Everything must be just so when he begins to paint. It is not necessary that they remain in the exact order throughout - but when he begins, they must be arranged in exactitude. He does not speak as he arranges them; he is silent as the grave, his thoughts serene and as orderly as any Buddhist monk contemplating the satori found in the perfect rock garden. Its order will not last. But it does not lose the zen of the moment.
     Hansl is dressed in grey tonight; grey flannel shirt, which has been washed so many times that the buttons are now crooked, the hems and lapels crumpled and floppy, with darker grey trousers which look as if they could once have belonged to a pajama set. Though with today's fashions, who knows? On his feet, he wears a pair of deck shoes which once were navy but time and use has seen them fade. He stands in front of the easel, looking at it blankly. It is blank. He has yet to select paints. The choice will depend upon today's subject. Dry, the tip of his brush taps to the canvas and then lowers, and he closes his eyes.
     Satori.
     The moment of perfect peace and enlightenment. It always fades, it may never remain. But it is not the less to be gratefully received, for its transitory nature...

     There are no models already prepared for you. There was nothing awaiting you but the blankness of canvas and the promise of a multitude of media. Will you paint your surroundings? Some bit of fevered dream? When the door opens, its knob and latch sound with destiny. There is only one who enters.
     William enters slowly, his feet bare. The white of his shirt and the pants make him seem all the darker, the bronzed olive a testament to his final days in a desert. The fabric of the shirt and trousers are brushed cotton. It crumples and gives beneath the demands of his form and seems nothing more than gauze. "Bonjour," he murmurs. Though it is evening (just), it is morning to him, no?
     Behind him comes a servant, wheeling in a cart of coffee -- two cups -- with the requisite accouterments of sugar and cream and croissants. The servant wheels the service into the center of the room and leaves.
     Shall you paint a still life of French coffee? You would not be the first.
     "Help yourself," William offers with a motion of his hand. "You cannot live by blood and paint alone, no?" His mouth makes the most of a slight grin. It can make the most trivial of expressions exquisite.
     He pours himself a cup with plenty of cream and several cubes (at least five) of sugar, and he takes his drink to the window. Daylight is gone. Occasionally it is mourned. Setting the cup on the window's sill, William removes his shirt, tossing it aside and turning to you.
     "Where do you want me?"

     You enter, and there is a murmur of greeting, absent for the moment before he looks up at you. His gaze is almost shockingly direct, for him, caught in the moment of his own thoughts as he is; it takes a few nanoseconds for the reality of who you are, where he is to catch up. For that moment, his expression was bare of its hunch (if a face can be said to hunch its shoulders, his often does) - there is nothing of painful self-awareness, of subdued vitality.
     But the moment passes, and with a flicker of eyelids, he looks down, his murmur made as he looks past you to the cart. "Merci." He does not help himself, but instead moves towards the paints. You will undoubtedly tell him what he is to paint tonight, and he will then choose what he will paint with, and in. "I will ... have some in a minute."
     He is pondering oils and acrylics when you speak behind him, and Hansl glances over his shoulder - and freezes. There is the nascent widening of his eyes, the signal transmitted from pupils to brain. You can almost track its progress, can't you? His tongue seems to be sticking to the roof of his mouth. He is taking off his shirt. What does this mean? But he knows what it means, of course. What he does not know is what to do next - how to react. He is speechless, tongue-tied, twisting with a blush to stare at the paints again, reaching for them haphazardly. It may end up being a mixed-media portrait. "...Anywhere. I - will need to warm up."

