A Study in Red

Nathaniel was awake long before Claude, and lay there, stroking Claude’s back lazily while he allowed his thoughts to wander. He briefly entertained the notion that he had gone absolutely barking mad, but what difference would it make if he had? He still did not have any explanation for the fact that he’d just had the best sex of his life with a painting… or perhaps a ghost. It was too bizarre. Assuming he wasn’t positively out of his mind, how did Claude leave his picture frame?

‘Does Claude even know how he steps out of the painting?’ He thought, wondering at physics. ‘Is it all by chance?’ With a sudden start, he thought, ‘What if he goes back into the frame and can’t come out again for another two hundred years? I’d waste away, staring into the canvas…’

He decided he’d have to ask Claude what he knew. How long could he stay out of the painting? Did he have to return? If he could, would he… stay?

A quiet, cat-like sound told Nathaniel that Claude was waking, and he stilled, smiling when the other blinked bleary eyes at him.

“Good morning, Starshine,” Nathaniel chuckled, referencing a song he knew Claude would have never heard. Claude merely blinked some more, rolling the stiffness out of his shoulders. Finally, a slow, sleepy smile crept across his face and he leaned forward to plant a sloppy kiss across Nathaniel’s smirking lips, and then they were kissing and grinding again, the sheer pleasure of rubbing against each other enough for now.

Later, when Nathaniel was fixing them a late breakfast, his thoughts returned to him. He stirred eggs in a pan, wearing loose basketball shorts, while Claude sat at the kitchen table in one of Nathaniel’s baggy t-shirts. Claude was still mystified by the technological advanced that defined Nathaniel’s kitchen, and gazed about in wonder while Nathaniel pondered Claude’s existence.

A leisurely meal of sausage, eggs, and cut tomatoes later, they sat companionably in the living room while Claude silently marveled at Nathaniel’s entertainment system. Television! What a concept. Nathaniel had been coerced to get out the encyclopedias that Claude might learn more about the devices Nathaniel couldn’t explain. Claude devoured the information ravenously, and Nathaniel sat idly by, watching the other read furiously. Claude would point to something, Nathaniel would name it, and Claude would go flipping through the books, reading faster than Nathaniel had ever seen anyone do.

Finally, Claude was satisfied with his newly acquired knowledge, and snapped P-Q closed audibly. He looked up to meet Nathaniel’s amused expression, and he blushed under it. He quickly turned away, replacing the encyclopedias, and chewing his lip. He must have bored Nathaniel terribly in this time, and he felt as though he was being a burden to his host. Be that as it may, he was reluctant to leave this time and place. He turned his eyes back to Nathaniel and knew the reason for his hesitation.

“My most sincere thanks,” he intoned as he stood. “It has been a princely manner, thyne.” He gave a courtly bow to which Nathaniel responded with a laugh. Nathaniel moved closer to Claude and kissed the other’s knuckles. “My pleasure,” he answered, smiling, with humour in his eyes. He tugged Claude’s hand until he folded into Nathaniel’s arms. Kissing came easily, sweet and slow and laced with smiles.

They stumbled to the couch, their lips never parting for long, and fell all over each other, all teeth and tongues, sighing as they pressed against each other. Claude fell back on the sofa cushions, panting, and Nathaniel gazed down at him, his own breathing ragged. He realized it was insanity how easily the two had fallen into a pattern of sleeping, eating, kissing, fucking, and sleeping again, without a word of explanation between them. He sat up, pulling Claude up with him.

“Listen,” he began, “I honestly don’t know how any of this came about…”
“Equally perplexed, I am sure,” Claude commented with a short laugh.
“…But I’m…” he wanted to ask how Claude stepped out of the painting, he wanted to ask how long he could stay outside of his frame, he wanted to know if he’d age, he wanted to ask a lot of things. “I’m really glad it did,” he sighed, diving forward to catch Claude’s throat. Perhaps he didn’t need to know these things right away.

Claude arched and made little mewling sounds, and Nathaniel gave into them, trailing his mouth lower. He pushed the baggy shirt up while his hand stroked over twitching abdominal muscles. Claude wrapped his arms around Nathaniel’s neck, hardly thinking about the implications of the situation. He was more interested in the hand that wrapped around his unclothed cock, which was easily stroking him to hardness. He didn’t care too terribly about the surreal when there was a hot erection pressing into his thigh with the promise of another round. In fact, he was hardly able to think about anything else when a pair of fingers pressed into his already stretched entrance, still lubed from that morning. He groaned, his mouth hanging open and his eyes glazed.

Nathaniel loved that about Claude: the way pleasure bloomed across his face with no inhibitions. He pushed his shorts down impatiently. Claude eagerly sat down on his length, sliding slowly, oh, so slowly, downwards, heat clenching, breath catching with ragged, drawn-out gasps, until he stalled, seated fully, and sat stock still. He gulped. Nathaniel clenched his eyes against the pleasure, and it was good, it was hot, it was tight and slick and perfect each time, and he felt as though his stomach would drop out of him any moment for the desire, no, the NEED to move, to snap his hips roughly upward, to grind out some of that delicious friction which he was drooling for, absolutely starving for, the pit of his stomach feeling clenched, empty, tight, and then…Claude moved.

