Drawn from afar

[zpitt27]

Role filled
​

http://i955.photobucket.com/albums/ae32/zpitt27/MasonandWoman.jpg


Name: Mason Lockwood
Age: 20s
Brown hair
Blue eyes
6'2"
240

Bio: With an apartment to himself and few friends to speak of, Mason keeps to himself. Most of his day is spent locked away inide listening to music as he works on finishing his comic book.

The new apartment had proved to be just what Mason needed. The change of scenery was inspiration enough alone to fill his creative energy. He'd finished the first two issues of his new comic book faster than he'd ever finished anything in his life. While working on the cover of the third issue, everything changed ...

Mason stepped away from the drafting table to stare out at the street below. What he saw, was a beautiful woman undressing across the street with the drapes wide open. He'd rushed to his bedroom to rummage through his things when he came across the pair of binoculars that had been handed down to him at a young age. Though he felt guilty peeping, Mason remained in the shadows of his apartment, watching intently as the woman walked through her apartment nude.

Before he knew it, Mason pulled up a chair and started sketching the woman from afar. Weeks went by, and the cover for his third issue remained on his drafting table, waiting to be inked. Stacks upon stacks of drawings of the woman filled his apartment. As the time wore on, Mason began taking bolder steps closer to the window. He'd set up his easel right next to his window, binoculars around his neck, ready to paint the woman. He raised the binoculars to his eyes once again to notice how the light reflected off the woman's thighs when he caught her staring back at him ...

 

[zpitt27]

'You stupid, stupid fuck,' Mason thought to himself. He couldn't believe he was stupid enough to get caught watching his neighbor undress.

He frantically ran around his apartment trying to gather up all the drawings and paintings of the woman that he could find. It was one thing just to watch your neighbors at their most intimate, but he was bordering on an entirely different level of obsession. Mason stashed the pictures in any place at all that could double as storage of some kind.

He was nervous...and wasn't handling it well at all.

Mason kept playing the scene over in his mind. He grabbed his binoculars to stare at the woman's legs, when he saw her with a pair of binoculars of her own. After flipping him off, she gestured for Mason to meet her outside his apartment complex.

Sweat continued pouring down his face as Mason locked away all the pictures that he had found of the woman - totaling in the mid-40s. He looked at himself in the mirror. Just as he thought, he looked like shit.

"Fuck," he said.

Mason tried his best to wipe the sweat from his face. He hurried to his bedroom to find another shirt, but they were all as dirty as the one he was wearing, so he opted for some cologne.

Mason ran past his drafting board, completely oblivious to the latest drawing of the woman sitting right on top.

He hopped in the elevator, biting his nails the whole way down. When it reached the bottom floor, Mason stuck his head out to see if the woman was around. The coast was clear. He could just go back up and everything would be fine.

But then he saw her walk inside.

He'd been spotted...again.

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara was beside herself with rage. She could feel the heat in her cheeks, the pulse in her temples, the tremble to her hands as she threw on clothes. A knee-length shirtdress, a pair of panties hastily yanked on. She'd almost forgotten a bra in her anger, but reconsidered- that creeping ass had seen more than enough of her tits. She stripped again to carefully redress, wishing she hadn't put away her turtlenecks and puff jackets months ago.

She drew deep, calming breaths as she crossed the street and entered the lobby of Mason's building. Cara knew that her temper could get her in trouble- she'd been fired from more than one job for telling a handsy supervisor exactly how disinterested she was in his balding, paunchy, little self. It had crossed her mind more than once that cracking her canvasses over her peeper's skull would have been immensely satisfying, and she was pleased with herself for discarding that notion. Cowardly little shit wasn't worth the waste of her work.

