Work Text:
Sidney was hovering. Evelyn tried to ignore it as she laid out the initial sketches, but her elbow jabbed into his hip, causing him to start. She stared at the line she had been making, now abruptly flying across the page.
Beyond her easel lay Hugh, Sidney's paramour. Evelyn had arranged him that way, based on what Sidney had told her he wanted, in only a long shirt, precariously leaning up against a chair that had been partially covered in a drop sheet. She personally would have had Hugh standing, showing off his weather-tanned body without being so decadent, if only Sidney could be bothered to trust in the incomparable eye he’d hired her for. Incomparable, apparently, except to his own. Sidney was a man with too much taste and too little talent, and made up for it with his legal tender.
Hugh, for his part, looked mildly out of place--very awkward, but not uncomfortable.
Sidney plucked up one of the pencils in her kit and began to twirl it over his fingers. Evelyn gently tried to nudge him out of the way.
“Now, darling,” Sidney asked Hugh, drifting now to her other side--still entirely too close, “you could perhaps look a smidge more serene for the artist?”
“It's only the sketch,” Evelyn muttered.
Hugh looked from Sidney to Evelyn and thankfully took the hint. “I will when she tells me to, Sid.”
Evelyn had come into this sitting with ideas already percolating in her head, and she had to admit it smarted to have them all thrown out. She craned her neck, trying to get at another angle. She passed her wrist over the paper several times before marking out the curve of his spine.
“I just wonder if you shouldn’t let more of his genius shine through , don't you think?” Sidney asked.
Evelyn stood up suddenly. “Alright, that’s enough!” Charcoal sticks rolled from her smock-covered lap and onto the floor. Evelyn briefly regretted it, since the carpet was lovely, and they shouldn’t have been out at all, but she was too annoyed with the lot of them to care, or even to pick them up. “I need a minute.” She looked around, gathered up a few of her things while they watched silently, and left.
“If my nan could see me now, putting on airs...” she heard Hugh say as she left.
She wasn't entirely familiar with Sidney's apartment, but she could get to the stairs well enough. It was a two-story townhouse built a few decades ago at the turn of the century, and still maintained hints of its Victorian excess underneath Sidney's modern aesthetics. She sat herself down at the top of the stairs and, after taking several breaths to clear her head, spread out her sketchbook and a pencil and tried again from memory. She could hear them talking to each other in the other room, and tried to tune them out.
Objectively, Hugh wasn't the worst subject to have. He was broader than Sidney, which wasn't hard to be. He had dark, thick hair and a wide mouth that gave the most dazzling smiles. Though his work in construction was rough, he kept clean and polished. His hands were calloused, which she noticed with one handshake, and his manner was friendly and without ornament.
This pairing impressed Evelyn. Hugh was a framer, a carpenter, and by all rights Sidney shouldn’t even know his name. And whatever virtues Hugh saw in Sidney were somehow unknowable to the rest of the world. But here she was putting to record a relationship that had been happy, if mostly kept to itself thus far—the two had met only this year, and purely by accident.
This portrait, which would eventually be done in pastels, was something of a boudoir piece. Sidney had wanted something sensual, sensitive, something that really got to Hugh's soul. What had his letter said...crystallizing the gem-like flame of his ardor? Or something to that effect. She thought it left some things up for her interpretation, but apparently Sidney had a very specific image in mind. She would have to be expedient if she wanted to get any progress made. The less time she had to spend with Sidney, the better.
After she had completed a few different sketches, she felt ready to go back, but stopped when she reached the doorway and realized what they were doing.
Sidney was over at the dropcloth, leaned over Hugh. He slipped his hands inside Hugh's shirt and parted it wider, exposing more of his broad, hairless chest and one dark nipple.
“What are you doing?” Hugh sighed, but also laughed.
“I'm helping the artist,” Sidney replied. “Now you ought to tilt your head back...like that.” He had dragged the tip of his nose up the line of Hugh's neck, gently nudging his head into the position he wanted, burying his nose beneath Hugh's ear. “God, that scent.”
“It's probably sawdust, you hopeless thing.”
“It's ambrosia. There, you look perfectly dolly.” Sidney placed his finger on Hugh's lips, letting them part. The look in Hugh's eyes warmed for a split second before flickering away in bashfulness.
Good god, Sidney was going to debauch him right then and there. Evelyn adjusted her papers, decided to tack on an inconvenience fee to her bill, and strode into the room.
“If you're ready...”
She was loathe to admit it, but Sidney had a point—Hugh did look better now. More relaxed, more movement in the lines of his body—except she wasn't at that point of the drawing yet! She glanced askance at Sidney as he returned to his former perch right beside her, arms tucked up close to his body, chin resting on his hand, and smiling like a young boy at the object of his affection.
Hugh winked at him.
Evelyn smoothed out the corner of her sketchbook she had mindlessly crumpled, set herself stiffly down at the easel and got back to work.
–
Hugh didn't used to have an eye for visual harmony or anything like that until he started seeing Sidney, and then it was like things started fitting together for him.
Take this room for instance. The sitting room was papered in a pale green Chinese pattern of flowering trees and leggy birds. It stopped just two feet short of the ceiling and was capped with a crown molding. The fireplace had been re-tiled with white and deep green marble, and a collection of miniature paintings in golden frames hung in a line beside it. Two matching chairs, upholstered in something that wasn't quite white, sat low to the ground with wooden arms that could only be described as swooping. Along the far wall was a long walnut sidebar underneath an immense mirror. The bottles stood at attention, next to a chrome set of bar tools. Next to the couch, leather, was a side table with a shining black telephone and a streamlined chrome vase filled with tulips. He'd always thought it beautiful, but now he had a vocabulary to describe why it looked well together. He was used to rules and measurements--following plans and being precise. The vagueness that surrounded art had always escaped him, but now it was color values and balance and harmony and contrast.
