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Given the fact that they had hours to kill by painting and talking, they each took turns rambling. They started with Kieran, since later on he'd have to stay still while Nic painted him. The kid was just as quiet about his life as he was in general, but there were a few tidbits Nic weaseled out of him now that a portion of his confidence was back.
"Wait, so where do you live? You never told me last week when we met," Nic asked, creating large brush strokes outside of the lines to fill in the background. He wrapped the colors around the edge of the canvas.
"I did't tell you because if you know, it'd be pretty easy to find me. I tend to think people are axe murderers at first glance," Kieran confessed, and Nic snorted, only to realize that Kieran was being entirely serious.
"No shit? Sav hardly seems like an axe murderer." Though, she does have a serial killer smile sometimes...
"Yeah, well. I like to think that if you keep your hopes low enough, you might be able to surprise yourself more frequently. That's basically the motto to live by in my major," he confessed, and after a quizzical look from Nic, he continued, "Environmental science. S'why I live at the Student Co-Op with all the other environmental students."
"Oh, that makes sense," Nic mused aloud. The Co-Op was the Arnette University's way of giving power to a bunch of plant nerds. It was sort of like a frat, but sort of not considering it was co-ed. It was on Frat Row, though. Nic saw it several times, and was shocked by the number of... signs out in their lawn. It was honestly the only lawn on Frat Row that even had trees for that matter, and a makeshift garden. "What's with all those signs out front?"
Kieran paused for a moment, and then said, "Oh, right, you're a freshmen. You probably don't know much about the frat guys on campus. There's almost an eighty percent higher chance of girls being raped by frat guys on campus, and there were several cases last year that were brushed under the rug. So we put all the signs up, and they can't tell us to take 'em down because it doesn't violate any rules."
"So, like, an anti-rape campaign."
"Exactly. It's funny because the University's board members were initially like, 'We'll do anything to make you take those signs down!' and when we found out that it wasn't violating any rules, we just gave 'em the middle finger and that was that. Some frat guys have frisbeed them across the road, but other than that... I mean, we started chaining them to the trees and stuff."
"Honestly the first time I saw the signs I thought they were, like, Beware Of Dog type stuff." Kieran laughed and shook his head, glancing out the window before turning back to where Nic was smiling softly, blending red into the background, and creating a soft glow where the window met the bricks. "Where do you normally live? Other than Arnette?"
"Illinois. Chicago suburbs," he replied, clearing his throat. "But I live here now, so... probably not going back to Chicago any time soon."
"Well, I'd take Oregon over Illinois any day, so that's not so bad," Nic murmured, swapping brushes to paint in the foundation of Kieran's skin color. Pale, almost pore-less like a mannequin, especially with the soft, indirect light of the sun. They were on the west side of the building, so it was all soft, glowing shadows in the morning.
"How long have you been drawing and painting?" Kieran asked as Nic started to get into the details of Kieran's face. He started with broad, wide strokes, and blended them in with patchworks of accented reds and pinks, and faint blues linking to the glow on the window—influence of the sky.
"I don't even know. My Ma would tell you 'since the day I was born,'" he laughed. "Hold still—I'm gonna start painting your eyes."
It both helped and hindered Nic, to look up and find Kieran's eyes already on him. He guessed he hadn't really been focusing on Kieran's eyes until now. They were a blend of grey, likely to shift depending on the environment. Nic knew plenty of people who had grey eyes where in the forest, they were green, and under the sky, they were blue. His irises were huge, his pupils small, and eyelashes curved in their length.
After a moment of getting his shit together, Nic turned back to the canvas and shaded underneath Kieran's eyes, highlighting his waterline, curving around the inside corner where his tear ducts were.
"But I don't think I was ever really into drawing when I was little," Nic confessed after a moment of listening to the music play in the background. "I sorta... stumbled across that hobby later in life. My elementary school teachers told me I wasn't 'creative enough,' whatever that means."
"Well that's kind of ridiculous. If only they could see you now, huh?" Kieran commented, mouth barely moving.