     One night, I will see your eyes open in wonder. Those words of his, recently spoken, are easily recalled in the widening of your eyes. William sips at his coffee, nodding. "Ainsi je... Je suis lent pour me reveiller aujourd'hui." For now, as you search the treasure trove of his own supplies for the colors you will use, William remains by the window. He cranks it open to let the summer breeze wander by.
     The village can be heard by sensitive ears -- otherwise, there is only the rustling and the occasional crying of the peacocks that wander the gardens and orchards.
     He does not tell you that he means to make your work a gift. It is simply another exercise. William looks from the castle gardens to you as you settle into your selection. He watches you as you blush. The air is heated by it. He can smell it, even taste it. William lifts the cup to his mouth again, sipping at the blood of one bean as he senses the blood of another.
     His physique is cut and shaped by the life he has led, a life of wars, of armor. His shoulders are broad, his arms and chest very defined. How his musculature was formed by wearing heavy chain and the first plate armor of the day. Twisting on horseback with sword and lance trimmed his sides, and shaped the strong torso that tapers into the cotton trousers. When he was struck, when he was killed and then saved by the embrace, he was at the prime of his life, an example and paragon of Man.
     Finishing his coffee, William strides back to the service in the center of the room, his steps languid with lingering dreams.

     When he died, he was as he feels himself to be now - a youth, scarce more than a boy. He should not have been done with life, but that life was done with him. In your presence, he feels his lack of age, his callowness. What he perceives as a lack indeed, a shallowness, an uncouth edge which he cannot overcome. The blush stays, remains, does not fade though he wills it to, strives to, and fails. It is the master of him, and not the other way around.
     Some would insist you be painted in oils, that nothing else would be called for. He turns and looks at you, now, his hands on his hips, eyes half-closed as if he is attempting to look past you; it is only for a moment, and he turns back to the materials at hand. And he reaches, not for oils but for the acrylics again... and for watercolors. Of all things! He makes his selections with increasing speed, taking them up and moving abruptly to his easel, setting up everything. It is as if he has forgotten that you are there.
     But he has not. Hansl speaks, as sudden as his movements. "Would you mind sitting? Comfortably, be comfortable, ja. There." He points, he moves around from the easel again, towards you, stopping, pointing, gesturing with his hands in short, choppy motions. "Knees bent, one drawn a little up towards you. Leaning back."

     Were this not serious business -- a serious lesson, indeed -- he would smirk to be ordered around so. It is a thing few on this earth have enjoyed: commanding William Plantagenet. He does as you ask, quietly. As he steps on the rug, his fingers tug at the ties of those trousers, and the white fabric falls to the floor.
     Like the top half of his figure, the foundation of his physical being was forged by life in the saddle and on the field. The muscles of his torso roll in waves to converge at his groin. The thighs and legs are those of a knight, a horseman and lance-man and swordfighter. What lies between them is a bit of family history. The legends of Angevin dukes were not contrived. Some myths do have a basis in fact.
     The naked crusader takes a seat on the rugs in the center of the room. His comfort in his own nakedness is as startling as the nudity itself. He needs no fashion to cover his skin; his skin, his flesh are the vestments most natural to him. William leans back, one leg bent, his foot on the floor, and the other lying relaxed, knee slightly bent. His weight is borne up by his hands, his palms to the carpet.
     Though he sits in a castle chamber, he could be relaxing and sunning himself by the banks of the Vienne some eight-hundred and so-on years ago. He could be relaxing by the large, Roman-styled bath he built in the guts of this very tower. He could be in his own bed, deciding whether to get up or to remain in the canopied privacy with his lover. All these moments are conveyed in the same instant, in the same confidence, with the same ease.
     William looks to you, his expression casual, nonchalant in the face of his own intimacy. That, too, for him is natural.

     He does not think of it in terms of orders and commands. There is Art waiting, his muse and his mistress, the only feminine entity he would acknowledge. And at that, it is perhaps not so feminine as all that. You take your position, and he bends over you; a moment of hesitation before it is overcome, and his hands move to rearrange you, adjusting your position.
     His hands move quickly, they do. You are comfortable. He would be sweating if he still had the glands for it. You can see it in the roll of his eyes, the sudden leap of tension in his shoulders and into his neck. He is trying not to look, though his face has gone the colour of the sun in the evening, the back of his neck as red as bull's blood. He hurries back from you, suddenly stiff from the electric shock he's just received.
     Gott! What tortures do you send to me? How will I paint? Devils are after me, churning my gut. It is as well that I have not eaten...
     Hansl returns to his easel, to the canvas upon it. His eyes stare at it, not at you as he scrabbles and scrambles for his supplies, arranging the paints and the brushes. He inhales deeply, sharply, his spine as straight as if on parade as slowly, reluctantly, he looks to you again.

