room half-dressed. When you said you were a painter, they wanted to keep your sketches for themselves, which meant you just had to keep coming back to draw them some more.
That night Jared stayed out in the audience, though, drawing dancers and other patrons and Jensen smoking. Jensen kissed him during a break in the show, and his mouth tasted like wine and tobacco. Genevieve came out to say hi - Sandy was apparently mediating some kind of dancer drama backstage - and Jensen kissed her too. She just laughed. She wasn't interested in men any more than Jensen was interested in women, but even if she had been, if Jensen wanted to kiss her that was okay. Jared didn't care. They were friends and Jensen would never stray, so why should it matter?
It was late when Jared and Jensen finally went home, having drunk and danced and chatted, and Jensen fell on the bed, pulling Jared on top of him and murmuring, "Maybe I'll try my hand at erotic stories," in Jared's ear.
"Yeah?" Jared said. "You'd write about our sex life?"
"Not ours, no. It's no one's business. But men and women, sure. Sandy would tell me some things. Genevieve too. What pleases a woman, you know? I already know what pleases a man." He bit at Jared's lower lip. Jared's tongue flicked out and caught the tip of his nose, and he laughed. "Even that." His teeth closed around Jared's lip again and he squeezed Jared's ass. Jared ground down against him, rubbing until Jensen released his lip and moaned.
"You want to fuck me?" Jared murmured. "You want me to stroke your cock until you're hard enough to pound nails, and then roll onto my back and spread my legs for you? That's what I want."
Jensen laughed breathlessly and swatted the back of his head. "No fair writing my story for me."
"You write it, I'll paint it. I'll paint you in all your glory, and that will sell." It would be considered obscene, a painting of men fucking - and there was probably a law against selling the kinds of filthy stories Jensen could write about them - but someone would buy it. Someone would want it.
Jensen naked and beautiful and aroused - who wouldn't want him?
"You won't." Jensen's voice was suddenly serious. "Because if you do I'll never sleep with you again."
"Okay, okay. I won't. Then kiss me. And fuck me."
"No, Jared, no." Jensen wrapped his legs around Jared's waist. "You fuck me."
So Jared did. It was a bit of a struggle getting their clothes off, but soon he was spreading Jensen's thighs and sinking into his body and it was hot and close and Jared ducked his head to mouth at Jensen's throat, and he could feel Jensen's moans against his tongue.
Jared pushed deep, losing himself in the heat and the smoke-and-sweat scent of Jensen's body, moonlight and starlight from outside dimly illuminating Jensen's half-closed eyes and half-open mouth and the flutter in his throat as he tried to catch his breath. His legs tightened around Jared's waist. Jared fucked him harder. The bed rocked underneath them as they panted and moaned and then Jared was coming, biting his lip to keep from crying out, his eyes fixed on Jensen's face.
When he was finished, he guided Jensen's hand between them, wrapped their fingers together around Jensen's cock, and stroked until Jensen came as well.
"I can't paint that," Jared panted. "How that feels. How you feel."
"Good." Jensen reached up to push Jared's hair back from his face, then tangled his fingers in it to pull Jared down for a satisfyingly deep kiss. After they pulled apart, Jared rolled off Jensen and Jensen got up to find something to sleep in. Jared watched him as he found undershorts and a nightshirt, put them on, and then threw Jared's nightclothes at the bed before joining him under the duvet.
There was a breeze through the open window, the sounds of rustling trees and a barking dog and someone singing a French song incoherently and off-key. Jared flung his arm across Jensen's chest and his leg over Jensen's thigh. He loved this city. He loved his life.
Spring in the Bois de Boulogne
Jared felt like he'd spent the entire winter and beginning of spring slouching around Montmartre, confining his painting subjects to whatever existed within a circle that was fifteen walking minutes across. Or he'd holed up in the studio, wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off and moving his easel close to the old cast-iron stove to keep warm. He was so used to painting what was nearby that he found himself thinking that maybe he'd go down to the Rue d'Amboise today and sketch the girls hanging out the windows of the brothels trying to entice the passers-by. But some of them were getting wise to him and would want to be paid like any other models, which meant for now he should go elsewhere. Because the sun was out and the weather looked fine, that "elsewhere" became the Bois de Boulogne, where Jared took his easel and paintbox and set himself up near one of the walking paths but hopefully out of people's way. After a couple of hours he hadn't seen his favorite recurring walker, a tall woman with an ocelot on a leash, but he had seen several women strolling with their friends, a gaggle of small girls in school uniforms being herded by a pair of nuns, three separate people (one maid, one manservant, and a well-dressed middle-aged lady) walking small, nervous-looking dogs, and Danneel out by herself with a net bag over her arm.
"Jared!" she called, waving at him as she came down the path. He waved back. "I was hoping to see you here."
"You found me." He grinned. "Why don't you have the baby?"