Nic scoffed a little. "Yeah, if only they could see me now." They lapsed into silence again before Kieran fidgeted a little, another one of his subtle expressions occurring. The look of contemplation, tensing his brow ever so slightly. "What are you thinking?" Nic asked.
"Just wondering. You said I'm easy to draw, right?"
"Yeah."
"I wonder if you could get paid being a model or something, or drawing classes, I mean," he confessed. "Extra cash would be nice."
Nic looked at him for a moment, and then back to the canvas so he wouldn't turn red when he said, "Yeah, but most drawing models are nude models for figure drawing classes. There's classes in the city and stuff, for nude models to practice and artists to come and draw them."
"Really?" Kieran asked. "That's kinda weird."
"I dunno. It's not sexual or anything. It's just easier to learn anatomy if ya don't have any clothes on. I took a summer class at the university near my parent's house that was on figure drawing. My mom nearly had a heart attack when I had her sign the paper saying that she was fine with me being in a figure drawing class that used nude models," he explained with a laugh. "Most of the time, they end up being old guys with beer guts."
"Gross," he giggled, going a little pink at the cheeks. "You think it's hard?"
"Oh yeah. Ya gotta stand still for a long time, or maybe do multiple class periods where you stay in the same position for hours on end. I mean, ya get breaks and stuff, but it's tough I'd say," Nic explained. "When we start figure drawing, everyone has to stand at the front of the room and pose for five minutes—clothed, of course—just so everyone can practice, and know what it's like."
"You think I could be a nude model?" he asked, and he said it so calmly that Nic thought he was kidding. Either way, all the heat in Nic's body swept up to his face, and he flushed hard, hiding behind his canvas so Kieran couldn't see him.
"I-I don't—Hell if I know! Why would you want to anyway?" Nic squeaked out, a stuttering mess as he frantically cleaned out his brush in his mason jar full of water. He busied himself with drying it off on a towel.
"Well—I mean, you said it wasn't sexual or anything. And it's not like I'm self-conscious about my body!" Kieran blurted out, laughing when Nic peered around the canvas to glare at him. "And how much money would you get from each session? Somethin' like thirty bucks?"
Nic stared at him, eyes wide and gawking. "Are you kidding? Everyone in the class probably pays fifteen bucks upfront, and that all goes towards the modeling fee."
"Wait, seriously? Holy shit, where do I sign up," Kieran murmured, settling back against the wall again with his eyes wide, the wheels spinning in his head.
As Nic went back to painting, he felt numb inside as the shock was still settling in. He pushed it out of his head for the remainder of the time they spent together in that studio, until he put the finishing touches on the strands of Kieran's black hair as it curved around his ears. He went in with a fine-tipped brush and painted in the pinstripes on Kieran's shirt. He signed the corner, and let out a deep breath. He supposed this was as good as he could do now, given their time frame. Nearly... four hours later.
"Okay, it's done," Nic said, and pushed back in his stool to go clean up his supplies. When he came back, he found Kieran sitting in his stool, staring at the painting. Upon hearing Nic's footsteps approach, Kieran looked back at him with those same wide, grey eyes. "What?" he asked, but Kieran didn't say anything.
"I mean, a lot of people don't like drawings of themselves done by other people. One of my old art teachers told me that, because everyone views themselves differently, and it always varies from the artist's perspective," he explained, but Kieran just shook his head.
"This is better than my perspective, honestly," he confessed, pressing his hands to his reddened cheeks before clearing his throat and reaching into his back pocket. "Could I take a picture of it?"
"Wait, seriously?" Nic blurted out, and felt the tension condense in his chest, and suddenly snap free. "You like it?"
"Are you kidding me? This is incredible—I honestly wasn't sure what I was expecting," Kieran said, and held up his phone. "So can I? Take a picture?"
Nic let him, still stunned as he leant up against the wall, watching Kieran photograph the portrait, and get in close to capture the detail of the colored strokes in the shadows. The purples, the blues, the pink in the hue of his skin. "What are you gonna do with it?" Kieran asked.
