Special Episode - Muse
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here. The episode below is NSFW and contains mature content.
Alix leans back on her elbows, watching curiously.
“Rip,” she murmurs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “What are you doing?”
He’s pulling the shades down over all of the windows of the workshop. Alix has no idea why. The night outside is so dark that barely any starlight was making it in at all. The shadows in here are already so deep that when they slant across Ripley Alix can barely make out the details of his shredded black jeans, the paint-stained rag stuffed in the back pocket.
He pulls down the last of the window shades, then switches off the stairway light, glancing at Alix over his shoulder.
“You said I could paint you.”
A deep blush rushes to Alix’s cheeks. She can’t believe she agreed to this.
She had asked Ripley what he wanted to do to celebrate his first night officially living in his own apartment. She’s not sure what she thought his answer would be, but she definitely didn’t expect:
I want to paint you. Can I paint you?
He already has painted her, once. The portrait he did of her for Bright Future, a piece Alix will never forget. But he did that one from memory and his imagination. She understood instantly that this time he was asking her to pose for him.
That’s a whole different thing.
Sitting still while a boy gets to stare at her for as long as he wants, and come out with a finished painting of how she looks to him at the end… the idea of that made Alix so anxious and self-conscious that she said no immediately.
“Okay,” Ripley had answered, gently nuzzling his nose into her temple. “No worries, alright? I’ll think of something else we can do to celebrate.”
Alix went home and thought about it a lot more, even though Ripley told her not to worry about it.
Her mind kept going back to the painting he did of her for Bright Future. Remembering how glowingly beautiful she felt looking at it. If he was going to make another one like that, then… that actually didn’t sound so bad. Besides, if she was ever going to pose for an artist, it would be Ripley. She feels safe in his hands. She knows he would never paint her in a way that would hurt her feelings when she saw the final result.
She could also tell that he really, really wanted this, for some reason. He was trying not to let it show, but it did when she told him she’d changed her mind. He caught her arm and kissed her excitedly, breaking into a heart-melting smile.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked eagerly.
She is sure, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t wracked with full-body nervousness. She actually feels this nervous every time she comes over to the workshop, because - it’s Ripley’s place, now.
No more sneaking around high school style. They’re grown and graduated and living on their own, free to do all the things they couldn’t get away with before.
Not that they have, and maybe it’s that air of possibility that makes Alix’s stomach flutter so wildly every time she comes over here. Especially tonight, because she and Ripley are planning to spend hours alone together. Even if it’s solely so he can paint her.
Now Ripley inexplicably seems determined to seal out every hint of starlight and moonlight, closing out what little was making its way in.
Alix lets her gaze wander over the workshop. It’s only half set up, with unopened boxes and crates full of woodworking machinery strewn around. Motes of dust drift through the air in the low light, winking in and out of visibility.
Something about this place is warm, inviting, reassuring. Despite its half-finished state, and the shower that goes off like a bomb if you turn the handle.
Alix is looking around for some hint as to why Ripley seems determined to paint her solely in artificial light. Isn’t that the worst, least-flattering light to paint anybody in? And after he just asked her to wash off her makeup for this?
She opens her mouth to ask, then blinks in total confusion when Ripley switches off the main overhead lights. The workshop - the whole building, really - falls completely, totally dark.
“Um, okay…” Alix lets out a nervous little laugh, starting to get seriously confused. “Are you planning to paint me with no light? I'm taking that as an insult, if so.”
“No,” comes his soft laughter, from the darkness of the workshop. “Not at all. Hang on…”
There’s a rough scraping sound. A match flares into bright, fiery life between Ripley’s fingertips, casting its glow over his face. Alix watches curiously as he starts lighting some candles, which she hadn’t noticed scattered around.
“I’ve been wanting to try this for a long time, but there’s been nowhere to set things up,” Ripley murmurs, his warm voice drifting over his shoulder to reach her as he lights more candles. “Call it an artistic experiment.”
“Explain,” Alix laughs, leaning her elbows behind herself on the windowsill.
“Okay, so I was reading about the very first artists.”
Alix casts her mind around, then remembers a library book she noticed in Ripley’s apartment upstairs. One with truly ancient artwork on the cover, cave walls painted with bison and horses and handprints.
“You mean the cave painters?”
“Mhm.” Ripley lights another candle, the light of the match playing over his fingers. “The book I read was asking the question - why the deep caves?”
Alix fidgets with a pink strand of her hair, watching him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the cave painters could’ve done their artwork in caves open to the outside, where they had light and safety. But they routinely went down into the deep, dark caves. The ones that had no light at all, except the torches and fire bowls the painters brought with them, and some small hearths they’d set up in there. Definitely had no guarantee of safety in those caves, it was probably dangerous even just to get to them. But they painted there. Surrounded by total darkness, with like six feet of light around them in the whole huge cave, no more. Why’d they do that?”
