Work Text:
When Rey calls Ben an appreciator of the human body, what she means is that she loves the way his hands cradle the tallow before he makes the first impression. She sees how his eyes rove over her form, noting the distance between her shoulder and elbow, the hollow by the cuff when she rotates her arm, the gentle slope of bicep into bone. He watches and watches, and only when she fears he’s lost himself to a daydream does he begin to sculpt.
How Rey started sitting for him isn’t the interesting part of their story. (Mechanic shop, Rey stretched out on a creeper, her legs poking out from under Ben’s car. He stuttered asking her to model for him; she only agreed because his ears flamed red, too unpracticed a man for the sort of creepiness that clings to customers when they get too bold.) Rather, the interesting part is how, after half a year of sessions, Ben has rubbed off on Rey. She finds herself breaking down bodies that pass like a butcher – a muscled thigh, a rounded stomach, a curved throat.
An artist, Ben corrects her when she points out the change. He smiles so rarely, but lately he folds for Rey too easily. It softens all the harsh planes of his face. Sometimes Rey wonders if the sculptor who made Ben forgot to polish his work – smooth the clay of his nose, trim a bit of his ears. It makes for a face from which she can’t look away, no matter how long they’ve spent staring at each other in his home studio.
First, a bust; then a quick study in beeswax. He bakes both in plaster and casts them in bronze. Two miniature Reys, both remarkable in their likeness. Rey’s never seen metal look lonely before. There’s something hungry in the eyes, the bend of her neck as sculpture-Rey studies the ground. This stranger has whittled her down to her essence without cutting her open to dissect the half-dozen foster families, the years spent scrabbling to make rent since, the nagging feeling that she’ll never find a home. A hallmark of a good artist indeed.
He asks her to sit for more pieces. In the golden era of sculpture, the greats called subjects like her muse . Ben never calls her such, but Rey sees him assemble a gallery show piece by piece – “a comeback unlike no other,” The Times calls it – and she shivers to know her naked body, translated through his generous fingers, stands before New York tied to his name.
Sometimes when she models for him, she grows wet watching his deft fingers work the wax. So precise, so emotive. Too long and she starts to ache, aware of her emptiness in a way both painful and delicious. It’s not just his hands that provoke this yearning. It’s the way his eyes, dark and roiling, stare her down too long for politeness when she shifts and spreads her legs into another pose. It’s the way he stumbles through niceties at the end of a session but launches into a passionate discussion about the latest MoMA exhibit when Rey walks into his studio clutching a museum map.
Rey begins making excuses to talk to Ben, bringing him coffee in flimsy paper cups so they start their mornings together. At first he gulps it fast or puts it down on his workbench and forgets about it, lost in his craft. Then Rey makes a point of smiling as she gives it to him, sitting down before taking her clothes off to model. She asks him about his designs, hunching over sketches on stools with him as he asks her input on their next project. Collaboration , he starts to call it, as if Rey’s hands worked the clay alongside him. She corrects his perspective on a sketch – a mark here, a smudge here. He tracks each movement like a starving man. In that moment, Rey wonders if he senses her want; if he feels it, too.
He titles the next sculpture Empress – their drawing brought to life. The art world buzzes. Who is this mysterious source of inspiration? A newspaper prints a half-page photo, black and white, of Ben surveying his work displayed on a pedestal, the gallery’s focal point. Rey traces his hair (curling around the nape of his neck), his hands (clasped behind his back), his expression (fiercely satisfied, a hint of possession).
One morning, the city buried deep in snow, Rey arrives late, pink cheeks and a frost-chapped nose peeking out from a scarf. Ben growls when she opens the door, practically yanks her inside by the scarf. Orders her to undress quickly, he has a deadline coming up for the next show and she knows how much they have left to do. His brusqueness fits ill like a mask. Rey refuses to be shooed along. Places a hand on his arm and relishes the warmth underneath her palm. But for the warmth, she might mistake him for a sculpture.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
He goes still under her apology. “I thought you weren’t coming today,” he says, quiet and a little petulant, eyes downcast.
“Ben” – so full of warmth he snaps up to scan her face – “this is the best part of my day. Of course I came.”
He grins so warm and wide he could melt the snowstorm. Before they work, he shows her the shitty kitchen, makes her coffee and apologizes he has no cream or sugar to sweeten it. They drink it black and only as Rey rinses both cups in the sink does she realize he’s welcomed her into his home beyond the studio.
