Chiaroscuro (28 page)

He sucked on Jamie's lower lip and licked his throat. "Hey. I want to ask you something."

Jamie said, "The condoms are in the usual place" and chuckled when Ben tweaked his nose. "Ask away."

"What are you doing for Christmas?"

Jamie arched an eyebrow. "Um. What I normally do, I suppose. Go to the cinema all day."

"For serious? You spend Christmas day watching movies? That's terrible."

"It's better than sitting at home alone."

"That's true." He raked his hand through Jamie's hair and kissed his forehead and the tip of his nose. "I want you to spend it with me. With my family."

Jamie blinked at him and caught his chin in his hand. "Won't they mind a near-stranger hanging about?"

"You're not a stranger, not even nearly. My mom loves you, my brothers like you, my dad thinks you're pretty okay. And I like you." He nodded firmly, as if that settled everything. "So you're spending Christmas with us."

"But I--"

"Brrzt!" He made a buzzer noise, bopping Jamie on the nose. "No protests. My will is unshakable, Jamie mine."

That got him another eyebrow, but he kissed Ben back. "Then I gratefully accept."

"Cool," Ben said with another kiss. "Now, we can eat more, we can have more sex, or we can do both at once. Which sounds best to you?"

Jamie thought about it, cocking his head, and then grabbed another handful of pasta and ate it. "I'm ready for anything."

***

Jamie brought a box of crackers as a hostess gift, and by ten o'clock Christmas morning all the grandchildren were running around the house wearing gold paper crowns or bits of plastic jewelry from their crackers.

"You're a hit," Ben told Jamie as they lazed on the couch, both dressed in perfectly sensible Christmas morning attire of pajama bottoms and holey, if soft and comfortable, sweaters. Ben's was an astonishingly ugly shade of green, so worn Jamie knew it had to be his favorite.

"You can't go wrong with crackers," Jamie said comfortably. Ben's brother, Gabe, gallumped past with his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders, his crown askew on his head, and Jamie grinned. "Case in point."

"We're a whole family of big kids, I hope you realize that."

"I consider myself warned." He yawned and stretched. "What are they playing, anyway?"

"I think it's Catch Uncle Mikey but I'm not sure. It could just be Work Off Energy So You'll Let Us Nap Later. We play that a lot."

Jamie hummed in contentment and closed his eyes, relishing the sound of kids and Christmas carols on the radio and people talking in the kitchen as they cleaned up from breakfast. He'd offered to help but had been shooed away as 'the guest', and Ben said it was his solemn duty to keep Jamie company and so had joined him on the couch.

The kids had been awake at six and couldn't be kept away from the living room beyond seven, so finally Matthew, with the resignation of someone who loses this battle every year, gave them permission to play with their Santa presents. At least the crackers had kept them at the breakfast table, though they showed little interest in their scrambled eggs and juice.

There would be Mass and a large dinner later with more extended family, gaggles of cousins and uncles and aunts. Ben told Jamie not to worry about remembering everyone's names. "I can't do it half the time--no one will expect you to," he said, though he dragged out a family photograph album in an attempt to explain the long and tangled Gallagher family tree.

Meantime, though, there was lazing on the couch and listening to Christmas albums, which Jamie was enjoying to the fullest.

"You don't have to go to Mass with us, by the way," Ben said as Barbra Streisand hit a high note in "O Holy Night."

"I brought good clothes for it."

"I know, but you still don't have to. If it would be weird for you."

"It wouldn't be weird. I've been to high Masses before. It's not that different from C of E."

"It's just readings and carols and stuff."

Jamie nodded. "I may even know some of the words."

"Okay. Just, you know. If you don't want to, you don't have to. I don't want you to think you should just to please me or something."

Jamie opened one eye to peer at him. "What makes you think I'd do anything just to please you?" he said as seriously as he could.

"Because you're that hot for my body?" He grinned and scrubbed a hand through Jamie's hair.

"Right. I will sit through two hours of church because I'm hot for your body." He couldn't stop himself from laughing anymore, and sat up to put his arms around Ben's neck and blow a loud raspberry on his cheek--a favored Gallagher family method of expressing affection, he'd noticed. Ben yelped and wrestled him onto the couch, getting his sweater up to expose his belly to several loud and wet raspberries while Jamie laughed and struggled and swore revenge. Two of Ben's nephews decided this was a fun game worth joining, and soon there was a puppy pile of small children in loose alliance to get one or both of them with as many raspberries as could be bestowed.

