A World of Make Believe
Title: A World of Make Believe
Wordcount: ~7,400
Summary: Gwaine is the model for Freya's art class, and she can't seem to get him right.
A/N: This is the Freya/Gwaine subplot from I Owe You a Love Song, since that was the most frequently requested (hopefully most of the people who requested have me friended? I can't post this on merlinxarthur). The Elena/Mithian should be next. Title is from "I Owe You a Love Song" by the Shiny Toy Guns. (For the curious, the rating is for nudity but there is no explicit sexual content.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
The first two weeks after Freya met Merlin while playing trust games at some residence orientation, she never really stopped sketching him. She does that sometimes, gets captivated by the way someone is put together and has to get them from every last angle, capture every last expression and gesture. By the end of it, Merlin no longer stiffened up and tried to duck away when she reached for her pencil and the two of them were fast friends, and she’d moved on to sketching Morgana, who’s all striking coloring and angles like Merlin (and then she’d had a dream where Merlin and Morgana were maybe the same person or maybe twins and moved on to sketching Gwen’s possibly-boyfriend Lance, who is so classically handsome he’s almost boring, as a palate cleanser).
She’d sketched Gwaine a few times after Merlin met him and he was introduced to the rest of them, but not much, because he’s got an interesting face but she hadn’t really found much behind it to look for like she usually does with the people she draws often.
That’s why, instead of giggling along with the other girls when Gwaine is introduced as their model for the next two weeks in her figure drawing class, Freya just sighs and sets her equipment to rights while Gwaine wanders about in his bathrobe chatting with people he knows (including her, because he is Merlin’s roommate and good friend and it isn’t his fault he won’t be interesting to draw).
Freya likes it when their models are different, with interesting bumps and shapes and proportions, so she can figure out how they fit together-it’s why she likes looking at Merlin so much, since he’s made up of what look like badly-stitched-together spare parts at first glance but still manages to be ridiculously attractive. But then, maybe safe rugby-muscled Gwaine is a mid-term breather, and Freya contents herself with that until Professor Nimueh calls the class to order and Gwaine drops his bathrobe without any shame whatsoever.
Merlin’s always telling her that she could be a surgeon, since she knows how to look at someone’s body and not think about how attractive they are but about how they’re put together, and Freya prides herself on that, which is why she’s shocked by the five seconds of overwhelming, stupefied attraction when she looks up at Gwaine. He’s staring off into space, natural as can be, while everyone around titters a bit and gets round to work, and Freya has to shake herself before she starts putting lines on the page.
From there, it’s a disaster. It isn’t that she can’t compartmentalize her attraction once she’s acknowledged it, because that’s the least of her problems. She simply can’t seem to get a handle on how he’s put together. She could do a mediocre picture-and she sees many of her fellow students doing exactly that, putting down just how good-looking he is on the pages because that blinds them to the fact that he’s the most difficult model they’ve had all term, something deceptive under all that brashness, and every time Freya tries to pin it down the picture just looks more and more like an awkward sum of parts and less like a person.
“Well done,” says Professor Nimueh as she walks by, smiling in the way that makes some of her less favored students call her creepy.
“It’s a disaster!” Freya says as quietly as she can, gesturing to the mess on her page. Gwaine breaks pose for a second and looks in her direction until he sees Nimueh standing at her shoulder and straightens back up.
“That’s why I chose him.” Nimueh almost grins before she leans forward and lowers her voice. It’s very disconcerting. “Anyone else looking like that is a first week model at best, and three quarters of the class won’t get much out of him besides a breather and a good look at his bum. As for you … I might gently remind you that all the models used in class have indicated they’re willing to sit for a few students’ final assignment in this course, and I think he’ll be more of a challenge for you than for anyone else.”
Coming from Professor Nimueh, that’s practically a threat that if Freya doesn’t use Gwaine as the model for her end-of-term assignment she’ll have her grade docked, so Freya grits her teeth and nods and continues attempting to fit him together in any sort of logical sense for the rest of the time he’s in, as he changes positions four times and she can’t get him quite right in any of them.
Humiliatingly, she ends up in a line of girls at the end of class time waiting to talk to him. Professor Nimueh has to approve of their choice of models, and Freya doubts she’ll allow too many to use Gwaine, so they’re mostly just flirting, which makes it even more humiliating. Especially when Gwaine shoulders his way to where Freya’s loitering at the edge of his group of admirers and puts an arm around her shoulders, gapping his bathrobe open too far for Freya’s comfort. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I actually know Miss Lake, here, and it seems she needs to chat with me.”
That, of course, gets her glares from everyone else, and she’s sure she’s crimson by the time he drags her out of earshot of his group of admirers. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she says, more snappishly than she means to.
“Milady Freya, you can interrupt any time you wish. What can I do for you?”
For a second, looking at everyone still staring and glaring and Professor Nimueh watching serenely from the front of the classroom, Freya ponders fobbing him off and using one of the other models, but if she wants to learn, she’s got to challenge herself and she doubts she’ll get him quite right in two weeks if today was any indication. “Professor Nimueh has encouraged me to use you as my model for my end-of-term project, and I was wondering if you would be interested. I’m sure she’s laid out the terms-you’d be paid, we’d have some private studio time, nothing more invasive than what happens in class.”
Gwaine leers. “For you, I’d do it for free.”
“You’ll be compensated,” she says firmly. “I’ll talk to you more after you’ve done your stint in the classroom.”
Before Gwaine can say anything else, Freya gathers her things and flees, leaving him to the mercy of his fan club.
*
Freya desperately wants to whinge about it all when she gets back to her room, but Gwen’s all aflutter over some mix CD from Arthur Penn, another of Freya’s erstwhile sketching subjects and Morgana’s brother. When Gwen mentions Merlin helped her out with her return CD, it’s all Freya can do not to blurt out that Merlin’s been besotted with Arthur for ages and she doesn’t see how this is going to end without someone getting their heart broken. By the time she’s finished being comforting and supportive, she doesn’t have enough energy to complain about Gwaine, so she puts on her headphones and takes out her sketchbook and starts the arduous process of figuring out where she went wrong.
“You’re being quiet,” Gwen remarks the next day when she surfaces momentarily from panicking about Arthur Penn and whether she’s really over Lance and whether Merlin was wrong and the CD really was too much. “Is something wrong?”
“Model for my figure drawing class is difficult,” Freya says, starting another attempt at sketching Gwaine’s arm. Parts of him are easier than the whole, but then, that’s always the case. The problem is fitting him together and still having him make logical sense. “And Professor Nimueh wants me to use him for my final project. It’s fine.”
Gwen may be distracted, but she isn’t stupid. “Difficult how? If he’s harassing you or something …”
Gwaine harasses everyone, and Freya isn’t about to penalize him for it. “Difficult to draw, and a bit of an arse, is all. I’ll get over it. And in the meantime, did Merlin think to tell you to e-mail him or ask him out or something in the middle of all of this?” Gwen shifts guiltily. “You could, you know. It’s the twenty-first century, after all.”
Of course, Gwen doesn’t, but they end up corresponding anyway, Merlin getting tangled up in it in a way that Freya knows spells disaster even as she knows that there’s not much she can do about it, not without hurting one of her best friends pretty badly. Instead, she keeps her head down and is there for Merlin as much as she can be, in between classes. Gwaine finishes his two weeks in class as their model and by the end of it nearly every girl there is in love with him, or at least would willingly jump into bed if he even blinked at them the right way, and Freya still isn’t over the discomfort of being attracted to someone she’s meant to be drawing for class-someone this difficult to draw, no less, because her pictures of him seem to get worse instead of better over the course of his time in class and Professor Nimueh just looks more and more pleased about it.
The last day, she knows she needs to talk to him again, and she’s been avoiding doing it when possible before, so she gets into the line again after a quick chat with Professor Nimueh confirming that yes, under pain of grading difficulties Freya had best use Gwaine as her model. This time, she only has to wait until the end of his conversation with Sophia, one of the girls who’s been fawning over him the most after class (and, incidentally, almost certainly one of the ones who won’t be allowed to use him as a model) before he pawns everyone else off with a laugh and a smile and comes over to Freya. “I’d thought I’d somehow managed to offend you,” he says, in the too-cheerful way that means he didn’t think that at all.
“And I thought you’d forsaken me for your endless admirers,” she returns as dryly as she can. “I wanted to ask about you modeling for me again, make sure it’s still okay.”