"His mother is playing with him in the garden. She sent me on some errands. Grapes, hard cheese, soft cheese, bread, flowers." She ticked them off on her fingers, then leaned around Jared to peer at his canvas. "What are we painting today?"
"Studies. Trees. Just looking at the Bois in this kind of light. Hoping to see the woman with the ocelot."
"I'm sorry?"
"Sometimes I see a woman walking an ocelot on a leash. She's always beautifully dressed, very regal. She looks like I always imagined the Queen of Sheba would look, but not as dark." He'd learned in Sunday School that Sheba was in Africa, and he knew that Africans were dark-skinned, so King Solomon's beautiful and wealthy queen had become tall and imperious and black as night in Jared's head. And who was to say she hadn't had tame ocelots in her court?
"I think I know who you're talking about." Danneel pursed her lips in thought. "I'm pretty sure Mrs B has an American friend who would fit that description. I don't know if she owns an ocelot, but if she's the woman I'm thinking about, she's the kind of person who would. And she does look very queenly. Can't you paint her in anyway?"
"I guess. You said you were looking for me?"
"Oh! Right! The Bs know an art dealer. Mrs B asked about you - one of her friends had seen us chatting out here - and she wanted to know who you were. I said you were a nice painter from Texas and she asked if you'd ever shown anywhere and would she know your work. I said no, you hadn't found a dealer yet, and then she volunteered someone they know, Monsieur Collins - he's Russian, so he might not want to be called 'Monsieur', but he's been in Paris a few years - 'Collins' isn't very Russian, is it - he must have changed his name - she didn't know if he was looking for new artists, but she'd mention you and see if he was interested." She beamed, clearly proud of herself for potentially making this connection for Jared. "I thanked her profusely."
"Who does he sell? Has he put together any shows I would've seen?"
"I don't know. I just know he likes unknown artists who are doing new and exciting things. Mrs B asked if you painted like Monet and Degas and I said a little bit, but not really. I told her you painted dancers, but I didn't say where they danced." She looked pleased with this bit of subterfuge. "I think you're perfect. I talked you up a lot. I should probably be embarrassed at how I talked to her, like we were friends and not employer and staff." Danneel did not look at all embarrassed, just excited. Jared could just imagine how thrilled she would have been to talk to Mrs B as if they were of the same social standing, as if Mrs B would have sat and chatted with her, one girl to another. He knew she had a crush on her employer, and despite the potential for unprofessional familiarity, she'd take any chance to talk to Mrs B that she could.
"When will she talk to him?"
"Soon, I think. Probably today or tomorrow. She doesn't like to put things off, and I think she mentioned him because they're going to see him. When she tells me what he says, I'll let you know. Hopefully he'll want to meet you and see your art so he can represent you. And now that I've shared that, I have to go." She held up the net bag. "Errands. Cheese. I came way out of my way to find you. I'll see you later." She walked off down the path, leaving Jared to contemplate her words and his potential meeting.
He told Jensen and Christian about it that night and Jensen said that of course this Collins would like Jared's art, Jared was brilliant.
"And if he buys some of your work, you'll finally be able to pay your tab," Christian commented.
"If you'd just accept a painting...," Jared said. Christian rolled his eyes. They had this conversation at least once a week, and Christian's refusal to take art as payment was sometimes just for show and force of habit, considering he'd taken paintings in the past. "I could make another one of you in your Wild West days. You could sell that."
"How reliable is she?" Christian asked.
"Danneel? I trust her."
"How reliable is her Mrs B?"
"I don't know. Danneel trusts her, though."
"Danneel has a crush on her," Jensen murmured, loud enough to remind Jared but too low for Christian to hear.
"That doesn't mean she's not reliable," Jared told him. To Christian, he said "If she said she talked me up to Mrs B, she did. If she said Mrs B will talk me up to her dealer friend, she will. The only question is whether or not he wants to see my work, and then if he wants to sell it."
"I told you, he will."
"A bottle of wine says he doesn't," Steve said, appearing behind the bar. Jared hadn't realized he was listening.
"That's rude," Jared said, offended. Steve shrugged.
"Deal," Jensen said, extending his arm across the bar so he and Steve could shake on it. "A good red, not that vinegar you keep trying to unload on us." That last comment was directed at Christian, who just rolled his eyes again. Jensen should know that Christian always sold them the good stuff, or at least the fairly decent stuff. They were friends, and he wouldn't give his friends cheap wine. "Monsieur Collins takes Jared on and you owe us a good bottle."
"I'll put it aside right now," Christian told him, making a show of pulling a bottle down from the shelves behind him and hiding it under the bar.
"Make sure you write 'Jared and Jensen's wine' on it." Now Jensen was grinning. "You know, so you don't 'accidentally' open it for someone. Or so Steve doesn't 'accidentally' drink it."