It was probably the least dignified Christmas Jamie had ever experienced, and he was having the time of his life.

***

Mass was much more solemn, all the little Gallaghers in their best clothes, their parents keeping a strict eye out for bad behavior. Jamie sat next to Ben in the pew, following his lead for any standing and kneeling, and he was proud to demonstrate that he did, in fact, know a few of the carols they sang during the service.

What surprised Jamie during the hour, though, was that at the end when the congregation was offered Communion Ben rose to receive it. Jamie had never thought much about Ben's faith, though he'd said he was a practicing Catholic, but it appeared that Ben felt it more deeply than he let on. Jamie had never seen him pray or study, but that didn't mean he never did it.

Jamie's own feelings on religious were ambiguous, at best; he had been baptized as a baby and taken to church every week until he left home, but he'd rarely felt touched or even inspired during any of those many services. He knew stories of various saints and angels because of his study of art; you have to know your Bible for most of the works of the masters to make sense, but he appreciated them from an aesthetic sense, not a spiritual one.

He supposed sometimes, if he were anything, he was a Buddhist. He liked the philosophy of nonviolence, of treating all people as aspects of divinity, of dharma. He had tried to explain it to Ben before: "Every person is a god inside, whether they realize it or not, and that's what I try to capture when I draw them."

Ben had made one of his jokes: "That must make me your sex god, then"--and Jamie had dropped the subject for more physical demonstrations of worship.

He watched Ben kneel and bow his head--watched him sip the wine and take the wafer, watched him and the priest smile at each other like old friends before Ben rose and returned to the pew. Jamie slipped his hand into Ben's and Ben squeezed it lightly.

***

Sleeping in an old bunk bed had not lent itself to passion or even romance, and Jamie was relieved when he and Ben returned to their flats after Christmas. His mattress may have squeaked but it fit them both, and there was no worry about someone--particularly someone small and impressionable--bursting in at an inopportune moment, like when Ben had his legs pushed open and hooked over his forearms, watching his cock slide in and out of Jamie's ass.

"Happy Christmas," he murmured and Ben chuckled throatily.

"I'm not giving you the books back, dude."

"Wanker." He was too sated to even bop Ben on the nose, so he settled for a kiss to Ben's chest instead. "You can keep the books. I'm not giving you anything you haven't had already at this point."

"I don't even consider it re-gifting."

"Thank God for small favors." He smiled, his eyes closed.

"Gabe asked if you're my boyfriend," Ben said after a moment.

"Oh?"

"Well, what he said was, 'Do we call Jamie your boyfriend now or what?'"

"I assume you told him 'or what.'" He pressed himself closer to Ben and kissed his chest again.

"I think I just laughed. I never know how to answer that question anyway. You're my Jamie. I don't want to label you."

"Your Jamie," Jamie murmured and squeezed him tight. "That works."

***

Ben was back to work the day after Christmas, this time preparing for winter weddings and New Year's parties, and Jamie put on his paint-spattered clothes and went to the studio. The light was milky and soft, filtered through rain clouds, and the tap of rain was so soothing Jamie didn't turn on the radio for company. He squeezed out some paints on the palette, chose some brushes, and uncovered the latest in his Ben series.

Yes, series--and he hoped Ben wouldn't die when he found out. Ideas tend to spawn like backyard weeds, and once he'd finished the first painting he knew he had to do more, more poses, more situations, more views. Not just Ben as an angel: Ben in walking down the street, glancing back over his shoulder with the beginning of a smile; Ben working on a cake, brow furrowed in concentration; Ben laughing in bed, nude, beautiful and strong.

He was working on a very simple picture now, Ben in a white t-shirt, reading while smoke climbed lazily from the cigarette forgotten in his fingers. It was an odd series, he supposed: one fantasy picture and all the rest were very prosaic. But then, he supposed further, Andrew Wyeth had painted Helga in every situation imaginable and was called genius for it. Ben was his Helga--his favorite subject, his most inspirational model. His muse, if he believed in such things.

