Perfect Model

Slice-of-life short. A young man models for a favourite painter of his.

1.7k, just some slice-of-life and bickering between a painter and his model — some teasing and flirtation and some one-sided yearning and unrequited lust on the model’s part, with some feline mischief and some Yiddish too.

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“Ah, Dorian, you perfect Adonis!” said Mr Bichler, beaming, and Dorian smiled back at him as he stepped over the threshold and into Mr Bichler’s flat, which was warm and comfortable as ever despite the winter chill outside. “Good morning, good morning, darling.”

“It’s afternoon, Mr Bichler,” said Dorian, shrugging off his coat and hanging it up as Mr Bichler disappeared down the corridor, scooping up one of his cats as he went. “It’s just past twelve.”

“Details, details,” called the old man in his hoarse and throaty voice from the kitchen, and Dorian laughed as he eased off his shoes — he didn’t wear laced shoes when he was going to Mr Bichler’s or to any other artist’s, didn’t much see the point when he was only going to be taking them off again.

He liked Mr Bichler’s flat. He’d lived in the same place at least since the eighties, had rented it and then bought the place after he’d gotten lucky and sold a bunch of pieces back-to-back — when you walked in, you could almost always smell fresh-baked bread and the spices he cooked with, and it was small but didn’t feel cramped, only felt cosy, even in the narrow corridor where there wasn’t much space to move. It had a little kitchen, a little bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and then on the south-facing side was one big room — it had used to be a dining room and a sitting room, both of them small, but Mr Bichler had knocked through the wall and made up his studio instead.

There was a fire blazing in the hearth when he went inside, and he saw already that Mr Bichler had set up a red square rug and a chaise at an angle on it, a piece of red silk cloth thrown over it, a lute, a bowl of fruit.

Stepping behind the screen, he started stripping off the rest of his clothes.

Across the hall through the open second door into the studio, he could hear Mr Bichler bickering with one of the cats — Dorian didn’t know much Yiddish at all to speak, but he knew liebling and nafke and klafte (Mr Bichler called Dolly all these names) and he knew scheifele and sheigetz and mieskeit (these were for Kropotkin), and most of the time when Mr Bichler gave him instructions or asked if he wanted to eat or drink tea or put on a robe Dorian could follow even if he had to answer in English.

Mr Bichler called Dolly a fat pig, and then asked her why she wasn’t eating her food, if it wasn’t good enough for her high standards, and Dorian laughed as he stepped out of his jeans, hanging them over the top of the screen.

“Are you warm enough, sweetheart? Can’t have that beautiful body freezing while I’m trying to paint it!”

“It’s fine, Mr Bichler, thank you,” Dorian called back, and he laughed again, quieter this time, and reached up and touched his own cheek, which felt slightly warm. Dorian had modelled for a lot of people over the years, and no one complimented him the way Mr Bichler did, with so much warmth and so much casual ease and such… effulgence.

(That was one of Mr Bichler’s words. He was well-read in half a dozen languages, but he ran circles around Dorian just in English.)

Once he was just in his underwear, he stepped out from behind the screen and looked at the paints that Mr Bichler had set out on his little rolling table with the levels and the trays — it was the same kind his barber had, apparently — and then at the canvas ready primed. He’d used to paint a lot more with oils in the eighties and nineties, but he’d transitioned over to using acrylics more. He used watercolours at times, and Dorian had posed as he’d done other experiments too — chalks and charcoals and different pencil weights, and collage-esque things with gold leaf, and photographs, and all the rest. He liked to do different things, and he was hugely prolific, even though half of his pieces he sold for relatively cheap, or donated to schools or community groups or whoever asked.

Dorian had a canvas of Mr Bichler’s up in his bedroom, not of himself but of the shopfront of the corner shop Mr Bichler always went to down the street.

“Acrylics today, Mr Bichler?”

“Mmm, yes, the window’s open, is the draught too much for you?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh!” said Mr Bichler as he came in through the doorway — he’d been holding Kropotkin, who was an ugly flat-faced Persian with continuous problems with his anal glands (Mr Bichler frequently complained that his anus received more attention than his own, especially from Kropotkin and Dolly’s vet, who Mr Bichler thought was very handsome) underneath his arms so that his back legs dangled, and now he dropped him so that he could spread his arms and look at Dorian admiringly. “Beautiful! I shouldn’t paint you. We should just oil you and put you on a plinth.”

“You couldn’t take credit for that, Mr Bichler,” Dorian pointed out, and Mr Bichler harrumphed and pouted out his lips, but his eyes sparkled with amusement as he came forward, waving his arms about. “Do you want my cock out, sir?”