Alix watches Ripley with adoring eyes, her head tilted to one side, her hair falling down over her shoulder. She loves it when he talks like this. She spent a long time wondering about the process behind his art.
“Secrecy?” she guesses. “Privacy, for religious rituals? People used to believe the darkness of the caves was the passageway between different worlds, right?”
Ripley pauses, looking over at her in surprise.
“Oh. I didn’t expect you to actually have a guess. Pretty good one, too. Damn. Forgot you’re so much smarter than me.”
“What’s the theory you liked better?” Alix giggles.
Ripley slowly shrugs his shoulders, his smiling eyes lingering on hers.
“That the painters went into the deepest darkness, where they could only see with firelight, because both the darkness and the fire were part of the artwork.”
Ripley lights another candle, then strikes another match, slowly building a warm, flickering glow in the dark room.
“People today go into those caves and look at the art with big, artificial lights that illuminate everything at once. But that’s not how the cave painters saw their work. Not how they ever would have seen it. And it turns out it’s a totally different picture, once you put out the lights.”
Ripley pauses to look over at Alix again, his beautiful green eyes picking up the glow of the candles.
“The cave artwork looks completely different with shadows and firelight to fill things in. Parts of it that look unfinished in the full light are actually complete, in firelight.” He sets aside the matches, then starts putting some paints onto his palette. “The art has meanings and layers you could only understand if you knew to look at it in just the right light.”
Alix nibbles her lip, watching him with her feelings all showing in her eyes. “You want to paint me in total darkness, but with firelight?”
Ripley shrugs his shoulders again, his green curls hiding his eyes as he leans over his palette.
“If that sounds okay with you. I know this isn’t exactly torchlight, but these are ancient candles I got from the clearance section of the thrift store, so. You’ll notice they’re flickering a lot.”
Alix has noticed, actually. The dusty old candles are sputtering and flickering and snapping softly, not giving off a smooth, steady glow. The warm light they give the workshop is dancing, shifting ceaselessly. The effect doubles anytime a gust of breeze comes through the windows.
“Won’t it be hard to paint with the light always moving, Rip?”
“Yeah, but I think it’s good to try things with constraints every now and then. If you have perfect sunset light or a hundred shades of paint to work with, where’s the part where you’re forced to be inventive?” He hesitates, carefully keeping his eyes on his palette, then adds, “In this case I’ve got the perfect subject, so… had to think of something.”
Alix’s heart flutters happily. She hesitates, then crosses to Ripley and takes the bottle of paint from his hand.
“Okay,” she says, when he lifts his gaze to her in surprise. “Then you can only paint with the colors you’ve already got on the palette.”
Ripley blinks at her, glances down at his palette, then points to the paint bottles he already set aside. “But I only put out those. King’s gold, tangerine sunset, crushed red velvet, rich lemon, black, and a tiny bit of white.”
“Oh. That’s not a lot, is it?”
“No. That’s basically only earth pigments.”
Alix tilts her head to the side sympathetically. “Guess you’ll just have to be inventive, won’t you?”
Ripley breaks into a startled grin, then shakes his head. “C’mon, I’ve gotta add at least like one or two more-”
“No,” Alix says lightly, trying her hardest to channel Gabby’s breezy, effortless firmness. “You’re welcome to mix what you’ve got together to make new colors, and add more of what’s already on there. But that’s it. Those are the conditions of me posing for you.”
This draws an indignant laugh from Ripley, but he loves a challenge. Alix can see the irrepressible way the corner of his mouth keeps twitching up. That disarming, playful grin Alix loves so much is revealing itself in his eyes.
“Let me add one shade of pink.”
Alix considers, then gives Ripley a single nod of concession. It’s his favorite color to paint with, and she really wants him to be happy with the artwork that comes out of this.
Ripley chooses one of the pink paint bottles, looks up at Alix, and gently catches her jaw in his hand. He holds the paint bottle up, comparing the shade to her lips.
She blushes, and Ripley smiles, pretends to compare the pink bottle to her cheek. She giggles and pushes his hand aside. He grows serious and thoughtful again, setting aside the bottle and holding up another shade of pink to compare to her mouth.
Alix holds still, glad that Ripley didn’t close all the windows along with the shades. She needs that cool night air against her burning cheeks.
He holds up the paint bottle to indicate he's got a close enough match, then presses a lingering kiss onto her lips before he releases her jaw.
Alix steps back, wondering how her overworked heart is supposed to manage an entire - hour of this? Multiple hours? How long will it take for him to paint her? She hadn’t thought to ask.