"Yeah yeah. Are you going to drink anything now, or did you just come here to bend my ear and take up space at my bar?"
"What do you have to eat?" Jared asked.
"For you?" Christian quirked an eyebrow. "Cheese and toast."
"We should go to the Green Door and tell the girls," Jensen suggested.
"They won't feed us," Jared said.
"I don't think Christian will either."
"You can have some cheese and bread for the road," Steve offered. "On the house."
"Thanks for giving away my food," Christian said grumpily.
"You would've offered if I hadn't."
"Are you feeling guilty for betting against my success?" Jared asked Steve, grinning. Steve shrugged. "You are. I knew you couldn't be an asshole all the time."
"Cheese and bread," Jensen repeated, "and we'll get out of your hair." More customers had appeared in the Cherokee, three seating themselves at a table and two now leaning against the bar. Christian slid down the bar and Steve vanished into the back, reappearing a few minutes later with what looked like half a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese wrapped in waxed paper. Jared took it gratefully and he and Jensen went off to the dance hall to share this potential good news with Sandy and Genevieve and whoever else cared to be excited for him.
Mrs B was as good as Danneel's word, and three days later there was a message for Jared at the Cherokee:
M Collins will meet you next Thursday at 2 pm. Bring samples of your work. Don't worry if your first impression is skepticism about his professionalism; he's very smart and very good at what he does.
Under that was an address and xoxo Danneel. Jared wrote her a quick note of thanks and left it with Christian to find someone to deliver it. Jared would have gone himself, and if he was honest he wanted to meet Mrs B, but he had too much to do. Besides, he knew if he sat in the Bois de Boulogne long enough with his easel or drawing board, he would see Danneel and could thank her in person.
He pinned the note to the wardrobe where he was sure to see it, and after that it was a question of what he should bring.
"Don't take any paintings of me," Jensen said, when Jared asked for his help picking things out. He was sitting at the table in the studio trying to write, although from what Jared could tell, all he was really doing was scratching things out and glaring at his notebook.
"I was going to show him The Bed," Jared answered, pulling the painting away from the wall and holding it up to see it in better light. "See, it just shows heads from the side."
"Heads in bed. It needs a better frame." Jensen chewed on his pencil. "Ask the brothers for their advice. Aldis will tell you what he thinks."
"I don't care what Aldis thinks. I care what you think."
"Take that one." Jensen pointed his pencil at the painting currently on the easel, Jared's most recent study of the Bois de Boulogne, to which he'd added the woman with the pet ocelot to go with the group of schoolgirls being herded by nuns, a manservant walking a small white dog, and a pair of well-dressed ladies strolling arm-in-arm. It was nearly finished. "Or the one of Christian behind the bar. Some of the sketches of the girls at the Green Door are good."
Jared put The Bed down and followed Jensen around the studio, trying to look at his work as a dealer might. He'd tried to get into galleries and shows to see what was new, what the art-buying public wanted, and he could judge the similarities between his own style and what was currently popular. But what would Monsieur Collins want to see? What did he think he could sell? What would he want to sell?
He was too nervous to judge his own work. This would be the first time he'd met anyone who could possibly sell his paintings. But he trusted Jensen's eye and opinion, and he listened carefully and tried not to fidget as Jensen moved around the room and told Jared what he thought.
In the end Jared did decide to take The Bed, as well as some drawings of the girls at the Green Door - Danneel had told Mrs B he painted dancers, after all - a study of Sandy fixing her hair in front of the wardrobe mirror, a painting of Danneel pushing Baby B's carriage, a different painting of the Bois without any people, a study of workers taking a lunch break near the site of the half-built basilica at the top of Montmartre, and a sketch of Jensen sitting at a table at the Cherokee, writing a letter and smoking. Jared could only hope M Collins liked something.
Onward!
NC-17
Part 1 of 6
Master post
Art
Tel était le Paris de notre jeunesse, au temps où nous étions très pauvres et très heureux.
But this is how Paris was in the early days, when we were very poor and very happy.
--Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
The Luxembourg Gardens
Paris in spring, when a young person's fancy turns to thoughts of love. In Jared's case, love could mean many things - his studio, his art, the new brushes he bought yesterday when Sandy unexpectedly gave him some francs, the flowers blooming in the street below his windows, Christian's chicken-in-the-pot, the soft blue sky outside, the cabaret where Sandy and Genevieve danced, the sound of French drifting up from the street and through the floor, the entirety of Montmartre, the really excellent sex he'd had last night which had led to some really good sleep, and his boyfriend Jensen, who was... not there.
Jared shoved the duvet over to the empty side of the bed, swung his legs off the mattress, and stood. He stretched. The studio was full of indirect morning light - the windows faced south and west, more or less, so he and Jensen got some really glorious sun in the afternoons, but the morning light was a bit more diffuse. He could see dust motes floating in the air, and paintings leaning against the walls in shadow. It really was beautiful.
