The Arty Boosh
Category: Real Person Fic
Characters: Chris Corner, Dave Brown, Dee Plume, Julian Barratt, Mike Fielding, Noel Fielding, Other, Sue Denim
Pairing: Noel Fielding/Julian Barratt
Rating: R
Status: WIP
Length: 10-20k words
I: And So It Begins…
Contents
I: And So It Begins…
It’s always the most mundane, unsuspecting of days that you’ve got to watch out for. Nothing ever happens on Thursdays, really—just one more hurdle between you and the weekend. By all rights, nothing should happen on Thursdays, but today, one Noel Fielding was going to find out firsthand that this is not a hard and fast rule.
The studio echoed with sounds of chairs and easels scraping the concrete floor as students filed in and got settled, chattering and laughing as they shed their coats and sat down their drawing boards. Noel was one of them—happy, stupid, not a care in the world.
Until someone new walked in—someone marked by his attire and lack of supplies as clearly not part of the class, and therefore, clearly the life model. Except that wasn’t right, because Noel had seen him before. Two nights before, to be precise.
Noel’s brain fuzzed a bit and he blinked a few times to try and focus the abstract dancing of his eyes as he tried to make sense of the situation. No, there wasn’t any doubt about it. The model was definitely the same bloke he’d seen the other night at the pub—playing his guitar, and singing, and generally being sexy. Noel had wanted to talk to him, to say something to him, but he’d hesitated that moment too long and let the other man walk right by him, right out the door. He’d been banking on a second chance, scolding himself for being such a pussy. But now…
Noel felt a cactus of despair suddenly growing in his throat. Well fuck, now the whole thing was completely cocked up, wasn’t it? How could he ever talk to the man now that he was about to draw him nude? The guy would surely think he was a complete freak, would probably sock him a good one if he attempted it. At the very least, it would be deathly awkward—you don’t chat up the model, and if you do happen to say a few words to them, you definitely don’t mention that you say them the other night at an open mic and thought they were quite good and by the way, would they like to grab a coffee sometime? It just wasn’t done.
Noel huffed to himself in frustration as he set up his newsprint pad on the easel. This was all wrong; he was supposed to go back on another night, and the same man would be playing again, and Noel would introduce himself, and then if the tall, handsome stranger just happened to model for Noel’s life drawing class later on… well, that’s a perfectly good catalyst right there, if he played his cards properly. But it needed the proper set-up, right—this was completely no good. He tried not to fidget in annoyance, distracted himself by pulling his charcoals from his supply box.
They were supposed to be using the soft vine charcoal today, he was cheerfully informed by his instructor, but that seemed wrong. This fellow would be all strong lines and hard geometry, not those loose, diuretic squiggles that oozed out of crumbling, flimsy ash. He slipped a hard, compressed black stick from its package instead, wondering if his instructor would notice or care.
“All right everyone,” his short, slightly rotund professor clapped her hands together once, trying to focus the class’s attention. “Julian is going to be our wonderful model for today, so be nice to him or he might not want to come back.” Noel snuck a look at the man—Julian, eh? He’d never have guessed it, but somehow, it fit him. He noted the soft smirk on Julian’s face as he took his place on the platform in the center of the room, robed but barefooted.
“Now, we’re starting with gesture studies, two to a sheet, twenty seconds each… And… what was I saying? Oh, oh yes. Does everyone have their charcoal today?”
She asked this every single class, but without fail, there was always someone who didn’t. It always took a minute or two to sort out, which might give Noel an extra moment to compose himself and get focused on the task at hand before he had to stare at Julian in earnest.
No such luck, as it turned out.
Julian slid his robe from his shoulders and dropped it off to the side of the platform, where it wouldn’t get in the way. Noel tried not to make an undignified squeak as the lithe, nude form was revealed, coughed a little to mask any unusual noises that may or may not have escaped. His pants felt just a little tighter than they had a minute ago and he surreptitiously crossed his legs on his stool, just in case.
God, he was bloody gorgeous. Noel wasn’t normally a fan of anything beyond plain old stubble, but Julian’s ‘tache suited him, as did his short, ruffled hair. He’d thought the other night that Julian looked different from most other people he knew, as if he followed what he liked, not what was in vogue at the moment—because, let’s face it, ‘taches weren’t exactly at the height of popularity. For Noel, to whom this was an issue of great importance, it was a rather appealing characteristic.
