A Study in Red

In the corner of the European Painting Hall, in the city’s largest art museum, there hung a bust portrait of a young man with a fair, youthful face and airy curls spilling out from under a black velvet hat. The portrait imparted a sense of the lost, of sadness, of longing. Who was the young man in the painting, and why did he look so forlorn?

Nathaniel Van de Waow was a wealthy man. He had made some good investments when he was still in college, and now lived more than comfortably, tucked away in the cliff side estates that overlooked the ocean. He had no nearby relations, and his expansive home was empty, save the growing collection of classical paintings he’d taken to collecting. From Rembrandt to Toulouse Lautrec, from Renoir to El Greco, from Monet to the odd Cezanne, he had built his collection since his late teens. There was one painting, however, that he coveted above all others, and it hung in the corner of the European Painting Hall in the city’s largest art museum.

Hours he’d spent staring at it, and he’d long since come to the bittersweet conclusion that he was in love with the youth in the portrait. He pined for a person who had died some five hundred years ago. The words “private collection” blazed from the description card, and it depressed him each time he saw it. If the collector was anything like him, he or she would be loathe to relinquish the painting, no matter what the offer. So he sat and stared at it, each fine brushstroke of oil on canvas, the tiny cracks of age, the minute highlights on the light curls and in the weary eyes. The curator knew him by name and face by now, and greeted him upon each return. He would lose the day sitting on a bench and staring at the painting, and all other comings and goings in the museum went unnoticed by him. It was for this reason that he did not notice when an old man sat beside him.

“You’ve been here all morning,” the old man whispered, startling Nathaniel out of his reverie. The aged fellow pointed a questioning look at Nathaniel, who stuttered out an affirmative. The old man turned his eyes toward the painting, clasping his age-spotted hands in his lap. “I bought that painting in France, when I was your age,” he said quietly. “It’s striking, isn’t it?” Nathaniel nearly whirled around and stared at the old man.

“Th-then this painting is from your private collection?!” he cleared his throat in embarrassment over his outburst while the old collector chuckled and nodded.

“It is, as are many of the paintings in this room. I’ve been collecting for many…many years.” His voice was a mere croak, worn with too many sunsets. He turned watery and nearly sightless eyes on Nathaniel. “I believe I know who you are. Are you not young Nathaniel Van de Waow, the upstart stock market millionaire and collector of classic and antique paintings?” Nathaniel nodded dumbly. “Ah-HAH!” the old man clapped his hands in triumph. “I thought so. Your name does get around among the collectors. I am told your collection is quite impressive.”

“It’s my only diversion,” Nathaniel answered jokingly. The old collector smiled.
“Yes, I know the feeling exactly. But, lately I haven’t been adding to mine…”
“Oh? Why not, if you don’t mind my asking…” Nathaniel answered, merely carrying on conversation.
“Well, my eyesight is getting poorer by the year, and while Monet was still able to paint stunning landscapes when he was nearly blind, I am no longer able to appreciate the paintings I’ve spent my life collecting.”
“I suppose you will be donating your collection to the museum, or passing it on to your relations?”
“I think you want this painting,” the old man answered perceptively, gesturing toward the painting of the young man.
“I will pay any price,” Nathaniel said sincerely. The aged collector paused in thought.
“I have been told you have a lovely Monet… the scene of a cathedral in the winter. Those later Monet paintings are some of the few I can still see with my eyesight. Would you be willing to make a trade?”

Nathaniel agreed immediately and within the week, the portrait of the young man hung on his wall. Guiltily, he hung it in his bedroom, where he resumed his activity of staring at the youthful face, until his vision swam and it almost seemed as though the young man in the painting was moving, turning his head, and taking a look at Nathaniel. In the young collector’s eyes, it looked like the youth in the portrait had placed his hands on the picture’s frame and hoisted himself up, as though he was climbing through a window. Nathaniel saw the young man step out of the painting and walk toward him, his ornate garb swishing with him as he moved. He became more real, his painted body taking on the dimension and the fullness of flesh, the colour and warmth of blood. Nathaniel did not want to blink and destroy this vision, but his eyes stung and burned, and he rubbed them with regret, only to find that when he looked up again, the youth stood before him, just as the young collector had seen him in the vision. Nathaniel’s eyes widened in surprise as the object of his desire stood before him.

The young man gave a bow, sweeping off his hat so his curls tumbled over his shoulders, and it was all Nathaniel could do to stay conscious. This was all too surreal, too bizarre. He supposed it would work itself out as he mirrored the other’s courtly bow, feeling ridiculous and possibly insane.

“Claude Desiderio-Gallarde,” the vision said amiably, introducing himself. He had a lovely accent, lightly French though cultured in England. Nathaniel was speechless. Finally he managed to spit out his name. “Well met, good sir!” this Claude replied cheerily. He began looking curiously about the modern room with all of its Swedish furniture and its Japanese electronics and its tiles and hardwoods and textiles. “Ah, once more I tread into an epoch most foreign to me. Prithee, Master van de Waow, upon the advent of what year do I alight?” Nathaniel suddenly remembered his years in theatre in high school. He told the youth the date, and the curly-headed young man spun around, bright mirth in his eyes and cheeks.

