Well Sculpted
Draco settles himself on the low, metal stool behind the easel with his name written on it in pink chalk. He breathes in the cool, cement-scented air of the studio and trails his fingers reverently over the single piece of bone-white parchment already clipped to the wooden frame. He’s here unnecessary early—he’d been worried about getting lost on the sprawling campus and is determined to start the semester off on the right foot.
He decides to pass the time by taking each of his brand new art supplies out of his messenger bag, one-by-one, and arranging them carefully in size order on the little table next to his easel. He’s not sure which they’ll be asked to use in class, so he prepares everything he’s brought.
It still feels like a dream that he’s here in his very first drawing class of his very first year of art school. He thinks back to the miserable, lonely boy he was only six months prior. Suffused with a sense of unhappy resignation as he sat through tedious meeting after tedious meeting with his father’s associates, being groomed to take over the family business and hating every moment.
He’d applied to the program at the local university on a desperation-fueled whim, sure that he’d never be accepted. He just wanted to…see. But then his acceptance letter had arrived, followed swiftly by a letter from his father informing him of his disinheritance. It was the best—and the worst—week of his life. When he thinks about it now the rejection still stings, and sometimes, when he’s making his third bowl of instant ramen of the day in his dingy, one-room flat he misses his old life so fiercely he can taste it.
But then there are moments like this when he glances down at his charcoal-smudged fingers, inhales the smell of a brand new eraser, and soaks in the limitless possibility of a fresh, unmarked page, and he remembers exactly what he gave it all up for.
He wishes he could communicate this big, electric feeling to his younger self, drawing under the duvet with a flashlight at night and hiding his art under a loose floorboard so his parents wouldn’t accidentally find it.
The room begins to slowly fill with other students. They all seem so cool with their interesting clothes and colored hair and Draco feels small and unimpressive. It’s a new, uncomfortable experience for him. When a couple of them look over and smile at him his chest fills with warmth and he actually blushes.
Maybe everything will be alright, after all.
As soon as almost every easel is occupied, the door to the room bangs open and a willowy woman in a flowing dress and shawl flounces into the room.
“I’m Camille Rialto and this is drawing 101, if you’re in the wrong place I suggest you leave now. I don’t have a PhD so for the love of god don’t call me doctor. Mrs. Rialto was my mother, god rest her soul. Camille is fine. Pencils only. We don’t mess about in my studio, people, so we’re starting strong today drawing from life. I believe we learn best by trying, failing, and trying again until we create something we can live with, so I’ll instruct as we work.”
Draco gulps. Camille seems stern and critical, a far cry from his primary school art teacher with her pastel wardrobe, star-shapes stickers, and soft voice. He begins to question all of his choices.
Until he sees that Camille is being followed by someone, a boy seemingly about Draco’s age with big, green eyes hidden behind fashionable, round glasses. His dark hair is cut into a mullet and the ends are dyed nearly the same color green as his eyes. There’s a shiny pink scar that slices through his left eyebrow and over the top of his cheek. Draco feels his heart skip a beat.
Camille is saying something distantly, and Draco is vaguely aware that the other students are moving around him, but he doesn’t really register any of it. He’s too busy watching the green-haired boy remove his oversized denim jacket and hang it by the door, then toe off his worn out converse to reveal mismatched woolen socks. The boy disappears into a back room and Draco snaps to attention quickly enough to catch up on the warm-up exercises everyone else has started.
He almost forgets about the boy, lost to the consuming joy of sketching, until the door to the back room opens twenty minutes later and he re-emerges, now wrapped in a long, faded plaid robe.
“As I said, we’ll be drawing from life for the remainder of our time together today. Next week we’ll dive into theory and technique and all that other bullshit, but today… today we look, and we draw,” Camille instructs.
The pieces don’t fully fall into place for Draco until the green-haired boy steps up onto the dais in the center of the room and begins to untie the belt of his robe.
Drawing from life…
Live model…
Surely, that can’t mean…
“Everyone, this is Harry, he’s generously volunteered to be here with us today. You’re all adults and aspiring artists, I expect you to act with the respect and decorum that entails. Say hi, Harry.”
The boy chuckles and blushes slightly, which makes Draco feel hot and cold at the same time. His got deep dimples and his nose crinkles when he smiles. “Hi, everyone.”
Harry’s robe slips off of his shoulders and down to his waist. He folds it into an untidy square and sets it on the ground next to the dais. He’d left his socks on to keep out the cold of the hard ground and Draco watches, transfixed, as first one, and then a second knobby brown ankle comes into view as he slides them off. Draco is momentarily mesmerized at the flex and pull of the thick tendons on the tops of Harry’s feet.
