19 Armand Hides Like a Cowardly Sod

July 20th - Twenty-six days until the convention

I was sat staring at a potted fern, wondering with increasing horror whether I was meant to care for it. I did this for nearly twenty minutes before realizing with bone-shuddering relief that it was, in fact, made of plastic.

They'd given me an office. Apparently.

This was information that I'd only become aware of nearly a week into teaching the workshop. A student had come up to me after class and asked about office hours; I'd panicked. I joked that I couldn't hold office hours, I'd need an office for office hours! And both the student and Finch had looked at me like I was the village idiot. Which I clearly was.

"I showed it to you," Finch had muttered, then shook his head. "Jesus Christ."

Then he had taken my hand, walked me out of the classroom, and physically led me a few feet down the corridor. To my office.

It was little more than a windowless cubby in a corner of the arts building, but importantly, it provided a space that was neither the classroom nor the flat in which to exist, and meet students who had specific concerns; like the young be-mulleted person (Ashley? Ashton? I had it written down somewhere) who'd felt the need to express their frustration, in person, regarding how long we'd spent on layout so far.

And then there had been the student who appeared to have stepped directly out of a cornfield with the intent of haunting some late nineteenth-century American architecture (Benson? Benjamin? ...Beelzebub?), who'd wanted to talk about color theory—a strange choice, given my work was strictly monochrome. The students were nice, or at least harmless, and there was something oddly comforting about the realization that they were individuals rather than a faceless mob intent on devouring me whole.

My office was also providing a safe, secluded place in which to interview a young person who might be interested in displaying their naked body for the pedagogical benefit of the aforementioned not-a-mob.

I'd broken down the workshop into four parts by week, and the third involved figure drawing—the study of movement, expressions, body language—and unfortunately the best way to learn these things was through observation and practice. The students could study stock images for as long as they wanted, but nothing had taught me how to capture movement and presence and emotion like the sketches I'd been forever doodling of my fellow dancers. And to do that here, I needed a body. Or rather, a life model.

I'd received a total of three applications and blocked out an hour or so this afternoon in which to make my selection.

The first applicant was clearly titillated by the idea—nope—the second couldn't stop fidgeting or meet my eyes, and the third ...

He came in, gave me a little smile, and sat down.

And he was perfect.

Well, not perfect—he was a bit too good looking for that—but he exuded a calm stillness that settled on myself and the dingy little office, surrounding us like a delicate layer of warmth. His very presence was comforting, quieting. Like a human cup of tea.

"Brilliant," I breathed. "Do you catch cold easily?"

He appeared a bit puzzled, but the smile remained. "Not really. Um, I'm Skyler, by the way. Skyler Evans."

Right. I knew that. Still, I jotted his name down on the piece of paper I held on my knee, for something to do. "I'm A-Armand. Demetrio. Er." But he must be aware of that already, having received my message and come to my office ...

"Thanks for meeting with me, Professor Demetrio."

"Aye, but please, just call me Armand." Bloody hell. "Professor sounds so ... so bloody turgid."

"Okay." Skyler laughed softly. He leaned back, one hand on his knee, but even this movement was smooth, fluid, contained—the subtle bulge of muscle in his biceps, the sharp crease of his trousers, the long taper and clearly demarcated phalanxes of his fingers; honestly everything about him cried out, demanded, begged to be drawn.

I'd never met anyone who was so blatantly a collection of shapes and shadows.

"Any joint stiffness? Are you comfortable holding the same position for more than twenty minutes at a time?" He clearly was; he radiated whatever the opposite of restlessness was. Peace. Like he could remain immobile for hours if necessary, in the center of a fountain or a square, benevolently guarding the local pigeons.

Still, the considerate young man seemed to think about it. "Yeah. I don't get stiff very often, except during the thirty-hour bus ride I took when I moved out here, but I don't think that's necessarily relevant."

"No, this should be considerably less than thirty hours." I nodded. "So"—now for the biggie—"have you considered ... the nudity?"

His eyebrows—both fascinatingly angled and shapely, the boy had shapely eyebrows for goodness' sake—furrowed slightly. "What about it?"

An incredulous smile pulled at the side of my mouth. "It's the type of thing that might give most people pause. They might be self-conscious, for example."

Skyler considered this with the same gravity that apparently suffused every part of his existence. "I guess. But it's not like it's inappropriate in an art class, right? I've never been particularly self-conscious about my body, and if the setting isn't ... weird, I kind of feel like I'd be fine?"