The snow doesn’t let up that week nor the next. Ben’s studio stays cold in the mornings, reluctant to heat up no matter how much he cranks the thermostat. Rey shivers so much posing for a statuette (standing nude, hands coiled around her head like cocooned butterflies) that Ben frowns and abandons his work for another room. She worries she’s upset him somehow, but then he returns bearing a thick wool blanket. He’s touched her before while sculpting. Always clinical – a wrist cocked this way, her head inclined deeper – but this time, he wraps her in the blanket, settling it around her shoulders and resting his hands there a beat too long.
She leans into the touch. The ache starts again. He leads her through another new room to a couch, where he asks her to recline. He leaves the room as she strikes the pose, comes back bearing materials to find her sitting back to him, tits pressed against the couch back, legs streaming along the cushions. A traditional odalisque.
At first, he doesn’t move, arms full of wax and tools, and a stool slung over one shoulder. Then he positions himself at the desk across the room and immortalizes the moment, the perfect mold for bronze casting.
While Rey warms under the blanket, she discovers there’s something more revealing about modeling half-covered. A shoulder peeking out here, the curve of her spine there. A thigh but nothing more. Fully naked, she’s just another tool. Now she’s thinking of Ben, how the blanket smells just like him (pine, salt, a hint of spice). How he sucks on the tip of the metal rib when lost in thought, pink tongue darting over lush lips. How more and more frequently, he watches her without sculpting anything. Minutes just spent teasing a smile out of her, returning it with a crooked one of his own.
Maybe she’s becoming an appreciator of the human body, too. Ben’s body, to be exact.
“Turn,” he commands when their session’s winding down, when she’s certain he’s already captured too much of her pose to ask for changes, when she’s empty and needy and all too aware.
She shifts and is left clutching the blanket to her, silly since he’s seen all of her and never once shied away. But Rey’s always been a silly girl, so she covers her chest with the borrowed blanket and loses herself in the way Ben swallows, gaze running up and down her sprawled out form.
“Warmer now?” he asks, and she doesn’t miss the glint in his eyes as he sets down the pick.
Rey rises from the couch, still bundled in his blanket. “Very.” As she returns to his studio and changes back to her clothes, she doesn’t notice the prominent wet spot left on his couch.
The snow thaws as tensions between Rey and Ben heat. They progress from sipping coffee to sharing breakfast. She asks him to show her what poses he has in mind. He moves her from one to another. She arches into his touch.
They talk about their pasts. Ben’s done everything he can to bury his. Doesn’t get why Rey wants to exhume hers in search of family, to find the love she’s always craving. She’d trade every freedom she has now – every comfort – for a scrap of what he has and turns away. He doesn’t mock her for it. Just listens and then moves her onto a stool or his couch or, once, his kitchen counter in a sprawl so obscene Rey flushed as she lay there watching his hands mimic her curves.
So much and yet not enough.
During one long session, Rey can’t seem to hold the right pose. From his stool, Ben coaches her, hands ruddy with clay, but his directions don’t seem to stick like they normally do. Both of them grow rigid with frustration. Finally he stands, wipes his hands off on his apron, and stalks to where she stands. He grunts a request to touch her. She answers with a huff.
Their irritation dissipates once he begins guiding her into a position they both can agree looks good. His fingertips ghost against her forearm, her collarbone, the small of her back – pushing her out and arched. He kneels to reach her legs, pulls open her calf, strokes her thigh, points her foot when she won’t do it herself. So she makes him work a little for the pose.
Then as he reaches to turn her face toward the skylight, his arm brushes her chest, drags along her nipple. A small groan escapes her. Ben snaps out of his reverie, blushes scarlet and stands as soon as he adjusts her face. Before he returns to his stool, Rey notices his pants bulging.
She hadn’t meant to provoke him, but when she sees his jeans shifting noticeably, she can’t help but want to try again, see what else she can do to make him hard. She thinks of him at night now when she wakes, lonely and wanting. Thinks of him as she comes with two fingers (a poor substitute, not as thick as his).
They never talk about their bodies’ reactions to each other. In the studio, it’s all on display. Part of the process. Part of the art.
One day after coffee, he trades clay and wax for marble. Spends half the morning chiseling the roughest approximation of Rey’s figure from the block. Drives the wedge too deep and ends up shearing off her elbow.
A guttural snarl. He throws the wedge and chisel onto the workbench. They clatter sharply against the wood, rupturing Rey’s concentration on maintaining her pose. She watches as Ben’s nostrils heave, as he punches the table, as he wipes his newly-frayed knuckles on his jeans and bares his teeth.
“Ben.” She doesn’t know what else to say, hopes her sternness is enough to snap him out of his frenzy.