“Don’t be filthy,” said Mr Bichler immediately, faux-stern with a jabbing finger pointed up at his face, but when Dorian put his thumbs in the waistband of his boxers he said, “yes, yes, take those off, if you would. Thank you, darling.”

Dorian handed them over, and Mr Bichler stuffed them absentmindedly in breast pocket as he concentrated on sitting Dorian down on the chaise, reclining with his head on his hand, the silk draped over his waist and the back of the sofa and then ruching on the ground, with the lute rested against it and the fruit bowl looking as if he’d just knocked it over, an apple dangling from his other hand.

“Is this pose alright for you, hm?” asked Mr Bichler. Dorian had gone quiet, enjoying the way that the older man moved him about on the chaise — he was confident in touching Dorian’s body, tugging his thigh forward, moving his elbow, even reaching out and adjusting the tousle of his hair, putting the curls he liked best over Dorian’s forehead. Mr Bichler’s hands were always warm, and they were really quite strong, and he always touched Dorian in deliciously proprietary ways without actually being lascivious, even when Dorian spread his legs and looked at him invitingly and tried to get him to be.

It didn’t matter how much Dorian flirted when Mr Bichler was oblivious to it every time.

“It’s fine, Mr Bichler,” said Dorian. “I’ll keep any pose you ask me to.”

“Oh, don’t you tease like that, young man,” said Mr Bichler, disappearing behind his canvas. “I might just start twisting you in knots.”

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t like it?”

Mr Bichler clucked his tongue. “Foul little boy.”

“I’m not so little,” said Dorian. “Didn’t you look when I took my shorts off?”

“I most certainly did not.”

“That hurts my feelings,” said Dorian, and Mr Bichler laughed.

“Well, you shouldn’t store them around your pecker, then, should you?” he retorted, and Dorian shifted his head more into his hand, smirking over at him. When Mr Bichler moved his canvas slightly so that he could see Dorian better, he grinned. “Oh, yes, that’s just the look, that sort of self-satisfied come-hither expression.”

“If you would come hither maybe I wouldn’t have to be self-satisfied,” said Dorian.

“Very clever, my dear,” said Mr Bichler, chuckling, “such a pleasure it must be to have beauty and wit.”

Dorian inhaled, wanting to go on, wanting to perhaps say that maybe he’d be better to paint if Mr Bichler and he retired to the bedroom for half an hour, but saying it out loud, really bluntly or explicitly, seemed like it was too far.

“Don’t you have better things to be doing than taking off your clothes for an ugly old man?” asked Mr Bichler as he mixed paints.

“Yes, sir,” said Dorian. “I take my clothes off for a very handsome old man with a good arse.”

“Tease!” Mr Bichler admonished him, but he did laugh again, and Dorian sighed, looking down at Dolly as she moved past Kropotkin with her tail in the air, and then hopped up onto the chaise to collapse into Dorian’s side.

“Vey iz mir, you interfering little whore,” said Mr Bichler, and Dorian laughed, putting the apple aside so he could sink his hand into the thick fur ruff of Dolly’s white chest — she was a Persian too, although she just looked fancy and pretty where Kropotkin looked a bit of a mess, and as far as Dorian knew, her anus was quite healthy — and scratch it. When she tipped her head up against his chest, he tipped forward and pressed a kiss between her ears.

“She’s not an interfering whore, or a nafke, or a klafte,” said Dorian, stroking her chest in circles and laughing when she purred like an engine, vibrating against his chest. “She’s a little ketsele — an oytser.”

“Treasure, her?” Mr Bichler demanded, and then said, “Pah!” After a few moments, though, when Dorian stilled his hand and didn’t keep rubbing, he looked at her thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed, his lips pressed together. “Are you going to stay still if we leave you there, hm?” he demanded, putting his hands on his hips as he came out from behind the canvas and looked down at her sternly. “Are you going to pose?”

Dolly purred, leaning further back against Dorian’s chest, and Mr Bichler sighed very dramatically, but swiped up the apple and put it on the floor as if it had been tossed down with the other fruit.

“I suppose it’s a better narrative anyway,” he grumbled, walking away. “The cat knocking over the fruit bowl.”

“Yes, Mr Bichler,” said Dorian.

“Although she ruins the view of your chest.”

“You’ll just have to put more of the focus on my thighs, Mr Bichler.”

“How I would love to focus on your thighs, dear,” he said, still sounding fondly irritable, and Dorian stifled his laugh, rubbing his nose against the top of Dolly’s head again. He rolled up his sleeves, and putting aside his attempts to flirt for the time being, Dorian focused on admiring Mr Bichler’s paint-stained forearms and keeping Dolly in her place.

He could always give it another try next time.

(He told himself this every session.)