Chapter Text
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"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself."
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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1926. New York City
“Normally, we'd use one of our own artists,” the man from the agency had explained.
It was a late Tuesday afternoon, and he’d been pacing as he spoke, the light striping him in dust-shimmering bars as it fell between the blinds.
Beyond the window, the rush hour traffic echoed and hummed, dreamy and faint with distance: eight hundred feet down--practically another world. Out in the windowless hall it had been easy to forget how many floors the building arrogantly boasted. Higher than any steeple, a twentieth century Tower of Babel.
After so many hours of waiting, the rustle of his portfolio's pages had felt loud to Credence, a jarring protest against being so roughly handled by the ad man's brusquely flipping fingers. Slowly, his shoulders had ratcheted up towards his ears nearly in time with the chopping sound, cringing in sympathy over the necessary invasion. It was of his own volition that he'd come here, he’d had to carefully remind himself, desperate for the opportunity to put his unique talent to some honest use. Besides, there was no avoiding it--he needed the money.
Stopping in place, the man had raised an eyebrow at the print now cradled against the crook of his arm like a swaddled babe, turning it to share with Credence as though his own work would somehow manage to surprise him. The greater part of him had fervently wished that it would.
Off the page, a young Greek athlete posed brooding down at him from beneath a laurel crown, bronzed muscles gleaming, his honey-warm eyes narrowed in smug triumph. Credence had felt himself blush under the haughty gaze as though he hadn't painted it himself. Or, perhaps because he had.
“But,” the man had gone on as he returned the smouldering youth to his proper place amongst the others, “we need someone with a certain talent for capturing… a more dashing male figure.”
At his words, Credence had visibly flinched. And yet, it couldn't be denied that the man had a point. While Credence's vibrant illustrations boasted no shortage of nubile flapper girls, flushed and champagne-brave, the men… the men shone.
“Our client--Cluett, Peabody and Company, are making exciting and somewhat controversial moves in men's apparel--attached collars, a wider range of colours and prints. Things that some consumers are skeptical of, and frankly, resistant to.”
He'd smiled then, ruefully almost, hitching his charcoal slacks at the knee to perch against the desk and regard Credence under the same assessing gaze with which his work had just been treated. The pleats of his trousers had looked sharp enough to draw blood, even the desk itself a testament to wealth--a great mahogany ship imposed against the horizon of Credence's hopes.
“We need someone who can convince them. Someone with an eye for a certain charisma. Our 'Arrow Collar Man’ needs to be someone young men want to be.”
The words had reached Credence as though arrow-sent straight into the molten core of him. “I-- I can do that,” he’d stammered out at the tail end of the ad man's speech, a breath shy of outright interruption. “Sorry,” he'd quickly amended, faintly cringing as the raised brow made its second appearance, “Sorry. I just. I can do it. I can do this job and I… I want to.”
The man had contemplated Credence then with another wry smile. “You don't sound terribly convinced, yourself.”
Credence had stood at that, all the gangly height of him rushing up at once like a spout of oil freshly tapped. Black gold. He'd gestured helplessly towards the folder stranded on the desk, fingers twitching against the overwhelming desire to retrieve it.
“It's not my way with words you want me for,” he’d reminded--and here his head had ducked back down again, upward momentum spent--“...Sir. My pictures, they… they can speak for themselves. Like you said.” He had resumed his seat then, chastened by his own audacity, hands folded and head cast down, pulling into himself like a wave retreating.
There’d been a pregnant pause before the man cleared his throat, shifting the moment back to something manageable. “Yes, well….”
Slowly, Credence had raised his eyes, head still tilted towards his lap, to cautiously examine the palm held out towards him as though it were a serpent set to strike. The hand that feeds, he'd thought, reaching up to awkwardly return the shake from where he still sat.
~~
Once paperwork had all been signed and last minute glad handing blessedly over and done with, the agency had sent him off with a small advance and instructions to return two days hence.
A small advance, that is, in the eyes of men who ate, slept and breathed large sums. For Credence, the cash now dipping the pocket of his threadbare coat with its beguiling weight was more money than he'd ever seen in his twenty years--certainly more than he'd ever handled in his own frail hands. The agency accountant's eyes had widened with disbelief when Credence had insisted he couldn't accept a cheque-- “I'm… I mean, I've never used a bank…”
By now, the sun was nearly set, a smear of grenadine bleeding low between the buildings, autumn frost creeping in its wake. Most of the day had been spent turning his hat in a white-knuckled grip and furtively smoothing his hair in the agency's hall. All for an interview that had lasted no more than five minutes--Credence's time another currency they were more than generous in spending.
