“Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” 

On the other side of the curtain, Elias sighed, and Ryan could see the shadow of his silhouette peeking through thanks to the light, his crossed arms before his chest, and his head held low. 

“You shouldn’t have agreed.”

“I—I had no choice! They already dragged me here, and, and—“ 

“They can’t force you.” 

“Well, well, uh—“ Ryan stuttered — how would he explain that he wanted to do this, out of curiosity, and for whatever other stupid reasons that flung through his mind? He just didn’t expect … this. 

Staring down at his body completely exposed, clothes neatly tucked onto a chair, he was naked from head to toe. Even though he still hid behind the curtain, Ryan covered his crotch with his hands, and already shuddered with goosebumps all over his body.

“Honestly, um, I thought you get some kind of nude underwear for this — do people really do this, like this, in their birthday suit? Aren’t they embarrassed?”

“That’s why we get volunteers,” Elias grumbled.

“Well, I’m volunteering, but that’s still—!” 

“Tch,” even louder, now, Eli clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. His arms dropped, and Ryan could hear him step away. “You are wasting everyone’s time. Come out, or get dressed so we can look for someone else. What a pain. We shouldn’t even have bothered with you. It’s a terrible idea.”

Ryan pouted. “H-Hey! I’ll be the best naked model you’ve ever had, okay?!”

“You just have to sit there. How the sketches come out has nothing to do with you.”

With way too much confidence, Ryan pulled the curtain to the side, exposing himself to a class of more than twenty people, some of which he’d seen in history, and social studies before. An even louder gulp rolled down his tongue as they all stared, the room a little too silent for his liking. 

Even Elias, whose gaze was usually so avert, stared right down at him, heating his body up with his eyes alone.

“Nothing to see, after all,” he sighed, and Ryan’s hands slapped right onto his crotch once more, hiding it all. 

“It’s cold! You’re mean! It’s cold, and he’s shy, okay, and this is completely normal, and, and—“ As his face already burned up in embarrassment, Elias long turned away and headed for his stool, canvases long prepared in a circle around the little podium Ryan would sit on. 

And as Eli left, Ryan could see the ever so slight smirk on his face, forcing his heart to thump even louder. 

One of the girls clapped her hands together, only for them to wrap around Ryan’s arm and pull him towards the podium, with only a single stool atop it, and nothing Ryan could cover himself. He was exposed to the whole class, positioned on the chair with his legs slightly spread, and his arms positioned right before his private parts, giving him at least some kind of privacy.

“Let’s get started, then!” 

As she hurriedly left to her seat, Ryan gulped. His hands didn’t cover anything, not enough for the person that sat right across from him, right in the way of his eyes, and that stared so intently, it brought goosebumps and shudders down Ryan’s entire body. 

Eli sat there, behind his canvas, all of Ryan facing him.

He gulped, gaze stuttering upwards, but a tremble dominated him forevermore, his muscles tensing at the mere thought of the eyes that stared at him. 

He cared about none of them, and there was nothing exciting about it. In the end, it wasn’t even weird, at all, for the most part. The students all focused on drawing his body, and learning about the muscles and the anatomy that came with it. For all of them, it was another day in this studio, another class, another body to learn from. None of their eyes particularly bothered him.

My God.

Eli’s eyes were intense. 

Ryan’s, like magnets, drooped down towards Eli’s over, and over again, and he shuddered each and every time. In full focus, Eli’s eyes would study Ryan detail for detail, from the head, to the shoulders, to his chest, hips, and down his legs, those fiery, focused eyes would take it all in, and Ryan gulped over and over, and almost couldn’t handle it.

Those eyes Eli had, when he concentrated on the work he loved so much, when there was nothing but professionalism and focus within them, a heat so surprising, a heat only meant for art, it mesmerized Ryan, and overwhelmed him all the same.

So intense, it was as if Ryan could feel the very pencil running down his own skin, following Eli’s gaze and every movement. 

And though Ryan tried his hardest to stare at some sketches behind Eli, he couldn’t help it, and sometimes, his eyes would drop, and meet Eli’s like a punch in his face, so overbearingly fierce, Ryan had no idea what to do with it. When Eli was so avoidant usually, and never wanted to look at Ryan, right now he studied him from head to toe and Ryan thought no one had ever known him any better than now. 

He gulped. Those eyes … were danger in and of itself. And the way his curtain bangs fluttered into his face as he cocked his head to the side, squinting at Ryan’s moles or birthmarks along his legs or the one he had near his hip, those very spots tickled, and Ryan squirmed. 

“Um—So—How long is this supposed to—“

“Sh.” Eli hissed right at him, and continued to draw.

“Am—Am I not allowed to move at all?”

“You’re not supposed to talk,” Eli grumbled, and at that moment, it was as if he was the only one in this room with him.

At some point, Ryan had completely given up avoiding those eyes, and embraced them, all for his own demise, his body reacting all on its own for being so profoundly watched over. 

His hands shivered, trying to press further into his crotch, trying to hide more, and more. 

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

Ryan clenched his eyes shut trying to distract himself, but all he could think of, in-between integrals and annoying engineering labs he thought of, were Eli’s powerful eyes. 

Stop, stop, stop! Thermodynamics! Newton’s law! No, no, no, no! 

He’s gonna kill me. 

With his face burning hot, and places too uncomfortable to think of, Ryan had long lost the battle, Eli’s face reappearing inside his mind to perfection, it was long over. It had never been a fight he could have won in the first place. 

To rid himself of his embarrassment, he cleared his throat. “You—You guys will definitely need bigger canvases, now,” he whispered in a joke, making the whole class that had been so silent until now chuckle and scoff, when they’d tried their hardest to remain professional. 

They all did, except for, again … Eli. 

He remained focused, with those consuming eyes, but that eye contact … wasn’t it way too personal, way too intense? And then, the way his eyes slithered lower, as if it were his own, curious hands as they painted. 

For as long as Elias observed him, there was no way he could have calmed.