     He can remain in the same position for hours. It is the trick of the soldier, non? But though his body is still, his energy is as dynamic as ever. It nearly casts its own light. The air reacts to him the same way you do; it would scramble to get out of his way if it could, yet longs to wrap around him. It is as helpless as all those, now including you, who have been in his presence.
     When you look to him again, you meet his gaze. His pose has not wavered. His expression is the same -- that easy command, that casual assurance that the universe is his. It is the face of a Norman. The face of the son of Henry and Eleanor. And his indigo eyes reveal his passion, reveal his intellect, reveal his strength. His sensuality? Though he is naked and nothing is hidden to you, his sensuality is revealed in his mouth, first.
     He breathes naturally. In the quiet of this chamber, his heartbeat is audible. Is it magic or is he real? There is nothing pantomime about his reactions; they are the reactions of a living man.
     William looks at you as though you were the one who were sitting on the bank of the Vienne with him, the one bathing beside him, the one who shares his bed. His eyes lift and lower, looking at you as you return his gaze, as you begin to work.

     There has been perhaps one man in all the men who have been drawn to you who has escaped from enslavement to longing. By his eyes, you can track his fall. You can see the tragedy in them, the self-awareness, and the torture it gives him. It is the fall of man in the garden of Eden; with the consumption of the fruit of the tree, he watches a paradise he longs for but cannot reach.
     Abruptly, he looks away, rubbing the back of his fist over his mouth almost angrily, shoulders jutting up as he hunches down towards his supplies. That look is not meant for you, Hansl. Do not be a fool. Keep your heart in your chest and your prick in your pants. His hand almost does not shake as he picks up the brush, and he tries to calm himself. Tries.
     All things must be endured, Hansl. You know this. What ever trial is brought to you, you must face it, or die trying. That is your fate in this life; as it has been since your birth. Do not cry over it. Tears solve nothing. It did not stop pain at any time, it did not bring the dead to life, and it will not stop this, the least of your trials. Why are you so weak? Why do you long for what is not yours? In both the abstract and the actual, it is not yours to have, Hansl. I know, I know.
     The brush flicks in an angry miniscule wave to chase away the buzzing clouds of demon doubt. Hansl looks to the canvas, then to you. But not to your face. Not to your eyes. He begins to lay down a backdrop in watercolors, the stretching expanse of white sands and shallow rocks. The sun drenches them, as they have not touched your skin for longer than he would even imagine. And over this, he begins to lay down your form.

     He sees you struggle. He knows why. It is who he is. It is what he represents. But without longing, where is art? And so, the Serpent sits as the Serpent always has, relaxed, revealed, resplendent. His is the face, the body of what is desired, in as much for the energy he projects as for the sight and smell of him. That, his mother's gift and curse to him.
     There have been times upon this earth where such power was used to punish. Knowing itself, knowing its effects, it would wrap around the ankles and drag men and women down. Oh, women by the scores, too many to enumerate. Men... far fewer... but few though they have been, fewer still have escaped. His reputation is well known, well earned.
     But times have changed. While the power is still extant, the punishment is gone. Left behind is simply the self-realization of his energy, his appearance, his form and function. He and it simply are. There is no need, certainly not with you, to wrap around your ankles like the serpents around Laocoon.
     He does not wish to ruin you...
     Push you? Yes, to and past your limits. Challenge you? Yes, to make you see, finally see, yourself. To allow yourself to feel, to lust, to love, even to lose. Art is never in the winning. It is in the seeking, yearning, and in defeat.
     William's gaze is steady, fixing on you as you work to calm yourself, your figure tense. Push through it, Hansl. There are rewards for your sacrifice in the end. The timbre of that look does not change. The warmth, the intimacy is still expressed, but there is a study that is also taking place. To see how affected you are. To see if you can paint despite it.
     Such a figure. Though he is relaxed, leaning his weight upon the heels of his palms, he cannot help but look war-ready. Tall and broad, with musculature that puts him at two-hundred-and-fifty pounds, he is every bit the Jupiter he is sometimes called. Only Olympus could give birth to a face and a body such as this.
     He allows you to wonder, with that look. Could it be? And what would it be like if it were true? You are a spectator... a voyeur upon this moment.
     "I have never allowed myself to be captured in this way," William murmurs, his voice is deep, the pronunciation of the modern French is slow -- and flecked with the sparks and resonance of his native tongue, the more poetic Langue d'Oc.

