Work Text:
Lotor is feeling markedly uninspired.
Morose.
Melancholic.
Now there’s a word for it: melancholic, as if all the colour has been bled from the world to leave its every fibre cast in muted shades of tedium, a flat, lifeless painting of the most pitiful calibre. Lotor absently picks at the velvet arm of his chair - a faded blue, and dreadfully threadbare - as the plush cushions half swallow his slouching figure, squirrelling him away in the café’s back corner and leaving him invisible to all but those who care enough to look. He’s contemplating his coffee as if it might supply more answers than something so over-priced and under-appreciated could quite frankly be expected to, but there’s always the off-chance that the dregs might take form into something particularly stirring.
Shockingly, they do not.
With a sudden burst of energy that’s less like enthusiasm and a lot more like the general sentiment of fuck this, Lotor downs what’s left of his (lamentably tepid) beverage, and gathers himself to leave; so naturally, because the universe has lately elected to make a great game of fucking with him, this is the precise moment in which the heavens decide to open and release unto the world a bona fide monsoon.
Momentary disbelief gives way to irritation and, after ramming his mockingly empty sketchbook back into the tattered cushion he’d just vacated, perhaps a little more viciously than it deserves, Lotor resigns himself to a second cup of caffeinated disappointment, redirecting his path towards the counter.
Macchiato, please and thank you. Yes - Lotor steals a snide glance towards the door where some poor bedraggled unfortunate has just stumbled in from the downpour, looking rather the worse for wear - that is to sit in with. No, he most assuredly does not want anything else or he would very well have asked for it. Most of this goes unsaid, but by the non-too-subtle look the cashier shoots their co-worker, his foul mood must shine through, and that in itself has him feeling the faint sting of shame for his misdirected ire.
Lotor makes sure to tip well.
Dropping back into his seat returns him to the same state of insipid monotony as before, except this time the lacklustre coffee is at least hot, which… well, it’s not not an improvement.
Forcing himself to play at productivity, Lotor settles back into the armchair’s embrace and props his sketchbook up on one knee, tuning out the dull murmur of conversation that surrounds him as he begins to draw: the too-loud ornate clock with an irregular tick, the raindrops on the window pane as they race one another down the glass, the glowering woman huddled into her overcoat at the bus stop across the street.
Anything and everything, all of it boring.
Or, at least, it is until it isn’t.
“Hey, er, look I’m really sorry-” a young voice, a nice voice, and painfully sincere to boot, “-but there aren’t any other tables. D’you mind if I…?”
Lotor looks up, and his heart stops.
It’s the bedraggled unfortunate, or that had been Lotor’s initial assessment, but evidently he’d been wallowing so deeply in his own self-pity that he’d completely lost grip of any semblance of intelligence he’d ever possessed, because the man before him is beautiful, even fever-flushed and soaked to the bone as he is.
“By all means,” Lotor hears himself say on a quiet, choking breath, and the shivering stranger softens with relief.
“Great,” he curls into the chair opposite Lotor with an awkward little smile, half hidden behind his cup as he nods his appreciation for such a small concession, as if anyone in the world wouldn’t have presented their very own still-beating heart on a platter if only he were to ask for it, “thanks.”
And that should be the end of it.
The stranger isn’t one of those obnoxious, chatty types, and seems perfectly content to leave Lotor be as he buries his red-tipped nose between the pages of his book - a science fiction novel, the painter notes, charmed - and were his companion anyone else, Lotor would find this arrangement perfectly agreeable. But as it stands, said companion is divinity made flesh, and before he realises it Lotor has put pencil to paper and is marking out the stranger’s likeness in soft shades of graphite.
Frantic eyes dart between subject and sketch.
He has a delicate sort of beauty not often worn by men: fine-boned and deliberate, as if a sculpture for which someone had taken great pains to carve, his eyes dark beneath full lashes that clump together with raindrops, and a fierce brow line that speaks volumes of a temperament to match, yet upon which sits an expression so soft that it might bring a pious man to his knees. His lips - his lips - bitten raw and rouged, are crowned with a cupids bow to end all others, the only one Lotor’s ever seen to prove worthy of the title, and even as he watches the upper lip’s plump counterpart is taken between teeth to be worried upon with a wild abandon that no one could hope to capture in a still image. Instead, the enraptured artist moves his attention to that strong jawline and follows it upwards until it disappears into a wild nest of hair, half slicked to skin with water that beads heavily at the tips to roll down the column of that pale throat, darkening the mottled crimson of the stranger’s sweatshirt collar with its oblivion.
The drawing’s end is as abrupt as its beginning and, with one last brush of his knuckles over the shadows which gather where wayward strands of silk-spun ink kiss the apple of each cheek, Lotor snatches his hand back.
“You done?” Dusky eyes flick upwards from the novel’s pages, a knowing smile in the crease of their corners, and it’s like this that Lotor realises he’s been caught.
It’s very hard to conjure up some semblance of embarrassment for it.
“I am,” he says instead, not in the habit of falsifying unease where there is none to be found, “you are a compelling subject.”
In lieu of further justification for his attentions, he turns his sketchbook in hand and revels in the wide-eyed delight his work is greeted with; the stranger seems pleased by his likeness, and - if Lotor does say so himself - he has good reason to be. Simple a sketch though it may be, it has the makings of a masterpiece.
“Huh,” dark eyes sweep over the lines of his counterpart, a fascinated inspection, and that sweet little mouth has dropped open on the sincerity of his awe. Lotor finds it more disarming than he should. “That’s… You’re really good.”
Resting his chin atop his sketchbook, Lotor preens under the earnest praise.
“How does two hundred sound?”
“For the drawing?”
Lotor nearly laughs, but the contemplative crease of that dark brow - as if he’s is actually considering such an outrageous price for so unrefined a sketch - is so gratifying that he daren’t risk offending his subject.
“No, sweet thing,” unabashed affection paints his words and his muse’s face both, “for an hourly rate. I could achieve far more in my studio than I can here, and I should very much like to capture you in a more flattering light.”
The pretty stranger, ducking his head in a failed attempt to hide the colour streaking his cheeks, mumbles: “I think it’s already plenty flattering,” and this time Lotor really does laugh, rocking forwards in his seat as if helplessly tethered.
“I’m glad to hear you say so, but I meant it literally. The lighting in here is does absolutely nothing for your bone structure,” he traces the sharp jut of cheekbones with his eyes until his attention is caught on how his subject returns this admiring gaze twice over, “which, I don’t mind telling you, is nothing short of a travesty.”
And so it begins.
Keith - his muse’s name is Keith - arrives at his loft on a morning when the light is soft and spilling freely through the great glass panes that span the full height of the south wall, flooding his studio until its entirety is stained honeyed and golden. Lotor has been awake for hours, his very soul eager and restless since long before sunrise, and his mind whirring with colours and compositions and Keith; Keith who had tentatively agreed to model for him, though he seemed unconvinced as to why Lotor would want him to, as well as the, quote, ‘extortionate amount’ the taller man had insisted upon paying him for his time; Keith who is brilliant and beautiful and the only subject Lotor has truly felt worth his attention in months, perhaps years; Keith who has just texted him a cautious I’m outside, and is in all likelihood the source of the short rapping of knuckles against Lotor’s door that send the artist stumbling barefoot across the room, his limbs tremulous with anticipation.
Tearing the door open reveals wide violet eyes, startled and stiff like a rabbit in headlights, as Keith blinks up at him with the kind of expression Lotor supposes he ought to have expected when he invited a young stranger up to his private loft for a far more generous price than one could reasonably expect. At the younger man’s awkward little shuffle as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other under the wordless inspection, Lotor feels his heart swell and stutter all at once.