“By my holidam! Two centuries have passed me by since I last stepped out, and it had been three preceding that.” He was positively giddy with the passage of time which hadn’t touched him. He was flitting about the room like a bonny little bird, asking questions about devices he’d never seen before, and delighting in the changes that had come to the things he recognized. He let forth a peal of laughter when he saw the bound volume of Shakespeare next to the compendium of Edgar Allen Poe on the bookshelf. “These both have been my contemporaries. It is a marvelous world!” Nathaniel’s heart glowed watching the enthusiasm Claude showed. He must have been in his late teens or early twenties, not that much younger than Nathaniel was, himself. And yet, Claude was acting like a kid in a candy store, completely fascinated by the bathroom and its invisible pipes and plentiful electric lights, and Nathaniel’s electric razor and his shower, and all of the strange synthetics: plastics and so forth. Nathaniel would have to ease him into the kitchen; it was likely to overwhelm the excitable and endlessly curious young man. Instead of jumping that hurdle, Nathaniel led Claude into the living room, where he invited the chipper youth to sit on a long couch, forgetting that it was stationed immediately in front of his state-of-the-art entertainment system. Claude’s eyes grew wide as he stared in awe. Nathaniel put on some music and closed the cabinet doors on his plasma screen for now.

“Would you care for a drink, Monsieur Desiderio-Gallarde?”
“My good sir, You needn’t reserve titles for me. I answer all the more promptly to ‘Claude’.” His gaze was warm.
“In that case, Nate is fine for me,” Nathaniel responded. “I simply didn’t want to offend.”
Claude was laughing as he said, “You will find it no easy chore to offend me. I am nearly impervious to insult,” he stated, though his eyes were bright with mirth.
“Any beverage you have a particular taste for, er, Claude?” It felt strange calling the elegantly dressed young man by his first name.

Claude looked up to the ceiling in thought. He wasn’t at all sure the drinks he’d been fond of a half millennium ago would still exist, and with a flourish and a smile he asked to have whatever Nathaniel was having.

Nathaniel disappeared into the kitchen and Claude gazed about him in wonder. ‘The ingenuity of man!’ he thought, ‘How infinite in capacity, in faculty, in boundless intellect!’ When he had last stepped out of the painting, it had been some two hundred years ago, and he was told by the fellow who had bought Claude’s portrait that the painting depicted him as somewhat sad and forlorn, and Claude had responded, in a somewhat offhand way, that he had always had a hunger for that which he could never taste. One of the things he’d been after was knowledge, further than his own lifespan would carry him, and the other… it was too taboo.

Nathaniel poured some of his best wine and brought out some cheese, olives, crackers, nuts, and grapes. Typically, he’d make himself a mixed drink, but he didn’t want to put too harsh a shock through Claude’s system. He sat on the couch, a respectable distance from Claude, more as a restraint system than anything else. Nathaniel had fallen in love with the painting, but now, to have the genuine article sitting with him, drinking with him, joking, laughing, and talking with him as though they were old friends, his heart ached for the brightly smiling young man just a few tantalizing, torturous feet away. It was hard enough not to simply leap across the couch and cover the other body with his own, much less to hold up conversation.

Claude watched Nathaniel watch him, covertly matching him glance for smoldering glance. Perhaps this ‘Nate’ also hungered for the forbidden? ‘No,’ he thought, ‘That would be far too…fortunate.’ Then their eyes met over the rims of their glasses and there was a sort of telepathic communication, a primeval aligning and connecting of human circuits, and their glasses were set with muted clinks on the coffee table, soon forgotten. They never broke eye contact, gazing transfixed at one another, moving together as if magnetically drawn. Claude leaned slowly into Nathaniel, until the older man reclined against the throw pillows and the arm rest, Claude draped over him as they kissed.

It was slow, languid, with closed lids and grasping fingers. Nathaniel half-expected Claude to taste of oil paint, but instead he found only human warmth. Buttons and ties came loose under those probing fingers. Clothes were pushed aside rather than properly removed, and hands slid over the planes of chest and stomach, frenzied, frantic. But, when a hand ventured lower, it was like a window to December had been opened and an arctic wind had blown in, startling them both into frozen stillness. They took stock of their surroundings, of the craziness which seemed to have momentarily overtaken them. At least, these were Nathaniel’s thoughts.

Claude was still high on the fact that he’d found someone who was interested, and who wasn’t so roped by societal norms that he would deny it. His eyes half-lidded, he gave a glassy gaze to Nathaniel who swallowed and felt a sudden jolt of heat throughout his body.

“…Dear God…” Nathaniel croaked, as though commenting on the situation. A sexy look like that was hard to come by, and here was Claude, just giving them away. Nathaniel helped himself to another sliding kiss.
“Never in my most improbable imaginings, nor my most frantic fantasies, could I have ever dreamed…” Claude began, trailing off as he watched Nathaniel’s heaving chest. He lost himself, staring, and Nathaniel eventually coughed quietly to bring the other back. Claude’s head snapped up suddenly and his eyes smoldered, burning into Nathaniel like a gulp of boiling water. “I wish to continue,” Claude stated, his face determined. Nathaniel could only nod.

