It was complicated.
After a few drinks, (though not nearly enough drinks to excuse this) Remus responded to the ad that only days ago had made him scoff. And the next morning, mind still clouded with a hangover, he walked to the Georgian building a few blocks away. And mere moments after he'd shaken off the last vestiges of sleep and realized the insanity of what he was doing, a woman he had just met said, with a note of impatience,
"You can take your clothes off now."
Remus Lupin's life was colored by two dogged misconceptions. The first: that he was not just poor, but desperately poor: one-unexpected-bill-away-from homelessness-type-poor. The second delusion: that he was a brain without a body, a studious man who would keep curfew and drink only lemonade if anyone made the mistake of inviting him to a party.
As for the first fallacy, his landlord at least knew it wasn't true. Anti-werewolf regulations barred him from formal employment, but Remus was resourceful, and the lower levels of Wizarding London were full of semi-dangerous, semi-legal work. If for some reason odd jobs grew scarce, Remus need only cross back into the Muggle half of the capital, where only a daft wizard couldn't manage to conjure lodging and a warm meal. Add in Remus's mean poker skills, and he could ensure himself a fairly comfortable income.
The second misconception had proved harder to shed. "The wet blanket image" started during his first year at Hogwarts- he considered himself a full-fledged Marauder, but compared to the reckless, feckless James and Sirius, Remus always looked tame. Nearing 30, he had finally lost the youthful features that made him look like a saintly little churchboy, but people always seemed shocked when he swore, or admitted a fondness for marijuana.
Those tiresome twin misconceptions, surely, influenced his decision to pursue a vastly different line of work.
The trouble started on a dreary Thursday afternoon. Remus was exhausted, having spent the morning battling a particularly bad doxy infestation at a flat in Kensington. He treated himself to a long lunch at a neighborhood pub, not because the ambiance was pleasant, but because the bartender, Terry, was a friend. (And by "friend," Remus meant he'd slept with Terry, and the young man now gave Remus free drinks in the hopes of a future rendezvous.)
Armed with a pint of ale and a plate of battered cod, Remus moved to his usual spot. Two years ago, he'd hexed the light above his table to never turn on, and to make a constant, annoying buzzing noise. This ensured, first, that he could remain in shadows while watching the street outside, and, more importantly, that no one ever claimed his favorite table. If Terry noticed the sabotage, he didn't seem to mind.
Remus sank into the booth and sipped his pint as slowly as possible. It was cheap swill he didn't want to savor, but drinking delayed the horrid moment when he would have to get up and walk again. While he lazily dipped his chips in the tartar sauce, he scanned for work in a few local broadsheets.
Remus normally took the most dangerous jobs, those meant for physically fit young men with a slight death wish. He would have skimmed over her ad if it hadn't been written in purple ink and block capital letters.
LOCAL ARTIST SEEKING MODEL: MALE 20-40, MODELLING BACKGROUND PREFERRED. SEXINESS IS A PLUS. PRICE NEGOGITABLE. YOU WILL HAVE TO TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES (ALL OF THEM), BUT I'LL GIVE YOU TEQUILA BEFORE.
Remus used the newspaper to dab up the excess grease from his fish. Rather than chuck the soggy paper, he decided to keep it for a moment, so he could show it to Terry and say something clever like, "Hell, I'd do it just for the free tequila."
As it happens, things developed from there.
At first, the ad was a joke. While walking home the next day, Remus imagined himself stretched out nude on a couch, trying to look collected, but actually dying with embarrassment. The image was so absurd that he unintentionally barked with laughter, startling nearby pedestrians and attracting a few stares.
But something about the ad intrigued him. The next time he imagined himself being sketched, he didn't break into manic laughter. For his own quiet reasons, the job beckoned to him. He started to see other motives, ones unrelated to money. But never, never, did he actually think he was going to do it.
The door to the studio was a purple bead curtain. Remus stood on the threshold for a full minute, trying to decide if the artist was a tasteless hippie, or if the kitsch was a touch of sardonic irony.
"Well don't just stand there!" A female voice called from inside.
Startled, Remus took an involuntary step backwards. Inside, a slim figure was moving about. Still perplexed at his own madness, Remus pushed aside the bead curtain. He had to duck, to keep from banging his head on the doorframe.