“You’re here,” he breathes, desperately trying to tamper down his zeal so as not to scare the poor thing off.
“I- yeah? Shit, am I early? I thought you’d said-”
“Not at all,” Lotor steps to the side with a grandiose sweeping gesture, allowing plenty of room in an effort not to crowd him, “I had simply expected to need to let you in downstairs. Do come in.”
“Oh,” Keith ducks past Lotor with a hesitant smile, rubbing the back of his neck as his eyes sweep the cluttered loft with tempered curiosity, “yeah, some girl let me in? Bubbly, pink hair, didn’t seem to care if I was actually supposed to be here, just kinda…”
The vague gesture he makes coupled with the slightly bewildered furrow between his brows has Lotor sighing out something that is in equal parts exasperated and fond.
“That would be Ezor. She has approximately no self-preservation skills and would likely welcome an arsonist into our building provided they ask nicely,” he allows himself to bask for a moment in the bark of laughter this earns him, “regardless, shall we begin?”
“Right,” Keith has tensed up again, though he’s evidently trying not to show it, “yeah, er, where do you want me?”
Anywhere, Lotor thinks, with a terribly moony sort of air about him that he’s helpless to do anything about; everywhere.
"Sir John Everett Millais,” he starts instead, the adrenaline buzzing through his veins frantic and distracting, “are you familiar with his work?”
Keith gives a slight shake of the head, and with a half-smile, admits: “I’m, er, I’m not really all that into art?”
He looks so sweetly guilty about this admission that Lotor cannot help but grin.
“He was a 19th century painter, his Ophelia is an iconic Pre-Raphaelite piece, and I had thought with your complexion…” Lotor trails off, circling Keith with a critical eye that sees the smaller man straightening under his scrutiny, “but my memory did not do you justice. Perhaps with a palette more reminiscent of-”
Snapping his fingers as the answer occurs to him, smile wide and eyes bright, Lotor darts across the studio floor with renewed enthusiasm in his footsteps.
“The- she was a ballerina!” He calls back over his shoulder, well aware that his eccentricities can leave people off-kilter when unprepared for them. “Early 20th century! Russian! Anna-somebody, very good at what she did, but the painting was - oh there you are - the painting was so bold with its use of light and colour and the way it managed to capture her in motion, she was just-”
Lotor stands, arms full of oils he hasn’t used in an age, and finds Keith leant up against the wall, an indulgent smile playing on his lips as he displays the back of his phone, the painting that Lotor is fumbling to describe plastered across its case and paling in comparison to the man who holds it.
“-breathtaking,” Lotor finishes, lamely, and then: “Did you not just tell me you’re not particularly into art?”
“I’m not,” Keith answers with a small shrug, “but I have a friend who is, and when I visited her in Glasgow she dragged me around a gallery and, well, I guess this one stuck with me.”
He hesitates, almost bashful in admitting: “I liked the reds,” as if he expects his reasoning to be somehow invalid.
“I imagine,” Lotor murmurs, liquid warmth pooling behind his sternum, “that red rather suits you.”
By their first session’s end, Lotor has half-filled his sketchbook with studies of Keith from all angles, some of which have swatches set against them while others are framed with scrawled notes of a nonsensical nature, and it feels endless, unmatched, as if Keith himself is an inconceivable fountain of inspiration without contest. He’s flexible too, strong, and when Lotor has him hold a few short poses that are scarcely shy of ridiculous just to test his range, Keith falls into each and every one with neither complaint nor a moment’s hesitation.
“We ought break, you’ve been like that for almost ten minutes.”
“I can go longer,” Keith offers immediately, from where he’s suspended upside down, his legs twisted up in the scarlet silks Lotor has looped through an aerial hook set into his ceiling, “I’m not even dizzy.”
“I don’t doubt it,” and yet Lotor remains insistent, placing his materials firmly down before offering his hand in assistance.
Keith waves the gesture off with a snort, “suit yourself,” and unravels himself, twisting like a cat to drop onto the balls of his feet with a soft thump, bare toes wiggling as he rolls each of his ankles in turn, and breathes a contented sigh as the joints pop.
“Do you need anything?” Lotor smiles when Keith looks up at him, confused. “Sugar? Water? Both?”
“Oh!” There’s a pause as Keith seems to self-assess. “Yeah actually, a drink and whatever you’ve got to snack on’d be great.”
Lotor leads him beneath the stairwell and through a doorway to the kitchen, sectioned off from the loft’s main area and practically minimalistic when contrasted against the studio’s chaotic arsenal of knickknacks and props.
“Be warned, I do not much use it.”
“Bit late to convince me of the starving artist thing,” Keith hops up onto the countertop as if he belongs, and Lotor cannot find it in himself to mind, “you’re paying too well for that.”
Hiding a smile in the cabinets, Lotor continues to scrounge for something passable as sustenance.
“Perhaps it is because I can afford food that I elect not to keep it in,” which has never posed such an issue as it does now, with a cute boy sitting in his apartment, decidedly peckish, “the effort of cooking myself a meal can be easily bypassed by having others do it for me.”
“Kinda sounds like you live off fast food.” Keith says, distinctly unimpressed, and Lotor bristles at the insinuation.
“I absolutely do not.” A pause. “I simply frequent restaurants more than most.”
When, after several minutes more, he fails to find anything even remotely resembling viable sustenance, Lotor is forced to settle for apologetically handing Keith a sole can of something cold and plied full of artificial sugars, which he accepts without verbal complaint, instead eyeing Lotor suspiciously over the rim of the drink until he’s drained it.
It’s a look that says this isn’t over.
Keith becomes nothing short of a frenzied sickness, with Lotor thinking on him at all hours as if delirious with artistic fervour: the play of light on soft features, the shadows pooling between sharp collarbones, the hills and valleys of his very being as if an entire landscape in his own right, swelling with every breath and collapsing just as easily.
“You’re senseless,” Lotor tells him, when asked several weeks into their acquaintance why he hasn’t yet grown bored of painting the same subject, “a mania of the purest form. I don’t want anyone like I want you.”
“Then you’re crazy.” Keith fires back with a laugh, and Lotor doesn’t deny him.
Yes, he thinks, completely and utterly mad. You make me so.
By the time the December frosts have truly set in, Keith is a permanent fixture in Lotor’s life.
His muse is no longer simply his muse - though Lotor highly doubts that his dark-haired companion has ever been 'simply' anything at all - and it seems that he might know the back of Keith’s hand better than he does his own; besotted as he is, Lotor is quite certain he could map the constellation of his subject’s moles from memory if so inclined. He knows which classes Keith takes, the times at which he takes them, the friends he surrounds himself with in each one, and even the notable anecdotes associated with them. He’s learnt Keith’s likes, dislikes, nervous habits, the exact furrow of his brow when he’s thinking of something he’s unsure how to say, and the relief in his eyes when Lotor tells him to just say it, because he’s fond of Keith’s blunt honesty and cares very little for tact when he himself has more than enough of a silver-tongue for the both of them.
In turn, Keith himself seems to have acquired half Lotor’s life story without him quite remembering when he let it slip: the names of his closest compatriots, his strained relationship with his family - which hardly anyone knows - and every little thing that’s ever driven him to paint as if those feelings might bleed out onto the canvas of their own accord regardless.
It’s a terrifying sort of vulnerability.
Lotor finds it positively electric.