There. Sighted. He wasn't as young as she'd thought, and somehow that made it worse. Definitely looked like he wanted to vomit, though, and had she not been so incensed, Cara might have found some sympathy. She narrowed her eyes behind her geek-chic thick-rimmed glasses and moved closer. A short, curve-packed redhead with the stereotypical firey temper and half a dozen tattoos, Cara was used to being looked at. It wasn't the world's worst crime to admire the pale delicacy of her neck beneath her short, geometric bob, or to "read" the fine, intricate lines of script involved in her chestpiece tattoo. Somehow, though, what Mason had done felt more invasive, more degrading than the worst catcall.

She stopped three feet in front of Mason, arms folded tightly across her chest, as if covering her breasts now would somehow erase everything he'd seen before. When she spoke, it was in an icy, and dangerously level voice, the words edged with a crisp, faultless British accent. "Would you like to begin this conversation with a very, very sincere apology? Perhaps an explanation?"

 

[zpitt27]

Mason watched the woman make a bee-line straight for him and he couldn't hold back the sweat that was running down his face. She looked gorgeous in her shirtdress, and despite the circumstances, Mason still felt himself eyeing the woman from head to toe. Part of what he loved so much about drawing her, was watching the way she undressed, sometimes dropping the clothes to the ground, sometimes throwing them. He wondered how she would take off this outfit.

Her accent was beautiful, but had thrown him for a loop. But then again, how would he expect to know anything about the woman...other than how great she looked naked.

Mason cleared his throat. "An apology. Yeah. Yeah I guess that's probably the best way to start, considering, well...everything," Mason said, unsure of himself.

Mason scratched the back of his neck. He wished he was better at talking to women.

"I am...sorry," Mason started. "I, uh, well the reason I'd been watching you was. No. That's not right. I just moved here from, well the house I grew up in, and I'm an artist. Comic books mostly, but they really haven't gone into production anywhere, so I guess you could say I'm an aspiring comic book artist, though that doesn't sound nearly as cool."

'Get to the point, Mason,' he told himself. 'She doesn't give a shit about you or what you do.'

Mason smiled politely. "Sorry, sometimes I get off track. I was working on the cover for what would be the third issue of my series when I took a break and looked out the window. That's where I saw you. And you were undressing. And I should've looked away and everything, but I couldn't. So, I kinda sorta drew a picture of you," Mason said sheepishly.

"I didn't mean to keep watching you to see what you were doing, but...I guess I can't really defend my actions," Mason said.

He extended his hand to the woman, hoping she wouldn't be so angry she couldn't bury the hatchet. "I'm so very sorry. I was, no, I am pretty fucking stupid. I'm Mason, by the way."

 

[laceandcogs]

The fact that Mason wasn't trying to turn this into a pick-up line, or make himself sound any better than he was, was greatly improving his standing with Cara. He seemed to know that he had fucked up, and he did seem earnestly sorry. Honestly, the sweating, rambling, and neck-scratching made him seem a bit like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and it was becoming steadily more difficult for Cara to keep up her head of rage.

Sliding her hand into his and giving him a rather decent shake, she let her grey-blue eyes meet his. They had considerably softened, and Mason wouldn't have a difficult time detecting a glimmer of smile working its way around her lips. "Cara. And I want to see that picture."

 

[zpitt27]

'She actually held my hand,' Mason thought. While he knew this didn't mean anything serious, he knew that he had at least held back some of the anger and abuse he was sure he would've received.

"Cara. I like that," Mason said. "And thank you."

He pressed the button for the elevator to come down, but he couldn't shake the nervous feeling that remained in the pit of his stomach. Even though he remembered hiding all the pictures of Cara, he hoped to show her only one. That way it wouldn't seem as if he'd been spending weeks out of his life watching her. That would make him appear more pathetic than he all ready felt.

The elevator came and an elderly couple exited. He motioned for Cara to enter the elevator first, hoping to be able to catch a glimpse of her ass in that dress.

"You're not offended I drew you are you?" Mason asked.

