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rainbowfic2025-09-08 08:14 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-09-08 08:14 pm
Warm Heart #23 [Tales from the Neighborhood]
Name: Modeling
Story: Tales from the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Warm Heart #23: Insolent
Styles and Supplies: Vaudeville, Silhouette, Life Drawing, Glue ("It's possible that someone will question your motives or wonder whether or not you're genuine, Virgo. Don't take it the wrong way. You don't take everything at face value either. Show your sincerity by following through and sticking by your word. If you can't avoid going back on your word, explain the situation to the person involved. This will show that you're sincere.")
Word Count: 880
Rating: T
Warnings: Mention of casual sex, Light swearing
Characters: Michael Wolf, Philip Marsh
Summary: Michael meets someone new during a class.
Notes: This did not happen in my sims game, and also has very little actual relevance to the Sims, so I'm not tagging it Gesso here. This is entirely inspired by an irate tumblr post that I saw like ten or twelve years ago complaining about fanfics that used nude modeling art class as like, a sexy meet cute scenario, which went into great detail about how nude modeling art class is the least sexy scenario ever. Anyway, I have never actually read a fanfic like that (I think I just don't read enough college AUs) so this scenario had never really occurred to me before, and my brain immediately went, ok, but what if it was an unsexy meet cute, like the model went into it with a completely wrong set of expectations and it didn't work out like they'd planned? And then I immediately started imagining this happening to my neighborhood's resident slutty art student. I'm not an artist and have never been in one of these classes, so all of the details here are sourced directly from my decade-old memories of a funny tumblr post, so I apologize for any inaccuracies. Hopefully this is actually as funny as it was in my head.
The figure-drawing period was excruciating, as always. Michael stared at the model, a new one this time, trying desperately to burn the image into his brain for just a few seconds, and then turned back to his paper and drew a few more lines. No, that didn’t look right. He erased them and frowned at the model again. He drew one line, and compared… that seemed correct. Another. Alright. A third. No. Completely wrong, a disaster. He scrubbed it out again.
He brought his hand up to brush away a stray lock of his hair that had fallen into his eyes, and clearly felt himself paint a streak of charcoal across his forehead. Great. Wonderful. He closed his eyes. The period was almost over. If he could just get the last few parts of the drawing done to some level of competency, in five minutes he could go home and take a nap.
Buoyed by this thought, he tried to quickly sketch out the last bits of the pose. It wasn’t great. Maybe moving this line would improve it? Very slightly. He fiddled with a few others until it at least looked sort of like he had completed the drawing and hadn’t half-assed this piece of it. He sat back and looked at it. Would it be good enough for the professor? Damned if he knew. He didn’t care at this point, he just wanted this to be over.
Mercifully, the bell chose this moment to ring. Michael sighed, reached down and scribbled his name in the corner of the drawing, and moved to start packing up his supplies.
“Hey,” said someone from above him, as he was stuffing his things back into his backpack. “You’re Michael Wolf, right?”
He glanced upwards. It was the guy who’d been the model for this class, still naked as the day he was born, just dusky skin and messy red hair falling into his face. “Yeah,” Michael said. “What of it?”
The model smiled. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “They say you know how to show a guy a real good time. I think we could be friends. I’m Philip,” he added.
Unbelievable. He guessed he should have expected what this would be about, though, people he’d never met who already knew his name generally only had one reason for that. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”
“You sure?” said Philip. “I know how to show someone a good time, too.”
Michael put his head in his hands, massaging charcoal into his eyelids, and stood up. “Look,” he said. “This class saps all of my energy. It’s work, and it’s demoralizing, and I’m covered in charcoal. It’s not— it’s not sexy just because you’re naked. Here, you’re just something I can’t draw. The last thing I want to do at this point is spend another hour looking at your ass.” He took a breath, and then continued. “And this can’t be that fun for you, either. You’re stiff from holding the same position for so long and you’re cold, right? Is that actually what gets you going?”
For a moment, he thought Philip was going to keep at it, but then his expression relaxed out of that smile and his body seemed to recede into a shorter, slightly pudgier stature, no longer self-consciously trying to make himself look more attractive. “Yeah,” he admitted, in a much different tone of voice. “This… didn’t work out exactly the way I was hoping it would. But I spent so much time and effort on this. I had to track down your schedule to find out what period you were going to be in, and then I had to move calculus to 8 AM in order to be able to sign up, and then I didn’t get the job and wound up on a backup list in case the regular model couldn’t make it… I couldn’t just leave and not shoot my shot. You know?”
In spite of everything, Michael had to huff a laugh at that, a little bit. “You know, I think that might be the most effort anyone has ever put into sleeping with me.” That was— actually pretty flattering. “Was it worth it?”
“Kind of depends if you say yes or not.”