So they know each other well - too well, perhaps, for two people who were perfect strangers scarcely three months prior - which is why Lotor takes it for granted that today’s session is to be called off when he opens his eyes to a world blanketed in the kind of snowy white that absorbs all the sound in the world, and colour with it.
The melancholy sets in fifteen minutes after Keith would have otherwise arrived.
And it’s ridiculous, truly it is, but Lotor’s grown so used to the studio as their space, that to have it devoid of Keith when every fibre of his being is so sure that his muse ought be here, is disheartening and dreadful in a way he wasn’t quite prepared for.
He’s lonely.
The snow is coming down hard and fast now, and at this rate Lotor’s not going to be able to get out for food - and that’s if anywhere is even open in these conditions - so really he ought gather supplies of some sort and steel himself to weather the storm.
Keys, wallet, coat, door, Keith.
“Keith?”
The déjà vu hits him hard and fast, because Keith is standing there all bundled up and bedraggled with his nose bright red and his hair an absolute birds’ nest, but there are snowflakes in his lashes and a smile on blue lips as he presents Lotor with an armful of groceries as if they were the spoils of war.
“Surprise?”
Lotor looks on in muted shock, his jaw slack and mouth agape as Keith hurries to explain.
“When it started snowing I knew it was gonna be a bad one because they’ve cancelled my classes for the rest of the week, and I figured a certain somebody wouldn’t have any food in because why would he,” here he rolls his eyes, in a too-fond mimicry of true exasperation, “so I stocked up on pretty much everything and, er, came here?”
He ends on a question, as if only now has it occurred to him that perhaps barging in on somebody else’s life uninvited and unannounced might not be well received, but Lotor’s mind has finally caught up and his hands are already busying themselves with the proffered bags as he tries and fails to hide a smile because, god, Keith is more than welcome to intrude upon every aspect of his life - he might even beg him on his knees for the privilege.
“How much do I owe you?” he asks instead, and Keith’s pink little nose scrunches up in protest.
“Nothing, don’t be stupid, you already pay me way more than I’m worth and we both know it.”
“I don’t pay you nearly enough.” Lotor says this as he moves to take the last of his muse’s burdens from him, only to recoil sharply at the sudden shock of cold that is pale fingers against his much darker complexion. “Good god, you’re frozen, get in here!”
He’s quick to harry Keith inside, only now realising how much the poor thing is trembling, his jacket far too thin for the storm outside, and his jeans soaked through besides.
“I can help with the-”
“You absolutely cannot.” Lotor bites, with no true heat to it. “You know where the bathroom is; go, shower, warm yourself up.”
Keith scrunches up his face as if he’s going to argue, but as he opens his mouth any protest he might have made is transformed into a full-body sneeze that leaves him startled and stumbling.
“Don’t,” he growls, when he catches the smug look in Lotor’s eye.
The artist neatly clicks his mouth shut, and jerks his chin in the direction of the bathroom.
Keith complies.
“I’m pretty sure this costs more than my entire health plan,” is the first thing out of Keith’s mouth when he re-emerges into the kitchen, warm and dry and wearing black leggings under an oversized jumper of woven cashmere that looks better on him that even Lotor could have predicted. “Don’t you have, like, a sweatshirt or something?”
Lotor scoffs, careful to reign in his appreciative eye.
“Athleisure is not typically my MO, no, and besides,” he allows himself one last moment of self-indulgence, eyes trailing over the generous sweep of that crimson neckline, “red really is your colour.”
With Keith’s approach, comes the belated realisation that he’s still notably flushed.
“You’ve not caught a fever, have you?” Long fingers curl into Keith’s fringe, gently pushing it back as Lotor tests the heat of his forehead with the other hand. “You are a little warm-”
“I’m fine!” Keith ducks his touch with a cough, voice rough, and this non-too-convincing declaration assuages Lotor’s concerns approximately not at all, “S’just- I like my showers hot, is all.”
Lotor narrows his eyes, but Keith is quick to glower back just as ferociously.
Skirting around the older man before he can probe further, Keith busies himself with gathering ingredients on the countertop that Lotor would never have thought to pair, surveying his collection with a critical eye before proceeding to chop several chicken breasts to pieces, a practiced elegance in his movements.
“Oh, you can cook.” Lotor finds himself pleasantly surprised.
“One of us has to,” Keith grins sharply over his shoulder, then nods to his left, “think you can dice up a couple of cloves of garlic for me?”
“I’m quite sure I can handle that, yes.”
Lotor cannot, in fact, handle that.
The outer skin is refusing to peel, instead flaking to pieces to bury itself beneath fingernails, and his eyes are beginning to smart something awful, and- and Keith is shaking with laughter, his grin wide and bright, and although Lotor pulls a face it’s one of falsified indignance because there’s something so wonderfully domestic about this whole scene that he daren’t complain for fear that it’ll end.
“Crush it with the flat of the knife,” Keith murmurs, gently bumping his arm against Lotor’s until he’s half tucked up against him and making no effort to push him further out of the way, “like-” the clove crunches wetly as Keith demonstrates his meaning, and pops from its skin like rip fruit, “-that, see? Easy.”
He hands Lotor the knife but remains where he is, so close that the wildest strands of dark hair tickle the artist’s nose as he moves to replicate the culinary trick. It works like a charm.
“And you couldn’t have told me that five minutes ago because…?”
Keith shrugs, unsuccessfully smothering a smile by catching his lower lip between the sharpness of teeth, dark eyes glittering with mischief.
“Menace,” Lotor scolds, affection rife on his tongue.
Slicing the lemon is far simpler, and the rice is microwavable so even Lotor can’t fail in that regard, thus the end result is a rich, dark sauce that seeps flavour into the poultry, and warms Lotor to his very core. It’s the best meal he’s had in years.
They’ve migrated to the lounge to eat - or what counts as one, the open mezzanine above Lotor’s studio sparsely decorated with a modest sofa, coffee table, and a tv he almost never uses - and Keith seems perfectly content to curl into one end of the settee while Lotor lounges upon the other, easy conversation bridging the gap in between. It’s so simple, so natural, that neither realise it’s dark until Keith fumbles for his phone to check the time and the whole world lights up, a blinding artificial white surging forth from the screen and startling them both.
“Oh shit,” Keith curses, bolting abruptly upright as he looks out the south window to find a flurry of snowflakes that have not abated in the slightest, “shit. That’s going to be hell to get home through.”
“Then don’t go home.”
Feigning nonchalance as he says it, Lotor keeps his tone level and pretends that he can’t feel his heartbeat in his throat fluttering like a frenzied songbird.
“You said it yourself: your classes are cancelled. And they won’t be the only thing once the snow really sets in, at this rate the entire town will be shut down by sunrise, but thanks to you I have enough supplies for the both of us to wait out an ice age if need be,” he allows himself a small smile, soft and tentative, “so stay.”
“I don’t want to impose…?” But he does want to accept, Lotor can see it in the way he’s already half sunk back into the sofa, like he’s part of it, like he belongs.
“You, Keith Kogane, are the furthest thing from an imposition imaginable.” Nudging his muse gently with his foot earns him a kick in return, a shy little smile, and soon enough the two of them are play-fighting like children - giggling like them too - their legs tangled up in one another to form a Gordian knot of limbs as Lotor implores that Keith “stay,” through bubbling laughter.
He does.
The snow abates enough for public transport to resume a semi-regular schedule after four days.
Keith doesn’t leave for a full week.