There was a note on the table, scribbled on a scrap of paper that Jensen had probably ripped out of his notebook:
You looked so peaceful I didn't want to wake you. See you tonight.
That meant Come by Christian's café for dinner and he'll feed you, which Jared was more than happy to do. Christian was a good cook, he poured decent wine, and he'd known Jensen since they were kids and felt a kind of obligation to feed his old friend and his old friend's bottomless pit of a painter boyfriend. He'd give Jared and Jensen a hard time about floating them credit, he'd refuse to take a painting in payment, and he'd eventually dish something up and serve them.
If there was one thing Jared would change about being in Paris, it was that he'd like to actually sell some paintings and make some money. He didn't like having to scrounge off his friends.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't do it. A boy had to eat, after all. And he was only twenty-three - he could still be growing.
He wondered where Jensen had gone. Maybe he'd found a sidewalk table at a little café or a patisserie along the Rue Lepic or the wider Boulevard de Clichy or any of the narrow side streets in Montmartre, for a coffee and a croissant and a first-row seat to the goings-on in their corner of Paris. Or maybe he was sitting inside, listening to morning chatter and trying to write. He hadn't sold any stories yet, and it was hard to get an English-language play produced in France. He was currently working on a series of stories and vignettes about Paris, including a few tales about a young poet and the love of his life, both characters thinly disguised versions of himself and Jared. (Or more well disguised versions, as the poet's love was a pretty French girl who made lace, rather than a tall boy from Texas who liked to paint.) There was no shortage of story fodder in their neighborhood, that was for sure.
They lived in a studio on the top floor of an old converted factory. It hung off the slope of the hill, the old factory windows unobstructed by trees and thus a conduit for the inescapable noise of their neighbors and the smells of lilac and hawthorne and baking bread. It was an old, flimsy building, the walls thin enough that Jared and Jensen could hear the girl who lived below them, and the two American brothers next door. Edwin was a composer and musician, and he'd hung blankets over his walls to try and improve the acoustics and coincidentally deaden the noise from Jared and Jensen's studio.
Jared hadn't thought they were that loud - they certainly tried to be mindful of the fact that they had close neighbors - but sometimes they got so excited that they'd knock the bedframe against the wall, and he imagined that could be annoying and distracting. And no one needed to hear him and Jensen having sex.
There was a sign on their door that said, in English and French, "Please knock. We might be naked." It had been nailed there last autumn when one of their building neighbors, a painter and illustrator named Sebastian, had waltzed in to borrow something - the door had been unlocked - and interrupted Jared and Jensen fucking on the sofa. "If I'd known there was going to be a free show I would've invited some friends," he'd commented drily. Jensen was mortified (much more than Sebastian was) and the next day the sign appeared on their door.
A couple of months later Sebastian moved out and shifted his stuff to a new studio on the Boulevard de Clichy, but the sign remained.
On the first of the month, like clockwork, the landlady's grand-niece Marion came by to collect the rent. Sometimes, when they didn't have the money - and a lot of times they didn't have the money - she'd accept a painting instead. The building creaked and leaked and the windows rattled in the least wind, but it was cheap and the light was good and Jared liked being able to go out into the tiny plaza in front of the old factory and look up to the top of the butte - the "mont" of Montmartre - and see the white basilica of Sacré-Coeur rising over the city. He liked being able to look out the drafty many-paned windows of his studio and see the roofs of the houses marching down the hill, the occasional windmill with its still blades stretching into the air.
Compared to the rest of Paris, with its orderly boulevards and stately buildings and formal gardens, Montmartre looked like the village it still partly was - uneven streets winding up the butte, cheap cafés, rowdy bars, lilac and wild roses clinging to the crooked wooden buildings, painters and prostitutes and butchers and bakers and laundresses and cats and the occasional cow. It was a wild place, in the way of old neighborhoods reluctantly nestled hard against a more civilized city. Montmartre rolled down the butte, met the rest of Paris, and flowed across the Seine, the whole a busier and more crowded and more exciting city than the one Jared had left.
He was Texan, and he'd always be Texan, and someday he figured he'd go home. But until then, he was young and broke and living in Paris with the man he loved, and he was going to enjoy it.
Today that meant taking advantage of the light and hauling his paintbox and easel to the Jardin du Luxembourg. There should be a puppet show today, which meant crowds to paint if nothing else. It was a glorious day and he wanted to be out in it. He pulled on some clothes, packed his things, dug up a handful of coins in case he needed to buy something, and went.
He ran into Danneel, his American nanny friend, in the gardens, where she had taken her charge Baby B to watch the puppet show. Baby B was apparently having none of it, and Danneel was bouncing him around the garden's formal paths in his wicker baby carriage when Jared found her.
