The Artist’s Abode

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“That would- Uhh, I mean, I would- Err, if you…” He **** himself to stop and take a breath. To calm down. She had sounded approving beneath the jest. And she had been flirty even before he improved his CHA. And Pheromone Aura was on full blast. And a Schrödinger’s Present adjusted to something suitable to the receiver. He could reasonably assume that he had this in the bag. Nerves steeled, he responded, “Yes, I would like that very much.”

June had waited patiently for him to get his head back in something resembling order, then giggled. “Come with me then, we’ll be more comfortable around back.”

She turned to walk back into her house and it took John a moment to remember that he needed to move his legs to follow. While the sundress she was wearing was much looser, and more covering, than her usual work outfits, the brunette artist was still plenty curvy enough, and her gait swaying enough, that an ephemeral outline of her hip showed with every step. The knowledge of how her bountiful figure looked in a tighter fit vividly etched into his memory only made it so much harder to look anywhere else.

Still, he did **** himself to do so every few steps. While everything was going well, he was aware that going overboard on the horny was a common way to self-sabotage an otherwise done deal. And he was interested in getting to know June better in more senses than just the lewd one.

The interior of her home followed a similar style to the exterior. Which was to say that it was all clean lines and light colors, with a lot of glass, tile and steel. Overall, it projected a feeling of modern stylishness while being sufficiently understated to play clear second fiddle to the artworks. And there were a lot of those.

Much like his grandparents had chosen to make their home decor a celebration of their children and grandchildren, and the important events in their lives, June’s was a celebration of art. Paintings and drawings on the walls, small sculptures on shelves and larger ones directly on the floor.

They were all aesthetical pieces. As far as he could tell, none of them were of the particular post-modern kind that seemed to put a bold statement or pretentious mystique over being pleasing to look at. Beyond that, there was a definite theme to most of the pieces, specifically physical intimacy.

It wasn’t all of them that fit the theme, and it wasn’t all erotic intimacy. A small sculpture of a pair of clasped hands with their fingers intertwined stood out in the non-erotic category. As did a painting of two hugging women, wherein both body language and color composition made it clear that one was comforting the other amid deep sadness.

The erotic ones had a strong feel of artistic tastefulness, and none of them went so far as to depict actual sexual contact. Instead, partial and full nudes abounded, of either individuals, pairs, or small groups. As did depictions of embraces, kisses, and ongoing massages. In most cases, the pieces also invoked a feeling that what they depicted was a sight meant only for the eyes of a few select souls. Thus, they projected the sense of intimacy to also encompass the viewer.

“You have a very beautiful home. These pieces are all gorgeous.” He might have more desire to look at June herself rather than her decor at the moment, but he couldn’t just not voice his appreciation of the latter either.

She turned enough to flash him a radiant smile. “Thank you. Most of it is my own work, either ones I made for myself, ones I couldn’t bear selling when it came to it, or ones where the sale fell through.”

“Sell them?!?”

“Yes. You didn’t think Ashcroft paid well enough for something like this, did you?” She gestured at the house in general with a melodious giggle.

“I guess not…” He hadn’t really considered how much Ashcroft paid its staff, but she did make a good point. While the school was well funded, it probably wasn’t that well funded. Especially considering that as far as he knew, June only taught elective art classes.

“Teaching is really more of a passion project, and a way to pay forward everything my own art teachers did for me.”

“Well, I sure am glad you picked that hobby, because you’re by far the best teacher I’ve ever had.”

“I’m happy to hear that. Still, my profession is artist and I want my home to reflect that. Though most of my favorite pieces around the house aren’t my own work. I got some of them from art trades with colleagues, and others simply because I like the artist’s work.” She passed through a door and made a gesture towards something in the room that John couldn’t see yet. “Like this one.”

John followed her, moving from a hallway to a room that was furnished as a living room in one half, while the other half held three easels with unfinished paintings on them. None of that was why John did a double take and his face started heating up. The artwork she was directing his attention towards, and had described as one of her favorites from an artist whose work she liked, was a poster sized printout of a drawing he had posted on the internet himself.

