Work Text:
“Shit,” Erik cursed as he looked outside at the snowdrift covered streets from the living room window.
“What?” called Charles from the kitchen, “is someone getting ready to jump off the roof into a snowdrift again? You know the mayor actually had to release something to tell people not to do that?”
Erik snorted, “like I would care if some idiot broke their leg doing something idiotic.”
Charles walked in from the kitchen where he had been washing the dishes, a towel still in his grip as he dried his hands. “Well, then what’s the problem?”
Erik retreated from the window and let himself fall onto their beat up couch. “The roads are totally impassible,” Erik didn’t merely voice the complaint; his waving arms clearly telegraphed his frustration with the situation. “There is no way that the museum is holding their live drawing session tonight, and I have an assignment due next week.” Erik’s wide hand gestures seemed to encompass his ever-present satchel and sketchbook.
Charles tossed the towel haphazardly back towards the kitchen sink and sat down as well. “Why don’t you ask someone in the building to sit for you?”
Without conscious thought, Erik pinched the bridge of his nose in remembered pain. “The last time I asked someone to sit for me, I got her perfectly arranged. Just as I was starting, she began to unbutton her top and asked me to “draw her like one of my French girls.”
Glaring as his roommate's snort of laughter, Erik continued, “and that was for a clothed sitting!”
“What did you do?” asked Charles through his laughter.
“What do you think I did? I told her to button up her shirt and to stop moving because even if I wasn’t working on a still-life, I needed her to hold the pose.” At Charles’s renewed laughter, Erik let his hand drop to his lap and tilted his head back against the cushion.
“You realize she was hitting on you, right? It’s a line from a film?”
Erik let his eyes close as he tried not to let himself laugh with Charles. “I know that, now. But I had no idea what she was talking about then. And that was a clothed portrait. Who knows what someone will do if I ask them to pose nude.”
Charles frowned thoughtfully, “I didn’t realize it was a nude sketch. What about Jean? Everyone knows she’s dating Scott, so she won’t think you’re hitting on her.”
“Ugh, but then I have to deal with Scott. No thank you.” Erik shuddered at the thought. Scott would just loom in the background, making it impossible to draw.
“Does it have to be a female?” Charles finally asked.
“Well, no. But I think asking a guy to sit naked for me would result in either me offending an idiot, or a more blatant proposition. None of the guys I know well enough to ask live in the building.”
“How long do you need a model for?”
Erik flipped open his planner to consult his notes for the assignment. “I have a couple options, but ideally I’d like to do two sketches for this week, and then a more detailed sketch for the next assignment.”
As he looked up, Erik barely caught his roommate’s eyeroll.
“For those of us who are ignorant of fine art and the making thereof, how long in terms of time?”
Realizing he hadn’t answered Charles’s original question, Erik answered “probably about an hour tonight and maybe two more hours sometime over the next week.”
“I can do it for you then,” announced Charles as he rose to his feet and began pulling off his shirt.
For a moment Erik was taken aback- Charles had always respected his comfort and rarely exposed much in the way of skin in their common living areas. Then he realized that this was the perfect solution. Charles knew exactly what Erik was and wasn’t asking.
Actually, that had been one of the reasons they had worked out so well together as friends and roommates over the past three years. Their habit of blunt honesty had started when Erik walked into his freshman dorm and met his assigned roommate. After brief introductions and generally inane small-talk, Charles had decided to skip straight to his main worry.
“Look, you seem like a decent guy, but I’ve been wrong about that before, so I want to tell you this upfront in case you need to request a room change.”
Frowning, Erik thought about what reasons they might need to trade out roommates. He really couldn’t think of anything that would be utterly unacceptable that a person would admit to outright, but then he had never shared space with a stranger before.
“So, I’m bisexual. The last person I dated was a girl, but I might date a guy in the future. If you’re going to have a problem with that, then we shouldn’t bother getting too comfortable as roommates or friends,” Charles announced. The slight hunch of his shoulders belied his seemingly confident proclamation. His mouth was pulled tight, and Erik wondered exactly what sort of reactions this announcement had garnered in the past.
Regardless, Erik couldn’t see how it would be an issue. “I’d rather not walk in on you fucking, or anything too physically romantic, but no, that’s not a problem for me.”