He was in such a good mood he kissed her hello, on both cheeks in the French fashion, even though she'd once told him that wasn't really the proper thing to do with a member of someone's household staff. Now she just laughed.
"You must be having a good day," she said. "We came to see the puppet show but the little Monsieur had other ideas." She wiggled her fingers under the hood of the baby carriage, letting Baby B know that she was talking about him. Jared peered into the carriage. The baby looked calmly back at him.
"He's quiet now."
"You should've heard the squalling before." She pushed the carriage along the path. "Come on, walk with me. I have an hour still. What did you paint?"
"Crowds. Trees. Shrubbery." He'd sketched, mostly, feeling too overcome by the weather to do much more than make vague marks on his canvas. He'd probably end up painting over everything anyway.
"I would've thought you'd be in the Bois de Boulogne." That was where they usually ran into each other, and was in fact where Jared finally talked to her in the first place, having seen her several times and having heard her speaking to Baby B in American-accented English. He and Jensen had been in Paris ten months now, and his French was still embarrassing. Jensen did a lot of translating.
"Tomorrow, probably. I was hoping you'd come to watch the puppet show today and I could say hi."
"Well, we tried to watch the puppet show." Danneel glanced at Baby B, who now seemed to be falling asleep. She rolled her eyes. "So hi." She grinned at Jared.
He thought about a half-finished painting back in the studio, showing her wheeling the baby carriage along a sunny path in the Bois de Boulogne. He should finish it. She was very pretty and made a good subject. He had no idea how Baby B's parents, Danneel's employers, would feel about their child and his nanny showing up in a stranger's painting, but it wasn't as if he was ever going to meet them, and you couldn't see Baby B's face anyway. And painters made paintings of people they didn't know all the time.
"Where are you going after this?" Jared asked.
"I have to pick up some things from the cobbler and then we have to go home. Oh, I might start getting Saturday afternoons and some evenings off. I can catch up with you somewhere and meet your famous friends." Because Jared had told her about Christian and his partner Steve, and about Sandy and Genevieve, and about Edwin and Aldis, the brothers in the studio next door, and about Sebastian and some of the other people in his building, and of course he'd told her about Jensen. But she'd never met any of them. They'd like her. She'd like them. He should introduce them all.
"I don't know for sure, though," she continued, pausing to let a small herd of little boys thunder past. Baby B made a curious noise, which Jared interpreted as baby for "What the hell was that?"
"You can probably just show up," he told Danneel. "Come to the Cherokee. If we're not there, Christian can point you in the right direction. Or leave me a message ahead of time. Whatever works best."
The Cherokee was so named because Christian had once worked in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show as a sharpshooter and trick rider, alongside a group of native Cherokee and a number of white cowboys. The show had come to Paris in 1889, seven years ago, but during their 1892 tour in London, Christian was injured in an act that went wrong. He quit, cashed in his contract, and came back to Paris to open a café. The Parisians had loved Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and Christian felt some loyalty to the job that had taken him to Europe, and more importantly to the territory where he'd grown up.
There was nothing to be gained back home by claiming any kind of kinship - or any friendship - with the native tribes, but in Paris it was exotic and western, and while very few people would ever go out of their way to find a tiny café in Montmartre run by a former cowboy, to Christian it was a little piece of home, and Jared always felt comfortable there.
And more importantly, Christian would accept Jared and Jensen's mail, and it was the most reliable place to leave them a message. None of Jared's artist neighbors could be counted on for that.
Danneel paused to pull a little notebook and a pencil out of the front pocket of her apron. "Did you ever tell me where it is?" she asked.
"In Montmartre?" Jared answered. Danneel gave him a "that was a stupid answer to an honest question" eyeroll. "Here." He took her notebook and pencil, rested the notebook on top of the hood of Baby B's carriage, and wrote the address next to a quick sketch of what he hoped was a Cherokee warrior's head. His experience with Native Americans was limited.
"Am I ever going to get to see your finished paintings?" Danneel asked, after they'd walked a little more.
"If I ever find a dealer, you can convince your employers to buy one."
She chuckled. "So you haven't found one yet, huh."
"Nope." He paused to switch the hands carrying his paintbox and collapsible easel. He was used to carrying his stuff around the city, but the gardens were crowded and people occasionally jostled him, and he didn't like worrying that they were knocking into his easel. "I tried to meet with a guy last week, but it didn't work out. Part of the problem is that I don't know anyone, and no one I know knows anyone either. I think Katharine was just accepted into an exhibition - she's a sculptor, she lives below me and Jensen - but I haven't had any luck there either." He shrugged. "I know it can take time. But we have a hard time paying our rent, and we owe Christian for months of feeding us, and I'd just like to sell something. It would make me feel like I'm on the right track, you know? Like I'm doing the right thing."