Which isn't to say that he wasn't used to exercising patience. Far from it. Long spells of silence spent earning no more than pitying glances were far more familiar to Credence than neatly folded bills and solid handshakes.
It wasn't that long ago his hours had been spent with knees aching on the chapel floor, watching the dust swirl and settle, studying the light. Filing every simple sight away like a treasure.
Either that or the countless days of proselytising, footsore and chilled to his very marrow in the unforgiving street. Until this past year, the world had only ever been something for Credence to observe, never to be a part of, himself. At the very least, the ad agency had been warm and dry.
As soon as he was released Credence had found himself heading towards Central Park despite the lateness of the hour. A creature of habit before all else. He'd come here nearly every day since leaving the church, the green space like an urban oasis in comparison against the cramped and dirty streets he'd been so long confined to. A place for luxury and idleness--a wonderland of total freedom.
During his earliest hungry days of emaciation, when he'd truly had nowhere to go, the park had been his refuge. All summer long--a place to sleep, to pray, and most importantly--to earn.
At first, he'd barely known how to speak to a stranger, just a ghost of a boy frightened of his own shadow. Before long, he was sketching penny portraits for young sweethearts and drinking in what the world could be when viewed in full colour. Until he'd saved enough to be able to paint it in those very same hues. Central Park had saved him more certainly than the church could have ever hoped to.
If there was to be any saving him at all, that is, knowing what the ad man had certainly seen in his illustrations. He'd been kind to call it dashing.
Even in those first paid portraits, crudely fleshed in smeared charcoals, each girl's place at center focus had been rudely outstripped by the palpable longing with which Credence had captured their partner. A year's passing had far advanced his technical skill, yet failed to tame his covetous eye--how much more clearly his nature revealed itself in glistening oils. Across his canvas, brawny sportsmen lounged and bantered, hips casually cocked, while chiseled soldiers gazed into the distance, eyes wistful and carmine lips sensually parted. Credence caressed with his brush where his hands never dared to touch, and all the while his Ma's words lurked in every vivid stroke--wicked, sinful boy.
The Arrow Collar Man “needs to be someone young men want to be” he'd been told, and if anything, Credence knew all too much about wanting to be somebody else. Both wanting to be and wanting to be with long since tangled up into a maelstrom of self-loathing-turned-adoration for his subjects. And so many of those subjects seemed to feel his gaze through the veil, paused in some forever moment of artful self-presentation, fully cognizant his hidden desire was the magic that brought the blush of life to their painted cheeks. Each curve and line of them framed in love and torment.
Despite the growing darkness, Credence wanders the park a while under the glimmering twilight, portfolio tucked tightly beneath his arm. The stars are beginning to make their appearance against the pale violet of the sky, echoing the city lights below.
He commits the sight to memory, tucking it away with the agency money and the inquisitive glances of a few other lone men passing him along his evening stroll. Things to be pored over later in the safety of his rented room--when sleep evades and the unseen figures in each canvas propped and overturned along the dusty wall leave him sweetly aching. He wants to capture it right now, though he knows there isn't nearly enough light to allow it, and the cold would soon enough have the scars on his palms drawing tight and cramped around the palette.
Eventually, thoughts of his sisters come to mind, as always, bringing with them a weight of guilt to the burden of today's earnings. Credence wonders if they're fairing well, or as well as he can hope, at least. Beneath the open sky, he loses himself for some time simply pondering ways he might somehow share his good fortune in secret before heading back the way he came.
~~
Once home, night now fully fallen and hunger groaning low in his belly, Credence carefully sets his worn shoes next to the door before retrieving the stale apple and small paring knife that wait for him along the windowsill. Tomorrow he'll spend his afternoon gathering groceries for the first time in weeks, along with new supplies to begin working on preliminary sketches for the Arrow campaign.
The soft susurrus against his thin dress shirt as he pushes his suspenders down over his shoulders brings a small smile to his lips--a private sound that's come to signify home.