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara followed his apparently gentlemanly gesture, slipping into the elevator before him. Of course, she wasn't an idiot- she knew he probably just wanted to see the difference in motion when she had panties on. No sense in letting him off the hook too easily, she thought, and put a deliberate sling and roll into her hips- not enough to knock an eye out, but definitely an exaggeration. She spun on one toe and put her back to the corner of the elevator, wanting to catch any change in expression her little show had caused.

A normal woman might think Cara insane for going up to the apartment of a man who she had not only just met, but had in fact met because he was ogling her from across the street. Fortunately for Mason, Cara was far, far from a normal woman. She kept her arms folded over her chest and her chin tilted up aggressively, an angle that highlighted the curling edge of tattoo that slid up the side of her neck from deep within the collar of her dress.

 

[zpitt27]

Mason couldn't believe his luck. He was bringing Cara back up to his apartment to show her the nude pictures he had drawn, and he was given quite possibly the greatest show he had ever seen in his life. He was so hypnotized by the way Cara's ass had swayed from side to side with each step, that he hadn't noticed she was now just standing in the corner of the elevator waiting on him. The closing elevator doors brought him back to reality.

"Fuck," Mason cried out as he leaped toward the elevator. His arms caught the attention of the sensors in the doors, and they re-opened, allowing him to step inside.

Mason smiled at Cara before he hit the button for the tenth floor. He walked to the opposite corner, and hung his head in shame. It was then that he had finally spotted Cara's beautiful feet. He let out a soft sigh, hoping Cara hadn't heard anything. Everything was just too perfect about this woman for any of this shit to be happening to Mason.

The elevator arrived at the tenth floor, again snapping Mason out of the trance Cara had unknowingly put him in. He held his arms out to keep the doors open, "After you," he said.

 

[laceandcogs]

That... that earned a laugh. A throaty, full sound as Cara tilted back her head and really enjoyed the moment. While her punker looks might have suggested to an outside eye that she was laughing at Mason, there was nothing cruel to the sound, or to the way she let her arms fall away from her chest and hang lightly at her sides. This man might be a bit of a sketchball, but he sure as hell wasn't a serial killer in training.

Cara really did think he was hanging his head in shame, so she let him stare at her feet with blithe, cheerful innocence. Cara believed in religiously regular pedicures, as she had very, very sensitive feet and a shoe collection based almost entirely around bad decisions. Someday, she would make a chiropractor very happy with the results of her platform heel habit. Today, she had gone for speed, and chosen a pair of simple black flip-flops, which nicely hightlighted the perfect silver glitter polish on her toes.

"Careful, Mason. The wild elevator is a cagey predator." Keeping an amused eye on him, she stepped out of the elevator.

 

[zpitt27]

Laughter was a familiar sound to Mason. Hell, it's what he heard every time he had gotten the courage to approach a woman, let alone ask her out. Her laughter seemed to cement the fact that nothing was going to happen between Mason and Cara. While most of the time, Mason let the negatives of life nag on him, there was something special about today. Cara had beautiful feet, and her toes were out in the open.

Mason's mouth began to water as her heard the sound of Cara's flip flops hitting her heels with every step she took. That would be material enough for Mason to relieve himself to after Cara left.

Mason cleared his throat as he stepped out of the elevator. He laughed to himself at Cara's comment, but all he could muster out loud was: "My place is this way."

He stopped at the third door on the left. He was digging in his pocket looking for his apartment keys when he noticed that the door was left ajar. In his haste to meet Cara, Mason mustn't have closed up properly. "This is my studio so to say," Mason said. "Can I get you something to drink, Cara?"

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara stepped into Mason's apartment, grey-green eyes capturing and filing the details for later analysis. Most of Cara's work relied on memory, on the evocation of a place or time well beyond her physical grasp, some she had never even seen. To enhance her talents, she had worked hard on drawing connections between people's environments, focusing on seeing the common instead of the disparate.