Danneel patted him on the arm. "It'll happen. The stuff that I've seen looks good. I know it's not finished" - and here she gave him a meaningful look - "but it's a good start. And I know you paint more than just the gardens or the Bois. Someone will want a painting of dancing girls. Look at Toulouse-Lautrec. Or Degas. It will happen for you, I know it will."
Jensen said the exact same thing later that night at the Cherokee. But he would - he was Jared's boyfriend and offering comfort and encouragement was part of the job. In return, Jared read Jensen's latest work-in-progress and offered reassurance that it was good, because that was part of his job.
"We'll go to the Green Door," Jensen suggested. That was the cabaret where Sandy and Genevieve danced. "We'll see the girls and you can draw Sandy flipping her skirts over her head." He grinned. "Maybe they'll let you draw them getting dressed."
Sometimes there were distinct advantages to being a boy who liked boys. Dancing girls didn't care so much if you wanted to sketch them changing their skirts or pulling up their stockings or lacing other girls into their corsets or just lounging around their dressing room half-dressed. When you said you were a painter, they wanted to keep your sketches for themselves, which meant you just had to keep coming back to draw them some more.
That night Jared stayed out in the audience, though, drawing dancers and other patrons and Jensen smoking. Jensen kissed him during a break in the show, and his mouth tasted like wine and tobacco. Genevieve came out to say hi - Sandy was apparently mediating some kind of dancer drama backstage - and Jensen kissed her too. She just laughed. She wasn't interested in men any more than Jensen was interested in women, but even if she had been, if Jensen wanted to kiss her that was okay. Jared didn't care. They were friends and Jensen would never stray, so why should it matter?
It was late when Jared and Jensen finally went home, having drunk and danced and chatted, and Jensen fell on the bed, pulling Jared on top of him and murmuring, "Maybe I'll try my hand at erotic stories," in Jared's ear.
"Yeah?" Jared said. "You'd write about our sex life?"
"Not ours, no. It's no one's business. But men and women, sure. Sandy would tell me some things. Genevieve too. What pleases a woman, you know? I already know what pleases a man." He bit at Jared's lower lip. Jared's tongue flicked out and caught the tip of his nose, and he laughed. "Even that." His teeth closed around Jared's lip again and he squeezed Jared's ass. Jared ground down against him, rubbing until Jensen released his lip and moaned.
"You want to fuck me?" Jared murmured. "You want me to stroke your cock until you're hard enough to pound nails, and then roll onto my back and spread my legs for you? That's what I want."
Jensen laughed breathlessly and swatted the back of his head. "No fair writing my story for me."
"You write it, I'll paint it. I'll paint you in all your glory, and that will sell." It would be considered obscene, a painting of men fucking - and there was probably a law against selling the kinds of filthy stories Jensen could write about them - but someone would buy it. Someone would want it.
Jensen naked and beautiful and aroused - who wouldn't want him?
"You won't." Jensen's voice was suddenly serious. "Because if you do I'll never sleep with you again."
"Okay, okay. I won't. Then kiss me. And fuck me."
"No, Jared, no." Jensen wrapped his legs around Jared's waist. "You fuck me."
So Jared did. It was a bit of a struggle getting their clothes off, but soon he was spreading Jensen's thighs and sinking into his body and it was hot and close and Jared ducked his head to mouth at Jensen's throat, and he could feel Jensen's moans against his tongue.
Jared pushed deep, losing himself in the heat and the smoke-and-sweat scent of Jensen's body, moonlight and starlight from outside dimly illuminating Jensen's half-closed eyes and half-open mouth and the flutter in his throat as he tried to catch his breath. His legs tightened around Jared's waist. Jared fucked him harder. The bed rocked underneath them as they panted and moaned and then Jared was coming, biting his lip to keep from crying out, his eyes fixed on Jensen's face.
When he was finished, he guided Jensen's hand between them, wrapped their fingers together around Jensen's cock, and stroked until Jensen came as well.
"I can't paint that," Jared panted. "How that feels. How you feel."
"Good." Jensen reached up to push Jared's hair back from his face, then tangled his fingers in it to pull Jared down for a satisfyingly deep kiss. After they pulled apart, Jared rolled off Jensen and Jensen got up to find something to sleep in. Jared watched him as he found undershorts and a nightshirt, put them on, and then threw Jared's nightclothes at the bed before joining him under the duvet.
There was a breeze through the open window, the sounds of rustling trees and a barking dog and someone singing a French song incoherently and off-key. Jared flung his arm across Jensen's chest and his leg over Jensen's thigh. He loved this city. He loved his life.