It was the one that he considered his best piece to date, and in an atypical turn of events for his work, a largely non-lewd one. It was a drawing of an angelic woman with a motherly presence posed as though offering the onlooker a hug. The idea had come from stumbling over the fact that the archangel Gabriel was considered a patron of motherhood in Catholic mysticism. In a demonstration that he had spent all his creativity at the time on drawing, he had named the finished work Gabriella.

The drawing’s presence here was a source of self consciousness for John on two accounts. The first, most obvious, one was that it did not stack up to the other art on display. Yes, it was his best piece. Yes, by the standards he usually measured himself with, which was people who posted their stuff on the internet, he was above average. In the company where this drawing was kept, however, he was at best a talented amateur among professionals. If putting it here had been his own decision, he would have felt like an unmitigated fraud.

The second reason was, in a sense, more personal. While making the drawing, he had flip flopped between wanting to draw a pure paragon of maternal virtue and wanting to also make of the design an angelic MILF he might use in a future comic. He had never actually made a decision, and it was a minor miracle that this hadn’t severely detracted from the end result. All of that had led to the proportions of the finished drawing being something of a mix between those of his mother and those of June.

Now, it was one thing to make a drawing that was partially based on a woman without that woman’s knowledge. It was another, and far more embarrassing, thing when that woman then hung the drawing prominently in her living room.

“I don’t- why is…” He faltered somewhere between embarrassment and not really knowing how much of that he actually wanted to articulate or how.

“Because it belongs there.” June was not a woman who was given to project an air of authority, and she was still smiling. He still got the feeling that the seriousness that replaced the teasing aspect to her demeanor would brook no argument. “Your technique has room to grow, sure, there really would be no point in you attending lessons otherwise. But having room to improve technique is true for every artist ever, even the greatest masters in history. Your work has soul, John, more than a great many professional artists’ does, and that is priceless.”

He really didn’t know how to respond to that. That was tremendous praise, enough so to push his lustful intentions out of his mind, and he just stood there in a dumbstruck mix of gratitude and feeling that he didn’t really deserve it. After a moment, June returned to a playful tone. “When I said that I wanted to help nurture and develop your talent, I did mean it literally too.”

That did jog his brain back into something resembling activity again, and put the lewd desires back into conscious awareness. “I, uh, hope my efforts will satisfy. In both senses.”

“I believe in you.” She slipped from a teasing tone to very blatant bedroom eyes for a moment. “And anything you need to learn, I’ll be happy to teach you~”

Before John managed a response, she was back to the playful tone. “Starting with body painting. Normally, before the actual painting, you’d apply a cream or spray to protect the skin, make the work last longer, or both. In this case, you’ve sprung for top shelf paint where protecting the skin isn’t a concern. And while I would love to wear your work to school as our little secret, I think it’s best to save that for when you have a bit more experience with the medium. So for now, we will just need some basic tools.”

The thought of June teaching her class while wearing an intimate painting by his hand was… Where her return to teasing implications and sensual gaze had set the horny to trickle back in, that thought was an outright tidal wave by comparison.

While he was distracted by a momentary daydream, and adjusting his pants to feel slightly less tight, June had gone to a low cabinet in the atelier half of the room. Presumably, she was fetching those basic tools she mentioned.

In doing so, she was bending over, causing the skirt of her dress to lie flush against the heart shaped pillows of her backside. On top of that, she was swaying her hips slightly, creating a hypnotic sight that had him utterly enthralled.

Only when she started to straighten up again did the thought cross his mind that while she had undoubtedly caught him looking by now, maybe he shouldn’t stare too much. The attempt not to brought him to notice that the top of the cabinet held the only photograph he had seen in June’s home so far.

It showed two girls around John’s age. One was a gorgeous goth girl, wearing a black dress with a tight corset, that accentuated her generous bust and wide hips, and dark red accents. She was wearing stark white make-up with dark purple lipstick and eyeshadow, and generally hitting all of the notes of the memetic “Goth GF” ideal. Except that her smile was perhaps a bit too bright and wide to fit with the aesthetic.

