lmom day sixteen
Title: The Benefits of Art Rating: pg13 Pairing: Remus/Dean, Remus alone Wordcount: 2148 Kink(s): public orgasm. Challenge: LMOM 2009 Summary: After seeing a painting, Remus has a strange reaction. Notes: me and hpsauce are fic prompting each other every day. today's is "Remus/Dean - in which Dean has an artistic fascination with Remus and Remus models because (frankly) he needs the money." i've always loved the idea of stendhal syndrome, so i kinked it up a bit for this prompt. i promise tomorrow's will have much more porn.
Remus used to scour the daily classifieds. Now he looks at then briefly, with no hope held out. If it wasn't for Sirius leaving Grimmauld Place to Harry and thus the Order, he'd be on the street. Nor would he have food, and god knows what he would do for the moon. It was a horrible thing to say, but Sirius' death had given him some much needed stability.
He's seen them all before, applied for as many as he has half the capability of fulfilling. About to give up for the day, Remus comes across a small square saying Looking for scarred people. Will pay up to 10 galleons an hour.
Curiosity piqued, Remus touches the square with the tip of his wand to reveal the rest of the information. Only an address pops up for Remus to reply to. What is it that you are seeking from scarred individuals? I am not a prostitute, but I am interested in applying for your need if it doesn't involve sex. Sincerely Remus J Lupin. He sticks the note in a envelope and instructs one of the owls at Grimmauld Place to send it out.
The reply comes back only a day later, meaning whomever it was lived close.
Remus Lupin I am please you are interested in my offer. I would like to assure you I am neither a client with a particular interest, not a St Mungo's 'professional' intent on trying a new experimental salve on a unwitting patient. I am an artist, looking to do a series on scars. I need scarred individuals to model for me. You would be compensated in accordance to the amount of time I need you. I day say in your case it will be a good sum of money. Please respond back with approval or denial of a contract. Sincerely, Dean Thomas.
Remus recognises the name of one of Harry's dorm mates and chuckles a bit at the over worded letter. What must be Dean's first attempt at professionalism is awkward, but it's a good try.
He thinks about it for only a moment before penning back a note saying he's agreed. While he doesn't understand why someone would want to draw him, he's not about to turn down what is essentially free money. There have to be much higher stakes then confusion for Remus to turn down a job.
When Dean's next letter tells Remus to meet him at the Leaky Cauldron next Friday evening, Remus thinks the location is a bit strange, but he goes anyway. Dean's sitting at one of the tables alone. Unlike nearly every occupant, he's not having a pint. For all the adult he tried to pass off in the letter, he's only sixteen.
Dean stands upon seeing Remus enter the building, and gestures for him to follow. Dean takes him to room four, where he's got a desk with a bunch of papers on it in the middle of the room, while the bed is pushed against the wall. Dean sits at the wooden stool, undoubtedly using a cushioning charm.
"Strip, please." Dean instructs kindly when Remus reveals he isn't sure what happens next. It feels strange to be stripping in front of someone so young. He has to keep reminding himself liquor and apperating are 17, but sex is fifteen, so Dean is well old enough. With a sigh he pulls off his robe, then jumper and trousers and pants. He has the urge to cover his cock with his hands, but doesn't. It will make it worse if he does, and Dean has to tell him to move his hands.
Impersonally, like every mediwitch that's ever seen to him in the studies in werewolfism in children, Dean positions him like he's a doll. The only difference is Remus is standing up this time. Dean backs away a few steps, looks him up and down slowly, and nods. He retreats back to his desk and writes something Remus can't read from so far away with a flourish. Then he shakes his head as if he's forgotten something.
"This might feel a bit... odd," Dean offers him before he picks up his wand and casts a spell Remus has never heard before. Suddenly it feels like he's surrounded by pillows. He tries to shake them off and his limbs don't move, he looks down and he can't see anything. Before he starts to panic he takes a deep breath and stands still. The weight of them isn't bad, it's actually not that suffocating. Not even as bad as being buried in the sand is.
He decides to stay, to put up with the strange feeling. He really needs the money.
Dean asks him what his favourite kind of music is, and suddenly it's playing. Remus is able to drift asleep for awhile, warmly cocooned in the spell. When he wakes up he can tell Dean's cast a Solis charm, the room is as bright as it was hours ago. It's the cold blue light of winter mornings, but it's still bright.
Eventually Dean tells him he's done. He warns him he's taking off the spell and still Remus stumbles and nearly falls when he's suddenly got weight. Dean gives him a bag of Galleons and thanks him. Remus nods and leaves. He spends the winter and spring trying to infiltrate werewolf dens for Albus, many connected to the filthy bastard that had turned him.
Halfway through May, an owl comes for him. A small card from Dean informs him there's an art show at Hogwarts, and as his piece is being displayed he's invited to come look. Remus has never been to the sixth year's show, James and Sirius and Peter weren't the sort to appreciate art. In fact, his sixth year only two students took Magical Techniques.
The room he goes to is large enough to accommodate half the students, and to his surprise seems to hold about a third. Art has had a revival he quips to McGonagall, and she nods in agreement.
