Francis Thompson gingerly sipped his macchiato -- still a little too hot, he thought -- as he made his way through the cramped corridors of the Visual Arts Building.
He glanced over his shoulder to see if the young woman who was accompanying him had rounded the corner of the hallway yet, suspecting she must have taken a wrong turn after stopping to refill her water bottle.
"Hurry up!" he called out. "Prof. Schwartz is a stickler for punctuality!" he threw in as he continued at his brisk pace.
Francis's undergraduate and now graduate studies in visual media ensured that he knew the Visual Arts Building like the back of his hand. While many newcomers found the building difficult to navigate even after several visits -- such as his companion lagging behind him -- he figured (perhaps correctly) that the spatial reasoning skills of the artists who haunted these halls no doubt made them the ones best suited to spend their time there.
Francis's time here had also taught him a thing or two about Prof. Schwartz. An undeniable Renaissance man, Schwartz had taught the wide-ranging "Intro to Visual Media Studies" class that Francis had taken as a freshman.
Francis had fallen in love immediately -- although decidedly more with the subject matter than with the one teaching it. Although Francis mused that Schwartz had a "silver fox" thing going on -- and there was no denying he was an absolutely mesmerizing lecturer -- the art professor was a little too old and a little too dandyish to arouse anything more than respect in Francis's mind.
That being said, as a scholar and an artist, Francis downright worshipped the man. It was no wonder Schwartz had a cult-like following of students and fans alike, drawn in by his commanding presence and wooed by his unparalleled performance art. Francis considered it an honour to be a teaching assistant for such a renowned figure (desperately hoping that Schwartz might take an interest in his own art along the way).
"Hey, wait up!" the young woman hollered. Francis glanced back to see her quickly catching up to him. Despite Francis never having felt any kind of attraction to members of the female sex, he couldn't help but notice how her chest bounced up and down as she continued her jaunt.
He mused at what it must be like for her to be so effortlessly desirable. It would be easy to hate her for her good looks, as he often had to endure being utterly ignored by the men who would hit on her while they were out together. Even just a few minutes ago, it seemed the barista at the campus café was more intent on getting his friend's number than on doing his actual job and taking Francis's order.
Still, Francis thought that perhaps that was why they were friends -- or, likewise, why she had so few female friends. Surely, they both could comfort themselves knowing that her receiving so much more attention almost everywhere they went was more likely a product of heteronormativity than of their comparative attractiveness. Knowing, realistically, that they could not compete for the same partners made her getting so much more attention out in public into something tolerable.
Nevertheless, newly single, Francis couldn't help but resent -- at least a little bit -- how easy things must be for her. To say nothing of the way a heterosexual society made every day a chance for her to meet potential suitors (and, as though that were not enough, Francis knew she didn't mind women hitting on her either), nature had blessed her in ways it blesses few.
Today, for instance, he knew that she wasn't done up in anything special, just having on an (intentionally) ripped pair of jeans and light fall sweater, not to mention only minimal makeup. But she was someone whose natural beauty required nothing to be added to it, with luscious full lips, sun-kissed skin, and a body that could hardly be hidden even by her baggy olive-green top, hinting as it did the narrow waist that her round thighs curved into and the buxom bosom that now bounced almost obscenely from any pace quicker than a walk.
"I don't see why you're in such a rush," she said as she came to next to Francis. "Who cares if we're late?"
"Like I said, Prof. Schw--"
"Stickler for punctuality, yeah, yeah..." she said, swiping her auburn bangs out of her eyes.
Francis let out an exaggerated sigh. "You could at least pretend to care about this job."
She laughed. "I care, I do. It's just that I'm not hot for teacher -- like some people," she remarked with a wink.
Francis blushed and laughed as well. "I told you! He's not my type..."
"Yeah, but from what I've heard, I think you're his type." She reached over and undid the top two buttons on Francis pastel-pink button-up, "So maybe show a little skin if you really want to get in his good books."
