SNEAK PEEK:
God…Bucky, can I draw you?” He blurts, fingers still tracing lines over gooseflesh skin.
“Uh, draw me? Like right now?” James asks, looking more confused than opposed to the idea.
Steve bites his lip and nods, “Please.”
“Okay. Sure… How do you want me?”
Steve wiggles his eyebrows in a manner he thinks is seductive, but probably looks ridiculous, a notion that is only fuelled by James’ sudden eruption of giggles.
“That’s not what I meant, goddammit!” James laughs, shoving against Steve’s side.
Steve grins, shoving the brunette back. “Just lay against the pillows. That’s it…” Steve directs, face a little pink. “Bend your left knee, no, that’s your right knee, Buck… and put your foot flat against the mattress. Okay, good…Um, your hands look a little awkward. Do you want a book or something?”
“I feel awkward!” James protests, but fishes a paperback from down the side of the mattress. Steve watches him flick to the dog-eared page, neon tabs sticking out haphazardly. He leans over to grab the materials he needs from his backpack, shoves his glasses back on top of his nose and settles himself in the desk chair which he wheels over to the foot of the mattress.
“Sorry, the lighting isn’t very good,” James apologises, looking up from the words on the page with a frown.
“No, it’s perfect. Trust me, Bucky, you look…really beautiful.” Steve says honestly, bringing a knee up to balance the sketchpad on. “Just read your book, baby,” he encourages, not missing the pink flush that spreads over James’ chest.
“Kay,” the boy grumbles, but quickly gets absorbed in the pages, much to Steve’s amusement.
Steve starts with a quick outline to get the general position of James’ body before he inevitably can’t sit still any longer. He flicks his eyes between the paper and his subject, he looks closely, intently. He pencils in James' elbow propped up on his thigh. Sketches slender fingers keeping open the pages of a book. The sharp jut of a bare ankle and the long curve of his spine. He commits the sinewy expanse of the boy’s neck to paper. The proud slope of his nose and the dime-sized divot in his chin. Steve draws the tantalising valley of James’ pectorals and the sharp lines that disappear underneath the waistband of his tight jeans. He captures the concentration on his face, eyes slightly narrowed, the corner of a lip caught absently between teeth. And then it’s the scars on James’ arm, the tattoos, the swinging pendant over his chest.
It’s silent for a while, just the soft scratching of pencil against paper and the sound of city-traffic below. Every now and then, James will glance up and catch Steve’s gaze only to blush and look away again with a shy smile. He can’t place when exactly the air around them changes but, the next time James looks up from his book, they hold each other's gazes for a while longer.
“Can I stretch out now? M’getting cramp,” James complains, several glances later. Steve nods, the sketch has been finished for a few minutes, but he’s not letting James know that. Not yet.
He looks down at it. Tires to separate himself from the image, to look at it objectively as a piece of art. It’s difficult. He’s tied to it, deeply, intrinsically. When he looks at the paper in front of him he sees an extension of himself. His James. He knows without any uncertainty that even the most uncultured individual would be hard pressed to deny the love within the fine lines of graphite.
It’s obvious. Christ, is it obvious.
“Sure, Buck,” he says instead. Pretending to adjust the sketchpad on his knee when really he’s watching as James lies flat on his back. James lifts his arms above his head and stretches languorously, his hips rising off the mattress. He resettles lazily, propped up on his elbows, his legs spread. His hair falling into his eyes. James’ body a long line of temptation that Steve can’t help but let his eyes wander across.
This is it. Steve thinks. This is my undoing.