The studio was a disaster. In fact, the messiness was so egregious it had to be deliberate, a personal statement. Remus, who had an organized system for sorting his socks, felt the beginnings of a panic attack.
The outmoded curtains were probably left over by a previous owner, and the wall was plastered with so many overlapping paintings and sketches that he couldn't study any of them. He was still trying to make sense of it all when a young woman jumped out at him.
"Hey, you're the model, yeah?"
For a few seconds, Remus didn't understand she was referring to him. "For today, at least," he eventually said with a small smile. "I haven't done this enough to actually call myself a model."
"I haven't sold enough paintings to call myself an artist, but I do it anyway."
She tried to shake Remus's hand, but, noticing her arms were smeared with green paint down to the elbows, she just gave him a perky wave.
The artist perfectly matched the garish font of her advertisement. She wore black skinny jeans and a peasant blouse, cut low to display intricate Celtic knot tattoos around her neck and shoulders. Her hair was dyed bright pink, but she'd buzzed it so short Remus wondered why she bothered with color at all. She seemed to have more piercings in her ears than actual ear.
"My name's Tonks, by the way," she said with a huge smile.
"I like that. Is it a pseudonym? Whatever a painter's version of a pen name is."
She shrugged. "You'd call it a brush name? But no, it's my real last name. Hate the one my parents dreamt up, so I kinda use "Tonks" as first name and last name both."
Tonks danced to the back of the studio and busied about with some bottles. Remus's stomach spasmed when he realized she was preparing the promised tequila.
"And I'm Remus. Remus Lupin. People often think that's an assumed name, too." Remus rambled on to smother his nervousness. "Named after the unfortunate half of the Romulus/Remus duo, you know, the ones who get raised by wolves. My Aunt was a keen hand at Divination. She suggested the name. Apparently, she saw… wolves... in my future." Remus decided he needed to stop talking immediately.
Tonks skipped back over and passed him a yellowed shot glass.
"Liquid courage, yeah?"
Remus blinked at the drink for a moment, imagining its history with Tonks, all the liver-scourging alcohols she had put into it, all the wild parties she had taken it to. Pushing down the unkind thoughts, he drank the tequila.
"You've never done this before, have you? Modelling I mean. Not tequila. I'm sure you've done tequila before. Not to imply you're an alcoholic or anything."
Remus raised one bemused eyebrow. "I'll admit to a certain familiarity with tequila. As for modelling, no. Never. I just saw the ad and realized I needed money for rent."
That wasn't true, actually. Remus had next month's rent carefully stowed away. And the next three months after that, just in case. A wealthy family had recently hired him as a "tutor," which meant he came over four times a week and wrote their son's essays.
No, Remus didn't need work. And an artist who had sold few paintings wouldn't offer a compelling paycheck, anyway. He had a different reason for taking the job, but he was just starting to grasp it himself, and he certainly wouldn't articulate it to a stranger.
He was suddenly struck by a need to both stall for time and obtain more alcohol. Deliberately, Remus moved to pour himself a second shot. The young woman smirked but didn't object. He tossed the drink back and savored the burn rushing through his throat and into his lungs.
She gently pried the shotglass from his fingers. "When you're ready, just leave them on that shelf."
Remus pretended to not understand.
"You can take your clothes off now."
She winked at him and moved back to her easel. Remus stood, completely still, his fingers still wrapped around the shape of the glass. Mortified, he undid his belt. She gestured toward a low bookshelf in the corner. Most of the shelf was covered with cobwebs and spilled paint, but she had cleaned and dusted a small section for his clothes. He found the gesture oddly touching.
He kicked out of his boots and stuffed his wool socks inside. For a moment, he rolled his weight around on his ankles, feeling the soles of his feet press against the cool wood floor. With crisp, efficient movements, he unwound his long blue scarf, deposited his jacket on the coat-hanger, and shrugged out of his jumper.
That was the easy part. He took a quick breath and turned his back to Tonks.
From across the studio she drawled, "I promise not to look. Not now, at least."
His laugh was more of a bitter exhalation of breath.
"I'm being serious, Remus. Even if you're comfortable runnin' around naked, there's something about the actual undressing process. It's private. Special somehow, dunno why."