"I don't know, honestly," he confessed. "I probably won't sell it or anything. Do you want it?"
"That'd be kind of vain of me to take it," he admitted with a laugh. "You should keep it."
For whatever reason, that just seemed like the most romantic thing Nic had ever heard in his entire life. He wondered if this was the equivalent of a Jane Austen, offering-a-lock-of-hair type of a deal. And for what it was worth, what purpose would Nic have with a fucking seventeen-inch portrait canvas in a dorm room?
He hadn't thought this through.
"I... don't really have the room for it, honestly," Nic confessed, scratching the back of his head with his paint-speckled fingers.
Kieran just stared at him before blurting out, "Seriously? What did you plan to do with this afterwards anyway?"
"I didn't have a plan! I just wanted to paint you!" he exclaimed with a laugh. He lifted the canvas up by the back of it, and held it towards Kieran. "I think you should take it. You could, like, put it on a wall and start a portrait wall of all the members in the Co-Op or something ridiculous like that."
"That's so fucking corny," he muttered, but still smiled as he accepted the painting, "but I'll take it."
Kieran wandered around the studio while he waited for Nic to clean up and pack everything away. The painting sat, drying on one of the desks, and Nic snuck his own picture of it for later. He shouldered his backpack and portfolio bag after setting the easel aside, and called out to Kieran, "You ready to leave?"
"Oh, yeah sure." He came back to fetch the painting and held it gingerly by one of the wooden bars in the back. Nic led the way out of the room, shutting the lights off, and closing the door behind them. It locked shut, and they wandered back across the skywalk, and down the three flights of stairs in relative silence. Kieran would hold the painting high over his head as they went down the stairs, just so he wouldn't end up accidentally kicking it, or swinging it into the railings.
As they were reaching the ground floor, Kieran asked, "So, what do you say to a second date?"
"D-Date?" Nic stammered out, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline as he turned to face Kieran. Kieran stuttered to a halt on the tile flooring, his white converse taking a step back. "This was a date?"
"W-Well, I just... we had a conversation about a second date earlier!" Kieran all but squeaked out. "And I'm usually really bad with hints, but I figured... the fact that you bought me a coffee kind of made me think that this was a date." Nic was surprised by how embarrassed Kieran looked, the splotches of red on his face spreading to his ears and the soft curve of his neck, where his longer strands of hair settled.
Nic cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead. "I'm not saying this wasn't a date. I just—I figured I'd let you decide. Since... I don't want to push any of your boundaries."
The redness faded a little from Kieran's face, and then he was pointing a finger above Nic's eyes. "You've got paint on your forehead now."
As Nic quickly scrubbed at it, though that just seemed to make it worse because there was still a bit of paint on his hands, Kieran cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "Okay. I guess it's relevant to say up front that I'm ace, and if we do go on a second date, I just don't really like all the corny bullshit. Like holding hands or kissing or anything else that's cliché."
"That's fine," Nic said, and they shared a smile that was vindictive of their nervous, awkward habits, and the fact that neither of them were sure what, exactly, was happening. Nic cleared his throat and rubbed his thumb against his forehead again, feeling the paint drying there. "Um... so nothing cliché or romantic. I don't exactly have any ideas... but I'm cool with anything."
"Okay. Just give me your number and I'll let you know when I'm free," he suggested, holding out his phone and opening up his contacts. Nic typed in his name, and added the little fire emoji after it, before ending with his actual number. "Thanks. I'll... see you around then?"
After Kieran parted ways from Nic, he continued to stand there on the steps watching the most beautiful Guy he knew walk away with one of his paintings. He wasn't even worried about the painting getting smudged, like he usually was, he just kept thinking... there was something pricking at the back of his mind demanding attention...
Oh, right.
How could I have suggested Kieran become a nude model?
Nic paled and willed death to come sooner rather than later, just so he wouldn't have to experience the repercussions of this madness.