     It takes him several long minutes. It ebbs and flows, tides and currents of it, the despair mingling with determination and lapsing back into despair before he manages to win his struggle. Not for you, this, Hansl. Put such thoughts away. Put them into the painting if you must, but there is no point in focusing on the feeling when there is art to be done. He inhales, he exhales, and his shoulders straighten. He turns again to the canvas, begins to make his presence known upon it again.
     Your outlines begin to take form, sketched liberally. Your backdrop is the watercolor, but you are the acrylic, bright colours subdued to human tones. And he does not alter what he finds.
     "I do not know that I catch you at all. You do not seem to me someone who can be caught and caged, be they bars of paint or bars of iron."
     His pronunciation is letter-perfect, the voice of someone for whom was hired the best tutors in all of the Alsatian regions. It is not Parisian French; he can do that too, but it does not come naturally. Instead, it is almost Swiss French, the French of Northern France, the rivers and the mountains and the valleys lilting on his tongue. It is a clean sound, and second nature to him by now. Address him in French when he works, and it is French which he replies in. He is not thinking of his responses, now. He is working.

     Your northern dialact, and his central-southern. Between the two of you, you straddle France from alps to vineyards. "Je suis fait de terre pleine. Je peux etre attrape. M'attraper est une chose. Me tenir est un autre." And that has been the hardest lesson of all for all to learn. Even the great Ian Dunross, whose empire stretches far and wide, has burned his hands on the one he has nicknamed Rigel. For William burns the fingers, burns the tongues, and sears the mind in novas that would rival Rigel's own.
     Shoulder muscles flex, subtly stretching as he holds the pose. He does not move, does not crane his neck in an attempt to spy upon your work. He gives his body to it, his trust to it. His skin drinks what warmth there is in the air, the coolness of evening beginning to slip in past the glass of the windows. His dark hair, a natural blackness with its deep shades of conspiring browns, does not drift downward to spare you or anyone from the fullness of his attention. It is there. On you. Watching you work.
     You move with a deliberateness, the effects of your struggle in part, but also of your determination. It is the fight in you, the unwillingness to surrender to your own doubt or to the work that attracts him to your work, to your process, that piqued his interest. It is why you are here with him now.
     That mouth of his begins an upward curl -- breaking his pose only for a moment. "It is a shame I am keeping this painting for myself. Do you know how much you could get for this in immortal markets?" William chuckles quietly, not believing what he says himself, but it is a funny thought. "Perhaps I will have to show it one day, open it up for bid to raise some extra money for your tutelage."
     The indigo of his eyes hold a fiery resonance, both dark and bright. They burn, constantly, but in humor the color all but erupts -- a flame fanned by the breath of his smile. That mouth. The barest smile can be devastating.

