The Egyptian Queen Redux
Author's Notes: So, yeah, this was really supposed to be a one-shot with 60% sexytimes and 40% humor, but as I kept writing, it somehow became a three-shot commentary on contemporary art through the eye of Pegasus, mixed in with humor and a little bit of sexytimes. All in all, I think it turned out better this way.
The original inspiration for this comes from hearing my husband recall growing up with his father as an artist and his mother as a dancer. The female body was never a taboo image, as much of the walls in his parents' house, as well as our own today, has an image of Venus in some fashion. In their household, the phrase is thus: "If we did not have women, we would not have art." I do not doubt that Pegasus has the same maxim.
I also wanted to write some Sightshipping goodness, so there's that too.
Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! and its characters are copywritten to Kazuki Takahashi and Konami.
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
"No, no, no, no, no!" Pegasus growls with his head hung low, cradling his head in his hands as the brush falls from his fingers. "This isn't right at all!"
"Do I need to change something in my posture?" Isis asks carefully, looking over her shoulder with some concern.
"No, no, Madame Muad'Dib, it has nothing to do with you," Pegasus sighs, slumping further into his hands and refusing to meet her gaze. "I just can't capture you properly. It's been driving me mad for months."
"... May I see this one?"
"If you can tolerate the sight of my clumsy attempt," Pegasus grimaces, still refusing to look at her or the canvas. He rolls his hand inward, telling her to come over. She moves in a smooth manner, as though she is floating to where he sits, and takes a seat on his lap to observe his work. She holds her chin in her hand and hums while he buries his head in her shoulder out of embarrassment, placing a hand to the curve of her lower back.
"You are far too harsh on yourself," Isis finally says, cradling the back of his neck with her hand, massaging the tension with her fingers. "I think it looks fine."
"That's the problem!" Pegasus says, summoning the nerve to look into her eyes. "It can't just be fine because you are not just fine!"
Before she can ask him to specify, he gingerly cradles her cheek with his hand as the other rubs circles on her back.
"You are divine, and that," Pegasus points to the portrait, "does not do you any justice."
"You're being dramatic."
"No, I'm being a serious artist," Pegasus says. He takes his hand off her face and leans off to the side of the chair. Isis stands as she feels him slipping and watches him fall, softly, on his back to the lush patch of grass below, covering his eyes (or rather, one eye and one eye socket) with his forearm while the other arm drapes over his stomach.
"This is being dramatic."
"You're acting ridiculous," Isis claims, tittering with the words. She kneels down to meet him and rests on her hip alongside him, the loose sleeves of her crème dress flowing with the passing breeze as she casually snaps one of his suspenders against his chest. He sighs deeply and drops his forearm from his face, moving the hand to intertwine with hers as he stares up at her. He cannot help but think of the ocean at the horizon as he looks into her eyes: bright, glistening, refreshing and awe inspiring to behold. The only thing that matched their beauty was the smile at her lips, a more common sight these days compared to their first meeting in Egypt. It felt like a lifetime ago...
"See, that's what I'm talking about," Pegasus began with a small smile. "I can paint the shape of you, but I can't capture that." He gestures with the other hand in a circle about her face.
"Any of that," he continues. "What's on that canvas might be passing material for the Royal College, but it simply will not do by my standards."
"The standards of the mighty Pegasus exceed that of the world's leading art institution?" she asks with a cocked brow. "Isn't your degree's major in business with a minor in art?"
Pegasus gasps as though struck through the heart with a spear, grabbing the front of his crème blouse in a bunch around his chest.
"You wound me so!" He tosses his head to the side and the other hand goes limp in hers. "You earth science majors are so heartless!"
"Archaeology with an emphasis in Egyptology," she corrects him with a small smirk. "And my minor was mathematics."
"Agh, numbers! The mortal enemy of the fine arts!" he gasps, before blinking rapidly in realization. "... Mathematics, you say? I swear I would have pegged it for history or philosophy, no?"