"It isn't weird," I confirmed, then was overcome by my detestable honest streak. "It's a bit weird, honestly. It— Look"—I reached up to scratch at my stubbly cheek—"it's as weird as you make it, aye? I used to do something similar, and if you come to it with a firm idea of your role, a certain confidence, untouchability ... people pick up on that. They accept the situation on your terms."

Skyler was nodding, as if this all made sense to him. The problem was, now that I'd started, I couldn't bring myself to stop.

"The only danger is losing sight of your own subjectivity," I continued helplessly. "Don't forget to exist outside their eyes. You can convince them you're an object, but you mustn't convince yourself." I tapped my pen against the paper and shook my head. "Sorry. I just ... I want to make sure you know what you're signing up for. And you should also know some of the work will be displayed later on at a convention. Sorry."

"I'll keep that in mind." The boy's features were drawn up in introspection. "Don't objectify myself. Got it." He smiled. "I've actually done a little modeling before. Not naked, but I think I get what you're talking about."

"You have?" I asked in surprise.

"I put it in my application." Skyler reached into a pocket and retrieved his mobile, tapped at it for a few moments, then handed it to me. "Here."

It was open to a FotoBom page featuring Skyler in a variety of attitudes, accompanied by... horses.

My stomach turned cold and solid and dropped.

They were Lucas's bloody horses.

MyLucas. The one I'd been living with for over a week and hadn't even met yet. Lucas, who, this very morning, had sent me a litany of texts regarding proper shower etiquette—apparently, I was meant to rinse the tub after I showered to avoid the buildup of soap scum and other nasty things, it just saves so much work in the long run and I wouldn't want you to slip and die because then I'll never find out what happens to that penguin :)

He was being so very patient with me, despite the rise of deeply understandable frustration with my minging existence.

"Are you okay, Profe— Armand?" the cherubic creature before me asked in concern.

"Aye." I coughed and hurriedly handed him back his mobile. "Quite. Er. Those are lovely. Aye. You've got the job, mate."

Skyler's face broke into a sunny grin. "Wow, thank you!"

"Don't mention it." I coughed again. "So—so I'll see you early next week so we can do a dress rehearsal, or heh, an undress rehearsal." I gave him a pained smile. "Feel free to bring along a chaperone, er, a friend or parent or someone. Ehrm. I believe there's someone in the front office who'll have you fill out the proper forms?" Surely there were forms? No clue what kind or how many, but there were always forms, weren't there?

Skyler stood, still grinning, and held out a hand for me to shake. "Thanks again, sir."

"God, please, sir is worse than professor."

"Okay, Armand." He laughed. "See you next week." And then he left.

And I sat quietly in my horrible little office and let the water close in over my head. He knew Lucas. He worked with him.

It really was only a matter of time—I was delaying the inevitable, trying to hold back the tide of the world with nothing but my bare hands.

I still hadn't responded to the increasingly nerve-racking texts he'd sent me. To his request for a meeting. Instead, I'd taken to carefully listening at the door before I left my room, and only venturing forth once I was certain he'd left—somehow the thought of meeting him, which had been intimidating before, now caused my heart to pound in my throat.

It was irrational. It was ridiculous.

I couldn't put off meeting my flatmate indefinitely, especially considering how small the world appeared to be, and I knew he could be neither as punctilious nor as parochial as he seemed over text—after all, I'd found a TARDIS mug in the cupboard, and Pratchett on his bookshelf. But I'd become somewhat enamored with the idea of Lucas as an unseen presence who flitted about the flat while I slept, cleaning up messes and leaving snide little notes. Commentating on the out-of-context single pages of an already quite abstract comic I left out to dry.

I didn't want to meet this person who so clearly found me both obnoxious and amusing—especially since however negative his current impression of me, the real article could only bring his opinion lower.

It was mad, but part of me truly believed that if I could continue avoiding him until I fled the country (twenty-six days until the convention, twenty-eight until my flight home), I could get away with never meeting Lucas face-to-face. How hard could it be?

"Armand?"

I jumped, instinctively crumpling the paper I held—the one with Skyler's name on it and a surreptitious sketch I'd done of his sitting stance without even realizing—and inhaled sharply through my nose. "Titch!"