Which he didn't.

He just….loved to look at Ben, wanted to share his beauty with everyone, wanted to study every inch of him and then recreate every muscle and bone and pore and fingernail.

It's just art, he thought. It's just reinterpreting the world--and so it happens to be through my lo--the guy I'm fucking. I'm not the first to do this. Just art.

And art's everything.

He smiled and dipped his brush in paint.

He was absorbed in painting, paying attention to nothing but his brush, when a pair of hands grasped his shoulders and a pair of lips slid along his neck. "You weren't answering the bell--I got worried," Dune whispered as Jamie tilted back his head.

"I'm busy," Jamie said, not annoyed. It's why he'd given Dune a key in the first place. "I have a show in barely a month, you know--I want to finish this."

Dune wrapped his arms around Jamie's waist and rested his chin on Jamie's shoulder. "Nice," he said in a neutral tone, and Jamie looked back at him.

"You don't like it?"

"No, no, I like it very much. It's very….Ben."

"You don't sound like you like it."

"Oh, Jamie," Dune crooned and hugged him tight. "I don't think I've ever seen you paint one person over and over. That's all. Of course, Ben's certainly pleasant to look at. Great body, wonderful bone structure, striking coloring…"

"You also have all these things," Jamie said in a comforting tone.

"I don't have his broad, manly chest."

"You have a very manly chest." He turned in Dune's arms, tucking the paintbrush behind his own ear to keep it out of the way. "And legs a mile long. Full lips, expressive eyes, a tight ass…you're beautiful, Bellamy."

Dune laughed and kissed him, holding Jamie's face in one hand. "I've missed you lately. You never come around anymore."

"I've been--"

"I know, I know, busy. Murals and paintings and ceilings." He smoothed Jamie's hair back from his face and kissed his cheeks. "And Ben. Many hours spent with Ben."

"Many hours," Jamie agreed, not paying attention to his words as his hands moved down Dune's chest to the waistband of his trousers. It amused him that even though Dune now worked from home on his own schedule, he still dressed like someone out of a photo shoot: soft wool trousers and a mock turtleneck today, both in shades of gray that made his skin look rosy and glowing, cut close enough to show off his slender hips and strong arms.

"I'd be jealous if I didn't like him so much," Dune whispered, nose moving through Jamie's hair, hands moving down to cup Jamie's ass.

"You have nothing to be jealous of." He undid the fasteners on Dune's trousers, slipped in his fingers to touch the warm skin beneath.

Dune chuckled and arched his hips, pulling Jamie close and kissing him. Their tongues touched and Jamie inhaled--he clutched at Dune's hair, threading his fingers through glossy soft curls.

"I'm jealous of all the time you spend together," Dune whispered against his lips. "I'm jealous that he's your favorite person now."

"Oh, Dunie," Jamie said and held his face in both hands to kiss this ridiculousness away. "Silly git."

Dune hung his arms over Jamie's shoulders and buried his face in his neck a moment. "Need you, Jamie," he said. "Even though you think I'm a silly git." He looked up with a smile.

Jamie laughed and kissed him again, then pulled out the paintbrush from behind his ear and dabbed it against Dune's nose. "I've painted you before but I'll be pleased to do it again. Take off your shirt."

Dune raised an eyebrow and stepped back to toe off his shoes and tug off his turtleneck. "Any excuse to get me naked, I see."

"I love you naked." Jamie hung a drop cloth over the painting of Ben. "And you love being naked, so don't fake modesty on my account."

Dune gave him a skeptical look and hung the shirt over a chair, and then stretched out his arms and struck a pose, hands on his cocked hips and chin raised. "My modesty is not faked."

"As proven by how easily you take off your clothes." He picked up a sketchbook and pencil and sat cross-legged on the floor. Dune tilted his head a moment, thinking, and then stripped off his pants as well. He stood in front of Jamie, golden and slender, and grinned down at him.

Jamie smiled back and started drawing in quick, dark strokes: Dune's perfect nose, his thick hair, the set of his shoulders, the long lines of his body. Dune was a good model: he knew how to hold still once he'd settled into a pose, and didn't even look bored as Jamie's fingers flew over the pages.