Paris in the Early Days 2/6
J2 RPS AU
NC-17
Part 2 of 6
Master post
Art
That morning Steve banged on their door to deliver a note and the grumpy explanation - as Jared read the quickly scrawled words - that M Collins had changed his mind and would be arriving at the studio at 2 pm to see everything Jared had done.
Jared's only response to that was a surprised "Shit".
"I'm going back to bed," Steve grumped, and took off. Jared stared at the note, willing it to be wrong. He glanced around. The place was a mess, dishes and clothes and jars of dirty water and pencils and brushes and tubes of paint and books and paper and canvas everywhere. It seemed as if everything they owned was thrown around the place. For guys without a lot of money, they sure did seem to have a lot of things. He and Jensen would have to make the bed, or at least rearrange the screen to hide it better.
Jensen came out from behind the screen. He'd put on his robe.
"What was that about?" he asked.
"You know the dealer I was supposed to meet today? He's coming here." Jared's heart started to race at the thought. He needed breakfast before he could deal with this. He could always think better on a full stomach.
"We should clean up," Jensen said calmly. "At least this way you won't have to haul your work halfway across the city, or worry that he won't like whatever you brought him."
The more Jared thought about it, the more it made sense this way - M Collins would need to see everything he'd done in order to make an accurate assessment of his work and skills, and the easiest way to do that would be to show up at the studio. Jared could never carry enough to the man's office or gallery to show everything that he thought he was capable of.
M Collins was prompt and the studio was as clean and tidied as Jared and Jensen could make it. Jensen had gone to the Cherokee, claiming he'd only be a distraction and in the way, and Jared should be alone with M Collins to give the dealer the full force of his personality. Jared was washed and shaved and dressed and twitching with nerves when there was a polite knock on the door and he let M Collins in.
The dealer was dressed in a good, if slightly wrinkled, brown patterned suit and a cream-colored shirt. His hair was dark, his eyes blue, and he told Jared to call him Misha.
"Show me everything," he said. "I do not care if it is finished or not, if it is done in oils or watercolors or pastels or charcoal, if it is merely a study or a sketch. I wish to see everything you have done, and then I will sort the wheat from the chaff and tell you what I think. You come highly recommended."
"Thank you," Jared said. "I think." Mrs B must have repeated everything Danneel had told her. And Mrs B had never even met him. She must trust Danneel very much.
He showed Misha around the studio, pulling paintings away from the wall and flipping through sketchbooks and letting Misha thumb through his work. Misha looked at everything - not just Jared's art but also his easel, his charcoals and pencils and paints, the paintbox and collapsible easel he took to paint outside, the prints and postcards and magazine ads and illustrations pinned to the walls, the note from Danneel that was still pinned to the wardrobe door, the little pewter soldiers and the tiny wooden cactus that his mom had sent him for Christmas, the small stack of dishes that Jensen had forgotten to take back to the Cherokee. It was as if Misha was judging Jared's entire life here, not just his work.
Not only did he look at everything but he asked questions about everything - why had Jared painted that, what was it about the Bois de Boulogne that attracted him so, why did it look as if the light was coming from this direction on that painting, where were these postcards from, who were the girls, was this one done in his studio, what about that one, why had he bought that print, where did he buy his paints and brushes, where had that pot come from, were those supposed to be American soldiers, who had stretched this canvas, where was the music coming from?
"That's the Hodges," Jared explained. "They live next door. One of them's a composer, and the other one is a photographer. He also plays the fiddle."
"Does the music help you work?"
"I'm so used to it I don't really hear it any more."
"I like it." By now Misha had made a circuit of the entire studio and had apparently looked at every single thing in it. He sat at the table and gestured to the other chair. "Sit. Let us talk." Jared sat. "Have you thought of doing illustration? Posters, that kind of thing?"
Jared had seen the posters for Sarah Bernhardt with their flowing lines and organic curves and pretty pastel colors, and everyone knew Toulouse-Lautrec's work for the Moulin Rouge. Somewhere in the mess of the studio were a few copies of the magazine La Plume, which Jared had bought for their reviews of art exhibitions and the illustrations done by artists whose work he wanted to know.
"There is money to be made," Misha continued, "and I think some of your sketches will lend themselves nicely to advertisements. You have a good eye for design. I will introduce you to a good printer, if you wish."
"I hadn't thought about it," Jared admitted, although he had asked Christian about designing a poster for the Cherokee, and he'd asked Sandy and Genevieve who he could approach about maybe doing a poster for the Green Door, but nothing had come of either avenue. Christian hadn't thought it necessary - and if Jared and Jensen were going to try to pay off their tab, he wanted cold hard cash rather than a poster advertising his bar - and the girls hadn't had any more success with the manager of the dance hall.
"Think about it. In the meantime, you have a great amount of potential. There is a touch of Degas' dancers in some of your work, but you are painting a different world and you have something else to say. I quite like this one as well" - he stood up and walked over to where The Bed was leaning against the wall - "it is very intimate without being voyeuristic, as is much of your work. You are of the world you paint, not merely looking into it. It shows great care, great love."
Well, I'm painting people I love, Jared thought, of course it shows.
"Some of it seems quite slapdash," Misha went on, coming back to the table and sitting down, "but that is not a problem in itself. Your technique is good, although I do not know if your watercolors will sell for much, and your pastels could use some work." Jared's disappointment must have shown on his face, because Misha added "Do not look so crestfallen. I like your vision. You just need more practice with the watercolors and pastels, and perhaps some instruction. Are you taking classes?"
"No," Jared admitted sheepishly. He knew he could benefit from professional guidance, but he didn't have the money or the connections to get a place somewhere good.
"No matter. Your Bois de Boulogne pictures are pretty and show a good command of light and shadow, although they can be a bit derivative. But there is still a market for them. I do like the woman walking the cat. That is not a leopard, is it?"
"It's an ocelot," Jared said. "It's too small to be a leopard. I see her in the gardens a lot." He remembered Danneel telling him she thought Mrs B knew the woman with the ocelot. Maybe he could get her to introduce them, if Misha took him on and he started to sell.
"Jennifer did not lie to me about you. She said you were good, and you are. I can see the lack of training here and there, but your sense of design is good, your subjects interesting, and as I said, most of the time your technique is sure. I would like to show your work. I believe I can sell you."
It took Jared a minute to realize that "Jennifer" was probably Mrs B, and then it took him another minute to remember his manners, more or less. "No shit! Really? Thank you."
Misha didn't look at all taken aback by the swearing. "Let us shake on it," he said, holding out his hand. Jared shook it. He couldn't believe it was this easy. Shouldn't he sign a contract? "I need some time to draw up a contract for you, but if you could come to the house on Saturday I will have it ready. Come at three. We will sign it and have tea."
Well, that answered that question. But it still seemed easy. It wasn't even two weeks since Danneel told him she'd mentioned him to Mrs B and Mrs B had said she'd ask her friend the art dealer if he would see Jared's work. Jared knew people could toil for years without recognition. He wished Danneel had talked to Mrs B sooner.
He wondered if he should bring Misha a thank-you painting, something small. Maybe one of his paintings of the girls at the dance hall, or something in charcoal. Misha seemed to like the charcoal drawings. Maybe Christian would pose in his Wild West get-up. Some Parisians had a thing for cowboys and the American west. Although Misha was Russian, and Jared didn't know what Russians liked.
"Bring that one, that one, and that one," Misha went on, pointing at the painting of Genevieve lacing another girl into her corset backstage at the Green Door, the nearly-finished painting of the Bois de Boulogne with the woman walking her ocelot and the little girls with their nuns, and the sketch of Genevieve pulling on her black stockings. "And we will see what we will see."
They shook hands again at the door, Misha said "You have my address, yes?" and when Jared said he did, Misha left. Jared waited until he was sure Misha was out of sight, and then he practically ran to the Cherokee to share his good news.
"Told you," Jensen said smugly to Steve, who sighed exaggeratedly as he retrieved the bottle of wine they'd bet from behind the bar. Someone had actually written "Jared and Jensen's wine" on the glass with a black wax crayon. Christian put out four glasses and they drank a toast to Jared's success.
The four of them killed the bottle and then Jared and Jensen went to the Green Door, where Sandy and Genevieve congratulated Jared and two of the other dancers volunteered themselves to help him celebrate. He made Jensen tell them in very polite French thank you, but no thank you, his boyfriend wouldn't approve. In response, the girls said something to Jared that Jensen wouldn't translate, and then they giggled, amused and entirely unoffended.