Amidst it all, he was initially surprised that Sidney seemed so plain, but it was that way on purpose. Fine tailored flannel trousers...tightly rolled cigarettes in a silver case...his sartorial tastes were not flamboyant, but classic and strong and simple, so as to provide a counterpoint to the decoration he surrounded himself with. To draw attention not to his person, but to his sense of aesthetics. Sidney never clashed with the room, only slid seamlessly into a corner where he wouldn't distract anyone, leaving him to sit unbothered, admiring his effortlessly manufactured Eden. There was no point in being beautiful if one couldn't see his beauty himself.
It was a self-absorbed ideology for some, but in Sidney, it suited Hugh just fine. He had no need for a fancy dresser. One usually noticed that Sidney's face was long and plain. But then one would notice the sudden appearance of the dimple of his cheek, or the sharp glint of his eyes. It was then he was the most lovely man Hugh had ever met.
Hugh, spread out on the dropcloth, cracked his neck and looked out at the world Sidney had built for them both. His portrait would be a part of it soon. It was sure something, Hugh thought, that he could be considered so beautiful as to be allowed an exalted place upon Sidney's wall. It gave him pause to be reminded of this—sometimes, he would look down at his hands as he worked and feel like the ugliest person to ever exist—and have this revelation all over again.
He wasn’t used to lying about like this, and he was eager to be finished. He looked away from where Sidney was bothering Evelyn again, and picked at a splinter that was starting to work its way out of his finger.
God, it was getting cold in this room without his trousers on.
–
It wasn't just for the gratification of his libido that Sidney had commissioned this portrait. He had hoped that by seeing himself on canvas, Hugh would come to realize just how beautiful he was, and that comeliness was not unattainable by those who belonged to the so-called lower classes. Nor did their working in construction exclude them from being completely beloved.
He hadn't missed the glimpse of mischief on Hugh's face as Evelyn had come back in the room, and Sidney was glad to see that Hugh might be coming out of his shell. Gaining a self-regard that wasn't so fragile that it shattered at the slightest hint of embarrassment.
With Evelyn in the room, Sidney had to keep his hands to himself, but all he wanted to do at this moment was worship this man who in most important things was so much better than he. His intense focus, his levelheadedness, the way his affection for Sidney felt perfectly logical and easy. Sidney knew he was hard to get along with, and he was terrified sometimes that Hugh would realize that Sidney was nothing except for a sniveling wisp in a shell. This portrait was Sidney's symbol of devotion. If he could commission this portrait to show Hugh his own beauty, it would convince Hugh that Sidney was worth staying beside.
Which is why it would be just swell if Evelyn would only listen to his suggestions.
“Are you sure you want to put his hand there?” Sidney inquired, perfectly innocently, as Evelyn lingered on the spot he had mentioned. She was positioning the fingers in a way that didn't strike him as languid enough.
“I'm not sure,” she replied, setting down her pencil and holding her hands tightly in her lap. “I haven't finished the sketch yet.”
Sidney could hear the strain of fury in her voice, but couldn’t help himself. “Ah. Well, then I'm sure you won't mind my saying that that pose there is no good.”
“Brilliant. Perfection. Genius,” she deadpanned, which was horrible of her.
“If you don't want me here, just say so,” Sidney said to her. “I'm only trying to assist.” He would be lying if he said he wasn't also feeling a little bit left out.
“I promise,” Evelyn ground out through her teeth. “I will run everything by you. Before I commit to anything. Now would you please go sit down?”
After the session was done for the day—poor Hugh had been startled to learn that he would have to sit over the course of several days to get to a point where he wasn't needed anymore—and after Evelyn had left with her large bag in tow, the two of them were lounging about on the divan. Hugh was reading the evening paper, and Sidney thumbed through a catalog for the local auction house.
Just his presence lent a preternatural contentedness to the air that Sidney could sense. He could not properly describe it, but he would certainly feel its absence, and he lived with a certain level of anxiety that Hugh would wise up and submit him to just that. How sublime, that Hugh had an effect on Sidney even when he wasn't in Sidney's line of sight. He reached blindly over to squeeze Hugh's hand, firmly and quickly. He let go, but Hugh took hold of his wrist and placed something in his hand.
Hugh presented the box of cigarettes with embarrassed casualness. He seemed to be looking at Sidney's nose rather than in the eye. "They're, uh, gold-tipped. Don't see why since they're just going to be tossed away later, but I figured since you like fancy trifles... They reminded me of you. And they weren't too dear."
Sidney took the box like it was a little bird. He had tried these things once. They were gold-leafed so cheaply that it left the smoker with a gold O on the inside of his lips. Still, the lavender box was charming, and etched with an arabesque of gold lettering. An art piece in its own right, even if he didn’t intend ever to smoke these. Ah well, some things were to be cherished for their uselessness.
Sidney put the box down on the coffee table at their feet and reached for Hugh. The paper slid from Hugh’s hands as Sidney pulled him into a kiss. Hugh smiled against Sidney’s lips, catching them lightly on his teeth.
“Oh. Would you believe,” he said, as they parted, “that my mother has been getting Howard Hughes and Herbert Hoover mixed up?”
Hugh was no fun. “Well, those double h’s are dashed tricky, aren’t they?” Sidney leered at him. He took up the catalog again and noticed a pair of alabaster bowls he liked.
“So you can imagine her face when she realized she'd been saying that Herbert Hoover broke some kind of plane record.”
“Hell, if I were in his shoes, I'd want to be as fast as possible too.”
After Sidney had stopped grinning at his own quip, he looked over to see Hugh gazing at him with a look of sheer adoration. It made him stop and wonder if he really was something special after all.