Here, of course, were many elements of the standard bachelor pad- gentle disorganization, the lingering scent of overapplied cologne... it was a great smell, though, Cara had to admit. If she had the chance, she'd want to find the bottle, memorize the brand. Of course, Mason definitely carried that aroma with him, but grabbing your stalker by the shirtfront and burying your face into his chest so you could huff him like a tweaker with a new can of spraypaint was not exactly the best way to convey your disapproval of his activities.

The drafting board... by the window. How convenient, Cara thought, a bit uncharitably. She moved toward it, oblivious to the thwock-thwock of her flip flops, knowing that the girl in the image there must be her. After all, he only had one window in the living room. "No, thank you." She sidled up to the drafting board, and stared down at the drawing in silence.

 

[zpitt27]

Though Cara didn't want anything to drink, Mason felt like downing the rest of the beer in his fridge. It would be the only thing to help calm his nerves at the moment. He closed his eyes, embarrassed not only at the state of his apartment, but also that she was heading toward his drafting board. His livlihood. His obsession.

Mason closed his eyes, drowning out every other sound in the room, including his heart pounding in his chest, and focused on the beautiful sound of Cara's flip flops hitting her feet. He was becoming aroused by that sound alone. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to adjust himself with Cara noticing anything.

And then he heard the rattling of the papers on his drafting board. If there was anything that could awaken him from his daydream, she had found it. He reopened his eyes and scratched his head. She hadn't said anything about the drawing yet, which heightened his nervousness. 'She probably hates it,' he thought.

Mason cleared his throat as he cautiously approached Cara. "So...what do you think? I, uhh, didn't get a chance to finish that one, because you caught me in the act."

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara didn't touch the work, knowing full well about the heartache a fingerprint or smudge could bring. She braced her hands lightly on the edges of his desk and leaned very close to the picture, trying to ignore the subject matter and focus on its presentation. The lines were sleek, certain, no wavering hesitation, no eraser marks where he would have second-guessed his skill. The style was only lightly stylized, but Cara couldn't bring herself to call it realistic- if she had thought she looked that good naked, she'd never dress again.

"It's... good. It's really rather good." The notes of surprise and consternation were evident in her mellifluous speech, and she flickered an only half-joking glance at Mason, skewering him on a lance of cool grey before she continued. "I will not lie- I really would have preferred that you suck utterly so that I could shred your skill as well as your choice of model."

 

[zpitt27]

Mason ogled Cara from behind as she looked over his artwork. In his mind he kept telling himself: "She hates it. I just know it. She hates it and she's gonna rip it up and kick my ass." He was left speechless to hear Cara compliment his artwork.

'Maybe this won't be so bad afterall,' he thought to himself.

He approached her cautiously as it was still too early on in their "relationship" to gauge how he should act around her. He couldn't, however, stop his eyes from taking in the beauty of Cara's body from every possible angle. Mason felt his tongue moisten his lips as he thought about kissing her toes. But Cara's last words hit him like a brick.

"I actually think you're the perfect model, Cara. I mean, hell, from across the street you got me to stop working on something that I've wanted to spend my entire life doing...and that was at least three weeks ago," Mason said, his words trailing. He'd forgotten that he'd only just been caught watching her undress. If ever there was a chance of anything good coming from this situation, Mason was sure it was over now. How could he be so stupid to admit how long he'd been watching her?

 

[laceandcogs]

Three weeks? This shrimp had been watching her for three weeks? Oh... oh. Oh. Oh, this called for a whole new temper tantrum. But she practically heard Mason wince as he realized what he had confessed to, and since she had him on the hook, she might as well enjoy it.

"Oh? I had no idea that I was engrossing enough to distract such a dedicated worker." Cara was still bent over his desk, lightly drumming her fingertips on the edge. "But in three weeks, you must have produced more than this one little drawing, Mason... why don't you show me the rest?" Her voice was sweet, cordial, and her eyes friendly... if slightly colder than Mason might have liked to see. There was a distinct air of "trap!" to her friendliness, like a cat cooing to a canary...