Francis swatted her hand away playfully, but didn't move to do the buttons back up. She might be right. There were rumours -- lots of rumours -- about Schwartz sleeping with students. And a man of his standing -- tenured and famous (well, at least as far as artists go) -- could probably get away with that and a whole lot more.
Francis figured it couldn't hurt to see if the old man responded to a little bit more skin. And if Schwartz wasn't his type, who's to say that Francis wasn't Schwartz's? Lots of old guys lust after twinks, don't they? Francis had to admit he himself was a bit more femme than some guys liked, but there's always a chance that's what Schwartz liked...
"Hey, hurry up, slowpoke!"
Francis searched for the voice and realized it echoed from a different hallway. He had been so lost in his thoughts even he had managed to get lost in the Visual Arts Building he knew so well, his companion taking her own route and him not even noticing.
Francis chucked his macchiato in the trash and ran down the adjacent hallway, intent on not being late.
"I thought you said artists knew how to get around this building," his friend cajoled as he caught up to her. "But it looks like it's only psychologists who know how a rat gets out of a maze," she added, gesturing to the twisty-turvy hallway around her.
"Yeah, yeah..." Francis said, waving away her comment. "Whatever," he chuckled as he rapped his knuckles on Schwartz's office door.
Turning his head away from his friend and toward the opened passage, Francis's eyes immediately went wide in surprise.
The first surprise was just that it was not Schwartz at the door, a different face there in place of the one he had expected.
Glancing down, the second surprise was that the man standing there did not have a single stitch of clothing on him -- totally bare-ass from head to toe, neither hat above him nor shoe below him.
Looking back up, the third surprise was that he recognized the face in front of him.
"AJ?" he asked, dumbstruck.
AJ did not immediately respond. The door swung fully open and AJ took a slight step back, blinking a couple times (almost as though he had not been fully awake).
Then the lights appeared to turn on in AJ's head as he registered who was in front of him, his eyes likewise bulging.
"Francis?!"
AJ's upper arms made a peculiar half-motion before he suddenly took a step back from the open door. Then, glancing to Francis's right, his eyes bulged even more.
"Jessica?!"
Turning to his companion, Francis noticed immediately that -- where both he and AJ wore expressions of shock -- Jessica's countenance was markedly different. She, unlike them, did not seem surprised at all.
If anything, with her arms crossed and expression flat, she looked irritated and contemptuous at the sight of her ex. "Oh. Hello, AJ."
AJ stepped forward again, smiling sheepishly and running his hand through his hair. Francis realized this might be the first time the two had seen each other since their break-up and, despite the weirdness of the situation, AJ seemed to be falling into the clichéd script of the awkward post-break-up encounter.
"You, uh, you're looking good," he said to her, flashing a million dollar smile that made Francis weak in the knees.
Whereas Schwartz could maybe pull off "silver fox," AJ was, hands down, an unforgettable stud. Sure, he ticked all the same boxes so many of those "sports science" dude-bros on campus did: tall, broad-shouldered, and clearly spends more time in a gym than studying. Those were things that made them all hot, yet interchangeable: one of those hoodie-wearing meatheads could stand in for any other.
Some things about AJ, however, stood out from the crowd. Raven-black hair with a slight curl or wave -- perhaps looking at only this, you would peg AJ as Mediterranean. But fair skin and soft blue eyes sat in striking contrast to his dark locks, the apparent softness of his skin only complemented further by a strong jaw and rugged features.
But most memorable was his smile -- and perhaps all the more memorable for how rarely he showed it. It spoke of innocence and certainty, calmness and energy -- pearly whites which lit up a room.
Jessica snorted at such a dumb remark. "And you're looking..." her eyes trailed down to his package and her eyebrows arched, "... nervous."
AJ looked down, as if just then remembering that he was naked or wondering what about his member gave her the impression that he was "nervous."