He takes her hand and clutches it to his still-naked chest. “For you, my lady, I’ll clear my schedule and-”
“I thought we’d meet up once a week, maybe a bit more frequently if necessary before the end of term, two hours at a go, you’d have final approval for anything I submit in case you feel it’s too personal, but I promise you I won’t do anything pornographic. It’s just meant to be a series of studies of the same person, nothing you’d even find in an exhibition, most likely. Acceptable?”
She finishes reeling off the information to find him raising his eyebrows at her, grin breaking out across his face. He’s still holding her hand, and she removes it from his grip as surreptitiously as she can. He notices, of course, but at least he doesn’t mention it. “Businesslike, aren’t you? Anyway, I’d be glad to, on one condition.”
Freya doesn’t like the looks of the smile that’s still growing, but Professor Nimueh would have no compunction about actually failing her if she doesn’t come up with a really good reason not to use him as her model so she doesn’t just walk away, like she usually would. Instead, she grits her teeth. “What sort of condition?”
“I want to see what you’ve been drawing of me so far. Have to be sure you’ll do me justice, after all.”
Her automatic reaction, just as it has been with anyone but Professor Nimueh trying to see any of her sketches of Gwaine, is to clutch her sketchbook closer to her chest. Most times, she doesn’t mind people she likes looking at her little portraits, but she hates that she can’t get him right-but on the other hand, he has a right, and if he dismisses her then it gives her an excuse to use one of the other models for her final project. “Of course,” she says, and flips through her sketchbook (her classroom one, even though there are a few tries at him in her personal one as well) to his section. “Not very good, I’m afraid,” she apologizes in advance.
Gwaine just laughs. “False modesty, my lady. Merlin’s showed me a few of the pictures you’ve given him, and I’m interested to see what you-oh.”
“Yes, oh,” says Freya, and knows her cheeks must be crimson. “I can’t seem to get you right.”
For a second, she expects him to laugh her off like he always does, but instead he just nods, and she doesn’t think she’s seen him look so serious. “Then I suppose I’ll have to make myself available for you,” he says, and tugs his bathrobe tighter as he hands her sketchbook back. “Thursday afternoons are good.”
“I’ll reserve the studio.”
With that, he walks away to finish up with his admirers, all of whom are glowering at Freya, and towards his clothes. Freya packs up and goes back to her room in time to go to dinner with Merlin and Gwen, who are talking about Arthur, as always. Freya does her best to support Merlin and just brushes him off when he asks if anything’s wrong with her.
*
Whatever it was that had Gwaine serious at the end of class, he’s lost it by the time she sits down in the studio the next Thursday afternoon, one of the private ones with a screen for him to change behind. “How do you want me?” is the first question that comes out of his mouth as he strips off, leaving his clothes in a trail across the floor.
“There’s a screen with a bathrobe,” Freya points out.
“Just in time for me to get naked again?” he inquires, and shucks off his briefs to go stand a few feet in front of her. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“I’m just trying to make you comfortable.” She opens to a new page in her sketchbook-her personal one, today, since it will be more about getting a feel for him than anything else and Professor Nimueh won’t be expecting anything from her yet. “I’ll just do a few test sketches today, no proper studies, so you won’t need to hold any pose for very long, as long as you don’t wiggle about too much.”
“Did I ever wiggle in class?” She just sets her pencils out in order, setting up her easel at the angle she wants so she can see him properly. “What should I do?”
“Whatever’s natural.” Maybe the problem is that the poses he did in class were actually poses, not just the way he stands and moves naturally.
Natural turns out to mean facing her dead on, hands resting against his hips like he wants pockets to put them in, and Freya just nods before getting down to business. She’s beginning to learn his body and face, the basic shapes and angles that make him up, so it’s easy enough to lay down a few lines, and if she were just drawing any man in that position, it would be almost laughably easy. It isn’t just any man, though, it’s Gwaine, and there’s something about the set of his shoulders, the exact angle of his hips, that somehow makes him impossibly complicated to draw.
She keeps him in the pose for a while, mostly doing sketches of the little parts of him that seem to give her the most trouble-his joints, the way his jaw meets his neck, how he holds his hands, and every time she gets one of those right it won’t fit in well with the rest of what she has, until she ends up with more of a patchwork than a portrait. “You can move,” she says after a while.
“You don’t look happy,” he observes.
“You should be easy,” she snaps, and something in her tone makes him settle into another pose, angled away but looking back at her.
This time, she ignores the little complexities of him, just works him over in broad heavy strokes, more a suggestion of him than anything else, and for the first time it looks like it might be Gwaine, might be a real person standing in front of her, but it’s got nowhere enough detail to give her the mark she needs. Still, it’s progress, and when it’s over, she puts down her pencils and stretches. “Taking a break?” he asks, breaking pose.
“I’m done for the day. I know we’ve got a while left, but I need to think about my strategy.”
“Strategy? I’m a person, not a battlefield.” He walks over to her, still naked and nowhere near self-conscious about it. “Can I see?” He still has the right, so she shows him, first the disaster with the strange emphasis on hands and eyes and his left shoulder and his right knee, places she got frustrated, that makes him look like Frankenstein’s monster. “This one looks like me,” he declares when he looks at the other one, the only one she’s close to happy with. “What did you do different?”
“Didn’t add enough detail, for one,” she says, and takes the book back. “We’re done.”
“Great, I need to do a bit more study today, I was up late last night and Merlin and I are meant to do some roommate bonding later,” he says, bending to get his pants and jeans, which he wiggles on while Freya packs her things. “Same time next week?”
“Yes,” she agrees, and slips out to give him privacy to finish getting dressed, even if he doesn’t seem to want it.
Later, Gwen looks up from her laptop, where she’s been staring a bit worriedly at Arthur’s latest e-mail, or at least at something on her screen, which probably means it’s something to do with Arthur. “Are you okay? I know I’ve been wrapped up with things this term, but you’ve been looking upset these past couple weeks. Something to do with figure drawing, right?”
“Yeah, just my model’s still difficult, hard to draw.” For all she knows, Gwaine’s already told Merlin and everyone else he knows that he’s stripping off for cash and Freya’s drawing him like one of her French girls, but she wants to keep it to herself until she gets it right. “Are you okay, though? You seem really stressed by this whole Arthur thing, especially so close on the heels of Lance.”
“Right. Lance.” Gwen’s lips thin, and Freya knows that means bad news. “He e-mailed me yesterday.”
Freya drops her pencil, since she’s been idly sketching Gwen’s brother from the picture Gwen’s got tacked up over her desk. “He what? Shit, was I meant to know about that already?”
“No, I haven’t told anyone yet.” Gwen looks back down at her screen. “I haven’t answered him yet, either. He … I think he realizes what a shit thing it was to do to leave, and he apologizes six times in the e-mail, and I still love him, it’s not like I just got over that, but …”
“But then there’s Arthur, too,” finishes Freya.
“And I do like him, and I know he wouldn’t leave like Lance, but that’s a terrible reason to like someone, isn’t it?”
Freya loves Gwen and thinks she could get to like Arthur if she got to know him better, but she’d love nothing better than to break them up because they’re going to break Merlin’s heart. She keeps quiet, though, because that’s definitely not her secret to tell and she can’t deny Gwen happiness if it will really work out. “It’s not the only reason you like him, though. You smile when you get his e-mails.”
“And then have no idea what to say,” Gwen points out.
She looks back down at her sketchbook, the page covered in little half-finished doodles, at least three of which are tries at various parts of Gwaine’s body. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” she says on a sigh, and shuts it to pull her own laptop closer.
*
The next week, in between Gwen’s increasingly-pleased correspondence with Gwaine, Arthur asks Gwen out and it turns into a pub night for all of their respective friends, Freya and Gwaine included. She’s seen him a few times outside of class and they wave to each other as they pass in the corridors, so she doesn’t think the pub night will be a problem until the next Thursday, during their studio time.
Freya’s already tired, classes and work piling on and Gwen’s increasing fluttering and Merlin’s increased attempts at being happy for her only serving to make her more stressed, and Gwaine doesn’t seem much better, snappish and less inclined to flirt than usual. “Can you get right in the light?” she asks once he’s stripped, a little more reluctantly this week. “I want to see what I can do with as few shadows on you as possible.”
“Sure,” he says, and falls into an easy pose right under the light, sitting on the chair she’s left there for him and stretching out, head tipped back for a perfect look at his neck and jaw even if he has to stretch out of it every few minutes.
