Work Text:
The piece of charcoal skitters over the page like an extension of himself. With it, he caresses every line of her body, rubs contrast into the likeness he creates, brings out the interplay between soft and hard, light and shadow, tension and fluidity.
He has to work fast, sacrificing detail for a more abstracted snapshot of the moment, although it's more an amalgamation of several snapshots, impressions of close-ups merging into a whole – he's not a photographer, and Harleen never still. It used to frustrate him at first, when she destroyed a perfect pose by scratching her head because her scalp itched or shifting her pelvis because the posture was uncomfortable or letting her gaze wander around the studio because she was bored.
She's forcing him to push himself, to let go of perfection, it's why he's hired her in the first place. He can get lost in replicating the split ends of her hair or the creases in her palms, the uneven shades of her skin. And yet he wonders if she's really a professional model if she can't suppress her micro-movements even for five minutes. Perhaps her other clients are students like him, too poor even for cup ramen, let alone a life model. Perhaps she's a novice herself, counting on her looks to distract from the minute shifts in posture.
Jonathan notices, however. For him, the angles of light bring out her imperfections or obscure them, and he wants to bring them all to the surface, especially the hidden ones. Perhaps he should have become a photographer, but this profession wouldn't engage his mind enough. Creating a vision piece by piece, line by line, provides a deeper understanding of the object he is contemplating, thus allowing him to dig deeper into its essence and unearth its secrets.
When he looks up again, the object in question has vanished from view. Willful child. Instead of listening to her instructions and staying on the stool he's placed her on so carefully, she is writhing on the floor next to it. Panic stabs at him, but he won't let it take over. He deliberately places his utensils to the side before walking toward her.
"Harleen," he tries to sound calm, reassuring. "Hey, what happened? Are you all right?" He pats her cheek, cradles her neck, steadies her head and in so doing he leaves dark smudges on her heated skin. Her breath is coming in short, flat bursts.
"Peachy," she grinds out between high-pitched whines. "Took you, ah, long enough to notice."
She's frowning, but it's not agony he reads, it's concentration.
"Are you—" he slides the sheet she's draped over herself from her shoulder. It falls open to reveal her toying with her naked breast. She twists her nipple one last time before lifting her fingers to his lips as if to shush him. A faint whiff of her essence still clings to them.
She is.
"Wait for your turn, sweetums," she grins at him, flushed and feverish, pearly teeth gleaming from beneath a rim of coral red. Her gaze cuts deeper as she pushes her fingers into his mouth and irrationally, he thinks of rocky hilltops by a stormy sea and waving meadows after a summer rain. "Ooh, yeah. Suck 'em, baby. Suck 'em hard." The intensity in her eyes burns away the vestiges of decorum he's been trying to hold onto. This is not a private moment, not if she has chosen to pleasure herself where he would see. She allows him to be part of this, so he tugs her fingers from his mouth and allows himself to watch.
Her hips lift and jerk, her fingers working faster behind the veil of linen. "Just another second. Almost there. Almost. Ah, yes."
He's taken with the quiver in her thigh muscles, the strength in her abdominals, the arch of her throat. He can almost feel the tightness in himself and wonders how he could best recreate this in a drawing, how to transform the estrangement and curiosity that has gripped him into something universal that everyone could understand. He still has so much to learn about his chosen language and not yet the right tools to express himself intelligibly.
A contented sigh draws his attention back to Harleen. The tension flows out of her, and she slumps back down into the embrace of the sheet that decks the floor. "Phew, that was awesome." She lounges like royalty, one lazy hand curling just above her head, the other playing with her nipple.
"Stay like this," he says and scoots backward to pick up an unused sheet of paper and the piece of charcoal that broke during the fall.
"Haven't you been drawing enough for one day?" she groans and rolls to the side, but he doesn't hear, doesn't see, already back in his element, trying to immortalize his impressions before they fade from memory. He has so many of them.
Harleen, however, does not take kindly to being ignored. She watches him for another moment, standing over him with her arms crossed, wearing nothing but a frown and an unlaced pair of violet Converse flats. He's tried to get her to wear black heels at first, because they are what his teachers call classy, what they say everyone draws their models in. She just laughed at him and told him he was boring and uninspired. A grave insult for any artist, yet she was right.