Surprisingly, Charles seemed to grow tenser at the answer. “So as long as you don’t have to see it, you’re fine with me dating men?” If he hadn’t been listening carefully, Erik would have missed the edge of bitter sarcasm in Charles’s words.
Even at eighteen it struck Erik as a cynical interpretation of his response, though probably one influenced by whomever else Charles had come out to.
So he clarified, “I don’t care who you see romantically or who you fuck, or what gender they are or are not. I just don’t want to walk in on any of it.” Erik thought about leaving the issue there, but Charles had been so blunt about laying his cards on the table that Erik decided to follow his lead. “I’m not really into the whole sex thing, regardless of who’s involved.”
Charles’s eyes went wide in surprise before he controlled his expression. “So, you’re um, well, not interested in sex for yourself either?”
“Not, not really. I mean, I jerk off, so I get why people like it, but I don’t really see the appeal of other people being involved.”
Charles looked thoughtful. He opened his mouth as though to ask a question before pausing and leaning back against the dorm room wall. “So, when you say you don’t want to see me with someone else, it’s not some sort of homophobia, it’s just something that grosses you out?”
Erik frowned. “Not grosses me out, exactly. More like a weird hobby that is kinda off-putting? Look, if this is going to be a problem, maybe we should request that roommate switch.”
Charles looked bewildered. “How would it be a problem? You don’t want to see it, and that seems reasonable to me. You’ll need to let me know if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable though. I’ve not really met anyone who’s not interested in sex.”
“That you know of. But the last person I told kept sending me porn because he thought that if I found the ‘right kink,’ I’d be cured and go out with whomever he wanted to set me up with.” Erik frowned at the thought of Sebastian's complete unwillingness to understand Erik’s disinterest.
“What the fuck? Um, no, I can promise not to send you porn or set you up on dates or anything. Hell, trying to manage my own sex life is enough to worry about, I don’t want to get involved in yours.”
“Okay then.”
“Okay.”
The awkward silence stretched until Charles with seemingly genuine enthusiasm asked, “so...have you found anyplace decent and cheap to eat near campus yet? I could really go for some fries.”
And that had been that. Charles had kept his sex life to himself, and as far as Erik could tell had never mentioned Erik’s to anyone else. So Charles stripping naked now, years later, was just a sign of a helpful friend rather than a come-on.
“Where do you want me?” asked Charles as he began to unbutton his jeans.
“Give me a second to get everything set up. Let’s start with you on your side, curled away from me.”
“On the couch?” asked Charles as he shucked his boxers.
Erik eyed the couch critically. “No, not enough room. I’ve got a clean sheet in my room, let me set up a spot on the floor for you.”
Minutes later Charles was on the sheet, trying to adjust his pose according to Erik’s instructions. Finally he snapped, “Erik, just move my leg how you want it. I don’t get what you want me to do!”
Erik hesitated, but eventually bent down and gently adjusted the bend in Charles’s leg until he was recumbent on the cloth.
His fingers seemed to burn as he picked up his charcoal to sketch. As he traced his eyes along Charles’s body, he was surprised at how well the dips and curves caught the light. The swell of his buttocks cast his upper thighs into shadow, contrasting with his otherwise pale form.
Time seemed to stop entirely as Charles patiently kept his position, his breathing slight and his body relaxed into its position.
As he finished, Erik felt the sudden urge to trace his fingers along Charles’s hip, to see how the flesh might react under his hands. Scowling a bit at the odd thought, Erik reminded himself that he was working in charcoal, not clay, so he should focus on the task before him.
Glancing at the clock, Erik was pleased to see that his previous estimate was correct- he still had a half hour of sketching time for a second pose.
“You can relax while I set up for the next pose, Charles.”
Charles rolled over to onto his back, and then laced his fingers behind his head. Still looking at the ceiling he said, “just let me know what you want me to do next.”
Erik eyed him thoughtfully. He carefully set his first sketch aside and readied for the next.
“Roll towards me. Now, remember when we were in Rome and I made you go to that museum while I sketched?”
“You made me go to like ten museums on that trip, Erik.”
“Right, but this one you actually liked the sculptures enough that you didn’t bitch too much.”
“Oh, you mean the one with the dying warrior?”
“The Dying Gaul.”