     "Je ne feins pas pour pouvoir vous tenir, mon seigneur. Vous n'etes pas pour ma sorte." Again he answers without thinking, without guarding his tongue the way he ordinarily might. It is not a truth serum, it is not perfect in its revelations - but he is not thinking of his words, his mouth. His posture relaxes, bit by bit, so that you are regarded by blue eyes that see you and reinvent you. He will carry some tension, but he is becoming aware of you, learning you in a different way, for the moment.
     It does not stop there being some discomfort, however, of purely a physical sort; the sort which requires a discreet readjustment.
     Paint spreads, swirls as you recline there. On the canvas, you are taking an almost palpable presence. It is a struggle; he struggles but perseveres, and in the end, finds some success. His eyebrows beetle together and with an impatient eclamation paws at his shirt, pushing the sleeves up. They keep falling down, and in a fit of exasperation, the shirt is pulled off and hurled to the side. It is not calculated, it is not studied. He is paying no attention to how you react to it, to if you react. For himself, he continues to paint.
     On the canvas a similar struggle is occurring. Your hand grasps the sand, holding you to the earth. Your smile slants, smooth and knowing, but with the knowledge of a challenge that has already been won. Your hips are lingered over, as if the brush could caress them, as if hands could grasp them and pull. Though you are relaxed, there is a readiness on the canvas. At any moment, you will get up.
     At any moment, you will move forward, and you will take what you want.
     The challenge has already been won in your eyes, in your form caught in paint. You know it. Hansl knows it. Anyone looking at the painting will know it. Why struggle? What would be the point? They cannot win. The battle was fought, and lost, if not on the rock-strewn plateau of the painting, the desert beach with sunlight cleaving to your skin as it could not in reality, then in the heart, in the mind of the viewer. But if there were any lingering doubt, if there was entertained any thought of defiance...
     You still wait in readiness, relaxed, muscles defined and hard with war as pleasure...

     An eyebrow lifts as the shirt goes sailing with a matador flourish. You there with your batons, your brushes. That makes me the black bull. His mouth spreads, a luxurious swath. That is very fitting. Ian would agree.
     Silently, there is something that passes between sire and progeny, between husband and spouse. Though they are separated by towers, by thousands of square feet and tons of limestone, the intimacy between he and his spouse, his mate is intense. That intensity has but one focus as he relaxes naked on the rugs: you.
     A chuckle sounds in his throat, held resonant in his chest, the embers of his humor and his desire. William is transformed, even as he sits victorious upon the rugs, upon the imaginary sands of a conquered oasis. His physical power is one thing. His sexual power is ...something else.
     It unfurls there as he sits. It comes from his eyes, dark but sparkling in blue-violet color. It can be felt in the tug of his smile and the uplifting of an eyebrow in question. In the tightening of muscles holding in place, holding in pose. But more than this, it is known in the sudden focus. That focus that feels like the universe turning its head...
     "Your kind?" he says, his voice leonine in his amused curiosity, rich in tone. "And what kind is this, Hansl?"
     The more one struggles, the more captured they become. Is it not true when in the grasp of a constrictor? In the clench of a crocodile's jaw? In the paws of a lion? The struggle is pleasure, and pleasure is war. He loves like he fights, and he marks his lovers with the bruises and the scars of his affection and attention.

     The words alone do not hit him so hard. It is the words in combination with that focus, that sensation of being watched, of - almost being undressed. He is trembling, though he tries to restrain himself. The brush is quivering in his hand badly enough that he has to put it down - which he does hurriedly, turning his attention to the coffee service. It is time for coffee. It is almost spilling, the way he drinks it.
     It is the energy that is passing. He does not know how to answer it or even how to address it. Withstanding it is impossible, and he takes refuge behind his canvas, setting the coffee down where art will come to no harm from it. "I ... that is..." The words cut off, and the air is again warmed by his blush. Who knew that a vampire could blush so much?
     Hansl swallows hard, staring at the painting - which mimics en peu what you offer en grande. "I am German, mein herr. We both know what Germans are, ja?" That he is hiding is obvious, palpable, apparent. But at least he is hiding behind a joke - or is it a joke? It both is and it is not, a caduceus of humour and misery, self-effacing and self-scarring. He picks up his brush again slowly, beginning to drench sunlight with mirrored shadows.