"Why won't you tell me what they said?" Jared asked.
"Because you need to learn the language yourself," Jensen told him. "I'll show you what it was later."
They stayed for the show and then took Sandy and Genevieve back to the Cherokee, where they drank and talked and danced and finally reeled home near sunrise. Jared would have thought he had drunk too much to be any use in bed, although he was certainly excited enough about so many things, but Jensen kissed his mouth and his jaw and his throat and thumbed his nipples and stroked his inner thighs and spoke French to him in a throaty, intensely sexy voice until Jared was stiff and aching and Jensen was straddling him and sinking down onto his cock.
They rocked and bounced on the bed, panting and moaning, their combined weight and efforts making the bed creak underneath them. The windows rattled as the wind whistled around the building, as if the entire factory was in motion to the rhythm of Jared and Jensen's love.
Jensen leaned down down, his lips barely an inch from Jared's as he fucked himself faster and faster on Jared's cock. Jared was overwhelmed with the heat of him, the weight of him, the wine of his breath and the flush on his cheeks and the freckles scattered across his skin like flecks of cinnamon. Jared breathed him in until that breath stuttered as they both shuddered and came.
Afterwards, Jared stayed conscious long enough to wrap himself around Jensen's warm, sweaty limbs and murmured, "I love you so much," into his hair. He was pretty sure Jensen said something in return - it sounded like "Je t'aime toujours", which was some of the only French Jared knew - but then he was asleep.
He spent all of Friday trying to organize his work and then walking around the city looking at advertising posters. It wasn't until that night, when he and Jensen were sitting in the Cherokee trying to convince Christian to feed them, that he remembered he never told Danneel what had happened and he had never thanked her. He borrowed a pen and a sheet of paper from a poet sitting in a corner - he and Jensen had seen the guy several times over the past couple of weeks but had never learned his name - and scribbled a quick note:
M Collins said he would take me on! He told me to call him Misha! I'm signing a contract tomorrow (Saturday)! Thank you! Thank Mrs B too! I owe you a drink!
He folded the note into quarters, handed it over the bar, and asked Christian to get someone to deliver it. Christian looked expectant. Jared sighed, dug into his pocket, and retrieved a few centimes.
"When I sell something I'll pay you back," he said. "I promise."
"Uh-huh." Christian was unconvinced.
"I know, I know, we've had this conversation before. But I have a dealer now."
"You still haven't sold anything."
He fed them anyway.
On Saturday Jared wrapped the two paintings and the sketch Misha wanted in brown paper, put on his best suit, and went to Misha's house to sign the contract that would ideally lead to artistic success and good money. The sun warmed his back and shoulders, a mild flower-scented breeze ruffled his hair, and Paris was pink and blue and red and yellow and green and white, and it smelled of people and horses and cut grass and slowly-warming stone. Jared couldn't help whistling as he walked through well-kept arrondissements to Misha's house.
A maid answered the door when Jared rang the bell. She made him wait in the foyer while she went to fetch Misha, who appeared before Jared had much of a chance to do more than peer down the hallway and try to look up the stairs and peek into the closest room. He got a glimpse of dark walls and three different styles of chair and some framed botanical prints before Misha appeared and led him away.
They walked down the hall and into a high-ceilinged eclectically-decorated parlor and a library before finally stopping in a room at the back of the house, with tall windows overlooking an overgrown back garden. There was a heavy desk in the middle of the room, two glass-fronted bookcases, papers and knick-knacks everywhere, and paintings and drawings covering what felt like every inch of wall. Jared stared. There was no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of art, no unifying theme or style - some of the paintings looked very avant-garde, some of them more classical, and a few were oddly stylized in a way that looked almost medieval.
"Not all my clients," Misha said. "Some are simply pieces I like." He gestured to a medieval-looking painting that Jared had been admiring. "That one is by a painter from Odessa, and the small one next to it I brought from St Petersburg." He took the paintings and the sketch from Jared, leaned them against the desk, and picked up a long sheet of paper covered with writing. "Here, I have your contract. Read it over, and if it is to your liking, sign. And we will have an agreement." He smiled.
Jared read it over, or tried to - it was in French and English, and while he thought Misha's terms were fair, in terms of payment percentages and rights and responsibilities, he'd never had a thorough conversation with anyone knowledgeable about this kind of thing and didn't know for sure if he was being offered a good deal.
Misha would no doubt say he was. He decided to trust the guy. He signed.
"Excellent," Misha said. "And you have brought me the pieces I asked for. Now we will have tea like civilized men." He pulled a tasseled cord that was hanging from the ceiling. Five minutes later a middle-aged woman in a white apron and cap brought in a tray bearing a teapot, two teacups, a plate of pastries, and a pot of jam. She put the tray on the table, bobbed her head, and went out.
Misha poured tea for both of them and stirred some jam into his cup. "Russians prefer preserves in their tea," he explained, "rather than sugar. We have strawberry today. Try it." He dropped a spoonful into Jared's teacup and stirred it, and when Jared looked at it dubiously - strawberry jam? Really? - Misha sipped his own tea and made encouraging motions with his free hand. So Jared tried it. He got a couple of seeds and a tiny piece of strawberry with his first sip, and the sweet, strange, and vaguely fruity taste of adulterated black tea. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not. Maybe he was just too used to strong coffee sometimes lightly touched with milk, but unsweetened.
Misha offered him the plate of pastries, and he took a tiny napoleon that flaked into delicious sugary nothing in his mouth when he bit into it.
He would write home and tell his parents that he had found a dealer to sell his art, and the two of them had drunk tea in the Russian style to celebrate signing the contract.
A small, spiky creature with a pointed nose trundled speedily into the room, chased by the maid who had brought the tea. The creature waddled right up to Misha, who picked it up, brought it close to his face, and made affectionate Russian-sounding noises at it. Its spikes were white and brown, the fur on its wide belly and sides was white, and its little black nose twitched as Misha talked to it.
"This is my Yozhik," he said, holding it out towards Jared. It made a weird squeaky noise that he couldn't begin to decipher. Was it mad at him? Trying to make friends? Was it speaking Russian? Or French? "She was a gift to me from a mad Moroccan." He brushed his finger over the creature's quills. "She likes to have the run of the house but generally she is not allowed." Jared must have looked dubious again, because Misha continued "Have you never met a hedgehog before?"
"No. Is it - she? - is she poisonous?" She had short skinny legs that looked too frail to support her wide, teardrop-shaped body. She scrunched up her face at Jared so that she looked as if she had eyebrows and they did not approve of him.
Misha laughed. "Of course not. But she might quill you if you are mean to her. My wife has a cat who tried to sit on her once. He learned his lesson after Victoria spent some time pulling quills out of his bum. Russians are very fond of hedgehogs. There are some very good jokes, but I do not believe they translate well."
"That's okay," Jared said. He wondered what Misha's wife was like. "Victoria" didn't sound Russian, but Misha was the first Russian he'd ever met, so who knew? But her name wasn't French either.
The maid was apologizing to Misha in French. He handed the hedgehog over, told her, "Merci," and something Jared didn't understand, and she took herself and the hedgehog out of the room.
"I would like to get her a friend," Misha said, "but I have been told that tame hedgehogs do not like the company of their own kind. She does not like cats. Perhaps a dog. What do you think? Should I get a dog?"
Jared thought of the maids and manservants who he sometimes saw in the Bois de Boulogne walking their masters' or mistresses' dogs, and the well-dressed ladies with their spoiled lapdogs. He didn't think Misha was that kind of person - he would probably walk his dog himself, and he didn't seem the kind of person who would own a twitchy little dog.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you like dogs?"
"Well enough. Hm. I will think on it." He knelt on the floor to take the paper off the paintings and the sketch that Jared brought. "Now. Tell me about these pieces. Why this girl, why these scenes?"
"Well, the one of the Bois de Boulogne, I go there to paint a lot, to get the light and to paint the people. That's where I met Danneel, actually. Uh. Miss Harris."
"Jennifer's nanny. I have not met her, but Jennifer is pleased with her. She is the one who told Jennifer about you."
"Yeah, she did. Anyway, it's a great place to paint. The woman with the ocelot, I see her there a lot. She's beautiful and graceful and I just like to paint her, and I've never seen anyone with a jungle cat as a pet. So she adds something a little interesting and different to the picture."
"And these?" Misha gestured to the other two, the painting of Genevieve and another dancer at the Green Door, and the sketch of Genevieve pulling on her stockings.