The Ophelia Project, as they’ve taken to calling it, is ambitious to say the least. Water isn’t Keith’s element - as both a subject and person he’s fire personified, sparking bright and brutal at every turn - and there’s something of a challenge to be found in capturing him at his softest, his most vulnerable, that Lotor is finding to be a delicious test of both his limitations, and Keith’s. They’ve trialled several poses and angles between them since the new year began, but today is their first true run, and Lotor is resolved to get it right even if it kills him. Amongst his odd arsenal of props is a great brass bathtub, now filled to the brim with hot water that spills steam over its rim and into the room around it; with generous quantities of lush foliage arranged to border the tub, the whole scene conjures to mind an exotic jungle environment, cradling at its heart an elegant antiquity soon to serve as Keith’s throne.
“We good to go?”
When Lotor looks up from where he’s knelt at the bath’s edge, it’s to find his muse stood behind him, robed and restless; though the set of his jaw is not one to be trifled with, violet eyes won’t quite meet his, and as an artist he’s spent enough time studying Keith from every angle that he knows how to read disquiet in the lines of his face.
As a friend it concerns him.
“Keith,” Lotor makes sure to be in command of the younger man’s full attention before he speaks again, “if you’re not completely comfortable we can rework the composition-”
“No don’t, it’s- I’m fine. I’m fine Lotor, I swear, it’s just… different,” he falters, which is unlike him, and fumbles over his words, which is even less so, “weird.”
But even as he says so, there’s an obvious shift that takes hold of him - a slight alteration in his manner, a renewed fortitude behind his eyes - and Keith is fixing his attention determinedly on the water as he drops his robe without ceremony to stand beside the bath completely nude, the steam curling greedily around skin and sinew as it makes to kiss the flawless expanse exposed to it.
“So long as you’re certain,” voice dropped to a whisper, Lotor rises to his feet, making sure to keep his eyeline respectful as he steps back and allows his model plenty of space, “if anything changes, you’ll tell me.”
It’s less a question, more a command, leaving no room for argument, because above all else Keith’s comfort is paramount. Keith himself, however, is tilting his head back over one shoulder as he breaks the water’s surface, his breath hitching and body flushing at the heat, even as he responds to Lotor’s mothering with a dramatized roll of the eyes. He opens his mouth to say something clever, Lotor can tell by the way the corner of his lips quirk upwards before they part, but then his expression falls to one of innocent curiosity as he settles in the water, submerged up to his chest and frightfully endearing for the perplexed scrunch of his nose.
“It smells funny. Spicy?”
“Sandalwood,” Lotor supplies, the beginnings of a smile playing on his lips as he sets his easel in position, “is it not to your taste?”
“It’s not that,” Keith admits, “it’s just, well even you can’t paint a smell, Lotor.”
“This is true. It’s more for your sake than mine.” Thumbing gently over the head of his paintbrush isn’t necessary, but it is a nice distraction for the way Keith’s eyes are boring into his skull as if he might be able to ferret out the thoughts within by sight alone. “I thought you might like it.”
Keith falls into a moment of quiet contemplation, and then: “I do. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
God, Lotor thinks that evening, when Keith looks up at his fourth floor window from the pavement and salutes - of all things - before disappearing into the night; I’m so in love with him.
Their second session with regards to the Ophelia Project is far more taxing than the first.
Not for all the obvious reasons - though there’s a very particular brand of awareness that comes with having Keith naked and trusting when the two of them are alone together for hours on end, Lotor knows where to draw the line between artistic sensuality and sex, even if the memories do insist upon haunting him at the most inconvenient of times - but rather because the lighting is just a touch different today, Keith’s careless sprawl has all the wrong angles about it, and there’s just something so inherently off in their replication of the composition that Lotor cannot hope to continue his work like this.
The whole process is trying his patience, and Keith’s with it.
“You can just-” his muse huffs, rolling his shoulders and shaking out his arms to splash water over the tub’s rim, scattering tendrils of steam in all directions before his posture falls into something loose and lax, “-just put me where you want me. It’ll be faster.”
Lotor hesitates. It’s tempting in more ways than he can, in good conscience, allow it to be, but: “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Nah,” Keith shakes his head with a crooked smile that has Lotor’s heart tying itself in knots, “I’m easy.”
Lotor’s brows shoot up, and he has to force himself to smother a laugh as Keith’s own words dawn upon him and he chokes, a spluttering sort of cough turning into denial as his face glows hot and yet more water sloshes onto the floor.
“Not like- I didn’t mean-!”
Lotor saunters across the space between them with a dangerously fond smile playing on his lips, and when his fingertips come up to gently raise Keith’s chin a fraction and better deliver his features to the sunlight as his subject lies draped over the bath’s edge, his sweet little muse’s jaw snaps abruptly shut.
“Good to know,” he hums, his amusement made too obvious then, and Keith screws his face up into something that is in no way so charming as Lotor finds it.
“Oh fuck off, you know what I meant.”
“I do,” Lotor taps his nose lightly to smooth out the expression - endearing as it is - before stepping around with a touch between Keith’s shoulder blades to encourage his spine into something a little more natural. ”There. You look divine.”
Keith drifts off the sleep like that sometime during the second hour, and Lotor lets him - partially because he’s presently focused on capturing the way light and water play together to mottle Keith’s skin beneath the misted surface, and partially because his muse had just finished an exam the night before that he’d been stressing about for the last week solid, and Lotor’s entirely certain that this is the most uninterrupted rest the poor thing has managed in double that time.
Until his phone rings, that is.
Keith startles awake immediately, almost overbalancing the tub with the strength of his reaction, which is understandable seeing as his phone never rings. It’s a personal policy of his that Lotor rather agrees with: a phone call is to be enacted in a situation of threatened mortality, or not at all.
“D’you mind?” Keith gestures towards his things that are piled neatly beside Lotor, well out of the splash-radius for safekeeping.
Lotor wipes his hands free of oils and reaches to do as he’s bid.
“Speaker?”
“Mhm,” comes the drowsy response, and when he chances a glance back Keith is blearily rubbing the heel of his palm into one eye, sweet and sleep-soft and precious beyond measure.
Lotor’s heart melts.
“It’s Lance,” he warns, before accepting the call, and Keith grunts appreciatively for the notice.
“You’re on speaker McClain,” he announces as soon as it goes through, “behave.”
“I’m on speaker?” The tone is sharp, scandalised, and from what Keith has shared of this Lance character, Lotor knows this dramatization of the mundane to be not particularly abnormal. “What are you doing that’s so important that you don’t mind projecting our conversation to the world? Oh-!”
There’s a gasp of pure, unadulterated delight.
“Don’t tell me you’re doing salacious things with your body for that secret sugar daddy of yours!?”
Keith immediately chokes on a noise that is in equal parts high and horrified, while Lotor barks out a laugh.
“Is that what you tell your friends?”
“No!” Keith’s eyes have turned wide and imploring as he grips at the bathtub’s rim, and really he’s so dreadfully fun to tease that Lotor can’t even bring himself to feel bad about it. “No it is absolutely not! Lance, I swear to god-”
There’s a squeal from the other end of the phone.
“Please tell me that’s him!” is immediately followed by a noise that’s deep and debauch and not remotely appropriate in polite society, “hello mr sexy accent, Keith certainly kept that dirty detail to himself-”
“Lance,” Keith is blushing bright crimson and scrambling to clamber out of the bath and into his discarded robe, his voice adopting a dangerous edge, “you have five seconds to give me a very good fucking reason for calling or I swear-”
“Cool your jets Keith, I just thought I’d remind you that Shiro’s surprise party starts in less than an hour and that some of us are apparently still halfway across town in the love nest.”