Her unconventional style has transformed his art in some ways, but most of all the way he thinks about it now. Her sneakers and pigtails lend her a youthful appeal at odds with the sensual colors of her lipstick. Without makeup, her face has a childlike innocence, and he wonders why she both accentuates and contrasts it. He could understand it if she chose one or the other in different situations, but it's the combination that baffles and intrigues him. There are many layers to her, many layers to peel off and examine.
She clears her throat and nudges his shoulder with her knee. He looks up and notices her standing over him.
"You moved," he points out.
She growls in exasperation and kicks the pad off his knees. "I swear, one day I'm going to murder you with a paintbrush to your eye. What do I have to do to get you to pay attention to me?"
He cocks his head. "I don't understand. I've been concentrating on nothing but you for hours."
"On your idea of me, perhaps. You really have no clue how to deal with real people, do you? Did you ever hear me complain of hunger?"
"Are you... hungry?" He twiddles with the piece of charcoal she hasn't yet kicked out of his hands. He wishes she would just calm down and be rational.
"Damn right, I am!" She squats in front of him, pouting and hugging her knees to her chest, apparently tired of glaring down at him. "I'd be so mad at you if it wasn't kinda sexy watching you work."
"I..." He doesn't know what to respond to that. "...only have tofu."
"I know. I checked." She looks down and tugs at the laces of her shoes. "I don't know what to do with only tofu," she mumbles.
"Neither do I. Except marinate, perhaps, but I don't have soy sauce."
"Is that really all you have?"
"All that's left over, yes."
"How can you live like that?"
He shrugs. "It's nothing I notice when I'm working."
Harleen groans again and rests her head against her knees. "I'm so hungry. Had I known doing pro bono work for you would involve prolonged periods of No Food, I'd have thought twice about agreeing to it."
"I'm sorry I can't provide for you."
"It's not that," she snorts and uncurls to the floor. She tugs his sketches closer to pore over and babbles like she's not thinking about her words or that she's articulating them. "I'm cranky because I'm frustrated and hungry and don't know where I stand with you. Falling for you was a stupid idea. But I thought hey, dating an artist would be so glamorous and decadent, all of my friends would envy me."
"Then why don't you date an artist who conforms to that image you have?"
A nervous titter escapes her. "Seriously, just like that? You don't care about me at all, do you?"
"I thought you were unhappy with the situation I present you with."
"In a way. Perhaps. I don't know." Harleen sighs. "You're weird, you know. I can never figure out whether you love me or hate me."
"Why would you think that?"
"Take these, for example." She gestures to the sketches. "There's some brutal honesty about them. You don't glorify my looks or try to flatter me by depicting me prettier than I am. You look at me with dry eyes and not with heart-shaped glasses, and I don't know what that means. And then," she giggles nervously, "look at me. I'm sitting here stark-naked, I just got off in front of you, and you think of nothing else but drawing me. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Well, of course not, or you wouldn't do it."
This topic is uncomfortable for Jonathan, he cannot wrap his head around it or see where the problem lies. Yet he feels a sense of loss she must be projecting onto him.
"Do you... do that for all your clients?"
"Do what?"
"Touch yourself. In front of them."
She grins. "Would you be jealous if I did?"
"I don't think it's my place to be jealous."
"That's just what I mean! You don't care."
Jonathan tilts his head and frowns. "Does that mean you want to terminate our relationship?"
"Do you?" she asks back, pursing her lips.
"No."
"Then why do you ask?"
"I thought that was the direction you have been headed all along."
She stares at him for a moment, then bursts out laughing. "Let's start over, shall we?" She crawls into his lap and kisses him. A peace offering.
"I'm going to get charcoal all over you," he says and holds up his blackened fingers.
"Do," she giggles as though the seriousness of their conversation is already forgotten once more. She's living in the moment again, guiding his hand down her thighs and up her chest, rubbing stains into her skin. Body-painting must be pleasing her childish side. "Try to really get a feel for the object you're studying."
Once again, Jonathan can't keep up with her. He's still mulling over her earlier reservations, or why she's using the word "object" to describe herself after telling him off for using it before. But kissing her is nice and she's right about the connection between touch and sight. If you know what components something is made of, you can have a better understanding of how it works. And Harleen has given him a lot of insight in how her mind works.
He will have to reexamine their conversation later, to evaluate what her agenda was and how he responded to it. Perhaps if he can figure out how their conversation works, he would be able to find a way to translate his thoughts onto canvas for an as yet indeterminate beholder.