It doesn’t go badly, not compared to some of what she’s done, since she’s decided to continue working in broad strokes until she’s confident enough to go in closer, but it still feels off and when she gets down to filling in the outlines around his hips she realizes that he’s gone half-hard in the chair, cock lifting, and when she looks automatically up at his face she only catches the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. Freya keeps drawing, she’s professional enough for that, but it’s hard to concentrate properly when all half of her is thinking is that Gwaine looks more fucked out than exhausted all of a sudden, leaving her wondering what it would be like if she could put down her sketchbook and crawl into his lap and put a love bite on him like she did with her boyfriend in sixth form when he was sitting for her for her A-Level course.
“New pose,” she chokes out when she hears him swallow again, mortified at how dark she’s drawn his cock compared to the rest of him.
Gwaine just looks up and smiles, the same smile he gave to all those girls lined up to talk to him after class, and Freya wants to slap him because she might be attracted to him, but she isn’t going to fawn and she isn’t going to be anything less than professional. “Sure you don’t want me to stay like this?” he asks.
That’s as good as a bucket of cold water on her libido, and Freya straightens up. “New pose, please,” she says again, and after an endless second he shifts around, gives her a few more shadows to play with, but this time he’s looking at her dead on and won’t look away.
“Why can’t you get me right?” he asks when she’s got her outline in place.
“Sorry, it’s distracting to talk while I draw,” she mutters, and erases his left arm.
“Bollocks.” She looks up at him sharply. “I know you outside this room, remember? I’ve seen you chatting to people and sketching them at the same time.”
“Not for class.”
“Why can’t you draw me? I’ve seen your work, I know what you can do, but you said you can’t get me right and you aren’t looking happy now.”
Freya tries to think of the easiest way to put it. “You don’t fit together like I keep expecting you to.”
“Maybe,” he says mildly, “you should stop expecting.”
The part that stings most is that he’s probably right, but she definitely doesn’t plan to tell him that. “Right, thank you, now that that’s all cleared up I’ll undoubtedly draw you perfectly and get perfect marks on my assignment.”
He shrugs, an easy gesture that almost has her reaching for her pencil again. “I’m not an expert, but I also don’t think I’m that complicated.” He smiles at her. “Unless you’re just looking to-”
“It’s in your best interests not to finish that sentence,” she says, and they’re both shocked at how vicious she sounds. “New pose, please.”
This time, he bends his head forward, puts his feet on the floor a bit apart, and looks down at his clasped hands, and she draws a picture that she thinks might almost, almost get close to the kind of work that she thinks he could inspire in the right hands before shutting her sketchbook and clearing her throat. He snaps up to look at her right away. “Are we-”
“We’re done for today,” she says, even though she knows that’s not what he was going to ask. “I’ll see you tomorrow night at the pub.”
He stands, about to say something else, but by the time he’s got his wits about him she’s already grabbed her jacket and her things in a messy stack and fled out the door. He may have no shame about being naked in front of her but he won’t follow her out into the corridor, so she gets out of the building and well out of sight before he can catch her.
They ignore each other at the pub night the next night. Gwaine seems to get on well with Arthur’s friends, and Freya keeps herself busy alternately chatting with Elena, who seems sweet, if inclined to talk with her hands with drinks still in them, and keeping an eye on Merlin, Gwen, and Arthur, which isn’t going very well, what with Gwen having no idea what to say and Merlin pining so obviously she just wants to hug him and take him away. Merlin gives her a few worried looks in return, since it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that she and Gwaine are avoiding each other’s eyes and more than a bit displeased with each other, but for the most part she’s left to her own devices.
Gwaine catches her after she goes to the ladies’, arms already crossed defensively. “Look, I’m sorry about yesterday, okay? I get that I was unprofessional.”
That’s the least of the reasons she’s angry at him, but mostly she’s angry at herself for getting him wrong and being attracted and somehow doing it all badly for no reason she can understand. She just wants to be done with the conversation and the assignment, so she goes the easiest route. “Forget about it, it’s fine. Yesterday was strange.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You could at least do me the favor of pretending that I do.”
Gwaine gives her a smile. “But where would the fun in that be? I don’t know what I’ve done to get on your bad side, but I really didn’t mean to.” The smile turns into a leer. “Let me make it up to you?”
Freya closes her eyes and clenches her fists and doesn’t slam her way out of the pub because she thinks she might need to pick up the pieces of Merlin’s heart later. “No.” He starts to say something, but she shakes her head. “This whole thing is humiliating, not being able to get you right and Professor Nimueh forcing me to choose you as some sort of learning experience and you treating me like I’m either your little sister or just like one of those other girls you fuck-”
“Right,” says Gwaine in an unfamiliar tone, and when she opens her eyes he’s nodding a few times, rapidly. “Good to know what you think of me.”
She knows she shouldn’t leave it like this, that if nothing else they’ve got Merlin in common and they’ll need to be civil for him, but she’s still angry and tired and worried that she’s going to fail her course because she can’t understand him and it suddenly all seems like his fault. Instead, she just sets her jaw and watches him turn around, grab his jacket from the table, and storm out of the pub, Merlin’s eyes on him on the way out before the go back to Freya. She just shakes her head and takes a few seconds to breathe before going back to Elena and making bright conversation that she doesn’t remember at all by the time they leave an hour later.
*
The next morning, while she’s still feeling blue and starting to feel guilty about some of what she said to Gwaine (but not all of it, because he’s still sending mixed signals and she doesn’t know what to do with that), Merlin arrives and finally figures out that Gwen’s been talking to Lance, and Gwen finally figures out that Merlin’s half in love with Arthur just before Merlin ends it, and by the end of it both of them are looking so miserable that Freya shakes off her own melancholy long enough to uncurl from her spot on her bed and suggest a movie marathon.
Merlin falls asleep between them sometime in the middle of the second movie, and Gwen looks at Freya over his head. Freya busies her hands sketching Merlin’s slack mouth and the way he automatically curls himself around whatever parts of them he can reach, like an affectionate octopus. “I can tell something’s the matter with you too,” Gwen whispers over the sound of the hero and heroine of whatever they’re watching having a stupid argument. “You can tell me.”
“I think we’ve dealt with quite enough problems today.”
“Yes, so we’re on a roll.” Gwen looks back at the screen. “Not that you have to tell me, but you’ve been upset, and don’t think I didn’t notice that with Gwaine last night.”
Freya shifts and smiles down at Merlin when he whines in his sleep. “You can’t tell him, okay? He’ll think he has to pick a side and he’s having a bad enough week without that on top of it.”
“It’s bad, then.”
She shrugs and flips back a few pages in her sketchbook. “Bad enough.” She can tell when Gwen notices who the subject of the pictures from the other day is. “He modeled for our class, and then Professor Nimueh told me to use him as the model for my end-of-term project, and things have been … strange, sometimes. He was …” She gestures at his groin in the picture where it’s most obvious that he was hard. “And it’s frustrating because I feel as though he should be simple to draw, and he isn’t.”
Gwen hums. “He’s more complicated than he lets on, but I don’t know what that says about art. What happened last night?”
“We both said some stupid things, and I’ll have to apologize. I want him to as well, but I’m mostly mad at myself. The worst he’s done is flirt with me and treat me like the girls always hanging off his arm, and I don’t suppose he can help that.”
“He can. He just doesn’t like to.” Gwen sighs. “Do you like him?”
That’s always been a complicated question for Freya, wrapped up in her art and her feelings and which one induces the other, and with Gwaine it’s complicated even further by how attracted to him she is, which usually comes well after liking someone’s personality and liking to draw them for her. “It’s not an epic destined-in-the-stars romance like you and Lance.” She looks down at Merlin again. “Or Merlin and Arthur.”
“You don’t know that. It isn’t like Merlin and Arthur aren’t … well, Merlin’s ended it. Hard to say that’s destined in the stars.”
“It’s only a matter of time. And what about you and Lance?”
“Lance left me. I may still love him but I haven’t forgotten that yet. Look, anything with Gwaine is your choice, but I don’t think you would have looked so shattered last night if you didn’t like him at least a little.” Gwen points at the sketchbook Freya’s still got open in her lap. “Look at your sketches, and stop worrying about the technical stuff. Gwaine … he talks big, but I don’t think a lot of people see him like that.”
