Sinful.

Arthur is fucking beautiful. His skin is every bit as smooth as Eames expected it to be and it’s not covered in the black stains of tattoos like Eames’ is. Arthur is thin and willowy, though he holds some muscle on his frame and Eames is sure that, should the need arise, Arthur would be more than capable of holding his own in a fight. His pose is soft, elegant but his expression is sharp, and the dark black shadows swallowing his body are in stark contrast with his pale complexion. Eames is in awe. He’s also desperately fighting a losing battle to keep his thoughts within the realm of what’s considered “PG.”

“Two minutes,” Patty says softly as she continues to pace around the room, peering over student’s shoulders and offering quiet critiques.

Eames looks down at his paper and realizes with horror that it’s still blank, three precious minutes having slipped right through his fingers. He scolds himself inwardly and his hands fly across the paper to leave behind dark charcoal shapes, racing to come up with something halfway decent before that timer resting on the blankets at Arthur’s feet goes off.

He focuses on drawing in the curve of Arthur’s spine, the angle of his shoulders, making a very conscious effort to approach this as just another art assignment. And he succeeds – sort of, anyways. A couple times he catches his eyes straying, but he quickly averts his eyes back to the section of Arthur’s body that he’s drawing.

After a span of time that seems like forever and not long enough at the same time, the small white timer Arthur set prior to posing goes off. Eames forgets about his drawing for a moment and watches as the man relaxes out of his pose and hops down to sit casually on the edge of the platform as if he’s not completely naked in a room full of people.

Patty asks them if they’d like another five-minute pose or if they’d to move onto a longer one, and almost everyone agrees to have a slightly longer pose. No one really likes those short warm-ups anyways. Not enough time and too much detail; it’s good practice, but it’s always annoying how the timer goes off just as you’re able to lose yourself to the sense of quiet peace that accompanies making art.

“Okay, fifteen minutes,” Patty announces. She turns to Arthur, “Another standing pose?”

Arthur nods briskly, once, and sets the timer again, smoothly transitioning into another pose. Eames realizes he has yet to hear Arthur speak. He wonders what kind of a voice would accompany an appearance like that.

The light swish of charcoal and fingertips against paper is all that’s heard in the room besides Patty’s footsteps and her quiet whispers. It continues like that for perhaps an hour; Arthur poses for fifteen minutes, takes a quick break, then poses again. As time progresses, Eames begins to find it a bit easier to stop looking at Arthur as someone extremely attractive and start looking at him as just a subject to be drawn. He’s not even flustered anymore by the time one hour passes, though that quickly ends when the timer goes off again and he becomes only all too aware of the fact that Arthur is wearing nothing.

Patty smiles at her students. “Okay, let’s take a five minute break,” she proposes. “Why don’t we walk around the room and take a look at each other’s drawings?”

Eames lingers to add a few last touches to his drawing and then sets the piece of charcoal he’s using down. He begins to slowly stroll around the circle of work tables around the model’s platform, looking at everyone’s drawings. When he gets back to his seat, he sits back down on his stool and lets his eyes flick up to Arthur again.

Arthur has pulled his pants on by now and is sitting on the edge of the model’s platform again, legs crossed at the ankle and leaning back on his free hand as he reads from the book he brought. He has slipped his shirt on as well but left it unbuttoned, his chest exposed. It takes more effort than it should have for Eames to look away.

“So, um, your name is Arthur, right?” one of the girls in Eames’ class makes an attempt to learn more about Arthur. She’s a sweet girl who draws with the lightest of feathery touches of charcoal against paper. Her name is Edith and her drawings always hold a sort of ethereal feeling to them.

Arthur looks up from his book and marks the page with his thumb, gazing over at her with polite and, Eames thinks, mildly amused interest. He nods for her to continue.

“Are you in school right now?” she asks, tilting her head to one side. “I-I mean, you look quite young.”