“Right, I remember that one. I’ve only complimented your painting based on it how many times?”
“Do you think you can mimic that pose?
“You may need to correct it a bit, but yeah.
Charles apparently remembered it quite accurately, because it took minimal adjustments and support from a handy couch cushion to position him comfortably in the correct pose. Charles’s high waist and messy curls were a close approximation of the ancient sculpture.
Erik silently finished his sketch and put them away before Charles could ask to see them. Normally he was happy to share his work, but he was surprisingly unsure about these sketches. Technically they were fine, and Erik was happy with the compositions; he just wasn’t ready to look at them clinically. Unlike past sessions, Erik was still thinking about Charles when he finished instead of neatly tucking away the subject into the back of his mind.
Rather than get dressed, Charles leaned back and watched Erik as he tidied away his supplies. When Erik raised a single eyebrow, Charles just shrugged and admitted, “it’s oddly freeing to be naked like this. I’ll get my clothes on, don’t worry. Let me know what time you want to work on your other sketch so I can put it in my schedule.”
Erik wondered if he’d be able to work in time to use pastels. Or if Charles would agree to more regular sittings. Perhaps if he caught the right image, he’d be able to lay this interest in his best friend to rest. At the very least, he had another two hours of drawing time to work it out.
After the end of his second session drawing Charles, Erik was no closer to putting the experience from his mind. The earlier idle thought of touching Charles’s skin had grown to an uncomfortable interest.
Erik hadn’t even recognized how much he was thinking about Charles until his morning routine drastically changed. Typically Erik jerked off in the mornings- he had admitted to himself as a teenager that starting off the day with an orgasm was probably the only way he managed not to kill someone. Physically, it was an easy, enjoyable experience. And it was consistent.
So when his normal routine of dropping into the physical sensations and letting his mind go blissfully blank was interrupted by the sudden memory of Erik’s hands on Charles as he moved him into position, Erik was shocked at both the thought and his body’s response. In high school he had tried to think of people while touching himself- had learned that it was “normal,” but had never had any sort of success. To have his orgasm triggered by someone else’s nudity was not normal for him.
He wasn’t sure what he should do, so he ignored it. And if he ignored Charles a bit and avoided looking at his best friend, Erik figured it was only temporary until he figured out what was going on with his body.
It was as Charles stripped down for his final session that things came to a head. Instead of reclining back onto the sheet that served as the backdrop, Charles stood uncertainly, one hand on his hip. By this point Charles was entirely comfortable with his nudity, so his hesitance was over something else.
“Erik, is something wrong?”
“No,” he answered brusquely, “nothing is wrong, the sketch is going well. You’ve been a great model- missing the MFA’s session hasn’t set me back at all.”
“I wasn’t talking about the art Erik. You’ve not shown me anything you’ve worked on yet, but you’ve been acting weird. This is the first time you’ve looked at me since the last sketching session.”
Erik had no response to that other than the truth. “I’ve been having some thoughts and urges that are out of my normal experience. It’s nothing you’ve done, it just has blindsided me.”
Frowning, Charles guessed, “some sort of artistic crisis? You’ve always been interested in hyperrealism, but you told me that you’re fine doing the rough sketches for this class.”
For a moment Erik toyed with the idea of agreeing and just ignoring his uncharacteristic sexual responses to Charles. If he got over this, nothing would change. But he was also curious. The interest was new and not something he’d experienced before. Charles was currently unattached. In the past Charles had told Erik he couldn’t come with him if he was trying to pick up someone because Erik was too attractive and would either attract unwanted attention or scare away potential partners. So Charles was presumably somewhat attracted to Erik.
“It’s not the art. In fact, do you want to see what I’ve done so far?” Erik wanted to smack himself for sidestepping the issue when he had all but convinced himself to explain.
Charles’s eager face calmed him, and Erik allowed him to see the unfinished sketch he was working on while he pulled out the previous two. When he looked up, Charles was pensively considering the images.
“In the last one I look, soft- touchable. Normally your drawings are a lot starker. Not in a bad way, but it’s a change from what I’ve seen you do before. Are you sure this isn’t an artistic thing? I mean, I love it, and I think you’ve unduly flattered me since it’s not in the hyperrealist style, but…” Charles trailed off, still thinking. Without actually touching the paper, Charles traced the lines of his own back, “it’s lovely. I’ve never seen myself like this before.”