     You removed your own shirt. There is not much left to undress...
     William watches as you tremble and blush. It does nothing to discourage him. He watches you as you pour yourself a cup of coffee, as you take refuge behind the canvas. He does not move as you take a momentary break -- he is the model model, no? He keeps his pose as if it were nothing to sit in the same position for hours.
     But Somewhere... somewhere deep in the tiny remnants of his soul...William finds mercy. It may be fleeting, but he finds it. He inclines his head, his gaze sweeping upwards to the arched buttresses and ceiling. A master should not pick upon a student thus. He closes his eyes for a moment of meditation.
     The smile is lazy. Lingering at the corners of his mouth, it finally spreads across the rest of his lips. Did you just make a ... joke? "I will admit, most of the Germans I have met have been deceased." A joke of his own by the slow drawl of his words. Yes, deceased most likely after meeting him. "But... that is not Now. I do not discriminate, Hansl."
     Ian Dunross could second that. William will flirt with anything.
     He stretches his arms, his fingers with a subtle motion that does not disrupt the overall pose, and he flexes his feet before becoming still once more. "Though I did go on crusade with thousands of them," he smirks at the joke. "... My brother and I, Phillippe and Barbarossa." Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor. He is dating himself.
     William exhales a quiet breath through the end of his stretching and he settles, relaxing on the carpet once more. The energy has not abated. The air still throbs with it, but it is given to the room in general rather than upon your solo shoulders. "You do have permission to instruct your model to be silent," he chuckles, the sound captured in his throat and in his chest.

     "I am deceased myself. I have simply forgotten to lie down and stop moving."
     He is still blushing, a traffic light in the 'do not cross' position. Hansl is devoting himself now to a study of your eyes, dangerous territory though that might be. He is a fool; he knows himself to be a fool. Slowly, he moves out from behind the canvas, blue eyes locked on your face, on your eyes as he approaches.
     There is nothing of the rabbit with the snake. But he is aware of you - he is not all the way dead. His brush is still gripped tightly in his hand, though it does not snap. He moves in, he drops to one knee, still looking in your eyes, scrutinizing their colour, their shape.
     "Telling you to shut up would be rude, mein herr," Hansl murmurs, still on one knee. Perhaps if he focuses on his own reflection, it will affect him less. "One may learn much in silence, but communication is the doorway to education, ja?" One hand braces on the ground, ready to push himself up and away, back to his refuge in Art. But he is trembling again, slightly, as he makes that effort. If he were mortal, he would be coated in perspiration. "Does it feel different, to be old?"

     Willingly, you step and kneel into the gravitational tug of Rigel himself. And the force of that energy, his prowess, his sexuality return to you. The air feels him, and in your proximity you feel him too. He does not need to even touch you, for the look is palpable enough.
     His eyes are dark blue-violet, as indigo as his lineage. They are comprised not of a solid swath of colors, but of a universe comprised in blues and violets. Bursts of roman candles, the formation of the nebulae that make up his iris, create a perfect blending of the two shades into one intense color.
     His eyes reside between dark lashes, longer than they have any right to be. Their shape, the symmetry of their position. The symmetry of all of his features. In your closeness, you see that beauty is not due to one part but of the balance they all strike together, like a perfect harmonic in the key of Angevin.
     There is no sound but the sound of the strongly beating heart. This is no ghost of a pulse resurrected for disguise, but a living beat. A war drum rhythm, slow and steady. Relentless. A hand lifts from the carpet -- lifts from the imaginary sand -- and captures your face before you can draw away. That hand has held, loved, killed, pleasured many. The echoes of swords can still be felt in the ghosts of calluses, long since softened by the passing of time. He tilts your face, studying you, feeling the trembling as it starts at your core and follows in waves to the tips of your fingers and the ends of each hair.
     "Silence is a great teacher," William murmurs. "I was once a poor student." His thumb moves against your lip. "You do not need silence," comes the languid baritone of his voice after a short pause. "...I believe you have had too much of that." He does not ask you. He knew your sire. He knows of your loneliness. "Silence has its limits. I ... am not the silent type." His mouth smoothes out a smile and violet fire plays against the deep blue.
     "Different," William mulls upon that as an eyebrow quirks upward. "To be ancient as I am? It is different from my youth. Imagine that you know yourself. How well you think you know yourself, you find that you know nothing. And with each year, you know more... and less. Multiply that by a thousand, and you will know what it is like to be nearing nine-hundred."
     Did you feel his hand move? His fingers slide against your scalp, slipping through golden hair as he holds you where you kneel. Before synapses can fire warning and delight, your mouth is conquered by a kiss.