"Sorry." The little ginger stood in my office doorway and held up both his hands, smirking impishly. "I didn't realize how deep that reverie was. I thought you were just buffering or something."

I glared at him, then actively loosened my shoulders. It had become clear over the past week or so that Robin Finch, who initially appeared to hold me in some semblance of esteem, had become fully convinced of my ineptitude. Which, unfortunately, was fair. "Come to take me back to my kennel?"

He nodded. "Yeah, did you pick out a life model for us to ogle next week? Are they hot?"

This was exactly what I'd been worried about. "That is not the purpose of this exercise," I growled. "The whole point is to learn how to take in the aesthetic space of a person, capture their energy, their movement, not—"

"Okay, okay, calm down, Grandpa." He walked over and picked up my bag, shouldering it with an air of wardenship. "So did you find someone?"

I nodded resignedly and unfolded to my feet, stretching. "Aye, and you will treat him with respect and compassion."

"Obviously." Finch rolled his eyes and stood aside, motioning for me to move past him and out of the tiny office. "Can we get a move on? I've got a hot date on Friday, and I need to start my 24-hour skin care routine!"

He clearly wanted me to ask him about this, which was one of the many reasons I did not.

Finch dropped me off back at the flat, then headed right back to campus to prepare for his date. I climbed the stairs, swallowed the nerves I experienced every time I came home—Is Lucas here?Is today the day? Please let it not be the day—but as usual, the flat was empty. I'd been especially concerned because this was a bit earlier than I tended to come home, considerably closer to late afternoon than evening.

As far as I could piece it together, my and Lucas's days went something like this:

Lucas rose obscenely early in the morning and fucked off to work with old horses and small children.

Many hours later, I would rise from my eldritch slumber and work on the comic until Finch came to collect me in the afternoon.

While I was at the university "teaching" my evening "class," Lucas arrived back at the flat and cooked and cleaned and puttered and did whatever domestic tasks functioning humans did to maintain their living environment. After class, Finch would return me to the flat. This time—the no-man's land of late evening—was by far the most dangerous, the most likely time we would run into each other. But luckily for me, Lucas tended to be out most nights and every weekend so far. One assumed he had that unthinkable condition known as a social life.

I'd had one, once upon a time. The kind normal people have. Even after I'd got clean, I'd still gone out with Sam and some of the other dancers after work—my sponsor, Karim, had said it was good for me, that there was nothing like a drinks do with friends. The danger was when I isolated myself and started drinking alone.

I thought this as I unpacked the bottle of Wild Turkey I'd ordered, grabbed a mug from the cupboard, and headed into my bedroom to work for a few hours before supper.

Just as I shut the door and started kicking off my shoes and unbuttoning my trousers, there was the jingle of keys, the creak of the front door—

Oh god!

I immediately dropped into a crouch and held my breath. He was home. Lucas was home and I was home as well. We were both home! He was out there doing things, and I was in here making an utter arsehole of myself.

I could hear him humming, puttering around the kitchen, tutting at the wrapping materials I'd left on the counter, and there must have been something about this mess that seemed recent, because then—

"Armand, are you here?" He sounded almost nervous. I heard him take a step, then another, drawing dangerously close to the door of my room. "Mr. Demetrio? Armand?"

Oh bloody hell. I was a grown man curled into a ball on the floor of his bedroom, hiding from a flatmate who merely wanted to ... what? Say hello? Talk to me? At the very worst, admonish me for not tidying up after myself?

I could see his shadow moving under the door. No. No. Go away!I clenched a hand in my hair, bit down on a knuckle, and squeezed my eyes shut.

Knock, knock ... knock.

Breathe, Demetrio, just breathe. And stop being so bloody dramatic!I should have responded. I should have stood to my feet and opened the door like an adult capable of human interaction—I'd talked to so many people today already, why was the idea of talking to Lucas so much more bowel-liquefying than that had been?

Why had this one man, this one demonstrably friendly albeit passive-aggressive man, become my social kryptonite?

Lucas heaved a softly disappointed sigh and padded back down the hall toward the kitchen.

I only allowed my body to relax once the door to his room shut. Then I collapsed onto the floor like the ridiculous creature I was and took a few deep breaths before doing my absolute best to lose myself in work and whiskey. I had to answer his texts, I absolutely had to. This couldn't continue.

But deferred pain was still an absence of pain, and sometimes that was the best one could hope for.