"That's my friend Genevieve. She dances at a place called the Green Door. Uh. La Porte Verte." He never called the cabaret by its French name, and so usually forgot that most other people would. Misha nodded, prompting Jared to wonder if he'd heard of it, or even if he'd been there. It wasn't anywhere near as famous as the Moulin Rouge, but it could attract an interestingly mixed crowd, and Jared knew that even wealthy men and women liked to come to Montmartre to see how the quaint poor people and the artists entertained themselves. The men at least came to sleep with the girls and the occasional boy. "The dancers let me sit backstage or in the dressing room and draw them. That one, I liked the line Genevieve made as she put her foot on the chair and bent over to pull her stockings up, and I thought the black was a nice contrast to her white skirts and red bodice."
"A bit Snow White, perhaps. Skirts as white as snow, stockings as black as ebony, bodice as red as blood." Misha grinned. "Did you know, the Grimm brothers softened the original German tales so that children would not be afraid? They were much darker before. I believe there was more cannibalism. Are you going to make this one into a painting?"
"I don't know. I do a lot of sketches and drawings of the girls. Most of the dancers like me to draw them, so they'll take the sketches when I'm done, so of course I have to draw more. They're really good practice for fabric and just... people, expressions and motion and gestures and body shapes and hair and everything. I'll sit out in the hall and draw the audience and the dancers."
"As I said in your studio, your work is very intimate - you know this world you paint, these people. There is indeed a bit of Degas in your drawings and paintings of your dance hall girls. Little of your work looks posed. It is very natural. I am merely curious why you paint what you do, why it is this world and not another."
Jared shrugged. Misha didn't sound judgmental, and he'd seen all of Jared's work and still wanted to sell him, so clearly there was a market for paintings of dance hall girls getting dressed and bricklayers eating their lunch and couples lying in bed, just as he already knew there was a market for paintings of gardens full of spring sunlight and gorgeously-dressed women out for a stroll.
"I paint what I see," he said. "I paint my friends. I think the ordinary can be beautiful, so that's what I want to show." Sebastian had told him once that he didn't have airs, that he and his work were honest. But it seemed arrogant to repeat that to Misha.
"You are not wrong, about the beauty of ordinary things and ordinary people. Leave these two with me." He pointed to the sketch and the painting of Genevieve and the other girl. "And this one, of the gardens, finish it. It needs very little work and I have a buyer in mind for it. Now. I am putting together a kind of group exhibition of new painters, perhaps ten or fifteen pieces from each, along with another dealer who is a friend of mine. We have nearly all the artists and it is to open a month from now. I would like from you fifteen good pieces to show. I will choose them, so you must have more than fifteen for me to see."
Jared's heart skipped in shock. Was this how it always worked, once you'd found a dealer? Were you immediately put to work preparing for a show? He shouldn't complain, and he shouldn't panic - he didn't think he had fifteen paintings, finished or not, that were good enough for an exhibition, but he did have some good work, and maybe Misha would take some drawings as well.
"Do they all have to be paintings?"
"Most of them, yes. I will consider taking a few drawings if they are good enough. This one I would show." He tapped the top of the painting of the Green Door. "And some of the others showing your dance hall girls. Perhaps a painting of your prostitutes, for a bit of scandal." He grinned. "I recall a study of a girl in front of a mirror, fixing her hair."
"Sandy in front of my wardrobe mirror. That's a study for a painting."
"Paint it. And the one of the couple in bed, I will show that one."
The Bed. Jared and Jensen under their patchwork duvet, just woken up and smiling at each other. It was a love letter as much as any words Jared might have written. He couldn't sell it. Jensen wouldn't let him.
"That one's not for sale."
"No? Perhaps I can show it anyway. It demonstrates what you do."
Jensen would kill him, if it went on display for who knew how many strangers.
"Can I think about it?"
"Yes, but do not think too long. You have work to do. Ah, I forgot, a copy of your contract." Misha pulled another piece of paper from one of the piles on his desk, scrawled his signature and the date on it, and handed it to Jared. "This is for you. You may wish to sign it." He grinned and handed Jared a pen, and Jared added his signature to the bottom. He folded the contract up and put it in his inside coat pocket. "Wonderful. Now you will paint and I will sell, and we will be friends. More tea? Take a biscuit." He offered the plate of pastries and Jared took a tiny cream puff. It wasn't much more than a single bite, no bigger than the napoleon had been earlier, but the pastry's crisp plain-tasting shell was filled with fluffy vanilla-scented cream whipped to within an inch of its life, and the one bite was enough to convince him that he could eat a whole pile of them.
"One more thing," Misha went on. He set down the plate, opened one of the desk drawers, and pulled out a business card. He scribbled something on the back and handed it to Jared. "Make yourself a list and on Monday, go here and ask for Mademoiselle Liu. She will help you with whatever you need - paints, brushes, canvas, new pastels - and you will have her send the bill to me."
Jared looked at the card dubiously. A shop for artists' supplies, on a street he didn't recognize. But he didn't need anything. Well, he could use an advance to start to pay Christian back.
He didn't get an advance. But he did get several cookies for the road, round Russian tea cookies that tasted a bit like gingerbread with a pepperminty glaze and that Misha said were called pryaniki, and a reminder to go shopping on Monday.
He couldn't quite believe this was happening. He had a signed contract inside his jacket and an upcoming exhibition and he still couldn't believe it.
On Monday he went to see Mademoiselle Liu and let her lead him around her beautifully arranged shop, picking out these paints and those brushes and this paper and ordering a bunch of canvases and just loading him up with supplies. She admitted to being a painter herself, but told Jared that no, she'd never shown her work, she painted for her own pleasure and to give things to her friends.
She arranged to have all his purchases delivered to the studio, and when the delivery boy showed up on Tuesday Jensen was home and could help Jared unpack and arrange everything. They admired the class of a place that routinely provided that kind of service.
"Now I can paint you with the best brushes that Paris has to offer," Jared said, waving one of those very brushes in Jensen's direction. Jensen just laughed and shook his head. "Just wait. Someday you'll walk into a gallery and see yourself on every wall."
"Better to see myself in every bookseller's," Jensen countered. "I'm so proud of you."
"Even though I haven't sold anything yet?" Unless the painting and the sketch that he'd left at Misha's house counted.
"You will. Come here." Jared went over to him. Jensen took the brush out of Jared's hand, tossed it at the couch, and pulled Jared's face down for a kiss. It was a long kiss, a deep kiss, and Jared returned it enthusiastically. Soon he was dropping to his knees and opening Jensen's pants to take Jensen's cock in his mouth, to tease the head with swipes of his tongue and to hum as he sucked, trying to make Jensen vibrate with pleasure against his mouth. Jensen cupped the back of his head with a steady hand, breath hitching as Jared took him as deep as he could. He needed Jensen to know exactly how grateful he was for Jensen's support of him and pride in him and love for him.
Arranging all his new paints and brushes and charcoal pencils could wait.
Backstage at the Green Door
On Friday Danneel sent a note to the Cherokee explaining that she was needed at the house through Saturday afternoon, but she had been given the evening off. If Jared was free, she wanted to celebrate with him. She hadn't had a chance to really congratulate him on finding a dealer and getting a show. And as she pointed out, she could finally meet his friends.
"Take her to the Green Door," Christian suggested. "Make her buy you dinner first." He grinned. Jared rolled his eyes. He'd never asked Danneel what kind of money she made as a nanny, and for all he knew, her salary consisted of room and board and a franc a week for spending money. And if that was so, he could hardly ask her to spend it on him.
She met him and Jensen at the Cherokee, where Christian and Steve teased her and fed her, and from there Jared and Jensen took her to the Green Door to introduce her to Sandy and Genevieve. Jared couldn't believe they'd never met before. Danneel didn't seem at all bothered by being invited into the dressing room of a dance hall, or sitting on the broken-down sofa chatting with dancing girls in various stages of dress, but then, Jared had never been bothered either, and the girls had never cared.
"I think Genevieve is really taken with your friend," Sandy confided to Jared, as the show started and half the girls vanished to dance in it. Danneel and Jensen had already gone out to find a table. "Lace me up."
He pulled at her corset laces, trying not to yank too hard. "Danneel has a crush on her boss," he said.
"Well, I think Genevieve has a crush on her." He could barely feel her chest expand as she took an experimental breath. "That's good." He tied off the laces and Sandy turned to face him. She patted her hair and adjusted her shirt. "Emmanuelle told me about a bar we should try. I know you love the Cherokee, but we're still celebrating your good fortune, right? I want to stand you a round somewhere new."