Remus slowly unbuttoned his shirt, moving from top to bottom. He folded the white button-down and left it on the shelf. He skimmed a thumb around the hem of his undershirt, but did not pull it off. He was swiftly running out of layers. Even if she didn't watch him undress, she would see the truth soon enough.
When he had placed his shirt on the shelf, he had accidentally brushed against an envelope, his payment from Tonks. He had heard a reassuring clink, but he didn't know if it was Galleons or Knuts. No matter what she paid, it couldn't compensate him for what was about to happen.
He tugged out of his clean undershirt.
His bare skin prickled against the chilly air of Tonks's flat. With his eyes shut, Remus waited for a reaction. Then, from behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath.
"Good God," she whispered.
Remus balled up his undershirt and tossed it onto the shelf. He shoved a clenched fist into his pocket, then turned to face her. Tonks had gotten up from her stool and was walking toward him, cautious hand outstretched.
Barely a square inch of Remus Lupin's body was not forever marked by pain. Curse burns on his side, battle wounds along his chest. And, of course, the great slashes. The brand of the wolf. The ones on his back were deep but old, still visible all these decades after his childhood attack. The rest were self-inflicted, souvenirs from countless nights of torment. They ripped down his arms and legs, tore open his tightly-muscled abdomen. There were so many they overlapped, looking like cross-hatched shading on a sketch
"My God," she repeated.
Remus lowered his gaze to his bare feet. "Since I have scars on my face, people always expect some on my body. They never expect quite this many, though."
Tonks looked like she wanted to trace the lines of each scar. "I've never seen anything like this. So many. Do you remember the story for each one?"
"Each one. Even after so many times. Each one."
"I think it's beautiful. Your body, I mean. Even with the scars." Her eyes traced down his chest.
Reddening, Remus took a step back. "Anyway, I thought you promised not to watch me undress."
Within moments, her blush matched his. "I wasn't! I just… happened to turn around. Hey! I have to look. Gotta know what I'm working with here."
He rolled his eyes and shot her a vaguely offensive hand gesture. She responded in kind and returned to her easel. Without even thinking, he unzipped his trousers and left them on the shelf. The tension seemed to have broken. Before any vestiges of shyness could return, he took off his boxer briefs as well.
Remus lingered for another moment, completely nude, his back to her. Then, he flexed his arms and, only reddening slightly, turned back to Tonks.
She looked him over. "The scars aren't as bad on your legs."
"The scars on my legs. I'm sure that's all you were looking at."
"Sod off, Lupin!"
Remus moved to the center of the room, where she had calibrated the lighting to her liking. Tonks explained how he should pose and gave him helpful pointers on modelling. He must have revealed his inexperience, because she made the pose less demanding, and more than once said it was alright if he had to fidget.
Tonks readied her paints and swept one last, long look down his body before she turned to the canvas.
"Do we have to do the whole thing in vague flirty double entendres, or can I just come out and say you have a great body?" she asked after a few minutes of quiet work.
Remus was inanely pleased at the compliment. "I'm sure you just mean my proportions work well with the picture you've planned. All purely professional."
She gave him a coy look and took a long swig from a porcelain mug. For a moment, he thought it was the cup she had just dipped her brush in. The shock must have shown on his face.
"Different mug." She finished a staccato stroke and then held up two porcelain cups, both clearly handmade, and not by a potter of great skill either. "The green one is for tea, blue for brushes."
"You never mix them up?"
"It's a deliberate color code! Green for tea because that's the only sort of tea I drink. And blue for the brushes because no matter what colors I mix in, the water always ends up a cloudy dark blue."
"I'll ask again. You never mix them up?"
"Admittedly, both mugs look the same in the dark. If I drink out of the paint water, it's a shock, but I get to laugh about it later with my mates. I just hate dipping my brush in the tea. Spoils a perfectly good cuppa."
Tonks laughed again. He hadn't noticed until now how beautiful her laugh was. She threw back her head unreservedly and showed an ample amount of sparkling white teeth. Remus forced himself to think of more somber things. This was not the time to become visibly aroused.
Tonks worked in silence for fifteen minutes, bent so close to her canvas that she seemed to disappear entirely. He studied the paintings and half-finished sketches plastered on her walls. Remus still couldn't understand them. In most of her sketches, he saw a random assortment of limbs, with no cohesive structure. She was a good artist, but her ideas were too wild to grasp.
