Someone told him once that you should never marry your muse— that it ruins the illusion. He has since found that idea to be complete and total bullshit. With Rose, there is no illusion. She is and always has been the person whom she presents to him. All of her flaws and and range of wild emotions are borne in front of him regularly and without any shame or pretense and that has done nothing but make her that much more intriguing to him. She has been like a piece of the pottery she has taken to creating— the shape of her found, and uncovered with time and patience.
Now, several years into their marriage, he finds his gaze constantly straying from his work, through the window, and out to where she sits on their small porch, book in hand in a patch of sunlight. That light is setting her fire-streaked curls ablaze as in her casual state, they sit, pulled lazily over one shoulder in the loose braid he had watched her plait that morning. His fascination then as her fingers had expertly worked through the tresses had been just as present then as now.
His mind drifts to another moment when her hair had been set ablaze, setting fire to his heart, as she had stood by the railing on Titanic the first time he had laid eyes on her. Tommy had joked about angels flying out of his ass before he could ever get next to the likes of her— a real upperclass lady so far out of Jack's realm of possibility. Tommy had been wrong though, and Jack thinks that he had felt it in that moment— that it wasn't angels that were the impossibility. Rose was an angel— his angel. An ethereal being he couldn't fathom, and he had somehow still been chosen.
He had spent time in galleries during his travels. He had studied who he considered to be his own masters— the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood had had a profound influence upon Jack, through from childhood. They were the painters, romantics, and visionaries of his parents' generation but their work, full of symbolism and romance and nuance had held him captivated even as the world had shifted into an industrial age. Their visions of those long haired beauties wrapped up in cloaks of nature had stuck with him as he had progressed within his own practice. The secrets held in the gazes of models such as Elizabeth Siddal, and Jane Morris. To look upon Rose now, through this golden window, is as if to peer straight into the frame of something by Dante Gabriel Rosetti. She was his Proserpine; his Fair Rosamund.
And now, it seems, he has been found out. Caught at his gazing— his silent wonder at her presence once again as her eyes meet his through the pane of glass, her eyebrow arching in a question. Her book is abandoned upon the wicker chair as she stands, summer skirts and curls falling with the motion of her movement.
She's across the threshold and through the door in a moment, drawing closer to him as he sits back on his stool, his eyes still not leaving her.
"Distracted, Monsieur Artiste?" she asks, coming to stand behind him to see the canvas he had been working on. He had, until the vision of her had taken over, been attempting to paint a landscape— something which had always alluded him.
"Mmm," he mumbles, nodding, eyes sliding closed as her hands find his shoulders, fingertips brushing through the shag of hair grown long at the base of his neck. She is sun-warmed, and its as if he can feel the gold of those rays emanating from her skin.
"You keep trying, Jack, but I think perhaps you ought to stick to portraits," she tells him, her arms wrapping further around him in an embrace.
He nods, laughing at the frankness with which she says it. His hand rises to cover hers over his heart. "I think maybe you're right," he admits, and he can feel her nod into his neck. He can feel the kisses she drops there, setting his pulse to quicken just as it does any time she's near.
"You should paint me," she whispers, and he nods.
"I should," he admits, his hand moving to strike his brush through the middle of the canvas. If he's starting over, what's there now doesn't matter. "You seem to be the only thing I get right in paint, anyway."
She smiles, but shakes her head. "No, everything you do is right, Jack. But right now I want you to paint me."
He looks at her over his shoulder— the odd way she is requesting this catching his attention. She has never demanded art from him in this way.
Her eyes are locked on his, as she reaches forward, a finger dipping into some of the paint on his palette before that finger swipes playfully across his stubbled cheek, the paint smearing there as she makes clear her intentions. His shock only lasts a moment, as he blinks, making sure he had just comprehended what she has done.
In one motion, he turns her around, pulling her forward and onto his lap, facing him. If she is surprised at his sudden action— at his boldness, that's a secret she doesn't give up. His lips claim hers, the familiar fire of her catching hold within his stomach again, filling him up with the passion he knows he won't be able to contain. Nothing in their relationship, in their marriage was routine, but there is still a familiarity to this— to his hands on her, and the feeling of their skin together, their lovemaking now such a part of the entanglement of their lives that it is never dull or boring but still like a coming home.
Scooping her up now, with a grin at the little yelp of surprise which escapes her lips, he kneels, laying her upon the drop cloth right there on the floorboards of their kitchen where he had set up his easel that morning. His hands work quickly to remove the shirtwaist from her body, the chemise and bodice beneath showing him just enough skin to work with as she settles, her gaze following his hands and his eyes as he works.
If the brush tickles, she doesn't let on. She keeps her face schooled as if instead of being the canvas she were the subject, posed for another of his portraits in charcoal and graphite, and she is just as fascinated by the flowers and vines he paints upon her summer golden skin, blooming with the freckles denied to her in childhood, as she is with his drawn portraits. She finds pieces of him in each.
As he paints he steals kisses, his hands moving to grasp at her as he knows by now he is allowed to do. She may be an angel, but she is one of flesh and bone and a beating heart which he has had it sworn belongs to him as his does to her, and after a time she seems to no longer be interested in the paint, but instead in his hands, which she takes, setting his brush aside.
She sits, and his eye don't leave hers as she directs his hands to push aside the straps of her chemise, her breasts now bared to him below the rose petals he had painted on her collar bones, and as she moves to lean over him, dropping herself back onto his lap, her own hands working deftly to get what she wants between them, he lets his eyes slide closed at her touch, her lips on his, the feeling of her curls wrapping around them as she leans him back onto the floor, the paint becoming an abstract upon their remaining clothing and both of their bodies as they move together, finding that familiar precipice— the place where for Jack, beauty, and art and life mingle, becoming one in that instantaneous flare of pleasure as bright as the sun within her hair— his Rose— his own Lady Lillith, Ophelia, or Lady of Shalott, devoid now of the tragedy of those muses, and instead exuding nothing but their own light and joy.