Following both their lines of sight, Francis honed his eyes in on it as well, the whole group of them now finding themselves in a decidedly unusual situation: studying AJ's crotch.
Not knowing how it normally looked, Francis could only guess at what Jessica had discerned from AJ's dick. Was it smaller than usual? Pulled up more inside its foreskin? Or was that, perhaps, just because of the cold? Francis found himself wishing that he knew what AJ's package looked like in its at-ease state so he could know just what he was looking for in the study at hand.
But seeing it before this moment had been a distinct impossibility. Francis had twice before seen AJ in states of undress -- and both times he had been assured that what was on display was strictly not meant for his viewing.
Moving in the same social circles (albeit, only because the woman AJ had been dating had also declared Francis her "gay BFF" at the time), Francis and AJ had been to the beach together a couple summers ago.
Francis was ambivalent about his own body, feeling his skinniness made him appealing to some, but unremarkable to others. Without much thought, he had taken the opportunity to sunbathe in a short pair of swim trunks.
By contrast, AJ seemed to have a body worth flaunting that he nevertheless kept largely covered. The board shorts were standard fare, but the sleeveless top seemed wholly unnecessary. It was only when Jessica persuaded him to take a dip with her that he finally peeled off his top -- immediately shooting Francis daggers with his eyes when he noticed the twink checking him out.
The second time he had seen AJ in a state of undress was in the locker room at the campus gym only a few weeks prior. Having recently ended a relationship, Francis had been trying to develop a new habit to pull himself up out of the dumps, beginning an exercise routine.
That time had been wholly by accident and had been, in fact, one of the reasons Francis stopped frequenting that location. He had been freshening up before going to work out -- just splashing some water on his face -- when, upon turning around, he saw the curtain to the shower stall start to pull back and AJ's form to come into view.
Seeing Francis seeing him, AJ scowled and pulled the curtain back, reading the situation all wrong. While Francis liked what he saw, he had not been intentionally perving on AJ.
"What the fuck, man?!" AJ called out, clearly taken aback.
"Woah, I, uh, sorry -- I didn't realize..." Francis had started.
"If you're just gonna stand there and watch us shower in here, you should be in the fucking ladies' room, you little queer!" AJ hollered, now drawing the attention of others in the locker room.
Francis felt the situation getting out of hand, mumbled an apology, and quickly went on his way. It was fear of precisely that kind of toxic masculinity -- that immediate aggression at any sign of gayness in that all-male atmosphere -- that had given Francis misgivings about the gym to start with and which then kept him away afterwards.
But certainly it had not been mere homophobia that had had AJ covering himself up all the time. Francis had gleaned this from his conversations with Jessica back when the two were still dating. To the best of his knowledge, AJ and Jessica had been together for over a year before even she saw him naked.
Francis had made some kind of joke during a pre-drink at his apartment -- "Don't worry, I make Marc put down a towel before any time he sits naked on the furniture!" -- commenting on his then-boyfriend's propensity to go au naturel on hot summer days in their non-air-conditioned apartment. Laughing, Jessica replied, "AJ makes me do the same thing!"
"And you don't make him do that?"
"Oh, no," she chuckled.
"Sexism! Double standards!" Marc chimed in.
Jessica laughed again, "Oh, no, I mean he's not a naked' kind of guy... And he's got air conditioning. I just get naked cause I'm freaky like that," she added playfully.
The three of them laughed and that could have been the end of the subject, but slightly drunk Francis could not resist pushing a topic that involved the words "AJ" and "naked." Yes, at that time he was happy with Marc -- but he also maintained an active fantasy life and hearing some details about Jessica's arm candy was always welcome. "He's not a `naked' guy? What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't know it to meet him, but he's such a prude!" she said, perhaps a bit too loudly (she was likely feeling tipsy herself). "Here I thought Catholic guilt was a joke, but I feel sometimes like I'm Eve frolicking freely in the Garden of Eden, and he's Adam after eating the apple." She lowered her voice an octave, misquoting Genesis: "And his eyes were opened and he saw that he was naked and ashamed."
