Work Text:
The painter’s hands are gentle as they work upon Dorian’s buttoned shirt. Despite everything, Dorian almost always comes back to Basil—if only for the silence. As Basil’s excitement grows, the young man doesn’t look at him, instead staring at his own hand—pale and smooth like an alabaster statue in a sunlit garden. It contrasts nicely with the chestnut walls of Basil’s studio.
“You’re perfect,” he hears Basil whisper in his ear. “Divine almost.”
Divine, divinity. God within, God without. A God alone.
He doesn’t feel divine.
Basil’s hands find his skin. He fights not to shy away from the tender touch. Basil’s lips move upon the youth’s neck—he doesn’t notice the way Dorian has tensed. Perhaps he doesn’t care.
The old divan beneath them is uncomfortable—the cushions well used from the dozens of sitters Basil had before him and dozens Basil will have after him. Dorian scrunches his nose; it smells like smoke.
Dorian thinks he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t think he likes when Henry tells him he’s the pinnacle of humanity. He doesn't think he likes when Basil says that he’s perfect. He doesn’t think he likes that Dorian doesn’t exist outside of what others have made for him.
Or maybe he doesn’t care. Dorian doesn’t know what to feel when someone else isn’t there to tell him.
As pencil-calloused hands pull the clothing down, Dorian wonders if this was why his mother had run away to a man supposedly so beneath her. He assumes her father made her feel the same way he made his grandson feel years later.
Dorian imagines her in the rotting attic he had grown so familiar with in his youth. She must have dreamed of more than the life her father had deemed for her. Dorian used to place his hand where he thought she might have, imagining his willful, beautiful mother staring longingly at imagined scenes of fairytale gardens and eternal love. It was a stupid attempt to understand and be understood by a woman he never met.
Did she too feel empty and lost? Did she want to be seen as more than herself?
Or, like her son, did she not know who she was? Had the doomed pauper who loved her also wrote her a part that fit better than the rest? One that made her whole?
“Am I being too rough?” Basil asks. The poor man never wants anything more than to leave Dorian as he found him. He really is an artist.
“No.” The answer is mechanical. A little less than he had given the man from yesterday and the woman from before and the man before her. All of them all melt into one muddied mess, staining his skin. “No, you have not.”
“Tell me if it is too much,” Basil says. Dorian feels Basil’s only ever left him less than he was before. The painter says nothing more as he presses his lips to Dorian’s in the soft way only he could.
Dorian wonders if he’d like it more if Basil was capable of hurting him. He doesn’t like the pain, but as revolting as it is, the Dorian who accepts brutality is a far more familiar devil.
He always feels dirty, despite how Basil tries to force him clean. He always feels disgusting despite how Henry tries to make him beautiful. He feels broken, but no one tries to make him whole.
No. Dorian has tried to make himself whole. Dorian has taken every bit given to him and made it fit. And when countless men and women chipped or cracked or shattered him, Dorian forced the dirty alabaster pieces back into place and painted them over so they were smooth and white and perfect.
But he’s afraid—Basil’s steady hands slide up to cup the young man’s face—that the pieces have frayed from constant use. He’s afraid—Basil’s body presses against his; he’s warm, he’s kind, he’s infuriating—the whole thing will crumble.
When his grandfather’s image of Dorian fell apart, he found Basil, and when Basil’s image followed, he found Henry. But when Henry’s falls apart too—who will be left?
“I love you,” Basil whispers, small and desperate.
Well. There is a image of himself Dorian can always recognize. And then everything else will follow. He will be whole once more.
He forces a soft chuckle. The painter stills on top of him. Dorian refuses to let the moment go. He needs this. Needs to be something he recognizes again.
Dorian within, Dorian without.
Dorian alone.
Pressing his lips against the painter’s, he says, “How horribly boring of you, Basil.”
He doesn’t let Basil say anything. He doesn’t need him to.
The alabaster cracks, but a little paint will cover it up fine.