     How is one to capture those eyes, that look? He does not know if his skill is up to it; if it will ever be up to it. He looks at you, and he looks too long. It is too late. (It was too late before he ever entered the room, of course. But how was he too know that?)
     Your hand lands against his skin, and his eyes go wide and shocked. You are touching him. Though he does not move, you can sense the flight urge taking hold of him, the sheer panic. What should he do? Where would he go? He trembles, barely able to listen to what you say. Blood rushes in his ears at that touch.
     He licks his lips, swallows roughly. The brush, still held, now falls to the floor to roll quietly away, the sound loud but ignored in favour of your voice. He is caught and pinned, as any butterfly might be.
     Hansl, Hansl, where are you going? There are bears in the woods, and wolves. Things which prowl in the night, Hansl, and you - you are small, and alone.
     You see entirely too much, and you see the awareness of it in his eyes, echoing as Hansl takes a shuddering breath. He is on fire. Did someone open a window for the sunlight to hit him? He summons all of his will, all of his nerve, his lips part to speak. "I-"
     It is cut off, like a lemming leaping off a cliff. Though he sensed, intuited its coming, he was caught unawares, and he groans, his mouth giving way to yours with a low exclamation. Thoughts are turned to white noise; words, to silence. He is unable to resist what he most wants.
     And after all, it is the role of the model to seduce the artist, is it not? Even here, he cannot deny, it is Art.

     I will dash you to pieces. There is a part of you that needs the release that can only come with the annihilation of your past. You benefit from the supernova of his mouth. You need the hot, white light of it to burn away the memories of the blood stained marble floor and a head resting some feet away from its shoulders and the effects of isolation. There is no isolation now.
     You feel the fibers of the carpet against your back, pricking at your skin made more sensitive by the eruption of his mouth spreading yours and by the pressing down of his immense weight.
     Vipers squeeze against the tortured flesh of your lips, tugging but not piercing as the kiss is broken. Your mouth released, you can see those eyes again as they fix on you. His weight lifts, the heel of his hands bearing him up. He has become Desire. It fills his flesh, deepens his complexion, and chokes the room of its oxygen.
     You want it, but you are not prepared for it. William's hand moves across the front of your trousers. You are not prepared to face him after he seduces you. You do not yet feel that this is your place, that you are worthy of his instruction. Perhaps you shall never feel thus, but neither should this happen in the first month.
     He resists temptation, and he lets you see him resist it. His hand squeezes, then lifts to your face again. "I think you have enough of me to go on," comes the languid baritone, the French slow, the vowels and consonants full of the honey and fire of Langue d'Oc. "Finish the painting. When you are done, we will work again. Next time... you will sit for me..."
     And perhaps you are imagining, now, just what you might be sitting on...
     The white shirt, the white cotton trousers are retrieved, and he puts them on. The white trousers do nothing to conceal what you have seen, what you have felt. What you shall continue painting.

     It is just as well that he does not need to breathe, for he has forgotten how. For a moment, there is no breath drawn, none aspired; he sighs, accepting your weight as he did once before. This time is not like that time. As far yet as he must go, he has come so very, very far already. His longing colors his skin, makes a thawed ocean of glacier-frozen eyes. His emotion, his desire emanates from him, the wind rushing over the mountains and down into the valleys to meet the plains. If only he could have what his heart calls for...
     But he cannot. That is there, in him, as you see. He is not prepared, not ready for it. His belief in you is absolute, but his belief in himself is minimal. It is what he was trained to believe.
     Heil Hitler. Heil the Fatherland. All is given to one's nation, one's leader; there is nothing left for the self. When that passed, he was taken by another, and his eyes fixed to a new altar, the altar of God. The self is unimportant, unworthy. Only God is deserving of worship, of respect. One idol or another, what does it matter, when the self is valueless, worthless?
     But he does not know this; Hansl is unaware. Aware only of you, of this terrible desire, the terrible loneliness that accompanies it. You withdraw where he lies on his back like a turtle, staring up at you. Paint? What? What language is this that you speak?
     It takes time; time and effort before he can roll himself over, to his knees, bewilderment vivid in every line of his body. But art - he understand art. As he does not understand you. He returns slowly, shakily to the easel, and though he gives you one glimmering glance, his eyes then land back on the canvas, wordless. What could he say?
     He paints, instead.