Marc snorted. "You've never seen him naked? Don't tell me you guys exchanged purity rings or some shit, too?"
Jessica laughed. "Fuck no! Now THAT would be a deal breaker," she took another sip her drink. "No, thank Christ, we fuck like bunnies. It's just... always under the sheets."
"Come on, Jess," Francis interjected. "You mean you've been together for a year now and you've never even taken a shower together?"
"Well, he normally just showers at the gym." She took another sip. "And the one time I tried to get into the shower with him at his place... well... it was weird."
Francis knew he should stop prying, but he couldn't resist one more question: "Weird how?"
She sighed. "He, uh, told me to get out."
Jessica's mood had darkened with the comment and Francis regretted asking about it.
She took one final swig to finish her drink. "Listen, it was weird, and he probably wouldn't want me telling people about this. It's just like... I feel like he can't imagine anything worse than someone seeing him totally naked."
Francis didn't push the topic any further. And it never came up again. Jessica and AJ were together for two more years after that, so he thought it was possible AJ changed in that time. But even still...
Here was AJ now, doing exactly what Jessica once said was the worst possible thing he could imagine: letting others see him totally and utterly naked.
To his horror, Francis realized he had continued studying AJ's cock while all those thoughts rushed through his head. Looking back up, he saw that AJ had caught him staring and was now replicating exactly the same hateful scowl Francis had seen upon his face in the locker room a few weeks prior.
But this time, the scowl was not followed by AJ's exclamation, but Prof. Schwartz's. "Ah, Jessica! Francis!"
AJ started at the sound, a panicked expression now overtaking his features as he turned slightly to look at Schwartz behind him.
Francis wasn't sure how long Schwartz had been standing there. Was he blocked from view by AJ's imposing figure, or had Francis just been too distracted by the visual buffet AJ was serving up?
"Come in, come in," Schwartz motioned, AJ dutifully stepping to the side to let the others pass. As they entered the room, Schwartz commented, "Oh, Jessica, why don't you put the doorstop down. It gets so stuffy in here." Looking to Francis and AJ, "And you two boys... Take a seat."
Francis wondered if too much blood had rushed from above the neck to below the belt at the sight of a naked AJ on full display since, without knowing how he got there, he now found himself seated on Schwartz's settee -- his leg brushing right up against AJ's bare one. He tried desperately to quiet the urge to steal more glances at the naked form now so close to him.
But removing AJ from his line of sight, yet having him still so close, only caused Francis to switch what senses he relied on, AJ's scent now charming Francis's nostrils with every breath he took. Francis knew he must have caught a whiff or two of AJ before, but it was rare the two men were close enough for AJ's scent to manifest as something the bespectacled twink could appreciate in detail.
From AJ, Francis caught an aroma that was decidedly fresh and clean, but somehow also earthy -- like the petrichor from the grass and the soil that a gentle wind carries in through open windows after a summer storm.
What started as an unconscious perception now quickly shifted to a more intentional assessment as Francis breathed in more and more deeply through his nostrils (without being too obvious about it), trying to decipher the finer notes of the scent that was drawing him in with its subtle flirtation.
With his first deep inhalation, Francis was disappointed to discover that the scent was much more artificial than the shallower impression had suggested. It conjured up scenes of a tidy outdoors space to start with -- a fresh-cut lawn or a clean stream running past you -- but now had Francis thinking of Irish Spring brand soap.
But he became intrigued once more from the new images this called to mind. Had he not perceived a scent like this in the locker room the day he crossed paths with AJ? Francis's mind formed the scene of AJ lathering himself up behind the shower curtain that separated them that day (still unknown to Francis at the time) while he splashed some water on his face only a couple feet away.
