Butterflies (BL)

Chapter 7: Naked

"I'm not flirting with you Blake...I'm being honest"

♡

Tamesh grabs a long thin paintbrush and lightly dips the bristles into a blob of blue paint before returning his gaze to Blake. The male's intense stare is still present, making Tamesh feel a little like he is the one being studied.

Pushing the overwhelming feeling to look anywhere but into Blake's eyes to the back of his mind, Tamesh gazes back, trying his best to see exactly what is before him. Blake is ultimately light and shade, lines and curves. But those eyes... they were becoming too much of a distraction.

Only making a few basic lines, Tamesh puts his brush down on the ledge of the easel. "I think it would be better if you looked into the distance and not at me." He finally says. 

Blake smiles, noticing how Tamesh looked a little flustered as he ran his fingers through his messy dark brown hair. "Sure." he replies, choosing to focus on a vase on a small side table in the background with a purple butterfly on it. "Was it a little too much?" He adds with a jesting tone.

"Just a little." Tamesh replies, not picking up on Blake's teasing undertone, or the flirtatious connotations surrounding it. However, it didn't stop Tamesh from adding, "You know you are beautiful, that makes things more difficult for me." 

"Really?" Blake now shifts in his chair a little as he speaks, raising an eyebrow as a smile spreads across his face. "Do you flirt with all your life models?" 

"I'm not flirting with you Blake. I'm being honest." Tamesh says, now picking up his brush again, trying to carry on where he had left off. "Visually speaking, you are a beautiful subject to study and paint and it makes it tougher for me as an artist, because it's easier to paint subjects with flaws. They evoke more drama. It's easier to create the lines and creases of the older face, or the pain and sorrow of a person feeling such an emotion, but right now, you are literally flawless. You're gonna be a challenge." 

"I guess I'll take that as a compliment?" Blake says in a questioning tone, furrowing his brow a little. If this was Tamesh's approach to flirting, he was hopeless at it.

Tamesh doesn't respond. He sees no need for conversation. He preferred the quiet. No distractions from the matter in hand.

***

Blake doesn't know how much time has passed, but the butterfly he has been focusing on feels like it's started to flutter before his eyes. He begins to squeeze his eyes closed and open them a few times as they begin to feel a little heavy. 

Tamesh picks up on this and lowers his brush. "Do you wanna take a break?" 

Blake kind of comes out of his trance-like state and turns his head slightly to again focus on Tamesh. "How long have I been sitting here?" 

"An hour."

"An hour?" Blake is surprised. He could have sworn that he had been sitting there for over an hour, maybe 2!

"Yeah, just an hour." Tamesh confirms with a light chuckle, now getting up from the seat to grab a grubby looking cloth from the side to wipe his brush with. 

Blake gets up from his seat and stretches his arms above his head as if he had gotten up from a night's rest, before casually pacing his naked body around the room. 

As Tamesh turns from cleaning his brush, he is surprised to see the man in his naked form ambling so casually around his studio, looking at the other canvases on display. "Are you always this free?" Tamesh comments, watching as the guy seems so at peace with himself. 

"Mmmh?" Blake looks at Tamesh almost in surprise, as if he hadn't even noticed his own nakedness, but soon realises what Tamesh is implying when he feels those eyes rake him up and down.

"You just can't stop staring at my beauty can you?" Blake teases again, loving how he got this guy a little flustered, yet he was the one without clothes. 

"I'm just not used to people like you, that's all." Tamesh replies, returning to cleaning yet another brush. In truth, Tamesh just wasn't really used to people in general who were outside of his micro friend group.

"People like me?" Blake didn't really know what Tamesh meant by that, but he wasn't going to let the comment slide. "What's wrong with me?" He asks, now facing Tamesh's back, hands on his hips. 

Tamesh can sense the man behind him and although he had spent a short time gazing at his naked form, right now, he could not bring himself to turn around. But he still tries to find the right words to explain himself. "I mean...what I mean is...I guess you're very self confident. I've never met someone so sure of themself before." 

Blake laughs at the words leaving Tamesh's lips. "You're talking like you've never seen a naked man before. I mean it's your profession isn't it?"

"I haven't."