Ripley pauses in setting up his palette, looking at Alix searchingly. Sensing that she’s nervous.
The more Alix thinks about it, the more she suspects he offered to do things this way because he knew she would feel exposed and vulnerable posing for him. He must have thought darkness and candlelight would help her feel more comfortable.
“Hey,” Ripley murmurs, gently cuffing her chin. “We don’t have to do any of this, if you don’t want. We can go snuggle up and watch a movie or something.”
He’s offering her an out, just like he did before the billboard. Alix has no regrets about refusing the out last time. The opposite, in fact. Doing the billboard with Ripley was one of her favorite nights in all the nights she’s ever had.
“No,” she says firmly. “I want to.”
Ripley takes a close look at her, sees the determination in her eyes. He smiles, then quickly bites it back.
“Okay. Let’s get set up, right?”
“Where do you want me?”
Ripley catches her hand in his colorful fingers, then draws her over to the center of all the candlelight, where a wooden crate is sitting on the floor. Alix looks at him in surprise, then moves automatically as he gives her a hand so she can step up onto the crate.
She flinches, thinking it’s going to wobble. But it must have something heavy inside, and it’s backed all the way up against the wall for extra support. It holds perfectly still as she turns around to face Ripley, now looking down at him.
Before she can ask any questions, he gently releases her hand and crosses to get his easel. He’s got the legs collapsed to their shortest setting. He places it in front of himself on the floor, then sits down cross-legged behind it, drawing his brushes and his palette to himself.
He sits back and gazes up at Alix, where she stands in the flickering, shifting glow of the firelight. Just stares and stares at her, his eyes roving slowly, meticulously over her body. It’s hard to make out the expression in his eyes, with his face half in the velvety shadow of his curls.
Alix shifts from foot to foot, then blurts out:
“This is a one-time thing, by the way. I hope you’re not thinking I’m your muse. I’m not. So you can stop looking at me like that.”
Ripley leans back on his hands, smiling up at her in fond amusement. “You’re not?”
“No. I don’t want to be.”
He pauses, his green eyes blinking hard.
“Why, um…?” he begins, carefully keeping his voice casual.
“Because! I know about history. I know how great artists tend to treat their muses. Terribly, and then they forget about them and move right on when the next muse comes along.”
Ripley draws back, taken by surprise. His brow clears, and a small smile flickers around his mouth.
“Is that your concern about it?”
“I - I’m just saying. I’m your business manager and your girlfriend. Not your muse.”
Ripley is still smiling at her, his lower lip caught between his teeth. He laughs softly, then murmurs -
“Okay, not my muse. Would you mind turning your head a little more towards the light, and holding more still than that?”
Alix tries to meet the instructions. Ripley picks up one of his brushes, and slowly begins to paint.
A few silent minutes pass, broken only by the soft snapping of the candles.
Alix takes a deep breath. She can already feel some effects of the deep darkness in the room. Ripley is right, this restriction takes a lot away, but - it also heightens things, somehow.
Her other senses are slowly beginning to sharpen, for one thing. She can feel the summer breeze from the windows on her skin like a gentle, caressing hand. She’s aware of every little scratching sound of Ripley’s brush on the canvas. Every now and then a car goes by outside, a distant sound that becomes sharper and clearer each time Alix hears it.
The wood and paint smell of the workshop, and the taste of the night air, all so clear. It’s a purely sensory world, right now.
The firelight never completely stops moving, giving the impression that the world around them is breathing in and out with the breeze. Their mysterious surroundings are constantly changing, blurring, ever shifting.
Makes it feel as if Alix and Ripley, in the pool of candlelight, are the only two in the world. Or like they slipped into one of their own.
Eventually Alix loses the battle against her self-control and steals a glance at Ripley. He’s… not painting the way he does when it’s coming easily and naturally. She’s seen him totally absorbed in his art before, and it doesn’t look like this. At the moment he’s barely even painting at all, just half-heartedly mixing up colors on his palette.
“What’s wrong?”
Ripley lifts his head to look up at her, surprised she noticed. “I - nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, what?”
“Just… something’s not right with our setup.” Ripley hesitates, wincing uncertainly. “I can’t think of a way to say it that doesn’t sound-”
“It’s okay, just tell me!”
“The firelight makes everything really natural and timeless, and then you’re in jeans and a crop top. Looking gorgeous, of course, but it doesn’t fit right with the setting.” Ripley tilts his head to the side apologetically. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I didn’t tell you what kind of stuff to wear. Not that I’m sure what would have worked better.”
“Aw, no!” Alix answers, her heart sinking. “I didn’t even bring any other clothes-”
She stops, a sudden idea striking her.
