Work Text:
looking for art models idgaf what gender
all you gotta do is stand around for me and ill draw you
dont have to do it nude but if you wanna go streaking who am i to stop you
pay $100/hour
TG
You don't really think the Craig's List ad is real. It's too good to be true, but part-time work at Target only gets you so far with art school tuition and everyday expenses. You can't risk that it's not true.
All the same, when you leave for the address this "TG" (clarified through email to be a "Dave Strider") specified, you make sure your roommate knows exactly where you're going and how long you should be gone and that your phone is on and "please don't let me get kidnapped, Karkat, I don't want to die before the next Star Wars movie comes out."
At your first glance at your new employer and his douchey shades, you think you may have made a mistake. As you step into his apartment, which is littered with blades on the floors and walls, you're pretty damn sure you're about to die.
Then he flops into a chair, flips open a sketchbook, and demands you freeze in place.
"What, like this?" you say, not daring to move even a finger. You're just standing normally, you sure think!
"Yep, boringass poses are the hardest anyway. Let's skip the stretching, go right into the marathon, pull a muscle or two but it'll be worth it." His head is bowed while he talks, but you suppose he glances up at you from behind those sunglasses.
You didn't even have a chance to remove your jacket, let alone your backpack. It's starting to feel heavy, but you're too nervous to complain just yet.
"Loosen up," he says. "A guy can't draw a damn natural pose if his model's all stiffer than Batman's valiant upper lip, can he?"
You snort. "So you don't want me posing like Batman?"
"Try Joker. That could interesting. Give me your best maniacal pose." His mouth quirks into the smallest smirk, the first you've seen emotion on his face, and he raises his pencil to give you a chance to readjust.
You take the opportunity to drop your extraneous load before splaying your hands in front of you and trying to look as if you're about to burst into a fit of evil laughter.
Dave nods once. "Perfect." He goes back to his drawing. "You look like a dork."
"Hey!" You start straightening out without even thinking about it.
His pencil stops mid-stroke. "Don't drop that pose. Do you want to get paid or not?"
"Well, maybe don't insult your employees!" you say, but you return to your previous position all the same.
"I will do what I damn well please and I encourage you to do the same."
You roll your eyes. "You're an asshole."
"There you go."
You snort.
It takes you a few more minutes to notice how much more at ease you are now that you're at "casually insult"-levels of familiarity with him. Every ten minutes or so (you guess; you should get a wristwatch since you can't exactly check your phone like this), he tells you to change up your pose. Sometimes he tells you exactly where he wants all of your limbs, other times he leaves the gist of it up to you -- though he almost always tells you to make adjustments until he's satisfied.
After maybe thirty poses (you lose track at twelve), he raises his pencil. "Okay then." He nods at his sketchbook. "Yeah, this can work."
You relax. "I'm hired?"
"Yep, you're my art minion now."
"Don't put it like that, douchefuck." You wrinkle your nose, but he's already rifling through his wallet and ignoring you.
"You want twenties or hundreds?" he says, flipping through the bills.
"Uh." Your mouth hangs open a little. "I assumed there'd be a check involved?"
"You assumed wrong, but I forgive you." He smacks three bills in your hand. Other than when you work registers at Target, and rarely even then, you have never held so much cash in your hand at once.
You stuff your "paycheck" as far into your bag as you can before hightailing it to your nearest bank to deposit it before you can do something foolish like forget it on the bus or make acquaintances with a mugger. You try not to sigh in relief too visibly when the teller doesn't turn the bills away as fake.
Your roommate is more suspicious of Strider than ever when he hears how things went, but you're feeling pretty good about this new job. The hours aren't long and you get paid a hell of a lot better than you would working at Starbucks or another retail job. Plus it is the easiest job ever. The easiest.
Or so you think, until your next modeling sessions involve holding poses that get progressively more complicated for anywhere from ten to forty-five minutes at a crack. Usually he sits at a chair as he draws, but sometimes he moves the chair around to your other side or even lies down on the floor to get an angle from below. He also throws you props to stand or sit on, but rarely anything you have to hold up.
Your muscles are tired and sore for two days after each modeling session -- at least he only calls you over once or twice a week. More importantly, on the occasion that Dave is too caught up in his art to be chatty, you are bored.
"Is it okay if I read my homework?" you ask once when he lets you bring in a chair for a prop and mercifully get off your feet. "I think I can hold a book in this pose without moving or anything."
"It'll get in the way," he says without even a pause to consider it.
You frown. "Seriously?"
"Seriously, dude. You think I'm fuckin' around here?"
You sigh and search for a conversation topic to sate your boredom instead. "So, uh, are you in school too? I haven't seen you around campus."
"Nah. Why would I pay eighty grand for a piece of paper when I can pay you a hundred bucks an hour for the same practice minus all the math classes?"
You snort. "That's how you afford me, huh? Skipping college?"
"Nah times two. My bro's loaded, dude, and he doesn't give a shit what I do with his money so long as I don't get arrested."
You'd nod if Dave wouldn't scold you for moving. "Cool bro."
"The coolest." He's bent over enough you think you actually see his eyes flicker up at you over the shades. "You're at the art school then?"
"Yeah. Music major."
"What instrument?" he says with a surprising lilt of curiosity you don't normally hear in him. "Or just voice?"
"Piano."
He nods. "Yeah, didn't think you'd have a good singing voice."
You blow a raspberry at him.
He asks for one more pose -- a trickier one, probably to spite you -- before calling it a day. You roll your shoulders and stretch, wandering over to him and tilting your head to try to catch a glimpse of his sketches.
"Can I see this time?"