Draco blushes again as his eyes, completely out of his control at this point, trail up Harry’s calves and over his knees. There are small, pink scars there too, as if he’s no stranger to scrapes and bruises. He fastidiously avoids looking at Harry’s crotch, sure that doing so would cause him to spontaneously combust, but he can’t help the way he fixates on the soft-looking trail of dark hair just above it.
There’s thick, dark hair scattered all over his body, in fact—down his arms and legs, over his chest and soft stomach—and it’s striking against his bronze skin. Draco wonders for a delirious moment what it’d be like to touch.
Draco’s stomach flips as he watches the lines of Harry’s body shift and change as he makes himself comfortable on the plinth. The man looks like a Greek statue come to life the way his pliant skin twists and folds, his muscles shifting underneath as he bends and moves.
When he finally lifts his eyes to Harry’s face he finds a pair of cool, green eyes looking calmly back at him. There’s a small smile on Harry’s relaxed face and he’s staring right back at Draco. Draco drops his gaze and blushes furiously, he begins nervously sharpening one of his already-sharp pencils and tries to make himself small behind his easel.
When he chances a glance back up, Harry is still looking at him and his smile has grown wide and warm.
Draco takes a deep breath and mentally chastises himself for getting distracted. He feels a bit gross—Harry isn’t here to be gawked at, he’s volunteered to put himself in this vulnerable position for them and Draco is supposed to be sketching him.
He closes his eyes for a moment and recalibrates. When he opens them again, he’s focused on the lines of Harry’s body, the shapes he sees in his relaxed posture, the swaths of shade and light that together comprise the figure in front of him. He’s lost to himself as soon as the tip of his pencil touches the paper, brow furrowed in deep concentration.
“Pretty good,” a soft voice says over his shoulder some time later, startling him out of his flow. Draco jumps back from the easel and blinks until his eyes focus on the room around him. Some of the easels are abandoned now, their occupants having already left some time ago. The light in the studio is low. He must have been drawing for a long time.
Harry is there next to him, his robe secured around his waist once again. “Sometimes I think I actually look like a misshapen potato from the way people draw me. But I suppose I don’t.”
“No, you d-don’t,” Draco breathes. Not even close.
“Yes,” Camille drawls as she passes. “Mr…Malfoy, is it?” She eyes his sketch imperiously for a long moment. “There’s potential here. We can work with that.”
Draco has to bite down on his lip to stop himself from beaming. It’s the first time a stranger, and a university art teacher at that, has said anything remotely kind about his work. He suppresses a giggle as he watches her flounce away.
“I’m Harry,” Harry says, shifting around behind Draco’s easel to look down at him.
“I know,” Draco says timidly.
Harry laughs, “Yes, well I thought I should introduce myself properly. With my clothes on.”
“O-oh,” Draco replies, blushing. “I’m Draco.”
“Draco. Cool name.”
“Is it?” He breathes, feeling a little lightheaded.
“Are you a new student? It’s mostly first years that take this class.”
Draco starts to carefully pack up his supplies. Most of the other students left their sketches behind, but he unclips the paper from his easel and rolls it up to tuck into his bag as well. He’s definitely going to keep his first real piece of art. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s a drawing of Harry.
“Yeah,” Draco says finally. “This is my first class ever. It’s…not quite what I expected.”
“In a bad way?”
Draco laughs again, “No, in the most wonderful way.” He smiles contentedly up at Harry, struck again by the feeling that he’s in the right place at the right moment for the first time in his life.
Harry’s eyes go wide and Draco thinks he sees the top of his cheeks darken.
“Will you tell me about it? There’s a pub nearby that everyone goes to. Great chips. I-I mean, if you aren’t busy right now. But you probably are—“
Harry seems suddenly nervous. Draco can’t fathom why, when he’s just been completely nude in front of a room full of strangers and that is arguably more nerve-wracking than standing here and talking about chips.
“I’m not,” Draco interjects loudly. “Busy, I mean.”
“O-oh, good. Yeah, good. Okay, well just give me a minute to…” Harry is dancing backward toward the door to the back room waving his hands at his torso.
Draco chuckles, “I don’t know, I’m in a bit of a hurry. There’s great chips waiting for me, you see.”
Harry pokes his tongue out at him before he slides into the back room and closes the door.
Yes. Everything will be more than alright.