“Studio!” Keith’s voice has pitched to new heights, “it’s a fucking art studio and you know it!” Belatedly, and to Lotor’s great amusement, the actual point of Lance’s call seems to dawn upon its recipient a little late. “Wait- shit- Shiro’s thing is in a hour?”
“That’s what I said hot stuff.”
“I thought it was at eight!”
Lotor tactfully elects to find something suddenly interesting on his ceiling as a very wet, very naked Keith frantically hops about on one leg in an attempt to tug his too-tight jeans on.
“I did, and it is. Do you not have clocks in the sex-dungeo-”
There’s a wicked crack, followed by dead silence, and when Lotor turns, running his hand through long hair in an attempt to remain casual in the face of all Lance’s non-too-subtle insinuations, it is to find Keith with his arm outstretched and palm flat against the surface of his phone, as if his chosen method of hanging up had been to smack the screen at full force. An intriguing choice, but apparently effective.
“Is there…” Keith coughs, stubbornly not making eye contact. “Is there any chance you didn’t hear that?”
Lotor could be tactful and kind and pretend that each and every word of what Keith’s friend clearly chooses to believe with regards to the nature of the personal relationship between himself and his muse had miraculously passed him by.
“Not even remotely.”
Keith’s head drops between his shoulders, eyes scrunched shut.
The damp ends of his hair clump together.
His ears burn a furious scarlet.
Lotor is in love with him.
“I swear I haven’t told them anything weird,” Keith’s voice cracks in the space between them, “it’s just Lance, he’s well, he’s Lance, and he likes to be a dick for whatever reason, and-”
“Keith,” the name rolls off his tongue like thunder, and it’s impossible that his muse doesn’t know, because while subtlety may be Lotor’s forte, when it comes to this he’s the most obvious fool in the world, “Keith, it’s fine. I am something of an enigma, and your friend has evidently chosen to capitalise on that for his own amusement.”
His tone is a soothing one, and succeeds in leeching some of the tension from the smaller man’s shoulders until timid eyes dare peer up through dark hair and darker lashes to meet Lotor’s indulgent gaze.
“Yeah, that’s…” Keith swallows, softening further, “that’s pretty much the size of it.” Eyeline dipping low again, he picks at his sleeve, “sorry.”
And it’s this, of everything he’s heard in the last ten minutes, that has Lotor’s eyebrows disappearing towards his hairline.
“Whatever for?”
And Keith doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, just waves vaguely in an all-encompassing gesture, flushing deeply from head to toe.
Insistent upon driving Keith to his destination himself - “the buses will take you thrice as long, and I rather believe the surprise to be a key element to a surprise party,” - Lotor leads him down to his building’s garage.
“Lotor,” no sooner have they entered do Keith’s eyes turn wide, his voice reverent, trembling fingertips tugging at Lotor’s sleeve as he half bounces in place, “Lotor that’s a Sincline.
“You like cars?”
“I like that car,” Keith says, distinctly awed, “everybody likes that car. It’s beautiful. It’s revolutionary. It’s- is that model even on the market yet?”
It is not, something Lotor knows full well, but he’s not entirely certain there’s a delicate enough way to phrase that without making himself sound like a complete- well. Instead of false modesty, he settles for dangling the keys in front of Keith’s nose in an offer he can’t refuse.
“Would you like to drive?”
Keith looks just about ready to vibrate out of his skin.
As it turns out, Keith’s ‘Shiro’ lives in an idyllic little house in the middle of picturesque suburbia, and Lotor has never felt so out of place in his life; yet, when Keith gets out of the car and frowns as Lotor makes to move to the driver’s seat rather than accompany him inside, softly expectant as he asks “you’re not coming?” Lotor is helpless against him.
“I mean,” Keith receives Lotor’s hesitance all wrong, “you don’t have to, obviously, you probably have somewhere better to be on a Saturday night-”
“Than with you?” Lotor asks, a pleasant warmth thrumming through his veins. “Never.”
When they cross the threshold, the household erupts.
The first person they see is a tiny scrap of a girl, only barely cresting five foot and with all the condensed spite to show for it. She smiles at Lotor like he’s a gift - no, a sacrifice - for her personally, and bonces over the wrap Keith up in a brief squeezing embrace that serves more as a shrewd evaluation of Lotor over her friend’s shoulder.
“Pidge,” Keith seems relieved that she’s the first to greet them, which Lotor does not feel bodes particularly well for him, “this is-”
“Lotor, I presume,” her grin is full of teeth, but softens when Keith makes a confused noise at her apparent knowledge. “Oh come on, it’s not like you have a whole lot of secret friends that none of us have ever met.”
She shoves a disgruntled Keith in the direction of the kitchen with orders to help Hunk by keeping Lance occupied, before turning sharply on her heel and fixing Lotor with a discerning sort of look.
“Keith’s sweet, but dumb, and couldn’t internet-stalk someone to save his life,” she looks him up and down, “I am the antithesis to his entire being, so let me tell you now, I know exactly who you are no matter how cleanly you’ve scrubbed your social media.”
Lotor’s heart drops to his stomach.
“So let me make two things perfectly clear.” She raises the appropriate number of fingers, only to immediately fold the second of them back down again. “One: I don’t give a shit about your family, they are who they are, that’s not on you. And two:” the second finger makes its grand return, “no matter how pretty and pathetically infatuated with him you are, I really truly cannot emphasise precisely how oblivious Keith Kogane is. Questions?”
There’s… so much to unpack there.
What he settles upon is: “has anyone ever told you that you’re quite terrifying?”
Pidge beams.
Taking him by the arm as if they’re old friends, she drags Lotor down the hallway towards the source of a great commotion, kicking open the door with a manic grin and announcing “speeding dating!” to the room before pointing to each individual in turn.
“The sensible one in the back corner who is regretting every life-decision he ever made leading up to this point, but loves his husband very much and so chooses to deal with the consequences, is Adam. Resident pretty-boy Keith you already know, but to his left is Hunk, the ray of sunshine none of us deserve, and to his left, Lance, the absolute gremlin of a person we probably do deserve.” This assessment is met by a high squeak of outrage, which nobody so much as blinks at. “Then there’s a disturbingly lanky version of myself lurking somewhere around here - also known as my brother, Matt - Allura, who’s also elsewhere, and kind of annoyingly flawless but we love her anyway, and obviously Shiro who should arrive at literally any moment!”
A deep breath, a triumphant grin.
“Everybody, Lotor!” The way she says his name, as if to taste the word and all its hidden meanings, is something to be pondered upon later, but by the look on Keith’s face Lotor has a sneaking suspicion his muse would really rather not continue along that particular line of conversation.
“Alright,” chimes a new voice from the other room, “I’ve gathered drinks and gifts and-”
Lotor turns, and finds the figure in the doorway startling familiar.
Annoyingly flawless, Pidge had said, and really that should have given the game away even if there were a thousand “Allura’s” in the city, which in all likelihood there are not. There’s a squeal, airy with delight, and when she launches herself into his arms Lotor has enough presence of mind to catch her, even if he does receive a mouthful of hair for his trouble.
“Lotor! What in god’s name are you- oh!” she cuts herself off, pulls back without releasing him, and does that irritatingly perceptive thing she’s had a talent for ever since they were children. “Oh.” She repeats, a cheshire-cat grin splitting her features in two, “oh you’re Keith’s, Lotor! I ought to have known.”
“I thought you were still in the UK,” Lotor hears himself ask, carefully sidestepping the dreadfully enticing concept of being Keith’s anything.