Somehow, knowing what product AJ was using in the shower -- learning what the muscleman used to scrub his body clean and freshen his aroma after working up a sweat -- made Francis feel like he was being let in on a secret, revealing what scent appealed enough to AJ for him to have made it a quotidian element of his private ablutions and learning what olfactory delights the select few AJ let into his personal space must perceive when they get there.
But the smell of the soap alone rarely lingers so long. Perhaps it was something stronger that Francis picked up on now, like a cologne mingling in? The scent was decidedly a grassy-spiciness -- subtle, yet strong enough to be made known to those who made it far enough into AJ's personal space.
Francis was ripped from his reverie when his seat mate suddenly jerked his leg away from where it was touching his own. Perhaps AJ had also had a spell of light-headedness and, likewise, took as long as Francis did to perceive the other next to him?
If this was the case, AJ's reaction was markedly different from Francis's. Where Francis revelled in the closeness -- a nervous joy in realizing he was touching AJ, an excitement at having the chance to breathe in and study the air that AJ's personal space created, and so on -- AJ displayed the typical male distaste for bodily contact with another man, apparently unwilling even to let his leg brush up against Francis's.
AJ's recoil had been so emphatic that Francis was surprised that the gym-fit stud did not carry the motion through his whole body to retreat from the settee entirely and put a more typical space between them. But, much like when the door first opened and AJ's upper arms twitched, appearing as a motion defeated before completion, so too did the movement abruptly stop at the top of the leg, allowing AJ to withdraw from immediate contact but not to rise from his seated position.
"Francis?"
The lithe young man blushed, hearing Schwartz and thinking he must have caught him "subtly" scoping out AJ's pelvis.
"What? Oh, sorry, I was distracted."
"No problem. I was just saying that I must have forgotten to CC you on the email."
"Email?"
Jessica chimed in. "About today's class." She motioned to her ex-boyfriend. "AJ's our model."
Francis wracked his brain to try and recall anything he might have been told about a "model." Both the fun and the frustration of being Schwartz's TA is that the art professor's syllabi were always threadbare documents, even students sometimes not knowing what the lecture topic would really be until they arrived (although, Francis had to admit, the tactic worked: they had a full class every week).
This week's topic: "What a Piece of Work is Man"
Of course, after seeing AJ's body on full display, it now seemed obvious: this week's class must be about the male nude. Francis was sure he would have come to that conclusion before now, if anyone had mentioned anything about a model at any point --
"It's not a problem if you didn't get the email," Schwartz interjected. "I only need you to help with some minimal prep before we head to class."
Always eager to do what Schwartz asked of him (although still not clear on what the evening's plan was meant to be), Francis replied, "Of course, Prof. Schwartz. What do you need me to do?"
"I need you to look after our model," said Schwartz, gesturing toward AJ. "And first and foremost, I need you to get him ready for us."
"Get him ready... how?" Francis asked, taking this as an opportunity to justifiably have good look at AJ, whom he noticed was casting nervous glances toward the wide-open office door.
Mere inches separating them, Francis realized that, although he'd seen mostly-naked AJ before, it had never been so close up or in such a sustained gaze. He had never quite noticed the all physical details that made him unique.
Everything he had appreciated before had been facial: those eyes, that smile. But those were easy to see at a polite social distance. He had assumed (wrongly he realized now) that AJ's body, while enviable, was "cookie cutter" -- interchangeable with so many other gym-obsessed dude-bros or any number of the Sean Cody models he could pull up on his laptop at a moment's notice.
Seeing AJ's body up close, he realized that it was not something carved from stone by an artist with perfect symmetry and proportions in mind. Rather, it was something that grew like a garden -- well kept and undeniably producing fruits of the gardener's labour, but somehow also still expressive in unpredictable ways. Francis mused that, while a gardener knows a tomato plant will grow tomatoes, he does know what arrangement wild nature has chosen for its vines to take before it starts to grow.