She and Ripley have had a lot of stolen moments together, but that’s just what they were. Stolen moments, with their clothes still at least half-on.
This would be something else.
Alix slowly lifts her gaze to meet Ripley’s, her heart hammering in her ears. His warm, sweet eyes are looking at her like she’s spun from gold, growing slightly worried at her sudden silence. It’s hard to feel self-conscious with him looking at her that way.
Before she can talk herself out of it, she silently slips off her little white crop top.
Ripley sits up sharply. His startled eyes get wider and wider as Alix sheds her clothes. He sits motionless, a dark blush rushing to his cheeks, then automatically poises himself to spring forward if Alix gets dangerously close to the edge of the crate she’s standing on. Maybe that’s why he left a few cushions strewn around by the crate, so she’s guaranteed a soft landing.
Alix straightens up without any of her clothes. She can’t explain it to herself, but for some reason now she can stand taller, and hold more still than she could before.
“How’s this?” she asks Ripley.
He’s staring at her in stunned, wide-eyed silence, frozen right where he is.
Alix is trembling, but some wild sense of triumph rushes through her racing heart. It’s so hard to shock Ripley, given that he loves shocking stuff and goes out of his way to try to find it.
But at the moment he’s just sitting there with his mouth slightly open, his perfectly round, dilated green eyes blinking fast, his cheeks gone dark crimson. Suspended in a spell of silence that seems to have temporarily destroyed his ability to think. His breath trips in his throat, his eyes roaming all over her.
Suddenly he makes a sharp, eager little movement, like he’s going to fling his brush aside and get up. He hastily stops himself, then lets his gaze drop to his canvas, gripping his paintbrush very tightly.
“I - yeah. That’s much better.”
Alix can hear something changed in his voice. Something too subtle for her to pinpoint or explain, but it sets off an instinctive response in her.
It starts as electric, tingling pinpricks all over her body. Restless electricity sparks in her veins, and fire blossoms beneath her skin.
The sensation spreads and grows so fast, until the intoxicating heat suffuses her body as if her skin is drinking in all the light of all the candles, the rich heat of the summer night.
Filled with that glow, her eyes travel slowly down Ripley’s tensed-up jaw, the curve of his neck in the firelight, his fingers fidgeting nervously with one of his green curls. His shoulders look broader to her than they used to, his muscles all filled out and nicely defined after all the gym time spent with Aiden.
Ripley is a lot different now, even compared to the person he was at the start of their last year of school. His face, his body, his voice, even the way he talks and stands and carries himself have all changed. There’s a whole world of other subtleties that have quietly transformed about him, too. He’s even picked up a nice tan since summer started.
Right now, though, he’s sitting with his shoulders shyly drawn in and his head down, the way he used to. He may as well be sitting alone in the corner of the breakroom at City Hall, with his headphones in his ears and his sketchbook in his hand, his eyes carefully avoiding Alix.
Her adoring heart is beating so hard that every thrum of it vibrates her entire body, pounds in her ears.
“Rip,” she says softly, “How are you gonna paint me if you’re not looking at me?”
Ripley holds still for a moment, his jaw flexing and unflexing.
Very slowly, he lifts his eyes to her. The color of them is like dark green velvet in this light, but she can barely make it out for his blown-out pupils overtaking it. There’s an incandescent glow in his eyes, two little flames, making them hazy and glassy.
He seems to get lost staring at Alix the instant his eyes alight on her. She hears a soft hiss of indrawn breath from him, so quiet she wouldn’t have been able to pick it up if her senses weren’t so heightened. God, why does she feel so unbelievably sensitive to everything, right now? Has he noticed?
Yes. Something tells her has, that he's very aware of it. He’s hesitating, his wet paintbrush hovering over the canvas, his eyes locked on her.
“Maybe - maybe it would help if you show me how you want me to pose,” Alix says.
Ripley slowly rises to his feet. He seems to move by instinct instead of any conscious choice, drawn in as if spellbound, never breaking his eyes away from her.
Alix’s senses feel, at this point, as if they’ve been sharpened for hours and hours. Worked into a level of intense clarity that makes the infinitely light, gentle touch of Ripley’s fingers on her calves go through her whole body like a shock of electricity. A shiver melts down her back, and she bites her lip as Ripley tilts his head back to look up at her.
He’s blushing so hard that she feels the heat of it against her palms as she takes his face in her hands.
Their eyes meet, and Alix sees that the fire alive in her is rushing up in Ripley, too. She can feel it flowing back to her from him, doubling the flames.
A deep, slow, pulse of breathless expectation begins to pound through her. It makes her ache. Her cheeks feel hot and stiff with the scorching blush flaring in them.