She had her arm around the other girl’s shoulders in a sideways embrace that seemed a combination of offering comfort and preventing escape. The other girl looked like she was trying not to run away from being photographed. With a downturned face, it looked like it was a coincidence that the picture had been taken when she glanced up at the camera through too-large, round glasses. Between the shy body language, the slightly messy hair, and the combination of slumped posture and oversized, paint-stained hoodie making it impossible to tell anything about her body from the neck down, she reminded John of Christie.

“That’s my college roommate and I during intro week,” she commented, having clearly noticed what he was looking at. There was a nostalgic aspect to her tone.

“I didn’t know you had a goth phase… Do you by chance still have some of the clothes?” Sure, he hadn’t recognized her at a glance, with the difference between no glasses versus glasses, fairly heavy make up versus, as best he could tell, none, and dyed black hair versus brunette, that wasn’t too surprising.

June laughed with amusement and shook her head. “I did and I do, but I’m not the goth in the picture. I only picked that up from her months after that picture was taken.”

'What?' For a moment, John almost thought it was a joke, but instead of vocalizing this, he took a closer second look at the picture. And now he could see it. The shy girl did have the same eye and hair color, and roughly the same shape of jaw and chin. Still, her demeanor was so far removed from anything he had ever seen, or even imagined, from June that he would sooner have thought it a sister or other relative even now. If not for one detail: The beauty mark below June’s left eye was on the picture, peeking out from half-obscurement behind the rim of the glasses.

“Sorry, I, uh-”

“It’s okay, no worries.” His attempt at putting together some sort of apology was cut off by June, mid giggling. “I was something of a late bloomer, only really coming into both my figure and my self confidence during the latter half of freshman year.”

The nostalgic undertone showed back up as she continued, “Truth be told, it was both exhilarating and terrifying to suddenly be turning heads after years of being practically invisible. She helped me a lot with finding my comfort in the situation back then, and with learning how to keep myself safe from the unpleasant types whose attention I was also suddenly getting…”

John wasn’t really sure what to say to that, but also fascinated to hear more of June’s past. So there was a twinge of disappointment mixed in with the eagerness when she shook her head slightly, as if to shake off the memories, and said, “Well, me going down memory lane isn’t what you’re here for. Can you grab that table for me?”

He went for the table she had indicated with her foot. It was a small, circular one with a diameter of perhaps half a meter and adjustable height. Currently, it was set to a height suitable for someone a bit shorter than John to use it while standing. Picking it up, it was light enough that even his pre-Abyssal self would have been able to lift it without trouble. Clearly, it was made to be easily moveable.

June took the brushes, paint sponge, and palette she had gotten from the cabinet and went outside, John following behind with the table. A door led directly from the combined living room and atelier onto a terrace with a pool set in the crook of the artist’s L-shaped home. A balcony from the first floor had a hole in the railing allowing someone to jump directly from it and into the pool.

Along another side of it stood three poolside lounge chairs, each flanked by a low table. The tables were of a height suitable to use from the lounge chairs, but were unnecessarily long. This confused John briefly, until June had him help put a lounge chair on top of a table. The legs of the former slotted into pits in the latter, creating a raised lounge chair.

June put it to lean back almost all the way, then laid in it. With her thus at a good working height for him when he was standing, and the paints and tools on the small table, they were just about ready to get started. He tried his best to only look at her bountiful breasts about half the time while she was giving the last few instructions. It wasn’t exactly made easier by the nubs on the front of her sundress, made by her nipples standing proudly at attention at the peaks of her bosom.

“Now, body art is a fairly tricky medium, especially for very exact motifs. Even when experienced with it, it’s usually best to do some planning for those first. To start with, I recommend a more flexible design, like tribal patterns or accentuating and embellishing the features of the body itself. Also, a full body work is a very time consuming project, as you might have guessed, so I think we should stick with a more limited area to start with. Like so.”