And vines had grown here according to nature's will more than any gardener's design. Up close, what Francis's glimpses had previously only allowed him to obliquely register only as a "hairy chest" now seemed far too wooly for his liking insofar as a shapeless rug spanned across AJ's upper body, going (in Francis's opinion) too far up toward the shoulders and too far down below the pecs.
Aside from disliking the haphazard shape it took, Francis resented the chest hair for its thickness -- primarily because it largely hid AJ's nipples below it. Francis wanted to see much more than just a couple protruding pinkish tips, curiosity about this hidden erogenous zone creeping into his mind (did they demand attention like the cherries on top of an ice cream sundae, or blend in and complement their surroundings like the sand-dollars on a tropical shore?).
Still musing over the hair, Francis could not help but remark that, no doubt thanks to the strange games genetics like to play, where AJ's chest hair was a thick forest (and an equally thick yard of hedges grew in his nether regions), the hair on AJ's stomach was sparse, noticeable only as a narrow trail tracing the path down his linea alba.
Despite the thickness of AJ's pubic hair, it obscured no more than the root of AJ's member. Moreover, where the incongruity of AJ's body hair irked the art student, the way in which AJ's dick and balls complemented each other filled him with an aesthetic appreciation for well-proportioned width, length, and depth. In a sitting position, AJ's testicles worked just right to lovingly cushion his penis on either side, embracing its gentle curve to the right.
"Well, I'll need you to shave him," Schwartz said, his words only slightly pulling Francis back from his engrossment with AJ's body.
The art student let his eyes linger a moment longer than he meant to -- distracted for an instant by the sudden shade of fuchsia glans he saw peak out from under AJ's foreskin (logically, it had to be his cock head, but the vividness of the colour was wholly unexpected) -- before pulling himself back to the room and looking up.
"What the fuck?!" AJ exclaimed, apparently taking a moment to fully process what he heard before turning his nervous glance away from the doorway and jerking his head angrily toward Prof. Schwartz.
Schwartz was glaring at AJ with a steel-cold intensity that Francis had never seen on the older man's face before. Maybe this is why AJ had stayed seated? His posture had bolted upright with his outburst and, based on the initial body language, Francis had half-expected the movement to end with AJ marching up to Schwartz, smacking him in the face, and leaving this all behind.
"Oh, calm down, AJ," Jessica interjected dismissively. "He doesn't mean shave you completely. We don't have time for that!" She was rifling through her bag and pulled out a small, battery-operated razor. "We just need to get you trimmed down to make sure everything important is totally unobstructed and easily visible for every student in the class."
AJ did not seem any calmer, but remained silent and scowling, his eyes darting between both Schwartz and Jessica.
Schwartz joined in. "In fact, your body hair one of the reasons I'm so glad you volunteered for this: it gives your body even more of a natural look."
Schwartz moved closer and swept his hands over the regions of AJ's body he commented on them. AJ recoiled slightly, but not enough for him to brush up against Francis again at any point.
"You're not out-of-shape like the average Joe, but your body also isn't something wholly unattainable to him," Schwartz commented while waving his hands over AJ's upper body.
"That is to say: you are clearly at pique physical fitness, but your physique has not been tailored to any specific tastes or trends of the day." He waved his hands over AJ's mid-section with this comment, clearly gesturing to his stomach.
Francis had not noticed before then that AJ's abdominals were obviously firm and his stomach was flat, but there was only a little definition to carve out intricate lines of a six-pack along its interior. As he glanced over AJ's body, it occurred to him that it was not like a form that a sculptor had chiseled out of marble, but more like an oak tree that had grown from a small sapling into something strong, mighty, and imposing over many seasons of hard work.
Schwartz continued: "The hair on your body is... hmm, a little excessive in places, but we'll tidy that up shortly." He gestured to AJ's pubes at that. "You, at very least, project the image of `Man' -- natural man -- by keeping yourself unshaven."