A girl poked her head in the dressing room and called Sandy's name, apparently telling her that she should be out on the floor. Sandy patted Jared's arm, said "Wait for us after the show," and went out to dance. Jared snuck out of the dressing room and crept around the dance hall until he found Danneel and Jensen. Danneel was sipping her wine and watching the show, and Jensen had just finished rolling a cigarette. Jared sat down, kissed Jensen on the cheek, and whispered "Sandy wants to take us to some new bar after this."
"Okay," Jensen said. He lit the cigarette and took a drag. "I have some money."
"She wants to buy us a round."
"Just one?" Jensen grinned around his cigarette.
"One to start." Jared leaned across the table and touched Danneel's arm to get her attention. When she turned to look at him, he told her "We're going out with Sandy and Genevieve after this. Is that okay?" She nodded.
After a while, Jared asked Danneel to dance, and then he asked Jensen, and then Danneel asked Jensen, and then Sandy came out and sat with them for a little bit. After the show, the five of them stopped at the Cherokee to say hi to Christian and Steve and have a few drinks before continuing on to the bar Sandy had heard about, which was a dim, smoky, overdecorated place called La Chenille.
"The Caterpillar," Jensen whispered to Jared, knowing Jared's French was still not that good. Jared pointed out the caterpillar drawn on the menu, and kissed Jensen anyway for trying to be helpful.
They drank brandy from wide-bottomed glasses and absinthe from glasses with bubbles in the stems to indicate how much of the liquor a person should pour. Sandy demonstrated the proper way to drink it, with a sugar cube sitting on a tiny slotted spoon laid across the rim of the glass, water slowly dripping onto it from a faucet in a small brass fountain. Absinthe tasted like green, like herbs and spring meadows, and Jared lost track of how much he drank. He only knew that he was drunk and happy - wildly, ridiculously happy, sitting with his friends and his boyfriend in this velvet-covered, decadent bar, laughing and drinking and kissing and forgetting everything except that he was in Paris with people he loved. Everything was soft and green and beautiful, and Jensen's mouth tasted like cigarettes and sugar, and the feathers in Genevieve's hat waved in the bar's heavy air like graceful blue-black fingers. Sandy's head against his shoulder and her hand on his thigh were two small comforting pressure and Danneel's laugh was music when Genevieve pulled her to her feet to dance, the two of them swaying to a song only they could hear.
There was an absinthe-and-smoke haze over everything, making the overstuffed velvet couches and tasseled wall hangings and carved wooden roses and even the unnaturally-green liqueur feel unreal. People moved in and out of Jared's vision like creatures in a fairy tale. The murmur of conversation all around them was the running of water, the low bubbling of a river. Jared could well believe he'd dreamed this place, lush and low-ceilinged and full of things and people he could never focus on long enough to paint.
He found himself sitting on a sofa, Jensen sitting half on top of him, leaning against him, a hand heavy on his thigh.
"You're amazing," Jensen murmured in his ear, words warm and blurred. "I'm so lucky you're mine." He pressed his lips to Jared's jaw. "We'll go home later and I'll show you exactly how lucky."
"Show me now," Jared murmured in response, feeling a tingling in his cock and the conviction that he could get hard like that with almost no prompting. But Jensen only laughed, took Jared's chin in one hand, turned his face, and licked at his mouth. Jared's lips parted for his tongue and they lost themselves in a deep, slow, sugar-laced, absinthe-flavored kiss.
Jared was sure they must have gone back to the studio eventually, but he never could remember the five of them actually leaving the Caterpillar and making their unsteady way home. He only knew when he woke up naked, in his bed, feeling a little hungover and still a little drunk. He was quite surprised and weirdly embarrassed to find Sandy, equally naked, asleep next to him. He very carefully turned his head to discover a completely unclothed Jensen on his other side. He was pretty sure he remembered Sandy straddling him and enthusiastically riding his cock, but he couldn't remember doing anything with Jensen, at least not in this bed. Another careful glance behind him, and it looked as if there was lipstick on Jensen's cock. That was odd. Sandy wouldn't have sucked him off, and neither Danneel nor Genevieve liked men.
Jared's lips felt weirdly sticky and gummy. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand, and then stared uncomprehendingly at the waxy red smear on his skin. Oh, he finally realized, he must have put on someone's lipstick, or she put it on him, and then he blew his boyfriend. He really wanted to remember that. How much had he drunk last night?
He needed to pee. He needed to go back to sleep. He could use a drink to take the edge off his incipient hangover.
Sandy solved at least one of his problems by stirring, opening her eyes, blinking at him, and smiling.
"Morning," she murmured. She pushed hair out of her face with one hand. "I think it's still morning."
"Did we..." he asked. "Last night, you and I?"
"We did." Her smile widened. "You were good."
So he hadn't imagined it. Good to know. "Did you... did you take advantage of me?" He didn't think she would, but he had to ask.
She shook her head, still smiling. "Of course not. You kissed me first."
"Did Jensen - "
"I think he might have dared you. He watched us. Watching you get off turns him on. And then I watched you go down on him." She yawned and closed her eyes again. "I liked that. He did too."
"Can you... I mean, I have to - "
"Okay, okay." She rolled off the bed, and as soon as he followed, she climbed back onto the mattress.
Jared tiptoed as fast as he could out of the studio and down the hall to the toilet, too desperate to relieve himself to care that he was naked. He tiptoed back and this time he noticed Danneel and Genevieve lying tangled together on the sofa. They were both half-dressed and Danneel had a feather in her hair.
He tried to remember if they had done anything besides dance with each other, and he was pretty sure they'd kissed, and it made him smile. Danneel should be with someone who would return her affections. Her employers wouldn't be thrilled that she was seeing a dancing girl, but he couldn't imagine why she'd tell them. He was pretty sure they wouldn't be thrilled with anything she'd done last night, not least among them the fact that she hadn't gone home.
He tiptoed back around the screen hiding the bed and climbed over Sandy to snuggle next to Jensen. The things he could remember from last night were a little crazy but generally good - he was pretty sure Christian had opened the tiny storage room in back of the Cherokee so Jared could bend Jensen over a stack of crates and fuck him, and he was pretty sure Jensen had stuck flowers in his hair at the Caterpillar and called him a pretty pretty princess - so he could only guess that the things he couldn't remember were good too. They'd have to go back there and have absinthe again.
He was woken an indeterminate time later by Danneel shaking his shoulder and demanding to know what time it was.
"I'm late," she insisted, "the Bs will fire me. What have I done, I'm going to lose my job, I'll have to go back to Louisiana, my parents will be so ashamed - "
Jared blinked at her, completely confused. "Slow down," he said. He realized Jensen had left - he must have gone out to find something to eat - but Sandy was still deep in sleep on his other side.
"If they send me away - " Danneel started to say, but Jared reached out and grabbed her arm.
"Shh. What's wrong?"
"I had the night off. I didn't have to go to church with them this morning - Mrs B likes to take the baby out herself, while Mr B is at mass, and then they meet somewhere for lunch - they would have let me sleep in so they might not know I never came home, but I can't be gone when they get back." Her face was pale, her hair a tangled mess. She'd lost the feather and had gotten fully dressed. "I feel sick."
Jared let go of her arm so he could sit up very carefully. He patted the mattress. "Sit."
"I can't. I have to go. Tell Genevieve - I don't know. Make something up. Tell her I enjoyed - " She stopped, evidently remembering whatever it was she'd enjoyed, and Jared couldn't help smiling at the thought. She didn't seem to notice. "I enjoyed last night. Tell her that. Tell her I'll see her again when I can, I promise."
"You had a good time?"
"I had a wonderful time. But I can't lose my job for it."
"Go home. I'll tell her goodbye for you. Good luck."
She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispered in his ear.
He was about to ask her what she was thanking him for, but she pulled her arm free and ran out. Jared thought about going back to sleep, but he was up now and he wanted to be awake when Jensen came home, so he slowly climbed out of bed, slowly got dressed, found the washbasin, and slowly went out and down the hall to the sink. He needed to do more than wash his face - he needed a long hot soak in a big bath - but he could at least try to boil water for tea for himself and Sandy and Genevieve and scrub his face with whatever water was left.
After that, he had to get back to work. It was one thing to learn that he'd been chosen to show his work in an exhibition, but another thing entirely to produce enough good paintings for it.
Onward!