He never would have been permitted the freedom to walk around the church this way, even in what had served for his own cramped little room. Barefoot and unlaced like the out-of-work Catholic labourers from the tenement down the street, shameless before his sisters and God himself…Ma would surely have beat him within in an inch, and he'd have thanked her for the charity. Now, he simply stretches out the day's aches, doing his best to shrug away his self-recrimination along with them.
Stooping low, he pulls the small crate that serves as his table up to the edge of the bed in the corner of the room. In addition to the advance, the agency had sent him off with a small catalogue of Arrow's latest offerings for him to study, and he lays it out now reverently. The old spring mattress groans and dips as he settles in, carving the initial cut into his meal and staring down at the first open page before him.
The apple has gone dry bordering on flakiness with age, but Credence barely tastes it, barely even feels it on his tongue as he chews and swallows.
Crowding the sepia newsprint, pristine tailored dress shirts--starched and crisply pleated--hold no competition against the carefully groomed models they adorn. His eyes trace with slow, liquid movement over the close-shaven jawlines, taking in the clean refinement of their glistening pomaded hair. Breathing shallowly around a half-chewed slice, he tries to imagine his faceless Arrow Collar Man amongst them, shining out above his rosy-cheeked peers, drawing the admiration of every single eye. The kind of man who looks the way expensive cologne is meant to smell, enticing in its spicy masculinity.
Credence realizes himself with a sudden thrill of dread, alerted by the warm thickening along his inseam.
Glancing up to scan the little room as though expecting his Ma herself to catch him staring just a beat too long, he meets the eye of his latest unfinished work. Immediately he reprimands himself for having left it facing outward into the room, caught nearly panicked now by the golden rippling shoulders of the handsome rower he'd once seen gliding over the lake like a figure in a hazy summer dream.
He turns back to the catalogue, flips the page hard enough to leave a small tear. Union suits.
Closing the book with a trembling hand, Credence rises to shut the light on the far wall, turning the beckoning rower to join the others as he goes.
For a moment he simply paces in the dark, running his fingers through tangled curls, listening to the sound of his own heaving breaths. He can't find the stillness he seeks, can't settle the buzzing, fluttering tightness of his skin. Arousal moves through him like an engine, a perpetual motion machine, as unstoppable now as it is inevitable. He knows that it's been building nearly all day, all his life, it seems, grown bold and insistent with the relief of his new-found prosperity. The sin of lust doubled down, advancing into greed.
In the shadows of his room, with the city faintly glowing over his pale skin through the bare window, he sees that compromise is all that's left to him.
Decision made, he strips down quickly, allowing himself to remain fully uncovered for as few seconds as possible before sliding whisper-silent between the sheets. The need within him is something to be appeased, he knows, as cruel a fact as hunger or his mother's cold-burning rage. The analogy fits: his reaching hands shake as surely now as they once did handing over his worn belt like a humble offering.
Grasping above his head, he pulls the thin pillow down to press against his weeping hardness, turned onto his stomach, his teeth already half-sunk into the meat of the forearm folded beneath his head. He deserves this, he tells himself, a rare reward for the achievements of the day--and already he's slowly humping forward in soft little shifts, stifled moans shivering out against his goose-pebbled skin.
The pleasure of it borders on pain and Credence tells himself he deserves that, too.
Once begun, the earthbound, hellbound filth of it grips him and he's mired in sensation: an ignorant hog happy in the mud of his own making. Images hoarded throughout the day, the weeks, the months--all wash over him and he lets them come unbidden--rough workers hands… shoulders broad and thick beneath the taut wool serge of a tailored suit… he can nearly smell the musky aroma of sandalwood and man-sweat on the stifling air.
Spurred on now by his own willful imaginings, Credence rides every pent up, saved up, locked down frustration into the creaking mattress in angled downward thrusts. The rhythmic squeal of tired springs fills the room, underscored by the sound of his own soft and whorish whimpering. He couldn't stop himself if he wanted to, possessed by the thought of sandpaper stubble brushing rough and hungry over his tender, electrified flesh. His jaw drops slack and panting around the shape of a jagged moan, little teeth marks pressed wet and livid where his mouth had only just been.
He wants… he wants and wants and burns with it, gripping the sheets for leverage, spilling hot and sudden as a punch. Wet warmth blooms against his stomach, pulsing out in one long shuddering, bone-melting wave. Credence lays there in the following stillness and simply breathes.