“Are - are you still okay?” Ripley murmurs, his voice grown thick and soft and husky. “With all this?”
“Mhm.” Alix releases his face, then pokes his forehead. “Although - typical man, putting a woman up on a pedestal. Literally.”
Ripley breathes out a soft laugh, gazing up at her with the fire showing openly in his eyes.
“Can’t help myself, in this case.”
Alix is glad that he bends to start moving her into the pose he wants, so he doesn’t see the wild blush deepen in her cheeks at that. He walks around her slowly, adjusting the positioning of her feet, pulling her knee gently forward to indicate she should bend it.
Alix closes her eyes, feeling dizzy. He’s only giving her the most feather-light touches, and only to move her, but it feels like his hands have been all over her.
He lets out a sudden laugh, like he was holding it in for a minute.
“Holy shit, Alix. Kinda can’t believe you did that.”
“You always have me doing things I would never otherwise do,” she laughs helplessly, adoringly.
“Were - were you planning on us doing the painting this way?” he asks, not looking up at her.
“No, definitely not. Or I would’ve shaved my legs and everything before I came over here.”
Ripley looks up at her in surprise. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Like - for what?”
Alix shakes her head at him, her eyebrows drawing together in bewilderment. “What do you mean, for what?”
“Guess I mean - not because you thought I’d want you to do that, right? Is there some other reason?”
“No, I don’t know, just… because.” Alix pauses, confused by the question. “I just wish I had time to do it before I ended up standing here like this in front of you.”
“Oh, really? Then no reason to worry.” Ripley gently takes her hands, which were clasped in front of herself, and gently moves them to her sides. “I can’t think of anything natural to you that wouldn’t be beautiful to me.”
Alix blushes deeply. The last little knot of anxiety in her chest loosens up, melting away into the already much stronger, more pure, fluttering kind of restless nervousness that’s racing up and down her body.
Ripley pauses, then adds -
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean no disrespect. You do whatever you want with your own body, obviously. I’m not against customization.” He gestures to all of himself. “Also obviously.”
Alix giggles, and Ripley leans his forehead against her hip for a moment, then presses a soft kiss onto it.
“I’m just saying that I’m glad you didn’t change anything about yourself for this. You already look perfect, you’re already…”
He trails off, having circled back around to stand before her. He stops to gaze up at her, his paint-stained fingers twitching almost imperceptibly at his sides.
Alix is struggling her hardest not to move, still reeling from the effects of that one, tiny little kiss on her hip. She’s drunk off of it, the edges of her candlelit surroundings shimmering and blurring, leaving only Ripley in sharp clarity.
There’s a beautiful, breathless tenderness in his eyes as he draws closer to her. He has to stop himself again, and quickly turns away, looking around for one of his brushes.
“You can let me know whenever you’re tired, or if you want a break. You all ready, for now?”
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Alix answers. “Do whatever you need to do.”
Ripley pauses. He heard that in her voice, whatever it was.
He turns his head very slightly, like he’s going to look at her over his shoulder. For a split second it’s exactly the pose he painted himself in for Bright Future, with his back to her, his green curls hiding his eyes.
Unlike the painting, he actually does turn all the way around, stands looking at Alix for a long moment.
He comes over to her, the candlelight sliding slowly over his shoulders, and stops right before her. He hesitates, then playfully hooks his muscled arms around her bare thighs.
“Whatever I need to do,” he repeats softly, with a hint of a question beneath his words.
Alix smooths his thick, soft green curls back from his brow, then nods, looking deep into his eyes.
He watches her as she stands there trembling. Without warning, he playfully starts feathering kisses all over the base of her lower stomach, using his arms around her thighs to hold her in place.
Alix bursts into ticklish giggles, taking two handfuls of his curls, then catches her lip between her teeth as his kisses grow longer, slower, less playful. His tongue is lightly tracing over her skin, his teeth nibbling her, his lips and breath caressing her. He slowly makes his way down and down.
He’s so gentle as he finally kisses her where she wanted him to, but it sends a shock of jagged pleasure through her, so intense it makes her head spin and a little cry of pleasure burst from her lips. Her hands tighten their grasp on his hair, the intoxicating heat of his breath rushing through her whole body.
Ripley’s fingers are stroking her inner thigh, pressing it slightly like when he was posing her for the painting. Trying to make her open her thighs for him. Alix complies without thinking, evidently no longer in command of her body. She’s panting and moaning more and more the longer this goes on, the heat of his mouth warming her everywhere. It’s like she’s made of hot wax, slowly melting. Feverish, incendiary liquor courses through her veins, making her drunk, setting her body on fire.