His head swings toward her; in his eyes, surprise and shame.
“Ben,” she repeats again, softer now. Understanding. “Let’s make another cup.”
He nods mutely, examining her as she steps back into her clothes and leads him from the studio to the kitchen, where they while away their afternoon with conversation that helps Rey understand how a childhood can shape a man so that he responds to failure like that.
With the generous understanding they learn to give each other, their body of work flourishes.
The next time Ben opens a show, the gallery writes an article on them, in a manner of speaking. “Who is his muse?” the press release squawks, detailing how Ben’s style has shifted over the course of his collaboration with a singular model unknown to the rest of the sculpting world. All he says in the accompanying interview is that she collaborates on the designs with him, often dictating the poses he immortalizes. My partner , he calls her, the word sending shivers down Rey’s spine when she sees it in print.
Ben invites her to the open house. She’s never come to one of his events. He’s never asked and beside, she enjoys skulking around the exhibits on a weekday afternoon, no one but the security guard and an old couple to link her to the statues. Just her and a thousand versions of herself born from Ben’s mind, made real by his hands.
She comes to view him as gentle the more they make excuses to touch each other. She wonders if he’ll put a hand on her arm at the opening. Guide her to his contemporaries in attendance. Introduce her as his inspiration. She shudders at the thought, part of her wishing to keep their mornings private. Something more than business, bordering friendship, edging toward intimacy.
What is intimacy if not a thousand shared cups of coffee, hours breathing life into art, hotly debating minutiae and spilling their holiest of guts? By all accounts except the physical, they’ve become lovers. Rey has even slept over on Ben’s couch once or twice when the weather got too bad or the time slipped away from them and there were no more trains back to Brooklyn. Flimsy excuses, they both know, but neither of them can twist words to shape their desires.
On the evening of the gallery reception, Rey washes her hair. Swipes on mascara and shaves her legs for good measure. Shimmies into a gossamer dress more whisper than fabric, something ethereal like the Greeks would wear. The stuff of sculptures.
When she shows up at the gallery after a subway ride full of stares, she worries she’s overdressed, but not for long. The room – packed with turtlenecked critics and sweatered colleagues, buttoned-up waiters balancing trays of cheese and wine – revolves around Ben. He stands in the center, his typical t-shirt replaced by a suit that highlights his broad shoulders, his thick waist: a mountain of a man hewn from stone and left unpolished. Rey ogles him three people deep through the small crowd gathered in front of him. A seemingly endless stream of well-wishers press forward, complimenting his work, until they run dry, drawn to his displays scattered throughout the room, parting so that only Rey stands before him.
He lights up when he sees her. “You came.”
Although the impulse strikes, she can’t say, For you, always. She settles for, “Of course.” Then things stall, the two of them staring at each other as if they can’t believe the other exists outside of their private world built for two. Only now does Ben scan her body and register her dress. He swallows, fumbles for some words.
“You look…”
“I know,” she says cheekily, winking for good measure. Ben Solo, artist first class, gulps. At his own show.
Then someone dressed in silver spots them, cocks her head, and bustles over with a drink in hand. She brushes right past Rey and kisses Ben on the cheek. “Tell me, is this your model?”
Rey jams a hand in front of the woman, demands to be acknowledged, waits till she shakes it. “I’m Rey.”
“You’re incredible,” the silver woman says, glancing knowingly at Ben. “I’ve known this man a long time. His art never sang like it does for you.”
Ben blushes ear to cheek.
“I’m glad to meet you, Rey,” the woman says, moving off in the direction of the cheese, leaving Ben to study the polished wood floor until Rey steps in closer, reaches for his hand.
“Come on,” she says, dragging him to the nearest statue. “Show me your work.”
At the display (a bust of Rey turned up toward the sun), she moves to drop his hand, but he doesn’t let go, using his free hand to gesture at the work while rubbing her knuckles with his other. They fit together so easily, nesting dolls fitted to rest within each other. His calluses scratch pleasantly across the back of her hand. The gallery is warm, packed with so many people, but Ben’s skin is on fire.
He walks her through a few more pieces, each one of her. Joyous, frustrated, anxious, lonely: he captures so many sides of her Rey didn’t know he could read in her poses. Thought he just watched the slopes of her limbs. Forgot he read them like a manuscript.
He drops her hand, but Rey remains acutely aware of his body a breath from hers. Whispers cloud the gallery as the two of them circulate. They fade whenever Ben turns to gauge Rey’s reaction to a display. He seems to relax when she praises a technique. Yet as he leads her to the final display, his fingers wriggle with his watch, his cuffs. He grows tense again. “Here,” he says gruffly, presenting the final selection, the centerpiece of the show.