Allura releases her hold around him with a look that says she knows exactly what he’s doing, but graciously allows it. “I was, but Shiro’s a leap-year baby so it’s not often we get to celebrate on his actual birthday. I couldn’t miss it.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, but is interrupted by a violent and obviously forced coughing fit.
“So!” Lance is suddenly much closer than before, hands on his hips and eyes sharp, “you two know each other?”
“Only since we were children,” Allura smiles, leaning affectionately into Lotor’s side, “though it’s been an age since we saw one another last.”
She isn’t given chance to elaborate further, headlights pulling up the drive and an exclamation of “Shiro’s here!” from Pidge’s brother as he bursts into the room sending everyone diving behind furniture to hide out of sight, and Lotor is glad of it. He ends up crouched behind the breakfast bar with Allura nestled up under one arm and Keith making an abrupt appearance under the other, with no time to speak to either of them before the door opens and the kitchen explodes with a gleeful chorus of “surprise!” that has the recipient near fleeing the room altogether.
Shiro, as it turns out, is just as protective of Keith as Keith himself had implied through his scattered mentions of the man during the months since he and Lotor first met, and the artist now finds himself greeted by the posture of a military man and a firm handshake that he feels it important not to flinch from. Shiro’s right arm is a prosthetic - sleek, cutting-edge, and a beautiful piece of tech - and when he catches Lotor’s open admiration he raises one thick eyebrow as if in challenge.
“It’s Alfor’s work, is it not?” Lotor would recognise the craftsmanship anywhere.
By the blink of surprise Shiro gives him, his expression suddenly disarmed, this evidently isn’t the reception he’d expected.
“Yes,” he nods, then looks to Allura who’s returned to loop an arm around Lotor’s waist with a knowing smile.
“Lotor did some design work for my father a few years ago. That model,” she inclines her head at Shiro’s arm, “would never have been possible without his contribution.”
Lotor scoffs, feeling himself fall into the age-old debate that is a well-worn component of his and Allura’s friendship, because, no, that’s not quite true and in all honesty Alfor would have designed something similar, eventually, he had merely encouraged the process along a bit, and really the fact that her father still insists upon replenishing his bank account annually with so much money for such a meagre contribution is ridiculously indulgent and quite frankly unnecessary.
“He adores you, you know that,” Allura laughs, “and that money was well-earnt.”
Conversation seems to flow easier after that.
Apparently knowing both that Lotor had a hand in the creation of his prosthetic, and that he has Alfor’s resounding approval, butters Shiro up enough that by the evening’s culmination he’s pulling the taller man into a brief hug as he claps him firmly on the back and murmurs, “you’re good for him,” in Lotor’s ear with a clarity on his tongue that says he’s not nearly so inebriated as his jovial mood would suggest.
Keith is the next victim of Shiro’s fond farewell, the birthday boy tugging him into a much more intimate embrace that Keith sinks into with a softness that he wears so well Lotor wishes he’d never go without it.
Then, the two of them are cast out into the cold night air.
“He’s just glad you aren’t the ‘unscrupulous type’,” Keith snorts, wobbling and wine-drunk as he half saunters, half stumbles, into the passenger side of the Sincline, Lotor holding the door open for him with an indulgent smile, “I think the amount of money you’ve been throwing at me freaked him out a lil’.”
“You’ll have to apologise for me,” Lotor says without the slightest intention of altering the amount he pays Keith for his time, irrespective of how unscrupulous the transaction might appear to outsiders, and slides smoothly into the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind him. “I wouldn’t want him thinking anything untoward.”
The engine purrs to life, and Keith giggles.
It’s a mistake, to steal a glance.
In the low light, and illuminated by the ghostly blue of the dashboard, Keith is ethereal; a phantom of temptation and Lotor’s every suppressed desire cast in ivory, sculpted to perfection, chiselled as if a chimera of Galatea and Aphrodite that might surpass them both. He’s witty and charming and beautiful and Lotor is head-over-heels in love with him.
“Hey,” Keith whispers, eyes lidded and voice low, “you gonna take me home?”
Lotor’s voice is suddenly hoarse when he replies, “yes,” because he is, but not in the way that Keith’s inebriated self could be mistaken for implying, because that would be so so so wrong.
Another giggle, a pink little tongue soothing over a plump lower lip, and Keith is careening forward with less poise than he evidently intends until he’s out of his seat and sprawled across the centre console, practically in Lotor’s lap.
“Yeah?” He loops his arms around the artist’s neck, sweetly sincere, hopeful, and entwines himself so closely that their every breath is shared. “You gonna take me to bed?”
One hand in the dip of his waist to steady him, and voice firm, Lotor warns, “Keith-”
And is silenced with a kiss.
Like this, Keith is warm and shadow-soft, silhouetted by a streetlamp that turns dark hair into a halo of liquid moonlight that spills over Lotor as the most beautiful boy he’s ever known moulds himself to fit all the artist’s jagged edges. It’s earth-shattering, world-ending, and when Lotor’s mouth opens on a noise that’s in equal parts disbelief and desire, Keith licks between his lips like a wild thing, turning said kiss messy, sloppy, slick with spit and too much wine, and-
“You’re drunk,” Lotor gasps, when they part for a second, only for his weak protest to be swallowed by another impatient press of lips and teeth and tongue.
“Not that drunk,” Keith murmurs into the non-existent space between them, suckling Lotor’s lower lip between his with a hum of liquid heat that near renders the artist’s heart in two.
It’s everything Lotor wants, and he can have decidedly none of it.
Drunk enough,” He insists, tongue sharp and palm firm against the pounding of Keith’s heartbeat as he pushes him away only to mourn the loss immediately, this forced distance cold and unforgiving, and his muse abruptly wilting under the severity of it all. When he speaks again, Lotor is sure to soften his tone. “Let me take you home, sweet thing.”
“Take me home,” Keith echoes, confused as he withdraws, subdued as he sinks back into his seat, and then, on a whisper: “but not like that.”
Lotor’s heart yearns for everything he cannot have even as his knuckles turn white from how hard he’s gripping at the wheel.
“No,” he croaks out, every fibre of his being aflame, “not like that.”
Returning Keith to his apartment - a modest two-bedroom that, as of late, he seems to have spent less time in than the loft - Lotor seats him on the bed to kneel at his feet, quietly unlacing one boot, then the other, and gently encouraging his weary muse to drink a full glass of water (resolute in his refusal to acknowledge how his lips are lightly bruised and swollen from the severity with which Keith had kissed him - kissed him) before finally allowing his friend to flop gracelessly into the mattress.
“M’sorry,” Keith muffles into his pillow, teary-eyed and doleful.
He passes out before Lotor can assure him that he has nothing to apologise for.
Keith wakes the next morning with a headache, a hazy memory, and Lotor’s taste on his tongue.
“Shit,” he bolts upright and immediately regrets it, the light that creeps between the slats of cheap blinds swimming about the room unnervingly, and bringing with it the distant threat of nausea, “oh fuck me.”
Or not, as the case may be, Keith thinks to himself, glumly, head held steady in his hands as he tries and fails to purge Lotor’s careful rejection of his stupid, tipsy, obnoxiously overconfident self from his mind. After digging around for a second, Keith finds his phone arranged neatly on his bedside table with a glass of water, a small bottle of aspirin tablets that Keith definitely hadn’t owned the night before, and a note scrawled in perfect cursive that says: Just in case - L.
Not for the first time, Keith is forced to face the reality of his crush-turned-infatuation-turned-something-he’d-really-rather-not-name, and wants to scream.
