Work Text:
“Are you cold? I can’t really get you a blanket, but I can check if there’s a way to raise the temperature in here.”
“No, it’s fine, thank you.”
Kaveh‘s touch burns as his fingers keep skimming over Tighnari‘s shoulders, his arms, the faint pressure slowly bullying him into a comfortable pose. So no, he is plenty warm, thank you very much.
His ears are still tingling where Kaveh had brushed against them earlier, his hands keep itching to move over his crotch, his chest, he still wants to hide away from the calm, gentle, calculating gaze of the artist in front of him, who keeps looking at him, staring at him, watching him.
Tighnari has forgotten just how different Kaveh becomes when he is at work. How all of that scatterbrained energy seems to melt away and zero in onto one specific thing, how he seemingly effortlessly changes right in front of Tighnari’s eyes, turns into someone breathtakingly beautiful. Not that he’s not beautiful normally, but this… The single-minded focus is intimidating, thrilling, really. Right now, Kaveh keeps looking at Tighnari, he makes him the centre of his attention, the only thing worth looking at in the room and it‘s a lot. Too much.
But…
Kaveh looks good like this.
The ponytail suits him, as does the simple shirt that appears two sizes too big. It‘s already stained with paint, some of it so old that it‘s already flaking off his sleeves. Tighnari knows for a fact that it‘s one of Alhaitham’s, most certainly a shirt Kaveh claimed after it had shrunk in the wash, because that’s a thing they tend to do. Tighnari himself has another one that had suffered the same fate, a comfortable cotton tunic he likes to wear whenever he is doing paperwork at home or tending to his plants.
It‘s not the first time he models for Kaveh. He knows portraits and pose studies and Kaveh manhandling him around so he can figure out how his ears and his tail work, how they move around his hair and clothes, how to pin down the texture and that can be embarrassingly intimate, but it‘s never something like this.
Right now, exposed and naked in front of the blond man, Tighnari feels worshipped, borderline caressed into position. Kaveh is staring at the little scars spanning over his arms and sides, he keeps glancing at the mole on his hip and the freckles climbing up his throat. At the little stretch marks on his thighs that stubbornly mark his skin ever since he was a child and hit his first and last growth spurt.
It doesn‘t help that he is sitting on a bench that Kaveh seems to have drowned in flowers, petals keep clinging to Tighnari’s legs, pale pink and yellow a stark contrast against his sunburnt skin. By now, his pose feels… too open, legs spread, arms wide over the back of the bench, his chin pillowed on his fist. It‘s bold, bolder that he feels, naked as he is and his tail keeps wrapping itself over his lap. Kaveh is standing between his legs, towering over Tighnari like this, his fingers keep pressing into his jaw, thumb swiping over his chin, catching a wayward petal.
Intimate, exposed, too close.
Tighnari wants to crawl out of his skin and hide underneath the fur of his tail completely, encompassed as he is by all of these sensations and impressions. Instead he moves it over his lap to create at least a semblance of decency.
„Hold your pose.“ Finally, Kaveh mutters and steps back, turns around, „You are aware that you will have to move the tail once I get back to the easel, right?“
Tighnari‘s tail twitches. The momentary loss of attention is freeing and horribly tragic simultaneously, especially when Kaveh steps back and Tighnary registers the loss of warmth.
Suddenly he feels very cold after all.
„And pray tell, where exactly do you want me to put it?“
„Drop it into the flowers, I like the contrast.“ Kaveh grabs a brush and glances at him over the canvas, „Tighnari? Tail? Now?“
„Give me a moment, this is not quite what I expected.“ Tighnari tugs at his fur, frowns as he watches his tail just flop into the flowers to his right, „When you asked for a portrait, I wasn‘t expecting this.“ There are petals in his fur now, it‘s going to be a nightmare to pluck them out later. Maybe he can bother Kaveh for a comb later.
Once he is done painting.
„You mean the nude part? You agreed. I asked. Weren‘t you listening?“ Kaver grouches as he starts painting, easy strokes, pale fingers holding the brush gently, the paint dripping onto the floor, adding to the colourful puddle underneath the easel. „Although, you were busy scolding that ranger again. Which mushrooms did he eat this time around?“
„I heard the painting part, but not the nude part? And please don’t ask. I am still figuring that one out myself.“
„And yet you agreed.“
And yet he agreed. Even after Kaveh asked him to strip and despite the embarrassment that came with it, Tighnari agreed. Tighnari followed the request. Because it‘s difficult, saying no to Kaveh, not when Tighnari knows that he himself likes the attention, the eyes on him. That he likes that single-minded focus and the way Kaveh paints him.