AJ narrowed his eyes at Schwartz, projecting both anger at and suspicion of the man -- but did not do much more than that -- prompting Francis to ponder yet again what sway the ageing art professor could possibly have over a college man "at pique physical fitness" that could subdue him enough to endure a decidedly embarrassing academic lecture commenting so candidly on the intimate aspects of his body.
Schwartz's hands moved down to the level of AJ's crotch and he added, "And your genitals are just right for our purposes today. They're ample enough to find when you actively look for them, but they are certainly not eye-catching enough to make the casual viewer think of you in sexual terms."
Despite having angrily, but passively, withstood all of Schwartz's narration up to that point, it was the comment on his dick that (unsurprisingly) struck a nerve and brought AJ fully to life. Shaking his head as though wondering if he had understood Schwartz's insinuation correctly, AJ immediately vocalized this incredulity: "Wh -- are you calling me small?!"
To add insult to injury, Francis noticed AJ's foreskin extended further at that moment, his dick head retreating further inside (and, not helping AJ's case, objectively reducing his size). He had no doubt interpreted its behaviour correctly: it hides when he's nervous. And so, Francis realized -- thrilled at the prospect of genuinely having public, exterior access to what AJ thought was only a private, interior world -- the virile anger in AJ's voice was a cover-up for the deep anxiety he must now actually be feeling.
Jessica chimed in, apparently unafraid to emasculate her former lover further. "Well, I've certainly had bigger!" she called out snidely.
"Oh, fuck you, bitch!" AJ exclaimed, clearly far past the point of trying to charm his ex in any way at all.
Jessica's remark had provoked AJ even more, to the point that Francis felt uneasy, noticing as he did an increase in twitching all over AJ's body, as though any moment he might jump up from the settee to yell his next comment right in Jessica's face. Francis thought about moving away -- retreating from his space next to a display of raging testosterone -- but somehow found the idea of staying seated took prominence in his mind. Logically, he knew concern for his own safety should take priority... but he had to admit, the view was better from where he was right now, wasn't it?
"And here we go!" Jessica hollered, throwing her hands up in a gesture of exasperation. "I say something abso-fucking-lutely true and that's all you've got! Calling me a bitch. Greeeeeeat comeback."
"Children, please," Schwartz interjected, an edge in his voice. He looked right at AJ when he said his next words, "For a few goddamn more minutes just... Calm. Down."
Francis -- managing to keep his eyes off AJ's body long enough to watch his facial expressions -- noticed that, at Schwartz's command, AJ's eyes seemed to go unfocused as his whole demeanour changed. He slouched slightly, the tension leaving his body.
Francis took note of the unique physical changes. AJ's nipples seemed decidedly less erect, now hiding completely in the chest-hair forest -- perhaps it had not been the physical cold after all, but emotional agitation that made them act that way. Moreover, studying AJ's body in greater detail, Francis took note that the naked man's balls also seemed to hang down lower, cushioning his dick even more lovingly now.
But that cushioning was short-lived. When AJ's relaxation seemed to be in full effect, his eyes now starting to scan the room lazily as though he was not entirely sure where was, Schwartz threw in another instruction, relating it almost as though he were speaking to a dog: "AJ. Here. Now."
Moving in a stupor, AJ fumbled his way to the centre of the room, Schwartz navigating his way around him and studying what was on display before resuming his academic monologue.
"So, as I was saying -- before I was so rudely interrupted," at that, he glared at AJ, before calmly alternating his gave between Francis and Jessica once more, "Above-average genitals are never ideal for class models. In general, these conjure up images only of pornography and put learners in the wrong headspace to fully appreciate the beauty of the male body in myriad other ways," he looked from Jessica to Francis pensively as he spoke, entering into "professor mode" yet again. "In my experience, the only benefit to a model with a large member is that it allows for easy manual adjustments throughout, as more..." he gestured toward AJ's crotch once more as he searched for a word, "... shall we politely say, `believably portioned' examples like this do require a bit more digging around to get a firm grasp of."