Freya closes her sketchbook and goes back to staring at the movie she’s completely lost the plot of, but later on, after Merlin’s gone back to his room and Gwen’s plugged in her headphones and is murmuring quietly at her screen talking to Lance on Skype (and he must be up late, if he’s in India and talking to her at this hour, but Freya decides not to ask), she leafs through all her sketches of Gwaine again. The ones from class, first, where he’s posing for all of them, impersonal and professional. Her lines are a mess, erased and darkened and drawn over so many times it’s more like scribbling in some places, but she can see that he’s taking it seriously, and not flirting or being a tease. Her sketches from their private sessions are different, and it’s not just because she’s getting more comfortable with his body slowly. He’s not posing for an audience, he’s posing for her. He’s still got an uncanny knack for knowing what would make a good picture, but he isn’t bothering to divide his focus and he isn’t impersonal in the least, and it doesn’t look like his usual flirting.
“Fuck,” Freya whispers to the ceiling, and tosses her sketchbook at the floor. Somehow, in some way, Gwaine’s serious about her, or her work, or both, and she has no idea what to do.
The next morning, cursing herself for cowardice all the way, Freya opens up an e-mail to Gwaine before she can overthink it: I’m sorry about the other night, I was stressed and unfair to you. I think it’s best if we take this week off from our sessions to figure things out.
His return e-mail comes twenty minutes later but she doesn’t have the courage to open it until Thursday night, bolstered by Merlin’s babbling when he called to say that he and Arthur are going on a date and it’s apparently all working out after all. I don’t think it’s best. I’ll be there anyway, and hope you will be too.
I couldn’t today. But I’ll be there next week. I’m sorry for missing, she sends, and then buries her face in her pillow and screams.
*
They don’t see each other again until Merlin and Arthur schedule another pub night, and Freya wouldn’t go at all if it weren’t for Gwen taking her by the arm and almost pulling her along. Gwaine gives her a nod when they walk into the Rising Sun and she gives him one in return, and after that Freya devotes herself to chatting with Elena and Gwen and Merlin and Gwen’s brother Elyan, who turns out to be a lot more interesting in person than in pictures.
One of them has to say something, though, so when Gwaine excuses himself halfway through the night to go to the loo, Freya counts off two minutes (and then another seventeen seconds while she bucks up her courage) before excusing herself quietly and going to wait in the quiet little nook the sets the loos apart from the rest of the bar. He doesn’t seem surprised when he comes out and finds her standing there. She tucks her hair behind her ears and waits for him to say something. “I’m guessing you aren’t in line,” he says at last.
“No.”
He opens the door wider and steps back. “Come on in, then.” She does, and engages the lock when she shuts the door behind her. “I think I owe you an apology for the last time too.”
“We can consider it forgotten, if you want to. I think I was probably more in the wrong.”
“You wouldn’t have gone there if I hadn’t pushed.” He sighs. “Yeah, we can forget about it. Are we on for this Thursday?”
Freya looks around the room. It’s dingy, like all bar bathrooms, and there’s inexplicably a chair in the corner like they’re expecting someone to want to sit down and rest in their sketchy little room with the bad lighting and the dirty mirror. “Yes, I’d like that.” They could have had this conversation quietly while their friends were around-most likely should have, because now Freya can’t stop looking at the chair, and wondering what it’s there for, and how likely it is that it’s where people go when they want to get off with someone, and that leads her right around to the fact that she’s standing two feet away from Gwaine and she’s not stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t, or more to the point that he doesn’t want to. She finally drags her eyes back to Gwaine’s to find him watching her with a grin that’s pleased but not the least bit smug, and can’t quite figure out what she wants to say.
“Oh, fuck it,” says Gwaine, apparently reading something into her silence, grabs her, and kisses the hell out of her.
Of course Gwaine’s a good kisser, there was never going to be question of that, but Freya’s a little surprised at how into it he is, the way he makes little noises into her mouth and is willing to give in when she pushes until he’s up against a wall and she’s practically climbing him. “I would invite you back to my room, but I’ve got a roommate,” Freya whispers when they pull apart. “And Gwen’s been very nice to me, so I can’t kick her out.”
“Merlin’s been annoying with this whole Arthur thing,” says Gwaine, and she laughs and kisses him again because he isn’t serious in the least, and if this is all they get, making out and all of their friends thinking they’re having sex in what’s got to be the most diseased chair known to mankind, then she’s going to make the most of it. “No, really, keep that up and I’ll kick him out.”
“We could-wait. Encourage them to have a sleepover at some point or something.” She lays a line of kisses down his neck, the beginnings of his beard tickling her lips. “Or until Merlin starts spending nights with Arthur, that should start at the beginning of next term at the latest, Merlin can be a bit of a slag and Arthur’s making up for lost time with being besotted.”
“We have studio time,” Gwaine points out, groping idly at her arse.
“That’s for working,” she says patiently. “We’ve still got to be professional there, and I don’t want to fail my course, so you’re just my model in the studio and not my boy-um, the bloke I’m sleeping with.”
That, as she might have expected, makes Gwaine look delighted. “Boyfriend is fine,” he says, which she didn’t expect, and then he kisses her again, mouth moving hot and at just the right angle.
She doesn’t know quite how long it lasts, but someone-not one of their friends, luckily, or she would be mortified forever-knocks on the loo door and tells them pointedly that there are other people who need to take a leak and they can have sex somewhere else, so they both splash water on their faces and Gwaine makes a pained face and takes off his overshirt to hold in front of him and they walk out, past the judgmental man standing waiting to use the room, probably a professor. All of their friends must have some idea what went on while they were gone, but Merlin just looks confused and Gwen looks delighted and Elena gives her a broad wink and nobody else is impolite to mention it, so Freya survives the rest of the night nursing the pint that Gwaine buys her with a grin and a gentle tug on her hair.
They all walk back to their halls in a big mob, people splitting off as they get to the right places. Merlin and Arthur lag a bit behind the group, holding hands and smiling at each other in a way that’s almost painfully ridiculous, Gwen’s talking to her brother, and Freya alternates between just walking along quietly and occasionally chatting with Gwaine, who doesn’t try to take her hand but does stay close to her side. “I’ve already got your number,” he says when it’s time for her and Gwen to split off, “and I will use it. Before Thursday, but I will also see you then.”
“Good,” she says, and lets him squeeze her wrist before she tags along behind Gwen, waving goodnight to everyone else as she goes.
*
The next Tuesday (well, it’s Wednesday, it’s two in the morning), Freya finds herself perched cross-legged on Merlin’s bed with her sketchbook, drawing Gwaine. She’s been scheduling more studio time and will actually use it properly, since Professor Nimueh’s been starting to inspect her work and offer some critiques, but there’s something a little thrilling about sitting in his room, Merlin gone to stay with Arthur for the night, and drawing him while he’s all sprawled out and relaxed, tangled sheets just hitched over his groin.
The trick to drawing Gwaine, she’s starting to discover, is that he does a near-perfect job of pretending that he’s confident and knows that he’s doing all the time, and it’s much easier to put him together when he’s got his guard down. It’s easy, now, to get the shadows that Merlin’s desk lamp, dimmed, are casting on his face, the way his mouth is pressed into his own arm. Anyone with an eye is going to see that there’s space for someone else in the bed, space that he hasn’t stretched out to fill yet, and Professor Nimueh is certainly going to notice. Freya doesn’t much care, since she’s nearly finished and already knows that if Gwaine says yes this is going to be one of the best pieces in her series.
His eyes open before she even realizes he’s coming awake, and he yawns once before his gaze snaps to her. “Did I say you could leave?” he asks, a little muzzy with sleep.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says with a shrug, and holds up her sketchbook in explanation. “Would you mind staying still for a few more minutes?”
“I’m your muse,” he mumbles, already going back under. Freya smiles to herself and puts a few more lines on the page. It will look good rough, but she does want to prove she can get the details. Gwaine rallies after another minute, just when she’s starting to think he’s gone back to sleep. “Come back to bed?”
Freya looks at her sketch and bites her lip. It’s only half-finished, and she wants to keep working now that she’s finally learning Gwaine, can already see the beginning of the tug that means she’ll be shoving him off her to capture one of his expansive gestures for weeks to come, maybe months, but he’s looking as pitiful as she can and it’s going to be hard to forget how he looks just now, sprawled and soft with sleep. She sighs and shuts her sketchbook, ignoring his grin, and compromises by taking a picture with her phone in case she forgets something.
“You know how to flatter a man,” he murmurs into her hair when she’s climbed back into the space he left for her.
“Shut up,” she says, even though he’s already falling back to sleep properly, and smiles when he just rumbles out half a laugh. When he’s out again, snoring gently, she only spends a few minutes wondering just how terrifying Professor Nimueh’s smirk is going to be before she drifts off as well.