NC-17
Part 2 of 6
Master post
Art
That morning Steve banged on their door to deliver a note and the grumpy explanation - as Jared read the quickly scrawled words - that M Collins had changed his mind and would be arriving at the studio at 2 pm to see everything Jared had done.
Jared's only response to that was a surprised "Shit".
"I'm going back to bed," Steve grumped, and took off. Jared stared at the note, willing it to be wrong. He glanced around. The place was a mess, dishes and clothes and jars of dirty water and pencils and brushes and tubes of paint and books and paper and canvas everywhere. It seemed as if everything they owned was thrown around the place. For guys without a lot of money, they sure did seem to have a lot of things. He and Jensen would have to make the bed, or at least rearrange the screen to hide it better.
Jensen came out from behind the screen. He'd put on his robe.
"What was that about?" he asked.
"You know the dealer I was supposed to meet today? He's coming here." Jared's heart started to race at the thought. He needed breakfast before he could deal with this. He could always think better on a full stomach.
"We should clean up," Jensen said calmly. "At least this way you won't have to haul your work halfway across the city, or worry that he won't like whatever you brought him."
The more Jared thought about it, the more it made sense this way - M Collins would need to see everything he'd done in order to make an accurate assessment of his work and skills, and the easiest way to do that would be to show up at the studio. Jared could never carry enough to the man's office or gallery to show everything that he thought he was capable of.
M Collins was prompt and the studio was as clean and tidied as Jared and Jensen could make it. Jensen had gone to the Cherokee, claiming he'd only be a distraction and in the way, and Jared should be alone with M Collins to give the dealer the full force of his personality. Jared was washed and shaved and dressed and twitching with nerves when there was a polite knock on the door and he let M Collins in.
The dealer was dressed in a good, if slightly wrinkled, brown patterned suit and a cream-colored shirt. His hair was dark, his eyes blue, and he told Jared to call him Misha.
"Show me everything," he said. "I do not care if it is finished or not, if it is done in oils or watercolors or pastels or charcoal, if it is merely a study or a sketch. I wish to see everything you have done, and then I will sort the wheat from the chaff and tell you what I think. You come highly recommended."
"Thank you," Jared said. "I think." Mrs B must have repeated everything Danneel had told her. And Mrs B had never even met him. She must trust Danneel very much.
He showed Misha around the studio, pulling paintings away from the wall and flipping through sketchbooks and letting Misha thumb through his work. Misha looked at everything - not just Jared's art but also his easel, his charcoals and pencils and paints, the paintbox and collapsible easel he took to paint outside, the prints and postcards and magazine ads and illustrations pinned to the walls, the note from Danneel that was still pinned to the wardrobe door, the little pewter soldiers and the tiny wooden cactus that his mom had sent him for Christmas, the small stack of dishes that Jensen had forgotten to take back to the Cherokee. It was as if Misha was judging Jared's entire life here, not just his work.
Not only did he look at everything but he asked questions about everything - why had Jared painted that, what was it about the Bois de Boulogne that attracted him so, why did it look as if the light was coming from this direction on that painting, where were these postcards from, who were the girls, was this one done in his studio, what about that one, why had he bought that print, where did he buy his paints and brushes, where had that pot come from, were those supposed to be American soldiers, who had stretched this canvas, where was the music coming from?
"That's the Hodges," Jared explained. "They live next door. One of them's a composer, and the other one is a photographer. He also plays the fiddle."
"Does the music help you work?"
"I'm so used to it I don't really hear it any more."
"I like it." By now Misha had made a circuit of the entire studio and had apparently looked at every single thing in it. He sat at the table and gestured to the other chair. "Sit. Let us talk." Jared sat. "Have you thought of doing illustration? Posters, that kind of thing?"
Jared had seen the posters for Sarah Bernhardt with their flowing lines and organic curves and pretty pastel colors, and everyone knew Toulouse-Lautrec's work for the Moulin Rouge. Somewhere in the mess of the studio were a few copies of the magazine La Plume, which Jared had bought for their reviews of art exhibitions and the illustrations done by artists whose work he wanted to know.
"There is money to be made," Misha continued, "and I think some of your sketches will lend themselves nicely to advertisements. You have a good eye for design. I will introduce you to a good printer, if you wish."
"I hadn't thought about it," Jared admitted, although he had asked Christian about designing a poster for the Cherokee, and he'd asked Sandy and Genevieve who he could approach about maybe doing a poster for the Green Door, but nothing had come of either avenue. Christian hadn't thought it necessary - and if Jared and Jensen were going to try to pay off their tab, he wanted cold hard cash rather than a poster advertising his bar - and the girls hadn't had any more success with the manager of the dance hall.
"Think about it. In the meantime, you have a great amount of potential. There is a touch of Degas' dancers in some of your work, but you are painting a different world and you have something else to say. I quite like this one as well" - he stood up and walked over to where The Bed was leaning against the wall - "it is very intimate without being voyeuristic, as is much of your work. You are of the world you paint, not merely looking into it. It shows great care, great love."
Well, I'm painting people I love, Jared thought, of course it shows.
"Some of it seems quite slapdash," Misha went on, coming back to the table and sitting down, "but that is not a problem in itself. Your technique is good, although I do not know if your watercolors will sell for much, and your pastels could use some work." Jared's disappointment must have shown on his face, because Misha added "Do not look so crestfallen. I like your vision. You just need more practice with the watercolors and pastels, and perhaps some instruction. Are you taking classes?"
"No," Jared admitted sheepishly. He knew he could benefit from professional guidance, but he didn't have the money or the connections to get a place somewhere good.
"No matter. Your Bois de Boulogne pictures are pretty and show a good command of light and shadow, although they can be a bit derivative. But there is still a market for them. I do like the woman walking the cat. That is not a leopard, is it?"
"It's an ocelot," Jared said. "It's too small to be a leopard. I see her in the gardens a lot." He remembered Danneel telling him she thought Mrs B knew the woman with the ocelot. Maybe he could get her to introduce them, if Misha took him on and he started to sell.
"Jennifer did not lie to me about you. She said you were good, and you are. I can see the lack of training here and there, but your sense of design is good, your subjects interesting, and as I said, most of the time your technique is sure. I would like to show your work. I believe I can sell you."
It took Jared a minute to realize that "Jennifer" was probably Mrs B, and then it took him another minute to remember his manners, more or less. "No shit! Really? Thank you."
Misha didn't look at all taken aback by the swearing. "Let us shake on it," he said, holding out his hand. Jared shook it. He couldn't believe it was this easy. Shouldn't he sign a contract? "I need some time to draw up a contract for you, but if you could come to the house on Saturday I will have it ready. Come at three. We will sign it and have tea."
Well, that answered that question. But it still seemed easy. It wasn't even two weeks since Danneel told him she'd mentioned him to Mrs B and Mrs B had said she'd ask her friend the art dealer if he would see Jared's work. Jared knew people could toil for years without recognition. He wished Danneel had talked to Mrs B sooner.
He wondered if he should bring Misha a thank-you painting, something small. Maybe one of his paintings of the girls at the dance hall, or something in charcoal. Misha seemed to like the charcoal drawings. Maybe Christian would pose in his Wild West get-up. Some Parisians had a thing for cowboys and the American west. Although Misha was Russian, and Jared didn't know what Russians liked.
"Bring that one, that one, and that one," Misha went on, pointing at the painting of Genevieve lacing another girl into her corset backstage at the Green Door, the nearly-finished painting of the Bois de Boulogne with the woman walking her ocelot and the little girls with their nuns, and the sketch of Genevieve pulling on her black stockings. "And we will see what we will see."
They shook hands again at the door, Misha said "You have my address, yes?" and when Jared said he did, Misha left. Jared waited until he was sure Misha was out of sight, and then he practically ran to the Cherokee to share his good news.
"Told you," Jensen said smugly to Steve, who sighed exaggeratedly as he retrieved the bottle of wine they'd bet from behind the bar. Someone had actually written "Jared and Jensen's wine" on the glass with a black wax crayon. Christian put out four glasses and they drank a toast to Jared's success.
The four of them killed the bottle and then Jared and Jensen went to the Green Door, where Sandy and Genevieve congratulated Jared and two of the other dancers volunteered themselves to help him celebrate. He made Jensen tell them in very polite French thank you, but no thank you, his boyfriend wouldn't approve. In response, the girls said something to Jared that Jensen wouldn't translate, and then they giggled, amused and entirely unoffended.