"So what are you painting?"
She peeked out from behind the easel, twirling her brush between her fingers. "It's, uh, something experimental. Half of it comes from you posing, and half from my own imagination. I tried it three or four times without a model, but since I was drawing everything from memory, it got wonky."
He turned to look at her directly.
"Oi, keep your head in profile!"
"Sorry." Remus immediately snapped back into position. "I was just gonna say, you didn't answer my question."
"I don't like telling people too early. It's weird, because usually I'm crazy vain. Once the piece is finished, I show it to everyone, hawk it to the guy on the Knight Bus like. But not this early. If I explain the concept before I have something real to show, before I can prove I executed it well, I just get so paranoid. I think everyone is judging my idea, convinced it's totally barmy. Maybe it's just inexperience. I feel confident with my painting, but I haven't sold many pieces. Not sure if the whole 'professional artist' thing is just wishful thinking."
"Out of curiosity, how many paintings have you sold?" Remus asked.
"Erm, not many." Tonks ducked behind the canvas again.
Remus broke the pose and turned his head again, risking her ire. "Just tell me. Ten? Less than ten?"
"Alright, I'll tell you, but if you mock me, I'm tossing you out on the street, and not giving back your clothes either. I haven't sold a single one yet."
Suspecting that she wouldn't hesitate to carry out her threat, Remus chose his words with caution. "And how long since you became a professional artist?"
"Two years."
After a moment of polite silence, Remus uttered some meaningless pleasantry and resumed his pose. The conversation died away, and for the next hour, Tonks lost herself in work. He liked how her tongue would unconsciously poke out of the corner of her mouth, and a tiny crease would appear on her forehead. As the morning wore on, they started up a few harmless chats, swapped vague details about their lives and loves. She offered him tea at one point, which Remus refused, fearing the state of the mug. Tonks herself had no such qualms. She drank happily, sloshing her tea dangerously close to the canvas. After two mugs, her ocher lipstick smeared away, and her natural lip color reasserted.
When Tonks took a break to massage life into cramped fingers, Remus ventured back to the dangerous conversation.
"You've honestly never sold a painting? Look, I don't know much about art, Tonks, but I think your stuff is good. Very good. Your technique is solid- clean lines, complex color blending. The concepts are wholly unique, but you use traditional composition to keep the piece from looking too alien."
"For someone who doesn't know much about art, you do a convincing analysis."
Remus grinned. "This kid I tutor, he just signed up for an art history class. I assumed he wanted high marks with no effort- that's what we did back in school. No, apparently he doesn't care about the grade- he just wanted to look at naked women during the school day."
"Isn't that why all of us get into art?" Tonks asked with mock innocence.
For a moment, Remus suspected she may be serious. "Anyway, I write the kid's essays, so I had to study up a bit."
"You help some brat cheat his way through the easiest class in school, you run around killing dangerous creatures for hefty bounties, and then, just for the fun of it, you get naked and pose? Honestly, mate, you never wanted a job at the Ministry? Boring as hell, but they've got a good benefits package."
"Formal employment isn't really an option for me, for a few reasons."
"Because you're a werewolf?" Tonks chirped, her speech garbled by the paintbrush clenched between her teeth.
"What did you say?" he snarled at her.
Her eyes widened, and she took the brush out of her mouth. "Oh my god, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was a secret."
Remus took a few unwilling steps toward her. "Who told you that? How did you find that out about me?"
Anger made Remus change. His face looked savage, more wolfish somehow, and the scars stood out in greater clarity. The transformation was almost as dramatic as the one he endured every month. His voice seemed an octave lower and painfully tight, as if his throat was collapsing in on itself. At times like this, people realized just how tall he was, just how thick the muscles on his arms were. Tonks didn't seem afraid, but she was undeniably startled.
She waved the brush in his general direction. "Oi, scary naked man, get back to your spot."
"Sorry." Though short, his apology was sincere, shaky with emotion. Worse even than when someone learned about his condition was when it frightened someone, when he allowed the ferocity of the wolf to peek through.