Wordcount: ~7,400
Summary: Gwaine is the model for Freya's art class, and she can't seem to get him right.
A/N: This is the Freya/Gwaine subplot from I Owe You a Love Song, since that was the most frequently requested (hopefully most of the people who requested have me friended? I can't post this on merlinxarthur). The Elena/Mithian should be next. Title is from "I Owe You a Love Song" by the Shiny Toy Guns. (For the curious, the rating is for nudity but there is no explicit sexual content.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
The first two weeks after Freya met Merlin while playing trust games at some residence orientation, she never really stopped sketching him. She does that sometimes, gets captivated by the way someone is put together and has to get them from every last angle, capture every last expression and gesture. By the end of it, Merlin no longer stiffened up and tried to duck away when she reached for her pencil and the two of them were fast friends, and she’d moved on to sketching Morgana, who’s all striking coloring and angles like Merlin (and then she’d had a dream where Merlin and Morgana were maybe the same person or maybe twins and moved on to sketching Gwen’s possibly-boyfriend Lance, who is so classically handsome he’s almost boring, as a palate cleanser).
She’d sketched Gwaine a few times after Merlin met him and he was introduced to the rest of them, but not much, because he’s got an interesting face but she hadn’t really found much behind it to look for like she usually does with the people she draws often.
That’s why, instead of giggling along with the other girls when Gwaine is introduced as their model for the next two weeks in her figure drawing class, Freya just sighs and sets her equipment to rights while Gwaine wanders about in his bathrobe chatting with people he knows (including her, because he is Merlin’s roommate and good friend and it isn’t his fault he won’t be interesting to draw).
Freya likes it when their models are different, with interesting bumps and shapes and proportions, so she can figure out how they fit together-it’s why she likes looking at Merlin so much, since he’s made up of what look like badly-stitched-together spare parts at first glance but still manages to be ridiculously attractive. But then, maybe safe rugby-muscled Gwaine is a mid-term breather, and Freya contents herself with that until Professor Nimueh calls the class to order and Gwaine drops his bathrobe without any shame whatsoever.
Merlin’s always telling her that she could be a surgeon, since she knows how to look at someone’s body and not think about how attractive they are but about how they’re put together, and Freya prides herself on that, which is why she’s shocked by the five seconds of overwhelming, stupefied attraction when she looks up at Gwaine. He’s staring off into space, natural as can be, while everyone around titters a bit and gets round to work, and Freya has to shake herself before she starts putting lines on the page.
From there, it’s a disaster. It isn’t that she can’t compartmentalize her attraction once she’s acknowledged it, because that’s the least of her problems. She simply can’t seem to get a handle on how he’s put together. She could do a mediocre picture-and she sees many of her fellow students doing exactly that, putting down just how good-looking he is on the pages because that blinds them to the fact that he’s the most difficult model they’ve had all term, something deceptive under all that brashness, and every time Freya tries to pin it down the picture just looks more and more like an awkward sum of parts and less like a person.
“Well done,” says Professor Nimueh as she walks by, smiling in the way that makes some of her less favored students call her creepy.
“It’s a disaster!” Freya says as quietly as she can, gesturing to the mess on her page. Gwaine breaks pose for a second and looks in her direction until he sees Nimueh standing at her shoulder and straightens back up.
“That’s why I chose him.” Nimueh almost grins before she leans forward and lowers her voice. It’s very disconcerting. “Anyone else looking like that is a first week model at best, and three quarters of the class won’t get much out of him besides a breather and a good look at his bum. As for you … I might gently remind you that all the models used in class have indicated they’re willing to sit for a few students’ final assignment in this course, and I think he’ll be more of a challenge for you than for anyone else.”
Coming from Professor Nimueh, that’s practically a threat that if Freya doesn’t use Gwaine as the model for her end-of-term assignment she’ll have her grade docked, so Freya grits her teeth and nods and continues attempting to fit him together in any sort of logical sense for the rest of the time he’s in, as he changes positions four times and she can’t get him quite right in any of them.
Humiliatingly, she ends up in a line of girls at the end of class time waiting to talk to him. Professor Nimueh has to approve of their choice of models, and Freya doubts she’ll allow too many to use Gwaine, so they’re mostly just flirting, which makes it even more humiliating. Especially when Gwaine shoulders his way to where Freya’s loitering at the edge of his group of admirers and puts an arm around her shoulders, gapping his bathrobe open too far for Freya’s comfort. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I actually know Miss Lake, here, and it seems she needs to chat with me.”
That, of course, gets her glares from everyone else, and she’s sure she’s crimson by the time he drags her out of earshot of his group of admirers. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she says, more snappishly than she means to.
“Milady Freya, you can interrupt any time you wish. What can I do for you?”
For a second, looking at everyone still staring and glaring and Professor Nimueh watching serenely from the front of the classroom, Freya ponders fobbing him off and using one of the other models, but if she wants to learn, she’s got to challenge herself and she doubts she’ll get him quite right in two weeks if today was any indication. “Professor Nimueh has encouraged me to use you as my model for my end-of-term project, and I was wondering if you would be interested. I’m sure she’s laid out the terms-you’d be paid, we’d have some private studio time, nothing more invasive than what happens in class.”
Gwaine leers. “For you, I’d do it for free.”
“You’ll be compensated,” she says firmly. “I’ll talk to you more after you’ve done your stint in the classroom.”
Before Gwaine can say anything else, Freya gathers her things and flees, leaving him to the mercy of his fan club.
*
Freya desperately wants to whinge about it all when she gets back to her room, but Gwen’s all aflutter over some mix CD from Arthur Penn, another of Freya’s erstwhile sketching subjects and Morgana’s brother. When Gwen mentions Merlin helped her out with her return CD, it’s all Freya can do not to blurt out that Merlin’s been besotted with Arthur for ages and she doesn’t see how this is going to end without someone getting their heart broken. By the time she’s finished being comforting and supportive, she doesn’t have enough energy to complain about Gwaine, so she puts on her headphones and takes out her sketchbook and starts the arduous process of figuring out where she went wrong.
“You’re being quiet,” Gwen remarks the next day when she surfaces momentarily from panicking about Arthur Penn and whether she’s really over Lance and whether Merlin was wrong and the CD really was too much. “Is something wrong?”
“Model for my figure drawing class is difficult,” Freya says, starting another attempt at sketching Gwaine’s arm. Parts of him are easier than the whole, but then, that’s always the case. The problem is fitting him together and still having him make logical sense. “And Professor Nimueh wants me to use him for my final project. It’s fine.”
Gwen may be distracted, but she isn’t stupid. “Difficult how? If he’s harassing you or something …”
Gwaine harasses everyone, and Freya isn’t about to penalize him for it. “Difficult to draw, and a bit of an arse, is all. I’ll get over it. And in the meantime, did Merlin think to tell you to e-mail him or ask him out or something in the middle of all of this?” Gwen shifts guiltily. “You could, you know. It’s the twenty-first century, after all.”
Of course, Gwen doesn’t, but they end up corresponding anyway, Merlin getting tangled up in it in a way that Freya knows spells disaster even as she knows that there’s not much she can do about it, not without hurting one of her best friends pretty badly. Instead, she keeps her head down and is there for Merlin as much as she can be, in between classes. Gwaine finishes his two weeks in class as their model and by the end of it nearly every girl there is in love with him, or at least would willingly jump into bed if he even blinked at them the right way, and Freya still isn’t over the discomfort of being attracted to someone she’s meant to be drawing for class-someone this difficult to draw, no less, because her pictures of him seem to get worse instead of better over the course of his time in class and Professor Nimueh just looks more and more pleased about it.
The last day, she knows she needs to talk to him again, and she’s been avoiding doing it when possible before, so she gets into the line again after a quick chat with Professor Nimueh confirming that yes, under pain of grading difficulties Freya had best use Gwaine as her model. This time, she only has to wait until the end of his conversation with Sophia, one of the girls who’s been fawning over him the most after class (and, incidentally, almost certainly one of the ones who won’t be allowed to use him as a model) before he pawns everyone else off with a laugh and a smile and comes over to Freya. “I’d thought I’d somehow managed to offend you,” he says, in the too-cheerful way that means he didn’t think that at all.
“And I thought you’d forsaken me for your endless admirers,” she returns as dryly as she can. “I wanted to ask about you modeling for me again, make sure it’s still okay.”