Ah, Christy, this was going to be ridiculous, trying to draw him in a room full of people without getting a hard-on. It was embarrassing, too; he’d never once had this problem with any of the other models, even the fairly attractive ones. (Though they didn’t get many of those, to be fair.)
Thing was, all the painting and drawing students were well used to working from live models at this point—nudity wasn’t anything special, just another set of shapes and forms to translate onto the canvas, just a light source and some color, all musculature and structure. It was a detached thing, drawing from life. It wasn’t a person, really. Just a bunch of shapes, a subject for their artistic diagnosis. Except now, that whole theory was being utterly shot to hell because Noel had suddenly turned into a horrible fucking perv.
“All right, first pose! Twenty seconds, go!”
Julian struck a fairly typical contrapposto stance, weight mostly on his left leg, pelvis cocked slightly with one hand reaching back to hold his shoulder, the other resting at his side. Despite the way his eyes curiously flicked around the room, he looked at ease.
As Noel started scribbling, he tried to focus on getting the gesture and weight of the pose, but all he could think of was how nice it would be to grasp those broad shoulders and pull Julian close, how the slight swell of Julian’s stomach would feel warm and smooth against his own. Wondered how the sinew of Julian’s taut thighs would feel when they were wrapped around his—
“Next!” Called his instructor, and Julian turned to face the other side of the room, adopting a stance similar to a lunge that made Noel suck in a shallow breath. Just as he’d thought, the man’s arse was nothing short of godly. He started sketching again, grumbling in his head. This was so unfair. Clearly, he was in the wrong business, having to sit back and try to objectify this man, with his glorious body and equally as glorious voice. Not to mention his hands.
As the twenty seconds passed and everyone turned over a new sheet of paper to begin the next study, Noel watched Julian’s hands closely. That had been it, truly—he’d been done for, the minute he’d seen those fingers sensitively coaxing the sweetest sounds from the steel strings of his guitar. It had been somewhat like watching Julian make love in the middle of a crowded room. And now Noel was watching him cock his hips and swivel about in the buff, again in a crowded room.
This really was just torturous. The man was probably as straight as an arrow, but at least his feverish imagination could take care of that. His classmates, on the other hand, were a little less easily dispelled.
They whipped through the gesture studies, each one making Noel a little more flustered. He hoped his lack of concentration wouldn’t be obvious from his drawings—after all, they were just loose sketches, still. He had time to get it together.
Or perhaps not. Next was contour drawings, two minutes each. Noel mentally sighed, willing himself to focus. It would be more obvious with these if his mind were elsewhere.
Julian’s next great idea was to put both hands on his hips and lean back from the waist, legs spread for balance. Of course, he would be facing Noel directly, presenting himself like an offering. Noel gulped, feeling his cock stir as he tried to adequately follow the contours of Julian’s body with his charcoal stick. The jut of his hips at this angle was delicious, with those big hands splayed over his own abdomen, long fingers leading the eye down to where Julian’s not-unimpressive cock rested amidst a forest of dark curls. Noel’s brain, unbidden, conjured up an image of Julian laying back on the platform, back arched luxuriously as one of his hands pumped up and down his hard dick, the other teasing a pert nipple.
Noel shook himself. All right, brain—that was more than enough. He still had over two hours of class left. The last thing he needed was to get painfully hard in a room full of the people he would have to spend the next two years with, day in and day out. It was a small school, after all. He didn’t want to be known as more of a freak than he already was.
“Remember,” his instructor was saying as she walked around the outside of the circle of easels, passing behind Noel. “Don’t let your hand move faster than your eyes. Follow what you see with your hand. Pretend you are actually touching what you are seeing.”
Noel squirmed on his stool. No problem there, Teach. Ten steps ahead of you.
Finally, the warm-ups were over, and the instructor was arranging a seat for Julian to use during their extended pose.
Trying to casually scan the room and catch a glimpse of Julian on the sly—because staring at the models when you’re not drawing them is also just not on—Noel was quite startled to make eye contact.
His first instinct was to look away and play it off, but Noel ignored his gut and realized after a moment that Julian was looking at him with something akin to… recognition? He tried to mirror the expression, wondering vaguely, what were the chances? Julian gave him a small nod and one of those grins that’s more like a bit of a grimace. The kind you give to people to be polite, when a fully toothy smile is too forward, but no smile is a bit standoffish.
But that was all right with Noel, because that meant Julian had seen him at the pub. And might even talk to him now. And it might not even be weird, after all.
Well, no… knowing him, it would still be weird. Maybe Julian liked weird.
He could only hope.