"Why won't you tell me what they said?" Jared asked.
"Because you need to learn the language yourself," Jensen told him. "I'll show you what it was later."
They stayed for the show and then took Sandy and Genevieve back to the Cherokee, where they drank and talked and danced and finally reeled home near sunrise. Jared would have thought he had drunk too much to be any use in bed, although he was certainly excited enough about so many things, but Jensen kissed his mouth and his jaw and his throat and thumbed his nipples and stroked his inner thighs and spoke French to him in a throaty, intensely sexy voice until Jared was stiff and aching and Jensen was straddling him and sinking down onto his cock.
They rocked and bounced on the bed, panting and moaning, their combined weight and efforts making the bed creak underneath them. The windows rattled as the wind whistled around the building, as if the entire factory was in motion to the rhythm of Jared and Jensen's love.
Jensen leaned down down, his lips barely an inch from Jared's as he fucked himself faster and faster on Jared's cock. Jared was overwhelmed with the heat of him, the weight of him, the wine of his breath and the flush on his cheeks and the freckles scattered across his skin like flecks of cinnamon. Jared breathed him in until that breath stuttered as they both shuddered and came.
Afterwards, Jared stayed conscious long enough to wrap himself around Jensen's warm, sweaty limbs and murmured, "I love you so much," into his hair. He was pretty sure Jensen said something in return - it sounded like "Je t'aime toujours", which was some of the only French Jared knew - but then he was asleep.
He spent all of Friday trying to organize his work and then walking around the city looking at advertising posters. It wasn't until that night, when he and Jensen were sitting in the Cherokee trying to convince Christian to feed them, that he remembered he never told Danneel what had happened and he had never thanked her. He borrowed a pen and a sheet of paper from a poet sitting in a corner - he and Jensen had seen the guy several times over the past couple of weeks but had never learned his name - and scribbled a quick note:
M Collins said he would take me on! He told me to call him Misha! I'm signing a contract tomorrow (Saturday)! Thank you! Thank Mrs B too! I owe you a drink!
He folded the note into quarters, handed it over the bar, and asked Christian to get someone to deliver it. Christian looked expectant. Jared sighed, dug into his pocket, and retrieved a few centimes.
"When I sell something I'll pay you back," he said. "I promise."
"Uh-huh." Christian was unconvinced.
"I know, I know, we've had this conversation before. But I have a dealer now."
"You still haven't sold anything."
He fed them anyway.
On Saturday Jared wrapped the two paintings and the sketch Misha wanted in brown paper, put on his best suit, and went to Misha's house to sign the contract that would ideally lead to artistic success and good money. The sun warmed his back and shoulders, a mild flower-scented breeze ruffled his hair, and Paris was pink and blue and red and yellow and green and white, and it smelled of people and horses and cut grass and slowly-warming stone. Jared couldn't help whistling as he walked through well-kept arrondissements to Misha's house.
A maid answered the door when Jared rang the bell. She made him wait in the foyer while she went to fetch Misha, who appeared before Jared had much of a chance to do more than peer down the hallway and try to look up the stairs and peek into the closest room. He got a glimpse of dark walls and three different styles of chair and some framed botanical prints before Misha appeared and led him away.
They walked down the hall and into a high-ceilinged eclectically-decorated parlor and a library before finally stopping in a room at the back of the house, with tall windows overlooking an overgrown back garden. There was a heavy desk in the middle of the room, two glass-fronted bookcases, papers and knick-knacks everywhere, and paintings and drawings covering what felt like every inch of wall. Jared stared. There was no rhyme or reason to the arrangement of art, no unifying theme or style - some of the paintings looked very avant-garde, some of them more classical, and a few were oddly stylized in a way that looked almost medieval.
"Not all my clients," Misha said. "Some are simply pieces I like." He gestured to a medieval-looking painting that Jared had been admiring. "That one is by a painter from Odessa, and the small one next to it I brought from St Petersburg." He took the paintings and the sketch from Jared, leaned them against the desk, and picked up a long sheet of paper covered with writing. "Here, I have your contract. Read it over, and if it is to your liking, sign. And we will have an agreement." He smiled.
Jared read it over, or tried to - it was in French and English, and while he thought Misha's terms were fair, in terms of payment percentages and rights and responsibilities, he'd never had a thorough conversation with anyone knowledgeable about this kind of thing and didn't know for sure if he was being offered a good deal.
Misha would no doubt say he was. He decided to trust the guy. He signed.
"Excellent," Misha said. "And you have brought me the pieces I asked for. Now we will have tea like civilized men." He pulled a tasseled cord that was hanging from the ceiling. Five minutes later a middle-aged woman in a white apron and cap brought in a tray bearing a teapot, two teacups, a plate of pastries, and a pot of jam. She put the tray on the table, bobbed her head, and went out.
Misha poured tea for both of them and stirred some jam into his cup. "Russians prefer preserves in their tea," he explained, "rather than sugar. We have strawberry today. Try it." He dropped a spoonful into Jared's teacup and stirred it, and when Jared looked at it dubiously - strawberry jam? Really? - Misha sipped his own tea and made encouraging motions with his free hand. So Jared tried it. He got a couple of seeds and a tiny piece of strawberry with his first sip, and the sweet, strange, and vaguely fruity taste of adulterated black tea. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not. Maybe he was just too used to strong coffee sometimes lightly touched with milk, but unsweetened.
Misha offered him the plate of pastries, and he took a tiny napoleon that flaked into delicious sugary nothing in his mouth when he bit into it.
He would write home and tell his parents that he had found a dealer to sell his art, and the two of them had drunk tea in the Russian style to celebrate signing the contract.
A small, spiky creature with a pointed nose trundled speedily into the room, chased by the maid who had brought the tea. The creature waddled right up to Misha, who picked it up, brought it close to his face, and made affectionate Russian-sounding noises at it. Its spikes were white and brown, the fur on its wide belly and sides was white, and its little black nose twitched as Misha talked to it.
"This is my Yozhik," he said, holding it out towards Jared. It made a weird squeaky noise that he couldn't begin to decipher. Was it mad at him? Trying to make friends? Was it speaking Russian? Or French? "She was a gift to me from a mad Moroccan." He brushed his finger over the creature's quills. "She likes to have the run of the house but generally she is not allowed." Jared must have looked dubious again, because Misha continued "Have you never met a hedgehog before?"
"No. Is it - she? - is she poisonous?" She had short skinny legs that looked too frail to support her wide, teardrop-shaped body. She scrunched up her face at Jared so that she looked as if she had eyebrows and they did not approve of him.
Misha laughed. "Of course not. But she might quill you if you are mean to her. My wife has a cat who tried to sit on her once. He learned his lesson after Victoria spent some time pulling quills out of his bum. Russians are very fond of hedgehogs. There are some very good jokes, but I do not believe they translate well."
"That's okay," Jared said. He wondered what Misha's wife was like. "Victoria" didn't sound Russian, but Misha was the first Russian he'd ever met, so who knew? But her name wasn't French either.
The maid was apologizing to Misha in French. He handed the hedgehog over, told her, "Merci," and something Jared didn't understand, and she took herself and the hedgehog out of the room.
"I would like to get her a friend," Misha said, "but I have been told that tame hedgehogs do not like the company of their own kind. She does not like cats. Perhaps a dog. What do you think? Should I get a dog?"
Jared thought of the maids and manservants who he sometimes saw in the Bois de Boulogne walking their masters' or mistresses' dogs, and the well-dressed ladies with their spoiled lapdogs. He didn't think Misha was that kind of person - he would probably walk his dog himself, and he didn't seem the kind of person who would own a twitchy little dog.
"I don't know," he said. "Do you like dogs?"
"Well enough. Hm. I will think on it." He knelt on the floor to take the paper off the paintings and the sketch that Jared brought. "Now. Tell me about these pieces. Why this girl, why these scenes?"
"Well, the one of the Bois de Boulogne, I go there to paint a lot, to get the light and to paint the people. That's where I met Danneel, actually. Uh. Miss Harris."
"Jennifer's nanny. I have not met her, but Jennifer is pleased with her. She is the one who told Jennifer about you."
"Yeah, she did. Anyway, it's a great place to paint. The woman with the ocelot, I see her there a lot. She's beautiful and graceful and I just like to paint her, and I've never seen anyone with a jungle cat as a pet. So she adds something a little interesting and different to the picture."
"And these?" Misha gestured to the other two, the painting of Genevieve and another dancer at the Green Door, and the sketch of Genevieve pulling on her stockings.