He takes her hand and clutches it to his still-naked chest. “For you, my lady, I’ll clear my schedule and-”
“I thought we’d meet up once a week, maybe a bit more frequently if necessary before the end of term, two hours at a go, you’d have final approval for anything I submit in case you feel it’s too personal, but I promise you I won’t do anything pornographic. It’s just meant to be a series of studies of the same person, nothing you’d even find in an exhibition, most likely. Acceptable?”
She finishes reeling off the information to find him raising his eyebrows at her, grin breaking out across his face. He’s still holding her hand, and she removes it from his grip as surreptitiously as she can. He notices, of course, but at least he doesn’t mention it. “Businesslike, aren’t you? Anyway, I’d be glad to, on one condition.”
Freya doesn’t like the looks of the smile that’s still growing, but Professor Nimueh would have no compunction about actually failing her if she doesn’t come up with a really good reason not to use him as her model so she doesn’t just walk away, like she usually would. Instead, she grits her teeth. “What sort of condition?”
“I want to see what you’ve been drawing of me so far. Have to be sure you’ll do me justice, after all.”
Her automatic reaction, just as it has been with anyone but Professor Nimueh trying to see any of her sketches of Gwaine, is to clutch her sketchbook closer to her chest. Most times, she doesn’t mind people she likes looking at her little portraits, but she hates that she can’t get him right-but on the other hand, he has a right, and if he dismisses her then it gives her an excuse to use one of the other models for her final project. “Of course,” she says, and flips through her sketchbook (her classroom one, even though there are a few tries at him in her personal one as well) to his section. “Not very good, I’m afraid,” she apologizes in advance.
Gwaine just laughs. “False modesty, my lady. Merlin’s showed me a few of the pictures you’ve given him, and I’m interested to see what you-oh.”
“Yes, oh,” says Freya, and knows her cheeks must be crimson. “I can’t seem to get you right.”
For a second, she expects him to laugh her off like he always does, but instead he just nods, and she doesn’t think she’s seen him look so serious. “Then I suppose I’ll have to make myself available for you,” he says, and tugs his bathrobe tighter as he hands her sketchbook back. “Thursday afternoons are good.”
“I’ll reserve the studio.”
With that, he walks away to finish up with his admirers, all of whom are glowering at Freya, and towards his clothes. Freya packs up and goes back to her room in time to go to dinner with Merlin and Gwen, who are talking about Arthur, as always. Freya does her best to support Merlin and just brushes him off when he asks if anything’s wrong with her.
*
Whatever it was that had Gwaine serious at the end of class, he’s lost it by the time she sits down in the studio the next Thursday afternoon, one of the private ones with a screen for him to change behind. “How do you want me?” is the first question that comes out of his mouth as he strips off, leaving his clothes in a trail across the floor.
“There’s a screen with a bathrobe,” Freya points out.
“Just in time for me to get naked again?” he inquires, and shucks off his briefs to go stand a few feet in front of her. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“I’m just trying to make you comfortable.” She opens to a new page in her sketchbook-her personal one, today, since it will be more about getting a feel for him than anything else and Professor Nimueh won’t be expecting anything from her yet. “I’ll just do a few test sketches today, no proper studies, so you won’t need to hold any pose for very long, as long as you don’t wiggle about too much.”
“Did I ever wiggle in class?” She just sets her pencils out in order, setting up her easel at the angle she wants so she can see him properly. “What should I do?”
“Whatever’s natural.” Maybe the problem is that the poses he did in class were actually poses, not just the way he stands and moves naturally.
Natural turns out to mean facing her dead on, hands resting against his hips like he wants pockets to put them in, and Freya just nods before getting down to business. She’s beginning to learn his body and face, the basic shapes and angles that make him up, so it’s easy enough to lay down a few lines, and if she were just drawing any man in that position, it would be almost laughably easy. It isn’t just any man, though, it’s Gwaine, and there’s something about the set of his shoulders, the exact angle of his hips, that somehow makes him impossibly complicated to draw.
She keeps him in the pose for a while, mostly doing sketches of the little parts of him that seem to give her the most trouble-his joints, the way his jaw meets his neck, how he holds his hands, and every time she gets one of those right it won’t fit in well with the rest of what she has, until she ends up with more of a patchwork than a portrait. “You can move,” she says after a while.
“You don’t look happy,” he observes.
“You should be easy,” she snaps, and something in her tone makes him settle into another pose, angled away but looking back at her.
This time, she ignores the little complexities of him, just works him over in broad heavy strokes, more a suggestion of him than anything else, and for the first time it looks like it might be Gwaine, might be a real person standing in front of her, but it’s got nowhere enough detail to give her the mark she needs. Still, it’s progress, and when it’s over, she puts down her pencils and stretches. “Taking a break?” he asks, breaking pose.
“I’m done for the day. I know we’ve got a while left, but I need to think about my strategy.”
“Strategy? I’m a person, not a battlefield.” He walks over to her, still naked and nowhere near self-conscious about it. “Can I see?” He still has the right, so she shows him, first the disaster with the strange emphasis on hands and eyes and his left shoulder and his right knee, places she got frustrated, that makes him look like Frankenstein’s monster. “This one looks like me,” he declares when he looks at the other one, the only one she’s close to happy with. “What did you do different?”
“Didn’t add enough detail, for one,” she says, and takes the book back. “We’re done.”
“Great, I need to do a bit more study today, I was up late last night and Merlin and I are meant to do some roommate bonding later,” he says, bending to get his pants and jeans, which he wiggles on while Freya packs her things. “Same time next week?”
“Yes,” she agrees, and slips out to give him privacy to finish getting dressed, even if he doesn’t seem to want it.
Later, Gwen looks up from her laptop, where she’s been staring a bit worriedly at Arthur’s latest e-mail, or at least at something on her screen, which probably means it’s something to do with Arthur. “Are you okay? I know I’ve been wrapped up with things this term, but you’ve been looking upset these past couple weeks. Something to do with figure drawing, right?”
“Yeah, just my model’s still difficult, hard to draw.” For all she knows, Gwaine’s already told Merlin and everyone else he knows that he’s stripping off for cash and Freya’s drawing him like one of her French girls, but she wants to keep it to herself until she gets it right. “Are you okay, though? You seem really stressed by this whole Arthur thing, especially so close on the heels of Lance.”
“Right. Lance.” Gwen’s lips thin, and Freya knows that means bad news. “He e-mailed me yesterday.”
Freya drops her pencil, since she’s been idly sketching Gwen’s brother from the picture Gwen’s got tacked up over her desk. “He what? Shit, was I meant to know about that already?”
“No, I haven’t told anyone yet.” Gwen looks back down at her screen. “I haven’t answered him yet, either. He … I think he realizes what a shit thing it was to do to leave, and he apologizes six times in the e-mail, and I still love him, it’s not like I just got over that, but …”
“But then there’s Arthur, too,” finishes Freya.
“And I do like him, and I know he wouldn’t leave like Lance, but that’s a terrible reason to like someone, isn’t it?”
Freya loves Gwen and thinks she could get to like Arthur if she got to know him better, but she’d love nothing better than to break them up because they’re going to break Merlin’s heart. She keeps quiet, though, because that’s definitely not her secret to tell and she can’t deny Gwen happiness if it will really work out. “It’s not the only reason you like him, though. You smile when you get his e-mails.”
“And then have no idea what to say,” Gwen points out.
She looks back down at her sketchbook, the page covered in little half-finished doodles, at least three of which are tries at various parts of Gwaine’s body. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” she says on a sigh, and shuts it to pull her own laptop closer.
*
The next week, in between Gwen’s increasingly-pleased correspondence with Gwaine, Arthur asks Gwen out and it turns into a pub night for all of their respective friends, Freya and Gwaine included. She’s seen him a few times outside of class and they wave to each other as they pass in the corridors, so she doesn’t think the pub night will be a problem until the next Thursday, during their studio time.
Freya’s already tired, classes and work piling on and Gwen’s increasing fluttering and Merlin’s increased attempts at being happy for her only serving to make her more stressed, and Gwaine doesn’t seem much better, snappish and less inclined to flirt than usual. “Can you get right in the light?” she asks once he’s stripped, a little more reluctantly this week. “I want to see what I can do with as few shadows on you as possible.”
“Sure,” he says, and falls into an easy pose right under the light, sitting on the chair she’s left there for him and stretching out, head tipped back for a perfect look at his neck and jaw even if he has to stretch out of it every few minutes.