Whatever that is supposed to mean for the both of them. Something selfish in his chest, something heavy and possessive, wants this all to himself, the flowers and the easel and the paint and those eyes on him.
The quiet settles over them, wraps its greedy hands around Tighnari‘s throat, all protests dying on his tongue the second Kaveh digs out the paints and starts working in earnest. Because Tighnari feels every single time when Kaveh looks at him, he feels him tracing his ears and his shoulders, mapping out the freckles and scars. His eyes keep travelling, the pressure gentle, but unerringly there, a weight settling over him almost comfortably.
He swallows, breathes in, closes his eyes. Leans back into the flowers until they encompass him, until he allows himself to fall.
The flowers smell nice, gentle and fresh, with an underlying saccharine current that keeps clinging to him, soothing his ruffled fur until Tighnari finally calms down enough to let this happen. He focuses on the sounds and the smells and the sensations around him, luxuriating in the comfort and warmth of the room.
„Stay exactly like this.“ He hears Kaveh murmur, „Don‘t move.“
„Don‘t plan on it.“ He answers, smiles. There is a petal under his thumb, the scratching of pencil on canvas.
Eyes on his shoulders, eyes oh his chest, eyes on his legs, tail, ears, face.
It‘s a touch, a caress of fingers down his throat, intimate and close enough to worship that Tighnari wonders if he even wants to see the end product. Or if it’s going to show him all the things unsaid between them, all the desire that keeps pooling in his gut and threatens to spill out every time they are sitting in this studio.
The intimacy of model and artist. The twisted image of friendship that is painted over truths and thoughts left untold. A thought of maybe and the truth of more and two men divided by an easel and paint and the yearning growing roots and stems and buds and flowers between them.
Kaveh curses, huffs, the scratching sound becomes faster and Tighnari steals a glance at him from between his lashes. There is that furious little furrow between his eyebrows, the one Tighnari likes to laugh at at every dinner, a frustrated little thing that wraps its claws around Tighnari’s heart and keeps him rooted in place. He wants to touch it, smooth it out and make Kaves smile, grin, laugh again.
He can’t right now.
Painting really is a good look on him.
Kaveh looks up and his eyes settle between Tighnaris legs and all the comfort flies back out the window, chased away by embarrassment.
“Do you have to look there?” He refrains from crossing his legs or else there will be a brush flying his way, but it’s a close thing.
“You are aware that this is a nude painting and that your dick does, in fact, belong to your body, right?!”
“I am well aware of my biology, but you keep staring.”
“It is a very pretty dick and I want to draw it right, let me have this, ‘Nari.” Kaveh grumbles and it takes all of Tighnari’s self control not to burst out laughing at how absent minded and honest and disgruntled this sounds, like there is no filter, nothing standing in between them.
This intimacy, it’s suffocating in the best way possible. And it stays that way until Tighnari settles back down again, until he starts dozing off, comfortable and soft and peaceful, all warm and in the moment.
He could grow roots right here and he would be perfectly at peace with it.
He wants to bloom for Kaveh. It might make a marvellous painting.
And then the scratching stops. Kaveh hums, a content sound, pleased and happy.
Then, “We can take a break, I’m done with sketching.”
It’s the steps that pull Tighnari back from the realm of sleep, that coerce him back into the room, back to the cloying smell of flowers and the rainforest.
Moving proves to be a bad idea though, the very second he moves his fingers, tries to uncoil them from the fist, the pins and needles hit him like a Sumpterbeast and like the elegant man that he is, Tighnari just crumbles off the bench and right into Kaveh’s waiting arms. The touch burns again, the fingers digging into Tighnari’s waist branding themselves right into his bones and he knows that he is blushing, he knows that his face is most certainly a mess right now, but his legs are still jelly and well. Moving is the last thing on his mind.
He’d make a joke about falling for Kaveh if it wasn’t so very painfully true and if he had any breath left in him.
Kaveh’s hands clench a little bit around his waist, thumb nail scratching Tighnari’s side, the other one skimming suspiciously low on his back and…
They realise their… suggestive position at about the same time and Tighnari doesn’t even have the time to curse when Kaveh drops him with a strangled, “Sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
Still stuck on the feeling of skin and calloused hands and warmth, Tighnari just grunts, “Don’t worry, I think my pride hurts more than my back right now.”
He looks up at Kaveh, who is blushing up to his ears, the red spreading further down his neck, lower, lower until it disappears beneath the collar of his shirt. For a moment, Tighnari wonders just how far down that blush goes. But it‘s not like he can say anything, his face is probably just as red. So he does the next best thing and hides behind his hands, his tail once again slapped over his lap, „Can I please have something to cover myself now? A blanket? A shirt? A napkin? I think I am cold after all.”