"I had enough of that in my personal time," she whispers, fingers brushing over her collar where the Torque once rested. "But if you want me to entertain philosophy, I remember Descartes had claimed certainty could be found in mathematics. In that way, it was a welcome distraction for me in those days."
"More distracting than me?" Pegasus asks with a sure smile. She leans down until her nose touches his.
"You weren't a distraction back then; you were a headache," she draws out the word, lips so close to his own, tempting him.
"And what am I to you now?" he asks with a grin that rivals that of the Cheshire Cat. Her eyelashes flutter against his cheek as her lips barely brush against his, a chaste kiss.
"My loyal steed, the majestic Pegasus, he who carries the weight of the gods." Her tone mocks him lightly, but her eyes speak with affection.
"I serve to carry the weight of only one goddess," he interjects, wanting so much more in that moment than her lips on his, hands reaching for her hips and urging her to sit astride him. She obliges him with a low sound in her throat, almost a moan when she moves her hands to his hair and brushes the silver strands aside as she straddles his waist.
"And such a fine steed you are," she purrs, moving her hands from his head to his blouse, undoing the buttons to reveal his chest. "Well bred with a sure stance, but you lack discipline."
He raises a brow at that statement, and wonders if she's hiding the riding crop somewhere among his art supplies. Are they going to play that game?
"I'm undisciplined? In what way?" Pegasus teases, fingers moving in a spidery motion up her lap, edging the fabric upwards to reveal the bronze thighs underneath. She stops them in their tracks and holds them to either side of his head, and he cannot help but chuckle in anticipation. Oh, yes, it was this game!
"You speak out of turn..."
"Guilty."
"You touch without asking..."
"Oh, my, that is quite a considerable offense."
"And you've been most depreciative of someone very important to me."
He opens his mouth for a rehearsed retort, but the words die in his throat and the lust fades as he furrows his brow in confusion, then distress, and finally, outrage.
"I would never speak ill of your brothers!" he shouts with conviction. "Who would tell you something like that? Who would accuse me of such—"
"I'm not talking about them, Pegasus," she says softly, resting her forehead to his with a solemn smile, lifting her hands from his wrists and cupping his face. "You've been far too critical regarding your artwork. I won't stand to hear you berate yourself any longer."
He shuts his eye and grits his teeth, as though he was slapped, and turns away from her.
"Isis, you don't understand..."
"I understand enough to know I won't tolerate anymore whinging from you on the matter, much less insulting yourself so needlessly," Isis says with finality, caressing his cheek with the back of her hand. "You're upset because you think you can do better work, yes?"
"... Perhaps," he confesses with pursed lips, still refusing to look at her and placing his attention to a blade of grass beside his head.
"You've never struck me as one to give up so easily, and certainly not on your art. You say something is missing, but you can't capture it? I propose this: instead of lamenting on your failures, perhaps it would do you some good to revisit the fundamentals and work from there. All fine crafts require consistent practice. Perhaps there is a step you are glancing over without realizing it."
Pegasus' eye softens at the words with a hum. There is something to her hypothesis. He had been so intent on capturing her in a portrait that the thought of revisiting other methods hadn't crossed his mind. He had trapped his aspirations in a tunnel where he should have been pulling inspiration from wells.
"Back to basics, hm?" he says thoughtfully, noting the movement of the grass and clouds in the wind. "It has been a while since I've done any intensive drafting with charcoal. I can still remember the day I sketched my first nude."
"Were you nervous?"
"There was a sense of anticipation before the model arrived, yes. Mind you, I like to think I was more mature than everyone else in the room, but I was still quite young when it took place. Once I put the charcoal to paper, it all flowed so naturally from my fingertips, the jitters went away."
"Jitters?" Isis asks. Pegasus realizes the word may not have had a direct translation into Arabic, and tries to find the correct term as he connects the shapes of the clouds above to particular animals.
"Anxiety," he specifies. "Adjusting your mind to focusing on the finer details, seeing a stranger in that fashion. It's all done in a professional setting, but I suppose we Americans still have some Victorian tendencies towards nudity in the beginning. Yet as the sessions go along, so does the nuance. As an artist, there is an expectation to still be passionate about the subject, but you develop a numbness to it in some manners as well. It's a difficult paradox to explain."