 

[zpitt27]

'Fuck...think...fuck. Fuck,' Mason thought to himself repeatedly. Though he knew better, he still held on to the hope that if he acted fast enough, there might be a way to salvage the situation.

Mason cleared his throat. "M-more? No. I, uhh, meant...hours? Yes! Hours. Three hours it took me to finish the draw-, that one drawing," Mason managed. He chuckled nervously to himself. There was no way Cara would buy that. Even he couldn't believe his own bullshit.

"Fuck," he whispered as he went into the other room to retrieve the drawings.

Mason's bedroom was a sad sight indeed. Clothes were thrown everywhere and even if he managed to straighten everything out, he knew that no time would be spent in the bedroom with Cara...well, at least not the real Cara. He went into his drawer, grabbing out the large stack of drawings. He stacked them neatly in a pile, making sure all the edges of the pages were even. Anything to prolong the inevitable confrontation with Cara.

Mason sighed and returned to Cara. He held out the drawings. "I kinda lost count after 40, so you got a lot to look through," he said. He quickly went into the kitchen, grabbed two beers and shuffled his way back to hear Cara's response.

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara slid her ass onto the wide windowsill and crossed her thighs, flipping carefully through the stack of drawings Mason had brought her. She fidgeted, bouncing her calf in a manner that made her flip flop dangle and shiver at the end of her toes.

Her face was a study in blankness. No sound parted her lips, no smile or frown creased her brow. She set each drawing carefully on the drafting table after she finished regarding it.

Blushing, however, was not a reaction so easily controlled. She closed her eyes as she held the last drawing carefully between her hands, feeling the heat of her blood rushing through the tips of her ears and down her neck. She was working on calming down enough to speak. It gave Mason a long rope to dangle from. If she was a very lucky girl, he'd be the type that couldn't handle silence.

 

[zpitt27]

Mason popped the tab of the first can of beer he had brought out for himself. He gulped down half the can without a problem. He sat down on a broken recliner he had bought at the local Good Will, but he couldn't control his leg as it bounced up and down, nervously.

He finished the other half of the beer and let the empty can fall to the floor. He quickly popped the tab of the second beer, but he nursed this one, taking little sips at a time. The silence was killing him.

'What's she thinking? Why isn't she saying anything? Is she gonna hit me? Report me for peeping?" were the thoughts the ran through his mind.

Mason stole a glance at Cara's face, but was too ashamed to look at her for longer than a second. His eyes made their way down her body, stopping at her feet. Her flip flops were barely hanging on to her feet. It made Mason want to crawl across the floor, slip them off delicately and do anything Cara asked of him. He felt his mouth watering again when he heard a loud thud and a splash. He dropped the can of beer.

"Fuck," Mason said as he grabbed a towel and started dabbing up the beer.

 

[laceandcogs]

"Tell me why, Mason." Cara's voice was soft, crisp, and shivering with a very real vulnerability. She was not accustomed to feeling at the mercy of others, and it wasn't something she totally enjoyed. She stared at Mason as he mopped up the beer. "Tell me why you drew so many. Why you spent three weeks on me. Why you busted out binoculars, Mason. Christ's bloody wounds, -binoculars-." Were it not for the tremble in her words, the way she pronounced binoculars would have been singularly charming. As it was, however, she sounded like she was going to cry.

The single sheet in her hands shook lightly, and she forced herself to put it aside, not wanting to damage it.

 

[zpitt27]

Mason finished mopping up the beer and threw the towel into the kitchen sink. He smelled his fingertips, and of course, the reeked of beer. He washed his hands.

"Why? Well, that's an easy one really," Mason started. "Well, it all started out by accident. When I saw you walk into your apartment, time just sort of stopped for me. Then you started undressing, and...I, well, thought you were the perfect model for my art. You're really the only person I've met since I moved here, and even before today, I kinda talked to you from here just to fill up the apartment with some kind of sound. I get pretty lonely because I don't leave that often."