“Well, alright, let me see.” Michael relented a bit. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and tried to mentally switch gears. When he opened them again, he took a look at Philip’s body as a person’s body, and not as an object that he had to draw, and— yeah, ok. On another day, in a completely different context, that was something that would be of interest to him. “Ok,” he said to Philip, and tore a blank corner off of his drawing, wrote his phone number on it, and handed it to him. “I’ll give you a shot. Hit me up sometime, please on day when I don’t have to draw you.”
Philip flashed him a smile, this one seeming much more casual and genuine than the one he’d opened the conversation with. “You got it,” he said, and went back over to the stand to retrieve his clothes.
Michael sighed, and shook his head again. He was ready for that nap.
Philip is actually an amalgam of three different university townies who I keep getting mixed up.
Michael was actually the first gay sim I had who actually wanted to date multiple people, so at this point in my gameplay, I started keeping a mental directory of gay and bi university townies for future gay sims to date later on. I do actually have a gay bar lot in the downtown neighborhood, but due to university-specific time dilation issues, sending college students to community lots messes up the way I prefer to play university, so I tend not to do that very much. So, for the sims who want to date around, they are generally restricted to trolling the campus phone directory.
Anyway, one of the earliest bi university townies I identified was this guy, who in my game is named Casey Johnston, and he is one of the many many people Michael got with during college. Subsequently, the game also randomly generated this guy, named Stewart Marsh, I'm not sure if he's gay or bi, but definitely one of those:
He was also someone Michael dated at some point, although I'm not sure if he actually got generated before Michael graduated from college, or if Michael just dated him afterwards. Anyway, because Casey and Stewart have the exact same hair style and color, I guess I developed Associations with that hair, and later on, when I was browsing the campus directory for gay sims, I would see this guy, who in my game is named Orlando Phillips, and would mistakenly think he was one of the other two and have my gay sims make friends with him. Unfortunately, Orlando Phillips is straight, so this just winds up being a waste of time for everyone. The mix-up also caused me to briefly misremember the other guys' names as "Philip". So, when I was putting together this story, and remembering probably Casey Johnston as "that one red-headed guy", he wound up going into the story as Philip instead. I decided to give him Stewart's last name, just because I like it better.
It occurs to me that Orlando Phillips is probably having a very weird eternal college experience in my neighborhood. Maybe somewhere in the universe of these stories I am writing, there is a character named Casey Stuart or something who is going through something similar.
Story: Tales from the Neighborhood
Plot Thread: Michael, Robert, and Stephen
Colors: Warm Heart #23: Insolent
Styles and Supplies: Vaudeville, Silhouette, Life Drawing, Glue ("It's possible that someone will question your motives or wonder whether or not you're genuine, Virgo. Don't take it the wrong way. You don't take everything at face value either. Show your sincerity by following through and sticking by your word. If you can't avoid going back on your word, explain the situation to the person involved. This will show that you're sincere.")
Word Count: 880
Rating: T
Warnings: Mention of casual sex, Light swearing
Characters: Michael Wolf, Philip Marsh
Summary: Michael meets someone new during a class.
Notes: This did not happen in my sims game, and also has very little actual relevance to the Sims, so I'm not tagging it Gesso here. This is entirely inspired by an irate tumblr post that I saw like ten or twelve years ago complaining about fanfics that used nude modeling art class as like, a sexy meet cute scenario, which went into great detail about how nude modeling art class is the least sexy scenario ever. Anyway, I have never actually read a fanfic like that (I think I just don't read enough college AUs) so this scenario had never really occurred to me before, and my brain immediately went, ok, but what if it was an unsexy meet cute, like the model went into it with a completely wrong set of expectations and it didn't work out like they'd planned? And then I immediately started imagining this happening to my neighborhood's resident slutty art student. I'm not an artist and have never been in one of these classes, so all of the details here are sourced directly from my decade-old memories of a funny tumblr post, so I apologize for any inaccuracies. Hopefully this is actually as funny as it was in my head.
The figure-drawing period was excruciating, as always. Michael stared at the model, a new one this time, trying desperately to burn the image into his brain for just a few seconds, and then turned back to his paper and drew a few more lines. No, that didn’t look right. He erased them and frowned at the model again. He drew one line, and compared… that seemed correct. Another. Alright. A third. No. Completely wrong, a disaster. He scrubbed it out again.
He brought his hand up to brush away a stray lock of his hair that had fallen into his eyes, and clearly felt himself paint a streak of charcoal across his forehead. Great. Wonderful. He closed his eyes. The period was almost over. If he could just get the last few parts of the drawing done to some level of competency, in five minutes he could go home and take a nap.
Buoyed by this thought, he tried to quickly sketch out the last bits of the pose. It wasn’t great. Maybe moving this line would improve it? Very slightly. He fiddled with a few others until it at least looked sort of like he had completed the drawing and hadn’t half-assed this piece of it. He sat back and looked at it. Would it be good enough for the professor? Damned if he knew. He didn’t care at this point, he just wanted this to be over.