"So you're completely numb to this?"
Pegasus' attention shifts from the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky to behold the expanse of mocha flesh before him. When had she dropped the top of her dress around her waist?
"Oh, Isis," he shivers, trailing his hands up her waist and savoring the warmth of her breasts against his palms. "I could never be numb to this."
- 0 – 0 – 0 -
He reviews the supplies in his studio, taking inventory of what he does and does not have. If he truly is going to work from square one, he needs the proper tools. He is loathe to admit it, but he has allowed his skills to stagnate over the last couple of years, falling into a rut for the sake of comfort. It is an absolute tragedy to his hands and eye for the lack of exercise, and worst of all, a great injustice to his heart. He needs to relearn in order to innovate; he needs to go back to basics if he is to capture the essence of his muse.
It certainly didn't get any more basic than the contours of a nude, of which Isis is a willing model. The darkness of the charcoal blends with little effort to her kohl-lined eyes, but Pegasus laments that the limited pallet cannot bring out the full potential before he chastises himself. It is not the medium nor the model that determines the outcome; it is his eye and his hand, which makes it all the more frustrating when he looks over the completed piece and finds himself unsatisfied. He is fortunate Isis has patience in spades, more than content to allow him the opportunity to try again, and again, and again, throughout different poses and mediums.
He has the money for the supplies and the willingness to experiment, but time proves to be the most precious resource. Isis cannot visit as frequently as he would like, and she is coming up on the last week of her vacation before she must go back to Egypt. He would never ask of her to abandon her career, her passions, her family, for his selfish needs, but he cannot eliminate the sound of a ticking clock in the back of his mind as he readies himself in his studio.
He slaps himself with both hands to steel his nerves. No excuses. If he cannot capture everything in real time, then he must prepare himself to practice in her absence. However, he still has a week with Isis, and he is determined to commit all details to memory not through his eye, but through his hands.
Artists are often stereotyped to having a carnal rapport with their models, and Pegasus cannot find it in himself to disagree as he stands behind Isis, fingers roaming to her hips and gripping them in desperation while his lips brush against the shell of her ear. He likens her hair to obsidian silk as he brushes the strands away from her neck and nips the sensitive flesh. He savors the feel of taut muscle on her belly and the softness of her own hands covering his, guiding one hand to her breast, a comfortable weight and shape in his palm, as she directs the other hand lower to the junction between her legs.
There is great regret in that no matter how many lifetimes he could live, he knows he will never be able to sketch the beautiful sound that escapes from her lips as he plunges into the moist heat with his fingers, and he cannot hope to paint the flavor that is on his tongue as he lays her down and laps at the swollen pearl above her molten core. Alas, there is some hope of a detail he can put to canvas, as his hands drift to cradle an ass carved by a Renaissance artist, and lissome thighs move to trap his head in place.
He wonders as he moves atop her and runs his tongue along the hollow of her neck, holds her legs over his hips and relishes the cry that rips at her throat as he enters her, if he can somehow bring forth the sensation of her nails digging into his back. Was there a way to replicate that force, translate that passion to acrylics and oils?
"Pegasus."
He is broken out of his thought at the wanton sound of his name, and upon looking into her eyes, shimmering sapphire with a depth that threatens to swallow him whole, they pull him in like a tide and he is swept away in the moment.
- 0 – 0 – 0 -
He learns to work with the time they have. Both travel frequently for their careers, and Pegasus is more than willing to meet with her in Egypt whenever the chance arises. He hopes the atmosphere of her homeland will lead him to the hidden element he needs. It also does not hurt their relationship when he grows more attentive to her body with each session. With every attempt, he becomes more familiar with every curve, every line, how she moves, how she breathes. He can nearly read her mind by observing the small subtleties in her expressions and how she holds herself throughout the day. It's all so alluring as he finds something new each time, yet it confounds him in the same breadth.