Spring in the Bois de Boulogne
Jared felt like he'd spent the entire winter and beginning of spring slouching around Montmartre, confining his painting subjects to whatever existed within a circle that was fifteen walking minutes across. Or he'd holed up in the studio, wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off and moving his easel close to the old cast-iron stove to keep warm. He was so used to painting what was nearby that he found himself thinking that maybe he'd go down to the Rue d'Amboise today and sketch the girls hanging out the windows of the brothels trying to entice the passers-by. But some of them were getting wise to him and would want to be paid like any other models, which meant for now he should go elsewhere. Because the sun was out and the weather looked fine, that "elsewhere" became the Bois de Boulogne, where Jared took his easel and paintbox and set himself up near one of the walking paths but hopefully out of people's way. After a couple of hours he hadn't seen his favorite recurring walker, a tall woman with an ocelot on a leash, but he had seen several women strolling with their friends, a gaggle of small girls in school uniforms being herded by a pair of nuns, three separate people (one maid, one manservant, and a well-dressed middle-aged lady) walking small, nervous-looking dogs, and Danneel out by herself with a net bag over her arm.
"Jared!" she called, waving at him as she came down the path. He waved back. "I was hoping to see you here."
"You found me." He grinned. "Why don't you have the baby?"
"His mother is playing with him in the garden. She sent me on some errands. Grapes, hard cheese, soft cheese, bread, flowers." She ticked them off on her fingers, then leaned around Jared to peer at his canvas. "What are we painting today?"
"Studies. Trees. Just looking at the Bois in this kind of light. Hoping to see the woman with the ocelot."
"I'm sorry?"
"Sometimes I see a woman walking an ocelot on a leash. She's always beautifully dressed, very regal. She looks like I always imagined the Queen of Sheba would look, but not as dark." He'd learned in Sunday School that Sheba was in Africa, and he knew that Africans were dark-skinned, so King Solomon's beautiful and wealthy queen had become tall and imperious and black as night in Jared's head. And who was to say she hadn't had tame ocelots in her court?
"I think I know who you're talking about." Danneel pursed her lips in thought. "I'm pretty sure Mrs B has an American friend who would fit that description. I don't know if she owns an ocelot, but if she's the woman I'm thinking about, she's the kind of person who would. And she does look very queenly. Can't you paint her in anyway?"
"I guess. You said you were looking for me?"
"Oh! Right! The Bs know an art dealer. Mrs B asked about you - one of her friends had seen us chatting out here - and she wanted to know who you were. I said you were a nice painter from Texas and she asked if you'd ever shown anywhere and would she know your work. I said no, you hadn't found a dealer yet, and then she volunteered someone they know, Monsieur Collins - he's Russian, so he might not want to be called 'Monsieur', but he's been in Paris a few years - 'Collins' isn't very Russian, is it - he must have changed his name - she didn't know if he was looking for new artists, but she'd mention you and see if he was interested." She beamed, clearly proud of herself for potentially making this connection for Jared. "I thanked her profusely."
"Who does he sell? Has he put together any shows I would've seen?"
"I don't know. I just know he likes unknown artists who are doing new and exciting things. Mrs B asked if you painted like Monet and Degas and I said a little bit, but not really. I told her you painted dancers, but I didn't say where they danced." She looked pleased with this bit of subterfuge. "I think you're perfect. I talked you up a lot. I should probably be embarrassed at how I talked to her, like we were friends and not employer and staff." Danneel did not look at all embarrassed, just excited. Jared could just imagine how thrilled she would have been to talk to Mrs B as if they were of the same social standing, as if Mrs B would have sat and chatted with her, one girl to another. He knew she had a crush on her employer, and despite the potential for unprofessional familiarity, she'd take any chance to talk to Mrs B that she could.
"When will she talk to him?"
"Soon, I think. Probably today or tomorrow. She doesn't like to put things off, and I think she mentioned him because they're going to see him. When she tells me what he says, I'll let you know. Hopefully he'll want to meet you and see your art so he can represent you. And now that I've shared that, I have to go." She held up the net bag. "Errands. Cheese. I came way out of my way to find you. I'll see you later." She walked off down the path, leaving Jared to contemplate her words and his potential meeting.
He told Jensen and Christian about it that night and Jensen said that of course this Collins would like Jared's art, Jared was brilliant.
"And if he buys some of your work, you'll finally be able to pay your tab," Christian commented.
"If you'd just accept a painting...," Jared said. Christian rolled his eyes. They had this conversation at least once a week, and Christian's refusal to take art as payment was sometimes just for show and force of habit, considering he'd taken paintings in the past. "I could make another one of you in your Wild West days. You could sell that."
"How reliable is she?" Christian asked.
"Danneel? I trust her."
"How reliable is her Mrs B?"
"I don't know. Danneel trusts her, though."
"Danneel has a crush on her," Jensen murmured, loud enough to remind Jared but too low for Christian to hear.
"That doesn't mean she's not reliable," Jared told him. To Christian, he said "If she said she talked me up to Mrs B, she did. If she said Mrs B will talk me up to her dealer friend, she will. The only question is whether or not he wants to see my work, and then if he wants to sell it."
