Friend? Now that was bold. Maybe even bolder than having a bloodstained Hound from the infamous Four Hounds stand as a model for a portrait, here or in Elyos. But if anyone could be the human stand-in for a wyvern, it was probably a criminal. The church couldn't have possibly known that though, and all Griss was really here for was to clear some debts his mercenary paycheck couldn't cover. Defacing property... stealing alcohol from the kitchen... They'd have to throw him in the dungeon if they ever wanted him to stop though.
The familiarity pulls a draconically toothy grin across his face, and without even trying. Griss has always smiled like that, showing off how half his teeth are sharper than most people's and unsettling just about anyone meeting him for the first time, but that's what makes him perfect for this assignment. Chrom's a lucky one, and that's why Griss doesn't put up a fuss at first when he's asked to be more wyvern-like. Obediently, but in a way that looks like this is his normal way of being, he bends at the waist and spreads out his arms, his unblinking, rust-red eyes trained on this wannabe artist the whole time.
Lines like bloodstains snake up both arms between the white lines of old scars, stretch from wrist to shoulder, and then streak down his shoulder blades to hug around his ribs. The full breadth of his tattoos is a rare sight, but there lies the problem. And the problem with this entire exercise, in fact. In this sterile, feature-less room, five models stand in a circle at the center with their backs facing one another, wearing nothing but smallclothes as a handful of artists stare at them from behind their easels. A man undressed, being nothing but soft skin and, at best, mild self-consciousness, is about the farthest thing from the hard, reptilian scales of a dragon of any species. While by no means one of modest dress, even Griss understood that the mantle he often wore across his shoulders could do a better job of impressing the shape of wings than his wiry, though well-defined arms stretched out in a line.
"Wait, I got somethin' better," he says, and doesn't wait for Chrom's approval. A crate sits between him and the young woman on his left painting a different model, and so Griss goes over to hook his foot around it and kick it toward the center of the room. Spare brushes and some other supplies that had been sitting on it scatter across the floor, and the young woman yelps in protest, but it's all too loud in this otherwise silent drawing studio, so she ducks down to hide her red face and gather up her runaway tools.
"Ahem. Please refrain from disrupting the other artists," the instructor calls from the other end of the room. He'd had his nose buried in a book until now, and searches blindly over the heads of those gathered because the crash had only alerted him of something happening, and not who had done it.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Griss says, grinning, and then drags the crate the rest of the way to his place in the middle. Here, he kicks out his leg and steps halfway up onto the crate and puffs out his chest, doing his best impression of a mighty lizard lifting its head from a rock.
It's a shameless display, all things considered. Chrom's a lucky one. For the church's requirement that all models wear smallclothes, that is.
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