"That's my friend Genevieve. She dances at a place called the Green Door. Uh. La Porte Verte." He never called the cabaret by its French name, and so usually forgot that most other people would. Misha nodded, prompting Jared to wonder if he'd heard of it, or even if he'd been there. It wasn't anywhere near as famous as the Moulin Rouge, but it could attract an interestingly mixed crowd, and Jared knew that even wealthy men and women liked to come to Montmartre to see how the quaint poor people and the artists entertained themselves. The men at least came to sleep with the girls and the occasional boy. "The dancers let me sit backstage or in the dressing room and draw them. That one, I liked the line Genevieve made as she put her foot on the chair and bent over to pull her stockings up, and I thought the black was a nice contrast to her white skirts and red bodice."
"A bit Snow White, perhaps. Skirts as white as snow, stockings as black as ebony, bodice as red as blood." Misha grinned. "Did you know, the Grimm brothers softened the original German tales so that children would not be afraid? They were much darker before. I believe there was more cannibalism. Are you going to make this one into a painting?"
"I don't know. I do a lot of sketches and drawings of the girls. Most of the dancers like me to draw them, so they'll take the sketches when I'm done, so of course I have to draw more. They're really good practice for fabric and just... people, expressions and motion and gestures and body shapes and hair and everything. I'll sit out in the hall and draw the audience and the dancers."
"As I said in your studio, your work is very intimate - you know this world you paint, these people. There is indeed a bit of Degas in your drawings and paintings of your dance hall girls. Little of your work looks posed. It is very natural. I am merely curious why you paint what you do, why it is this world and not another."
Jared shrugged. Misha didn't sound judgmental, and he'd seen all of Jared's work and still wanted to sell him, so clearly there was a market for paintings of dance hall girls getting dressed and bricklayers eating their lunch and couples lying in bed, just as he already knew there was a market for paintings of gardens full of spring sunlight and gorgeously-dressed women out for a stroll.
"I paint what I see," he said. "I paint my friends. I think the ordinary can be beautiful, so that's what I want to show." Sebastian had told him once that he didn't have airs, that he and his work were honest. But it seemed arrogant to repeat that to Misha.
"You are not wrong, about the beauty of ordinary things and ordinary people. Leave these two with me." He pointed to the sketch and the painting of Genevieve and the other girl. "And this one, of the gardens, finish it. It needs very little work and I have a buyer in mind for it. Now. I am putting together a kind of group exhibition of new painters, perhaps ten or fifteen pieces from each, along with another dealer who is a friend of mine. We have nearly all the artists and it is to open a month from now. I would like from you fifteen good pieces to show. I will choose them, so you must have more than fifteen for me to see."
Jared's heart skipped in shock. Was this how it always worked, once you'd found a dealer? Were you immediately put to work preparing for a show? He shouldn't complain, and he shouldn't panic - he didn't think he had fifteen paintings, finished or not, that were good enough for an exhibition, but he did have some good work, and maybe Misha would take some drawings as well.
"Do they all have to be paintings?"
"Most of them, yes. I will consider taking a few drawings if they are good enough. This one I would show." He tapped the top of the painting of the Green Door. "And some of the others showing your dance hall girls. Perhaps a painting of your prostitutes, for a bit of scandal." He grinned. "I recall a study of a girl in front of a mirror, fixing her hair."
"Sandy in front of my wardrobe mirror. That's a study for a painting."
"Paint it. And the one of the couple in bed, I will show that one."
The Bed. Jared and Jensen under their patchwork duvet, just woken up and smiling at each other. It was a love letter as much as any words Jared might have written. He couldn't sell it. Jensen wouldn't let him.
"That one's not for sale."
"No? Perhaps I can show it anyway. It demonstrates what you do."
Jensen would kill him, if it went on display for who knew how many strangers.
"Can I think about it?"
"Yes, but do not think too long. You have work to do. Ah, I forgot, a copy of your contract." Misha pulled another piece of paper from one of the piles on his desk, scrawled his signature and the date on it, and handed it to Jared. "This is for you. You may wish to sign it." He grinned and handed Jared a pen, and Jared added his signature to the bottom. He folded the contract up and put it in his inside coat pocket. "Wonderful. Now you will paint and I will sell, and we will be friends. More tea? Take a biscuit." He offered the plate of pastries and Jared took a tiny cream puff. It wasn't much more than a single bite, no bigger than the napoleon had been earlier, but the pastry's crisp plain-tasting shell was filled with fluffy vanilla-scented cream whipped to within an inch of its life, and the one bite was enough to convince him that he could eat a whole pile of them.
"One more thing," Misha went on. He set down the plate, opened one of the desk drawers, and pulled out a business card. He scribbled something on the back and handed it to Jared. "Make yourself a list and on Monday, go here and ask for Mademoiselle Liu. She will help you with whatever you need - paints, brushes, canvas, new pastels - and you will have her send the bill to me."
Jared looked at the card dubiously. A shop for artists' supplies, on a street he didn't recognize. But he didn't need anything. Well, he could use an advance to start to pay Christian back.
He didn't get an advance. But he did get several cookies for the road, round Russian tea cookies that tasted a bit like gingerbread with a pepperminty glaze and that Misha said were called pryaniki, and a reminder to go shopping on Monday.
He couldn't quite believe this was happening. He had a signed contract inside his jacket and an upcoming exhibition and he still couldn't believe it.
On Monday he went to see Mademoiselle Liu and let her lead him around her beautifully arranged shop, picking out these paints and those brushes and this paper and ordering a bunch of canvases and just loading him up with supplies. She admitted to being a painter herself, but told Jared that no, she'd never shown her work, she painted for her own pleasure and to give things to her friends.
She arranged to have all his purchases delivered to the studio, and when the delivery boy showed up on Tuesday Jensen was home and could help Jared unpack and arrange everything. They admired the class of a place that routinely provided that kind of service.
"Now I can paint you with the best brushes that Paris has to offer," Jared said, waving one of those very brushes in Jensen's direction. Jensen just laughed and shook his head. "Just wait. Someday you'll walk into a gallery and see yourself on every wall."
"Better to see myself in every bookseller's," Jensen countered. "I'm so proud of you."
"Even though I haven't sold anything yet?" Unless the painting and the sketch that he'd left at Misha's house counted.
"You will. Come here." Jared went over to him. Jensen took the brush out of Jared's hand, tossed it at the couch, and pulled Jared's face down for a kiss. It was a long kiss, a deep kiss, and Jared returned it enthusiastically. Soon he was dropping to his knees and opening Jensen's pants to take Jensen's cock in his mouth, to tease the head with swipes of his tongue and to hum as he sucked, trying to make Jensen vibrate with pleasure against his mouth. Jensen cupped the back of his head with a steady hand, breath hitching as Jared took him as deep as he could. He needed Jensen to know exactly how grateful he was for Jensen's support of him and pride in him and love for him.
Arranging all his new paints and brushes and charcoal pencils could wait.
Backstage at the Green Door
On Friday Danneel sent a note to the Cherokee explaining that she was needed at the house through Saturday afternoon, but she had been given the evening off. If Jared was free, she wanted to celebrate with him. She hadn't had a chance to really congratulate him on finding a dealer and getting a show. And as she pointed out, she could finally meet his friends.
"Take her to the Green Door," Christian suggested. "Make her buy you dinner first." He grinned. Jared rolled his eyes. He'd never asked Danneel what kind of money she made as a nanny, and for all he knew, her salary consisted of room and board and a franc a week for spending money. And if that was so, he could hardly ask her to spend it on him.
She met him and Jensen at the Cherokee, where Christian and Steve teased her and fed her, and from there Jared and Jensen took her to the Green Door to introduce her to Sandy and Genevieve. Jared couldn't believe they'd never met before. Danneel didn't seem at all bothered by being invited into the dressing room of a dance hall, or sitting on the broken-down sofa chatting with dancing girls in various stages of dress, but then, Jared had never been bothered either, and the girls had never cared.
"I think Genevieve is really taken with your friend," Sandy confided to Jared, as the show started and half the girls vanished to dance in it. Danneel and Jensen had already gone out to find a table. "Lace me up."
He pulled at her corset laces, trying not to yank too hard. "Danneel has a crush on her boss," he said.
"Well, I think Genevieve has a crush on her." He could barely feel her chest expand as she took an experimental breath. "That's good." He tied off the laces and Sandy turned to face him. She patted her hair and adjusted her shirt. "Emmanuelle told me about a bar we should try. I know you love the Cherokee, but we're still celebrating your good fortune, right? I want to stand you a round somewhere new."