[[Hey, sorry about last night, I didn’t exactly mean to throw myself at you like that, but-]]
[[Look, about last night, apparently I’m a fucking dumbass when I’m drunk-]]
[[So, funny story, I’m sort of insanely in love with you and I know that’s crazy because we’ve barely known each other six months and we’re not even together-]]
[[Thanks for the aspirin - K]]
[[You’re most welcome. Feeling better?]]
They don’t talk about the kiss.
Keith emerges from his room some time past midday, to find Matt eating a bowl of soggy cereal on the floor, for reasons undisclosed. When he sees him, Matt does a spit take.
“Wait you’re here?” he exclaims, leaning dramatically to one side to peer around Keith as if expecting someone else to emerge from his bedroom. “Is tall dark and handsome with you?”
“Why would he be?” Keith snaps, and Matt blinks at him slowly as if he’d just said something very extremely stupid.
“Um, because you two spent all night mooning over one another? Because it was disgustingly obvious to anyone with eyes how much you wanted him to have his wicked way with you? Because you left with him, rather than wait for me to take the kiddies back?”
The kiddies, as the elder Holt refers to them, are Lance, Hunk, and Pidge, all of whom are in their twenties and none younger than Matt himself by more than a handful of years.
“I was tired. I wanted to get off-”
Matt snorts. Keith grabs an orange from the fruit bowl and hurls it at him.
“-I wanted to leave. Go home. Whatever.” He’s too drained for this shit, all the fight having bled out of him. “Lotor brought me back, but nothing happened,” and then, sullenly, “he doesn’t want me like that.”
There’s a silence then that stretches between them, thick and heavy, until Matt breaks it with a put-upon sigh as he dumps his bowl in the sink and ruffles dark hair with little to no regard for how it makes Keith’s head reel.
“You’re wrong,” he chirps, cheerfully, “and also, we’re out of milk!”
Nothing changes between them, not really, because Lotor is just as he ever was, while Keith is well-versed in the art of swallowing his feelings and biting his tongue, so in all honesty he hasn’t anything worth complaining over. And it’s not- it’s not that Keith is unhappy with the way things are - he isn’t - or that he in any way thinks of Lotor’s friendship as a consolation prize - how could it be? - only, there are days when they spend hours together occupied by great winding conversations and bookended by oils on canvas. Nights where Keith stays over because it’s late and dark and Lotor insists his bed has room enough for two, so, in his own words, “it’s hardly an imposition, sweet thing.” Worst of all are the mornings, when he wakes in a tangle of sun kissed limbs and star-spun hair and wants to cry because such tender affection is the cruelest form of torture that Keith’s ever known.
Some days, Lotor looks at him like he’s picking him apart at the seams - which Keith supposes is to be expected when the entire foundation of his relationship with the artist is one of rendering his likeness in pigment for all to see - but it’s intimate, painfully so, and often Keith feels as if Lotor knows him better than he knows himself.
Other days, it’s the brush of fingertips as he passes Keith a mug of something warm and saccharine, the chime of a laugh as it rolls across Keith’s cheek, the memory of a kiss stolen in the quiet of a moment that was never his to take.
Every day is hell, and he wouldn’t exchange it for the world.
The Ophelia project takes several sessions more to complete, and even then Lotor won’t allow Keith to sneak a peek until the exhibition.
When he does finally lay eyes upon it - upon all of it - he finds himself breathless.
It’s not the only piece in the collection for which Keith has modelled, but it is the centrepiece, situated at the heart of the lavish showroom as it steadily fills with a modest battalion of patrons whose footwear costs more than Keith sees in a year. Contrary to the elemental subject matter Lotor has chosen to render the painting in a warm palette that makes it seem as if Keith were bathing in molten sunlight; there’s nothing explicitly risqué in it - the way the bathwater and the steam it exuded have come together on the canvas leave the exact details of Keith’s anatomy to the viewer’s imagination, for the most part - but it’s less the hint of flesh beneath the water’s surface and more the intimacy of his doppelganger’s attention: his gaze unwavering, as intense as it is indulgent, alluring and cautionary and bewitching all in the same breath.
Keith tugs self-consciously at the loose thread of his button-up’s cuff.
Lotor’s talent is undeniable, his brushstrokes masterful, and by the excited buzz of chatter that trickles between the guests of tonight’s event, Keith has an inkling that Lotor’s return to the art world had been more highly anticipated than he’d let on, and yet… Keith doesn’t know how to recognise himself in the portrait before him, as if he were Dorian Gray with precisely the opposite problem.
Stealing a glance at the artist across the room, where he appears to be navigating his patron’s pleasantries with an easy sort of charisma, Keith can’t help but admire him; Lotor swans about the room as if he were born to it, his shirt - mulberry he’d corrected Keith earlier, on a laugh, when pinning the colour down as either a purple or a red had proved elusive - was practically poured on and all the more enticing for it, and paired with his effortless charm and charismatic smile, it’s little wonder that tonight’s guests seem to be having a hard time looking away from him.
Keith included.
“So you’re the muse,” speaks a voice to his right, and Keith nearly jumps out of his skin.
“Shit! I, er,” he turns sharply to find the woman next to him to be slight of stature, but built entirely of hard lines and severe angles, her silver hair suggesting she’s older than her face would otherwise imply, “yeah, that’s me.”
As weird as it is having at least half the room’s artwork inspired by him, Keith hadn’t thought to prepare for anyone addressing him directly.
The woman gives a low hum of acknowledgement in the back of her throat, and though she turns to fix her discerning gaze upon Ophelia without another word, Keith finds himself quite certain that he has not yet been dismissed, and would be unwise to leave without her having formally done so.
“I’m Keith,” he says instead, and cringes at how uncertain he sounds about that fact.
“…Honerva.”
They stand in silence for several minutes more as Honerva takes her time in looking over Ophelia’s finer points with greater scruple than the subject of said painting is really comfortable witnessing first-hand.
“You have the bone structure for it, and the fire, if his rendition is to be believed,” she looks back at him then, only for a moment, and under the pallor of the lights brown eyes flash a piercing gold, “but more than that you’ve managed to rekindle something I feared he might never regain.”
“I didn’t really…” Keith turns back to the canvas, finding it somehow easier to look at his own face than it is hers, which is a statement in and of itself, “do anything? Just kind of sat there, honestly. Fell asleep once-” and this is probably really not even remotely what these rich artsy types want to hear, “-Lotor did all the hard work, I just happened to get caught out in the rain at the right time.”
A short huff of air through her nostrils apparently constitutes for laughter, in her case, and when Keith chances a brief glance in the woman’s direction, she’s almost smiling.
“He’s better than I ever was,” she murmurs, distinctly fond, and then: “but he’s still determined to treat painting like a battlefield which it is not. If he doesn’t learn how to be kinder to his trade and stop stabbing at his work, he’ll go through twice as many brushes as he needs to.”
Lotor does, in fact, go through an obscene quantity of brushes, leaving the bristles frayed and unusable in a matter of weeks.
“You tell that boy-” she begins, with a neatly knitted brow, but seems to shatter on a sigh before pulling herself together twice as sternly as before. “Tell him the truth, whatever it is, and tell him soon.”
“The truth?”
Honerva looks at him with exasperation written into the lines of her face.
“You don’t paint someone like that,” her chin jerks up sharply at Ophelia, and Keith does his best not to flush under the knowing weight of her attention, “on a whim. He’s too much like his father for his own good.”
Hawk-like, the petite woman looks Keith up and down as if deciding whether or not he’s a worthy meal.
