AN: Written simply because I can't sleep, I watched a small chunk of the film on TV before I went to bed, and I needed to keep my fingers busy. I have always had a serious adoration of Brideshead, whether it be of the novel or its film adaptations. Would anyone like to join me in populating this section with fics? We need more Brideshead love!
Disclaimers: This story contains mild slash (because I ship these two to death XD). Also, this is my first attempt at writing anything remotely close to slash, and hopefully my insomnia−addled brain didn't fail too horribly. Doubly also, all characters belong to the ever−awesome Evelyn Waugh.
The heat shimmers in the air like dragonflies in flight, and underneath the brilliant sun the world turns incandescent, saturated by its own glow. They have perched themselves at the zenith of a sloping hill alive with grass that pulses in the breeze, and they lounge in the shade of a towering oak, curled and stretched in the intricate silhouettes of branches swaying in the haze.
They have abandoned their upright picnic long ago for the comforts of something less colloquial and more soundless, still a conversation but not one spoken aloud.
Charles balances an easel on the ground, and his brush glides across the canvas. Open cans of paint litter the area between the empty glasses of wine, and every now and then he bends towards one and drags up a stream of color. He holds the dripping brush in the air, suspended for a heartbeat, and then presses it to the negative space of his picture and slowly wills it to bring the scene into life.
Sebastian reclines on the earth with his eyes half−lidded and his lips fully parted. His gaze wavers between the clouds drifting overhead and the profile of the painter next to him, watching but not actually observing. He remains relaxed and stationary, only breaking from his statuesque habitations to tug at his sweat−dampened shirt as it sticks to his flesh.
Charles can't help but peek over at him sometimes. Spread like a child on the crest of the hill, he's a tightly tangled mass of dark hair, darker eyes, and skin sun-browned by many an afternoon spent drinking in the July light during moments such as these.
Sebastian's eyes are concentrated on the clouds, but perhaps he senses his friend's watchful regards, because he splays an arm out across the grass and lolls his lazy head in Charles's direction.
"You've been painting all afternoon," he declares with a grin not entirely sober. "Take a break and lie down with me. The sky looks much more fantastic from here, I can assure you."
Charles mumbles something about how half−dried paintings are always terrible to tamper with, but Sebastian swears to him that anything he touches becomes instantaneously magnificent and golden, so he sets the brush down and leaves the canvas behind. He sinks onto the grass and stares up at the sky with his head resting on Sebastian's arm, and together, wrapped up in their own little solitudes, they witness the planet as it turns on its axis.
It doesn't take much for Sebastian to stop watching, though, and Charles detects the way he's shifting ever so slightly. He feels Sebastian roll onto his side before he turns to check that he's moved. He hears Sebastian speaking before he understands what the words require.
"Close your eyes, would you?"
He blinks once or twice, and his glance falls away from the clouds and fixates upon Sebastian's face. "Might I ask why?"
The smile is more radiant than the sun has ever been, mischievous and glorious both. "Because it would make me happy."
And since Charles would follow his friend to the ends of the earth if just to see that same sort of smile cross his face, he surrenders and lets his eyes flicker shut.
He doesn't expect it, at first. A sudden brush of trembling skin presses itself to the crease in his brow like it aims to smooth it out completely. But he breathes in deep, and with the exhale his limbs grow languid. In that wondrous release of breath, his whole body unfurrows and whatever tenseness was there to begin with dissipates into the atmosphere.
The two of them laugh, gently, and Charles finds himself leaning into the grace of Sebastian's touch, fingertips as they spend many a moment dancing warm and callous across the contours of his face, brushing their way over the angles of his cheekbones, flitting across the tip of his nose, trailing along his jaw.
They never quite touch his lips.