I keep writing Pot drabbles, often ones that take a long time to continue, and I think I'll keep writing them, so this is a place to store them, overall.

Thanks to wonderful people.

Urchin Power; wow, you're so very kind. I'm working on being less confusing ;;

Valsed; um, that really wasn't a deathfic…thanks for the review, tho!

Ki-ku-maru Beam; thanks! Yes, it came across as very hard, I realize that, it's just part it, I guess…thank you, though. I agree.

Fallen Fantasist; thank you so much for continuing to review. It's wonderful to hear from you. You make me smile….

Don't own.

…………………

He volunteered to be a model, a useless waste of time indeed, but he wanted the extra credit. He modeled during his study hall, something he hadn't needed anyway.

Momo laughed, surprised. Nobody was quite sure what to think, but Taka commented that he would do fine.

Of course he would.

……….

Act One

He sits motionless in a foldable chair, the cold metal curves pressing against his back and spine. The metal was scratched lightly in places, catching the dim morning light and reflecting back in pale radiance. His posture felt stiff and unrelenting, his expression distant, body lightly draped in white cotton, a former sheet randomly volunteered by one of the students. Sweat beaded almost indistinguishably on his skin, even though goose bumps rose on his forearms, due to the chill in the air.

A half-open window behind him provided golden light partially blocked by an old screen clogged with dust.

It shouldn't have mattered, but the little things itched at him like grains of sand and grit. It was warm and cold, and he was sweating, he wasn't the only one, but the atmosphere was so tensely concentrated no one spoke, a vast conspiracy in a living hive.

The first few minutes aren't too bad, cool defiance at the dilated, squinting eyes of his watchers slowly ebbing as no one speaks, and he wants to say something, do anything, to finish this.

He sits and waits, instead.

There isn't anything else to do.

Stuck in an awkward position, he chose to ignore his haphazard pose, his eyes scanning the room to brush over intent students; rapidly and anxiously sketching, their eyes flickering from the pages of brown covered notebooks to his face, drawn irresistibly to hover at a faint horizon line. The painted floor was smooth and cracked; gashes of paint lay at odd angles like layer after layer of paper-thin frames lay on the floor, the results of easel bases and clumsy children and rainbows of paint. He thinks that it would pass muster in an art show as easily as one of their drawings, it's been made with more effort, if less care, but then he doesn't really know much about art anyway. He shifts; imperceptivity and the fine weave of the cheap cotton catches against the chair, the noise sounding awkward and strange. The plump art teacher steps forward, her pearl earrings clacking across her chin with every step, and he narrows his eyes, daring her to admonish him. She steps back, her lips pursed, clutching a clipboard to her ample bosom like she's won.

He feels like a Pied Piper, leading there to wherever he wishes while they follow blindly, stumbling drunkenly after him in desperation. He wonders if these rats know how to dance, how desperately they seek him.

He doesn't have a horizon line to fix his eyes upon, they do, and it's an unfair trade. His expression is forbidding, he knows that, but all the same he makes an effort not to swivel his eyes, to turn his head. He frowns. His eyes are caught between the angles of the room, he feels dizzy, and wonders if he's swaying. His clenched fingernails bite into his palm, the meager pain allowing him to focus on something else, anything else, and anxiety and an odd, light, full feeling rises in him, and he chokes back saliva.

The ceiling is pale gray, maybe bluish, the light is faint and he's not allowed to shift position anyway. He likes it. He'd like it even better if he could see it. It's scratched with fine gray marks, as if someone doodled on it with a pencil, but then again, the students probably couldn't reach, anyway. He focuses on the moving hands; rapidly waving pencil tops like impatient cilia, and freezes. The brightening light barely touches the naked corner of his eye, gilding the edge of his vision, and transforming a certain area into vague wavering shapes of gold and red. He closes his eyes, feels coarse lashes press against skin, and absently notes the commotion around him, the shuffling of feet and usual awkwardness of a too-full room.

Fuji smiles. Not at him, gesturing skillfully into the air with a paint-encrusted palette knife, he inclines his head, graceful. Steady. Hidden behind arms and legs and shoulders draped in bright, dark colors, unassuming but never unnoticed, yet Tezuka knows he's there, pale blank eyes intent, feels the pressure softly push at him, a velvet weight on his shoulders. The air is warmer, but he doesn't feel it.

Instead, he feels the pressure. Hears the murmurs. Invisible eyes focus on him, greedy, bold, uncompromisingly frank and impersonal, and he feels them dissect him. They don't all look up, but he can tell. They want him. Want more than mere aesthetics, more than the hunch of his shoulder; the bunching of fabric caught in the crook of his elbow, that and more, much, much more. He feels them begin to dissect him, changing his jaw to an soft angle, face into a formal grid, eyes become sketched circles, and ovals, the clench in his throat varies the strokes of gray, a crooked line for his knee, long tapering tubes replacing fingertips. Thin lines drawn around his heart, thin enough to slip through his fingers, under bones and between ribcages, they tug on him insistently, cocooning him till he can barely move.

They want a thought, an ideal to paint and he gives them that, nothing more, because he doesn't owe it to them, not precisely, but he's never been one for giving more than asked, and he's a good model, and a gentle enough doll, but he's not exactly kind. He doesn't need to be, that's all.

He doesn't mind. He knew what he signed up for, knew what he was doing, but knowing doesn't mean you have to like it. He hasn't liked anything for a while. The hunger in their eyes is merely for his flesh, and that's the first, the easiest sacrifice to make, but somehow it would seem almost cruel if they wanted more from him. It isn't something he's prepared to give.

He's used to being devoured. Now he knows what it is to take that dizzying step.

He wouldn't trust anyone with more, but it's taken anyway. Though not by them.

It's over. Blood stirs sluggishly in him, slow and sweet like honey. He can leave. He stands up and gathers his tennis bag. Fuji waits for him outside the classroom, his smile angelic, his skin outlined in gold and amber.

For all the time Tezuka has known him, he's still the same, beautiful and unkind.

He walks outside, into the lion's open maw.

Are you unhappy? Let's be unhappy together…