Ripley has been doing everything gently and slowly, but he’s losing hold of his self-control, panting against her. He uses his grasp on her thighs to pull one up over his shoulder, then to rock her against his tongue. She gasps, doubling over him in a convulsive spasm of pleasure that comes dangerously close to sending her right over the edge.
She leans her shoulders back against the wall behind the crate, breathing hard and fast. She arches her back for Ripley, one hand still tangled in his hair. She’s trembling, helpless to stop herself from rocking and grinding against his face. She hears his breath catch, and realizes his fingers trembling.
She opens her hazy eyes and looks down at him.
His cheeks are on fire, his chest rising and falling fast with his panted breaths. He looks like he’s burning up with a fever, reaching a breaking point of desperation. She can almost see him fighting not to wrench her down from the crate, feel it in how tightly he’s holding her. She can sense the burning, aching hunger in everything he does.
“Ripley,” she moans, his name falling from her lips on a breathless whimper.
He stops abruptly, breathing hard, then lets out a dazed little laugh. “Oh, s-so that’s - that’s what that sounds like, huh?”
“Get me down from here!” Alix tells him, so forcefully and urgently that Ripley asks no questions.
He slips an arm around her waist and lifts her down from the crate. As soon as her feet are safely on the ground, she crushes her mouth against his, then pulls back to drag his ripped black shirt up over his head. His breath hitches in his throat. His hands come up to hold her by her jaw, so he can kiss her and bite her lips while she undoes his belt buckle.
She pushes him down onto the cushions scattered around the crate. He looks up at her eagerly, his green eyes as wide as they go.
“Is this-? I promise I really was just gonna paint you!”
“Really?” Alix descends to her knees over him, dragging his jeans down and off. She looks pointedly at his boxer briefs, then up at his face. “That’s funny, I can see that you were all prepared for this possibility. Just in case, or…?”
“Yes, just in case,” he laughs, blushing deeper. “I’ve been ready for this like every time you’ve ever come over here, if I’m being honest. Gotta have the right items equipped, you know?”
Alix lets out a burst of shocked giggles. “Rip!”
“But I swear I wasn’t planning anything for tonight, just painting you. I promise.”
Alix smiles down at him as she pulls the rest of his clothes off. “Glad I instituted a change of plans, then.”
Ripley laughs, and Alix, loving that sound with her whole heart, leans down to catch it in her mouth. She’s never wanted anyone like this, in a way so undeniable, so insatiable, so impossible to resist. The sensation only doubles when Ripley catches her and rolls them both over so that he’s lying over her, slipping his tongue between her parted lips, panting into her mouth.
Alix wraps her arms around him, moaning as he teasingly rubs himself between her thighs. She buries her fingers in the green softness of his curls. Her heartbeat strikes through her body in great, thrumming waves, flooding her with delicious heat. Ringing at the very heart of herself. Her toes curl with pleasure as Ripley kisses her earlobe, then sinks down until he draws a thin, gasping cry from her.
Alix’s head falls to the side as Ripley leans down to kiss her throat. Her glazed eyes find the flickering candles on all sides as their bodies begin to rock back and forth.
That’s what it felt like, she thinks dazedly afterwards. Like when two fires melt together. Are they ever quite the same thing again, after that? Or are they permanently part of each other, in some way?
Ripley is laying back against the cushions, his chest rising and falling with deep, slow, panted breaths. Alix is on her knees over him, barely able to hold herself upright. She’s bracing herself with one hand on his chest. Her other hand is still reached behind her, her fingertips now resting on his inner thigh. She can feel him trembling.
She sinks down into his waiting arms, and he rolls them both over onto their sides.
He opens his eyes to look at her. They’re so boundlessly warm right now, like sunset light glowing through green glass. Sweet and brilliant and hazy with pleasure.
He gazes at her like that for a good long while, then softly kisses her lips, draws her close to him. Alix snuggles into his arms, savoring the perfect feeling of their bare bodies all tangled up together. Ripley lapses into a long, long silence, and Alix is too cozy and content to break it herself.
After a long time, quiet whispers rise up from their little candlelit place, and some soft laughter, and then more moaning and heavy breaths and muffled cries. Then quiet again for a while. Eventually more whispering, which grows slower and quieter, then trails off.
Alix is so at home that she falls asleep right there on the cushions, folded into Ripley’s arms. The effect of the darkness, maybe, broken only by the low firelight. More likely it’s a result of the deep, languid pleasure running all through her, making her limbs and her eyelids heavy. That, and the gentle thumping of Ripley’s heartbeat against her ear. It sounds to her ears like sweet music as she dozes off.
