In the hush of an empty art studio, two life models remain after the poses have ended. Cora is practiced, composed, used to being seen. Ethan is new, uncertain, still learning how to carry the weight of his own gaze.
What begins as a shared clean-up becomes something else entirely, an exploration of flesh, pigment, and the places we let each other mark.
Wet Paint is a story of slow exposure, deliberate strokes, and the mess art makes when bodies are the canvas. It is tender, filthy, and quiet in the way only truth can be.
Wet Paint
The last stroke of charcoal had barely dried when the door clicked shut behind the final student. Silence reclaimed the studio, thick and alive with the scent of turpentine and cooled bodies. Fluorescent tubes buzzed faintly overhead, washing the drop cloths in a pale, institutional glow. Easels stood like abandoned scaffolds, their paper sheets curling at the edges. Jars of brushwater clung to the colours of the day, murky greens, streaks of violet, rust-coloured swirls where bold attempts had been rinsed away.
Cora reached for her robe without hurry. The studio after hours was her cathedral, her smoke break, her exhale. She wrapped the paint-streaked fabric around her waist, not quite closing it, and stretched. Her spine arched, the bones clicking softly in relief. She had posed for two hours without flinching, had held sorrow in the dip of her clavicle and curiosity in the flex of her hip. Now, she simply existed. Unshaped, unstudied, and unbothered.
A rustle behind her. Not the wind. The other model.
Ethan.
He stood by the sink, shirtless, wiping thick streaks of ochre from his forearms with a paper towel already too wet to be useful. His hair was damp with sweat, his ribs rising and falling in the deliberate, awkward rhythm of someone trying not to breathe too loud. He hadn’t spoken much during the session. His body had tried too hard to do everything right, tense jaw, tight shoulders, as if posing were something to survive.
“You missed a bit,” Cora said, nodding toward the smudge of blue riding high along his bicep.
He looked up, startled. Blinked, then smiled.
“Maybe I didn’t,” he said.
She dipped a rag into the rinse jar beside her. The water was warm and smelled like linseed and ghosts. She walked toward him, bare feet whispering against the canvas tarp. Up close, he smelled of oil paint and heat. He didn’t step back.
Cora lifted the rag and pressed it gently against his skin. The smudge faded slowly under her touch. Her fingers, through the fabric, stayed longer than needed.
His breath hitched.
“You really don’t talk much,” she murmured.
“Not good at it,” he replied. “I tend to ruin the moment.”
She didn’t laugh, but her lips curved. “Lucky for you, this isn’t a moment. It’s just cleanup.”
“Right,” he said. “Cleanup.”
Her eyes flicked to his chest. A line of red, crimson, almost bloodlike, had dried along his sternum in a perfect brushstroke. A careless mark. Or maybe something more.
She reached for a nearby brush. Not a rag this time. A wide, flat bristle still damp with watered pigment.
He frowned. “What’re you—”
“Ever wondered what it feels like to be painted on instead of looked at?”
He opened his mouth to answer. Closed it again.
She dipped the brush into a pot of diluted red and dragged it slowly down his chest.
He flinched. Not from cold. From surprise. The paint bled down his skin like a question.
She giggled softly. “Ticklish?”
He looked at her, still not laughing. “A little.”
She did it again. Another slow stroke. The red curved just slightly to the left, veering toward his navel. She followed it with her eyes, not her hands. Not yet.
He reached up and caught her wrist. Not hard. Just a touch. A pause.
Her breath stopped.
“I thought we were cleaning up,” he said, voice lower now.
Cora’s eyes searched his face, then dropped to his lips. They were parted. Stained faintly pink by whatever lip balm he had used earlier.
“This is still cleanup,” she said quietly. “I’m cleaning off everything we pretended not to feel.”
The brush dripped between them.
He didn’t let go of her wrist. But he didn’t stop her either.
“Your turn,” she whispered. “Pick a colour.”
He did.
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