The corner of Arthur’s mouth quirks up into what’s more like a slight smirk than a smile, and Eames nearly finds himself holding his breath in anticipation of hearing Arthur speak for the first time, but then he reminds himself to breathe, telling himself he’s being so silly for letting himself get so wrapped up in this like some lovesick schoolgirl.

“Well, thank you, I guess,” Arthur says smoothly, his voice low and even and sure, confident. Well of course, Eames thinks. Arthur must be confident to have a job like this. “And yes, I’ll be going into my last year of college in the fall.”

Oh. Arthur must be only about three years older than Eames. That’s not so big of an age difference, is that? Eames pinches his arm hard, squashing the thought before it really has a chance to sink in. How ridiculous, he scolds himself, to be thinking of someone he hasn’t even spoken to in that manner. Stupid.

Edith looks at Arthur with renewed interest. “Really?” she asks. “What are you majoring in?”

“French Literature,” Arthur replies easily.

And it makes sense somehow. It explains the book Arthur’s been so absorbed in, and for some reason Eames can’t quite figure out (because really, Eames is in no position to be acting like he knows Arthur at all), it seems to fit. It just seems so very Arthur, and Eames can’t see this man studying anything else.

Edith looks like she wants to continue this conversation (and many of the other students, including Eames, who are subtly – and some not so subtly – eavesdropping look like they want her to continue too) but Patty calls for their attention again and they all shift in their seats, preparing to immerse themselves in drawing again. Patty suggests that they try a couple sitting poses next and Arthur nods, putting the book aside and lifting the chair he’d been sitting on earlier up onto the platform. Eames tries not to stare as Arthur strips and folds his clothing in a neat stack on the floor (“try” being the operative word). Eames takes a deep breath as Arthur settles himself into the chair after setting the timer and he begins to draw.

He traces the line of Arthur’s leg up to the knee, curving it over to match the angle of his leg. He sketches in the chair vaguely just to give himself a sense of where everything is and Patty peers over his shoulder, reminding him to use not line but what she calls “shadow shapes” (quite literally the shapes the shadows on Arthur’s body take on) to define the form. Eames nods and Patty moves on.

The rest of the morning passes and Eames hardly even feels it. Soon it’s time for lunch, which means that everyone is tidying up their workspaces and washing their hands so they can go get a bite to eat, and Arthur is gathering his things to leave. The models are only with them in the morning, as that is the period of time that is officially considered “class.” The studio is still open in the afternoon until four, except it’s more of an open studio for anyone who wants to work on anything with Patty’s constructive criticisms, if necessary. Eames likes to take this time to work on some paintings he’s been doing. It’s very convenient that the studio has just about every art supply imaginable, especially since his supply of paints at home is running dangerously low.

But first, as always, Eames walks around the room like everyone else, glancing at their drawings, and what he sees is very impressive. He’s quickly learned that everyone here is incredibly good at this, and it’s kind of intimidating. He often wonders if he’s good enough.

Eames sighs as he gets back to his seat, putting away his charcoals, not quite ready to leave for lunch. He’d been quite enjoying the peace that art always brought him and didn’t want to let that go just yet (well, that and the fact that he gets to ogle at such a beautiful man all while seeming minimally creepy). Out of his periphery, Eames sees Arthur – now fully dressed, of course – walk casually around the classroom taking a quick glance at everyone’s work as he passes. Eames looks down, trying not to get too flustered at the fact that Arthur is steadily drawing closer to Eames, and when he looks up again, he almost chokes.

Arthur has paused in front of Eames’ work table and is looking at his drawing with a very thoughtful expression on his face. He makes a sound that might have been a soft laugh or a quiet hum of approval or maybe just a snort of amused laughter and turns to leave the classroom without even looking at Eames, offering a brief wave to Patty before disappearing out the door.

Eames barely has time to turn this strange event over in his mind before he’s being swarmed by half of the girls in his class, all of who are too eager to hear firsthand what happened, even though they were all perfectly capable of seeing it with their own eyes. Patty chuckles quietly from somewhere off to the side, very amused.

Obviously, Eames isn’t the only one who finds Arthur attractive.