"Nope." He snaps the sketchbook shut. "That is not part of your pay, wasn't in the contract, so no can do. Hit me up at one of my art shows in ten years if you want. Maybe you'll see these framed and under one of those crazy bright lamps."
"Are you embarrassed?" you say with a smirk.
He feigns a swoon. "I am the most sensitive of snowflakes about my art." He straightens. "That said, it's not fuckin' finished and that's not fun for either party."
"Whatever, dude," you say, still grinning. You'd die if anyone saw your handwritten sheet music before you thought it was ready to perform, so you let it be.
All the same, when you get home later that evening, curiosity gets the better of you. You google Dave's name in hopes he has an online portfolio, maybe even a Tumblr. The first result is for a webcomic named Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. You think you've heard a classmate mention it before. You wonder if it's popular? Is this going to be like Penny Arcade?
The website is bright and ugly and kind of makes your eyes hurt. You don't have to scroll down far to find the comic itself, which matches perfectly with the rest of the site's aesthetic.
Is this... a fucking joke? This artist can't be the same Dave Strider. Or if it is, this page has to be balls old. Except, nope, the newest comic was posted yesterday.
He's using you as a model when his art looks like this pile of garbage? It doesn't even look like he's trying to get correct anatomy down. Oh lord, is this how he's been drawing you all this time?
Now you have to get a glimpse of his sketches. You have no choice. Your conscience simply won't allow otherwise.
You get your chance at your next session. Dave sets aside his art supplies between poses and tells you to relax.
"I gotta take a piss," he says, standing up. "You be okay by yourself?"
"No, Strider, don't go." You reach your arm out as if in agony. "I am lost without you. I might trip and hurt myself if left unsupervised."
He shakes his head. "Well, I ain't taking you into the toilet with me, so we'll just have to risk that."
You let out a lengthy, "Nooooo," until he's in the other room (flipping you off all the way). You count to five then zip over to where he left his sketchbook. It's still open, so you don't even have to feel the guilt of properly "snooping." You're just taking a gander at something he left in plain sight. It's just one picture! Just one to make sure he's not drawing you like a creepy little jpeg man.
Okay, wow, he's a lot better of an artist than you realized. If he does draw that silly comic, he is holding back on his online audience. That said, the only thing on the paper is a close-up of your hands, the fingers delicately shaded to show every wrinkle and nail.
You frown. You'd said one you'd only look at one, except you were in a really hard-to-hold pose for this drawing and you're pretty sure you don't remember him flipping a page during it. You kind of assumed he'd be drawing maybe your legs? Where all your weight was? The two appendages that are already growing sore from overuse again?
You grab a tip of the page and peek beneath it. There are only more hands. One more page then. More hands. You flip through the book guilt-free. There are a few rare, unpolished full models sketched on a few pages, but 90% of this damn book is nothing but your hands. (Well, and a few dick doodles in the margins that reaffirm Dave is probably the artist for that godawful comic after all.)
You can't believe this. Dave has just one-upped you on the pranking scale on a level you haven't seen since you moved out of your dad's house.
You put the book back as you found it and scramble back into position as you hear the toilet flush. Dave doesn't seem to suspect anything's off as he flops into his chair and calls for a new pose.
You obey him except for one thing: you keep your hands curled into fists.
He doesn't even start drawing, frowning just a touch. "The fuck are you doing with your hands? Don't need a fight scene reference, dude."
"Oh, sorry." You open your hands and slip them at just such an angle that he can't see them from his spot.
"Hey, arms out a little more."
You sigh in exaggeration, as if he's being soooo picky, and shift, continuing to keep your hands out of easy sight for him.
He still doesn't draw. "You mind keeping your hands in view?"
"Why?" you ask, for the first time not changing up your pose even the slightest.
"Maybe I like including the most difficult part of all human anatomy when I draw your pose. You ever think of that?"
"Maybe you should change things up a little then. My hands are always in view in every other pose we do."
He's silent a moment. "You saw."
You scowl. "I saw."
"Welp." He sets his pencil down, slips the book closed, and crosses a leg over his knee. "That was a blatant violation of privacy, dude."
You take that as permission to drop the pose and point at him. "You were fucking with me, douchebucket!"
He shrugs. He seems... uncomfortable and... Are you imagining that red on his cheeks? "Maybe a little."
You snag a chair next to him. "Look, that was a good prank and I respect you for that, but it was kind of mean too, making me stand in goofy poses if all you wanted was to practice your hands."
He sighs. "I wasn't pranking you, dude, I was just teasing 'cos I like you and your ridiculous piano hands."
You pause. "Uh. Like?"
He leans back and crosses his arms, but that embarrassed blush only grows worse. "What of it?"
"Well. Fuck, I don't know. You could have maybe told me instead of putting me through that!"
"Nah, too easy." He shifts and you're pretty sure he's trying to watch you without giving away that he's watching you. "So. Can I touch 'em?"
You facepalm. "Can you say that in a creepier way if you tried?"
"For sure I can, but I don't think you actually want me to," he says with a small smirk.
"Yeah, not really," you say, holding a hand out to him.
He enfolds your hand in his, tracing the edges with his fingertips. "Can I kiss 'em?"
You raise an eyebrow. "I'm not getting paid for this too now, am I?"
"Do you want to be? Do I need to alter our contract?"
"Heeeeell no!"
He holds your hand up, giving you a long enough moment you could snatch it back if you want, and softly kisses the back of it. "Good, we can officially call this a date instead of work then."
You feel your face burn. "Does that mean I'm fired?"
He chuckles. "Nothing says we can't have some office romance during off hours."
"Guess there isn't." You grin.
He leans toward you and you meet him halfway for the kiss.