Mercifully, the bell chose this moment to ring. Michael sighed, reached down and scribbled his name in the corner of the drawing, and moved to start packing up his supplies.
“Hey,” said someone from above him, as he was stuffing his things back into his backpack. “You’re Michael Wolf, right?”
He glanced upwards. It was the guy who’d been the model for this class, still naked as the day he was born, just dusky skin and messy red hair falling into his face. “Yeah,” Michael said. “What of it?”
The model smiled. “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “They say you know how to show a guy a real good time. I think we could be friends. I’m Philip,” he added.
Unbelievable. He guessed he should have expected what this would be about, though, people he’d never met who already knew his name generally only had one reason for that. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”
“You sure?” said Philip. “I know how to show someone a good time, too.”
Michael put his head in his hands, massaging charcoal into his eyelids, and stood up. “Look,” he said. “This class saps all of my energy. It’s work, and it’s demoralizing, and I’m covered in charcoal. It’s not— it’s not sexy just because you’re naked. Here, you’re just something I can’t draw. The last thing I want to do at this point is spend another hour looking at your ass.” He took a breath, and then continued. “And this can’t be that fun for you, either. You’re stiff from holding the same position for so long and you’re cold, right? Is that actually what gets you going?”
For a moment, he thought Philip was going to keep at it, but then his expression relaxed out of that smile and his body seemed to recede into a shorter, slightly pudgier stature, no longer self-consciously trying to make himself look more attractive. “Yeah,” he admitted, in a much different tone of voice. “This… didn’t work out exactly the way I was hoping it would. But I spent so much time and effort on this. I had to track down your schedule to find out what period you were going to be in, and then I had to move calculus to 8 AM in order to be able to sign up, and then I didn’t get the job and wound up on a backup list in case the regular model couldn’t make it… I couldn’t just leave and not shoot my shot. You know?”
In spite of everything, Michael had to huff a laugh at that, a little bit. “You know, I think that might be the most effort anyone has ever put into sleeping with me.” That was— actually pretty flattering. “Was it worth it?”
“Kind of depends if you say yes or not.”
“Well, alright, let me see.” Michael relented a bit. He closed his eyes, shook his head, and tried to mentally switch gears. When he opened them again, he took a look at Philip’s body as a person’s body, and not as an object that he had to draw, and— yeah, ok. On another day, in a completely different context, that was something that would be of interest to him. “Ok,” he said to Philip, and tore a blank corner off of his drawing, wrote his phone number on it, and handed it to him. “I’ll give you a shot. Hit me up sometime, please on day when I don’t have to draw you.”
Philip flashed him a smile, this one seeming much more casual and genuine than the one he’d opened the conversation with. “You got it,” he said, and went back over to the stand to retrieve his clothes.
Michael sighed, and shook his head again. He was ready for that nap.
Philip is actually an amalgam of three different university townies who I keep getting mixed up.
Michael was actually the first gay sim I had who actually wanted to date multiple people, so at this point in my gameplay, I started keeping a mental directory of gay and bi university townies for future gay sims to date later on. I do actually have a gay bar lot in the downtown neighborhood, but due to university-specific time dilation issues, sending college students to community lots messes up the way I prefer to play university, so I tend not to do that very much. So, for the sims who want to date around, they are generally restricted to trolling the campus phone directory.
Anyway, one of the earliest bi university townies I identified was this guy, who in my game is named Casey Johnston, and he is one of the many many people Michael got with during college. Subsequently, the game also randomly generated this guy, named Stewart Marsh, I'm not sure if he's gay or bi, but definitely one of those:
He was also someone Michael dated at some point, although I'm not sure if he actually got generated before Michael graduated from college, or if Michael just dated him afterwards. Anyway, because Casey and Stewart have the exact same hair style and color, I guess I developed Associations with that hair, and later on, when I was browsing the campus directory for gay sims, I would see this guy, who in my game is named Orlando Phillips, and would mistakenly think he was one of the other two and have my gay sims make friends with him. Unfortunately, Orlando Phillips is straight, so this just winds up being a waste of time for everyone. The mix-up also caused me to briefly misremember the other guys' names as "Philip". So, when I was putting together this story, and remembering probably Casey Johnston as "that one red-headed guy", he wound up going into the story as Philip instead. I decided to give him Stewart's last name, just because I like it better.
It occurs to me that Orlando Phillips is probably having a very weird eternal college experience in my neighborhood. Maybe somewhere in the universe of these stories I am writing, there is a character named Casey Stuart or something who is going through something similar.
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Thank you, this was what I was hoping for, haha.
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Thank you! I don't know if the tumblr OP would actually appreciate this, or be horrified that they inspired yet another one of these stories, haha.
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Thank you! It's true, there's a lot of interesting ideas that get posted there. I think it was actually a screenshot I saw there of someone asking how to cite a prophetic dream in MLA format that gave me certain ideas for dreamreaders in the Fulcrum.