It doesn’t go badly, not compared to some of what she’s done, since she’s decided to continue working in broad strokes until she’s confident enough to go in closer, but it still feels off and when she gets down to filling in the outlines around his hips she realizes that he’s gone half-hard in the chair, cock lifting, and when she looks automatically up at his face she only catches the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. Freya keeps drawing, she’s professional enough for that, but it’s hard to concentrate properly when all half of her is thinking is that Gwaine looks more fucked out than exhausted all of a sudden, leaving her wondering what it would be like if she could put down her sketchbook and crawl into his lap and put a love bite on him like she did with her boyfriend in sixth form when he was sitting for her for her A-Level course.
“New pose,” she chokes out when she hears him swallow again, mortified at how dark she’s drawn his cock compared to the rest of him.
Gwaine just looks up and smiles, the same smile he gave to all those girls lined up to talk to him after class, and Freya wants to slap him because she might be attracted to him, but she isn’t going to fawn and she isn’t going to be anything less than professional. “Sure you don’t want me to stay like this?” he asks.
That’s as good as a bucket of cold water on her libido, and Freya straightens up. “New pose, please,” she says again, and after an endless second he shifts around, gives her a few more shadows to play with, but this time he’s looking at her dead on and won’t look away.
“Why can’t you get me right?” he asks when she’s got her outline in place.
“Sorry, it’s distracting to talk while I draw,” she mutters, and erases his left arm.
“Bollocks.” She looks up at him sharply. “I know you outside this room, remember? I’ve seen you chatting to people and sketching them at the same time.”
“Not for class.”
“Why can’t you draw me? I’ve seen your work, I know what you can do, but you said you can’t get me right and you aren’t looking happy now.”
Freya tries to think of the easiest way to put it. “You don’t fit together like I keep expecting you to.”
“Maybe,” he says mildly, “you should stop expecting.”
The part that stings most is that he’s probably right, but she definitely doesn’t plan to tell him that. “Right, thank you, now that that’s all cleared up I’ll undoubtedly draw you perfectly and get perfect marks on my assignment.”
He shrugs, an easy gesture that almost has her reaching for her pencil again. “I’m not an expert, but I also don’t think I’m that complicated.” He smiles at her. “Unless you’re just looking to-”
“It’s in your best interests not to finish that sentence,” she says, and they’re both shocked at how vicious she sounds. “New pose, please.”
This time, he bends his head forward, puts his feet on the floor a bit apart, and looks down at his clasped hands, and she draws a picture that she thinks might almost, almost get close to the kind of work that she thinks he could inspire in the right hands before shutting her sketchbook and clearing her throat. He snaps up to look at her right away. “Are we-”
“We’re done for today,” she says, even though she knows that’s not what he was going to ask. “I’ll see you tomorrow night at the pub.”
He stands, about to say something else, but by the time he’s got his wits about him she’s already grabbed her jacket and her things in a messy stack and fled out the door. He may have no shame about being naked in front of her but he won’t follow her out into the corridor, so she gets out of the building and well out of sight before he can catch her.
They ignore each other at the pub night the next night. Gwaine seems to get on well with Arthur’s friends, and Freya keeps herself busy alternately chatting with Elena, who seems sweet, if inclined to talk with her hands with drinks still in them, and keeping an eye on Merlin, Gwen, and Arthur, which isn’t going very well, what with Gwen having no idea what to say and Merlin pining so obviously she just wants to hug him and take him away. Merlin gives her a few worried looks in return, since it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that she and Gwaine are avoiding each other’s eyes and more than a bit displeased with each other, but for the most part she’s left to her own devices.
Gwaine catches her after she goes to the ladies’, arms already crossed defensively. “Look, I’m sorry about yesterday, okay? I get that I was unprofessional.”
That’s the least of the reasons she’s angry at him, but mostly she’s angry at herself for getting him wrong and being attracted and somehow doing it all badly for no reason she can understand. She just wants to be done with the conversation and the assignment, so she goes the easiest route. “Forget about it, it’s fine. Yesterday was strange.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You could at least do me the favor of pretending that I do.”
Gwaine gives her a smile. “But where would the fun in that be? I don’t know what I’ve done to get on your bad side, but I really didn’t mean to.” The smile turns into a leer. “Let me make it up to you?”
Freya closes her eyes and clenches her fists and doesn’t slam her way out of the pub because she thinks she might need to pick up the pieces of Merlin’s heart later. “No.” He starts to say something, but she shakes her head. “This whole thing is humiliating, not being able to get you right and Professor Nimueh forcing me to choose you as some sort of learning experience and you treating me like I’m either your little sister or just like one of those other girls you fuck-”
“Right,” says Gwaine in an unfamiliar tone, and when she opens her eyes he’s nodding a few times, rapidly. “Good to know what you think of me.”
She knows she shouldn’t leave it like this, that if nothing else they’ve got Merlin in common and they’ll need to be civil for him, but she’s still angry and tired and worried that she’s going to fail her course because she can’t understand him and it suddenly all seems like his fault. Instead, she just sets her jaw and watches him turn around, grab his jacket from the table, and storm out of the pub, Merlin’s eyes on him on the way out before the go back to Freya. She just shakes her head and takes a few seconds to breathe before going back to Elena and making bright conversation that she doesn’t remember at all by the time they leave an hour later.
*
The next morning, while she’s still feeling blue and starting to feel guilty about some of what she said to Gwaine (but not all of it, because he’s still sending mixed signals and she doesn’t know what to do with that), Merlin arrives and finally figures out that Gwen’s been talking to Lance, and Gwen finally figures out that Merlin’s half in love with Arthur just before Merlin ends it, and by the end of it both of them are looking so miserable that Freya shakes off her own melancholy long enough to uncurl from her spot on her bed and suggest a movie marathon.
Merlin falls asleep between them sometime in the middle of the second movie, and Gwen looks at Freya over his head. Freya busies her hands sketching Merlin’s slack mouth and the way he automatically curls himself around whatever parts of them he can reach, like an affectionate octopus. “I can tell something’s the matter with you too,” Gwen whispers over the sound of the hero and heroine of whatever they’re watching having a stupid argument. “You can tell me.”
“I think we’ve dealt with quite enough problems today.”
“Yes, so we’re on a roll.” Gwen looks back at the screen. “Not that you have to tell me, but you’ve been upset, and don’t think I didn’t notice that with Gwaine last night.”
Freya shifts and smiles down at Merlin when he whines in his sleep. “You can’t tell him, okay? He’ll think he has to pick a side and he’s having a bad enough week without that on top of it.”
“It’s bad, then.”
She shrugs and flips back a few pages in her sketchbook. “Bad enough.” She can tell when Gwen notices who the subject of the pictures from the other day is. “He modeled for our class, and then Professor Nimueh told me to use him as the model for my end-of-term project, and things have been … strange, sometimes. He was …” She gestures at his groin in the picture where it’s most obvious that he was hard. “And it’s frustrating because I feel as though he should be simple to draw, and he isn’t.”
Gwen hums. “He’s more complicated than he lets on, but I don’t know what that says about art. What happened last night?”
“We both said some stupid things, and I’ll have to apologize. I want him to as well, but I’m mostly mad at myself. The worst he’s done is flirt with me and treat me like the girls always hanging off his arm, and I don’t suppose he can help that.”
“He can. He just doesn’t like to.” Gwen sighs. “Do you like him?”
That’s always been a complicated question for Freya, wrapped up in her art and her feelings and which one induces the other, and with Gwaine it’s complicated even further by how attracted to him she is, which usually comes well after liking someone’s personality and liking to draw them for her. “It’s not an epic destined-in-the-stars romance like you and Lance.” She looks down at Merlin again. “Or Merlin and Arthur.”
“You don’t know that. It isn’t like Merlin and Arthur aren’t … well, Merlin’s ended it. Hard to say that’s destined in the stars.”
“It’s only a matter of time. And what about you and Lance?”
“Lance left me. I may still love him but I haven’t forgotten that yet. Look, anything with Gwaine is your choice, but I don’t think you would have looked so shattered last night if you didn’t like him at least a little.” Gwen points at the sketchbook Freya’s still got open in her lap. “Look at your sketches, and stop worrying about the technical stuff. Gwaine … he talks big, but I don’t think a lot of people see him like that.”