Each student is standing beside their work. Remus recognises all of them, though a few have changed their look since third year, a new hair style or taller by a foot. Blaise, Gregory and Vincent are all beside works, none of which surprise him. study in art and music has always been primarily Slytherin sophisticate style. Blaise has an arrangement of paintings of natural items slowly transitioning into different colours, skies becoming purple while grass becomes black. Gregory and Vincent both have metal crafted, one sculptures while the other has different styles of armour.
The Hufflepuffs have two representatives. Hannah has painted directly onto people, some large full body paint to make them look like diricawls or glumbumbles, some have smaller moving tattoos painted on. It looks as though she's used nearly half the Hufflepuffs as her base. Wayne has painted on the traditional canvases, but his paint moves around the canvas like Muggle lava lamps.
Ravenclaw also has two students in the Magical Techniques. Su Li has a wall of photographs, and while not many are looking, Colin Creevey seems to find her amazing and is gesturing erratically. Anthony has a collection of paintings. They don't seem special or interesting at all until you walk near and realise each painting smells exactly like the scene; the Qudditch game smelling of sweat and leaves blowing in the air and hot cocoa, the library smelling like ink and old parchment.
Dean is the sole representative of Gryffindor. And while Remus might be a bit biased, he's willing to say Dean's offerings are the best. Surely they've captured the attention of most of the students and guests. Each is a full body portrait of a person with scarring, half of whom Remus recognises. After a certain time on the human perspective, the pink scars begin to stretch, showing different colours beneath. As the skin rips away from the person, they become a human shaped landscape of other.
A black man's ear to chin slice reveals trees, leaves, ferns waving in a light breeze. Remus watches Neville stand in front of it, nodding. One portrait shows twin women with long black hair and scars down their opposing sides, indicating at one point they were conjoined. when their skin rips away one is pink satin and bows and wedding cakes, the other is leather and worn in steel toed boots and hippogriffs.
The ones that really interest Remus are the ones he recognises as students, and it seems the students themselves are also transfixed. Cho Chang's sliced wrist tears open into the red-pink of muscle and dark blue of bruises. Her inner self seems to be made of pain. Marietta Edgecombe stands in front of it, crying softly.
It's not the only one that's garnered hard emotion. Draco stands with a large scar across his chest. It rips open to show a infinite line of Malfoy ancestors with their arms crossed, Hogwarts students with leers that transform their faces to those of demons, and a ferret trapped in a cage. Harry and Hermione are stuck in front of it, Hermione with a hand on Harry's back. Harry looks close to tears.
Seamus' Finnegan's scar is a large gash on his leg, going from knee to ankle. When it opens it reveals a swirl of green and red, glass of milk, a glass of wine and a catholic cross and the sparks that mean you've touched your wand for the first time. While it's clear Dean put a lot of work into each portrait, it's also clear this is the one with the most meaning to him. This is the one that Dean knew without having to ask.
Lastly, there is Remus' portrait. He's glad he's saved it for last because he can't look away, and it seems rude to be ignore the other student's work. Remus looks lifelike in Dean's painting, as good as some that hang on the wall at Hogwarts, better then some to tell truth. He's never looked at himself nude in a mirror, always ashamed and not wanting to dwell on his past. To see himself through Dean's eyes is fascinating. His scars run light peach and with a bit of a sheen all over his skin. It looks a bit like lightning. To see them open is like watching a puzzle explode around it's rounded edges, tiny tatters of skin slowly fade away.
Beneath them is the black shine of shaggy hair, and a night landscape in the greys of the colour-blind. tuffs of matted fur, and images of a teenager collapsed with bleeding wounds. It's nothing that someone couldn't figure out by knowing a bit about his past, but Remus feels like Dean has peered through him like glass to look at his soul.
The more he looks, the more times it flashes from lightning skin to who he is, the fast his heart beats. He starts to hyperventilate, his portrait begins to swirl as he starts blinking quickly to get it back to normal. The swirling increases, and with it a dizziness. He's as hard as rock, but he feels like he's going to vomit.
Remus falls to his knees, head automatically looking up to keep his gaze on the painting. His vision whites out as he orgasms, spraying the inside of his pants with come, then greys to black as he passes out. A group of concerned people cluster around him, but he's gone, dead to the world.
When he wakes up, he's in the school's hospital wing. Twenty years, and the sheets are still smooth and cool against his back. He opens his eyes and Dean is sitting beside his bed.
"Shouldn't you be enjoying your reception?" Remus asks. His voice is quiet as his throat is dry, Dean passes him a cup of water.
"I figured if someone had the sort of reaction to my art that you did, you're the best person to talk to about it."
"I'm not sure what happened. I was looking, like any other person, and then I felt weak. Now I'm here. I'm sorry if I ruined your evening."
"Like I said, I'm intrigued by your reaction. And you didn't just faint, you had an orgasm." It's a cruel world when a 16 year old can make a 37 year old blush, but it's not the first time Remus has realised the cruelty of his life.
"I think it's sweet." Dean stands in a graceful motion. He bends down over the bed, and kisses Remus with a light lick of his lips. Before Remus can respond Dean is leaving the ward, robes swirling around him. Remus touches his bottom lip with his fingers. Maybe he can inquire as to getting a custom portrait. It will drain his meagre funds completely, but it will be worth it.