In the middle of the night, she wakes up for a moment, vaguely aware that Ripley isn’t curled up with her on the cushions anymore, but that there’s a blanket half over her now. She winds one thigh around it, and leaves one hand on top of it, reaching out for Ripley.
~~~~
Alix is awoken by very soft sunlight dancing across her closed eyelids. The distant sound of a car going past on the street down below, and the drowsy chirping of birds from above.
She stirs in the - bed? That’s what it feels like, but she doesn’t remember falling asleep in a bed.
She slowly blinks her eyes open, and finds herself gazing up at the slanted windows of Ripley’s studio apartment. The brilliant sunlight streaming in is muffled by the shades, which he left pulled down.
Alix’s sleepy eyes open very wide as memories and images from last night come rushing back to her all at once.
She sits bolt upright, blushing furiously, then twists around to look to her left.
Her nervous heartbeat is soothed with a wave of warm relief. Ripley is right there, asleep beside her. She was so sure she felt him get up from the cushions last night, but maybe it was just to carry her upstairs to bed.
A lightning strike of flustered, delighted surprise hits her as she realizes that he slept naked, just like she did. He’s on his stomach on top of the blankets, breathing slow and deep, with his face tucked into the nook of his elbow.
Alix lays down facing him and rests her cheek on her hand, savoring the sight. She’s never had a chance to look at him like this before, in the full sunlight, taking all the time she wants. She didn’t know how badly she wanted this opportunity, but that’s no surprise. Ripley has a way of answering all of her longings, then replacing them with brand new ones for her to discover.
Her eyes very slowly travel over his face, his body.
His words from last night drift back to her. I can’t think of anything natural to you that wouldn’t be beautiful to me.
I feel the same way about you, she thinks, her loving eyes lingering on Ripley. I’m even more sure of that now than I was before.
She finds herself overcome with deep, unbearably intense tenderness as she watches him sleep. Unable to resist, she gives his bare shoulders a slow, gentle scratch, then traces her fingers down the supple muscle of his back. He sighs peacefully in his sleep.
After a moment Alix props herself up on her elbow in confusion, her gaze caught on Ripley’s hand. She just noticed that his fingers are covered with fresh paint stains. All in shades of red and gold, pink and orange. She sits up so she can get a look at his other hand, and finds it in the same state.
Alix hesitates, then silently slips out of bed. She’s not sure where her clothes ended up, so she takes one of Ripley’s hoodies and slips it on, then makes for the stairs. Pausing on the way there to glance in the mirror, noticing something. Ripley left a few pink paint fingerprints on her hip.
She smiles dazedly to herself as she sets off down the stairs.
She’s almost startled to find the workshop glowing with sunshine. Everything looked so different last night. So weird to see the candles put out, scattered around haphazardly. The crate looks like any other crate, aside from the cushions and the discarded clothes scattered around it. It really was a whole other world, in the dark.
Alix makes her way silently down the rest of the stairs. The first thing she spots is Ripley’s palette. Looks like it saw a lot of mixing of colors, although Alix can tell he didn’t add any more shades of paint, used only what they agreed to.
His easel is roughly where Alix remembers it being last night, but it’s been turned slightly. To face not the crate, but the cushions beside it. It’s been moved closer to them, too.
Alix lightly crosses to the canvas, taking deep breaths of the early morning air. It has the sweet, fresh aroma of paint and wood, and the scent evokes more memories of last night in Alix. That moment when she drew that one long, broken groan of pleasure from him, how he looked panting so hard, the smell of his skin, the feeling of his hair between her fingers.
They were so sleepy and cuddly afterwards. Did he really get up to paint? Maybe he did a little sketch or something.
Alix drops down in front of the canvas, looks at it with curious eyes, and freezes.
After a moment she slowly, carefully takes the painting from the easel, then straightens up, staring down at it.
The painting is not of Alix standing up on the pedestal. It’s of her asleep, sprawled across the cushions. A soft blanket is half wrapped around her, one of her thighs slung over it. Her hair is spilling down in an inky waterfall over the cushions, the silky pink streak tumbling down by her ear to frame her profile. The firelight is dancing all over her bare body, kissing her with light and shadow.
Her face is serenely peaceful, her lips turned up in a subtle, dreaming smile. Her one extended hand is reaching out for him, the painter behind the canvas.
It’s far from the most realistic piece Ripley has ever done, especially given the limited color scheme, but somehow Alix can’t shake the feeling that his brush forgot nothing. The painting is so intimate and breathtaking that it stills her heart.
She has no idea how long she’s been staring at it before a pair of strong, warm arms gently wrap around her waist from behind. Ripley leans down to press a kiss onto her cheek, tickling her with the tiny little bit of stubble he’s starting to get.
She leans back against him, so she can turn her head to look at him.