Freya closes her sketchbook and goes back to staring at the movie she’s completely lost the plot of, but later on, after Merlin’s gone back to his room and Gwen’s plugged in her headphones and is murmuring quietly at her screen talking to Lance on Skype (and he must be up late, if he’s in India and talking to her at this hour, but Freya decides not to ask), she leafs through all her sketches of Gwaine again. The ones from class, first, where he’s posing for all of them, impersonal and professional. Her lines are a mess, erased and darkened and drawn over so many times it’s more like scribbling in some places, but she can see that he’s taking it seriously, and not flirting or being a tease. Her sketches from their private sessions are different, and it’s not just because she’s getting more comfortable with his body slowly. He’s not posing for an audience, he’s posing for her. He’s still got an uncanny knack for knowing what would make a good picture, but he isn’t bothering to divide his focus and he isn’t impersonal in the least, and it doesn’t look like his usual flirting.
“Fuck,” Freya whispers to the ceiling, and tosses her sketchbook at the floor. Somehow, in some way, Gwaine’s serious about her, or her work, or both, and she has no idea what to do.
The next morning, cursing herself for cowardice all the way, Freya opens up an e-mail to Gwaine before she can overthink it: I’m sorry about the other night, I was stressed and unfair to you. I think it’s best if we take this week off from our sessions to figure things out.
His return e-mail comes twenty minutes later but she doesn’t have the courage to open it until Thursday night, bolstered by Merlin’s babbling when he called to say that he and Arthur are going on a date and it’s apparently all working out after all. I don’t think it’s best. I’ll be there anyway, and hope you will be too.
I couldn’t today. But I’ll be there next week. I’m sorry for missing, she sends, and then buries her face in her pillow and screams.
*
They don’t see each other again until Merlin and Arthur schedule another pub night, and Freya wouldn’t go at all if it weren’t for Gwen taking her by the arm and almost pulling her along. Gwaine gives her a nod when they walk into the Rising Sun and she gives him one in return, and after that Freya devotes herself to chatting with Elena and Gwen and Merlin and Gwen’s brother Elyan, who turns out to be a lot more interesting in person than in pictures.
One of them has to say something, though, so when Gwaine excuses himself halfway through the night to go to the loo, Freya counts off two minutes (and then another seventeen seconds while she bucks up her courage) before excusing herself quietly and going to wait in the quiet little nook the sets the loos apart from the rest of the bar. He doesn’t seem surprised when he comes out and finds her standing there. She tucks her hair behind her ears and waits for him to say something. “I’m guessing you aren’t in line,” he says at last.
“No.”
He opens the door wider and steps back. “Come on in, then.” She does, and engages the lock when she shuts the door behind her. “I think I owe you an apology for the last time too.”
“We can consider it forgotten, if you want to. I think I was probably more in the wrong.”
“You wouldn’t have gone there if I hadn’t pushed.” He sighs. “Yeah, we can forget about it. Are we on for this Thursday?”
Freya looks around the room. It’s dingy, like all bar bathrooms, and there’s inexplicably a chair in the corner like they’re expecting someone to want to sit down and rest in their sketchy little room with the bad lighting and the dirty mirror. “Yes, I’d like that.” They could have had this conversation quietly while their friends were around-most likely should have, because now Freya can’t stop looking at the chair, and wondering what it’s there for, and how likely it is that it’s where people go when they want to get off with someone, and that leads her right around to the fact that she’s standing two feet away from Gwaine and she’s not stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t, or more to the point that he doesn’t want to. She finally drags her eyes back to Gwaine’s to find him watching her with a grin that’s pleased but not the least bit smug, and can’t quite figure out what she wants to say.
“Oh, fuck it,” says Gwaine, apparently reading something into her silence, grabs her, and kisses the hell out of her.
Of course Gwaine’s a good kisser, there was never going to be question of that, but Freya’s a little surprised at how into it he is, the way he makes little noises into her mouth and is willing to give in when she pushes until he’s up against a wall and she’s practically climbing him. “I would invite you back to my room, but I’ve got a roommate,” Freya whispers when they pull apart. “And Gwen’s been very nice to me, so I can’t kick her out.”
“Merlin’s been annoying with this whole Arthur thing,” says Gwaine, and she laughs and kisses him again because he isn’t serious in the least, and if this is all they get, making out and all of their friends thinking they’re having sex in what’s got to be the most diseased chair known to mankind, then she’s going to make the most of it. “No, really, keep that up and I’ll kick him out.”
“We could-wait. Encourage them to have a sleepover at some point or something.” She lays a line of kisses down his neck, the beginnings of his beard tickling her lips. “Or until Merlin starts spending nights with Arthur, that should start at the beginning of next term at the latest, Merlin can be a bit of a slag and Arthur’s making up for lost time with being besotted.”
“We have studio time,” Gwaine points out, groping idly at her arse.
“That’s for working,” she says patiently. “We’ve still got to be professional there, and I don’t want to fail my course, so you’re just my model in the studio and not my boy-um, the bloke I’m sleeping with.”
That, as she might have expected, makes Gwaine look delighted. “Boyfriend is fine,” he says, which she didn’t expect, and then he kisses her again, mouth moving hot and at just the right angle.
She doesn’t know quite how long it lasts, but someone-not one of their friends, luckily, or she would be mortified forever-knocks on the loo door and tells them pointedly that there are other people who need to take a leak and they can have sex somewhere else, so they both splash water on their faces and Gwaine makes a pained face and takes off his overshirt to hold in front of him and they walk out, past the judgmental man standing waiting to use the room, probably a professor. All of their friends must have some idea what went on while they were gone, but Merlin just looks confused and Gwen looks delighted and Elena gives her a broad wink and nobody else is impolite to mention it, so Freya survives the rest of the night nursing the pint that Gwaine buys her with a grin and a gentle tug on her hair.
They all walk back to their halls in a big mob, people splitting off as they get to the right places. Merlin and Arthur lag a bit behind the group, holding hands and smiling at each other in a way that’s almost painfully ridiculous, Gwen’s talking to her brother, and Freya alternates between just walking along quietly and occasionally chatting with Gwaine, who doesn’t try to take her hand but does stay close to her side. “I’ve already got your number,” he says when it’s time for her and Gwen to split off, “and I will use it. Before Thursday, but I will also see you then.”
“Good,” she says, and lets him squeeze her wrist before she tags along behind Gwen, waving goodnight to everyone else as she goes.
*
The next Tuesday (well, it’s Wednesday, it’s two in the morning), Freya finds herself perched cross-legged on Merlin’s bed with her sketchbook, drawing Gwaine. She’s been scheduling more studio time and will actually use it properly, since Professor Nimueh’s been starting to inspect her work and offer some critiques, but there’s something a little thrilling about sitting in his room, Merlin gone to stay with Arthur for the night, and drawing him while he’s all sprawled out and relaxed, tangled sheets just hitched over his groin.
The trick to drawing Gwaine, she’s starting to discover, is that he does a near-perfect job of pretending that he’s confident and knows that he’s doing all the time, and it’s much easier to put him together when he’s got his guard down. It’s easy, now, to get the shadows that Merlin’s desk lamp, dimmed, are casting on his face, the way his mouth is pressed into his own arm. Anyone with an eye is going to see that there’s space for someone else in the bed, space that he hasn’t stretched out to fill yet, and Professor Nimueh is certainly going to notice. Freya doesn’t much care, since she’s nearly finished and already knows that if Gwaine says yes this is going to be one of the best pieces in her series.
His eyes open before she even realizes he’s coming awake, and he yawns once before his gaze snaps to her. “Did I say you could leave?” he asks, a little muzzy with sleep.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says with a shrug, and holds up her sketchbook in explanation. “Would you mind staying still for a few more minutes?”
“I’m your muse,” he mumbles, already going back under. Freya smiles to herself and puts a few more lines on the page. It will look good rough, but she does want to prove she can get the details. Gwaine rallies after another minute, just when she’s starting to think he’s gone back to sleep. “Come back to bed?”
Freya looks at her sketch and bites her lip. It’s only half-finished, and she wants to keep working now that she’s finally learning Gwaine, can already see the beginning of the tug that means she’ll be shoving him off her to capture one of his expansive gestures for weeks to come, maybe months, but he’s looking as pitiful as she can and it’s going to be hard to forget how he looks just now, sprawled and soft with sleep. She sighs and shuts her sketchbook, ignoring his grin, and compromises by taking a picture with her phone in case she forgets something.
“You know how to flatter a man,” he murmurs into her hair when she’s climbed back into the space he left for her.
“Shut up,” she says, even though he’s already falling back to sleep properly, and smiles when he just rumbles out half a laugh. When he’s out again, snoring gently, she only spends a few minutes wondering just how terrifying Professor Nimueh’s smirk is going to be before she drifts off as well.