At that, Schwartz reached forward casually and moved AJ's cock so that it rested on the opposite side of his nut sack, apparently demonstrating his point: it took a few moves of Schwartz's hand to get it to rest there on its own. Francis, realizing at the same time how silly the sentiment was, couldn't help but feel sorry for it: it had looked so comfortable resting nestled between two supporting testicles. It was, really, quite criminal to disturb it like that.
AJ seemed to be coming to, but the slight twitches all over his body never quite manifested as a real resistance to Schwartz's invasion of his territory.
"Moreover, assuming I judged the nature of the suspensory ligament correctly on my cursory inspection of the subject's pelvis," he motioned to AJ's genitals once more, lifting the penis away from its resting place and using the index finger of his other hand to invite Jessica and Francis to look precisely along its length to where it disappeared into a bush of pubic hair at its base. "I would speculate that this member does not grow in any impressive or notable way when erect."
Schwartz's statement here struck Francis as fascinating, the bespectacled twink was agog both at learning something he had never known about the sex organ he most adored (that one could predict the ratio of flaccid and erect manifestations in this way) and at learning that the secret of AJ's aroused state was written even on his flaccid member.
Perhaps AJ, too, was intrigued by the information, his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked at where Schwartz's fingers pointed to on his cock -- although, the look of confusion might just as well spring from a mind not quite certain as to what was going on around it.
Schwartz looked over to Jessica. "Can you confirm this, my dear?"
She blushed and considered the question (whether she was considering the answer or considering whether to answer it at all was unclear), eventually offering up: "Well, AJ never let me get a look at his dick like this," she motioned toward it, "Up close, I mean, either soft or hard. But going by feel alone, yeah, I would definitely say he's a show-er, not a grower."
"Excellent, excellent," Schwartz added, then carelessly dropping AJ's cock from his grip. Francis, allowing his eyes to linger a moment before turning back to Prof. Schwartz, was pleased to see it fell comfortably back into its normal groove.
"What this means is that very few adjustments will need to be made during the modelling process. Should AJ become aroused -- or should we ask him to become erect -- overall measurements and scales will barely need any adjustment," Schwartz concluded.
Francis cleared his throat, preparing to ask what he hoped was not a stupid question: "Umm, Prof. Schwartz? I understand that models occasionally will get involuntary erections, but, uh, is it, umm, typical to ASK a model to become erect while posing? Wouldn't that move us into the territory of the sexual' which, as I think you said, could distract from the beauty of the male form'?"
"A fine question, Francis!" Schwartz smiled politely at his eager pupil. "I was merely throwing out a hypothetical -- more of a joke than anything else." He paused and seemed to consider this for a moment. "Although, you never know what might happen," he added with a wink.
Francis laughed nervously, not knowing if this was another joke. He glanced to the man in centre of the room and, noticing now that AJ's nipples were pointing out from under the rug on his chest once more, he concluded AJ was coming out of whatever temporary state of "relaxation" Schwartz had managed to coax him into.
Jessica cleared her throat. "Ahem, Sebastian?"
Francis shot his eyes at Jessica immediately, shocked that she would be so disrespectful as to use Schwartz's first name. However, she seemed not to notice Francis's glare nor did Schwartz seem to react to the address by doing anything more than casually turning his head in her direction.
"It looks like we've got a visitor," she said coyly, motioning toward the open doorway.
The room's occupants turned their collective attention to the uniformed man the threshold, while he (predictably) focused intently only at the odd one out, his eyes suspiciously inspecting the bare-ass student in centre stage.
Whatever state of calm had come over AJ quickly evaporated at noticing the stranger in their midst, his arms once again making their panicked half-motion (which Francis now realized was an instinctive attempt and a curiously immediate cessation of throwing his hands in front of his fully-exposed genitals).
"Well, this is, uh... not exactly what I was expecting."