Erik hesitated and then said, “can I finish this sketch and then explain what’s going on?”
“Yeah, that will be okay.”
As Charles draped himself across the sheet, Erik plunged into his work. Rather than dwell on the coming conversation, he allowed himself to feel the sketch come together under his hand as though Charles’s flesh had transubstantiated into his medium. The slightly lost expression on Charles’s face was captured on paper in a way that internally thrilled Erik.
When he finished, Erik took a few steps back, and then skirted around the sketch to drop down next to Charles.
“Finished?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Charles relaxed, carefully flexing his wrists and ankles before stretching, though he stayed lounging on the sheet next to Erik.
“So, what’s going on?”
“I want to touch you,” Erik blurted and then winced.
“Pardon?”
“It’s, I’ve been thinking about it for days. I’m not sure what exactly I feel, but I want, I don’t even know,” he admitted in a rush.
Charles straightened his back and looked closely at Erik’s miserable expression.
“Plenty of people like human contact, like the comfort of another person and it’s been awhile since you’ve had a chance to see your family. Do you just need physical affection? I may not be able to hug like Edie, but I’m happy to try.”
“It’s not that, Charles. Trust me when I say it’s not a hug that I think I want.”
Charles leaned back on the sheet and clasped his hands behind his head, his entire nude form exposed.
“I don’t mind if you want to touch me Erik.”
Erik felt his mouth go dry, but he wasn’t sure if Charles knew exactly what he was getting into. Before he could get too nervous though, Charles interrupted.
“You’re my best friend and I trust you. Maybe this is sexual and maybe it’s just curiosity. I don’t mind you exploring with me.” He flashed a shy smile, “I’d enjoy your hands on me even if it happens only this one time.”
Carefully, Erik reached out and traced the line of Charles’s hip as he had imagined the first night sketching. Residual charcoal from his hands left dark streaks on the pale flesh, and for a moment Erik felt as though he was corrupting Charles with his touch. A glance at Charles avidly watching with an expression of pleasure on his face calmed that irrational fear.
Erik rested his hand on Charles’s bare waist, feeling the breaths under his palm as Charles allowed him to explore. Quietly, with reverent touches, Erik slid his hand up to Charles’s neck before cupping his head and lifting him slightly.
The kiss wasn’t what he expected. From porn, from tv, from real life, Erik had anticipated harsh movements, a battle for dominance or a messy exchange of fluids. Instead, Charles’s slightly chapped lips met his in a gentle caress.
Breaking the kiss, Erik leaned down until his forehead rested against Charles’s. One of Charles’s hands wrapped around Erik’s wrist and Charles asked quietly, “is this okay?”
The touch was overwhelming and not nearly enough. It was different without being foreign and Erik felt as though he were a stranger in his own mind. “Yes, but I’m not sure how much I can take,” he admitted.
Charles left his hand there without moving to tighten his grip or touch anything else.
Erik carefully dropped his body against Charles’s supine form. The barrier of his clothes against Charles’s nudity was enough for him to slowly process the pleasure of the touch.
“I want to touch you everywhere Charles,” Erik admitted roughly.
“I’m fine with that.”
“I don’t know how long I will feel this way Charles," Erik warned. "You’re my best friend, I don’t want to use you just because I’m curious if that's all this is.”
“Erik, trust me, I’ll enjoy anything you want to try, but I have no expectations- if this is just a passing interest, I can at least be flattered that I was the one that made you curious, and we will still be friends. And if it's more, I'd certainly not object. I love you as a friend, and I could easily see loving you as a partner.” Charles shifted slightly, and Erik could feel the slow rise of his erection between their bodies.
Erik rolled to the side and slowly ran a hand down Charles’s belly and through the short patch of hair at his groin before carefully circling Charles’s hardening cock. A low moan was pulled from Charles’s throat as Erik gently pulled on his foreskin curiously.
“I want to see if you react the same way my own body does when I stroke you,” Erik said. “I want to see your face when you come. I think I want you to touch me too.”
Charles swallowed noisily. “Let’s start with you touching me wherever you want, Erik. Do you think you can make me come?”
“Let’s find out.”