“Tell him the truth,” she repeats, “whatever your feelings for him. One way or another, it’ll put him out of his misery, and if you care for him at all then you ought know he deserves that much.”
And before Keith can say another word, she’s turned on her heel and disappeared into the throng.
The exhibition comes to a close in the early hours of the morning, once the o'dourves are depleted and the champagne has run dry; though Keith is no authority on these things, from the general sentiment of the dispersing crowd the event seems to have been a resounding success, every snippet of conversation he hears made up of its participants gushing over Lotor’s use of light or colour or “audacious exploration of human sensuality and relationship between subject and voyeur,” which has Keith’s ears burning even if he can’t quite say what that’s supposed to mean.
No sooner have the guests gone than does Lotor sweep him up into his arms with laughter on his lips, burying a smile that Keith can feel at his crown.
“Well!” Withdrawing enough to cup Keith’s face in his hands, Lotor beams ear to ear, clearly uncaring that his meticulously braided hair has half fallen to disarray. “That went infinitely better than I could have hoped!”
Laughing and giddy with shared enthusiasm as he confirms, “yeah?” Keith finds himself emboldened enough to curl fingers gently around Lotor’s wrists, leaning into the cushion of his palms with too-soft eyes.
“Yes,” Lotor breathes, thumbing over cheekbones and leaving heat in in his wake, “impossibly so. And I owe it all to you.”
There are a thousand things Keith wants to say to that, warmth bubbling up in his throat and blossoming out across cheekbones.
The one he blurts out is: “I think I met your mom.”
Lotor recoils as if struck, his violent retreat halting only because Keith has not yet released his wrists.
“Mother was here?” he gapes, “you’re quite certain?”
“I mean…” less so, after that reaction, “yes? With some of the things she said, the way she said them- but she didn’t exactly introduce herself.”
“No,” Lotor barks out something that’s almost a laugh through gritted teeth, eyes suddenly wet as he blinks furiously, “she wouldn’t,” and now Keith’s concerned, because Lotor’s mentioned his relationship with his parents before but never in great detail, and Keith’s always thought the things the artist doesn’t say to be far more telling than those he does.
“Hey,” he steps back into Lotor’s space, reaching up to cup his face and reverse their position from mere moments before, “hey, look at me.”
Lotor does, blue eyes desperate and searching.
“Did she-” he begins, then snaps his jaw abruptly shut.
Keith answers the unspoken question regardless.
“She said you’re better than her- than she ever was.” Keith, scrambling to remember all he can as accurately as he’s able, tucks the longest lock of hair that’s fallen from Lotor’s braid back behind his ear, keeping his tone level and sincere even when the older man looks hesitant to believe him. “She said you’ve got something back she thought you’d lost… that I’d helped with that?”
Though he ends on a question, still unsure of the meaning behind those words, Lotor is leaning into him and knocking their foreheads together with a weak smile, so Keith daren’t stop, instead lowering how tone further as if the words shared between them are a secret to all the world.
“She could tell that you’re rough with your brushes,” Lotor blinks at that, but no tears fall and instead he seems comforted by the observation.
“I’m sure she asked that I stop stabbing at the canvas too.”
“Almost verbatim, and-” Keith cuts himself off, wishing he hadn’t started that sentence at all, because now Lotor looks so hopeful that he can’t possibly take it back, but his voice turns small as he admits: “-and she told me to tell you the truth.”
When white brows knit themselves neatly together, Keith now knows from whom it was inherited. The resemblance is uncanny.
“Well, demanded, really. Scary woman, your mom.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Lotor’s hands have, at some point and entirely without Keith’s notice, fallen to rest on his hips, and now hold him steady even as Keith feels he might keel over at any second. “The truth about what?”
Goddamnit.
“Keith?”
God-fucking-damnit.
“The truth that I-” Keith chokes, backtracks, attempts to rephrase even as the heat rises in his cheeks, and as he does so his eyeline finds Ophelia over Lotor’s shoulder. Dodging the question leaves him feeling more than a little pathetic. “She said you don’t paint someone like that on a whim.”
Lotor’s eyes flutter shut, his nose crinkling, and long fingers twitch as if they’d pinch the bridge of it, were they not otherwise occupied with the dip of Keith’s waist.
“Ah,” he says with profound regret, head dropping heavily onto Keith’s shoulder, “meddling old crone.”
They stay like that for a while, shrouded in silence and entangled in one another: Lotor’s face hidden in the crux of Keith’s neck while Keith’s arms drape around Lotor’s shoulders, hand tracing patterns between the artist’s shoulder blades, entirely unwilling to explain himself and yet fully aware that now that he’s come this far, he really has no other choice.
“She said I should put you out of your misery,” is the begrudging admission Keith settles upon.
“Ironic,” Lotor mouths against the pale skin of the muses’ throat, sending heat trickling down his spine, “considering that it is she who conspires to keep me there with her unnecessary interference.”
Keith doesn’t know quite what to make of that, but he’s tired, it’s been a long day, and ‘meddling crone’ though she may be, Lotor’s mother was right about one thing: he deserves better than this, and Keith has been a coward about it.
“I kissed you,” he whispers against the shell of Lotor’s ear, and feels the artist go rigid against him.
A heartbeat drags out to infinity between them, and then: “I did not think you remembered that.”
As if Keith could forget the single most stupidly wonderfully heartbreaking decision of his life. As if he would even if it were possible.
“I was drunk, but I wasn’t that drunk.”
“Drunk enough,” Lotor echoes his words from that night, and Keith feels his heart sink.
“I know,” Keith licks his lips, fights against that awful heat in his veins, “I know it didn’t mean anything,” not to Lotor, at least “but I just… I can’t keep pretending it didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t- that I’m not-” and god this is so much harder than it should be.
Fuck it.
“I’m in love with you!” Keith spits, throat raw and heart bleeding. It’s only once he’s said it that the belated sensation of Lotor’s lips against his neck, mouthing those very same words, catches up with him.
There’s a rustle of fabric in his ear as Lotor draws back just enough that they might stare at one another in mutual disbelief, pale lashes fluttering as impossibly blue eyes turn impossibly wide beneath them.
The question: “What?” is posed by two equally incredulous voices in tandem.
The first to gather himself is Keith.
“I’m… I’m in love with you,” he repeats carefully, searching the artist’s face for any hint of a joke even though Keith knows he’d never be so cruel, and when he can’t find a single crack in that facade he echoes those words again, more firmly this time. “Lotor, I’m in love with you.”
Lotor swallows.
Ghosts knuckles down Keith’s arms to his hands, until they can lace their fingers together.
Gestures vaguely at the paintings that surround them, a dozen iterations of Keith’s own likeness, all power and passion.
Breathes.
“I’m in love with you,” he echoes, a dry swallow doing nothing to alleviate the crack in his voice, “obviously.”
Keith looks about the room to find his doppelgangers looking back at him, reproach behind their eyes.
“Oh,” he feels suddenly giddy with stupidity, “oh.”
Lotor laughs, breathless.
“How could you possibly not know?”
Even as he ducks his head to hide the shy smile that is working its way onto his features, Keith feels his ears burn, as he admits, soft and searching: “After the party I thought- I mean you made it pretty clear that you didn’t want-”
“-to take advantage of you,” cuts in the vehement correction, “not that I didn’t want- never that I don’t-”
And somewhere between this fumbled explanation and the taste of his own name on Lotor’s tongue, they find one another in a press of lips upon lips, blind to the world about them as Keith stumbles back against the wall, tugging Lotor after him until the artist has him pressed up against it, the only space between them bubbling with laughter and champagne stained kisses.