After a year of constant review and practice, Pegasus' work improves, but something is still missing. It grates him, endlessly, that as he pours over his references and refreshes himself on his art history, he cannot pinpoint the detail of her essence that eludes him so. It is the first time, in a while, where he has not been able to adapt at the drop of a hat. He is a prodigy in the arts, a natural talent from the moment he picked up a brush, so why is he running into so many difficulties now? Had he plateaued somewhere along the line? Or worse, did he lose something along the way?
He recalls his most productive years, before the creation of Duel Monsters and the trip to Egypt, and remembers the only time he experimented with so many styles was when he was with Cyndia.
Pegasus knows that every artist is a plagiarist. Did Pegasus have his own style? Yes, but he thought it horrendously egotistical to think that the origins were his and his alone. A brush can only move in so many ways and there are only so many colors a person can perceive. Every artist is a result of their mentors, their research, their practice, their dedication, and it simply cannot be helped that a technical skill or secret trick to the trade is applied. Every artist that has ever been, and ever will be, will always, inevitably, be doomed to steal from the ways of those who came before them.
Pegasus has no qualms in admitting that Cyndia was, first and foremost, a Gibson girl. Certainly, the paint would carry hints to the soft style of a Manet, the decadence of a Fragonard, and he entertained the loose strokes of a Lautrec now and then, but the lines, the shape, the overall composition and influence was unabashedly Gibson. Cyndia was the Victorian ideal with American sensibilities: independent, confident, never brash or brazen in her actions but still commanded attention. Her frame was a slender hourglass, always having a demure air about her while he stood captivated by her presence.
Isis, too, captivates him, but Isis is not Cyndia. Isis is also independent and exudes confidence with an hourglass figure, but she does not possess the fragile frame or delicate constitution of a Gibson; she is something else entirely. Isis is freer than the bold lines of a Mucha, more grounded than the content of a Dali, and it would not sit well with him to mimic the style of a Gauguin— Isis may have been raised underground, but she is not primitive by any means. "Isis", the very name itself, suggests to surpass the humble realm of mortal man, so he eliminates the style of Rockwell as a possibility.
He tries to depict her as a Picasso, once. Just what the hell was he thinking?
For one year, he tries, and fails, to paint the essence of the Egyptian goddess. He delves deeper into his references, tries to go back farther in time, tries to find some inkling that would guide him to the missing piece, but when he studies ancient fertility figures, he decides Isis is more refined than the squat shapes. He goes through the Renaissance and Neoclassical styles, but finds them stifling.
He explores other mediums. Perhaps she would be better captured as a statue, something of bronze or marble? Surely, they would be materials that would stand the test of time, but he remembers there is a fire to Isis, something behind her eyes that can only come from the sun. In that, the cold, lifeless nature of metal and stone does not suit her.
Damn it, just what is he missing?! He needed to find it, at any cost!
"Pegasus..." she moans into the pillow. He massages the beautiful curve of her lumbar with the thumb of his free hand and leans into her ear, slowly rolling his hips forward with the motion.
"Yes, my beloved?"
"Do you really need to paint while we're doing this?"
He glances at the brush in his right hand and looks back to her. She is peeking over her shoulder and he can see a hint of red to her cheeks. A moment of silence, reflection, then:
"Ah... I suppose that is a bit much, isn't it?"
Perhaps painting during the act of sexual congress is not the correct price to pay.
- 0 – 0 – 0 -
In the end, the answer comes to him not in a book, a session, or a dream, but in a Vegas auction house.
It is an annual charity event in which all proceeds will fund art programs for at-risk youths in the state of Nevada. However, Pegasus' reasons for being are were not quite so charitable. He had gotten word through the Vegas Grapevine that a rare copy of Funny Bunny was up for grabs: a 10.0 GM, limited edition collaborative issue starring a one-off adventure between Funny Bunny and Fritz the Cat, a gem from the '70s and certainly not meant for children. It is one of 16 copies remaining in the world, and Pegasus is going to walk out of the place with it in hand if it is the last thing he ever does in his life.