Rey gawks at the marble couch, the languid figure lounging on it, the blanket draped finely over her as though it were molten, not stone. In the sculpture’s eyes, longing strong enough to carve granite. She runs a finger along the base. “I thought you used wax for casting.”
“I did,” he admits. “But it didn’t capture you well enough. I used it as a model. Went back and did it in marble.”
If Rey looks close enough, she can see a few unpolished features, the lack of fine details where his bronze sculptures would have them. But those minor flaws fade away compared to the emotion he’s hewn from the rock. Inexperienced working in stone though he is, Ben has brought to life the deepest part of Rey’s soul.
She takes too long scrutinizing it. Beyond, Ben’s face falls. “You don’t like it.”
Rey laughs at his absurdity – what an impossible thought, that she doesn’t like the culmination of hundreds of hours spent together, artist and muse. He flinches and Rey’s amusement quickly dies. She steps toward him, closing the gap between them that’s driven her wild all night, and whispers into the shell of his ear, “You see me.”
To this room of artists and critics, Rey is nothing. Nobody. But not to Ben. Her hand finds his back. He reaches for her waist but draws back before making contact. Pure torture to Rey. No matter that he doesn’t touch her, her stomach still tingles.
“Not here.”
The remainder of the soiree slips by easy, the promise of after dangling between them. They separate, reunite, separate again. Rey packs down appetizers. Ben inquires about his colleagues’ latest projects. Across the room, they remain attuned to the other’s movements. To the other’s desire.
Then the gallery disappears in a blur of subway stops. The world solidifies into the steps to Ben’s studio, the fumbling for his keys, the brushing of limbs too often to be called accidental. Save for Rey drawing him close in the gallery, they still haven’t truly touched. Not like they need.
In the studio, Rey could rush for Ben, pull him near and let loose all her pent-up craving. He’d welcome it. Instead she steps into the sliver of moonlight streaming through the skylight and looks at Ben, really looks at him half-obscured by shadows. A hulking silhouette, a cascade of hair clinging to his neck, the gleam of his eye or maybe his mouth. She imagines his flushed face, his red ears.
Under the moon, Rey lifts one strap of her dress, then the other, from her shoulders. She lets the dress puddle like fog at her feet. This is how she’s always done it here. But it’s never felt quite so electric. Always been for his work, never just for him.
Ben has seen her undressed more times than they could count, but he inhales – sharp and hungry – and Rey feels brand new. She stands steady, lets him pad across the wooden floor, flick on the lights and take off his blazer. Out of habit or from nervous energy, he rolls up his sleeves, falling into a familiar role. Yet he doesn’t stop there.
A few strides and he closes the gap between them. Ben reaches for her face, cradles it in both hands, rubbing callused thumbs across her cheeks. It’s the first time he’s touched her like this. She pushes herself against him, leans into his touch, soaks up everything he gives her because she always wants more than anyone gives her.
Long before kissing him, Rey called Ben an appreciator of the human body. Tonight, she discovers she was operating on limited information. Kissing Ben, she’d now describe him a worshipper, a devotee, an explorer bent on ravaging every place he can touch. He licks her everywhere – mouth, stomach, thighs, slit – sloppy and needy and oh so thorough. Tracing the muscles he’s sculpted again and again, made new under his tongue.
He’s not much of a talker. Rey babbles for the both of them as he works her into a frenzy – first one finger, then two. She begs for a third. He obliges and stretches her until she no longer feels empty, until all she can feel is a bone-deep fullness that warms her from the inside out. He moves faster, lets her hips set the pace and matches her rhythm. She comes stifling her scream against her wrist.
Ben watches it all.
After coaxing her through the aftershocks, he gently reaches for her wrist, pins it above her head. “Don’t hide from me,” he tells her, stroking a path from wrist to waist. “I will have all of you.”
They smile at the wonder in her eyes, at their desperation to be closer, at the easy way they slot together. When he slides into her, her world narrows to heat and friction. All she can think is Ben: hers, now, always. Under his touch, she becomes melted bronze in a plaster cast, heating and cresting and cooling into something new shaped by his arms.
Later they make coffee, make love, talk about love and what all of this means for them. Later Rey wakes up to Ben working in beeswax, sculpting her sleeping, contentment where there once was longing. Later the sculpture goes on to win him fellowships, endowments, his first display at the MoMA. For now they twine, breath and bodies and hearts: a moment too private to immortalize in marble.