Mason let out a deep sigh. He'd said a lot of things that he never thought he'd be given the chance to.

"After awhile, I grabbed the binoculars to get a closer look to see how light created shadows on you at different times during the day. And I don't know...I just kept drawing. I can get rid of them if you want, and I won't spy on you again. You just gave me something to do, even though you didn't realize it," Mason said.

 

[laceandcogs]

"You talked to me?" Cara was gobsmacked by this admission, though it did little to reassure her of Mason's sanity. She didn't really know what to do with her hands right now. No longer wanting to wrap them around Mason's throat, she was at a loss.

"God damnit, Mason, there are better ways to meet people than to spy on them from your filthy living room!" Cara stood, deciding, as she often did, to work through difficult emotions by cleaning. She neatened the edges of his drawings, began picking up beer cans, paper plates, any errant trash. Moving past him, around him like he wasn't there, she continued her tirade. "Did you think about joining a club? Going to a bar? Sitting idly in a Starbucks with a pretentious paperback?"

Tossing an armful of trash into Mason's bucket, she whirled again, gathering clothes piece by piece and folding the cleanest ones with snapping motions as precise as a semaphore writer. "Did you think, perhaps, after drawing the first, or seventeenth, or twenty-fifty picture that it might be a good time to bump into my on the street? Introduce yourself like a fucking normal man instead of reaching for the Girl Guide Birdwatching kit?"

 

[zpitt27]

Mason scratched his head unsure of what to say. He could tell that he'd said too much, but he always had a way of not knowing when to shut up. 'Probably shouldn't have said I talked to her,' he thought.

As he watched Cara start picking up the mess that his apartment had become, Mason again felt ashamed. He started picking up other garbage that sat on his floor. There was no need for him to keep pizza boxes and fast food bags on the floor, especially when he had company.

"I know there are better ways of meeting people, Cara," Mason started. "But that's not how things work with me. Had I met you in a Starbucks or some other place like that, I wouldn't have known what to say. I barely do now. I don't know what to do. Every time I've tried to approach a woman that way, I get laughed at, slapped and told to 'fuck off.' So this time, I just kept everything to myself. I figured I couldn't get hurt again if I didn't embarrass myself. But, I was wrong again."

Mason walked over to his door and opened it. "Look, you have to believe me when I say that I never meant to draw so many pictures. I never meant to gawk at you for as long as I have. I know I must sound like a complete fucking nut, but I'm really not that bad. You don't have to stay, and you don't have to pick up after me. You can take all the drawings and burn them, and I'll never bother you again. I'm sorry."

 

[laceandcogs]

Now it was Cara's turn to feel vaguely sorry. Clearly, Mason felt that by cleaning up his place, she was reducing him, ridiculing him. An idea crossed her mind, and a second later, a smile lit her face thoroughly from within. She moved past him, toward the door, and held up one finger in a "just a minute" motion.

Closing the door behind her, Cara stood in the hallway for a count of three. Then, raising one delicate fist, she rapped on the door.

 

[zpitt27]

Mason wanted nothing more than to get on with his lonely life. The way things had been before any of this shit happened. Before he moved out here. It was a life he was used to, and he was fine with that.

Mason was confused as he watched Cara walk out of his apartment. Why was she holding up one finger?

The door closed, and shortly after, Mason heard a knock at the door. He opened it. "Hello?"

 

[laceandcogs]

Cara stood on the other side, her smile warm, sweet, and plenty mischevious. She stuck out a hand for a shake, her voice broad with gentle over-dramatization. "Hello! My name is Cara. I noticed you are new in the neighborhood, and since we have never met before ever, I wanted to introduce myself so that we might become friends!"

Her grey gaze fixed on his as she produced a much belabored wink-wink, her smile nearly dissolving into a laugh. "Perhaps you would like to invite me in for a beer, new neighbor and friendly stranger?"