Nathaniel wanted to watch him. Really, he did. But, it was too good, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He moaned and Claude bounced, fingers clawing at Nathaniel’s back as he keened with each downward thrust. Nathaniel moved with him. He surged up. Claude threw his weight down. Nathaniel grasped Claude’s hips. He forced him down harder. Claude pleaded. The pace increased, and Claude was crying out with wild abandon, his curly locks bouncing with him, fanning out like a halo as he tossed his head in arcs Nathaniel wished he could have painted. Nathaniel’s vision swam, he was close, oh, so close, and Claude was slurring what sounded like nonsense, and Nathaniel felt like cursing, it was so overwhelmingly, overpoweringly amazing, and Claude’s cries rang louder and Nathaniel’s thrusts grew faster and Claude stilled! His breath caught! He came hard, clenching down as he nearly sobbed with release and Nathaniel drove in a few more times, his vision blurred until his back bowed and with a barked “Claude!” he slumped back into the couch. “Stay with me, please…” he mumbled into Claude’s shoulder, the desperation radiating out of his voice even through his exhaustion. He felt Claude nod.

When Nathaniel grudgingly decided to get up, rolling the kinks out of his shoulders with a grimace, he wondered why it seemed he and Claude only ever did things on the couch. ‘Next time,’ he thought, ‘I’ll make sure we relocate to the bed.’ Claude stretched and winced, a series of audible pops running up his spine. Nathaniel made coffee and they sat at the kitchen table, their muscles complaining and their minds fuzzy. Nathaniel felt sweaty and crusty and badly wanted a wash, and he was about to offer to share a hot shower with Claude when he thought, ‘What if the water washes him away? Flesh as he seems, just yesterday he was oil on canvas.’ He cleared his throat.

“Claude…” he began, his voice barely above a whisper. “How is it that you… walked out of a painting and became…” he grasped for words, “tangible?” Claude smiled softly into his coffee cup, gripping it with both hands.

“If only I could give an explanation,” he answered, gazing into his coffee with that same smile on his face. “I shall write a prologue, and the dialog shall fall in step. To my pinkest memory, ‘twas the dawn of spring. Winter had fingertips on the Earth, yet, but her barren grasp was fleeting and the balmy babe of April was nigh on waking. Even amid this birthing air, with the flush of green pressing the sullen greys, an autumnal heart was mine: dry and crackling and wanting for light and warmth with naught but bleak Winter and chiming Death before me. I had, I know, wishes far exceeding those allotted to a man.” He glanced up at Nathaniel and said, “My desires were beyond my dues. But,” he sighed, and looked down again, “I am a man, blood and bone, as other men are… although a strange bird, and I feared the Pale One’s hoof beats were upon my trail.” He shifted his eyes to the ceiling with a faraway expression. “Having in my pocket the fruits of my short labour, I wandered, ‘til my eyes beheld a studio, that of a painter, the name you well know in this epoch. Within I found the craftsman himself, flanked by such skill as could only be given by the Almighty. He turned, and he made some comment as to my larkspur mood, my ironclad, my winter-bound heart, and I sat for him. Two days’ light, but a twinkling to the glow of my heart’s candle, which grew lighter and brighter with the strokes of his most proficient brush. There, on the virgin canvas, bloomed like the very Spring herself my likeness, and I warrant, as my memory of that time treads no further, my very self left my withering flesh and flooded that portrait, my final act.” His eyes shone with tears, and still the smile remained. Nathaniel sat transfixed by that gaze. “By sheerest accident, though in it am I happy, I fell from my frame in the bumbling jostle of my portrait being hung in a clumsy room…1839. London had left its hempen homespuns and now squatted like a dapper blacksmith, shrouded in silk and soot. Three days, good sir, did I stay to coat my tongue in ash. Thenceforth I did not again stray, that is, exempting yesterday.”

Nathaniel was speechless for a long while. “…Must you return?” he asked, his voice sounding small. “I shan’t,” came the reply.

Nathaniel covered Claude’s empty canvas, wrapped it in string and took it downtown to the Art district, where he was well known. There he found an aspiring young artist who had taught himself from high-res prints of Remrandts, Sargents, and Renoirs the techniques of the old masters. Nathaniel commissioned a portrait, and he sat for it, patiently, instructing the artist to deliver the painting to Nathaniel’s home upon its completion. As he watched his reflection grow from the canvas, he felt himself fading away…and knew nothing more.

Finding the wrapped package on the doorstep, Claude unwrapped it with shaking fingers. Nathaniel had been missing for two days, and as the corner of the familiar frame peeked from the brown butcher paper, his heart lurched. Staring back at him from the flat portrait was Nathaniel. Claude could have cried as he carried the painting into the bedroom and hung it before the bed, where that same frame had hung before. He sat on the bed and stared into Nathaniel’s face, knowing all too well what had happened. He felt the hot sting of tears behind his eyes and he drew his knees up to his chest, his eyes never leaving the painted face.

His vision was swimming with tears, and the portrait blurred and wobbled, and he didn’t even notice when Nathaniel stepped out of the frame, just as Claude had done nearly a week before. Only when arms wrapped around his shoulders did his tears of grief become those of joy, and the last thing he saw before his back hit the mattress was the empty canvas on the wall.

XXX

End.