With a note of hesitation, Tonks sat back on her stool again. "No, I'm sorry. I should have realized it was a secret, the political climate being what it is. I just, I'm friends with a lot of outcasts and misfits… oh, bollocks. Now I've gone and called you a misfit. I'm making a total mess of it. I'm not good at talking. I always either confuse people or piss them off. Or both. Please, Remus, don't leave."
He had all but resolved to pick up his trousers and leave. He always felt exposed after someone learned about his condition, like he'd been flayed of all his skin. But her smile was so sincere he forced down his anxiety.
"I shouldn't have reacted so strongly. Sorry for frightening you. I'm just a bit sensitive, that's all. Enough people react badly that sometimes I forget not everyone hates my kind." He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair. "How… how did you guess? Was it the scars?"
"The scars. And you didn't frighten me. Normal reaction, all things considered." She crossed her ankles and looked down. "Okay, you don't have to answer this, but being a werewolf, is that why you took this job?"
The word "werewolf" made him wince, like always.
He attempted a wan smile. "Yes. Absolutely correct." Remus broke the pose to flex his aching arms. "Let's just say I have a strained relationship with my body. It gives away all my secrets. For example, all wolves and werewolves have amber eyes. Most people call mine hazel, because no one has a clear idea of what hazel actually is. Also, it's subtle, but I have very slightly pointed ears. That's why I wear my hair this way, so no one can see. Even the appealing aspects of my body are…tainted."
Remus looked down at his chest. "I'm in decent physical shape, but I just jog. I don't lift weights or do anything strenuous, so there's no reason I should have… this." He gestured along his perfectly muscled torso. "Werewolves are just bulkier, I don't know why. My lovers are always delighted with the abs, but I'm not. They've never felt like mine. And then we have my scars, of course. It's so hard, taking my shirt off in front of someone for the first time. I don't mind the battle wounds- I got them fighting for something that mattered. But the rest, the wolf scars... Just a reminder I don't need."
"That's why you took this gig? You wanted to- this is going to sound silly- reclaim your body?" She ventured.
"Nothing quite so symbolic. Much simpler, really. To me, an artist's job is to find beauty, find it and share it. I just wanted to know what I would look like through eyes like yours."
She blushed so dazzlingly that her cheeks seemed to match her hair. "That's quite the job, no? Hey, what if I did some designs for your scars. You don't have any ink yet." She traced the intricate fractal tattoos along her clavicle, which whirled and reformed with her heartbeat. "Scars are just lines, really. I could something new out of them."
Remus smiled. "No, I'm not asking you to change anything, just to be a mirror. I want to see what beauty you can find in all of… this."
For a few moments, he actually thought Tonks would cry. But then her eyes widened suddenly. "Oh shite."
"That was not the desired response," Remus said, with a touch of worry.
She buried her head in her hands and let out a stream of curse words. "Jesus, man, you should have just told me that from the beginning. I could have done something downright sexy for you. But I told you, I wasn't drawing from life. It's mainly from my imagination. Oh shit. This is awkward now."
"Tonks, what's wrong? You didn't draw me as a werewolf, did you?"
"No, but this is just as bad. I drew... I drew you as a beast."
The word was a physical blow. His insides turned to cold water, and the hard mask snapped down again around his face.
"A beast?" Remus repeated.
She held out an imploring hand. "Wait! Bugger all, I make a muck of it every time I speak. Not as a beast. At least, I hope not. You'll be the judge of that. Why can't I make any sense? I blame you for this. I can't talk- your eyes are too intense like that."
He popped his shoulders, trying to stop the panic pulsing inside his skull. "Just go slow and explain."
"I can tell by your voice you're upset. Please, I'll try to explain. Like I said earlier, this painting is half based on you, half taken from my imagination. I'm trying to dream up something new, you see. A new creature. But in my practice sketches, it looked monstrous. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't have claws of fangs or anything ferocious. It's just too weird, too far from normal. And I guess when something is too different, our first reaction is to see it as hideous. That's why I hired you. I needed to make this look beautiful."
Before Remus could understand what she was saying, Tonks leapt off her stool and flicked her wand at the closet. "Right, let's call a break. Put this bathrobe on. Yes, it will fit. It's men's. And before you make any jokes, I didn't pinch it off a lover, I bought it myself, to loan to gentlemen friends who stay the night, because I'm a good hostess. Right, tie it like that, and then come look at the painting."