His warm, sleepy green eyes glitter with satisfaction when they look at the painting, then grow a little nervous when he looks at her.
“Do you like it?” he murmurs, with a seriousness that suggests her answer is the only thing that matters.
Alix can only nod, her words too helplessly tangled up to get out.
Ripley’s nervous expression melts into a relieved smile. He brushes a lingering kiss onto the curve of Alix’s shoulder, then takes the painting from her and carefully sets it back on the easel. He turns Alix to face him, tucking a strand of pink hair behind her ear.
“This is a great outfit for you,” he says, breaking into a little grin as he takes in the fact that she’s wearing only his hoodie. “You should wear this all the time.”
“Stop it,” Alix giggles, then stops, catching the glow in his green eyes as they roam over her.
He steps towards her, slipping his hands beneath the hoodie to take her by the waist.
“Wait, wait!” Alix laughs, as he eagerly pulls her to him. “I wanna shower first!”
Ripley complies with that request, although they do end up stumbling into the shower together, losing what little clothes they’re wearing as they go. Alix backs Ripley up to the wall and kisses him deeply as he fumbles for the handle of the shower. She’s about to sink down to her knees, and he can tell. He’s eagerly knotting his hand into her hair, his eyes already starting to glaze over like they did last night…
Something strikes Alix at the last second.
“Rip, no, don’t!”
It’s too late. He turns the handle, and the shower turns on like a dam exploding. Alix and Ripley gasp, clinging to each other in the sudden onslaught, thrown back to the far end of the shower.
“Ripley!” Alix wails.
“Oh, shit, I forgot!” he shouts, diving through the waterfall to reach the knob. “Goddamnit, Noah!”
“Noah?”
“Wait, I’ve got it-”
The shower turns off, the roar falling silent. Alix and Ripley stare at each other, soaked and panting and wide-eyed.
They both burst out laughing at the same time. Alix slumps against Ripley, and he groans in dismay, wrapping his arms around her.
“Shit, I’m sorry!”
“Stupid!” Alix giggles. “You know this means a bunch of water just poured onto the first floor! Why didn’t you take me upstairs, to the shower that isn’t possessed by a demon of violence?”
“I don’t know! We can go there right now, though, right? Pick up where we left off?”
Alix lets out a laugh when she catches the pleading look in his eyes.
Ripley lets out a helpless laugh, too, stroking her hair. “My bad, princess. You - you just knock everything else right out of my head. My thoughts are always running after you. You should know that from the way I paint you.”
Alix smiles so hard she feels the need to hide her face in Ripley’s neck.
She trails her hands up his sides, then kisses the hollow of his collarbone. “The painting is perfect, Rip.”
He goes quiet, but she can feel that he’s smiling, too.
“Just promise me you won’t hang that piece on the showroom level,” she adds teasingly, drawing a soft laugh from Ripley.
“No,” he murmurs, taking her by her chin, tilting her face up so he can kiss her. “That one is just for me.”
~~~~
Alix accepts Ripley’s invitation to stay over for breakfast. He doesn’t have any food here yet, so they decide to walk to the farmer’s market together.
While he’s upstairs taking his actual shower - the one they took together wasn’t really about showering, truth be told - Alix quickly heads back down to the workshop floor.
She takes the painting from the easel, careful not to touch the parts that aren’t dry. She hurries across the room to one of the workshop supply closets across from the hurricane shower, grabbing two of the candles on the way.
She props up the painting in the supply room, then shuts the door after herself, letting the little space fall into darkness. With the lighter she found in the pocket of Ripley’s hoodie, she lights the candles she brought and places them on an empty shelf, where their glow falls over the painting.
Alix looks closely at the painting, her eyes widening in amazement.
It’s so different, in the firelight. More of the colors melt together, blending into shades she couldn’t see before. Different ones come out to shine. The reds and golds look richer, the pink streak in Alix’s hair radiant against the darkness. Lines that didn’t connect before are connected, made whole by the gentle shadows.
The painted firelight seems to dance and move. Alix’s sleeping body seems to breathe, bathed in the warm glow.
In this light, the painting perfectly captures what last night felt like. It sends ripples of residual warmth through Alix, memories of pleasure that make her body ache with desire, even right after that shower they just took.
Her eyes find Ripley’s smudged paint fingerprints, there on her hip. He painted those in. She couldn’t see them when she had the piece out in the sunshine. Only the firelight draws that shade of pink out so clearly.
There’s so much more to the painting, but only if you know how to look. Only she and Ripley know how to look. It’s like the painting is written in their secret language.
And if this is how Alix truly looks to Ripley’s eyes…
Maybe she’s okay with being his muse, after all.
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