"Is Ms. Ishtar not attending the auction with us today?" Croquet asks at his side. The timing is coincidental when she chooses her flight, but Isis opts to meet with them in Vegas and fly with them to the island when their business is done. There is also a genuine curiosity about Pegasus' hometown, and the silver-haired man is more than happy to show her around when he is free. So Croquet is vexed when she is nowhere to be seen.
"She's at the Museum of Fine Art," Pegasus answers with a wave of his hand, glancing over the paintings for the silent auction. "Can you just imagine? She works at a museum in Egypt and then decides she wants to spend her leisure at one in the States. Her thirst for knowledge is insatiable!"
Croquet grunts in a noncommittal tone.
"Also, I told her these events are an absolute bore," Pegasus says with a roll of his eye. "All this waiting for one item to come to the floor. Goodness, who would want to pay over $5 million for that abstract expressionist piece of hogwash over there?"
Croquet grunts again, not wanting to say the wrong thing. He knows how Pegasus feels about gestural abstraction. They continue to walk through the auction house with a plan to stay until the comic comes to the main floor, viewing each piece as Pegasus comments and criticizes whatever catches his eye.
"Ah, they have a section dedicated to comics! You see, Croquet, my taste is validated—not that it needed to be, of course," Pegasus drawls with a roll of his wrist. "Oh, and they have posters over there! I guess this event is not as pretentious as I inferred."
He hums a tune to himself as he holds his chin between his thumb and forefinger, not giving too much critical thought to the theatrical gallery. Most are vintage prints from America's Golden Age, others are from the Silent Era, and many are modern films bearing signatures from cast members. He did not find them all wholly remarkable, but he admits he would rather have the Art Deco styling of Metropolis on his wall as opposed to the abstraction of the Kooning being sold on the main floor.
He continues down the line, mind in a light daze as he counts down the minutes of just how much longer he has to wait for Funny Bunny and Fritz to be announced. Something catches his eye, and he almost passes by the image, but he turns his head back and he blinks to focus on it again. Then, like a weary traveler in the desert, his breath hitches in his throat and he stalls as he is taken by a storm.
Croquet almost bumps into him from the abrupt stop, and his confusion shifts to worry as he can see Pegasus' hands shaking, a cold sweat breaking out over his brow.
"Sir?" Croquet wonders if he should dare lay a hand on his shoulder.
Pegasus does not hear him as his jaw goes slack and his knees feel weak, a sensation of jelly in his nerves as his heart feels as though it has been struck by lightning, pounding in his ears.
"Sir, are you all right?"
"I... I can't believe it..." Pegasus pants, finding his breath again. Quaking hands move to his face, covering his mouth. He looks like he is about to cry.
"Do I need to get a doctor, sir?"
"My art books... I've had it... the whole time..." Pegasus buries his head in his hands and takes deep breaths at the realization.
"The auction for the collaborative issue of Funny Bunny and Fritz the Cat will begin in 15 minutes."
Croquet almost flies into a panic when Pegasus doesn't react to the announcement over the intercom.
"Sir!"
Silver hair whips back as Pegasus flings his head to face the ceiling and begins to laugh hysterically. It is a scene Croquet has not witnessed since the events at Duelist Kingdom, and he is terrified. A crowd begins to form around them at the commotion.
Croquet's terror turns to vexation as Pegasus stifles his laughter and he excitedly jumps in place, pumping his fists in the air, chanting "Yes, yes, yes!" under his breath.
"Sir!"
"I've found it, Croquet!" Pegasus grips his butler's shoulders and swings him around in a circle. "I have it! I know what I've been missing! It was so obvious!"
"Um... congratulations, sir?" Croquet says stiffly. "What exactly did you find?"
"I need to find Isis!"
Pegasus promptly releases Croquet and the mustached man stumbles backwards. Before Croquet can regain his footing, a flash of crimson dashes before his eyes and he sees Pegasus running for the exit.
"Sir?" he croaks.
"If you don't win that collaborative issue of Funny Bunny and Fritz the Cat while I'm gone, you're hitchhiking back to the island!"