While Tonks prattled on, raising her volume to hide her nervousness, Remus tried to sort through his complicated emotions. He felt that their unspoken contract had been violated. He'd secretly hoped for a forgiving portrait of himself, something silly and over-sexualized: a naked male form, tan and muscular, bathed with golden light. His expectations were actually outrageous: that she would make the scars beautiful, that she would somehow solve his complicated bundle of anxieties. He knew he was expecting too much, and he was willing to compromise his rosy mental picture. But for her to make him into a monster…
Forcing down his pain, Remus straightened the robe and approached the easel.
Tonks took three exaggerated paces back. "Go ahead and look. I hope I didn't muck this up too badly."
Remus moved to the easel.
Tonks's vague descriptions had done nothing to prepare him. The animal she had painted was not recognizable as either a Wizard or Muggle beast, or even a mythical creature. Most disconcerting of all, it was still recognizably Remus.
His skin was gray- a warm gray, not the clammy lifelessness he associated with fish. The body shape was largely unchanged, but there were obvious differences- the creature in the painting had far longer and thinner legs, and its arms were a mass of tightly bound cables, not a single, solid unit. The thing was scaled, but not uniformly so. The edges of his limbs were wholly armored, but the scales tapered away as they neared his core, leaving his torso entirely human. From his shoulder blades sprouted wings, closer to those of a bat than an angel.
The general features of Remus's face were unchanged, but the lines were more angular, the planes longer and smoother. To soften the harsh contours of the face, Tonks had painted Remus's shoulder-length brown hair as a tousled mass of white feathers. Most striking of all were his eyes- in real life, dull amber; in Tonks's reality, pure gold, ferocious, twin orbs that smoldered out of the canvas.
But despite the power of the creature's face, Remus kept glancing back to its chest. Tonks had painted every single scar, even the small scratches hidden in the shadow of his arm, even the marks so old and faded Remus struggled to find them. Rather than attempt to blend the scars with his skin tone, she had painted them pure silver, a shade of paint so violent only wizard artists could obtain it, a color that glimmered like condensed starlight.
The scars seemed like a natural part of the creature. She had painted them with vivacity, with bold lines and impetuous swirls of paint, following the grain of previous brushstrokes. The scars were not an aberration or a marring. They belonged here.
Tonks appeared at his shoulder but did not say a word. She seemed vulnerable somehow, having handed her work over for another to judge.
Remus glanced down at her. "The creature's scars, they look natural. Something he was born with. In your imagination, do those marks serve any purpose?"
"Purpose?" She rubbed her scalp. "I hadn't thought of a particular purpose. Maybe they are marks of identification? Each scratch a character in their language. The scars display his family and his roots, like their version of a coat of arms. Or maybe this is another race of wizard. In this world, our gifts are visible, and magical ability flows in silver channels across the skin. Or maybe his lover is a silver color, and they've exchanged pieces of themselves. So maybe in another painting there is a different being, perhaps a female, who has those exact scars, but in gray across her silver form." She took his hand. "Or maybe they have no purpose at all. I think they're beautiful, really. And if it's beautiful, does it really need a purpose?"
Remus squeezed her hand back. "You guessed I was a werewolf… before or after you started painting?"
"The moment you took your shirt off," she whispered. "Before I started to paint."
Remus selected every word with precision. "Now I'm not sure who earned the envelope of money. It seems like you have done me a service, not the other way around."
She laughed. "No! You've done me a service, I promise. Like I said, I've spent ages trying to crack this concept. I don't even need the painting now. I've had my breakthrough, I can do a full-sized one from memory now."
"What do you mean you don't need the painting? You've been working on it for hours!"
Tonks busied about the easel, saying a drying spell under her breath. "I'd planned to do three or four more things, but it's probably good to quit now. My artistic method is to keep dabbling until I completely ruin the piece. So please, get it away from me before I do any real damage."
Remus took the proffered canvas with more care than he would show a 16th century masterpiece. "But you just finished this. You haven't even tried to sell it. And to be honest, you could get a good price for it. Are you sure you just want to give it to me?"
She leaned back on the stool. "I told you I hadn't sold a painting in two years. It's not that I've never had anything worth putting in a gallery. It's just that I keep finding people who need the art more than I do."