     Without speaking, William approaches you. His steps are silent, for one so large. He does not look at the painting. He only looks at you. You do not understand. But...
     "You will understand," he assures quietly. There is compassion there, and it is echoed in his eyes. Do you capture that as well? You will understand what I am doing, and why I am doing it. That night will come.
     His hand rests upon your shoulder for a moment before William draws you toward him, your golden hair brushing the olive bronzed skin of his torso. He is warm, as warm as any living thing. His hand pats your shoulder and then his presence recedes as he steps away. "You are giving yourself to my trust and care. I want you to ...show yourself the same courtesy. Eat, allow yourself to feel," William says. "The rest... the rest will follow in time. When you are ready, ne c'est pas?"
     He waits a moment for you to acknowledge what he says. He doubts you are ready to accept it, but acknowledgment would be a good beginning.

     You say that he will understand, but he does not. It shows in his posture - in his eyes, though his gaze stays on the canvas as you speak to him. He has not picked up brush or paint yet; his hands are empty at his sides. Empty. I am empty of anything to give. If I had anything worth giving, it would be different - but though others think me worthy of - something, I do not know what, I know it to be untrue. I wish that I were. I wish that I could give something. But one cannot turn lead into gold, not even through the philosopher's stone of vampiric blood.
     That is his belief. It shimmers on his skin, it lives in his eyes, in the knots in the muscles of his neck. He looks to you as you draw him closer, and away. What can he say to it? When he is shivering at your every touch, nerves as raw as if they have been whipped.
     "I will do my best not to fail you." Hansl whispers the words, an echo, a shadow of his usual earnestness there. The words are meant - even without belief in himself, he will try to honour your request, your whim as if it were a command, or die trying.

     You are earnest. Earnest in your pain. Earnest in your emptiness. Earnest in your confusion. He recognizes it. He hears it, sees it, smells it. But the conqueror who sat in the sand of his oasis with that challenge in his look and in his smile is there again.
     William is not willing to surrender. And never easily.
     As he steps out of the door and into the hallway passage, Marco appears, his barefeet whispering on the stone. He wears the same style of white cotton shirt and white trousers worn by his departing master. He closes the door and smiles to you as the fabric falls to the floor.
     "Ho pensato che potrte gradire una certa azienda," Marco says warmly, his brown eyes echoing that warmth. "Mi ricordo di quando ero primo in Chinon ed ottenere ha usato al principe," he murmurs.
     "Ah... do you?" he starts in English. "Want... me? To make a picture." His hand gestures to the easel and canvas. And then he grins. "Or not to make a picture..."

     He believes in illusions so wholeheartedly; could anyone overcome the illusions with truth? But he does not know that he is lost - or where he is lost. He slowly, looks to the painting, hands still empty, expression blank in its confusion as you leave.
     Where do I find myself? I do not know. I do not know myself anymore. Hansl - are you Hansl, still, Hansl? If you are not, then who are you? Who am I becoming, in this maze of mirrors? I do not know. I do not know...
     He looks up at the sound of the door closing - just in time to see trousers falling to the floor. It is sensory overload. How is he to resist this? Again, his eyes widen; again, he stares. Again, he blushes, looking to the floor and mumbling, first in German, then, stiltedly, in English, a garbled mix of the two that is a gabble, ending shortly, before he swallows thickly and tries again. He does not dare to look up.
     "Mi - abbia un progetto sul supporto, il no. Mi - non conosco che cosa desidero ora."
     It is painfully honest. If he were holding anything now, it would have dropped again by this point. Hansl wears his confusion like the finest of clothes - askew to imply the nakedness beneath.

Posted by rowan at June 13, 2007 02:51 PM