A girl poked her head in the dressing room and called Sandy's name, apparently telling her that she should be out on the floor. Sandy patted Jared's arm, said "Wait for us after the show," and went out to dance. Jared snuck out of the dressing room and crept around the dance hall until he found Danneel and Jensen. Danneel was sipping her wine and watching the show, and Jensen had just finished rolling a cigarette. Jared sat down, kissed Jensen on the cheek, and whispered "Sandy wants to take us to some new bar after this."
"Okay," Jensen said. He lit the cigarette and took a drag. "I have some money."
"She wants to buy us a round."
"Just one?" Jensen grinned around his cigarette.
"One to start." Jared leaned across the table and touched Danneel's arm to get her attention. When she turned to look at him, he told her "We're going out with Sandy and Genevieve after this. Is that okay?" She nodded.
After a while, Jared asked Danneel to dance, and then he asked Jensen, and then Danneel asked Jensen, and then Sandy came out and sat with them for a little bit. After the show, the five of them stopped at the Cherokee to say hi to Christian and Steve and have a few drinks before continuing on to the bar Sandy had heard about, which was a dim, smoky, overdecorated place called La Chenille.
"The Caterpillar," Jensen whispered to Jared, knowing Jared's French was still not that good. Jared pointed out the caterpillar drawn on the menu, and kissed Jensen anyway for trying to be helpful.
They drank brandy from wide-bottomed glasses and absinthe from glasses with bubbles in the stems to indicate how much of the liquor a person should pour. Sandy demonstrated the proper way to drink it, with a sugar cube sitting on a tiny slotted spoon laid across the rim of the glass, water slowly dripping onto it from a faucet in a small brass fountain. Absinthe tasted like green, like herbs and spring meadows, and Jared lost track of how much he drank. He only knew that he was drunk and happy - wildly, ridiculously happy, sitting with his friends and his boyfriend in this velvet-covered, decadent bar, laughing and drinking and kissing and forgetting everything except that he was in Paris with people he loved. Everything was soft and green and beautiful, and Jensen's mouth tasted like cigarettes and sugar, and the feathers in Genevieve's hat waved in the bar's heavy air like graceful blue-black fingers. Sandy's head against his shoulder and her hand on his thigh were two small comforting pressure and Danneel's laugh was music when Genevieve pulled her to her feet to dance, the two of them swaying to a song only they could hear.
There was an absinthe-and-smoke haze over everything, making the overstuffed velvet couches and tasseled wall hangings and carved wooden roses and even the unnaturally-green liqueur feel unreal. People moved in and out of Jared's vision like creatures in a fairy tale. The murmur of conversation all around them was the running of water, the low bubbling of a river. Jared could well believe he'd dreamed this place, lush and low-ceilinged and full of things and people he could never focus on long enough to paint.
He found himself sitting on a sofa, Jensen sitting half on top of him, leaning against him, a hand heavy on his thigh.
"You're amazing," Jensen murmured in his ear, words warm and blurred. "I'm so lucky you're mine." He pressed his lips to Jared's jaw. "We'll go home later and I'll show you exactly how lucky."
"Show me now," Jared murmured in response, feeling a tingling in his cock and the conviction that he could get hard like that with almost no prompting. But Jensen only laughed, took Jared's chin in one hand, turned his face, and licked at his mouth. Jared's lips parted for his tongue and they lost themselves in a deep, slow, sugar-laced, absinthe-flavored kiss.
Jared was sure they must have gone back to the studio eventually, but he never could remember the five of them actually leaving the Caterpillar and making their unsteady way home. He only knew when he woke up naked, in his bed, feeling a little hungover and still a little drunk. He was quite surprised and weirdly embarrassed to find Sandy, equally naked, asleep next to him. He very carefully turned his head to discover a completely unclothed Jensen on his other side. He was pretty sure he remembered Sandy straddling him and enthusiastically riding his cock, but he couldn't remember doing anything with Jensen, at least not in this bed. Another careful glance behind him, and it looked as if there was lipstick on Jensen's cock. That was odd. Sandy wouldn't have sucked him off, and neither Danneel nor Genevieve liked men.
Jared's lips felt weirdly sticky and gummy. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand, and then stared uncomprehendingly at the waxy red smear on his skin. Oh, he finally realized, he must have put on someone's lipstick, or she put it on him, and then he blew his boyfriend. He really wanted to remember that. How much had he drunk last night?
He needed to pee. He needed to go back to sleep. He could use a drink to take the edge off his incipient hangover.
Sandy solved at least one of his problems by stirring, opening her eyes, blinking at him, and smiling.
"Morning," she murmured. She pushed hair out of her face with one hand. "I think it's still morning."
"Did we..." he asked. "Last night, you and I?"
"We did." Her smile widened. "You were good."
So he hadn't imagined it. Good to know. "Did you... did you take advantage of me?" He didn't think she would, but he had to ask.
She shook her head, still smiling. "Of course not. You kissed me first."
"Did Jensen - "
"I think he might have dared you. He watched us. Watching you get off turns him on. And then I watched you go down on him." She yawned and closed her eyes again. "I liked that. He did too."
"Can you... I mean, I have to - "
"Okay, okay." She rolled off the bed, and as soon as he followed, she climbed back onto the mattress.
Jared tiptoed as fast as he could out of the studio and down the hall to the toilet, too desperate to relieve himself to care that he was naked. He tiptoed back and this time he noticed Danneel and Genevieve lying tangled together on the sofa. They were both half-dressed and Danneel had a feather in her hair.
He tried to remember if they had done anything besides dance with each other, and he was pretty sure they'd kissed, and it made him smile. Danneel should be with someone who would return her affections. Her employers wouldn't be thrilled that she was seeing a dancing girl, but he couldn't imagine why she'd tell them. He was pretty sure they wouldn't be thrilled with anything she'd done last night, not least among them the fact that she hadn't gone home.
He tiptoed back around the screen hiding the bed and climbed over Sandy to snuggle next to Jensen. The things he could remember from last night were a little crazy but generally good - he was pretty sure Christian had opened the tiny storage room in back of the Cherokee so Jared could bend Jensen over a stack of crates and fuck him, and he was pretty sure Jensen had stuck flowers in his hair at the Caterpillar and called him a pretty pretty princess - so he could only guess that the things he couldn't remember were good too. They'd have to go back there and have absinthe again.
He was woken an indeterminate time later by Danneel shaking his shoulder and demanding to know what time it was.
"I'm late," she insisted, "the Bs will fire me. What have I done, I'm going to lose my job, I'll have to go back to Louisiana, my parents will be so ashamed - "
Jared blinked at her, completely confused. "Slow down," he said. He realized Jensen had left - he must have gone out to find something to eat - but Sandy was still deep in sleep on his other side.
"If they send me away - " Danneel started to say, but Jared reached out and grabbed her arm.
"Shh. What's wrong?"
"I had the night off. I didn't have to go to church with them this morning - Mrs B likes to take the baby out herself, while Mr B is at mass, and then they meet somewhere for lunch - they would have let me sleep in so they might not know I never came home, but I can't be gone when they get back." Her face was pale, her hair a tangled mess. She'd lost the feather and had gotten fully dressed. "I feel sick."
Jared let go of her arm so he could sit up very carefully. He patted the mattress. "Sit."
"I can't. I have to go. Tell Genevieve - I don't know. Make something up. Tell her I enjoyed - " She stopped, evidently remembering whatever it was she'd enjoyed, and Jared couldn't help smiling at the thought. She didn't seem to notice. "I enjoyed last night. Tell her that. Tell her I'll see her again when I can, I promise."
"You had a good time?"
"I had a wonderful time. But I can't lose my job for it."
"Go home. I'll tell her goodbye for you. Good luck."
She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispered in his ear.
He was about to ask her what she was thanking him for, but she pulled her arm free and ran out. Jared thought about going back to sleep, but he was up now and he wanted to be awake when Jensen came home, so he slowly climbed out of bed, slowly got dressed, found the washbasin, and slowly went out and down the hall to the sink. He needed to do more than wash his face - he needed a long hot soak in a big bath - but he could at least try to boil water for tea for himself and Sandy and Genevieve and scrub his face with whatever water was left.
After that, he had to get back to work. It was one thing to learn that he'd been chosen to show his work in an exhibition, but another thing entirely to produce enough good paintings for it.
Onward!