The way Claude dove down on him, the way he savagely moved his mouth over Nathaniel’s flesh, the way his hands flew over skin as if starving for touch… Nathaniel almost felt like he was being attacked. ‘Oh, trespass sweetly urged!’ he thought humourously, recalling Romeo and Juliet. He could only keen and moan at Claude’s frenzied attentions.

Claude was acting entirely on instinct. He had never revealed his desires until now, and had only a nominal knowledge of sex and its mechanics, but he had waited too long and was now feasting on the taste of Nathaniel. Nathaniel surged up wards as Claude locked his mouth onto a nipple, crying and bucking. His wild hip movements generated an electric friction between then and Claude gasped and clutched Nathaniel desperately with a high-pitched cry of ‘Nate!’

Nathaniel kept bucking and grinding their hips together through their clothing, neither of them paying much attention as Nathaniel pushed pants down to gain more feeling. Shirts were shrugged off, pants kicked to the floor, and then Nathaniel lunged and pinned Claude under him with a squeak from the couch. Claude lay panting as Nathaniel, far more experienced, mouthed and licked his way down the other’s torso, kissing and nipping along the way. Soon, each pant turned into a little whine as Nathaniel moved lower, nuzzling Claude’s erection with his cheek. He was too embarrassed to look Claude in the face, but he could hear the desperate moans as he licked from base to tip and then drew the length into his mouth and bobbed slowly. Claude clutched the sofa in a death-grip while Nathaniel licked and sucked his way around the head. A mounting pressure and headiness told Claude he was close, his eyes clenched shut and his cries a nearly constant song of unbridled pleasure. Nathaniel had picked up the pace, bobbing faster and sucking deep, his own moans of passion becoming humming as he moved quicker still. Claude arched with a long, loud moan, broken by his heavy breathing. He came hard, nearly blacking out, and Nathaniel sucked him dry.

Panting hard, Claude sagged slowly back onto the couch, feeling boneless and over-heated. He slid out of Nathaniel’s mouth, a dizzy haze clouding his mind. Swallowing a few times, he tried to speak, to tell Nathaniel just how liquefying that experience has been, but he could only give another low moan. Nathaniel licked his lips and finally risked a glance at Claude’s face, which was the picture of debauchery and satisfaction. Nathaniel had never wanted to fuck someone so badly in his life.

He cleared his throat, which was a little clogged after the oral. Claude looked up at him with cloudy eyes. “Claude?” he began. The only response he got was an absent, “Uhn…?”

“Claude. I want… I want to…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. He threw a crazed look at the other who swallowed and was able to rasp out a passionate “Please.” Nathaniel couldn’t refuse.

He went quickly to the bedroom and returned with his lube, which he placed on the coffee table before lying over Claude and attacking his neck and ear. In whispers, he asked Claude to relax and to say something if he felt any pain. He uncapped the tube and squirted a generous amount into his right hand, warming it with his fingers. He teased around Claude’s entrance and Claude shivered and mewled. Slowly, carefully, Nathaniel pushed one finger in. The intrusion didn’t hurt, but when Nathaniel began to pull out again, Claude cried out. Nathaniel stilled and begged the other to relax, and didn’t move until Claude had calmed. Nathaniel took his time, even though he was painfully hard, he wanted to make sure Claude felt as little pain as possible. With three fingers inside, he hooked the three and pushed forward, and Claude bucked and swallowed a scream.

Finally, when Claude was begging for more and arching to every pass of his fingers, Nathaniel withdrew and asked if Claude was ready. He received a desperate moan and nodding, and positioned himself.

“Please, just stay relaxed,” he warned as he began to push in. He had to pause and wait for Claude to adjust several times, and when he was finally seated firmly within the other, slim, pale legs wrapped around his hips, the tightness was almost too much for him to bear. He drew out slowly, cursing himself for Claude’s hiss of pain. A few more slow intrusions before Claude began pushing back, feeling a decadent friction and those brilliant strokes of that spot within him, and Nathaniel began to move faster, unable to hold back.

Nathaniel kept up a constant slew of words, telling Claude in broken terms how wonderful, how beautiful, how deliciously tight he was. Claude wailed and moaned, and Nathaniel moved faster still, his thrusts becoming erratic. He reached out to fist Claude’s reawakened erection, and Claude knew he wouldn’t last long. He could never guess how deep Nathaniel’s next thrust would be, and he was seeing stars. A series of short cries led to one long one, and Claude arched, his head thrashing wildly on the throw pillows. He clenched hard around Nathaniel who groaned like an animal and came, shaking, filling Claude with his release. They held that position for three heartbeats, their worlds going white with the most powerful orgasms either had ever experienced.

They collapsed onto the couch again, a panting, sweating heap of languid limbs. It would be a while before Nathaniel pulled out and watched his cum leak out of Claude’s sated body. They lay on the couch, exhausted and hot, allowing an awed silence to fall over them. There they slept, satisfied and uncaring for anything other than each other.


XXX

End Chapter 1