"I told you, he will."
"A bottle of wine says he doesn't," Steve said, appearing behind the bar. Jared hadn't realized he was listening.
"That's rude," Jared said, offended. Steve shrugged.
"Deal," Jensen said, extending his arm across the bar so he and Steve could shake on it. "A good red, not that vinegar you keep trying to unload on us." That last comment was directed at Christian, who just rolled his eyes again. Jensen should know that Christian always sold them the good stuff, or at least the fairly decent stuff. They were friends, and he wouldn't give his friends cheap wine. "Monsieur Collins takes Jared on and you owe us a good bottle."
"I'll put it aside right now," Christian told him, making a show of pulling a bottle down from the shelves behind him and hiding it under the bar.
"Make sure you write 'Jared and Jensen's wine' on it." Now Jensen was grinning. "You know, so you don't 'accidentally' open it for someone. Or so Steve doesn't 'accidentally' drink it."
"Yeah yeah. Are you going to drink anything now, or did you just come here to bend my ear and take up space at my bar?"
"What do you have to eat?" Jared asked.
"For you?" Christian quirked an eyebrow. "Cheese and toast."
"We should go to the Green Door and tell the girls," Jensen suggested.
"They won't feed us," Jared said.
"I don't think Christian will either."
"You can have some cheese and bread for the road," Steve offered. "On the house."
"Thanks for giving away my food," Christian said grumpily.
"You would've offered if I hadn't."
"Are you feeling guilty for betting against my success?" Jared asked Steve, grinning. Steve shrugged. "You are. I knew you couldn't be an asshole all the time."
"Cheese and bread," Jensen repeated, "and we'll get out of your hair." More customers had appeared in the Cherokee, three seating themselves at a table and two now leaning against the bar. Christian slid down the bar and Steve vanished into the back, reappearing a few minutes later with what looked like half a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese wrapped in waxed paper. Jared took it gratefully and he and Jensen went off to the dance hall to share this potential good news with Sandy and Genevieve and whoever else cared to be excited for him.
Mrs B was as good as Danneel's word, and three days later there was a message for Jared at the Cherokee:
M Collins will meet you next Thursday at 2 pm. Bring samples of your work. Don't worry if your first impression is skepticism about his professionalism; he's very smart and very good at what he does.
Under that was an address and xoxo Danneel. Jared wrote her a quick note of thanks and left it with Christian to find someone to deliver it. Jared would have gone himself, and if he was honest he wanted to meet Mrs B, but he had too much to do. Besides, he knew if he sat in the Bois de Boulogne long enough with his easel or drawing board, he would see Danneel and could thank her in person.
He pinned the note to the wardrobe where he was sure to see it, and after that it was a question of what he should bring.
"Don't take any paintings of me," Jensen said, when Jared asked for his help picking things out. He was sitting at the table in the studio trying to write, although from what Jared could tell, all he was really doing was scratching things out and glaring at his notebook.
"I was going to show him The Bed," Jared answered, pulling the painting away from the wall and holding it up to see it in better light. "See, it just shows heads from the side."
"Heads in bed. It needs a better frame." Jensen chewed on his pencil. "Ask the brothers for their advice. Aldis will tell you what he thinks."
"I don't care what Aldis thinks. I care what you think."
"Take that one." Jensen pointed his pencil at the painting currently on the easel, Jared's most recent study of the Bois de Boulogne, to which he'd added the woman with the pet ocelot to go with the group of schoolgirls being herded by nuns, a manservant walking a small white dog, and a pair of well-dressed ladies strolling arm-in-arm. It was nearly finished. "Or the one of Christian behind the bar. Some of the sketches of the girls at the Green Door are good."
Jared put The Bed down and followed Jensen around the studio, trying to look at his work as a dealer might. He'd tried to get into galleries and shows to see what was new, what the art-buying public wanted, and he could judge the similarities between his own style and what was currently popular. But what would Monsieur Collins want to see? What did he think he could sell? What would he want to sell?
He was too nervous to judge his own work. This would be the first time he'd met anyone who could possibly sell his paintings. But he trusted Jensen's eye and opinion, and he listened carefully and tried not to fidget as Jensen moved around the room and told Jared what he thought.
In the end Jared did decide to take The Bed, as well as some drawings of the girls at the Green Door - Danneel had told Mrs B he painted dancers, after all - a study of Sandy fixing her hair in front of the wardrobe mirror, a painting of Danneel pushing Baby B's carriage, a different painting of the Bois without any people, a study of workers taking a lunch break near the site of the half-built basilica at the top of Montmartre, and a sketch of Jensen sitting at a table at the Cherokee, writing a letter and smoking. Jared could only hope M Collins liked something.
Onward!